Fallout 4’s announcement was a breath of fresh air after years of game trailers with exponentially long delays. It was the first time in the video game industry that we were experiencing multiple year periods between the announcement and release.
When Bethesda put up a countdown clock on their website in June, we had no idea that what we were going to be shown would release in November of the same year.
I think the whole industry changed its outlook on announcement windows from how much hype came from not just the announcement that a new Fallout was coming for the new console gen, but the excitement that we’d actually be able to play it within only a few months.
IMO the RPG elements were not as nice after having played The Witcher 3 just a few months prior, but the feeling of being the wanderer in a wasteland was still very cool and I enjoyed the building additions.
The Pip Boy might have been a bit of a flop, but the application itself was still a cool novelty addition to the game for 2015. I do wish that second screen applications had grown and gotten better, but it appears they needed to be good from the start for wide adoption.
The colour palate was massive improvement over the beige green and browns from the PS3/360 generation, I still have no idea why so many games used to have no colour to them.
There aren’t that many games that have as much of a mod scene like Bethesdas games, if you don’t already have the game and are going to buy it, get it on PC if you can. Also make sure to buy the GOTY Edition with all the DLC, as there are many mods that are dependent on all of the content.
I would also avoid the Creation Club and get accustomed to the NexusMods page, you should download and setup Vortex Mod Manager which handles mods fairly well.
In order for mods to work on the PS4, within Sony’s required limitations, mods themselves on consoles can’t be much more than short in code length. So the Creation Club which was designed for consoles does not host the same quality in library.
Fallout 4 got an 88% on OpenCritic with one reviewer saying this;
Bethesda has created another game you can lose your life in. New experiences just keep coming, and you always have another perk to unlock. ~ Game Informer
The game with all DLC is -75% on Steam at $9.99 for the next week, even cheaper in my region with AUD.
I’m biased because it’s the first fallout game I played, but I never understood some of the complaints people had. I really liked having a voiced protagonist and the predefined back story was great, because it came up constantly. It allowed for great role-playing. I played new Vegas and enjoyed it, but the game itself wasn’t really all that fun to me, partially because I feel it’s aged somewhat poorly from a gameplay point of view. But in addition, it felt like your character didn’t have a personality, they just had skills and things they were good at. Compared to four, where you can bring up your dead spouse and child and your prewar knowledge pretty regularly, for example. Obviously the dialogue system could’ve been better but on the whole I think four gets way too much flak.
This is the problem for folks like myself, who got to spend time with New Vegas when it was new. Your character is given to you, and you must play that role no matter how little you care. NV allows me to have a very specific conception of who my character is, right down to which lines I choose to deliver sarcastically, and I can express that character in nearly every interaction because I’m not tied to a wife and child I had all of 2.5 minutes to develop an emotional attachment to.
I’m aware I’m in the minority with my opinion, but it just seems odd to me that I never hear these sorts of criticisms levied at the witcher for instance. Great game and fundamentally a good rpg, but your character is predefined. You can shape it a little but Geralt is ultimately still Geralt no matter what. But I never felt that impeded my ability to roleplay as him. The fact that the character is predefined is a positive to me, because the game can be designed around that fact. The scope is limited somewhat, so the paths you do choose can be better detailed. With new Vegas, the actual personality of your character lives within your head most of the time, and isn’t represented on screen nearly as much. Of course that’s fine, it’s just a very different roleplay experience imo, and I don’t prefer it like most people seem to. Not to say that Fo4 is as successful at it as the witcher was, just something I think about. I wish Fo4 would have leaned into it even more if anything, rather than the middle ground they’re in. Would’ve been cool to spend more time prewar for instance, have that aspect of the character influence more side quests.
I have the real minority opinion in the end cause I very much dislike the witcher 3, which is heresy from what im told, for the same reason. Geralt is not a character I like. Im not interested in playing as him. Id be much happier if I could play some create-a-witcher and just interect with the world and characters. Obviously it would be very different but he ruins it for me.
I can’t comment on this, really. I’ve only played the first Witcher, and I thought it was charming, an opinion that many people seem to find incomprehensible. I tried getting into Witcher 2 and the world just would not hold my interest long enough for me to get any momentum. I haven’t played Witcher 3 and despite all the praise it gets, the fact that I’m playing a predefined character continually dampens my interest.
Blistering hot take, but if I don’t have pretty excessive control over my character I don’t consider it to be a ‘true’ RPG. I don’t bandy this around with elitist intent, I just find myself measuring games in the genre by their narrative chops when the bar to entry is seemingly down to game mechanics (see: Mass Effect, Red Dead, Deus Ex - Incredible games in the RPG genre, but I feel like I do not get to define my own Role to Play whatsoever).
There really are two very separate ways that rpgs can work. I’m glad you brought up red dead too, I loved those games, found them very immersive and I found myself role playing a lot. But it’s not a game where you define your own character obviously. Wish there were better terminology to separate the two ideas.
Off topic a bit I guess, but I hope we can all have a great time with starfield. Seems like they’re putting a lot of work into the character backgrounds and traits and such. Trying not to get too hyped in case I get disappointed, but it does sound cool.
I’m looking forward to starfield because there’s nothing that can show me that will make me expect more than a bog-standard Bethesda RPG, in space. I am excited about the nasapunk style and the ship customization looks like it could be fun, but anything beyond that will be a pleasant surprise. There’s supposed to be record-setting amounts of recorded dialogue in that game so I’m hoping that will raise the bar for voiced character interaction.