Its repeated, its on the bingo card, its..

But anyhow, wait for the mods, the dlc, and etc.

Fallout 4 might be a bad game..but its going to be a great platform. The base mechanics they include in the game are basiclly a lovely jumping off point. Someone will develop a use for the building mechanics (and revamp them completely, add sky and underwater base building, Hello Rapture, Hello Columbia) someone will make massive new questlines, better written then everything in the game. Someone will expand, again massively, on the mod system in the game. We are going to see all the weapons we miss (say a proper anti-material rifle) we will get..

Basically, give it 6 months, it will be better to play. Give it a year, it will be a completely differnt game. Until we see the next Elderscrolls, this is the platform for lots..and lots...and lots of mods to be made. To be fair, some will be 'hey look nudity!' and "hey look better graphics!" but enough are going to be meaty fulfuilling and 'lets fix all the problems people have with this game" style.

I got my 40 hours out of the base game. I'll get another 40 when the dlc is done..and then 100+ in a year when the mods begin to fill up an entire night's worth of work to download and get them all working. As I did with all of bethesda's games.

I'm not surprised at all at the dislike of Fallout 4. All the people going crazy over Fallout and saying they find the Elder Scrolls universe boring have suddenly realised that Fallout's setting is about as uninspired as a potato. I just don't think you can do a wasteland setting and have it be anywhere as exciting as the beautiful worlds they craft in Elder Scrolls.

Fallout 3 only got such a good reception because it was novel still - Oblivion was the first Bethesda style RPG that became mainstream and Fallout was the first time they did it with guns, so for the fantasy haters that was their first experience of that kind of game. In actual fact, the world was crap and the gunplay was beyond awful, and unsurprisingly Fallout 4 followed the same trend.

I blame the Witcher 3. Whenever I want to play open world rpg, I remember fallout 4 voice acting , quests, writing and overall cutscene presentation and turn on W3 for my ng+. It is a shame because I want to like f4, I really do, but something is not clicking like it did with Skyrim and Oblivion.

This made me laugh a lot, thank you. I agree with basically everything you say. A lot of the packaging of the game is garbage, but the core mechanics are just about good enough to pull me through. Whenever I have to stop and consider what is going on outside combat and scavenging, I shake my head.

Yeah, exploration is always the biggest draw for me. Even if a lot of quests boil down to "go here, shoot some dudes, come back," I don't mind so much when I get to do it in this great big open world.

I don't really think this game is much worse than fallout 3, I'm just certain that I've completely burnt out on the Bethesda formula.

I general, I thought the main story-line was pretty boring as well. Honestly the most interesting faction is the Institute, but you only do what feels like a couple of main missions for them and then it's over. As for the the beginning of the game, I felt like it was just trying to find an excuse and the fastest way to get the player out there into the wasteland; when actually I find a lot of the pre-war stuff more interesting than the post-war stuff.

If Bethesda makes another Fallout game, I want them to deal more directly and substantially with the events that lead up to, and result from, the even of the nuclear detonation itself. Also, I know this is difficult to do with the kind of open world games that Fallout tends to be, but maybe have a sense of actual progress for humanity. Like, the Institute starts up a reactor, destroys its potentially opponents preemptively, and that's about it. I wouldn't mind a time skip in a few places to be honest. I just feel that the "big" story of Fallout gets limited.

I guess I want something better than "I'M LOOKING FOR MUH SON/FATHER/SISTER/SECOND COUSIN".

I would believe it if I was told that Todd Howard expressly forebade copying or learning from New Vegas when they made this game. So many things feel like a conscious decision to not acknowledge good choices made in New Vegas that it hurts Fallout 4. Companions are static. Either you earn affection with them or you don't. They don't feel like they are affected by you in anyway and yet they all surrender their own beliefs and morals to you at times just because you are the Lone Survivor. You don't get to weigh in on their story. In fact, you don't get to weigh in on much of anything in this story overall. Something Skyrim also suffered from at points. The companions are better than in Skyrim because they took ideas from New Vegas. They're also worse than in New Vegas because they didn't want to put in the effort Obsidian did.

Remember New Vegas, where you can actually influence factions and npcs and where you can't according to logic? Fallout 4 just decides everything for you because fuckyouthisisbethesda.

Take a step back from all the games and look at it from a perspective from someone who has never played these games with mods. (hush now, don't cry)

Fallout 3 was new and exciting from a novelty point of view. Main questline is set in stone very much with little player agency.

Fallout: New Vegas does a number of improvements on Fallout 3 and lets you influence so many things that shape up the world and then it kind of shits the bed on the final quest. Not any worse than 3 does, mind you.

Fallout 4 throws out any pretense that who you want to be in the game is relevant. The first glance you take on the perk screen yells out 'this is code we took from skyrim because you all love this game, right?". They sure have us covered with a broken armor system once more. Who else got a really sour taste in their mouth when they saw perks that were just +10/20/30/40% dmg increases again? How come the last three charisma perks are just variants on each other instead of 1 perk becoming progressively more diverse? Why does a supersledge get bounced off due to a cherrytap from any weapon? Why do weapons also get the Radiant Quest treatment of just lazy ass RNG mechanics?

Did we all get really spoiled by what Obsidian gave us? Is Todd Howard's crew just really in love in the smell of t own farts? All I know is no dlc for FO4 is gonna be anything excitingfor me if it has to play by the rules the base game has laid down.

@sunstalker_solaire: Add to all this that New Vegas still wasn't that great and despite the few steps forward it took from Fallout 3 they were almost insignificant in the grand scheme of things. Fallout 4 is the embodiment of stagnancy in video game design. It is a harsh case of a developer resting easily on their laurels because the Internet at large, including professional review outlets, aren't applying the same level of scrutiny as always. When you see the complaints levied at most high caliber games these days and then see what Fallout is getting away with its baffling.

Oh, I know from a technical stand point it is a very underperforming game and Obsidian has it owns problems that need adressing but I give New Vegas a lot of passes on things because of the whole thing being under contract from Bethesda. If they would let Obsidian make iso-metric style fallout with different tech than the unduying corpse that is gamebryo...

Gamebryo is really the true evil here.

Totally agree about NV. Obsidian did good stuff with some aspects but overall I continue to not share in the idea many seem to have that Obsidian is pure gold. That game was not so amazing. They did do a WAY better job with factions though no doubt about that.

I think F4 is so frustrating because it basically jab steps and fakes you out that it's going to do some big new mechanical things. Like oh fuck THERE'S SETTLEMENTS. Like that's crazy to see at first. But then there's like two resources and like no other mechanics that tie into the gameplay and even the bits that are there hardly seem to matter. If it was actually more of a simulation, with needs for your residents, more of a defense aspect, anything, I would have greatly appreciated that depth. Like oh shit there's crafting with individual components on the guns..... and all the upgrades are basically linear (i.e. further down the list are better upgrades and it's not so much about choice actually). Imagine if you could do stuff like make a lab to research new weapons or weapon upgrades (with settlers you could assign to this task). Just things like that could've gone a long way and made all that so much deeper.

As far as the tech and buggy issues, I've debated that to the death and don't care to again. I expect that from what they are trying to do. But they just did not go far enough mechanically. Looking at the game I have to imagine there were things cut or that didn't come together for the Settlement stuff. I just don't get that otherwise.

Beyond that I feel like the world is so inconsistent in quality, more so than any of their other games. Some areas just fall so flat.

I think modders will probably do great things for F4. Waiting for a mod that really makes the Settlement stuff a sim for example. But the game on a base level just isn't as appealing anymore. The things I like about Bethesda games isn't so revolutionary at this point because I've played a lot of their games and so they need to keep pushing.

A few other posters here have noted it, and I'm glad to see the idea finally gaining traction: Ok, so Bethesda is the only developer who likes to render a billion fiddly physics objects all over the place, and that's why we can't enjoy things like decent scripting and stable gameplay. Is that... Good?

The Brad and Austin argument really hinges on this notion that the fiddly bullshit strewn everywhere is inherently awesome and immersive. Is it? Because from where I'm watching, it's a completely hollow and masturbatory waste of everyones time. I picked up a 3d model of a microscope and flung it awkwardly across the room. Is it any more real to me than when it sat on the table? Does it do microscope things? Does anyone around me respond to it or care?

I'm even off the "Oh it's a bad RPG but a good game" thing. Fallout 4 is a poor offering. Weak content, bad UI, abysmal writing, unstable tech and half baked badly implemented building mechanics.

Fuck that stupid game, and god rest the IP.

Man. This whole thread reads less like, "Fallout 4 is impressively bad" and more like, "Fallout 4 isn't what I wanted and its being mediocre is a crime!" I think it earned its spot on the "biggest disappointments" list for the GOTY discussions (and Jeff's comments are spot-on), but dogging it as "awful" is doing a major disservice to games that are ACTUALLY awful. Fallout 4 lets me pick alarm clocks off of the corpses of zombies and deconstruct them into radio signal towers that let me recruit people to farm carrots for my squirrel stews. That's worth something to a lot off gamers, I'd wager, even if it's slathered in Bethesda jenk.

It was good enough for me to play for 100+ hours, even if there are tons of things that should have been done better about it.

I put my 42 hours into it, and while I mildly enjoyed my time with it, it was missing "something". It feels like Bethesda is getting lazier and lazier with each game.

@peregrin38: In "Superman" for the Commodore 64, there's a stage involve a T-Rex stepping on a space shuttle next to a barn. Does that make the game worth playing? No.

@kasaioni: I'm not arguing that Fallout 4 is a "game worth playing," just that it's not the horrendous disappointment to a lot of people the way this thread seems to be implying. Myself and plenty of my friends are having a grand old time with it, largely due to the fact that we went in expecting exactly what we got and not a revolutionary re-imagining of the Bethesda brand.

Kinda reminds me of the Mass Effect 3 fiasco, wherein tons of people got up in arms about the ending (and I mean STUPID up-in-arms, like demanding refunds as though that's how capitalism has ever worked) while plenty of others were pretty content with the "game" part of the game. Fallout 4 is a disappointment in its mediocrity, but its mediocrity alone does not make it "awful." It just makes it mediocre. And if you go hard for some of the specifics - the base building, the fiddly objects, the Boston setting (which is admittedly pretty fun for me given that I live in that area) - then it's actually kinda super-fun-worth-my-money.

And to the argument of whether or not fiddly objects are good, @hotspray, I have played plenty of FPS games in which I have tried and failed to interact with microscopes and have lost immersion for it (because objects aren't glued to tables in reality). I don't call those games "awful" for it because I recognize that an FPS isn't about flinging microscopes around. But at the same time, I enjoy having that ability in games in which it's appropriate. Like Fallout 4. A not-awful game for people who want to scratch a particular kind of non-roleplaying itch. If there's a lesson to be learned, I'd say it's that trying to please everybody ends up displeasing more people than not, and that's a good lesson (and a big part of what I think you're saying here). At the same time, that doesn't mean that a hot mess can't be fun for a lot of people. Maybe it's "hollow and masturbatory" but y'know, plenty of people masturbate, and there's nothing wrong with that.

Forget the microscope thing. I think Fallout 4 is a bad game. Period. What it sets out to do, it does poorly.

Disregarding the mediocre graphics It pretty much delivered just what I wanted so I found the game to be damn entertaining.

You may have got that from what I wrote, it wasn't what I was trying to get across at all. I tried really hard to approach Fallout 4 on it's own terms. I don't know if I always succeeded, but I tried. My point was that even within the context of what the game is, it hasn't been an enjoyable experience for me. At it's worst, I feel like I'm wandering around a tedious combat theme-park strewn with missed opportunities. But I don't mean that I wanted it to be something and it was something else. I mean that the game frequently confronts you with possibilities, and then squanders them. The marketing for this game, and the game itself, spends a long time trying to tell you that it is a very exploratory experience, but then it doesn't fulfill any of that promise. This is a fundamental issue with the game, I think - the way it presents itself, the way it has been presented, and its actual essence.

When it's not dangling a missed opportunity in front of you, it is simply bad. IN the very rare occasions it is not either of these things, it just never coalesces into anything that seems like an actual game.

To even further nail my colours to the mast, I really don't see the value in what you describe. I enjoyed weapon modifications, but the system is way too shallow to stay interesting for long, I think. I quite like base building, but it is totally hamstrung by a terrible interface, and the fact that it feels completely separated from anything else in the game, whilst not actually offering any kind of progression on its own. I quite enjoy building cool looking stuff I guess, but everything around that...I just don't see the fun in getting a clock and breaking it down. Literally just pushing buttons on a bad interface. Do you even need people to farm carrots, or just to add the food resource to the settlement's counter. Either way, this either is in service of the rest of the game which isn't fun, or it has to stand up as fun on its own because those systems go nowhere once you've got the people farming carrots. I find it hard to comprehend the mind that finds fun in this. That's not to say that I don't believe you do find it fun or anything. My mind just rebels at such an alien idea.

I've tried a couple more times to get back into Fallout 4, because I do want to like it. I can normally get to the first time I have to reload, and I find myself irritated and unwilling to carry on. I'm not saying it's disappointing. I'm saying it isn't fun.

@thomasnash:

Most of the positives people bring up about Fallout are all brute force features. Enough money, time and personnel can get you a baseline experience. These are professionals, and they took a long time. The shooting has gone from 2001 levels to 2009-10. The world is nice to look at. There's a lot of art assets. Talented people spent a lot of time together working on this.

After that, I'm genuinely at a loss about where to praise the game. I used to wonder what the early design docs for Hitman: Absolution looked like, and how so many poor ideas could have made it through to a finished AAA product for a major IP. Fallout might have just taken the throne.

The writing and world building alone are in such disrepair, I cannot fathom how serious professionals conceived it. And that doesn't have anything to do with bugs or physics objects. There is such a vacuum of good ideas in the game. As you wrote, the world sets the table, but you quickly discover the plates are all bare.

If this were a film franchise, Fallout 4 would be in line for a reboot. I'm sure there are still people out there who really enjoyed the Joel Schumacher Batmans, but that doesn't mean they weren't objectively poor films.

I've been enjoying fallout 4 as I would enjoy post apocalyptic minecraft. I can't forgive Bethesda for destroying this RPG series, but, man, the minecraft they made is great.

A couple of hours in (my Dad bought this and loves it, but he doesn't care about the story at all) and I doubt I'll return to this. Back in the day, I thought Fallout 2 was a terrific RPG. The world had a great atmosphere, and the interactions you had with other characters were meaningful, so were your choices. Fallout 3 gave this world a scope that the early games lacked and looked great, but it all seems a bit bare and pointless this time around. After Skyrim you would be right to expect a rich world but that's not what's on offer here. If you want to tinker around in a shooter sandbox though, this is the game for you I guess.

Absolutely. I think I'd nearly clocked in 200 by the time I was done with it. It could (should) have been a better game in many, many respects but it was still a great and super-engaging experience that was worthy of those 200 hours (and I place a high premium on my time).

I'm enjoying the game quite a bit. I don't know if it's people being cynical, jaded, or just simply having a different opinion, but I'm about 50 hours in and I still look forward to playing more every day.

I'm just happy that I enjoy the game. A disappointing current generation Bethesda game would a real bummer.

@spaceinsomniac: It's probably just people having a different opinion :)

I've played all of them bar the shitty shooter and this is the one that I have found to be the least interesting.The exploration is cool and if the crafting and settlement management had more meat in them they would be really great. The downfall for me is the world building is bad in this. it's been 200 years and there is no progress here.

Fallout 1 wasn't even 100 years after the bombs, about three generations. In that time a handful of entirely new settlements were built (Shady Sands and Junk Town) and the old cities were either too irradiated or else had people living in them. By Fallout 2, new cities had appeared (Vault City), Shady Sands had become the capital of a new country etc etc. Things had progressed because it was 120 years after the war. For 3 they explained why the place was so empty because of the super mutants pouring out of Vault XX, the complete lack of fresh water and the sheer number of bombs that hit the captial.That's fine. New Vegas continued the story of 2 and showed the rise of new countries and empires. There are armies and cities and politics, it all feels like an actual place.

Then you get Fallout 4. 200 years after the bombs and no one can do anything. People haven't progressed because they just didn't for some reason? There's still food in the super market and there is a town a five minute walk away. The guy in Diamond City doesn't know how baseball was played even though there are loads of ghouls around from before the war (also retconning how ghouls are created, they're meant to be rare ffs). Everyone who doesn't live in a town is a brutal kill on sight raider yet there are little farms everywhere with no guards or walls. And don't forget the ghoul in the fridge. He was right beside Quincy which had been a big settlement and no one let him out? And so on and so forth.

I don't mind the wackiness, it's an inherent part of fallout. But Bethesda aren't interested in really making a coherent world, they just build a lot of little vignettes and scatter them across the map without really thinking about how they fit. For most people that's probably fine but I don't like it. So I think this'll be my last Fallout game.

Oh also, Bethesda can also just be lazy about some things that are small fixes - post war gear and weaponry in prewar containers (use a different loot table, easily done), leaving suits of power armour on the side of the road and not making you work for anything (Paladin Dance practically creamed his power armour getting me into the brotherhood because I did a job for him once? Also the Railroad, also the Minutemen).. And settlements feel like they were hacked in with a mod. Now I'm done :)

The act of playing Fallout 4 isn't as smooth as I wanted. Having to repair power armor after every incursion somewhere sucks. Companion invincibility is stupid. Shooting really isn't much better than before. Getting a quest and being told by the giver its "right around the corner" when upon inspecting the Pipboy the marker is on the other side of the Commonwealth is ridiculous. I could go on.

I get a better RPG experience from walking around the block IRL.

I love New Vegas, My favorite open world game.

I've put it down after something like 200 or more hours. I tried my hardest to overlook my misgivings over the story. Mother loses Son and Husband, wakes up and doesn't immediately break down in grief but instead is picking up guns and killing everything. She was a lawyer. Okay you think she is a strong woman and I'll roleplay as such and head to Diamond City post haste, no Preston, no Brotherhood, no Railroad - straight to Diamond City. Save Nick, follow Dogmeat, meet Kellogg and oh god I am underlevelled for this fight, retreat retreat. Cheese Kellogg and finally whittle him down.........clearly Bethesda didn't want me to role play as a grief ridden Mother whose only goal was to find her son. Clearly I was supposed to do Minutemen quests and Brotherhood quests and whatever else before I try and rescue my son. Clearly I am playing it wrong. This is not a good thing to think when playing a RPG. In my excitement I bought the season pass (I had played and enjoyed all Fallout 3 and New Vegas' DLC so I was excited for Fallout 4's DLC) so I'll get back to it when they come out. As it is I restarted my character, levelled the shit out of her - the lawyer - and am just about to head to The Institute. Put it down - bored rigid and still annoyed at the story. Feel like replaying New Vegas instead for the 4th time!

@mjhaylett:New Vegas is basically the only 3D Fallout that was good. Thanks god Obsidian made it instead of Bethesda.

There was a specific point where I fell out with fallout 4, and it came way earlier than I expected it would: the opening monologue.

Now, I've never exactly been huge on Bethesda games, even though I love RPGs. I generally just lose interest in those games after the novelty of the open world wears off. I've never even beaten a Bethesda game.

New Vegas convinced me that good games were possible within the patented Bethesda formula. It just all came back to those classic RPG standards: writing, writing, writing, and player choice.

So I was ready to give Bethesda another chance to hook me. Maybe this would be the one. I decided my character archetype beforehand: My guy was going to be an idiot, a complete bumbling buffoon who only managed to survive through sheer luck and force of will. "That's it," I told myself. "I won't have to take it too seriously. I can just sit back and have FUN."

I guess Bethesda had other ideas.

The game opens with MY CHARACTER giving some kind of elaborate speech on the nature of violence--much too nuanced for an idiot such as him. Also, apparently he was a soldier? Weird. OK, now he's bantering with his wife and he's receiving an award for being such an awesome soldier-man? thanks, Bethesda, guess I didn't REALLY want to role play after all.

At least in other Bethesda games, you are just given a basic prompt for your character (You are a prisoner, you were born in this vault, etc) and allowed to go from there.

Really, that intro showed me the shade of what Fallout 4 really was, something that became more and more apparent over the 30 hours that I could bear to spend with it.

Fallout: New Vegas was the story of a place.

Fallout 4 is a treadmill, a checklist. Hollow. Nothing more.

I loved character creation in New Vegas. It was such a good, clean slate. Once the intro was finished, your character could have been anyone, and it would have worked. The only thing that was shoehorned into your character was that they had the McGuffin and was in the wrong place at the wrong time. You could actually roleplay in it! The first time I encountered Benny, I let him go. Much to my surprise, I saw him -hours- later. When I replayed as a female with black widow? That was pretty cool.

If Benny were in Fallout 4, the conversation tree would look like this.

1) I have to kill you now. You know, revenge.

Benny, "Argh, die!"

2) I have to kill you now. It's not personal.

Benny, "Argh, die!"

3) I'm sorry Benny, I can't let you go without facing justice. (attack)

Benny, "Argh, die!"

4) You're free to go, Benny.

Benny, "Too bad. Only one of us gets to leave this room. Argh, die!" (Benny attacks)

The problem is compounded by the voiced protagonist. About three minutes in, once the curtain is pulled back, and you know 99% of the conversations branch out as much as a Lanister family tree, I just don't want to listen to the main character speak. My girlfriend has been playing Skyrim, and it's scary how in-depth the conversations feel compared to Fallout 4.

There's no consequence in Fallout 4. All conversations always lead to the same path unless you're given a clearly binary choice. Fail to unlock a terminal? Loot the desk the terminal is on and the terminal's probably already reset. Murder a quest giver in cold blood? Naw, it's cool! They're marked essential. You'll have to kill him two to three more times before he turns on you, too!

I have a really high tolerance for ocean sized open world games with the depth of puddles. I've got 100+ hours in Oblivion and Fallout 3 and 200+ hours in New Vegas and Skyrim. I'm 25 hours into Fallout 4, and the last 5 I've been really struggling with.

As an exploration game? It's not fun. The "dungeons" are small, they're boring, there's no reward. I found a quest that sounded like it would be -scary-. I thought, "This is going to be the Dark Brotherhood of Fallout 4. The haunted house from Vampire." Nope. A small shack and a death claw.

As a loot collection game? A legendary pipe gun. Boring. A legendary metal bracer. Boring.

As a building game? Even if the interface wasn't a giant piece of crap, the incredibly low item count sucks.

Even the pip boy is useless. You'd think by now, they would have figured out how to display enough tex ...

I'd love to see a mod that brought New Vegas in to Fallout 4. But, I've been let down so many times playing Fallout 4, I wouldn't be surprised if they decided to cancel the GECK.