Now before we begin I feel like I should say that I have been a fan of Bethesda games for a long time, but I would be doing a major disservice to our readers if I wasn’t completely objective about this review. Be prepared for some pretty brutal honesty.
Alright, now with that out of the way we can finally get started.
Visuals
Although a significant improvement from previous Fallout releases, for a game that released 5 years after the most recent release one would expect a little more of an upgrade that what we have received. Not only is Fallout 4 visually underwhelming, it is pretty disappointing.
Textures
This happens to be the most disappointing aspect of Fallout 4’s visuals. I can’t count how many times I walked in to areas where a super low texture had loaded and no matter how many times I fast traveled away and returned I could not get the proper textures to load. On top of the glitches the textures themselves just LOOK bad when compared to other games released this year.
Meshes
Now this aspect has significantly been improved from previous the Previous Fallout titles which allows for much smoother models, this is especially noticeable in the character models as the NPCs have a much more diverse range of facial expressions.
Animations
This aspect of the game has to be one of the single best improvements in Fallout 4, aside from weapon reloads it seems that most of Fallout 4’s animations are improved. A lot of these do seem to be copied over from Skyrim, but to an extent this is understandable and this is a big improvement over the previous titles, because as I’m sure you all know animation has NEVER been Fallout’s strong suit.
Gameplay
Fallout New Vegas improved on many elements from Fallout 3 that causes many headaches for players, hit detection being a major issue. Fallout takes all of these things further bringing a whole lot to the table.
Gunplay
Fallout New Vegas brought many requested improvements to the Fallout universe, Iron sights being one of these improvements. Fallout 4 takes this a step further and really makes it feel like you actually have some control over your weapon as you fire it. I find that I can actually control the recoil of the weapon and aim accurately even when firing automatic weapons.
Melee Combat
Not that I did not like unarmed or melee combat in previous Fallout releases, but in Fallout 4 for once I feel like I am finally not just wildly flailing about like a fish thrown ashore. That with a wide selection of classical scores I truly felt like Hannibal Lecter as I hacked my way through the wasteland.
Crafting
Although I dearly miss ammo reloading from Fallout: New Vegas, Fallout 4 really expanded on the weapon modding system and adding armor modding as well. Instead of just getting all of your armor in a set (which you still can do) you find each component individually
Armor Crafting
I feel that each different type of crafting deserves its own section just because it is SO diverse, and with so many options. The most common armor pieces you are going to find for the first 5 -10 levels are leather and raider, with other pieces being found later depending on how far you travel. These pieces can be modified to provide extra physical damage resistance and energy resistance. They can also be modded to decrease the weight of the item and/or add additional capacity by adding pockets to the armor. These are just a small number of mods that can be applied to armor. If you move to another bench you will be able to modify a totally different set of armor, Power Armor. Like your character’s armor your power armor comes in 6 pieces and can be upgraded and even painted. What makes the power armor different is that is requires Fusion Core to power it which lasts roughly 20 minutes depending on what you are doing and what perks you have.
Weapon Crafting
Although melee weapons don’t quite have as many customization options as the guns they still offer their own set of unique modifications. Want a metal baseball bat with saw blades attached? You got it. Now guns on the other hand have several different modifications across 5 different categories, Barrel, Muzzle Attachment/Receiver, Magazine, Stock, and Sight. This allows for a massive number of different weapon combinations to suit almost every play-style.
Cooking
Yep, that’s right, you can cook in Fallout 4 too. Now I know you could cook in New Vegas, but this time around cooking and chems crafting is done on two separate benches eliminating a lot of the confusion and making things a lot less cluttered. In New Vegas I found myself only using cooking a handful of times, one being my hardcore survivalist play through where I could not use stims and I only did unarmed damage. In Fallout 4 is use it pretty frequently to cook the meat I cut off various creatures in the wasteland to make it edible. The often provides a pretty nice stat boost as well as the returned HP.
Settlements
Although this area isn’t EXACTLY crafting it still belongs in the section. This honestly has to be one of my favorite elements of Fallout as I have been a long time fan of city building sims. Out of all of my playtime I have probably allocated 15 hours to just this section alone. Throughout the Wasteland as you clear out different area’s you will be able to build on to them and form settlements. There are exactly 30 settlements spread throughout, so are fairly easy to acquire, while others can be a major challenge. For those of you who played the Fallout Shelter Android/iOS app then you are somewhat prepared for this part of the game as far as resource management is concerned. In order for a settlement to thrive you need 4 essential things: Food, Water, People, and Defenses. Now you can also have electricity, while not an essential it is still really nice to have for various defensive and decorative options. Now although there are many pre-built options actually assembling your buildings yourself can be a bit clunky and incredibly frustrating. The most frustrating part of building settlements for this writer has to be trying to wire thing inside buildings. Although it makes sense that wires can not pass through walls, trying to wire say a terminal in doors can be a major pain as you will have to run the wire from some opening in the building, and without a window template that proves to be a pretty daunting task.
Chems
Just like in Fallout New Vegas, Fallout 4 brings back the ability to craft chems, although this time around it is much more refined and feels actually useful instead of a gimmick employed just so the developers can pat themselves on the back and say they put it in the game. During my play through I did not do very much chems crafting as I mostly just used stimpacks and radaway with the occasional Med-X or Rad-X thrown in to the mix. I’m sure someone will along the way will do a “Mad Scientist” or “Chemist” Role Play.
Which brings us to the next section of the Gameplay, how does it play as an RPG? Well in previous titles, even though you had some sort of back story, your character felt less of a written person so much as an extension of your imagination. This isn’t really the case in Fallout 4. Although having the Sole Survivor fully voiced seems like a good idea at first, seeing them talk in the 3rd person kind of breaks the immersion for me and makes it so that I identify my character as the Sole Survivor and not what ever role I had dreamed up for it. This is pretty disappointing for me because that was one of my favorite parts of playing previous Fallout games and TES. In Fallout 4 I am only the Lone Survivor and not Michael Robinson, boxer and collector of vintage Nuka-Cola paraphernalia. This may not be as big of a deal to those of you whom play the game more objectively, but for those of you, like myself, really enjoyed the strong RPG element of previous titles Fallout 4 is a major let down.
Audio
One thing that has been pretty iconic for the series (well the Bethesda Fallouts that is) is the radio stations. After my many play-throughs I pretty much know every song by heart as the stations usually repeat many many times even over fairly short sessions. This remains true in Fallout 4 and although I feel that the song choice is prime, I still would have liked to hear more songs in the game. I do have to say that the developer’s choice of a Classical station was a wise one as Classical music isn’t quite as offensive when listened to on repeat because it is instrumental.
Although I would have liked to hear a different set of sound effects for weapon fire and footsteps from previous titles this isn’t really that big of a deal as these were fine to begin with.
Quests
Without giving too much away I feel that it is important that I touch on how well the main quest line plays out as well as the quality of the side quests throughout the game.
Main Quest
It seems that the numerical Fallout titles seem to alternate between starting out in the vault and not. Fallout 4 not only starts you out not in the vault but also before the war even begins, or as it begins really only for you to go in to the Vault and then emerge from it then after. Fallout 4 definitely feels as if it has the most streamlined main quest line which branches several side quests very fluidly. Many of the side quests play so well in to the main quest line you will often forget that it is even a side quest. Fallout 4 is definitely a lot more cinematic than previous titles often alternating between several different camera angles during conversations depending on what is going on. Many of you will praise Fallout 4 for this element, but I find it to be kind of distracting and it breaks the immersion for me.
It was also pretty disappointing that in Fallout 4 you don’t really have much control over what happens in the main quest line. Regardless of your decisions the end is mostly the same. I would go into further detail but that would be a major spoiler.
Side Quests
Just like its predecessors Fallout 4 is packed to the brim with side quests some have more impact in the player than others. If there is one quest that isn’t required but no one should miss out on, it would definitely have to be “Last Voyage of the USS Constitution”. The USS Constitution has been commandeered by a group of robots who seem to have shorted a few circuits over the years. This group of loopy bots have taken it upon themselves to repair the constitution so she may take flight once again. I have never laughed so hard while playing a Fallout game, don’t pass this one up.
Overview
Fallout 4 is so massive that it would be impossible for me to cover everything in the amount of time that I have had the game, well, unless I wanted to live in the wasteland for 10 hours a day. This bodes well for the game’s replay-ability as it assures that the average player will be able to easily squeeze hundreds of hours of enjoyment out of this title. Unfortunately that doesn’t mean it gets the A-OK with me.
Fallout 4 just feels, well lazy. Yes there are a lot of weapon and armor mods, but one of the best part of previous Fallout titles was the sheer number of different items available, there are half as many unique items available in Fallout 4 as there is in previous titles.
Interacting with NPCs in the Wasteland is a painful experience thanks to the “Streamlined” (read dumbed down) dialog options. Your responses are now limited to an obvious Positive response, a negative, neutral, and a sarcastic response which is usually also
negative.
Fallout 4 isn’t a bad game as it is actually really fun to play, but it is an awful RPG and a fairly poor Fallout title. It is fairly obvious that Bethesda planned on the mod community fixing many of their shortcomings and they should be ashamed of themselves.
Speaking of mods, since Fallout 4 has so many shortcomings I have compiled a list of what I would consider essential mods that won’t impact your performance negatively:
Vivid Fallout – A texture mod that reduces overhead and improves the overall look. (John actually wrote an article on it recently)
Texture Optimization Project – This mod keeps the vanilla texture look while reducing VRAM usage.
Full Dialog – A throw back to more classic dialog options.
FPS Dynamic Shadows – Dynamically Controls shadow quality based on FPS
All in all despite its flaws Fallout 4 is incredibly fun, but that does not mean Bethesda should get a free pass. It is very obvious that a lot of content is missing either due to the fact that they know the modding community will add a lot of content to the game (this theory is definitely probable considering consoles will also be receiving mod support) or it is being saved for future DLC releases. What ever the reason may be, neither is good and it is your jobs as the consumers to let Bethesda know that whether or not you’re okay with that.
Matt Followell is another contributing author here at DSOGaming. A long time fan of PC Gaming and a huge supporter of the open source and homebrew movement. You’ll see him interacting with the community from time to time going by the user-name of Radapples.
Contact: Email
Loved how you broke it down into parts but don’t get it, you talked about audio and didn’t mention what you thought of Inon Zur’s original score, and how it affects the game.
Inon Zur’s work in Fallout 4 is haunting, but at the same time stoic. A tune that makes you feel the struggle that befalls the citizens of the Commonwealth, rising from the ashes to rebuild the world anew. War never changes, much like the resolve of mankind, the desire to not just survive but to create. Inon Zur’s score in Fallout 4 paints this in a way that makes the hair stand on the back of your neck. You can feel the passion poured into it.
All that could have been compressed better, giving you more room to talk about how the music works during combat, exploration, etc… Is the music well tailored to the game, and just how important is the main theme… Do you hear variations of it throughout, if so what does it portray.
There are subtle tones throughout Fallout 4 that are often missed if the radio is playing the entire time which is why I greatly encourage everyone to spend some time walking around in silence, because rarely is it ever silent. The backtrack of the wasteland is always playing if you are paying attention long enough to hear it. When moving from the wasteland to an underground tunnel the music changes, and the transition is oh so smooth from warm but somber tones to a sound much darker and almost mechanical. All of this is overlooked if the radio is on or your volume is lowered.
Great review i liked how you put things in categories so i can find out what i needed.
To be honest Fallout 4 was a daunting review simply because the game is so massive that there is just SO MUCH to cover. I didn’t even touch on how well the game performs which is something I do in almost all of my reviews. So there are areas that I missed out on. Which is why I am happy that we have this comments section because it allows me to answer any and all questions that our reader may have.
I understand that, you did a good job really. I’ve been playing it and I know how much the game has packaged inside it, making it hard to talk about every single aspect. Just though, my personal advice for you is to at least keep the major parts in mind, which you have here. You were just missing the games original score.
Also there are some brief mistakes in your review. For example in meshes, “improved from previous the Previous Fallout titles…”. You’ve repeated previous.
In, gameplay, “Fallout takes all of these things further bringing a whole lot to the table…” You’ve put that right after a negative statement, does taking thing furthers relate to the fixes or shortcomings. This line stops the reader for a bit, breaking the flow.
There are some more minor mistakes, and some sentences could have been better structured, like the headache one in gameplay which doesn’t read so good.
I’d really recommend you to paste your entire review into any software that supports spell check, you’d be surprised at how much you can find. I do that with all my reviews for push start.
I’m sorry I know I’m being a bit rude by nitpicking but I loved your enthusiasm and I think you truly deserve to get better. Overall loved the review. Keep at it!
You aren’t nitpicking. I appreciate any feedback that I get from our readers here. Criticism helps me understand what our readers here want to read, and it helps me become a better writer.
Fact is Bethesda games are not for everybody… I been playing them since the mid 90’s as a teenager.
Fallout 4 has got me hooked on it’s story and side quest just like the Witcher 3 did for games this year. And as much as I would like to see ground breaking visuals I already knew that was not going to happen. So when I did play it I would not be upset about it.
Mod community will save the day on that aspect. I just wish the performance was lot better then it is now. Majority of the time I can keeping at 60 fps but still get odd dips that go down to 42/38 fps. Which does not make sense at all and that’s even with Nvidia Godrays off.
But once I get passed all of that. The game overall to me is very enjoyable. If you are skeptical well just wait till it’s super cheap. No harm in that.
” Bethesda games are not for everybody.”
You are right they are not dumbed down enough to apeal to cod players yet.
Other than that bethesda games are so dumbed down at this point that they are your average open world shooter with a pathetic upgrading system, there is no roleplaying or death nor they ever change how they do things, i keep waiting for them to improve them, nope they just simplify them an dumb them down further.
Bethesda games are for everyone these days. most of the times games turn into a huge hit thanks to their appeal toward mainstream. Skyrim, The Witcher 3 and Mass Effect 2 are examples of that in RPG genre. they are all way more streamlined in comparison to their prequels or previous similar works.
these days the first rule of creating an AAA game is to make sure it appeals to the mass.
however you are right about FO4’s story. it is not revolutionary, but it is the best story Bethesda Game Studios has offered. however some people are busy following the hate trend. for example some keep calling this game a bad RPG thanks to lack of enough choices however FO3’s terrible story could barely make you care for your choices anyway. (i admit i couldn’t even finish FO3 since it was way too boring so i can be wrong) not to mention all those emotionless NPCs that shared the same voice actors broke the immersion, and immersion is half of role playing. Skyrim shared these problems as well and all these problems are fixed to some extent in FO4.
Can’t remember who I’ve heard saying something like:
“Bethesda did not make a Fallout game, they made a game with Fallout elements”.
Fallout 4 in a nutshell, starring Indiana Jones as Vault Boy, Steven Spielberg as Todd Howard, and George Lucas as Robert Altman.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eG4W0LbIvW0
Chems are invaluable for survival mode, great review!
… With poor optimisation to boot. Crysis 3 runs better on my system whilst looking light years better.
I started playing the Witcher 3 after, and I can’t believe these games were both released in the same year. Death to the creation engine.
Edit: Also, currently playing Skyrim with many mods, looks better and plays smoother…
Gigabyte and MSI motherboards are the worst
Too small. not anymore a RPG and uglier than skyrim!
79
It’s still a shallow RPG which will give you more playtime than most of single player games. And saying skyrim looks better(vanilla) is simply a stupid and wrong statement.
Its a great…but cant carry a Fallout name….
It sure can, it’s 90% similar to previous ones(1&2 dont count).
“1&2 don’t count”
They don’t, they were a different genre of games made in the last millenia.
Fallout 4
“1&2 don’t count”
“But they are different now.”
It carries a name and a legacy, if you name it anything else it’s okay, but when it carries a brand it should be held to scrutiny against the said legacy.
90% similar to COD…more likely!
This can be summed up as fallout 3 with better graphics and shooting, this time even less falloutish. If you looking fore new vegas quality roleplaying, sorry this is a repettive dumbed down shooter with some rpg mechanics. It feels more like ubisoft’s far cry games than a fallout game. Bethesda should get arkane to do the quests.
Perhaps im getting old because the game felt like such a chore to play, FO4 is the Worst Bethesda game to date IMO.
Yeah, you are getting older and the nostalgia of the older games are getting even more golden. Even though the game is good it isn’t as good as the last 3 elder scrolls or FO3.
so fallout 4 is better? Serious question.
so fallout 4 isnt better than 3?
If the nostalgia was the problem, New Vegas wouldn’t be praised for its writing, quest design, branching story, faction system, etc., in comparison to Fallout 3.
Morrowind is also superior to Oblivion and Skyrim, and again, not because of nostalgia, but because it’s simply a better crafted game. I played it back in the days, but completed only a couple of years ago, after Skyrim.
But I still prefer FO3 over NV. I did not like the environments, setting and design of many things in NV. The graphics seemed worse and some places weren’t immersive. The factions were ridiculous, I couldn’t take it seriously. It is better in almost every other way you can name. but still
Morrowind isn’t superior to the newer games, it may have been better for it’s time and have some better aspects in game design but it’s just too old. As a ES fan I tried to play it properly for the first time like 12 years after it’s release. I couldn’t play it. Even with mods making it look much better it’s ridiculously outdated in every aspect. I don’t care if the writing of a quest is little better if there is no actual person to properly interact with. Looking at a still frame and reading a bunch of text is completely immersion breaking and boring. That’s just one aspect and not even the worst.
I have nothing against you, and it’s nothing personal, but people who says that F3 > FNV simply don’t have a taste. Let’s just leave it at that. If you don’t value qualities of one of the best RPGs ever created, there is nothing I can do to explain it (and we already had this conversation). Maybe it’ll come to you some day.
Morrowind is superior, even now. World design is one of the many things which is done better.. You won’t find anything quite unique as Telvanni towers (they were designed only for mages, so without levitation you can’t travel properly through them), Ghostfence, Clockwork City or even the Tribunal itself. Even monsters are unique, starting from non-hostile Silt Striders. I didn’t bother myself checking who actually made this game, but those people clearly aren’t working for Bethesda anymore. Oblivion is just a generic fantasy world, and Skyrim is heavily inspired by the Norse regions.
Other than that, there are 3 Great Houses you can join, and siding with one of them will have consequences. There is also a ton of factions you can explore (mages, morag tong, fighters, blades, tribunal, imperial legion, even vampire clans), but you can’t become, for example, an archmage without being skilled in magic, which is a plus for me.
And based on your actions and factions you joined, every NPC in the world will have opinion of you.
But wait, there is more (c). RPG system is great, compared to Oblivion, which is completely broken (every enemy in the world become stronger as you progress with your level, so at the end of the game you have bandits on the roads in glass / ebony armor, and godlike rats / mudcrabs who can r@pe you no matter how good you are – this is a shame on Bethesda that people won’t forget soon), and Skyrim, which is basically not even an RPG, more like a hiking game with perks.
But in Skyrim autoleveling caused a different problem, resulting in almost 0 challenge, since every enemy you encounter has level according to yours, while Morrowind has places which you cannot explore, until you’ll become stronger (like Ghostfence).
Plot is more dark and gritty, so that’s a plus for me. And on the top of everything, it is a game designed around PC. So, if this wasn’t enough for you, just go back to the first paragraph, and replace F3 > FNV with Skyrim / Oblivion > Morrowind.
>The factions were ridiculous
I can’t think of anything more ridiculous than factions from Skyrim, and its so-called “civil” war. The same I can say about Fallout 4.
>Looking at a still frame and reading a bunch of text is completely immersion breaking and boring.
You will be surprised how immersive books can be.
I get that about morrowind, but it’s still really outdated. I wanted to play and love it but couldn’t really even get started. Graphics, animations, gameplay, etc etc…. If I wanted to read books I would read books, not play a game. The way morrowind handles it isn’t a design choice, the lack of voice acting, animation etc are just because of limitations.
The new games may seem inferior in ways and have their problems but at least they dont seem ancient in every single aspect.
” can’t think of anything more ridiculous than factions from Skyrim”
The legion?
”but people who says that F3 > FNV simply don’t have a taste.”
Instead of looking at RPG elements you can write to a paper I prefer F3 because of the feel and immersion it gave me. I’m a guy that puts on some HC mods to skyrim and does a journey across the map even though I could fast travel.
You’re talking like a spoiled child. Seriously. People are playing even 20 years old games, but you can’t play Morrowind because of some minor nuisances. Visuals looks really great with Morrowind Overhaul, and as far as I remember there are even new animations.
What really matters is the core. This is something that will take a game though the years no matter what. Eventually, Skyrim will be dated too, but the core looks very bleak compared to Morrowind.
>The legion?
The whole conflict looks ridiculous and childish. If you’re considering New Vegas factions to be ridiculous, I’m not even sure how you can stand Skyrim. It’s not a conflict, it’s just a mightiest warrior in Skyrim, a legal pretender to the throne (!), doing some dirty jobs for two guys, while they’re sitting in their thrones (in the same pose). Eventually, some of them will come to the throne. Fin.
What? You’re looking for a serious story? A possibility of being a double or even a triple agent like you were in New Vegas? Several possible endings? I’m sorry, we’re at Bethesda just selling games via our marketing train hype.
>Instead of looking at RPG elements you can write to a paper I prefer F3 because of the feel and immersion it gave me.
What kind of immersion I can get when I see Bethesda’s awful writing in F3? When I realize there are more dragons than bears in Skyrim? When a bandit is trying to rob me on Oblivion’s road, while wearing a full set of glass armor, which is costs more than everything I have?
Immersion cannot be achieved solely via technical advancement. For example, one of the biggest problems of Skyrim is that the world doesn’t react on your advancement anyhow. In Morrowind or New Vegas if you join someone or do enough deeds, people will know who you are, and will act accordingly. In Skyrim, you can be vampire + creepiest necromancer + daedra worshiper + you can butcher a whole city, and guards in other cities still will be joking about arrows in their knees.
I’d say most people will never pick up a game for the first time that is over 10 years old and enjoy it like a new game. If that was the case people would buy an PS2 and play the 10 000 games it has. But no-one really does it unless you want nostalgia. You can list pros and cons of a game but in the end it’s not that simple.
I didn’t play those isometric games like fallout 1&2 or any similar fantasy rpgs so I never grew up used to them. I did however love wasteland 2 and divinity original sin which are very similar games but from 2014. They were modern gameplay and graphics wise. And after playing a lot of modern games it becomes increasingly hard to go back to something really old. I’m not saying it’s impossible for me to like something like morrowind today but it feels really hard. I want to like it, it’s not like ”old stuff is boring and stupid, when is the new cod coming out”.
That’s just how it is. I’m also the guy that is used to 1440p 144Hz and tweaks sweetfx post prosessing settings in games. Graphics don’t make a game good but really low resolutions or framerates simply look distracting after being completely used to something else.
I’d say most people play COD (not the game itself, but rather a set of popular games) and don’t give a crap about anything else. If you want to associate yourself with the majority, go ahead.
PS2 doesn’t have 10000 games. The number is much lower than you probably think, and even so, it doesn’t make sense to play them all, but it makes sense to check the handful of masterpieces of that era. This is what I’m talking about.
Wasteland 2 looks barely acceptable, to be honest, models and animations looks really bad, and considering that even Enemy Unknown (1994) can offer you more serious tactical gameplay, it’s hardly modern. Weird thing is that you don’t have any complaints about a game that doesn’t look modern if it came out “yesterday”, but have a sheet ton of complaints about a game that came out 13 years ago, and looked really good back then (and even now – with mods). I’m afraid “‘old stuff is boring and stupid” may be exactly the case.
But the thing is, with all this cheap Unity pixel crap developers pouring into Steam every day, sometimes even Morrowind look like a pinnacle of technology.
”Weird thing is that you don’t have any complaints about a game that doesn’t look modern if it came out “yesterday”, but have a sheet ton of complaints about a game that came out 13 years ago, and looked really good back then”
A new game doesn’t need to be the new crysis, but it really cant look like something from early 2000’s either. A 13 year old game that looked really good back then looks terrible now, and that’s all that matters. Wasteland 2 doesn’t look impressive but it looks good enough, and it’s not just graphics. There is again a massive different to the enemy unknown which is basically extremely low tier even for a phonegame of today. Is that group of 3 pixels a stone or a mine…
LMAO!