Is this game bad? Simply outdated? Or is it just me? (Beginning spoilers)

Huh. For games that are starting to sell 20+ million per release, you'd think they would increase the staff in order to up the quality and increase the trend in sales. Resting on your laurels is going to lead to stagnation and an eventual drop in sales.

Maybe accounting needed that money put the company back in the black after Elder Scrolls Online? (Wild and likely inaccurate guess.)

Well my opening impression of the game was largely awful. Thankfully after sinking more time into it, im really enjoying it, but here's what happened straight off the bat.

Downloaded and booted the game up (Xbone). Hit new game.... that screen pops up with the dude's face staring at the bathroom mirror. Nothing happens... he just stares into oblivion. At first i thought it was some sort of sick joke, but nothing happened after 2 mins, which is when I figured something was off. I noticed when I pressed the start button, about half a second of dialogue was triggered. So i had to what I will term as 'start hammer' my way through the entire opening sequence. Eventually, when you spawn inside your family home, it sorted itself out, but I have the same issue each time I start a new game.

Not the best welcome!

@humanity: @humanity: @humanity: @mirado: You can't just point to map size and say, "These games are similar in size! Therefore they should have fixed these things by now!" Fallout 4 also has a more sophisticated physics engine, rendering software, and who knows what else, including a nodding/crafting system and etc. etc. etc.

@humanity: Not everyone lives in complete filth. Don't argue in absolutes

There's so much shitting on this game so I thought I'd just pop in to provide an alternate perspective.

I've been playing on PS4 for about ~40 hours and have not experience any game breaking bugs at all, and most all the jank has resolved itself easily or just been funny. So, just wanted to say, if you are one of those gamers who has been at this for a long time (or maybe even a short time) and you know yourself as someone who isn't usually bothered by "this stuff" (like, say you've played other Bethesda games without issue) you'll be fine here I think. I was worried this was way worse, but nah. All the same as before.

The funniest thing that ever happened to me was when everytime I went in to VATS my character would do a 180 and face the other way.

So, naturally the solution was to turn my back on the enemy and then go into VATS. Which, yeah, is a fucking bad ass move.

My only real disapointment so far with the game is the dialogue wheel isn't great. Too vague.

I'm enjoying it 'enough', but I'd gladly trade like half the quantity for a tiny bit more quality.

The consistency of the quality seems quite random too - some areas for fairly inconsequential missions seem like they've had quite a lot of thought and effort put into them, while others for nominally quite important sections seem half assed. Likewise, the sudden appearance of a certain faction's HQ seems far more dramatic and better handled than anything that happens prior to that point, and the overall quality of that HQ (the people, their relationships, the sense of community) is quite noticeably several levels better than anything you encounter in the main story content to that point.

@bernard_bernoulli: An 'overwhelming majority' of the NPC's live in absolute filth.

I dunno what my feelings on this game are. It's seems...fine? I'm pretty good at sussing out why I feel a certain way about a game, but I just don't know why I'm still sort of drawn to Fallout 4 despite coming to the realization that there's not much about it that enamors me. Of course, by "drawn to it" I mean "I'm probably going to go play Fallout 1 for the first time instead of continuing Fallout 4, but I'm going to feel slightly guilty for doing so, because there's an inexplicable gravitational field around the gameplay of the Bethesda Fallout games that draws me in *just enough*." I loved Fallout 3, but I've grown a lot since then, and I'm not sure the novelty of the Bethesda style works on me strongly enough to warrant that $60 I spent on Fallout 4...but again, that style doesn't quite repulse me, despite the laundry list of issues I have with it. I'm stuck in a really trippy limbo with this game.

All I know is that my pre- and post-Fallout Rocket League cooldowns got longer and longer every night of the past week until I realized that I'd just rather be playing Rocket League throughout.

Actually, I suppose my main problem is the writing. But I'm not even sure I know what good video game writing looks like anymore. I've only relatively recently started critically approaching that stuff, and only enough to recognize the writing of, like, MGS V and FO4 as "ehhhh." So my question to you guys is -- what are some wonderfully-written video games? I know Austin is a strong supporter of KOTOR 2, so I'll get around to that eventually. I've heard great things about Planescape: Torment?

This end of year sucked for games, so many disappointing games, and even though i agree completely with Jeff's review, Fallout 4 is not one of them.

@wrathofgod said:

Yeah, KOTOR2 is pretty good. New Vegas too. Pretty much anything by Obsidian is going to be pretty good if you don't mind tons of jank.

For things more modern, Bioshock: Infinite not so much for the dialogue but the themes. That game goes to some pretty crazy places but somehow ends up being almost coherent. I'd also recommend South Park Stick of Truth if you want more humor. That game manages to nail the look and tone of the show and there are quite a few laugh out loud moments if you're a fan of that kind of thing.

I'm also a gigantic Witcher fan. A lot of people will disagree, but I always found those games to be pretty well written. Helps that the games are pretty good too.

@wrathofgod: Witcher trilogy has pretty decent writing if you ask me. But like the dude above I am a big fan of these games so maybe I'm biased.