Can someone explain once and for all why Skyrim is considered better than FO4?

always hear people say skyrim is better but never hear any actual reasons,considering buying skyrim remastered so please list your reasons why it is better(or worse)than fo4 below.

Dragons.

Better story.

fo4 personally dissapointed me cause it felt less expansive than skyrim. Less unique quest lines and a smaller feeling world to explore. Whether it can be empirically proven that's the case or not I cannot tell but fallout 4 felt small in comparison to skyrim or even fallout 3/new vegas.

Better story, better world, more to do, and all of this 4-5 years before Fallout 4.

The biggest sin of Fallout 4, to me, was it's failure to even TRY to push the boundary of what a Bethesda Game Studios game could be. It was playing 100% safe, and that made it 100% boring to me. Before Fallout 4, I REALLY didn't like New Vegas much, but since FO4, NV isn't too bad since it tried to be kinda different.

As someone whose favorite game series ever is The Elder Scrolls, Fallout 4 made me really scared for what Elder Scrolls 6 could be. I really hope that Bethesda listens to come of the critical complains about the game, instead of just focusing on the fact it was a commercial success (because really, what AAA doesn't rake in insane amount of money nowadays) and they make TES6 feel like the proper step forward Oblivion felt to Morrowind, and Skyrim felt to Oblivion.

If not, I am going to be a very sad person in 2020 or 2024 or whenever it comes out.

Fallout 4 is mostly a rehash of much of the tech from Fallout 3, and where it does add things, like settlements, it is janky at best. When it comes to gameplay FO4 is mostly an improvement over prior entries, but it falls apart in mission design and story, which are both relatively lacking and uninspired. Side missions are slightly stronger, but even here where Bethesda traditionally shines doesn't offer much in the way of memorable events.

Skyrim is similar in that it is a refinement of prior entries (Though not always for the better), but in terms of story offers an improvement over Oblivion, and features many more interesting and intriguing side stories and quests.

Overall Skyrim was a step forward for the franchise, whereas FO4 felt more like the franchise treading water. I own both and spent significantly more time in Skyrim, where I played for some hundreds of hours, whereas I grew bored and stopped in FO4 after 30ish hours.

Both are playable and enjoyable, and while I personally wouldn't recommend FO4 for everyone (especially if you already played a lot of 3 or new vegas), it wasn't a bad game. So that is my take, for what it is worth.

Fallout 4 felt like a very safe game. A friend of mine who is less harsh on F04 then I was would remark "man, they sure made Fallout 3 again" while playing it and experiencing the story beats. Then it gets a little murkier depending on how you feel about the franchise as a whole, I cut my teeth with the older games so my past experience with the franchises colors a lot of my feelings. It also doesn't help that the biggest thing they added, the settlement building tends to be a you either like it or you don't sort of thing. I wasn't a big fan and it made the wasteland super uninteresting when it came to towns, the game relegated it to you and even if you did dive into it, the places you could make can look impressive but don't have a lot of depth when it comes to actually doing things with them.

So it was both a very safe incremental game while also being a misstep in certain areas depending on who you ask. The core story being poor, voiced protagonist not sitting well with role players, and less than ideal changes to the dialogue system, too many radiant quests trying to fill the quest void etc. It all added to a death of a thousand cuts kind of thing. Fallout 4 was also the entry where a lot of people were less than forgiving of all the Bethesda standard jank. I wouldn't call it a terrible game by any means cause exploring that world can be fun (and I liked the weapon crafting too) but it had a lot of flaws.

I'm not the biggest Elder Scrolls guy and Skyrim had it's detractors but it seemed to push the series in interesting ways and making quality of life improvements.

I think fallout 3 did to its predeseccors what skyrim did to elder scrolls. Many people loved oblivion. It skyrim was so much more polished and accessible to casual players. Fallout 3 was similar in that regard and 4 was playing too conservative. I love both skyrim and fallout and the big difference to me is persinal preference for fantasy and sci if apocalyptic

Gameplay, story, characters, and setting.

The UI in FO4 was unforgivably bad (the pip boy metaphor needs to be totally reworked or tossed) the setting was forgettable, the crafting was unnecessary, tacked on, and buggy.The combat was just bad. I could go on about specifics but to me the game just sort of had the intangible feeling of being paint by numbers. The game had no soul and had nothing to say.

Sky Rim on the other hand was one of the best games of last generation. Epic in scope, with beautiful graphics and soundtrack, imperfect but superior UI, and offered so many unique things to do in a varied and interesting world.

I'll echo a lot of what other people are saying here: The UI, the story, the characters, etc.

However, to me the biggest difference is the world building aspect of it. There have been enough Elder Scrolls games to this point that the mythology is actually pretty complex and so the world feels more fully realized when you play through something like Skyrim. Each game feels distinct because it's set in a different region of that world, which has its own culture and style. It feels like a big interconnected world that exists and has its own history.

By contrast, I feel like Bethesda's biggest sin in the Fallout games is that their world is just boring as hell. Unlike the original Fallouts, which definitely had a "brave new world" feel to them, Bethesda just took locations we already know in real life and just made ruined versions of them. It's thempark-y and stupid and doesn't do a good job of evoking wonder or discovery. It's literally just "Fenway Park - but ruined!" or "Boston Commons - but ruined!" or "The Jefferson Memorial - but ruined!"

It's not really relevant to the topic but I have never played skyrim before so I'm pretty excited to get the game on X1 next week.

Its more a matter of taste, not which one is better.

I don't like Fallout in general mainly because of VATS, but that's just me.

To break it down simply, I think Skyrim in every aspect is a much better game.

The story in Fallout 4 is pretty weak and only serves the purpose of taking the player across the map, having the most predictable twist, and introducing some of the most boring factions ever created in a game. Skyrim while not exactly the best story, it still serves the purpose of guiding the player through new game mechanics like the shouts, fighting dragons, and explaining pretty much everything that has happened since Oblivion. The voice acting ranges from great to meme tier familiar in Skyrim while Fallout doesn't know whether to take itself seriously or not, especially with the new voiced protagonist which was a huge mistake in my opinion.

World wise Skyrim is fantastically built with some of the most immersive environments ever created and with cities that feel and look painstakingly created so each feel unique. FO4 feels like they went through a checklist to make sure all the Boston landmarks were there along with the 'Fallout' aesthetic over everything. They tried adding more color, but what you get is a mixture of colors that look too heavily contrasted or a really washed out look that makes you feel like you're looking through a dirty lens. Playing FO4 just... hurts my eyes while Skyrim is so inviting and comfey that I can play it for hours.

I think I could go on and on, but basically, Skyrim hits all the fantasy notes while having epic gameplay and scenery. While FO4 seems to be a failure of understanding what fans really want in a Fallout game and sticking too close to its past formula while also having an identity crisis of tone story wise.

Because there was no Skyrim: New Vegas to compare it to.

You saw that mountain, and then you walked to that mountain.

This is probably true for me.

I already don't really love Skyrim because I was really into Morrowind so I'm one of those fangirls. You can't beat that first taste of this (modern-ish open world principals FPS RPG) stuff in a really weird world. But Fallout games have to fight against my love of the Fallout games and Obsidian making a nu-Fallout game that makes F3 feel like wasted potential in comparison (F3 I was dead against pre-release, got into when it arrived in a lunchbox with a bobble-head and exceeded my low expectations, and have slowly come to like less and less with time).

Mr. Randall, the 'Macho Man', Savage, esq.

as a dragon.

Skyrim came out in 2011

Expectations are higher today

FO4 is the exact same game as FO3 and New Vegas yet everything about it is worse than New Vegas.

because i prefer elder scrolls fantasy setting more than the post apocalyptic setting of fallout.

Skyrim's little slice of the Elder Scrolls world was just a more interesting place to explore. A lot could have been done with Fallout 4's Commonwealth and Institute themes, but it all felt like just an extension of Fallout 3, while ignoring a lot of the great little touches that brought such personality to New Vegas. It also didn't hurt that Skyrim was such a vast improvement over its predecessor while Fallout 4 felt largely incremental and unnecessary.

There's also a pretty unspoken issue with the way Bethesda hugely started to capitliazie on marketing with Fallout 4. Arguably, that game's more about selling merchandise than it is actual copies of the game, which isn't surprising given that we're a year past its release. But it's still a bummer to see so much emphasis be put into tee shirts, pins, bags, collectibles, and the rest of the items in their store as opposed to putting that money into making a game that a) didn't feel like leftovers and b) hiring a couple of decent writers to flesh out a more interesting world and story.

Arguably, you could say that merchandising could go into a better Fallout 5, and I hope so. But I don't really believe it.

Honestly?

For me - the dialogue system.

I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw a TV commercial for Skyrim remastered that said from the makers of Fallout 4, I was like, "what in tarnation?!". I never thought I'd stick up for Skyrim cause I'm Oblivion til I die, but Fallout 4 is from the makers of Skyrim.

The ending of Fallout 4 is so unforgivably bad in terms of plot holes and lack of choice that it makes me actually angry, and that's not even looking at its myriad of other writing related problems, and the fact that there's really only one good quest in the entire game (The Silver Shroud).

I will say this, though. I think Fallout 4 is a better playing game than Skyrim, and I (at least on paper) like post apocalyptic future-past America better than generic fake Viking land, but Skyrim is a way better game. Better story/writing, and more memorable/worthwhile quests.

I don't know, I thought Fallout 4 was pretty damn good.

There is a concept in psychology called Novelty, and it is considered to be one of the major categories of intelligence and motivation. We are hardwired to seek new experiences and when we do we get a dopamine rush. Likee heroin, that rush addicts you, and this motivates you to come back looking to repeat an experience. Since you are hooked, you end up "chasing the dragon" over and over again looking for that same feeling that you received the first time, even though you will never be able to experience it again. Because the experience is no longer novel, you become more jaded and just end up picking apart everything. Since you are picking everything apart, you are less immersed in the game, and this enables you to see exactly how the game isn't living up to your lofty expectations. Like heroin, Bethesda RPG's not living up to the originals is a nasty cycle of depression and despair.

For a lot of people, Skyrim was their first major open world RPG, so going back and playing the same game again is inherently less attractive. These feelings get even worse with every repeat of the same game, and you can tell whenever you hear someone say, "X was my favorite Bethesda RPG." So, if Morrowind was their first, they will probably give you an argument about how unique the world design was and how many more systems there were to play around with. If Oblivion was their first Bethesda RPG, you would probably hear them say about how they preferred the story. Fallout 3 and they will say that they prefer the mechanics and freedom of character alignment. Etc, etc.

So many things. Better quests, more interesting world, better gameplay systems. So I guess just about everything? Certainly better performance on consoles as well. Being downtown Boston in Fallout 4 is pretty terrible.

I lol'd.

But seriously, Morrowind was my first Bethesda open world RPG, and I dropped hundreds of hours into it. I think I proooobably prefer Skyrim. (There's a chance that might be different if we get a Morrowind remaster, or if Skywind works out.)

I agree with that. Another thing is the Fallout pedigree - given the great track record of the previous games in the series, Fallout 4, especially after such a long wait, was disappointing to a huge degree. That being said, if they had released that same game under and other name a stripped out the Fallout-specific story beats, it probably wouldn't have gotten as much hate as it did. There are legitimate reasons to dislike Fallout 4 for design choices and story and so on but since the series is held in such high regard, even a "bad" Fallout game by comparison is still pretty good compared to most other games out there.

Skyrim on the other hand totally nailed what it was trying to do. Bethesda promised a larger, more interesting game and delivered just that. Even with Skyrim's shortcomings there is still enough good there to write off the bad.

@stonyman65: Yeah, I still like Fallout 4, and I'm actually playing it now while waiting for Skyrim SE, but it's lacking from previous installments in the series. The game just seems much less like an RPG and more like a shooter, which is very noticeable when it comes off the heels of New Vegas, which was just so deep on so many different levels. You could literally be anyone you wanted in that game. It's not the systems in Fallout 4 that aren't RPGish enough, it' just the fact that you're character is pretty defined from the start. From what I've understood they've tried to remedy that in the story expansions, but I've yet to start those.

I personally don't think Skyrim is better than FO4, but if I had to say why it may be generally more well liked I'd say FO4 betrayed too much of what made FO3 and Skyrim fun (roleplaying ) with the more restrictive dialogue system (and story).

Honestly, I think Skyrim experienced its own fair share of diminishing returns being after FO3. FO4 is the just the more severe case of diminishing returns, where even more people felt fatigued by the formula and to a greater degree. I probably put more hours in FO3 than Skyrim, and I haven't even finished FO4.

They need to try making new games, like actually new games.

INCOMING SNOBBERY: Or they could try making a game with actual combat, instead of the absolute bare minimum. To me, both FO3 and FO4 are automatically better than Skyrim because they have guns, instead of exclusively having Betheseda's wonky melee combat. Skyrim's combat essentially feels like a Half-life mod with just the crowbar available. I'd prefer some depth. Recent games like Dark Souls or For Honor prove there can be a lot more interesting ways to tackle melee combat.

To me the short answer is the fact that a 5 year old game is comparable at all to a game that came out this year is the problem with Fallout 4. Skyrim is just much more fun to explore. I would spend hours going through caves for the hell it because sometimes you would stumble on some random hour and a half long quest line.

Fallout just didn't hook me in the same way. Fallout goes out of it way to have a barren lifeless world. In that, it successful.

Skyrim to me feels like you are dropped into a world.
Fallout 4 feels like you are dropped into a toy box.

Both have their ups and downs, just depends what you are looking for, sometimes you want to feel like you are in an realized world, sometimes you want to smash shit together and see what happens.

While I haven't played FO4, I'm just going to assume that the music in Skyrim is way better.

Fallout 4 was so by the books it hurts, it's like they were afraid to even implement mechanics that made Fallout NV so great (imo). Dialogue options felt like a step backward and the RPG element felt like it took a backseat this time around.

New Vegas is better than both.

It was a hard swing from the "classic" style RPG similar to the older Fallout games and the older Bethesda games, to the newer Mass Effect-esque Bioware style which is less of an RPG and more of an action game with RPG elements. Go back and play the older Fallout games and then go play Fallout 4... Might as well be an entirely different series aside from being in the same universe.

A roleplaying game where everyhing feels open to your own narrative versus a roleplaying game where you can be either a saint or an asshole and every dialogue choice falls in to those two categories

Skyrim is no great shakes either. They have been playing it too safe since Oblivion but the sales numbers show that apparently that is what people want - shallow open worlds that don't force any interesting choices. New Vegas was cool because at least you could do something other than kill everything to win.

With Skyrim it just felt like I had a lot more choice about my character and my actions than they gave you in Fallout 4, with Dialogue especially.

With Fallout 4, almost every conversation will have only 4 dialogue choices at a time, up, down, left, and right; Left was the sarcastic choice, Down was the positive/acceptance choice, Right was the No Thanks choice, and Up was the "What does that mean?" choice. For like every single conversation! That and no matter what I was Frantically looking for my child, whom from the outset I didn't care about AT ALL, but my character was still freaking out about their missing kid. no choice for me to go "Kid? Fuck that kid!" and go do whatever I wanted.

Which, sure, they wanted to make one of these big open games but give it a bit more structure and direction than their previous games. They tried something a little different and it wasn't for me personally. You could start Skyrim and ignore the whole dragon shit the entire time and its quite easy to stumble upon something completely unrelated to the dragons. Which you can sorta do in Fallout 4, there's a lot of activities that don't Directly relate to the FO4 main plot, but one of those 4 directional answers to any given question is more likely to be about that stupid kid than it was about that stupid dragon for a lot of the quests. Or at least it felt that way for me.

I recently started my 2nd fallout 4 character, who in these Bethesda games is usually my "Evil" character.... but i'm still whining about missing my dumb kid! When I plan on getting the cannibal perk and not giving a fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck about the plot! but its come up dozens of times in conversation, and the best it gives me is Angrily asking where my kid is :/

I still really liked Fallout 4. I started my 2nd evil character to more properly play through that Nuka World DLC. And New Vegas is probably my favorite of these games. (Not Bethesda, but still)

I'm also going to parrot the folks who said something about New Vegas. Never played the console versions, but once patched up (And it did require a lot of patching), New Vegas' factions, story telling, and world were great. You were playing -your- character, how -you- wanted to play, and for the most part, the game was fluid enough to give you choices that made the game feel different on multiple playthroughs. Maybe this time, I'll befriend the powder gangers. Maybe I'll join Caesar's legion. Maybe I'll join in the cannibal dinner party. If Fallout New Vegas was the Planescape Torment of RPGs, then Fallout 4 was the Diablo 3 (Pre expansion, when all loot sucked) of RPGs.

New Vegas got that sense of new world right. Time, and people, have moved on. 200 years after the bombs fall and FO4 doesn't feel like it. Bethesda's Fallouts have been "Here's a place you know, but ruined" where other Fallouts have been "Here's a place you know, ruined, and rebuilt according to the new rules of civilization."

There's a sense of scale that Skyrim has that Fallout 4 lacked. Why is it, that 200 years after the bombs dropped, are these guys still holed up inside a baseball stadium? It's much easier to accept that Whiterun is simply a representation of what Whiterun should actually be even though it's not to scale. And New Vegas? If you had the mod that merged New Vegas into one location, it was huge, believe me! It felt like the inhabitants had pushed their way out and reclaimed and rebuilt.

Outside of the boring story of FO4 and the non-sensical factions, the biggest bummer about Fallout 4 was that it was no longer an open world RPG. You're no longer a character with a blank slate. Every plotpoint is a fixed point in time. You will always kill what's his name. You will always find Shaun. Event X will always happen. This is exasperated by the dialogue system. Even without a mod putting the conversations into plain text, it's clear as day that the dialogues are fixed and linear. Your choices just don't matter.

Skyrim doesn't have the same set of rules holding it back. The world of Tamriel is enjoyable to explore since you get multiple biomes, you get to see castles and dungeons. Ruins are inhabited by monsters, but you can still piece together the story of the previous inhabitants. They don't force the factions into the main plotline. The dark brotherhood never shows up during the main campaign as a major force. You can play the thieve's guild faction quest and get a sense of completion from that. There's a sense of progression from the dragon walls. You felt more powerful and were able to do more powerful things. In Fallout, energy weapons, power armor, and heavy weapons were end game items. And now you get those ten minutes in.

No matter what you do, your character fits the character backstory you're given. You were captured, accused of being associated with a military group, and are off to be executed. You can be a psychopath murderer or a goodie guy, and it works. If you never start the main quest, the game works just fine.

But Fallout 4's voiced protagonist was a soldier/lawyer. Their goal is to find the bad guy, get revenge, and find your son. The voiced protagonist makes it sound like finding Shaun is the most important thing in the world, so when you're just dicking around building beds and looking for glue, you're just tossing that sense of urgency out the window.

Oh man, so much this. You summarized what I rambled on about for pages in another thread. What always attracted me to the original Fallouts was that they dealt with the question of what society would look like if it were set back to 0. Do you create a nascent democracy like the NCR, which gives people "freedom" but isn't necessarily responsive to people's needs, or do you go full on dictatorship like Caesar's Legion and be a brutal slave-based society but one that at least brings order to a violent wasteland?

Dragons.

I like the Elder Scrolls games, but I will never like any fantasy setting as much as any futuristic or post apocalyptic setting. I also just don't really like fantasy much at all, and it wasn't until Dark Souls that I realized I'm sorta okay with fantasy, but it's gotta be some dark fantasy. Some shit has to be going down.

Everything in Fallout 4 felt it just revolved around the tired Underground Railroad stand in/Brotherhood of Steel/etc. stuff kind of consumed the entire game and it was boring. The world felt small and flat. I mean the gameplay as easily the best it's ever been, only thing that kept me playing probably.

I think it's because Skyrim was the first Elder Scrolls game to not be garbage and to play like a modern game. Same reason people prefer Fallout 3 and New Vegas over Fallout 4, even though Fallout 4 is a superior game in most ways. There's a mental disconnect between the quality of Bethesda titles and which is somebody's favorite. Personally? My favorite is Fallout 4. I liked Skyrim when it came out, but there's no doubt for me that Fallout 4 is a better game. Skyrim has really bad combat systems. Fallout 4 plays relatively well.

For me the disappointment came in the lack of doing anything with the main story character. I mean, here is a dude literally out of a different era, and they don't do anything with it (apart from some dialogue in the beginning parts of the game). Your character should be in shock, freaking the F out, but instead he's really cool en composed. Also the fact that they went out of their way to voice this character that has absolutely no personality really bummed me out. So much wasted potential story wise.

The game just feels cheap, they haven't improved enough since Skyrim to be honest, back when that came out it felt like a leap to me, not as big a leap as oblivion but it was pretty impressive. Fallout 4 pales in comparison to modern open world RPGs when it comes to polish and size. It feels like maybe a 100 people worked on that game and no more. I hope the next Elder Scrolls is a bigger leap forward.