Fallout 4 scepticism...

[JimboUK]

 

 

As for new vegas, I never played, every review i read said it was linear, so I didn't bother.

 

 

You should give it a try, it's not linear at all, yeah the early part of the main quest has you follow a certain route while you chase someone down, however after that the story branches out giving you multiple choices and paths, it's not like FO3s story where you follow the arrow and do what you're told, that's linear.

[jet4571]

FO3 follows the same system as all Bethesda games do, if you follow the main quest it is rather linear but Bethesda expects you to branch off and do whatever. personally I didn't enjoy the so called great branches, choices, and factions that were in FNV, they weren't all that well done like Powder Gangers, if you want to help Goodsprings but want to be neutral to that faction you can forget about one or the other. Then when doing stuff for other factions later in the game you better have quests for the same location that each faction will have or you will fail side quests from those factions because Obsidian used way too many locations for faction sidequests rather than different locations. That cuts down on the quests you can do unless you have knowledge on all the quests and will make you repeatedly go to the same location if the quest doesn't fail. *Visiting Motor Runner *Cough*cough*. Then the factions will become locked out way too soon causing failed missions and not even getting some. In theory multiple branches sounds good but FNV was done quite poorly from a technical standpoint.

 

Then from a storytelling point of view FNV was just a bit off to me. It felt like 2+ different game ideas mashed together, War for Hoover dam, good idea but mixed with Mr. House? felt like they were both separate ideas. BOS? "Well we have to add them or fans will be upset". Great Khans or Boomers? Felt like afterthoughts and incomplete stories but aren't a full fledged faction that's important at all. Powder gangers felt like there were allot of plans for them but were quickly abandoned. And when you get out of Powder ganger territory and you get past Novac it felt like production had changed direction leaving much started in the south that was left unfinished or something added in a rushed manor to fill those holes. Story is scattered, faction stories were weak, pacing was inconsistent and the whole thing felt like it was going in too many directions for no reason explained in the story. I get that they were rushed but the problems start not even halfway through the game as though they started with one idea then shifted gears leaving what was done with a few tweaks to shoehorn it into the new storyline.

 

I would rather have a consistent storyline without having failed quests due to too many locations being recycled even if it is more linear with sidequests to add things to do besides main quest than a branching game like FNV that's weak on story with inconsistent pacing and factions that just felt empty and tacked on. Plus FO3 had so much more exploration than empty Mojave, every building you could enter had something to it and in FNV there was so much emptiness. Too many long treks with just nothing of interest.

[JMan240]

Uh, I don't think a lot of you understand what it means to be a linear game. Some of you have been throwing that nonsense around a lot, and it's getting pretty damn annoying. If you want to compartmentalize it down to any one individual quest, then most games are going to be linear by that standard. It requires a monumental amount of work to have players end up in multiple places at the end of a quest and still tell a good story, and even when they don't provide non-linear quest narratives Beth RPGs have always had an air of non-linearity due to their go-anywhere design. I'll also say that I agree with jet4571, and found most of New Vegas' main story beats to be incoherent s#*! that valued choice to the point where giving said choice overrode any attempt to provide context or motivation. After you kill Benny, it gives you a bunch of branching nonsense but no reason to do it other than that it is quest log. There's no motivation to do almost anything in that game outside of clearing them off the quest list. (Which, honestly, to me as a writer seems like a far worse sin than maybe being a bit too inflexible - though I wouldn't accuse any Bethesda RPG of being inflexible.)

 

FO3's story is a far cry from linear also, because while yeah, you can trounce around following the marker - just as you can do in New Vegas and Skyrim - you can also just straight up ignore that and go find your dad in Tranquility Lane. I know that's what I did completely by accident on my most recent playthrough. I found that vault while ignoring the main quest, remembered what all goes on there, and skipped the first third of the main quest. That's not linear, not even remotely. You can't sequence break a linear game, that's why it's called linear, things can only play out in a straight line. Something can only be linear if there's only one outcome and only one way to get there. Call of Duty is linear (Black Ops II excluded), Half-Life is linear, Metal Gear Solid (pre-5) is linear. Bethesda RPGs are not. This is not a subjective assessment, something is either linear or it is not - regardless of whether or not you feel satisfied with the breadth of the choices offered you.

 

By all means be critical of Bethesda. They deserve your criticism like any other decently sized pub/dev. Being skeptical is fine, but you guys are rolling in a pit of nonsense in this thread that seems tailor made just to s#*! on people who are excited about the game - which isn't cool in the slightest. We've got assholes saying Fallout 4 doesn't look meaningfully different than 3 - which anyone with a brain and eyes can see isn't true. We've got another asshole saying the Creation Engine is a 32-bit engine and others whining about ancient Gamebryo stuff - wholly ignoring the fact that this iteration of it clearly is not, and that in the video game industry software is rewritten into something new and different far more often than it is replaced outright. Then we've got people who don't know how to read a f*#@ing EULA saying that F4SE won't be coming out and other people lapping it up as an excuse to pile on the bullshit. We've got still more people claiming they know things or feel things about a game that has had one wide-release demo and some leaks from a series of sketchy, ridiculously unreliable sources.

 

Chill the hell out. Saying you're worried about Bethesda games being buggy? Sure, that's perfectly reasonable. Saying you don't think the game looks good? That's cool as long as you tone down the nonsense factory pumping out assertions that it hasn't gotten visually better in almost a decade. Saying you're worried about how the streamlining of combat and other stuff will affect the flow of the game? Cool, me too. All of this posturing and bad-mouthing using deeply flawed, and sometimes completely false, information though? That's f*#@ed.

[gunslinger6792]

I'm honestly looking forward to it with a skepticism intact. I do feel guilty about preording the game and the season pass because it goes against giving money to a person before knowing the quality of the good. That said my internet is terrible so I pre bought the game so I could download before launch in case my internet decides to pitch a fit. As for the season pass it seemed logical in a way, fault me if you wish I blame you not. The paid modding thing and console modding has me scared and I won't publish mods for consoles most likely. I'm sure modders will fix the game but it's sad we have to rely on them to fix a game that should be playable. I'm also worried about the state of fallout 4 modding. Skyrim saw an influx of every porno, skimpy clothes, waifu, god knows what the hell else of mods, lots and lots of those mods. I'm afraid we'll see even more of that as certain modders make only mods that appeal to 14 year old boys to get recognition.

[JianXintou]

I do agree with some of the points made by jet and JMan albeit not necessarily the tone some of those points were made in. I mean a lot of the things here are a bit speculative and dependant on perspective/personal judgement and people can do whatever they want in that regard. It's just that attempting to infer facts from judgements or try to turn something based on one of these rather subjective things into a statement claiming general validity is a bit meh.

But then again, we could open a whole other can of worms regarding semantics and how a lot of peole tend to talk past each other.

Edited November 7, 2015 by JianXintou

[JMan240]

Things I know for sure:

The FO4 EULA is more restrictive than previous Bethesda games.

The game is meant for console players.

There is not a FO4 section here at Nexus. http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/?

Bethesda does not want anything related to FO4 made public unless they control it.

Reviews for FO4 cannot be published until after the game is released.

The game is not Next Gen like Tod Howard claims.

Bethesda will lie about the contents of a game. Think Skyrim and Arkane developing Prey2.

 

Things I suspect:

FO4 modding will be restricted in ways people will not be happy with.

Bethesda wants FO4 modding to be aimed at console users.

There is a secret about FO4 modding we do not know. Like there was for monetized mods.

 

I have been doing a lot of research for FO4 because I want a new game to play that is good. What I am finding is not nice to see. I can not share the links here because some of the site are blacklisted and others might cause problems for Nexus. I am glad I did not pre order the game. I will wait to see what happens. :confused:

To piggyback on my last post, I'll tear this thing to shreds. This is what I'm talking about. Not expressing concerns about stuff. Not being skeptical about Bethesda's ability to deliver, but just blatantly spreading a lot of completely false stuff while claiming that "research" was a part of gathering that false information.

 

"The FO4 EULA is more restrictive than previous Bethesda games."

 

Barely, at least in regards to mods. Most of it is the same stuff saying Bethesda can use mods in their marketing, which they rarely if ever do and is probably more likely than not a legal cover for them talking about specific mods on their company run website without having the modders come after them for something that could be construed as in-house PR copy. (They're paranoid, so that wouldn't be a surprising reasoning.) It also allows them to put together an infographic about modding community for their site without getting sued. Small potatoes. It does the pretty boilerplate stuff where it says assets from the game belong to Bethesda, and assets created by modders belong to the individual who created them in the context of them being used by other modders. The only thing I saw that could be construed as more restrictive is the limit on modifying executables via use of something like the Creation Kit. Thing is, even stuff like the large address launchers for previous Beth games don't modify the actual executable, they just run a wrapper when launching them. So almost none of that EULA is any more restrictive to 99% of modding. And the other 1% already lived in a dubiously dark "grey area" or were simply just modifying the exe to accept cracked license codes or fake Steam verification checks in support of piracy.

 

"The game is meant for console players."

 

There are two ways to look at this. 1) You haven't played it, and in that context what does that even mean? Made for console players? How can you "know" that without any hands on time? You mean it's more friendly to a controller? Because a lot of people I know who play on PC have preferred using controllers for previous Bethesda RPGs anyways. You can use a controller on PC. 2) Well yeah, thanks to the absolutely massive dip in PC gaming around the start of the previous generation due to the 360 and PS3 technologically leapfrogging the then-stagnating consumer PC market, Bethesda has been aiming at console for a decade at this point. I will say that outside of the floaty mouse cursor, I've never found any of the Fallout UIs to be particularly hostile to PC players from a design standpoint. Skrim was a bit bunk, but we fixed it and Bethesda made a few tweaks as well. Fallout 4 certainly looks to have a much less terrible UI from a function perspective than something like The Witcher 3 at least. I'm not a super huge fan of the 4 dialog options bit, but we can fix that as soon as F4SE launches and... since PC copies are all digital now all of the leaks are coming from console.

 

"Bethesda does not want anything related to FO4 made public unless they control it."

 

Yes, and? They're in the business of selling a game, and that game isn't out yet. It's perfectly reasonable at this point for them to try and keep a lid on things so close to launch.

 

"Reviews for FO4 cannot be published until after the game is released"

 

Really? Because, you know, there's a thing floating around that Kotaku posted that lists the embargo as 9AM, EST, Monday. And unless I'm mistaken, the game doesn't launch until 12AM EST, on Tuesday. So, unless you live in an alternate universe where the time-space continuum has folded over on itself... this is just a bold-faced lie. Like, 100% verifiable, this is false and there is no way to claim otherwise. That information was widely available well before this post was made.

 

"The game is not Next Gen like Todd Howard claims."

 

What the hell is this even meant to say? You're complaining about Bethesda trying to control their message, and then riding the "next gen" marketing terminology nonsense train to crazy town? "Next gen" is a marketing catch phrase, and we're almost halfway through this current console cycle based on their computing power - so unless Sony and Microsoft prove exceptionally stubborn it's beyond time to move on. Leave the marketing lingo to the marketing people. Next-gen doesn't exist on PC.

 

"Bethesda will lie about the contents of the game."

 

What is this based on in the context of Fallout 4? And what does Arkane working on Prey 2 have anything to do with this? 1) The turn around from reveal to release is too short for features to be cut from Fallout 4. They unveiled that game when it was feature-complete. 2) No one ever claimed Akane was working on Prey 2, that was an internet rumor floating around when Bethesda acquired them.

 

Please stop with stuff like this. Please. Like I said, I'm not against anyone being critical of Bethesda, but these conspiratorial falsehoods help no one.

[Signette]

First of all I want to remind that this thread consists of OPINIONS about a GAME, not about fans or players! No one bashing anyone here, and yes, we may exaggerate things, and that's okay by me. Game is not out yet but we still should be able to discuss it, as normal live human beings usually do, proposing STFU before game is released and say only strictly known facts isn't the best idea IMO, because we aren't experts counsel, just users and customers. We can freely agree and disagree, but please, stay civil, and calling people a-holes for their opinions, which may contradict yours isn't very nice.

 

Cheers :happy:

 

In my case, I never experienced CTD issues with vanilla Skyrim. Seemed to be much more stable than Oblivion and FO3.

 

As for the graphics, I suppose some of us who have been fans of Bethesda games for a number of years might be seeing the glass as more half full than half empty when each new game comes out and it looks much better than the previous game.

 

I was blown away by how good the vanilla Skyrim graphics looked compared to Oblivion and now I'm ecstatic about the vanilla FO4 graphics and lighting.

 

Do FO4 graphics really look that bad to you? For me in this kind of open world sandbox game, the art style, the attention to detail in the world, environmental storytelling, dynamic systems, etc., are more interesting than, say, the resolution of various textures, but I think this game looks pretty stunning.

 

There were some gorgeous PC version screenshots in the Bethesda.net article about updates to the Creation Engine, did you see those?

 

https://bethesda.net/#en/events/game/the-graphics-technology-of-fallout-4/2015/11/04/45

 

The new features reportedly include:

• Tiled Deferred Lighting
• Temporal Anti-Aliasing
• Screen Space Reflections
• Bokeh Depth of Field
• Screen Space Ambient Occlusion
• Height Fog
• Motion Blur
• Filmic Tonemapping
• Custom Skin and Hair Shading
• Dynamic Dismemberment using Hardware Tessellation
• Volumetric Lighting
• Gamma Correct Physically Based Shading

There are some cases of corrupt save game with players, who never had installed a single mod on this game, savebloat is still an issue, and it can easily happen on non-modded game, when USKP actually eliminates or reduces to minimum that issue.

Interesting, I hadn't heard of this before.

In my case, I played Skyrim quite a lot of hours without mods from launch until the CK beta in late Dec or Jan IIRC. The only issues I experienced with vanilla Skyrim were minor stuff, like some textures turning purple when my video card ran out of memory, etc.

Seemed to be more stable than vanilla Fallout 3 and Oblivion which both crashed frequently. New Vegas was also rather stable at launch, some cosmetic stuff like radscorpions melting into the terrain but very few CTD.

 

I'm glad that Skyrim was more stable for at least someone than FO3 and Oblivion but sadly not in my (and other players') experience. FYI my Oblivion was strapped down with mods MUCH more than Skyrim and I ran in some serious issues only when I was sloppy or hit some incompatibility issues (my own fault). Almost the same with FO3 but I just didn't had any desire for too many mods on it, I was fine with a few and still very little issues, just some minor usual bugs. I also probably have to mention that I got both of those games in about a year after release, that might be the reason why it worked better and perhaps official patches actually fixed games unlike it was with Skyrim.

 

Funny thing about "new" graphic options list. I can easily get most of it via ENB... real sad. There's giant difference between candyeye picture with heavily outdated interactions and actual "alive" models/world behaviour. I'm really tired of listing them...

 

On overall graphics and engine note, just to refresh your memory: when Morrowind was released I remeber how my (and my buddies) jaw dropped to the ground from quality of picture when I was looking at some screenshots in one gaming magazine, it was insane, my rig couldn't handle the game so I upgraded just for the sake of playing it. When Oblivion launched visuals also were on par and graphics were pretty darn impressive. It started to get worse with FO3, but still visuals were pretty good for 2008. When Skyrim launched in 2011 it looked and mainly FELT waaaay too outdated, I don't say graphics were BAD, design and textures (with patch) were fine but overall game really wasn't looking like 2011, a blind man could see that. Game ran on pretty mediocre rig very well and it was designed around past-gen consoles, run decently on those too. It cannot be denied that visauls were big selling point of Beth games, maybe not all but currently the enornmous degradation of visuals we see now is too obvious, and I repeat again, it wouldn't matter if game would be pureblood RPG, maybe classic isomteric or cheap Indie project, but this is very expensive AAA project we have here, with 4 dialog options, emphasis on FPS... and saying stuff like "Nextgen" is obviously pure marketing, but many ppl fall for it, and I assure you, there would be heated debates from those believers that it is truly Nextgen. We all know that lying is bad, even in pure marketing conditions.

 

________________________________________________________________________

 

Now, on the account of: "making openworld gamez iz hard" statement. No, sir. Saints Row, GTA, Sleeping Dogs (Streets of... series), Far Cry, Assassin's Creed, Fable and many-many others are not even close as buggy as Beth games. I don't say they are completely bug free and don't have any technical issues, they have, but from my experience Beth titles are far-far ahead of them on that account, so no, with the right tools, mind and not completely relying on some Bob who's gonna pledge his own time and fix this mess you can make pretty stable and working well product IMHO.

 

 

Then from a storytelling point of view FNV was just a bit off to me. It felt like 2+ different game ideas mashed together, War for Hoover dam, good idea but mixed with Mr. House? felt like they were both separate ideas. BOS? "Well we have to add them or fans will be upset". Great Khans or Boomers? Felt like afterthoughts and incomplete stories but aren't a full fledged faction that's important at all. Powder gangers felt like there were allot of plans for them but were quickly abandoned. And when you get out of Powder ganger territory and you get past Novac it felt like production had changed direction leaving much started in the south that was left unfinished or something added in a rushed manor to fill those holes. Story is scattered, faction stories were weak, pacing was inconsistent and the whole thing felt like it was going in too many directions for no reason explained in the story. I get that they were rushed but the problems start not even halfway through the game as though they started with one idea then shifted gears leaving what was done with a few tweaks to shoehorn it into the new storyline.

Completely agree on FNV part, but tbh FO3 felt way worse. In FNV I could at least remotely RP bad/evil character. In FO3 it makes completely no sense... just try to play evil, I don't wanna spoilers, you'll laugh hard in the end.

 

I understand that objectively we can't call those games truly linear in any way, but at the same time we can in comparison to other games, which strap on "RPG" not only for marketing reasons, but also because they represent this genre as it should be. So in measurely and some exaggerating manner of speaking we can say that those games are somewhat linear. In all honestly I haven't once felt that I play actual RPG with ANY Beth games, they felt like great sandbox games with ELEMENTS of RPGs. I don't deny that Morrowing writing was good, even superb is some sense, but detective style question/answer dialog system was dealbreaker. You don't talk or discuss, it's more like you interrogate everyone you meet, that felt odd... and it basically migrated on some other titles in that form. How much RP is that really?...

[GroceryBaggins]

YOU CAN ROMANCE A ROBOT, BUT YOU CAN'T ROMANCE A MUTIE

[RoyBatterian]

MUTHAf*#@A!?

[JianXintou]

 

 

I'm glad that Skyrim was more stable for at least someone than FO3 and Oblivion but sadly not in my (and other players') experience. FYI my Oblivion was strapped down with mods MUCH more than Skyrim and I ran in some serious issues only when I was sloppy or hit some incompatibility issues (my own fault). Almost the same with FO3 but I just didn't had any desire for too many mods on it, I was fine with a few and still very little issues, just some minor usual bugs. I also probably have to mention that I got both of those games in about a year after release, that might be the reason why it worked better and perhaps official patches actually fixed games unlike it was with Skyrim.

Idk, I didn't have less issues with Oblivion than I had with Skyrim. FO3 was a clusterf*#@ for me but I was never big into FO3. The rate of CTDs and s#*! like that was usual, only had corrupted savegames a few times but I also had huge mod lists (100+) and my game took up around 35-45 GB at times. Also, started playing Skyrim a few months after release.

 

 

Funny thing about "new" graphic options list. I can easily get most of it via ENB... real sad. There's giant difference between candyeye picture with heavily outdated interactions and actual "alive" models/world behaviour. I'm really tired of listing them...

Why is that said? How does being able to get them vis-a-.vis an ENB discredit the work they've done so you don't need it? Your last point is a bit too vague for me.

 

 

 

On overall graphics and engine note, just to refresh your memory: when Morrowind was released I remeber how my (and my buddies) jaw dropped to the ground from quality of picture when I was looking at some screenshots in one gaming magazine, it was insane, my rig couldn't handle the game so I upgraded just for the sake of playing it. When Oblivion launched visuals also were on par and graphics were pretty darn impressive. It started to get worse with FO3, but still visuals were pretty good for 2008. When Skyrim launched in 2011 it looked and mainly FELT waaaay too outdated, I don't say graphics were BAD, design and textures (with patch) were fine but overall game really wasn't looking like 2011, a blind man could see that. Game ran on pretty mediocre rig very well and it was designed around past-gen consoles, run decently on those too. It cannot be denied that visauls were big selling point of Beth games, maybe not all but currently the enornmous degradation of visuals we see now is too obvious, and I repeat again, it wouldn't matter if game would be pureblood RPG, maybe classic isomteric or cheap Indie project, but this is very expensive AAA project we have here, with 4 dialog options, emphasis on FPS... and saying stuff like "Nextgen" is obviously pure marketing, but many ppl fall for it, and I assure you, there would be heated debates from those believers that it is truly Nextgen. We all know that lying is bad, even in pure marketing conditions.

That narrative seems a bit incoherent, i.e. I'm failing to see what specific point you're trying to make. I don't think visuals were or are a big selling point of Beth games, Bethesda has a monopoly on open world sandbox games and they've had that since the days of Morrowind and Oblivion. I don't think that a major selling point of theirs was graphics, at least not in the long run.

 

 

 

Now, on the account of: "making openworld gamez iz hard" statement. No, sir. Saints Row, GTA, Sleeping Dogs (Streets of... series), Far Cry, Assassin's Creed, Fable and many-many others are not even close as buggy as Beth games. I don't say they are completely bug free and don't have any technical issues, they have, but from my experience Beth titles are far-far ahead of them on that account, so no, with the right tools, mind and not completely relying on some Bob who's gonna pledge his own time and fix this mess you can make pretty stable and working well product IMHO.

Not a lot of these are sandbox RPGs and some of these are open world in the sense that ME is open world. You have hubs with free spaces and a bit of exploration. I don't think any of them are as extensive as most BSG games (barring GTA V maybe but Idk since I only played a bit and I find the GTA series to be woefully boring) In that sense, I'm not sure those comparisons are adequate. I'd also note that I don't know whether these game run the same amount of scripts at the same time - games like Skyrim have a lot going on.

 

 

 

 

 

I understand that objectively we can't call those games truly linear in any way, but at the same time we can in comparison to other games, which strap on "RPG" not only for marketing reasons, but also because they represent this genre as it should be.

That statement makes no sense, first you say you can't make objective statements in regard to criteria "linearity" but you can compared to other games and then you postulate that there is an objective standard of what an "RPG should be".

Where are they written down? Who decided on that?

 

So in measurely and some exaggerating manner of speaking we can say that those games are somewhat linear. In all honestly I haven't once felt that I play actual RPG with ANY Beth games, they felt like great sandbox games with ELEMENTS of RPGs. I don't deny that Morrowind writing was good, even superb is some sense, but detective style question/answer dialog system was dealbreaker. You don't talk or discuss, it's more like you interrogate everyone you meet, that felt odd... and it basically migrated on some other titles in that form. How much RP is that really?....

I fail to see how this specifically applies to FO4.