Fallout 4 is a good game. It's just incomplete.

CT Phipps

CT Phipps

Carbon Dated and Proud
As the resident dissenting opinion, I'm going to state that I don't dislike Fallout 4. I think it's a good game and gave it an 8 when it came out. I stand by that ranking despite some of the things I've played in the game being extremely frustrating. I still think of Fallout 3 as one of the greatest games of all time and think Fallout 4 was a massive step down from Skyrim (which remains my all time favorite video game). I, as you may have guessed, am a big huge fan of big open world sandbox games.

I also love single player shooters. I'm one of those jerkasses who is disappointed with the way the Halo and Call of Duty games have been utterly murdered because of the desire for co-op and shiity storytelling when I actually liked them for their stories as well as world building before.

Fallout 4 has a setting I like
Fallout 4 has a character I like
Fallout 4 has a cast I love

Fallout 4....is deeply unsatisfying. It is the game which I think, for me, isn't a game I dislike for anything it did but instead have the problem of it being an incredible case of the blue balls. It has an immense amount of awesome build up that....never satisfies.

A similar game with this problem was Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloolines which is another of my all time favorite video games but can be summarized as, "I love playing this game for 2/3rds of its run time but it is complete ass when you hit the final third." I just don't consider that final third relevant. Unfortunately, Fallout 4's incompleteness is spread more evenly so it's always there.

What do I mean by incompleteness?

Essentially, the big problem of the game is that it's as wide as an ocean and as thin as a puddle. It has all the ingredients for a massively awesome video game but it can't pull them together into a coherent whole. The flaws are papered over rather than allowed to exist like in Unity, though. Technically, the story is complete but it's obviously just barely so.

I think this is best summarized by the fact I'm fascinated by the corrupted Brotherhood of Steel. Arthur Maxson having perverted the BOS from its original purpose but allowing minor reforms in some way and becoming a conqueror of the Wastelands is a fascinating concept with massive amounts of storytelling potential for those of us who loved the Lyons family, the more heroic BOS, and our legacy as the Lone Wanderer. However, the legacy is completely ignored and he/she is not even mentioned.

It's wasted potential for a very personal enemy.

Similarly, we never really get a chance to get to immerse ourselves in the issues of the Synths. Why should we care? Who is going to die and what happens. The most interesting use of them is with Paladin Danse but it doesn't affect his opinion of Synth genocide or the threat posed by their race. The characters don't really have a stake in the struggle. It'd be nice to get numbers as well. How is the Railroad so big? How many Synths are there? Dozens? Hundreds?

It's not that these issues are bad, it's that we don't get ENOUGH of them.

Shaun, why does the Institute do what they do?

We can never ask.

Which is the real waste.
 
>Good Game
>Disgrace 4

Sorry, Phipps, but I disagree with you.

The game itself had a lot of things cut or underdeveloped. Settlement system, radiant quests, variety in weapons in armour, quests, intriguning locations, npcs, etc. I will give you that.

However, this game to me was designed to appeal to lowest common denominator and outside of name, has got nothing to do with Fallout. Not amount of mods can fix it, because the main story is so shit, it would have to completly rewritten.

Things that it does wrong: Voiced Protagonist (killed any replayability); story about another family member we are supposed to feel sad about, but end up being annoyed, bored or something in between; Power Armour with fusion cores, letting us jump from 20 floor without damage and given to us in the first 15 minutes of the game, etc. To name a few.

It doesn't matter if it is incomplete or not, it was build on loot-shoot-return foundation, which ultimately turns it into run of the mill, generic shooter.

And let's not forget, that because it was so incomplete, bugthesda STOLE an entire questline from a mod.

I have posted Mister Caption review once and he went into details about all the plotholes all the game mechanics and what it did wrong. We had several threads about this complete disgrace of Fallout, so I am just going to leave those links here:


http://nma-fallout.com/threads/facetiousf-ckboys-fallout-4-review.207278/
http://nma-fallout.com/threads/fallout-4-after-replaying-new-vegas.206059/
http://nma-fallout.com/threads/examples-of-bad-writing-in-fallout-4-spoilers.204339/
 
Ediros said:
Sorry, Phipps, but I disagree with you.

The game itself had a lot of things cut or underdeveloped. Settlement system, radiant quests, variety in weapons in armour, quests, intriguning locations, npcs, etc. I will give you that.

However, this game to me was designed to appeal to lowest common denominator and outside of name, has got nothing to do with Fallout. Not amount of mods can fix it, because the main story is so shit, it would have to completly rewritten.
Click to expand...

How do you figure?

What's bad about the story? The story itself is fine.

Civil War in the Commonwealth. Find your missing son.

Things that it does wrong: Voiced Protagonist (killed any replayability); story about another family member we are supposed to feel sad about, but end up being annoyed, bored or something in between; Power Armour with fusion cores, letting us jump from 20 floor without damage and given to us in the first 15 minutes of the game, etc. To name a few.
Click to expand...

1. Voiced protagonist is fine. You just need to actually have them able to emote, which they didn't and be able to ask questions.
2. Power Armor is great in the game. You feel like the original game.
3. I'm not sure what you're referring to.

It doesn't matter if it is incomplete or not, it was build on loot-shoot-return foundation, which ultimately turns it into run of the mill, generic shooter.
Click to expand...

A RPG/Shooter hybrid is a great thing.

And let's not forget, that because it was so incomplete, bugthesda STOLE an entire questline from a mod.
Click to expand...

Yes, the incompleteness is the big issue.

I have posted Mister Caption review once and he went into details about all the plotholes all the game mechanics and what it did wrong. We had several threads about this complete disgrace of Fallout, so I am just going to leave those links here:
Click to expand...

Basically, this game just needed another year in development time with more quests, lore, and roleplaying opportunities.

Then it would have been great.

The gameworld's biggest problem is it's mostly empty and they've tried to pretend its not.
 
Fallout 4, without context, is a passable game.
It's hard to enjoy the game when it has the Fallout brand slapped onto it, but as a standalone product I can see the appeal.

It's a dumb mindless power fantasy, sadly it tries to over reach that mark and try and become something it's not.

I can almost see the pain in the Far Harbor DLC. If that DLC was a game in it's own right with more room to breath, I can see myself really liking, loving it possibly.

I guess the biggest thing going against it is that it's the 5th in a series of mostly excellent games, and as the 5th, it feels like there is nothing learned from previous instalments.

I'll give you this, I don't think it's the worse in the series (Fallout 3 offers the least nowadays) but there's nothing that really makes me stay.

I guess the fact that every now and then I get the urge to pick it up again says there's something I enjoy about it (even of I don't know what that is) but it doesn't last long.

Better games have come out and will continue to come out.
So yeah, is Fallout 4 a good game?
I guess if you don't call it Fallout 4.
 
Fallout 4 lacks ability for player to leave a mark on the world. There're barely any choices and if there're they have bare bones consequnces (quest with the biggest number of C&C is http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Diamond_City_Blues, which are 3 people asking you what happened to guys you could have killed).

I can build settlements, I can destroy raiders/mutants camps, but why bother? Settlers are still gonna whine about ghouls attacking them from another side of the map.

They've stepped up number of fetch/kill quests when compared to FO3, but I've to say that I liked FO4 MQ more (up to final choice between the factions, then it was on the same step) than FO3's, if it says anything.

Ending is really bad (no info what were consequences of your actions, barely anything changes in the wasteland). The only faction whose goal I understood was BoS, while Minutemen, Institute and Railroad had no clear intentions.

DLCs were a major dissapointment (especially with them rising price on Season Pass). Far Harbor and Nuka World look interesting, Automatron at least has some storyline, but Workshops look like something you would see in Sims 4 downloadable tab.

Modding weapons is kinda on a same step as MXR, but settlement building is miles behind Wasteland Defense or RTS.

To end with my major complaint with it- they restricted roleplaying in RPG game. Dialogue wheel that looks like it was made as some sort of parody of Mass Effect, lifeless male actor and skills being replaced with perks. In previous games I could be at level 5 with good unarmed and sneaking, but in FO4 I've got to wait something like 60 levels to even hack computers or pick locks.

It's the only Fallout I got bored on a first playthrough.
 
It's not a bad game, I've certainly played a lot worse. However, it's a poor Fallout game and as someone who usually cares about lore and setting more over gameplay, I can't enjoy it as much as New Vegas, which reacted a lot more to what I did and felt more natural.

I feel Fallout 4 doesn't really know what it wants to do. Does it want to be a serious game or a hammy experience? Is it a shooter or a world builder?

EDIT: I think it had great potential, but a lot is wasted or poorly executed.
 
CT Phipps said:
As the resident dissenting opinion, I'm going to state that I don't dislike Fallout 4. I think it's a good game and gave it an 8 when it came out. I stand by that ranking despite some of the things I've played in the game being extremely frustrating. I still think of Fallout 3 as one of the greatest games of all time and think Fallout 4 was a massive step down from Skyrim (which remains my all time favorite video game). I, as you may have guessed, am a big huge fan of big open world sandbox games.

I also love single player shooters. I'm one of those jerkasses who is disappointed with the way the Halo and Call of Duty games have been utterly murdered because of the desire for co-op and shiity storytelling when I actually liked them for their stories as well as world building before.

Fallout 4 has a setting I like
Fallout 4 has a character I like
Fallout 4 has a cast I love

Fallout 4....is deeply unsatisfying. It is the game which I think, for me, isn't a game I dislike for anything it did but instead have the problem of it being an incredible case of the blue balls. It has an immense amount of awesome build up that....never satisfies.

A similar game with this problem was Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloolines which is another of my all time favorite video games but can be summarized as, "I love playing this game for 2/3rds of its run time but it is complete ass when you hit the final third." I just don't consider that final third relevant. Unfortunately, Fallout 4's incompleteness is spread more evenly so it's always there.

What do I mean by incompleteness?

Essentially, the big problem of the game is that it's as wide as an ocean and as thin as a puddle. It has all the ingredients for a massively awesome video game but it can't pull them together into a coherent whole. The flaws are papered over rather than allowed to exist like in Unity, though. Technically, the story is complete but it's obviously just barely so.

I think this is best summarized by the fact I'm fascinated by the corrupted Brotherhood of Steel. Arthur Maxson having perverted the BOS from its original purpose but allowing minor reforms in some way and becoming a conqueror of the Wastelands is a fascinating concept with massive amounts of storytelling potential for those of us who loved the Lyons family, the more heroic BOS, and our legacy as the Lone Wanderer. However, the legacy is completely ignored and he/she is not even mentioned.

It's wasted potential for a very personal enemy.

Similarly, we never really get a chance to get to immerse ourselves in the issues of the Synths. Why should we care? Who is going to die and what happens. The most interesting use of them is with Paladin Danse but it doesn't affect his opinion of Synth genocide or the threat posed by their race. The characters don't really have a stake in the struggle. It'd be nice to get numbers as well. How is the Railroad so big? How many Synths are there? Dozens? Hundreds?

It's not that these issues are bad, it's that we don't get ENOUGH of them.

Shaun, why does the Institute do what they do?

We can never ask.

Which is the real waste.
Click to expand...


You can only give incomplete games a write off so many times before it gets to be "No, fuck you fix this shit before releasing" in my humble opinion. When you change so much of the franchise while shelling out halfass content you really sour the whole product regardless of how utterly average it is. It's everything the detractors have said it is at this point, even the fans now admit it. Fallout 3 was a fucking masterpiece of RPG game design compared to Fallout 4's LARPY narrative "Go here kill these then return or maybe barter for more caps" nonsense.

I don't care how much fucking personality the NPC's have now. There is no meat to the fucking game. Even the gear is now shit. THE LOOT IS SHIT IN A LOOT GAME. This alone made the fucking torturous trek through the games multiple paths (which all boiled down to kill all of the other guys) so boring. Ultimately being the leader of the evil faction in the game is a big wet fart too. I didn't buy the DLC so please don't tell me it fixed the quest design I am sure if I could manage to avoid slitting my wrists to play the DLC long enough it might mildly entertain but I would need a shower afterwards from buying the fucking shit and I don't shower anymore.
 
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Without the Fallout brand, Fallout 4 would be a merely passable open-world sandbox game with nice underdeveloped ideas.

Settlements, while a nice feature, are not complex or interesting enough for long term investment into playing with said feature; the gunplay though improved is ruined by bullet sponge enemies that level scale; the Blade Runner story is better told by other games exploring those ideas; the endings all suck; loot is primarily RNG-based (with a few exceptions); and as @CT Phipps pointed out, much of the sandbox is empty. On the latter point, East City Downs is probably a good example as a still-operational race track run by mercenaries in the city... is nothing more than a shooting gallery without any means of interacting further with the place or its people (that and how little proper settlements there are in the game).

I do agree that there is some value to Fallout 4 as a power-fantasy game but the kind that becomes boring quickly. My evidence for that: I never went back to Fallout 4 after my first playthrough.
 
CT Phipps said:
Essentially, the big problem of the game is that it's as wide as an ocean and as thin as a puddle.
Click to expand...

Well, I agree with that part. I do think it applies to the story and the rpg mechanics. Which are the most significant deficits. I wouldn't even bother complaining about how underwhelming and incomplete the settlement system is, or how the legendary system cuts out the joy of hunting for collectables and along with the crafting system gives us more tiers than actual gear choices--even aesthetically speaking...

...how the need to hoard junk has ballooned into a crippling slog--that along with the even more broken economy means game the system or be perpetually poor and weak as a result, how interiors feel really generic, that it continues the Fo3 tradition of recycling old factions and creatures through caecotrophy...I'd mention them sure, but in the same way that I mention Fo3's many flaws.
 
CerberusGate said:
Without the Fallout brand, Fallout 4 would be a merely passable open-world sandbox game with nice underdeveloped ideas.

Settlements, while a nice feature, are not complex or interesting enough for long term investment into playing with said feature; the gunplay though improved is ruined by bullet sponge enemies that level scale; the Blade Runner story is better told by other games exploring those ideas; the endings all suck; loot is primarily RNG-based (with a few exceptions); and as @CT Phipps pointed out, much of the sandbox is empty. On the latter point, East City Downs is probably a good example as a still-operational race track run by mercenaries in the city... is nothing more than a shooting gallery without any means of interacting further with the place or its people (that and how little proper settlements there are in the game).

I do agree that there is some value to Fallout 4 as a power-fantasy game but the kind that becomes boring quickly. My evidence for that: I never went back to Fallout 4 after my first playthrough.
Click to expand...

East City Downs actually is one of the signs this is a decent game underneath it because the skeleton is there for the actual good game which Fallout 4 could have been.

Ditto the Combat Zone.

Things like the fact you were originally supposed to find out the Institute has built a robot duplicate of your Spouse and you had a choice of taking her or not.

The option of making Danse into an Elder or seizing it yourself.

Honestly, the settlement system and things like building your own robot seem like they were done because they needed to provide SOMETHING for the players to do.
 
CT Phipps said:
East City Downs actually is one of the signs this is a decent game underneath it because the skeleton is there for the actual good game which Fallout 4 could have been.
Click to expand...
I see it as more signs of wasted potential. Those places have potential to be interesting but are relegated to shooting galleries rather than anything of substance.
 
CerberusGate said:
I see it as more signs of wasted potential. Those places have potential to be interesting but are relegated to shooting galleries rather than anything of substance.
Click to expand...

Which is what I mean. They're set up for something else, we know this because the developers have said, but because of crunch time, they just abandoned their plans and made them full of targets.

In the racetrack, you were originally supposed to be able to place bets and talk with the locals.

In the Combat Zone, you were supposed to be able to do the same and even compete.
 
No fallout new vegas is incomplete. Fallout 4 is just bad. We've been over this. It's quests are almost completely randomly generated. Right out of the gate it's already making stupid decisions. Then the voiced the protagonists. That paired with the dialogue wheel completely neutered the dialogue trees. Then they added a crafting system. Which means the game has a handful of weapons that all look slightly different. Then they added a settlement system which fucking swallowed the map and so now you don't have as many towns. With a mere two towns the game now also lacks a decent amount of characters. Then they decided to give you power armour a mini gun and have you fight a Deathclaws ten minutes in. Getting this equipment so early completely breaks the balancing of supposedly "high tier" equipment. All of that just touches on the how the design decisions they made kept it from being good. I'm not even going to touch on how hard it breaks the fallout setting with self contradictions and lore breaks.
 
Depends how you define a "Good Game"

If you are the kinda person who can just lay back and shoot some ghouls, sure, mechanically speaking it's a fairly good game, and it has a good way of rewarding players.

Though I kinda prefer it when I feel the game I'm playing has more depth to it, and playing skinner-box esque shooting games just doesn't do it for me, it just constantly reminds me of how absurd it is that I'm spending this much time looking for quick entertainment.

For me, a good game is one where I can just get lost in it's rules and gain some kinda understanding of the game, because with those kinds of games, for me, it feels rewarding beyond it's mere time-wasting ability. By my definition of a good game, Fallout 4 is not one.

Though I do understand why some people who just want to lay back and relax at the end of a day might find Fallout 4 to be a good game, and I wouldn't say that definition of a good game is any less valid.
 
R.Graves said:
No fallout new vegas is incomplete. Fallout 4 is just bad. We've been over this. It's quests are almost completely randomly generated. Right out of the gate it's already making stupid decisions. Then the voiced the protagonists. That paired with the dialogue wheel completely neutered the dialogue trees. Then they added a crafting system. Which means the game has a handful of weapons that all look slightly different. Then they added a settlement system which fucking swallowed the map and so now you don't have as many towns. With a mere two towns the game now also lacks a decent amount of characters. All of that just touches on the how the design decisions they made kept it from being good. I'm not even going to touch on how hard it breaks the fallout setting with self contradictions and lore breaks.
Click to expand...

Again, I've received not a single explanation why voiced protagonists are bad that doesn't sound immensely silly to me. I've heard that it hurts immersion but I think the opposite is true and that it doesn't allow as many options but that's just because Bethesda made stupid choices.

I love many many voiced RPGs.

Then they decided to give you power armour a mini gun and have you fight a Deathclaws ten minutes in. Getting this equipment so early completely breaks the balancing of supposedly "high tier" equipment.
Click to expand...

This is called a "Taste of Power" and that's not a bad thing.
 
R.Graves said:
You start level scaling. Ghouls slap your power armour to pieces while your mini gun does fuck all because level scaling.
Click to expand...
And that's not counting 'legendary' enemies. Somehow Bethesda found a way to make level-scaled bullet sponges worse by making them capable of healing at half health.
 
CT Phipps said:
I've received not a single explanation why voiced protagonists are bad that doesn't sound immensely silly to me.
Click to expand...

Does such explanation exist that you wouldn't find silly?

Would it be enough to say that a voiced protagonist robs the ownership of the character and the interpretation of his/her expressions from the player? Meaning that even though you might have some say on how to play, it's not "your" character anymore in the sense that what ever choices you have and what ever way you play, the PC always has a predefined personality and character through his tone and vocal delivery.

There also can not be spoken lines that would sound out of character of what ever the VA is directed to sound like; the lines also can not escape the boundaries of the VA's delivery. If the player does not like the voice, if it's just bad or if it even irritates him, the whole experience might be ruined no matter if the spoken lines amounted to some sort of nu-Shakespearean maesterpice. It's a very limiting way of doing PC dialog. And as such, it's a bad way of doing it for RPG's like Fallout.... and I would say RPG's in general, having to listen to Geralt or Adam Jensen or whoever for prolonged periods as the game lasts and lasts gets really fucking tiresome.

And it's of course expensive to record and animate.


More on the topic.... Fallout 4 is bad. That's it. I couldn't get much entertainment out of it even when trying my earnest to think that it's not a Fallout game, it's a Dying Light spinoff, and that game was already just as boring. It's just not a fun game to play.
 
The thing is we only had x-number of choices of dialogue to begin with.

Previous Fallout games often had somewhat generic responses.

I'm just saying.
 
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