Fallout 4 - Bethesda Teases Announcement

I loved Fallout 3 even without mods, but that's probably because I like immersive exploration more than anything.

That said, mods improved it a great deal - and made the mechanics worth caring about.

Writing mostly sucked, though, no doubt about that. Strangely, I still enjoyed the story and especially the opening sequence a hell of a lot more than FO:NV, which is just dreary and dull. I recognise the actual writing is inferior, but the atmosphere was way beyond NV in all its glitchy brown awkwardness.

Based on Skyrim, which had better writing and some very cool quests, I have every reason to believe this will be the best Fallout for me - and I'll still have mods for the mechanics.

I wasn't expecting this. I always thought fallout 4 would be like Kotor 3, something gamers want but was never gonna happen.

On another note, I always thought Fallout 3 was decent game cause of it's atmosphere although the game mechanics sucked. Awaiting to see what they will do with this one.

I was affraid Fallout would turn out to be a new MMORPG (specially after ESO). Still am, at least untill the announcement is made.

Originally Posted by Drithius
Story will be trash.
Quests will be nonsensical.
NPCs will be forgettable.
C&C will be practically non-existent.
Will still win GotY "awards" even before it launches.

Long-live blind Bethesda fanboyism and marketing.

It's one of those sad and obnoxious Internet "truths" (at least among cRPG hardcore fans) that Bethesda's games are bugfests with bad writing and bad voice acting. But are they really? And compared to what?
Of one thing I'm quite sure: cRPG harcore fans love their isometric perspective tactical semi-RPG (the older, the better). And the original Fallout and the sequel are labeled as such - although on the tactical side they aren't that great… Well, tactical enough, I guess. And what happened? The nasty corporation bought the rights for Fallout and transformed what was a silly but funny (and sometimes not that silly) game universe served as a isometric tactical game (which made the silly - and sometimes not that silly - game universe take a second place after all the tactical thinking and min-maxing) and turned it into a 1st/3rd person "action RPG", that people who loved the classics will call a "shooter". Shooter my arse.
Was, in fact, the writing better in those cherished classics of the past? My answer is a very clear NO. No, it wasn't. It's the same universe, inspired by the same things (Mad Max, A Boy and His Dog, 50s comics, 50s paranoias about the communist peril and the Bomb… well, you know…). Were the quests any better? Not really, no. They were all a bit silly, but sillyness is at the heart of this universe (controlled silliness, at least). Were the main quests better? Let's see: Fallout's main quest is about a Vault Dweller tasked with the mission of recovering a water chip, Fallout 3 is about a vault-dweller who ventures into the Wasteland to search for his father (voiced by Liam Neeson, yeah that irish guy that no one knows, and the original Fallout, on the other hand, included the voices of the very much talented McGyver and Tony Shaloub). What was the father doing? Working on a water purification process. Can we say that they weren't all that original? Yes, we can. But can we say that the main quest sucks? Well, in fact we can, but then the original Fallout sucks too. I won't even get into Fallout 2, because that surpasses my ammount of allowed silliness in a game. I hated it from the very start.
So, are the dialogues so damned awful, that they inspire all the hate? I don't think so, they are very typical video game dialogues, which is to say that they are pretty much shitty if compared to literature, but comparing video game writing to literature isn't a sane thing to do. Compared to movies? Well, most video games are on par with the average entertainment flick. That's good enough for me. It's also interesting to note that Deus Ex, the game that (almost) all of the cRPG hardcore fans love to love - every time it is mentioned, someone installs it, blah, blah, blah - has a notoriously crappy story, awful dialogues, even worse voice acting, but no one mentions it. Why? Because those who love the game don't really care about the story and the quality of writing. The exact same people that turn into literary critics when talking about FO3, FO:NV. And Skyrim, and most of BioWare's recent games. But I digress…
NPCs are forgetable? Are they, really? Well, there are a lot of NPCs, and they all are voice acted, unlike the two classic Fallout games. Is it strange that people remember easily the few character's which had a real face and body and voice in the classic games, rather than the ghoul in Megaton's salloon or any street vendor in New Vegas? Also, most of the cRPG hardcore fans played Fallout and all the other classics when they were kids or teenagers, and I don't think I have to remind anyone of the much bigger impact of pop culture in our infancy or teenage years compared to what we consume in adult life.
But there are games with better characters, of course there are. One good example is the Witcher. This one has better characters and better writing than most cRPGs - than most games in general. But it should be noted that the Witcher games, although they aren't stricly speaking adaptations of Andrzej Sapkowski's works, they are heavily inspired by them, and even if Sapkowski isn't a great writer, he is a writer nonetheless.
Then there's all the talk about crappy gameplay and whatnot. Well, I don't care much about that, as I'm not a wannabe game designer. I have no knowledge of what goes on "under the hood" and no desire to know. What I do want is immersion and the ability to explore the game world. Details don't matter. Of course this is a personal point of view, and this one I can't discuss because it needs some degree of technical know-how about game design, which is not my department.
Anyway, this is getting too long and too boring. I should just note that in this same forum, at least one, but maybe more than one, cRPG hardcore fan who spits on Bethesda's and BioWare's games, who call them bugfests, who criticize their alleged crappy writing, crappy quests, crappy dialogues, crappy NPCs, found Raven's Cry to be a very good and entertaining game. Well, there goes their credibility down the toilet…

Originally Posted by MigRib
Anyway, this is getting too long and too boring. I should just note that in this same forum, at least one, but maybe more than one, cRPG hardcore fan who spits on Bethesda's and BioWare's games, who call them bugfests, who criticize their alleged crappy writing, crappy quests, crappy dialogues, crappy NPCs, found Raven's Cry to be a very good and entertaining game. Well, there goes their credibility down the toilet…

The only two people who found Raven's Cry to be a very good and entertaining game on this forum are Fluent and me. Noone else bough it or didn't bother to write.
And since Fluent never mentioned a single bug in any game…

I do post about Bethesda's lack of interest to fix bugs over and over. And I'll continue till they use the cash to patch games instead of investing into some MMO.
But crappy writing, quests and NPCs, sorry, never said that about every their game, it's just Skyrim and even more boring Oblivion. Their Dishonored had a superb story with at least one fantastic NPC (Granny Rags) and what's even worse when it comes to Bethesda's treatment of TES fans, they proved they can do an almost bugfree thing, good story and interesting quests with Dragonborn DLC.

Sorry but, when did I ever say Bioware's games are bugfests with crappy writing and crappy quests? IIRC I said (maybe not on this forum though) that if you gather all Bioware's games bugs on one pile you'd still see a less number than amount of bugs in just Skyrim. The crappy writing I did criticize, but never generally, just a few things they could make better, but didn't care (disastrous DLC Arrival, plotholes in ME3 plus it's ending). In fact I praised their storywriting and NPCs (just examples from DA3 - Sera is top notch written character that one can either adore or hate her guts, dance mainstory quest is a masterpiece of C&C).

And I still say that Raven's Cry is a very good and entertaining game.

But I fail to see how is this all related to FO4.
FO3 was a decent crash-o-rama. Entertaining when they patched it. IMO not as entertaining as FO:NV, but NV came later.
Of course I'll buy FO4, but only after it's released and if it's buyers confirm it doesn't crash every 10 minutes like FO3 release version did.

Originally Posted by Silver
What I expect from Bethesda Fallout 4
*Good exploration
*Generic perks
*Interesting weapons
*Batman like combat + Shadows of Mordor like nemesis system
*Some drivable vehicles + vehicular combat

You know perfectly well that it's going to have so-so exploration with way too many books everywhere, very generic perks, generic weapons + a garbage catapult, crap combat mechanics and you will have to go everywhere on foot or use fast travel.

Also, I doubt they changed the engine…

Originally Posted by joxer

Sorry but, when did I ever say Bioware's games are bugfests with crappy writing and crappy quests? IIRC I said (maybe not on this forum though) that if you gather all Bioware's games bugs on one pile you'd still see a less number than amount of bugs in just Skyrim. The crappy writing I did criticize, but never generally, just a few things they could make better, but didn't care (disastrous DLC Arrival, plotholes in ME3 plus it's ending). In fact I praised their storywriting and NPCs (just examples from DA3 - Sera is top notch written character that one can either adore or hate her guts, dance mainstory quest is a masterpiece of C&C).

As I said I was aware that one or several people who dislike FO3, FO:NV, the Mass Effect trilogy (well, maybe not the entire trilogy) and, at least DA:O, also from BioWare, also liked Raven's Cry. I wasn't sure who was (I knew that one of them was you, of course). That's why I generalized and exagerated a bit. I know that a lot of the most active forum users dislike Bethesda's and BioWare's games (at least the most recent games, not Baldur's Gate or Morrowind, for sure).

Originally Posted by joxer
But I fail to see how is this all related to FO4.
FO3 was a decent crash-o-rama. Entertaining when they patched it. IMO not as entertaining as FO:NV, but NV came later.
Of course I'll buy FO4, but only after it's released and if it's buyers confirm it doesn't crash every 10 minutes like FO3 release version did.

There's nothing much to do with FO4. of course. It was just an afterthought after what I mentioned before. Raven's Cry was a game I wanted badly to like and was eager to play despite the delays. When I played it I found it a REAL bugfest (the voice overs that disappeared were what bothered me the most, but there were much more things) and very disapointing in several other ways - the story, the quests, the characters. That's why I made the comparison. I could as well have mentioned Wasteland 2.

I can understand that the VO problem can turn away many who find it important from Raven's Cry (btw, it's not properly patched to this day).
It's just it isn't something I care much about.

Raven's cry was junk.

So when do ya think they will announce the paid mods ? lol

Originally Posted by joxer
I can understand that the VO problem can turn away many who find it important from Raven's Cry (btw, it's not properly patched to this day).
It's just it isn't something I care much about.

Yeah, I know, you already mentioned that on another post. But it is quite odd, sometimes characters talk, sometimes just move their lips. And I'm still waiting for them to patch that (though I don't believe they will, probably those lines of dialogue were never recorded). If they fix that, I'll try Raven's Cry again.

And sometimes they say wrong stuff (that the ship costs 20K for example while it's price is actually 5K).
Never said that the game is bugfree, but also it's not Gamespot's 1/10. Do wait for the patch, in fact the dev's promise was not the patch as a patch but enhanced edition like TW1 had.

The official Fallout 4 website is going to crash in about 30 minutes.

There is a trailer (internet wiz found it before Bethesda made it private) and it doesn't look like Bethesda did that much work on the Creation Engine in the last 4 years going by the screenshots I saw of it…