Fallout 4

[Wingflier]

So for months I've seen this game hyped over and over again all over social media and the internet in general.

I personally can't understand the hype for several reasons:

1. I've never been a big fan of "Sandbox RPGs". It seems like most of the "playtime" of these kinds of guys just revolves around traveling on foot from place to place, where the moments of "action" are few and far between. You typically spend an ungodly amount of time talking to boring NPCs, performing arbitrary quests, or opening a thousand boxes and loot crates to discover items which 99% of the time you're just going to sell anyway. For me, it is a miserable, miserable experience.

2. Anytime you get to the "3rd" or "4th" in the series, you have to start wondering about the company's motives. I mean come on, how many times can you honestly "reboot" a series before it starts to get stale? I don't even think that companies even try to hide anymore that these kinds of marketing ploys are just thinly veiled money grabs, and yet people continue to fall for them again and again and again.

3. I don't understand the draw of these kinds of games in general, whether sandbox RPG or MMO period. You can't really lose, you just wander around the world collecting quests, arbitrary gear, and levels indefinitely. Perhaps I'm just thinking about it too much, I don't know.

All I know is, the hype for this game is probably the biggest hype for any game I've seen in a long, long time. There have been countless memes about how people are going to quit their job and divorce their wives so they'll have more time to play this.

Well, unsurprisingly, the game has failed its high expectations. Fans are calling it the worst of the series. Full of bugs, boring characters, and an extremely simplistic system that removes the depths of the previous games.

http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/fallout-4/user-reviews

As always, the critics gave it a high score, so I'll let you be the judge of who is being more objective in this situation.

For fans of the series, I'd like to hear your opinions.

[Mick]

It's a game I'm looking forward to playing, but I decided to wait for a sale simply because I have too many things to play. This has the advantage of allowing a few bug patches to be applied in the meantime.

Exploring and collecting is a thing I find fun to do in games. I'd say I'm somewhere in between an achiever and and explorer on the Bartle Test, and open world games are fitting for that.

[crazyroosterman]

So for months I've seen this game hyped over and over again all over social media and the internet in general.

I personally can't understand the hype for several reasons:

1. I've never been a big fan of "Sandbox RPGs". It seems like most of the "playtime" of these kinds of guys just revolves around traveling on foot from place to place, where the moments of "action" are few and far between. You typically spend an ungodly amount of time talking to boring NPCs, performing arbitrary quests, or opening a thousand boxes and loot crates to discover items which 99% of the time you're just going to sell anyway. For me, it is a miserable, miserable experience.

2. Anytime you get to the "3rd" or "4th" in the series, you have to start wondering about the company's motives. I mean come on, how many times can you honestly "reboot" a series before it starts to get stale? I don't even think that companies even try to hide anymore that these kinds of marketing ploys are just thinly veiled money grabs, and yet people continue to fall for them again and again and again.

3. I don't understand the draw of these kinds of games in general, whether sandbox RPG or MMO period. You can't really lose, you just wander around the world collecting quests, arbitrary gear, and levels indefinitely. Perhaps I'm just thinking about it too much, I don't know.

All I know is, the hype for this game is probably the biggest hype for any game I've seen in a long, long time. There have been countless memes about how people are going to quit their job and divorce their wives so they'll have more time to play this.

Well, unsurprisingly, the game has failed its high expectations. Fans are calling it the worst of the series. Full of bugs, boring characters, and an extremely simplistic system that removes the depths of the previous games.

http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/fallout-4/user-reviews

As always, the critics gave it a high score, so I'll let you be the judge of who is being more objective in this situation.

For fans of the series, I'd like to hear your opinions.

personally years ago I played fallout 3 to death the things you dislike are all things I enjoyed doing so I thinks its a matter of subjectivity there personally I haven't played fallout 4 and don't really intend to since it would probably stab my laptop to death if I tried to play it and I don't have the ,next generation. of consoles also I'm not really sure what you mean by cant lose doesn't that mean there would be no failure state? which there clearly is(ie diying)....at least in till you got the Gatling laser that thing was horrifically over powered but in till then the game was fairly challenging despite it being terribly balanced. ps about the whole reboot thing before fallout 3 it wasn't Bethesda who made it was an entirely different company who Bethesda bought out if my history serves me well so that's a bit eeeeh? really

[TheVampire100]

If you don't like sandbox style rpgs it is clear that you cannot understand the game. But just try to think of people who actually LIKE this genre. For those people the game looks really good with all the options the game has to offer.
And Fallout 4 HAS a lot of stuff to offer. I want this game myself but I wait until it's on sale.

The most atracting stuff for those games os colelcting. Some people just like collecting stuff. What has been in the past post stamps and stickers (which people nowadays still do but you see it less common) are now collectibles in games. And people that like to collect stuff will like games like this.
In sandbox games you just want to find and see everything.
Another major point for this games is that you can play the way you want. While straightforward games give you a specific task and only one way to finish the game, this one offers you multiple ways to do so, giving the game a higher replayability (you can just try another way to play).
Soemtimes people just want to be individiual int heir games and games like Skyrim and Fallout 4 give them that chance.

[Aklyon]

3. I don't understand the draw of these kinds of games in general, whether sandbox RPG or MMO period. You can't really lose, you just wander around the world collecting quests, arbitrary gear, and levels indefinitely. Perhaps I'm just thinking about it too much, I don't know.

Its not really the kind of thing you play if you want the potential to lose, because how do you define losing? You're just this guy, adventuring around the [setting], who may or maynot have special powers. You could go save the world or fight the whatever, or you could mod the shit out of it (its a bethesda game anyway, piles of mods are par for the course) and ignore the main quest entirely. Pick your own objectives, like a grand strategy game.

Though this is all from a skyrim pov, since I don't have fo4 and i doubt I'll get it anytime soon with the new xcom coming soonish.

[Coppermantis]

I loved New Vegas and kind of enjoyed 3. Thus far, Fallout 4 has has a few problems but overall I'm enjoying it quite a lot. Exploring is fun, the gunplay itself is much better than the previous games, building settlements is fun, and so on.

The UI is god-awful though, and I feel like I'm fighting against it whenever I take any action. I'm growing more accustomed to it as I go on, but it's far from intuitive.

Graphically it's mostly gorgeous, even if Bethesda is even worse at animations than Bioware. The lip-syncing is frequently off, facial animations don't do a good job of conveying emotion. That said, some things too look quite nice. Deathclaws zig-zagging to avoid your shots looks great, and the dog is pretty neat too. Player body animations are better than before but jumping looks weird. Elsewhere, there are some bugs with the skybox textures.

Pretty much I'm just having fun exploring, just like I did in every other Bethesda game ever. In that respect, Fallout 4 satisfies quite nicely. I haven't gotten too far into the main story yet, but since when has anyone ever played a sandbox RPG for the main story? Maybe that's not for you, but, for me, wandering on foot from place to place, finding new places, and occasionally getting some really cool new loot is very enjoyable. For your third point, I think you really are just thinking about it too much. It's fun to explore an interesting world, and the action really isn't as sparse as you make it out to be. Even in the short time I've played it so far I've been in quite a few very fun firefights, and I still remember some of my most memorable battles in New Vegas. Low level, poor equipment, making my way through a vault infested with raiders, pulling every trick I could to whittle down their health so I could get to the end. And then learning that, with the right armor and some speech skill, I could have just made my way straight to the end without fighting.

That's another thing I like about these RPGs is finding non-violent solutions. For some reason, being able to negotiate my way into a better outcome is very satisfying, and I love it when games do that. In stuff like Skyrim that's not as present, but in many sandbox RPGs it is, which I imagine is part of the reason for their popularity.

[crazyroosterman]

I loved New Vegas and kind of enjoyed 3. Thus far, Fallout 4 has has a few problems but overall I'm enjoying it quite a lot. Exploring is fun, the gunplay itself is much better than the previous games, building settlements is fun, and so on.

The UI is god-awful though, and I feel like I'm fighting against it whenever I take any action. I'm growing more accustomed to it as I go on, but it's far from intuitive.

Graphically it's mostly gorgeous, even if Bethesda is even worse at animations than Bioware. The lip-syncing is frequently off, facial animations don't do a good job of conveying emotion. That said, some things too look quite nice. Deathclaws zig-zagging to avoid your shots looks great, and the dog is pretty neat too. Player body animations are better than before but jumping looks weird. Elsewhere, there are some bugs with the skybox textures.

Pretty much I'm just having fun exploring, just like I did in every other Bethesda game ever. In that respect, Fallout 4 satisfies quite nicely. I haven't gotten too far into the main story yet, but since when has anyone ever played a sandbox RPG for the main story? Maybe that's not for you, but, for me, wandering on foot from place to place, finding new places, and occasionally getting some really cool new loot is very enjoyable. For your third point, I think you really are just thinking about it too much. It's fun to explore an interesting world, and the action really isn't as sparse as you make it out to be. Even in the short time I've played it so far I've been in quite a few very fun firefights, and I still remember some of my most memorable battles in New Vegas. Low level, poor equipment, making my way through a vault infested with raiders, pulling every trick I could to whittle down their health so I could get to the end. And then learning that, with the right armor and some speech skill, I could have just made my way straight to the end without fighting.

That's another thing I like about these RPGs is finding non-violent solutions. For some reason, being able to negotiate my way into a better outcome is very satisfying, and I love it when games do that. In stuff like Skyrim that's not as present, but in many sandbox RPGs it is, which I imagine is part of the reason for their popularity.

I have to ask since you seem to the only fellow here who's actually played the game in question how well balanced is it? new vegas was nicely balanced but fallout 3 was just the worst when it came to balance?.

[Coppermantis]

I loved New Vegas and kind of enjoyed 3. Thus far, Fallout 4 has has a few problems but overall I'm enjoying it quite a lot. Exploring is fun, the gunplay itself is much better than the previous games, building settlements is fun, and so on.

The UI is god-awful though, and I feel like I'm fighting against it whenever I take any action. I'm growing more accustomed to it as I go on, but it's far from intuitive.

Graphically it's mostly gorgeous, even if Bethesda is even worse at animations than Bioware. The lip-syncing is frequently off, facial animations don't do a good job of conveying emotion. That said, some things too look quite nice. Deathclaws zig-zagging to avoid your shots looks great, and the dog is pretty neat too. Player body animations are better than before but jumping looks weird. Elsewhere, there are some bugs with the skybox textures.

Pretty much I'm just having fun exploring, just like I did in every other Bethesda game ever. In that respect, Fallout 4 satisfies quite nicely. I haven't gotten too far into the main story yet, but since when has anyone ever played a sandbox RPG for the main story? Maybe that's not for you, but, for me, wandering on foot from place to place, finding new places, and occasionally getting some really cool new loot is very enjoyable. For your third point, I think you really are just thinking about it too much. It's fun to explore an interesting world, and the action really isn't as sparse as you make it out to be. Even in the short time I've played it so far I've been in quite a few very fun firefights, and I still remember some of my most memorable battles in New Vegas. Low level, poor equipment, making my way through a vault infested with raiders, pulling every trick I could to whittle down their health so I could get to the end. And then learning that, with the right armor and some speech skill, I could have just made my way straight to the end without fighting.

That's another thing I like about these RPGs is finding non-violent solutions. For some reason, being able to negotiate my way into a better outcome is very satisfying, and I love it when games do that. In stuff like Skyrim that's not as present, but in many sandbox RPGs it is, which I imagine is part of the reason for their popularity.

I have to ask since you seem to the only fellow here who's actually played the game in question how well balanced is it? new vegas was nicely balanced but fallout 3 was just the worst when it came to balance?.

I'm only a couple hours in and it seems pretty well-balanced, but I don't know how it scales as you get to higher levels. In terms of how difficult the combat is it seems similar to New Vegas, some bits are challenging but I haven't run into anything that just blatantly unfair or unusually pitiful yet. I mean, you've got your easy packs of wild creatures, but I did get caught off-guard by a squad of super mutants that gave me a challegne. The AI seems better too. Of course, I'm only playing on the default difficulty with an allocation of SPECIAL stats favoring charisma, perception, and intelligence so combat isn't my character's main forte.

 Ammo and health seem more common than in 3 and they seem to have removed weapon condition, which is a little disappointing as the survival aspect seems diminished. Makes the whole thing a bit easier.

Presumably there will be mods to rectify this later down the line, but for now it's unfortunate.

[Cyborg]

I should really beat Skyrim. I got so distracted wandering around the world for hours on end, playing with mods, and treating it like a big sandbox that I never did get far in the main quest. I don't even feel guilty about it, I had a lot of fun.

[crazyroosterman]

I should really beat Skyrim. I got so distracted wandering around the world for hours on end, playing with mods, and treating it like a big sandbox that I never did get far in the main quest. I don't even feel guilty about it, I had a lot of fun.

personally I never beat that my self I got to the bit were I chained up the dragon but didn't really care enough to go further with it.

[KingIsaacLinksr]

I personally can't understand the hype for several reasons:

1. I've never been a big fan of "Sandbox RPGs".

3. I don't understand the draw of these kinds of games in general, whether sandbox RPG or MMO period.

Because other people enjoy different things. You don't enjoy FV/Sandbox RPGs so you don't understand why others do but they have legitimate reasons to enjoy these style of games.

2. Anytime you get to the "3rd" or "4th" in the series, you have to start wondering about the company's motives. I mean come on, how many times can you honestly "reboot" a series before it starts to get stale? I don't even think that companies even try to hide anymore that these kinds of marketing ploys are just thinly veiled money grabs, and yet people continue to fall for them again and again and again.

Fallout 4 isn't a reboot so where does that even come from? It's a continuation of a long series who doesn't do annual releases like a lot of companies do with popular series. If anything, I'm glad they're doing it like this. Even if I don't play the series. (I haven't).

(Disclosure: I haven't played any of the Fallout series. I have zero personal investment in any of them).

[Wingflier]

I also forgot that the original Fallout 1 and 2 were tactical squad based shooters. So those were completely different games.

Hearing a lot of the opinions in this thread have helped me understand the appreciation of this game, even if I don't enjoy it. I guess it's kind of a personal immersion thing that I haven't experienced in a game since I played Everquest as a young teenager.

[Misery]

So for months I've seen this game hyped over and over again all over social media and the internet in general.

I personally can't understand the hype for several reasons:

1. I've never been a big fan of "Sandbox RPGs". It seems like most of the "playtime" of these kinds of guys just revolves around traveling on foot from place to place, where the moments of "action" are few and far between. You typically spend an ungodly amount of time talking to boring NPCs, performing arbitrary quests, or opening a thousand boxes and loot crates to discover items which 99% of the time you're just going to sell anyway. For me, it is a miserable, miserable experience.

2. Anytime you get to the "3rd" or "4th" in the series, you have to start wondering about the company's motives. I mean come on, how many times can you honestly "reboot" a series before it starts to get stale? I don't even think that companies even try to hide anymore that these kinds of marketing ploys are just thinly veiled money grabs, and yet people continue to fall for them again and again and again.

3. I don't understand the draw of these kinds of games in general, whether sandbox RPG or MMO period. You can't really lose, you just wander around the world collecting quests, arbitrary gear, and levels indefinitely. Perhaps I'm just thinking about it too much, I don't know.

All I know is, the hype for this game is probably the biggest hype for any game I've seen in a long, long time. There have been countless memes about how people are going to quit their job and divorce their wives so they'll have more time to play this.

Well, unsurprisingly, the game has failed its high expectations. Fans are calling it the worst of the series. Full of bugs, boring characters, and an extremely simplistic system that removes the depths of the previous games.

http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/fallout-4/user-reviews

As always, the critics gave it a high score, so I'll let you be the judge of who is being more objective in this situation.

For fans of the series, I'd like to hear your opinions.

You're not alone in not understanding the hype here.

I played number 3, and.... was bored out of my mind.  Just absolutely bored.  Nothing happened most of the time, half of the game was just talking, the "combat" could be made super trivial with that whole "VATS" system, which I used to call "the win button", the world was almost artificially big, to the point of being silly.... I mean, seriously, it reminded me of Hyrule Field in Zelda OOT, which always seemed STRETCHED yet totally empty just so that the devs could say "Look how BIG this is! Isnt that awesome??!?" despite not having put much STUFF in it.... Skyrim had given me the same feeling as well.  And of course there were ways to improve your character and such, but the game never made me CARE, since, well, you know.... win button.  What did I need skills or abilities for when the game was so EASY?  Skyrim had that very same issue too; absolutely braindead and very SLOW combat that caused me to just not care about my build. 

And just.... ugh.  The whole genre just = "slow" to me, and I dont deal with slow things very well.


So yeah.... I'm one of the very few, it seems, that DOESNT have an interest in getting Fallout 4 here.

Though, I'm not AT ALL surprised to see that people arent taking too well to it if that's the case.  That seems to be the theme right now.   Battlefront is looking *terrible*, and.... I'm not even going to talk about the new Anno.  All it'll do is anger me and something will get thrown at a wall.

Ugh.  This is part of why I stick to indie games these days.

[Mánagarmr]

Hnnnrghh....stop. using. metacritic.


Anyways, I don't like the game for the same reasons I didn't like Fallout 3: Dull as hell combat system and overall boring gameplay mechanics. Sure, it's a big world and lots of interesting story, but MAN is it a sleeping pill. Not to mention Bethesda yet again puts their trademark paper-doll-robots animations on the characters.

[Misery]

Hnnnrghh....stop. using. metacritic.

I tell people that one all the time.

Nobody ever listens though.