Where Does the Negativity Come From?

[Arthmoor]

And Obsidian are the better story writers.

IMO this only seems to be the consensus in a very few select places. The wider audience does not tend to agree that Obsidian is any better or worse at this than any other company out there. I for one didn't find anything they did in NV to be very compelling and it was pretty obvious they were trying to pull a Bioware with faking different choices when ultimately it all ended more or less the same way.

 

Quite frankly I see a lot of Obsidian's supporters as little more than thralls who don't know any better.

[lelcat]

I think Fallout has the best story. All these little side things you can find, blows all previous games out of the water. Look it up on Youtube, all the different random encounters. The reason people claim the older games had better story is because they older games were very primitive, especially Fallout1 and 2. So the only good thing to remember about them was the story choices. The same for Fallout3, there was no workshop to mod your guns or build your own place, so only the storytelling sticks out in memories. Fallout4 has many other systems that are awesome besides the story so the story is just one good thing among many.

 

Like when people claim in the 60,70,80,90s music was better than today. But its not, it is just today only the greatest music and artists are remembered, while the trash is forgotten. But present day's music, is present in our short term memory and therefore all the trash music is too.

[TeamBacon]

 

I am one of those that does not agree. But to each his own I guess.

 

If you are curious as to know why, I personally don't like having the entire dialogue choice for every option sitting there in front of my face for me to have to read.

See that's the problem though. For most people, "sarcastic" or "mean" or whatever has little to no meaning. Even if they just gave you a glimpse of how the line would be delivered it would be more than enough. The choice isn't binary between meaningless label and the full dialogue line.

 

I think CDPR struck a good balance with the Witcher series in that you had enough of an idea of how the response would play out based on the words they chose for each one. Something like that would have worked out much better for FO4.

 

 

I totally agree. I can point out dozens of examples where Bethesda did a very bad job of 'labeling' their dialogue choices. I think at times they were trying to be too short with the short answers, and at times it was just counter intuitive and you ended up surprised. (In this case, not a good kind of surprise)

 

I am by no means trying to say the Bethesda did a 'perfect' job or even a 'good' job at certain parts of the story. There were lots of instances that made me want to beat my head against my keyboard when all I could say in 'I must save Shaun!' when in my head I personally was thinking, 'I don't trust these people, I don't want to tell them anything yet, especially about Shaun.'

 

I am not trying to defend that the implementation was spotless. I personally just like the direction they are headed and that they are trying to be a bit more smooth and a bit less menu crawler. (Which I understand a lot of people like Bethesda because of the in depth menu crawling aspects, but I personally find that crawling through menus breaks the pace of a game.)

 

Me saying that I like the system and hope they keep trying isn't the same as me saying that I am totally satisfied with the implementation and that they don't need to continue to improve.

 

 

 

 

And this isn't just something that I speculate on like an armchair quaterback. I really do put in a lot of work trying new things with interactive dialogue and trying to make it more intuitive, smooth, while still having a vast amount of choice.

 

It is a hard thing to pull off, and I am by no means saying I am good at it yet. But I have over 400 pages of dialogue written out for my mod with at least another 100 pages of charts and graphs about potential new ways to 'move' these dialogue trees along a more organic path. I spend a lot of time in the Creation Kit trying to make these 'crazy ideas' of mine actually work.

 

I personally like working with writing dialogue for the new system even with the challenges that come with it. I prefer it to when I was writing quests for Fallout 3.

 

 

 

But I'm not trying to convince anyone of anything. In the end when I release my quests, a lot of people will complain about how much they hate my writing and how I pushed the envelope away from 'traditional' Fallout. But I am cool with that and don't plan on pleasing everyone.

 

The point I was trying to make is that I do challenge every new idea presented to me. I don't just blindly praise Bethesda as I have often been accused (not in this topic, but many times in the past). I have been very critical every step of the way, and have come to the conclusion that I really did enjoy Fallout 4 over any other Fallout game.

[mkborgelt13]

I honestly don't understand why many people are so prejudice about Bethesda's treatment to Fallout, specifically the No Mutants Allowed community. Can't they see that Interplay f***ed up when they made the console game Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel? Last time I checked, everyone hated that game, including them! Besides, Bethesda made the wasteland look more realistic than just barren sand and dirt. The haters have obviously been watching too much of Mad Max. And even if Interplay, now resurrected as Obsidian, redeems themselves, they can't reclaim the franchise. Their mistake came at a price for they were forced to sign a contract. There is also the fact that Bethesda is far wealthier than Obsidian. Bethesda has been around for 30 years while I think Obsidian is only 12 years. The more money, the more power over a franchise. Also, when making FNV, Bethesda came to Obsidian, not the other way around. They hired Obsidian, to give insight on how they could connect the two Fallouts into the same world.

So you see, I think everyone's negative feedback is rather hypocritical. I know that there are many differences from the old games, but I will always love it because it's Fallout. I've been playing the old games since I was 10, right now I'm 24. My father loves these games, as does my brother; they're 51 and 27.

The way I see it, Nexus is run by people who appreciate Bethesda's work. There are mods that helped give Bethesda new ideas. The Creation Engine is loosely inspired by FNV mod Project Nevada, and the building and managing of settlements is taken from the RTS Settler mod.

 

People like to hate things, especially new and popular things.

 

I think Fallout 4 is a step up from Skyrim. They found a nice balance that has details more involved players can appreciate, and is still enjoyable for less-involved players.

 

The main plot (find Shaun) is kind of stale and uninteresting, but I rarely play games for the main plot. If you want a story read a book. Games have to be written so the player feels involved and this is difficult to do. On one hand, it can feel like watching from the sidelines, or being pandered to by the game world. Player should feel like one of the NPCs that has "free will" if that makes any sense, not the center of the universe. Fallout 4 accomplished this in my opinion. I still don't understand why the Institute is so hell-bent on making synths, for example. Like... it seems like the last thing on the list of things to do when civilization collapses. "Let's start making lots of fake people, and dribbling them out into the up-world." Why? This needs to be clearer, the game is very focused on synths, which themselves felt like a borrowed obligatory moral dillemma from Bladerunner.

 

There are lots of entertaining "off the books" stories in the Commonwealth. I spent a long time searching for the remains of the wife of that guy who made the radio beacon in West Everett Estates. The random encounters are delightful surprises.

 

I wish they would have done more with Super Mutants and ghouls. The Super Mutants are clearly intelligent enough to operate machines, I want to know what their world is like, how they think, etc. For example why do they despise humans so much? Etc.

 

Gun modification! How cool is that?

 

The voiced protagonist is great. Sorry, haters. Yes it does limit your role playing options, but honestly, I feel like the Sole Survivor has the most developed personality out of all Bethesda titles. previous player characters were silent loot-collectors who ran around completing quests with nothing to say outside your head. I feel like the Sole Survivor has a (predetermined) but quality personality... another thing I like, is how different the male/female version of character is. The dialogue is different in subtle ways, reflecting unique personalities. Nora seems more witty and sarcastic than Nate, for example. If you have played the Witcher games you know how powerful and entertaining an RPG with a specific, pre-set player character can be.

 

Settlement building is not SIMS, it is a good choice for a post apocalypse game. In previous Fallouts I wanted to help rebuild civilization and leave a mark on the world that didn't have to do with me clearing out the NPC vendor's funds selling junk. Now I can. I can help rebuild the peoples' milita and defend the few survivors of the wasteland.

[lelcat]

I especially don't understand the hate for voiced players. It won't get in the way of mods. Because if you do not record voice files it will be mute with subtitles, EXACTLY LIKE IN THE OTHER GAMES.

[MerdanBeta]

I tried 600 hours of gameplay, serching for loot to build up the settlements, ... very boring after a short time. A huge map full of copy and paste unfriendly respawn NPCs Raiders, Gunners, Childs of Atom, want to kill me first sight anyway. Can´t find the teenagers in Big Town, settlers of Arefu, cannibals in Andale, slavers in Paradise Falls ... . People with stories and quests are missing here. I believe the last step in Fallout 4s development, Quests and Storys, was canceled for any reason. Maybe not enough questwriters. Then they put the repeat stuff in to keep me busy. Game feels unfinshed for me, like a korean mmo grinder. I know beteshda was searching for questwriters over the last two years on there website, so this can be the reason. Sorry for my english.

[lelcat]

Wrong. Fallout 4 has more quests and more voiced dialogue. And the landscape sure as hell is not copy paste.

[cartman1975]

You are both right. The landscape is really very detailed but not really "alive". Only some spots in Fallout 4 are really unique and magic.

I havn't played Skyrim and New Vegas for years but i still can remember so many locations. Not only how they looked like but also what i felt when visiting those places.

Fo4 has been released 8 months ago and i allmost forgot most of the places already and i am still playing sometimes (but only in settlements)

Maybe it is because i am spoiled after playing so much games but there must be something else with FO4.

Edited July 26, 2016 by cartman1975

[mcguffin]

The mod theft thing is a joke.

This reminds me the Fanfictions debate (search for GGMartin and fanfiction on google)

 

People just forget that Bethesda provides tool and assets in first place and is awesome enough to let us do whatever we want with their game, assets and engine.

 

And seriously.... building a vault or having some display cases is rather obvious at some point.

Edited July 26, 2016 by mcguffin

[RattleAndGrind]

First, some of what OP calls negativity is really an attempt to give some positive feedback to Bethesda. There are things in the game that are not well done, are distracting, are annoying, are disliked or need to be fixed. It only looks to be negative as we keep pounding on Bethesda. But we keep harping because Bethesda generally turns a deaf ear to this feedback.

 

Second, Bethesda seems to dump games on the market which are not really well tested. There are multiple errors and bugs which either were not discovered or were not fixed prior to release. This gives the game an unfinished feel and causes the players to feel ill used. We pay good money for a game which becomes a exercise in futility when things crash, break or just do not work as advertised.

 

Third, there is the issue of support. Having dumped a game which is inadequately tested on the gaming public, Bethesda almost stops caring. Just report an error/bug/glitch in any game and see how fast Bethesda responds to your report. I reported a bug in Morrowind and have yet to hear back.

 

Fourth, there is the pre-release hype versus the post-release reality. The best example of this is Todd Howard at E3 proclaiming about the Settlement mechanic "It just works". Well, It doesn't. The game routinely looses track of the resources in Settlements, and settlement happiness plummets. Next you know, a settlement is no longer associated with the Minute Men.

 

Fifth, is the role playing itself. To take on a role in a game, there must be a good story to help define the character and help shape the character and their actions within the world they find themselves. Such a story does not exist in Fallout 4. Some story is there, but parts are incomplete and other parts are missing entirely. For example, why are the Gunners in Fallout 4 hostile? They are mercenaries, so someone must be paying them to be hostile; but who? There is no story to tell me.

 

Finally, I get a feeling of complacency from Bethesda. Bethesda is no longer innovative in their games. They have discovered a formula which works, and they are sticking too it. Yes, they try little things here and there, but even these attempts are based on game mechanics which already exist in other games.

 

So OP. It is not necessarily animosity. It is more frustration about Bethesda's unfulfilled potential and our unfulfilled expectations.