Is anyone else disappointed with a lot of Fallout 4? (slight rant to follow)
Now don't get me wrong, the improvements over previous versions are pretty legit. The graphical improvement is always a good thing, I like the fact they added voice acting for the player's character (takes away some of the RPGness, but since when is giving the player's character a personality a bad thing?), the story insofar seems good, I like the layering on clothing, the added details and usefulness of power armor, the new pip-boy is pretty incredible, animations looks good, first person combat seems way better than previous titles, the leveled perk system is great, there's a lot of good to say about the game.
But I have a lot of misses, and a lot of them are very minor things. Perhaps even trivial things. Some are major and, in my opinion, rather game breaking.
The first major issue I have is they sort of force you into using the power armor.
I started the game on a higher difficulty level, as I'm used to doing, and was getting my ass kicked by a few wild dogs almost immediately. So I thought maybe I need better weapons or a higher level before I can increase the difficulty, and I turned it down to normal. This was fine until I ran a mission where I had to go to a foundry full of raiders and rescue a farmer's sword heirloom and optionally save his son. Said foundry had a handful of raiders with flamers.
No matter how stealthy I was, I'd get seen and engaged. I couldn't take out all the flamers before they could reach me, and at that point they could outrun me, outrange me, and out damage me. Running wasn't an option, they didn't loose interest and break off and would eventually catch me. If I tried to kite them about and engage them I couldn't outrange them. While I was just outside of shotgun range they were landing hits on me, and the carbine wasn't powerful enough to end them before they ended me. Mind you usually these were 1v1 engagements.
And if I said fuck it and charged in with my double barrel they would out-damage me. Even if I VATS to the face with a critical, by the time I could reload I was already dead.
Frustration set in and quickly elevated to anger, and I knocked the difficulty down to Easy. Was barely better. Knocked it down to VERY EASY. Came close to dying but pulled it off. Finished the quest on very easy, but out of curiosity loaded a previous save and went in with power armor on Normal. Cleaned the house...
The Power armor should no doubt make the combat easier. You take way less damage. But I was never a fan of power armor in previous titles so I've been somewhat avoiding it this time around. It's just way to difficult in some situations without it! If I can play a good assassin and sneak about taking out baddies one or two at a time I'm fine, but when I'm up against a handful my wits and skill can't carry me. When wits and skill can't prevail, but simple brawn can, you have a broken game mechanic IMHO.
Make power armor necessary in some situations. Really highly irradiated zones, massive amounts of enemies, really tough robots, legendary class enemies, FINE! A few raiders with flamers? Unacceptable.
Second was that it seems like super-mutants are WAY too accurate. I'd be a distance away using my sniper rifle, and when I finally trip the alarm I have 5 super-mutants shooting back at me and HITTING ME CONSISTENTLY with smgs, even through obscured line of sight.
I could be on a ridge behind bushes, and still get shot in the face at ranges where I would have trouble with an iron sights weapon. Even though I'm sniping I'm still constantly going through stimpaks.
Same scenario vs a bunch of raiders, they might get a lucky hit or few in, but I'm way outranging them. Super-mutants were always meant to be tough opponents because of their strength and resistances, finesse and precision are NOT things that come to mind when I think of them. So why are they the most accurate enemy in the game?
Speaking of super-mutants, seems like the hitboxes are all fucked up. It seriously feels like to me they stuffed the normal human sized hitbox into the exact center of a super-mutant. He'd be standing behind a pole with his whole shoulder and part of his head sticking out, I'd put my crosshair right on him, shoot, miss. He comes out of cover, I shoot, hit. He goes back in cover, is now blind firing at me and hitting me. Shoot his head, miss. He moves, now out of cover, shoot, hit.
Beyond frustrated. My main playstyle in these games is usually the long range game, I'm a rifles user and a shotgunnner in close range, and the hitboxes are so fucked I can't do that at any useful range. At this rate I question why a long scope is even needed, short scope seems to be all that's necessary...
And here are some of the stupid minor details that just irk me:
For some dumb reason they decided to make the pip boy button do other functions within the pip boy. I don't know how many times I've reassigned favorites in the weapons and first aid menu just trying to exit the pip-boy. It always used to be, say, "q" to enter pip-boy and then "q" to exit. Now it's "q" to enter and "tab" to exit, and "q" for favorites and other functions. WHY? Why couldn't TAB assign favorites? Or here's an idea, the way New Vegas did it wasn't broken. Open pip boy, hold number key, select object, exit pip-boy. Is that too fucking complicated?
Hammer-space'd current item. Used to be when you holstered a weapon, he'd stuff it on his back or wear it on his hip. Now it goes "poof" and get's sent to hammerspace. F3 and F:NV had a "holster" animation, why was it omitted? Spent so much damn time and budget on other bullshit you couldn't afford to have someone program a simple holster animation? Even if the animation was gone but the weapon was still worn I could live with it. As is it just seems like a regression.
Detraction from realism. Used to be weapons (guns at least) were somewhat realistic. Now for some reason there is an overabundance of left handed weapons, the pipe guns are just ridiculous, and many of the mods make zero sense.
Mod receiver to increase fire rate. Sure. Mod receiver to increase weapon damage... Umm. No? I see there are caliber conversions available, so make that the damage increase. They got rid of bullet crafting, which is a shame since they beefed up all the other crafting, and tried to replace the damage mods of ammunition with something else that makes no logical sense. On top of that, they got rid of the maintenance aspects of using said weapon.
Repairing was often annoying, but in F:NV with the receiver mods and such from the gun runners there were ways to reduce the effects, plus perks to make repairing easier. Why can't the receiver mods in F:4 be related to weapon durability? Light receiver is lighter but weaker, heavy is heavier but stronger, faster ROF means faster wear, but how about we can also make repairs with screws, springs, steel, and other bits?
And why can't I break down mods? I can see I need 2 screws, a spring, 4 steel, and oil to make a receiver mod, and upon upgrade the previously installed mod gets stuffed in my inventory, but why can't this then be broken down for screws, springs, steel, etc?
Extreme limits on followers. Used to be you could have one primary follower and one secondary follower. You could have a mercenary and a dog, for example. In F:4, dogmeat replaces Nick Valentine? Makes no sense. Dogmeat is a useful follower, but once you get deeper into the game having a follower that can pick locks (for example) and used ranged weapons trumps following the barking to find a .44 round in a bush...
And the freaking speech selection. As I said I dig the voice acting, but sometimes I pick a speech and instantly regret it. I want more info that just "What?/Offer Help/Sarcastic/Fuck you".
Nothing was wrong with listing the spoken sentences. To me the directional dialogue doesn't seem like it's more controller friendly or whatever. If anything it saves a button press, but lets be honest, you don't play a game like fallout when you are in a hurry.
And of course it's still plagued by the typical Bethesda crashing, physics bugs, texture errors, and other issues. They did a lot with the title, but I feel like they stepped back more than they stepped forward.
I like the game, it looks and feels amazing, but I can't help but think that so far it's actually the lesser of the titles since F:3...
This post has been edited 1 times, last edit by "Watcher-45" (Jan 20th 2016, 5:06am)
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