Fell into the fallout trap after having watched the tv show and while i like the show i really hated the game.

I don’t know why but i like the idea of RPGs but hate playing them. Played like 2 hours and it just didn’t click with me I guess.

I don’t know if it is a problem with bethesda’s games specifically as i have pretty much the same issues with skyrim or an issue with RPGs in general because i felt the same way with the latest zelda games too, pretty cool open world setting but just too much to do and not enough hand-holding. I might be in the minority here but this is what i liked about the RPGs assassins creed, you know what you have to do and where you have to go at all time. And i really don’t feel like it hinders exploration at all as i’ve pretty much done everything in Odyssey and Valhalla.

I actually played the game before the PS5 patch so the frame rate was shit but even now that the patch is released i’m not tempted to play again.

I really don’t see myself playing this game again at least not on PS5, maybe with mods once i have a better pc but i don’t think mods can cure the boredom i feel playing this game.

When Fallout 3 was originally released in 2008, it did not let you continue playing after you finished the game. This notably ruffled a few feathers, so Bethesda, known best for their substantive DLC, released a DLC pack less than a year after its release which rectified the issue. Seven years and some change later, Fallout 4 did not repeat this "mistake." Upon finishing Fallout 4, you're met with a cutscene that's three minutes shorter than what was in Fallout 3, after which the game hastily throws you back into its world. No credits, no real acknowledgment of any of the choices you might have made outside of the main quest. What this ultimately betrays, though, is not what the player spent the last thirty-to-forty to god knows how long doing in the Commonwealth.

A change from F3 and New Vegas that's immediately apparent is that F4 drops the Mad Max style of narration, where the player character has been made into this legend of sorts whose adventures likely get misappropriated and lost in translation by the locals as time wears on. F4's opening and ending cutscenes are in the first person, feature stark, high-contrast imagery, and have heavy, emotional music playing over them. The concept, on paper, is likely that Fallout 4 was meant to be a more investing, personal tale than that of the Courier, who let Fisto have their way with them because it was funny. The voice talent for the player character in F4, god bless both of their hearts, put their souls into reading lines about how their fictional son was missing, and in a vacuum, their efforts pay off. But after the game gives you a tank to walk around in and a minigun to kill a Deathclaw with in its first hour, and then lets you keep both of them, it's hard to tell whether or not the game is taking itself seriously. I would say that the culprit of this is that any power armor set you wear makes the cinematic, Mass Effect-style conversation camera angles feel laughable. It's hard to put yourself in the shoes of a desperate parent when that parent is behind a hundred layers of steel and isn't emoting; The Mandalorian this is not. But ultimately, the conclusion I have to come to is that it's context that neuters the experience of its grain.

Fallout has never had a strong emotional core. I've come to the realization that the reason I see both Fallout and STALKER paired with each other, despite being continents apart in tone, intent, inspiration, lore, and nationality, is that both favor the minutiae of being in their worlds as opposed to the grander scheme of what they're meant to represent on a narrative level. These games are sandboxes, and sandboxes shouldn't be limited by such finicky, human matters. Do you see that bandit camp over there? Clear it for no other reason than it feels good to shoot at mannequins and then loot their remains, and then go back again to do the exact same thing halfway across the map. Therein lies the overarching problem with Fallout 4's narrative structure: it wants to be convinced that it can have those bandit camps, gameplay loops so refined and repetitive you'd think Bethesda was run by Kairosoft with a budget, and something to tug at your heartstrings with. As it so happens, it also desperately wants the Faction system of New Vegas, so that has to fit somewhere into the narrative, too. The end result is too crowded for any one angle to feel sharp. Every possible corner feels rounded and flat so any of the hundred ideas it's running with don't conflict with the rest.

Series purists will decry this as a black sheep of sorts and claim to resent it, even though they've never played it. Lest we forget, New Vegas is an untouchable masterpiece, even if it's as emotionally dry and ineffectual, save for Obsidian's sterling ability to make you laugh. "Have you played New Vegas?"

Having spent an ungodly amount of time in New Vegas, what I will say about F4 isn't that it's the former's RPG mechanics that the latter loses. New Vegas had restraint. Thirteen years ago, when it was praised for its scale, it might not have seemed so. But in hindsight, Obsidian never let its ambitions outweigh its talent. Almost every piece of New Vegas feels deliberate in its inclusion because Obsidian gave themselves the space they needed to maintain that sense of intention. In Fallout 4, the overworld is so large that it almost makes sense that the solution to a locked door is almost always lockpicking/hacking or finding the key in a nearby desk with no in-between.

However, in spite of it all... I kinda loved my time with Fallout 4? Until the end, at least. I'm going to go off of a branch and say that this is the most fun I've ever had with a Bethesda game. Skyrim and Starfield are too sterile to resonate with me, and as much as I love New Vegas, even with a chunky modlist, it still feels like one of those mods the Bethesda community has been fixated on for nearly ten years that builds a new game on top of another existing one through mod tools. Despite it sharing the same janky, archaic properties that even the aforementioned modlists can't scrub from New Vegas, almost all of Fallout 4's systems feel refined in some way. Weapon modding is no longer a menu interaction that adds invisible buffs and debuffs; it's an involved process that lets you see the changes for yourself. Although I never got into it, settlement building could easily be ripped out of this to become its own game. Progression is a bit barebones, but what's there still allows for modular playstyles that alter the game. Like I always try to do with these games, I mained a stealth build that eventually got so overpowered that I was one-shotting super mutants with a silenced automatic pistol by the time endgame rolled around. Tying this all together is that, for the first time in this series' three-dimensional existence, Fallout 4 has really fun combat. It still borders on janky in a few areas but in general, shooting and whacking stuff felt appropriately flashy in appearance and sound, and I was delighted!

I cannot deny that I had a ton of fun with this game, but by the time I reached one of its four-ish endings, it had worn out its welcome. I would argue that that is the single flaw that holds all of Bethesda's modern output down. Until they can find ways to better pace their experiences, and allow them to be more meaningful than dumb fun, their contemporaries will keep outshining them.

...

(THE ANECDOTE BELOW CONTAINS SPOILERS):

I did have two really funny stories from my time playing this that I'd like to share.

So, when you reach the institute and talk to Father, the game doesn't stop you from capping him in the head. And if you do it sneakily, the game doesn't stop you from capping almost everyone you see! So, for shits and giggles, I went around and did that until it caught up to me. I noticed there was an absolute shit-ton of enemies, but I didn't see them, so I figured I would be able to walk out of the institute with my pride intact. Wrong. As it turns out, the enemies I was seeing on my compass and listening to were below me, and because Fallout 4 is terrible with directional audio, I didn't know this until I took the elevator down. What I eventually discovered was an optimal strategy for dealing with the 60+ synths (not exaggeration!) trapped beneath me was to take the elevator down, fire off a mini-nuke, go upstairs, and wait for my status to reset from "Caution" to "Hidden", go downstairs, do that again until I was out of mini-nukes, start using my rockets, and then finish them off with a machine gun and some psycho. The pile of dead bodies not even halfway through this process was so absurd in its size that it momentarily tanked my game's framerate. Quite clearly, these developers either never considered this a possibility, or they didn't put up enough guardrails to prevent you from doing so, as I was not considered an enemy of the institute after my massacre. I guess if no one's alive to see you reach the exit, they can't put you on a hitlist.

But this pales in comparison to the stupidest moment in my entire playthrough. So, picture this: I'm on my way to confront the mayor of diamond city. He's a synth, he has a hostage, and it's up to me to settle his fate once and for all. My instinct, as a gun-for-hire that everybody is too pretentious and morally righteous to call a mercenary, is to lockpick the door and shoot him in the head. I notice my silenced pistol doesn't do stealth damage, so it takes two shots to the head to take him out. Not optimal. I reload my save and pull out my .50 caliber sniper rifle to do the job in one fell swoop. Before I can pat myself on the back, his hostage then gets up and starts shooting at everyone in the room, even though the bullet never hit her. If I shot her at all, everyone in the room would start shooting at me, but if I left her alone, they would finish her off. Reloading my save at least ten times because I couldn't believe my eyes, this was consistent. I may not give Fallout 4 as many marks as my playtime would suggest, but for giving me one of the funniest bugs/oversights I've ever seen in a game like this, it at least deserves some credit.