First Fallout 4 Reviews

It's hard for me to read these, but I do try to glance at them. The Ars Technica piece hits on something that I really expected; Fallout 4 is not technically superior to anything. I kinda expected that, once I heard that they used the ancient gamebryo engine once again.

This matters about 3% to my enjoyment of an open world game that revolves around exploration. If the graphics are at the Skyrim level, that is high enough for me to enjoy hundreds, if not thousands, of hours of exploration. Would I like more awesome shininess? Yes, I would. The game has already been lowered to a max score of 97% since reading these articles :)
 
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The Ars Technica review is like a slap in the FO4's face. The new game features (settlements, perks, etc) are not that SPECIAL (pun intended).

Ars Technica's verdict sums it up: I didn't preorder it, and I won't rush to buy it. As I wrote months ago in another thread, I will not pay 80 dollars for this game (in my opinion, I don't think it is worth it).
 
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That Ars Technica is brutal! And it pretty much confirms my feelings on what Bethesda was going to turn the franchise into once I saw there were no skills in the game.

Fallout 4 is clearly bigger than any Fallout that's come before it—we'd estimate that it's at least twice the size of Fallout 3, if not even more. When you eventually reach a point in the game that reveals the entire game world in one fell swoop, the effect is pretty staggering. The problem is, so much of Fallout 4's content is recycled stuff. Almost every outpost's buildings look identical—all the same ragged wooden textures with the same chairs, same desks, same doors, same "broken" wall designs, all surrounded by the same trees and same leaves.

The moments when you stumble upon actual Boston landmarks, like an early appearance from Fenway Park, feel particularly refreshing as a result. But these instances are rare. Fallout 4 doesn't take place from a beautiful, sweeping, from-the-sky perspective. Instead, you're often inches away from these repetitive details (especially if you're hunting for scrap as much as the game encourages you to). There are huge expanses of Fallout 4's map that look like they'd been built with an in-game tool that just copied and pasted houses from other parts of the game on generic hillsides.
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It's the boredom of Skyrim all over again… ie, if you didnt find yourself ready to claw your eyes out in Skyrim after 20 hours of repetitive nothingness, you'll probably enjoy FO4.
I wasn’t propelled enough that I would encourage an average quest-loving gamer to take the Fallout 4 dive. We're now in an age where open-world games can forgo plot in favor of such cool stuff as fully fledged crafting systems (Minecraft) or online co-op survival (DayZ, ARK Survival Evolved), or they can take the best stuff of Fallout and Skyrim's pedigree and slap even better plot and acting into it (Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, Dragon Age: Inquisition). Fallout 4 peaks at neither of these extremes.
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I was going to wait for a Steam Christmas Sale, but I think I might just postpone my purchase further until All-in-One DLC pack gets released.
 
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This is roughly what I expected. I'll be writing some thoughts on the game in about a week (probably a bit more), but I would be surprise if I ended up being:
- Blown away (Witcher 3 style)
- Very disappointed (like Ars Technica)

Based on their track record (FO3, Skyrim), I could probably write a review before even playing the game.
 
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