Fallout 4 - it's official! Coming Nov 10, '15

[cmdrdredd]

For your last bit, you're conflating the game story with what they said, and arriving at wrong conclusions.

Also, ars for a video game review? That's been terrible idea AT LEAST as far back as Kuchera.

There's nothing wrong with any site doing a review of a game IMO. I'm tired of the so called gaming journalists anymore anyway. I loathe IGN and gamespot etc. There's not much integrity with them anymore as a whole so I tend to look at the places that are relatively unknown myself.

 

[GusSmed]

So even if the story you make ends up being a worthless one?

What does that even mean?

The way you're characterizing earlier games is inaccurate. Well, at least as far as I approached the game - maybe you were perfectly fine with blowing up Megaton, or never cared about whether you can save Sheriff Simms in a second playthrough, and never debated the morality of the Ghoul / Tenpenny Tower conflict, but those things weren't pointless to me.

Which is beside the point anyway, since the "story" I was referring to was the overall experience, where I went, what I discovered, what I decided to do about it, what plans I made. Which is why I made the Civ V analogy. There it shouldn't be ambiguous - the "story" of winning a game of Civ V is never "worthless," because it's about the decisions I made. The only yardstick for judging that "story" is whether the process was interesting and enjoyable.

The same applies to Fallout 3, even if you can't see it. Creeping through the Springvale Elementary School on my first playthrough, when I had no idea what was going on, or even that the current inhabitants were bloodthirsty murders, was a memorable experience, and thus a story in its own way.

 

[cmdrdredd]

What does that even mean?

The way you're characterizing earlier games is inaccurate. Well, at least as far as I approached the game - maybe you were perfectly fine with blowing up Megaton, or never cared about whether you can save Sheriff Simms in a second playthrough, and never debated the morality of the Ghoul / Tenpenny Tower conflict, but those things weren't pointless to me.

Which is beside the point anyway, since the "story" I was referring to was the overall experience, where I went, what I discovered, what I decided to do about it, what plans I made. Which is why I made the Civ V analogy. There it shouldn't be ambiguous - the "story" of winning a game of Civ V is never "worthless," because it's about the decisions I made. The only yardstick for judging that "story" is whether the process was interesting and enjoyable.

The same applies to Fallout 3, even if you can't see it. Creeping through the Springvale Elementary School on my first playthrough, when I had no idea what was going on, or even that the current inhabitants were bloodthirsty murders, was a memorable experience, and thus a story in its own way.

I'm talking about the game directly and I felt no emotional attachment to any characters so I was fine with just rampaging everywhere and yes blowing up megaton. I had no reason to feel bad about anything I did. I guess that's just me.

 

[GusSmed]

He probably just got assigned the review. He's clearly not one of the people he calls out in the first sentence of the piece, i.e. "Fans of giant quest video games."

I think there's some point in seeing reviews from people who don't really know the genre, but who find the concept appealing. There always need to be reviews told from the prospective of people who have never played a Fallout game, or even a sandbox world game.

The real problem is assigning a game to a reviewer when the reviewer is essentially uninterested in the game. Whose interest does that serve? People who think the game looks bad but might accidentally buy it?

 

[JSt0rm]

looks like more bad art direction from bethesda coupled with that same tired engine they keep putting lipstick on. I love the explore aspect of these games but I am tired of the look.

 

[GusSmed]

I was fine with just rampaging everywhere and yes blowing up megaton. I had no reason to feel bad about anything I did. I guess that's just me.

Ugh. Yeah, I can't relate to that at all. That seems like more you than the game.

 

[escrow4]

Tee-hee in the Ars review:

"Its opening sequence sputters instead of splashing; its most obvious gameplay tweaks, and changes take too long to pay off (and in some ways, never do); its storytelling drags thanks to too much ham-fisted dialogue and herky-jerky pacing; and its visual presentation looks utterly pitiful compared to games two years older, let alone ones from 2015."

"Light and shadow reflect off every character in a very plastic way, and when faces animate, the movement comes mostly in the mouths. This makes all the characters look robotic and a little silly. This is especially true when they respond to button-press dialogue attempts with shouts that in no way match their faces. (Worse is your infant child, who looks like a cross between a dead-eyed Ken doll and a ghoulish monster.)"

"The problem is, so much of Fallout 4's content is recycled stuff. Almost every outpost's buildings look identical—all the same ragged wooden textures with the same chairs, same desks, same doors, same "broken" wall designs, all surrounded by the same trees and same leaves."

"There are huge expanses of Fallout 4's map that look like they'd been built with an in-game tool that just copied and pasted houses from other parts of the game on generic hillsides."

So typical Bethesda, big world, low rent everything else. I'll give it a shot seeing as III was OK but I'm not expecting big things.

 

[Markbnj]

All of you guys dismissing negative reviews as "the author doesn't like the game" are wrong. They even go out of their way to say that they liked it and had fun.

That's the same thing that gets said, for both sides, every time a game comes out. People who like the game and franchise want it to get better, not different. People who don't like it as much the way it is want it to change so they'll like it. Makes more sense just to create a different game to appeal to that audience, because when you change the core of what a franchise is you risk losing the loyal fans.

The bottom line: people who want to be told a story find the big world and non-linear play "pointless." People who love the exploration and finding loot and killing mobs don't want to be told a story, other than a sort of loose overall narrative to hold things together. This same exact argument has been going on since CRPGs were invented. Not going to be resolved here either. I like Fallout and the ES series the way they are, so I'm pretty sure I'll be happy with this game as long as the concessions to console interfaces aren't too mind-numbingly dumb.

 

[Tyranicus]

As I suspected, the CPU requirements are exaggerated. My 13-4150 and GTX 970 run this game just fine on Ultra.

 

[Markbnj]

I'm talking about the game directly and I felt no emotional attachment to any characters so I was fine with just rampaging everywhere and yes blowing up megaton. I had no reason to feel bad about anything I did. I guess that's just me.

Well one way to look at that is this: the fact that you _could_ rampage everywhere and blow up Megaton is one aspect of what fans love about these games.

 

[Markbnj]

So typical Bethesda, big world, low rent everything else. I'll give it a shot seeing as III was OK but I'm not expecting big things.

Yeah basically he wants Bethesda to stop being Bethesda. You could say the same thing about a ton of the content in all their games. It's probably a consequence of making huge worlds on a achievable budget and timeline.

 

[JSt0rm]

Yeah basically he wants Bethesda to stop being Bethesda. You could say the same thing about a ton of the content in all their games. It's probably a consequence of making huge worlds on a achievable budget and timeline.

Im ok with reusing assets but damn if the art doesnt just looks bad. Get new art people in this studio. They are lazy.

There is a saying "the starving artist is a creative artist". These guys rehash the exact same art style from when they had to cut corners for tech reasons. Now they are on rails with these weird animations and weird looking character models. Bad texture assets and all.

 

[sweenish]

To my surprise, it looks like I'll only be able to play at around 30 fps, which I assume is the same as consoles.

Haswell i5, 8 GB RAM, 760 2 GB, 1440p.

I will probably be able to play in the 40's, as the site I'm getting my info from is kind of lackluster on details. I'm assuming I'll be able to turn some stuff down for some easy performance and minimal visual loss.

 

[GusSmed]

Well one way to look at that is this: the fact that you _could_ rampage everywhere and blow up Megaton is one aspect of what fans love about these games.

I've never been a fan of Plan C, but the fact that Plan C was possible made the games feel less scripted. Though I must admit that killing off Roy and company after the events at Tenpenny Tower feels like a certain rough justice.

 

[escrow4]

Yeah basically he wants Bethesda to stop being Bethesda. You could say the same thing about a ton of the content in all their games. It's probably a consequence of making huge worlds on a achievable budget and timeline.

What I want is some effort in both the engine and the plot, not a loose more or less cohesive slapped together story. Bethesda has the money and the experience to tighten it up.

 

[sweenish]

I swear, nobody understands context.

He wants something different from the game than what I want. I don't particularly play Fallout to be told a story any more than I play Civ V to be told a story. I'm the one making the story.

We'll start with this.

So even if the story you make ends up being a worthless one? That's the problem I've always had in bethesda games. I could flip a coin on a decision and I wouldn't feel anything either way. I want my choice to feel meaningful and maybe even emotionally impactful.

This is you misunderstanding what was said.

For your last bit, you're conflating the game story with what they said, and arriving at wrong conclusions.

This is me stating you've misunderstood.

There's nothing wrong with any site doing a review of a game IMO. I'm tired of the so called gaming journalists anymore anyway. I loathe IGN and gamespot etc. There's not much integrity with them anymore as a whole so I tend to look at the places that are relatively unknown myself.

This is you going off the rails as a reply to me. Seriously, how did you conceive that this was the discussion?

[...] since the "story" I was referring to was the overall experience, where I went, what I discovered, what I decided to do about it, what plans I made. Which is why I made the Civ V analogy.

At least they clarified what they meant, but I though the original inclusion of Civ V made it blatantly obvious what they were talking about.

 

[Tweak155]

I wouldn't be too worried about other people's opinions, play the game and form your own opinion!

Still debating taking tomorrow off...

 

[GusSmed]

Well, one thing I got of the exchange is that I spent some time thinking about empathy.

Because they're human shaped, I pretty much treat the NPCs in a game like Fallout 3 as humans. They aren't really humans, obviously, they're little snippets of code and animations, but I pretend their humans. It's the "role playing" part of RPG.

Dredd doesn't. In a sense, he's right that they're not real, and he blames the game for not convincing them that they're real. I see it at least as a partly a failure on his part to try to suspend disbelief. After all, they do have a lot of surface detail. They look like people (as much as CPRG people look like people), they have daily routines, they have some conversational bits, some more than others.

The reason I've never blown up Megaton, and never will, is that I'm willing to go along with the game and project myself into the situation - would I really kill a town full of people just to make a few caps? No. I'll defend myself, but murder is not something I do, let alone mass murder.

I have a high body count, of course, but I'm only so casual about killing raiders because I know what they'll do if I don't. That's part of the fiction, if I were really out in the wasteland, assuming that raiders will kill and eat me if they can is only being realistic.

 

[Markbnj]

I've never been a fan of Plan C, but the fact that Plan C was possible made the games feel less scripted. Though I must admit that killing off Roy and company after the events at Tenpenny Tower feels like a certain rough justice.

There were times when I wanted to blow Dogmeat's head off. Mostly on stairways or small storage rooms. And I definitely wanted to kill Moriarty a few times.

 

[GusSmed]

There were times when I wanted to blow Dogmeat's head off. Mostly on stairways or small storage rooms. And I definitely wanted to kill Moriarty a few times.

Moriarty's a dick, but I honestly have never considered killing him. Dogmeat... well, the first time I got Dogmeat, I quickly discovered that Dogmeat had a death wish, and tended to go off on nearby giant ants when I was trying to be stealthy. So in future playthroughs I just didn't pick Dogmeat up. Better for both of us, really.

One of the many systematic improvements of New Vegas was that you could tell your companions not to do that, even the dog.

 

[JeffMD]

I have to say, after seeing some the the pre release videos and the reviews, I am not all that interested in the game. There just does not seem to be enough new. Sure you got some good story telling, but the combat is the same, the weapons are the same, considering the amazing feats we have seen to worlds like GTA5, Creed (heck, even syndicate), and Witcher 3, Fall out 4 seems to consist of the same wonky pathing, open world glitches, plasticy plain looking character models, and a world that still looks more stamped out then sculpted. If being Bethesda means making your games look 2 years old then I'll consider purchasing it at prices that 2 year old games go for.

 

[sweenish]

I wouldn't be too worried about other people's opinions, play the game and form your own opinion!

Still debating taking tomorrow off...

Many of my other posts in this thread already show that I'm not going to be affected by the opinions of others.

Just putting all the pieces together to demonstrate a massive logical fail.

 

[Zenoth]

So right now (and since a couple of hours) I know that owners of the PS4 version of the game (and maybe the XBox One too?) can currently play it. So why the heck is the PC version not unlocked yet? It's more than unfair, technically the game is released (well, "unlocked" I should say) today then. There's already videos of people around on YouTube playing it and streamers on Twitch also on it as I type this. Something is wrong here, is any of that even legal? There was an embargo on the reviews and general media that constantly got removed (well most of it) for a week. And today the 9th as I understood it only the reviews were allowed to be released, not the actual game. Who decided to 'lock' the PC version until a 12:01AM release when the console version(s) (at least the PS4 one) have seemingly been unlocked?

Someone enlighten me.

 

[AMD64Blondie]

Oh great...I still have to go to work tomorrow morning.

(Meaning I'll probably have to wait until tomorrow afternoon before I start playing, if I want any sleep..)

Sitting here staring at the countdown on Steam..so excited.

 

[aigomorla]

So right now (and since a couple of hours) I know that owners of the PS4 version of the game (and maybe the XBox One too?) can currently play it. So why the heck is the PC version not unlocked yet? It's more than unfair, technically the game is released (well, "unlocked" I should say) today then. There's already videos of people around on YouTube playing it and streamers on Twitch also on it as I type this. Something is wrong here, is any of that even legal? There was an embargo on the reviews and general media that constantly got removed (well most of it) for a week. And today the 9th as I understood it only the reviews were allowed to be released, not the actual game. Who decided to 'lock' the PC version until a 12:01AM release when the console version(s) (at least the PS4 one) have seemingly been unlocked?

Someone enlighten me.

im completely on your side of the line in this rant.

The game should unlock globally at a UTC time.
This local timezone unlocking is absolute garbage.

And i feel this is the most unfair to people who do reviews, streams.
It allows others to post before giving them a head start.
By the time you post a review, your at the bottom of the pack just because you live in a later time zone.

This affects how many people will see your review.

Definitely not a smart move from Bethesda, whoever thought of unlocking locally should seriously be dragged out to the street and beaten silly.