Fallout 4 Early impressions...

Only been out of the vault for about an hour, so these are very early impressions.

Graphics are good but not great. Better than vanilla FO3 but nothing to write home about.

The UI isn't that bad imo. I'm disappointed that they don't offer the option to just toggle off the compass, but at least I can control the HUD opacity.

Movement is a LOT faster than in FO3. The default run speed feels a little too fast to be honest.

I don't like how simply looking at a container shows you its contents without even opening it. A nitpick I know, but it bugs me for some reason.

How the hell do I holster my weapon?

No flashlight?

JDR13 said:

I don't like how simply looking at a container shows you its contents without even opening it. A nitpick I know, but it bugs me for some reason.

Click to expand...

Seriously? That's not a nitpick - that's pretty crappy.

I've still got 45 minutes of download left. Ho-hum...

You can access more settings by going to Documents/My Games/Fallout 4/Fallout4Prefs

Most of it is related to graphics, but you can disable the compass by changing bShowCompass=1 to bShowCompass=0. I find the game more immersive without it, but obviously that's a personal preference.

JDR13 said:

How the hell do I holster my weapon?

Click to expand...

Press R for a longer time.

Morrandir said:

Press R for a longer time.

Click to expand...

Ah thanks. That was driving me crazy.

Not to start a major flame war about the graphics (it's probably been done to death already), but from the videos I've watched, those graphics really disappoint me after having played The Witcher 3 and even Skyrim. They look... weird, and muddy. Anyone that doesn't hate graphics (a.k.a. the Anti-Graphics-Whores Association ) care to comment? How is immersion compared to previous Bethesda games?

JDR13 said:

Only been out of the vault for about an hour, so these are very early impressions.

Graphics are good but not great. Better than vanilla FO3 but nothing to write home about.

The UI isn't that bad imo. I'm disappointed that they don't offer the option to just toggle off the compass, but at least I can control the HUD opacity.

Movement is a LOT faster than in FO3. The default run speed feels a little too fast to be honest.

I don't like how simply looking at a container shows you its contents without even opening it. A nitpick I know, but it bugs me for some reason.

Click to expand...

Thaurin said:

Anyone that doesn't hate graphics (a.k.a. the Anti-Graphics-Whores Association ) care to comment? How is immersion compared to previous Bethesda games?

Click to expand...

Played it for 3 hours.

I am graphics whore and I say that graphics is actually IMO great.
Why is it great? Because you can't see such graphics on phones.
Why it isn't stellar? Because it's just a bit better than graphics on consoles (saw comparing vid).
Could it be better? Definetly could. Everything is too shiny like Risen 3 beaches, but beaches are one thing and in reality do shine like that, FO4 is not happening at sea so such shine is not logical.
Why are people expecting from modern games to look like 3D studio max realtime, dunno. I guess I'm not a huge graphics whore perhaps?

UI is horrible. I don't want to press F then arrows as idiotic emulation of joysticks. I also don't want to close menus with TAB, that's what ESC should be used for. Why are we seeing retarded itemlists again when TW3 and D:OS EE proved better solutions that work even on consoles? etc.

I love the boosted movement speed. The game is supposed to be RPG/FPS hybrid. As proven by Ubi in FC3 and FC3:Blood Dragon that are FPS with oversimplified RPG elements, faster you move, more fun.

And I love seeing what's in container before opening it. What I hate is not seeing complete content just first 3 entries.

Immersion? I never got immersion feeling with Bethesda's whatnot engine games and this one isn't different.

-----------------------------

Few new things/hints.

As the game is perk-based now, someone should have told everyone to start with at least perception 4 (lockpickin' perks). I kinda don't like switching skills to perks that depend on attributes. Why should lockpicking mastery depend solely on one's perception attribute?

Exploration is rewarding! Example, when you return to your home from Vault111, there is a certain "thing" you'll spot if you're carefully investigating, but have to crouch to use. No, I don't mean the +5% boost comic but another even better booster. And I don't mean the safe "hidden" in the floor at the house by the bridge. Spoilers? Tags? Minor spoilers so no tags.

Bugs? So far haven't seen any critical which is surprising for Bethesda's release version. Minor stuff is there, of course, they had to add to the reputation. For example intro movie doesn't have transcript shown although I've switched subtitles on. Stutters, freezes and crashes, so far none. Thumb up.

Not sure about mobs respawning. In the first area I killed some bugs, fasttravelled here and there and those didn't respawn. Yet. So no XP ginding on trashmobs to become godlike character early like in FO3 etc!
I seriously hope Bethesda decided to ditch endless trashmob respawn design crime.

joxer said:

Why are people expecting from modern games to look like 3D studio max realtime, dunno. I guess I'm not a huge graphics whore perhaps?

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Not expecting as much as hoping, ever since the day I went from Wolfenstein 3D (wow, 3D!) -> DooM [12] (wow, ceiling/floor textures!) -> Ultima Underworld/Duke Nukem 3D (wow, inclined surfaces!) -> Quake (wow, true 3D!) -> Descent (wow, six-direction true 3D!) -> Unreal (wow, coloured lights!) -> Morrowind (wow, per-pixel shading!) -> Far Cry (wow, beautiful draw distance!) -> Oblivion (wow, large, beautiful world!) -> Skyrim (wow, better graphics than Oblivion!) -> The Witcher 3 (just wow!).

Was hoping for Fallout 4 (wow, entering the Matrix!). Well, maybe with ESO6!

(Gameplay? What's gameplay? )

Graphics impression on my side would go like this:
TW3 > FC3, GTA5, Watch Dogs (with graphics unlock mod) > MGS5, Fallout 4, Dragon Age Inquisition

There is no way I'd ever pay 50 bucks for Wolfenstein, wait hours to download 50 gigs then finish it in one afternoon. So can't put it somewhere in there.

But that's just graphics. As I said before, the best looking game I've ever seen (not played) is Order 1886. But it's a rubbish game. Who needs impressive visuals if a game is garbage (QTE fest)?

How's the quest design? In spite of all its flaws, Fallout 3 at least had some interesting quests.

An answer on that you'll have to wait a bit more.

The start is widely known so it's not a spoiler - you're not thrown in the world just because but you're actually searching for your something.
Now this is on one hand great idea, you have a very important thing to do and that thing is not saving the world from a big bad entity or mobster.
On the other hand it could be problematic - if your major goal is that important, what kind of person you are if you'll go exploring and "doing chores" instead of concentrating on your main goal. Maybe Bethesda did something through the game to connect things with each other, but I really can't know that yet. Noone can.
Comparing to other Bethesda Gamebryo games, seems this one could actually have a story (and hopefully sidestories) behind it. Too early to say for sure though.

I received a few sidequests but didn't do them yet thus not sure if are connected to the world in general or are just a filler.
A spoiler, but so you'll see, on the gas station you come first, if you read computer messages, you get a hint that there is a cave underneath it. And you go in, kill some molerats, grab some nice loot but… It ain't marked as a (side)quest! Such things I just don't like. Give me a quest so if I skip it for now, I can return to it later.

It's not a disaster though - you have to explore to find the cave entrance. It doesn't spawn handheld map pointer!

EDIT:
Went for a coffee and a friend of mine who is not in RPGs shown me some gameplay FO4 vid where someone is nailin' deathclaws with powerarmor on and third person view. Which is… Not important to me. I want RPG stuff not shooting like him.

However, I noticed on that vid that loading time in that case was enormous. On my side, game is on SSD and loading lasts not nearly as long as on that vid, it's just a few secs here. I'm also not sure if the vid was from PC or consoles. Does someone know more on this matter?

WTF!

I bought a dvd copy (better price),….now after 'installing' it seems I have a 28 GB download via Steam!? That's Bullshit! It will take a whole day and I have a capped account so that's even worse. I did some googling and Hines mentioned 'piracy' as one reason…but why not have say a 5 GB part to download not the whole fucking game? I should send them a bill for the extra cap I need. Not everyone lives in countries with fast cheap internet. I'm pretty sure pirates will pirate anyway.

Pirates were pirating it before actual buyers started playing it so...
I don't think it's because pirates but because cutting costs of printed media. Not that it's Bethesda's first idea. EA started it last year with Sims 4 expansions (digital download only), Ubi I thing with HoMM7 and Konami with MGS5 where DVD contains nothing but Steam Client installation and game key (lol).

JDR13 said:

You can access more settings by going to Documents/My Games/Fallout 4/Fallout4Prefs

Most of it is related to graphics, but you can disable the compass by changing bShowCompass=1 to bShowCompass=0. I find the game more immersive without it, but obviously that's a personal preference.

Click to expand...

Firs thing I did was start the loader to generate the INI files. Then I went and edited them and hiding the compass was at the top of the list.

While its an old engine the plus is its familiar and all the stuff I learned in modding and tweaking for Skyrim will have some benefit still in FO4.

joxer said:

actually searching for your something.

Click to expand...

The one thing I dislike . I hope I can limit how much of that I have to do

Then again who knows I may change my mind when I get into things more

EDIT: In regards to the OP in general (and nothing to do with my quoting Joxer, just to be clear):

In general my early impressions have been extremely favorable, my one sticking point aside. Like the story, and I read the reviews, even the very negative one, and disagree on graphics. I am fine with the graphics and how the characters look. Yep guess I have low standards (per a comment from another thread). Either that or I am just not a negative Nancy out to complain about everything and can simply enjoy the pleasure of playing a new game.

joxer said:

On the other hand it could be problematic - if your major goal is that important, what kind of person are you to go exploring and "doing chores" instead of concentrating on it.

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Yeah, that's what I call the TW3-problem.

That's a thing BG2 imho solved greatly. The protagonist had an important pressing goal (find Imoen and/or Irenicus) but to proceed you needed to gather a large amount of money. Here in chapter 2 you could go adventuring and adventuring having a valid reason doing this and that for hard money without betraying the protagonists goal.

Did they already release a patch? I just had a 60MB download.

JDR13 said:

Ah thanks. That was driving me crazy.

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Likewise! I knew it was R but it seemed to do nothing. Then I went to the Pipboy help manual and figured out you had to hold it for longer.

I'm enjoying it quite a bit after 3 hours.

only bug was that the game started lock at 800x600 resolution and I couldn't adjust it in the settings so I had to change it in the config file. IO do have a 21:9 monitor though so maybe that was the problem, although it shouldn't be with a new game. Other than that its run quite smooth.

Is there a way to use the mouse wheel to change weapons and items? theres too many weapons and items for the hotkey system. That would be more useful than having the wheel zoom the camera which I rarely ever do. I do appreciate that they included 3rd person as its nice for stealth.

Graphics are good enough but I will definitely be installing texture packs when there out.

Combat is fine. I don't like that the vats system has the hit %'s moving but that only happened when I was fighting a deathclaw so maybe its a bug?

the pip-boy could be easier to navigate but it works OK I guess.

those are my gripes so far. I'm enjoying the rest.

Ok, one other thing.

I just found power armor (mech suit) on the way to an early quest not hidden way out of the way or anything. As far as I can tell I can move just as fast and stealth works just as good. It also gives me more strength and I'm almost invincible now.

Why would I get this so early and why would I wear anything else now. All the other armor I've found and it's tons seem useless now.