Fallout 4 [PS4, XO]

Bethesda have been releasing the S.P.E.C.I.A.L videos every Wednesday so I would expect something tomorrow in lieu of the run of those being complete. But even if they don't show more (and I would be surprised given the videos we saw of Skyrim before release) you can wait for the reviews or wait for opinions and shared footage of others who have played it. Live from PlayStation is really good for this.

I'm not sure videos from the developer/publisher will be more beneficial than reviews, the latter are for the most part independent whereas an official gameplay video is not going to show you anything that isn't super polished. Past Bethesda Game Studio review embargos have lifted the day before release.

 

Fallout 4 – Big Leagues Perk



There are over 200 distinct perk/ranks. Well played, Bethesda.

 

I've seen more marketing for Fallout 4 in London than I have for Halo 5 of Star Wars Battlefront. Hell, I've seen more marketing for the Nathan Drake Collection as well! I guess you're not getting stuff like this where you live.

 

I couldn't disagree more. The parts of the engine they most need to have improved is the AI, scripting, collision detection and physics because this is what is most important to 99% of moment to moment gameplay.

Fallout 4 is an RPG which lets you explore, shoot, build, craft and build big piles of 50,000 cans. Plus anything else a maniac can imagine wanting to do. The engine is built around these things working well and the graphics engine needs to accommodate people wanting to do weird shit like that. Graphics are the least important thing to the majority of people who will actually play the game.

Bethesda could definitely have prioritised graphics but needing to support consoles meant they would have had to pair back other things and then it's not really a Fallout game any more. How many game engines out there have to deal with the player potentially doing anything like stacking thousands of bodies, body parts or items up without the engine and framerate falling to pieces?

For anybody who has forgotten this is what Fallout 3 looked like on 360.

 

The Witcher 3 is an RPG (and a great one at that) but it does not let you destroy and create new environments or move any of the million objects the game world so the game designers know the graphics budget of most scenes because they are static environments. Fallout and Elder Scrolls games are not like this so the engine that has to accommodate the user potentially wanting to do anything at all.

That is HUGE.

edit: Also figure that every NPC model in the game has layered armour so they've not just endless identical models with the same textures. You look at the game and sure, it's a long way from what The Witcher looks like, but what you don't see are the details. The things Fallout 4 is doing and I expect we won't get a full appreciation of this until the reviews are out.

 

I don't claim to speak for everybody but the vibe in the fallout community is that the visuals are a big step up from Fallout 3 on consoles and people are very much looking forward to playing the game.

B3D is a microcosm in gaming because there is much scrutiny over visuals but almost nobody is discussing gameplay. This is a site for graphics whores more than gamers.

BGS titles give you unprecedented amounts of freedom to interact the game world where physics are applied to everything so it was never going to look as good as games which don't do these things and that's pretty much every other game apart from Elder Scrolls and Fallout. Anybody who expected it to look like the Witcher or GTA were setting themselves up for a fall.

Some people get it, others do not.

And as someone who played Fallout 3 and New Vegas on PS3, while it has its moments, it had a lot of rough edges - all side effects of decisions to give player freedom.

 

You are not the target audience and that's totally cool, there are other RPGs out there for you. Bethesda have been making games like this for 20 years and they sell millions of copies have a cabinet full go GOTY awards.

For the record, stealing all the cans and building a giant pyramid out of them isn't my thing either but I've been seemingly blessed to thoroughly enjoy games with great gameplay regardless of the graphics, resolution or framerate. I consider myself lucky given how many other people see to find this a barrier to enjoyment, it just means some people will be missing out on a lot of good games.

Apparently you've not played a Bethesda game on PC with mods applied. If you want performance at any price the PC version is right there but we're in the console thread here.

As for gameplay mechanics, the Witcher 3 offers you a choice of combat mechanics (strong/agile melee, ranged, potions and magic) using which you can vary the way you murder and kill your way through the game's story with just a few instances where you have the scope not to murder and kill everything. There are choices throughout the main quest which give you an illusion of choice but which really only affect story slides at the end, they don't meaningfully change the game world.

Fallout also offers you a very wide range of combat but also a dizzying array of non-combat skills which means you can tackle most quests exactly how you like. You have melee and ranged weapons, you have conventional guns, energy weapons and explosives. You have stealth, you have traps, you can talk your way into places and out of problems. There are a lot of combat and non-combat options. There are choices though the main quest which materially change the game world, such as in Fallout 3 where you chose to destroy the hub town Megaton. New Vegas offers factions vying for power and your decisions will shape the game world.

They're very different games and very different in scope because in the Witcher you're a witcher and in Fallout you're anybody you want to be. Freedom.

Ok, I don't know what more to say here short of repeating myself. Bethesda have a different goal with their RPGs than CD Projekt Red which I've explained above and which you seem to have trouble accepting. Commercially, Bethesda's games are more successful than CD Projekt Red. It's a fact, more people play and buy them which should tell you that the formula is popular. I enjoy both, I prefer the freedom of playing very, very different ways - not just will I cat armour build with swords and potions, or wolf armour build with swords, bombs and magic - because it's still mostly hack and slash.

In terms of the engine I really don't know what to tell you. Bethesda's engine has a bad reputation and some of this is warranted but a lot of it, in my view, is unwarranted and put forth by people who have never written a line or code let alone written or used a game engine. Bethesda are very nice in that they make some engine development tools (like G.E.C.K) available for modders and those who just want to muck around.

It's tiresome reading endless comparisons between Gamebryo/Creation and other engines running different games with oblivious disregard that those other games are not doing a fraction of what Bethesda's games are doing. Graphics are not the be all and end all of immersion. You want to compare them, fine but first let's load down this other game and its engine with the flexibility of gameplay that Fallout offers and oh don't forget that objects are no longer states models, they have their own properties and can be moved around and physics applies to everything. Oh this other game is now running like shit? What a surprise! Writing an engine has to deal with anything the player can imagine, then actually do, is hard. It's why Bethesda games can be glitchy because there are very few rules which make QA very, very difficult.

I expect nonsense like this on GAF (read this thread - you'll probably love it) but not on a 'technical forum' where so many developers post.