Fallout 4 — Boston Makes Me Feel Good

[Dewar]

I played through the entirety of New Vegas a month ago and didn't use VATS once. I'm not sure if it made it a better game or not, but it did keep me from doing the overpowered hybrid combat of opening up with VATS to instantly kill 3 enemies and FPS-ing the rest. It also caused a weird situation where there wasn't a single perk available that I was particularly interested in because so many were VATS related.

 

Also, I love the "future the 1950s thought we'd have" style of Fallout. In my opinion, there wasn't enough of it in Fallout 3, and I'd be really disappointed if they got rid of it entirely. It would really just be another crappy post apocalyptic game to me at that point.

[SuperBiasedMan]

Instead of the VATS system I opted for the 'melee everything to death' approach, and it was also way too effective for me through the game. I didn't really play it for the combat.

[Patrick R]

I must be some bizarre case study because I adored the VATS. In 60+ hours of gameplay seeing Raider's heads explode in slow-motion never got old. 

 

The only thing I don't like about the combat is how it was often you line up a shot in VATS only to have all your bullets go directly into a nearby wall that you didn't think was in your way.

[Max Ernst]

I can't wait for the Obsidian spin-off in which the writing is better, the world building has subtlety and recognises that to feel a post-apocalyptic (ugh) world, you need to feel that you aren't that significant- because everything is hopeless.

 

 

Also remember when the President was a computer in Fallout 3? Remember? That was designed to be a big reveal that MADE YOU THINK. 

 

I know I am being super shitty on Bethesda but they build these huge worlds and then ruin them by having people spew lore and exposition at you. All the characters feel like archtypes and all your choices are pretty simple (gee, do I blow up a town or do I let them live, I wonder what the moral choice is here...it's so complex!). It was nice playing New Vegas because the companions were memorable, each final outcome was loaded with complexities and positives and negatives. Do I go with NCR, even if they are a bloated bureaucracy that will slow things down on the strip, but at the same time provide it structure and security? Do you enable House to rule? While he is a paranoid who will do a lot of shitty things to maintain to his rule, the people enjoy a brief bit of respite on his strip and are thankful to have some happy moments away from their shitty lives. 

 

New Vegas is a game that created a bleak, sparse world. It gets knocked for not because the tourist-landmark-roadtrip that Fallout 3 is, but that's what I love about it. It's a game where you sense the helplessness of the little communities that struggle to cement themselves among the nothingness. It's a game where you see nothing but sand to the horizon, and then filled with fear when the clean horizon is broken (by what? a ranger? Ceasar's troops? A scorpion? A merchant?). It's a world where people are trying to keep their chin up in the face of the worst living standards, and doing everything they can to hide it. In a world where civilisation has essentially hit the reset button, cultures have approached the rebuilding phase employing a range of ideologies. When these ideologies clash in the context of hardship, their worst elements come forward. Fallout 3/Skyrim posited large, dense worlds ful lof busting towns and communties. When you poke at the edges, you realise how shallow these towns are, with their limited population on a constant loop and barking the same handful of lines at you. New Vegas makes no such assertion- this is a small world, littered with small communities. With the limits of game technology, the realities of game development, and the parameters of the world it suggests, there can be no other way, really.

 

Anyway, I will play Fallout 4 and will probably enjoy it because I like exploring, but it's inevitable shortcomings in its storytelling will be what I remember when I walk away from it. I just wrote all this without an edit or a reread so it hope it makes sense and that I realise I just criticised a game that I have yet to play but I have played every Bethesda game so I don't feel too bad about it.

[Max Ernst]

Also this is a good bit of games criticism.

[Atlantic]

Fallout 4 is available for pre-order on Steam (I'm not going to link it for those who are weak willed; also, pre-orders are disgusting).

 

It'd be weird if it wasn't released this year.

[SecretAsianMan]

The thing I never really loved about the Fallout universe was the mix of serious, bleak setting and goofy, almost 4th wall breaking silliness.  I like both of those things, but they're so present in the game that I never knew how I was supposed to be interpreting things.  Am I supposed to take this serious?  Is this a huge joke?  If they were random one offs that I encountered very infrequently than it would be fine, but I feel like every other step lead a joke, followed by something serious, followed by another joke, then more seriousness, then...  The end result for me was not taking anything seriously because it all felt like a joke.

[feelthedarkness]

Man I want to +1 Max Ernst's post super hard. I really think New Vegas, and particularly the 4 DLCs taken together are masterpieces. (I of course went No Gods No Masters at the end, even though it really bummed me out to have to turn on some of the people I really liked)

 

I enjoyed 3, and I'll probably enjoy 4, but they're kind of like cover bands, all the gloss little of the heart. NV tries for meaning in a way I don't feel 3 does. 

 

Also, just on a worldbuilding level I'm a little worried about setting it in a metropolis, because I think it misses the point/heart of Fallout as an expression of the postwar midcentury exurban/suburban fantasy to turned disaster. 

[Vasari]

I'm on board the New Vegas train as well. Dead Money never gets enough recognition for how brilliant it was.

[feelthedarkness]

Also, a nice illustration of this is the granularity of the endings NV has, compared to 3: 

 

http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Fallout:_New_Vegas_endings

http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Fallout_3_endings

[Gamebeast23456]

I have really been enjoying that New Vegas gives human life an element of dignity in its portrayal that you just don't get in most games. There's a lot of very stoic portraits of many of the small towns that makes it actually feel close to life in a post apocalypse, highlighting "life", not just the slow death I feel like existed in 3.

[chummer]

I can't wait for the Obsidian spin-off in which the writing is better, the world building has subtlety and recognises that to feel a post-apocalyptic (ugh) world, you need to feel that you aren't that significant- because everything is hopeless.

 

...

 

Anyway, I will play Fallout 4 and will probably enjoy it because I like exploring, but it's inevitable shortcomings in its storytelling will be what I remember when I walk away from it. I just wrote all this without an edit or a reread so it hope it makes sense and that I realise I just criticised a game that I have yet to play but I have played every Bethesda game so I don't feel too bad about it.

 

I'm of two minds about your post, with one being an enthusiastic "Yes!" and the other saying "Let's not sell FO3 short." While my memories of enjoyment from FO3 are fewer and farther between than those from NV, I think they might be more emotionally affecting. Agatha's Song and Temple of the Union are ones that always come to mind I think of Fallout as a whole. I also remember those random radio towers that you could power on, get a short range station that looped some desperate message, and led to a nearby bunker where a tiny, environmental story was told. I also loved the urban area of the game because you were forced to use the metros to get around. All of that stuff- except for the world navigating- existed on the margins though and Skyrim didn't leave me enthused about Bethesda's work, so I share your skepticism.

 

That said, if I had to choose between the two, I'd choose NV, but I don't think we're going to get that because Obsidian is out there making an MMO.

[miffy495]

God do I need to go back and finish New Vegas. It fell victim to a hard drive failure causing there to be a 3 month gap where I didn't have a PC to play games on. I didn't want to re-do the 30 hours I had done, but I had no idea where I was anymore. Maybe the time is right to jump back in.

[chummer]

God do I need to go back and finish New Vegas. It fell victim to a hard drive failure causing there to be a 3 month gap where I didn't have a PC to play games on. I didn't want to re-do the 30 hours I had done, but I had no idea where I was anymore. Maybe the time is right to jump back in.

 

I say "yes" because- aside from the game being great- I imagine you can play another 30 hours of the game and manage to explore whole other spaces of the world.

[Azniac]

One thing I liked a lot about New Vegas was how much the world made sense. I know that it's a little silly to talk about 'realism' in game with Fallout's tone and setting, but New Vegas felt a lot less constructed. Fallout 3 had some memorable locations, but they were memorable because they all had a spin on them. The tower filled with rich people, the city around a atomic bomb, the city on the aircraft carrier. I guess there's nothing wrong with that, but I never felt like I was exploring a world.

 

New Vegas just had towns. Cities of people. There were farms, sharecroppers, a power plant. The world felt like it existed for something other than my own amusement. 

 

I hope I don't sound crazy, I know a lot of these are just feelings and not quantifiable, but it's why I love New Vegas.

[pabosher]

If I were to buy one for PC (considering I own 3 for 360 but never *really* played it), should I get 3 or NV? And should I get all the DLC with your choice?

[Vasari]

Personally I think New Vegas is the better of the two, it improves on 3 in every way. Plus the DLC is all brilliant in New Vegas, where in 3 it ranges from pretty good to abysmal.

[SecretAsianMan]

Personally I think New Vegas is the better of the two, it improves on 3 in every way. Plus the DLC is all brilliant in New Vegas, where in 3 it ranges from pretty good to abysmal.

 

I would agree with that.

[Professor Video Games]

I never got around to playing the DLC for New Vegas. Based on all the Fallout talk that's been going on lately, this was a mistake.

[Twig]

I think Fallout Tactics is the best one.

[Dinosaursssssss]

 

I actually really liked tactics; it had a lot of interesting backstory for the Brotherhood of Steel and I think this is the best looking power armor in the series.

 

But what this thread really needs is more of the best game ever made, Fallout 2

 

 

Play Fallout 2

[JonCole]

Yeah, play New Vegas over 3. However, if you suspect that you might end up playing both I'd play 3 first because as the others say NV is a definite iteration upon 3 and it'd feel weird to move backwards.

[Mawd]

Play Fallout 2

 

Yessssssss

 

That game is so special. Though I should probably stop beelining to San Fran to pick up all the goodies in early game.

 

Y'know just watching that vid I started thinking that it might be fun to have some kind of mod where if you do have a vault born character in F4 that you do need to wear protective eyewear for the start of the game as you slowly adjust. Idk I think It'd be fun in the same vein as the Skyrim Wet and Cold mod having to perceive the world through some dinky eyewear before finally taking them off to see the vibrant details of the wasteland.

[Dewar]

I never got around to playing the DLC for New Vegas. Based on all the Fallout talk that's been going on lately, this was a mistake.

 

By the time I got to the end of the actual game, I didn't feel like playing anymore, so I didn't do the DLC either. Also, the fact that you have companions they want you to care about, but then don't let you take along is kind of a bummer.

[feelthedarkness]

the DLC heavily relates to one companion. All 4 are pretty uniquely scoped, 10-20 hour adventures with a narrative through line. 

 

i also agree with Azniac, it's neat that when you get to the strip there is a HUGE plot of land that is basically just farmland. I think one or two quests might cross this huge space, but it's mostly just there to build the world.