Crispy's (Mostly Technical) Initial Impressions™ of Fallout 4

[Volrath]

Personally i would put F3 a bit higher.

From everything I've seen so far in LP's Fallout 3 does look better then this abortion.

 

[Lord Azlan]

I never said Fallout 4 is better than Skyrim. I'm saying it's not a shooter, because it's not.

In shooters, the focus is always on the combat. If you're not fighting, you're leading up to a fight or recovering from one. In shooters, there are generally very few areas you can walk in without being harassed almost immediately. In games like Fallout 4 and Skyrim, you can wander around (if you're relatively careful) for hours, just collecting shit, looking at shit, talking to dumb NPC's, and completing "quests". Does that sound like a shooter to you?

Some of the examples you provided are not strictly shooters, such as STALKER. Even the Far Cry series blurs the lines.

It's not just me saying Fallout 4 is a shooter. Read any of the 10/10 reviews by users on metacritic.

Common positives from Page 1 only:

The gun modding system is by far the best addition to the series
Gun play is vastly improved to give the game a good weapon handling feeling
The gun-play is nice the graphics are good
Every gun has a unique feeling and purpose and everything functions so fluidly
Guns n' more bullets: Shooting is more playable
Your guns no longer break
Gunplay is great and makes combat in the wasteland feel very visceral
The gunplay feels nice and tight
The gun-play has improved a ton, and you don't need to rely as heavily on V.A.T.S. Some might argue that it's dumbed down and is Call of Duty shooting.

In my limited time playing it and discussions with others - I don't think it is better than the previous incarnations as hiking simulators. I don't know if the map is smaller or if Bethesda packed more stuff in. Part of the enjoyment of F3 and New Vegas and even Skyrim was to walk on to that next mountain, road or town. It takes a while. You get time to ponder and reflect stuff. Real life or even in-game ponderings. Time to look at your character and plan what to do.

I think Bethesda dumbed this crap down to accommodate console retards who only know how to aim and shoot. There is no time for musings. No thinking time. There is no lone traveler here.

Apart from the DIRE modding aspect and the unexplained Sim Farm - isn't the rest of your time just shooting stuff?

Saying all that, I still want to buy this game. Maybe when it is fixed by Bethesda or the excellent modders. Maybe buy it when it is five pounds like New Vegas is now.

I could not stop playing the previous incarnations.

This one - I just like reading posts from people that like it - and trying to understand why.

 

[potatojohn]

What are you even talking about? The map isn't smaller nor are the enemies denser than in previous beth games.

 

[King Crispy]

Look, man, if you want to go based on what morons at Metacritic have to say about what makes a game a shooter or whatever, that's fine. Personally, I prefer my computer game definitions to be of a more prestigious nature:

For discussion of Bethesda's hiking simulator series of games they call RPGs. Like Fallout 3, Fallout 4, Skyrim and stuff.

 

[Akratus]

Because we all hold the idea of strict genres in games in such high regard. We all know what is and isn't an rpg, here on the prestigious codex.

 

[Lord Carlos Wafflebum]

What is an RPG?

 

[Lord Azlan]

PLUS

 

[NotAGolfer]

I dunno - New Vegas was voted in the RPG Codex all time list. So the franchise could at least be seen to be on an upward trajectory.

That graph is beyond retarded, FO2 rated lower than New Vegas?


Also who fucking cares? I am mildly entertained by FO4, gunplay is good, enemy variety is fine (AI is retarded though, especially on humans), slomo VATS is a great idea imo, crafting is addictive as hell, much more than in Skyrim where it was an unbalanced, tacked on shitty mechanic, just like base building is in FO4.
The char building is very transparent (so you don't have to replay the start of the game 2 or 3 times to "get" the system like in the good old days (TM)), but also very boring, story C&C seem to be stripped down (dunno if that's so bad for a Bethesda RPG though, they are shit at telling branching stories, FO3 and Skyrim showed that much), but I'm still having fun exploring the wasteland. Couldn't care less if the name is Fallout and if it's the Fallout universe, I just happen to like postapoc Steampunk.
And I quite like the map and locations so far, would be great though if there was something else than hordes of enemies (mostly raiders) in the NW quadrant of the map. It gets a bit old and I'm too much of a methodical map explorer who has to look in every corner (read: OCD victim) to just walk to the next quest objective. I always stop playing these hiking sims because they throw too much shit in my face too early, too many locations I could explore that distract me from the MQ. The isometric Fallouts were so much better in that regard, they didn't force all that filler content on me all the time, it was mixed up with the main quest .. or the main / intended narrative branch (since the main quest in the old Fallouts can be quite short if you want it to be) nicely there.
The FO4 map is fucking huge btw, dunno where all these claims come from that it would be smaller. I put about 40 hours into the game so far and still only explored 1/4 of the map (explored pretty much every location/house/cave/tunnel system in that quadrant though). Still have to arrive in Diamond City...

 

[Cthulhu_is_love]

I put about 40 hours into the game ...................................40 hours into the game

Spoiler

40 hours

That's 2,5 playthroughs of the original Fallout, moron.

 

[NotAGolfer]

And?
Those Bethesda hiking sims tend to be extremely long, been like that since Arena, fucktard.

 

[King Crispy]

This mod is excellent:

Shadow Boost

http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/1822/?

Cleverly uses a .dll to dynamically adjust the shadows distance in-game, seamlessly increasing or decreasing depending on the frames-per-second that you desire. While it won't magically produce more frames than your rig can normally generate, it will reduce or eliminate extreme performance loss and judderyness in shadow-intensive locations, such as in Diamond City. Recommended.

 

[ArchAngel]

This mod is excellent:

Shadow Boost

http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/1822/?

Cleverly uses a .dll to dynamically adjust the shadows distance in-game, seamlessly increasing or decreasing depending on the frames-per-second that you desire. While it won't magically produce more frames than your rig can normally generate, it will reduce or eliminate extreme performance loss and judderyness in shadow-intensive locations, such as in Diamond City. Recommended.

I tried it a bit, seemed to work well. Have to test it more later.