You will save the world -- and what a world! -- in Fallout 4, whether you like it or not

Interesting. The game is very mediocre, but not really for any of the reasons you indicated. I find this fascinating.

What it missed for me was any sense of a real world existing in the game. Most dialogues were over in 30 seconds and most NPCs had nothing to say. There was very little to learn about most sites -- just kill, maybe say one thing to one NPC, and that's it. They didn't spend a lot of time thinking about their world, just adding more more more more.

There's no real politics, no real characters, no real thought-out factions. Just a lot of dungeons and a lot of generic fighting. Give me New Vegas any day.

This game is definitely not an RPG. Most of the game is about shooting generic raiders. Very rarely do you have any actual role-playing to do, and even then it's usually in the form of a shallow charisma check followed by a single shallow line of dialogue.

The only people who float the hackneyed "if you don't like it, don't use it!" rebuttal are people who wouldn't dream of not using it. That goes for fast travel and saving anywhere. They don't understand the concept of a game design having to support a particular feature. You don't just toggle these things on and off.

And I just went through new accounts, so you're all set, Tarrbranon. Welcome!

Wait, complex? I'm sorry?

Not to throw shade on your impressive degree, but I was a little shocked by how much you found confusing in this very simple game. You seem to be arguing for more simplification, as the systems in place are apparently too confusing and untutorialized for you. I really can't fathom how that's possible, as the game is so shallow and so simple.

The point is that fast travel and quicksaving are game design decisions. Asking devs to put them in or take them out is asking for a different kind of game. Tom isn't asking for Bethesda to grey out the fast travel option in the menu. He's asking them to make a game where traversing the world is part of the gameplay, a game where geography and travel time matters, where the world layout and quests are not built around the idea that players can teleport all over the map.

On that particular side-note, any specific mod you would recommend? I was thinking of giving it another go one of these days.

Ah, I see, your idea of a "conversation" is people immediately capitulating and agreeing with everything you say, regardless of its subjectivity or veracity, and resorting to personal attacks when you can't back up your claims. That's why I responded to somone else's concern rather than your article. Most of you I nternet "reviewers" talk a big game about critique, but can't take it yourself. I mean, "You're an idiot" is your response to one innocuous contention of just one claim? But, yeah, I wish I had a nickel for every time people disagreed with me, too.

At no point did I say it only happens once. I said I only had to do it once during my playthrough.

And 30 minutes is too long of a quest for you? That's your idea of a "gate"? Heheh, what were you even doing playing this game? Might as well call it "gating your progress" when games make you do the first chapter before the last. Your very next point was that the game caters too much toward convenience, but this basic fetch quest is an offensive "gate"? No, the truth is, you probably shouldn't be doing reviews, much less claiming any authority over gaming critical perspective. Here's hoping your advanced Ivy League degree serves you better in other pursuits.

Yes I got that from the examples you and Tom presented. And you've both pointed out places where developers may have made decisions that were indeed done with the knowledge that fast travel exists, leading to situations that don't make sense, where it's become contrived and breaks some of the believability of the game world. That's a fair point. Perhaps fast travel and save anywhere aren't in the same class of utility. I can see that fast travel would require more effort to make a more organic part of the game.

Save anywhere though, as a way to save a static point where I can later resume...I just don't know how I'd be able to play games without it.

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Somewhat related to the fast travel discussion, I find waypoint/quest markers to be one of my pet peeves in open world games. I always try to turn off hud elements or impose certain rules for how I explore and find my way around but it inevitably hits a brick wall of gameplay design. In New vegas it was finding out npcs don't tell you where to go or how to get there, they just assume you follow your magic gps, location tracking pipboy. In Skyrim I guess all citizens are given a magic map at birth that always knows where you are.

I dream of a game where I have to go north until I find the big rock that looks like a horned devil, then northwest towards the leaning radio tower until I come upon the dead tree by the stagnant pond. It's not like these game worlds are lacking in the kind of detail needed to navigate like this.

She was probably tired of seeing loading screen all the time. Fallout 4 is the first game that forced me to play it from SSD disk as loading screens took about 20-30% of my play time...

Fast travel really shines when you get quest to save some settlement and you have to speak with specific settler about details and by chance game chooses that settler that has more information about quest is the one assigned to supply line... That was not fun at all...

You see in older games loot was kind of special because you couldn't loot corpses and if you could it was a special occasion. In those times, and I am talking Fallout 1 and 2, it was working in those circumstances.
Then gaming changed and people started asking why they can't loot every dead body. And Bethesda has come up with the worst solution ever. You see, when loot was rare, vendors bought it for reasonable prize. But when players were able to loot every body they became rich in few hours and broke game economy. So instead of saying to players that if you murder someone in armor and have fierce fight you usually damage their armor and weapon beyond repair and it's therefore not loot-able, they went for tinkering with economy and found terrible solution where you can sell items for 1/10th of their value from vendor. What it means in reality of games like Fallout 4 is that you'll spend 1/3 of the game play time sorting inventory and comparing in-game prizes making it also economy simulator.

In Fallout 4 Bethesda pushed this system one step further and you don't need to explore anymore in this exploration game. Why would you when killing legendary radroach can give you best weapon or armor in game? Why even bother searching for hidden special weapons when you can have hundreds of legendary weapons and armor from random legendary monsters?

Fallout 4 is mess on every level.

I seem to recall Todd Howard mentioning recent tweaks to the engine in regards to rendering/lighting (this is where I implied possible participation from the idTech team above), and some of the environments (and environmental effects) do seem to take advantage of such (initial entry into Diamond City was quite a delight - especially by way of contrast to the dreary expanse of The Commonwealth - I spent quite a while just meandering, drinking in the sights). But the engine still fails to deliver for the most part - horribly disconcerting texture pop-in (I was peering through a gap in a fence at one point, and buildings on the other side would progressively switch visibility on/off as I advanced/retreated - and similar, though less egregious, issues are experienced when just perambulating through the landscape). Also, have you tried looking through a scope from the top of the Trinity Tower? Woeful LOD resolution - ticky, tacky boxes on a hillside.

And don't get me started on the dreadful NPC path-finding, AI (sans I), and quests that refuse to resolve. Grown up? I think it's very much still in an awkward teenage stage - disappointing, given it's age. (I'm not angry Bethesda, just very disappointed.)

"I think the Creation engine really serves the location well."
Given the world is rubbish-strewn, mostly broken and prone to random unpredictability, you may well have a point :/ - as a means of presenting this latest vision of a post-apocalyptic disaster, I'd personally deem it (im)perfectly adequate.

I should have mentioned I'm playing the PS4 version, so lacking the visual bells/whistles you may have experienced on PC. However even on this platform, employment of "Workshop Mode" invariably results in a crash to dashboard.

I think you are either missing the point or you haven't played the game yet. It's not about "realism" nor is it about "freedom". It is a problem of design and balance.

The game is designed to NEED fast travel. This is seen in all the quests that send you all over the place, places you probably have already been to, or if not, you will certainly will need to visit it again soon... and again... and again. Then there are the random settlement quests that require you to drop everything and go back to a settlement you already established to defend it, or even worse rescue a hostage from a dungeon on the other side of the map that you already explored but is now repopulated. Between those design issues alone, fast travel becomes necessary. But then throw in settlement building and the need to move resources all over the wastes and now, unless you have a charisma build character and spend the perk points to get supply lines, you are going to be hauling junk back and forth for the rest of you life. As final proof that this game is intended to be played with fast travel, the dev's even have a fast travel perk that lets you fast travel while encumbered.

So the point the review was making is that the games strength is exploration, but the necessity of fast traveling works against the beautifully crafted world. Not that fast travel is evil and should be in the game. If the game had been designed to be playable without fast travel it wouldn't be that big of a deal. They also could have solved this by only allowing fast travel between established settlements and having less quests that bounce you all over the place, adding purpose to settlement building, and still requiring exploration from settlement to settlement and settlement to dungeon. Or they could have put more energy into other aspects of the game and make it less about exploration in the first place and kept the fast travel as is.

Most people don't have the time or patience to play a game designed to fast travel, and not use it. Which is a pity because it works against one of the games greatest strengths. There are LOTS of ways to fix this, but as it stands you get the worst scenario: a game that's strength is that it's fun to explore, but is then designed to require you to warp all over the place.

Frankly I think this was a flaw of Fallout3 as well but is even worse in 4.

I played over 200 hours of Fallout 3 and NV and loved it, I even bought the Deluxe FO3 with Lunch box and Bobble-Head, my 9 year old son took the lunch box to school and blew all the teachers minds.
(I still have the Bobble-head on my desk)
Fallout 4, wow what a letdown, Unless you liked playing the SIMs.
I swear one or more of the SIMs Developers worked on this game.
Yes it’s a bit better than Fallout 3, this game engine is old.
What a lazy production of a game, (Let MODDERS fix the game? really???)
I have a high end PC with dual Vid cards and 144hz monitor and cranking up the Res just makes the feeling of disgust even worse.
Bethesda was so lazy they were playing the SIMs 3 when they made this game and I think played the Sims more than Fallout 4.
Then I see PS4 and Xbox graphics on these youtube vids, what an embarrassment Bethesda, SIM quality graphics.
This is just the Fallout 4 rumored in 2010.
WOW, wait for the MODs to fix or give us a high REZ MOD pack.
Im embarrassed for Bethesda..
Should we be so thankful for a new Fallout? maybe if this was 2010.
My son said it best when I asked him if he wanted it---Meh..

There would be soooo much things to say, both positive and negative, about the game, but that would probably takes weeks or months. Like Skyrim in fact.

Bethesda has a spacial way to make obviously flawed games, but that we can still enjoy for what they are : a huge world to explore and immerse ourselves into.

I love the point you're making, Vladimir, about looting. But I think that's the case with the genre in general than any problem specifically with Fallout. But, yeah, as a long time fan of role-playing games, tabletop and virtual, it's kind of disappointing that loot has become a cornerstone of the gameplay. There was a time loot was rare and special. There was a time a player might actually care about a +1 short sword rather than thinking of it as the first step in a long drawn-out gear churn of constant new stuff, each with only incremental snippets of significance.

But, yeah, gameplay economies are increasingly about immediate player gratification.

I remember being at a press demo for Skyrim. Bethesda PR front man Pete Hines was super proud of the fact that you could turn objects on the loading screen.

"Move the thumbstick," he told someone who was sitting at a loading screen. "See? It turns. You can look at it from all sides. It's a 3D object. You can even zoom in."

It's as if Bethesda had to do something -- anything! -- to distract people from the fact of frequent loading screens.