Steam tells me I've spent 20 hours with the game now. I continue to be impressed. Basically everything I said above still stands, but I continue to be impressed with some of the surprises.
Anyone who wants to be COMPLETELY blind shouldn't read this, but it's not a spoiler so much as a brief discussion of one particular feature that's new, and the leanings that gives the game. If you want absolutely zero knowledge of the game and some of what you're able to do going in, avoid it. If you're just avoiding story, character, and world spoilers, you're totally fine:
You can discover and liberate various settlements or areas that are possible to settle, and there's a building system which allow you to build everything from power generators, water filters, crops, guard towers, machine gun turrets, to individual dwellings, shops, and crafting stations. HOLY SHIT. Some of this is unfortunately locked behind character choices—you'll need certain perks to build some of the stuff. But in that sense what you can do as the leader of a settlement reflects the strengths of your character. Are you strong? Are you smart? Are you charismatic?
This is reflected in the crazy-ass crafting system, which provides SO MANY options. You can tweak out armor and weapons in a ton of ways, and along with the settlement system, what you're granted is a lot more mechanical motivation. There's always something else to do or work towards beyond just your innate character, beyond a straight-up gear hunt, and beyond finding cool stuff to quest for. Or even world exploration. All those things tie back in to the build system and crafting/upgrade systems, which makes for a much more cohesive whole in terms of your drive to interact with the world. It does lead to some inventory frustration, as the Pip-boy just doesn't do well with huge quantities of collectibles (everything that's not nailed down can now essentially be boiled down into component parts, so getting your hands on coffee cups, pencils, pots, plates, or plastic dog bowls will provide you with raw materials you need to build more and better stuff), but there are some shortcut keys and item tags that make this easier. You can move all your "junk" with the press of a button when you offload to one of your settlement workshops. Sadly, breaking down weapons you'll have to do by hand (though all it involves is dropping it and pushing a button over it, and you won't have weapons in near the same quantities).
This game continues to excite. I'm pumped for more.
I have some interesting reactions so far with this game. Not sure really what to make of it completely, as I'm only 3-4 hours into it. Might be too soon to really give an idea, as BethSoft games are usually freaking huge. Often, sum of their parts can really make the game.
Intro video + set-up for the game is fantastic, even though there's one thing that feels like Bethesda dropped the ball on, story-wise + character-wise.
Your spouse's death is done too fast + quickly. More build-up or ways to make me feel some emotions for the character would've helped matters quite a bit here.
Storytelling, plot, and dialogue is STILL Bethesda's weakness.
While a lot of the RPG stuff seems scaled back, yet the combat feels incredible - seems like Bethesda really been talking + hanging out with Id Software. Action feels more like a shooter + action game, practically embarrassing both Fallout 3 + New Vegas.
VATS is no longer a pseudo turn-based affair like it was on Fallout 3 + NV. VATS instead now just slows down combat.
Karma system's gone period.
So far, options in dialogue seems to often be...very Hero-like. Options often feel like you can be morally Good, another Good choice (with maybe another outcome/varation), Sarcastic jerk that'll still do something Good - i.e feels very Mass Effect. You really don't feel like there will be many, if any, options to be a Evil bad-ass, which was VERY common-place in ALL other major FO games (FO1, FO2, FO3, FO:NV).
Everything is in the Perk System for new skills, sinking points into skills, and that stuff.
No more categories for sinking up to 100 points in say - no more Guns, Melee, Speechcraft, etc. A lot of that stuff got axed or moved over into Perk System.
Graphics are technically solid & decent, but it isn't anything spectacular.
This game should support more in-game/in-engine than TXAA + FXAA. TXAA does too much blurring, while FXAA is too weak for only-supported AA in-game/in-engine (when compared to MSAA, MFAA, and SMAA).
I'll talk more in depth later.
I've been heavily into this for over 3 days of game time, according to the latest saves. (As with past Beth games, I think this includes all the time the game is running, even while paused. So I believe all the bathroom breaks, dinner breaks, breaks to look up stuff like "how the hell do I get out of this power armor?" and time I've forgotten the game was running are in there too.) It feels very much like a FO game, with the addition of all the crafting and gear modding.
The latter interests me the most. Base building strikes me as a chore, since the building system is atrocious, and I don't care to spend forever trying to make pieces stick together into a bigger whole. Usually I just end up throwing some turrets around the perimeter, a prefab shack or two stuffed with mattresses, dropping down a generator and beacon plus some water pumps, maybe a small farming space, and call it a settlement. Then I link them together to share resources. Making weapons and armor progressively more effective, though, is quite the addictive time sink for me.
In what seems like a clear nod to Borderlands, the game spawns legendary (badass) enemies every so often, which sometimes drop weapons or armor with unique extra properties. The crafting system allows me to mod these weapons with parts from others of the same kind, which acts very much like leveling up the gear. So for example, I like this "Righteous Authority" laser which adds double damage for criticals and a 15% faster filling of the critical meter. Every time I get a laser with better parts, I can swap them out for crap parts, then use the better parts on the RA. Or as I ramp up related perks like Science or Gun Nut, I can craft better parts for it from the junk I collect all over. If I have a great generic weapon already put together, and I find a special named weapon of the same kind later on, I can move all the better parts from the generic weapon over to it, and then use the special instead. Pretty cool. Most of my weapons and some of my armor now have proper names (and added perks). It's an enjoyable process.
I don't concentrate as much effort on regular armor, though, because of the awesome addition of the power-armor crafting. An early story mission nets everyone a T45 set (6 armor pieces and a frame). I got lucky not much later by accidentally shooting a Brotherhood of Steel knight and stripping him of most of his health while in a firefight with super mutants. He then got wasted by the SMs, and I ended up collecting all 6 pieces of his T60 set. I've been working on that one ever since. It's up to Model D now, with added explosive and radiation shielding. I'm basically unkillable in this thing. The regular armor serves me well for random encounters in places where I wasn't expecting to need the heavy protection, so I do tend to keep it up as well. [I should add that the greatest single gear perk I have so far is on an armor piece: If my heath drops below 20%, I go into bullet-time slo-mo until I decide to heal. Some great fun has been had this way.]
Anyway, I still have a very long way to go with both the story and the side content. So I'm not going to get into too much of how I feel about that now. The companions have been great so far, each very unique, and with their own story to pursue in-game. Probably not a spoiler, but just in case: My favorite so far is Nick Valentine, though the Curie personal quest has had the most awesome single moment for me yet.
Hey, Que. Is your review very spoilery? Knowing I was going to be playing this eventually, I haven't dared to go look before. Now, maybe, is the time?
Sitting at over 10 days of game-on time now. As with the past Beth games, once I get hooked, I'm gone. I was cycling through several good games, but not anymore. My system may as well be hardcoded with Fallout 4 right now.
I finished the story with the BoS, but I left myself saves to follow the Minutemen and the Institute to the end. I felt awful after playing good soldier for the BoS. Maxson is a mass-murdering xenophobe, and following him means doing a lot more harm than good to the Commonwealth.
Same nuclear detonation blasting a huge radioactive hole in the middle of Boston. Garvey's reaction to the event is that of a good man, but that doesn't change the horrible outcome. Also, his enmity with the Institute is never clearly explained. Perhaps I've forgotten some details from early in the game. Either way, it felt very odd to me that Garvey wanted to pursue a course of destruction just as much as Maxson. It felt way out of place for his character.
My greatest disappointment is that so much is rigidly forced in the storyline. Shaun may be a 60-something scientist with a myopic view of the world, but he is my son. (I suppose it's possible that he really isn't, but nothing in the quest paths I've followed so far points to him being a synth or impostor.) My greatest motivation after discovering this nifty time-bending twist was to somehow reconcile the Institute with at least one of the factions above ground. As far as I can tell, that's completely impossible, and 2-dimensionally so. Father (Shaun), who comes across as so enlightened when first met, becomes an impenetrable stone wall when the game gets to the Mass Fusion quest. The folks above ground are similarly closed to any persuasion or negotiation. The game simply did not go there, and that's a shame. I have to let the Institute enslave mankind, or kill my son along with a lot of promising technology and half a city.
through the Mass Fusion branching point
Edit: On to the gameplay feelings. Overall, terrific. It's definitely Bethesda, and we all know what quirks and problems that brings. Accepting or overlooking those, the improvements from the previous installment are most welcome. Gunplay feels a lot more like it should, and VATS is not strictly necessary anymore. Being able to mod gear is terrific, as is the addition of true power armor. I probably spent as much time tinkering as I did doing anything else. The perk system is quite good, and the lack of a hard level cap makes playing for a very long time more rewarding. I read somewhere that to get all the SPECIAL ranks and all the perks takes something like 270 levels. I'm at story end game, and I'm at Level 74 on the BoS branch, and 73 on the Minutemen branch.
The weapons are extremely varied as a result of their moddability, and the addition of legendary prefixes and unique named items. Expanding positively on the obvious influence from Borderlands, it's possible to exchange parts between guns of the same basic design, as well as craft them with the proper resources and perks. It takes 4 ranks in 3 different perks, plus at least one rank in a 4th to be able to craft everything possible for gear.
I got so hooked on power armor that I really didn't invest nearly as much time on the normal wearables. Those can be modded extensively as well, and your outfit can consist of up to 8 items (underarmor, 6-piece armor, glasses) and each one of those can have perk boosters or legendary bonuses. Next playthrough, I'll try to resist the allure of those shiny hulking mechanized suits, and develop some killer regular armor instead.
Power armor is the shit, though. It's my single favorite enhancement over FO3. You really feel like you're in a mech suit, and once you have a jetpack, you'll never go back. That's only one of many mods for each piece of the PA set, which themselves come in 4 different flavors suitable for different character levels. Each can be strengthened in 5 increments above base level as well. Overall, quite engrossing for a tinkerer.
Bugs and issues abound, as in all the big Beth games. Not many crashes after the update to 1.4, but I still got infinitely stuck in a dialog or totally frozen on occasion, or something didn't trigger properly, etc. Their saving grace is the many save files possible, and being able to save at any time. I hear that the revamped survival difficulty will do away with quick saving, and restrict saving to sleeping in a bed. For such rickety game tech, that is a huge mistake.
Edit 2: Oh, and gotta have Automatron. You haven't really played FO4 until you can make your own robot companions, or mod Codsworth into a British battle beast of a valet.
Damn page breaks. I'm tempted to move the whole bulk of my previous post here. But I won't. I'll just finish what I started, since I've now finished the game along the 3 paths I cared about (of 4 overall).
I was right initially. My impressions about what's best for the Commonwealth were correct all along. What I said looked impossible in the biggest blacked-out area 2 posts up is actually doable, in essence completely, since I get to call all the shots at the end of this story branch:
The Institute is by far the best hope for mankind out of the 4 presented to us in this story. The problem is that everyone above ground considers them the boogeyman, obscure monsters akin to a tech-based version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. In reality, they are led by a sheltered visionary, whose closed-in upbringing has kept him from getting a complete picture of the greater good. As a result, some tragic mistakes were made, and blown way out of proportion by the fearful and ignorant wastelanders. They fear The Institute wants to supplant humanity with synthetic beings, and take over the world. The reality is quite different. The consensus at The Institute is that the surface world is dead already. As the wanderer's courser companion X6-88 puts it, the world is a corpse, carrion fed upon by the maggot-like remnants of surface-dwelling humanity. So they take steps to ensure the continued viability of their pristine underground facility, as a sort of ark to preserve what matters for the future, after the old world finishes burning itself out. They don't even like to go above ground, and do so only out of necessity. That perceived necessity includes taking steps to deter any invasion or other interference.
Shaun is the wanderer's son, but due to the cryogenic shenanigans that went on for 200 years, that son is a generation or two older than his father (or mother) by the time the two meet. He leads the Institute. Following this faction to the end allows the player to influence heavily the approach to the surface world. It can end in heavy antagonism with the outside world, or cooperation. The turning point is clever. The wanderer partially crafts a speech to be broadcast through Diamond City Radio. His multi-part influence on the speech determines whether the Institute will reveal itself as hostile and domineering, or reservedly benevolent and willing to help. Since Shaun is terminally ill, and dies by story's end of natural causes in this story path, the wanderer becomes director of the Institute as well. Because of these possibilities, a positive outcome is not impossible, as I had thought after following two other story branches. So I crafted the reveal speech to be as reassuring and open-armed as the choices let me. (I was trying to be Jean-Luc Picard in the TNG episode "First Contact".) I chose better weaponry instead of more synths at the meeting before the final push to defeat the sadly misled Brotherhood of Steel. (Humanity doesn't need even more synths scaring them.) And I dealt with the Minutemen benignly, complete with a (successful) conciliatory speech challenge. The result was a complete destruction of the BoS, the preservation of The Institute, now led by my benevolent character, the continued good work of Garvey and his minutemen on the surface, and no ridiculous new atomic devastation in the middle of Boston. The wasteland has had enough of that.
The Railroad unfortunately had to go as well. In a replay, I may investigate if it's possible to reconcile with them, but I seriously doubt it. While not as destructively closed-minded or anywhere near the same military league as the BoS, they seem completely intent on destroying The Institute as a sort of emancipation of its enslaved synths. I found this conceit too unpalatable to really care about their pursuits, found them too weak and too fringe to support. As Director of The Institute, I can treat all sentient synths as free beings, whether the more fascist elements in the organization like it or not.
Edit (4/15): "Official" in-game confirmation of this take, something I found more recently:
In an almost unthinkable series of recent events, the Institute has destroyed anyone in the Commonwealth who could conceivably stop them, including longterm player the Railroad, as well as the newly arrived Brotherhood of Steel. What's more, the shadowy, sinister organization has completed work on an advanced nuclear reactor that will provide them with nearly unlimited power for the foreseeable future. This surely means greater underground expansion, as well increased range of their teleporter technology (which, until recently, had been a closely-guarded Institute secret).
So what exactly does this mean for the Commonwealth, going forward?
"Nothing good" seems to be the consensus. In fact, most people assume the worst.
But isn't it possible these fears are unfounded? The Railroad may have opposed the Institute, but they also defended all synths - even those who would potentially infiltrate human society. And the Brotherhood's mighty airship may now lie a smoldering wreck - but was the neo-knightly order really interested in the Commonwealth's best interests anyway?
But perhaps the most compelling reason not to give up hope just yet is the fact that, if my sources are correct - and I know they are - the Institute is now under the direct influence of someone many of us have already met - the Wanderer. That lonely figure who came into our settlement searching for a missing child, and clearly found something else entirely. And maybe, just maybe, the Institute is all the better for it.
So be wary as we go into a new tomorrow, my friends. But stay strong. And always, always remember that humanity lives and dies on the surface. Humanity IS the Commonwealth. And maybe, just maybe, the Institute can be a part of that now.
-- from the final issue of The Synthetic Truth, written by Piper
So it turns out there is a fair amount of choice and dimensionality here after all. The complete picture of the story with all its different perspectives and motivations is much better than some critics have led us to believe. I am glad I persevered until I found a good path to a better future for the story. I was completely immersed in its nuances.
Edit 4/29: Final one, I hope.
Finished the game with my 2nd character. I chased the storyline I skipped before--the Railroad. By far the most difficult to do, because it is the least appealing, and because it has very obscure quest-line triggers near the end. I resorted to an outline view of these online, something I normally hate to do. It was either that, or kill Desdemona and her gang yet again. It is as I thought, an allusion to the Underground Railroad from where the new $20 bill will draw its face. I cannot think of man-made synths as a downtrodden slave race. The parallel to Africans in America is troubling at best.
On top of that, there is no compelling reason for the Railroad to demand the total destruction of the Institute, and vice-versa. It makes sense that the Third-Reich-like Brotherhood of Steel has to exterminate or be exterminated. But the rift between the other factions is not nearly so absolute, or necessary. The game will not allow any alternative, however unreasonably inflexible that may be. This is something that could not have been learned in my first playthrough, since the Railroad went down the tubes first, ahead of the BoS.
As before, I felt a bit queasy forcing myself to side against the wanderer's son (my son, as I identify with the wanderer). It was the wrong thing to do, and I knew that before, during, and after the events. The destruction of the most promising technology happened again. The huge atomic crater in the middle of the Commonwealth happened again. But hey, Desdemona and her handful of cohorts are happy. Lucky us.
Had a bit of a revelation today. The name I chose for my first character is "Jack". Codsworth called me "Mr Jack" in his John-Cleese-like voice, and it never struck me as odd for some reason. This isn't a canned name from a list. I typed out "J-a-c-k" to get it. Well it finally sunk in on my 2nd playthrough. I created a female character and called her "Laura". (Again, not a selection from a list--"L-a-u-r-a" on the keyboard.) Codsworth now calls me "Miss Laura" out loud. Cool! I wonder how many different names will get such treatment. Codsworth's voice does not sound synthesized, but is it? No one else calls me by name. Only Codsworth.
Yeah, Beth apparently added about a thousand names that Codsworth will utter. Here's a full list (http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Codsworth/recognized_names). There are a few Easter eggs in there too :P He'll even recognize "Kal-El"
I had the same thing, my character's name is also Jack and Iw as pleasantly surprised when my Robo butler called me by my character's name!
@Xessive
Since I have the Pass + want to get Far Harbor going...
[FO4 Base-Game Spoilers coming]
...I had to finally start-up the main-quest stuff to go find Nick Valentine (yep, found him now) + taking on Get A Clue Quest to find Kellogg.
Found Kellogg, now I gotta' deal with him in that Vault.
Thanks for that detailed review of the vanilla game, D. I agree for the most part with everything you said. I have a couple things to add.
I got heavily into the PC version of the game since I last posted here. I'm surprised I didn't post about it in this thread. I guess I must have felt it would just be redundant? No matter. What I found, in terms of performance, is that besides godrays, shadows have a huge impact on it when there is a lot going on. You can have high settings for the most part and still get a locked 60 fps (99% of the time) if you dial shadows back manually, from like 20000 to 5000. They must have really inefficient, CPU-bound shadowing code in this engine. My memory is letting me down now. I can't recall where you do this. It's in a config file somewhere.
As for the good/neutral/evil possibilities, check out my reply #121 above, and perhaps #119 before that. There are still multiple paths to the end, and who gets your support, who wins out, and how you handle certain missions and tasks, does have what I consider a significant impact on the future of humanity. I found a way to (at least in my mind) come up with what I considered the best outcome by far. I inserted quite a bit of my own reasoning, and tried to present some evidence backing it up. See what you think, if you haven't already.
Actually, the FO4 main-quest is one of the few quests that, at times, will offer up actual real meaningful choices. And it doesn't really do much of that, it seems, until the last 1/4 or so of the actual game's main quest.
It all seems like this choice-stuff finally begins to kick really into gear...
...Once you meet Father (AKA The Wanderer's son, Shaun).
I personally think that Far Harbor DLC does a much better job overall (probably b/c it's much smaller in size, scope, and can actually have some detail & depth to it b/c of its size). They often go more for a quality over quality thing in DLC's & expansions, as opposed to their base-games which often seem to be insanely huge sandboxes with a few quests w/ choice but tons of MMO-style fetch quests (either Radiant AI-based or hand-crafted fetch quests). Far Harbor also seems to have a lot more personality, as well. This all actually happens a lot w/ their DLC's & expansions - go see Fallout 3's The Pitt & Point Lookout; Oblivion's Shivering Isles expansion; Morrowind's Tribunal & Bloodmoon expansions; and Skyrim's Dawnguard & Dragonborn DLC's.