Fallout 4, has anyone played it yet? Your thoughts?

Let's be honest, Bloodlines isn't the only game we play around here. Has anyone played Fallout 4 yet? On PC, Xbox, or PS4? Was it fun? What are your initial thoughts of it? Discuss...

I wasn't even aware it was out already....
Currently not interested, maybe on vacations I'll try it out

Also, Bethesda releases have the tendency to be a iny bit bugged

I'll wait until Steam puts in on sale. I still have Age of Decadence to play through and Age of Empires 2 to get decent at again. Not to mention another playthrough of TFN coming up in January.

Yes, Zer0. I am officially giving your mod priority over Fallout 4.

Dragatus wrote:

I'll wait until Steam puts in on sale. I still have Age of Decadence to play through and Age of Empires 2 to get decent at again. Not to mention another playthrough of TFN coming up in January.

Yes, Zer0. I am officially giving your mod priority over Fallout 4.

^Exactly this (without tge AoD and AoE things).
I will start playing FO4 after all the DLCs are out and there will be less bugs, mod to fix them and to make the game more challenging

Now I inhabit a bit of the fair province of Skyrim. May venture into the fair and glorious lands of Morrowind. Other than that, I will wait for TFN in January...

Assuming I will get out of the horrible relam of Laboratory, which I become trapped in while traveling through the Oblivion...

Dragatus wrote:

Yes, Zer0. I am officially giving your mod priority over Fallout 4.

MxM wrote:

^Exactly this (without tge AoD and AoE things).
I will start playing FO4 after all the DLCs are out and there will be less bugs, mod to fix them and to make the game more challenging

Wow guys! I feel all gooey inside right now, putting my mod before Fallout 4! What an honor!

But I agree with both of you. Whenever Bethesda releases a new game, it feels like it's more of a skeletal structure of a game that's incomplete. Typically I wait 2 years for all the DLCs to come out along with all the mods and bug fixes, before I start playing it. That's what I did with Skyrim, I didn't start playing it until 2013, and by that time all the DLCs and good mods dropped.



Fallout 4 looks like it will be amazing in Nov. 2017 so I'm excited to play it then. Until that time, I'll be rotating Bloodlines, Civilization V, and Skyrim... and I've been eye-balling Cities Skylines by Paradox. A co-worker is playing that right now and loves it so I might try it out after TFN 1.4 gets released. I was playing League of Legends but that game is such a sham that I'll never play it again, I uninstalled it permanently.

It seems like a lot of the new games including Call of Duty, Battlefield, Uncharted, Farcry, etc... just don't have any heart to it. Great graphics of course, but with no sustenance. The thing I loved so much about Bloodlines was the game had soul, I mean I really felt like I was there, a real vampire, living in a real city full of real people. Games today just don't have that feeling to me anymore.

I'm extremely excited to see what Paradox does with the White Wolf license and I'm really hoping for a new Single Player RPG Vampire game. I don't care who develops it (Obsidian or anyone else), because TCI will be modding the hell out of it anyways. All I care about are good graphics, 3rd and 1st person view, and an SDK, and we'll be set. It can completely suck for all I care since we'll be changing everything anyways. I'm super pumped about it and will be posting any tid bits of news we get, here at TCI.

Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain, anyone?

Give Crusader Kings 2 a try, that one has a soul. It really makes you feel like you're a medieval noble, worrying about the stuff that medieval nobles worried about. Going to war with religious enemies, arranging a good political marriage for your son, holding an epic torunament, feasting with your vassals, rebelling against your king because the bastard is trying to revoke your duchy, murdering your brother to get his lands and murdering your wife because she's cheating on you with a courtier who is also a hunchback. Or if you get the Old Gods DLC you could be a viking, reform your pagan religion to give it a formal structure, and then conquer the world in the name of Thor.

I haven't played through Age of Decadence yet, because my gaming PC died a month ago and I still haven't gotten the new one, but if the old Teron demo is any indication it's a real gem. There are many radically different ways to play through it. You can be a diplomat or a warrior, but also a loremaster or a con artist. And then you have a bunch of different factions to choose from and you even get opportunities to betray them and switch sides. The combat is also really good and really hard, though not everyone will like that it's turn based. But it is optional and you can play through the game without fighting at all (if you have the right skills and don't do anything dumb). It has a branching storyline and while you do move from city to city in a set order, what you find in each new city will depend on your actions in the previous one. And the writting is excellent too. Here's the Official website link and here's the Steam store link and finally here's the GOG link too. There's a demo available that contains the first city, roughly 25% of the full game. And here's a link to RPS first impressions for those who like that sort of thing: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2015/10/19/age-of-decadence-impressions/

Cretino wrote:

Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain, anyone?

I've seen screenshots and I must say the graphics are amazing! But if Phantom Pain is anything like previous MGS games, I won't enjoy it. I did enjoy the first 3 Splinter Cell games, but then even Splinter Cell turned into Call of Duty, and MGS games did a long time ago for me.

The same co-worker I spoke about earlier that's playing Cities Skylines also loves Crusader Kings II and talks about it all the time. It definitely sounds very realistic which I like a lot, but I wish you could start the game earlier in time and end in the modern days, like Civilization V.

I've never even heard of Age of Decadence until today. I just checked it out and it reminds me a lot of Fallout 1 combined with Baldur's Gate, and that's a good thing. I may have to add it to my list of future games to play!

Zer0Morph wrote:

The same co-worker I spoke about earlier that's playing Cities Skylines also loves Crusader Kings II and talks about it all the time. It definitely sounds very realistic which I like a lot, but I wish you could start the game earlier in time and end in the modern days, like Civilization V.

With the Charlemagne DL you can start a game of CK2 as early as 768 AD and there's a tool available to export the game into Europa Universalis (which is a strategy game that covers the Renaissance and early colonial era). And then there's a tool that exports EU games into Victoria (which covers the 19th century and early 20th century) and finally there's a tool that exports games from Victoria to Heart of Iron, which covers WW2.

So it is possible to start a game in 769 and play all the way to 1948, though you do need 4 different games and at least one DLC for it.

Quote :

I may have to add it to my list of future games to play!

Try the free demo when you have a bit of time. Or maybe wait until the release of TFN 1.4, just to be safe.

I didn't realize that, thanks for letting me know. I heard CKII is hard to get into initially, it's not for the casual gamer. I'll wait until after the release of TFN 1.4 before I do anything as drastic as a game change. For now, I'm 100% Bloodlines and need to stay focused until Dec. 31st.

Good to hear you're focused.

Yeah, CK2 might be a little much for your Brujah brain. There's a tutorial and a learning scenario available, but they don't cover everything. You'll need some patience and trial & error to figure things out. But that's part of what makes it fun.

Dragatus wrote:

Good to hear you're focused.

Yeah, CK2 might be a little much for your Brujah brain. There's a tutorial and a learning scenario available, but they don't cover everything. You'll need some patience and trial & error to figure things out. But that's part of what makes it fun.

Will this game make me smash things out of frustration? Remember, my brain is tiny and tender, don't confuse it or swap things around.

There's a decent chance something will make you angry. The tutorial teaches just enough to get by, but not enough to be succesful in the long run. For exmaple it doesn't mention how to upgrade the building in the province and how important that is for a strong military. A lot of things about the interface aren't explained either and you'll have to figure it out by experimenting. The same applies to many of the in-depth mechanics. But Paradox does have a friendly forum for their games where people will gladly explain things to you and help you out.

I'm still saving for a new PC so I can even run Fallout 4 ... and even then I might just postpone getting it too, since I still have Inquisition to enjoy in high graphics (plus the DLCs to play through). And I'll likely want to do a similar thing to the Mass Effect series with Dragon Age - set aside a weekend plus a day off or two and just burn through all three games right after another. I like doing that; it was great for Mass Effect because of your Shepard being a recurring character, but for Dragon Age it will be a lot of fun as well since I like all protagonists equally as much as Shepard (okay, Shepard a bit more but ... come on, she can't be topped).
My colleagues have been playing it though, since Wednesday was a national holiday in Poland (Independence Day) and they speak highly of it. It has its quirks (like all Bethesda games) but they like it.

I watched a Let's Play of the first 2 hours of the game and I'll admit, I did notice some vast improvements over Fallout 3 (and in some cases, Skyrim). First instance, the first thing I looked for was the distance pop-in issues that have plagued Bethesda sandbox games since the beginning of time. Even in Skyrim, when you would walk across a vast distance you would see mountains and trees just pop in off in the distance, and that broke my immersion so badly. I didn't see any of that in Fallout 4. Granite, the player was moving over small hills which broke the viewing distance so it's possible on flat land you will still see objects pop in, but so far from what I've seen it looked amazing.

Another vast improvement over Fallout 4 was the combat, the gun sequences and such were handled much better, it looked so much smoother and seemless.

Obviously the voice acted player is a huge bonus and so is the customization of your weapons, armor, and power armor. But not all is roses and sunshine for Fallout 4. Honestly, the overall graphics suck in my opinion. HD textures packs with Skyrim look WAAY better than Fallout 4 in my opinion. To be fair however, Skyrim and Fallout 3 didn't look very good either until the modding community fixed it, and since we know they'll return to fix Fallout 4, I'm very excited to see how beautiful it's going to look in 2017!

I think Fallout 4 will be an amazing game after the DLCs and modding community spend some time with it, then I'll play it. For now, I'm going to pass on it.

The reviews I've read mention that while the raw gameplay has improved the game's genre moved away from RPG and more towards FPS. I don't really like the sound of that too much.

Dragatus wrote:

The reviews I've read mention that while the raw gameplay has improved the game's genre moved away from RPG and more towards FPS. I don't really like the sound of that too much.

You mean like Mass Effect and Skyrim?
That was pretty much what I expected

Skyrim was generally an improvement over Oblivion. And while I didn't expect Fallout 4 to be a good RPG, I did expect it to maintain the same level of balance between RPG and FPS that we had in Fallout 3.

Fingers crossed Obsidian gets to make New Vegas 2.

Dragatus wrote:

Fingers crossed Obsidian gets to make New Vegas 2.

I might get flamed for saying this but I bought New Vegas and played it for several hours and just couldn't get into it. It just didn't have the same charm that downtown DC had. On the other hand, I invested tons of hours into Fallout 3.

Zer0Morph wrote:

Dragatus wrote:

Fingers crossed Obsidian gets to make New Vegas 2.

I might get flamed for saying this but I bought New Vegas and played it for several hours and just couldn't get into it. It just didn't have the same charm that downtown DC had. On the other hand, I invested tons of hours into Fallout 3.

I started playing Fallout with New Vegas, is the 3 better?

MxM wrote:

I started playing Fallout with New Vegas, is the 3 better?

I thought so yeah. I will admit that Obsidian did take some modder ideas from Fallout 3 and incorporated them into Vegas which was great, but the overall atmosphere of Fallout 3, the green irradiated land, and just overall feel was way more fun in 3. Vegas felt too "clean" for me.

MxM wrote:

I started playing Fallout with New Vegas, is the 3 better?

It depends on what you want and expect from the game.

New Vegas is the superior RPG. It has a better story, a brilliant faction reputation system, better quests that can be solved in different ways and that form a greater whole. It also has superior dialogue as well as better worldbuilding (in the sense of lore and logical consistency). However, it's not really a post-apocalyptic game anymore. Rather it is a post-post-apocalyptic game. The nuclear apocalypse happened, but two centuries have passed and civilization is recovering.

In contrast to that Fallout 3 is a big post-apocalyptic amusement park. It has a bunch of random locations scattered all over the place and while a few of them are linked they don't generally have much to do with each other. Quests are alright, but between the GECK and the Enclave the main storyline is essentially an inferior rehash of the storyline of Fallout 2. However, it is the more directly post-apocalyptic of the two, even though it takes place at about the same time (I can't be bothered to check the exact dates). It also has a bigger focus on "dungeon crawling".

Personally I don't care much for post-apocalypse settings and I can live without dungeon crawling so the superior RPG qualities of Fallout New Vegas make it my favourite of the two. On a 5 star scale I'd rate FO3 as 3 stars and New Vegas as 5 stars. But that's my personal taste.

Draggy made an accurate and well written synopsis of Fallout 3 and New Vegas. My personal taste is for Fallout 3 over New Vegas but his post still rings true.

Thank you both for your opinion, I guess I will try FO 3 anyway, while I wait for FO 4.
The only thing I didn't like of New Vegas were some of the DLCs that seemed way unrealistic (even in the Fallout universe): Old World Blues and Dead Money come to mind. Are FO 3 DLCs more consistent?