Fallout 4

[MatterEaterLad]

You make the game sound so interesting... I might have to buy it one day. Is it heavy on the GPU?

[Shawn Hopkins]

You make the game sound so interesting... I might have to buy it one day. Is it heavy on the GPU?

I play it on PS4 so I dunno. But I think so, because there's slowdown in some places.

[Tenebrae]

THIS POST CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR THE SILVER SHROUD QUEST




I have a question about the Silver Shroud quest: is it possible for Kent to survive the final showdown? I've reloaded the game about 10 times, but no matter what I do, he never makes it. Also, if he can survive, does he continue to play the radio show (I enjoy listening to it).
Thanks!

Yep. You have to be insanely quick and have a powerful gun, but you can headshot his captor and save him. Jet helps. Having a critical hit ready to go helps. Intimidate the other goons into running by keeping up the Shroud act or they might kill Kent anyway. Then in the second before Sinjin shoots, you have your chance. I had to try it a lot more than 10 times to get it right.

You can also try to pass the speech check for "kill me first" to make Sinjin (and everyone else) shoot at you instead, but it's hard to pass and Kent might die in the crossfire.

It's worth saving him, because he upgrades the Silver Shroud armor if you do. I think Silver Shroud Radio stays on the air.

I think I got really lucky as I missed having any dialogue with the raider and they became aggressive but didn't seem to target Kent at all but me and my companion so he was pretty safe the whole time.

[Shawn Hopkins]

Finally beat it. In-game clock says I have more than seven full days invested. I'm going to go back and try the other endings, though, to find the one I like best to continue from for the eventual DLC.

[Shawn Hopkins]

So I finally finished all four endings, which took a long time (I found out at the 11th hour that one faction I didn't expect much from has questgivers, it was like opening a box and finding 10 more hours of game).

And then I dived right back into New Vegas to try the DLC I never got around to playing the first time it came out, starting with the excellent so far Dead Money. It was a bit of a shock.

Things I noticed:

Fallout 4's graphics are really very much improved. People complain about Fallout 4 not melting down their high-powered PCs with graphical awesomeness, but compared to the pokey, barren and low-res New Vegas, it's much improved. Everything's relative.

Fallout 4's gunplay is much improved. As an action game Fallout 4 plays much better than New Vegas, which is merely serviceable.

New Vegas feels bigger, mainly because there's so much empty space. You can walk for virtual miles in New Vegas without finding anything of note. There's not the fun stuff around every corner feel you get with Fallout 4. Even some of the stuff you find is dull. I found an airfield that had nothing in it but a few radscorpions (and a stash with an amazing number of caps). On the other hand the areas in New Vegas that are behind loading screens tend to be smaller. The camp where the final battle takes place seemed pretty epic to me when I first played, now it seems bathtub-sized. So do the settlements, even New Vegas. Another old-school touch is that these levels have a maze-like layout, made worse by the fact that everything looks the same. In Dead Money there are literally signs pointing you in the right direction, and you need them. Whereas Fallout 4 streamlines things to be careful that the player doesn't get too lost.

Fallout 4's quests are less intricate than New Vegas, although this is a bit overblown. There are very intricate quests, but some are just like Fallout 4 in that they maybe have one alternate option.

New Vegas' faction reputation system is very nice. It's good to be able to make peace with some factions so not everyone is hostile. Although making peace with certain factions eventually means the opposing factions will hate you, so you still have the same problem you had in Fallout 4 where there are people who will try to kill you on sight. At least you can wear disguises to fool some of them.

The biggie is New Vegas' dialogue system. There are some seriously complex conversations in New Vegas, with a lot of options to use skill checks. But, there's not a ton of consequence to the majority of the options. Most of it is a way to offload a megadump of backstory on the player. It's also, I hate to say it, unnecessarily complex. Yes, the player has a lot of available questions, but it's sort of an illusion because many of them lead, either directly or eventually, to the exact same voiced response from the NPC. Don't get me wrong, I think Fallout 4's conversation system is worse. But I also think there's a middle ground where you can have radial, voiced conversations that aren't crowded with cruft, have skill checks that elicit interesting info, have choices of some consequence, and allow players to get straight to the point or explore backstory. And I think Bioware has found it with Dragon Age: Inquisition. I know a lot of people chafed at the dull MMO-style quests in that, but interacting with your companions kept me coming back to it more than anything else.

[JediMindTrick]

On my second playthrough now. In my first playthrough I did it on normal difficulty and had a stealth sniper type build. I was level 77 by the finish and the game was fairly easy, the only time it got hard was when I was mob rushed by feral ghouls or such as I couldn't kill them fast enough. Normal single enemies were easy, its just hard to kill a mob with a sniper weapon.

On my second playthrough I'm doing it as a melee fighter on the hardest difficulty. While it was rough going for the first 20 levels or so, its now become incredibly easy even though I'm only at level 35. Using Kremvah's Tooth as my weapon I can one hit kill pretty much anything from stealth. Only the boss level type monsters take more than one hit and those usually are dead within 2 or 3. Just today I fast traveled out of stealth into an area and there was a Behemoth there. Couldn't stealth hit as it was on top of me as I arrived so I had to attack normally and took it out in four hits with the Tooth. It helps that my strength is 13 (9 on initial stats +1 Bobblehead, +2 Grognak's costume, +1 Champion arm) but I'm rarely challenged by anything at this point.

[JediMindTrick]

I liked Vegas but it was incredibly buggy on my 360 to the point I couldn't finish it. I tried two different playthroughs and reached a certain point where the game just wouldn't load anymore. . . completely different points in the game, it just simply would go into screen freeze when loading my saved game though I could start a new game without issue. I also ran into numerous bugs involving followers, Veronica especially.

[Shawn Hopkins]

I liked Vegas but it was incredibly buggy on my 360 to the point I couldn't finish it. I tried two different playthroughs and reached a certain point where the game just wouldn't load anymore. . . completely different points in the game, it just simply would go into disc read error when trying to load my saved game though I could start a new game without issue. I also ran into numerous bugs involving followers, Veronica especially.

Oh lord, the frustration. I played through all of the DLC in the last few weeks and it crashed constantly. Like a couple of times an hour. One of my main feelings upon finishing was relief that I made it all the way through. The two biggest things were that any time I'd die there was about a one in three chance that it would hang on the loading screen when reloading a save. I had to start pausing when I thought I was going to die and doing a load. And Miss Fortune appearances caused crashes so much I deeply regretted taking that perk. Great game, incredibly lousy software.

One additional issue I had with New Vegas is that there's too much redundant dialogue. People complain about their not being enough dialogue in Fallout 4, but there's got to be a middle ground. Standing around for 15 minutes in Lonesome Road selecting options to listen to Ulysses say essentially the same pseudo-intellectual thing five different ways drove that home, and it is not good storytelling. Editing is just as important as writing.

[JediMindTrick]

On my 3rd playthrough now, I've easily put 150 hrs into this game so far, as I'm trying to see how siding with the various factions plays out (sided with the Railroad and Institute in the first two). It still absolutely amazes me though how much even now on my 3rd time through I'm only discovering for the first time. Just now found the sewer near Diamond City where you get a mine subplot of a serial killer who killed the Detective who was after him. Somehow I just breezed right by the sewer the first two times but this third time I'm going very slow and exploring every door, nook, and crannie. Ran into a Legendary Deathclaw on a rooftop tonight as well that I hadn't come across before. I'm playing on Survival mode and only killed it by cowering in a corner where it couldn't get to me while I emptied about a hundred bullets into it. Then I found a whole new quest I missed the first two times where I have to go look for an undersea monster. I haven't done it yet as I'm assuming I'll need some Mirelurk Cakes, breathing underwater, and I don't any right now.

I'm doing this playthrough as a Sniper / guns type which is way way way way way harder than melee on Survival mode (my last playthrough). Sometimes I have to go melee when I get rushed and am out of Shotgun shells (which happens a lot) but with my puny 3 strength and no melee perks its like slapping some enemies with a wet noodle. It took me five reloads to kill off a pack of five mongrel dogs as they kept rushing me faster than I could shoot.

Its the fact that I can still find new things to do that makes me love this game so much even after so much time put in. It really makes me want to go back and play Fallout New Vegas again but I'm scared it will just freeze up again on me midway.

[Expletive Deleted]

For those still playing this, the first DLC, Automatron, is out. It's an extra quest-line, investigating rampaging squads of robots, with the option of building and customizing new robot companions. You can kitbash them together from Robobrain, Assaultron, Protectron, Mister Handy, and Sentry parts, then either take them with you or assign them chores in your settlements.

It's not exactly transformative, as DLC goes, but it's a fun little diversion. The May DLC, Far Harbor, looks much more substantial. In terms of content, it's supposedly at least as big as Shivering Isles.

[Zero Hunter]

The Wasteland Workshop DLC is now out and has some cool new things in it. The cages to trap any and all creatures are pretty cool, but my fav is the new building stuff like being able to make concrete buildings and being able to build fusion generators that give out 100 energy each.

A nice little DLC to keep you busy until Far Harbor comes out.

[Galerion]

I was actually thinking about getting into it again after having a bit of a break from it but I think I will wait until all the DLC is out and the Creation Kit is released so modders can fully work their magic.
For the record I have spent 146 hours with the game, played through it two times with the Institute and the Brotherhood respectively and was underway at doing a third play through when I quit the game. I think it's certainly a very fun and enjoyable game. I do have a huge gripe with it though.

I can admit that the voiced dialogue system along with the intro makes it pretty much the Bethesda game with the best presentation yet. The thing is it also hugely railroads you.
I try to take my role-playing serious. If people play it more like an action adventure where they talk with everyone, make every quest, pick everything up, go everywhere then that that's fine. It's their choice. I try to put myself into the shoes of my character though and adopt he mindset that my character would have. In real-life there are people who you wouldn't want to talk with based on their attitude or looks or whatever. It's just natural. If I would wake up in an apocalyptic world and would see a ghoul for the first time I would be freaked out and not act like nothing is wrong at all. Is my character generally angry or more cold, relaxed and calculating? Is my character someone who lets emotions rule or more of someone who thinks stuff through? What does my character like and what not? What is the motivation of my character? Etc, etc.
Too often does the game make it hard to actually the show the personality of your character though. On top of that your backstory is for the most part pre-defined too. Every female I create is a house-wive with a lawyer decree who ends up a widow with a missing child. Yay!

There is a good reason why in previous Elder Scrolls titles or Fallout: New Vegas you are a just a random stranger who ends up in a situation. That way your custom character is actually custom because even your characters backstory is entirely up to you and mods like Alternate Start for Skyrim notch that up even further.
In Fallout 4 I sadly have to find an excuse for why my house-wive who lived happily with her family in a beautiful environment picks up an gun and is suddenly a master shot with it and for why she suddenly becomes frikken MacGyver and a merciless Terminator as soon as she steps out of the vault. A good example where going more cinematic can have an negative influence on role-playing.

[Carabas]

Yeah, to me this is the area where Fallout 4, where I have preciously few complaints about otherwise, loses a lot of credit for me: railroading.

Last time I played Skyrim I played the human reincarnarion of Tiber Septim, the first emperor, aka the god Talos. He had been speaking to me in my dreams my entire life, talking about my destiny and about dragons... and my character was pretty much convinced she was absolutely insane at the start of the game, until the dragon shows up and she realises it's all real and she better do what the creepy voices in her dreams tell her to if she wants to survive.

And even Fallout 3, which also gave you a set-in-stone backstory at least gave you the option of not actually caring one bit about what happened with your father.

To fully enjoy Fallout 4 I need to ignore a lot of what I say.
That said, it is a pretty impressive opening even if it is set on rails.

The other bugbear for me is the available factions.
Two are flatout evil.
The Minute Men are needy and whiny. And it's not that they would just curl up and die if not for me, it's that they actually had done that.
And the Railroad, well, I really like the Railroad. I have no problems with the Railroad. It's just I'd like one or two other factions who are actually worthy of my support.

[Galerion]

I tend to not agree or care of many complaints about certain aspects of the game but when role-playing get restricted then I do have to complain about that. That's the main reason why I play these kind of games.
There is nothing wrong with playing a pre-defined character. In the Mass Effect series you are Commander Shepard and in The Witcher series you are Geralt of Rivia. Those games never made a secret about that. You were never supposed to have full control over your character. You could make many decisions with consequences for yourself but other certain things were outside of your control. That's OK and those games where great.
I feel Fallout 4 just ended up in this awkward grey area where you character is not pre-defined and yet actually is in a way.

When it comes the factions I cannot agree with branding any faction outright evil. I think Bethesda made a very good job in that regard. It's on the same level as Fallout: New Vegas, maybe even better. The Legion had so many bad and regressive things about it that is is very hard to argue there was anything good in them.
In Fallout 4 though every faction with the exception of the Minutemen is pretty firmly grey because they have both good and bad things about them and it's on you to decide which faction could lead to a better future. The Minutemen while having not many bad or iffy things about them lack on the other hand the vast resources that other factions have access to. So there is no clear choice and it's good that way. Simple black and white portrayal has it's place in fiction but this is not one of them.

[Carabas]

I tend to not agree or care of many complaints about certain aspects of the game but when role-playing get restricted then I do have to complain about that. That's the main reason why I play these kind of games.
There is nothing wrong with playing a pre-defined character. In the Mass Effect series you are Commander Shepard and in The Witcher series you are Geralt of Rivia. Those games never made a secret about that. You were never supposed to have full control over your character. You could make many decisions with consequences for yourself but other certain things were outside of your control. That's OK and those games where great.
I feel Fallout 4 just ended up in this awkward grey area where you character is not pre-defined and yet actually is in a way.

I would say that Mass Effect offers you considerably more roleplay freedom than Fallout 4, even if you have to play Commander Shepard.

When it comes the factions I cannot agree with branding any faction outright evil. I think Bethesda made a very good job in that regard. It's on the same level as Fallout: New Vegas, maybe even better. The Legion had so many bad and regressive things about it that is is very hard to argue there was anything good in them.
In Fallout 4 though every faction with the exception of the Minutemen is pretty firmly grey because they have both good and bad things about them and it's on you to decide which faction could lead to a better future. The Minutemen while having not many bad or iffy things about them lack on the other hand the vast resources that other factions have access to. So there is no clear choice and it's good that way. Simple black and white portrayal has it's place in fiction but this is not one of them.

I'm going to have to disagree there.

The Minute Men are kinda just there. They're an unambiguously good guy faction, but they don't really have any influence at all on the plot. The story does not change one whit whether the Minute Men exist or not.

The Railroad are those who fight the bad guys out of a moral conviction: they're anti-slavery.

The Brotherhood are monsters.
They're a nazi analogue. "Ad victorium comes" out "sieg heil" in German, and that is not a coincidence.
It is incredibly clear that they care only about three things:

• kill creatures they hate (some of which are upstanding members of society, like non-feral ghouls and liberated Synths like Valentine and Danse.
• steal technology from the population
• the glory of the Brotherhood

It is incredibly clear that the leaders of this bunch of tughs cares not one bit whether the civilian population of the Commonwealtyh lives or dies.

And then there is the frelling Institute. Pure, unambiguous evil.
These clowns have sabotaged all efforts of establishing a united Commonwealth leadership, they are behind the demise of the Minute Men, they have created the Commonwealth Super Mutants, they mmurdered all of Vault 111, except for Sean and the PC, and the list goes on. And they have done nothing that can be cathegorised as 'good'.