1775

Most RPGs boil down to going to a place, killing everyone there, upgrading items and skills, and repeating. That’s not the problem. The problem is failing to decently conceal that structure within a world and a story that have some superficial coherence or with characters that are fun and appealing. It’s early days in the game for me, but I would have expected to find a character more interesting than my household robot in the first three hours.

And just to chime in on the timespan complaint, I really have no idea what these 200-year-old newspapers and street banners and functioning radios are doing all over the place, not to mention these cheap bungalows. In that amount of time everything that’s not absolutely massive and made out of stone or concrete will have long since disintegrated if not maintained. There would be no trace of Sanctuary at all, and Concord would be nothing more than overgrown foundations. But of course that is a mere nitpick.

1776

Got to Concord, and just turned level four. I’m not as down on it as some, but I agree there’s something less, well, magical about this one. Maybe it’s the nostalgia for the feelings I got from earlier Fallout games but the story is certainly not engaging, the world building is haphazard, and the UI…well, yeah, it sucks a syphilitic goat’s wang.

I do enjoy the basic formula, and I personally think it looks very good comparatively. No, I haven’t played Witcher 3, because I could not get through Wither 2 because of the (to me) god-awful combat controls, at least with m+k. I can only compare F4 to F3 and NV. Gunplay is better, the graphics are better, general movement and geometry handling (3D objects/terrain) seems better. But soul? It’s early, so I’ll be playing with hope it picks up, but there’s been nothing yet like the a-ha moment of leaving the vault in F3, or even the drama of the big gunfight in Goodsprings with the Powder Gangers early on.

I do like the doggie. I can deal with his lame AI in combat (so far) but then I’m a dog fanatic. I am definitely tempted though to take the loner perk and dispense with companions altogether.

Crafting. Oy vey. They give you like zero instruction, and there is seemingly so much complexity there (power? power conduits? power pylons? recruiting? etc.)that I’m sort of at a loss. I created a couple of turrets and a generator and a well. Um, ok. Oh, and two beds. It also seems you have to fast-travel back with salvage to put it in the right workbenches to work on stuff in that location, so yay, I’m a post-apocalyptic 1-800-JUNK!

The single biggest bummer though has to be the first people I ran into after I exited the Vault. I didn’t do anything but walk up and say hi, and they didn’t seem phased by me either. It should have been a big deal, I think, after 200+ years in a freakin hole in the ground in cryo. But no, I just say hiya and buy some stimpaks.

I am enjoying it, and I’m sure I’ll enjoy it as I play, but it sure so far isn’t quite what I had hoped for. That being said, it’s probably going to keep me entertained more than most games.

1777

I’ve played W3 and loved it, so I am worried how that will color my opinion of these types of games. I did play Mad Max after and enjoyed it. Completely different setting probably helped and I liked the off the wall characters in MM - especially Chumbucket.

1778

So I played Fallout 4, and after two hours or so, I like it as much as I liked Fallout 3 back in the day.

That being said, the M&K controls took a turn to the worse. It’s very inconsistent (WASD in some places, arrows in others, TAB to exit in places, ESC in others). In fact, I’m considering playing with a gamepad instead, since it’s quite obvious that the whole thing has been designed for a gamepad (with M&K being mostly an afterthought).

Other than that, though, I don’t think it’s any less magical than Fallout 3 was, and I think it’s considerably more impressive. The opening was much more personal and dramatic as far as I’m concerned, the (much!) improved shooting is very welcome, and the slow motion VATS is a nice improvement over the pause-the-world VATS from F3.

Also…

Early spoiler…

The way they introduce the power armor really early on, and then make you face a Deathclaw… that was pretty good if you ask me.

1779

Wait a couple years. You’ll get it for $20 with all the DLC, and then you can download 10 Gigs of mods to fix everything.

1780

I have not tracked this release, so this article may have already been posted, but I found it amusing:

Target Employees Reportedly Buying Out Fallout 4 Nuka Cola Quantum Bottles

1781

Yeah, agree completely. Witcher 3 though, for me, was the best game of all time. So its not a shock that FO4 doesn’t live up to it. I am still enjoying FO4 and I imagine that I will put a lot of time into it and find it well worth the purchase price.

1782

I’m OCD in games wanting to collect everything and this game has practically broken me. There is too much to grab and i don’t have a semi truck attached to my buttocks to drag it all with me.

Quick question in beginning Codsworth says wife left a tape for me. Where is that? Or is that comment just some intro speech filler? Also, Codsworth… Is this the same voice actor that did Defense Grid?

1783

The Main Quest is awful. Or, at least it starts that way. After the first 10 minutes of gameplay, your character should be near-mad with rage, sprinting through the wasteland with an unstoppable drive to follow that trail and none other. But then, you’re dumped into an open-world game focused on exploration, sidequests and rehabbing old homes. And your character is absolutely fine fixing leaky pipes, picking melons and building furniture.

If you had a contest for the dumbest, least appropriate main quest for this sort of game, I think the winner might be the one that’s actually in-game.

1784

This game is ridiculous.

Maybe the main quest is bad. I myself couldn’t tell you, because I’ve been busy wandering around, building up settlements, and creating crazy guns. And it’s totally awesome.

1785

Made it out of the vault, I am going for a unique LULZ build. :)

S 5
P 2
E 4
C 5
I 1
A 1
L 10

So far I am only collecting coffee cups and clip boards.

1786

I’ll get to whatever city when I well damn please. In the meantime, there is a world to rebuild. I’m gonna build me a palace in my old hometown and just live the rest of the game there, looking at pictures of my family.

1787

It’s in one of the Pip-boy screens, a holo-tape.

1788

I’m enjoying it, and I think it’s because I set my sights a bit lower than necessary. There’s lots of stuff that feel a little off at times, but There are bits of story I like, too.

Plus Skeeter Davis on the radio!

1789

I played a few hours last night, and enjoyed my time in the world. I got back to the town where I have to build stuff. I must admit I LOVE building bases, but I have no idea how to do it here.
The pre-fab I can use are extremely ugly, and I have no cloth to build the beds with - Anyone have any tips for that particular thing? For instance, building 4 prefab wooden structures on the platform where the old house used to be, looks incredibly bad.

1790

I think the core gunplay loop is pretty satisfying this time. In previous games the weapons were hamstrung by low rof which made them somewhat awkward to use, in FO4 you can tap a semiauto pistol as fast as you can (provided the base fire rate is fast enough, which it is on standard 10mm gun). I could also swear they actually tied the barrel alignment with crosshair this time because I’m having absolutely no issues playing without one and just use my screen to aim. It actually feels better than some of the ‘pure’ shooters I’ve played.

I can’t wait to unlock some perks that further improve gunplay and sneaking.

On an unrelated note, Corvega factory is fucking massive. Jesus.

1791

btw - When do you get to pick skills? I just have the option of putting points into the SPECIAL stats, and am level 4 now.

1792

You just pick the skills below the stats. You can pick them in any order, as long as you have a high enough number in the corresponding stat. So you can pick a level 4 strength skill without picking skills 1 through 3.

The UI for this is dumb, because it makes you think the only thing you can pick are the stats because they are highlighted.

1793

I don’t understand why they did this. Fortunately I realized the UI problem at Level 3 before I really screwed myself over.

1794

dammit…

So, am I screwed, or is it normal to increase your SPECIALs?