AnotherUserName

Some good, some bad, and some ugly... After reading all the negatives I wanted to add my voice. Coming from the background of originally playing Fallout 1, 2, Tactics, 3, NV, and now 4 (over 100 hours). And RPGs over many many years. As an RPG this just really isn't much of one anymore. The score would be more like a 2 or 3. As an FPS it's probably more like a 7 or 8 I'm thinking. Action/Adventure/Comedy?? meh... So the good? What I liked - Atmospherics. Rain, Radiation storms, vegetation (yeah it's dead but it's there), clouds. It's feels more like what you might expect a post apocalyptic world to be like. (maybe not 200 years later but...) - I think the people actually do look different from each other compared to FO3 - The fallout franchise Finally figured out how to make the dangers of radiation poising have a real practical effect. - They included some FPS things, like a grenade button. - I actually thought the voice acting was well improved with respects to the quality of delivery over FO3 and NV. - Some quest items have time limits. I know some people hate this, but I also liked my companions to actually be able to die. I prefer the real consequences over the idea that raiders would actually sit on an abducted settler for months until you get around to killing their camp. - You can really build the home of your dreams (mostly). - Creatures are more interesting. Burrowing, crawling out of holes. Clinging to walls, etc. The Bad.... - It's not really an RPG, it's an open world FPS. (that's got to be the worst of the worse) - Your character development is almost irrelevant. Other than leveling up for more hit points. - Dialog options are pretty much gone now. - Your settlements become tedious (seriously do I have to literally rescue them all the time?) - Hardcore mode? - Lots of Mutants, lots of ghouls - City flavor is missing (more on that below) - The bones of Fallout 1 & 2 are just about gone now. I know a lot of people are complaining about the graphics, and some of the glitches. I watched a dead mirelurk fall from the sky after I reloaded a quick save. But those are mostly inconsequential. It seems to me that Bethesda looked at what the modding community was doing and took some of the well executed ones and added it to FO4. Environmental effects, and building. I was excited for the idea that I could carve out a settlement the way I imagined. Instead, I'm dealing with a bunchy of whiny settlements that never seem to take care of themselves. However I had a concern after FO3 that they might try to slide into their Elder Scrolls territory with a sequel. Instead it appears they're trying to squeak out a pure FPS but can't quite bring themselves to do it. And really they shouldn't. There's lots of other games that do that better. So when I said the "flavor" is missing I mean it like this. I used to (and still do) play FO3 just to wander into the capital wasteland and feel the oppressive, ruin of a world brought to it's knees by bombs, and just what might be around the corner. The look, the feel. Imagining what that building might hold if I could just get inside somehow. Instead in FO4 I try to find the quickest route some where cause I get tired of running into ONE MORE RAIDER SETTLEMENT blocking the street. Or if it's not a raider it's super mutants. It's less about discovery and more about fighting. Which many others have pointed out is all you really do in the service of pretty much every quest. Save some one by killing everything. Bring a new settlement into the fold by doing a quest for them to kill every thing. Someone giving you a problem? Eh, kill em. Might as well. So the joy of discovery for me has been largely, largely, stamped out by knowing that all I'm pretty much going to do after killing all the ______ (fill in the blank) is find a building full of junk to scrap. FO4 implemented the same scheme that Diablo has done for years by adding some kind of unique effect to their weapons or armor to make it stand out from the crowd. Was kind of fun at first, but honestly, it stopped being of much interest a dozen hours in when you see the same things keep showing up. There's room to improve this with patching or DLC. To conclude, if you like just going out and shooting stuff, you might like this. If you like RPGs you won't really get what you want. Hopefully two things come out of this. First, we can hope Oblivion Entertainment gets another shot at a Fallout with a follow-up to New Vegas. Second, hopefully Bethesda, goes back to the RPG core that made this game what it is. But please not Skyrim with a robots. Fallout 1 & 2 were loved for a reason!