Fallout series

[Prophetic Spirit]

I've always found it interesting that Fallout 4 and Dragon Age: Inquisition were released so close to each other, because each game represents its developer poaching into the other's traditional territory and demonstrating how poorly they understood what made their rival games tick. Fallout 4's affinity system mimics approval from Dragon Age, but because in DA approval stems from how you approach a situation and from copious amounts of dialogue -- on both counts Fallout 4 falls lamentably short -- the only way to build up affinity turned out to be dumb binary choices like "take the quest / don't take the quest" and absurd actions like lockpicking and hacking. It makes the system easy to game, and because generally all you get is two to four extra conversations even the most intriguing companions end up feeling relatively shallow.

Yeah, despite those flaws, is a huge improvment from the follower system in Skyrim, at least vanilla, 'cus if you put like 2 or 3 mods, you can basically make the same behavior FO4 companions does.

 

[Mola Ram]

Yeah, despite those flaws, is a huge improvment from the follower system in Skyrim, at least vanilla, 'cus if you put like 2 or 3 mods, you can basically make the same behavior FO4 companions does.

They're immensely more sophisticated than Skyrim followers, which sacrificed depth for breadth. I don't even know how many followers there are in Skyrim -- over 50, I think. They're also a big improvement over the Fallout 3 followers, who were mostly forgettable. But nowhere near as good as the Fallout 2 crew, or New Vegas, which wisely went its own way when it came to companion quests and had them revolve around unique world interactions rather than generic ones.

 

[Ghost of Wesley Willis]

I think one thing I look back that Really irks me about Fallout 4 is it's artstyle feels so inconsistent with the rest of the games. Like if I only ever played Fallout 4, I probably wouldn't even know it was supposed to be a sequel to Fallout 3.

3 and New Vegas had a really solid artstyle and aesthetic going, but 4 just feels very off. It almost feels cartoony and goofy. Everything feels oversized, the 50s quirkiness goes from charming to outright in your face with the absurd focus on dieselpunk. Not to mention the stiff animations from the player or NPC just really took out what little charm the game had. Vanilla Fallout 3 and New Vegas may not be visually appealing by today's standards, but it really has a charm to it that makes it memorable. Sending enemies flying from grenades or large caliber weapons was gleefully sadistic and funny. Compare that to Fallout 4's dumb death animations that play for every weapon.

The graphics of Fallout 4 also looks really muddy and a lot of engine quirks make them look even worse (like everything becoming overly shiny and reflective in rainy weather). Nor does it help that about 30% of the map is unplayable due to horrid optimization in the downtown part of Boston thanks to Creation engine being unable to handle shadows well.

 

[z0mb0]

Warlockracy is excellent, his videos are a great peek into slavic games and culture for a dirty westerner like me. I highly suggest his Olympus 2207 video, which is about a Fallout 2 total conversion.

His video about The Sum, a Canadian Annarchist Fallout Tactics mod that is funded by the government, is also pretty good.

Warlockery is right up there with Strat Edgey quality. Tried to play the sum and I just couldn't.

I had no idea that this mod for Fallout 2 existed.
Looks very intersting. Just need to learn russian

It's right beneath Olympus as a whole. Want real odd fun the Stalker fallout 2 mod is janky but interesting enough to be worth it. Fucking invisible insta kill blood vortexs tho.

 

[Polyboros2]

The Fallout 4 London mod has released a trailer, I haven't gotten to watch it yet, but they have hired 6th and 7th Doctors Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy for short roles in the introduction.

Less significant, but I enjoyed it, well liked 40k YouTuber Baldemort does the opening, and I think he's a really good fit.

 

[Ruin]

The Fallout 4 London mod has released a trailer, I haven't gotten to watch it yet, but they have hired 6th and 7th Doctors Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy for short roles in the introduction.

Less significant, but I enjoyed it, well liked 40k YouTuber Baldemort does the opening, and I think he's a really good fit.

I'm cautiously optimistic. The Frontier looked really cool too early one with all of the sketch and shitty aspects hidden by the devs until after release.

 

[Polyboros2]

I'm cautiously optimistic. The Frontier looked really cool too early one with all of the sketch and shitty aspects hidden by the devs until after release.

I'm definitely more interested in it over The Frontier, mainly cause I've played a hell of a lot of New Vegas, and I mechanically like Fallout 4 even though I think it's setting is underwhelming and it's story it's terrible.

 

[Mega Black]

Yeah, despite those flaws, is a huge improvment from the follower system in Skyrim, at least vanilla, 'cus if you put like 2 or 3 mods, you can basically make the same behavior FO4 companions does.

I actually quite like most of the Fallout 4 companions and lament that they weren't put into a better game that would better accommodate the decent writing surrounding them. Nick is a real bro and the highlight of strong writing the whole way through the game.

I think one thing I look back that Really irks me about Fallout 4 is it's artstyle feels so inconsistent with the rest of the games. Like if I only ever played Fallout 4, I probably wouldn't even know it was supposed to be a sequel to Fallout 3.

This really put me off too. Correct me if I'm wrong but the art designer they had fucking died or something, right? They leaned really hard into the cartoony retrofuturism with Fallout 4 and the game came out as an awkward middle child between Borderlands and Skyrim. It completely lacks the grit that helps to ground the sillier elements of the previous games into a realistic and believable world. Fallout 3 even, while having a world that pretty much makes no sense on a logistical level, remains an incredibly interesting game to look at from a visual design standpoint and I remember almost every location in that game like twenty years after the fact. I can't remember shit from Fallout 4, though, aside from The Institute, which only sticks out in my mind because of how much it reminded me of Mass Effect and NOT Fallout.

The Fallout 4 London mod has released a trailer, I haven't gotten to watch it yet, but they have hired 6th and 7th Doctors Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy for short roles in the introduction.

Can't wait to play this in forty fucking years only to discover that it's still Fallout 4 at the core and thus terrible.

I kid, but it looks interesting, reminded me more of Bioshock than Fallout but that's not really a bad thing. I was concerned to see that we had no significant dialogue going on in that trailer though, I'm hoping they'll use a less retarded system than the forced Fallout 4 interface.

 

[Snekposter]

I actually quite like most of the Fallout 4 companions and lament that they weren't put into a better game that would better accommodate the decent writing surrounding them. Nick is a real bro and the highlight of strong writing the whole way through the game.

I think they should have had the Ghoul Whitey Bulger be the head of the Triggermen and revolve things there about him trying to recreate the good old pre-War days. Could either take him down or convince him to walk away and put aside his Old World Blues. Also, Kellogg. We get that one little post-death line from him and then... nothing. Everything involving the Memory Den is fucking golden, especially as it translates to synths, consciousness, and memory, including Curie, and they do nothing with Valentine having Kellogg's backup harddrive installed in him.

 

[Ruin]

I think they should have had the Ghoul Whitey Bulger be the head of the Triggermen and revolve things there about him trying to recreate the good old pre-War days. Could either take him down or convince him to walk away and put aside his Old World Blues. Also, Kellogg. We get that one little post-death line from him and then... nothing. Everything involving the Memory Den is fucking golden, especially as it translates to synths, consciousness, and memory, including Curie, and they do nothing with Valentine having Kellogg's backup harddrive installed in him.

Kellogg is actually a really interesting character done dirty. A former Shi contract killer and NCR mercenary turned 100+ year old cyborg hitman and they did fuck all with him.

That's a fucking cool backstory.

 

[Ghost of Wesley Willis]

This really put me off too. Correct me if I'm wrong but the art designer they had fucking died or something, right? They leaned really hard into the cartoony retrofuturism with Fallout 4 and the game came out as an awkward middle child between Borderlands and Skyrim. It completely lacks the grit that helps to ground the sillier elements of the previous games into a realistic and believable world. Fallout 3 even, while having a world that pretty much makes no sense on a logistical level, remains an incredibly interesting game to look at from a visual design standpoint and I remember almost every location in that game like twenty years after the fact. I can't remember shit from Fallout 4, though, aside from The Institute, which only sticks out in my mind because of how much it reminded me of Mass Effect and NOT Fallout.

Yeah, Adam Adamowicz. He did the concept art for Fallout 3 and early on for Fallout 4. Died February 2012 of lung cancer.

But yeah, it really went into cartoony overdrive. Comparing it to Borderlands is indeed justified as it feels like a boring borderlands knockoff. 3 didn't feel realistic, but it felt immersive. It was a dark world full of suffering, war, slavery, and instability. Comparing the capital wasteland to the Commonwealth is like comparing Detroit to a lower middle class neighborhood. Only the lower class neighborhood looks zany and goofy like it's now being gentrified.

Fallout 4 didn't feel as dark and gritty as it did in 3. It felt too silly, like much of it was a fever dream. The raider gangs come off as high school bullies and the nuka world raiders are just larpers that look like comic con attendees or tumblr bloggers than actual fucking raiders. Everything just feels like it's more trying to be a cheesy comic book or pulp novel because Bethesda takes the 50s retrofuturism way too seriously.

It's just a shame the only sparks of creativity and fun came from Far Harbor.

 

[Spicey McHaggis]

Kellogg is actually a really interesting character done dirty. A former Shi contract killer and NCR mercenary turned 100+ year old cyborg hitman and they did fuck all with him.

That's a fucking cool backstory.

I really wish they had done an operation: anchorage style dlc where you could explore his backstory to access some of his unique gear. Instead we got more workshop shit, including the fuck awful ammo production shit.

 

[wopirish]

I really wish they had done an operation: anchorage style dlc where you could explore his backstory to access some of his unique gear. Instead we got more workshop shit, including the fuck awful ammo production shit.

I always thought the ammo production was from one of my mods. with how shit it was lol.

 

[Ghost of Wesley Willis]

On the topic of ammo in Fallout 4, isn't really stupid how 5.56 was the most common rifle round in 3 and New Vegas, but yet you only find small handfuls of it in Fallout 4?

Guess that's what happens when you decide to put emphasis on PIPE GUNS PIPE GUNS PIPE GUNS instead of a well rounded arsenal.

 

[Conan]

On the topic of ammo in Fallout 4, isn't really stupid how 5.56 was the most common rifle round in 3 and New Vegas, but yet you only find small handfuls of it in Fallout 4?

Guess that's what happens when you decide to put emphasis on PIPE GUNS PIPE GUNS PIPE GUNS instead of a well rounded arsenal.

The combat rifle being chambered in .45 and the assault rifle in 5.56 is still a baffling decision.
Having them be 5.56 and .308 respectively would have made much more sense balance-wise as well as logically.
I fiddled with CK early on to do that as well as rename the AR to the Machine Gun.

The crafting system allowed them to ditch a whole slew of weapons under the pretense that you could turn one weapon into several (no 10mm SMG because full auto 10mm pistol receiver, no sniper rifle distinct from the hunting rifle because you can rechamber to .50, but that still removes the semi-auto sniper rifle which was present in 3 unless you count the dumpy combat rifle via crafting)

The fact there's like 5 pipe gun variants but whole classes of weapons absent or only present in a craftable mod form/ugly as sin
just indicates how much of Fallout 4's development was "so caught up in that we could we didn't stop to think if we should" tier.

Looking at 76's copious fun and decently designed weapons genuinely annoys me.

 

[Ghost of Wesley Willis]

The combat rifle being chambered in .45 and the assault rifle in 5.56 is still a baffling decision.
Having them be 5.56 and .308 respectively would have made much more sense balance-wise as well as logically.
I fiddled with CK early on to do that as well as rename the AR to the Machine Gun.

The crafting system allowed them to ditch a whole slew of weapons under the pretense that you could turn one weapon into several (no 10mm SMG because full auto 10mm pistol receiver, no sniper rifle distinct from the hunting rifle because you can rechamber to .50, but that still removes the semi-auto sniper rifle which was present in 3 unless you count the dumpy combat rifle via crafting)

The fact there's like 5 pipe gun variants but whole classes of weapons absent or only present in a craftable mod form/ugly as sin
just indicates how much of Fallout 4's development was "so caught up in that we could we didn't stop to think if we should" tier.

Looking at 76's copious fun and decently designed weapons genuinely annoys me.

Also the fact the combat rifle does much more damage than the submachine gun despite being chambered in the same cartridge is also really damn annoying as well, along with the fact you can make a jump from .45 to .308.

Pipe Guns are so ugly as sin and they make no sense if you're a bit of a gun sperg like me. They're weak, overabundant, and everyone and their mom has a fucking pipe gun. No wonder the minutemen got their asses pounded. They're all using stupid pipe guns and laser muskets while getting outgunned by brainless raiders with superior weaponry. No wonder settlers and farmers in the commonwealth are absolute pushovers. Meanwhile on the west coast, you got the NCR mass producing AR-15s for their army, the gun runners building, rebuilding, or restoring pre-war firearms or building new rifles of their own, and much more superb improvised weapons.

Really goes to show that the original formula to Fallout was showing society rebuilding and shaping into a civilization itself and putting the apocalypse as far as possible behind them. Bethesda just wants wholesome gay quirky wasteland where everyone is gay and living in a rusty shack with 3 skeletons and a deathclaw nest in their backyard.

 

[Polyboros2]

The biggest question I have about Fallout London is how are you suppose to tell the Ghouls apart from the Brittish?

Guess that's what happens when you decide to put emphasis on PIPE GUNS PIPE GUNS PIPE GUNS instead of a well rounded arsenal.

The biggest loss of Fallout 4 was the complete and utter lack of progression in guns. Its there, they have tiers that could of made progression in the game feel really cool, where early on you are using these ugly primitive cobbled together pipe guns and salvaged together energy weapons. You find prewar stuff but you can't maintain them long enough to rely on them. As your skill improves, you can repair 10mm Pistols and Combat Shotguns, but you can't modify them, and while the pipeguns and laser muskets aren't as good, they compete by being customizable. It's a choice if you want fully tricked out primitive guns, or old world guns with one or two modifications. And later game, if you level yourself up enough, or shell out the caps, you can wield the best that there was before the bombs dropped.

Instead pipeguns are worse than what you have after your first mission, and for the next 100 hours they'll never be more than the chaff you leave on raider corpses.

 

[Ghost of Wesley Willis]

The biggest question I have about Fallout London is how are you suppose to tell the Ghouls apart from the Brittish?



The biggest loss of Fallout 4 was the complete and utter lack of progression in guns. Its there, they have tiers that could of made progression in the game feel really cool, where early on you are using these ugly primitive cobbled together pipe guns and salvaged together energy weapons. You find prewar stuff but you can't maintain them long enough to rely on them. As your skill improves, you can repair 10mm Pistols and Combat Shotguns, but you can't modify them, and while the pipeguns and laser muskets aren't as good, they compete by being customizable. It's a choice if you want fully tricked out primitive guns, or old world guns with one or two modifications. And later game, if you level yourself up enough, or shell out the caps, you can wield the best that there was before the bombs dropped.

Instead pipeguns are worse than what you have after your first mission, and for the next 100 hours they'll never be more than the chaff you leave on raider corpses.

Fallout London looks dreadfully boring ngl.

Yeah, Fallout 4 decided to go the route of guns being dynamic and multi platform and it sadly just killed a lot of creativity and balance. It felt good going from a 10mm pistol in Fallout 3 to an Assault Rifle and 10mm SMG in the first 30 minutes. They felt solid and balanced. New Vegas did it even better and made low level weapons useful well past mid level with perks. Fallout 4 also killed unique weapons in favor of the dogshit legendary mechanic which gave you the most useless dogshit weapons imagineable (kill a radroach, get a pipe pistol that deals more damage to robots, kill a deathclaw, get a gamma gun that deals more damage to ghouls).

Plus I wish the pipe guns actually looked like something functional, not what some dipshit Bethesda intern whipped up smashing pieces together and calling it a night. I'm an absolute sucker for homemade and improvised weapons, but they suck so bad in Fallout 4.

 

[Mola Ram]

Fallout 4 also killed unique weapons in favor of the dogshit legendary mechanic which gave you the most useless dogshit weapons imagineable (kill a radroach, get a pipe pistol that deals more damage to robots, kill a deathclaw, get a gamma gun that deals more damage to ghouls).

You do get good stuff from time to time. I once got an explosive combat shotgun that did ungodly damage to just about anything, because the explosive quality applied to every individual pellet. Seriously, shredded limbs going everywhere. Unfortunately, it sucked as a close-range weapon because it was constantly breaking my limbs from the shockwaves.

You know what really fucked up the legendary system? Nuka World. I can't tell you how many garbage pieces of legendary Nuka World gang armor that I will never, ever use clog up my inventory and spawn in the place of vanilla stuff that would at least be marginally useful. Sometimes you luck out and get a Western Revolver, but nowhere near as many Pack Stuffed Armbands or whatever other raider trash you find.

 

[Shidoen]

Found the perfect mod, my game is complete now.

Spoiler