All aboard the hype train: Fallout 4

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Tolchock
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All aboard the hype train: Fallout 4

Post by Tolchock »

So what do you guys think? Those armor/weapon customisation options... That base crafting system... I gotta admit my mouth was slightly open throughout that section. Of course, the inventory is going to end up filled with crap, but, for me that is just part of the charm of a Bethesda game.

http://kotaku.com/bethesda-closed-their ... 1711315740

In other news, V.A.T.S. is back. It might be polarising, but, in my opinion, VATS broke the game -- it was too good *not* to use, but wasn't very fun at all. Graphics pretty standard and animations rather terrible, as per usual.

Btw, I managed to grab free tickets to a screening of Bethesda's E3 showcase in Sydney, so hi if any of you guys happened to be there. Nabbed four free mini hamburgers and some pins off our Bethesda buddies, so can't complain -- my good will has been successfully bought.
Chris
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Re: All aboard the hype train: Fallout 4

Post by Chris »

If anyone's interested in watching the E3 event:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KApp699WdE&t=25m30s (link skips all the pre-show crap)

The Fallout 4 stuff starts here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KApp699WdE&t=64m30s
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psi29a
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Re: All aboard the hype train: Fallout 4

Post by psi29a »

I like fallout, VATS didn't break the game for me since I'm in for the story and puzzles and not for the fighting. Honestly, VATS doesn't help much in the beginning because your skills are too low, the there is a magic moment where you just want to move on and do all the other things that fights become a hassle and leaving up to VATS automates it all away.

Now I just want a Pipboy2000 for Skyrim. :P
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Okulo
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Re: All aboard the hype train: Fallout 4

Post by Okulo »

Do you also have a non-Kotaku link? I don't want to give Gawker Media my clicks.

Also, Todd Howard doing his regular spiel, so I am skeptical. Knowing Beth, they probably just show the best part (the beginning) and then everything goes downhill from there. They did the same with Skyrim and I was less than impressed with that game.
Chris
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Re: All aboard the hype train: Fallout 4

Post by Chris »

Okulo wrote:Do you also have a non-Kotaku link? I don't want to give Gawker Media my clicks.

Also, Todd Howard doing his regular spiel, so I am skeptical. Knowing Beth, they probably just show the best part (the beginning) and then everything goes downhill from there. They did the same with Skyrim and I was less than impressed with that game.
Watch the presentation I linked, that's where news sites are getting all their info from. In addition to the usual, Todd talks quite a bit about their crafting system (which is far and above what New Vegas and Skyrim had), and had several more bits of in-game footage.
SquireNed
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Re: All aboard the hype train: Fallout 4

Post by SquireNed »

PC Gamer has a collection of video excerpts:

http://www.pcgamer.com/fallout-4-is-rel ... -november/
Chris
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Re: All aboard the hype train: Fallout 4

Post by Chris »

The event certainly left me feeling hyped for the possibilities. But looking critically, there's some problems:

Voiced protagonist: Just, no. Todd says they did it so they could add more emotional impact to the dialog, but let's be real... emotional dialog has never been Bethesda's strong point, and the attempt at including it in an open world game like this is bound for failure (running around doing crazy crap, then skipping over to hand in the next quest objective with a super emotional scene, then running off to do more crazy crap). Not to mention, having the line spoken with the completely wrong tone than what the player expected.

If this carries over to TES6, I don't know what they're going to do with the fact that there's 10 races (the stupid thing to do would be to have a few male and female voices, and have some races share them).

Limited dialog choices: There's seems to be a limit to the number of dialog choices since the choices are mapped to the controller's A/B/X/Y buttons. Also, the shown dialog text doesn't match what's said.

No skills (apparently): This isn't as bad as it may seem, though not necessarily ideal. There is still SPECIAL, armor is layered (no more one-piece armors), and the crafting is very detailed. A lot of the character customization comes from this crafting, and crafting options are perk-gated. So rather than upping some skills on level-up, you select some perks which allow you greater weapon and armor customization.

I don't see this working with TES, though. Fallout uses a more classic XP-based leveling system, which means selecting improvements at level-up (either via perks or by upping some skills) still fits the general design idea. But with TES, you get better at the things you use, and while selecting perks at level-up is a decent way to supplement and specialize skills, they don't replace them.
SquireNed
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Re: All aboard the hype train: Fallout 4

Post by SquireNed »

The voiced protagonist certainly is interesting. I'm not actually entirely anti-voice, but I feel like there are issues with it, namely the fact that you've got a ton of issues regarding the way that third-party content will be integrated. I think that a lot of the issues with mismatch could be fixed by informing players of the tone in some way, perhaps by linking the various options with emotion. Likewise, the dialogue not necessarily matching the cues is problematic, but in the past we've just sort of had to deal with questions about what exactly the silent protagonist said. It's a little more immersion breaking, but I don't think it's a substantive change with regards to decision making.

The dialogue choices are problematic, but I think that there's a good chance that there will be dialogues with more than four options that use a more traditional system. That said, I've been playing X-Rebirth, and it actually handles the interaction menu very well, with (six? eight?) options chosen from a context menu, which is more than you'd need. If nothing else, I feel like they'll have a [more] style menu when necessary.

So far I'm not sure what happened to skills. They may have transitioned into perks, but I feel like they might actually be Oblivion style—we saw a "Science Rank 1" thing in the crafting menu, and I wonder if that could refer to what would've been 25-50-75-100 increments for skills. In any case, I have no doubt that we'll see them in modding.

The interface looks a lot more polished overall, and I like the move to location-based armor (interestingly, they actually dropped this for Oblivion/FO3/Skyrim and then added it in for Fallout 4), the new VATS looks much cooler, and the inventory is classic but with a lot more emphasis. I feel like the second-screen experience could be really cool, but I moved over to Windows Phone (dammit, Bethesda!). We'll see if it can run on my old Samsung Galaxy, though.

I'm most excited about the world space, however. It sounds like they're moving away from interior—exterior distinctions (at least somewhat), and they're adding in a lot more dynamic structural elements. Given that flying in Vertibirds and powered armor is going to be a thing, it'll be a nice alternative to slogging around the Wasteland at level 50. With the addition of flying vehicles, I'd like to see some ground vehicles.

Basically, what I've taken from it is that it has some of the best gameplay elements from, say, Borderlands or Dark Messiah of Might and Magic (animated deathclaw maulings, anyone?), and it's gone to the extra effort to augment them with the Fallout style. The rim-lit style seems to indicate that there's going to be a more artistic veneer to the setting, which I hope means that they're moving away from some of the more tight-laced elements of Fallout 3 and NV and letting a little bit of the wild wasteland back into Fallout (I know NV had it, but NV with the WW trait was really just Fallout 1/2 without). The custom weapons add in a nice absurd vibe as well, combined with the awesome of having some really cool weapon combos. Laser musket, anyone? I look forward to making some really absurd high-efficiency weapons, and the Junk Jet looks like a blast. They mentioned 50 base weapons with 700 modifications; we'll probably see something more like 35,000 combinations that are anywhere near effective, even though there will likely be millions of potential weapons in the game. With mod support (which I wasn't able to find any explicit support for) (wait, they're supporting Xbox One mods?), we could see that grow exponentially. I look forward to building the optimal gun for my play style, especially since I spent a lot of time in NV messing around with mods that added more weapons and weapon modifications.

My biggest concern comes down to play style and game balance. Base-building will be a thing now, and while I look forward to Minecraft-esque fort construction (if they snuck in multiplayer, they'd make me really regret buying Lego Worlds), I hope that they haven't gotten so in depth with the whole "You can make pixel art now!" thing that they forget to have an engaging story and world. At least it sounds like the world is more dynamic, with roving bandits and the like.
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Sslaxx
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Re: All aboard the hype train: Fallout 4

Post by Sslaxx »

The interior-exterior thing had actually been present with Skyrim, albeit in a much more limited way (some guard towers, for example). Not too hot on voiced protagonists (if mod makers add additional content to existing NPCs and it's voiced the results are often pretty jarring), but eh. Not likely to be buying this any time soon. Not a fan of the direction Zenimax has gone in. More interested in the forthcoming WL2 update and Bard's Tale 4.
DocClox
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Re: All aboard the hype train: Fallout 4

Post by DocClox »

I think the player voice acting is going to prove a bad idea.

One of the key elements of games like this is to push as little characterization as possible onto the PC, and thereby leave the maximum scope for the player's imagination to fill in the blanks. Having voiced responses not only dictates what I sound like, it also sets the emotional tone of my responses. Previously, if I didn't like my options, I could always imagine a sarcastic tone of voice and tell myself I didn't mean it. If we have some VO oozing sincerity it's going to make it that much harder to keep my sense of identity going at times like that.

But, you know, it is what it is. We'll see how it works in practice.
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