Let me kick this off by saying that unlike many here, I actually like and respect Fallout 4 unlike Diet Coke, but after nearly 5 years it's becoming more and more apparent to me that it's gameplay isn't very exciting anymore. It's a cheaper, processed and less added sugar variant of what we've already played before.

I'm merely going to talk about certain elements in this that set me off, not certain larger elements that have already had dissertations written about it.

First things first, the color palette was at first exciting and refreshing for many players, and even I was excited at first to see that Fallout 4 didn't look like it had cheetos dust smothered all over the screen, but after a while the constant blue skies and happy Disney adventure starts to feel a bit milquetoast. Remember when Fallout was a post-apocalyptic game that looked like the world was one massive anus? Me too. That's because that's what it was supposed to look like. An irradiated shithole isn't supposed to look upbeat and happy, it's supposed to look somber and relentless. Many criticised Fallout 3's green tint, but it added necessary flavor to the wasteland. Fellout added a new lens to see that game through, but I wouldn't want the entire game to look like that, and in Fellout's defense it doesn't completely resemble Fellout. Fallout 4 looks much more colorful and unnecessarily vivid than Fellout could ever be. Remind me what genre of game I'm playing again? Certainly not a post apocalyptic RPG. Those have elements of horror and survival in them, Fallout 4 is an action game with unimaginative design.

Another element I'm tired of is the settlements. There's only one part of the whole game where you are forced to do this and I'm still sick and tired of it. There's one city that I will even call a city in Fallout 4 and it's not even as big as the first city from Fallout 3. Isn't modern hardware evolving? So why doesn't Bethesda think it's possible for a city to actually look like a city and not a small village? Skyrim had 8 cities and while not all of them were constantly huge, they still had a lot of NPCs and quests contained within them. Fallout 4's biggest city (and also it's ONLY city) has around 3-4 quests not tied to the main story. Wtf? Did they forget that the player is going to be exploring this world that they've built from scratch? It doesn't help to most quests boil down to formulaic and monotonous kill fests that feel like the few hundred radiant quests in the game.

totally agree, fallout 4 was a casual game that sadly doesn't feel like a fallout, for me
the worst thing about fallout 4 is that you dont feel at any time that you are in an apocalyptic world.

Dude, the world is colorful. Atomic bombs have several effects, but none of them is tinting the world puke-green. Radiation is invisible to the human eye. Even if it wasn't and you could actually see it, after 200+ years, the world would have recovered. Plants grow again, toxic clouds dissipate.

As for only a few settlements. I suppose they wanted to go with "The Commonwealth is dead" theme and give you ample room to rebuild it. Honestly, I've always found Bethesda-made cities to be underwhelming anyway. They're always sparsely populated and very small.

My problem with Fallout (but not just FO4) is that the guys at Bethesda are too fond of rubble. People say the world of TES seems to be trapped in a permanent medieval era. Well, the world of Fallout seems to be trapped in the 10 years or so after the bombs fell. There's trash and rubble everywhere, despite the fact that being a prospector is one of the most popular jobs. People look pretty much the same they did before the war, only dirty, but no one is actually doing anything to preserve that per-war world. They keep using the same weapons people did 300+ years prior.

NPCs in fallout seem to fall into a few categories: farmer/rancher, prospector, mercenary/soldier, chem addict, wastelander, raider... But you know what I never find? People actually producing the stuff you see lying around. Where are the tailors making clothes, or the tanners preparing the leather for the jackets, or the artisans making cups and utensils for people? Or maybe more modern jobs like engineers installing some basic source of power for settlements?

FO4 actually did a couple of great things in that regard. The settlement system allows you to create sustainable settlements (because seriously, FNV settlements are abysmal). I also thought adding pipe weapons was a brilliant idea. People shouldn't be able to go around wielding 1911s or AR 15s when the manufacturer has been gone for hundreds of years. It actually makes a lot of sense that they would make their own crappy, handmade firearms.

gavin gold wrote:

Dude, the world is colorful. Atomic bombs have several effects, but none of them is tinting the world puke-green. Radiation is invisible to the human eye. Even if it wasn't and you could actually see it, after 200+ years, the world would have recovered. Plants grow again, toxic clouds dissipate.

As for only a few settlements. I suppose they wanted to go with "The Commonwealth is dead" theme and give you ample room to rebuild it. Honestly, I've always found Bethesda-made cities to be underwhelming anyway. They're always sparsely populated and very small.

My problem with Fallout (but not just FO4) is that the guys at Bethesda are too fond of rubble. People say the world of TES seems to be trapped in a permanent medieval era. Well, the world of Fallout seems to be trapped in the 10 years or so after the bombs fell. There's trash and rubble everywhere, despite the fact that being a prospector is one of the most popular jobs. People look pretty much the same they did before the war, only dirty, but no one is actually doing anything to preserve that per-war world. They keep using the same weapons people did 300+ years prior.

NPCs in fallout seem to fall into a few categories: farmer/rancher, prospector, mercenary/soldier, chem addict, wastelander, raider...  But you know what I never find? People actually producing the stuff you see lying around. Where are the tailors making clothes, or the tanners preparing the leather for the jackets, or the artisans making cups and utensils for people? Or maybe more modern jobs like engineers installing some basic source of power for settlements?

FO4 actually did a couple of great things in that regard. The settlement system allows you to create sustainable settlements (because seriously, FNV settlements are abysmal). I also thought adding pipe weapons was a brilliant idea. People shouldn't be able to go around wielding 1911s or AR 15s when the manufacturer has been gone for hundreds of years. It actually makes a lot of sense that they would make their own crappy, handmade firearms.

i love some of the additions they added into fallout 4, and i feel like they realised their mistakes and attempted to improve those system with 76 only problem is the rest of the game was trash and they got greedy.

in terms of being stuck in a time frame i get what your saying but i think the issue you would run into would be something along the lines of fable where it escalated the advancements in technology and it somewhat backfires. where as a perpetual sort of time setting you can make small adjustment and keep the ongoing feel per installment but thats my own opinion

@AlanaSP I actually don't agree with you on Fable. Fable 3 was one of my favorite games, I played that so much. I've never enjoyed the medieval setting with bows and arrows, I like using guns. I do think they might have moved technology forward a bit too fast because Fable 2 had a renaissance-like setting while Fable 3 was fully industrial and there was only 50 years between the two. But honestly, the only thing I disliked about Fable 3 was the living weapon system, and not because the system was bad, just the way it was implemented was not great in my opinion.

But anyway, the one thing fallout doesn't need for sure is to go back to the puke-green atmosphere of the Capital wasteland. That's the one thing everyone could agree was terrible.

gavin gold wrote:

@AlanaSP I actually don't agree with you on Fable. Fable 3 was one of my favorite games, I played that so much. I've never enjoyed the medieval setting with bows and arrows, I like using guns. I do think they might have moved technology forward a bit too fast because Fable 2 had a renaissance-like setting while Fable 3 was fully industrial and there was only 50 years between the two. But honestly, the only thing I disliked about Fable 3 was the living weapon system, and not because the system was bad, just the way it was implemented was not great in my opinion.  

But anyway, the one thing fallout doesn't need for sure is to go back to the puke-green atmosphere of the Capital wasteland. That's the one thing everyone could agree was terrible.

dont get me wrong i loved fable all the games, fable 2 i think struck the right balance with advancing the time frame and still retaining that fantasy setting and i do concur i love the more vibrant colour palette as a whole and makes the game far more interesting

I have over 4000 hours in fallout 4 at the moment. I've played it every which way multiple times.

I find each fallout game has strengths and weaknesses.

FO3 - for me this was the best of the modern Fallout settings. The ruins of DC felt like a proper post apocalyptic landscape. but the story was perhaps not the best. It was enjoyable of course but not epic. The DLC's were too standalone and apart from broken steel added nothing to the story of the game (Something bethesda repeated in 4, more on that in a bit)

FONV - As a guy who grew up playing fallout 1&2 this felt the closest to a true successor to those in terms of story telling. The branching tales. Multiple endings etc felt like a fallout game. I found it was let down by the world, I found it very sparse and empty at times (one could argue that it is set in the desert what do you expect). Still it hurt the game for me. One of the highlights for this one was the DLC. Although they told their own story they each had that connecting thread that kept the overall story progressing and tied in with the base game. This is how DLC should be adding to and expanding on the base story.

FO4 - This was the best in terms of gameplay. The combat feels fluid and exciting. But this game is hampered greatly by its dumbed down story. I dont mind the voiced protagonist but it does restrict new playthroughs. the lack of an evil option to most things was a massive loss. They tried to correct it with Nuka World but failed in that by making the good option so utterly worthless. Having 4 response options per interaction was a really poor choice. I know they wanted to appeal to a mass market but it lost alot in terms of true RPG value.

The DLC for FO4 were perhaps (excluding Far Harbor) some of the worst DLC bethesda have every released (looking at you horse armor) as I stated above Nuka World tried to add in an evil/raider option for players but it was so lack luster and hamfisted it felt unnatural. Yes you can say there is an evil option joining the institute but given you have to progress almost half way through the base game to get to it by that point its almost pointless.

Base building I honestly dont mind much but they focused to much on it. In future I would love to see perhaps one or two places that can be turned into settlements and thats it. the rest of the time your playing the actual game. The workshop DLC felt like a waste of money. Even Vault tec Workshop - now I have had fun building this but ultimately what 5 quests with no further impact to the game is trash. The other 2 workshop DLCs have been outmatched by player created content.

Automatron was good but needed alot more fleshing out. What a wasted opportunity that was. The rust devils seemed like such an interesting faction yet you learn almost nothing about them. The robots were cool but after a while you just forget about them.

Far Harbor was the only truly good DLC. It felt like proper fallout content. the setting was good the new monsters and the fact it finally expanded on the Children of Atom into an actual faction was wonderful.

but now we come back to bethesda's issue with dlc in the fallout universe. None of it matters to the main game world. Once you've done them thats it there is no cross over into the main narrative. No consequences depending on how you finish them. Nothing. Each one is a self contained tale that ends up resulting in nothing more than a few new armor sets and weapons.

I doubt Bethesda can pull off a revival of fallout with fallout 5 but one can only dream.

One thing I really think they need to do is do away with the main questline. After my second playthrough i could not give 2 f's about shawn. Future Fallouts should have a reason for you to be in the world/setting but thats it. you experience everything happening in a living world and find your place to fit in. You cant walk out of a vault and become the defacto leader of a faction within 2 hours of play (Preston!) where is the sense of progression?

The world should feel like it is alive despite your actions not because of them. Events should happen simultaneously. Outcomes can be influenced by you but are not dependent on your direct intervention.

Have multiple factions, multiple side quests but scrap the main quest and let you just find your place in the world. Want to be a raider then be one and have the world react to you as such. Want to join a faction then great. Dont spoon feed it to you. Bring back multiple dialogue options and a genuine sense of consequence to how you deal with them. You can have a big bad in the world sure but it doesn't have to be you that takes them out. have the option to join in the fight or live your own life but have events play out anyway. Only with differences depending on whether you have taken action in the world itself or interacted with the populace.

Anyway I have rambled long enough.

Just my views

Van

People have this idea of what a post apocalyptic world should look like. But most franchises in the genre will show you a world only a few years after the apocalypse. Fallout 4 takes place 200 years after the bombs fell. It should not look like Mad Max, it should look almost medieval, pre industrial, with a few elements of pre war tech here and there.

I've thought about the voiced protagonist. When you make a character, you get to choose the sex, skin color, hair color, eye color, the shape of the features... Everyone loves customizing their character. Nobody would claim they prefer to have a grey blob. BUT imagine you were given a predetermined character you can't customize. All of the sudden it is no longer your character, even if you would make it exactly the same. I like to have a voiced protagonists, I think it gives personality to it, but the problem is by giving it just one voice, it stops being your character, it's just the voice of the SS. They need to add a few more voices next time.

Being evil could be a great tool for storytelling, but Beth likes keeping the story simple. I remember an interview with Peter Molyneux. He was talking about Fable 3 and said the issue with a morality system is most people don't want to be evil, they want to be good. It's the job of the developer to make it so that it's a tough choice. In FNV, there are choices to give drugs to kids or trick innocent people into getting blown up, but why would I want to do that? Honestly, I think the morality system is somewhat boring anyway. I think something along the lines of Dishonored would be better. In that game, it's not about good or evil, the people you're hunting down deserve to die, but there are consequences for the world at large to murder an important political figure. Maybe you could have those consequences coming back to hurt the player. There's so little impact in slaughtering an entire village that it's almost comical. As for being evil for the sake of being evil though, the chaotic evil genocidal maniac kind of play through, I suppose you can just kill innocent people for kicks. But honesty I'm a little worried about people who play like that.  

People who criticize the base building need to realize that it's here to stay. The idea was almost certainly based on the Hearthfire DLC, which was the most successful DLC for a Beth game ever. That and remember that Minecraft is the most successful game ever made, at all. The reality of things is money talks, and even when older fans may think it's somewhat out of place, numbers don't lie, younger players love settlement building.  

Doing away with the main quest though, it's a terrible idea, and realistically, it's never going to happen. Nobody plays a game to be the secondary character. If there's something going on in the world, you should be at the center of it. If anything, the problem is the secondary quests are too disconnected from the main quest, to the point if you do one or two things you get completely derailed from the main quest.

Unfortunately you are right about the base building. Doesn't mean it should be as feature heavy as it has been. Hearthfire worked very well but it was a one and done home. Not a recurring thing you had to go and do all across the map.

My issue with the main quest is it feels like it belongs in a linear game rather than an open world RPG setting. The main quests that have been given so far feel rather forced, and yet there seems to be no impact if you dont follow it. I makes no sense. You're supposed to be tracking your son, the most important thing you have left in the world but there is no sense of urgency about it. Even Fallout 2 had the weird visions to say "Hey get back to saving us ya mook" although I am glad that isnt it, there should be something.

As for the evil aspect. I would disagree. I for one like options and sometimes it is more fun to be the bad guy. It doesn't reflect me as a person but I dont play games to be myself. There can be so many rpg reasons why for example to SS becomes a bad guy. After seeing their partner murdered and son kidnapped they could suffer a psychotic break and just lose it. They have no connection to anyone in this wasteland so why would they be bothered what happens to anyone. It would be perfectly fitting for the SS to go "F this world" and worry only about themselves. Having an evil play option doesn't have to mean murder everything in sight. Your can be evil by serving your own self interest. Allowing people to die at the hands of others because it benefits you in the long run. In most RPG's being a thief is considered the evil/bad option yet you dont have to kill anyone. there are many facets to it.

Bethesda wanting to keep a story simple is a failure on their part. but not one they exclusively suffer. A lot of game companies have a history of dumbing down games and stories. Your right money does talk and to appeal to more people it has to be easier for more people to understand or get into. However you really do risk alienating your core fans. Please dont misunderstand I am not asking for an overly convoluted game that takes all the fun out of a game just to know how to play it but give us something to work with.

Take 76. Granted with Wastelanders it is better and now feels almost like a Fallout game but they made colossal mistakes with not including human npc's at the start. 76 now has a settler/raider option giving people the chance to play the bad character. They tried something new and it backfired but they are trying to claw it back so kudos to them for that. They really should not of used a single player engine for a multiplayer game but thats a whole different conversation. Even so 76's handling of base building is better than 4. Your only concern is your own base. Bethesda still make money with the micro transactions of base building content but not at the expense of playing the game.

Base building in 4 took over too much of the game that is where they went wrong. I enjoy it. I've build hundreds of settlements and often base entire playthroughs on the style of settlement I want to build. It has its place just in moderation.

I just hope they learn from 4 and 76. Look at the fact that NV is still rated one of the best Fallout titles and work a way of blending all the good aspects.

As for playing as a secondary character thats not what I mean with getting rid of the main story. Play as the hero or villain but don't force it. Let it be a natural evolution of the game. The problem with 4 is nothing happens in world other than what you do. The radio has nothing but news of what you do. Whereas there could be thing happening around the game world that happen without your involvement but are affected by other choices you make. Take the minutemen. Without your involvement they could either completely die out or someone else can come along and be the new leader. While your playing new settlements grow around the commonwealth that you have no direct involvement in but that changes the landscape over time. You could join the BoS and while doing so because you never joined the railroad, while your off doing Brotherhood stuff, the institute track down and have a war with the railroad. Resulting in them being wiped out or having to relocate again.

Just because you are the Protagonist doesn't mean the world stops existing unless you interact with it. This is all conjecture on my part I am not a game designer or story teller I don't know how hard it would be to have things like this in a game world but to me that would make things seem like you are in a world that is existing and not just there for you to interact with. It would open up many more options and feel like things around happen. The radio stations in game could tell you what is happening through current news/rumors you can decide if you want to investigate or leave other factions to their fate.

I think these games could use with a time system. So the way it is now you get a quest, and it may seem like the most urgent thing in the world, but if you ignore it and get back to it a month later it is still there as if no time has passed. There's no sense of urgency to anything. Instead you could have a time limit to complete quests, maybe the circumstances could change a bit if you do it early or when it's just about to expire, and if you don't complete it on time there's consequences for that too. Dead Rising did this quite well (the first one, I haven't played any of the sequels so I don't know about those). That would also tie well with your idea of the world progressing naturally. I wouldn't want a world that works completely independently of your character, but I do agree that it could be good to have things happening around. It does feel sometimes like nothing happens without you doing it.

76 I think it's just a different animal. Beth wanted like a Fornite with a Fallout costume.

The base building thing, I'm just saying don't expect it to go away or to be toned down.

I am also for options, but options need to make sense or have some sort of weight attached to it. One of my favorite games was Fable 3. If you never played it, very often there were different options to take during quests, these had consequences not just for you but often for the world at large. So, regardless of what you thought was best, every time you took a choice you had to pause and think about what you were doing. It's never as simple as A) Clearly good option that works best for everyone B) Completely evil option that you have no reason to take, C) The good option but I want more money, or D) Skill/Charisma check that changes the outcome sightly. And I'm not talking about FO4. FNV, for all the praise it gets, almost always falls into the same thing. It's fun to play as an anti-hero, or a morally grey mercenary who only cares for the money. As for the fully evil, I'm talking chaotic evil character, that would give chems to children or blow up innocents just for kicks, I don't get that. I feel bad doing those things, even if it's just a game, but maybe that's just me.

gavin gold wrote:

Dude, the world is colorful. Atomic bombs have several effects, but none of them is tinting the world puke-green. Radiation is invisible to the human eye. Even if it wasn't and you could actually see it, after 200+ years, the world would have recovered. Plants grow again, toxic clouds dissipate.

Thanks for your response. It's a video game and a post-apocalyptic one at that. If I wanted to play a colorful fantasy adventure I would go play Oblivion. That's what I play that game for. However, it's not what I play Fallout for. What I play Fallout 4 is a blend of 20th Century science fiction and grimdark horror. I can't immerse myself into the bleak and somber tone when the game looks like a cartoon.

Last I checked, radiation poisoning is more likely to give you cancer than to give you superpowers. And also there's no such technology that can stop time long enough for you to shoot a raider's d*ck off. It's a video game. Take a few hints from Metro or Stalker and make Fallout feel post-apocalyptic again and not post-Fallout.

gavin gold wrote:

My problem with Fallout (but not just FO4) is that the guys at Bethesda are too fond of rubble. People say the world of TES seems to be trapped in a permanent medieval era. Well, the world of Fallout seems to be trapped in the 10 years or so after the bombs fell. There's trash and rubble everywhere, despite the fact that being a prospector is one of the most popular jobs. People look pretty much the same they did before the war, only dirty, but no one is actually doing anything to preserve that per-war world. They keep using the same weapons people did 300+ years prior.

The rubble is there to create atmosphere. If it wasn't there and everything looked as pristine as it can be 300 years after a Nuclear War, it would be not only boring to explore but also rather incongruous with the tones and themes of the series. What is the point of a post-apocalyptic game that is so far into the future that it's not even post-apocalyptic anymore?

And literally nobody says that about TES. In TES, every province in Tamriel represents a different period of human history or at least takes heavy inspiration from different parts. Some provinces are more obvious than others, like Cyrodiil's parallels of Ancient Rome. The only province that is stuck in a constant medieval era is High Rock.

gavin gold wrote:

NPCs in fallout seem to fall into a few categories: farmer/rancher, prospector, mercenary/soldier, chem addict, wastelander, raider...  But you know what I never find? People actually producing the stuff you see lying around. Where are the tailors making clothes, or the tanners preparing the leather for the jackets, or the artisans making cups and utensils for people? Or maybe more modern jobs like engineers installing some basic source of power for settlements?

Yeah, that's what I wonder all the time after feeding buckshot to some poor settler. When's the functional tax system coming? What about having your character settle for a shitty 9-5 job working in some post-post-post-apocalypse convenience store or a NCR office cubicle. Sounds fun.

There are ways to incorporate base building into an openworld game but not have a linear storyline.

Lets use a 76 esque vault as an example. You and say 10-20 vault residents could leave the vault wherever it happens to be next time around. Your goal to establish a new colony to begin rebuilding the world. So initially you find a spot to settle. this works as your homebase/hub, now in terms of story you could be the defacto leader of the group automatically the head honcho or you could be one of the residents that is tasked with scouting and material retrieval initially. Over the course of the game you can become the leader as events progress.

During your time while your beginning and out scouting you can organically come across other survivors/settlements be they neutral or hostile. and while you are away from your home base things can happen there that will open new possibilities to explore or make contact with other towns and factions.

It is a system that would give you a purpose to explore and scavenge without the "you must find this person style questline"

During play you can be introduced to tales of the big bad of the area through rumors and social interactions with other towns and groups. But just like in Fable 3 you cannot face them until you are ready. Recruiting allies and kitting out your homebase. It would keep base building but having it localised. And while being an important part of the game its not all encompassing. Factions could be introduced via Radio broadcasts or even random encounters. so it feels different each time. If the Brotherhood were to appear in the next game. you can be out in the wastes scavenging and come across a patrol.

maybe you cannot join them to start with but they offer aid to your hub or give you an option to allow a BoS Garrison inside your base. over time you can earn their trust and join them, who knows.

There are ways of having an open world story that encourages exploration and almost demands it rather than has the option to explore as a side not to the main quest. For all its failings Fable 3 got that right. Bethesda just need to work on the storytelling. Bring back skill checks. Fame and Infamy. Even weapon degredation is a missed part of fallout for me.

As for an evil option is this kind of game. you could decide to abandon the survivors and go it alone. Maybe join the raiders or even the big bad of the game, or get captured by them then be given a choice to serve them. or another option, personal greed or lust for power. you want to be the leader of the town but the only way to get it quickly is by murdering the current leader. Then hold onto power by ruling through fear. There are ways of doing an evil option that can feel like it belongs.

Anyway I have thoroughly enjoyed this discussion. but I really should do some actual work. Need to pay the bills and all. Thanks @gavin gold plenty of food for thought.

@Heisenberg

Quote :

Thanks for your response. It's a video game and a post-apocalyptic one at that. If I wanted to play a colorful fantasy adventure I would go play Oblivion. That's what I play that game for. However, it's not what I play Fallout for. What I play Fallout 4 is a blend of 20th Century science fiction and grimdark horror. I can't immerse myself into the bleak and somber tone when the game looks like a cartoon.

Then use an enb and make it bleak. Fallout isn't a horror game. And just because you like it puke-green doesn't mean the rest of us should suffer for it.

When you go back and look at the most popular mods for FO3, the first is the Unnoficial Patch, the second is archive invalidated, and the third is the first real mod, Fellout. Ever since the game came out, people have been trying to get rid of that ridiculous, depressing, unrealistic tone. The world has bright colors, sorry to disappoint you.

Quote :

The rubble is there to create atmosphere. If it wasn't there and everything looked as pristine as it can be 300 years after a Nuclear War, it would be not only boring to explore but also rather incongruous with the tones and themes of the series. What is the point of a post-apocalyptic game that is so far into the future that it's not even post-apocalyptic anymore?

You should ask Beth to consider that before they set their game more than 200 years after the apocalyptic event.

In the original Fallout, when you visit Shady sands for the first time you see an actual village. They have walls for safety, they dug a latrine, they have a well for fresh water, they grow crops and herd cattle. They don't live amongst the rubble or ankle deep in trash because it's a settlement. You can have rubble, and destruction and all that stuff on ruins, but they make no sense on a settlement.

Quote :

And literally nobody says that about TES. In TES, every province in Tamriel represents a different period of human history or at least takes heavy inspiration from different parts. Some provinces are more obvious than others, like Cyrodiil's parallels of Ancient Rome. The only province that is stuck in a constant medieval era is High Rock.

Well, I've heard plenty of people say that. Maybe not you.

The world in TES is trapped in a medieval era. I'm not sure how that's even debatable. Between the  setting of TES Online and TES Skyrim there's a 2000 year difference, yet the world barely changes.

Quote :

Yeah, that's what I wonder all the time after feeding buckshot to some poor settler. When's the functional tax system coming? What about having your character settle for a shitty 9-5 job working in some post-post-post-apocalypse convenience store or a NCR office cubicle. Sounds fun.

I'm sorry, What?

I'm not talking about your character. I'm talking about NPCs. It's called worldbuilding. You can find those kinds of NPCs in other games. How is that a strange concept?

''Remember when Fallout was a post-apocalyptic game that looked like the world was one massive anus? Me too.'' that gave me a chuckle, and i 100% agree, Oblivion from 2006 had more effort put into its cities than this game ever did, every thing outside of the main quest is 99% go fetch things or go kill things, even the main characters personalitys are just pure cringe, its always something sarcastic but super cheerful. always so cheerful...

I'm beginning to wonder if the OP of this post has ever seen images of, say, Chernobyl. Despite the mass levels of radioactivity, to the point that it will not be fully safe for human habitation for nearly 22,000 years... it is vibrantly green, growing, with bubbling brooks and wildlife. Granted the wildlife has a tendency towards odd mutation, but hey. Not only this but Chernobyl wasn't even a century ago, not two hundred years of Alpha radiation being drained through the soil into the ground water, washed into the Ocean by the river that winds it's way through the Boston area, etc. In fact my main problem with the game is the aforementioned puke green area known as the glowing sea, and the green-fog ridden radiation storms. While radiation storms would be possible on a world that is heavily irradiated... again, no puke green color.

That said... the plant life would be, outside of the direct blast area (which it is made clear that the extent of the blast area is intact the glowing sea... which is perhaps 40 miles wide... larger than modern nuclear weapons, but the war is said to have taken place in the 2070s so perhaps high megaton, low gigaton, blasts were possible.) should be... well fine. Having lived in the north eastern USA one thing that is actually lacking in the game is MORE greenery, even in the suburbs of Boston. Massachusetts is a state that, like many New England states, leaves heavy amounts of trees both outside and within their suburbs and surrounding areas. Trees and grass have an amazing tolerance for levels of radiation vastly beyond what we find deadly... and hence my first question as to whether the OP has seen modern images of Chernobyl (not the show). It is a heavily wooded area, most of the buildings having been reclaimed by grass, mold, vines, and trees.

I feel the problem lies, mostly, in the fact that earlier Fallout games took place in the South West. Ranging from SoCal to San Francisco, then east into Nevada etc. These areas are deserts TODAY, and would simply remain such after a nuclear war. Thus a highly different color palette, especially considering a major nuclear war would ruin most of the ozone layer, and it would JUST be on it's way back to fully rebuilding itself after a couple hundred years... which is yet another calamity for animals and humans, but not plant life. In fact plant life has shown amazing resilience even during periods of monstrous holes in our o-zone layer, such as the fossil record shows after various events in the earth's past where we find a massive extinction events attributed to vast spikes in solar radiation - only for the plant life to not only survive but to thrive.

TL;DR - 200 years is FAR more than enough time for plant life to return to new pre-human levels. We know simply by playing the games that no nuclear winter took place (or if one did it did not set into motion an ice age, and was thus extremely short lived), and therefore to be honest Fallout 4 of all of the games from itself and before should in fact be far more green and vibrant.

P.S. Having played games since long before Bethesda was even a company, and having played everything Bethesda has ever released... they have always sucked at city development, dialogue, and to be honest side quests. While actually rather good at primary story lines, lore and history, and nuance they have always lacked in storyboarding for the side stories in their worlds. One of the best they've done in a long time was actually the memories of Kellogg, and finding out that his story lines up with the protagonists through out the fallout series... and that is just a tiny blip in the game. With mods that expand settlement limits, objects, etc the Settlement system allows you to actually fill the gaps that Bethesda even realized they weren't the best at.

DoomRabbit wrote:

I'm beginning to wonder if the OP of this post has ever seen images of, say, Chernobyl. Despite the mass levels of radioactivity, to the point that it will not be fully safe for human habitation for nearly 22,000 years... it is vibrantly green, growing, with bubbling brooks and wildlife. Granted the wildlife has a tendency towards odd mutation, but hey. Not only this but Chernobyl wasn't even a century ago, not two hundred years of Alpha radiation being drained through the soil into the ground water, washed into the Ocean by the river that winds it's way through the Boston area, etc.  In fact my main problem with the game is the aforementioned puke green area known as the glowing sea, and the green-fog ridden radiation storms. While radiation storms would be possible on a world that is heavily irradiated... again, no puke green color.

Ah yes, Fallout. The last hope for realism in video games. On top of turning the landscape into a living, breathing, green and healthy paradise, they should also remove all traces of VATS, perk mutations, unrealistic drugs and psychic Fortune tellers from the game. One thing that has always stumped me is just how unrealistic the Chem usage in these games are. It's promoting heroin to the youth by telling them they'll be able to stop time and dodge bullets by using it. Oh and there's no way Dogmeat should be a healthy German Shepherd after 200 years in the Wasteland. My suggestion is to replace him with an angry fire lizard, the more realistic option.

Fallout should stay Fallout. Why are you complaining about Fallout 3's green tint and Fallout 4's glowing sea when you forgot to mention Necropolis in the first ever Fallout game. Are you going to complain tirelessly about this too?



Wow. 200 years in the future and they still haven't replaced that old CRT TV. How unrealistic can you get? Are we living in 2277 or 1885? And also look at that dilapidated roof and wall. Nobody will be able to live there anymore. 200 years later and you're expecting me to believe nobody has rebuilt the floorboards. Lazy devs.

DoomRabbit wrote:

TL;DR - 200 years is FAR more than enough time for plant life to return to new pre-human levels. We know simply by playing the games that no nuclear winter took place (or if one did it did not set into motion an ice age, and was thus extremely short lived), and therefore to be honest Fallout 4 of all of the games from itself and before should in fact be far more green and vibrant.

A game like The Last of Us is built on the idea that there will be a lot of greenery after a post-apocalypse, but that game is about an infection. Fallout is about a post-apocalypse brought on by nuclear war. The last thing that comes to mind when I think of nuclear war is an urban metropolis covered with healthy greenery and shrubs. What I do tend to think of is a foggy, harsh, you guessed it, Wasteland. Why set a game after a nuclear war when you're just going to make it tropical anyway? The designers don't just add in a green radioactive tint to piss you off and put a wrench in the works of every "Fallout fan" who thinks that they are the smartest person in the Galaxy for reading an article online stating that Chernobyl is healthy and green after all these years. It called a design choice and the reason game designers and concept artists make these design decisions is so it's a fun game to play. Nobody wants Chernobyl simulator. The closest we've ever come to that is Metro or Stalker and those games still look atmospheric and menacing because their designers were trained to be designers and not accuracy inspectors.

I think that you should re-read my post a few times, read a few of the other comments considering that I was also responding to those. After you're done there I'd like you to consider why you took almost everything that I said so far out of context that it no longer really even pertains to WHAT I said. In fact I was supporting Fallout 4's greenery, and no where in my post was a complaint about it beyond dialogue and side quests.

That said I could care less what YOU view a post nuclear landscape as being, considering we have numerous post nuclear landscapes on this planet... in real life... and yes a couple are tropical.

@Heisenberg Well, dude, you clearly have a handle on sarcasm, but other than that you're not providing much substance. Obviously there's fantastical elements, but why would that mean to throw away all shred of realism? You can have both.

Guess what? There's plenty of people who would prefer more realism, not less. All you are saying is "I don't like color, therefore color bad". Well, it makes sense to make it colorful. Just use a bleak enb if realism bothers you so much.

Dude... I havent said ANY of that. At all. I think you are confusing my post with others. At this stage you are quite literally stuffing words into my post that don't exist.. and in fact are the OPPOSITE of what I said.

I.E. you're claiming I am saying things that, in point of fact, I said explicitly the opposite... and you're defending my post by attacking me and claiming I didnt make my post.

I despise Fallout 4 and it's one of my biggest gaming disappointments. It took me about 6-8 months to conclude that Bethesda made many fundamental creative and design errors with Fallout 4. They had taken a direction the franchise should not be going. Frankly, it is dangerously close to being little more than an Ubisoft Far Cry game instead of a Bethesda, let alone Fallout, RPG.