I always thought it was weird that diamond city was this major city with tons of security, basically a standing army, and no body bothered to clean out the vast amounts of raider and super mutant nests right next door. Same with goodnieghbor. Like how do you guys get food in to eat and basic supplies?
All Bethesda games have a problem with scale, partly because of dev time to realistically size things and partly because as a player it's more engaging to have stuff happening every 100 feet. The vast amounts of raider and super mutant nests might actually be miles apart if things were sized more realistically, but I don't want realism, I want a fun game.
I mean how is any wasteland community (or Elder Scrolls community) even enough to be a self-sustaining population? With no or few children depending on the game?
Yeah, because those wonderful radiant quests that involve going to the opposite corner of the map and killing 3 ghouls for the 27th time was a much better use of dev time than some proper, hand crafted, intriguing stories.
This is assuming it takes the same amount of dev time or resources to make both things. But in this case yes I would rather have several radiant quests and an axe sitting at Hubris Comics than a quest that takes me all over the world to find this axe. I don't mind delving into a dungeon to find a glowing sword on an altar. I don't want to find a note that says "haha I got here first" and have to spend ages tracking it down only to find out it's much worse than what I already have. It stings less if I just pick it up and toss it in the trophy case.
Yeah I definitely agree about the drugs and pipe guns.
Isn't there even a cache in Santuary like that? Some guy in their idyllic little town was making drugs and kept them in his cellar and it's postwar stuff?
Yeah I believe there's some internal inconsistency just within Fallout 4 re: jet. Jet has always been a post-war drug made from the fumes coming off of brahmin shit, but Vault 95 was sent shipments of it. I'd have to check the logs on that guy's terminal in Sanctuary to see but it wouldn't surprise me if he was distributing somehow, too. Meanwhile, the protagonist has no idea what it is when asked for it by Mama Murphy.
Yes I am basically saying I am tired of the current Fallout formula and want them to move forward with the setting, showing how places start to grow beyond simple scavenging in the ruins.
I was just saying this to someone today. They're going to start looking awfully silly when they keep having their protagonists make these massive sweeping changes for the better to the wasteland, yet from game to game there's no fucking change. For some reason, all of the water is irradiated despite the massive water purifier a couple miles south that as far as I've ever been able to gather was capable of purifying the ocean of radiation. Everyone's living in squatter settlements in 200+ year old ruins, shitting in buckets and sleeping in piles of debris, nevermind that the Lone Survivor built a vast network of cities across the commonwealth.
There's been some consistency in regards to not making too big of a sweeping change to the setting in the endings to date. 3's ending used a GECK for its water purification which is supposed to be a powerful bit of tech but back in Fallout 2's end using one didn't really have an effect beyond Arroyo and Vault City created by using the one from Vault 8 wasn't that big so it would fit for the cleaning of water to be very localized.
It's usually been more about stopping some faction that's an immediate threat which leaves plenty of room for future stories. The Black Isle/Obsidian side of things has had a pattern of showing what happens to the survivors of the opposing faction in the next game afterwards to boot.
Alternatively, if that's the setting and/or tone they want, it's long past time to just pull a reset and say, "We're going back to 10/20/50 years after the War."
If that's the kind of story and world they want, that's where/when you find it.
I always thought it was weird that diamond city was this major city with tons of security, basically a standing army, and no body bothered to clean out the vast amounts of raider and super mutant nests right next door. Same with goodnieghbor. Like how do you guys get food in to eat and basic supplies?
All Bethesda games have a problem with scale, partly because of dev time to realistically size things and partly because as a player it's more engaging to have stuff happening every 100 feet. The vast amounts of raider and super mutant nests might actually be miles apart if things were sized more realistically, but I don't want realism, I want a fun game.
I mean how is any wasteland community (or Elder Scrolls community) even enough to be a self-sustaining population? With no or few children depending on the game?
Its about suspension of disbelief and internal consistency. Fallout 3 you have a wasteland that is fairly empty (with hostile pockets but generally not hard to get around in) with the main settlements in it then a densely populated hostile area you have to navigate through where the only friendly presence is the Brotherhood, who are convincingly powerful enough to survive there (Rivet city is an exception but under the protection of the brotherhood and on the periphery of the hostile area.). In skyrim, you have urban areas and roads between them patrolled by the legion or stormcloaks that are safe, then things get bad as you go out of the urban areas and away from the roads into the wilderness.
Fallout 4 you have an empty wasteland (which a large part of the game is the player populating), a big nasty city area like fallout 3, but all the big population centers/quest hubs are INSIDE the big nasty city area. And all the NPCs and lore acts like it’s much less hostile than it actually is. It’s very tonally inconsistant. And while you do have npcs talk about, for example, the boston commons is a raider and mutant infested shithole, from the player perspective its not any worse really than the raider and mutant infested shithole that is the direct surroundings of diamond city, which is supposed to be a major city that trades with a lot of the smaller wasteland outposts. It just gives a very weird feeling to the believability of the world which wasn’t much of a problem in previous games.
This game would have been better if most of Boston was synthetic. The Institute is using the streets of Boston as a live training simulator for their Synths.
Fallout 4 you have an empty wasteland (which a large part of the game is the player populating), a big nasty city area like fallout 3, but all the big population centers/quest hubs are INSIDE the big nasty city area. And all the NPCs and lore acts like it’s much less hostile than it actually is. It’s very tonally inconsistant. And while you do have npcs talk about, for example, the boston commons is a raider and mutant infested shithole, from the player perspective its not any worse really than the raider and mutant infested shithole that is the direct surroundings of diamond city, which is supposed to be a major city that trades with a lot of the smaller wasteland outposts. It just gives a very weird feeling to the believability of the world which wasn’t much of a problem in previous games.
Snipping this bit as a tangent:
During the "peace talks" portion of Skyrim's main quest, the Dragonborn is asked to serve as arbiter as to who gets what territories. Both sides put in claims for Markarth and Riften... and while I understand that those towns are sitting on significant resources, my experience of both settlements as a player made me want to ask, "By the Nine, why? They're both shitholes." Burning both to the ground (or in Markarth's case, to the stone) along with pretty much the entire population would be an improvement.
I always thought it was weird that diamond city was this major city with tons of security, basically a standing army, and no body bothered to clean out the vast amounts of raider and super mutant nests right next door. Same with goodnieghbor. Like how do you guys get food in to eat and basic supplies?
All Bethesda games have a problem with scale, partly because of dev time to realistically size things and partly because as a player it's more engaging to have stuff happening every 100 feet. The vast amounts of raider and super mutant nests might actually be miles apart if things were sized more realistically, but I don't want realism, I want a fun game.
I mean how is any wasteland community (or Elder Scrolls community) even enough to be a self-sustaining population? With no or few children depending on the game?
Its about suspension of disbelief and internal consistency. Fallout 3 you have a wasteland that is fairly empty (with hostile pockets but generally not hard to get around in) with the main settlements in it then a densely populated hostile area you have to navigate through where the only friendly presence is the Brotherhood, who are convincingly powerful enough to survive there (Rivet city is an exception but under the protection of the brotherhood and on the periphery of the hostile area.). In skyrim, you have urban areas and roads between them patrolled by the legion or stormcloaks that are safe, then things get bad as you go out of the urban areas and away from the roads into the wilderness.
Fallout 4 you have an empty wasteland (which a large part of the game is the player populating), a big nasty city area like fallout 3, but all the big population centers/quest hubs are INSIDE the big nasty city area. And all the NPCs and lore acts like it’s much less hostile than it actually is. It’s very tonally inconsistant. And while you do have npcs talk about, for example, the boston commons is a raider and mutant infested shithole, from the player perspective its not any worse really than the raider and mutant infested shithole that is the direct surroundings of diamond city, which is supposed to be a major city that trades with a lot of the smaller wasteland outposts. It just gives a very weird feeling to the believability of the world which wasn’t much of a problem in previous games.
It was also a pain in the ass to actually play, since if you so much as deviate off the main road in the early game, SURPRISE! SUPER-MUTANTS!
It struck me more like an FPS-oriented design, teasing you with the scariest monsters (deathclaws, supermutants) ASAP, rather than an open-world RPG design.
My main problem with Fallout 4 is that I can't seem to keep myself from going unarmed/melee whenever I make a new character. Becoming One Punch Man is too awesome, as is tooling around the commonwealth with Lucille 2.0 (barbed wire is cute Neegan, try saw blades) and shathwacking enemies to bits.
The endings could be better, though. It apparently doesn't matter if you go Institute and broadcast "Yo, I'm in charge now. I'm basically Jesus, and we're going to use our knowledge to help everyone" everyone still responds with "OMG you evil prick..."
Everyone has a price. Throw enough gold around and someone will risk disintegration.
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daveNYCWhy universe hate Waspinator?Registered Userregular
The endings were bad, the Institute was comically evil, and the main story was hamfisted.
The side quests weren't bad, the companions were interesting, I enjoyed the settlements (YMMV though), and I actually liked the conversation system with the not totally grabbing your camera and initiating conversation by proximity sometimes. It didn't always work, but it felt more natural than Skyrim/ME/whatnot's systems of locking you down when you were in a conversation.
The conversation choices were all variations on 'I'll do what is required to advance the plot', so that sucked.
Shut up, Mr. Burton! You were not brought upon this world to get it!
The endings were bad, the Institute was comically evil, and the main story was hamfisted.
The side quests weren't bad, the companions were interesting, I enjoyed the settlements (YMMV though), and I actually liked the conversation system with the not totally grabbing your camera and initiating conversation by proximity sometimes. It didn't always work, but it felt more natural than Skyrim/ME/whatnot's systems of locking you down when you were in a conversation.
The conversation choices were all variations on 'I'll do what is required to advance the plot', so that sucked.
See, my take on that was they made that a feature for people who couldn't be bothered by those pesky conversations in their shootermans games.
But I also realize that isn't a very charitable take.
Dr. Phibbs McAthey on
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daveNYCWhy universe hate Waspinator?Registered Userregular
I think they put too many resources into the conversation voices for that to be the case, though the quality of many of the conversations was bad enough I can see the argument.
Shut up, Mr. Burton! You were not brought upon this world to get it!
In practice I never really noticed the different dialogue system. I don't feel like Skyrim locked you down because you could always cancel out, and it frequently got interrupted by fights and dragons anyway, and I don't feel like Fallout 4 was more freeing because it still shifted the camera viewpoints to be similar to the old way of doing things anyway unless you pulled a gun or something.
I prefer Morrowind or Oblivion which IIRC paused the world in the background, which was great because these engines are too buggy - the longer you spend letting the simulation run around you the more likely some critical NPC is going to phase through the floor. I don't want to be anywhere too long without the physics and scripts paused.
Someday I should go try to play New Vegas again and finish it. I thought Fallout 1 and 2 were good back in the day and thought 3 was sort of visually evocative at least -- I remember seeing crumbling radar dishes off in the distance and thinking they looked memorable.
By the time I played New Vegas, I got to the little Las Vegas part of the map and it was so tiny (and split in half with a loading screen if I remember correctly) that I lost interest. It just seemed too dinky and miniature to be a hub for a game. But the factions were kind of interesting and it seems like so many Fallout fans cite it as a favorite.
I really actually enjoy 4 I think because I don't feel any real fealty to any of the modern 3D fallouts and because of the combination of base building and the Delete Anything mod. Going into a pile of garbage and collapsed buildings and shitty brambles and tearing everything out and slapping down a modest but secure and symmetrical house for someone actually feels to me like first time in the game's history that the Nuclear 1950s schtick exists for anything beyond the basic undermining of the American dream or the semi-sarcastic juxtaposition of cheerful period music with post-apocalyptic devastation.
Fallout 4 with a little settlement building and game modding actually seems to suggest that there might be some specific value to the sort of restrained and cerebral Apollonian thinking of midcentury America that has hitherto existed only to be skewered by the series. You're in a disorganized, overgrown, chaotic environment and you can begin to counterbalance that by clarifying and organizing the environment for the collective good. That's actually compelling to me personally as a player, whereas crawling through glowing green goop to shoot some caesar's Vegas fascist creepo i can take or leave as video games go.
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DeadfallI don't think you realize just how rich he is.In fact, I should put on a monocle.Registered Userregular
It was my first foray into the series so I don't know if that clouded my judgement but I have played through it 3 times with 3 vastly different characters and settlements.
If you haven't played Fallout 1/2, Fallout 4 is a pretty enjoyable shooter/RPG Lite with some dodgy writing. I enjoyed playing through it enough, and have close to 700 hours playtime, a lot of which is making settlements.
Fallout 4 just doesn't feel like a good Fallout game.
I haven't played 1 or 2, though recently 1 was free on Steam or GoG so I at least own it.
So like I said I got into the series late. 4 just hit two of my favorite things: base building and apocalyptic settings. I loved being able to build my Brotherhood forts and bandit pirate camps. And going through base building threads on Reddit is something I thoroughly enjoy.
I'd prefer they ditch the base building completely. At least on PS4, it's too cumbersome and annoying to deal with. It's easy enough to ignore at least, so hopefully they keep it optional if they don't want to get rid of it.
Like, all the Minutemen settlement sidequests were just me clearing the area, setting up the beacon and then saying "fend for yourselves, I don't care."
Everyone has a price. Throw enough gold around and someone will risk disintegration.
I'd prefer they ditch the base building completely. At least on PS4, it's too cumbersome and annoying to deal with. It's easy enough to ignore at least, so hopefully they keep it optional if they don't want to get rid of it.
Like, all the Minutemen settlement sidequests were just me clearing the area, setting up the beacon and then saying "fend for yourselves, I don't care."
I would prefer if they made it better and also there was a reason to do it beyond simply enjoying the process. Templates, settlements growing on their own according to priorities you set, better placement tools of course. Things like that.
It was way too promising, even if it was super cumbersome, to just abandon entirely. I saw it as more of a dark middle chapter where the first part was Hearthfire in Skyrim.
I was playing FO4 on PC. The first thing I did was install a mod that created a tiny, buildable generator for the settlements that maxed out all settlement stats (food, beds etc). And then I never did anything else with the settlements after building that.
The interface was shit for base building, and if I wanted to design houses I'd play the Sims (and when I play the sims, I only use pre-built houses). I'm not an architect and I don't want to be one, either.
I did get the vault-building DLC (I forget the name) and completed it, and that was the least enjoyable part of the game by far. Complete waste of time.
Sic transit gloria mundi.
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Sir CarcassI have been shown the end of my worldRound Rock, TXRegistered Userregular
I was playing FO4 on PC. The first thing I did was install a mod that created a tiny, buildable generator for the settlements that maxed out all settlement stats (food, beds etc). And then I never did anything else with the settlements after building that.
The interface was shit for base building, and if I wanted to design houses I'd play the Sims (and when I play the sims, I only use pre-built houses). I'm not an architect and I don't want to be one, either.
I did get the vault-building DLC (I forget the name) and completed it, and that was the least enjoyable part of the game by far. Complete waste of time.
Sim Settlements! It's pretty much created for people like you (and me). I occasionally get into building something fancy, but for the most part, I just want to put something down quickly. I do enjoy building up settlements, though.
I really enjoyed building Vault 88, personally. Clearing out the caves, not so much. I do wish there was more to do with to make it feel like a functioning vault, though.
The endings could be better, though. It apparently doesn't matter if you go Institute and broadcast "Yo, I'm in charge now. I'm basically Jesus, and we're going to use our knowledge to help everyone" everyone still responds with "OMG you evil prick..."
That's because, though Bethesda loves to put the player character in nominal positions of leadership over various guilds, factions, etc, your actual control or influence over them is non-existent. It's not even a matter of fighting internal politics and/or institutional inertia; there's simply no way (in-game and in-character) to alter their pre-scripted activities, policies, membership, etc. The illusion of player agency and ability to affect the world beyond the basic and direct "do this quest, shoot this guy, pick up this thing" is paper-thin.
I'd prefer they ditch the base building completely. At least on PS4, it's too cumbersome and annoying to deal with. It's easy enough to ignore at least, so hopefully they keep it optional if they don't want to get rid of it.
Like, all the Minutemen settlement sidequests were just me clearing the area, setting up the beacon and then saying "fend for yourselves, I don't care."
Settlements didn't really come into their own for me until survival mode was added. Having safe locations to use as a base became really handy in that mode and I can't see 4's implementation of it working as well without it.
I'm bugged by how the Minutemen, as the least bad main faction for many people, don't really do much for most of the game besides the same kind of settlement missions but view that as a separate matter.
My run right now is going to be focused on making the Minutemen a fearsome force to be reckoned with across the Mojave. I love building bases, though with the caveat that without mods to do things like clear the fucking garbage out, manage settlers and resources, and add shit to build with that doesn't look like a shantytown reject, the whole thing can fuck right off. I'd be down if the next Elder Scrolls and/or Fallout kept the system in, only polished, and scaled down so that you know, they actually make content in their damn game instead of letting the player build up 90% of the game world.
Edit: Also I'm tempted by Survival but as I understand it, it's worth adding some mods to tweak it and I'm that guy that runs pretty close to the 255 plugin limit so I'll probably end up doing a whole separate mod setup if I ever get around to that.
I'd be down if the next Elder Scrolls and/or Fallout kept the system in, only polished, and scaled down so that you know, they actually make content in their damn game instead of letting the player build up 90% of the game world.
I'd be fine with the game making content and putting it in settlements. Like, the 5, 10, and 15 settler all advance some story specific to the settlement, and you also get occasional minor dudes, like somebody who really likes lights and you get a defense bonus to the settlement if you bring them lights to put up, or a shopkeeper who likes robots and if you bring them robot parts the store stays open at night because it's got a robot in.
I'd be down if the next Elder Scrolls and/or Fallout kept the system in, only polished, and scaled down so that you know, they actually make content in their damn game instead of letting the player build up 90% of the game world.
I'd be fine with the game making content and putting it in settlements. Like, the 5, 10, and 15 settler all advance some story specific to the settlement, and you also get occasional minor dudes, like somebody who really likes lights and you get a defense bonus to the settlement if you bring them lights to put up, or a shopkeeper who likes robots and if you bring them robot parts the store stays open at night because it's got a robot in.
All that takes effort that, Frankly, Bethesda just isnt into putting into games anymore.
I've always thought they should have had a 'pool' of possible unique settlers with unique conditions for them to show up, similar to (don't laugh) getting new Pinatas to show up in Viva Pinata. Stuff like completing certain quest lines, killing so many of a particular enemy faction, building something unique in a settlement, etc. And rewards would be along the lines of what Glazius listed, advancing a storyline for a given settlement, bonuses at said settlement (or all settlements), unique items, companions, etc. etc. If I had the free time to learn how to set up such a thing, I'd totally make a mod that does this. But that seems pretty Herculean and I simply don't have the time.
I've always thought they should have had a 'pool' of possible unique settlers with unique conditions for them to show up, similar to (don't laugh) getting new Pinatas to show up in Viva Pinata. Stuff like completing certain quest lines, killing so many of a particular enemy faction, building something unique in a settlement, etc. And rewards would be along the lines of what Glazius listed, advancing a storyline for a given settlement, bonuses at said settlement (or all settlements), unique items, companions, etc. etc. If I had the free time to learn how to set up such a thing, I'd totally make a mod that does this. But that seems pretty Herculean and I simply don't have the time.
They're all merchants and a lot are randomly encountered and depend on certain merchant stalls meaning you need Local Leader at rank 2, but there are some.
All that takes effort that, Frankly, Bethesda just isnt into putting into games anymore.
this is not evident. They overhauled the advancement system, got the combat to be actually kind of good, and made a big map full of recognizable biomes and places to explore, but somehow that was all effortless?
It's more likely that due to the voice pipeline and the overhaul of the advancement system, they had to write and act the game while they still didn't know what you could do in it. Far Harbor isn't stellar, but it was written after they finalized the system, and it's better off for it.
Someday I should go try to play New Vegas again and finish it. I thought Fallout 1 and 2 were good back in the day and thought 3 was sort of visually evocative at least -- I remember seeing crumbling radar dishes off in the distance and thinking they looked memorable.
By the time I played New Vegas, I got to the little Las Vegas part of the map and it was so tiny (and split in half with a loading screen if I remember correctly) that I lost interest. It just seemed too dinky and miniature to be a hub for a game. But the factions were kind of interesting and it seems like so many Fallout fans cite it as a favorite.
I really actually enjoy 4 I think because I don't feel any real fealty to any of the modern 3D fallouts and because of the combination of base building and the Delete Anything mod. Going into a pile of garbage and collapsed buildings and shitty brambles and tearing everything out and slapping down a modest but secure and symmetrical house for someone actually feels to me like first time in the game's history that the Nuclear 1950s schtick exists for anything beyond the basic undermining of the American dream or the semi-sarcastic juxtaposition of cheerful period music with post-apocalyptic devastation.
Fallout 4 with a little settlement building and game modding actually seems to suggest that there might be some specific value to the sort of restrained and cerebral Apollonian thinking of midcentury America that has hitherto existed only to be skewered by the series. You're in a disorganized, overgrown, chaotic environment and you can begin to counterbalance that by clarifying and organizing the environment for the collective good. That's actually compelling to me personally as a player, whereas crawling through glowing green goop to shoot some caesar's Vegas fascist creepo i can take or leave as video games go.
Fallout New Vegas is absolutely worth your time, it's the best Fallout game to date. With mods, there's no question.
I think you just didn't play far enough. New Vegas is titanically large. You don't actually start to affect the outcome of the wasteland until you reach New Vegas, and start working with the larger, more powerful factions and subfactions and start making alliances that change the Wasteland.
I am entirely sure there's about 1000% more world building and story. During one play session, I just *talked* to the various NPCs of Camp Hope including Chief Hanlon. It took me well over an hour.
I can't recall a conversation in 4' main story that took more than five minutes.
Someday I should go try to play New Vegas again and finish it. I thought Fallout 1 and 2 were good back in the day and thought 3 was sort of visually evocative at least -- I remember seeing crumbling radar dishes off in the distance and thinking they looked memorable.
By the time I played New Vegas, I got to the little Las Vegas part of the map and it was so tiny (and split in half with a loading screen if I remember correctly) that I lost interest. It just seemed too dinky and miniature to be a hub for a game. But the factions were kind of interesting and it seems like so many Fallout fans cite it as a favorite.
I really actually enjoy 4 I think because I don't feel any real fealty to any of the modern 3D fallouts and because of the combination of base building and the Delete Anything mod. Going into a pile of garbage and collapsed buildings and shitty brambles and tearing everything out and slapping down a modest but secure and symmetrical house for someone actually feels to me like first time in the game's history that the Nuclear 1950s schtick exists for anything beyond the basic undermining of the American dream or the semi-sarcastic juxtaposition of cheerful period music with post-apocalyptic devastation.
Fallout 4 with a little settlement building and game modding actually seems to suggest that there might be some specific value to the sort of restrained and cerebral Apollonian thinking of midcentury America that has hitherto existed only to be skewered by the series. You're in a disorganized, overgrown, chaotic environment and you can begin to counterbalance that by clarifying and organizing the environment for the collective good. That's actually compelling to me personally as a player, whereas crawling through glowing green goop to shoot some caesar's Vegas fascist creepo i can take or leave as video games go.
Fallout New Vegas is absolutely worth your time, it's the best Fallout game to date. With mods, there's no question.
I think you just didn't play far enough. New Vegas is titanically large. You don't actually start to affect the outcome of the wasteland until you reach New Vegas, and start working with the larger, more powerful factions and subfactions and start making alliances that change the Wasteland.
New Vegas is so damn good.
Hot take: I blame the mod community for NV and 3 for the more shootery direction of Fallout 4. In the top 10 all-time files in 3 and NV, after your Unofficial Patches and whatnot, are major combat overhauls (FWE, Project Nevada) that make the game more in the vein of a tactical shooter. And in particular, New Vegas seemed full of tacticool SWAT/Special Ops/Rainbow 6-esque guns and gear mods, to the point where entire communities formed specifically around ripping assets out of other tactical combat games for use in New Vegas. It would be silly of Bethesda NOT to look at the Nexus and see what the community seems to want in their games.
Someday I should go try to play New Vegas again and finish it. I thought Fallout 1 and 2 were good back in the day and thought 3 was sort of visually evocative at least -- I remember seeing crumbling radar dishes off in the distance and thinking they looked memorable.
By the time I played New Vegas, I got to the little Las Vegas part of the map and it was so tiny (and split in half with a loading screen if I remember correctly) that I lost interest. It just seemed too dinky and miniature to be a hub for a game. But the factions were kind of interesting and it seems like so many Fallout fans cite it as a favorite.
I really actually enjoy 4 I think because I don't feel any real fealty to any of the modern 3D fallouts and because of the combination of base building and the Delete Anything mod. Going into a pile of garbage and collapsed buildings and shitty brambles and tearing everything out and slapping down a modest but secure and symmetrical house for someone actually feels to me like first time in the game's history that the Nuclear 1950s schtick exists for anything beyond the basic undermining of the American dream or the semi-sarcastic juxtaposition of cheerful period music with post-apocalyptic devastation.
Fallout 4 with a little settlement building and game modding actually seems to suggest that there might be some specific value to the sort of restrained and cerebral Apollonian thinking of midcentury America that has hitherto existed only to be skewered by the series. You're in a disorganized, overgrown, chaotic environment and you can begin to counterbalance that by clarifying and organizing the environment for the collective good. That's actually compelling to me personally as a player, whereas crawling through glowing green goop to shoot some caesar's Vegas fascist creepo i can take or leave as video games go.
Fallout New Vegas is absolutely worth your time, it's the best Fallout game to date. With mods, there's no question.
I think you just didn't play far enough. New Vegas is titanically large. You don't actually start to affect the outcome of the wasteland until you reach New Vegas, and start working with the larger, more powerful factions and subfactions and start making alliances that change the Wasteland.
New Vegas is so damn good.
Hot take: I blame the mod community for NV and 3 for the more shootery direction of Fallout 4. In the top 10 all-time files in 3 and NV, after your Unofficial Patches and whatnot, are major combat overhauls (FWE, Project Nevada) that make the game more in the vein of a tactical shooter. And in particular, New Vegas seemed full of tacticool SWAT/Special Ops/Rainbow 6-esque guns and gear mods, to the point where entire communities formed specifically around ripping assets out of other tactical combat games for use in New Vegas. It would be silly of Bethesda NOT to look at the Nexus and see what the community seems to want in their games.
So something that a lot of people tend to overlook is that Black Isle had a pretty grounded take on guns for a sci-fi game in the first two Fallout games. The descriptions of a lot of the weapons reference real life gun manufacturers for their made up weapons (e.g the plasma pistol was made by Glock), some guns had different ammo types, many Fallout 2 weapons were experimental real world weapons (e.g. the Pancor Jackhammer shotgun of which there were only about 12 made IRL) or well historied ones (e.g. the FN FAL prevalent among Europe's armed forces for a time post WW2). I suspect that the prevalence of the 10mm pistols were due to Fallout 1 being made at a time law enforcement signaled wanting to move to using 10mm pistols after the FBI concluded existing 9mm and .38 special sidearms were underpowered after the disastrous Miami FBI shootout. The Fallout 1 manual had a short but detailed description of the differences between standard FMJ ammo, hollow point bullets, and armor piercing ammo (which is how teenage me first learned about them). The designers did a lot of work on the guns to make them believable so it's not surprising that Obsidian did some similar work in New Vegas. It's a level of detail the vast majority of gamers will never really appreciate but it does a lot to make the setting feel more real for people with the background knowledge. It's a big contrast with Fallout 4's love of pipe guns everywhere including prewar caches.
Someday I should go try to play New Vegas again and finish it. I thought Fallout 1 and 2 were good back in the day and thought 3 was sort of visually evocative at least -- I remember seeing crumbling radar dishes off in the distance and thinking they looked memorable.
By the time I played New Vegas, I got to the little Las Vegas part of the map and it was so tiny (and split in half with a loading screen if I remember correctly) that I lost interest. It just seemed too dinky and miniature to be a hub for a game. But the factions were kind of interesting and it seems like so many Fallout fans cite it as a favorite.
I really actually enjoy 4 I think because I don't feel any real fealty to any of the modern 3D fallouts and because of the combination of base building and the Delete Anything mod. Going into a pile of garbage and collapsed buildings and shitty brambles and tearing everything out and slapping down a modest but secure and symmetrical house for someone actually feels to me like first time in the game's history that the Nuclear 1950s schtick exists for anything beyond the basic undermining of the American dream or the semi-sarcastic juxtaposition of cheerful period music with post-apocalyptic devastation.
Fallout 4 with a little settlement building and game modding actually seems to suggest that there might be some specific value to the sort of restrained and cerebral Apollonian thinking of midcentury America that has hitherto existed only to be skewered by the series. You're in a disorganized, overgrown, chaotic environment and you can begin to counterbalance that by clarifying and organizing the environment for the collective good. That's actually compelling to me personally as a player, whereas crawling through glowing green goop to shoot some caesar's Vegas fascist creepo i can take or leave as video games go.
Fallout New Vegas is absolutely worth your time, it's the best Fallout game to date. With mods, there's no question.
I think you just didn't play far enough. New Vegas is titanically large. You don't actually start to affect the outcome of the wasteland until you reach New Vegas, and start working with the larger, more powerful factions and subfactions and start making alliances that change the Wasteland.
New Vegas is so damn good.
Hot take: I blame the mod community for NV and 3 for the more shootery direction of Fallout 4. In the top 10 all-time files in 3 and NV, after your Unofficial Patches and whatnot, are major combat overhauls (FWE, Project Nevada) that make the game more in the vein of a tactical shooter. And in particular, New Vegas seemed full of tacticool SWAT/Special Ops/Rainbow 6-esque guns and gear mods, to the point where entire communities formed specifically around ripping assets out of other tactical combat games for use in New Vegas. It would be silly of Bethesda NOT to look at the Nexus and see what the community seems to want in their games.
So something that a lot of people tend to overlook is that Black Isle had a pretty grounded take on guns for a sci-fi game in the first two Fallout games. The descriptions of a lot of the weapons reference real life gun manufacturers for their made up weapons (e.g the plasma pistol was made by Glock), some guns had different ammo types, many Fallout 2 weapons were experimental real world weapons (e.g. the Pancor Jackhammer shotgun of which there were only about 12 made IRL) or well historied ones (e.g. the FN FAL prevalent among Europe's armed forces for a time post WW2). I suspect that the prevalence of the 10mm pistols were due to Fallout 1 being made at a time law enforcement signaled wanting to move to using 10mm pistols after the FBI concluded existing 9mm and .38 special sidearms were underpowered after the disastrous Miami FBI shootout. The Fallout 1 manual had a short but detailed description of the differences between standard FMJ ammo, hollow point bullets, and armor piercing ammo (which is how teenage me first learned about them). The designers did a lot of work on the guns to make them believable so it's not surprising that Obsidian did some similar work in New Vegas. It's a level of detail the vast majority of gamers will never really appreciate but it does a lot to make the setting feel more real for people with the background knowledge. It's a big contrast with Fallout 4's love of pipe guns everywhere including prewar caches.
I don't disagree on any particular point. Obsidian's weapons and weapon mod mechanics show a real attention to detail and a far more grounded take than Bethesda has shown interest in going. I'm just saying that the mod communities clearly were all in on turning the Fallout series into a shooter long before Bethesda followed down that path. I think they were just going with what the community seemed to want (and attitudes among mod communities for Fallout 4 seem to seem to back this up, based on anecdotal evidence from me lurking in mod discords). Which isn't to say I agree with the direction at all.
New Vegas is an RPG with combat.
Fallout 4 is a shooter with RPG elements.
I'm not disagreeing with this. I also think that 4 works better for the first person perspective they have chosen to go with. If you're going to be looking at the game over the barrel of the gun you always have out I would prefer to actually be able to aim and shoot it myself.
I am entirely sure there's about 1000% more world building and story. During one play session, I just *talked* to the various NPCs of Camp Hope including Chief Hanlon. It took me well over an hour.
I can't recall a conversation in 4' main story that took more than five minutes.
To be fair, it would probably take over an hour to seek out and fully talk to everyone in Diamond City.
But that's the main hub of the game and nowhere else really has anything on that level. New Vegas was so good in that respect.
Also, y'know, letting your skills actually influence the way some discussions would go? Instead of Fallout 4 where almost the only point of charisma was to shake down people for more money as they get angrier and angrier at your demands only to go back to their former attitude as soon as the speech checks are over.
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All Bethesda games have a problem with scale, partly because of dev time to realistically size things and partly because as a player it's more engaging to have stuff happening every 100 feet. The vast amounts of raider and super mutant nests might actually be miles apart if things were sized more realistically, but I don't want realism, I want a fun game.
I mean how is any wasteland community (or Elder Scrolls community) even enough to be a self-sustaining population? With no or few children depending on the game?
This is assuming it takes the same amount of dev time or resources to make both things. But in this case yes I would rather have several radiant quests and an axe sitting at Hubris Comics than a quest that takes me all over the world to find this axe. I don't mind delving into a dungeon to find a glowing sword on an altar. I don't want to find a note that says "haha I got here first" and have to spend ages tracking it down only to find out it's much worse than what I already have. It stings less if I just pick it up and toss it in the trophy case.
There's been some consistency in regards to not making too big of a sweeping change to the setting in the endings to date. 3's ending used a GECK for its water purification which is supposed to be a powerful bit of tech but back in Fallout 2's end using one didn't really have an effect beyond Arroyo and Vault City created by using the one from Vault 8 wasn't that big so it would fit for the cleaning of water to be very localized.
It's usually been more about stopping some faction that's an immediate threat which leaves plenty of room for future stories. The Black Isle/Obsidian side of things has had a pattern of showing what happens to the survivors of the opposing faction in the next game afterwards to boot.
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If that's the kind of story and world they want, that's where/when you find it.
Its about suspension of disbelief and internal consistency. Fallout 3 you have a wasteland that is fairly empty (with hostile pockets but generally not hard to get around in) with the main settlements in it then a densely populated hostile area you have to navigate through where the only friendly presence is the Brotherhood, who are convincingly powerful enough to survive there (Rivet city is an exception but under the protection of the brotherhood and on the periphery of the hostile area.). In skyrim, you have urban areas and roads between them patrolled by the legion or stormcloaks that are safe, then things get bad as you go out of the urban areas and away from the roads into the wilderness.
Fallout 4 you have an empty wasteland (which a large part of the game is the player populating), a big nasty city area like fallout 3, but all the big population centers/quest hubs are INSIDE the big nasty city area. And all the NPCs and lore acts like it’s much less hostile than it actually is. It’s very tonally inconsistant. And while you do have npcs talk about, for example, the boston commons is a raider and mutant infested shithole, from the player perspective its not any worse really than the raider and mutant infested shithole that is the direct surroundings of diamond city, which is supposed to be a major city that trades with a lot of the smaller wasteland outposts. It just gives a very weird feeling to the believability of the world which wasn’t much of a problem in previous games.
Snipping this bit as a tangent:
During the "peace talks" portion of Skyrim's main quest, the Dragonborn is asked to serve as arbiter as to who gets what territories. Both sides put in claims for Markarth and Riften... and while I understand that those towns are sitting on significant resources, my experience of both settlements as a player made me want to ask, "By the Nine, why? They're both shitholes." Burning both to the ground (or in Markarth's case, to the stone) along with pretty much the entire population would be an improvement.
I guess my point is, it's not just Boston.
It was also a pain in the ass to actually play, since if you so much as deviate off the main road in the early game, SURPRISE! SUPER-MUTANTS!
It struck me more like an FPS-oriented design, teasing you with the scariest monsters (deathclaws, supermutants) ASAP, rather than an open-world RPG design.
The endings could be better, though. It apparently doesn't matter if you go Institute and broadcast "Yo, I'm in charge now. I'm basically Jesus, and we're going to use our knowledge to help everyone" everyone still responds with "OMG you evil prick..."
The side quests weren't bad, the companions were interesting, I enjoyed the settlements (YMMV though), and I actually liked the conversation system with the not totally grabbing your camera and initiating conversation by proximity sometimes. It didn't always work, but it felt more natural than Skyrim/ME/whatnot's systems of locking you down when you were in a conversation.
The conversation choices were all variations on 'I'll do what is required to advance the plot', so that sucked.
See, my take on that was they made that a feature for people who couldn't be bothered by those pesky conversations in their shootermans games.
But I also realize that isn't a very charitable take.
I prefer Morrowind or Oblivion which IIRC paused the world in the background, which was great because these engines are too buggy - the longer you spend letting the simulation run around you the more likely some critical NPC is going to phase through the floor. I don't want to be anywhere too long without the physics and scripts paused.
By the time I played New Vegas, I got to the little Las Vegas part of the map and it was so tiny (and split in half with a loading screen if I remember correctly) that I lost interest. It just seemed too dinky and miniature to be a hub for a game. But the factions were kind of interesting and it seems like so many Fallout fans cite it as a favorite.
I really actually enjoy 4 I think because I don't feel any real fealty to any of the modern 3D fallouts and because of the combination of base building and the Delete Anything mod. Going into a pile of garbage and collapsed buildings and shitty brambles and tearing everything out and slapping down a modest but secure and symmetrical house for someone actually feels to me like first time in the game's history that the Nuclear 1950s schtick exists for anything beyond the basic undermining of the American dream or the semi-sarcastic juxtaposition of cheerful period music with post-apocalyptic devastation.
Fallout 4 with a little settlement building and game modding actually seems to suggest that there might be some specific value to the sort of restrained and cerebral Apollonian thinking of midcentury America that has hitherto existed only to be skewered by the series. You're in a disorganized, overgrown, chaotic environment and you can begin to counterbalance that by clarifying and organizing the environment for the collective good. That's actually compelling to me personally as a player, whereas crawling through glowing green goop to shoot some caesar's Vegas fascist creepo i can take or leave as video games go.
I haven't played 1 or 2, though recently 1 was free on Steam or GoG so I at least own it.
So like I said I got into the series late. 4 just hit two of my favorite things: base building and apocalyptic settings. I loved being able to build my Brotherhood forts and bandit pirate camps. And going through base building threads on Reddit is something I thoroughly enjoy.
xbl - HowYouGetAnts
steam - WeAreAllGeth
Like, all the Minutemen settlement sidequests were just me clearing the area, setting up the beacon and then saying "fend for yourselves, I don't care."
Ah, the Mayor Quimby approach the the apocalypse
It was way too promising, even if it was super cumbersome, to just abandon entirely. I saw it as more of a dark middle chapter where the first part was Hearthfire in Skyrim.
The interface was shit for base building, and if I wanted to design houses I'd play the Sims (and when I play the sims, I only use pre-built houses). I'm not an architect and I don't want to be one, either.
I did get the vault-building DLC (I forget the name) and completed it, and that was the least enjoyable part of the game by far. Complete waste of time.
Sim Settlements! It's pretty much created for people like you (and me). I occasionally get into building something fancy, but for the most part, I just want to put something down quickly. I do enjoy building up settlements, though.
I really enjoyed building Vault 88, personally. Clearing out the caves, not so much. I do wish there was more to do with to make it feel like a functioning vault, though.
That's because, though Bethesda loves to put the player character in nominal positions of leadership over various guilds, factions, etc, your actual control or influence over them is non-existent. It's not even a matter of fighting internal politics and/or institutional inertia; there's simply no way (in-game and in-character) to alter their pre-scripted activities, policies, membership, etc. The illusion of player agency and ability to affect the world beyond the basic and direct "do this quest, shoot this guy, pick up this thing" is paper-thin.
Settlements didn't really come into their own for me until survival mode was added. Having safe locations to use as a base became really handy in that mode and I can't see 4's implementation of it working as well without it.
I'm bugged by how the Minutemen, as the least bad main faction for many people, don't really do much for most of the game besides the same kind of settlement missions but view that as a separate matter.
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Edit: Also I'm tempted by Survival but as I understand it, it's worth adding some mods to tweak it and I'm that guy that runs pretty close to the 255 plugin limit so I'll probably end up doing a whole separate mod setup if I ever get around to that.
I'd be fine with the game making content and putting it in settlements. Like, the 5, 10, and 15 settler all advance some story specific to the settlement, and you also get occasional minor dudes, like somebody who really likes lights and you get a defense bonus to the settlement if you bring them lights to put up, or a shopkeeper who likes robots and if you bring them robot parts the store stays open at night because it's got a robot in.
There kind of are actually
They're all merchants and a lot are randomly encountered and depend on certain merchant stalls meaning you need Local Leader at rank 2, but there are some.
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Is there a mod for that?Yes, always. Not a patch on hypothetical official support, but you might enjoy it.
The thing is, though,
this is not evident. They overhauled the advancement system, got the combat to be actually kind of good, and made a big map full of recognizable biomes and places to explore, but somehow that was all effortless?
It's more likely that due to the voice pipeline and the overhaul of the advancement system, they had to write and act the game while they still didn't know what you could do in it. Far Harbor isn't stellar, but it was written after they finalized the system, and it's better off for it.
Fallout New Vegas is absolutely worth your time, it's the best Fallout game to date. With mods, there's no question.
I think you just didn't play far enough. New Vegas is titanically large. You don't actually start to affect the outcome of the wasteland until you reach New Vegas, and start working with the larger, more powerful factions and subfactions and start making alliances that change the Wasteland.
I am entirely sure there's about 1000% more world building and story. During one play session, I just *talked* to the various NPCs of Camp Hope including Chief Hanlon. It took me well over an hour.
I can't recall a conversation in 4' main story that took more than five minutes.
New Vegas is so damn good.
Hot take: I blame the mod community for NV and 3 for the more shootery direction of Fallout 4. In the top 10 all-time files in 3 and NV, after your Unofficial Patches and whatnot, are major combat overhauls (FWE, Project Nevada) that make the game more in the vein of a tactical shooter. And in particular, New Vegas seemed full of tacticool SWAT/Special Ops/Rainbow 6-esque guns and gear mods, to the point where entire communities formed specifically around ripping assets out of other tactical combat games for use in New Vegas. It would be silly of Bethesda NOT to look at the Nexus and see what the community seems to want in their games.
Fallout 4 is a shooter with RPG elements.
So something that a lot of people tend to overlook is that Black Isle had a pretty grounded take on guns for a sci-fi game in the first two Fallout games. The descriptions of a lot of the weapons reference real life gun manufacturers for their made up weapons (e.g the plasma pistol was made by Glock), some guns had different ammo types, many Fallout 2 weapons were experimental real world weapons (e.g. the Pancor Jackhammer shotgun of which there were only about 12 made IRL) or well historied ones (e.g. the FN FAL prevalent among Europe's armed forces for a time post WW2). I suspect that the prevalence of the 10mm pistols were due to Fallout 1 being made at a time law enforcement signaled wanting to move to using 10mm pistols after the FBI concluded existing 9mm and .38 special sidearms were underpowered after the disastrous Miami FBI shootout. The Fallout 1 manual had a short but detailed description of the differences between standard FMJ ammo, hollow point bullets, and armor piercing ammo (which is how teenage me first learned about them). The designers did a lot of work on the guns to make them believable so it's not surprising that Obsidian did some similar work in New Vegas. It's a level of detail the vast majority of gamers will never really appreciate but it does a lot to make the setting feel more real for people with the background knowledge. It's a big contrast with Fallout 4's love of pipe guns everywhere including prewar caches.
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3DS: 3454-0268-5595 Battle.net: SteelAngel#1772
I don't disagree on any particular point. Obsidian's weapons and weapon mod mechanics show a real attention to detail and a far more grounded take than Bethesda has shown interest in going. I'm just saying that the mod communities clearly were all in on turning the Fallout series into a shooter long before Bethesda followed down that path. I think they were just going with what the community seemed to want (and attitudes among mod communities for Fallout 4 seem to seem to back this up, based on anecdotal evidence from me lurking in mod discords). Which isn't to say I agree with the direction at all.
I'm not disagreeing with this. I also think that 4 works better for the first person perspective they have chosen to go with. If you're going to be looking at the game over the barrel of the gun you always have out I would prefer to actually be able to aim and shoot it myself.
To be fair, it would probably take over an hour to seek out and fully talk to everyone in Diamond City.
But that's the main hub of the game and nowhere else really has anything on that level. New Vegas was so good in that respect.
Also, y'know, letting your skills actually influence the way some discussions would go? Instead of Fallout 4 where almost the only point of charisma was to shake down people for more money as they get angrier and angrier at your demands only to go back to their former attitude as soon as the speech checks are over.