Fallout Fallout 4 Thread

[Inconceivable]

Is there a mod that drastically reduces the number of X-01 suits in the game? Like, limits it to 1?
I really don't like that Advanced Power Armor suits are just littering the wasteland. That's the problem with Fallout 4 really, there's no real care put into it, Beth just did whatever they wanted in an attempt to appeal to the fortnite demographic with immediate gratification. The Advanced Power Armor is an iconic suit of power armor from Fallout 2, much like how the T-51 is an iconic suit of the whole fallout series. It should not be a leveled loot option.
I mean for fucks sake, even Fallout 3 did it better by making the T-51 a special suit of which you could find only two in the game, and the second one is from a DLC. Fallout New Vegas also did it right by making the APA super rare and hard to find. Finding those suits meant something.

In Fallout 4 it's like "well, there's my fourth X-01 sitting out in the middle of nowhere with no sign of Enclave presence. Another one for the collection I guess".
Shits lame man, it's as if Bethesda no longer understands the concept of rare loot.

Here's what you're looking for, I hope.
https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/33094

Isn't the problem already with the T-51? It's been a while since I played F4, but I think I only found an X-01 pretty late into the game, whereas I always hated the fact that the game puts you in a T-51 within the first 10 minutes of gameplay. And these suits are literally spread all over the wasteland.
I guess it's not inconceivable that you would find such a suit in a crashed chopper, but still disappointing to be given so much power early on, from a game-design perspective.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

I guess it's not inconceivable

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

Is there a mod that drastically reduces the number of X-01 suits in the game? Like, limits it to 1?
I really don't like that Advanced Power Armor suits are just littering the wasteland. That's the problem with Fallout 4 really, there's no real care put into it, Beth just did whatever they wanted in an attempt to appeal to the fortnite demographic with immediate gratification. The Advanced Power Armor is an iconic suit of power armor from Fallout 2, much like how the T-51 is an iconic suit of the whole fallout series. It should not be a leveled loot option.
I mean for fucks sake, even Fallout 3 did it better by making the T-51 a special suit of which you could find only two in the game, and the second one is from a DLC. Fallout New Vegas also did it right by making the APA super rare and hard to find. Finding those suits meant something.

In Fallout 4 it's like "well, there's my fourth X-01 sitting out in the middle of nowhere with no sign of Enclave presence. Another one for the collection I guess".
Shits lame man, it's as if Bethesda no longer understands the concept of rare loot.

Here's what you're looking for, I hope.
https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/33094

Isn't the problem already with the T-51? It's been a while since I played F4, but I think I only found an X-01 pretty late into the game, whereas I always hated the fact that the game puts you in a T-51 within the first 10 minutes of gameplay. And these suits are literally spread all over the wasteland.
I guess it's not inconceivable that you would find such a suit in a crashed chopper, but still disappointing to be given so much power early on, from a game-design perspective.

Pretty sure the PA in concord is a T-45

 

[unseeingeye]

My feelings on Fallout 4 are conflicted, very much so and possibly more so than any other game I've ever played. It is both excellent and abysmal simultaneously, but ultimately I'm afraid that in its vanilla state the negative aspects overwhelm its potential. With certain mods it can be turned into a decent survival horror sort of game, by which the engaging features of scavenging and survival (similar to Stalker) are emphasized, the game becomes thoroughly enjoyable, even fantastic.. in a sense. There is no comprehensive order to the games many parts, nor thematic cohesiveness; rather, it as if it is multiple mini-games poorly amalgamed into an unrecognizable simulacrum of genuine artifacts, a cacophony of development ideas competing for precedence.

The environmental design is often at odds with itself but is occasionally brilliant, for instance encountering the Glowing Sea for the first time does stand out as among the truly memorable experiences I've had with the series and is surpassed only by the first approach to The Glow (which is mostly reliant on the imagination and visionary capacity of the player). The scorched earth and desolated horror of The Glow is however superior for me, because it emphasizes the fear one ought naturally feel at the approach to any dungeon and then intensifies it further by requiring a direct descent into a gaping subterranean chasm emanating invisible plumes of irradiated air sending your Geiger counter into a frenzy. Fallout 4 attempts to recreate this scenario by putting the "town" of the Children of Atom at the heart of blast crater, yet it ends up being even more mundane and uneventful than running the bases at Diamond City, with the inhabitants merely repeating less lines than even guards. The Far Harbor DLC rectifies this and is indeed the games saving grace as you are finally able to meaningfully interact with the atom cult - admittedly it is hardly as interesting as I'd initially hoped, but at least the possibility was implemented. Just imagine what could have been made of those half-submerged auto repair shops, factories and malls? Instead, if you are even able to enter them, they are two or three room affairs with a crab to shoot and maybe a terminal to read. The denuded and gnarled trees growing away from the impact zone is probably the best feature of it, with the way in which the environment visibly transforms as you approach to where the soil becomes a nutrient deprived barren waste resembling cracked clay and the sky shifts as the winds from the perpetual rad-storm pick up.

Besides the Glowing Sea and the northwest areas of the map, only Boston itself is really enjoyable to explore, despite the fact that it is primarily comprised of shooting or hitting the same three or four enemies repeatedly, but the verticality of the dungeon design in center city is remarkable, the hospital in particular stands out and especially if you navigate to the exposed upper levels and climb out onto the skyway. There are a few interesting areas that are sincerely enjoyable to explore for its own sake, which is a prerequisite because otherwise there is next to nothing to entice the player to pursue further. Once you realize that, unlike New Vegas for instance, there are almost no truly unique items, that loot is drawn from an index of randomly generated affixes and suffixes which with few exceptions generate hardly any impactful variables, and that the classic Bethesda artifacts are likewise uniquely named and retextured variants of the base items, the incentive to explore would otherwise be extinguished.

The settlement and crafting systems are major distractions, but can be indulged with mild enthusiasm if that kind of thing appeals to you, and I wouldn't criticize it so harshly if it weren't for the knowledge that so much time and resources were poured into making this a functional element within the game could have been poured into writing a better main quest, broadening the variety of side quests, and enriching the narrative dimensions of the many NPCs who walk instead walk around in circles repeating two or three lines. Then there are things like the levelling system and perks, that barely even maintain a facade of specialized build development. It very quickly becomes meaningless which choices you make on the path of building a role because, like Skyrim there is only one role and the consequences of specialization are hardly noticeable because, to quote Dostoevsky, "everything is permitted". There is no bifurcation or indeed true specialization of any kind in allocating perk points, every option is simply a matter of "when" as opposed to "why" thus there is no agonizing over the expenditure of a rare resource.

But, as others have said, the shooting is fun, and the atmosphere is in certain instances incredible, even occasionally awesome. It is worth playing but not worth taking seriously, and in my opinion does not measure up in any way to the original games. Playing Might & Magic - World of Xeen over the weekend I was reminded of how engrossing RPGs can be as I began playing somewhere around 22:00 and the next thing I knew the sun had already risen. That sense of meaningful development wedded to engaging combat and exploration is what Fallout 4 just does not have, which would have been fine given that it does have merit elsewhere, had it not gone wrong on so many other fronts, and especially so with the Brotherhood of Steel. Beyond the first week or two of the games release, during which time I did play the game to completion (and my God, what a joke..), and the introduction of the major DLCs, I've not been able to revisit it for more than a few hours at time and haven't picked it up in probably 2 years. Yet I replay Fallout and Fallout 2 annually at the least and continue to find myself attracted to them. Nuka World was a microcosm of the base game - an awesome idea mired in subpar writing, where the main quest is antithetical to the entire vision of the rest of the narrative yielding a jarring incongruity by its total values inversion - while Far Harbor proved to be the highlight overall. So long as one avoids speaking with Queston and Mama Murphy, there is fun to be had, but it is frequently interrupted by staggering lapses of creativity.

 

[Ravielsk]

Fallout 4 is great and horrible in the exact same way as any other Bethesda game post Morrowind. Its a "game" whose systems were made to support a 10-20 hour experience stretched out onto 100+ hour game. Same as Skyrim, Oblivion or Fallout 3 its great at the beginning and seems so much bigger than it really is. The crafting, the gun play, settlements, factions, the institute, THE PERKS... it all seems so big and and expansive for the first few hours. But then you hit something like level 30 and realize that as a character you barely progressed because half the perks have no or little effect compared to the impact of level scaling. The settlements turn out to be a answer to a problem that does not exist and are blatantly unfinished on top of that(the generators for example go from random junk generators straight to your own mini-nuclear powerplant, almost like there were supposed to be several more tiers of generators that were simply cut). You realize that the game has like 3 guns in total but with different attachments so there is effectively nothing to discover in the world outside of minor stat buffs. The factions turn out to be just radiant quest dispensers with no real purpose outside of that. And the institute turns out to be another FO3 enclave only now wearing white instead of black.

The systems and the story are simply not made for a long form RPG but for a quick singleplayer shooter. In a way it feels like a beta for a different game where Bethesda just threw together every possible concept and idea but never bothered to connect them into anything meaningful. Like for example they add in a "survival" difficulty where you need to eat, drink and sleep but they did not bother to code in a canteen(like in NV) and bottles can only be filled with water once, then they just vanish. They added in the ability to manufacture ammo and weapons but for some reason omitted the option to manufacture energy weapon ammo. There just so many basic and absolutely primitive oversights all over the game that I have to wonder whether its intentional or not because I simply cannot image anyone working on this and going "yup, this looks fine" as programmed a world enemy HP scaling equation that works mainly off of player level in game where half the perks are non-combat perks.

It just does not feel complete in any sense of the word.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

The Institute are more like the bastard offspring between House and Think Tank, but yeah they aren't great.
There's an interesting concept somewhere there, but it's mired by terrible writing and execution. They should not have been a major faction that you could join, especially not as the boss.

Survival would have been great if they didn't get rid of Fast Travel and manual saving.
I should not have to use save points (which are bloody hard to find because beds tend to blend in with the environment) in a game where it take bloody ages to walk anywhere and death can happen swiftly.
Stalker Anomaly had the decency to give the option of using save points and that game world is a lot smaller (and arguably lot more brutal) than Fallout 4's.
The implementation of survival mode in Fallout 4 was terrible and designed to cater to masochists with too much time on their hands.

That's how you can sum up FO4, really - nice concepts, shitty execution that failed to use what previous installments offered and doesn't even have the mechanics that makes Fallout Fallout.
For fucks sake, even Tactics didn't throw perks, traits and stats out the window. Even Fallout 3 kept it.
If it were a title from a small studio (like say Cradle Game's Hellpoint) I could forgive that but not a title from a AAA studio who charges 60 USD for it.

 

[unseeingeye]

At this point I wish they wouldn't even bother with the main quest narrative at all, because they clearly are incapable of writing one and their writing 'talent' certainly doesn't appear to be going away any time soon.

The first original Fallout game had an end-game boss, and it turned out to be one of the most fascinating, repulsive monstrous entities to ever appear in the medium. Do we really need to keep rehashing the Heroes Journey over, and over again? They acknowledge their games as sandboxes, so why not put the resources there and there alone? Its a rhetorical question, of course. "It was us, all along" is the moral of every Fallout game from 3 on and rest assured will continue to be.

 

[Valdetiosi]

I don't find enjoyment with Fallout 4. Lot of shit it has to offer feels like eating cereals you left on your bowl for half an hour. All soggy, no crunch.
How hard it would had been for Fallout 4 to not come with level scaling, actual levels (instead of you leveling up to triple digits), ammo variations (could have literally copied from New Vegas) or you know, now that they ditched skills in favor of specials, special checks other than charisma?

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

At this point I wish they wouldn't even bother with the main quest narrative at all, because they clearly are incapable of writing one and their writing 'talent' certainly doesn't appear to be going away any time soon.

The first original Fallout game had an end-game boss, and it turned out to be one of the most fascinating, repulsive monstrous entities to ever appear in the medium. Do we really need to keep rehashing the Heroes Journey over, and over again? They acknowledge their games as sandboxes, so why not put the resources there and there alone? Its a rhetorical question, of course. "It was us, all along" is the moral of every Fallout game from 3 on and rest assured will continue to be.

I'm kind of divided on this.
On one hand I get bored really easily with the open world free play system where you just aimlessly wander around like a hobo shooting things, and Fallout is supposed to have some sort of narrative.
But on the other hand Bethesda can't write worth shit.
I guess it could work if it were a system where there is an over-arching plot, you just have the freedom to do as you will without worrying about forced scripted nonsense (Think Stalker, Dark Souls or to a certain extent New Vegas), but the Fallout 76 /WoW way of doing things doesn't really appeal to me, especially not in a Fallout game.

 

[unseeingeye]

At this point I wish they wouldn't even bother with the main quest narrative at all, because they clearly are incapable of writing one and their writing 'talent' certainly doesn't appear to be going away any time soon.

The first original Fallout game had an end-game boss, and it turned out to be one of the most fascinating, repulsive monstrous entities to ever appear in the medium. Do we really need to keep rehashing the Heroes Journey over, and over again? They acknowledge their games as sandboxes, so why not put the resources there and there alone? Its a rhetorical question, of course. "It was us, all along" is the moral of every Fallout game from 3 on and rest assured will continue to be.

I'm kind of divided on this.
On one hand I get bored really easily with the open world free play system where you just aimlessly wander around like a hobo shooting things, and Fallout is supposed to have some sort of narrative.
But on the other hand Bethesda can't write worth shit.
I guess it could work if it were a system where there is an over-arching plot, you just have the freedom to do as you will without worrying about forced scripted nonsense, but the Fallout 76 way of doing things doesn't really appeal to me, especially not in a Fallout game.

I suppose I didn't anticipate the correlation of having no main quest to Fallout 76 and "make your own fun", but I tend to ignore the fact that the game even exists, so my apologies. I meant something akin to the scenario you described in your final sentence, or even just a loose association of side-quests, but without the forced impetus of designing a single obstacle to be overcome in the form of a villain around which every other facet of the game is forced into orbit. That Fallout is supposed to have narrative I absolutely agree, it is the essence of those early games. I just do not believe that Fallout will ever see greatness again because I don't think Bethesda is capable of hiring talent with the competence to do so, never mind how abhorrent the humor and temperament of the originals games are to the current generations ur-culture. The things that worked best in Fallout 4 are the only thing Bethesda has ever excelled at, so for me I'm at the point where I'd rather they focus there and drop even the pretense of having Fathers and Sons like a Turgenev novel.

 

[Inconceivable]

My feelings on Fallout 4 are conflicted, very much so and possibly more so than any other game I've ever played. It is both excellent and abysmal simultaneously...

Fallout 4 is a great game, like Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim, Fallout 3 and NV. Yeah, not afraid to say it.

The problem is that nostalgia runs strong in the RPG Codex crowd, and the way to distinguish yourself as Codex-Royalty is by shitting on "lesser" mainstream games as much as possible.
Is it a perfect game? Hell no. Some of the plot is really uninspired and just plain sucks. The base building was extremely wonky and practically unusable at release. But I'm able to see the complete package. It's a very satisfying blend of FPS and RPG that gives you a lot of freedoms to explore and play the game at your own pace, in your own style, which is what RPG gaming is all about.

But here you will only hear the high praises of the original Fallouts, as if those games were not buggy, completely unbalanced and had shit combat with a host of other issues.

 

[Gargaune]

Survival would have been great if they didn't get rid of Fast Travel and manual saving.
I should not have to use save points (which are bloody hard to find because beds tend to blend in with the environment) in a game where it take bloody ages to walk anywhere and death can happen swiftly.
Stalker Anomaly had the decency to give the option of using save points and that game world is a lot smaller (and arguably lot more brutal) than Fallout 4's.
The implementation of survival mode in Fallout 4 was terrible and designed to cater to masochists with too much time on their hands.

Restricting travel and saving in a Bethesda Game was downright idiotic, but even if you mod them back in, Survival Mode suffers due to excessive granularity and high event frequency. You've got a million different consumables cluttering up your inventory and, in lockstep with the game's fast time frame, you're constantly nursing some need or other. It's like Todd's crew looked to the most obsessive-compulsive mods for Skyrim for inspiration. Instead, they should've streamlined the framework and baked it into the default game experience like STALKER did.

On top of that, you've also got the usual negligence compounding frustration - e.g. one unit of water only reduces half a level of thirst, high thirst will have you sit there watching your character pump for thirty real seconds from an infinite water source, your metabolism keeps ticking in Workshop mode etc.

That's how you can sum up FO4, really - nice concepts, shitty execution that failed to use what previous installments offered and doesn't even have the mechanics that makes Fallout Fallout.

This is the thing about Fallout 4 in general, there's plenty of cool ideas in there, but most of them are hamstrung in execution by the design philosophy of "close enough." So much of the game's friction points to a lack of iteration and polish.

The settlement and crafting systems are major distractions, but can be indulged with mild enthusiasm if that kind of thing appeals to you, and I wouldn't criticize it so harshly if it weren't for the knowledge that so much time and resources were poured into making this a functional element within the game could have been poured into writing a better main quest, broadening the variety of side quests, and enriching the narrative dimensions of the many NPCs who walk instead walk around in circles repeating two or three lines.

I agree with most everything you wrote, though I'm not sure about this point in particular. If I recall correctly, settlements were an experimental design that only barely made the cut, and given the rough nature of its interfaces I suspect reallocating those resources wouldn't have made a huge difference to the rest of the game. If anything, I think the game would've benefitted if that aspect got a bit more attention - I enjoy building settlements up, I suspect it feeds into a childhood memory of playing with Lego, but it all sorta falls apart with the realisation it's ultimately pointless. There's no real interplay between settlements and the rest of the game, beyond a couple of topical quest nodes and more busywork "activities." You don't even get the benefits of a shared stash without mods.

Fallout 4 is a great game, like Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim, Fallout 3 and NV. Yeah, not afraid to say it.

I just can't stamp "great" on it and it's strange, it's not even a case of there being a middle ground between "great" and "shit." I enjoy Fallout 4, I enjoy it a damn lot modded, but it's obvious that there's a ton that's broken about it. There's a ton that's annoying about it. It's kinda like hard liquor, I enjoy that too but I know it's gonna have my head throbbing in due course.

 

[unseeingeye]

My feelings on Fallout 4 are conflicted, very much so and possibly more so than any other game I've ever played. It is both excellent and abysmal simultaneously...

Fallout 4 is a great game, like Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim, Fallout 3 and NV. Yeah, not afraid to say it.

The problem is that nostalgia runs strong in the RPG Codex crowd, and the way to distinguish yourself as Codex-Royalty is by shitting on "lesser" mainstream games as much as possible.
Is it a perfect game? Hell no. Some of the plot is really uninspired and just plain sucks. The base building was extremely wonky and practically unusable at release. But I'm able to see the complete package. It's a very satisfying blend of FPS and RPG that gives you a lot of freedoms to explore and play the game at your own pace, in your own style, which is what RPG gaming is all about.

But here you will only hear the high praises of the original Fallouts, as if those games were not buggy, completely unbalanced and had shit combat with a host of other issues.

The game has great aspects, but I do not view it overall as a great game; my feelings towards Fallout 3 and Skyrim are even worse, much worse in fact. While it is impossible for me to consider the games without bias, I feel that I am able to put the majority of my baggage to the side when criticizing the Bethesda games. A great game to me is one in which the faults are minor nuisances, slightly cumbersome interface, perhaps incoherent lore, &c. but when they are so numerous that I lose count I just cannot regard the game so highly. Bugs and balancing are not issues that I at least brought up, nor do they typically factor into my estimation of a game unless they render it unplayable, but while I most certainly appreciate the systems design in a complex RPG, what primarily draws me to them are the aesthetics and the various creative interpretations of the tabletop experience as converted to computers for single players.

Fallout 4 meets almost none of this personal criteria and this only bothers me in light of the loss of what the series used to provide, although I've long since acclimated to acquiescence of the inevitable. It is a decent, but not great first person shooter game, and an alright crafting and settlement building game, but as far as roleplaying is concerned in relation to what came before it is hardly even recognizable. The freedom to explore and play the game at your own pace is nice, where that applies, but your own style is the same style as everybody else because it is only a singular affair. This invariability, aside from the grotesquery of the presentation and its relative brevity, was likewise my biggest grievance with The Outer Worlds. It doesn't matter if you develop your character to specialize in melee weapons, or energy weapons, or unarmed, or stealth, because every character is capable of every approach exactly as was the case in Skyrim, the differences are purely cosmetic and any negative modifier is easily compensated for.

For me, Fallout 4 necessitates mods to transform the game into something more enjoyable, while Fallout 3 outright requires it.
I regard Oblivion in a similar sense as I do Fallout 4, in that it has certain aspects that are fantastic, but its aesthetics are utterly atrocious and the main quest line is possibly the worst thing Bethesda has ever released; nothing can compare for me with the Oblivion Gates, the fact that they pop up all over the place and the ostensibly radiant AI NPCs simply continue to go on about their lives as if nothing was happening while the few comments you do actually hear concerning them would lead you to suspect that Tamriel was being overwhelmed with an outpouring of Daedra, yet when you approach a gate what you see is two, maybe three Daedra calmly walking around in circles within spitting distance of it. Oblivion has so many profoundly negative aspects (like the happy/sad dialogue "mini-game") but there is, somehow (probably because of Ken Rolston) a decent game beneath the surface, the exploration in it is actually enjoyable and the Knights of the Nine is one of the best DLC ideas which was unfortunately executed very poorly. I'm unaware of the general opinion here regarding the other DLC Shivering Isles, and I've been condemned numerous times for my opinion of it, but when I heard Michael Kirkbride on a video dismiss Shivering Isles as awful and the cohosts gasp in astonishment, it led me to appreciate his insights. That DLC is the most juvenile and puerile caricature of mental illness I've ever seen and I'll just leave it at that. Fallout 4 at least had decent DLC in Far Harbor. Anyway I'm rambling but wanted to clarify my position. My feelings on the game are schizophrenic, or perhaps manic, bipolar extremes between which reflect my confoundment. Like I said before, it is both excellent and abysmal, but neither consideration approximates to a uniform value. Some games are overwhelmingly great or terrible, but most require a more nuanced estimation and cannot be summarily pronounced as one or other without qualifications.

 

[Inconceivable]

The game has great aspects, but I do not view it overall as a great game; my feelings towards Fallout 3 and Skyrim are even worse, much worse in fact. While it is impossible for me to consider the games without bias, I feel that I am able to put the majority of my baggage to the side when criticizing the Bethesda games. A great game to me is one in which the faults are minor nuisances, slightly cumbersome interface, perhaps incoherent lore, &c. but when they are so numerous that I lose count I just cannot regard the game so highly. Bugs and balancing are not issues that I at least brought up, nor do they typically factor into my estimation of a game unless they render it unplayable, but while I most certainly appreciate the systems design in a complex RPG, what primarily draws me to them are the aesthetics and the various creative interpretations of the tabletop experience as converted to computers for single players.

Fallout 4 meets almost none of this personal criteria and this only bothers me in light of the loss of what the series used to provide, although I've long since acclimated to acquiescence of the inevitable. It is a decent, but not great first person shooter game, and an alright crafting and settlement building game, but as far as roleplaying is concerned in relation to what came before it is hardly even recognizable. The freedom to explore and play the game at your own pace is nice, where that applies, but your own style is the same style as everybody else because it is only a singular affair. This invariability, aside from the grotesquery of the presentation and its relative brevity, was likewise my biggest grievance with The Outer Worlds. It doesn't matter if you develop your character to specialize in melee weapons, or energy weapons, or unarmed, or stealth, because every character is capable of every approach exactly as was the case in Skyrim, the differences are purely cosmetic and any negative modifier is easily compensated for.

For me, Fallout 4 necessitates mods to transform the game into something more enjoyable, while Fallout 3 outright requires it.
I regard Oblivion in a similar sense as I do Fallout 4, in that it has certain aspects that are fantastic, but its aesthetics are utterly atrocious and the main quest line is possibly the worst thing Bethesda has ever released; nothing can compare for me with the Oblivion Gates, the fact that they pop up all over the place and the ostensibly radiant AI NPCs simply continue to go on about their lives as if nothing was happening while the few comments you do actually hear concerning them would lead you to suspect that Tamriel was being overwhelmed with an outpouring of Daedra, yet when you approach a gate what you see is two, maybe three Daedra calmly walking around in circles within spitting distance of it. Oblivion has so many profoundly negative aspects (like the happy/sad dialogue "mini-game") but there is, somehow (probably because of Ken Rolston) a decent game beneath the surface, the exploration in it is actually enjoyable and the Knights of the Nine is one of the best DLC ideas which was unfortunately executed very poorly. I'm unaware of the general opinion here regarding the other DLC Shivering Isles, and I've been condemned numerous times for my opinion of it, but when I heard Michael Kirkbride on a video dismiss Shivering Isles as awful and the cohosts gasp in astonishment, it led me to appreciate his insights. That DLC is the most juvenile and puerile caricature of mental illness I've ever seen and I'll just leave it at that. Fallout 4 at least had decent DLC in Far Harbor. Anyway I'm rambling but wanted to clarify my position. My feelings on the game are schizophrenic, or perhaps manic, bipolar extremes between which reflect my confoundment. Like I said before, it is both excellent and abysmal, but neither consideration approximates to a uniform value. Some games are overwhelmingly great or terrible, but most require a more nuanced estimation and cannot be summarily pronounced as one or other without qualifications.

I think what many people fail to realize is that game design, like many things in life, is about making trade-offs. Yeah, we all want the game with the freedom to explore everything and deep and meaningful crafting mechanics, and base building that has a point, and romance plots, and impactful choices, and NPCs that have unique character, and Dark Souls combat, and, and, and... But of course game companies are working on a budget and you have to either go deep and focus your attention into some key areas, or go wide and spread your attention thin.

The Witcher 3 is a game that goes deep in a few key areas: it focuses on plot, dialogue and the combat mechanics. In all other respects, it is a fairly simple game from a gameplay standpoint. Static scenery, almost no world interactivity, simple NPC's, no interesting item mechanics, etc.

Dark Souls is a game that goes even deeper and focuses almost entirely on the combat system.

Elder Scrolls are games that sacrifice depth for width. Many game mechanics are shallow - the plot, dialogue and combat is not as good as Witcher 3, combat mechanics are nowhere near as nuanced as Dark Souls, but ES has much more to offer in other areas that the other games completely lack. You can build/buy and decorate your house, almost every item you see is a real object you can manipulate, there are interesting item mechanics with enchantments and special abilities, NPCs have schedules and there are random encounters, and a varied magic system...
Naturally, a lot of the mechanics are mediocre compared to games that choose to focus on that mechanic, but the game is a sum of it parts, and personally I enjoy the variety and freedom Elder Scrolls game offer. Add mods to the mix to enable the community to greatly enhance some of the gameplay components, and you have a winning formula. I don't fault Bethesda for not being able to compete in every game mechanic with the best games in that area. It's ridiculous that people fault Bethesda for not creating a combat system as good as Dark Souls, or having a good plot like the Witcher, when ES has so much more to offer that the other games completely lack.

Having said that, it's totally acceptable for someone to say that they prefer depth over width. But those people should accept that Bethesda-style games are not for them and move on.

 

[Cpt. Dallas]

Wow. There's more text in the last two pages of this thread than there are in the entire game.

 

[Ravielsk]

I think what many people fail to realize is that game design, like many things in life, is about making trade-offs. Yeah, we all want the game with the freedom to explore everything and deep and meaningful crafting mechanics, and base building that has a point, and romance plots, and impactful choices, and NPCs that have unique character, and Dark Souls combat, and, and, and... But of course game companies are working on a budget and you have to either go deep and focus your attention into some key areas, or go wide and spread your attention thin.

This is a general truism that is never wrong but at the same time its an equally hollow statement. Like the sky being blue, water being a liquid or MCdonalds ice cream machine being broken its a fact that has literary no argument behind it. Just a factoid that is not wrong.

Elder Scrolls are games that sacrifice depth for width. Many game mechanics are shallow - the plot, dialogue and combat is not as good as Witcher 3, combat mechanics are nowhere near as nuanced as Dark Souls, but ES has much more to offer in other areas that the other games completely lack. You can build/buy and decorate your house, almost every item you see is a real object you can manipulate, there are interesting item mechanics with enchantments and special abilities, NPCs have schedules and there are random encounters, and a varied magic system...
Naturally, a lot of the mechanics are mediocre compared to games that choose to focus on that mechanic, but the game is a sum of it parts, and personally I enjoy the variety and freedom Elder Scrolls game offer. Add mods to the mix to enable the community to greatly enhance some of the gameplay components, and you have a winning formula. I don't fault Bethesda for not being able to compete in every game mechanic with the best games in that area. It's ridiculous that people fault Bethesda for not creating a combat system as good as Dark Souls, or having a good plot like the Witcher, when ES has so much more to offer that the other games completely lack.

The sum of shit is still shit. Bethesda has been progressively half-assing more and more elements in their games to a point where they managed to squeeze out FO76. A game so wide and so thin that its barely a game. Since the release of Morrowind all Todd did design wise is that he has managed to cut more and more features out of the games and replaced them with nothing. Nobody expected Skyrim to compete with Dark Souls or DMC in terms of combat mechanics but people did expect that after all the hype surrounding Todds "revolutionary" dual handing system that there would be ever so slightly more to it than just spamming left click.
Same with base building in FO4. People did not expect a competitor for SimCity they expected a gameplay feature that at least somehow "just works" its way back into the main game, yet it never does even remotely. The problem is not it being less than excellent. The problem is that its just quantifiably shit.

A fact made self evident by the existence of New Vegas. Where the only real change was that a competent developer took Bethesdas mess and cleaned up. NV is literary just a big FO3 mod yet it effectively eclipses it in every way possible, despite having a budget of an expansion and barely 18 months of dev time(realistically more like 15 if you consider pre-production).

The problems in Bethesda's games comes from many sources but budget or design concessions are not even remotely close to being the main ones.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

The game has great aspects, but I do not view it overall as a great game; my feelings towards Fallout 3 and Skyrim are even worse, much worse in fact. While it is impossible for me to consider the games without bias, I feel that I am able to put the majority of my baggage to the side when criticizing the Bethesda games. A great game to me is one in which the faults are minor nuisances, slightly cumbersome interface, perhaps incoherent lore, &c. but when they are so numerous that I lose count I just cannot regard the game so highly. Bugs and balancing are not issues that I at least brought up, nor do they typically factor into my estimation of a game unless they render it unplayable, but while I most certainly appreciate the systems design in a complex RPG, what primarily draws me to them are the aesthetics and the various creative interpretations of the tabletop experience as converted to computers for single players.

Fallout 4 meets almost none of this personal criteria and this only bothers me in light of the loss of what the series used to provide, although I've long since acclimated to acquiescence of the inevitable. It is a decent, but not great first person shooter game, and an alright crafting and settlement building game, but as far as roleplaying is concerned in relation to what came before it is hardly even recognizable. The freedom to explore and play the game at your own pace is nice, where that applies, but your own style is the same style as everybody else because it is only a singular affair. This invariability, aside from the grotesquery of the presentation and its relative brevity, was likewise my biggest grievance with The Outer Worlds. It doesn't matter if you develop your character to specialize in melee weapons, or energy weapons, or unarmed, or stealth, because every character is capable of every approach exactly as was the case in Skyrim, the differences are purely cosmetic and any negative modifier is easily compensated for.

For me, Fallout 4 necessitates mods to transform the game into something more enjoyable, while Fallout 3 outright requires it.
I regard Oblivion in a similar sense as I do Fallout 4, in that it has certain aspects that are fantastic, but its aesthetics are utterly atrocious and the main quest line is possibly the worst thing Bethesda has ever released; nothing can compare for me with the Oblivion Gates, the fact that they pop up all over the place and the ostensibly radiant AI NPCs simply continue to go on about their lives as if nothing was happening while the few comments you do actually hear concerning them would lead you to suspect that Tamriel was being overwhelmed with an outpouring of Daedra, yet when you approach a gate what you see is two, maybe three Daedra calmly walking around in circles within spitting distance of it. Oblivion has so many profoundly negative aspects (like the happy/sad dialogue "mini-game") but there is, somehow (probably because of Ken Rolston) a decent game beneath the surface, the exploration in it is actually enjoyable and the Knights of the Nine is one of the best DLC ideas which was unfortunately executed very poorly. I'm unaware of the general opinion here regarding the other DLC Shivering Isles, and I've been condemned numerous times for my opinion of it, but when I heard Michael Kirkbride on a video dismiss Shivering Isles as awful and the cohosts gasp in astonishment, it led me to appreciate his insights. That DLC is the most juvenile and puerile caricature of mental illness I've ever seen and I'll just leave it at that. Fallout 4 at least had decent DLC in Far Harbor. Anyway I'm rambling but wanted to clarify my position. My feelings on the game are schizophrenic, or perhaps manic, bipolar extremes between which reflect my confoundment. Like I said before, it is both excellent and abysmal, but neither consideration approximates to a uniform value. Some games are overwhelmingly great or terrible, but most require a more nuanced estimation and cannot be summarily pronounced as one or other without qualifications.

I think what many people fail to realize is that game design, like many things in life, is about making trade-offs. Yeah, we all want the game with the freedom to explore everything and deep and meaningful crafting mechanics, and base building that has a point, and romance plots, and impactful choices, and NPCs that have unique character, and Dark Souls combat, and, and, and... But of course game companies are working on a budget and you have to either go deep and focus your attention into some key areas, or go wide and spread your attention thin.

The Witcher 3 is a game that goes deep in a few key areas: it focuses on plot, dialogue and the combat mechanics. In all other respects, it is a fairly simple game from a gameplay standpoint. Static scenery, almost no world interactivity, simple NPC's, no interesting item mechanics, etc.

Dark Souls is a game that goes even deeper and focuses almost entirely on the combat system.

Elder Scrolls are games that sacrifice depth for width. Many game mechanics are shallow - the plot, dialogue and combat is not as good as Witcher 3, combat mechanics are nowhere near as nuanced as Dark Souls, but ES has much more to offer in other areas that the other games completely lack. You can build/buy and decorate your house, almost every item you see is a real object you can manipulate, there are interesting item mechanics with enchantments and special abilities, NPCs have schedules and there are random encounters, and a varied magic system...
Naturally, a lot of the mechanics are mediocre compared to games that choose to focus on that mechanic, but the game is a sum of it parts, and personally I enjoy the variety and freedom Elder Scrolls game offer. Add mods to the mix to enable the community to greatly enhance some of the gameplay components, and you have a winning formula. I don't fault Bethesda for not being able to compete in every game mechanic with the best games in that area. It's ridiculous that people fault Bethesda for not creating a combat system as good as Dark Souls, or having a good plot like the Witcher, when ES has so much more to offer that the other games completely lack.

Having said that, it's totally acceptable for someone to say that they prefer depth over width. But those people should accept that Bethesda-style games are not for them and move on.

Except even for a Bethesda game the level of quality is poor. Compared to earlier Bethesda games made with an inferior engine, Fallout 4 has a surprising dirth of mechanical complexity. Compare it to Fallout 3 and New Vegas, and barring the combat mechanics and "pretty" graphics you actually lost more than you gained.
You can build settlements, but are settlements worth losing weapon variety, skills, traits, karma, reputation, ammo crafting, weapon degradation, disguises, hit squads, a dialogue system that isn't crap, and being able to effectively command companions?

 

[Inconceivable]

You're not wrong. Some stuff has been dumbed down. Every time I encounter the rotating stones "puzzles" in Skyrim or see the quest marker pointing me exactly to the target, I hate the fact that many games (not just Bethesda) are more and more trending towards the lowest common denominator. This is why many "hardcore" gamers are flocking to indie RPGs like ATOM or Age of Decadence.

But I still think the underlying laws are trade-offs happening in the background. If a game costs tens of millions of dollars to make, and you have a company with hundreds of employees, you have serious obligations, and that makes you more risk-averse as a company. So yeah, we can have those huge, big AAA games, but the price to pay is that they will be dumbed down for the masses, to some degree.

Also, the arrow of quality is not always pointing consistently downward. Let's get real. Oblivion combat is complete shit compared to Skyrim, and Morrowind combat is complete shit compared to Oblivion. Graphics, animations and landscapes are obviously also always getting better... which IS a problem for the gameplay, because these aspects of AAA games keep swallowing a bigger and bigger share of the budget.

 

[Butter]

Having played both Skyrim and Oblivion recently, Oblivion's combat is actually better. They gussied it up in Skyrim with a killcam, but it's mechanically shallower and less engaging overall. Oblivion had more status effects, a host of buffing options with doomstones and potions of Fortify Strength, etc. Hand to hand was a viable combat style. You could cast spells without unequipping your shield/2-handed weapon, reducing time spent in a clumsy-ass menu. There was also a proper hotkey system.

 

[vibehunter]

Haven't played this in years, but I remember the factions killing it for me. I can't remember a single likable faction. I wanted to murder the Railroad and the Minutemen.

My fondest memory of the game were a couple Lovecraftian-esque quests, which I found to be pretty enjoyable.

 

[unseeingeye]

It may sound disingenuous but I actually do prefer the Morrowind approach to combat than that of either Oblivion or Skyrim, because it at least doesn't present itself as anything other than a first or third person view of sequenced dice rolling animations. It is understood from the outset that the animations do not accurately portray the intricacies of parrying, dodging, targeting precise parts of the body &c similar to how in Fallout 1 you can be a single hex away from a Deathclaw aiming a shotgun at the midsection through a called shot and entirely miss. Oblivion and Skyrim entirely removed this aspect and presents combat as if it were a fully responsive, engaging affair since you can control things like blocking, or dual wield but it utterly trivializes any sense of challenge which can only be derived from artificially inflating damage scores and hit points by a difficulty slider which is essentially a "how long should combat last" slider, because they implemented only a handful of possible actions for each creature and NPC. Fallout 4 does improve over the previous title and the past two Elder Scrolls games, not so much in melee and unarmed which remain dull but the firearms and heavier weapons like the rocket launcher are so much more enjoyable to use. The bolt action rifle, while being inaccurately designed, is fun to use against people and mutants and it is only a shame that the weapon variety is so pitiful relative to New Vegas, likewise the crafting system isn't nearly as comprehensive or diverse. One of the most enjoyable approaches to playing New Vegas for me is to rely on the Survival, Medicine and Science skills in hardcore mode and crafting useful apparatuses, cactus water, explosives, healing items &c. In Fallout 4 the junk is collected primarily to build settlements and modify the same handful of weapons with the same handful of attachments endlessly, so that unless you enjoy the settlement system it very quickly loses any appeal.

 

[Inconceivable]

It may sound disingenuous but I actually do prefer the Morrowind approach to combat than that of either Oblivion or Skyrim, because it at least doesn't present itself as anything other than a first or third person view of sequenced dice rolling animations. It is understood from the outset that the animations do not accurately portray the intricacies of parrying, dodging, targeting precise parts of the body &c similar to how in Fallout 1 you can be a single hex away from a Deathclaw aiming a shotgun at the midsection through a called shot and entirely miss. Oblivion and Skyrim entirely removed this aspect and presents combat as if it were a fully responsive, engaging affair since you can control things like blocking, or dual wield but it utterly trivializes any sense of challenge which can only be derived from artificially inflating damage scores and hit points by a difficulty slider which is essentially a "how long should combat last" slider, because they implemented only a handful of possible actions for each creature and NPC. Fallout 4 does improve over the previous title and the past two Elder Scrolls games, not so much in melee and unarmed which remain dull but the firearms and heavier weapons like the rocket launcher are so much more enjoyable to use. The bolt action rifle, while being inaccurately designed, is fun to use against people and mutants and it is only a shame that the weapon variety is so pitiful relative to New Vegas, likewise the crafting system isn't nearly as comprehensive or diverse. One of the most enjoyable approaches to playing New Vegas for me is to rely on the Survival, Medicine and Science skills in hardcore mode and crafting useful apparatuses, cactus water, explosives, healing items &c. In Fallout 4 the junk is collected primarily to build settlements and modify the same handful of weapons with the same handful of attachments endlessly, so that unless you enjoy the settlement system it very quickly loses any appeal.

Yeah, Skyrim combat could do with more nuance. Just having locational damage would already have been a huge leg up. But dice rolling is best reserved for top-down perspective. It just doesn't work for me at all in first person. Sometimes I get excited about replaying Morrowind, and then I remember about the combat and the cliff-racers. It's like self-inflicted torture to go through that.

It's of course much easier to do good first-person shooting mechanics than close-combat mechanics. This becomes hugely evident in VR, where Skyrim/F4 shooting feels good, whereas the close combat is even worse.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

It's of course much easier to do good first-person shooting mechanics than close-combat mechanics.

I really doubt that it's possible to do close combat in a mixed tactics rpg well. You either go beat 'em up style or dueling style and neither would fit in an rpg smoothly, I think.

 

[unseeingeye]

Yeah, Skyrim combat could do with more nuance. Just having locational damage would already have been a huge leg up. But dice rolling is best reserved for top-down perspective. It just doesn't work for me at all in first person. Sometimes I get excited about replaying Morrowind, and then I remember about the combat and the cliff-racers. It's like self-inflicted torture to go through that.

It's of course much easier to do good first-person shooting mechanics than close-combat mechanics. This becomes hugely evident in VR, where Skyrim/F4 shooting feels good, whereas the close combat is even worse.

It's certainly not a popular opinion of mine, and I fully understand why it doesn't work for most people. I don't know why it appeals to me so much, but then I find that I enjoy pretty much all approaches to combat when implemented well, sort of like how great music can be found within any genre but the majority is always going to be market research driven popular appeal garbage. I can get as much enjoyment out of Morrowinds combat as I can from Baldur's Gate real time with pause, Fallout turned based hexes, Realms of Arkania isometric mode, Wizardry formless first person, Dungeon Master or Eye of the Beholder active first person or that of Might & Magic, the Tactics Ogre strategy tiles, and so on, while I can think of many more games which uses these same designs that for me are just awful. Fallout 4 even uses a style that I normally have very little interest in comparatively, that of first person or third person shooters. The games which fall under that category tend to only hold my interest for brief periods; it is a rare exception that I get really pulled into such a game with enthusiasm. But yea I would imagine that it is easier to design shooting mechanics and animations than those for close combat, I don't know this from experience or anything but it does appear to me as an outsider to be the case. Take Kingdom Come Deliverance for example, the combat is a rewarding experience at which you and your character begin to excel at with practice over time, but so many people complained about it and dismissed it as obtuse in the early days of its release.

 

[Fenix]

It may sound disingenuous but I actually do prefer the Morrowind approach to combat than that of either Oblivion or Skyrim, because it at least doesn't present itself as anything other than a first or third person view of sequenced dice rolling animations. It is understood from the outset that the animations do not accurately portray the intricacies of parrying, dodging, targeting precise parts of the body &c similar to how in Fallout 1 you can be a single hex away from a Deathclaw aiming a shotgun at the midsection through a called shot and entirely miss. Oblivion and Skyrim entirely removed this aspect and presents combat as if it were a fully responsive, engaging affair since you can control things like blocking, or dual wield but it utterly trivializes any sense of challenge which can only be derived from artificially inflating damage scores and hit points by a difficulty slider which is essentially a "how long should combat last" slider, because they implemented only a handful of possible actions for each creature and NPC. Fallout 4 does improve over the previous title and the past two Elder Scrolls games, not so much in melee and unarmed which remain dull but the firearms and heavier weapons like the rocket launcher are so much more enjoyable to use. The bolt action rifle, while being inaccurately designed, is fun to use against people and mutants and it is only a shame that the weapon variety is so pitiful relative to New Vegas, likewise the crafting system isn't nearly as comprehensive or diverse. One of the most enjoyable approaches to playing New Vegas for me is to rely on the Survival, Medicine and Science skills in hardcore mode and crafting useful apparatuses, cactus water, explosives, healing items &c. In Fallout 4 the junk is collected primarily to build settlements and modify the same handful of weapons with the same handful of attachments endlessly, so that unless you enjoy the settlement system it very quickly loses any appeal.

Jut try out Horizon.