Why do people hate Fallout 4 so much?

[Boombro]

Yup, fallout 4 is a great modder playground.

And the geck may be just simpler.

[UhuruNUru]

I keep seeing this labelled as a console port, whilst that term may once have held some truth. The current consoles are closer to PC's than ever.

 

I don't know whether you can attach K&M (Keyboard and Mouse) to the current consoles or not, but there is no technical reason why not? So I'll assume it's possible.

 

All that should really need to be done, whatever platform the game is designed on. Is optimisation for the other platforms.

 

The real issue is every game needs two incompatible UI's.

TV and Monitor UI's or Near and Far

Near is for the standard Monitor setup.

Far is for the standard TV setup.

A hybrid with TV layout and Monitor sized text, would help with monitor+gamepad style.

 

They should all be available, whatever platform is used.

What screen you want to play on, should be the players choice, not the devs.

[Khormin]

They say that no good RPGs have a voiced character but they do, The Dragon Age Series, Guild Wars 2, and others that get high praise. Another thing that they complain about is the graphics. I know games recently have been photo realistic, but if you judge a game by the graphics than you shouldn't be calling yourself a gamer. In the last two years there have been many good games that aren't photo realistic and expecting an A list game to look like that is just stupid.

 

I'd be interested in knowing who you cast as "they". I'm intrigued that in a post about gamers giving critique, you give critique about gamers.

 

Those aside, and skipping the between posts for my raw impression; I know these points might have been addressed, but OP asked for opinions.

 

a)

 

 

Super Deluxe Pixels!

An all-new next generation graphics and lighting engine brings to life the world of Fallout like never before. From the blasted forests of the Commonwealth to the ruins of Boston, every location is packed with dynamic detail.

Games don't have to be photo realistic. We do like our eye candy though, no matter what we play. While there's 'plenty of games that aren't photo realistic', not everyone is going to want to play BattleChess 2000 or Schein all the time.

 

In fact, if the texture mod popularity for almost every game with mod capacity doesn't tell you anything else, it should at least tell you that a lot of people like nice graphics, even at a cost of performance. Let's repeat since the point was lost before now; people like nice graphics.

That doesn't make them any "less" of a gamer. That doesn't make them "inferior" in any way to the style you enjoy. It makes them different to your enjoyment, which I should inform you is not a 'bad' thing. Diversity of enjoyment is what helps to drive creation of new genres, new titles, and new formats - otherwise we'd all still be playing Pong.

As for the game's graphics? They're pretty noticeably older than "AAA" titles, which contradicts what they themselves say about the game. "Next generation" graphics these are not; unless your comparison is purely from the previous Fallout games, in which case it still isn't "next generation", it's just "improved".

 

C+ on graphics. Misleading, but I still like it to a degree. Elements of blurry laziness mar the overall effect.

 

b)

Plenty of good games have voiced characters, but you should note that there are also bad examples of games with voiced characters. Not everyone is going to enjoy the main characters' voices. Not everyone is satisfied with the limited variety of conversation options that is presented, and not everyone enjoys the way that the addition of sound effects has come at a cost of imagination.

Much like in the point a) coverage, players come in a variety of tastes. Much like how people might like upscaled graphics, people might want to have a wide variety of choices for their playstyle in a game that's ostensibly about choices in playstyle.

After all, what's a role playing game without the role playing?

And that opens up another kettle of fish. The categorization.

 

c)

 

 

You’re S.P.E.C.I.A.L!

Be whoever you want with the S.P.E.C.I.A.L. character system. From a Power Armored soldier to the charismatic smooth talker, you can choose from hundreds of Perks and develop your own playstyle.

The game (Fallout 4) is marketed as a role-playing game with shooter elements, which is highly unique in of itself, and further cementing it's niche is the post-apocalyptic world that it's named for.

A role-playing game allows for a characterization that affects the game at a reactionary level. The way you play is just as important to the outcome as what you do, and the outcomes should be vitally different for a cold-hearted mercenary and a peace-loving diplomat. The NPCs should react differently, the main plot even adjusting to suit if you're a 'good guy' or 'bad guy', even more points if it breaks down how you did it, and seemingly minor points.

That immersion is maintained by being able to characterise yourself as a horrible monster (cannibalism, anyone) or a beatific idealist or whatever you want. A simpering moron can stumble dumbly through the campaign in a different way to a hotshot hacking genius.

Yet this is largely ignored in the game. "Ask question/good guy answer/uncaring answer/thug" seems to be the majority of the dialogue, which was dumbed down beyond what was necessary to explain being reformatted for consoles.

You could, for example, solve the issue of limited button selection by allowing more choices to help define down the character's attitude and expression. You could, for example, just use an up/down option to scroll through a list. You could, for example, actually see what your character is going to say without having to mod your game, which is necessary given some of the vanilla dialogue choices don't give good description for what you're going to be opening your mouth to utter.

Even if you want to just focus the character on a good/bad duality like other RPGs tend to do (Fable, Mass Effect, Jade Empire, SWTOR, etc), the option of very good/good/bad/very bad would be nice, along with say "ask question/ask question nicely/special option for relevant perk/special option for relevant charisma/special option for outstandingly good or bad stat". If there's one thing that can be easily taken into account as well - adding those options for voice acting would not be all that hard to do on top of what they've already done; Bethesda simply decided not to, which shows a good element of either laziness (explained later) or disdain for their customer base.

So, for story, they get a D. It's not a great title, and the RP elements are pretty limited.

d)

 

Bethesda Game Studios, the award-winning creators of Fallout 3 and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, welcome you to the world of Fallout 4 – their most ambitious game ever, and the next generation of open-world gaming.

The history that Bethesda and Zenimax set for the previous main franchise titles and spinoffs is important -

"Two things sell Bethesda games; nostalgia and lore"

- which have been skipped largely by the more recent titles of the Elder Scrolls and Fallout series. From ignoring (not just 'retconning', but being ignorant of) established history and precedents to forgetting to include their own world's map on 'ancient globes', it's clear that the producers are largely ignoring the two facets that they should focus on to sell their series.

So why are they making this mistake? It's simply broken down to two points.

Laziness and a lack of care.

"Laziness" includes that the game does not run or look like it has been produced for 'years'. It does not run or look like it has been QA tested thoroughly, it does not run or look like it's had hours of polishing and production. A lot of copypasta is evident if you look for it, which cuts down on the time that they obviously spent in production, and the bugs are still present including game-breaking ones that kill your save files.

This either means that they have done almost nothing towards the game for "years", since they haven't exactly got another title to work on (as Zenimax took over for ESO), or it means that they were told relatively recently that "BTW, we're making another FO game". When you factor in that the bragpiece they told PC Gamer about how they had "Divided up the team into different portions and everyone was working on their own, unique area", how the devs talked about their project implied excitement and enthusiasm. Not what you associate usually with 'laziness', so let's assume 'lack of time'.

Pretty odd for "their most ambitious game ever".

So, immersion-wise, they get a D-. "Not really Fallout, more 'grey-brown post-apocalyptic world'."

e)

 

So, ignoring the "RPG" elements of the game as much as the executives obviously did, we move onto the other facet that the game sells on. A 'shooter' niche. The theme of Fallout is "Survival!"

 

 

As the sole survivor of Vault 111, you enter a world destroyed by nuclear war. Every second is a fight for survival, and every choice is yours. Only you can rebuild and determine the fate of the Wasteland. Welcome home.

Wow. Every second is a fight for survival. That's intense. Certainly sounds like they intended to avoid you standing and slowly hacking at an enemy's health with a pistol while they slowly hack back at you, doesn't it? I mean, simple controls and bullet sponge enemies doesn't seem to be the scene envisioned in that quote. After all, if you wanted to shrug off seconds of anti-tank weapons fire while chugging stimpacks like they're the ammunition you're gatling-firing away with, you'd play a game like the Call of Battlefield franchises.

But that's what we got.

And that gives us a feeling of the game being slightly less than stellar in the 'fight for survival' field of opinion. I mean, it's not like it was one of the phrases they use to try to sell the game, right? Wait.

C for the shooting element. There's tonnes of better shooter games out there by far - more fun for casual players, more fun for intensity players, easier controls, more defined controls, the list goes on. Since they wanted "survival", this compares against STALKER and other intensity shooters with a very poor ranking.

f)

The single major thing they seemed to spend time on is something outside of the scope of what the game should have been marked down for: the settlement management.

 

Collect and Build!

Collect, upgrade, and build thousands of items in the most advanced crafting system ever. Weapons, armor, chemicals, and food are just the beginning - you can even build and manage entire settlements.

It's something they mention on the main sales page. It's something they advertised at E3. It's something they mentioned more than once in various interviews beforehand. It's something they tried to sell us on, and hell, it's buggy but it works.

Fallout 4, however, then drops it part-way and tries to pick up the RPG and shooter elements to focus on, as evidenced by placeholder "settler" NPCs, a lack of involvement in your base, and very limited options for building (that can be bypassed by various mods). It comes off as well-polished beta, not release candidate, and given that the Bethesda staff seemed quite enthusiastic about this point in particular, it tells me that this lack of finish is not from Bethesda being lazy. It tells me that they didn't have time to finish what they wanted.

Finale:

So what does that imply? It's likely that Zenimax passed word to Bethesda pretty recently that they were going to be doing Fallout 4, and then decided that since ESO is not doing as well as they had hoped that they needed to stock up another success for the final quarter of 2015 for their shareholders.

I can quite easily see the staff at Bethesda being pushed for an unrealistic timeframe after the announcement in the same fashion as Alien: Colonial Marine was, but thankfully having both a good amount of background grunt work done and dedication to the project to see it through.

All in all, these are just some of the points people have to dislike the game. Personally, I don't "hate" it. I don't love it nearly as much as other games, even in the Fallout series, and I can see why some more dedicated Fallout fans would be quite upset by it. Add on the price tag for preorder, and the lack of even sales-page promise fulfillment is going to make some people quite upset.

All in all, I'd give the game a C-. It didn't do very well in the two major points it was aiming for, and it's only by merit of the amusement I get from the settlement portion that I keep playing. They needed to spend more time on the roleplay, they needed to spend more time on the story, they needed to spend more time on the shooting engine, they needed to spend less time (ironically, given my first sentence in this paragraph) on the settlement and other 'gimmicky' features, to make this a better "Fallout".

But that's just my two cents.

-----

 

All quotes, incidentally, are from their own Steam page: http://store.steampowered.com/app/377160/.

 

SPECIAL BONUS ROUND

 

 

Will Fallout 4 support mods?

Published 09/09/2015 10:40 AM | Updated 11/16/2015 01:43 PM

Yes! Like all our previous games, we've made sure to keep Fallout 4 open and moddable at every step in development. In early 2016, we'll release for free the new Creation Kit for the PC. This is the same tool we use in the studio.

With the Creation Kit, you'll be able to create your own mods and share them with others. In the future, these same mods will be coming to both the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 platforms.

 

Like all our previous games, we've made sure to keep Fallout 4 open and moddable at every step in development.

made sure to keep Fallout 4 open and moddable at every step in development.

open and moddable

every step in development.

From http://help.bethesda.net/app/answers/detail/a_id/30930/kw/mod

Edited December 8, 2015 by Khormin

[unoctium]

 

So what does that imply? It's likely that Zenimax passed word to Bethesda pretty recently that they were going to be doing Fallout 4, and then decided that since ESO is not doing as well as they had hoped that they needed to stock up another success for the final quarter of 2015 for their shareholders.

 

I can quite easily see the staff at Bethesda being pushed for an unrealistic timeframe after the announcement in the same fashion as Alien: Colonial Marine was, but thankfully having both a good amount of background grunt work done and dedication to the project to see it through.

 

Considering that the T-60 Power Armor was modelled and rigged back in 2009, that kind of disproves your hypothesis. Not to mention VA was started in 2013...

 

It's unlikely Zenimax can push around the only studio that makes a profit for them around. This isn't like Ubisoft, or EA, who have leverage over studios, that they finger-clicked into existence, and can just as likely finger-click them out of existence again. It's pretty clear Todd Howard had not only final say on the release date, but final say on the marketing window as well, as the Fallout 4 schedule, from reveal to release is unprecedented for a Triple-A game.

[JimboUK]

 

 

So what does that imply? It's likely that Zenimax passed word to Bethesda pretty recently that they were going to be doing Fallout 4, and then decided that since ESO is not doing as well as they had hoped that they needed to stock up another success for the final quarter of 2015 for their shareholders.

 

I can quite easily see the staff at Bethesda being pushed for an unrealistic timeframe after the announcement in the same fashion as Alien: Colonial Marine was, but thankfully having both a good amount of background grunt work done and dedication to the project to see it through.

 

Considering that the T-60 Power Armor was modelled and rigged back in 2009, that kind of disproves your hypothesis. Not to mention VA was started in 2013...

 

It's unlikely Zenimax can push around the only studio that makes a profit for them around. This isn't like Ubisoft, or EA, who have leverage over studios, that they finger-clicked into existence, and can just as likely finger-click them out of existence again. It's pretty clear Todd Howard had not only final say on the release date, but final say on the marketing window as well, as the Fallout 4 schedule, from reveal to release is unprecedented for a Triple-A game.

 

 

Bethesda is a wholly owned subsidiary of Zenimax, they'll do what Zenimax tell them to do.

[Boombro]

 

Considering that the T-60 Power Armor was modelled and rigged back in 2009

Wow, 2009? Looks really good.

 

 

Bethesda is a wholly owned subsidiary of Zenimax, they'll do what Zenimax tell them to do.

A new person to blame? :p

[KiCHo666]

I have to say I haven't played the game in about 2 weeks. It just doesn't attract me as much as I thought it would.
I'm waiting for GECK and Script extender so serious modding can begin. Probably when there's Wanderer's Edition, I'll play it again.

[Boombro]

Me too, been playing grim dawn and overlord.

[unoctium]

 

 

Bethesda is a wholly owned subsidiary of Zenimax, they'll do what Zenimax tell them to do.

 

That arrangement gets complicated when the only guy who makes you any money can get up, leave, and have any game company of his choosing to go to.

 

[spirited123]

I think the game needs mods to shine, moreso than any previous Bethesda game to date. I'm enjoying my time playing Fallout 4, but it hasn't impacted on me like F3 and NV did.

 

The combat is of course much improved, I love the gunplay in this game but I think that's the only part of Fallout 4 thats really impressed me. Graphics are okay, exploring is what I've come to expect from a Bethesda game, dialogue system is pretty bad (I think this is universally accepted), the voiced protagonist doesn't add anything for me - especially as it seems to have come at the cost of the dialogue. The base building is a nice touch but that feels like its only in there due to the popularity of Minecraft and Steam early access survival games.

 

Fallout 4 is kind of unremarkable in many ways. Its not a bad game at all, I just think it doesn't have a focus of its own. So much has been borrowed from other games.