Off Topic Recommendation Request

[DirebearCoat]

I know that people who are still here, playing Skyrim, REALLY LOVE THIS GAME.  However, I'm sure that many, here, have played Fallout 4.  How does it compare to Skyrim, in terms of game play, replayability, immersion, story line, etc?  I'm sure that the game is completely different from Skyrim in a lot of ways, but in what ways are they similar?

Do you strongly recommend it?  Is it, "meh"?  Or somewhere in between?  I'm thinking of maybe getting it.

[Lollia]

Warning: The following personal opinions have been rated "B" for being Brutally honest.

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I can tell you that the NPC reaction factor is severely lacking in comparison to Skyrim. Have you seen footage of Starfield? Where NPCs barely react to chaos? Fallout 4 is the precursor to that sort of behavior.

Skyrim actually includes fully voiced responses for situations that can never even arise. Like the children voice types being able to comment on their own spouse's demise—or even that of their own children or grandchildren! Fallout 4? Well, to be perfectly blunt, hardly anyone reacts if you construe to give their relatives a shorter lifespan.

Keeping to the kid-theme, they can't die in Fallout 4 without mods, and it's the same thing in Skyrim. But if somehow they do, Skyrim families will react accordingly and verbally. Fallout 4? Nothing.

There's a girl in Bunker Hill and her mother is the acting doctor (even though she's actually an animal vet). Should her daughter drop dead right in front of her, this woman has no reaction whatsoever. And neither does the other woman who (according to the game guide) is in a relationship with the mother, and should therefore be very upset about the fate of the young girl they're raising together—and yet, nothing.

I use this example because it left a profound impact on me by showing just how much Bethesda stopped planning ahead (a trait I had always admired them for). But yeah, if an NPC in the proper family faction or ally faction dies, you will probably be attacked if you caused it and it's witnessed, but don't expect them to care about whomever they lost in the aftermath.

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NPCs in general: In Skyrim, I pretty much know the name, history and occupation of every person in each hold. For me personally, Fallout 4 is not good at fostering those sorts of connections.

At one point, I was defending myself from Super Mutants. We ended up by a local farm whose residents I had helped (and seemingly befriended). They fought alongside me until a grenade blast grazed one of their number, and then they all turned on me. Lowering my weapons did not help, and I was forced to put them down along with the Super Mutants. Had this been in Skyrim, I would have reloaded a save no matter how far back, but not in Fallout 4. Once you have met one NPC, you have essentially met them all.

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Followers/Companions? They have more dialogue and are more thought-out than Skyrim's default ensemble, but I personally find them bland and repetitive. I ended up making additional combat lines for the ones I could be bothered to occasionally have around, and the rest I ignore and bring in characters from other games in their stead. It's pretty sad that one character from Fallout 3 has more dialogue in the areas of combat and detection alone than most of the Fallout 4 companions have put together, but hey... Bethesda had other priorities. Like that awful new dialogue system.

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The Dialogue: Hate it with a passion. If you get Fallout 4, you be sure to grab mods to extend the lines so you actually know what your character is saying. And if you don't like the idea of your character having a voice foisted on them, get your game to the the pre-"next gen" version and get this F4SE plugin for a blissfully silent experience.

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The main story? You were either (if male) a soldier, or (if female) an attorney. You are married and have a kid name Shaun. If that sort of forced character building doesn't turn you off from the get-go, you may have better luck with the main story. I could not even get through it (mod-free) once. (That's never happened to me before.)

If it does bother you, get yourself an alternative start mod. You might have to use your imagination to get over some of the more stubborn bits of the story (mostly due to that awful, horrible, cursed dialogue system), but just pretend everyone is insanely dumb and you'll be fine.

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Combat? Combat is cool. NPCs can dodge and take cover (something I was really thrilled about when I first saw it in action). Wished it was in Skyrim the moment I saw it. Oddly enough, it sort of is? But the objects that Skyrim's NPCs can take cover behind were given very minimal attention, and of course they don't have nice animations to go with it.

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Joinable factions? They make Skyrim's own main quest's attempts at shoehorning you into joining the College of Winterhold and the Thieves Guild seem subtle.  Never have I craved Fallout: New Vegas' independent choice ending so much!

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The Settlement system? A joke. A horrible, unfunny joke.

Ooh, look! An NPC! What must they have to say? What cool area or side quest might they point me to? Hahahahahahaha. Your reward for rescuing a kidnapped friend or taking down a huge base of raiders? You get to take care of those NPCs for life! Provide them with food, water, bedding, security, and fun! What, you don't understand that a whole group of people whom you have no real connection to is now under your exclusive care? You don't understand why that house they've been living in is no longer sufficient because they have been introduced to wonderful YOU?

Oh. Well, they're going to die. Or abandon ship. How can they possibly take care of themselves with you? Life is just not worth living!

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Enemy variety? Dull as dishwater. Grab Mutant Menagerie and go wild. I wouldn't be playing Fallout 4 for this long if it hadn't been for that mod. Want a crazy experience? Get a mod that disables daylight. Go to Far Harbor for the very first time and take a sturdy and trusted companion with you, then wander around until you find a kraken. Or maybe let the kraken find you. Or perhaps a wendigo. Ah, good times.

[Karna5]

I played Fallout 4 for 10411 hours in-game plus thousands of hours more out of game modding it. I completely migrated from Fallout 4 to Skyrim AE last May when it broke my mod loadout (and is still broken since OCBPC still hasn't been ported to Next Gen).

Since May I've played Skyrim AE around 1800 hours. So I've accumulated a pretty good comparison of both games and am a genuine fan of both games (at least of the modded versions of them).

I'll list what I think each game does better.

1. Adult-oriented DLC-sized quest mods

Fallout 4 is way, way, way better at gritty, emotionally engaging, Lawrence Block style pulp fiction. It's not even close. Most of the credit for that goes to a mod author from Ecuador called JB. who wrote Nuka Ride and Commonwealth Slavers (which are absolutely incredible), but there are other amazing mods like Problems of Survivor and countless smaller mods as well.

Does Skyrim AE have adult-oriented quest mods? Yes, certainly. I just played Ebonitium yesterday, in fact. My Skyrim character was sent to a slave market by the Riften guards (Prison Overhaul and Simple Slavery mods sent her to Ebonitium mod). The writing was surprisingly good and had a nice twist here and there, well written and worthy of a play through. But it did not engage me emotionally like JB.'s writing which has actually made me fight back real life tears more than once.

2. PG13-rated DLC-sized quest mods.

In this camp I'd say Fallout 4 and Skyrim AE are pretty close, with maybe the edge ever so slightly going to Skyrim.

3. Adult Animations

Tough call here. I think Savage Cabbage and a few other mod authors [Fallout 4] have slightly better adult animations than anything I've seen from Skyrim AE. And I very much prefer the AAF integration of animations into quest mods in Fallout 4 than the Sexlab or Ostim Standalone integrations of animations into quest mods. But when manually controlling animations rather than naturally integrating them, I think Ostim Standalone (Skyrim) beats AAF (Fallout 4), though not by much.

4. Bodies, Faces, Skin Textures and Overlays.

For body physics, I'm going to vote for Skyrim AE beating Fallout 4 in part because F4 no longer has OCBPC but mostly because Skyrim AE has SMP which allows collision between clothing and body which Fallout 4 lacks.

For overlays I'd vote the edge to Fallout 4 because it has several very good random integration tools of tattoos, hair and other things which Skyrim doesn't have as well. But Skyrim does have good overlays and does well what it has.

For skin textures and bodies, they're different but both have superb options. Fallout 4 has several amazing 8k body textures and 2k face textures (plus one 4k face texture), and Skyrim AE likewise has some very good 4k and 8k skin textures. While I marginally prefer the Fallout 4 options, I'm very happy with Skyrim AE and don't miss Fallout 4 too much.

[Edit: with regard to actual body meshes, I prefer Fallout 4's Fusion Girl, but the 3BA body in Skyrim AE is still superb, and because 3BA has SMP its actual behavior is better than anything in Fallout 4.]

5. Combat

I very much prefer the ranged combat from Fallout 4, but I very much prefer the melee combat from Skyrim AE. And I very much prefer the unarmed stealth kills from Fallout 4 (which Skyrim lacks).

In Fallout 4, with the right mods, it's feasible to do entire play throughs without using weapons, just sneaking behind enemies and snapping their necks. I am unaware of any mods in Skyrim AE which allow this (sadly).

6. Walk animations and idle animations

Fallout 4 has the "Don't Stop" walk animation which is my favorite of any PC game anywhere. It also has an elegant Girly run animation. Skyrim AE has Gunslicer which is superb and a full-game overhaul which I appreciate. I'd say I like the Fallout 4 walk and run best and all the other animations I prefer Skyrim AE

7. Lighting and graphics (without ENBs)

I don't use ENBs. So based on using just the game's engine image spaces, image space adapters, weathers and time of day I'd say they're different but equal. Fallout 4 does better post apocalyptic lighting way better than Skyrim, and Skyrim does vampiric or demonic style weathers better. The styles are different, but I like them both.

Overall I'd say if you love Fallout 4, you should give Skyrim SE/AE a shot. But keep in mind it could take a good week or two or more to build up a stable and comprehensively overhauled Skyrim AE.

 

 

[DirebearCoat]

Thanks, Lollia and Karna5, for your insights.  Things to keep in mind.

I hope more people will join in and give their two cents!