Failout 4 (updated)

Preface: I’m not at all that oldfag who yells that the old is better and in every possible way rejects innovations in the series. I love Fallout 3, and I’ve only completed the classic parts once. All of the following applies in general to all games from Bethesda Sofworks.

Having almost lost the remnants of my mind after playing MGSV, I decided in time to distract myself with something else, a game. Tax-tax, what do we have here?? Fallout 4! Ahaha, let’s see! I was not looking forward to this game at all, because I had long ago lost all faith in Bethesd. And considering the first trailer with a plasticine dog and gameplay demonstrations with dialogues on the four cardinal points… even more so. But, in the absence of fish and cancer, fish. And thank you, ALMSIVI, unlike MGSV, I basically didn’t expect anything from this game, and therefore absolutely all its shortcomings, which I easily saw during the first dozen gameplays, did not plunge me into the abyss of despair. And I am writing this material because I am very touched by the topic of Fallout, Bethesda and Fallouts from Bethesda, as well as numerous disputes and strife among fans on this matter. I’m also confused by all the people who speak highly of Fallout 4. The idea of ​​this article was not entirely to evaluate the game, but since I call it shit, many will ask why. So I have to go through all my complaints about the game.

Level up my Gamebryo

And the first thing I want to talk about is the technical component. No matter how Bethesda swears in the freshness of its technologies, it has no faith and never will. So the tales about the “new engine” turned out to be nonsense, because the “next-gen” game of 2015, like all its predecessors, uses an ancient engine that dates back to 1991. This is where we should start when it comes to graphics, its quality, optimization and stability of the game in general.

Because all these things are made here very badly. Ears of old games and other jambs stick out everywhere. Someone will say that F4, on the contrary, has good graphics. Having personally run this game on maximum settings, I will say that yes. The graphics are beautiful, but only until the player looks at it closer, in detail. All the good things that have happened to graphics since Skyrim – the lighting has become more realistic and the clumsy shadows have finally disappeared (although in some places they still jump like mad). Daytime or evening outdoor landscapes of the wasteland look good, but nothing more. But I was wildly surprised to discover that not a single mirror in the game reflects. And the puddles I found on the surface of the earth turned out to be just a shiny texture! Although there is water in the rivers and it looks good. What prevented you from doing the same in the case of puddles is a mystery.

But the horror begins when we discover various outdoor buildings and rooms in which it is clearly visible that Bethesda still does not know how to do dynamic lighting, in 2015. But once you go indoors, the lighting becomes much better, which is understandable – placing shadows under static light sources is not difficult. However, this “easily” drains fps more powerful than outdoors, without drawing cells and loading distant lands, it’s not clear how. I think we should keep silent about textures altogether. Of course, the game is polished with modern shaders. And this whole thing manages to consume a huge amount of resources. I think you’re familiar with unreasonably long downloads.

Draw your own conclusions about the advisability of using ancient technologies in next-gen games. It’s worth remembering the promises of corrected shooting. She has definitely become better than three rubles. But, alas, the bullets still don’t fly where they should fly. Ay-ay-ay.

Of course, there are positive sides, if you can call them such. At least Bethesda games are making progress. It’s about the detail of the character models and their textures, which, well, are not bad. Although they are still far from being the modders from the Nexus. There’s also finally decent animation.

Story

The first thing the player encounters: the plot and the main characters. There’s no need for a lot of words here, the plot sucks. I’ve always been a proponent of the statement that "story is not the main thing in Bethesda RPGs", however, this does not mean that it should be ignored over and over again. Considering your PR company, you are obliged to hook with your story this time! The hell with it. Let’s ignore the numerous failures in the script, I’m not going to roll out the whole canvas again. The only funny thing here is the moral choice between pursuing one’s own convictions and supporting the life’s work of our over-aged child. Although, in truth, there should be no choice at all, especially considering the fury with which our protagonist is looking for his child, he definitely must take the side of the Institute. Imagine you are new to this world. You have a choice: your own son and life in the high-tech bunkers of the institute, or life in a post-nuclear squatter settlement among unknown people.

Speaking of factions. I didn’t like any of them. But if the Institute or the Brotherhood of Steel still have the right to exist (although, in my opinion, the sterile and high-tech Institute is already too much for the Fallout universe. Biorobots? Teleportation? Stop making fun of this universe like that!), then the Underground is just a cesspool. By the way, at the time of writing these lines, I still haven’t finished going through the story, because the choice between shit, shit and shit leaves me in a stupor.

Rollplay

Thousands of words have already been said about the dialogues, but I’ll still say my hundred. What they did with the dialogues is a nightmare. The voicing of the main character is still a controversial thing, some liked it, some didn’t. Along with the voice acting, a certain dialogue delivery appeared, akin to that in Mass Effect. As for me, this is a good idea, and it can be removed with mods. In the same way, mods remove the moronic console wheel and restore the display of full replicas. But what can never be corrected is the very structure of the dialogues. 4 lines per stage, epic “sarcasm”, as well as “uncertain” and “more details”, no lines based on skills, characteristics or perks, almost complete independence of the outcome from the words spoken and low variability. But the worst thing for me personally is that it is unknown which of the remarks will irrevocably move the dialogue forward without the opportunity to ask another question, and which will leave it at the current stage. You have to try to forget how to make convenient dialogues in 2015.

Role system. Well, congratulations, Todd, you killed her completely. You can forgive the changed rules in F3, where the role-playing system was forced to adapt to the mechanics of TES, but why did everything have to be so idiotic?? The skills are gone, the SPECIAL parameters are pumped up and now the initial choice does not affect anything, and a good two-thirds of the perks are useless garbage. At a certain point in the game, I discovered that I simply had nowhere to put the points from the levels, because I had already upgraded what was even more necessary and useful to me. There were a lot of useless perks in the third part, but here everything is even worse.

Quests? Eh. Now I remember only https://gamesnotongamstop.co.uk/slingo/ a few more or less good quests, most of which are related to partners. Everything else is boring gray go-kill and a ton of radiant quests (shame).

Gameplay

He’s very sad. I, a person who completely cleaned out Skyrim and Fallout 3, dropped this game somewhere in the second third of all content. Seriously, many criticized F3 for its endless subway lines and city ruins, but Boston… you can wander around forever without hope of salvation. This city is the saddest part of the game. Absolutely the same patterns everywhere, doors, walls, corridors, etc. And everything is filled with enemies: super mutants, raiders and other scams. And since this is now a shooter, the number of enemies of previous Bethesda games can be safely multiplied by three. This game becomes a chore very quickly. Because along the way you will definitely clean out all the locations you find, clean out every corner, every drawer, every safe or container. And all this must be hacked. Hack and hack again. Seriously, why are there so many castles?? Please tell me who locks first aid kits and other things that do not require this? And most importantly, behind all the locks there is almost always ordinary consumable nonsense hidden, which after some time the player simply does not need. Imagine if almost all the loot in Borderlands was locked away.

In general, it turns out that there is too much content in the game. Is it bad? But the content is the same and boring, and it’s all too tightly concentrated in Boston. Clearing the next dungeon in order to clear out a bunch of consumables and all sorts of garbage that you are unlikely to use is a typical activity in F4.

Endless enemies, endless and useless loot, endless radiant quests. Behind all this, that small good part of the game just fades away.

Crafting, building, equipment

I’ll immediately speak about the construction of bases, settlements, cities. I won’t say that this is definitely bad, it doesn’t interfere with the game as a whole, there are fans of this business – and good, to hell with it. But, after all, man-hours were spent on this thing, so dubious in an RPG, which could have gone in a more important direction. Just think about it.

Crafting (and modifications) at first seemed crooked, stupid, awkward to me. But over time I got used to it and understood how it works (the local interface is largely to blame), I even liked it. And the search for the necessary garbage adds complexity and task, especially at the beginning, when we still have little raw materials, especially rare and very necessary ones. But there are a couple of hiccups. Namely: the developers who make us a shooter don’t know how weapons work. For example, how does a suppressor improve performance when it should do exactly the opposite?? How does converting a semi-automatic weapon into an automatic reduce its damage if the caliber remains the same?? How does the hero manage to make collimator and holographic sights (electronics), and sights in general, out of garbage?? How does he even make factory-quality parts from garbage using a regular workbench?? As for me: you need to craft modules only for homemade weapons, all the rest should either be located or bought from professional craftsmen in cities equipped with the necessary equipment.

Now about the equipment. I was very pleased with the multi-layer system of wearable items (like in Morrowind, uh!). But not everything is so smooth here either. Why, for example, can I put elements of armor on a shirt and pants, but cannot on some other costumes, like a classic one?? Why do the dimensions of worn armor elements depend on the models of clothing worn underneath, and not on the dimensions of our character?? Why the hell can a blue three-piece suit be stitched with armor fibers, but a black one cannot?? Religion doesn’t allow it or what, Todd?

And most importantly – the arsenal. He’s too damn small! And I mean firearms! Thank God, there are heaps of cold, explosive and energy here. Remember the arsenal of firearms in F2, there is not even half of that variety here. And half of what we have are modified variations of the other half. I can’t forgive this in a role-playing shooter, big minus.

Interface

One of the worst things about this game is the interface, which is more of an enemy to the player than an ally. In F3 we had a nice find in the form of a pip-boy for all your needs: stats, equipment, magazine and map. Here they managed to make the Pip-Boy navigation worse. The interface, that is, all kinds of windows and their management for me, as a PC gamer, is disgusting. Problems with scrolling lists, an excessive number of buttons for navigation, small windows in which long names of items are forced to huddle, and the worst thing: a holographic translucent image of items in the inventory. That’s it, the gazebo has been wasting its interface and inventory regularly since 2006. And remember the divinely simple, convenient and most importantly – adjustable interface in Morrowind!

Combat system

Many note improved shooting. And it’s really hard to refuse this game. That’s just. As for me, the core of the combat system of F3 and New Vegas was not real-time shooting, but the VATS system.

And he was fucked up, turning into an absolute useless piece of crap. Previously, VATS was a full-fledged way to conduct combat, a kind of semi-analogue of turn-based battles from the classic parts of the series, in which success depended on the character’s swarm performance. Now successful hits are affected by who knows what, and critical hits are triggered manually when the scale is filled. Why did I pump my luck then?? Well, like the icing on the cake – instead of stopping time, now it’s just slowing down. Ta-daam! In F3, with proper leveling, I could take a critical hit from a sniper rifle through VATS to blow off the head of a deathclaw from the maximum possible distance. Here you can only dream about something like this.

Game world

Well, the most delicious thing is the typical development of the world from Bethesda. Now I don’t mean its physical design, locations, architecture, arrangement of various objects and items – Bethesda can and does all this well. But they still can’t muster up the intelligence and logic. And I’ll immediately say the most important squat in the puddle of this game: a huge atomic bomb that left a huge radioactive scorched crater with huge monsters… a couple of kilometers from untouched Boston, in which there is not a trace of radioactive contamination or the consequences of a blast wave. There was some damage on the outskirts, but no more.

The city itself looks almost intact and bears traces of its natural desolation. In the houses of which skeletons sit civilly at the dinner table, the owners of which died from unknown causes. Drawers and safes contain self-propelled guns and caps (despite the fact that dollars have long been in use), and in local stores you can still find edible food and even fresh watermelons (. ). Bethesda does not want to correct the mistakes made in F3, so the whole world looks as if the war passed a couple of years ago and now you can profit from the remnants of civilization. Why is there still so much treasure lying in the wasteland?? Why are huge habitable buildings empty?? Why does Besesda’s idea of ​​a “city” consist of a dozen houses in which a dozen homeless people live?? And I’m talking about the largest local cities, there’s nothing to say about small settlements. But we have huge raider bases with tons of people ready to be shot.

And it’s not that Bethesda doesn’t know how to make normal cities. Remind me about the cities in Morrowind? Huge, with a large number of NPCs and populated surroundings. Vivek alone is worth something (yes, I know, it’s just huge, but boring and empty, however, it creates the necessary illusion). And if we technically cannot demonstrate a large city, show part of it, creating the illusion of scale, as was the case with the capital of Morrowind or the limited available space on huge bases and cities in Mass Effect. It’s 2015 and the situation has gotten worse. Let me remind you that 200 years have passed since the atomic war, and we have already seen such large settlements as New Reno and NKR. But for some reason, the Capital Wasteland and the Commonwealth deliberately bypass natural social and technological processes.

Atmosphere

Last on the list, but not least important. My opinion – the atmosphere of Fallout is ruined. It’s worth saying that Fallout, in fact, was never about retrofuturism and the music of those years, which oozes from everywhere here. Even the architecture of Boston is inferior to Washington in terms of atmosphere. And there was no Fallout about cheerful, cheerful minutemen in stupid hats. Tell me, they must use characteristic elements of the wardrobe of those very Minutemen from the War of Independence? I thought a minuteman was what a man did, not how he dressed. What I want to say by this: there has never been a Fallout about US history. Although there were good quests in F3, touching on a historical theme, they were not put at the forefront! Excessive enthusiasm for this only harmed the atmosphere. This gives us a direct connection to our real world, and the old Fallout was something else. It was a dark world about the survival of the remnants of civilization. The Institute and the Subway also hit the atmosphere hard. Think what you want, but these things are outside the universe. Another important thing is the overall positive attitude of the game, which I noticed from the first trailer. Music in major notes, home and a dog wagging its tail. How is this… not like Fallout?.

A significant part of the atmosphere of the classical parts was industrial ambient, which is here… it actually exists? Has anyone noticed? In any case, the local OST is inferior to the old tunes in every way. In general, it seems to me that game dev has forgotten how to make good, memorable musical accompaniment.

Anything good?

Now I need to say something positive. And we only have two of these things. And the first of them is partners, who, admittedly, are not ideal, but they somehow brighten up this whole game. Even more, for them it’s worth playing this game. And I don’t mean artificial intelligence at all, which here has not been cured of Down syndrome since the mid-2000s. I mean the characters themselves, with whom you can dialogue and explore the game world. The second is the mechanics of power armor, which is now not just clothes put on, but a really heavy, powerful mechanism that needs to be put on like a spacesuit.

Morrowind hypothesis

Time to take stock. And it can be summed up in exactly one word: hack. Hackwork everywhere, hackwork always, simplifications, deteriorations, bad ideas and missed opportunities. It’s hard to believe that they do this in the current gene. Bethesda games already have a certain tactic they follow: one step forward, two steps back. Although there are already three.

Where do all these wonderful and simply positive reviews about Fallout 4 come from, dozens from gaming publications, no matter what?? These games never caught up with their competitors in almost any respect, but in the totality of their characteristics they managed to be enjoyable. And this is the main paradox and my hypothesis.

Named after the third part of The Elder Scrolls, which finally brought out the very success formula for RPG from Bethesda. The thing is that TES, which has slipped since Oblivion, and the new Fallouts, are all a sandbox. We have a huge open world with caves, subways, forests and wastelands, enemies, characters, leveling up and more. Each Bethesda game is getting worse and worse, but each one is sure to get good reviews. And the secret is simple: no matter how shitty the next game is, it still remains a good sandbox in which you can happily spend time, it has everything that we liked Morrowind so much. Even those who have not played the old parts of the TES series will be imbued with these magical game mechanics. Because the number of hours spent and the pleasure gained from the game is limited only by your own imagination or perversity. In just a couple of years, Bethesda will release another role-playing game that will be even worse than the previous one, but which will still appeal to a growing audience.

09.06.2024 And here is an insert from the future, because the released Fallout 76 confirms my hypothesis.

And in this she will be greatly helped by the huge community of mod makers, whom the development company shamelessly exploits. Why release a polished product when the fans will finish everything themselves, and even better?? Do you think Bethesda is releasing a game?? No matter how it is, it releases another platform for modifications, hundreds of modifications, the lion’s share of which only corrects numerous bugs of developers. I think that fashion is good, but this does not mean that your product should be deliberately ill-conceived. A good old idea, aggressive advertising and a loud brand – that’s the whole secret of big sales and success of Fallout 4. I said everything.

Best comments

Must agree with all points. But personally, I doubt that modifications will be able to fix anything, because the game is broken at its very core. And the dialogues even in the parody The Bard’s Tale seem to be of better quality than in F4. And you have to try hard to outdo the parody of serious cabbage soup, this speaks of real wretchedness.