Furioso Flays Fallout Four

generalissimofurioso said:
So, It's finally here.

The Fallout 4 board.

Well, since I have a lot of free time these days and I'm going to do it eventually, I will be picking up a copy of Fallout 4.

Stay tuned to this space for my constant updates and witticisms.

Oh and free pie.

Punch and pie.
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I'll keep watch, but I'll be spoiling the game for myself with the strategy guide at the midnight release. (No XBOX One to call my own yet, and we know Bethesda's track record of Day 1 releases.)
 
Fallout 4 will be amazing in its own right and people will still find 'caveats' for themselves to be upset with it because it didn't turn out to be how THEY envisioned it. You can't please every single fan, no matter how hard you try.

Yet, knowing this, people will insist that the game is bad because X reasons... how they should phrase it is that the game just isn't for them and be done instead of frothing like the damn thing gave them rabies.

I grew up on Fallout 1 and 2, and I've played 3 and NV. I liked them each for what they managed to bring to the table, took what I disliked about them, and ignored those bits or found mods to murder said bits to dust.

For me, I'm updating my rig specifically to be able to play Fallout 4 with no issues at all, and I know I'm going to love it, because the E3 gameplay alone gave me a boner. The graphics were wonderful, it had that recent Fallout feel, I'm not sure what the fuck everyone else's problem is about. I liked the voice acting. I liked how they're handling character customization. The intro to the storyline seemed a little confusing (I didn't look into it) but that's easily able to be set aside.

If something doesn't fit, I can add my own headcanon to it until it makes sense. That's the point of a game, something to be played for pleasure with your imagination. If you can't use it and want everything spoonfed to you, go watch a fucking movie. I liked the weapon crafting/customization. I like how you can make your own little 'settlements' and how every previously useless item now has a point for being broken down into specific materials for said building and crafting system.

It's like they had a bug on my phone and in my clothes and were listening in on my conversations with family and friends about how I'd like to see things like these in a new release, and I'd even said, "Wouldn't it be badass if they set Fallout 4 in the Commonwealth?" and bam, the confirmed announcements about it literally made me go "WHAT?! AWESOME."
 
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Man, no wonder Fallout 4 will be terrible if they get all of their ideas from bugging your clothes.

Just rustling and vague rubbing sounds.

Also, I shouldn't have to fix stories in my head in order to enjoy them.

There's a difference between a plot hole or a necessary weasel compared to just bad writing.

I want good gameplay and good writing.

That shouldn't be too much to ask, but apparently the #1 best-selling RPG can't be bothered to do both.

Unless Witcher 3 outsells Fallout 4, which would be pretty funny.

Also, nobody was surprised that Fallout 4 would take place in Massachusetts.

They all but confirmed it in Fallout 3 and everyone was expecting it anyway.
 
WeirdBeard said:
Fallout 4 will be amazing in its own right and people will still find 'caveats' for themselves to be upset with it because it didn't turn out to be how THEY envisioned it. You can't please every single fan, no matter how hard you try.

Yet, knowing this, people will insist that the game is bad because X reasons... how they should phrase it is that the game just isn't for them and be done instead of frothing like the damn thing gave them rabies.

I grew up on Fallout 1 and 2, and I've played 3 and NV. I liked them each for what they managed to bring to the table, took what I disliked about them, and ignored those bits or found mods to murder said bits to dust.

For me, I'm updating my rig specifically to be able to play Fallout 4 with no issues at all, and I know I'm going to love it, because the E3 gameplay alone gave me a boner. The graphics were wonderful, it had that recent Fallout feel, I'm not sure what the fuck everyone else's problem is about. I liked the voice acting. I liked how they're handling character customization. The intro to the storyline seemed a little confusing (I didn't look into it) but that's easily able to be set aside.

If something doesn't fit, I can add my own headcanon to it until it makes sense. That's the point of a game, something to be played for pleasure with your imagination. If you can't use it and want everything spoonfed to you, go watch a fucking movie. I liked the weapon crafting/customization. I like how you can make your own little 'settlements' and how every previously useless item now has a point for being broken down into specific materials for said building and crafting system.

It's like they had a bug on my phone and in my clothes and were listening in on my conversations with family and friends about how I'd like to see things like these in a new release, and I'd even said, "Wouldn't it be badass if they set Fallout 4 in the Commonwealth?" and bam, the confirmed announcements about it literally made me go "WHAT?! AWESOME."
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- No, but no company should, for any sequel to a long-running series, take away designs and mechanics that were more than functional and had no reason to be removed/merged into other parts of the game when a few tweaks would've fixed most of the problems. See also: Skyrim's Attributes, Spellcrafting, Dialogue options to force an NPC to pick fights with you/like you, Bartering, being able to ask specific questions about a location, person, etc.

- As I've said to many a YouTube commenter about modding in Bethesda games: "If you're using mods to fix a problem with the engine/code/world-design/user-interface, or restore an old mechanic from a past game, you're not modding anymore. You're doing part of the developer's job for them, gratis, while they reap the benefits (sales and word-of-mouth)." This was part of why gamers got so pissed at the idea of paying for mods, because you're quite literally at the point of paying for fixes in regard to Bethesda games.

- Meh. I'll be using an XBOX One, if I can get my hands on a Redbox rental or used copy, because screw Steam dependency. I won't be updating past 1.0 however; I want to see how bad the Creation Engine runs on the eighth-gen hardware, to see if Bethesda has, at all, learned their lesson from releasing Skyrim on the PS3.

- Headcanon is not Spackle for holes in game logic or plot, because the writer of the story is the final arbiter of that. I say this as a writer myself; you can give details and information without info-dumping, and doing so is the mark of a skilled writer.

- You don't find that idea creepy? More importantly, why would you gush over that?
 
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Morrowind-style dialogue options are just not possible with voice acting tho, sorry. Spellcrafting broke the game and being able to barter with just anyone was stupid
 
AgentBJ09 said:
- No, but no company should, for any sequel to a long-running series, take away designs and mechanics that were more than functional and had no reason to be removed/merged into other parts of the game when a few tweaks would've fixed most of the problems. See also: Skyrim's Attributes, Spellcrafting, Dialogue options to force an NPC to pick fights with you/like you, Bartering, being able to ask specific questions about a location, person, etc.

- As I've said to many a YouTube commenter about modding in Bethesda games: "If you're using mods to fix a problem with the engine/code/world-design/user-interface, or restore an old mechanic from a past game, you're not modding anymore. You're doing part of the developer's job for them, gratis, while they reap the benefits (sales and word-of-mouth)." This was part of why gamers got so pissed at the idea of paying for mods, because you're quite literally at the point of paying for fixes in regard to Bethesda games.

- Meh. I'll be using an XBOX One, if I can get my hands on a Redbox rental or used copy, because screw Steam dependency. I won't be updating past 1.0 however; I want to see how bad the Creation Engine runs on the eighth-gen hardware, to see if Bethesda has, at all, learned their lesson from releasing Skyrim on the PS3.

- Headcanon is not Spackle for holes in game logic or plot, because the writer of the story is the final arbiter of that. I say this as a writer myself; you can give details and information without info-dumping, and doing so is the mark of a skilled writer.

- You don't find that idea creepy? More importantly, why would you gush over that?
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Read: You can't please every fan. Changes are inevitable, and in my opinion, usually very welcomed. If they'd held onto the very same mechanics and merely pasted a new plot over it, people would find a reason to complain about that instead. Pick your poison.

On top of that, mods for bug-fixes only tend to come out for games that (after a long while) have been dropped by the developers and is an entirely different story on its own. Changes to everything else you mentioned is a personal taste for the modder and the people that decide to download and apply said mod. It is not necessarily something that the original developers have any responsibility for, as we're erring onto gamer entitlement here with the rest of this point. I'm deliberately setting aside the whole thing that Valve tried to pull, deliberately, because I'm also tired of reading about that wherever I go now and don't feel like discussing it.

As for headcanon, I was speaking purely for myself, as I like to give most games I play a healthy suspension of disbelief. I'm also someone who doesn't usually rage over the smallest inconsistencies and acknowledge that people, even developers of a heavy-hitter RPG title like the Fallout universe, are not perfect and thus holes in logic and plot are okay. Besides, this is a post-apocalyptic fantasy timeline redux. Logic is a bit on its side to begin with.

The NSA, your telephone provider, ISP, etc. are already monitoring you in more ways than you can count on both hands. It wouldn't surprise me. And aside from that, I love the idea of being in the Commonwealth; The lore presented for it is amazing, not to mention I'd loved the Rivet City questline with Harkness and the whole exploration of androids and advanced technology at the Institute. It's as good a setting as the Mojave or D.C.
 
frajaq said:
Morrowind-style dialogue options are just not possible with voice acting tho, sorry. Spellcrafting broke the game and being able to barter with just anyone was stupid
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Bioware pulled it off to an extent with Dragon Age: Origins, but what I was also talking about was what we saw in Daggerfall; voice-acting isn't needed for everything an NPC says, and if Bethesda would keep that in mind, this kind of thing could come back.

Spellcrafting was fine; it didn't force you to grind up Speech to get better deals, and if we're talking exploits, how about the Alchemy/Enchanting/Smithing loop exploit we got in Skyrim? Each effect could stack so high that final percentages on armor rating, potion power, enchantments, etc. were in the tens of thousands at times. Just as game-breaking as Spellcrafting, yet Spellcrafting, a cornerstone of magic in the past games, was stripped out. *slow clap*

Oh, really? Was being able to barter with most NPCs in Fallout 1 and 2 also stupid? I don't think so. After all, its nothing more than an exchange of goods.

WeirdBeard said:
Read: You can't please every fan. Changes are inevitable, and in my opinion, usually very welcomed. If they'd held onto the very same mechanics and merely pasted a new plot over it, people would find a reason to complain about that instead. Pick your poison.

On top of that, mods for bug-fixes only tend to come out for games that (after a long while) have been dropped by the developers and is an entirely different story on its own. Changes to everything else you mentioned is a personal taste for the modder and the people that decide to download and apply said mod. It is not necessarily something that the original developers have any responsibility for, as we're erring onto gamer entitlement here with the rest of this point. I'm deliberately setting aside the whole thing that Valve tried to pull, deliberately, because I'm also tired of reading about that wherever I go now and don't feel like discussing it.

As for headcanon, I was speaking purely for myself, as I like to give most games I play a healthy suspension of disbelief. I'm also someone who doesn't usually rage over the smallest inconsistencies and acknowledge that people, even developers of a heavy-hitter RPG title like the Fallout universe, are not perfect and thus holes in logic and plot are okay. Besides, this is a post-apocalyptic fantasy timeline redux. Logic is a bit on its side to begin with.

The NSA, your telephone provider, ISP, etc. are already monitoring you in more ways than you can count on both hands. It wouldn't surprise me. And aside from that, I love the idea of being in the Commonwealth; The lore presented for it is amazing, not to mention I'd loved the Rivet City questline with Harkness and the whole exploration of androids and advanced technology at the Institute. It's as good a setting as the Mojave or D.C.
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- Most change I'm seeing in the gaming industry, from Western devs anyway, is more akin to steps away from anything remotely complex or that demand some measure of critical thinking/memory. RPGs are the last genre where this should be a thing.

- No, I recall the SkyUI first coming out the month after Skyrim launched, and you can see that on the Nexus page for it. The User Patches for Skyrim were up on the very same day the game launched. And lets not forget DarnifiedUI, a UI scaling mod that came out within a month of Oblivion, Fallout 3, and New Vegas. "These things come out after the games have been dropped by the devs", my ass.

Pointing out the lack of optimization for keyboard and mouse input, or asking for a better system for such input methods, is hardly entitlement for PC games. (By the way, fuck Colin Moriarty for even making that phrase a thing when he and others in game reviewing have defended bad business/unethical practices from game devs.) Having properly optimized input methods for a PC port, especially mouse and keyboard, is what devs are supposed to program for in for PC games, yet Bethesda gets a pass for shoddy work because 'others can mod it in.' If any other company tried that, they'd be butchered by bad publicity.

As for paid mods, it wasn't just Valve making that choice to allow them. Bethesda was taking almost half the money from every mod sale, including optimization mods. That's paying for fixes, no matter how you want to think otherwise. And on that note, challenge for you: Name me five well-known mods for Skyrim that are ONLY content mods like quests, new lands and NPCs. No weapon/spell only mods. No one I present this to can do it, and there's a reason for it.

- Again, as a writer myself, headcanon is no excuse for bad detailing of concepts or plot holes, just as the Encyclopedia of Final Fantasy XIII doesn't remove all necessity of good pacing/writing from that game.

- And if you're okay with that, that's even more creepy, if not defeatist in nature. (One would think that rebuilding the world is a much greater priority than working on life-like androids. You can't have kids with them after all.)
 
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frajaq said:
Morrowind-style dialogue options are just not possible with voice acting tho, sorry. Spellcrafting broke the game and being able to barter with just anyone was stupid
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Who's saying they have to? Fallout 1 and 2 worked rather well with talking heads. Also I don't think that either F1 or F2 had THAT much dialog that they could not give every NPC some voice acting today. I think the Witcher 2 alone contained at leat as much dialog like Fallout 1 and 2, if not even more. They had no problem to give everyone a voice. Neither did Dragon Age, Witcher 3 and many other games.

It's about quality, not quantity. No one here ever asked for Morrowinds Wiki-style dialog for a Fallout game anyway. We are asking for something that has a bit more quality to it than, fighting the good fight with your voice or midle aged man dialog ... doesn't matter if it's voiced or not, anything about Lamplight for example was an atrocity that should be burned to the ground.

Technical limitations can be a problem, obviously. Everyone here understands that. Voice acting isn't the cheapest thing to do. But to say Beth can't deliver on quality cuz of voice acting is a very silly cop out. They are an triple A developer after all. But they get away with so much stuff that other studios have to take a lot of criticism for, it's funny really. Take their animations, facial expressions and bugs for example. It has become a very sad tradition in the moding community that they have to provide you with better faces and animations. Not to mention the uiser interface and other PC related stuff.
 
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Crni Vuk said:
But they get away with so much stuff that other studios have to take a lot of criticism for, it's funny really. Take their animations, facial expressions and bugs for example. It has become a very sad tradition in the moding community that they have to provide you with better faces and animations.
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It's easy to forget, indeed, you just get used to it, like the awkward-as-hell getting-up animations, sitting-down animations, and the dying-all-over-the-place ragdollism, if you just quickly compare with, say, GTA4, it's quite plain to see what could have been achieved, the way NPCs there stumble around, trip, roll, get back up again, it's amazingly fluid really - but since the games belong in two different "worlds", and players get used to what they play, it gets accepted as different styles, when in reality one is skimping more than the other.
 
Not to mention, I started this thread so I'd have a place to post my thoughts on my playthrough of Fallout 4.

I'm buying the game because I want to play it.

And apparently, nothing less than utter satisfaction will appease some people.

There's loads of games I like that I still complain about because they have genuine problems!

Ask me about something and I have an opinion about it.

Please forgive me for not lining up to suckle mindlessly at the teat of Bethesda.
 
If I had a monster-puter I would rob Beth of their creation, like a filthy, stinking thief. But I don't have 30 gigs of PC to just hand over, so... since I have so far only bought 2 games for my PS4, FO4 is a just-as-well 3rd, while I wait for Gran Turismo :0

And I guess complaining comes natural when you know certain games in and out. Among my favorite games, oh, I can hate them so fucking much... Civilization, oh, the hatred... GTA...
not to mention...

*aims*
60%
*you missed*
*you missed*

"OH FOR THE LOVE OF - !!!"

*you got critically hit in the groin for 40 HP*
*you missed*
*you missed*
 
WeirdBeard said:
Fallout 4 will be amazing in its own right and people will still find 'caveats' for themselves to be upset with it because it didn't turn out to be how THEY envisioned it. You can't please every single fan, no matter how hard you try.

Yet, knowing this, people will insist that the game is bad because X reasons... how they should phrase it is that the game just isn't for them and be done instead of frothing like the damn thing gave them rabies.

I grew up on Fallout 1 and 2, and I've played 3 and NV. I liked them each for what they managed to bring to the table, took what I disliked about them, and ignored those bits or found mods to murder said bits to dust.

For me, I'm updating my rig specifically to be able to play Fallout 4 with no issues at all, and I know I'm going to love it, because the E3 gameplay alone gave me a boner. The graphics were wonderful, it had that recent Fallout feel, I'm not sure what the fuck everyone else's problem is about. I liked the voice acting. I liked how they're handling character customization. The intro to the storyline seemed a little confusing (I didn't look into it) but that's easily able to be set aside.

If something doesn't fit, I can add my own headcanon to it until it makes sense. That's the point of a game, something to be played for pleasure with your imagination. If you can't use it and want everything spoonfed to you, go watch a fucking movie. I liked the weapon crafting/customization. I like how you can make your own little 'settlements' and how every previously useless item now has a point for being broken down into specific materials for said building and crafting system.

It's like they had a bug on my phone and in my clothes and were listening in on my conversations with family and friends about how I'd like to see things like these in a new release, and I'd even said, "Wouldn't it be badass if they set Fallout 4 in the Commonwealth?" and bam, the confirmed announcements about it literally made me go "WHAT?! AWESOME."
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No. You have no idea. People will be upset because it's a FLAWED game. Making up excuses for OBVIOUS flaws in the game is NOT okay. It's not about how they envisioned it. They want a GOOD fucking Fallout game that is a FAITHFUL fucking sequel. If BGS want to make a game how they want DON'T USE THE IP.

People will insist that the game is bad because IT IS BAD. IT HAS FLAWS. I still to this day don't understand how people who religiously defend BGS for no reason can't understand this.

Now I agree that really BGS's games aren't for everyone, however these people who don't like their games HAVE admitted this many times and least YOU could do is admit that their games HAVE FLAWS.

The gameplay we've seen so far is pretty decent I'll give you that but "gave you a boner" when there's far better games that focus specifically on the gameplay, why? Didn't Just Cause 3's gameplay not give you a boner? They basically threw all fucking logic out the window and went full on balls crazy with the gameplay and honestly if the Fallout name wouldn't exist this is exactly what BGS would probably be doing and I would be okay with that.

Sure, add your own headcanon to things that blatantly don't make sense and are full of bad writing. Add your own headcanon to make sense of the shitty dialogue system? To fix the shitty setting? Imagine that the worldbuilding in the game is actually good? The story is good? Your statement is "go watch a fucking movie" yet most movies do pretty well for me in adding my own headcanon. Really, that doesn't even make sense because you just can't compare games and movies like that.

I'm sure there's some people who can say smarter stuff than I can about this stuff. Whatever, though. I'm glad you can enjoy the game.
 
Sure. I'm not the type of person who's gonna really hate it and go over every detail so I'm gonna remain sane after it. :)

I'm probably gonna be fucking pissed at the dialogue system though.
 
WeirdBeard said:
Fallout 4 will be amazing in its own right and people will still find 'caveats' for themselves to be upset with it because it didn't turn out to be how THEY envisioned it. You can't please every single fan, no matter how hard you try.

Yet, knowing this, people will insist that the game is bad because X reasons... how they should phrase it is that the game just isn't for them and be done instead of frothing like the damn thing gave them rabies.

I grew up on Fallout 1 and 2, and I've played 3 and NV. I liked them each for what they managed to bring to the table, took what I disliked about them, and ignored those bits or found mods to murder said bits to dust.

For me, I'm updating my rig specifically to be able to play Fallout 4 with no issues at all, and I know I'm going to love it, because the E3 gameplay alone gave me a boner. The graphics were wonderful, it had that recent Fallout feel, I'm not sure what the fuck everyone else's problem is about. I liked the voice acting. I liked how they're handling character customization. The intro to the storyline seemed a little confusing (I didn't look into it) but that's easily able to be set aside.

If something doesn't fit, I can add my own headcanon to it until it makes sense. That's the point of a game, something to be played for pleasure with your imagination. If you can't use it and want everything spoonfed to you, go watch a fucking movie. I liked the weapon crafting/customization. I like how you can make your own little 'settlements' and how every previously useless item now has a point for being broken down into specific materials for said building and crafting system.

It's like they had a bug on my phone and in my clothes and were listening in on my conversations with family and friends about how I'd like to see things like these in a new release, and I'd even said, "Wouldn't it be badass if they set Fallout 4 in the Commonwealth?" and bam, the confirmed announcements about it literally made me go "WHAT?! AWESOME."
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You're a Bethfanboy. Disgusting. One of the more well-written shills, but still. A filthy shill.
 
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