So, as we all know, one of the biigest criticisms about FO4 that has been going around is that it lacks content. Many claim that FO4 is incredibly sparse, with little to do but radiant quests and main quests. You spend a buch of time gunning down raiders for Preston or placing MILAs for Tinker Tom but there is little content that isn't repeating.

I admit, I, too, believed this early in my playthrough. All I did when I wasn't chasing Kellog was kill raiders for Preston or make beds and crops in my settlements. But now, my quest log is filled with incomplete or unstarted quests. Hell, I haven't even found the time to start The Silver Shroud, and people have been hyping tghat quest like there's no tommorow.

With that said, let's try and dive into a discussion of how much content the game actually has.

First, a few things to keep in mind.

1. The Fallout games have never been Bethesda's biggest titles. It's very clear that The Elder Scrolls is Beth's flagship series. Every Elder Scrolls game is accompanied by a huge leap forwards in graphical technology, while the Fallout games usually build off the previous ES game graphically, I.E., TES III, IV, and V were all huge leaps ahead, but FO3 looks like Oblivion with some improvements and FO4 looks like Skyrim with some improvements. Additionally, Fallout seems to a sort of testing ground of sorts for TES, for example, you can make the argument that Beth was testing the waters with FO3's perk, companion, and random encounter systems, all of which showed up in Skyrim three years later.

Content wise, the Fallout games are genrally much more limited as well. TES has a main quest, faction quests, and side quests, but Fallout mainly sticks to a main quest and some side quests. The maps are also significantly smaller.

2. Comparisons to New Vegas are a mixed bag. On one hand, both Fallout 3 and Fallout 4 had a longer development cycle than New Vegas. On the other, it's no secret that NV recycles a huge amount of assets from FO3, and shares the same architecture, etc. When some people call New Vegas a giant total conversion mod for 3, they're not entirely wrong per se. When you don't have to build a game from the ground up, you can spend a lot more time focusing on adding more quests. Because of this, it is unclear how fair comparisons between 4 and NV are in this regard. I won't outright say they're unfair, but they are suspect.

With those two out of the way, back to FO4.

How many real quests does FO4 have, and how does this compare to FO3 and New Vegas?

We won't count minor fetch quests or radiant quests for some purposes, though the line between "real quest" and "stop gap quest" can be vague and arbitrary at times.

NOTE: Quest lists are there as "proof". Don't bother reading them unless you're skeptical of the numbers.

Fallout 3

Main quests: 11

Side Quests: 17

Faction Quests: Zero

Comapnion Quests: Zero

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Fallout: New Vegas

Main Quests: 24

Side Quests: Over 50

Sorry, too many to write! Not That that's a bad thing!

Faction Quests: None outside of Main quest

Comapanion Quests: 4

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Fallout 4

Main Quests: 36

Side Quests: 17

Faction Quests: 25

Note: Defined as quests you can complete before "Institutionalized" and/or are unecessary for completing the main story.

Companion Quests: 4

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So, there we have it. FO4 has significantly more content than FO3, and somewhat less than New Vegas.

So why does it seem like it has less? A few reasons:

1. Nearly a third of the game's quests are faction quests, which can be skipped or lost entirely if you destroy the associated faction. For a similar reason, you'll likely only play through half of the available main quests on a single playthrough.

2. Another few are companion quests, all of which are metaphorically locked behind an approval barrier. You need at least several hours of traveling with the given companion and not pissing them off for these quests to fire.

3. Side Quests are not spread out evenly across the map. The Northwest "starting area", where you spend a lot of your first 30 hours, is rather barren compared to downtown Boston or the far south.

4. They don't always do a very good job of pointing you towards side quests. They try, but they don't do a very good job.

I like 1 and 2, they both add more depth to the game and/or encourage replayability. 3 and 4, however, can and should be fixed. Personally, I suggest bringing back having the radio host point you towards quests for the latter (why was this removed?). For the former, we can again look to previous games, both of which had a cool side quest easily completeable in the early game (Power of the Atom in FO3 and Ghost Town Gunfight in F:NV); placing an interesting side quest or two early in the starting area encourages further play.

If you made it this far, good for you! I know this was long winded, but after hearing this complaint so much, I decided it warranted further investigation. What are your thoughts, though?

Interesting points.

I really love fallout 4 and while i knew it had alot going on, i can not help but feel like i had less quests.

But when i really think about it... I did so many of them so fast its easy to forget that on your fourth day of time put into the game almost everything complete.

I too have not even had time to do silver shroud!

The game has a sufficient amount of content. Enough for few hundred hours of exploration.

The problem is that too much of it is disconnected from each other. Not that this is a new problem. Every game does this to an extent I just wish someone would realize this limitation some day....

Fallout 4 has only 17 side quests?

I thought I read about a month ago? Before Bethesda Softworks and Bethesda Game Studios released Fallout 4 for sale that Fallout 4 would have 75 side quests in some leak or something?

Sad, it would of been nice to see Fallout 4 have 75 side quests. For a 2015 video game 17 side quests is too small.

No, OP, claims of lack of content are not the main complaint for FO4, certainly not if you do a quick review of the forums or YouTube, as well as various review sites. Just the opposite, in fact, as the vast majority of people have stated that there is "so much to do it's crazy" or something along those lines.

However, your anolysis is flawed anyway because all you are doing is counting quests (and not by official guides, apparently) and content =/= quests, ever, and especially not in a BGS game. Content is the game world. Quests are there to get players who need prompting to explore the game world. Otherwise, quests are totally unnecessary and not the goal of any BGS game. Exploring the world is the goal.

Now that that is cleared up, it's easy to see that FO4 has far more content than any prior BGS game (and loads more than FONV, of course).

By the way, although Elder Scrolls is Bethesda's own created IP, they spent millions of dollars and years of legal struggle to acquire the franchise rights. They did this to work on something other than TES so that they do not get burned out doing the same world context game after game. Fallout 4 has been given top priority by Bethesda by being their first title on new consoles as well as new PC hardware. The only reason FO3 looks similar to Oblivion is because they acquired the rights at that time and it was the middle of the console cycle. Fallout 4 is FAR beyond Skyrim in technical features. The lighting and AI alone is not possible on the older hardware and software.