I've played a little under two hours and made the decision to request my first ever refund on Steam, mostly due to technical issues that have been fairly well-documented by now. I really want to like this game, but I can't seem to square my personal experience with most of the reviews that were compiled yesterday. I guess I identify most with the following sentence from Jeff's review:

As such, a big part of deciding if you want to play Fallout 4 becomes a personal inventory of your desire to either revel in these glitches or your patience at dealing with them, should they appear.

Maybe I just don't have patience for these glitches anymore. Here's what I ran into during my time with the game:

• Input lag
• Mouse acceleration and the X/Y mapping issue
• Framerate stuttering while changing angles
• Vsync/Framerate tied to engine speed (old problem, but still a problem)
• Stuttering in intro cutscene
• Microstuttering in outdoor environments
• Incredibly narrow FOV (fixed via ini)
• Exiting power armor breaks ability to toggle run/walk speed

To a certain extent I can either troubleshoot technical issues myself, wait for community fixes, or just deal with it. And that's fine.

But man... the pre-War prologue... it's just not very well executed. Here's an abridged version of my thought process:

Where's the emotional investment in the story? Does the main character care that his wife has died at all? Or that the entirety of his world has been upended and he has to learn an entirely new method of survival? He's not at all completely incredulous to see his house and Codsworth? Does he have any questions about who was running Vault 111? No? No questions? Great... Does he really know how to craft guns and build bases innately? No, no tutorial at all? OK... So...why is he asking about his son again? It's been 200 years! What makes anyone think his kid is alive? Whatever, just go with it....The second quest I have is to get power armor and wreck everything with a minigun? No subtlety? No buildup? OK... great...now I can't run...this is dumb.

To be fair, it could just be poor timing. I could simply have open world fatigue after two very big, very good games in Witcher 3 and MGSV. There's definitely some involuntary direct and indirect comparisons that contextualize and color my experience with the story themes, which isn't the games fault necessarily. For example, we've spent many hours in MGS V yammering on about revenge and fiery anger after trauma, so to see my main character just sort of whimper "They're dead..." and immediately start puzzle solving and shooting things has zero emotional impact. Inventory management and base building were respectively the weakest parts of Witcher and MGS, so I wasn't excited to be dealing with that again in Fallout 4. The game doesn't look great, either. The Creation engine is really showing its age and it visually compared very poorly to Witcher and MGS, but again the graphics evaluations are well-documented.

Jeff and other members of community have had similar thoughts about the technical issues being less and less acceptable as Bethesda continues releasing games using this template. It certainly pushed me towards a refund in this instance. If my technical experience were better I would be able to look over the obvious story and pacing issues.

Maybe I'll give the game another chance in a year or two when it's 10 bucks on a Steam Sale, when the game has been modded to fix 90% of these issues. But today I had 10x more fun playing mutators on Rocket League than trying to get into Fallout. Admittedly, that probably says more about me or Rocket League than it does about Fallout.

Wondering other people's opinion on this... especially as to whether things change as you get deeper into the game...

I actually realized this when playing other games and comparing them to Bethesda games.

Compared to other games I've enjoyed, Bethesda game narratives aren't good (Metro, STALKER), their combat is lackluster (Dragon's Dogma), and they are just unpolished and buggy as all hell (compared to... most games).

The only thing going for them is their vast world.... Except most of it is cut-and-paste. Samey areas with samey structures (sometimes exactly the same!). Robotic interactions with NPCs... It's an illusion that wears thin rather quickly for me.

Honestly, their games aren't so different from yearly releases like COD. More of the same, over and over again. Except they refuse to do the bare minimum and fix issues that should have been fixed after, ESIV: Oblivion...

I've played through Oblivion, Skyrim, Fallout 3, and NV... And overall I'm feeling like they don't even try to improve the quality of their games at all.

Agreed on the opening cinematic running really rough (on my i7, 16GB ram, gtx970 system @ 1080). Only big bug I've had so far though is my gun suddenly ceasing to exist in the middle of a firefight. That was kinda unfortunate.

Totally agree on the lack of verisimilitude in the characters. Some folks have said that it's an unfair comparison for some reason, but I'ma do it anyway: the people you meet in the witcher have a believable range of feelings toward your character from the get go.

The first group of people I met in fallout 4 were like "you killed people real good. Do some chores for us and maybe we'll do things to help you" which is about as cliche as it gets.

Next quest was "build us beds that are exactly as shitty as the beds that are already here for some reason." Second guy I met was like "find the three valves and turn them for me" I rolled my eyes and obliged, but I'm not sure how invested I'll be able to get in this if that's the depth that it continues to show.

Would it make a difference if a game was "good", but you still didn't like it?

Maybe there's some sense of like, "this is the new Fallout, so if I don't like it I'll have to wait X years until the next one." Personally I don't trust what any review says, because I've yet to see a reviewer with the same standards of quality and who looks for the same tingly enjoyment bits I do in games.

All those spoilered parts would annoy me too and I doubt the improved shooting would make me want to run around and keep playing either, especially if it's still a busted Bethesda game.

So I dunno, meh? Play games you enjoy playing and that should really be the end of it. I think if I'm not engaged on some level throughout my time playing, it's a waste of time and attention to keep doing it.

@bocckob: I think what a lot of folks (myself included sometimes) are looking for is some reassurance that they aren't somehow crazy for seeing things a certain way, and trying to see if there's some really great aspect of things that they are overlooking that they could use to increase their enjoyment of something that other people clearly find enjoyable.

Not trying to put words in @tackystuff's mouth, but that's a motivation that I don't think is unreasonable (and that often gets shouted down).

I look at Fallout 4 and almost see Fallout 3 remastered. Like they've spent the last 4-7 years making new assets, content and story and crowbarring them into tech that wasn't even great by 2008 standards. I could still go for another Fallout but I've waited long enough to wait a little more. Its underwhelming but I'll probably still have a blast playing it. Just... not right now.

Yeah, I think it would, to a certain extent. This sort of gets into a different discussion but a large part of my overall enjoyment of games comes through discussion with friends, being a part of the community that's playing through it, hearing about it on podcasts/videos/etc. To me, an "important" game that's out of my normal preferences can be equally as entertaining as a game that appeals to me specifically. I also hate to come into a series in the middle, so that will often motivate to play aging games. Witcher 1 is a good example. Really rough game to get through, but I'm glad I did. I tend to grit my teeth and bear more than the first couple hours, at the very least, before I put it down.

That said, the quality of this year's releases in this genre is unusual, so I wonder if timing is as important as any other metric in this case. If anything it throws the aging "Bethesda game" template into sharper relief than usual.

Well, i'm not sure yet but games like these I don't think can be judged properly in 2 hours. It's definitely got a lot of issues, but off the bat i like it better than 3 but the game definitely does feel "outdated" or rather more of the same. I feel like their elder scrolls games tend to be more interesting than their fallout games (i'm still giving this game a fair shake only 5 hours in and haven't done anything really but what you said and some *attempts* at base building). I guess this game feels like it was developed in a box and all the gameplay and technical leaps in the genre by other companies went unnoticed by the developers, so things that issues that have been solved by newer games are still in this one. I feel skyrim was a bigger leap over fallout 3 than fallout 4 is over fallout 3. Even things like switching weapons (with a gamepad anyway) feel overly cumbersome, and the new things like base building feel thrown in and not explained very well.

Anyway, same formula or not a good game is a good game and i'll give this one a shot and see if it gets better as i see the potential in it.

It's certainly not up to date from a technical standpoint (at all), but the story and mostly everything else are perfectly fine. It's just a game with a certain tone.

Outdated and not polished. That pretty much sums it up.

If this game were released 2 or 3 years ago it would've been pretty amazing. By 2015 standards... Lackluster.

That story stuff sounds like straight up F3 type of broken logic like Nuketown and their bomb (as the first main example you come across, of many), tho not quite as bad.

Guess the game just isn't for you? I'm only five hours in myself, but I'm having a blast.
The only thing I have changed in the ini so far is the mouse acceleration, and I believe you can change the X/Y mapping there as well. Might fiddle with the fov a bit. Still haven't gotten any of the other glitches you speak of, and actually managed to turn everything higher than the recommended settings (which was high, got most on ultra now) while still keeping the frames acceptable. Mostly stays around 60, but has dipped down to 40 now and then. Will see what happens when I get to even more intense locations.

The story in Bethesda open world games are what they are. Not the reason I play them. The open world, filled with loot, secrets and fun stuff to do is why. And this has that and more. I love the crafting and building. I'm one of those who downloaded and followed those "Settlers" mods for both F3 and F:NV (hell, I even had an NPC named after me in one version for a time), and the base building in this feels like an expanded and vastly better version of that. I also love to craft and put things together in games, so the weapon and armor system is great. And for there are the little things. Like how the face of an older women you meet early on animates in such a way that it reminds me of the old "talking heads" if Fallout 1 and 2. Or how your voice spoken through the Power Armor helmet sounds exactly how it did in Fallout 1 and 2. I love it.

So yeah, it's all about preference. For me, I believe this game will be up there when it comes to Game of the Year (together with Witcher 3 and MGS5), while for you it's not. This is why I love the fact that Steam has that refund option now. Sometimes you buy a game that just turns out to be not for you.

I have more of an issue with the fact that the gameplay just isn't very good than I do with the story and dialogue. Let's face it, Bethesda games aren't exactly known for hard hitting, emotionally charged stories and Fallout 4 has the unique disadvantage of releasing in the same year as the Witcher 3, so the writing looks particularly childish in comparison. Of course, it doesn't help that Bethesda still can't animate faces. The NPCs are seriously creepy as fuck.

The thing is, none of that would matter if the gameplay were super-satisfying. But it isn't. Shooting still sucks, despite all the "inspiration" that was supposedly taken from Destiny, and huge parts of the early game are terribly tutorialized. The base building stuff in particular is seriously badly done, since the game never bothers to explain how any of the damn systems fit together, and on consoles the interface is pretty kludgy to get from item to item. Add in slowdown and generally kind of ugly graphics and the whole thing comes off as half-baked.

I won't say much besides that I wholeheartedly agree. With the small added comment that this would of felt somewhat dodgy anyways. Coming out 4(?) Months after the Witcher does not do this game favours.
I mean if you would ask me without any prior knowledge I would probably say that fallout was done by a young up and coming Polish company, while the witcher was done by the more established American company who has had 4 or 5 games like this behind them already. (counting fallout and the elder scrolls here.)

@tackystuff:

I've put about 10 hours in, I'm getting what I need out of a fallout, or any Bethesda game, that being exploration. Seeing a little icon on the map and deciding yes lets go then exploring whatever it is. But storywise and setting Fallout NV it is not. Actually at this point I haven't met one character I give a single fuck about..except maybe that druggy robot.

I guess if its not for you then its not for you. My problem is no-one else is even trying to make games like this Witcher 3 is great and all but it doen't offer the same immersion. I want more games like this written by people who can write.

A very uninspired first couple of hours. The glorified turret section (power armour vs deathclaw) feels particularly out of place so early in proceedings, and in a way kinda undermines the whole setting for me.

Hoping things pick up once I start to get away from the main questline stuff.

I think it's more outdated then anything, but I thought Skyrim was even outdated so I'm not surprised more and more people are thinking the same way.

As for the bugs they suck but I think most people who enjoy the game can power through them as long as there's nothing game breaking, not that this excuses them. You'd hope being 2015 Bethesda will be on it with Patches, would be inexcusable otherwise, but that remains to be seen.

I'm probably being a contrarian here, but I cannot understand where people are coming from when they say "Fallout 4 is outdated/tired/overused etc."

Put simply, Bethesda has found a winning formula with its focus and gameplay. Like it or hate it, there are very few companies out there willing to even attempt something as large as Fallout or Elder Scroll. The underlying concept of "explore, loot, kill things" is something that's very difficult to reinvent. It's fair to say that their stories aren't typically top shelf, but when your scope is as broad as Fallout, it's hard to fault Bethesda for coming up short in some categories.

The changes from 3 to 4 have been hugely significant. Having recently played both FONV and 3, the general quality of life improvements, not mentioning the actual new features have kept me largely satisfied. It's not simply Fallout 3 with a new coat of paint. It's highly disingenuous to say that.

I'm legitimately curious as to why and what people expected to change with 4. Having read the thoughts of members of the community, the overwhelmingly negative complaint in regards to the game is "it's more of the same". If you were in position of Todd Howard, what would you have changed?

I personally like the exploration in this one and graphically its fine. The settlement stuff is interesting, but has yet to play into the game in any meaningful way apart from giving me reasons to scavenge everything and clear pre determined areas. Probably my favourite thing though is that you don't need to exit menus when looting you just walk away, super timesaver. The shooting is much improved as well.

What would I have liked? Really at this point the main thing that lets them down is their story telling/ characters. So far not one of the missions or side missions have hooked me, none of the characters have been halfway interesting. the last two hours I played I listened to the bombcast while scavenging.

Having a more interesting narrative and characters doesn't change one thing about how the world works, they were going to need them anyway why not get someone in who can really make some good ones. This is supposed to be the BIG OPEN WORLD RPG, possibly of the generation considering that there are none announced on the horizon its safe to say this is it for the next two years at least. going to make a crap loan of money, they couldn't have thrown some of that green at team of great writers?

Its also missing some old timey Americana vibe I got in spades from 3 and NV I'm getting very little of that here..... oh and humour, its really skimping on the humour. This game has been funny twice in 12 hours both times it was robots, its saying something when robots are the funniest things in your game.

Also why so many reused songs? There is a wealth of tin pan alley and golden age music out there and I bet a lot is royalty free there is no excuse for falling back on the same goddamn tunes.

Playing on PS4, first 4 hours or so and I'm enjoying it a lot. Looks pretty good at times too!

But damn does Bethesda need a new engine. It's the only game on PS4 that needs a full install before you can start playing (25+ minutes). Also it's an open world in 2015 with loading times between indoor/outdoor area's (especially fun when you just exited a building on a balcony and need to go back in). And ofcourse the AI jank.

the community reaction is pretty shocking really. seems like you are not the only one who is thinking this is too much like fallout 3.5

bugs and all

I'm enjoying it, and I kept my expectations very low. However, I am pretty disappointed that from the moment we saw the reveal trailer you could tell this game was outdated. I haven't had much actual buggy jankiness yet (playing PC) but this game's visuals are so underwhelming.

Yeah, but I'm OK with most of it. The worst part is the mobility issue. I feel like I'm playing a game from the early 2000's.

I'm near the beginning of the game, only at Concord - but I haven't noticed many glitches yet. The only thing I've noticed is frame rate drops (PS4).

I've never played the Fallout games before so I can't really speak to whether or not the games feel outdated, I guess - but I do feel the lack of believability of the main character in the situations she's been put into thus far. I'm not liking how you manager your inventory so far, I do see the potential of that bothering me a lot later on in the game (this is where things like the Wii U GamePad become infinitely useful lol).

yeah, I'm running at ultra, and character models are pretty ugly. textures in general are pretty low quality. I kinda like the look of it though.

part of what i like about this game is that it is so similar to the other open-world bethesda RPG's. nobody else makes games like that so i still look forward to them when they do arrive. bugs and all. i've only encountered minor hiccups, like having to re-verify the steam game cache to fix a launching issue and i spent a couple hours yesterday overclocking to get the framerate to run better at higher settings. Got it to where the high preset runs at a solid 30-60fps so i'm good with that. if someone figures out how to implement a frame rate limiter i might just lock it at 30 at that point to minimize the fps spikes.

I don't think it's disingenuous at all to say that Fallout 4 is basically Fallout 3 with a new coat of paint. Quality of life changes and a couple tacked on new features would have been acceptable if they did this last generation. After all, that's what Skyrim was, and people liked that just fine. I just think people expect a little more now that it's new consoles we're talking about. I personally think it's foolish of them to be using the same flawed and dated engine that they've been using since Oblivion was made.

I don't think anyone could argue that this game doesn't look as good or run as well as a modern game should, and that's 100% because of the engine. A lot of the jank and common complaints we associate with all their games from last gen (microstuttering, input lag, fucked up character animations, dialogue getting cut off, companions getting in the way and being useless, the list goes on) are also problems/limitations of the engine, which is why they show up in every game and never get fixed. They can't be fixed. The fact that we haven't seen any significant improvements or innovations in gameplay as far as mechanics or polish and fine-tuning (improved shooting aside) is also, most likely, a limitation of the engine.

A new generation of consoles was the best time to finally make a fresh start on a new engine, and they didn't. Remember how mind blowing Oblivion was? That was a true next gen experience, worlds apart from Morrowind in graphics and gameplay. Fallout 4 isn't that even a little bit. As many have said, there's a shit ton of last gen in this game. I don't know about you, but their games had plenty of content already. Enough that I make myself sick on them like a food addict at a buffet. More content for what is basically an improved version of the same game isn't what I wanted after getting four of them last generation. I'm honestly surprised anybody can be satisfied with that (you're all gluttons and need professional help). I wanted a truly new, fresh, next gen, mind-blowing experience and they didn't provide it, so yeah, I'm pretty disappointed in them and this game right now.

What would I have done differently if I were Todd Howard? Used a new engine that wasn't so dated, inefficient, and buggy so the game could actually look not just "alright" but downright impressive the way Oblivion was in its day. Having a new engine would allow me to do all sorts of other fun stuff. I would've made the gameplay tighter; not just shooting, but actually moving your character, jumping, etc. Again, Oblivion was a huge improvement over Morrowind in gameplay "feel," and I expect them to make major improvements on that front when shifting console generations at the very least. More mobility, like some sort of mantling or parkour system is an example of a nice change they could've made. I would've made companions better integrated into the experience with improved AI, orders, and probably a separate upgrade system. I would've made the AI better in general. Oblivion's AI was a talking point when it came out. Emergent AI, etc. Silly to think of it that way now, but it was impressive at the time. Again, why shouldn't I expect continued progress on that front when it's something they've focused on innovating in the past? There's just nothing innovative about this game and there's no reason there shouldn't be. They fucked up, imo.

ah that's scripted? I thought it was kinda cool cause i thought that thing just showed up, now it feels a bit dumb.

Mouse acceleration can be fixed in the INI. A pain, and by the this third game, it should not be in the PC version, but it's not a huge deal.

The VSync/Framerate stuff is Havoc. At least it's not locked at 30fps like other games.

I'm honestly surprised the FOV isn't narrower with the consoles performing like butt, the default seems much higher than a COD or Halo game. It actually took me an hour or two to realize Fallout wasn't taking its FOV settings from the ini changes. I had to console FOV 95 95 to get it to work.

It just looks so much like a prettier version of the same game. Buggy in ways that AAA games coming out in 2015 shouldn't be anymore. I had high hopes for this since I hadn't seen any pre-release coverage but it's kind of sad to hear about it now. I think at this point these games are about finding funky glitches and posting them on youtube with a bunch of dumb memes alongside them.

The thing that has made me most disappointed so far is the lack of variety and choice in the quests. In 9 hours it feels like all I've done is gone from A to B, cleared an excessive number of enemies out, occasionally passed a lame speech check and then completed the quest.

@mrroach:That certainly resonates with me. It's hard seeing something that is a legit cultural phenomenon, and just not get it at all. It's alienating, I guess.

I kind of feel like I'm playing a completely different game than the rest of the internet. All I keep seeing is hate for this game, and I have been having the complete opposite experience. I haven't run into any glitches, the game runs great on my PC, except for a slight dip into the 50s with the framerate when I'm in a dense area, but it jumps back to 60 quickly. I think the graphics are good. I finished Witcher 3 prior to Fallout, and it obviously doesn't look as good as Witcher, but I still think it looks good. The textures look a lot better than previous Bethesda games, and the faces are not as atrocious as the leaked videos I saw suggested.

Maybe I'm not as critical as everyone else, but I played for about 12 hours yesterday, and I enjoyed every minute of it, and I can't wait to get home tonight and play more.

The technical issues will be on a case by case basis. I have always had good luck with Bethesda. In four games, I have never experienced any game breaking technical issues. I thought Skyrim was a fairly polished game by Bethesda standards, but plenty of people would disagree. The visuals are certainly not why you play a Bethesda RPG. The Witcher 3 has incredible graphics, but has a relatively static world. Bethesda games have a dynamic aspect to them that is fairly unique. For instance, you can run into events randomly that may only take place at a certain time and place that another player simply never experienced. The people and events of the Witcher 3 are set in stone by comparison. I think the "Jank" is worth it. I may change my opinion if the game is completely busted, but I have been lucky up to this point. The gameplay is never going to be as good as a dedicated shooter, but it seems good for what kind of game it is.

I'm on PS4 so I can't speak to your technical issues. I've had few problems so far in six hours. Couple wonky character model movement issues, but that's about it. No game or quest breaking glitches and I haven't noticed the framerate issues that everyone has been yelling about. Otherwise so far it definitely feels like a new Fallout with a fresh coat of paint, a new open world, lots of mechanical changes, and a ton of little gameplay improvements, which is exactly what I wanted. There are some things I wished they did better - inventory management and equipment comparisons, the base-building aspect isn't well explained and is a little convoluted, etc. - but overall it seems pretty great. There's a whole new character building system to figure out, I've run across some interesting characters already, and it perfectly hits the sense of exploration present in Bethesda games that I don't really get from other open world games.

The story I also don't really agree with your complaints. I think one of the issues with Fallout in general is that it's very much your character, and so the motivation/actions/understanding of the world is internalized to you. Even though your character speaks here, it's not the sort of game where he's going to say out loud every single thing and tell you exactly who he is and what he's doing. And the dialogue choices likewise will generally reflect your view of the character. It's an RPG with an emphasis on you role-playing your character. It's not MGSV, where you're just inhabiting a character and story that is fully defined by Kojima, or even Witcher 3, where Geralt as a character is fairly well-defined even if you make some decisions along the way.

On the prologue specifically: If you as your character want to figure out what the hell was going on in Vault 111 you can scour the Vault and find out a ton of info right there on what was going on and what happened there after the war. You can also piece some things together between that and the dialogue by the people who came after your wife and son. It's pretty clear he's pissed about his wife dying, and my character at least took his wife's wedding ring and carries both rings with him everywhere. I'm also confused why you think him asking about his son is weird - he witnessed his son getting kidnapped at some indeterminate time before he was unfrozen, and so his son easily could be alive and somewhere out there in the Wasteland. The jumping into power armor and crafting weapons off the bat is a little strange, but they at least set your character up as former military and of some importance such that he would have basic survival and combat skills, especially given that Vault-Tec was interested in him specifically.

To me it feels like a less dry one of these games. It reminds me a lot of the issues I had with GTA V, where it was worked on for so long that it had to ignore a lot of the developments open world games like this have made to make playing it feel more streamlined and smoother. The shooting feels better and making the dialogue scenes more like cut scenes helps, but at the same time it still feels like a slightly improved 2008 game.

Basically how I feel too. Sure, Fallout 4 is a bit more complex than say Witcher 3 but the overall quality of Witcher 3 still trumps this game big time. I think Fallout 4 will be the last game where I can tolerate the Bethesda jank and so/so writing.

seems like they try to get away with everything because of how many "Hours" of content they have in their games. it seems like come 2015 thats not good enough for people now

I'm only just past the prologue. I didn't even make it to the first town, I got to the gas station and I got distracted fiddling with the base building stuff. That said, I did not at all get the impression that the son was captured 200 years ago. I got the impression that was much more recent. The dude there was wearing what looked like raider armor or something similar. And, in fact, it's my guess that the game is going to imply that it was recent and the twist will be that you'll meet your son as a full grown adult. I have no evidence of that, but it's sort of a time travel/cryogenic sleep trope.

Also, what do you mean the character wasn't surprised about the state of the world? You get to choose his reactions. My guy seemed pretty distraught. Dissociative even. But maybe that only works if you lean into it as the player? Maybe some dialogue choices are better than others for that.

The beginning segments did go by too quickly for my taste, but people gather pitchforks whenever a prologue lasts longer than an episode of Friends, so I get why they abbreviated it. It would have been nice to have an extended segment at the beginning depicting life pre-bombing. I think getting a better idea of the before/after of that neighborhood would have really added some weight to it when you came out of the vault. Obviously creating clean doubles of a bunch of assets for just a prologue is a big ask, but it would have gone a long way for me. And yes, they should have leaned more on the family aspect. Maybe jump around their life together a couple of times just to give an impression of what they built and what was taken away. Then again I'm only about forty minutes in, for all I know there are a bunch of flash backs, audio logs, or exposition that serve that purpose just fine.

Bad or Outdated? Meh, little bit of both mixed with some fear piss/sweat of annoying fans of this trash.

Just you

Thus far Fallout 4 is, for better or worse, sort of exactly what I expected it to be, right up to the attempts at story stuff falling flat for me out of the gate. I guess that's mildly disappointing in its own way.

Don't worry folks, when they hire Obsidian to make Fallout: Kansas City, you'll get that big open world with meaningful people you're looking for.

@tackystuff: his son wasn't taken 200 years ago, that's when you were frozen. You were frozen, wake up to your son being taken by people clearly wearing raider gear, and then you refreeze. I am guessing your son was taken 50 years ago or less.

I'm really enjoying playing and I definitely think Jeff's position and statement about his position are on the money since I fall on the side of tolerating the glitches (although I haven't seen anything significant thus far at 5hrs in so perhaps I'll revise my opinion if something really bad happens?).

If you can't tolerate the jank (or you can't tolerate it from Bethesda any more) then I'd leave this title alone or refund it in the same way the OP did.

I'm hoping someone makes a higher fidelity mod that adds better textures like the ones that exist for Skyrim.

That makes more sense, not something I put together until I read through the thread.

Ive had almost no issues on PC, just a few random bugs that dont impact the game all in all. Running a GTX 770 4GB, I7-4790k, 12 GB ram, Win 8.1. I think the game has been pretty amazing! Enjoying it a lot. Surprised it looks as good as it does. Was a little disappointed in early screen shots. Think it looks a lot better in motion. Its really a great looking game. There are still some textures that arent that great, but overall its looking pretty damn good, esp the out door environments with the lighting. Definately going to be one of my favorite games of the year!

The big reveal at the end is that you're actually in Kansas City, MO when you'd assumed all along it was the ruins of Kansas City, KS. and then the villain says "we're not in kansas anymore!"

to answer the op: I have played a few hours and thought the prologue was dumb and the rest of the game hasn't really grabbed me. by the 6000th time they say "war never changes" in the prologue i'm like, i get it, it's a fallout game and that's the famous line from the fallout games! that barely ever has anything to do with the plot!

I hit a similar point of realization yesterday. I was stoked for Fallout 4. I loved Fallout 3, it's my I think the... third most played game of all time. Somewhere up there in any case. So I couldn't have been more hyped for Fallout 4. For a while that hype carried me, now about eight or so hours in, I just, don't really care.

It shouldn't surprise me I guess, the exact same thing happened with New Vegas and Skyrim. I'm just not liking what I was doing, it isn't wowing me. Not to say I think it's bad. There is definitely something to be said about the Bethesda RPG. No other game will let you pick up everything as Jeff put it. But for me I guess one of those was maybe enough? That's all I can really think to explain it.

In the end this just feels a lot like more Fallout 3, a slightly better looking Fallout 3, but still just more Fallout. Good or bad, I just sit here and think that I'd really rather boot up Tomb Raider right now over Fallout 4.