Why Fallout 4 Hasn't Failed

[jjb54]

Fallout 4 was the 'sign of things to come' - with Fallout 76 proving it.

I have yet to read any good coming out of FO 76. When I read about the Class Action Legal Actions and just how bad the game was / is .... We are talking major bugs. I even recently went over to a friend who has it and he walked me through the bugs / issues ... and he was simply just playing the game!

Fallout 4 showed Desperation to get ' something out ' faster then they should have ....

Settlement - I'm not sure what they were thinking? Seriously, what were they thinking?? It's painfully clear they had ZERO CLUE what they were doing and did it / showed it well!

It took a mod SIM SETTLEMENTS and other Mods to ' fix it ', and they did a great job.

The thing is, Beth should have taken the time to do it RIGHT and not had the MOD community ' fix it and rescue them '. I have my doubts, but Beth should have PAID the creators of that fixed their bugs and short comings for fixing their ' bad '.

The Story Line is very shallow and when I went back to FALLOUT 3 and found they basically used ' the same story line '. We are seeing " Father - Son relationship " ... one chasing down the other and ...... well REHASH!

The usable sandbox is smaller than Fallout 3 and New Vegas.

Yes it is. Basically there is A WHOLE LOT more water that is pretty much useless. It is interesting to note that there seemed to be confirmed Quests in and under the water, that Beth Bailed on. So it is indeed " dead seas ", in that there was something to be had there .... but did not make the final cut. Thus, yes the Sandbox is smaller.

Not to mention all those DEAD SPACE buildings. Again, the Mod Community came to the rescue on this too!

The characters are bit more shallow, 2/b honest with a few exceptions:

... Nick Valentine. This is a great character with a good story line, that they developed even more in Far Harbor.

But even here, instead of dead end empty " quests ", it would have been fun to add more back story for him.

IE: Find the dumpster he was in and find Holotapes to Nick and such? Since they were able to find a human body for Curie ... how about one for Nick? His final step, for which he could choose or not?

... Deacon, there was a lot of potential there. We got some story, but there was more to be told about him, IF they had taken the time.

IE - The Death Claw Gang. His wife, Barbara, how much authority he does have in the Railroad.

I really cannot think of any other characters in the Vanilla ( non-DLC ) that are catching. I found Strong and Curie annoying as .... In fact, I sent them both to a Settlement far far away, in hopes that they would kill each other and/or the Settlers would. I FAILED! :(

... Strong, had potential. They could have created a quest for: The Milk of Human Kindness. Find the full book for him, or a collection of Books to be found through out the Common Wealth. I'll take Fawks over Strong easily!

The Institute was also shallow and very limited as to what could happen! There are some other posts that share some great ideas as to what could have happened! Some great ideas post here! :)

Characters they could have developed:

... Piper and Sister. What happened to their parents? Maybe help investigate? Maybe find out they were killed -or - banned from the Institute? How did Piper get into Diamond City and start the paper?

... MacCready. He came from the Wasteland and Little Lamplight. Had a wife and has a son. We get a small quest, but what about his son? Why not a Quest and a reunion in getting him back?

... ( How about you readers? What characters would you have liked to see more developed and how? )

Even the Gunners are WIMPS! I still get annoyed hearing them cry out, " Daddy!! " Seriously????

The kids in Little Lamplight have more b..lls / backbone then the Gunners. Those kids took no BS from anyone, period!!! The Gunners would NEVER make in the Fallout 3 Talon Company, never. Why did they take the backbones from the Gunners? Seriously???

Don't get me started on the bugs in Fallout 4. I laid off the game, early last year ... and just came back and did all the updates and every mod updated and such and I have more bugs now then I did then! :P

The short cuts, the quickness, the less than fun sandbox to explore and such that is left up to the Mod Community to fix shows just how sad Beth has become!

Fallout 4, maybe did not ' fail ' .... but boy did it sure fell short .... and Beth apparently relied on the Mod Community to 'fix' their desperate need to get it out before it was Prime Time Ready.

[EmmyV]

FWIW this is something I chat about with friends who are also fellow fallout fans. I am usually the first person to dive into a Fallout game, and I grew up on ISO RPGS (Arcanum anyone???) and I super loved them back in "the day", and I did play and heavily enjoy Fallout 3. But when 4 came out, I actually had no want to buy it, outside that sweet Pip Boy version but I didn't have the cash at the time.

 

So, now I'm playing it all post-hype for the first time, and while I'm definitely having fun thanks to mostly the modders here at Nexus, (Like mentioned before Sim Settlements is completely awesome and it really does feel like a necessary idea.) it seems like the vanilla game just completely falls flat. Without providing an overmassive wall of text, I can truncate down some hits and misses in my playthrough of it.

 

Things I really enjoyed

• Settlements! - This was unexpected and cool. I dig the whole "let's fix the wasteland" angle. That's actually been very fun and I've only done the Sim Settlements mod, but it's clear this is the better way to go so I am unapologetic about not trying vanilla.
• Customizing weapons - I really like this, this was very fun and really helped you make your stuff yours. It's actually much nicer than Skyrim's system and I like right off the bat you can name your weapons. (In Skyrim I often would enchant my weapons just to name them)
• Some of the characters - In particular Nick though I have a soft spot as he sounds like my Granddad.
• Fallout! - Love the universe setting the style, and of course the radio and its stammering radio boy

Clear misses

• Dialogue - It's just awful, all the way around. Even with the text mod that shows me what I'm about to say, none of it really lines up with anything I'd really ever say to anyone. I too often find my potentials are Jerk Response/ Super Jerk response / Mega Hyper Jerk Response / Sissy
• Plot - Post Kellogg all hope of caring for the story is just shot. It was a rising action! A woman spurned, child lost! You can almost see it emblazoned on the front of the pulp fiction novellas you collect. But then it just goes straight battlefield earth on you and stays in that "Wait what?" camp that felt incredibly reminiscent of Mass Effect 3's railroading. There's even a railroad! (Though not related to the terminology.)
• Nothing matters really - You don't really have an impact like you did in 3. There's no 3 Dog narrating the tale of your life and your actions. You don't feel like you're doing too much for people, despite this time around your character can SIGNIFICANTLY do plenty for the people of the commonwealth. But it's barely a mention to anyone that there's suddenly clean water and hundreds of homes and farmland available with relative safety.
• Hard, isn't - It feels like the difficulty went straight Destiny 2 on this. Upping the difficulty just makes people spongier, and not at all more tricky. Just more annoying.

So what's up? Well from what I'm seeing and 76 really seems to bring this home. I think what's happened with Bethesda is they've kind of moved to trying to mimic the market they're in, rather than stick to their guns and make what they're good at. And well, sticking to your guns isn't easy! I mean look at the effort going into the Cyberpunk game right now. That potent single player game takes time, investment, time, money, time, and time! And you must work with what you have, which is a challenge in itself. People were into run and gunner cover shooters at the time of Fallout 4, so they clearly tried to tie it more into that. People wanted a branching story, so nesting the game into encampments made sense from that angle. Bethesda really seems to be chasing a zeitgeist right now, and they're not catching it.

 

In the meantime though, there are still plenty of modders making lots of hours of enjoyment for people, and who knows!? Maybe they'll come back around.

[taryl80]

I was always positive towards Fallout 4. Also towards Fallout 76 until they really f* that one up (no human npcs and their refund politics was a no go for me).

I play Fallout games for years now. My start with the Fallout universe was with Fallout 3 and since then, I play Fallout 4 and New Vegas again and again - thanks to mods. When a new Fallout comes out, its almost like coming home for me :smile:.

And so I had also thought about Fallout 4. Sure, it has its fault, but which games has it not today?

I have start the game, I have seen my lovley desperate wasteland, see that it has great opportunities for mods and so I was in. So I see Fallout 4 mostly positive and in some parts twisted, thats why you should not be bewildered about my list.

Positive I see:

-The mod support Fallout always gets.
-The settlements. I really like to build my own village/town.
-Part of the Story. The Kellog part I had really like and I also like so the voice actor of this character (at least in my language). Also I think, that the story is not bad. I just think that a story like the story of Fallout 4 has to struggle with problems that storys for post-apocalyptic games have usually not.
-The companions. Some people nag sometimes about the Fallout 4 vanilla companions, but seriously... Have those guys ever play with the companions in Skyrim? The Fallout 4 companions are a big improvement if you compare them to the Skyrim ones, or also the Fallout 3 ones and what the companion ai matters, so she is also in the most other games. The mass effect and dragon age companions are also not the "brightest" and I have still great memories on some of them.

-The wide range of things you can already do in this game without mods.

Negative is for me:

-The Story and yes, that is not a coincidence that I also name it here on the negative part of the list. The story provides reasons why we don't see people struggling with life, like in Fallout 3, or New Vegas but imo... That's exactly what I usually like to see in a Fallout game. How could one feel as a hero, if nobody seems to have "real problems"? And yes, I know - the institute is kidnapping people and makes many other things and also there are the Raiders, Supermutants and so on... But still the people in Boston seem to life better, as the people in the most games of this kind and also is the Institute some kind of "invincible" enemie. They don't approach you like the Enclave had, or the Legion and they also seem not to have an impact on the people lifes as those factons have.

 

But that is the problem with all evil factions, that hide their deeds and members somewhere far away of the ordinary life from the people in the "real gameworld".

 

-No real "mature" content in Fallout 4. It is unbelievable for me, that a society has nothing "mature" to tell, or to do - most notably if we talk about a society that at least should struggle with their own surviving. There was Fallout 3 better, with Nova as example or Dukovs "home", or Wasteland 2 is also a great example for stuff like that. Wasteland 2 had make me sometimes chuckle with that kind stuff :smile:.

-I don't like the "dialogue wheel" of Fallout 4 and that you can exit a dialogue with just moving your mouse to the left, or right. I had liked the dialogue part more in Fallout 3, or also Skyrim. Aka. where you was stuck in the dialogue screen until you have finished the dialogue.

 

Overall I really like Fallout 4. That said... Before they starting to work on Fallout 5, I wish someone would take the devs of the next Fallout 5 on their hands and tell them a bit about life and how bad it possible can be, with the next evil-faction-for-Fallout 5 in mind (which is supposed to frighten the people of their next game) and also someone should tell them about "Birds and Bees" in todays and also fictional societies.

Edited May 23, 2019 by taryl80

[tekmage]

Fallout 4 is fun for what it is. It is a clunky looter FPS disguised as an RPG. Thank goodness for mods, right?

The only real big mistake with FO4 was thinking reversing the plot from FO3 and forcing the father/mother finding son scenario would make for a compelling RP experience.

I won't even get into the lack of real dialogue choices and consequences since certain mods make that a bit more tolerable.