Fallout 4

[11B4V]

This game isn't "grabbing" me the way FONV did.  The story is too disjointed and even quest lines like the Minuteman one are somewhat anemic due to the tiny sizes of the groups you are dealing with (four people in the starting settlement, three in the first one you "rescue").  It strains credulity that 20 raiders are going halfway across the northern map area to steal food from three farmers.  Even FO3 had better-sized settlements.

And has anyone felt that Dogmeat is more of an asset than a liability?  In my game, his main role has been to start fights I don't want, and to foul the range when I do get into a fight.

The game is fun enough from a mechanics standpoint, but the aesthetics aren't very immersive.

I found I had to really control dogeat. Go here. Stay and so forth. He is good in a chance encounter to distract the enemy. I don't take him into a fight or attack I initiate that I want to control. I play the sneak assassin type skulking around. Ill skulk around and recon for a good vantage point. I will normally have doormat stay in a safe area prior to starting my shenanigans on a target. I have a soft spot for dogs so l like dogmeat.

So far Boone has been the only companion out of fo3, nv, and fo4 that suits may play style.

Your last sentence sums it for me. I hate to say it again, but AQFH I think ruined me. The original game setting in fo3 became a side note or just a cover for lack of words.

[Syt]

I like the setting so far. FONV was Wild West inspired, this now by the Revolutionary period. I've heard many complaints about how messed up the controls for building settlements are - I find them not great but serviceable. It took me about 15 minutes to figure out the ins and outs of placing stuff, but since then it's easy .... except placing fences around the settlement. Unlike walls they don't "link" up, and their models seem to have weird overlap so that I can only place them either by leaving small gaps between the pieces or by overlapping pieces.

I've started using walls that auto-connect instead. 

[Caliga]

It doesn't make sense if the raiders were only going to that one settlement. They are robbing people along the way and have sort of a paper route of settlements they visit.

What doesn't make sense is why you run into random stores without a settlement in the middle of nowhere. Who are they selling to? Who is resupplying them? And how are raiders not hitting a store, especially ones run by a single person? You'll attack a farm for what supplies they may have but you leave a stocked store alone?

Yeah, Dogmeat is always in my way. Or he'll stand still and get machine gunned. I'll tell him to move but then he'll just go back into the line of fire.

Also, why does every building in Fallout have to look like crap? Are we to believe even in civilized areas they can't do better than tying pieces of scrap together to make a nice looking structure? And do the insides always have to have trash all over the floor and broken computers?

None of the Fallout games are really 'realistic' IMO and I don't think they're even trying for realism.  I mean, there are giant mutated crab-men running around and shit.

I still have never beaten 'The Last Of Us' but from what I've seen of it so far, now that's a post-apocalyptic game that is actually trying to be realistic.  Fallout is more trying to be darkly humorous I think.

[celedhring]

My biggest gripe with Bethesda-era fallouts is that it's been 200 years since the apocalypse, and it seems it was yesterday. In the old fallouts there was a sense of rebuilding going on between 1 and 2, but in Fallout 3 people are back into living in the middle of rubble.

[Syt]

FO3 was supposed to be 20 years after the war, but they wanted the Brotherhood in, so they added a 0. It appears they've just stuck with it now.

[Caliga]

Bethsoft is all about game mechanics and stuff in their games.  They either don't care about immersive storylines at all, or do care and just have no talent to pull it off.  But we all knew this going into FO4, of course.  I will say from what I've seen of FO4 so far, it does seem like it's at least a marginal improvement over FO3 in that regard, but still inferior to NV.

I mean, from like a cinematic storytelling standpoint, the Mass Effect series totally blows FO out of the water... but a lot of people don't like how much less open those games are.  I prefer Mass Effect to FO because I just don't care about their constraints... I simply don't have time to play through every single little thing in the more open-world games like the Fallout and Elder Scrolls series.

[celedhring]

Bethesda games are vast oceans that are only 5 cm deep. I have played most of them, mind, I'm guilty as charged.

I find interesting that the game that actually furthers the Fallout narrative (New Vegas) was not done by Bethesda. I hope they hire Obsidian again for another west coast game.

[Caliga]

Bethesda games are vast oceans that are only 5 cm deep. I have played most of them, mind, I'm guilty as charged.

I find interesting that the game that actually furthers the Fallout narrative (New Vegas) was not done by Bethesda. I hope they hire Obsidian again for another west coast game.

I hope they let Obsidian do another one too, but wouldn't mind a totally different setting.  What happened to the ROTW when the nuclear war went down?

[grumbler]

Bethesda games are vast oceans that are only 5 cm deep. I have played most of them, mind, I'm guilty as charged.

For Bethesda's fallout games, this is true.  It has become increasingly true of their Elder Scrolls games, as well, as they shift the target audience to console gamers (who seems to trend younger and less dedicated to story than appearance).  Morrowind was both deep and immersive.  I prefer the vast oceans because I am interested in the strings more than the stories.  I found that the ME and DA type games were mostly about trying to figure out where the rails were by trying and failing to do things until one stumbled on the "right way" to do it.

I guess I am more interested in multiple plays than I am in the depth of any one playthrough.

I find interesting that the game that actually furthers the Fallout narrative (New Vegas) was not done by Bethesda. I hope they hire Obsidian again for another west coast game.

I don't find this either surprising or even interesting, given that the Obsidian folks working on FONV were some of the ones who invented the fallout universe.  I also hope for another Obsidian fallout game, but I fear that the Obsidian folks were too pissed at themselves for signing the first contract with Bethesda to sign another.

[Valmy]

Nah the rails in a Bioware game are blatantly obvious. You never have to try and fail until you stumble across them.

[celedhring]

I found it interesting because it seems that Bethesda is mostly interested in doing their own isolated FO narrative up in the NE, and not meddle with the established Fallout continuity in the California area.

[The Brain]

So FO4 is more FO3 than NV?

Gamewise, I mean.

[Warspite]

I bought FO4 on the weekend, and have found the quests so far to basically be "Go to [...] and kill everyone". Is there any more depth to it than this? I miss the way you could try to talk your way through large parts of FO1 and 2.

[Syt]

I bought FO4 on the weekend, and have found the quests so far to basically be "Go to [...] and kill everyone". Is there any more depth to it than this? I miss the way you could try to talk your way through large parts of FO1 and 2.

It's a complaint I've seen in some reviews. I recall that FO3 had multiple ways of solving quests, with possibilities to side with different groups. Not far into FO4 yet, so no idea if it'll be more flexible later on.

[MadBurgerMaker]

I'm starting to come across some retrieval quests where you don't necessarily have to kill everything if you don't want to (I do anyway just because).  You just need to get the thing and return it.