3957

What defines an RPG again? (Just kidding!!) I think you get to the root of it here though. Folks still bent out of shape that Bethesda took the “revered” Fallout franchise to first person open-world mod sandbox and using this review as a vehicle to rage against the machine… man.

Pretty big stretch though to conveniently ignore the formula of the last few Bethesda RPGs… (er, rocket propelled grenades?).

Quite telling in the review that it was only the action (shooting) and exploration that kept his interest for any length of time. 20+ hours on the shooting alone? Damn good!!! hehe. Again, if you don’t like flight simulators, why are you spending so many pages reviewing why they suck except for the flying parts? Who cares if a million years ago a game set in the same world was lots different (and New Vegas was NOT such a huge departure from Fallout 3. Actually, more of an iteration towards the current formula as the shooting was better.)

There. I’m convinced. Time to put some time into Fallout 4, the editor when its out so I can “create my own character and story through meaningful choices”, and a good book for plot twists my pea sized brain can’t come up with on my own…

3958

The review is fine, it’s his point of view. I agree with almost all his points, too. You just need to treat Fallout as an open-world shooter with RPG elements, and not get stuck on how they are completely different types of games than Fallouts 1 and 2, and you can have a grand ol’ time.

In addition to open-world shooting, I wish they would use the license for real RPGs too. Maybe farm to Obsidian.

3959

Most outlets don’t ask for a review with a deadline of “Oh hell, just get it out by the 6 month mark.”

3960

I totally agree. I went into the game with this attitude and have been loving it.

3961

It was sarcasm?

In that case it was woefully written tosh.

3962

I wish they did. Then I’d finally get my reviews published.

3963

I’m pretty sure most of the Codex folks and plenty of other people would be more than happy to dump the shooter part entirely in exchange for the RPG stuff. I know that if I want to shoot things, I’m happy to go to a shooter. I don’t need that from my RPGs. Probably the AAA graphics part, too, although I think you’d immediately have a much harder time selling it to a wider audience.

3964

Hmm maybe I should just read the durn review. But I am not sure I understand the “Fallout 4 isn’t an RPG” (or less of one) – how could that be possible? Could the Witcher 3 be more an RPG than Fallout 4? On what standard? Defining an RPG is as much mechanics, character building, min maxing, appearances (yes dress up), stats, skills, leveling as it is storytelling. Witcher lets you play one white haired guy –

Anyways I fail to see the difference between Fallout 4 (ok the writing isn’t great) than what I played in Fallout or Fallout 2. Except now I have a gorgeous world, vats, and cool skyscrapers I can climb. Plus disease, hunger, radiation, thirst, and that poor dog that whines every time I go in sneak mode. Everything is a bajillion times better. Heck could you even play a woman in the old Fallouts! Sexist post-apocalypsing!

I should point out that survival mode is brutal. But game-changing in every way. Feels role-playish to me. And my first game on the computer was Bane of the Cosmic Forge. And Eye of the Beholder – and it occurs to me that BOTH were rpgs.

ps --I wonder if that whole codex giant review is a mixture of disappointment over unrealistic expectations and a sorta nostalgic position on “what is an rpg.” Maybe I’ll stop playing sometime and actually read it and then alla sudden be mad at all the time I spent on this terrible action shooter.

3965

I certainly wouldn’t say the story is the strong point in Fallout 4, but as an open world apocalyptic setting it seems to work for me. Or at least the 200+ hours Steam says I’ve put into. It is what it is, and the nice thing is that now days we have other options. Wasteland 2, though that didn’t really work for me.

As for Fallout 4, the new DLC is out and kind of a bummer, IMHO. I say that as someone who has spent a bunch of time on settlements. Even for its $5 price point it doesn’t really deliver. There is some new stuff to mess around with, but nowhere near as much as I had expected.

3966

Honest to God, I would compare Fallout 4 with other open world action games with loot and level up, like Borderlands or Dying Light, before comparing against ‘real’ rpgs.

Enviado desde mi Nexus 5X mediante Tapatalk

3967

Haha, good point. Still a shame though :)

If Bethesda’s next Fallout game is called Fallout: Fetchin’ and Murderin’ while Obsidian works on Fallout 5, I swear I will not criticise Bethesda whatsoever.
But as Avellone said, possibility of Fallout leaving Bethesda is almost nill, and going to Obsidian is nill, probably due to the whole “bethesda fucks over Obsidian on bonuses due to a single metacritic point” thing.

New Vegas was just 5 years ago, in the same shooter/FPS genre, and much better, because it did not sacrifice any of the RPG aspects in favour of shooting (and was better written on the whole).

3968

Sorry for the long, long delay in response. by “Who cares if a million years ago game” I meant Fallout 2. Then I jumped right into New Vegas to speak to the folks who seem to maintain that it somehow falls outside the Bethesda path… enough to be judged on that same “pure” level as the Fallout 2 holy grail. Bullshit. If anything it expands on the shooter/RPG paradigm, and you know what? That IS great. Nothing wrong with Stalker, Bioshock, System Shock 2.

Doesn’t Fallout 4 continue in the same vein, and isn’t that worthy of a note in the history of game evolution? Shouldn’t it be judged by THAT criteria rather than Fallout 2?

3969

Only it fails in comparison to Fallout New Vegas, so in the history of evolution it’s a step backwards or, at best, a dead end.

The shooting was better. It was slightly prettier (as long as you didn’t accidentally look at 98% of the population up close), but everything else about it was pretty inferior. It had a big world you could run around, but so do the Farcry games, which is what this was at the end of the day: Farcry Fallout.

3970

I wrote

New Vegas was just 5 years ago, in the same shooter/FPS genre, and much better, because it did not sacrifice any of the RPG aspects in favour of shooting (and was better written on the whole).

Meaning, yes, it is a fps/rpg hybrid, but unlike F4, it did not sacrifice RPG aspects and replaced them with shooting. Fallout 4 did.

3971

The argument that Fallout 4 not being as crunchy and delicious as the isometric RPGs of ye olden times (or the sacred New Vegas) is well tread by this point. I’ll be interested when the conversation can move past that and talk about Fallout 4 as its own entity. I guess the name holds things back.

-Todd

3972

I didn’t particularly like FO4, and I rather enjoyed FNV - but those are very separate things.

My issues with FO4 were mainly the storyline/missions (which I felt to be subpar on an absolute level, not just relative to precursors), the density of things to do, the thematic failures and that for a runandgun game, the gunplay still wasn’t good enough. Oh, and bloody settlements.

3973

I’m more than happy being disappointed in how lazy Bethesda was with the major additions from the previous game instead of wishing it was a different game.

Some sequels by different companies try to stick to the original vision, like firaxis’ xcom. Some abandon the original fan base and do whatever they want, like fallout 3/4. People need to get over it already.

Although you wouldn’t see me complaining if obsidian got fallout 5. Far from it…

3974

I never played Fallout 1 and 2 (ducks), and enjoyed 3 and New Vegas. I’m not really attached to the franchise and don’t particularly care how much or how little it is similar to the prior ones. In my opinion there just wasn’t much about Fallout 4 to make it rise above being a middling game. The biggest problem for me was the lack of interesting enemies. The encounters just felt very generic to me. While the locals were pretty cool at times, the fact that I didn’t really find anything terribly interesting - encounters, loot, story, really decreased how fun the exploration part was. Nothing about the game was horrible to me, but nothing made it stand out either.

3975

Comparing Fallout 1/2/Tactics against 3/NV/4 is kind of dumb. Beyond the setting and some lore, they’re fundamentally different games.

I find it much more fruitful to keep the isometric titles separate from the 3D ones.

Even between 3, NV, and 4, there’s plenty to compare and contrast.

3976

I completely agree. My biggest problem with Fallout 4 was just how bland everything was. To me the Fallout series, including Fallout 3, have been great at invoking a unique sense of time and place that seemed absent from Fallout 4.