After completing The Witcher 3, Fallout 4 feels like it came from a B-Grade developer. Remember the days when Bethesda was top-tier in RPG games? My time with Morrowind was fantastic.
The problem with their latest games is that they seem to have not evolved in any way since then. I'd say Fallout 4 has even taken steps backwards.
I've just completed the game and I am astonished at how lazy the ending was. Sorry if this seems like a bit of a rant, but I need to vent.
Here's what I found during my play through. MOST OF THIS IS INDEED; OPINION.
The most disappointing part (spoiler time)...
I honestly didn't even want to cleanup the side quests and just turned the game off, put it back in its box and back on the shelf.
Maybe I'm just spoiled by The Witcher 3's awesome writing, quest design, story telling and ending, but Fallout 4 was easily the most disappointing game of 2015 for me.
Please Bethesda, please scrap your out-dated, patched together with super-glue game engine, hire a new writer and start fresh for your next game. If you don't, devs like CD Projekt Red and Larian are going to leave you in the dust.
Again, sorry for the rant, but I needed to vent and hopefully we can get some discussion out of the points I made. Am I totally wrong?
EDIT:
Some people mentioned that there's no way that I didn't like a single thing about the game. I actually did like some things about the game. For example...
Oh, and I didn't make the moneyhatter comment, not sure where some of you got that from. :S
The problem with their latest games is that they seem to have not evolved in any way since then. I'd say Fallout 4 has even taken steps backwards.
I've just completed the game and I am astonished at how lazy the ending was. Sorry if this seems like a bit of a rant, but I need to vent.
Here's what I found during my play through. MOST OF THIS IS INDEED; OPINION.
- Most character models/animations are simply embarrassing in 2015/16.
- What a steaming pile of shit the settlement system is. How about explain how some of it works via in-game tutorials Bethesda? Why do I have to google half of the functionality to use it properly? Why do I need a fucking perk to distribute my resources across settlements? Why do I need to wait for a settler to randomly come back to my settlement to cancel a trade route? The answer: the settlement system is a half-baked tacked-on turd to try and sell more copies of the game. I honestly said fuck it after battling with the system and having my crops glitch out for the 5th time and not be able to loot them. I'd rather go play Viva Pinata if I wanted to grow a settlement.
- Why are there no percentages in the tooltips in most of the perks? "Has a good chance to occur!" is not a very fucking useful perk description Bethesda! People shouldn't have to conduct experiments on Reddit to figure this shit out!
- The companions are just a nuisance and get in your way constantly, which is sad because I love dogs.
- Half the time I didn't know what my dialog choice wheel will actually say, so I stuck with the safe default answer.
- Dialog options are: be a dick, be a sarcastic prick, be a decent person. And half the time they don't change the outcome of the conversation at all.
- Characters are forgettable, except
Valentin, Piper and Dogmeat
- Random chance on conversation options is just fucking annoying.
- Most of the perks are simply damage increases or a random chance to do something. Also, my thought when unlocking a perk, should not be: "Oh thank god, that was such a tedious part of the game!". I'm looking at you Local Leader Perk. There are others too.
- Combat is not very enjoyable, I went with a melee build with some shooting mixed in. Using V.A.T.S with the Blitz perk caused all sorts of weird shit to happen, including clipping through walls or simply failing to attack properly. Same old press attack many times to win by shooting or beating a health bar to 0.
- Crafting system causes you to horde everything you find. Which may not sound like a bad thing, but when paired with a terrible sorting UI and 500 different items that contain various different materials. Good luck finding a material that breaks down into the raw material you need. If I subtracted the amount of time I spent picking shit up, I'd honestly have about 5 hours less play time.
- Armour is limited and very boring looking.
- Gun modifications are decent, but really just limited the variety of overall weapons.
- Definitely not the glitchiest Bethesda game I've played. I had 1 crash and my fair share of falling through the map or quests failing to progress properly requiring a reload though.
- Power armour; meh - annoying to babysit.
The most disappointing part (spoiler time)...
I actually had a hard time choosing which faction to go with, mostly because you have to pick from factions that are pretty much all dicks. So, I went with my good old Father's - um, I mean son (I see what you did there Bethesda writer, very clever! *rollseyes*) - faction. I was going to go with the Brotherhood until Danse was a Synth and they wanted to kill him. SO I went ahead and murdered Maxwell (he was a royal dick anyway) and all of his crew in the airport and on the ship. I went back to Danse in his hide out expecting him to say something cool about my murdering spree. He says nothing. Literally nothing.
Then, Father wants me to kill the Railroad. Sure I'll do that, they were pretty annoying anyway - except PAM, I left her alive. Then he wants me to blow up the Brotherhood's ship... umm, I just murdered them all, but sure. So I continue to murder more people while I destroy 3 generators (lol) and the ship crashes. It looked pretty cool, but is that really it, no one is going to comment on what I did? I went back to Danse thinking he HAS to comment on the ship being destroyed, right? WRONG - he says nothing again.
Fine - I think - I'll go back to Father and see what happens next. Father is lying in his bed and he dies. The Fucking End. Oh, by the way, WAR NEVER ENDS - did you know that? Plot twist! What a joke!
Then, Father wants me to kill the Railroad. Sure I'll do that, they were pretty annoying anyway - except PAM, I left her alive. Then he wants me to blow up the Brotherhood's ship... umm, I just murdered them all, but sure. So I continue to murder more people while I destroy 3 generators (lol) and the ship crashes. It looked pretty cool, but is that really it, no one is going to comment on what I did? I went back to Danse thinking he HAS to comment on the ship being destroyed, right? WRONG - he says nothing again.
Fine - I think - I'll go back to Father and see what happens next. Father is lying in his bed and he dies. The Fucking End. Oh, by the way, WAR NEVER ENDS - did you know that? Plot twist! What a joke!
I honestly didn't even want to cleanup the side quests and just turned the game off, put it back in its box and back on the shelf.
Maybe I'm just spoiled by The Witcher 3's awesome writing, quest design, story telling and ending, but Fallout 4 was easily the most disappointing game of 2015 for me.
Please Bethesda, please scrap your out-dated, patched together with super-glue game engine, hire a new writer and start fresh for your next game. If you don't, devs like CD Projekt Red and Larian are going to leave you in the dust.
Again, sorry for the rant, but I needed to vent and hopefully we can get some discussion out of the points I made. Am I totally wrong?
Now on to Xenoblade X, high hopes based on what I've been reading!
EDIT:
Some people mentioned that there's no way that I didn't like a single thing about the game. I actually did like some things about the game. For example...
- First time the radioactive storm started was pretty awesome, sounded amazing with surround sound and a woofer!
- I liked
working with Valentine/Piper to find Kellog then killing him (probably where the story peaked for me)
- The Glowing Sea was cool.
- The Deathclaws looked badass despite combat with them being: shoot, shoot, shoot, melee, get roared at in your face, repeat.
- Dogmeat
- Random interjections from companions in some quest dialog was unexpected, and Piper saying sorry to Dogmeat when you swap her in.
- I was actually interested in the story when I entered you know where, but then nothing was explained.
- The Powerfist
Oh, and I didn't make the moneyhatter comment, not sure where some of you got that from. :S