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Fallout 4
10 years ago
General
Since it's release, I have been going at Fallout for like a chronic masterbator at their genitles. It was released on November 10th and to this day I have put in 42 hours so far.
First thoughts:
Now, Bethesda didn't use super graphics, or post-recording polishing over the video. They crafted a story, poured heart and soul into it and once they were satisfied, moved onto the graphics. This left them with not as much time as usual for other games. The graphics are on a lower level than other AAA games, but don't worry, they make up for that with the world and it's story. Littel hints of information of past lives left on terminals, scraps of paper to tell the story of the aftermath and what happened. To make you feel that in this universe, there were those that were ignorant, some approached the war with a steadfast meduim hand, preparing where they could and hoping that it was all for naught.
Never has a game but you in this situation than Fallout 4. You get in game and putter around the house, looking at everything new and unblemished. Grass is green, houses are vibrantly colored along with the cars, it would seem a paradise as you are preparing for a speech.
Visited by Vaul-Tec and filling out your specialties to reserve a spot, if only to get that pesky representative coming around.
The vault fresh on your mind, you tend to your child, who despite the cold arms of your robot-servant, Codsworth when new most dire reaches you. The television spits out what they know, flashes, disarray, stations being knocked off the air. It's happened.
Rushing to the vault and barely getting below ground as the concussion wave rips over your head, you get into your vault and are safe...
******
I was stunned by how they decided to showcase the beginning. Stunned by how conversation feels, that everyone you talk to feels important. It no longer feels like staring at someone and clicking boxes to get a response. Though early in the game, the conversations tend to 'jump around' and cut off some dialouge. Later on it cleared up.
Every character is interesting, garnering your complete attention as they speak. Some are the simple wastelanders who have it rough, others have a detailed backstory and can entertain your for a long while.
The voice acting is top notch, and there are a lot of voices this time around. I don't think I have heard a duplicate voice yet, but I am only 50% of the way through the game by my estimates.
Like Skyrim, action still goes on in the background. Though they have yet to perfect the errant NPC from walking infront of you when talking, though camera angle changes to help with that, it's still not perfect. It overall is an improvement of Skyrim's system.
Movement no longer feels... blocky. It is a far cry from the newer games that have you tap a button and effortlessly mantle an obstacle. Running is smooth and sprinting can really help to get places faster in addition to hightailing it out of combat. The 3'rd person animations are even better, no longer herky jerking about as they are smooth.
Looting is a bit odd.
No longer do you go into a menu and select what you want (You can still do that though). Looting has changed into a little menu that you get when pointing at something. A small list appears in real time and you can scroll wheel and higlight what you want, pressing "E" to take it. The good stuff, Stimpacks, caps and ammo are at the top of the list, weapons below that and then armor. It has streamlined the 'take shit' process. But it takes a while to get used to. I'm putting this in the loot section, as it should be, but a word of ease. Safes you leave behind, either from missing them or not enough skill usually contain a few things: Caps/prewar money, ammo, a shitty pipe weapon and some crafting resource. Don't feel too bad if you miss or can't open one, they really dont hold anything TOO valuable.
Combat.
Probably the biggest improvment overall in the series. This is going to twist alot of nipples, because this a cringe worthy parallel. For or against, Call of Duty does only one thing well, the gunplay. So when I compare the combat system having changed into a CoD style combat, it's not a detriment, but rather a compliment. The guns feels weighty, they have a sense of recoil, impact and feel great. Overall, the combat is easy to slide into and almost effortless if you are an FPS whore and play mostly them.
They added in a melee/grenade button (I reccomend immediately rebinding it to a mouse button, M4 or something). Press once for a melee attack and HOLD it to toss a grenade/mine you have selected like a weapon. It's frustrating at first, tossing a grenade at your feet when trying to melee, but you eventually learn.
VATS is still there, but I have found it totally unnecessary. I use it only to do a critical strike on a really tough enemy. You can get away with never using it and you will do fine.
Guns.
There is a big change to the guns in the game. They went for a "Borderlands" gun set up where there are the base models, named special models and then the improved models. A 10mm pistol may be called "Tactical Powerful 10mm", or have a special name "Betty's Shooter" or something like that. You need to pay attention to these pre-fixes, as they mean different things. "Assassin" pre-fix means that it does more damage against humans, "Troubleshooter" does more against robots. Some may be plasma impregnated, doing a status effect with each shot. I recently found a 44 Magnum with an explosive effect, it's great. Some do more damage during the day or night and so on. You can modify these guns to your heart's desire without loosing the elemental/special effect.
Some enemies are harder than the others, indicated with a Star by their name and they always have better special loot. It can be guns or armor, but they always have something.
Pipe weapons are plentiful, and pieces of shit. I got away from using them as fast as possible.
Power armor.
You get it really early on in the game, but the dynamics of how it works have vastly changed. No longer is it something you wear all the time. It's billed as ALOT of protection, but at a cost. The armor is a standalone piece of equipment, requiring a power source, Fusion Cores, to run at it's full potential. When the core is dead and you have no more, you can't sprint or use VATS. Don't worry, you tend to find cores laying around alot. I had found 2-3 in just one outing, as they usually are in every building or subway ect... Provided you have sufficient lockpick or computer skills, you can always get them. They are rediculously expensive to buy, 600+ caps sometimes, so just scavange around for them.
Best thing to do with power armor is leave it sit at whatever you call home. Go out in the wasteland, survey the area and decide if you NEED power armor to survive. Any pre war military place it's a MUST you take it, as some of the robots/turrets inside will catch you by surprise, then blow up in your face when they die. So take it on those missions.
Power armor can also break, blowing off pieces of the leg/chest ect wich have to be repaired before they can go back on and provde protection.
Crafting.
In the world you need parts to make weapon add ons, buildings and repairing your power armor. It gets confusing as to what has what in it as a part. When in the crafting table and you don't have a resource, press "T" and it will mark that resource. Once out in the world, any item you can take will have a magnifying glass by it, letting you know it has something you are looking for inside it. If you want to get rid of that option, gather that resource and press "T" again in the crafting menu to clear it from your list. The best way to get resources early on is to PICK UP EVERYTHING and stick it in Dog Meat's ass for storage. Fast travel back to the workshop, unload Dog Meat and go to any crafting table in your home and dump it all inside. You can acess everything in your home's global inventory and on your person.
Alot of mods require the perks, "Gun Nut" for guns and "Science!" for laser weaponry. Choose accordingly on what you want to do.
Building/Settltments.
Don't go hogwild with these early on, as you can get stuck having to defend them constantly early on. Running back and making sure no one dies and no shit is stolen. You can build buildings and objects with impunity, though rather than scrap something you built, put it in the inventory, cause you only get a fraction of the parts you built it with back when scrapping. The menu is a bit shitty, I'd reccomend looking up a tutorial cause I can't explain it all here. But build yourself a house with storage for all your shit.
You get a few people early on in the game, and are taken through a turotial. Make stuff for them and build a few defenses. Just whatever you do, don't put up a broadcast tower that recruits new people. And if you want to go hogwild with the settlements, don't let your food/water supply ever out number your defense points, bad things happen.
Character building.
Probably not to much stress on this. But early game really depends on how you build your character. You get 21 points to spread over 7 stats. Plan for stuff you want early. Use a character builder website and see what you get with certain loadouts.
Now, you can do 2 things when leveing up. Put 1 point into any SPECIAL stat, or put a level into 1 perk. With this, you can put a point into SPECIAL every 5 levels to start unlocking some good stuff later on. I HIGHLY recocmend putting Luck so you can get "Ammo Scrounger", as you will choke for ammunition early on. Make it easy on yourself and at least spend your first level in unlocking it, you will thank yourself later.
Skill magazines and bobble heads add special things, dammage/bonuses to skills. Covert Ops manuals add +3% to sneak and so on for the other ones. Bobble Heads for skills do the same, The SPECIAL ones remain the same, adding +1 to the special it represents.
Caps/Supplies.
Get "Ammo Scrounger" early on, it's a great help, and any ammo you don't use can be traded for caps. 38 ammo especially, as you get better weapons in about 1-2 hours of play and can ditch the shitty pipe weapons then, but that ammo still piles up. 556 can be sold early on as well, as the Assault Rifle that uses it appeared only after 30 hours of play time. 50 cal is plentiful, so sell that early on as well. Keep 10mm and 12ga shells and the energy weapon stuff. The rest can be used to drain traders of caps.
Caps are plentiful out in the wastes, don't bother cap counting, just get what you want (Ammo is a priority) and sell the ammo you don't use to balance out the transaction. I haven't paid attention to my caps and haven't sold anything hardcore by making trips to traders regularly and managed to build up 20K caps rather fast. The hardest thing to keep up with is supplies for crafting.
The World.
The world is huge, and 90% of it is open to explore without loading screens. Alot of interiors are just walk into areas, but some of the larger more complicated areas require a load to get into. Factory buildings, subterranian areas and so on need a load. But everything else can be explored as an open world. Lots of cool locations and sights to see. Though it's best early on to stick to the areas from the start to Diamond City for the time being. Once you have some armor, and a few levels under your belt, feel free to branch out. And remember you have power armor for some of the tougher areas. Just make sure to have the resources to repair it once it get's fucked up, and will get messed up.
Overall, Fallout 4 is a welcome change to the series. There are still a few bugs that need to be worked out (I have a glitched quest, the required character WILL NOT move). Dialouge issues early on and the lip synch needs to be tuned. No crashes or loading issues as Bethesda games are known for.
The building has som issues, snapping for istance is a big one, and overall lack of unique stuff to build other than the same old wooden or metal buildings. Maybe fixing up places to look construction new would be nice.
No game breaking bugs yet, just little annoyances.
I can't say too much on the graphics, as my Nvidia 750 can run the game only on LOW, but videos from others look amazing. But again, it's Bethesda, expect a great story and world, but don't put too much stock in the graphics. Just wait until the 2K and 4K texture mods come out, as well as ENB's to make the game even better.
Bottom line.
Is Fallout 4 good?
Yes
Is it fun?
Yes
Is it everything we want?
No, mods will fix that.
If you are a Fallout fan, get it. Everything that has changed has changed for the better.
If you are not a fan, this game has been structured in the beginning to be an "Intro" to the universe, filling you into how this world is different.
I'm excited to see what DLC they have for it, as they always hit it out of the park with a majority of the extra content. Also, Obsidian wants to do another New Vegas title, will be amazing to see what they do with this updated engine.
All in all, Fallout 4 has been amazing so far. I reccomend getting it.
First thoughts:
Now, Bethesda didn't use super graphics, or post-recording polishing over the video. They crafted a story, poured heart and soul into it and once they were satisfied, moved onto the graphics. This left them with not as much time as usual for other games. The graphics are on a lower level than other AAA games, but don't worry, they make up for that with the world and it's story. Littel hints of information of past lives left on terminals, scraps of paper to tell the story of the aftermath and what happened. To make you feel that in this universe, there were those that were ignorant, some approached the war with a steadfast meduim hand, preparing where they could and hoping that it was all for naught.
Never has a game but you in this situation than Fallout 4. You get in game and putter around the house, looking at everything new and unblemished. Grass is green, houses are vibrantly colored along with the cars, it would seem a paradise as you are preparing for a speech.
Visited by Vaul-Tec and filling out your specialties to reserve a spot, if only to get that pesky representative coming around.
The vault fresh on your mind, you tend to your child, who despite the cold arms of your robot-servant, Codsworth when new most dire reaches you. The television spits out what they know, flashes, disarray, stations being knocked off the air. It's happened.
Rushing to the vault and barely getting below ground as the concussion wave rips over your head, you get into your vault and are safe...
******
I was stunned by how they decided to showcase the beginning. Stunned by how conversation feels, that everyone you talk to feels important. It no longer feels like staring at someone and clicking boxes to get a response. Though early in the game, the conversations tend to 'jump around' and cut off some dialouge. Later on it cleared up.
Every character is interesting, garnering your complete attention as they speak. Some are the simple wastelanders who have it rough, others have a detailed backstory and can entertain your for a long while.
The voice acting is top notch, and there are a lot of voices this time around. I don't think I have heard a duplicate voice yet, but I am only 50% of the way through the game by my estimates.
Like Skyrim, action still goes on in the background. Though they have yet to perfect the errant NPC from walking infront of you when talking, though camera angle changes to help with that, it's still not perfect. It overall is an improvement of Skyrim's system.
Movement no longer feels... blocky. It is a far cry from the newer games that have you tap a button and effortlessly mantle an obstacle. Running is smooth and sprinting can really help to get places faster in addition to hightailing it out of combat. The 3'rd person animations are even better, no longer herky jerking about as they are smooth.
Looting is a bit odd.
No longer do you go into a menu and select what you want (You can still do that though). Looting has changed into a little menu that you get when pointing at something. A small list appears in real time and you can scroll wheel and higlight what you want, pressing "E" to take it. The good stuff, Stimpacks, caps and ammo are at the top of the list, weapons below that and then armor. It has streamlined the 'take shit' process. But it takes a while to get used to. I'm putting this in the loot section, as it should be, but a word of ease. Safes you leave behind, either from missing them or not enough skill usually contain a few things: Caps/prewar money, ammo, a shitty pipe weapon and some crafting resource. Don't feel too bad if you miss or can't open one, they really dont hold anything TOO valuable.
Combat.
Probably the biggest improvment overall in the series. This is going to twist alot of nipples, because this a cringe worthy parallel. For or against, Call of Duty does only one thing well, the gunplay. So when I compare the combat system having changed into a CoD style combat, it's not a detriment, but rather a compliment. The guns feels weighty, they have a sense of recoil, impact and feel great. Overall, the combat is easy to slide into and almost effortless if you are an FPS whore and play mostly them.
They added in a melee/grenade button (I reccomend immediately rebinding it to a mouse button, M4 or something). Press once for a melee attack and HOLD it to toss a grenade/mine you have selected like a weapon. It's frustrating at first, tossing a grenade at your feet when trying to melee, but you eventually learn.
VATS is still there, but I have found it totally unnecessary. I use it only to do a critical strike on a really tough enemy. You can get away with never using it and you will do fine.
Guns.
There is a big change to the guns in the game. They went for a "Borderlands" gun set up where there are the base models, named special models and then the improved models. A 10mm pistol may be called "Tactical Powerful 10mm", or have a special name "Betty's Shooter" or something like that. You need to pay attention to these pre-fixes, as they mean different things. "Assassin" pre-fix means that it does more damage against humans, "Troubleshooter" does more against robots. Some may be plasma impregnated, doing a status effect with each shot. I recently found a 44 Magnum with an explosive effect, it's great. Some do more damage during the day or night and so on. You can modify these guns to your heart's desire without loosing the elemental/special effect.
Some enemies are harder than the others, indicated with a Star by their name and they always have better special loot. It can be guns or armor, but they always have something.
Pipe weapons are plentiful, and pieces of shit. I got away from using them as fast as possible.
Power armor.
You get it really early on in the game, but the dynamics of how it works have vastly changed. No longer is it something you wear all the time. It's billed as ALOT of protection, but at a cost. The armor is a standalone piece of equipment, requiring a power source, Fusion Cores, to run at it's full potential. When the core is dead and you have no more, you can't sprint or use VATS. Don't worry, you tend to find cores laying around alot. I had found 2-3 in just one outing, as they usually are in every building or subway ect... Provided you have sufficient lockpick or computer skills, you can always get them. They are rediculously expensive to buy, 600+ caps sometimes, so just scavange around for them.
Best thing to do with power armor is leave it sit at whatever you call home. Go out in the wasteland, survey the area and decide if you NEED power armor to survive. Any pre war military place it's a MUST you take it, as some of the robots/turrets inside will catch you by surprise, then blow up in your face when they die. So take it on those missions.
Power armor can also break, blowing off pieces of the leg/chest ect wich have to be repaired before they can go back on and provde protection.
Crafting.
In the world you need parts to make weapon add ons, buildings and repairing your power armor. It gets confusing as to what has what in it as a part. When in the crafting table and you don't have a resource, press "T" and it will mark that resource. Once out in the world, any item you can take will have a magnifying glass by it, letting you know it has something you are looking for inside it. If you want to get rid of that option, gather that resource and press "T" again in the crafting menu to clear it from your list. The best way to get resources early on is to PICK UP EVERYTHING and stick it in Dog Meat's ass for storage. Fast travel back to the workshop, unload Dog Meat and go to any crafting table in your home and dump it all inside. You can acess everything in your home's global inventory and on your person.
Alot of mods require the perks, "Gun Nut" for guns and "Science!" for laser weaponry. Choose accordingly on what you want to do.
Building/Settltments.
Don't go hogwild with these early on, as you can get stuck having to defend them constantly early on. Running back and making sure no one dies and no shit is stolen. You can build buildings and objects with impunity, though rather than scrap something you built, put it in the inventory, cause you only get a fraction of the parts you built it with back when scrapping. The menu is a bit shitty, I'd reccomend looking up a tutorial cause I can't explain it all here. But build yourself a house with storage for all your shit.
You get a few people early on in the game, and are taken through a turotial. Make stuff for them and build a few defenses. Just whatever you do, don't put up a broadcast tower that recruits new people. And if you want to go hogwild with the settlements, don't let your food/water supply ever out number your defense points, bad things happen.
Character building.
Probably not to much stress on this. But early game really depends on how you build your character. You get 21 points to spread over 7 stats. Plan for stuff you want early. Use a character builder website and see what you get with certain loadouts.
Now, you can do 2 things when leveing up. Put 1 point into any SPECIAL stat, or put a level into 1 perk. With this, you can put a point into SPECIAL every 5 levels to start unlocking some good stuff later on. I HIGHLY recocmend putting Luck so you can get "Ammo Scrounger", as you will choke for ammunition early on. Make it easy on yourself and at least spend your first level in unlocking it, you will thank yourself later.
Skill magazines and bobble heads add special things, dammage/bonuses to skills. Covert Ops manuals add +3% to sneak and so on for the other ones. Bobble Heads for skills do the same, The SPECIAL ones remain the same, adding +1 to the special it represents.
Caps/Supplies.
Get "Ammo Scrounger" early on, it's a great help, and any ammo you don't use can be traded for caps. 38 ammo especially, as you get better weapons in about 1-2 hours of play and can ditch the shitty pipe weapons then, but that ammo still piles up. 556 can be sold early on as well, as the Assault Rifle that uses it appeared only after 30 hours of play time. 50 cal is plentiful, so sell that early on as well. Keep 10mm and 12ga shells and the energy weapon stuff. The rest can be used to drain traders of caps.
Caps are plentiful out in the wastes, don't bother cap counting, just get what you want (Ammo is a priority) and sell the ammo you don't use to balance out the transaction. I haven't paid attention to my caps and haven't sold anything hardcore by making trips to traders regularly and managed to build up 20K caps rather fast. The hardest thing to keep up with is supplies for crafting.
The World.
The world is huge, and 90% of it is open to explore without loading screens. Alot of interiors are just walk into areas, but some of the larger more complicated areas require a load to get into. Factory buildings, subterranian areas and so on need a load. But everything else can be explored as an open world. Lots of cool locations and sights to see. Though it's best early on to stick to the areas from the start to Diamond City for the time being. Once you have some armor, and a few levels under your belt, feel free to branch out. And remember you have power armor for some of the tougher areas. Just make sure to have the resources to repair it once it get's fucked up, and will get messed up.
Overall, Fallout 4 is a welcome change to the series. There are still a few bugs that need to be worked out (I have a glitched quest, the required character WILL NOT move). Dialouge issues early on and the lip synch needs to be tuned. No crashes or loading issues as Bethesda games are known for.
The building has som issues, snapping for istance is a big one, and overall lack of unique stuff to build other than the same old wooden or metal buildings. Maybe fixing up places to look construction new would be nice.
No game breaking bugs yet, just little annoyances.
I can't say too much on the graphics, as my Nvidia 750 can run the game only on LOW, but videos from others look amazing. But again, it's Bethesda, expect a great story and world, but don't put too much stock in the graphics. Just wait until the 2K and 4K texture mods come out, as well as ENB's to make the game even better.
Bottom line.
Is Fallout 4 good?
Yes
Is it fun?
Yes
Is it everything we want?
No, mods will fix that.
If you are a Fallout fan, get it. Everything that has changed has changed for the better.
If you are not a fan, this game has been structured in the beginning to be an "Intro" to the universe, filling you into how this world is different.
I'm excited to see what DLC they have for it, as they always hit it out of the park with a majority of the extra content. Also, Obsidian wants to do another New Vegas title, will be amazing to see what they do with this updated engine.
All in all, Fallout 4 has been amazing so far. I reccomend getting it.
But I vaguely remember trying to play the Fallout 2 demo. It's not a game for me.
Loving the game so far, but my biggest gripe is the lack of necessary UIs for settlement management. I'd like to know who's doing what without having to ring a bell and re-assign them all. Also, for some reason I keep losing Happiness in Sanctuary without knowing why, Defense is at 80, food and water at 30, beds at 25. I've tried everything, from building an apartment complex to place their beds, build a second one so it's not so crammed, add TVs and stuff... nope, keeps going up and down. Up when I come back, and down when I leave. I'd love to know why, but there's nothing implemented to tell me :U.
Also, just realized that when you mouse over a Settler in Workshop mode, what they're assigned to will also glow green. It goes away when you select them or move the mouse, but still, it's there I suppose. LOTS of room for improvement there, for sure.
The settlements need some fxing. Snapping issues with the walls ect. The assignments for them, having to track down everyone and then run around "You do this, you do that, and you.." is a pain in the ass. They should have tags for people, like "farming, scavenging" and they just go do those things when they arrive.
I'd also love the chance to get some named people, like raid a place and someone with a name can be coaxed into a better place, guard your area ect.
Also, a settler food/chems and weapon supply. Have a special refriderator where they put all the food and water, and consume 1 everyday. Chems can keep them happy and keep some of the rougher "named" people to stick around. And a weapons crate so people can pick up what they will use.
Maybe something as well to tag an area. Like tag an entire building or a floor as "Sleeping quarters" or "Dining Hall" and so on. Make the place feel more like home instead of everyone bumbling around and doing whatever. Kind of give the town a structured organized town. I'd love to have a full on "bar" instead of a lemonade stand. Build shelves that tou can put booze into and it displays, bar tables, mirrors. There is sooo much potential to make stuff, I just hope that they add in more indepth crap... Can you tell I like to micro manage and make beleive I'm setting up something cool for everyone else?
The settlements need a streamline, more building options and auto assignments/arming...
Though I usually run around with that suppressed Walther PPK. My sneak and Ninja skills make that little pistol is a powerful melon popper. And 3.5x damage with that 44 magnum tends to cut deathclaws in half XD
Lastly, I think everone agrees that the settelment system needs work. A larger variety of things to build, a smoother job assignment system, better construction fundamentals.
Still, sounds like it needs a patch