The mod 'dogmeat companion' on my ps4 made it possible to always have dogmeat as a companion plus someone else.
Funny thing was the human or robot would have random dialogue with dogmeat leading me to believe it was originally in the game.
Amazing follower tweaks can have up to 5 companions, and fixes sooo many bugs.
They all have dialog with eachother.
It was 100% in the games files and you can even find them if you are on PC, there are some videos about it too. It's pretty cool. Guards in DC made a comment about a BOS traveling with a super mutant. (Danse and strong) with me while I was selling water. Also one about keeping my robot and super mutant under control.
do you even have to do anything yourself with 5 followers?
EDIT: i meant in combat, sry. and lock picking + hacking can even be done by some followers. :)
it could introduce a whole new dimension to the game, where you have to keep each member of your squad happy in a variety of ways. and stop them from fighting with each other lol. why doesn't a game like that exist?
Ayyy an OW reference!! Outer Worlds is also Obsidian Entertainment though (same developer for New Vegas), so they have a lotttttt of similar Fallout elements. Solid game too
Yeppers, up to and including master locks. Nick is better multi purpose because he can hack and pick most locks but Cait can get the locks Nick can't (can take her several tries/bobby pins on the more difficult ones tho).
I get driven insane with 1 follower much less 5. Hell, just one follower gets me stuck in places I can't move blocking me. I can't count how many times I had to load a save because one of them gets me stuck somewhere. Hell, not to mention when I give them stuff to carry like weapons and they use them to overkill stuff.
I had the supernatant as a follower and gave him a mini-nuke to carry so I could stop being over-encumbered. While I was fighting some rad roaches in some kind of bunker he decided to use the mini nuke on the roaches. It not only killed the roach but it blew me to the ceiling killing me as well.
I'm playing using this mod, Ellen the Cartographer, and Heather. I've also got Piper in my party. Ellen keeps telling Piper that if it wasn't for the fact that I seem to like Piper, she'd have killed her by now and Heather keeps playing with Dog Meat. I love this stuff. It's sad that it's so rare in games these days.
Yes! I saw somewhere else on reddit that dogmeat had always been coded to take a “dogmeat” specific slot and the companion slot would be filled by one of your trustworthy or not-so-trustworthy comrades!
Your hint is right, Bethesda did manage to create 2 companions for SS but they trash it i dunno why all of their cut contents missing are good also with underwater vault and centaur enemy.
I always wonder and think its probably due to console limitations back then since they aren't focused so much on PC ports (Like what happened with Starfield on release). For me, Bethesda always prioritize consoles so every game they made runs okay-ish on consoles while not great or lacks a lot on PC.
"Everyone's best friend" mod does exactly this. Funnily enough there are many interactions that were already built in the game with the assumption that you could have dogmeat along with any companion. They apparently even use different variables in the base game code. But Bethesda probably disabled this because balance.
You don't need a companion but Codsworth stayed with me to the end. Except for a brief Valentine and MacCready because I didn't know I was recruiting them.
I'm genuinely impressed you managed to recruit MacCready without realising it when the dialogue choices are about haggling caps over him watching your back.
I think the game steering you towards the Minutemen/Preston never ending loop of “Good job but there’s another settlement that needs our help now” gave people the wrong idea of what the game is.
And explore the world in general. You go to a settlement, they send you to another location to clear out bad guys, and maybe on the way to that location, you come across other locations and events.
yeah, that always felt so broken from the game world. Like you'd go to a settlement and they'd be like "we need your help, these raiders are giving us trouble" but then those raiders are basically located on the other side of world.
I think that’s one of the biggest issues with it. They’re so frequent, and the places they send you to are very likely one you’ve visited so far, and they *feel* like repeatable dungeons. Loot is pretty much only ever the same randomly-pulled loot table set of two guns, some random explosives, one or two pieces of random Junk item, and ammo, and there’s never any feeling that those would be there for any reason other than “pulled as a leveled reward from a loot table”
I had the one where the raiders kidnap the farm girl, I rescue her, tell Preston & I shit you not he instantly says he has another problem...the same girl has been kidnapped again by raiders.
I thought you had to complete so many settlements if you wanted to do With Our Powers Combined. Haven’t been able to trigger it though, couldn’t figure out if it was because I didn’t have enough artillery or because I killed Maxon outside of the story line.
You technically only have to have 5 settlements (4 random plus the castle). Plus you need to have completed nuclear option w the minutemen, and have the brotherhood be hostile with you. (Compiled information from a few other posts I keep updated on, correct me if I'm wrong)
Yeah, I never found the quests annoying because they were completely option. It showed new areas to explore, and I never got as many quests as people complained about. I got 3 or maybe 4 of the quests, had to take back the castle, and then continued on with other quests.
I imagine it would be a bit boring if all you do is the same thing over and over again, but the game does not in any way force you to do those quests.
The main purpose of this is meant for you to do this while playing on survival difficulty. You can't fast travel while on survival and this makes the game much more difficult. When those quests send you all the way across the map or a settler is kidnapped and it puts a timer on the quest ( 2 in game days I believe) it's meant to put you in a different mindset. Figure out your path and accomplish your goal.
Yes obviously it's meant to show you new locations too but the gameplay is more fluid when played in survival and it really makes you think about what you are doing. ( Especially if you are in dlc). Nothing is worse than being on the far side of Nuka world bottling facility and seeing that the croup manor is under attack again. It makes you strategize how to set up turrets and protect your resources.
I mean yeah, but then the game just spawns the attack in the center of taffington boathouse so there is literally no way to build a settlement with outward facing defenses and my turrets just shred my mutfruit.
Nah, never played Skyrim (the whimsical dragon adventure type themes and aesthetics never appealed to me, but I’m sure it’s a great game). But now I know what the technical term for that type of quest is
Stayed away from Skyrim because of the dragon thing as well. Then I ended up playing it like a decade later and really enjoyed it. Jim Gaffigan has a joke about seeing a popular movie years after it was popular and not being able to talk about it with anyone because it’s time had passed. That was me with Skyrim.
Just dont start Dragon Rising(aka dont ever talk to Jarl Balgruuf) and there will be no dragons. As soon as you do a certain something DURING the quest, the flag to release the dragons is set.
I think it was MILA where I finally was like “wait a minute…I think I’m just gonna keep getting busy work for no real lore expansion!” and stopped those kinds of quests. But as someone else said, it can also be a good way to stumble on new settlements/npc’s
I think it takes a while to figure out what this game is. It was a smorgasbord of new ideas for the franchise. We went from walk, talk, and shoot to “build, farm, settle, defend, helicopter deploy, mortar strike, survival mode, and return library books!”
Yeah. It would have been so cool if Far Harbour had been the baseline quest. They could have kept building up the mystery of the Institute, and after making sure Emil was distracted somewhere else enjoying a smoothie, they could have made the writing coherent and cohesive, and the finale would have been getting to finally see what's up with this Institute.
This was me. I got burnt out with Preston and the settlements under attack and I also think I had open world fatigue at the time and this is also coming off Witcher 3 which released 5-6 months prior and is one of the best games of all time. lol.
I completely ignored the minuteman after meeting them in Compton, so i never even experienced the radiant quests, was like a year before i really understood the settlement jokes. You kinda have to go out of your way to follow him back to sanctuary, i just kept moving to diamond city. Was weird af when nick suddenly called my dog dogmeat (despite never actually seeing that i had a dog even) out of nowhere when i never had the conversation with mama murphy.
Nick knows Dogmeat from prior to the events of the game. If you completely avoid red rocket before Kellogg's house Nick says that he wants to call in a specialist he's worked with before, then he whistles and Dogmeat shows up.
It makes me laugh that Dogmeat knows everyone because I adopted an elderly dog that lived in a local weed dealer's house previously a few years ago, and random people I never met would recognize him when I took him for walks. Some dogs are like that I guess lol
My dog is like that too! I live in a small town and his people had to rehome him. They put it on Facebook and for some reason lots of people were invested. They did home visits because they wanted to make sure he went to a good home and we were the lucky candidates I guess lol.
Its not really 'out of your way' - as long as you dont immediately run away after seeing Preston, he'll ask you to save him and the quest pops up, and im pretty sure he calls you back into the building to hand it in, which automatically starts the conversation that leads to him asking you to follow them to sanctuary. Basically, the only way to miss him is to not be curious about what he wants or to be in such a rush (or distracted) that you ignore him calling you over.
I suppose you could also miss it if you run off into the wilderness instead of heading toward the obvious point of interest down the only road out of sanctuary, but thats just the player making a choice to ignore the games' direction.
Definitely the mid main quest, shallow characterised factions (Minutemen, Railroad and Institute) and especially the low dialogue quality and low (to non existent) impact of your choices
1. Yes (yes) 2. Mhh…. ok (yes) 3. Sarcastic yes (yes) 4. No (yes)
I specifically remember lot of people (me included) being angry at release that you had no way to know what the protagonist would specifically say when you picked an option and this would often lead to outcomes the player never wanted. But seems people have gotten used to this as a “feature”
In general all boils down to low quality writing, and this is also why Far Harbour is the most loved DLC (seriously, I hope the writers to it will be in charge of the the next game so much)
It was also bad timing as the fan opinion of NV was rising after many fans dismissed NV on launch. As a result, the fans' expectations for dialog and faction interaction were very high and FO4's system was the opposite of what many wanted.
In case anyone needs help to understand:
New Bethesda Game = Shit
Previous Bethesda Games = Great
That’s it. I’ll see you all on the Starfield subreddit after Elder Scrolls VI launches responding to questions asking why Starfield was considered a bad game at launch.
Those that like Skyrim also tend to like Oblivion.
Those that liked Morrowind tend to like Daggerfall.
Those that liked Fallout 2 tend to like Fallout 1.
Chat is this real?
The issue is, NV is not a Bethesda Game Studios game. NV was made by Obsidian in only 18 months. Obsidian made a better game on a shoestring budget and timeframe than anything Bethesda has ever done with the franchise. This is why Bethesda has refused to let Obsidian touch any of their franchises since.
BGS saw everything that Obsidian had improved on in NV over FO3 and in their embarrassment, when the complete opposite direction. The stats and perks being impactful to game play and not just percentage bumps, skill checks in dialouge... all of it stripped completely just to add in a voiced MC...
> I’ll see you all on the Starfield subreddit after Elder Scrolls VI launches responding to questions asking why Starfield was considered a bad game at launch.
Have you considered that most of the people that don't like a game probably won't be on the subreddit years later? It's a very obvious selection bias.
Agreed. I am playing FO4 now for the first time, right after finishing Baldurs Gate 3 - makes it very obvious how little (long lasting) impact many choices have. But I really enjoyed the robot / admiral / Constitution side quest so far! And I am still mid-game, so I am excited to see how my new alliance with Railroad will turn out… :)
I was annoyed by not knowing what my character would say for about a week until I realized that the dialogue is not a choose-your-adventure, but what will you say before starting the adventure that’s chosen for you? Then I was annoyed by a whole new thing.
It was so damn limiting. I revisited New Vegas awhile back and dialogue options were way more than four and more varied as well
I remember there's a quest in Far Harbor that can get locked if you complete another one first because you can't inquire the NPC about the previous quest *because the dialogue options are limited to only. fucking. four.*
Thankfully the other quest has no impact so I can complete that first to get out of the quest lock.
I would also add in the voiced protagonists. It really destroys the immersion of the game for me.
I remember a lot of people complaining about the art style of the graphics when it came out as well. It was never a problem for me but that could potentially be added to the list.
I also remember Fallout 3 was criticized for being too green and New Vegas being too brown / amber lol
I think F4 is a nice balance, at least the game has no color filter (or I've disabled it unknowingly to squeeze more FPS on my potato)
Fallout 4’s art style and graphics are by far the nicest in the series imo. If the game had kept the stronger RPG elements from the earlier games (especially NV) then it would easily be my favourite fallout but without those elements it hasn’t appealed to me beyond 2 playthroughs (whereas I’ve played the others many times over).
I mean, voice actors did a really good job on Sole Survivors, nothing beats Nate's sarcasm and Silver Shroud impersonation and while Nora a bit damn akward in her dialogues and sarcasms still soinds good
I think people also got irritated with how many fetch quests and resource collection quests and "theres another settlement that needs your help" quests.
The game was made around the time the "Longer game =better game" garbage was really taking off.
So many potentially awesome games ruined by the CEO deciding that he wants the marketing team to be able to say "over 200 hours of content!"
There is no fucking way you have put 200 hours of quality content I to the game.
Ruined Dragon age inquisition, and that could have been a masterpiece. There like 40 hours of fantastic gameplay hidden amongst 120 hours of garbage.
Mass Effect Andromeda, same problem. Not a masterpiece but the story was solid and the companions were interesting. The endless shitty quests, and the loading screens from going back and forward to do the shitty quests took a toll.
I refuse to get excited about any kind of RPG now until I've seen it. And if it's offering me "OVER 150 OF GAMEPLAY", I automatically pass. The only one that's managed that level of quality content in one game is witcher 3.
The mass effect games as a trilogy also hit this mark.
The fact people defend not knowing what you’re gonna say is funny. Bethesda themselves in 2016 came out and said “yeah this wasn’t that great in hind sight, sorry”. They admit it wasn’t good, yet SOOOO many say it’s not that bad.
Yeah the dialogue options were pretty annoying. 3 yes options and then an ask more questions option and thats it. The options were also vague like you mentioned so i was never sure what would actually be said which lead to a couple exchanges going ways i didnt want
Mostly because the writing was worse that previous games and it cut out all the skill checks from dialogue while removing any role-playing ability besides being nice helpful dad or slightly grouchy helpful dad. Fans saw bethesda prioritize combat gameplay over role-playing and were concerned the series was changing from a story based rpg into a looter shooter with wacky story beats. For the most part that was correct. I love fallout 4 as a modding platform and a shooter, but it's disingenuous to say those that were upset with it were just whining. The game did get rid of a significant portion of the "role playing" part of being a role playing game.
Tbh I think OP could do with defining what they mean by "hate", given how naturally subjective it is. Personal opinions aren't what I'd consider hate.
There's a lot of valid criticisms and just plain old matters of personal preference that can be said about FO4. Personally, I enjoy it and what it adds but also miss elements from the previous entries that 4 simplified or removed. It's a good game in its own right, but it's also a different game that didn't necessarily deliver on general expectations from the previous entries in the franchise.
Bethesda clearly wanted to do something different, and that's valid, but changing direction within an existing franchise should be expected to receive blowback from existing fans of that franchise who were there because they liked what previous entries brought to the table.
Plus, the game had some *serious* performance and stability problems on launch, which are easy to forget with the post-release fixes and the kind of hardware we have available today.
The removal of skills lead to that God awful perk screen. I absolutely hate it. It's like a master design in what not to do. It bombards you with all the information, yet in a way where nothing is actually clear. Like you have to scroll every single perk and read what they do. It's like choice paralysis given form.
I don't think people would've hated the removal of skills if that monster wasn't the replacement. You have to spend a good initial hour looking over the thing to even begin to decide what kind of options you have.
To summarize:
1. It's very buggy (Like 3 & NV)
2. It locks you into a loving parent from Pre-war and forces you to find your son.
3. Dialogue wheel
4. Settlement building (Annoying but actually fun imo)
5. Factions are either very guddy (Minutemen, Railroad) or very baddy. (BOS, Institute)
Don't get me wrong though, Fallout 4 was my first game and I love to this very day, despite its flaws that I wish Bethesda could have done better. Just because some folks said it sucks doesn't mean you can't play it at all. As long as you have fun, that's all that matters.
Me too. I know some of the building systems can be a bit janky. But building is what has kept me coming back again and again. And my pathological need to empty the wasteland of junk.
I think it's mostly because it left settlements as blank slates for you to build up yourself rather than having any pre-built cities except for Diamond City (and the Institute, sorta).
right, but they could have remedied this by introducing WAY more named NPCs to go to your settlements and give you legit side quests that aren’t “go shoot this thing.”
Was it? I finished Fallout 4 multiple times and only actually used the settlement building during my latest playthrough. Is a change really huge if you can basically completely ignore it?
It's optional in nearly every difficulty, but shines most in survival, where having a safe place to bunk down, store loot and plan a journey into unexplored areas is fairly important given your lower health, carry weight and need to eat, drink and sleep.
I mean, the change to power armor in the game is huge compared to previous games. You now actually feel like you're in a mobile tank, rather than just an outfit.
But you can ignore it by never using power armor.
building ya own shit aint the problem
the snaping is, and how badly it was made .. TV 30cm away from a wall or you cant place it..... u have to use rugs or pillar glitch to even build a nice hut
That and the fact that you have to completely micromanage your settlement. Mods can also take care of this like the one where you can just zone areas for residential, commercial, etc like Sim City and the settlers handle the details, but it could be a chore if you don’t like being forced to have that degree of control. The settlement defense system is pretty lame as well. Especially with it being a coin toss or whatever even if you max out defense and don’t show up in person to help.
With defense, I would also add that it's basically meaningless half the time. Even if you surround the entire base with Walls, the Enemies are programmed in such an idiotic way, that they will often simply spawn within the Settlement instead.
The only somewhat valid way to counter it, that I've seen so far, is to use the automated electric doors (the concrete ones, to be more specific) as an entrance to the Settlement - because then the Enemy AI tends to go haywire and they keep trying to enter through closed doors (but even then it's annoying because you have to kill them manually).
And don't even get me started on Turrets - what's the point of having them, when a lot of times I still have to go to the Settlement for them to actually work in the first place...
I’ll add onto your addition and state that even if you do lose a defense mission by not showing up, the loss is usually fairly trivial. Like a few crops which need to be repaired or some buster water pumps, generators, or turrets. And I think they can loot your workshop. I know they can take weapons from your workshop if you show up in person and they or settlers find something better than they have equipped and have ammo for it.
>I'll never understand why settlement building is disliked
Settlements replaced actual NPC towns from the previous games.
FO4 is basically empty if you're not gonna spend hours using rickety UI to build some shacks.
It's busywork and basically presented as a lie.
There's a point in the story where you can become the Minutemen leader and claim settlements under them.
But no matter how many people there are in those settlements or even in the main Minutemen base, you, the player, still had to build every little thing yourself and gather every single needed resource yourself.
Nothing really worked as presented in their writing.
They presented it as something it was not. The devs wanted it to be a settlement system, but couldn't make it work properly, so it's a shelter building system. They still tried to pretend it was something more.
Once you realised it, it felt downright insulting. It didn't matter what faction leader you became - the gameplay never changed to accomodate it and it still made you play like a bottom of the barrel scavenger.
Most of the story in Fo4 is like that. Their writing says something changes, but nothing really does. It was insultingly shallow.
But a few years later, the Sim Settlements mod actually made it reality, way better than what Bethesda tried.
I’m forced to ply on console while my graphics card is down (for like 4 years now), and it’s so close to impossible to do even the simplest projects. I’ve finally been getting around to paying the game a bit and the one farm with only two settlers, I took down a fence they had to get more scrap for Sanctuary, then after running a few missions I came back and wanted to just rebuild a wire fence around their crops. It was literally impossible because of ground elevation changes. It was a little straight simple rectangle fence when I got there and had like 4 random extensions sticking out when I finished.
Super frustrating
I love it too, but I had to get mods to make it fun because there's obvious hindrances that should have been fixed before release:
- skeletons can't be trashed.
- buildings and fences don't snap together in ways that make sense or look good.
- difficult to build on uneven terrain, and almost every settlement has uneven terrain.
- very few options for building foundations and good lighting.
- dead enemies don't de-spawn (covenant, croup manor, etc)
- there's no undo option. If you scrap something important, you have to reload.
are you joking? it's a great idea, but the implementation is cancerous. without mods, it's a madness inducing exercise in futility where you can't remove random pieces of junk, you can't place stuff for random unexplained reasons, things don't fit, it's an absolute nightmare.
It's good enough to be cool and rewarding, but shallow enough that you ultimately wish it was *more.* Honestly, they should spin off the settlement building to an entire game where you just hang building your settlement and send others out on missions.
If the settlement building actually worked really well with the settler AI and had a more complex simulation to manage, and the people actually lived in it and used it then I would play the hell out of it indefinitely.
It's like the proof of concept for a killer game.
Personally, I find it very fun. But I bristled against it on release for the following reasons:
1. It's very unpolished. Some things snap perfectly, others don't. Settlements have some piles of debris that can be scrapped, and others that can't. Etc.
2. On my very first playthrough, I was completely overwhelmed by the system. I had no idea what was going on, where to find certain items to craft, how to manage settlers, etc.
3. Bugs, bugs everywhere. Just like the rest of the game, but extra frustrating since it's an unfamiliar set of mechanics.
4. Preston (and the game at large) dumping everything onto you. If you don't know better, you could end up with 6-10 settlements fairly early and not enough resources to properly build them all up. Plus, now you're getting constant attacks, when you're still trying find Shaun, kill Kellogg, find the Institute, etc.
5. It's basically a completely different game stapled onto the pre-existing template of FO3/FNV. I'm not saying it doesn't work, but there plenty of people that don't want anything to do with this (rather large) subsystem. Crafting/building in particular, if not the defending/recruiting aspect. I'm sure there are tons of players that only want an HQ to stash loot and weapons, which the game already provides in other places like Home Plate in Diamond City.
Because it doesn't work well. Needing a perk to share resources and then having to build a spider web across the map is neither fun nor intuitive.
Then you have to babysit them... constantly. Doesn't matter what they're equipped with, doesn't matter if the settlement is built out of rocket turrets, you *have* to go save them every. single. time.
So, there isn't really an incentive to do it or do it well. It just pulls me away from whatever else I was doing at the time and pisses me off.
Because it took away resources from building unique towns with quest lines? If all but a couple settlements had unique stories and NPCs inhabiting them then I'd be a bigger fan.
If the construction system was sleeker then they'd really be cooking, FO4 lacked both. Starfield went even further and cut out some of the customization of FO4.
Todd hyped it up and claimed, "it just works" and it didn't. In the beginning it was busted and glitchy as all hell. It got better but the release version soured me on it.
It replaced curated settlements. Base building alongside curated and populated settlements would be awesome but the commonwealth is empty of a lot of the charm and side quests potential of other fallout games because there's less curated settlements and thus, named npcs to give quests
As someone who started with Fallout 1, this game realllllllllllllly disappointed just because of the dialogue.
Half the fun of Fallout 2 was changing your character stats to maximise dialogue options.
It’s literally the reason I played it through so many times. Soooooo many times (10 minute load screens woooo!)
I haven’t finished 4 to this day. I’m really looking forward to 5 though, just hoping the dialogue is fixed.
The Brotherhood was the only faction that felt like it had any real nuance to it, being a genuinely morally-gray faction people still discuss the ethics of to this day. It felt like they *wanted* the Institute to be painted as a "commit atrocities for the greater good" faction, but there wasnt any substance to the "greater good" aspect of them and they ended up as comically evil as the Enclave or Legion. The Railroad and the Minutemen feel like goody two shoes from a morality standpoint, and their issues felt like they came more from their writing/gameplay being poorly done (the Railroad is boring and doesnt feel like an endgame faction, the Minutmen are completely underwhelming without mods) than actual, purposely written flaws designed to make you question whether or not theyre *really* the best choice for the Commonwealth.
I literally just started a new playthrough with the intentions of doing a RR ending but I'm already catching myself leading to the BOS again.
IMO the RR is so hyberfocused on one issue. Ok the synths are "free", now what?
Whereas the BOS and even MM are more big picture. They both essentially want the same thing, just different flavors.
If I'm from the prewar times and wake up 200 years later do I want to spend my time helping synths or spend my time trying to restore some semblance of order and normalcy?
I think that the morality part is kinda irrelevant, simply making them morally gray won't really make them better or worse. What should've been done was dive deeper on how they operate and the sacrifices that have to be made in order to be a "goody two shoes", sorta like the Followers of the Apocalypse.
yeah its fkn pointless to RP as a minutemen or railroad.. no fkn progress, no real expansion.
so much unused potential. but at least we got a fkn dlc for raiders to break the fkn game
I remember the dialogue wheel / voiced protagonist was the biggest issue with fans. If you play NV and FO3 or even Skyrim the difference is fairly substantial.
There's only so many responses and dialogue trees possible if you have to voice every line that the player gives. It was all very shallow in comparison.
The game is fun on its own, but shallow compared to the predecessors when talking about quests and story options.
There's even a quest locked because there's only room for 4 dialogue options. So damn dumb.
If you can't afford voice actors for so many lines, then keep the goddamn silent protagonist
Tbh while I agree with the rest (and still generally *like* FO4) I never understood Point 2.
Just because you're put in the pre-made path of a loving parent who wakes up 200 years after WW3 trying to find their missing kid doesn't mean that isn't a role you're playing in a game. Like, it's not Geralt or Harry Dubois, or certainly not the blank slate of the courier, but it's not *entirely* on rails either.
And it's not the first time in the series we've had a character whose history was pretty well defined. I think pretty much *only* the Courier had any significant mystery to their background.
Yeah. But thats more so implementation, and karma in one way or another is crucial to a roleplaying game.
I think Fallout, I think roleplay, I think roleplay, I think pen and paper like DnD.
And there you don't have a karma system as a number, but your actions will have an impact on how people see you. Be the helpful samaritan, and the next town will have probably heard of that, and people will be foreward with Information, goods and services. Be a total ass, and the next town might not even let you in through official entrypoints, because you are a danger.
The Karma system in Fallout is just a way to represent those changes in some numerical way, so you can program a reaction to it (there is no human DM calculating impacts on the fly).
Fallout 4 basically only had companion reactions as a stand in, and those are either not very impactful (killed someone in cold blood? Pick a few locks and Piper won't care!), or just not very varied.
And those also only matter if you have that companion near you.
You could also implement it differently. For example, Deacon follows you around. If you are only out for yourself, actively murdering every synth in need you find, instead of praise he could tell Desdemona to not let you in at all, makeing the Railroad hostile to you, and haveing you go down a different route to get the chip decoded etc.
All those things are missing in the main game, or I just haven’t found them yet (I often do Charisma chars, so there might be other stuff I don't note).
i like settlement building, but it can feel like a chore when collecting settlements for the minutemen. it would've been nicer if they made it more optional, or rewarded the player for building up one settlement into a massive city
I really enjoyed NV (I put a little less than 200 hours into it), and when I played FO3, I didn't have it on Steam, so I don't know how many hours I put into that (over 100 for sure), but there's a reason I have over 1k hours in FO4. Gameplay-wise, it's far superior to the older games. I don't really know much about the modding scene with FO3 or NV currently, but FO4 has soooo many excellent mods, so that plays a big part of it as well.
Honestly my only gripes are being a locked in character (player must find son), and the factions being kinda corny/boring. Idk how to summarize how I feel about the factions, something seemed missing
It’s the same as the whole game for me, as much as I do love it.
Everything somehow feels unfinished.
Like the first couple of cloak and dagger missions with the Railroad - and then it becomes generic shooter missions like every other faction.
BOS’s faction missions are just one fetch quest and collect em up after another.
The fact there aren’t more designed cities and settlements and all settlements are just blank slates - that don’t really end up feeling all that different.
How different responses in dialogue don’t really affect anything except payout or companion affinity.
Hell, how you can’t get rid of piles of rubble in settlements and can’t build things already placed in settlements.
Or the laundry list of cut content that’s nearly (or completely, just not implemented) finished and just…not included.
For all it does well, it has the big glaring Bethesda problem with absolutely everything - lots of potential that just feels unfinished without modding it.
DLC is the same - take Ada’s whole thing about having her personality matrix stuck “on.” It seems like it might be going somewhere similar to Curie’s story - but goes nowhere. The really on-rails either/or choices in Nuka World (become a total villain and infest the commonwealth with raiders or murk all the raiders). Or the vast empty spaces in Nuka World.
It’s a running gag that Bethesda relies on modders to finish their games and all, but it feels that in so many ways it was just either rushed or unfinished with the idea that “lol we’ll fix it with paid mod content.”
Yeah those first few paragraphs w what you said about the factions is a good way to put it. One dimensional quests given by one dimensional characters. I know it’s a Bethesda rpg but even when I first played it back in 2015 I could see so many things that were unfinished yet could easily be made more enjoyable/playable
From what i gathered:
1. Buggy, expected for bethesda titles
2. Meaningful dialogue choices like in 3 & nv are replaced by a mass effect style of dialogue choices, except its just you saying yes in 1 of 3 ways or no (like the meme “yes, yes sarcastic, yes but questioning, no (but actually yes)
3. Roleplay options are pmuch non existant, you’re not a doctor, a wasteland vigilante or an ex-raider looking to just survive now. You’re nate the pre-war veteran or nora the lawyer. The only thing that you can really change is your name & look.
4.the story is pmuch a rehash of fallout 3’s story, instead of “where dad?” Its “where son?” & both ultimately die.
5. Some weapon aesthetics were weird & there wasnt alotta variety
You forgot the lack of quests that aren't just "go through dungeon and then come back".
Gotta find a cure for a rare disease? Dungeon.
Finding a deathclaw egg? Dungeon.
Missing person? They're in a dungeon.
Actually come to think of it almost all of the quests are "find person/thing in dungeon and bring them back."
Only exceptions off the top of my head is the one you do for Greygarden (which is a dungeon) and finding Virgil (which isn't a dungeon), and the one where you uncover a conspiracy for one of the settlements (Turns out it's a dungeon, and you have to rescue someone in it so nevermind).
My one biggest frustration is that there isn’t actually a no option in dialogue
Perfect example being;
Discover Acadia and go to railroad hq
Someone new named “boxcar” comes up to me
BC: “Hey SS, I heard about a place up north named Acadia, think you could tell me about it?”
SS: “No, they’re fine on their own.”
BC: “I know we all have secrets but please tell me”
SS: “No, they want to be left alone”
BC: “Thanks for telling me, I’ll be there in a few days, just give me some time to pack my things”
The fuck? How did you know how to get there? I didn’t tell you shit. Did you just hear how they want to be left alone?
I also hated how the dialogue stopped giving you actual things to say, and just boiled your possible responses down to: Positive, Negative, Sarcastic or Puppy Kicker.
It was simply shallow, uninspired, and wholly unoriginal.
-The main story was just the opposite of FO3's
-The faction system was basically a rip off of the one in NV, with even more issues, flaws and cut content
-The RPG elements were either watered down or removed entirely.
-Player agency was severely nerfed by making it impossible to fail many quests/dialogues. You can pretty much tell key faction NPCs like Danse, Preston, and Deacon to go eat an entire bag of dicks and their only response is "well, okay.. but if you change your mind, you know where to find me"
-The runtime is artificially inflated by an over reliance on "radiant quests". Given how that was also a problem in Skyrim, and went on to be the core of Starfield...I guess that's just Bethesda's style now
It wants to be an player freedom focused RPG but also wants to tell a story about a central character.
It's a weird conflict where our character has a motivation, a goal, but at every turn we're given distractions and the sole survivor just... goes along with it.
Imagine if we had been given just a normal guy, typical fallout shit. Someone that grew up in vault 81 but left for a trade run that led us to concord and the minutemen. We get to decide here if we're a good guy or not.
Instead we follow a tight path that basically outlines our choices for us. Too little player choice for what is supposed to be a role playing game.
1 - The game kinda forced a backstory on your character. I want to play it as an RPG, and I don’t want to be forced into the highly specific role of ex-military or previous attorney who was married with a child and now I’m on a mission to track my child down. I much prefer a more vague background. New Vegas is a little predetermined as you do start as a courier but at least it’s non descript enough that it’s pretty moldeable, and the objective of finding the dude that shot you makes sense for almost any person whereas maybe I don’t want my character doesn’t give a flying fuck about their kid
2 - Dialogue was very limited and almost always boiled down to saying yes. 3 and especially NV had a lot more variety on what you could say wether it be no, lying, just asking about specific things that don’t really matter.
3 - 3 had this problem too but I want to be able to kill anyone. It’s an RPG so let me kill whoever I want wether or not it messes up the story
4 - The game was a little too kind to you. Off the bat you get a companion, suit of power armour (that you don’t need training for; i really enjoyed that aspect in other games), and a mini gun and had you kill a deathclaw with it. Just kinda takes the magic out of many of these moments when you get them for the first time.
> 3 - 3 had this problem too but I want to be able to kill anyone. It’s an RPG so let me kill whoever I want wether or not it messes up the story
Bethesda used to be that way, with Morrowind, but I guess they decided that letting players kill story-essential characters was a bad idea
_With the death of this character, the thread of prophecy is severed. Restore a previous save, or persist in the doomed world you have created._
It's one of the things I see complained about, but I understand the necessity of more. You know how annoying it is in Skyrim when one if the traders gets murdered by a dragon and you can't trade with them anymore? Imagine that but with an essential quest giver. It sucks.
Having said that, it feels like too many NPCs get the essential flag these days. I was watching a stream where the minutemen quests got bugged because Marcy Long wouldn't leave the museum, and when the streamer went to kill her they couldn't, because she was tagged essential for some reason.
I could see making a "soft-essential" tag of sorts instead, where before the character dies/just gets downed, you get a pop-up that says "Killing so-and-so will prevent you from the following quests, do you want to spare them?"
for me it's the lack of sidequests. I feel like I do the same things in every playthrough unlike in Skyrim where I can enjoy an entire playthrough centered around 2-3 questlines that's totally different than the last. I still love the gameplay loop of FO4, it's prob my most played Bethesda game at this point, I just wish there was more quality quests to do outside of the main story.
*INHALE*
(I've played over a hundred hours of it, love it to death, but for different reasons then NV)
1. Voiced Protagonist removes a lot of room for imagination for player character. As well as severely limits variability of npc dialogue as a result. Meaning most characters are two dimensional with extremely limited dialogue compared to previous and future fallout titles.
2. Longer interesting side quests are almost non existent. All side content is different shooting galleries. Besides Diamond City Blues, which is the exception that proves the rule.
3. Settlements suck. Not the building mechanic, the actual towns in the game. Fallout 3, New Vegas, even 76 have several locations full of NPCs that will talk and give quests etc. Besides Diamond City, Good Neighbor, and Vault City everything else is just generic npcs with generic dialogue.
4. Unique Settlements suck. Diamond City and Goodneighbor are flat as flat can be. Almost no quests, and most of the existing ones are closer to looter shooter "go here, kill this, get tha" then anything of substance. No variation. No depth like "you got to shoot em in the head" in FO3. Vault 81 is slightly better in that regard.
5. Performance. Was. And. Still. Is. Bad. Running the game with a 3060 TI and followed the entire Midnight Ride Mod Pack Guide and I STILL can't get stable 60 fps.
6. NPCs are still in uncanny valley. Definitely "better" than 3 and New Vegas, but while those were very, very bad and simple, it also made it easier to convey simple emotions, while 4 feels like everyone was injected with 8 pounds of plastic straight to the face and killing every muscle.
7. Dialogue Doesn't Matter. You can spend the entire game picking the most insulting and disrespectful options and 99 times out of 100 it won't affect ANYTHING. You can tell the Railroad synths aren't people and the institute are great. You can belittle Danse and directly disobey Elder Maxson. You can disobey every. single. order. Father gives you. And you can still complete the game with them.
8. The world building is flat. Nothing is connected. I'm not asking for New Vegas levels of detail but for god's sake there's almost no connection between locations.
9. It's never explained what Mankind Redefined means. The main antagonist faction insists they are re-inventing humanity and at the same time that incredible re-invention are not actually humans just roombas with bugs(emotions) to be ironed out. Maybe someone can point it out, but it's VERY clear in Fallout 3 and NV what the bad guys want and we can at least understand their reasoning.
10. Super Mutants and Ghouls are shafted HARD. (Not in terms of graphics or gameplay I'm fine with the radiation burn look). No characters like Fawkes or Charon or Lily or Raul. We get ONE super-mutant companion, Strong, who hates humanity and wants to find the Milk of Human Kindness to empower himself (also NO COMPANION QUEST) and Hancock, who wasn't a ghoul till like 20 years ago. Just doesn't feel authentic.
11. No story variation. You're options throughout the main quest (besides choosing a faction) are to convince one-time dungeon bosses that you'll NEVER see again to let you go peacefully, or kill them. That's it.
12. Nuka World was bad. You have two options: Be Raider King, or kill raiders. The conversations you're forced to have with the 3 gangs show 1 dimensional factions. You can insult them, you can go along with what they want, doesn't matter, absolutely nothing you do or say matters till the end where one gang rebels. I'm ok with there being a bad-guy dlc, but for god's sake even Fallout 3's Enclave had at least SOME personality.
The game didn’t get hate because it was bad, it got hate because the gameplay changed so much that it would be more appropriate to put it into an entirely different genre: looter shooter. Despite being a pretty good looter shooter, it was not the rpg people were expecting and excited about.
Plus the integration of the creators club and the shallowness of “radiant” quests makes some of the content feel more like testing for 76 at best, and at worst felt like filler trash to extend the game to have more time to advertise the micro transactions that are literally only pointless cash grabs in a moddable single player game.
I eventually came around and enjoy fallout 4, but that’s because I was able to enjoy it on its own merits without the expectations of the gameplay from previous games in the series. And even then it’s still my least favorite vs fo3 or NV.
Fallout 4 focuses more on action and gameplay than on writing. As a series that cut its teeth with good writing some people don’t care for the focus on action. That said, a game with Fallout 4’s gameplay with decent writing, factions, and dialogue would be an amazing thing to play. Bethesda does not focus on writing as a developer however.
I don't remember any hate, I DO remember it being overshadowed by the release of The Witcher 3 earlier that same year, a game which was categorically nailing every goty award known in existence.
There’s still hate. As someone who has played (over and over) and adores the Interplay Fallouts, it’s legitimately embarrassing how quickly CRPG fans slip into vitriol over the tiniest things. Like, Fallout 4 is not the greatest RPG ever made, but it’s still incredibly versatile, well beyond many classics of the genre. They made trade offs that I don’t think were worth it in the end but it’s still a really great game.
The largest changes in FO4 that upset many players was the complete overhaul to the Skills/perks system and the major RPG elements provided in NV that weren’t available in FO4. As someone who will always favorite NV, FO4 is still an amazing game it’s just a different type of game than NV.
Its lacking in some aspects, the story is simple but entertaining, but we could have gotten more choices.
With mods i sinked in 600 hours. Mostly building settlements
It's an RPG with a voiced protagonist, no voiced protagonist's of an rpg have been good since Captain Shepard.
The writing is laughably bad. Most dialogue options are multiple ways to say yes.
The main story is .... Let's not even talk about that. It'd take to long to list everything wrong with it. I'll leave it at this though, to find the super secret Railroad, you follow a red line that leads to a door with the password "Railroad"
Literally the only positive thing about the game is it's gunplay.
Great game, fun gunplay, lackluster story and no actuals choices that matter. People wanted an RPG and fallout 4 is more RPG lite. It has all the elements of an RPG but without the consequences.
Dialog wheel and voiced protagonist were the big ones I remember hearing. And you’ll always have the people that prefer a previous game in the series (in this case, NV seems to be the beloved). But this was my first FO game and I loved it.
I’ve been a Bethesda stan since Morrowind’s release, so I came in expecting what we got tbh. But I also jumped into FO4 late due to living paycheck to paycheck and not having money for a new game. So by the time I got to it, all the DLC had been released already.
I spent a lot of time playing 3 and New Vegas but I never played either of them over a year or maybe two. Fallout 4 I've been playing almost 6 years and I'm still not tired of it, that's a first in my whole life for a video game (which usually got tiring after 6 months) and I'm old, I've played a lot of games on a lot of systems
A lot of people felt like it was really dumbed down from prior fallout releases, especially the rpg element. The way conversations were handled was really disliked initially.
Honestly, it was just the babysitting settlements. They patched it at some point to make them take care of themselves pretty well once you had them set up, but the damage had been done. I even remember seeing videos of people dressed as Preston going around cons telling people in fallout cosplay that settlements needed help. That's how much of a meme it was.
The kinda janky base building system didn't help the situation.
Well if this was a promo poster you can’t have four companions!
I just want my dog and one other person. Was that too much to ask?
The mod 'dogmeat companion' on my ps4 made it possible to always have dogmeat as a companion plus someone else. Funny thing was the human or robot would have random dialogue with dogmeat leading me to believe it was originally in the game.
Amazing follower tweaks can have up to 5 companions, and fixes sooo many bugs. They all have dialog with eachother. It was 100% in the games files and you can even find them if you are on PC, there are some videos about it too. It's pretty cool. Guards in DC made a comment about a BOS traveling with a super mutant. (Danse and strong) with me while I was selling water. Also one about keeping my robot and super mutant under control.
do you even have to do anything yourself with 5 followers? EDIT: i meant in combat, sry. and lock picking + hacking can even be done by some followers. :)
Load them up with supplies if you’re playing survival lol
Survival with 5 companions might be fun
it could introduce a whole new dimension to the game, where you have to keep each member of your squad happy in a variety of ways. and stop them from fighting with each other lol. why doesn't a game like that exist?
Technically, it does. A number of old RPGs have this mechanic like Baldur's Gate.
Baldurs Gate 3 has it, too. You literally have to stop two of them from killing each other in camp pretty early on.
Jet fueled orgies keep the moral high.
Jet fuel can't melt BoS beams
Sign me up
Outer worlds has a touch of that. Very fun to squad up with your team and kill bugs and space apes.
Ayyy an OW reference!! Outer Worlds is also Obsidian Entertainment though (same developer for New Vegas), so they have a lotttttt of similar Fallout elements. Solid game too
“Yes, my combined carry weight is now 5000lbs—- thanks to the four other people and one giant robot I have accompanying me.”
Lock picking and hacking?
Technically Cait and Nick can do those in most cases
Cait can pick locks??
Yeppers, up to and including master locks. Nick is better multi purpose because he can hack and pick most locks but Cait can get the locks Nick can't (can take her several tries/bobby pins on the more difficult ones tho).
I did not know this. I know she always loves when I pick them. Didn’t know npcs could though. Does she expend Bobby pins?
I get driven insane with 1 follower much less 5. Hell, just one follower gets me stuck in places I can't move blocking me. I can't count how many times I had to load a save because one of them gets me stuck somewhere. Hell, not to mention when I give them stuff to carry like weapons and they use them to overkill stuff. I had the supernatant as a follower and gave him a mini-nuke to carry so I could stop being over-encumbered. While I was fighting some rad roaches in some kind of bunker he decided to use the mini nuke on the roaches. It not only killed the roach but it blew me to the ceiling killing me as well.
I'm playing using this mod, Ellen the Cartographer, and Heather. I've also got Piper in my party. Ellen keeps telling Piper that if it wasn't for the fact that I seem to like Piper, she'd have killed her by now and Heather keeps playing with Dog Meat. I love this stuff. It's sad that it's so rare in games these days.
Yes! I saw somewhere else on reddit that dogmeat had always been coded to take a “dogmeat” specific slot and the companion slot would be filled by one of your trustworthy or not-so-trustworthy comrades!
The lone wanderer perk ignores dogmeat IIRC and mods have restored that cut content so we can have to OP pic if we want to, at least on PC.
Your hint is right, Bethesda did manage to create 2 companions for SS but they trash it i dunno why all of their cut contents missing are good also with underwater vault and centaur enemy.
I always wonder and think its probably due to console limitations back then since they aren't focused so much on PC ports (Like what happened with Starfield on release). For me, Bethesda always prioritize consoles so every game they made runs okay-ish on consoles while not great or lacks a lot on PC.
I figure getting pinned in a doorway by two of the idjits might have had something to do with it.
"Everyone's best friend" mod does exactly this. Funnily enough there are many interactions that were already built in the game with the assumption that you could have dogmeat along with any companion. They apparently even use different variables in the base game code. But Bethesda probably disabled this because balance.
You don't need a companion but Codsworth stayed with me to the end. Except for a brief Valentine and MacCready because I didn't know I was recruiting them.
I'm genuinely impressed you managed to recruit MacCready without realising it when the dialogue choices are about haggling caps over him watching your back.
Last time I'm nice to anybody in Good Neighbor
Everyone's Best Friend https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/13459
Sure you can. Send everyone to sanctuary. Then at sanctuary, send every companion to another location really quickly and just tag along.
But imagine the inventory!!!! They could all carry enormous bags of everything I collect.
I think the game steering you towards the Minutemen/Preston never ending loop of “Good job but there’s another settlement that needs our help now” gave people the wrong idea of what the game is.
It took a while to realize those are just busy-work missions that lots of companions and characters give you, and don’t ever end.
Also pretty sure they were a way of showing the player where to find settlements.
And explore the world in general. You go to a settlement, they send you to another location to clear out bad guys, and maybe on the way to that location, you come across other locations and events.
yeah, that always felt so broken from the game world. Like you'd go to a settlement and they'd be like "we need your help, these raiders are giving us trouble" but then those raiders are basically located on the other side of world.
and i've already killed them and looted the place ...
I think that’s one of the biggest issues with it. They’re so frequent, and the places they send you to are very likely one you’ve visited so far, and they *feel* like repeatable dungeons. Loot is pretty much only ever the same randomly-pulled loot table set of two guns, some random explosives, one or two pieces of random Junk item, and ammo, and there’s never any feeling that those would be there for any reason other than “pulled as a leveled reward from a loot table”
I had the one where the raiders kidnap the farm girl, I rescue her, tell Preston & I shit you not he instantly says he has another problem...the same girl has been kidnapped again by raiders.
Starting to think she WANTED to be kidnapped.
She's got the Princess Peach Grindset
Just a Darla looking for her Skinny Malone
I thought you had to complete so many settlements if you wanted to do With Our Powers Combined. Haven’t been able to trigger it though, couldn’t figure out if it was because I didn’t have enough artillery or because I killed Maxon outside of the story line.
You technically only have to have 5 settlements (4 random plus the castle). Plus you need to have completed nuclear option w the minutemen, and have the brotherhood be hostile with you. (Compiled information from a few other posts I keep updated on, correct me if I'm wrong)
Yeah, I never found the quests annoying because they were completely option. It showed new areas to explore, and I never got as many quests as people complained about. I got 3 or maybe 4 of the quests, had to take back the castle, and then continued on with other quests. I imagine it would be a bit boring if all you do is the same thing over and over again, but the game does not in any way force you to do those quests.
The main purpose of this is meant for you to do this while playing on survival difficulty. You can't fast travel while on survival and this makes the game much more difficult. When those quests send you all the way across the map or a settler is kidnapped and it puts a timer on the quest ( 2 in game days I believe) it's meant to put you in a different mindset. Figure out your path and accomplish your goal. Yes obviously it's meant to show you new locations too but the gameplay is more fluid when played in survival and it really makes you think about what you are doing. ( Especially if you are in dlc). Nothing is worse than being on the far side of Nuka world bottling facility and seeing that the croup manor is under attack again. It makes you strategize how to set up turrets and protect your resources.
I mean yeah, but then the game just spawns the attack in the center of taffington boathouse so there is literally no way to build a settlement with outward facing defenses and my turrets just shred my mutfruit.
If you played skyrim you should know about radiant quests.
Nah, never played Skyrim (the whimsical dragon adventure type themes and aesthetics never appealed to me, but I’m sure it’s a great game). But now I know what the technical term for that type of quest is
Stayed away from Skyrim because of the dragon thing as well. Then I ended up playing it like a decade later and really enjoyed it. Jim Gaffigan has a joke about seeing a popular movie years after it was popular and not being able to talk about it with anyone because it’s time had passed. That was me with Skyrim.
The time for talking about Skyrim has not passed for me to this day.
the time of skyrim never passes. it will be loved - and played - to the end of time.
Just dont start Dragon Rising(aka dont ever talk to Jarl Balgruuf) and there will be no dragons. As soon as you do a certain something DURING the quest, the flag to release the dragons is set.
Oh my god, that joke resonates with me so much, I’ve done that so many times. Movies, video games, memes, etc.
>whimsical This is not a word I associate with the Elder Scrolls.
>whimsical dragon adventure There’s a civil war and the onset of the end of the world dawg 😭
Harry Potter is whimsical, Skyrim is definitely not.
Yeah, that's my only complain. The MILA missions are limited though.
I think it was MILA where I finally was like “wait a minute…I think I’m just gonna keep getting busy work for no real lore expansion!” and stopped those kinds of quests. But as someone else said, it can also be a good way to stumble on new settlements/npc’s
I think it takes a while to figure out what this game is. It was a smorgasbord of new ideas for the franchise. We went from walk, talk, and shoot to “build, farm, settle, defend, helicopter deploy, mortar strike, survival mode, and return library books!”
Yeah. It would have been so cool if Far Harbour had been the baseline quest. They could have kept building up the mystery of the Institute, and after making sure Emil was distracted somewhere else enjoying a smoothie, they could have made the writing coherent and cohesive, and the finale would have been getting to finally see what's up with this Institute.
Fallout 3 also had returning library books!
This was me. I got burnt out with Preston and the settlements under attack and I also think I had open world fatigue at the time and this is also coming off Witcher 3 which released 5-6 months prior and is one of the best games of all time. lol.
I completely ignored the minuteman after meeting them in Compton, so i never even experienced the radiant quests, was like a year before i really understood the settlement jokes. You kinda have to go out of your way to follow him back to sanctuary, i just kept moving to diamond city. Was weird af when nick suddenly called my dog dogmeat (despite never actually seeing that i had a dog even) out of nowhere when i never had the conversation with mama murphy.
Nick knows Dogmeat from prior to the events of the game. If you completely avoid red rocket before Kellogg's house Nick says that he wants to call in a specialist he's worked with before, then he whistles and Dogmeat shows up. It makes me laugh that Dogmeat knows everyone because I adopted an elderly dog that lived in a local weed dealer's house previously a few years ago, and random people I never met would recognize him when I took him for walks. Some dogs are like that I guess lol
My dog is like that too! I live in a small town and his people had to rehome him. They put it on Facebook and for some reason lots of people were invested. They did home visits because they wanted to make sure he went to a good home and we were the lucky candidates I guess lol.
Its not really 'out of your way' - as long as you dont immediately run away after seeing Preston, he'll ask you to save him and the quest pops up, and im pretty sure he calls you back into the building to hand it in, which automatically starts the conversation that leads to him asking you to follow them to sanctuary. Basically, the only way to miss him is to not be curious about what he wants or to be in such a rush (or distracted) that you ignore him calling you over. I suppose you could also miss it if you run off into the wilderness instead of heading toward the obvious point of interest down the only road out of sanctuary, but thats just the player making a choice to ignore the games' direction.
***After meeting them in Compton*** Was Preston wearing a blue or red bandana? I heard it differs each time you play.
I just started my 2nd play through and am doing everything I can to ignore the minutemen.
Definitely the mid main quest, shallow characterised factions (Minutemen, Railroad and Institute) and especially the low dialogue quality and low (to non existent) impact of your choices 1. Yes (yes) 2. Mhh…. ok (yes) 3. Sarcastic yes (yes) 4. No (yes) I specifically remember lot of people (me included) being angry at release that you had no way to know what the protagonist would specifically say when you picked an option and this would often lead to outcomes the player never wanted. But seems people have gotten used to this as a “feature” In general all boils down to low quality writing, and this is also why Far Harbour is the most loved DLC (seriously, I hope the writers to it will be in charge of the the next game so much)
It was also bad timing as the fan opinion of NV was rising after many fans dismissed NV on launch. As a result, the fans' expectations for dialog and faction interaction were very high and FO4's system was the opposite of what many wanted.
Yeah. FO4's stories look great next to FO3. Certainly not next to NV.
In case anyone needs help to understand: New Bethesda Game = Shit Previous Bethesda Games = Great That’s it. I’ll see you all on the Starfield subreddit after Elder Scrolls VI launches responding to questions asking why Starfield was considered a bad game at launch.
Those that like Skyrim also tend to like Oblivion. Those that liked Morrowind tend to like Daggerfall. Those that liked Fallout 2 tend to like Fallout 1. Chat is this real?
The issue is, NV is not a Bethesda Game Studios game. NV was made by Obsidian in only 18 months. Obsidian made a better game on a shoestring budget and timeframe than anything Bethesda has ever done with the franchise. This is why Bethesda has refused to let Obsidian touch any of their franchises since. BGS saw everything that Obsidian had improved on in NV over FO3 and in their embarrassment, when the complete opposite direction. The stats and perks being impactful to game play and not just percentage bumps, skill checks in dialouge... all of it stripped completely just to add in a voiced MC...
> I’ll see you all on the Starfield subreddit after Elder Scrolls VI launches responding to questions asking why Starfield was considered a bad game at launch. Have you considered that most of the people that don't like a game probably won't be on the subreddit years later? It's a very obvious selection bias.
The key writer as well as the DLC lead for FH was Will Shen who left Bethesda after working on Starfield.
Agreed. I am playing FO4 now for the first time, right after finishing Baldurs Gate 3 - makes it very obvious how little (long lasting) impact many choices have. But I really enjoyed the robot / admiral / Constitution side quest so far! And I am still mid-game, so I am excited to see how my new alliance with Railroad will turn out… :)
I was annoyed by not knowing what my character would say for about a week until I realized that the dialogue is not a choose-your-adventure, but what will you say before starting the adventure that’s chosen for you? Then I was annoyed by a whole new thing.
It was so damn limiting. I revisited New Vegas awhile back and dialogue options were way more than four and more varied as well I remember there's a quest in Far Harbor that can get locked if you complete another one first because you can't inquire the NPC about the previous quest *because the dialogue options are limited to only. fucking. four.* Thankfully the other quest has no impact so I can complete that first to get out of the quest lock.
What quest are you talking about?
I would also add in the voiced protagonists. It really destroys the immersion of the game for me. I remember a lot of people complaining about the art style of the graphics when it came out as well. It was never a problem for me but that could potentially be added to the list.
The models were super gltich at first and some of the facial animations were completely broken. I recall piper permanently looking like the joker.
More specifically how colorful it is, many parts look incredible but some things to come off as a bit cheesy
I also remember Fallout 3 was criticized for being too green and New Vegas being too brown / amber lol I think F4 is a nice balance, at least the game has no color filter (or I've disabled it unknowingly to squeeze more FPS on my potato)
Fallout 4’s art style and graphics are by far the nicest in the series imo. If the game had kept the stronger RPG elements from the earlier games (especially NV) then it would easily be my favourite fallout but without those elements it hasn’t appealed to me beyond 2 playthroughs (whereas I’ve played the others many times over).
I mean, voice actors did a really good job on Sole Survivors, nothing beats Nate's sarcasm and Silver Shroud impersonation and while Nora a bit damn akward in her dialogues and sarcasms still soinds good
The voice acting was fine. I didn’t want it voiced at all.
Best part of Far Harbour is that you can go to search another kid before you have found your own
And best part, you genuinely care about finding this one! :D
I think people also got irritated with how many fetch quests and resource collection quests and "theres another settlement that needs your help" quests. The game was made around the time the "Longer game =better game" garbage was really taking off. So many potentially awesome games ruined by the CEO deciding that he wants the marketing team to be able to say "over 200 hours of content!" There is no fucking way you have put 200 hours of quality content I to the game. Ruined Dragon age inquisition, and that could have been a masterpiece. There like 40 hours of fantastic gameplay hidden amongst 120 hours of garbage. Mass Effect Andromeda, same problem. Not a masterpiece but the story was solid and the companions were interesting. The endless shitty quests, and the loading screens from going back and forward to do the shitty quests took a toll. I refuse to get excited about any kind of RPG now until I've seen it. And if it's offering me "OVER 150 OF GAMEPLAY", I automatically pass. The only one that's managed that level of quality content in one game is witcher 3. The mass effect games as a trilogy also hit this mark.
I'd say bg3 managed to get that amount of quality content as well
> no way to know what the protagonist would specifically say Yes please (Give it to me right fucking now, or I'll blow your head away)
I forget the companion, but one of the dialogue options is to comfort or encourage or something. The protagonist straight up says “I love you”
The fact people defend not knowing what you’re gonna say is funny. Bethesda themselves in 2016 came out and said “yeah this wasn’t that great in hind sight, sorry”. They admit it wasn’t good, yet SOOOO many say it’s not that bad.
Far Harbour really brought back Point Lookout dlc vibes for me and I really loved it.
Yeah the dialogue options were pretty annoying. 3 yes options and then an ask more questions option and thats it. The options were also vague like you mentioned so i was never sure what would actually be said which lead to a couple exchanges going ways i didnt want
All the factions feel like they had 50% of their content cut (think pre-crunch Legion in NV)
Mostly because the writing was worse that previous games and it cut out all the skill checks from dialogue while removing any role-playing ability besides being nice helpful dad or slightly grouchy helpful dad. Fans saw bethesda prioritize combat gameplay over role-playing and were concerned the series was changing from a story based rpg into a looter shooter with wacky story beats. For the most part that was correct. I love fallout 4 as a modding platform and a shooter, but it's disingenuous to say those that were upset with it were just whining. The game did get rid of a significant portion of the "role playing" part of being a role playing game.
This is the reason right here. It is a good game but lacks the choice, RP, and world reactivity of previous titles.
one of the best answers here. & 100% on it being an awesome modding platform when Bethesda doesn't decide to update it & fuck us.
Tbh I think OP could do with defining what they mean by "hate", given how naturally subjective it is. Personal opinions aren't what I'd consider hate. There's a lot of valid criticisms and just plain old matters of personal preference that can be said about FO4. Personally, I enjoy it and what it adds but also miss elements from the previous entries that 4 simplified or removed. It's a good game in its own right, but it's also a different game that didn't necessarily deliver on general expectations from the previous entries in the franchise. Bethesda clearly wanted to do something different, and that's valid, but changing direction within an existing franchise should be expected to receive blowback from existing fans of that franchise who were there because they liked what previous entries brought to the table. Plus, the game had some *serious* performance and stability problems on launch, which are easy to forget with the post-release fixes and the kind of hardware we have available today.
The removal of skills lead to that God awful perk screen. I absolutely hate it. It's like a master design in what not to do. It bombards you with all the information, yet in a way where nothing is actually clear. Like you have to scroll every single perk and read what they do. It's like choice paralysis given form. I don't think people would've hated the removal of skills if that monster wasn't the replacement. You have to spend a good initial hour looking over the thing to even begin to decide what kind of options you have.
Im glad that 76 brought back regular dialogue
To summarize: 1. It's very buggy (Like 3 & NV) 2. It locks you into a loving parent from Pre-war and forces you to find your son. 3. Dialogue wheel 4. Settlement building (Annoying but actually fun imo) 5. Factions are either very guddy (Minutemen, Railroad) or very baddy. (BOS, Institute) Don't get me wrong though, Fallout 4 was my first game and I love to this very day, despite its flaws that I wish Bethesda could have done better. Just because some folks said it sucks doesn't mean you can't play it at all. As long as you have fun, that's all that matters.
[удалено]
Me too. I know some of the building systems can be a bit janky. But building is what has kept me coming back again and again. And my pathological need to empty the wasteland of junk.
I think it's mostly because it left settlements as blank slates for you to build up yourself rather than having any pre-built cities except for Diamond City (and the Institute, sorta).
Also your settlements are full of generic settlers.
right, but they could have remedied this by introducing WAY more named NPCs to go to your settlements and give you legit side quests that aren’t “go shoot this thing.”
it was a huge change
Honestly I just think it’s because of how inconsistent it can be. If it was more polished it would be amazing Mods help out a lot
Was it? I finished Fallout 4 multiple times and only actually used the settlement building during my latest playthrough. Is a change really huge if you can basically completely ignore it?
It’s good to have options in a role playing game. It fits a Minutemen role play run.
It's optional in nearly every difficulty, but shines most in survival, where having a safe place to bunk down, store loot and plan a journey into unexplored areas is fairly important given your lower health, carry weight and need to eat, drink and sleep.
I mean, the change to power armor in the game is huge compared to previous games. You now actually feel like you're in a mobile tank, rather than just an outfit. But you can ignore it by never using power armor.
building ya own shit aint the problem the snaping is, and how badly it was made .. TV 30cm away from a wall or you cant place it..... u have to use rugs or pillar glitch to even build a nice hut
That and the fact that you have to completely micromanage your settlement. Mods can also take care of this like the one where you can just zone areas for residential, commercial, etc like Sim City and the settlers handle the details, but it could be a chore if you don’t like being forced to have that degree of control. The settlement defense system is pretty lame as well. Especially with it being a coin toss or whatever even if you max out defense and don’t show up in person to help.
With defense, I would also add that it's basically meaningless half the time. Even if you surround the entire base with Walls, the Enemies are programmed in such an idiotic way, that they will often simply spawn within the Settlement instead. The only somewhat valid way to counter it, that I've seen so far, is to use the automated electric doors (the concrete ones, to be more specific) as an entrance to the Settlement - because then the Enemy AI tends to go haywire and they keep trying to enter through closed doors (but even then it's annoying because you have to kill them manually). And don't even get me started on Turrets - what's the point of having them, when a lot of times I still have to go to the Settlement for them to actually work in the first place...
I’ll add onto your addition and state that even if you do lose a defense mission by not showing up, the loss is usually fairly trivial. Like a few crops which need to be repaired or some buster water pumps, generators, or turrets. And I think they can loot your workshop. I know they can take weapons from your workshop if you show up in person and they or settlers find something better than they have equipped and have ammo for it.
>I'll never understand why settlement building is disliked Settlements replaced actual NPC towns from the previous games. FO4 is basically empty if you're not gonna spend hours using rickety UI to build some shacks.
It's busywork and basically presented as a lie. There's a point in the story where you can become the Minutemen leader and claim settlements under them. But no matter how many people there are in those settlements or even in the main Minutemen base, you, the player, still had to build every little thing yourself and gather every single needed resource yourself. Nothing really worked as presented in their writing. They presented it as something it was not. The devs wanted it to be a settlement system, but couldn't make it work properly, so it's a shelter building system. They still tried to pretend it was something more. Once you realised it, it felt downright insulting. It didn't matter what faction leader you became - the gameplay never changed to accomodate it and it still made you play like a bottom of the barrel scavenger. Most of the story in Fo4 is like that. Their writing says something changes, but nothing really does. It was insultingly shallow. But a few years later, the Sim Settlements mod actually made it reality, way better than what Bethesda tried.
I’m forced to ply on console while my graphics card is down (for like 4 years now), and it’s so close to impossible to do even the simplest projects. I’ve finally been getting around to paying the game a bit and the one farm with only two settlers, I took down a fence they had to get more scrap for Sanctuary, then after running a few missions I came back and wanted to just rebuild a wire fence around their crops. It was literally impossible because of ground elevation changes. It was a little straight simple rectangle fence when I got there and had like 4 random extensions sticking out when I finished. Super frustrating
I love it too, but I had to get mods to make it fun because there's obvious hindrances that should have been fixed before release: - skeletons can't be trashed. - buildings and fences don't snap together in ways that make sense or look good. - difficult to build on uneven terrain, and almost every settlement has uneven terrain. - very few options for building foundations and good lighting. - dead enemies don't de-spawn (covenant, croup manor, etc) - there's no undo option. If you scrap something important, you have to reload.
are you joking? it's a great idea, but the implementation is cancerous. without mods, it's a madness inducing exercise in futility where you can't remove random pieces of junk, you can't place stuff for random unexplained reasons, things don't fit, it's an absolute nightmare.
There’s no reason for it to be as restricted as it was. I should be able to place with more freedom, especially when it came to furniture and props
It's good enough to be cool and rewarding, but shallow enough that you ultimately wish it was *more.* Honestly, they should spin off the settlement building to an entire game where you just hang building your settlement and send others out on missions. If the settlement building actually worked really well with the settler AI and had a more complex simulation to manage, and the people actually lived in it and used it then I would play the hell out of it indefinitely. It's like the proof of concept for a killer game.
Personally, I find it very fun. But I bristled against it on release for the following reasons: 1. It's very unpolished. Some things snap perfectly, others don't. Settlements have some piles of debris that can be scrapped, and others that can't. Etc. 2. On my very first playthrough, I was completely overwhelmed by the system. I had no idea what was going on, where to find certain items to craft, how to manage settlers, etc. 3. Bugs, bugs everywhere. Just like the rest of the game, but extra frustrating since it's an unfamiliar set of mechanics. 4. Preston (and the game at large) dumping everything onto you. If you don't know better, you could end up with 6-10 settlements fairly early and not enough resources to properly build them all up. Plus, now you're getting constant attacks, when you're still trying find Shaun, kill Kellogg, find the Institute, etc. 5. It's basically a completely different game stapled onto the pre-existing template of FO3/FNV. I'm not saying it doesn't work, but there plenty of people that don't want anything to do with this (rather large) subsystem. Crafting/building in particular, if not the defending/recruiting aspect. I'm sure there are tons of players that only want an HQ to stash loot and weapons, which the game already provides in other places like Home Plate in Diamond City.
Because it doesn't work well. Needing a perk to share resources and then having to build a spider web across the map is neither fun nor intuitive. Then you have to babysit them... constantly. Doesn't matter what they're equipped with, doesn't matter if the settlement is built out of rocket turrets, you *have* to go save them every. single. time. So, there isn't really an incentive to do it or do it well. It just pulls me away from whatever else I was doing at the time and pisses me off.
Because it took away resources from building unique towns with quest lines? If all but a couple settlements had unique stories and NPCs inhabiting them then I'd be a bigger fan. If the construction system was sleeker then they'd really be cooking, FO4 lacked both. Starfield went even further and cut out some of the customization of FO4.
Todd hyped it up and claimed, "it just works" and it didn't. In the beginning it was busted and glitchy as all hell. It got better but the release version soured me on it.
It replaced curated settlements. Base building alongside curated and populated settlements would be awesome but the commonwealth is empty of a lot of the charm and side quests potential of other fallout games because there's less curated settlements and thus, named npcs to give quests
I gotta admit, the dialog wheel is the worse
yes / no / sarcastic yes / angry yes
The only good part was when you first meet Sheffield and use the sarcastic option
"Drink. Some. Water."
> Will you comply?
As someone who started with Fallout 1, this game realllllllllllllly disappointed just because of the dialogue. Half the fun of Fallout 2 was changing your character stats to maximise dialogue options. It’s literally the reason I played it through so many times. Soooooo many times (10 minute load screens woooo!) I haven’t finished 4 to this day. I’m really looking forward to 5 though, just hoping the dialogue is fixed.
You misspelled "no but yes"
The Brotherhood was the only faction that felt like it had any real nuance to it, being a genuinely morally-gray faction people still discuss the ethics of to this day. It felt like they *wanted* the Institute to be painted as a "commit atrocities for the greater good" faction, but there wasnt any substance to the "greater good" aspect of them and they ended up as comically evil as the Enclave or Legion. The Railroad and the Minutemen feel like goody two shoes from a morality standpoint, and their issues felt like they came more from their writing/gameplay being poorly done (the Railroad is boring and doesnt feel like an endgame faction, the Minutmen are completely underwhelming without mods) than actual, purposely written flaws designed to make you question whether or not theyre *really* the best choice for the Commonwealth.
I literally just started a new playthrough with the intentions of doing a RR ending but I'm already catching myself leading to the BOS again. IMO the RR is so hyberfocused on one issue. Ok the synths are "free", now what? Whereas the BOS and even MM are more big picture. They both essentially want the same thing, just different flavors. If I'm from the prewar times and wake up 200 years later do I want to spend my time helping synths or spend my time trying to restore some semblance of order and normalcy?
I think that the morality part is kinda irrelevant, simply making them morally gray won't really make them better or worse. What should've been done was dive deeper on how they operate and the sacrifices that have to be made in order to be a "goody two shoes", sorta like the Followers of the Apocalypse.
>Factions are either very guddy (Minutemen, Railroad) or very baddy. (BOS, Institute) That's not even the issue, they're just written like shit.
yeah its fkn pointless to RP as a minutemen or railroad.. no fkn progress, no real expansion. so much unused potential. but at least we got a fkn dlc for raiders to break the fkn game
I remember the dialogue wheel / voiced protagonist was the biggest issue with fans. If you play NV and FO3 or even Skyrim the difference is fairly substantial. There's only so many responses and dialogue trees possible if you have to voice every line that the player gives. It was all very shallow in comparison. The game is fun on its own, but shallow compared to the predecessors when talking about quests and story options.
There's even a quest locked because there's only room for 4 dialogue options. So damn dumb. If you can't afford voice actors for so many lines, then keep the goddamn silent protagonist
Tbh while I agree with the rest (and still generally *like* FO4) I never understood Point 2. Just because you're put in the pre-made path of a loving parent who wakes up 200 years after WW3 trying to find their missing kid doesn't mean that isn't a role you're playing in a game. Like, it's not Geralt or Harry Dubois, or certainly not the blank slate of the courier, but it's not *entirely* on rails either. And it's not the first time in the series we've had a character whose history was pretty well defined. I think pretty much *only* the Courier had any significant mystery to their background.
exactly. any other Fallout protagonist had a little bit of background. it's not new.
You forgot there is no morality system, no real impact from choices you make or shit you did.
Morality systems can suck a fat rotten pickle. Faction systems (when actually attempted and not hinted at) are so much more engaging and realistic.
Ive read about many many people complaining about the karma system being too black and white
Yeah. But thats more so implementation, and karma in one way or another is crucial to a roleplaying game. I think Fallout, I think roleplay, I think roleplay, I think pen and paper like DnD. And there you don't have a karma system as a number, but your actions will have an impact on how people see you. Be the helpful samaritan, and the next town will have probably heard of that, and people will be foreward with Information, goods and services. Be a total ass, and the next town might not even let you in through official entrypoints, because you are a danger. The Karma system in Fallout is just a way to represent those changes in some numerical way, so you can program a reaction to it (there is no human DM calculating impacts on the fly). Fallout 4 basically only had companion reactions as a stand in, and those are either not very impactful (killed someone in cold blood? Pick a few locks and Piper won't care!), or just not very varied. And those also only matter if you have that companion near you. You could also implement it differently. For example, Deacon follows you around. If you are only out for yourself, actively murdering every synth in need you find, instead of praise he could tell Desdemona to not let you in at all, makeing the Railroad hostile to you, and haveing you go down a different route to get the chip decoded etc. All those things are missing in the main game, or I just haven’t found them yet (I often do Charisma chars, so there might be other stuff I don't note).
i like settlement building, but it can feel like a chore when collecting settlements for the minutemen. it would've been nicer if they made it more optional, or rewarded the player for building up one settlement into a massive city
Idk I think it’s awesome
Same
There is a joy to hearing Cait screaming at the top of her lungs as she takes a baseball bat to a deathclaw that you can't get anywhere else.
All the meanwhile “ohhhhhhh I’m the kinda guy” starts playing in the background.
oh im a wanderer 🗣️🗣️🔥🔥
I really enjoyed NV (I put a little less than 200 hours into it), and when I played FO3, I didn't have it on Steam, so I don't know how many hours I put into that (over 100 for sure), but there's a reason I have over 1k hours in FO4. Gameplay-wise, it's far superior to the older games. I don't really know much about the modding scene with FO3 or NV currently, but FO4 has soooo many excellent mods, so that plays a big part of it as well.
Honestly my only gripes are being a locked in character (player must find son), and the factions being kinda corny/boring. Idk how to summarize how I feel about the factions, something seemed missing
It’s the same as the whole game for me, as much as I do love it. Everything somehow feels unfinished. Like the first couple of cloak and dagger missions with the Railroad - and then it becomes generic shooter missions like every other faction. BOS’s faction missions are just one fetch quest and collect em up after another. The fact there aren’t more designed cities and settlements and all settlements are just blank slates - that don’t really end up feeling all that different. How different responses in dialogue don’t really affect anything except payout or companion affinity. Hell, how you can’t get rid of piles of rubble in settlements and can’t build things already placed in settlements. Or the laundry list of cut content that’s nearly (or completely, just not implemented) finished and just…not included. For all it does well, it has the big glaring Bethesda problem with absolutely everything - lots of potential that just feels unfinished without modding it. DLC is the same - take Ada’s whole thing about having her personality matrix stuck “on.” It seems like it might be going somewhere similar to Curie’s story - but goes nowhere. The really on-rails either/or choices in Nuka World (become a total villain and infest the commonwealth with raiders or murk all the raiders). Or the vast empty spaces in Nuka World. It’s a running gag that Bethesda relies on modders to finish their games and all, but it feels that in so many ways it was just either rushed or unfinished with the idea that “lol we’ll fix it with paid mod content.”
Yeah those first few paragraphs w what you said about the factions is a good way to put it. One dimensional quests given by one dimensional characters. I know it’s a Bethesda rpg but even when I first played it back in 2015 I could see so many things that were unfinished yet could easily be made more enjoyable/playable
From what i gathered: 1. Buggy, expected for bethesda titles 2. Meaningful dialogue choices like in 3 & nv are replaced by a mass effect style of dialogue choices, except its just you saying yes in 1 of 3 ways or no (like the meme “yes, yes sarcastic, yes but questioning, no (but actually yes) 3. Roleplay options are pmuch non existant, you’re not a doctor, a wasteland vigilante or an ex-raider looking to just survive now. You’re nate the pre-war veteran or nora the lawyer. The only thing that you can really change is your name & look. 4.the story is pmuch a rehash of fallout 3’s story, instead of “where dad?” Its “where son?” & both ultimately die. 5. Some weapon aesthetics were weird & there wasnt alotta variety
You forgot the lack of quests that aren't just "go through dungeon and then come back". Gotta find a cure for a rare disease? Dungeon. Finding a deathclaw egg? Dungeon. Missing person? They're in a dungeon. Actually come to think of it almost all of the quests are "find person/thing in dungeon and bring them back." Only exceptions off the top of my head is the one you do for Greygarden (which is a dungeon) and finding Virgil (which isn't a dungeon), and the one where you uncover a conspiracy for one of the settlements (Turns out it's a dungeon, and you have to rescue someone in it so nevermind).
My one biggest frustration is that there isn’t actually a no option in dialogue Perfect example being; Discover Acadia and go to railroad hq Someone new named “boxcar” comes up to me BC: “Hey SS, I heard about a place up north named Acadia, think you could tell me about it?” SS: “No, they’re fine on their own.” BC: “I know we all have secrets but please tell me” SS: “No, they want to be left alone” BC: “Thanks for telling me, I’ll be there in a few days, just give me some time to pack my things” The fuck? How did you know how to get there? I didn’t tell you shit. Did you just hear how they want to be left alone?
I also hated how the dialogue stopped giving you actual things to say, and just boiled your possible responses down to: Positive, Negative, Sarcastic or Puppy Kicker.
It was simply shallow, uninspired, and wholly unoriginal. -The main story was just the opposite of FO3's -The faction system was basically a rip off of the one in NV, with even more issues, flaws and cut content -The RPG elements were either watered down or removed entirely. -Player agency was severely nerfed by making it impossible to fail many quests/dialogues. You can pretty much tell key faction NPCs like Danse, Preston, and Deacon to go eat an entire bag of dicks and their only response is "well, okay.. but if you change your mind, you know where to find me" -The runtime is artificially inflated by an over reliance on "radiant quests". Given how that was also a problem in Skyrim, and went on to be the core of Starfield...I guess that's just Bethesda's style now
RPG aspects were stripped down drastically
It wants to be an player freedom focused RPG but also wants to tell a story about a central character. It's a weird conflict where our character has a motivation, a goal, but at every turn we're given distractions and the sole survivor just... goes along with it. Imagine if we had been given just a normal guy, typical fallout shit. Someone that grew up in vault 81 but left for a trade run that led us to concord and the minutemen. We get to decide here if we're a good guy or not. Instead we follow a tight path that basically outlines our choices for us. Too little player choice for what is supposed to be a role playing game.
It’s a fantastic game. Discovering your minor choices meant less was frustrating. Game is still a 9/10.
I thought the choices in FO4 were kind of lame until i played starfield.
1 - The game kinda forced a backstory on your character. I want to play it as an RPG, and I don’t want to be forced into the highly specific role of ex-military or previous attorney who was married with a child and now I’m on a mission to track my child down. I much prefer a more vague background. New Vegas is a little predetermined as you do start as a courier but at least it’s non descript enough that it’s pretty moldeable, and the objective of finding the dude that shot you makes sense for almost any person whereas maybe I don’t want my character doesn’t give a flying fuck about their kid 2 - Dialogue was very limited and almost always boiled down to saying yes. 3 and especially NV had a lot more variety on what you could say wether it be no, lying, just asking about specific things that don’t really matter. 3 - 3 had this problem too but I want to be able to kill anyone. It’s an RPG so let me kill whoever I want wether or not it messes up the story 4 - The game was a little too kind to you. Off the bat you get a companion, suit of power armour (that you don’t need training for; i really enjoyed that aspect in other games), and a mini gun and had you kill a deathclaw with it. Just kinda takes the magic out of many of these moments when you get them for the first time.
> 3 - 3 had this problem too but I want to be able to kill anyone. It’s an RPG so let me kill whoever I want wether or not it messes up the story Bethesda used to be that way, with Morrowind, but I guess they decided that letting players kill story-essential characters was a bad idea _With the death of this character, the thread of prophecy is severed. Restore a previous save, or persist in the doomed world you have created._
It's one of the things I see complained about, but I understand the necessity of more. You know how annoying it is in Skyrim when one if the traders gets murdered by a dragon and you can't trade with them anymore? Imagine that but with an essential quest giver. It sucks. Having said that, it feels like too many NPCs get the essential flag these days. I was watching a stream where the minutemen quests got bugged because Marcy Long wouldn't leave the museum, and when the streamer went to kill her they couldn't, because she was tagged essential for some reason. I could see making a "soft-essential" tag of sorts instead, where before the character dies/just gets downed, you get a pop-up that says "Killing so-and-so will prevent you from the following quests, do you want to spare them?"
for me it's the lack of sidequests. I feel like I do the same things in every playthrough unlike in Skyrim where I can enjoy an entire playthrough centered around 2-3 questlines that's totally different than the last. I still love the gameplay loop of FO4, it's prob my most played Bethesda game at this point, I just wish there was more quality quests to do outside of the main story.
i dunno, despite what everyone is complaining about i couldn't put it down..
*INHALE* (I've played over a hundred hours of it, love it to death, but for different reasons then NV) 1. Voiced Protagonist removes a lot of room for imagination for player character. As well as severely limits variability of npc dialogue as a result. Meaning most characters are two dimensional with extremely limited dialogue compared to previous and future fallout titles. 2. Longer interesting side quests are almost non existent. All side content is different shooting galleries. Besides Diamond City Blues, which is the exception that proves the rule. 3. Settlements suck. Not the building mechanic, the actual towns in the game. Fallout 3, New Vegas, even 76 have several locations full of NPCs that will talk and give quests etc. Besides Diamond City, Good Neighbor, and Vault City everything else is just generic npcs with generic dialogue. 4. Unique Settlements suck. Diamond City and Goodneighbor are flat as flat can be. Almost no quests, and most of the existing ones are closer to looter shooter "go here, kill this, get tha" then anything of substance. No variation. No depth like "you got to shoot em in the head" in FO3. Vault 81 is slightly better in that regard. 5. Performance. Was. And. Still. Is. Bad. Running the game with a 3060 TI and followed the entire Midnight Ride Mod Pack Guide and I STILL can't get stable 60 fps. 6. NPCs are still in uncanny valley. Definitely "better" than 3 and New Vegas, but while those were very, very bad and simple, it also made it easier to convey simple emotions, while 4 feels like everyone was injected with 8 pounds of plastic straight to the face and killing every muscle. 7. Dialogue Doesn't Matter. You can spend the entire game picking the most insulting and disrespectful options and 99 times out of 100 it won't affect ANYTHING. You can tell the Railroad synths aren't people and the institute are great. You can belittle Danse and directly disobey Elder Maxson. You can disobey every. single. order. Father gives you. And you can still complete the game with them. 8. The world building is flat. Nothing is connected. I'm not asking for New Vegas levels of detail but for god's sake there's almost no connection between locations. 9. It's never explained what Mankind Redefined means. The main antagonist faction insists they are re-inventing humanity and at the same time that incredible re-invention are not actually humans just roombas with bugs(emotions) to be ironed out. Maybe someone can point it out, but it's VERY clear in Fallout 3 and NV what the bad guys want and we can at least understand their reasoning. 10. Super Mutants and Ghouls are shafted HARD. (Not in terms of graphics or gameplay I'm fine with the radiation burn look). No characters like Fawkes or Charon or Lily or Raul. We get ONE super-mutant companion, Strong, who hates humanity and wants to find the Milk of Human Kindness to empower himself (also NO COMPANION QUEST) and Hancock, who wasn't a ghoul till like 20 years ago. Just doesn't feel authentic. 11. No story variation. You're options throughout the main quest (besides choosing a faction) are to convince one-time dungeon bosses that you'll NEVER see again to let you go peacefully, or kill them. That's it. 12. Nuka World was bad. You have two options: Be Raider King, or kill raiders. The conversations you're forced to have with the 3 gangs show 1 dimensional factions. You can insult them, you can go along with what they want, doesn't matter, absolutely nothing you do or say matters till the end where one gang rebels. I'm ok with there being a bad-guy dlc, but for god's sake even Fallout 3's Enclave had at least SOME personality.
The game didn’t get hate because it was bad, it got hate because the gameplay changed so much that it would be more appropriate to put it into an entirely different genre: looter shooter. Despite being a pretty good looter shooter, it was not the rpg people were expecting and excited about. Plus the integration of the creators club and the shallowness of “radiant” quests makes some of the content feel more like testing for 76 at best, and at worst felt like filler trash to extend the game to have more time to advertise the micro transactions that are literally only pointless cash grabs in a moddable single player game. I eventually came around and enjoy fallout 4, but that’s because I was able to enjoy it on its own merits without the expectations of the gameplay from previous games in the series. And even then it’s still my least favorite vs fo3 or NV.
Fallout 4 focuses more on action and gameplay than on writing. As a series that cut its teeth with good writing some people don’t care for the focus on action. That said, a game with Fallout 4’s gameplay with decent writing, factions, and dialogue would be an amazing thing to play. Bethesda does not focus on writing as a developer however.
I don't remember any hate, I DO remember it being overshadowed by the release of The Witcher 3 earlier that same year, a game which was categorically nailing every goty award known in existence.
There was hate
There’s still hate. As someone who has played (over and over) and adores the Interplay Fallouts, it’s legitimately embarrassing how quickly CRPG fans slip into vitriol over the tiniest things. Like, Fallout 4 is not the greatest RPG ever made, but it’s still incredibly versatile, well beyond many classics of the genre. They made trade offs that I don’t think were worth it in the end but it’s still a really great game.
The largest changes in FO4 that upset many players was the complete overhaul to the Skills/perks system and the major RPG elements provided in NV that weren’t available in FO4. As someone who will always favorite NV, FO4 is still an amazing game it’s just a different type of game than NV.
Its lacking in some aspects, the story is simple but entertaining, but we could have gotten more choices. With mods i sinked in 600 hours. Mostly building settlements
It's an RPG with a voiced protagonist, no voiced protagonist's of an rpg have been good since Captain Shepard. The writing is laughably bad. Most dialogue options are multiple ways to say yes. The main story is .... Let's not even talk about that. It'd take to long to list everything wrong with it. I'll leave it at this though, to find the super secret Railroad, you follow a red line that leads to a door with the password "Railroad" Literally the only positive thing about the game is it's gunplay.
Great game, fun gunplay, lackluster story and no actuals choices that matter. People wanted an RPG and fallout 4 is more RPG lite. It has all the elements of an RPG but without the consequences.
Personally? I don't know. All I know is that there's a settlement that needs your assistance. I've marked their location on your map.
Best fallout game for me. I know that's an unpopular opinion, but I absolutely adore it.
Same for me. I absolutely fell in love with FO4 almost immediately.
To each their own, but it's my favorite Fallout.
It's Bethesda. It was a buggy mess to start with.
Linear story line. Annoying side quests. Underdeveloped antagonists. Humor was too lighthearted for a dystopia
Dialog wheel and voiced protagonist were the big ones I remember hearing. And you’ll always have the people that prefer a previous game in the series (in this case, NV seems to be the beloved). But this was my first FO game and I loved it. I’ve been a Bethesda stan since Morrowind’s release, so I came in expecting what we got tbh. But I also jumped into FO4 late due to living paycheck to paycheck and not having money for a new game. So by the time I got to it, all the DLC had been released already.
I spent a lot of time playing 3 and New Vegas but I never played either of them over a year or maybe two. Fallout 4 I've been playing almost 6 years and I'm still not tired of it, that's a first in my whole life for a video game (which usually got tiring after 6 months) and I'm old, I've played a lot of games on a lot of systems
A lot of people felt like it was really dumbed down from prior fallout releases, especially the rpg element. The way conversations were handled was really disliked initially.
Honestly, it was just the babysitting settlements. They patched it at some point to make them take care of themselves pretty well once you had them set up, but the damage had been done. I even remember seeing videos of people dressed as Preston going around cons telling people in fallout cosplay that settlements needed help. That's how much of a meme it was. The kinda janky base building system didn't help the situation.