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Comment count is 52
EvilHomer - 2015-11-11

So, how is Fallout 4? I have not played it yet. Metacritic Users are tearing it (and each other) to shreds.

P.S. In regards to the video itself, if you want to skip the character creation and get right to the action, timestamp is 26:36. The rest of the stream can be found on Rich and Moby's channel.


StanleyPain - 2015-11-11

I've played it for about 5 hours. My honest impressions as someone who was really, really looking forward to this:

It's a bit disappointing on a few levels.

1. It has technical problems that are utterly inexcusable in a title with this budget and dev time. Yeah, the Gamebryo glitches were funny the first 100 times...the frame rate issues, stuttering, draw-in, lighting glitches, etc, are all getting really old.

2. The combat has been changed for the worse. Manual aiming is the best it has ever been in a Fallout game, but it's still not on the level of Destiny or whatever (which is a claim Bethesda literally made). VATS now no longer stops time, just slows it which means while you're trying to maximize your crits and such, you are getting your face shot off and/or eaten off.

3. The armor and weapons have been changed a lot. You no longer have to repair anything, but upgrading the overall quality of something is way more labor intensive and involves a shoe-horned in Skyrim-esque craft table system that just grinds the pace of the game to an absolute halt. All of the useless crap from previous games now actually has purpose as supplies for crafting, but you can't dismantle it in your inventory. Instead you have to go a crafting location, dump all your shit there, and your junk does not share between locations so when you want to build thing or whatever at a different crating location, you need to haul it all over to that one.

4. Playing into 3, the new storage UI where you are simply told what's in a container without having opening it is nice and fast, BUT...unfortunately it means no item stats are told to you unless you pick up things then look at them in your inventory, so judging what weapons/armor are better than what you have can sometimes be really annoying since stats can vary sometimes.

5. Companions have not been remotely improved since New Vegas. They cannot die, but just like in NV all they do is literally stumble into every combat situation and aggro everything everywhere. They also take up physical space, so you cannot walk or shoot through them which becomes a pretty signifcant issue when you are in combat in closed spaces.

6. The leveling is...wonky. Unles previous games where you get 1 special point every few levels and then 1 perk point, now you get 1 point that can either be spent on a perk OR you can spend the point to raise one of your core special stats.

I am not saying the game is shit, especially since I haven't played it much, but it noticeably lacking some of the feel of FO3/NV and it has a really, really weird feeling unlike, say, Skyrim, that Bethesda wasn't completely done with it.


StanleyPain - 2015-11-11

Oh yeah..and the new Mass Effect style conversation system is really weird and distracting and feels very strange. This, in tandem with the weird storyline for this game (you are from the pre-war era, yet don't even blink an eye about wandering out into the wasteland and murdering everything imaginable), makes from conversations that progress in unusual ways that do not telegraph what the reactions will be (like previous FO games telling you which dialog did what)


SolRo - 2015-11-11

Well in FO3 you were a sheltered vault baby and suddenly started murdering everything with or without a pulse.


infinite zest - 2015-11-11

The last couple of days I've been on facebook it was a series of disappointment going from "I'm really excited for FO4" to "FO4 freezes on loading screen" and then a joke comment like "Goodbyyyyyyye." And that'd be somewhat acceptable if it was the PC version; I never played a PC game without a glitch of some sort, playing some perfect game that always runs smoothly is about as likely as some panacea that cures you no matter what you have, be it a cold or terminal illness. But this was the console version, which is tested on the same goddamn machine!


Sexy Duck Cop - 2015-11-11

PoETV's opinion will be contingent upon how popular it is. If it turns out to be awesome, expect a ton of instant, eye-rolling backlash.

Me? I haven't played it but I already want to fuck the BluRay.


Meerkat - 2015-11-11

Pretty much everything Stanley said. I have a high-end machine these days so performance is smooth, but still get weird things like dead guys floating 200 feet up in the air or the Dog claiming it found a treasure and looking at the sky like there's an invisible chest floating 20 feet up.

But then my neighbour's dog spends a lot of time barking at invisible creatures circling the house so maybe they see something we don't.

I can't say I'm underwhelmed, I mean ... it IS a Fallout game and is pretty much like Fallout 3 in the same way Fallout NV was like Fallout 3 but slightly different in some ways.

I find the inventory system jarring and keep reflexively hitting TAB to exit out of it, only to bring up the pip-boy. It would have been really nice to at least have an item better than what you're currently equipped with maybe have a star or plus sign or up arrow or some damn thing so you can take a closer look.

The fucking scrapping shit and building shit is idiotic. Seriously, is this some attempt to be realistic? My character has "powers" and can vaporize trucks and houses into their components at will and can call forth entire structures from the ether at will, so why the fuck can't I just drop a house on these stupid bandits like Fucking Dorothy?

Then you get to micromanage Settlers and set up Trade Routes and stuff, whee. Fucking whee. Just what I was looking for in a shooter.

Oh and when you're trying to sneak around the fucking dog runs around opening every door within 100 feet and barking its head off and standing behind you when you want to back away from bad guys.

I want to like this, it's pretty engrossing from a graphics and game world standpoint. The crafting shit just takes you out of the game and into a time wasting micromanagement sim. I don't know what they were thinking with this. I buy a house so I can store shit in it that I might need later in the game.

Like this one time in this fucking game I was in a dungeon and picked up some volcanic rock and it was like all the other volcanic rocks I had so I threw it in a random trash bin and later on in the game it turned out you needed to have ALL the fucking volcanic rocks. Man that was annoying.


Meerkat - 2015-11-11

The fucking volcanic rocks game was not Fallout, I was using "this" instead of "a" for some odd reason GODDAMMIT I NEED TO GO TO BED NOW


infinite zest - 2015-11-11

No more Nintendo until tomorrow!


Scrimmjob - 2015-11-11

Is there much point to the base building element? I looked at it for about 5 minutes, before deciding I'd rather be blowing up some shit.

Stanley is pretty spot on, one additional gripe is that they got rid of the tag skills, and the entire old skill system. It kinda feels like they just glommed together a bunch of features from other games, but didn't really manage to do anything groundbreaking.

With all that being said, the game is fun as hell, and I look forward to exploding many more skulls in slo mo.


infinite zest - 2015-11-12

I think it's like the outer heaven in MGSV. It's there, and your Punished Snake can have his own animal menagerie which is kinda cool but it's not essential or anything.


chumbucket - 2015-11-12

Anyone use the power armor in this game yet? I was told it was the kind of thing you can store somewhere and then, sometime prior to combat, fast travel to get it then fast travel back because non-fast travel with it on uses "fuel". That seems a bit of a wonky annoyance to players like me that don't like fast traveling everywhere. It also seems like a pain in the ass.


Gmork - 2015-11-12

Actually you can create supply lines that do allow you to link your workshops.


That guy - 2015-11-13

What Gmork said is true, but that by no means lessens StanleyPain's gripes #3 & #4.

Everything about the crafting and community building will grind your game to a halt, and is counterintuitive. Connecting the communities is for a semi-specialized character build.

I can recommend the game as good but not great.

I can't recommend it as a 'just start playing and figure it out as you go' game. They didn't make it right for that. Read the FAQs, buy the guide, etc. It's like it's made for excessive planning and reading on the front end.


jangbones - 2015-11-11

I enjoy being an Early Adopter.

However, I will not play Fallout 4 for at least six months.

Because Bethesda's bugs are bothersome.


Pillager - 2015-11-11

I'm holding out for the GOTY edition. Everyone else can beta test it.


Tough American Bouncer - 2015-11-12

Playing this before the mod tools seems crazy.


That guy - 2015-11-13

I'm not having bug problems to speak of. PS4


yogarfield - 2015-11-11

5 for heel


SolRo - 2015-11-11

I look forward to playing it a year from now.


infinite zest - 2015-11-11

Yeah I'm on the same page. By then one of the next gen systems should've dropped in price and I'm still having fun with MGSV and New Vegas on the ol' 360. Also I plan on winning the lottery this year.


SolRo - 2015-11-11

I'll just get it on the next steam xmas sale with all the DLC


EvilHomer - 2015-11-12

Torrenting it; I'll play it for a few hours, see how I like it. If it's good I'll buy it, if not, I'll uninstall and wait until some Russians crack the all-DLC Gold Edition.


Aelric - 2015-11-11

I am enjoying it on PC. Not a lot of time to play it due to work and other stuff, so only about 4 hours in and I restarted in that time to respec (as I tend to do in RPGs). I've seen some subtitle bugs and the occasional physics thing but nothing too bad so far. The graphics are a little out of date, which really makes me hope that they finally, FINALLY drop the old engine and design something new when the next elder scrolls come out.


Two Jar Slave - 2015-11-11

How long have they been using the same engine?


SolRo - 2015-11-11

Feels like since morrowind


EvilHomer - 2015-11-12

Yes, it's the Gamebryo engine; Morrowind used an early version of it, and most of Bethesda's games since then (including F3 and NV) have more or less used Oblivion's version of the engine, which included such advanced features as Singular Inversion's FaceGen.

Skyrim and Fallout 4 both use the same engine, which Bethesda calls the "Creation Engine" - it's still Gamebryo, but it's been tweaked for Bethesda's needs. I actually don't mind the two decade old engine, because I love modding/ console hacking, and at this point everyone on the Nexus is super-familiar with how it works.


Two Jar Slave - 2015-11-12

I guess this shows I don't really know what an engine is. Obviously, Skyrim looks and plays much better than Morrowind. So, what fundamental systems are still in place, and are they impeding progress? Like, physics and stuff?


EvilHomer - 2015-11-12

It's basically a set of developer tools which provide shortcuts for game designers. I don't know much about the technical side of it, but I'm sure some of poeTV's resident computer programmers could explain things!


Raggamuffin - 2015-11-12

It's a basically a collection of all or most of tools you're going to need to make a game. Different engines are going to have different built-in features depending on need, but your engine will have for example all the code built in to tell the computer how to render graphics, AI stuff, scripting tools, and so on. It's all highly customizable, and you're generally going to see ways to plug in other technologies depending on need.


Bootymarch - 2015-11-12

Didn't you like Dragon Age 3 though Aelric?


Aelric - 2015-11-12

Dragon Age 3 was ok. Fun but still pretty far from the greatness of the first Dragon Age game.

The Witcher 3 was my most recent game worth gushing over, before that it had been a long time before I really had been blown away by an RPG like that.

To answer Two Jar Slave's question, one fundamental thing I rather dislike about the gamebyro engine is the animation. It's all fits and starts and freakouts. It's capable of smoother animations if the effort is put in, but since it's often used for these big sandboxes, animation falls to the wayside.

I've actually been feeling that animation is where the focus for graphics should be. Games like Tomb Raider and The Witcher 3 are mostly great, use real world cinematography instead of the standard Bioware/Bethesda two-camera shoot style (see the Plinket review of Revenge of the Sith for a breakdown on that technique) all through their attention to the movement instead of just the granular textures. Realistic animations even made super old games like Flashback still look sorta good (it Flashback's case through rotoscoping).

TL;DR Gamebryo don't animate well. DA3 was ok but not great. Play Witcher 3.


Bootymarch - 2015-11-12

Im about 6 hours in. What Stanleypain said, except I like how vats is quicker now. Everything they've changed besides that is for the worse: terrible leveling and crafting system that makes no sense (I have just put most of my points into s.p.e.c.I.a.l), ugly ui, what seems like an attempt to biowareize it with the story...I wouldn't call it a total dsappointment because I knew they were using the same engine, but I was just paying the lost alpha mod for stalker before this and I'm gonna go back to that till modders do their thing with.


Bus_Aint_Comin - 2015-11-12

i played the fuck out of f3 & f:nv and i am enjoying the living daylights out of f4. but it feels different. not like HEY CROW SEEMS DIFFERENT but more like... idunno... a replicant? but i am really digging it.

i like crafting! i'm buildin' guns! wheeee!


Cena_mark - 2015-11-12

I've never played a fall out game, but I hope this helps expand the Fallout Equestria series. It feels like it should be a few thousand pages longer.


Scrotum H. Vainglorious - 2015-11-12

Fallout 3.5 with lots of bugs and a horrible UI.


StanleyPain - 2015-11-12

So, now that I'm about 18 hours in, my views have mellowed a bit. I still think there are issues (and the technical stuff is just embarrassing) but basically once you get into the groove it's pretty good. So, I was unfair about the whole inventory thing. I still think there could be improvements, but you CAN actually see whether a piece of equipment is better or worse in your inventory, you just have to pick things up (or go into storage mode at a container) to see it.

A lot of people are complaining that a ton of things in the game cannot be scrapped unless you drop them on the ground and then manually scrap them with the workshop interface, but this is not actually the case. Anything stored in your workshop (i.e. using the bench interface and NOT a storage container) automatically is consumed as scrap when it is needed. So...obviously be VERY FUCKING CAREFUL what you put in your workshop storage. If you want something stored for later use, put it in a container NOT your workshop storage.

I still think making VATS faster is dumb as shit as it totally ruins the entire point of VATS. Yes, it makes you react faster and puts more tension into combat, but I still think it's a bit off, especially now that all the enemies are MUCH faster (everything moves at the speed of fucking light now) and the game likes mobbing you with ludicrous amounts of mobs sometimes. (I went into one location and was instantly fighting SIX fucking supermutants which is virtually impossible to deal with when you're not all that well equipped, VATS doesn't stop time, and manual shooting still doesn't work like an FPS. )

The one thing I must praise in FO4 is the amazing scope of it. I keep seeing people bitching about how the map is "smaller" than FO3 and I have no idea where this is coming from. It's possible the map is physically smaller than FO3 (I have no idea), but the level of detail and exploration in it is easily 2 or 3 times greater than FO3/NV. City ruins are much more explorable, often times with several interior locations and sub-dungeons rather than just being stop overs on the map. The sheer amount of things to see and do even on a short walk somewhere is really overwhelming sometimes. I mean, you just get lost in exploration to a degree that really impresses me and that's ultimately what I really wanted out of 4. So....it's a fun game and it will easily please any fan that puts some time into it, I think, but it does have some significant problems that are really weird.


Meerkat - 2015-11-12

I love wandering around in the wasteland investigating old houses and buildings -- one of my fondest wishes is that I could just wander into peoples' houses and check out how they've decorated, or into factories and other industrial sites to just look at their equipment and how they build stuff.

I think whoever was the creative lead on this was trying to make it too many things to too many people. The Fallout 3 and Skyrim crafting was a little excessive for me ... seriously, who actually levelled Alchemy via practice?

Plus OKAY I GET THAT YOU LIKE MANNEQUINS. YOU THINK THEY ARE FUNNY FOR SOME REASON.

BUT SERIOUSLY, ENOUGH WITH THE MANNEQUINS.


StanleyPain - 2015-11-12

Yeah, the mannequins are getting a bit old. It's like they hired one person to just make "funny" stuff with the mannequins.


That guy - 2015-11-13

true


chumbucket - 2015-11-13

I did a lot of the alchemy in Skyrim but ended up with a boatload of potions I neither needed nor was worth selling.


Two Jar Slave - 2015-11-12

Something I'm not seeing much reference to, here or elsewhere, is whether the plot, characters, and writing (i.e. the story) are any good. You'd think that would be kinda important in a role-playing game?

Like, when did we become so boring as RPG fans that crafting, shooting, and graphics became our talking points?


StanleyPain - 2015-11-12

The structure of Fallout is a bit different from a lot of RPGs in that the story is not really very tightly put together and going from one plot point to another can take potentially hours depending on what you do and how you pace it. So...I think it's understandable that some people aren't talking about it.

Personally, I think the story is OK. It's basically what a lot of people predicted years ago: it becomes a story about how The Institute is making Synth people that are indistinguishable from humans and whether or not this is ethical etc. Mixed in, is the story about you finding your stolen child which is supposed to be the motivating force, but obviously the structure of the game means it's something you have to actively pursue by ignoring a ton of other stuff.

It's not bad, but the new attempt at Mass Effect style dialogue trees and companion relations is a little overwritten and annoying.
Still, it's better than FO3's weird non-story that didn't even have a real ending until DLC fixed it.


Two Jar Slave - 2015-11-12

Robo-ethics in Fallout actually sounds like a great fit! Not only is it a cool sci-fi concept that is relevant to our time, but Fallout has always had the 'retro-future' style to it, so incorporating some classic sci-fi themes makes a lot of sense. In a way, it was already pre-empted by the 'intergenerational ships' of the Vault dwellers. (And it must be a bit of an in-joke, considering all the uncanny valley sneers Bethesda games always receive.)

Open-world RPGs do have a hard time finding the right premise that is both emotionally engaging and not so urgent as to make exploration feel ridiculous. "I have to save my son! ...But first, is there anything in that abandoned mine? I have to save him!! But first, tell me about your rat infestation."

I'm playing a really good RPG right now, Pillars of Eternity, which has managed to create a story that strikes a good balance. There is an almost Children of Men-esque curse on the population: people can have babies, but most are born in a vegetable state, unresponsive. They call them "Hollow". It's ruining families, and the mad scientists who have risen up to fix the curse have only made things worse. It struck me as the perfect RPG premise. It's emotionally unsettling, but not exactly urgent. The curse has been going on for 15 years already; someone should really do something about it, but it can wait a little longer. Anyway, I'd happily recommend Pillars as an example of above-average game writing.


Scrimmjob - 2015-11-12

I've been playing for about 8 hours and haven't run into a friendly npc in the last 6, I'm just wandering around though.


StanleyPain - 2015-11-12

It's interesting you would mention Pillars of Eternity since it's the latest project by Obsidian who, of course, made Fallout 1, 2, and Tactics.


StanleyPain - 2015-11-12

Oh yeah..and New Vegas. Duhr.


That guy - 2015-11-13

Lots of side story. It appears to me that the main story is hard to go straight after at the early levels, because you'll get killed a lot on the way. Not sure.


EvilHomer - 2015-11-13

Pillars of Eternity is very nice; unfortunately, I got strong-armed into joining the OccupyTeaParty (they coulda had a warning about accepting that quest) and the game is too dang easy, thanks to Ectopsychic Echo.


Two Jar Slave - 2015-11-13

OccupyTeaParty? You mean the Dozens, or what?


That guy - 2015-11-15

I've played it a little more now and I can give some general comments.

Short version:
Huge game, ton of variety, suffers in the details. I would glady quarter the size of the game and have better details and more meaningful RPG replay-ability. The game seems geared toward one long playthrough, and not great for starting over with a new character/build. Some of the 'comic book' nature of the game/characters works, other parts don't.

Great:
1) game size- it's absolutely massive- I set aside vacation time for fallout 4 and I've barely made a dent in the game (although some of that was the game's fault for making crap counter-intuitive or time-consuming at first)

Good:
1) variety, combat (and variety of combat), art design. The musical score is at least not bad.
2) building your own guns to kit yourself out correctly is satisfying. I've built several guns that solved problems for my character/playstyle/how much ammo of a certain type I have, etc

Meh:
1) item crafting is a mix of good and time-consuming, but not as stultifying as Skyrim or other games
2) it's a big dangerous world, which cuts both ways, good and bad. On the annoying side: expect to be given quests that you cannot really chase down for a while, either because you can't get there in one piece, or it's too hard itself
3) I suspect (but don't know because I didn't want to test it) that if you start using the power armor you get really early in the game, you'll run out of ways to fuel and repair it, and it won't be usable when you need it. There are other things kinda like this, and yes I'm a Fallout veteran. Too much of this sort of thing still makes it a little user-unfriendly.
4) the dog has a lot of good flavor to it, but is a pain to use, and is immortal which is fairly corny
(I haven't tried out other companions)
5) for good and for bad, normal difficulty is pretty rough
6) for good and for bad the 'mazes' (buildings, etc) are pretty intense some times

Bad:
1) there's a lot of "what? how? why?" (especially in the community building) that makes it not a great game for just playing and discovering as you go. This is a "use the FAQs and **really** plan out a character build" kind of game.
1a) for instance, although this didn't happen to me: let's say you went with a charisma build and grabbed perks that helped you all up and down the charisma tree for your first 5-10 levels. Congrats, your character sucks now and you won't get payoff for these things for another 5-10 levels.
1b) heck this nearly happened to me, and I went with a balanced/intelligence build.
-some of the voice acting and dialogue writing sucks. Some of the actors have a tin ear for dialogue.
1c) I suspect that some of my missed shots are either stat-derived misses or game-engine issues. If the game would tell me more about how it works, at least I would have an answer for things like this.
2) it seems that you can't pursue the main story line very readily right off the bat, because you're too weak, so you have to do a ton of side-questing first. Here and elsewhere, the RPG elements (e.g. playing a character hell-bent on pursuing the main story) aren't always there for you. The overall RPG-flavor/depth is basically not there. It's an action-RPG. This also screws with the replay-ability
3) I want to restate how badly community building sucks if you haven't read perfect FAQs on it.
4) It seems like they didn't have a "no-man" on the Fallout 4 team. Everything is 'in'. As a result, there are weak bits all over where the game would just be stronger without them. (as mentioned by others, stop it with the mannequin jokes, etc) In this, and in the number of hours of potential game play, bigger isn't always better. I'm not a fan of apologetics of these sorts of practices: I don't want poorly implemented features or bad jokes that I have to ignore.

Unknown:
-I haven't had bugs/glitches worth mentioning. I'd rate them as acceptable-to-good in terms of bugs/glitches. But from my experience with last-generation's consoles, I highly suspect that someone else could have the same console and have plenty of bugs/glitches. I don't doubt the people complaining about them.


That guy - 2015-11-15

Also for context:
-PS4
-Fallout skills/experience: high
-RPG fan: yes
-FPS skills/experience : medium to low
-I'm not a graphics geek.
-specific build: high int / mid str, per, cha / low end, agi, luck
---focused on most int skills plus lockpicking, armor craft, community leader 1


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