There’s a yin/yang, zero-sum sort of thing to consider, too–the more you have great narrative and sculptured experiences, the less freedom you have. The very best games tend to do one and give the illusion of the other, but even the best I don’t think can create resources where there are none. F4’s problem with a lot of people is that its freedom isn’t that meaningful, and its narrative isn’t memorable. Whether that bothers you or not is where the dividing line seems to be. That, and there are legitimate differences over what “meaningful” and “memorable” mean to different people.
I mean, I love this thing, but it’s still very frustrating, say, when you can’t talk to a dude and avoid a fight when you have max Charisma and Luck and should be able to talk a leprechaun out of his green suit. Or when the radiant Minuteman quests send you to a settlement that is worried about “nearby” raiders who turn out to be…lurking in a ruin entirely across the map and nowhere near the farm. Or the fact that companions who are written to eschew random violence can’t tell the difference between you offing some civilian unnecessarily, or putting down a raging mirelurk. Stuff like that feels sloppy, I agree. It doesn’t rise to the level of anything that stops my enjoyment of the game, in general, but I can see how it could.
But I still think that a lot of the problems result not so much from any incompetence on Bethesda’s part but rather from decisions they made–maybe good, maybe bad decisions–on what type of game they wanted to make. The main narrative’s biggest flaw IMO is that it’s neither really compelling or truly escapable. You have to do it, and it’s thoroughly mediocre. This, I think, was not a good decision on the developer’s part, but I also think that going in either direction–more memorable, more ignorable–would have changed the game dynamics in ways that perhaps Bethesda didn’t want to deal with. As it stands, it’s a tenuous balance between what you have to do and what you want to do, a balance that works for some and not for others.
But it’s a tough call, usually. For instance, I have no problems going to places multiple time, and no problem with the spawning. If there was no spawning, the game would have an end state of “you killed everyone.” That’s a very viable approach, but clearly not one that Bethesda has ever really embraced; their games are pretty much open-ended, and I kind of like that. I actually find it kind of cool to go back to a place I cleared out and find that a new band of raiders has moved in (and the loot has regened too). I much rather would have them fix it so that settlements asking for help ask you to clear out stuff near them, and that there was more narrative tie-in with these things, in stuff like having notes or logs or convos you overhear from the raiders discussing raiding Old Joe’s shack or whatever. It’s all a bit too generic, including the lame dialog.
But then, the whole Minuteman thing is sort of dismal, anyhow. Preston is a dork, and the idea of him turning over the leadership of the militia to some thawed-out popsicle is sort of weird.
