War... War never changes (who's playing FO4?)

[Jonj1611]

Diamond City was where I found the most traders so far.

[Gaimz]

The big change is probably the shelter building thing. For the rest, from what I've seen is about the same as Fallout 3, which was a really great game. One of the best!

[Disturbedguy]

Me. Got about 27 hours in so far and on level 18. Played until 5am on release day then went to work.

Mr Burnout has also purchased this on her PS4. PC looks so much better.

I actually think it's better in every way to previous games. Big Fan of the Franchise and I really cannot see nothing wrong with it. If it ain't broke, then no need to fix it.

My R9 280x runs it at ultra fine with godrays turned to low. average 55fps. Drops a little in built up areas. Looks amazing though.

Will be on this for a while.

Just as a heads up with the PC version, there is / was a bug with the game where if you used a terminal when coming out your character would get stuck. The way to fix this is to lock the FPS, most people seem to lock it to about 72 - 75 FPS from what I've seen, using riva tuner.

As for the game, not bought it yet, with Christmas being close, having just moved and car bills next month, I'm too skint to buy at the moment...maybe after Christmas.

[Pob255]

I've been watching more youtube and twitch streams, while trying not to spoiler myself too much, it's tricky.

Overall it looks great (not just talking about graphics here but overall game)
I'm not going to say it's perfect or a 10/10 game because it's not.

Lipsync still needs work (although I've heard speculation that this could be more of an engine issue)

I think I preferred the old speech system, yes full voice acting is nice, but I prefer the old 1st person with blurred background camera to this 3rd person (sometimes wonky) view when talking.
I don't object to the response wheel too much, although sometimes the options can lack clarity.
My biggest issue is that it limits the responses too much, example, I was watching Hanna's (from the yogscast) live stream and she came across an npc doctor out in the middle of nowhere, speech options where basically to ask for healing, barter, gossip and end conversation, No "who are you?" or "what are you doing here?"
It might just be some of the early npc's but there doesn't seem to be as much world building conversations as in 3
Also from what I've heard all skill check conversation options are purely based off you charisma stat, there's no perk based options or other stat based options.

I've also heard bad things about the quests, in that they no longer have the multiple ways around a situation that has been a staple in all fallout games.
Has anyone found later quests of the multiple solution type, other than basic stuff like pick the lock or hack the terminal?

[herulach]

I've been watching more youtube and twitch streams, while trying not to spoiler myself too much, it's tricky.

Overall it looks great (not just talking about graphics here but overall game)
I'm not going to say it's perfect or a 10/10 game because it's not.

Lipsync still needs work (although I've heard speculation that this could be more of an engine issue)

I think I preferred the old speech system, yes full voice acting is nice, but I prefer the old 1st person with blurred background camera to this 3rd person (sometimes wonky) view when talking.
I don't object to the response wheel too much, although sometimes the options can lack clarity.
My biggest issue is that it limits the responses too much, example, I was watching Hanna's (from the yogscast) live stream and she came across an npc doctor out in the middle of nowhere, speech options where basically to ask for healing, barter, gossip and end conversation, No "who are you?" or "what are you doing here?"
It might just be some of the early npc's but there doesn't seem to be as much world building conversations as in 3
Also from what I've heard all skill check conversation options are purely based off you charisma stat, there's no perk based options or other stat based options.

I've also heard bad things about the quests, in that they no longer have the multiple ways around a situation that has been a staple in all fallout games.
Has anyone found later quests of the multiple solution type, other than basic stuff like pick the lock or hack the terminal?

The conversations bothered me a little bit, but most of the depth is still there, people have taken the one word descriptions at face value without factoring in the voice acting which fleshes out the choices quite significantly.

The main downside for me is that the UI is broken as hell. Some of it can be got round (anywhere it says hit enter you can hit e for example, and shift+wasd does most of the arrow key stuff for building) but its still not been properly thought through.

As far as quest lines go. I'm not very far through the main line at all, but I've done a couple where there were either alternative routes through a dungeon or different outcomes (buy stuff, kill people for it, steal it and sneak off type of thing). Certainly doesn't feel constrained.

The skill system is awkward though. Generally I'm enjoying it more than 3 or skyrim, but maybe not as much as new vegas.

[Jonj1611]

Speaking about the UI, yes, some significant changes could be made there, for instance one moment your pressing TAB to go back and exit and something else can be ESC instead, would be better if it was consistent.

[Arthoin]

I am probably getting it for the weekend, but not looking forward to it too much. Probably more to justify my bitching about Bethesda. So hard to be an old fart that remembers when 1 and 2 went out (and managed to make his favourite games out of those).

Yeaah so... Probably should make room for the young'uns, so they can find their favourites and bitch about Fallout 7 in ten years....

[Pob255]

The conversations bothered me a little bit, but most of the depth is still there, people have taken the one word descriptions at face value without factoring in the voice acting which fleshes out the choices quite significantly.

it's not the one word I have issue with, from what I've seen so far it's pretty good, it's all to easy to make that sort of one word option too misleading/obscure to the actual speech and Bethesda done a good job on it from what I've seen so far.
My issue is the limiting of only 4 options and that most conversations seem to be relatively straight line paths.
There don't seem to be as many conversation options about the world or the NPC's as before.
I'll admit that it could just be that I've not seen them as I'm trying to not spoil it for myself too much and the world building npc's are more tied to the main plot.
That's part of the problem with full voice acting, it requires a lot more time, money and data to do than text or partial voice acting.

edit: @Bastardko you're not alone in remembering when 1 & 2 came out heck I was working for virgin interactive at the time fallout2 came out (there was a buyout merger thing with interplay, so both still existed but owned part of each other and where sharing offices) so I got a copy of it off one of the producers.
edit2: note that was one of the producers at the interplay uk office not Brian Fargo, Eric DeMilt or Fred Hatch

[Waswat]

Has anyone found any radio stations (that is, not signal beacons) other than the classical radio and diamond city radio? I don't think the classical radio works well for the fallout theme and i've already heard most of the songs played in diamond city radio via the previous installments of the series.

[kalniel]

Has anyone found any radio stations (that is, not signal beacons) other than the classical radio and diamond city radio? I don't think the classical radio works well for the fallout theme and i've already heard most of the songs played in diamond city radio via the previous installments of the series.

Turn off the radio and you get lovely atmospheric sounds+music instead

[Rob_B]

# bongo bongo bongo I don't wanna leave the Congo oh no no no no no... #

[Pryzel]

I didn't really enjoy previous fallouts, but this one was just so tempting I couldn't resist, currently about 3-4 hours worth of gameplay in and I absolutely love it. Gameplay is great and the graphics are something else.

[Rob_B]

Last night I finally decided to go to Diamond City just so I could sell my stuff, turns out I had about 2500lbs worth so I spent ages, and ages, and ages breaking down hundreds of pipe pistols and raider armour at the benches for scrap, then I sold the rest and bought stimpacks, and that was mostly what I did last night.

Eurogamers article complaining about the weight limit annoyed me as I do feel it's a required part of the game but I entirely agree that you spend an awful lot of time in menus!

[Jonj1611]

I agree you do spend a lot of time in menu's and I do feel they could have spent a bit of extra time making the whole UI with crafting etc more appealing but overall I am enjoying the game, turns out the texture issues I had in the vault at the beginning were a known blurry texture bug.

I have managed to change the green menu's to a more appealing white

[kalniel]

Eurogamers article complaining about the weight limit annoyed me as I do feel it's a required part of the game but I entirely agree that you spend an awful lot of time in menus!

I just wanted to shout 'Grilled Radstag', but couldn't be bothered enough to create an account just to comment so.

It is part of the game. There are easy workarounds in game, and if it really bugs him it's small tweak in the creation kit or console to remove.

[malfunction]

Last night I finally decided to go to Diamond City just so I could sell my stuff, turns out I had about 2500lbs worth so I spent ages, and ages, and ages breaking down hundreds of pipe pistols and raider armour at the benches for scrap, then I sold the rest and bought stimpacks, and that was mostly what I did last night.

Eurogamers article complaining about the weight limit annoyed me as I do feel it's a required part of the game but I entirely agree that you spend an awful lot of time in menus!

The main problem with that article is: "So, after 15 or so hours with Fallout 4" - 15 hours is hardly getting started unless you ruthlessly ignore all exploration and side quests and the management stuff, which is kind of missing the point of playing any RPG.

Anyways - attempt at a mostly spoiler free update:

I've played 25 hours so far and I haven't even set foot in Diamond City yet though I will next time I sit down to play it as I've been spending too much time on side quests, levelling up and getting kit.

I really liked the outside part of the Corvega plant - an actual 3D map whereas a lot of the other parts I've been to so far feel a bit flat an not quite finished, though I'm happy that I haven't managed to get stuck in (or fall through) the scenery once (so far). I tend to mostly "sneak and snipe" and plan my frontal assaults if I can.

I'm not hating the crafting and settlement building part as much as I did at first and I'm getting used to the interface - helps when you know you can ignore certain prompts, e.g. when it asks you to span between [r] and [enter] you can just press [r] then [e] instead. I'm quite happy with crafting weapons and armour but the base building still feels like the wrong interface - would be nice if it zoomed out into a high level overhead or isometric view and let you build a base properly if they really wanted you to get into it and you'd probably be able to avoid a lot of the 'spawn stuff in mid air' and 'can't quite get it to connect together' issues I've had so far - and it would be a lot bloody quicker. I've always been a sucker for building a better mouse trap so I'll probably do as little building building (if you see what I mean) vs building traps and defences.

As an aside I'm actually thinking about:

1) Rewinding my saves as I joined a faction to see what cool toys were available but I really prefer being "the lone wanderer" - most of the hours I put into FO3 was just exploring though I did side with the BoS in FO3 because that's where all the cool toys were - exploring being the main reason I didn't like FO:NV as much - it may be rose tinted specs but there just seemed to be a lot less incidental stuff to find, though I really loved some of the DLC (esp the Sierra Madre)

2) Ditching the power armour completely until I start getting my arse handed to me. On default (normal difficulty) at least it makes it too easy. I haven't been killed outside of doing stupid stuff yet. I might just notch up the difficulty instead but overall it feels like you're being handed the good toys too early and too easily.