mikemariano

Fallout 4 — Boston Makes Me Feel Good

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As far as I know this is true. My friends online complained that if they even started the game with the controller plugged in, the keyboard was unavailable and there wasn't even an option to switch to it.

 

An hour after unlock, My first impressions: I didn't realize how much I'd miss Ron Perlman and the traditional old-timey music opening. Also, tons of facial options in a Bethesda game and it's still impossible to make a character that actually looks human. They need to buy whatever facial tech EA uses for Dragon Age and Mass Effect. 

 

There's an option under gameplay to turn the controller on and off (which I think you need to use the controller to activate) which lets you switch back to the keyboard. I was hoping for seamless switching between controller and keyboard since I'd like to explore with a gamepad and shoot with a mouse. Oh well. At least I have a dog friend. 

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There's an option under gameplay to turn the controller on and off (which I think you need to use the controller to activate) which lets you switch back to the keyboard. I was hoping for seamless switching between controller and keyboard since I'd like to explore with a gamepad and shoot with a mouse. Oh well. At least I have a dog friend. 

 

I am a little worried about how often he will bark. Might have to go it alone.

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That Guardian review is by Rich Stanton, friend of Crate and Crowbar. He regularly writes for Eurogamer, and is generally pretty good.

 

Thanks, that explains why it was good.

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I am a little worried about how often he will bark. Might have to go it alone.

 

Don't worry, someone will mod in a muzzle soon enough. 

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I'm waiting for my steam controller to arrive to play but I just watched Jim Sterling's video on the

'polyamorous relationships'? It hardly seems like an actual thing to me. Is their poly nature actually addressed at all or does each partner just pretend the other ones don't exist and the player can do whatever they want romantically regardless of anything? Seems more Bethesda just offhandedly didn't put that restriction up unless I missed something. Just seems odd to celebrate it so hard, though I could be wrong.

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I am liking the new graphics. I was walking in the woods alone at night in the rain and was legitimately a little freaked out. I was convinced every sound was a ghoul coming for me. The capital wasteland never felt as spooky to me. The swamps in point lookout are probably the closest FO3 came, but those enemies were annoying not scary. The ghouls are very zombie like now. Their arms come off, they go down and come back up, charge you occasionally. Love it.

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I think I've made my peace with the keyboard/mouse interface. I hit a perfect stopping point when it was time to go to bed, and then I played for another hour and a half. The game's hooked me. The bumpy start had me worried, but nope I'm good! Yay Fallout!

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The opening of the game did not really grab me and I thought that perhaps I'm not into Bethesda style RPGs anymore, but the moment I got out of the Vault and saw the view, it was bye bye free time, I will miss you.

 

I did not play for long after that yesterday, but my first impressions are that the atmosphere, especially the sound design, in the wasteland is excellent. The abandoned suburb near the vault was fantastically eerie with all the random clangs and the wind and all the other ambient sounds. I turned on the radio just to feel a bit more comfortable. The scared, insecure and lonely announcer only made things worse. Excellent.

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The giant bomb review is interesting, because it gives two separate scores: 4 stars for PC and 3 stars for XB1 and PS4. It does spoil the beginning, though.

I'm about 8 hours in and having a great time, but then I really love Bethesda RPGs, so another one of those is very welcome. Having spent 5 years in the Boston area, a lot of the area names are pleasingly familiar: I just reached Cambridge, which is where I used to live and work :). I've had the opportunity to help or do great evil to a couple of factions.

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I don't have much to say about this game, but the sarcasm button is the best fucking button. Why isn't this in games more?

 

Wow, a sarcasm button.  That sure seems like a good use of development resources.

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Listening to the bombcast, it just sounds like more Fallout 3. Which is cool, but I had my fill of that. If there's nothing new in there, I'm kinda glad. I don't really want to play another 100+ hour open world game this year.

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Listening to the bombcast, it just sounds like more Fallout 3. Which is cool, but I had my fill of that. If there's nothing new in there, I'm kinda glad. I don't really want to play another 100+ hour open world game this year.

 

That's sort of my problem too.  I don't really have time for a game that's designed to take forever.

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That's sort of my problem too.  I don't really have time for a game that's designed to take forever.

As someone who is trying to save money right now its exactly the kind of game I want. I'm hoping it keeps me busy at least long enough for Just Cause 3 to come out.

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The giant bomb review is interesting, because it gives two separate scores: 4 stars for PC and 3 stars for XB1 and PS4. It does spoil the beginning, though.

I'm about 8 hours in and having a great time, but then I really love Bethesda RPGs, so another one of those is very welcome. Having spent 5 years in the Boston area, a lot of the area names are pleasingly familiar: I just reached Cambridge, which is where I used to live and work :). I've had the opportunity to help or do great evil to a couple of factions.

 

I do not mean to be contentious, but how do you spoil the beginning of something?

 

Wow, a sarcasm button.  That sure seems like a good use of development resources.

 

:tup:  :clap:  :tup:

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Listening to the bombcast, it just sounds like more Fallout 3. Which is cool, but I had my fill of that. If there's nothing new in there, I'm kinda glad. I don't really want to play another 100+ hour open world game this year.

 

The Bombcast also said that it only took Jeff around 40 hours to beat. If you don't have time I get it, but it doesn't sound like it's another 100+ hours.

 

Edit: My impressions are mostly positive so far. It seems like much more of a real world than Fallout 3 or New Vegas did. Actual vegetation, more realistic seeming terrain. I thought having a voiced main character would bother me, but it's been pretty good so far. Voice acting is about the best it's been in a Bethesda game.

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The Bombcast also said that it only took Jeff around 40 hours to beat. If you don't have time I get it, but it doesn't sound like it's another 100+ hours.

 

Maybe you can beat it in less than 100 hours but it sounds like there is easily 100+ hours worth of content.  That's not a bad thing per se, but these days I feel better about being able to finish a game in less time than that while having experienced all the content.

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The giant bomb review is interesting, because it gives two separate scores: 4 stars for PC and 3 stars for XB1 and PS4. It does spoil the beginning, though.

I'm about 8 hours in and having a great time, but then I really love Bethesda RPGs, so another one of those is very welcome. Having spent 5 years in the Boston area, a lot of the area names are pleasingly familiar: I just reached Cambridge, which is where I used to live and work :). I've had the opportunity to help or do great evil to a couple of factions.

 

I was sorta hoping the Boston geography would be more accurate; probably shouldn't have expected it, but it's really jarring for me seeing Harvard Square and MIT represent all of Cambridge, with the city ending a block away from the Harvard train station. There are a few recognizable landmarks scattered around, but certain areas like Concord feel so distant from their real life counterpart that it pulls me out a bit. I went to high school in Concord and have lived around Cambridge for the past 6ish years so I'm probably just a little too familiar with it.

 

That said, obviously they were gonna change the geography to make this game playable, and I think they did a great job of capturing the feel of the area. Even if the layout is unrecognizable, the environments and lightning of the woods around Concord feel just right and the architecture feels true to reality (though of course mixed in with Fallouts 50s retro future thing).

 

Anyway, played maybe 8 hours yesterday and I'm enjoying it so far. The main story writing isn't grabbing me, but the Settlers for fo3/new vegas was easily my favorite mod for those games, so the town building aspect is really doing it for me (even though the tutorialization for it is awful). 

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I haven't figured out what the base crafting thing is about, but I did spend a lot of time. I straightened some fences and other probably useless stuff.

I turned off the floating quest thingy and set HUD translucency to 50%, it's much better that way.

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I was sorta hoping the Boston geography would be more accurate; probably shouldn't have expected it, but it's really jarring for me seeing Harvard Square and MIT represent all of Cambridge, with the city ending a block away from the Harvard train station. There are a few recognizable landmarks scattered around, but certain areas like Concord feel so distant from their real life counterpart that it pulls me out a bit. I went to high school in Concord and have lived around Cambridge for the past 6ish years so I'm probably just a little too familiar with it.

That said, obviously they were gonna change the geography to make this game playable, and I think they did a great job of capturing the feel of the area. Even if the layout is unrecognizable, the environments and lightning of the woods around Concord feel just right and the architecture feels true to reality (though of course mixed in with Fallouts 50s retro future thing).

Anyway, played maybe 8 hours yesterday and I'm enjoying it so far. The main story writing isn't grabbing me, but the Settlers for fo3/new vegas was easily my favorite mod for those games, so the town building aspect is really doing it for me (even though the tutorialization for it is awful).

Thanks for this post, I probably won't get around to playing the game for a little while but I've been really curious about how accurate Boston is depicted given the scale.

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