Yeah there’s definite under-the-hood-ish improvements that went into this game that I think it’ doesn’t quite get enough credit for? There’s a ton more ambiance in this game than in the previous two Bethesda titles (which is saying a lot, actually – Say what you want about Fallout 3 but that game had a very distinct aesthetic). There’s crowds of birds, the placement of locations is sensical, and the wildlife/NPC Raider distribution makes a LOT more sense as there are no more wandering demigods once you hit a certain level, a problem that’s plagued Beth games since fucking Daggerfall.
NPCs also got a MASSIVE overhaul in general. You can individually equip armor and weapons onto every single settler who is in one of your encampments, and it’s persistent right on down to ammo usage. They’ll even climb into Power Armor and use it to defend bases if you have a power core in there. Normally this would be annoying but it’s very easy to just pop the core out if you don’t want NPCs to use it. I wound up leaving a suit at every major trade location in a semi-secure location so that the NPC guards could get to it if necessary.
It was also fun to dress up the various vendors in clothes that made sense. My doctor is wearing an Institute medical coat, my weapons vendor looks for all the world like Cid from FFXV since I threw a mechanic’s jumper and hat on her, etc. I started to be able to recognize who had what job in my base based on what they were wearing. Guards will stand patrol with their weapons out too, so if you have a flashy weapon you can give it to a guard and they’ll walk around with it. My guards are all wandering around with Shishkebabs instead of batons, for example, and at night it looks pretty cool.
Basically they grafted a ton of the normally-PC-exclusive modding capabilities right into the game itself. This is huge, and I feel like a lot of people missed just how contributive this is to the overall experience.
thanks for the info, now I’ll probably be dressing up NPCs for a while …
and yeah,
[quote="DJ, post:43, topic:140, full:true"]
Nobody's giving the game a super high score because it's still pretty janky, but everyone is nonetheless playing the fuck out of it.[/quote]
exactly is my experience.
This game even came up when I was over at a friends house on new years eve, his brother/some friends are playing it, too, and we had quite a chat about things to see, try, explore and - once again - people were surprised how I am managing my machete-style of gameplay when they're approaching battles so differently. One used the hammer-thingy i haven't got yet exclusively, while s.o. is using an energy weapon etc., it seems like people like to pick a way of playing this and this game supports this notion without any effort whatsoever.
suplex-style easily wins over machete-style gameplay tho, hands down (pun unintended).
Weirdly enough it’s getting me to play Skyrim, mostly due to the resurgence of new and weird mods. Will expect a huge pickup whenever the new CK for F4 drops, especially if it coincides with a sale for the game.
I played a little of this at a friend’s house over Christmas break. It wasn’t enough time to really give a strong opinion one way or another, though I’m sure (like most Bethesda games) i would find it fun for the first few hours and gradually get bored and never want to pick it up again.
HOWEVER i wanted to mention that i liked the way power armor was implemented a lot. Jumping into a mechasuit and punching the shit out of a deathclaw was about as fun as you would hope.
THAT AND i still think it’s a bit silly to have a voiced character with an actual serious plot in a fuckaround playbox game, but i enjoyed the character creation/gender selection “screen” and it was a bit of novel fun to have your character gasping for breath and shivering while stumbling around the abandoned Vault. also i got no end of enjoyment out of the way your PC makes “mmhmm” and “uh-huh” noises as a segue when you interrupt NPC dialogue.
Hitting the Cancel button (circle on PS4) instead of the Accept button (X on PS4) to skip along in conversations is still the best thing in the game, because if you do it enough, your character starts making assholish comments about everything, or at least just muttering “blah blah blah” a lot.
The game’s roleplaying a la guided plot stuff is bad (see The Witcher for a good example of this). But it’s practically unprecedented as an RPG sandbox. Wanna build your base up just for fun and no other particular reason? You can do that to a pretty fucking micro degree and the game will actually roll with it with a ton of neat little details. Did you know if you run power lines into the side of a house – any house – it will power all the lights inside? Cool stuff like that.
another neat little detail:
i’m not sure what triggered this, but the DJ of DC Radio does comment on some of the progress you make in the game. After visiting Vault 81, i was running some errands and about an hour or so later, i’ve switched to DC Radio. Some songs in, he suddenly started talking about this vault [etc.etc], and I was all “wait a minute” for a moment.
Thinking about switching back to Nick Valentine as a partner, because he’s so damn composed even when bullets are flying/when i started a small-scale war with a vertibird that seemed like it was trolling an outpost of mine.
This game holds the record for the quickest time I lost interest in a Bethesda game.
I disliked Fallout 3, so since this is basically a prettier Fallout 3 but with a bigger focus on combat, it really tanked with me. I tried the settlement stuff which was a cute diversion for a while, but I lost interest in that pretty quickly too.
My favorite part of this game was getting the masshole trophy. I basically play like a jerk and do what I want. I’m thinking of siding with the Brotherhood of Steel because there are the biggest bunch of jerks in the game. Still looking for the institute.
I hate Preston Garvey
I use Dogmeat for a partner because he never judges me.
… still going on slowly, but steadily. Nick feels like we’re bros, lots of jerks don’t get it and make me draw my machete (that should be well-known in Boston by now), nowadays I enjoy listening to Silver Shrouds audio book episodes, which are hilariously spot-on lo-fi.
The Silver Shroud radio annoys me because I have a quest to listen to it, but it keeps playing the same three episodes without variation regardless of my location or activity.