Fallout 4 is a great game with big flaws - Lemmy.World
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/20867322
[https://lemmy.world/post/20867322] > This is a long post about the various
aspects of Fallout, don’t read it all unless you care to. Instead, find a
section and comment on that so we can have a focused discussion if you prefer. >
> ## Summary > I modded the ever loving crap out of Fallout 4 with minimal
effort using the A Story Wealth mod pack
[https://next.nexusmods.com/fallout4/collections/5atq9t]. My reasoning was that
on my first play through I found the world empty but I mainly enjoy stories and
quests, which this modpack seemed to do. Also I didn’t have time to spend
modding and didn’t want to get lost in that hellhole of doing it myself. This
play through was long, about 150 hours (yikes) which is probably all the fallout
I’ll need for many years to come. I also used an addon to the modpack to make
the game extremely difficult with healing items. More on that later. > > ## Mods
> The mods here are really quite varied and I was surprised at how coherent they
are. With Skyrim modding, I always felt that the mods are somewhat disjointed
and it takes skilled modders to stitch together. Here in FO4 its impressive how
stable the pack was and how well the quests worked together. The most standout
mod by far is The Fens Sheriff Department
[https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/68276] which adds hours of story,
actually interesting quests, and in my opinion content miles better than
Bethesda’s own content. It was worth coming back just for that alone. > > ##
Story > ::: spoiler spoiler > After seeing what mods have done, I have no good
words to say about FO4 in terms of story. The entire plot revolves around you
getting your son back and its all in service of setting up the surprise that he
isn’t a child anymore. Its predictable, boring, etc. All of the factions are
uninteresting. Minutemen are nobodies and their story is minimalist. So is the
Railroad. The Brotherhood of Steel are cool in concept but can’t back up their
grit at all and end up being too friendly with zero depth to them as well. The
Institute makes an attempt at depth but geez, its barely deeper than a puddle. I
chose to end the game with the Fens Sheriff Department and it ended up being way
more interesting despite the muted ending to their plot. If you’re playing this
game for story, don’t. > ::: > > ## Graphics > I’ll spend little time here, I
didn’t spend any time beautifying the game at all but it looks surprisingly good
at times. But at other times, the engine is terrible. The way it handles LOD
stuff is awful and graphical glitches and clipping are extremely common. And
yet, I do enjoy the aesthetic. The art is charming as ever and my main and only
complaint is that the wasteland itself is very one-note and could’ve used some
changes. > > ## Engine > Take it out back and kill it. I won’t blame the vanilla
game entirely but mods didn’t contribute to the instability of the game much. It
has always been rough. In the city, due to a lack of proper culling you will get
half your FPS or worse. My rig is very well equipped and still struggled to
maintain 30-40fps in the cities. Then add in the few quest bugs that I had
(mostly vanilla quests too) and the large amount of physics and items bugs and
this really feels barely glued together in ways mods can’t fix. This engine
needs to be worked on. A lot. > > ## Characters/Followers > I’ll be honest, I’m
not a huge fan of Fallout 4’s followers. Dogmeat is great but the interaction is
minimal and Nick Valentine is easily the best in my opinion. He’s one of the few
with a great set of dialog that actually makes use of the setting and feels
grounded. Everyone else could almost belong in a different game. As with the
story, a lot of the characters are poorly written and have lackluster dialog.
The DLCs fix this but the main game struggles big time to ground everyone
properly. I played the entire game with Heather Casdin
[https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/23273/] and that was a real treat. She
is what every follower could have been and provides really unique story
commentary and relationship moments. It actually feels like you get to know her
well instead of her just spouting backstory at you constantly. Bethesda take
notes. > > ## Locations > One of the better noted parts of Fallout 4 and Skyrim
are the random locations and storytelling within them. Only problem is, FO4
doesn’t reward you often enough with location exploration beyond loot and thats
not what people play fallout for in the first place. Its a mixed back here, some
of the locations are very well done and are 10/10 settings where others are
bland as mayo and waste your time. > > ## Settlements > As intrigued as I
initially was a long time ago at launch with them, the settlement system really
brings the game down. Its impressive, don’t get me wrong but it eats up way too
much of your time to configure and there isn’t any real point in setting them
up. Sim Settlements helps with this but it still misses the mark in my opinion.
I hope this system returns but very diminished in terms of tedium. > > ##
Gameplay > Guns feel good, fights are great. The mods all enhance that by giving
the high stakes gunfights I really enjoy. Yet the game still became too easy
despite me playing on survival. Needs just became annoying distractions. And
being overencombered is just… awful. Especially with scrap being a thing and I
hate scrap honestly. The scrap is a cool idea but has you doing the even more
annoying part of Bethesda games, looking in every nook and cranny for a desk fan
or box car. Its stupid and it takes you out of the game completely. I think this
could have been fine if they toned it down, not every item needs to be able to
be used like this. > > ## DLC > This was the highlight of my time because I had
never played the DLC, I couldn’t afford it back when this launched. Far Harbor
blew me away with how cool it was and just really showed what parts of the base
game were missing. The moral grays presented here were fun to work through and
the quests unique. I wish Far Harbor was its own game almost. Nuka world feels
more like a lightweight DLC but still shows that Bethesda can write decent stuff
and have decent art when they try. I have no idea why the quality of these DLCs
is so high when the rest of the game is kind of bland compared to FO3 or New
Vegas. > > ## The Takeaways > I hope Bethesda gets their act together because
FO4 was a pretty decent game. Not perfect but also very dated. Quests are mostly
bland and are often fetch quests or don’t reward you with much dialog or story.
And the mods just show how easy it would be to get this stuff right the first
time. The lack of grit to the story is something that really sucks in my
opinion. Its not a game for kids clearly, there is blood and guts and mutants
abound. So why don’t any of the major characters die? Why don’t they meet
horrible ends? Why not have your son meet a horrible demise if you make the
wrong choices? The only time any of that happens is the end of the game. Far too
little far too late. The game just has absolutely no stakes to it, no impact. At
least in Skyrim the Civil War shakes things up. Thats what I really wanted from
this game is to feel like my actions were doing something and the mods really
helped with that. > > If you made it through this wall of text, I appreciate it.
I spent way too long on this but I felt like telling someone about my
experiences. Don’t get me wrong, I had a lot of fun with this game but by the
end I was exhausted of Fallout 4’s short comings. Let me know what you think!