Fallout 4...

[Amentep]

So FO3 had a child looking for a father, FO4 had a father looking for a child.  What are the masterminds at Bethesda going to have as their hook for FO5?  Grandson looking for a grandfather?

 

I'd just rather they stuck with something that doesn't attempt (and fail) to pull at your heart strings as a motivation to do the main quest, especially when that main quest is almost always lacking and is the weakest part of the game.  They want to make their games all about the sandbox and exploration?  Fine by me.  But craft a main story that fits with that.

 

Sibling looking for other Sibling.

 

I can see it now, your family is living peacefully in the vault when raiders come and destroy and loot it, killing your family.  You hide but your younger brother/sister is kidnapped by raiders.  With the vault destroyed, and all your family dead but your brother/sister, you leave the vault to rescue them (after traveling around the wasteland for 3 years dispensing justice like you're Cain from Kung-Fu and finally feel like getting on with the main questline).

 

BOOM!  Fallout 5 for ya.

 

 

See, I'm mixed. Sometimes I think it's their interest, other times I think it's for profit and sales. The settlements for example seem inspired by Wasteland Defense, a common practice to cater to mods, but some of the ways it got fleshed out seem like Minecraft, and I'm 50-50 if devs said "let's make it Minecraft becuz I like Minecraft" (isn't this the part where a project lead says no because it's no their goal to make minecraft?) or if they figured catering to minecraft fans would help with sales. The Mass Effect style dialog? Nobody asked for, I have no doubt that they for whatever reason consider it profitable. But then with Skyrim for example, it's so crystal clear one of the lead designers bought the DVD boxset of Underworld, binge watched it, creamed his pants and then showed up at the office saying "LETS MAKE DAWNGUARD LIKE UNDERWORLD CUZ I LIKE IT," much like it's clear Todd has some reverence for Apple, which results in flashy-yet-impractical interfaces. But then I wonder if the reverence for Apple isn't because Apple's marketing team is quite impressive themselves.

 

 

It's a mix of the two, no doubt, but I still feel like a degree of it is in the interest of marketing, which I find just rather depressing to think about. And while here we discuss Bethesda, I have to wonder how many other companies or games have seen decisions made based on profit margins rather than quality.

 

I do think Bethesda has great marketing.  I'm just not sold that marketing is the tail that wags the game development's dog.

 

 

The kid thing was never going to work, but I'd say even good writers would have fallen flat trying to do it. Pre-war survivor, eh, it's doable, just not by Bethesda. I mean in the tutorial you're all shocked seeing all the dead bodies and radroaches, and not an hour later you're mowing down ghouls, androids, accepting assassination jobs, and your character has no comment to make whatsoever on these events.

 

Aside from a few dialogue option where you can repeatedly ask different people what synths are despite already potentially having gunned hundreds of them down, the player character is basically indistinguishable from someone who has lived their entire life in this wasteland. It just becomes an unnecessary detail that sticks out like a sore thumb on the occasions it gets raised.

I think the kid thing could have worked, but it certainly requires a degree of dialogue interaction that Bethesda seems to not really do well and/or go for.

 

Just being pre-war would have been easier, but either way it'd require one of the thing that Bethesda is generally weak at and that is having the open world really recognize you in a significant way without making you Dovahkin/chosen one.   They'd have to have create a way for their systems to keep track of what you've actually learned; they'd also have to have set certain things that you'd recognize that others didn't (like being able to correct the guy about Baseball in Diamond city, but more of it).

 

In fact, along those lines, as someone who is living in Sanctuary Hills pre-war, you should actually have a better idea of where the major landmarks were pre-war.  Not everything, but certainly stuff close to home and major landmarks.  They could still have the PC find those landmarks (ie find a path to them in the wreckage), but the map shouldn't have been a big blank.

 

But Bethesda's games have always been fairly compartmentalized, that seems to be part of what they do.

[GhostofAnakin]

I'm trying to get a second play through in, but I'm finding it tough precisely because of the lack of choice and consequence.  Part of what inspires me to play a game a second time is in most RPGs, there's (at least) two ways various quests can go.  So I play it a second time to see how things play out if I chose the second option.  Until the very end choice, Fallout 4 doesn't have that.

[HoonDing]

"Sibling looking for other Sibling."

 

 

Both games have much better story than Fallout 4.

[GhostofAnakin]

Hah, these streets are a maze.  I can't find Goodneighbor while just randomly walking around.  I was hoping to pick up Han**** or McCready early on, but I can't find them.

[WDeranged]

Hah, these streets are a maze.  I can't find Goodneighbor while just randomly walking around.  I was hoping to pick up Han**** or McCready early on, but I can't find them.

 

I love how maze-like the city is, exploration and random amusement are the reasons I'll end up coming back to this game once the rage fog subsides.

[GhostofAnakin]

Still wish there were more towns/cities though with large populations.  IMO, it makes the game feel almost more like a large DLC/expansion than an actual core game.

[HoonDing]

I use the highway and literally drop into Goodneighbour.

[GhostofAnakin]

Heh, I found Vault 81 for the first time.

[GhostofAnakin]

Vault 81 was a major disappointment.  All that area, all those people, and there was almost nothing to do there quest-wise.  In past FO games, there'd have been a bunch of minor quests, as well as a big main quest associated with that place.

 

What the heck, Bethesda?  Did you run out of time after implementing that Sim-like town creator that you didn't have any time left to actually include dialogue and quests?

[majestic]

What the heck, Bethesda?  Did you run out of time after implementing that Sim-like town creator that you didn't have any time left to actually include dialogue and quests?

 

1. Yes

2. Definitely

3. Yes, I think so.

4. Indeed!

 

[sorophx]

this thread is depressing... Fallout is dead

[Longknife]

this thread is depressing... Fallout is dead

 

 

Not so bad if you'd prepped your mind for this months ago. To me it's more about the why and how now. I remain ever curious as to why actions like this are considered profitable or why all companies seem to follow this pattern.

[HoonDing]

Vault 81 was a major disappointment.  All that area, all those people, and there was almost nothing to do there quest-wise.  In past FO games, there'd have been a bunch of minor quests, as well as a big main quest associated with that place.

 

What the heck, Bethesda?  Did you run out of time after implementing that Sim-like town creator that you didn't have any time left to actually include dialogue and quests?

 

 

Related quests

 

    Vault 81

    Hole in the Wall

    Here Kitty, Kitty

    Short Stories

    Dependency

[Sakai]

 

this thread is depressing... Fallout is dead

 

 

Not so bad if you'd prepped your mind for this months ago. To me it's more about the why and how now. I remain ever curious as to why actions like this are considered profitable or why all companies seem to follow this pattern.

 

Because they are profitable? You spend less making the game and still get huge sales. So why bother making it better? Companies like Bethesda will only stop doing that when gamers stop bying their games.

[WDeranged]

It's apparently their best selling game but it still doesn't seem to be conquering the world like Skyrim did.

[Longknife]

 

 

this thread is depressing... Fallout is dead

 

 

Not so bad if you'd prepped your mind for this months ago. To me it's more about the why and how now. I remain ever curious as to why actions like this are considered profitable or why all companies seem to follow this pattern.

 

Because they are profitable? You spend less making the game and still get huge sales. So why bother making it better? Companies like Bethesda will only stop doing that when gamers stop bying their games.

 

 

 

I just kinda find it hard to believe that it's that simple, yknow? It's crazy to me that they're cutting their work load down and there's no response from fans. Like I have difficulty believing they truly are doing less work because surely the customers would notice, complain, and demand cheaper prices. Perhaps it's me trying to give benefit of the doubt and believing best in people, but for me I try and rationalize it as misplaced priorities and poor management rather than "let's expend less effort and still demand the exact same price tag." You would think if that conversation took place, SOMEONE somewhere would come forward and say "this is what game companies are doing to you guys, you should speak out against such practices" if that were truly the case, thus I find myself trying to believe that all "mistakes" made were made in good faith. But yeah...

 

 

 

Also, on topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTZyr6iaYIc#t=1h44m52s

[ShadySands]

It's bringing in the "casuals" and others who never played a Fallout game before. A lot of my friends who had never heard of Fallout are loving the hell out of this new game and can't understand why I don't like it

[GhostofAnakin]

It's bringing in the "casuals" and others who never played a Fallout game before. A lot of my friends who had never heard of Fallout are loving the hell out of this new game and can't understand why I don't like it

 

What, exactly, do these new "casual" fans love about it?  I'm honestly curious.

 

The settlement building part (the biggest "new" feature) isn't even very deep.  I could understand that feature bringing in new fans if it was actually a deep and rewarding experience.  But it's not.  It's like a bare-bones version, a rough draft version of a concept that they didn't completely flesh out.

 

The combat is pretty similar to past Fallout games.  So it can't be that.

 

Is it the watered down dialogue?  Fans who don't like listening to long conversations preferring this stripped down version of dialogue and interaction?

 

I just don't see a single feature of FO4 that would draw in a new crowd.

[ShadySands]

They had never played any Fallout game so for them it stands on its own... nor are they PC gamers for the most part. They play a lot of console shooters and JRPGs

[Hurlshort]

It IS a better shooter, and the leveling up process is easy, and the presentation is fantastic.  That is hard to argue against.  But yeah, it's not really an RPG anymore.

[HoonDing]

They still haven't reached Treyarch levels of selling millions by phoning it in.

[GhostofAnakin]

It IS a better shooter, and the leveling up process is easy, and the presentation is fantastic.  That is hard to argue against.  But yeah, it's not really an RPG anymore.

 

Is it a better shooter than previous Fallouts (FO3 and FONV)?  I do all my combat in VATS, so I haven't noticed any difference in the combat between this game and the previous two.

 

Agreed about the leveling up, largely because now everything's right on one page so you can see at a glance what you've got unlocked, what you can unlock, and what you're not quite high level enough to unlock.

[Lexx]

Well, FNV already felt like a huge difference compared to Fo3. Fo4 certainly has the best gunplay of the bunch. I found the fps combat in Fo3 nearly unbearable without pause-mode, while I only rarely used the pause mode in FNV (usually when enemies came too close to me). In Fo4, though, I noticed the same old Vats bugs with the player being unable to effectively click the body part to shoot at... just now that it's only in slow-mo, it's kinda worse in my opinion (click, click, click, click, ffs why can't I target the damn head?).

Edited December 25, 2015 by Lexx

[GhostofAnakin]

The slow-mo that bugged me the most in VATS is when it would do a *really* slow motion kill, but at the same time you're being pelted by bullets from the other 10 enemies shooting at you.  It would even stay in that slow motion shot to watch your enemy tumble to the ground while you're being chewed up by bullets.

[HoonDing]

I'm far from an expert, but the FPS still doesn't feel tight enough. I use VATS quasi all the time.