Unless your charisma is lower than six. And only if you spend a perk point. And only if you manage to figure out how supply lines work. I have an advanced degree from an Ivy League school and I had to Google it! :)
I didn't have any stability issues beyond perhaps two crashes early in the game. And, yeah, I think the Creation engine really serves the location well. Have you been to any of the city areas yet? Pretty stunning stuff. Particularly if you're coming from New Vegas. :)
There are at least two hard-coded story beats that require lots of resources before you can get past them. If you've been stockpiling resources up to that point, it's not much of a problem. I'd been hitting settlement development pretty hard, so the only shortage for me was aluminum, which I gathered easily enough by scrounging around in a factory for a while. I think for the other situation, I just cannibalized one of my other settlements, since I'd figured out by then that the settlement system was so peripheral.
But if you ignore the settlement game, those two hard-coded story beats are going to be a real PITA. I won't spoil them here, since they're each significant reveals, but if you've finished a playthrough, you should know what I'm talking about.
No, no, mine is the one that looks more like Sarah Palin.
Ooh, thanks for bringing up Dragon's Dogma. I hadn't thought about that game's design in a long time. The game I kept thinking of as my favorite example of fast travel was Far Cry 2, which had a few fast travel options, but they were related to a bus system and to safehouses you'd unlocked. In other words, sensible fast travel carefully folded into the actual gameplay.
Clint Hocking was the man!
Unfortunately I had to choose between the guy playing lowest settings on his toaster or the Let's Players screaming profanities at the top of their lungs. ;)
Oh, and probably my favorite fast travel since Far Cry 2 is Metal Gear Solid V. The helicopter and FedEx delivery service were an excellent example of harmony between gameplay and convenience. What cleverly thematic solutions!
Or you should marry someone, who can then force you to not use a game *option*, which you don't like in the first place.
That would be much easier than waiting on Bethesda to actually come up with a solution!
I'm not a huge fan of inventory management in general and weight limits in particular, because they're usually just frustrating time sinks without much actual purpose in the design, but I kind of think that really going whole hog with it in the way I described would have a certain fussy charm to it. Like, there's a tabletop roleplaying game called Torchbearer that looks at the dungeon crawls of oldschool D&D and says, "Okay, what would this look like if you actually simulated a lot of stuff that D&D just handwaves out?" Like the psychological effects of spending days deep in the darkness, or the logistical challenges of navigating the supplies you need through the sorts of outcroppings and punishingly narrow segments that often characterize real cave systems, and the need to carefully plan just what you will need because you can't carry everything. I haven't played it, although I own it, and I don't know for sure that I would actually enjoy the experience, but it has a weird appeal to me.
But yeah, it's particularly strange when they're only half-committing to it the way Bethesda does. I don't really see what it brings to the table. As I say, not realism, because you can still carry way more than a real person would be able to and ammo would absolutely have weight. And while another game might use it to further complicate survival mechanics, as you say, they're already fatally undermining that with things like fast travel.
This is the same as the quicksave debate. If a game is designed around using quicksaves (lots of gotcha instadeaths, for instance), then it's pointless to tell people who don't like quicksaves to just not use them. If it's not designed around quicksaving, adding them will usually make a lot of the challenges trivial.
A big chunk of Bethesda quests would be stupidly tedious, pacing back and forth across the same stretch of the map over and over, if you didn't use the fast travel they were designed around.
Your discussion on fast travel really encapsulates my biggest grievance with the game so far. A big open world, beautifully realized, largely disconnected and meaninglessly laid out. I really hope someone patches in motorcycles or other rudimentary vehicles (via crafting or otherwise). Hell, since we're cribbing from Minecraft, I'd even settle for a saddle and hitching post to wrangle brahmin or radstags to and the ability to ride them around.
I'm in the last phases of the game, I think, (just after the obligatory "choose your faction" moment), and I'm getting a sense of what I feared Fallout 4 would eventually devolve into as a matter of course (it being a vidya game and all): time for you - the requisite hero - to save the world. Granted it was always going to be about this (Why should I be general of the Minutemen again? Is there really no one else qualified?), but I gleefully ignored it in pursuit of sidequests and whatnot. FO4 is at its best for me when I can just experience the world as the average Commonwealth citizen; just another figure roaming about the wasteland with no grand destiny on the horizon. Donning my battered trenchcoat and questing alongside Nick Valentine like a couple of gritty sleuths has been my favourite experience so far. It was refreshing because it was an engaging story not because of how epic the scope was (gotta save the world!), but because of how intimate and personal it was: solving a centuries old gangster case to ease a tortured conscience.
I was really hoping the main quest line of FO4 would function on the same level. Finding your son is a plenty good impetus for a narrative, I don't know why it has to be dwarfed because the world's somehow at stake and only you can fix it (which I presume is where this is all going; I haven't spoiled myself yet). I want to be a part of the world, not in complete control of it and certainly not the sole master of its destiny.
The only one I encountered in my playthrough was building the "signal interceptor". My character hadn't done any settlement building at all, and barely any weapon crafting, and still finished it in half an hour or less; no more involving than any other quest. I don't see what was so painful or taxing about it. It definitely didn't require a lot of resources.
Ah, you missed something pretty cool. I didn't realize it would let you do that. I have no idea what sort of ending you got, but you missed out.
And, yeah, it takes a lot of resources to build the signal interceptor. You're crazy to claim otherwise. I suppose you just had thirty power it requires sitting around even though you claim you "hadn't done any settlement building at all"? Yeah, right. I'd been building settlements plenty and the power was the real sticking point.
So, sorry, but I'm going to stick by my assessment that the late-game uses resources to gate your progress. I'll leave it to other people whether to take my word for it or the word of some dude on the internet who calls himself daft pirate. :)
It's 10 items(http://www.gameranx.com/featur..., each made with a handful of materials available to gather literally by the dozen in every other building in the game. Ingram gave the quest, I walked around the corner, scrapped everything in sight at the airport and already had most of what was needed.
And then any particularly unusual elements, they give you a quest marker for. It amounts to a fetch quest; no longer, more involved, or difficult than any other of the countless fetch quests Bethesda games drop in players' laps. You'd been building settlements plenty, and suddenly 6 generators was a tall order? Sorry, but I'm going to stick by my assessment that the late-game uses a par-for-the-course fetch mission to "gate your progress", vanilla and easy whether you're building settlements or not. If the second instance you refer to involves the actuators, that's even less difficult.
...heh, and then you're really trying to undermine my character based on my internet username? Classy. But what could I possibly know, I'm just "some dude on the internet".
It is very strange indeed they've removed weapon degradation yet weight limit is still there. In both Skyrim and Fallout 3 weight limit never actually affected your strategy. Yeah, you couldn't bring rocket launcher, minigun and flamethrower to the fight with 1 Strength. But why would you want to, you only use couple of weapons. It really worked in FNV hardcore mod, of course: for the first time I saw a reason in getting a home base in a Bethesda game as I had to stockpile supplies and bullets somewhere. Too bad this game was linear, focused and civilized enough so you could buy anything. This would work much better in a game like Fallout 3.
So Bethesda weight limit only limits your looting. Perhaps it's a solution to a problem of a world realistically used with cheap atmospheric objects and honestly lootable corpses (unlike, say, Bioware games where you can slaughter hundred of swordsmen and never get a sword). Force player to only pick up really useful or valuable stuff. It doesn't work. Everyone still hoards every chandelier to get early game money to get through early game equipment-less difficulty spike.
I agree with you that a game that NEEDS quicksaves to be playable is poorly designed.
As a gamer with limited time, I don't agree that it's wrong to use fast travel or save-anywhere if someone wants to. It is an open choice, though the scenario you described indicates a legit possibility of poor design that encourages use of the fast travel.
However, I do recall seeing reviews over the years where a reviewer will say save-anywhere is wrong, and that's complete bunk. Don't penalize me because I have to run to the restroom or eat or sleep, or do other insignificant things like tend to my family or do work, or do something other than game.
I've also seen games (Hitman) where they don't have a save anywhere and I exercise my choice not to play them because I don't enjoy playing the same sequence over and over again. But I do not begrudge those who do want to play it their right to play it; by all means, have at it and have fun.
I'm still working through Fallout 3 DLC and will get to New Vegas next, so Fallout 4 is a ways off for me. But thank you Tom for a very engaging and interesting review.
Bluh, should have known FO4 would be comment bait. ANYWAY
You raise a good point about the problems of fast travel in modern Bethesda games. It's something I've been quietly thinking about ever since I went from loving Morrowind to eagerly anticipating Oblivion. When I first got my hands on the game, and saw the options for fast travel from the menu, completely divorced from giant bugs that would take you to major cities, I thought the same trap thinking as many well intentioned but misunderstanding fast travel apologists : if you don't like it, don't use it
How naive I was. Ten minutes into Oblivion it was clear the game was balanced around assuming you would use fast travel and, maybe more importantly, vastly expanded map and compass tools. Turning them off would be an exercise in suicidal masochism. Gone were the detailed quest directions. Gone were the unique landmarks that guided you on your way to hidden coves and secret rogue entrances. Instead you got a quest, a waypoint was put on your map, and an arrow told you which way to walk. Once you walked enough in the right direction, your map would be updated, and then you could instantly travel there.
This next point is key, so please whoever reads this gay comment pay very close attention: I am not arguing that tedium and boredom equal engagement and deep gameplay. That is not now and will never be true. But in the race for more, bigger, and faster, we've lost sight of what makes immersive and entertaining gameworlds. Skyrim might be ten times the size of morrowind, but I still remember the contours of morrowind's swamps and mountains far more than the lovingly crafted and high fidelity vistas of skyrim, because morrowind was a game where its sandbox and open setting was deeply connected to its gameplay, and its gameplay did not ask you to go back and forth ten times in a row for one quest. Refusing to use fast travel in modern bethesda games is like pinning a sign to your back that says "yes, please waste my time". To reiterate, they're just not designed for sane people to skip the fast travel options.
Morrowind could well be one of the greatest case in points of how limitation begets innovation and creativity in gaming. Because despite the bigger budgets and enhanced graphics, Bethesda has shown they're only interested in making delightfully buggy and janky setpiece RPGs that other studios have proven they're much better suited to. And their character models still look like poop. What the eff, Bethesda?
Also approve my account tom thx
Yeah, you're right, no one ever needs to gather resources for any mission in Fallout 4. You got me, dude. My campaign to libel the good name of Bethesda has been exposed by you. Curses. Foiled again!
Here's me, trying to have a conversation with some idiot using a dumb name on the internet who wants to be taken seriously and didn't like something I wrote. Man, if I had a nickel for every time...
And, yes, the second instance does involve actuators. So you were obviously incorrect about it happening only once. Anyway, the fact that you admit it took you a half hour to gather the necessary resources to get past a mission proves my point. But keep up the good work, internet warrior! The truth will out every time!