You're welcome to your opinion, but I still disagree with you. I've played all the FO games many times over, and I definitely see and feel the dumbed-down-ness in FO4 in many ways, compared to past games. But I respect your opinion and do not call it nonsense, thanks.

I see guys like you saying this stuff, but I don't see it. Moreover, it gets repeated over, and over, and over, ad nausea-um. So my apologies, but . . . in the absence of an empirically based demonstration that there is some factual basis to it, I cannot regard it as anything except nonsense.

I've been playing FO1 here lately just to see if I can even pick up the faintest hint of what this recurring theme is about. Nope. I just don't see it. FO1 is NOT a better, smarter, more indepth, more detailed, more exemplary of role-playing, nor more fun or engaging.

It is a very good game, and still fun after all these years despite its very dated graphics. The artistic vision are of course brilliant and that is the most obvious thread of continuity with the Bethesda era.

Lets take just one example here: the exit from Vault 13 . . . yes I know, you and others have played them all through many times, so you can think of a dozen examples that you will think support your argument, but what is the most important part of any product? The beginning. Where are we most likely to get the best insight into the overall experience of an entertainment product? The beginning. I too have played through FO2, and FO3 nearly in full if not nearly so, but honestly I do not live and breath those games so I'd be hard pressed to think of examples from later in any of those games without replaying them anyway . . . so lets just go with the opening scenes:

Opening Cinematics

FO1: with the fact that it is a 1997 game in mind, one can be very 'forgiving' of the granular and very limited cinematics. The fact that this was the "pilot" of the whole Fallout franchise and that it reflects Interplay's creative vision also have to be weighed. But in truth it is horrific to a 2016 eyeball and extremely limited in scope and detail.

What do we get? "Maybe" instead of "I don't want to set the World on Fire" (which is what they hoped for but couldn't manage legally) and a narrow view of 1950s TV (the aesthetics are wonderful but the rendering is rough) which widens to show a very narrow view of a decimated cityscape. The famous narrator giving his "War, war never changes" lines and then a slide show of black and white photographs from history. Was it enough to set the player into the mood for the game at the time? Sure. Was it even exemplary of mood setting introductions even for that time? No I argue it wasn't. It was good enough but it failed to acknowledge the importance of putting the player into a world and instead used what amounted to a single photographs equivalent of information about the Wasteland some narration about the intervening alternate history along with historical slides and *poof*! You are now a Vault Dweller. I acknowledge that at the time it seemed pretty cool, but even then the fundamental truth's of Moore's Law were already pretty widely understood and I can definitely recall participants in boards saying things like "imagine how much better the graphics will be in X years . . ." Even setting aside the the arguably mediocre rendering (albeit with genius vision behind them) the entrance is quite obviously something some GURP players were virtually forced to put together by some marketing types or "suits" as you guys seem to say, and barely even understood why they were doing it. This tells me right from the beginning that the developers did not really know "what" a computer game really is, although they clearly knew what a "role playing game" is.

FO4: Anyone with an open heart, i.e., excluding overly-nostalgic sour-graqes types who decry that Bethesda does not make games exactly as did Obsidian or Interplay, and with any degree of knowledge of the game lore can watch this and it will engage them. It is the introduction to a fanciful world and it has been given the due attention it deserves, even though critiques like yourself might dismiss it as "unnecessary floof" or "ohh shineys." The music, the limited naturalistic cinematics, we immediately GET what this world we are about to embark into is all about.

Not to mention it is beautifully done and captures the essence of the older artistic vision perfectly, indeed it elevates that vision by bringing it even more to life.

Start of Game

FO1: After the opening cinematics we are tossed into character creation without even a hint of what the game world is. This is likely part of the reason that some players feel that the older games "gave more choice" because they provide less information, and as a gamer-nerd myself it doesn't bother me in the least. But the thing to keep in mind here is: narrow market segments can never expand simply by word of mouth, the product itself must be accessible to the breadth of the market one hopes to penetrate, and lets be perfectly frank here: Interplay would have loved it had Fallout1 or 2 been as a big a hit as FO3 or 4. They were not such "gaming purists" that they would have driven away the unwashed millions of "casuals" some are so quick to denigrate and who have made Bethesda and Zenimax rich beyond Interplay's imagining.

The Overseer's Speech.

NOTHING about life in the vault, NOTHING. We see an granular and distorted cartoon of an older man with bushy eyebrows giving us a speech. Excellent voice acting, and again, stunning artistic vision, but the visuals, meh at very best. Why even BOTHER with any cinematics at all if that is as good as they could do? Moreover, other products from Interplay in the very same year had much more polish:

Realms of the Haunting

FO4: Character Creation: how on Earth one could say that "Getting a speech read to you, which just says go get a chip" represents "smarted up" and "promotion of creativity" where -creating- a characater is "dumbed down" I cannot fathom.

I could go on and on like this, acknowledge the strengths of the former, pointing out the deficiencies of the latter, but basically arguing that the "dumbing down trope" is nonsense for page after page, but it likely wouldn't serve any purpose.

I feel that this game has a far greater depth than is appanent on the surface.

I gave the Crippling Board a try on some tough Ghouls, I wouldn’t bother looking for it, it’s not much use, though the location really opens up into quite big-and-complex.

Tough one, that some Ghouls actually have Names, a few of them, what the….

Am I ruining a future quest, I ask myself, well it’s a bit late now, I’ve almost got them all, and there is No negotiation with them!

No chance, but I’m a bit concerned if it impacts on a possibly related quest that I have on my list. Fingers crossed.

Intriguing game this, could have quite a complexity to it in some ways.

I on the other hand am disappointed with some people wanting Fallout to be a mindless shoot 'em up fps, farcry-like game, at the same time saying that the "rpg" term is fluid, claiming they like rpgs and ignore all the butchered fallout characteristics - not from F1 or F2 but from Beth's Fallout 3 that were stripped from Fallout 4, thing which is apparent in countless reviews, absence of GOTYs and general scores.

Nevermind the early fallouts and some using the "excuse" that they were produced by other companies or that "this is not Bethesda's style" (which is only valid if Bethesda's style is an even lower drop in writing quality or rp elements). Fallout 3 itself, did retain a lot of these elements (which I have posted several times in detail quoting wiki links etc of, for example, skill checks that were used to complete numerous quests - do I have to post them again?) and it also showed in its reviews, scores and GOTYs.

But, yea, some people insist on calling it "evolution", despite its scores, its reviews, lack of GOTYs and controversy and invoke its number of first days sales, which were obviously a product of the franchise success itself. But don't worry, with this so-called "evolution", it will show in time and the next Fallout sales and then I wonder what excuses some will come up with - probably same thing will happen like that time when some people were certain that FO4 would "get the GOTYs" - what a surprise will it be.

Got to laugh at this - even trying to compare a 1997 game and Interplay studios is problematic at best, especially when being clueless about the technology at that time, other games of that time, how a game is produced in general, their tiny, in comparison, budget, the popularity of gaming and their target audience at that time and skipping several more factors that make most of the described comparisons seem funny for a lack of a better word. CBA to explain in detail, even if I do, wasted it will be.

I will suggest this though - instead of mentioning these old used-to-death, juvenile concepts like "purists" or "casuals", "nostalgia" etc take FO3 which is Bethesda's, released seven years ago and compare them while also having this seven years difference in mind (which is admittedly easier to grasp). In the case you find FO4 the better game, it's just because, obviously you like specific things better in your Fallout. If, on this forum, we were focusing on these things, discussions would be much more productive and each one of us might actually understand that some people have different preferences and priorities in a fallout title. I, for example, may be disappointed by these preferences as I mentioned at the start of my post, but I understand that some people endorse them.

Talk about overthinking things.

TL;DR. You must have me confused for your therapist?

?

LOL...

and everything that s/he wrote was pretty much his/her opinions, along with others opinions, which are reviews...reviews are not fact, they are the writers opinions on the game...why people have such a hard time comprehending that is beyond me...but whatever..

I see that you can't handle more than mindlessly shooting enemies or replying to a more-than-one paragraph posts.

If people are having a hard time comprehending a simple post, expect everything.

Like you, for example. Of course I am stating my opinion. What did you think I was stating? Some universal truth? And yes, simply put, reviews are "influential" opinions. And pretty much stated that Fallout 4 accumulated a lot of negative ones. What was your point again?

Yuck, don't tell me your problems.

Closed for long review.