Welcome to the forum.

*As another who played the series from the first, and in order, I can agree with your sentiment; but I find that I cannot agree with most of your reasons for it... very few in fact (other than some of the New Vegas related ones). I can see that we do not agree on RPGs at all. (...and yet have similar disappointments about where they are headed.)

Coming from another Fallout vet (I was playing Fallout back in the 90's aswell, ever since the FO1), I have to disagree with you here on alot of the points you made. Overall your review felt a bit rushed, almost as if it was written under emotional stress, from the game not meeting your expectations I guess? Anyway..

-First off, I don't think there's only 4 armor types in the game as you claimed. Seeing as I've already found atleast 5 different types @ level 28 (Leather, Metal, Raider, Combat, Synth). I have a strong feeling there's several more there, and several more to become as the DLCs unfold (same thing happened with FO3 btw, stealth armor was from a DLC was it not?). As you might have noticed if you paid any attention while playing, that the loot tables evolve as you progress through levels! This seems only reasonable to me, because that way you won't be able to get the best gear in game at level 1 (not legit atleast). Which is real good for the game balance. - Wait for creation kit if you wanna cheat your way through the game.

-I've found a [censored]load of eerie places and interesting curiosities. Actually probably more than in any fallout before. To me it feels like every single place you stumble in to (and there's a huge TON of these places) has a story hidden behind it. Do you actually read the dialog, listen to the holodisks, read the terminal logs, notes, etc? That's where the story is at! And all the minute details.. Like the distressed father in the bunker, did anyone notice he was doing drugs? Why should it make a difference? For no reason, but these minute little details bring the world alive and make it breathe. It truly is an RPG game if you actually focus on the gaming and the stories instead of just streamlining through quests and dungeons to get better loot and power levels.

-The world is too colorful and happy? Dude you on anti-depressants? The world in FO4 is dark and heavy as [censored]. It's macabre, somber, cold and burdening. I cannot even begin to argument on why it is so, because I'd have a 100 different arguments and CBA making this TLDR (which it'll probably come out as anyway despite my best efforts). FO3 was just depressing, because there was absolutely no contrast to all the darkness. Having contrast gives a true meaning to, well basically everything. This is philosophy here and I won't open up more on the subject because this ain't the right time and place for it.

-You can enlarge the map view in your pipboy if you feel it's too cluttered. This is a no brainer and a pointless complaint IMO.

-I don't understand why you would compare this game to FNV seeing as it's made by a whole different dev team.. It's like comparing Battlefield 4 to Battlefield Hardline and complaining why they are so different. Obviously they are seeing as different people made them <.< right?

-Character animations? Better than any FO game before. Not even up for discussion

-I have used Power armor exactly twice, the first mandatory quest and the first mandatory Brotherhood quest that requires it. Other than that I am roaming in my mix and match gear. The difficulty level is spot on (atleast without power armor). I am having just enough hard time in firefights to make it feel challenging! Sometimes I die, I need to use stimpaks and other aids. I need to fabricate tactics for different encounters, use different weapons against different opponents at differing ranges and situations. What more could you ask? This is exactly how it should be. If it was any easier there'd be no challenge and the game would be easy, thus boring. If it was any harder the game could become frustrating after a while. They balanced it out really well.

-While I sort of agree with you on the vocalized protagonist dilemma. I still feel it brings alot more immersion to the game, actually having a voice instead of always being the mute bystander. It's a two forked sword, while it brings so much more depth to your character it also in a way restricts total freedom of imagination over what your character should be like, I understand that. Still I wouldn't go back to the mute system, I want my character to talk. As a game dev I understand it's not just possible to have 10 different vocal characteristics to choose from, and 10 different dialog options to choose from. Because recording all that would have postponed this game by probably atleast a year (most likely more) and cost [censored]loads of man hours and money. just so we could have different voices to choose from? Nah I'd rather finally have this game than wait another year or 2 for few more voice options. I am a realist.

-The only thing I perosnally would change is the hardcoe mode. I really enjoyed how it worked in FNV (I know, different game, I said it myself). It gave a whole new meaning to survival in the post apocalypse when you actually had to eat, drink and sleep to stay alive, in a world where the food is scarce, the water is poisoned and where you might get your throat slit unless you sleep with one eye open. I'm not saying : Copy the system. But it sure could be used as an inspiration for something cool, unique and challenging? Maybe in a future patch?

-We've come a long way from the 90's. You gotta accept man, the times have changed and the gaming industry (and most of all the gaming audience) has changed ALOT since those days. Gone are the days of hardcoe gaming and endless hours of grind and dedication. These days, players (and people in general) want : Fast pace, compact formulation, and functionality above all else. They also want it by yesterday, not in 2 weeks. Game houses (especially when developing a triple A title) HAVE to cater to those needs because their whole livelyhood is on the line. They invest millions of dollars and years of time in the developement, if the game flops it's all for nothing and in worst case scenario they go bankrupt and pay the debts for the rest of their life. All this considered I think Bethesda really went out and made a brilliant game, it's by no means generic, safe, casual, gray and tryhard.

-Best release since GTAV. I hope they make hundreds of millions of dollars in profit with this game. And keep up the good work.

TLDR: Read the [censored] post or don't read it, it's not too long, it's just the right length x)

So much complaining about this game. It's kind of getting annoying to come on to the forums when your looking for help and see half of the topics/threads are about "dumbed down" systems in game and lack luster content. Christ, just be happy we even got another Fallout game. I've been waiting 4 years for another one of these types of games and just by reading these comments I'm kind of seeing that the community here is nothing but a bunch of old whiny kooks. Are you still investing time in the game and complaining on the side every time you come across something that doesn't fit the narrative or something that just seem's like it could of been done leaps and bounds better? Please, just get used to it. There isn't much we can do except wait for mod's/patches.

In western RPG custom characters is ancient. Yes customization was who class to play, an character portrait if lucky and nobody really bothered with an back story for them.

Now Fallout 3 and 4 works pretty much the same way in 3 you was growing up in the vault and had to find your dad. In 4 you was an parent having to find your kid.

FO:NV used an much more TES blank background however more of your background is reviled in expansions.

I find fixed backgrounds boring but have no major problem with the short background storry in FO3 and 4.

What is it with people just saying things without any actual idea of the franchise history? This is patently false and people have been correcting this non-argument for SEVEN YEARS now!! Pay attention and think before you post. Somebody already corrected somebody else a few posts above!

Oh, and yes OP I feel your pain as well.

If you're comparing something new to your nostalgic memories, it'll never live up to any expectations. You'll always be disappointed. .. Lots of players playing Fallout 4 as their introduction to the series will end up loving this and not being able to get into the old games. There are plenty of people who played and loved Fallout 3 who dislike Fallout 1 and 2. The only way to really enjoy something new is simply stop thinking like an old person. The past wasn't better.. You have selective memory syndrome. Fallout 1 and 2.. buggy as hell on release. Tactics.. holy crap, you couldn't even play that game when it came out it was so buggy. Morrowind, Oblivion, Fallout 3, Fallout NV, Skyrim.. plenty of people "disappointed" and complaining about how awful they were when they came out too. Now everyone looks back on those games with fond memories which somehow nothing can live up to. They weren't better games.. you were just a different person then.

I believe Interplay also wanted to turn Fallout into an MMO......

But in regards to the OP - I actually agree with every point/concern you have stated here. Those are my gripes as well. That, and the lack of a Slaver faction and Slavery - Would have been interesting to have an anti-Slaver faction similar to the Railroad, in my opinion. Both factions joinable.

The towns are rather dull and uneventful too. Goodneighbor is supposed to be a town of scum and villainy but I don't see it - I was hoping for a New Reno with rivaling corrupt gangs and/or families, but nope!

Ghouls are damn clones - They all look the same. And why do female Ghouls have perfect and styled hair? It's contradicting and silly.

I could easily go on about my gripes but I will stop there.

EDIT - The greatest and glaring flaw of this title is the voiced PC and dialogue system though.

Overwhelming negative issue is the 4 dialogue options with vague hint about that you will say. Worse as they could easy add more text.

They could also used the aim for looting menu for dialogues too, this could also give you unlimited option like Skyrim or FO3 with the exact same functionality as FO4.

PC keybinding is a mess, this however is pretty easy to fix with mods, should also be even easier to patch.

Minor stuff.

Voiced character works well for me, playing as an female. The camera whoever is pretty broken, works but they should drop it then it can not aim at your face

Settlement building should let you zoom more out from your character now its hard to place the first floor tile accurate.

There is a lot to like in this game. The only real problem for me is the whole dialogue system. The brevity and the fact that you can't ask follow up questions is close to a deal breaker me.

The only points that I really agree with are the storyline ones (hate being forced into this married couple with baby nonsense) and the dialogue\voiced character. I don't think having a voiced protagonist is the real problem, I think it's terrible writing and a really, REALLY bad director, but if taking it back out means more resources on dialogue writing then so be it.

I also agree about their target age, though I would expand that to be probably closer to the millennial spread. That's interesting, because there was a poll on here the other day that showed the actual average age to be in the 30's and above. The fans of these franchises tend to be on the older side but the developer doesn't seem to realize what their audience actually is.

The players aren't as satisfied with this game as with others. It's holding at a 79% with 25k reviews on Steam, not quite up to the ~33k of the other fallout titles but close. Better than average... But not as good as Skyrim with a 92%, nor as good as Fallout 3 with an 82% and the REAL shocker, New Vegas with an overwhelming 96%. Wasn't this the game that the studio fired the entire staff after not pulling some arbitrary metacritic score number? Nevermind that the players obviously loved it.

This game just isn't as good as previous games, or as Bethesda's other titles, no matter what the white knights on this forum want to believe. They clearly did something wrong with this one to earn such a low player satisfaction score.

I've been around a long time, on a lot of gaming forums, and not once have I ever seen anyone say, "You know what would be really awesome? If Bethesda decided to write my character's entire backstory and major life choices for me before I got out to explore the wasteland. I'd much rather have a story on rails where my choices don't matter and I can't be the character I want to be. That would ROCK!"

So if no one asked for it, why did they do it?

Well, we've been playing Bethesda games for over a decade so your suggestion that it's a 'recent' trend, especially where Bethesda is concerned, is wrong. Gosh Morrowind was what, circa 2002? That's when I started with this developer, anyway. Every Elder Scrolls title and every Fallout title in these last ten years, except for this one, allowed you to be whoever you wanted to be. There was a level of expectation there that was actually set by the developer themselves. No one buys a Square Enix game and then complains that your character is already set, because you had that expectation going in that you weren't playing a character of your own design, you were playing a fixed protagonist with a set personality and past. That's part of the charm for many games, I agree - learning about this character and his or her experiences in the world and interactions with other characters.

However, that's not why people buy Bethesda games or what people that buy Bethesda games expect. For me, I buy them because they DON'T force me into that "straight white male protagonist with the incidental side female character that only serves as his love interest and maybe his healer". I bought Bethesda games because I could explore this world as a character of my own making, a gender that accurately reflects mine, and I wasn't locked into any given backstory that may or may not have made sense for me. Bethesda was a different developer that gave all of us a completely different experience. We got an open world and a character who could be whatever we wanted.

That was all taken away from us in this game, so some folks are understandably upset. They changed the formula pretty drastically, and for me, it's soured me on the entire franchise.

I would be shocked if it was a comparison of fond memories. From experience, it is often (or usually?) a direct comparison 1:1 from a person that has both games installed.

It's not nostalgia when you are looking at them side by side. (And there are many that play Fallout 1 or 2 once or twice a year ~every year.)

This was much, much later and nothing but a desperate attempt at saluaging the company by Herve Caen and nothing else. Neither Black Isle nor Troika (nor anybody else for that matter) should be blamed for Herve's inadequacies as a businessman.

I agree with the OP. But i do want to point out, the Chinese stealth suit was a DLC. It was not part of the original FO 3 game.

But yes, this game is basically a shooter with a backstory. Frankly the only thing going for it really, are the side quests and the world to explore. And hopefully, the mid kit will be powerful enough to let us add many thing.

I would love a alt mod, where you can begin another character in the game, that ignores the MQ - almost like IntrestingNPC and Alternate Start in Skyrim. INPC presets new NPC's, companions, all with stories and quests. It's 10GB in size and took over a year to write, So part of me wants to just stop, remove the game and come back to it next year and see.

I got lot of games to play. You know, I just might do that. Also, I STILL play Skyrim - a heavily modded Skyrim. I have over 3000 hours in Skyrim. i was hoping to have the same with this game- won't even be close - I'm already bored with this game. Maybe in a year.

Fallout: Not as good as it was since 1997.

@Dr, Tinde -

Ahh, gotcha. I could not remember the exact details I just did recall reading something about that some time ago.

Personally, and this is off-topic, but I want to explore the West Coast again. I loved the California desert and vast barren wasteland. And of course, the NCR! Probably my favorite established faction in Fallout.

I agree with the OP to an extent. Like I replied to another post about the lack of skills, the game is still enjoyable for me, but it could have been much better.

Fallout reviews intent on comparing it to past games belongs in the Series section of the forum.

I've got 30 plus hours in and feel the same way. Initially I was wow'd by just simply playing a new Fallout, but the more I play, the more I'm annoyed at the settlement missions in that they're all the same. Build me this, build me that. I too had the feeling like I was playing Minecraft. I still like the game and have a ton more to explore, but it appears Bethesda chose the path of least work in respect to some of the missions.

Cheers

This goes both ways. I'm not one of the people you describe, and I can tell you that I personally tire of all of the Bethesda fans who love to claim that Fallout and Fallout 2 are mediocre - most of which haven't even played them for more than ten minutes, if at all. If Fallout and Fallout 2 were as bad as some Bethesda fans like to claim, Bethesda wouldn't have wanted to work on the IP so badly to begin with, and Bethesda fans would never gotten their Fallout 3 and 4. Let's not forget that they were the ones who initially approached Interplay, and wanted to license the right to make three Fallout games before Interplay decided to auction off the IP.

This doesn't excuse the behavior of Classic Fallout elitists, but there's bad apples slinging ignorant remarks on both sides of the fence.

Oh, so Bethesda never took over the franchise then.. I guess FO3, F:NV and FO4 are just products of people's imaginations then?

No, they weren't the only party interested in the IP. As was already stated in this thread and has been stated for 7 years over and over and over and over...

Well. I think Bethesda had add most thing as an basic path for modders to add new things or modify it.

It third person gameplay share similarity to other games example: the last of us.

It's basically an entirely new game crafted to the existing one.

One unrelated to conversation, looting, and shooting.

That's pretty damn complex.

Fallout and Fallout 2 are great.

So is Wasteland, which I consider Fallout given Fallout exists because they didn't own the IP.

However, Fallout 3 and NV AND Fallout 4 are awesome too.

My .02.

There's really only a couple of things I hate in the new Fallout so far and that's the inventory management. The misc section is extremely cluttered. I'd split keys back into a different section or bring back the old "key ring". I'd also move the holotapes and notes back into their own sections in the Data segment of the Pipboy. I still hate the radio stations. They're just so dull and repetitive, Fallout New Vegas showed us that Elvis Presley is clearly in the timeline yet we have none of his songs. I honestly believe they just combined the songs of Galaxy News Radio and New Vegas Radio, then slapped a new radio host in the mix.

I don't hate the simplified levelling system, as it's a way to reach a wider audience. I also don't hate the dialogue and the voice acting. They've taken a page from Bioware and I don't necessarily disagree with it.

I'm in different to the armour and weapon customisations and find some of the positives and negatives a little questionable. Why does a bayonet reduce range? Shouldn't its only drawback be increased weight? Similar questions arise from automatic receivers, shouldn't it just decrease accuracy, indirectly increase ammo consumption (which is a negative thanks to scarcity) and increase weight.

I love what they did with cooking. They've actually made it useful. Knowing every recipe right from the get go is a negative in my books, but adding XP and other bonuses was a nice touch. I use food so much more in Fallout 4.

My other pet hates is the settlement management. It just seems clunky at times. Items snap together when I don't want them to. Objects hover off the ground and look very unsightly. There's no way to tell which settlers have been assigned tasks and which have already (unless they're already at their stations). Defending and managing a dozen settlements at once is a massive pain. Why isn't there an option to let them develop by themselves?

I'll take the term “levelutions” from Battlefield. Something that happens in a level which drastically changes how it's played. Early on in Fallout 4 I helped drain a particular area for a certain chracter. When I returned it was completely transformed, it made me feel like there was a true measure of time. That the world was indeed alive. Coming back to all these settlements that I've liberated should do similar things. I should be able to choose whether to help them directly or indirectly. ?

That's the only things that come to mind at the moment.