Fallout 4 |OT| Atom Bomb Baby

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I'm finally home, so I sunk in an hour today. Started out impressed with the player character face editing (works really well IMO), then found myself bored shitless by the opening and pretty much everything in the early game. One hour in I quit and watched a movie.

I dunno. I know I'm being a sourpuss, and I fully intend to restart once I'm not forced to play on my TV monitor (basically once my PC monitor comes back from repair), and I don't want to shit up the thread with superb negativity, but the opening of the game had that same issue I had with Fallout 3 and Skyrim; every character so far is immediately forgettable, and spouts drab, unnatural dialogue. Like everything is just (and I know this will be the unpopular opinion) so lifeless and boring.

Playing in my comfort zone (see monitor) and a better mood will elevate my opinion I'm sure. And it's super dumb to judge a 50+ hour open world game on the first hour with hardly any exploring. But yeah; early impressions = butts.

The shooting felt pretty good though. And despite weirdass fucking stuttering that makes no sense at all given I'm playing @1080p on a fucking 6GB 980Ti, I actually think it looks pretty decent. Obviously rough animations, inconsistencies in the assets, and other jank you expect in a huge open world RPG. But man, sometimes I feel people forget how Skyrim looked, or gloss over the vanilla look due to mods. This is massively improved on basically every single front.
 
Same happened with Skyrim.

"But in Arena it would take you months to go across the
procedurally generated, samey and boring
map!"
Skyrim was was was filled with boring crap though, definitely a detriment. FO4s crap has been delightfully diverse and well spaced so far.
 
Yeah without the good writing and good rpg stuff. Still it's shockingly better then Fo3. Not even close to New Vegas but, nothing even the original fallouts are no where near New Vegas.

I constantly keep imagining a game with Bethesda's worldbuilding and Obsidian's writing/mechanics. Such a boner.
 
bitch I'm fabulous

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Could they have picked a more annoying sound effect to play when Idiot Savant procs? I decided to pick it up, even with INT 6, after reading some of the comments here. Procced 4 times in the last half hour. :lol
 
The real answer to this question is because people complained about the lack of locations in Fallout 3 and especially New Vegas.

Seriously, I've seen people complain about the lack of stuff to do outside DC in Fallout 3 and of course people complained that there was 'even less' to do/see in New Vegas (even though this is in fact wrong, New Vegas had more locations and quests than FO3).

theres far too much civilization here.
i want empty wastelands where theres storms and no cover from the monsters that lurk within.
everything is just too lively here.

also, finally got the upgraded silver shroud coat.
42 defense is awesome if you do the quest early.
but crap, im at almost 100 phys defense rnow .
 
People are complaining that there's too much stuff in the world and there should be more empty areas?

Man, sometimes game creators just can't win.
 
In order to justify my female character being a killing machine, I came up with that she was secretly trained by her father who also served in war but kept it a secret to her husband & friends since she would be looked down upon.

Word

Similar for my guy - former military - special ops - also contract work and hits from a third party

Wife never knew about the details

boom, role play established

You could apply the same logic if you wanted to play a psychotic murderer - just because the game starts you with a spouse and child doesn't mean you have to play a family man/woman. Most of fictions most interesting characters have secrets.
 
How common are storms? I've not had one yet, perhaps 5 hours of play so far. I've also not had any bog standard rain either.

The great dynamic weather struggle in open world games. Either rains once every blue moon, or like Wild Hunt every 10 minutes (and for seven months at a time).
 
Man this game has me HOOKED.

Can anyone recommend me a good 'underlay' armour? One that has good upgradability, or is the vault suit the best?
 
How common are storms? I've not had one yet, perhaps 5 hours of play so far. I've also not had any bog standard rain either.
No storm yet after 20 hours. Maybe they happen in specific areas?
I went to Diamond City but other than that I pretty much stayed in the north-west corner.
 
"My infant son has been kidnapped but I really like building shit: The Game."

It's dumb. Witcher 3 had the exact same problem (also "hey a monster is terrorizing your town? Let me come back in 6 months when I'm level 23").

Does this sense of urgency ever go away during the main quest or am I gonna have to rush through it if I don't like the idea of playing as an asshole who's in no hurry to save his own child?

What's wrong with the witcher one? Most of those monster hunts are contracts. They're job opportunities for Geralt. If he doesn't do it then oh well for that town. Also most of the contracts that were higher level had you hunt a monster out of town.
 
I am 30 hours in and I have to say, this is a colossal improvement over both Fallout 3 and Skyrim. Yes, you are still doing repetitive tasks during quests but the writing around them is much, much more interesting, making them an absolute joy to discover and play through. I also haven't encountered too many of Skyrim's 'collect 10 copies of item X because I said so' miscellaneous quests, there's always some interesting spin as to why you are doing whatever it is you are doing.

The main quest is actually interesting now, and the further you get into it the more interesting the moral choices become. I also really like the way you can't advance too far into all factions at the same time, which was pretty immersion breaking for me in Bethesda's previous games.

The downside to all of this is, of course, that this is no longer an RPG but a shooter with RPG elements, but honestly, the RPG elements in Fallout 3 and Skyrim were quite weak anyway, so their removal didn't bother me all that much. The exploration and quests are some of Bethesda's best, and this is all that matters to me.
 
How common are storms? I've not had one yet, perhaps 5 hours of play so far. I've also not had any bog standard rain either.

Most of the dynamic weather I've experienced has been while I'm at a settlement upgrading stuff. I don't know if it's coincidence or what, but I've had rain, fog, and the weird yellow radiation storm thing all happen in Sanctuary/Red Rocket, but not while I'm out exploring.
 
The great dynamic weather struggle in open world games. Either rains once every blue moon, or like Wild Hunt every 10 minutes (and for seven months at a time).

I think I vastly prefer the less frequent. Witcher 3 got to a point where I would just meditate away the storms.
 
I'm finally home, so I sunk in an hour today. Started out impressed with the player character face editing (works really well IMO), then found myself bored shitless by the opening and pretty much everything in the early game. One hour in I quit and watched a movie.

I dunno. I know I'm being a sourpuss, and I fully intend to restart once I'm not forced to play on my TV monitor (basically once my PC monitor comes back from repair), and I don't want to shit up the thread with superb negativity, but the opening of the game had that same issue I had with Fallout 3 and Skyrim; every character so far is immediately forgettable, and spouts drab, unnatural dialogue. Like everything is just (and I know this will be the unpopular opinion) so lifeless and boring.

Playing in my comfort zone (see monitor) and a better mood will elevate my opinion I'm sure. And it's super dumb to judge a 50+ hour open world game on the first hour with hardly any exploring. But yeah; early impressions = butts.

The shooting felt pretty good though. And despite weirdass fucking stuttering that makes no sense at all given I'm playing @1080p on a fucking 6GB 980Ti, I actually think it looks pretty decent. Obviously rough animations, inconsistencies in the assets, and other jank you expect in a huge open world RPG. But man, sometimes I feel people forget how Skyrim looked, or gloss over the vanilla look due to mods. This is massively improved on basically every single front.

I was bored for 10 hours before I remembered that the fun to be had was in just exploring and seeing what I could find. Some game stories grab you, while Bethesda stories slap you...on the forehead.
 
What's wrong with the witcher one? Most of those monster hunts are contracts. They're job opportunities for Geralt. If he doesn't do it then oh well for that town. Also most of the contracts that were higher level had you hunt a monster out of town.
His daughter was missing and clearly in danger. Killing monsters for 200 coins shouldn't really be his priority.
It's nitpicky but I just hate urgency in open world games.
 
I started yesterday and am loving it... but there is ONE thing that I REALLY REALLY hate: Why the hell does Dogmeat footsteps sounds as if he is walking on a metal floor? Can I cut bis toenails or something????
 
Exactly. Game reminds me more of New Vegas than Fallout 3 in that way.

Plus, really, it's 200 years after the war. Even with nukes, a nuclear winter, mutations, and genetic manipulation, after 200 years civilization would have rebounded a lot. Just think of the world now vs in 1815. Still a little annoyed it's so brown when it should be very green, but I can deal with that (plus...mods).

On POIs, as someone who lives in Boston area, very dense POIs actually work here. Mojave is sparse, Boston Metro is not. Aside from State/Federally protected land there's very little unused space here, which is a big reason housing prices are skyrocketing here. Factor in that Concord to Boston in real life would be a 30minute+ drive easy if there was no traffic and you then merge that down to walkable in 5 minutes and yeah, there'd be a lot of stuff around.

I'm a little sad they left out Somerville itself (I see 'somerville place', but not the city of Somerville), but it was kinda amusing to me to get the Cambridge PD message and know where to go just from the fact I live in Cambridge right now :p

As for my character, playing a lady, I think I'm going with 'Baby was husband's with another woman, he was an abusive monster who deserved what happened and I had no attachment to the child outside of seeing it as some sort of mental escape. Only played nice at government decree. Apocalypse has given me a clean break and the two that took the baby are free to have it.'. Haven't actually had too many references to the baby so far in game, so it's worked out.
 
Just did some companion research and looks like
Robert MacCready
has the best perk.

Kill Shot :The player character has 20% greater chance to hit an enemy's head in V.A.T.S.

I gotta find this guy
 
That's too far off of a goal for me. I like how in FO4 it's like:

1. Escape
2. Go home
3. Get pointed in the direction of people who can help

Finding your baby is a far off overall goal. It's nice how the game doesn't just shove you out of the vault and go "find those people".

But I would argue that this plays into the weak point of the bethesda games. They are not good at telling good stories and have them presented in a way that is engaging (compare Fallout 4 to the Witcher 3 in that regard).

They are however very good at creating worlds that are just fun to explore and mess around in. So the more far off that goal, the more it plays into the strong aspects of Bethesda's game design.
I've played for 12 hours so far and have not set a foot into diamond city and I cant bother with the main quest. I mean all that stuff could have happened decades ago as far as I am aware so far. Whats the point of randomly asking people who dont know me and have never seen me if they know where my son is. FO 3 had the same problem.
But in FO3 I completely ignored the main quest and after like 20 hours I just ran into my dad. That was kinda cool and made much more sense than asking around like that (in my head at least).

In my opinion they could completely let go of the very personal motivation and let the player just get caught up in the greater things that are happening in the wasteland. And you find out about that by just being that wanderer.

The whole opening of the game was just so weak that I dont want that to be my main motivation, but the game doesnt want me to have another motivation for the main quest (so far), which sucks.
 
No storm yet after 20 hours. Maybe they happen in specific areas?
I went to Diamond City but other than that I pretty much stayed in the north-west corner.

One occurred for me in early morning hours at Diamond City. It's visually pretty cool, though I've been spoiled by the amazing storms from Mad Max.
 
Just did some companion research and looks like
Robert MacCready
has the best perk.

Kill Shot :The player character has 20% greater chance to hit an enemy's head in V.A.T.S.

I gotta find this guy

nah, it's already easy enough to hit someone in the head if your weapon has decent accuracy.
 
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