I'm almost to the end of Fallout 4. From the beginning I was afraid of the 'Skyrim Face Pissing' infecting the ending...like I was lying on my back and watching the arc of the stream.
Preface. You are part of a happy couple with a newborn baby boy. A salesman shows up at the door and tells you that your space in the nearby 'Vault' is complimentary due to military service in the household.... The bombs soon fall...you get to the vault...and without a word of explanation, you are cryogenically frozen in a capsule and your partner and baby boy are frozen in the other. Some time later, both you and your partner are thawed out, some thug takes the baby away from your partner and shoots her/him. You are frozen again and get thawed out some time later. Now on a quest to find your baby boy, you kill some bugs, leave the vault and find that it is many years later and the old neighborhood has gone to shit.
You soon rescue this group calling themselves the minutemen...probably because every minute or so they will auto dump a timed quest into your log that you will feel obliged to do if you want to continue feeling like a good person. Do yourself a favor...when you build a second settlement, move Preston Garvey there...and only go there if you really want to do another inane Minuteman quest otherwise you will find it hard to do anything else. When you get to a point in a quest where it says "Go See Preston Garvey" - DON'T. The timed quests will time out eventually and give you a 'Mission Complete' Result if all you have to do is to turn them in. It wouldn't be so bad if they actually spread the mission locations around a bit so you could explore new areas and get new stuff... but they tend to lean on the same area. I've been to the Corvega facility at least 10 times on different missions and I know I haven't even explored 1/10th of what is out there.
You have to think that there is one guy in the game design who absolutely goes the opposite way of what everyone else wants...and they are mostly right:
"So people are upset at having to cart around useless junk from our previous games. All in favor of eliminating junk from this game?" Aye Aye Aye go the sycophants. NAY! Goes the black sheep.
Actualizing the salvage potential in even the most seemingly useless of items will involve the player in an extravagant crafting system that features weapon mods, armor mods, and structures.
And it works!
"So, what...we'll stick to the usual format of giving the player the God armor later on in the game?"
Aye Aye Aye go the sycophants. NAY! Goes the black sheep. Having the Power Armor available early in the game with one proviso: That it uses power cells that will deplete quickly if under constant use. The player balances when they need armor to the cost of maintenance. This will require thinking and strategy - which most gamers enjoy.
And it works!
"So...yeah...We'll do the Skyrim thing where the quest will wait for the player to do it. All in favor?"
Aye Aye Aye go the sycophants. NAY! Goes the black sheep. Having not only timed quests but ones that insert themselves into the player's quest log will give the player a sense of urgency. They will have to think on their feet and decide which quests to do first. "Listen...I've been right the last two times haven't I?"
And it doesn't work! (well I did say 'Mostly')
It's a good thing they did this just to the Minuteman quests. You can't have your Minecraft and your Call of Duty too. This is what is known as an 'IceCream Pizza'. Two things that people like that just don't work together. Sitting there trying to design a colony while a quest sits in your log going 'Tick Tock' at you is not that much fun.
There is a settlement building element to this game. You can build generators...crops...buildings... defenses...just tons of stuff. Why? To defend your settlers and make them happy. Uh...why? Really? It's just a side game. The real benefits of having so many colonies is to have artillery close to wherever you will happen to be as well as a place to sleep and stow your stuff if you happen to be in the neighborhood.
I soon realized that numbers to this mini - game were way off. People would complain about 'Not having enough beds' and I would find they had more than enough. The numbers 'On Site' versus the numbers in the Pip-Boy would also not match up. Sources on the Net say that Diversification of crop will make your people happy...Enough Electricity...radios...lights...pictures... chairs...rugs...defenses. Nope. Nix. Nada. Nay. Nary. Would I trust that they would have got those numbers right considering that there are two apparent examples of where the game got the numbers quite wrong? I'm not saying I didn't enjoy it but Bethesda needs to patch that shit with someone who passed grade 3 math.
You can't rate this game by starting off at 10 and taking a point off every place the game pooches something. Why? Because the ambition of the Games' own making raised the bar to 15...but then did a half assed job of it.
Bethesda has done this since Daggerfall. There was a game that, on a full install, would take up 2/3rd of the average hard drive size of the time. There was a revolutionary map creation system for dungeons...unfortunately, one often found oneself in pointless endless corridors that lead to no where. There were rumors found in conversations that reflected politics between different groups outside the game - that you didn't know the first thing about. Now in Fallout 4... Approximately 150k lines of voice acted dialogue. This is truly unprecedented! Now, unlike the expansions in 'Fallout New Vegas', The dialogue doesn't bore a hole in your skull like the verbal form of Chinese water torture. Unfortunately, The dialogue options often do not actually reflect how they are actually going to be used. English is funny like that. You get the first few words of a sentence in your choices and may actually be used in the context which you had not intended.
**Slight Spoiler
The story itself is good versus good. Not good versus good intentions (with some crazy idea of overt radical thinking to benefit the future of mankind). Every faction in this is all 'Black and White' in a very grey world. You never get enough information to actually make a proper decision despite supposedly having proper access to it. The end battles are grandiose and epic... but all endings lead to killing good people that you may actually be very close to. I don't know of any thinking, feeling
individual who would enjoy shooting their friends. No. You aren't going crazy (like in Spec ops: The Line) and it isn't in self defense (as in Far Cry 2). What kind of a soulless monster wrote this crap-
Oh
Yes there is the joke about Gingers being soulless but I'm wondering if, in this case, it isn't true. Ladies and Gentlemen, it's
Emil Pagliarulo. Remember epic battles in Skyrim that you absolutely never did because
to do them, you had to kill good people? Emil is master at creating the perfect grey so that
it doesn't matter what side you choose, you are going to feel like an asshole if you have a soul. I guess he's jealous. There's the big payoff for hours and hours of building and leveling is to feel like an ass for this guy's supposed 'Writing Cred'. I'm not sure what he is trying to do but I'm sure eventually he will get it right... or perhaps the producers will decide to go drinking with a writer that actually HAS talent in the story aspect. Emil has allowed the player to get up close and friendly with those that the player will later have to kill...and possibly twice. That way the player can appreciate the loss of their friends while having a swashbuckling adventure shooting them! I've been around a while and have seen plenty of 'Ice Cream Pizza' but this has got to be the most blatantly stupid contradictions of ingredients I've ever seen (and that is saying something!).
All the guns and armor are extremely customizable...almost too much so. You remember all that crap you had to sell in previous versions of the game? Well now damn near everything has a use. There is definite 'Rhino Hiding' where 9 bullets to the head won't kill something but the 10th will cause their head too look like it was hit by an 88. A .50 cal. bullet to the head will kill anything IRL. It can take out most armored vehicles. If a T-Rex was around, a .50 cal. bullet to the head would make it extinct again. If a person is hit with a .50 cal. round, the effect on the body is so great that resulting
trauma would - well...lets just say it's pretty grizzly. So when I play a game where I shoot someone in the head with a 50 Cal. and they barely even notice...and then again with the same effect; well... 'Immersion' looks like it just took the round in its place.
An enemy in a 'Caution' state will blink in and out of reality causing the location of their body parts to disappear and reappear in different positions. Contrast that to say Far Cry 3 where body movement is much more fluid. Also hitting some enemies in the head will not only have no staggering effect but cause them to move instantly up to 6 feet left or right. It's pretty funny when you manage to kill an enemy in the process of this 'Dodge Dash' because they will launch themselves like 50 feet.
Grenades and Molotov's are also delivered with the same unrealism. They just sort of appear in the NPC's hand (with the pin pulled and pre lit respectively) and are tossed like a handful of gravel...like we used to do when we were kids pretending to be soldiers. The grenades are pre 'cooked' to about 1 second when they land at your feet (on a dime)...which is funny because they must have cooked them in their pockets because they weren't in their hands for that long. Though I did like the idea that, because the enemy could be deadly...you had to fight smart when not attacking in power armor. The combat is pretty balanced. You can't run and gun so well and that is proper...don't expect to always 'Peter Pan Ballet' your way to victory in this. The enemy is hard to see and can be shooting at you from 6 different places. Your best bet is to get to cover and pick them off one by one. The AI, however, is most deadly when it is in the open. It moves like old Doom PvP with the bullet impact teleportation effect and magic spell molotovs. It did actually remind me a lot of original Bioshock AI as some of the Feral AI reminded me of the RAGE mutants. AI in cover would stick its head completely out of cover and remain mostly stationary...Boom.
I enjoyed most of the game, in fact. As I was approaching the end, I saw dark storm clouds looming overhead...but that wasn't rain coming out of them.
Spoilers:
Spoilers:
Spoilers:
When you find your son he is 60 years old and head of this 'Institute'. Despite your relationship to him, you can't ask him the real questions about exactly what is going on with the disappearances or the escaped androids.
Where is the "Come on, Zimmer...what is it you aren't telling me...why would an android want to escape or feel guilt!" moments!?
Why can't you take charge of your fate? You're force fed one of four flavors of ending and they all taste like shit...and you get to kill your good buddies for some so-called 'Greater Cause' when the cause you are fighting for isn't exactly perfect either.
This is Fallout 4's Stormcloaks Versus Imperials face pissing...but it's mandatory in order to finish the game. Seriously...I play games to fight the good fight. To do what I can't do in real life and shoot assholes...of which, I'm sure we can all agree, the world has no shortage of. I don't fantasize about shooting my friends so I have no desire to play a game that says "In order to finish this game you have to shoot one of your good friends".
GAMES ARE NOT NOVELS. I don't want to find myself in a fast paced action shooter only to have it morph into "All Quiet on the Western Front"!!! It's times like these when I just want to go back and play Doom where there is none of this 'Moral ambiguity'.
The original Fallout 1 and 2 were clever. They had a 'Good' versus 'Good' idea but here is the difference: The intended enemy belied a brutal or ruthless nature that disqualified them to be humanity's heirs.
End of Spoilers
The Verdict? 8.0/15 (Yeah...they raised the bar but did a half assed job in writing, AI and execution)
