Fallout VII - Vault-Tec calling

[factotum]

The other problem is that FO4 sacrificed so much in the name of catering to consoles. The absolutely wretched dialogue system which has precisely four repsonses for any given stimuli: Yes, Scarcastic Yes, Pass A RNG Dependent Charisma Check To Ask For Caps Yes, and Maybe Later...

I don't think that's an example of FO4 being dumbed down for consoles. Having just four dialogue choices isn't a problem in itself--you generally didn't get more than that in FO3 and FO:NV. It's the *content* of those choices that's the big issue here, and that could be anything you like whether you're playing the game on a console, a PC, or a 1200W toaster oven. The problem is fundamentally that the writing and plotting in FO4's main game is awful, and no, having to voice-act all the lines does not excuse that.

[Caelestion]

Given that the voice actors actually recorded all those lines anyway, there's no excuse for not including the full text of those responses inside the conversation.

[Triaxx]

Tactics was fantastic. Mostly because it made no pretenses to being an RPG. Flat out replacing speech is a quick way to do that. It also cleaned up a lot of the interface silliness from F2.

[Cikomyr]

D'you know, I'd never really appreciated just how well built New Vegas's start was until you laid it like that? In one little segment, you have a microcosm of the wasteland as a whole. You're introduced to lockpicking, hacking, crafting, factions, in an immersive and entirely optional way.

I will be honest, i never appreciated NV's introductory sequences until i actually thought why Fallout 4's displeased me as much as it did.

Its these moments you start thinking why does X is better than Y?

I mean.. just to show you an example of Obsidian's quality writing. Fallout 3's Brotherhood of Steel bugged me to no end. I hated, hated it. I despised what they did to the faction.

And then, New Vegas happened. And i saw what happened to the BoS when it kept doing what i thought it should be doing; isolationist exclusitivist technologists: they are hunted down and slowly destroyed by attrition, or forced into hiding to the point that they practically become irrelevant.

And Veronica made the case about changing their ways. About how they should strive to become more than they were, and I agree wholeheartedly with her..

Until i realized this is exactly what Owyn Lyons has been doing in the East. He was no longer content to let his faction hide and be ******* technologists, he wanted them to be champion and protector of the population so they could survive as a people, and ensuring the Brotherhood's long term survival.

This is, this is never directly spelled out in New Vegas. The genius of New Vegas was to show us what happens to the BoS if I have had my way initially and let us draw the conclusions of our choice. It retroactively changed my opinion of a game that was in my past.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

I don't think that's an example of FO4 being dumbed down for consoles. Having just four dialogue choices isn't a problem in itself--you generally didn't get more than that in FO3 and FO:NV. It's the *content* of those choices that's the big issue here, and that could be anything you like whether you're playing the game on a console, a PC, or a 1200W toaster oven. The problem is fundamentally that the writing and plotting in FO4's main game is awful, and no, having to voice-act all the lines does not excuse that.

Okay, granted that all four options being identical in every way is a failure of writers more than coders, but the interface of interaction being four options only is a product of catering to consoles.

Also a factor of voice acting, but that's a whole 'nother kettle of worms.

[Alabenson]

Okay, granted that all four options being identical in every way is a failure of writers more than coders, but the interface of interaction being four options only is a product of catering to consoles.

Also a factor of voice acting, but that's a whole 'nother kettle of worms.

I'm sorry, but trying to say the limited dialog options was a product of porting the game to consoles is a threadbare excuse at best. It would have been easy to tweak the dialog interface to add more options if they wanted to, not doing so was more a product of laziness on Bethesda's part.

[Cikomyr]

I'm sorry, but trying to say the limited dialog options was a product of porting the game to consoles is a threadbare excuse at best. It would have been easy to tweak the dialog interface to add more options if they wanted to, not doing so was more a product of laziness on Bethesda's part.

3 options/conversation node is *fine*.

But option 1 and option 2 being so vaguely defined that your character says the *same thing* is a cheap way to get around lazy writing.

[DigoDragon]

Lastly, since I'm loving Skyrim right now, decoupling kills from XP was a brilliant move, because it lets the designers hit you with really difficult fights. Crap, I can't kill these 4 trolls at level 3... Better sneak around to the chest. Oh hey, I got XP from avoiding them, and got better at sneaking! Neat. F4 would really benefit from that system.

I did like that about Skyrim. The system's one flaw (though not deal breaking) is that enemies scale to your overall level, so if you improve a lot of non-combat skills then fights will get really tough to win. Not entirely unmanageable though. There's plenty of fights you can pick from, so as long as you at least practice one combat skill, you won't suffer (much). :3

3 options/conversation node is *fine*.

This was how I remember a lot of Mass Effect's dialog system. You had your Paragon, Neutral, and Renegade choices for answering questions, plus some extra options when you ask about topics related to your quests. It worked for me, as long as the options didn't all say the same thing (usually didn't, and what you pick can affect others' perceptions of you for later in the game).

[Balmas]

Multiplayer games have non-indicative retention numbers. IE, lots of people will play them because lots of people have to play them for other people to play them. A terrible game with good friends can still be more fun than a good game by yourself.

That's actually a good point, something I'd missed. Now that I look back on those figures, you have to go down five spaces to find one that even has a single player mode, and another ten to find one that's exclusively singleplayer.

Alright, given I've stated why I find Fallout 4's shooting worse, and yet everyone seems inclined to disagree, someone want to explain exactly what they found wrong with 3/NV's shooting?

I'm going to go off on a tangent here and talk about some other shooters and things I like about them, if I may? Let's pick three from the ether... Team Fortress 2, Payday 2, and Borderlands 2.

Spoiler

Show

• Team Fortress 2's weaponry focuses on big, single-fire weaponry like rocket launchers, shotguns, sniper rifles, and grenade launchers. They're hit-or-miss weapons. They sound big when they shoot. So when you shoot that pesky scout, and get that ph-toot-BING of a hit, it's incredibly satisfying. At the same time, that hit-or-miss nature of the weapons means that movement is important, that you can usually avoid damage by just outthinking where a person's going to shoot that rocket and moving accordingly. Shooting and moving both make fighting other people into a fun, interesting experience in every game. You have half a dozen different options of weapons in each class, which means that you have nine classes and then at least nine more sub-class playstyles in each.
• Payday 2 has you fighting wave after wave of cops. I find that it's most enjoyable at the higher difficulties like Mayhem and Death Wish, because on the higher difficulties the hoards of cops can take massive chunks out of your health with even a few shots. You need to plan your engagement, figure out when to perform objectives and when to bunker down in a bathroom stall. The shooting is fluid, responsive, and intuitive. Enemies respond when you shoot them; they stagger, helmets pop off, and they go cartwheeling into the distance if you hit them hard enough. You have standard weapons like shotguns, assault rifles, pistols, and sniper rifles, but then you have things like flamethrowers, crossbows, grenade and rocket launchers, each with excellent sound design and skill support. It feels amazing to have your weapons, perks, and shooting skills come together to complete a difficult heist.
• Borderlands 2 shares many of the elements that I like from Payday 2. It's a responsive shooter that has 87 bazillion different guns, each with their unique quirks. Enemies are responsive, and the difficulty of the game at higher levels means you're rewarded when you pull things off. It's satisfying to nail an enemy in the head with a Longbow shot, or keep a plasma caster on target.

In each of the games I've listed, you're rewarded for skill in shooting.

• In Borderlands 2 and Payday 2, you have to contend with enemies that bob and weave and need to be shot in the head. In Team Fortress 2, you're dealing with human opponents who are doing their damndest not to be hit. When you manage to headshot that scout who's been harassing you all game, it's immensely satisfying.
• All of them have interesting weapon choices that are substantially different in how they're used, and interact with perks differently. That results in a different experience when you try different characters, which keeps the game interesting and means that you can spend hours mastering even one style.
• Movement is important in each of these games. You need to figure out where to go, what path to go through, and when to engage.
• Shooting is fluid and responsive. I'm sorry for not having better words for that. It's intuitive to use. You point at someone's head, and it goes pop.
• Enemies respond to getting shot, which just increases the satisfaction of nailing that difficult shot.

Fallout 3's shooting does none of the above.

• Aiming is difficult in Fallout 3, and not because the target is small. It's difficult because in order for your shot to actually go where you're aiming, you need to have high skills in the weapon you're using. And then you need to crouch, and stop moving. This slows the game down to a crawl.
• Having done what you need to be as accurate as possible, you aim down sights... except that there aren't any sights to aim down, because it's just a slightly blurry and zoomed in version of the screen you were already using. You have nothing but a cursor to indicate where the bullets go, instead of proper ironsights.
• Enemies practically don't react to you when you shoot them. You shoot them in the head, and unless you've crippled the limb they just pull out a knife and run towards you, or stand up and start shooting.
• Your movement doesn't matter practically at all. You can charge an enemy, crouch, and activate VATS. Or you can sneak around, crouch, and activate VATS. Your movement mostly won't affect you getting hit, so you might as well just run around like a lunatic.
• Your weapon choice is relatively fixed from one game to another. You go from 10mm to SMG to Assault rifle, to chinese assault rifle, to Xuan Long, in almost every game. There's no point to using a 32 pistol, or a chinese pistol. Boring but Practical rules, but it's also boring.

The end result is a game where shooting enemies--something you're going to do a lot of in this game--is somehow boring, repetitive, and unsatisfying. It only gets worse when you add in VATS, so that you can watch people's heads explode over and over in half a dozen ways. Don't get me wrong, it's fun once you mod it up, but it gets old real quick in the base game.

[LibraryOgre]

The Mod Wonder: Page 50 coming up. Think about what you want the next topic to be named.

Mod Hat off.

Playing Tale of Two Wastelands is REALLY interesting once you get to the Mojave, because you're SO. BLOODY. COMPETENT. Like, in the beginning of FO3 and vanilla New Vegas, you're limping along, being careful... in TTW, the Courier is a medium-high level adventurer with good equipment, if you don't cripple yourself. You can just WALK through a lot of fights that were crazy hard in non-TTW NV... like choosing to fight the Legion in front of Nipton. You just... cream them. Shotgun, shotgun, shotgun, done.

[Triaxx]

I'll give you the aim issue. Fallout 3's lack of iron sights is utterly bewildering to this day.

Yes/no. I'll partially blame lack of reaction on Bethesda, because they should react in someway to being shot short of death. The fact that they do go into full ragdoll (mostly) post death is perhaps an overcompensation. And on the other hand, Adrenaline is a thing that exists for exactly this reason. To keep you up and running in situations where the correct reaction of dropping to the ground in excruciating pain gets you finished off.

The ranges Bethesda places most fights at is such that movement would not realistically do any good except for ducking behind cover. Enemies don't engage at ranges where moving to avoid bullets would be something worth doing. And even then it's very silly to be actively dodging bullets.

I've never used the Xuan Long Assault rifle. Mostly not the Assault Rifle either. Lever Action Rifle, Double Barrel Shotgun, and .44 Magnum. 10mm SMG is only for ghouls. DR means Automatics end up sucking. Honestly the opinion that automatics are any use is startling to me. .32 Pistol is actually not quite as bad as it's made out to be, if you're willing to put the work into using it. But at the same time, it's a very specific character design. Of course I am never without a Sniper Rifle, so for the very long ranges that is what I use. But it's always, always, about the single shot slow firing weapons.

I suppose that's where our differences of opinion come into play.

[unseenmage]

Fallout VIII - I Wonder How High the Vault Numbers Go?
Fallout VIII - A Mod In the Right Direction
Fallout VIII - Here Human, I've Got a Treat For You

[Cikomyr]

Fallout VIII - The Mother of All Mod
Fallout VIII - Sandbox vs RPG - Who cares gimme my plasma gun
Fallout Episode VIII - The Last Goodbye

[Anteros]

So I finally got FO4 on PS4 and I came into this thread to ask if it's worth starting...and now I want to play New Vegas again. Thanks guys.

[Cikomyr]

So I finally got FO4 on PS4 and I came into this thread to ask if it's worth starting...and now I want to play New Vegas again. Thanks guys.

Fallout VIII - Fallout 4 makes you want to play New Vegas

[Triaxx]

Fallout VIII: That a kick in the head.

Go ahead, Fallout 4's a good game. Better than a lot of games, even if we're sitting here complaining about it.

[Avilan the Grey]

I don't think that's an example of FO4 being dumbed down for consoles. Having just four dialogue choices isn't a problem in itself--you generally didn't get more than that in FO3 and FO:NV. It's the *content* of those choices that's the big issue here, and that could be anything you like whether you're playing the game on a console, a PC, or a 1200W toaster oven. The problem is fundamentally that the writing and plotting in FO4's main game is awful, and no, having to voice-act all the lines does not excuse that.

Definitely not a case of "dumbing down". I truly prefer this system to the non-voiced protagonist in these type of games. I have not owned a console since I bought Golden Axe and a Sega Megadrive to play it on.

[Cikomyr]

Fallout VIII: That a kick in the head.

Go ahead, Fallout 4's a good game. Better than a lot of games, even if we're sitting here complaining about it.

I suppose its the curse of many successor to great games..

I think the main complaint is that due to the successful marketing campaign, Fallout 4 did sold widely more despite being an overall worse game than New Vegas, when not looking at the graphics

[Avilan the Grey]

I suppose its the curse of many successor to great games..

I think the main complaint is that due to the successful marketing campaign, Fallout 4 did sold widely more despite being an overall worse game than New Vegas, when not looking at the graphics

I honestly don't consider any Fallout a great game. Some of them are really good (FO4) but no, not great. And the older ones have not aged well at all. I tried replaying FO2 a few years ago and the archaiceverything had me quit because it was too frustrating.

[Cikomyr]

I honestly don't consider any Fallout a great game. Some of them are really good (FO4) but no, not great. And the older ones have not aged well at all. I tried replaying FO2 a few years ago and the archaiceverything had me quit because it was too frustrating.

New Vegas...?

[Avilan the Grey]

New Vegas...?

As I said, I found it about Mediocre (for a FO game). I prefer 3 to it. The story is better, but they have not managed to implement it in such a way that it works with an open world. The open world feels like an afterthought, and is quite boring, actually. As good as Obsidian are at writing, Bethesda excels at environmental story telling, something New Vegas thoroughly lacks.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Fallout VIII: Wishing for a Nuclear Winter

Fallout VIII: Ad Victorum!

Fallout VIII: She turned me into a Synth!

Fallout VIII: Getting your GOAT

Fallout VIII: Because 200 year old junk food is healthy

[LibraryOgre]

Fallout VIII: Because 200 year old junk food is healthy

Fallout VIII: The Healing Power of Junk Food

[Avilan the Grey]

Fallout VIII: The Healing Power of Junk Food

Speaking of, they lampshade that in the intro...

[Balmas]

Fallout XIII: Almost makes you wish for a nucular winter.

Playing Tale of Two Wastelands is REALLY interesting once you get to the Mojave, because you're SO. BLOODY. COMPETENT. Like, in the beginning of FO3 and vanilla New Vegas, you're limping along, being careful... in TTW, the Courier is a medium-high level adventurer with good equipment, if you don't cripple yourself. You can just WALK through a lot of fights that were crazy hard in non-TTW NV... like choosing to fight the Legion in front of Nipton. You just... cream them. Shotgun, shotgun, shotgun, done.

I actually play with a mod for that. The way I see it, Benny's not interested in your loot; he just wants the Platinum Chip. But the Khans aren't the kind to leave valuable loot behind. So after they shoot you in the head, they loot your body and take all your nice gear. It's good for coming at New Vegas fresh. And, if you can track them down, you can get your stuff back. Be warned, though; they'll be using all that lovely loot to defend themselves.

Linkie!

I've never used the Xuan Long Assault rifle. Mostly not the Assault Rifle either. Lever Action Rifle, Double Barrel Shotgun, and .44 Magnum. 10mm SMG is only for ghouls. DR means Automatics end up sucking. Honestly the opinion that automatics are any use is startling to me. .32 Pistol is actually not quite as bad as it's made out to be, if you're willing to put the work into using it. But at the same time, it's a very specific character design. Of course I am never without a Sniper Rifle, so for the very long ranges that is what I use. But it's always, always, about the single shot slow firing weapons.

I suppose that's where our differences of opinion come into play.

With the DR system, the only thing that matters is how much damage you can accurately pump into an enemy; Damage per second reigns supreme. There are two main reasons, I would argue, for automatics being superior weapons in Fallout 3. First is that the powerful, single-fire weapons tend to have low DPS, which means problems if you face more than one opponent, or if opponents start needing more than one shot to take down. Second is that there are two perks in Point Lookout that together, add ten damage per shot to each attack, effectively doubling the DPS of automatic weapons.

Definitely not a case of "dumbing down". I truly prefer this system to the non-voiced protagonist in these type of games. I have not owned a console since I bought Golden Axe and a Sega Megadrive to play it on.

If you don't mind me asking, what about the Fallout 4 dialogue system was it that you liked?

As I said, I found it about Mediocre (for a FO game). I prefer 3 to it. The story is better, but they have not managed to implement it in such a way that it works with an open world. The open world feels like an afterthought, and is quite boring, actually. As good as Obsidian are at writing, Bethesda excels at environmental story telling, something New Vegas thoroughly lacks.

Eh, I would actually argue that New Vegas has better environmental storytelling than either 3 or 4. It doesn't dabble in senselessly placed skeletons or raiders with weirdly-posed teddy bears. The way the world is built, though, gives the player a far better understanding of the game they're going to be playing. That's what environmental storytelling is, is using the environment of the game to convey a message about the world. Portal conveys that you are in a lab experiment via how everything's clean, white, professional. Bioshock shows off the decadence of Rapture by having you walk through and loot a bar that was mid party. The organic storytelling of New Vegas does a far better job of telling the player about who lives here and what might happen next than the random vignettes of 3 or 4.

[Cikomyr]

Eh, I would actually argue that New Vegas has better environmental storytelling than either 3 or 4. It doesn't dabble in senselessly placed skeletons or raiders with weirdly-posed teddy bears. The way the world is built, though, gives the player a far better understanding of the game they're going to be playing. That's what environmental storytelling is, is using the environment of the game to convey a message about the world. Portal conveys that you are in a lab experiment via how everything's clean, white, professional. Bioshock shows off the decadence of Rapture by having you walk through and loot a bar that was mid party. The organic storytelling of New Vegas does a far better job of telling the player about who lives here and what might happen next than the random vignettes of 3 or 4.

I think you nailed it. New Vegas feels like a real, lived-in location that breath and bled.

Fallout 3/4 sounds like wacky playgrounds.

[The_Jackal]

I did like that about Skyrim. The system's one flaw (though not deal breaking) is that enemies scale to your overall level, so if you improve a lot of non-combat skills then fights will get really tough to win. Not entirely unmanageable though. There's plenty of fights you can pick from, so as long as you at least practice one combat skill, you won't suffer (much). :3

I like Skyrim's system too, I think it did a better job of combining perks with skills, as opposed to the 'all perks' approach of Fallout, However, Skyrim's major flaw is just how brokenly OP you can become with even a little bit of minimaxing. Between skills, perks, and crafting, you can become an invincible demigod. By comparison, Fallout 4 does a much, much better job of keeping scaling in check.

Problem is it's a ****tier sandbox than New Vegas is too, because you have less options for how to affect the world beside the tedious settlement building mechanics.

For that matter Deus Ex is a better sandbox game too so I'm not sure what your point is.

You clearly are using sandbox in a context in which I do not intend, or agree with. Minecraft is a sandbox game. GTA is a sandbox game. Shadow of Mordor is a sandbox game. Deus Ex is a straight up RPG. There is a linear story, there is NOTHING in the game world save the content that's put there for you to chase that story to its logical conclusion, and while there's some limited freedom in terms of how you can accomplish an objective, the outcome of each mission does not change. There's only one choice at the end with any real story consequence, and it basically lets you select an ending cutscene. So, if you're not willing to agree on what the definition of a sandbox game is, then I'm afraid there's no point in having a discussion about the topic, the argument devolves into pointless semantics.

Seriously what, to you, makes Fallout 4 any more sandbox-y than 3 or New Vegas?

At no point did I assert that Fallout 4 is a better sandbox than New Vegas. I didn't even say it was a better game. I said it was a great game, and a different kind of game than New Vegas.

In return it does get better gunplay (though a smaller selection of weapon types, at least viable ones) and mediocre voice acting added to the protagonist. Good trade?

In my opinion, YES. By any objective assessment of the game's commercial and ongoing success? YES. Real talk time: Money is fungible, all features cost time, and game developers are at the mercy of the cost of capital just like everyone else. Would I have liked more story and choices in Fallout 4? Sure! Would I have enjoyed more fleshed out mission content? Sure! But for the presence of all of those things in NV and FO3, I prefer the changes they made to Fallout 4, because what I care most about in a game is the gameplay, not choosing from a series of dialogue trees, no matter how cunningly crafted those dialogue trees are.

Nice strawman you've made there, glad to know the only way I could possibly think Fallout 4 was a weak entry in an otherwise strong franchise was because I had baggage from RPGs I hadn't played when I started Fallout 4...

It's not all about you.

Hmm. I'm having difficulty putting my thoughts on paper, but lemme try.

To my mind, balance and interesting choices are almost mutually exclusive. If you want all weapons to be balanced against each other, you have to do the math to make sure that they all perform roughly the same. Balance needs all weapons to be in the same ballpark as each other; you might have small variations in power, but they'd need to perform about the same. In order for there to be interesting choices, guns need to be different from each other, with negatives and positives to them. That means that players can try different builds, different weapons, and get a new experience each time. Using a bow should feel different than using a sniper rifle or an LMG or an SMG.

Examples of interesting choices in weapon design include Payday 2 and Borderlands 2. In each game, you have different weapon types that behave vastly differently. Heck, even within weapon classes, different manufacturer bonuses mean you're going to have a vastly different experience with a Bandit pistol than a Jakobs pistol. Being able to use skills to support different weapon types means that you can have a shotgun Zer0, or a pistol Mastermind setup, or a maniac who runs around with a buzzsaw and a grenade launcher. None of these things are balanced. There's always going to be an optimal loadout and skill setup, but having a robust variety of guns and skills to support them means that players can use something else and still have fun.

Unfortunately, Fallout 4 has neither interesting weapon choices, nor skills to allow for different weapon setups, nor even a semblance of balance to justify the blandness in the weapons. All of the weapons feel almost the same when you fire them. The skills are bland +X% to damage when using Y type of weapons. And even with all that, the weapons are imbalanced; Semi-auto rifles are more powerful than semi-auto pistols, and the DT calculations mean that both groups are more effective than commando-type weapons. And then you add in legendary effects, and any pretense of balance is thrown out the window, until you wind up with a hot mess of weapon types that are imbalanced while also being somehow dull and lifeless.

If you're recruiting Borderlands 2 into your 'balanced weapons' argument, I'm afraid we will never agree, because BL2, while a fun, and well written game, has a weapon design system that is utterly, wildly, horrendously imbalanced. BL2 is the game with a Bazillion guns, but like 18 good ones. I played (a lot) of Zero in Borderlands 2. When I decided to finally slog through to UVHM and get my OP levels, do you know what I did? I looped through the start of the game, then did Captain Scarlett's DLC until I got myself a Pimpernel, then I did the same thing again. And again. And again. Why? Because if I wanted to get a sniper that wasn't suicidal moist garbage, I HAD TO. Literally every random world-drop sniper was loose stool compared to the Pimpernel, to the point where I had a Pimp that was 10 or so levels behind me, and still outdamaged a purple Snider, which is the non-unique version of that type of gun.

Now I will concede that there was a lack of weapon variety, as most guns fell into one of two categories: Hitscan or Projectile, but there were choices that informed your playstyle. You could melee, go heavy, rifles, auto, or gunslinger. If you didn't want to go max difficulty, you could also try some gimmicks, like the basher. Now you may not have liked those choices very much, but they were choices.

The vast majority of people who bought and played Fallout 4 have probably never played an Interplay Fallout. The problem isn't that grognards are complaining that Fallout 4 doesn't live up to 1 and 2. It's that people who bought, played, and enjoyed Fallout 3 and New Vegas recognize that Fallout 4 has made several steps back from even those most recent 3D Fallout games.

No, the problem is that the grognards won't shut up, regardless of what they're comparing Fallout 4 to. The problem isn't the game design, it's nostalgia. It's the same reason that the Destiny 2 community has their pants in a wad. Change is bad, you dropped this feature that I liked, there's something that used to work the way I like that isn't the same, DO EVERYTHING. Instead of assessing the game on its own merits, everything is evaluated through rose-tinted goggles, and anything that doesn't measure up to what they think they experienced in the last issue in the franchise is harped on ad nauseum, while the things that are legitimately better are simply taken for granted. It's classic negativity bias.

Here's the thing. I'd be perfectly happy if Bethesda had decided to just make a Fallout sandbox. I'd be ecstatic with NV++. But Bethesda decided to give us a game that was neither. If you want to play it as just post-apocalyptic shoot-scavenge-loot-build game, then you have tons of things that are locked behind story content, and the RPG side of things means that the settlement building controls are unreliable at best and downright vexing at worst. If you want an RPG experience, then you'll be frustrated by the nonexistent choices and constant series of missions that amount to nothing more than "go find loot in this location." Both sides of the game are hosed because Bethesda couldn't make up their damn minds about what game they wanted to make, and the resulting game is mediocre for pretty much everyone involved.

No, they really did make a sandbox. Saying that the entirety of the gameplay is 'kill loot return' is incredibly reductive. That's like saying that all you do in GTA III is drive cars and get chased by police. There may be different features in FO4 than, say, Skyrim, or Shadow of Mordor, or Minecraft, but there were features. Maybe you didn't like those features. I did.

You seem to have confused "sold a lot of copies" with "is a great game," there. I'll note that there was a lot of hype surrounding Fallout 4, because Fallout 3 and New Vegas were such excellent games. Bethesda could have shoveled a turd in a DVD case and shipped it, and people would have bought it.

I'll also note that if we're charitable and assume that only a quarter of those 12 million retail copies were PC version, that means that of the 4.2 million people who bought Fallout 4 on launch day, 23K (0.5%) of people are still playing the game two years later. Those are some brilliant retention numbers, there, truly indicative of a quality product with massive staying power. Compare that to indie titles like Rust, a buggy, glitchy sandbox Battle royale game that somehow has maintained almost ten thousand more active players than Fallout 4 despite having only a quarter of Bethesda's sales. Or PUBG, the current #1 played game on steam, which has hit 10 million copies sold and 2.6 million active players today, despite still being in beta.

Yes, well, it turns out that new games have more active player bases than older games. Fallout 4 is now a 2 year old game, and it's a single-player game, so it's kind of hard to drive the notion that it's going to have the same level of concurrent engagement as a white-hot new multiplayer title. And even PUGB rates 6/10 on Steam, which just goes to show you what a bunch of cranky, whiney retards make up the average player who posts a review online.

It's almost like sales aren't indicative of the quality of a game at all, and trying to use them as evidence of said quality would be demonstrably, empirically wrong.

Maybe not, but they're closer to evidence than anything else furnished in this argument. More to the point, they're utterly relevant to my point, which is that the games industry objective isn't to please you. It's to make money. So, if you care about story, vote with your dollar, Obsidian is over there. Do you want your keep your cake or eat it? Do you want a AAA game with top-tier graphics and crisp gameplay, or do you want Zork 2.0?

That much I agree with. One of the main problems with Fallout 3's shooting, I feel, was VATS. It was a crutch that let Bethesda get away with shipping a first person shooter that was barely capable of first person shooting. You had no reason not to use it, given the massive 90% damage reduction while doing so and the additional 15% chance to critical hit. That same power, though, meant that you had a choice of either watching the game play itself for you, or wrestling with the barely adequate shooting controls of Vanilla Fallout 3.

Look, I don't mean to suggest that people who like story-based RPGs are somehow wrong, or shouldn't want what they want. But complaining that Bethesda should stop doing what they're doing is flying in the face of some insurmountable financial facts of life. Todd Howard might have lost your trust, but I'm sure he'll cry himself to sleep tonight on a giant pile of money. That's why I say you need to vote with your feet. Just don't expect me to vote with you.

[Avilan the Grey]

If you don't mind me asking, what about the Fallout 4 dialogue system was it that you liked?

---

Eh, I would actually argue that New Vegas has better environmental storytelling than either 3 or 4. It doesn't dabble in senselessly placed skeletons or raiders with weirdly-posed teddy bears. The way the world is built, though, gives the player a far better understanding of the game they're going to be playing. That's what environmental storytelling is, is using the environment of the game to convey a message about the world. Portal conveys that you are in a lab experiment via how everything's clean, white, professional. Bioshock shows off the decadence of Rapture by having you walk through and loot a bar that was mid party. The organic storytelling of New Vegas does a far better job of telling the player about who lives here and what might happen next than the random vignettes of 3 or 4.

Well...
1. Fully voiced.
2. I enjoy the Mass Effect system period.

As for storytelling... I disagree. NV felt... dead to me. I don't know, maybe it's not crazy enough for me. It just doesn't feel like fallout to me.

[Cikomyr]

Well...
1. Fully voiced.
2. I enjoy the Mass Effect system period.

As for storytelling... I disagree. NV felt... dead to me. I don't know, maybe it's not crazy enough for me. It just doesn't feel like fallout to me.

I cannot help you there. What you feel cannot bw argued, but i think you are really wrong.

[factotum]

The end result is a game where shooting enemies--something you're going to do a lot of in this game--is somehow boring, repetitive, and unsatisfying. It only gets worse when you add in VATS, so that you can watch people's heads explode over and over in half a dozen ways. Don't get me wrong, it's fun once you mod it up, but it gets old real quick in the base game.

I think what it comes down to is that Fallout 3 was more heavily weighted toward the RPG end of the FPS-RPG scale, while Borderlands 2 (since you give it as an example of things done right) is far more toward the FPS end. Personally, I prefer things to be at the RPG end--it's always been my contention that the main thing a CRPG should do is make progression more reliant on the in-game character's skills than the player's twitch reflexes.

Now, that doesn't mean I think it's a good idea you can have your crosshairs squarely on the enemy's head, press the mouse button, and do no damage because the secret dice rolls in the background determine that you miss. What your character's in-game skill should do is increase damage and make critical hits more likely, which Fallout 4 pretty much does. This goes back to what I was saying earlier, of course--I really don't have a problem with FO4 from a game mechanics viewpoint, although a few more interesting perk choices wouldn't go amiss.