Quick Look: Fallout 4

As a Fallout fan I wanted more New Vegas, not more Fallout 3. This game just seems dumber in every possible way, from tone to story to mechanics.

I prefer the Fallout 1 SPECIAL system where you are permanently stuck with your starting SPECIAL stats. That way your character customization has way more meaning, and there is a ton of replayability with different specs. The only downside is that you could easily wind up regretting your choice.

EDIT: Just the stats I mean, obviously the perk system has come a long way.

It's a bummer they didn't go with New Vegas' 1 humanoid and 1 non-humanoid companion system.

i'm the opposite, tried twice and failed to finish New Vegas; it wasn't even the dumb new mechanics of crafting bullets and shit. I just couldn't get hooked on the story, or the environment.

@admanb said:

History tidbit: This game is set more than two centuries after the nuclear war, in a society that has the capability to develop and produce androids.

And did neither Dan nor Brad play New Vegas?

Witcher 3 fans are rapidly approaching My Little Pony fandom levels of internet nuisance. It seems like I can barely go 30 minutes on video game sites before they stink the place up by trashing whatever game the current topic is about and complaining about how no one appreciates Witcher 3. They really need to tone it down and stop trying to make everything about the Witcher or communities will turn on them and they will get ostracized and quarantined like MLP fans were a few years ago.

Man, i love hearing Jeff be excited about a game.

".....Fucking awesome."

@levio: Yeah they do kind of make the whole character build irrelevant in the more recent games. I do miss the old style where you had to really sit down and think about what you were doing before you jumped in to anything. Now it's kind of a no-sum game. If you screw up somewhere there are literally no consequences for it besides maybe getting a less than great ending, and even then they do a good job of hand-holding to walk you through every step of whatever ending you chose.

In the old games the only way to figure that stuff out was to play a different build and make different choices in another playthrough.

Amazing Quick Look gentlemen, hilarious and awesome as always.

Between Fallout Shelter and Fallout 4, I am really excited to play... more New Vegas.

The changes to Fallout 4 make me feel like by Fallout 5 we will have regenerating health, no items to pick up (Because it is hard to do inventory and weight is scary), infinite ammo/auto ammo pick ups of very large amounts so ammo is no concern, and two weapon slots you press Y/ triangle to switch between. Also it will come out in 2020 and looks about as good as Crysis 2.

It also feels weird how hard of an axe to grind Brad has for Fallout 3's shooting. It wasn't great. Not by a long shot, but it was totally serviceable. That would be like saying "You can only use the wrench in Bioshock, nothing else. Ever. Everything else does zero damage.".

edit: When people have 14 different guns and three sets of armor with them and complain about weight limits I lose sympathy pretty fast. I think it was Vinny who complained about encumbrance in The Witcher 2 and just edited the limit super high. I *never* had a probably with that in The Witcher 2 and the only time I had it in Fallout games was when I was carrying power armor and not wearing it.

The removed durability seems like it would result in needing to carry even less weapons. In 3/NV you would be somewhat encouraged to carry a copy of your favorite gun to repair the other one and in Oblivion/Morrowind I would always carry a few repair hammers.

@revenantxenos: you have to understand that most of those yelling on the Internet are teenagers

LET'S!

Do!

THis!?

Super Mutant confirmed.

fallout sure seems like fallout

The progression here seems about right. Oblivion is to Fallout 3 what Skyrim is to Fallout 4. The Bethesda Fallout games were only slightly improved over the previous Elder Scrolls entry, at least from a tech standpoint.

Fallout 4 looks better than Fallout 3, and I bought it, but it is not on par with how the Elder Scrolls games have progressed. From at least Morrowind to Skyrim, every entry was jaw-dropping when it came out. This definitely lacks the massive improvements I was hoping for, and It really does seem like that engine they're using is on life support at this point.

Human memory is fallible - just as Jeff's memory fails him in terms of the Pipboy color selector is also the same memory that is used to incarcerate innocent people. #PoliceState

Huh. I think I'm starting to understand the fervor now. Neat.

I'm with you. I loved the hell out of Fallout 3, but New Vegas just didn't grab me at all. It just felt like more of the same with some added mechanics that didn't appeal to me.

This... looks like more of that.

The Charisma 6 perk that gives supply line is needed for any settlement focus. It allows you to connect your settlement resources, but not the specific items at each base. Basically you get the perk and assign someone to be the supplier in each base. If you have a supply line connecting all your settlements, you can put "junk" aka settlement resources in any settlement and use those to build at any connected settlement. You can check your supply lines on the pip-boy map.

22 minutes to get out of menus. Might be a new QL record.

"Synth" is the term used in Channel 4's "Humans," a show about sentient androids and their rights (kinda like that new Quantic Dream game "Detroit").

Really enjoyed the quick look. Will definitely get this game down the line, too many games out right now.

So combat that actually works and feels like a proper game is "dumber"?

Now I've seen a couple of claims that this is stripped down from New Vegas and somebody is gonna have to explain that one instead of just trying to throw it out there like it's automatically true because I don't understand the position at all.

I neither planned to purchase or pre order Fallout 4, yet this QL convinced me to enact a series of events that created a nightmare scenario of an evening trying to hunt down a physical copy of this game. Long story short, DIGITAL DOWNLOAD FOR THE FUCKING WIN. FUUUUCCCKKKKKK.....

LET THE DYSTOPIA FUTURE OF DIGITAL EVERYTHING START NOOOWWWW...... PLEASE!!!!!

also, this game is, in a word, AWESOME.

Watching this only makes me wish I didn't have to go to work now...guess I'll play on the Pip Boy app.

@mister_v I was thinking the Legendary RadRoach with that drop he got

Exactly, I mean gameplay and systems wise it's just a completely different beast. So people saying it's mechanically worse w/o examples really make me confused. I understand the "dumber" RPG stuff, but the shooting, VATS, crits, dialogue, crafting, perks, power armor, etc. are all COMPLETELY different than the last two. People don't have to like it, but to pretend like this game has no depth is ridiculous.

Also people in every thread whining about graphics and it not being written by Obsidian confuse me greatly. Fucking, we knew this shit since day one. This game looked not up to W3 and it's a Bethesda game. They're not going to try and emulate a different devs writing style. It's set on the East Coast. 3's story was bad, but Bethesda is good at tone and making a desolate random world. NV lacked (yes, yes it's better than 3 still. Don't shoot) in that respect imo, too populated.

Not saying there isn't a time or place to take about what a game could be, but it's just annoying to see "muh graphics" "muh Obsidian" in every thread.

It's okay to have complaints, but like this is shit we've known for months. It's not a revelation. It's okay to not like things, but complaining and being upset about what isn't there when we've known it for months now seems unnecessary.

Oh also, great QL. Gotta love that trio.

@avantegardener said:

:(

@applegong: Its a Bethesda game. NV comparisons need not apply.

As disappointing as it is that Bethesda has a weird need to do things their way instead of a better way.

Always be pumping, Nick. Always be pumping.

Stop with the crazy conspiracy theories! Everyone knows that aliens helped build the pyramids, because up until the last couple hundred years, humans were dumb-dumbs!

After watching Danny O'Dwyer play Fallout 3 naked and gunless I'm doing the same with this one.

In the future you gotta get your pump on! Go hard Nick!

So far this is doing a pretty great job of recapturing the weirdness of Fallout without going overboard the way Fallout 2 did.

The story could always fall apart again at the end like F3 but it's still gonna be a fun world to go through.

It's a catch 22.

Fun factor is not an excuse but at the end of the day, it totally is.

@dg187 said:

You are correct, sir. In ALMOST ALL (not all of course) cases, the PS4/Xbone games so far this generation look pretty great... in screenshots, and even (highly-compressed, and then prettied up with anti-aliasing and other refinements during decoding) YouTube, etc videos. But in person, side by side with the PC version, there is always obvious aliasing and framerate issues on both consoles.

The PS4 and XBone are pretty memory heavy, so the textures and stuff look great (they only have 8GB total system memory, but a lot of it gets used as video memory - so you end up having the equivalent of a 5-6 GB available for the console's GPU. The previous gen both had only 512MB total system memory, so we got a 16x increase in memory on this new generation, but only maybe 2-3x as much overall CPU/GPU horsepower).

Therefore, the current consoles just don't have enough CPU and GPU horsepower to DO much of anything with those pretty textures and other memory intensive things that you can use all that memory for, at a decent framerate. (I consider a decent framerate one that never dips below 30 FPS). And, another side effect of this imbalanced design is that we're STILL rarely getting games that run @ 1080p... still a lot of upscaling and other shenanigans going on because of the lack of GPU horsepower.

Can you make it so your character isn't wearing the Vault suit under everything? I've always hated the look and it's been my first move in every game to find a different outfit.

Weird, I know, but I need my character to be visually appealing.

Well the choice for me was between Fallout 4 and Just cause 3 I choose Just cause 3

Absolutely. Tons of other apparel options to wear instead of the vault suit, and one of the first of them is pretty much Mad Max's outfit.

The way Jeff talks about and seems to enjoy himself in this quick look really doesn't match the contents of his review and how he's talked about it on Gamespot and the Bombcast. Maybe he only started seeing the issues further into the game than where he is in the Quick Look?

i LOVE that they included the radio songs from fallout 3!

I mean, not to put too fine a point on it, but I think (am 99% sure) the fallout games just use the tech from the most recent Elder Scrolls game. Fallout 3 used Oblivion tech, Fallout 4 uses Skyrim tech. They probably aren't going to look much, if any better. The real evolution in the engine has historically come from Elder Scrolls, from a tech perspective, Fallout has mostly just gotten more life out of the existing engine.

That said, I'm enjoying this game so far, but I'm a sucker for these games.

Yep, I'm wearing military fatigues under the bits of leather armor I've found.

Legendary Radroach kind of says all you need to know about Fallout 4. My initial few hours I was a little disappointed with it but upon reaching Diamond City it's begun to hit its stride; looking forward to playing more.

Lol at the big frame drop at ~34:45 when they talk about the jank.

BAAAAAHHHHH guess i'll take a gander while i make a mario level.

Well, every world modder in Skyrim for one.

I bet the Fallout: Egypt wasteland looks exactly like 3000 years ago. But it raises the question, how many other places in the world were not bombed, but have just coped with 200 years of nuclear winter?

the settlement building is so awfully implemented... i cant wait to see what skilled people are gonna do with it though.. but i hope it either gets reworked by the devs a little or a mod fixes it

Hearing about that eject button issue makes me really glad that I eject my disk via the menu instead. Had no idea it was a problem.