it doesn't end if you finish it, you keep playing, the only reason to not finish it is if you like all 4 factions.

As someone who is replaying Fallout 3 for the first time since it came out right now, I second this opinion. It actually aged better than I thought it would but a lot of the so called "nuance" people claim is in the conversation writing in FO3 just isn't there. Most dialog options consist of: nice response, neutral response, rude response and most stat based dialog options are just ways to avoid a persuasion check and change literally nothing else.


The only major difference is that you can ask a whole lot more why/how/when/what questions of people, but really I don't think this added much. I was just in the Citadel last night and I had to option to ask pretty much every named Brotherhood NPC "So what can you tell me about super mutants?" to which I got 15 or so slight variations of "They are big green mean guys who kill us on sight." Does that really add anything meaningful to the game?


Having 1 NPC in each major area hub area that can provide answer to those questions is more than sufficient.


New Vegas is the one with the most nuanced writing, bar none. (At least of the later generation Fallout games. I still haven't played the first 2 but intend to as soon as I'm done with FO3).

Here's just a few of my overall disappointments:

-Failing to capitalize on Obsidian's move to 'Ammo Types' breaks my heart. Rechambering weapons only mitigates this slightly.

-Dialogue. Holy crap, the dialogue. Bethesda... please... fire whoever wrote this nonsensical trash and just contract with Obsidian to write for Fallout.

-Bethesda, do you even REMEMBER what player agency is?

-You managed to screw up crafting after SKYRIM?! Nevermind Fallout 3's custom weapon crafting, just go ahead and fire whoever thought it was a good idea to leave-out manufacturing your own weapons and armor and items from scratch.

-Companions with interesting stories and opinions only matter if you can actually talk to them. This is a dialogue issue again, but [censored].

-For a company that once prided itself on lore, Fallout sure has gotten repeatedly shafted in Bethesda's hands.

-The changes to power armor are cool, but the Fusion Core lifespan is complete [censored]. No military service in ANY universe has use for a suit of armor that runs out of power in a day and a half.

-A voiced protagonist was a cool new idea for you guys. A voiced protagonists who plods silently through the world only to [censored] up the player's day at important plot points was not.

-Settlements are great. Arbitrary 'caps' on how much you can build, where you can build, and what is/is not scrappable ruins much of it.

Oh I know, what I mean is that its a chore. And I do like all factions. Sadly they're written poorly enough that its hard to pick 1 for me

The main weakness of Bethesda's dialog system compared to Bioware's is that Biowares has a whole secondary "investigate" menu that lets a player ask lots of lore and context questions. I think Bethesda sorely needs to employ something similar.


The other issue is that they haven't figured out how to make conversations with the dialog wheel organic the way Bioware has. In previous games, almost all the questions you could ask were listed below and you could pick them at pretty much any time during the conversation. The "advance the plot" option was just always sitting there, waiting for you to select it when you were ready. Now, any given statement by a NPC can only be greeted with 4 responses given the system that Bethesda has made and the paraphrasing doesn't always have a spelled out "I'm ready to take back the Castle now" option. Instead, you are usually responding to a question rather than making a declaration. "Yes, I am" or "No, I'm not." These kinds of answers provide much tidier paraphrase summaries - yes and no. It also means that the NPC has to keep looping back to the same question in order to set that path up again. Bioware has gotten quite skillful at organically getting the character to ask the same thing while giving new information when you ask a lore question. Bethesda isn't quite there yet.


Here is one good example of them doing it right in a conversation with Danse starting at about 1:40: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4-fXPn-Rwk

At the end of this conversation, Danse is looking for some kind of yes/no I approve/I disapprove answer to his statement, but you can forego answering at first to ask a lore question. He answers it and then organically comes back to the same question. When it isn't done this way, it can just come off as the characters nagging you.

Here's what I don't like from the game:

- the bugs

- that unrejectable and buggy settlement quests

Otherwise, this is my Game of 2015. It's rare to find a game this big and thoughtful nowadays without any cut-content DLC and cash card business crap.

I hate they didn't add ammo types and crafting. Instead some guns magically make bullets explode on impact and can't break ammo to make a different. It's just as stupid as when we couldn't craft arrows in Skyrim. Seriouly how do you hype crafting but forget something so basic.

I said how much I hate the new dialogue system already. But I was okay with a voiced PC until his voice didn't fit one of my characters.

I've restarted this game several times with different characters... restatitus, yes indeed. But, it gives me a good idea of how I feel about the game.

So... the beginning is indeed very well-written and intriguing. The first time. ...and maybe the second and third times as well. The problem I have with it is that it can't really be varied by character. That is, if you intend to play a rogue or a true hero, sneak or warrior, it really doesn't matter. You're going to experience the same things in the same way, and if you need settlements for your character, you're going to do the exact same things. That makes it kinda boring, but only after a few playthroughs.

Voiced protagonist? Doesn't seem to make any difference to me either way. It does tend to add some sense of separation between me and my character that I'm not used to. It also lends itself to very repetitive dialogue that very quickly becomes less than stellar and interesting. I suppose that part can't really be helped without an AI that can really create dialogue ingame.

Repetitive quests. Save the settlers from whichever baddie they face by going nextdoor and killing everything. That coulda been a lot better. Anybody remember the vault in FONV that had to be entered to clean up the water supply? That one was interesting, dangerous, and rewarding. FO4 could use some of those sorts of quests.

Speaking of which FO4 DOES have interesting side quests and story lines. The Sillver Shroud, the USS Constitution, the Jack Cabot stuff, retaking the Castle (actually the armory part was most interesting as I saw it) and so forth. I think what burns me out is getting the same quest with a different name a hundred times from Preston, and having the feeling they have to be done all at once. After the first ten or fifteen save the settlement and revive the Minutemen quests, I got to the point where I wanted to shoot Preston on sight, and say something like "Hey! I thought there was supposed to be something about my kid in this game, eh?"

I mean, come on... my kid is missing, and I'm dinking around endlessly with this settlement stuff? I doubt it. Radiant settlement quests should be available, but on demand rather than every time you run into Preston, and they should be somehow tied to your missing offspring.

I know I sound critical, but overall I'm enjoying the game and I don't feel I've been ripped off, or that Beth is playing to a particular platform or audience. I do think that Bethesda tried using a shotgun to make enough radiant quests to satisfy, and that has made it ironically unsatisfactory. Of course I may have a go at shooting Preston with a Broadsider...

i dont know i have almost 200hs on the game and still playing, maybe im not playing 24/7 but im still playing.

For me overall the game is a huge improve to previews games, so im happy wiht it.

And about the IP issue Bethesda is making millions with the game, and the hype has pass already so, whatever changes they did to Fallout like it or no is working.

A few things I enjoy about Fallout 4:

-Settlement building is a great thing, and makes perfect sense to the sort of character I tend to play. Charging off into a hostile wasteland alone to find one's child is a surefire way to get yourself corpsed. Making allies, learning about the world, getting the skills and equipment needed to survive in a place like the post-war world?

-The above sentiments, but in relation to weapon/armor modding.

-I love the Commonwealth. Overall architecture of the locations and set-pieces are all great.

-The Glowing Sea!

-Weather!

Fallout 4 is definitely the Fallout game I have enjoyed the most. Hard to put my precise finger on why. It's the first one that actually made me care about the Fallout universe which I previously thought was monochromatic, lifeless, and generally just a slightly engaging stop on the road waiting for the next Elder Scrolls game.

Fallout: New Vegas is probably objectively the *best* of the Bethesda style Fallout's though.

I agree, the voice and dialogue kills all desire to play through the game beyond 1 male and 1 female character....I can't connect to them and create a dozen or more characters like previous Beth games.

Sad yet true.

I agree to the point that I now leave Preston in the Museum. The Minutemen annoy me to no end.

I will agree with the OP that FO4 has certainly been developed and cater to a larger, non-RPG audience, but the idea that Bethesda does not have the "right" to do whatever they want with a Franchise they own is laughable. The OPs personal desires to relegate a franchise to some mythical standard of "RPG-ness" means nothing in the world of actual game development. While I'm not in love with all the changes that Bethesda has made to the game, I fully get their reasons for making them.

That may be the case in Bioware single player games, their MMO Star Wars the Old Republic uses a limited dialogue wheel... usually Light side response, neutral response, Darkside response, More information. Frighteningly similar to the wheel you get in FO4.

The similarities are probably down to both using voiced protagonists.

It's interesting to see that SWTORS latest expansion has reintroduced non-voiced content by the protagonist framed to look as it did in the original KOTOR games. Guess what, people are complaining that the protagonist isn't voiced

According to Steam I have spent 300 hours on Falout 4. 20 hours I spent with the first character I made that I discovered that I had built totally wrong. 280 hours with current character and I'm somewhere in the end game so I expect a few more hours or so.

I know I've spent probably 100 hours building settlements so 180 hours doing quests/exploring. I've enjoyed it so far but now it's time to end the story. I think that doing too many of the repeating quests prolounges the game too much, at least for my taste.

Sure, I don't like the dialouge wheel, I guess some of the quests wasn't so entertaining as they seemed but the story is not so bad as everyone says. I would like the game to be more unforgiving and key characters to be killable but I also understand that it's ont possible to satisfy all players in the world. Over all, the game is good. It's not the best game I've played, but it's far from the worst game too!

if you go with the Minute men you don't need to kill the BoS or the Railroad, only the Institute. So you can have 3/4 factions still alive at the end.

You don't have to like the game and you don't have to like it but you do have to post spoilers here in the spoiler section. That or get some time off.

SPOILERS!!!

First, I really like FO4, I like a lot of things they did with it.

But:

The hideous, straight jacketing, back story casts an odious pall over the whole game.

I was ok with the voiced protagonist, ONCE! Now I hate his sniveling, constantly on the verge of weeping, guts.

Factions deserve their own section. So here goes:

1. Minutemen - A missed opportunity to provide players who prefer a 'good guy' faction with a meaningful way of completing the MQ. I mean, I really want to like them, but I get sick of the repetitive quests. This was also the perfect faction to include 'Nation Building', which could have kicked off a war between the MM and the Institute, without even having to meet your manipulative, science uber alles, son until you defeat them.

2. The Railroad - I haven't played them, because nothing about them attracts me to them. Their psychological baggage would sink a bulk freighter. They are supposed to give a Le Resistance vibe, but instead they give me a creepy Le Terroriste feel.

3. The Institute - OK, credit where credit is due. The feel of the Institute; cold, sanitized, alien, is spot on. They are clearly the 'bad guys', but since you'll be the new Director you will be able to move them in a better or worse direction. Unfortunately, all you get is a lousy radio address to give any indication of a change. What I didn't like was after doing my best FDR, fire side chat, we've got a 'New Deal' for the Commonwealth radio address, I still got chewed out by Piper and Nick. WTH!

4. The Eastern BOS - They are actually my favorite faction, and I don't really like Power Armor. Bethesda seems to have spent sufficient time developing them, which they should also have done for the other factions. This is the one faction the player has some influence on, to the extent that in one quest you can defy the faction leader to his face, and get him to back down. You also have some tangible influence, through one repeating quest for how the BOS is presented to the people of the Commonwealth. I wish I could have been a Scribe though. However, in one quest, 'Blind Betrayal' even if you keep Danse, he still becomes somewhat hamstrung as a companion for BOS players. They should have used a different NPC, IMO.

All Factions: Lack of player influence on how a faction resolves conflicts with other factions is glaring. I am not saying that you should be able through diplomacy to get everyone together for a group hug. Rather, diplomacy in managing both victory and defeat would have been nice. As it is, all you get is the most violent possible outcome and even The Railroad isn't that psychotic.

Other things:

The Railroad HQ, has an escape tunnel. Why didn't they use it. You know, live to fight another day and all that.

No faction, not even the Railroad, would set off a nuke in the middle of metro Boston.

The Prydwen, it has engines, when the Institute attacked, why didn't it launch aircraft and withdraw from the battle field, just saying.

Liberty Prime, seriously, why recycle this stupid robot. How bout a few more Air Cav battles, with me and Paladin Danse being inserted into hot LZs instead. How bout my character, find the point that the Institute is just a few meters from the surface and the battle revolve around conventional warfare and demolition charges to create the breach.

The Railroad attack on Prydwen. How bout instead of forcing the player to re-enact the Hindenburg disaster, we had the option for something a little less lethal, say force Pyrdwen to the ground. Better yet, no attack on Prydwen, but instead a daring plot to kidnap Elder Maxson and force a negotiated settlement. That would have brought a proper Le Resistance feel, and kept the cloak and dagger strong with this faction.

Finally how bout some MQ ending slides based on how the Player resolved various quests and the MQ itself. The game can go on afterwards, but perhaps with the world showing the influence of how the Player has behaved.

I am sure there's more, but I've bled over this enough.

Bring on the MODS!!!

Can you elaborate?

The more I play it, the more I love it.

Well, all their single player games since ME1 except DAO (so 5 total) have had voiced protagonists and the wheel they use in them has always been able to support up to 10 responses for any given NPC statement (3 different "flavor" responses that move the conversation forward and up to 7 investigate options). They don't always populate the full 10, but in my experience most have at *least* 2 flavor options and 2 investigate options, often many more depending on the overall importance of the conversation at hand.


*Edit* Also might be worth mentioning that the Star Wars MMO was developed by Bioware Austin and all the others by Bioware Edmonton so you are dealing with 2 different dev teams.

The dialogues are not as "broken" as people claim, though they do seem to have less variability in choice in them. You need to play a high CHA character to see the dialogues at their best.

I agree the "content" of the dialogues is not as satisfying as some other games because so many of the supposed choices actually lead to the same outcome; but it is inaccurate to gloss that over as "no choice." Once in a while you encounter an NPC for whom CHA is useful to get more info, get more out of them, even change their minds. Not enough of them, but they are there.

They didn't prioritize this in design and I agree I miss it, but it is more nuanced than just "dialogue broken! Game is a disaster."

I can't really agree with this, and this is coming from someone who is very critical towards Bethesda's writing. Fallout 4 has the best writing I've ever seen from this company. Sure it's not up to Black Isle/Obsidian Fallout standards overall, but it did have some Black Isle/Obsidian tier moments like a certain quest involving a potential companion and the Brotherhood of Steel towards the end of that faction's path, and Nick Valentine.

There were some pretty cringe worthy moments too, but not enough to say that the game was badly written in my opinion. It feels like Bethesda tried harder this time around, and while the results can be very uneven I think Fallout 4 shows that Bethesda has taken a step in the right direction - at least from a writing standpoint.

Todd Howard doesn't have to. They bought the rights to it so it's there's to do as they wish. Upset fans are irrelevent to that equation.

Yep. Pretty much my take as well. I find the sensory aspects of the game to be incredibly engaging, but that inevitably tends to wear thin after a couple hundred hours . . . Actually added up what all my toons (ERM! I mean CHARACTERS! ) play time amounts to this morning: 447 hours +/-5

That is LOT of play time for $60. My goal was to experience as much of it as possible before GECK comes out so I can focus on modding and not much playing, and I think I've accomplished that. Even though I have only got into the opening scenes of any of the Faction quests, I've peeked in on enough Spoiler conversations that I get what is going on and I think I'm sufficiently knowledgeable of the game to make decent mods for it.

I may continue to play it from time to time until GECK, but now that I know how it gets too easy at higher levels, I'm not inclined to play too much more until something like a FOWE for F4 is in play.

I think the game has enormous potential in terms of mods and I cannot blame the developers one bit for making it the way they did. It is a solid gaming experience that does an incredible job of striking balances: shooter enough to satisfy that demographic, RPG enough to satisfy (most?) of that demographic, builder enough to satisfy THAT demographic, etc.

People seem to like to fault Bethesda for "leaving so much up to modders" but that is a "glass half-empty" standard I think. The proper and productive way to think of it is: we are all in this together, even if you only got 20 hours of fun out of it so far and have set it down, can you really say that $3 / hour is a "bum deal?" Try doing ANYTHING as immersive as this game for as little as $3 per hour! I tend to suspect that some of the most strident critics have in fact got a hundred hours or more and will get plenty more in the long run.

Skyrim is over four years old and has >45,000 mods, many of which are truly works of art. It is clear the developers acknowledge the skill, dedication, creativity, and craft of the best modders, as they have obviously designed this game to have more modding potential than any game ever made. In time, there may even be a version of this game that blurs the genre between "strategy" or "builder" games like Civlization and the genres for which FO4 is considered more exemplary (open-world, story-based, character-driven, first-person, action/RPG).

The game has flaws and as one plays it more and more it inevitably starts to loose some of its initial appeal (that said by someone who has spent 447 HOURS playing it!) but it is also a visionary Masterpiece. Anyone who cannot acknowledge that is cutting off their nose to spite their face, else is not really a "gamer" but a synth, sent here to wreck havoc on our pastime.