Fallout 4 Announced

An anonymous reader writes: After teasing gamers with a countdown timer yesterday, Bethesda has now announced Fallout 4 for PCs, the Xbox One, and the PS4. They've also released an official trailer (YouTube video). The game will be set in post-apocalyptic Boston, and the player character will apparently be accompanied on his adventures by a dog. The Guardian has a post cataloging the features they're hoping will be improved from previous games in the series: "The combat system in the last two Fallout games was not universally adored. It often felt you were shooting wildly and blindly, biding time before you could use the the Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting (VAT) system, which allows players to focus in on specific parts of enemies with a percentage chance of hitting them. ... Well-written, hand-crafted quests are going to be vitally important. The Radiant Quest system used in Skyrim sounds brilliant on paper: infinite quests, randomly generated and a little different each time. But the reality was a lot of fetch quests in similar looking caves. Bethesda may be tempted to bring that system across to Fallout 4, but there's an argument for abandoning dynamic quests altogether and opting for a smaller range of authored challenges."

Comments

4?

[TechyImmigrant]

How did it get to version 4 before I heard of it?

Maybe it's because Steam is too busy trying to push Manga visual novels at me instead of games.

Re:4?

[Dogtanian]

Seriously? I've barely given a monkeys about computer games since the late 1990s, and even *I've* heard of the Fallout series (albeit that I can't remember much more about it than the name).

Re:4?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you've never played 1-3, you're missing out, pal.

Re:4?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not your pal, buddy.

Re:4?

[pla]

How did it get to version 4 before I heard of it?

How have you not heard of it before now?

Anyway, looks very cool... too cool, I worry - I just hope they didn't sacrifice the amazing gameplay of its predecessors in favor of eye-candy.

Not so sure about the dog, though - All the FO games have allowed you to have dogs as party members, but having one required? That better not make the whole game one giant escort mission...

Re:4?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not your buddy, friend.

Re:4?

[Anonymous Coward]

He's not your buddy, friend.

Re:4?

[TechyImmigrant]

Well there was a game called Fallout on the apple ][. I have that.

Re:4?

[Anonymous Coward]

Aren't party members invincible?

Re:4?

[Anonymous Coward]

y u no want doge?

Re:4?

[Anonymous Coward]

So...you were into computer games at the time when the original Fallout was released? Wow, it's shocking that even you have heard of it!

Re:4?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not your friend, guy

Re:4?

[TechyImmigrant]

Well I'm done with FarCry 4. So maybe that's next.

Re:4?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not your guy, amigo.

Re:4?

[TechyImmigrant]

I've been into computer games since the late 70s. Something was bound to slip through the cracks.

Re:4?

[Dogtanian]

So...you were into computer games at the time when the original Fallout was released?

Not really; I don't recall having heard about it at that time because I didn't have a PC then (*). IIRC, it's one of those games whose name popped up often enough over the years that I recognise its name as a famous computer game- if little else- and am surprised that the OP isn't.

(*) Owned and gamed on an Amiga until circa 1996, by which point that machine was no longer mainstream and I was out of touch. (Hadn't played Doom then, have still never played Quake). Bought a Playstation in late 1997 and sold it a year later after realising it wasn't fun (for me); though I had a few PS mags, I don't recall hearing about Fallout there, probably because it was never a PS game. Bought a PC in early 1998, but while I owned a few games for it over the next few years (all very cheap), I hardly played them and didn't follow the gaming scene at all.

Re:4?

[Anonymous Coward]

No soy su amigo, ese

Re:4?

[Anonymous Coward]

I am not your ese, dude

Re:4?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not your dude, chief

Re:4?

[squiggleslash]

I believe it's actually the fourth one in the Four series series, following Saints Row IV, GTA 4, and FarCry 4, so if you liked the other fours you should love Fallout 4.

Re:4?

[rochrist]

Sure. Such as a series of the most legendary games in history.

Re:4?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not your chief, mate.

Re:4?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not your chief, partner.

Re:4?

[dj245]

Aren't party members invincible?

Not commonly so in any of the Fallout games I have played. Keeping party members alive has always been a challenge.

Re:4?

[Anonymous Coward]

Congrats, so you have heard of Fallout.

(Yes the original is that old).

Re:4?

[Anonymous Coward]

I hated Sonic 4!

Re:4?

[pnutjam]

New Vegas is an improvement over 3, I didn't realize how much until I played them back to back.

Re:4?

[TechyImmigrant]

Congrats, so you have heard of Fallout.

(Yes the original is that old).

Oh. OK. I assumed it was a different Fallout.

Re:4?

[pnutjam]

In 3 and New Vegas, they go unconscious but don't die. They might die if you shoot them, but I think that's Skyrim. Some can die after certain storylines are complete. You can also wander too far away when their unconscious or leave them somewhere you don't remember.

Re:4?

[TechyImmigrant]

I believe it's actually the fourth one in the Four series series, following Saints Row IV, GTA 4, and FarCry 4, so if you liked the other fours you should love Fallout 4.

I haven't done Saint's Row IV yet. I see toil ahead.

Re:4?

[NotDrWho]

Yeah, I never got why people ran down New Vegas. I really liked it.

Re:4?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not your mate, chum

Re:4?

[TechyImmigrant]

Sure. Such as a series of the most legendary games in history.

I put the original Choplifter at the top.

I have a grandchild that plays it on my 35 year old Apple 2. Awesome game.

Re:4?

[Anonymous Coward]

I spent hundreds of hours in 3, bought NV in a steam sale for 4 dollars, installed it, played the opening sequence of events (killing geckos near a water supply) realized that this is an exact replica of the last game with BROWN theme instead of a GREEN theme. Uninstalled, never looked back.

Re:4?

[bspus]

The bugs. Oh the bugs!

I had to look up a bug walkthrough guide (bugthrough) on the internet just so I could deal with the bugs throughout the game.

If it wasn't for the console that allows you to inject commands live during the game, I would have had major trouble. We're talking bugs like trying to hand in a quest and the npc was nowhere to be found (maybe he was stuck behind a wall or below the visible terain). You had to invoke him using the console to bring him in place

Re:4?

[bspus]

Your loss really.
Sure technologically and stylistically the games are very close but the story is new and quite well developed.
I can't imagine someone having (happily I presume) spent so many hours on F3 and being disappointed by NV.

Unless of course you had so much of it that you had enough for life but that's a different story. The game itself certainly delivered

Re:4?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not your chum, homey

Re:4?

[Anonymous Coward]

launches December 31st. I think you have time to finish a couple of other games first.

Re:4?

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you thinking of Wasteland?

Fallout (a "spiritual" successor to Wasteland) was released in 1997 for PC (DOS and Windows 95)

Re:4?

[TechyImmigrant]

launches December 31st. I think you have time to finish a couple of other games first.

My habit is to wait a few months for the weekend special at 50%.

There are plenty of other games to choose from. Fallout 3 springs to mind.

Re:4?

[CronoCloud]

It's only an improvement over F3 to two groups of players:

1. FPS Dudebro shooter gamers who were disappointed by F3 when they went into it thinking it was going to be an FPS and tried playing like one, but didn't like it because it was an RPG and wanted a more shooter-like game. VATS was nerfed to cater to these guys.

2. Old school Fallout Fanboys who think Black Isle could do no wrong and would have preferred another isometric Fallout, but settled for New Vegas. The large difficulty spike (until the game finally got properly balanced in patches), weapons nerfs, hardcore mode and other features were to cater to these guys.

While NV is a good game, it's not as "enjoyable" as F3, the frustration/annoyance/tedium factor is higher even though it has some good ideas like the faction system.

Re:4?

[tnk1]

New Vegas definitely had a different feel from Fallout 3, although if you only played NV briefly, then yes, it would have been harder to differentiate. They did look similar.

Re:4?

[TechyImmigrant]

No. Fallout.
Little pixelated man with crap falling from the sky in 8 bit glory.
I'll dig it out when I get home from work. I strongly suspect that they (apple 2 Fallout and PC Fallout) are not connected. I think I got it from a BASUG distribution in the 1981-1982 timeframe. It wasn't a big name title like Wasteland.

I do have Wasteland, but is isn't called Fallout, so I didn't mention it.

Re:4?

[asdfman2000]

Not sure about later versions of Fallout 3, but originally party members would perma-die. There were console commands that you had to do to make them go unconscious instead.

Re:4?

[Darinbob]

It was an RPG game, it really slipped through the cracks for a lot of people who thought gaming was about first person shooters. It was also on PC only at the start, so kids sitting in front of the TV to play games would never have heard of it either. It's a fair comment, I've probably never heard of even a tenth of all the JRPG titles out there.

Re:4?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I wouldn't let the intro to NV put you off:

Like the intro to Fallout 3, it's intended to show somebody who knows nothing at all about the game enough that they can at least get themselves killed competently, rather than because they can't find the stimpack in their inventory and don't know what VATS is. If memory serves, it's also a fair bit shorter than the Fallout 3 intro(which was well done, and so fine the first time; but having to spend ten minutes being a baby and another 15 dealing with adolescent vault-bullying every time you want to try a new character build gets kind of dull). The character creation stuff in Doc Mitchell's house is obligatory; but you can skip Sunny Smiles' quest entirely(though it's a generous early-game source of caps and 5.56 rounds, so you might not want to).

Once you get past the intro, the game mechanics are largely the same(SPECIAL and VATS); but there is some additional polish to the skills and perks; the gameworld is really markedly different from the Capitol Wasteland; the local factions and characters are mostly well done and don't overlap at all with FO3(the Brotherhood of Steel is technically present in both games; but in very different capacities).

NV isn't a wildly radical re-imagining of what Fallout should look like in 3D or anything; but it's modestly more technically competent and polished than FO3 is(hence the existence of the Tale of Two Wastelands project; and it is very much it's own RPG. FO3 is a much more 'apocalyptic' take, since Washington was an obvious candidate for getting nuked to hell, and there's a lot more crumbling-cityscape and deaths by radiation and supermutant attack; along with the fact that the East Coast Enclave are still a reasonably viable force. NV is very much post apocalyptic; but there's a lot less tightly packed death zone and a lot more wilderness(some of it largely benign, some brutally lethal; seriously, don't fuck with Cazarores, or try to stop a deathclaw with anything less than .308 AP) and political and military struggle between new powers that aren't just scrabbling for canned goods in the smoking rubble and are actually starting to jockey for power in a post apocalyptic rebuilding.

You obviously don't have to trust my advice or anything; but especially if you already own the game(or find it when it goes on sale, which it frequently does), you are really missing out by not giving it a few more minutes to make its case. Let the doc patch you up, don't even talk to Sunny if you don't feel like it. If you really hate the intended early game, you can even go 'in reverse' by heading directly from Goodsprings to Camp McCarran: it takes a touch of practice; but there's a fairly safe path from Yangtze Memorial(veer to your right a bit if you see radscorpions on your left, early game weapons don't do much against their armor) and between Sloan and Black Mountain more or less straight to Repconn HQ. There are deathclaws on your left and supermutants on your right; but even feeble sneak skill should allow you to avoid the attention of the deathclaws without getting too close to the supermutants(always err on the side of too close to the supermutants: a deathclaw can run faster than you can, and is functionally unstoppable at low levels. A supermutant is something you probably can't defeat at low level; but it will usually stand and shoot at you and not pursue particularly aggressively. Unless you get particularly unlucky, or your character build has nearly no HP, you can survive being fired on, for a short time and at a distance, by a supermutant, which gives you time to get away).

Once you make it to Repcon HQ, you can either swing right and head to freeside, or head to Camp McCarran(if you go this way, try to stick reasonably close to the wall, where NCR troopers will provide a mixture of fire support and meat shield against any fiends. You can usually score some energy weapons from the fiends and and some 5.56, a

Re:4?

[Darinbob]

This is not your vault, dweller.

Re:4?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Aren't party members invincible?

Depends: in NV, 'normal' mode made party members vulnerable to damage; but on 'death' they'd just fall unconscious for a short time(typically until the fight was over, so you couldn't just cynically meat-shield your way through a tough fight, because the enemy would turn and finish you before they woke up again); but they could not be permanently slain. In 'Hardcore', they would die, permanently, if their HP was depleted.

While the latter is more realistic, my experience was that the companion AI and pathfinding weren't really good enough to make permadeath anything but brutally frustrating. Especially in tight spots(like, say, vaults full of feral ghouls) they tended to 'warp' around, making any sort of "now, we are watching each other's backs and focusing fire on targets closing to melee" collaboration nearly impossible; and they also weren't much good at self preservation behavior like 'running away' or 'using antivenom, even though I gave you ten goddamn doses and you know that cazador stings aren't good for you'). In FO1 and 2(and even Tactics) you had something much more along the lines of the top-down and turn based RPG experience, and keeping party members alive was a challenge; but it was at least a challenge you could actually do useful things about, because you were calling the shots. in 3 and NV, 'companions' responded to only a limited set of commands and were pretty loosely controlled.

I'd love to see a take on the 3/NV 'companion' smart enough that permadeath would actually add to the game, not just require a lot of loading-from-save or telling the companion to wait in a safe area while I do all the work; but that will likely require some fairly substantial advances.

Re:4?

[Darinbob]

Yes and no. There were things I liked better with FO:NV, and things I liked better with FO3. FO:NV had better characters, but it forced a lot of false moral dilemmas on you too much. FO3 felt more open, world wise, no big mountains or deathclaw hordes forcing you to go through Nipton. FO3 also had many more of the small details to bring some life to it, like the chess set at the top of the raider infested satellite dish. FO:NV had better crafting, a reasonable hardcore mode that wasn't onerous like many of the survivalist mods, etc. FO:NV though felt a bit too civilized at times, sort of the problem FO2 had.

Re:4?

[Darinbob]

Why do you think this game requires you to have a dog? It's in the video, but no hints at all that it was required. After all FO3 had a dog in its ending video sequence but you weren't required to keep it alive. The dog even ends up in the official lore (as having died at Mariposa even though I kept mine alive).

So if a ghoul was your companion in the teaser video would you think you were required to have a ghoul friend?

Re:4?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but you are clearly a moron so what the hell do you know?

Re:4?

[Darinbob]

Keeping the dog alive in some places was a challenge, but doable. Set yourself a goal to do it even if the game never penalizes you for it, and you just added some fun. I think a lot of newer game players don't understand this part about adding your own objectives or goals in many games being half of the fun.

Re:4?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd like to add, all the new or better features found in New Vegas were just copied from some of the most popular mods for Fallout 3. It is a great idea and more companies should do it.

New Vegas really was not at all impressive compared to Fallout 3 if you were into modding when New Vegas came out. It just looked like a less populated, brown version of what you were already playing. And don't get me started on all the invisible walls and nonsensical things in New Vegas (Caesar is a problem? I just killed him and everyone at his camp but nobody is scripted to notice.).

Re:4?

[Anonymous Coward]

I am neither of those and preferred NV to FO3, so kindly stop projecting your bullshit onto other people.

Re:4?

[TechyImmigrant]

I'm not quite getting the logic of the troll rating.

Re:4?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not your chum, dear.

Re:4?

[Ann O'Nymous-Coward]

Logic? Ratings?

You Must Be New Here.

Re:4?

[TechyImmigrant]

Not as new as you.

175943 460094

Re:4?

[TechyImmigrant]

Arse. It cut out my less_than sign

Re:4?

[Smauler]

I didn't have a PC when Fallout 1 and 2 were released, I just had a PS1. I know it's nice to be able to afford everything, but most of us couldn't, and made choices.

JRPGs are awesome, too.

Re: 4?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is not your dweller, feller.

Re:4?

[Darinbob]

PS1 was far too expensive for me :-)

Re:4?

[Anonymous Coward]

Fallout was the intended successor to Wasteland, as they didn't have the rights to Wasteland at the time.

Of course, now there's an actual Wasteland 2, and Fallout 3 and Fallout 3:New Vegas were a large departure from the isometric gameplay of Fallout 1 and 2.

Re:4?

[Darinbob]

If there was FO3, with another area of content right next door, I'd have explored that area too even if it was the same green sky, same game play, same enemies, etc. Why not? I mean 100 hours in FO3 and you can't be bothered with 1 hour in FO:NV?

You bought the game. Sure it was only $4, but if $4 fell out of my pocket I'd still spend the effort to bend down and pick it back up.

Re:4?

[Darinbob]

I never liked the intro to FO:NV that much myself. It goes on too long. It's like there are two separate intros back to back really; one that shows the background world, and one that shows your confusing backstory. It could have used a bit of editing, or maybe put in a tiny bit of gameplay between the two.

Re:4?

[Darinbob]

Ya, I laughed at those who whined about how guns didn't fire exactly in the direction they were pointed. RPG is not about you leet the player is, but how good the skills of the character are. Thus the need to actually put points into stats and skills.

Re:4?

[Darinbob]

Yes, Bethesda should review what the popular mods are this time around. But I suspect that yet again, continuing the trend from Morrowind, that we'll need a UI overhaul mod just to make things friendly for the PC.

For the hardcore mode, I liked the FO:NV version of it much better than any mod I ever saw. The mod makers all ways to be really hardcore, but FO:NV made it so that you still had to eat and drink but forcing you to stop every hour to do so (or with some you'd die after fast travel because you "forgot" to eat during the long trip). I remember the more realistic survival mode for Skyrim that required shelter to protect against the cold and whatnot, but after a few hours I uninstalled it forever because it got too annoying.

Mods I tend to think of as must-have are the UI overhauls, disabling unnecessary clutter on the screen (stupid arrows pointing to quest objectives), and the unofficial bug fixes. The rest I think of as optional, though nice to have.

Re: 4?

[ravenshrike]

There was no 3, there was only 1, 2, and New Vegas.

Re:4?

[anchovy_chekov]

Sure. Such as a series of the most legendary games in history.

My wife is having kittens (metaphorically, getting in before you Mr AC) at the moment - having just watched the trailer.

We came to the series somewhat late, after buying Fallout 3 in a sale and then leaving it forgotten, unwrapped, for months. But since starting on it, it's been the biggest detriment to household productivity since Skyrim. We've been looking forward to New Vegas (also currently unwrapped), but this... this gives us something to aim for. MUST finish all the series before Fallout 4 comes out.

You got to have goals in life.

Re:4?

[JackieBrown]

After you play it through (assuming you are playing on a PC), check out nexusmods. I went out and bought the PC version just for the mods. They add an incredible amount of story an detail to an already rich universe.

http://www.nexusmods.com/fallo...?

Re:4?

[mjwx]

Like the intro to Fallout 3, it's intended to show somebody who knows nothing at all about the game enough that they can at least get themselves killed competently, rather than because they can't find the stimpack in their inventory and don't know what VATS is. If memory serves

Yep, but the intro to Fallout NV is much improved over FO:3.

Its shorter, less annoying, easier to get through and large parts of it can be skipped entirely. Beyond that it feels more like part of the game and gives you a reward for going through it (about 55 5.56mm rounds). Bethesda definitely learned their lesson there.

But I have to back up everything you've said (although I've never tried heading straight to McCarran from Goodsprings myself). FO:NV is a much improved version of FO:3 with Bethesda seeming to fix most of the things I found wrong with FO:3. NV is a lot less foreboding than 3 though, a lot less survival horror as the Mojave is a relatively safe place compared to the Capital Wasteland. One of the biggest differences between FO:3 and NV in my mind is that the companions are actually functional rather than liabilities.

Re:4?

[JackieBrown]

If there was FO3, with another area of content right next door, I'd have explored that area too even if it was the same green sky, same game play, same enemies, etc.

Exactly! Of course, after playing FO:NV, it's hard to go back to FO3

Re:4?

[anchovy_chekov]

After you play it through (assuming you are playing on a PC), check out nexusmods. I went out and bought the PC version just for the mods. They add an incredible amount of story an detail to an already rich universe.

http://www.nexusmods.com/fallo...?

Thank you Jackie. We've been playing on console, but plan is to build a rig to complete our gaming experience for the family. Funnily enough, I'm the least active gamer in the family (as in I play the least, again to you AC). When I go to spec the gaming box, if I happen to mention that it's for my wife I fully expect the "sure it is" retort I got when bought the original XBox.

Ha, my good lady has just started watching the trailer again. I can hear it playing in the background. The woman is obsessed - heard her shout "bobble head".

Anyway, again... thank you for the advice. It'll be something to look forward to when we do get to play it on PC.

Re:4?

[master_kaos]

No kidding, i played both, 3 was good, but NV by far was my favourite.

Re:4?

[Anonymous Coward]

New Vegas definitely had a different feel from Fallout 3, although if you only played NV briefly, then yes, it would have been harder to differentiate. They did look similar.

Largely because while New Vegas used the same engine and many art assets from Fallout 3 the actual story and development was by Obsidian, which is made up of former Black Isle devs who made the first two Fallout games. New Vegas feels more like the original games and for the divided player base many see it as the true 3rd installment.

Not seeing Obsidian mentioned at all in this trailer does not bode well to me.

Re:4?

[Anonymous Coward]

So...the second iteration of a shooter/RPG is only an improvement to players who like shooters and players who like RPGs?

Re:4?

[Anonymous Coward]

The great thing about the Fallout games is that if some minor task annoys you, just leave it behind and go seek adventure elsewhere in the world. That gecko crap isn't mandatory.

Re:4?

[TechyImmigrant]

Yes. I now have them via steam.

Re:4?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

The one weird(though largely harmless in practice) thing about having the intro be both skippable and 'in game', is that it doesn't appear to level in any way, since it was built as a lightweight introduction; and none of the characters involved will react as though it's unusual if you come back later and start it.

Stagger out of the doctor's house, looking like you could really use the help, and Sunny will show you some stuff about guns, wilderness medicine, and Ringo will be deeply pessimistic about your chances against Joe Cobb unless you rally more or less the entire town.

Walk back to Goodsprings, power armor gleaming, CZ-57 Avenger on your hip and enough mini nukes in your backpack to qualify for a seat on the security council, if there were such a thing; and Sunny is still happy to help the new guy plink bottles and kill a few geckos, and Ringo still doesn't think that you'll be able to handle Joe Cobb. This...ends poorly...for Joe.

Re:4?

[JazzLad]

House notices

Re:4?

[CronoCloud]

Players who like a certain KIND of RPG's. For the Black Isle fanboys it was more about atmosphere and catering to their "tastes" that made NV a bit less fun to those who really liked F3.
For example in F3 I spent most of the game relying on 3 weapons: Lincoln's Repeater, Xuan Long, Terrible Shotgun. And one armor set: Reilly's Ranger And even if you don't have those Unique versions, the standard Hunting rifle, assault rifle, combat shotgun and combat armor will serve you well throughout the whole game. And they're relatively inexpensive and common.

But in NV they nerfed all of that to appeal to the hardcore Black Isle fanboys. It was nerfed so much I actually felf the game was "forcing" me to use a companion. In F3, I never used them. Now eventually the game was patched and became better balanced but that took quite a while.

And the BUGS. F3 had some issues but NV was worse. I personally got hit with that "reset faction" bug pre patch, which basically undid all my work and frustrated me enough to stop playing.

NV is a good game, yes, but as was said, it's a brown tinged, slightly annoying variant of F3.

Re:4?

[sound vision]

But Final Fantasy and Pokemon are definitely going to be within that tenth.

Re:4?

[Darinbob]

I actually forgot that Pokemon was a game instead of a TV show.

Re:4?

[pnutjam]

Yeah, 3 took forever to give up power armor. NV gives it to you in a reasonable time frame. It also has a richer collection of weapons and much better crafting options. Add in the ability to mod weapons and even without the better story line, it's a winner.

Please tell me there is destructible terrain

[Anonymous Coward]

And I can lob a half-dozen mini-nukes into Fenway Park and watch the crater burn.

Saw it coming

[Forgefather]

To absolutely fucking no ones surprise a sequel was announced to a popular and profitable franchise.

Re:Saw it coming

[GeekWithAKnife]

Amusing but the truth is there was doubt if this franchise will be killed off due to legal issues.

The truth is loads of geeks want to know this and there was a bit of an interesting intellectual rights battle between Bethesda and Interplay.

So really, this is a little bit of a surprise ifyou think that my most beloved game series of all times was almost axed because of some failed MMO you insesitive clod!

Read more here -> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F...

Re:Saw it coming

[Anonymous Coward]

What will really shock you is that you'll need Mods to even so much as use the menus... and you'll have to pay for them!

Re:Saw it coming

[Alumoi]

They are called DLC these days.

Re:Saw it coming

[Anonymous Coward]

Half-Life 3. STFU you cunt.

Re:Saw it coming

[Wootery]

Bethesda do like their GOTY editions.

They have the effect of punishing those that buy the base game and later decide to buy the DLCs: the DLCs never go on on a significant discount, so it's actually cheaper to buy the GOTY over the top of the base game.

(By no means an EA-level act of scummery, of course. Just a little annoying.)

Re: Saw it coming

[Anonymous Coward]

No they will not. They attempted to con skyrim modders into a pay scam with steam but it failed big time. Yes there will be dlcs but mods will stay free.

Re:Saw it coming

[guises]

Er, what? There was never any danger of the Fallout franchise being killed, that legal struggle was entirely about Bethesda suing the shit out of Interplay in order to take the rights to the Fallout MMO that Interplay was developing. Without Bethesda's interference the MMO may or may not have been completed, but it had no impact on the rights to the single player games.

Re:Saw it coming

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

It's a slightly weird tactic because of how deeply their GOTY editions eventually end up being discounted. I imagine that the cynical appeal of 'charge the fans full price for the game, full price for each DLC' is obvious, and why they do it; but it's a bit surprising that they don't have a stage between 'everything is full price' and 'GOTY is 75% off', where base game is still 100% of release; but 'DLC complete pack' is available to owners of the base game for a substantial discount in order to mop up the residual demand of people enthusiastic enough to buy the base game at full price; but not to go all in and shell out for each DLC at full price.

Instead, they just seem to go directly from 'everything full price' to 'GOTY available, frequently on sale for less than the price of buying 1-2 of the 4 DLCs separately'.

Not that I mind, when I'm in the position to buy that version; but it seems like a slightly curious discontinuity in the price discrimination strategy.

Re:Saw it coming

[Darinbob]

In Bethesda games since nearly the start, you have to use mods to get the UI to be usable. Even when consoles were rare the default UI seemed to be built around having low resolution and lack of a mouse.

Steam got slapped back for trying to add the paid mods to Skyrim. I don't know if Bethesda learned the lesson though. The majority of their fan base wants the open source mods far more than they want DLCs.

Re:Saw it coming

[Darinbob]

I don't care. HL1 was great, but by the time of HL2 they should have improved so that you weren't continually stuck on the rails with no freedom of action. But then I put up wiht it for the story, only to have it abruptly end and was told "please buy HL2 Part Two to continue". No thanks, they lost a fan with that.

Re:Saw it coming

[Anubis IV]

That's not quite how it went down. Let's be clear: Interplay is a shadow of its former self, has been that way for a number of years, and any Fallout game they would make would be just as much a "true successor" to the series as one made by anyone else since all of the devs are gone. Just to review...

1) Interplay created Fallout, and their internal Black Isle team created Fallout 2, under the leadership of Brian Fargo and the creative direction of Jason Anderson.

2) Anderson left the company during Fallout 2's development, and Fargo was ousted by shareholders in 2001 in a corporate shakeup.

3) Black Isle Studios was closed in 2003 and the entire staff was laid off. Van Buren (i.e. the original Fallout 3), which they were working on, was cancelled. A lot of them ended up over at inXile Entertainment, which Fargo had founded after he was ousted. Many of the others went on to found Obsidian Entertainment. More on those guys later...

4) Despite cancelling Van Buren, Interplay did, however, manage to push out the rather craptastic Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel in 2004 (not to be confused with the similarly-named Fallout Tactics: Brotherhood of Steel, which is a decent game with which Interplay had no involvement). It's so bad, diverges so far from the rest of the series, and sold so poorly that even Interplay and Bethesda can get on the same page in agreeing that it's not canon.

5) On the verge of bankruptcy in 2004, Interplay sold the rights to make three Fallout games to Bethesda Softworks (not to be confused with Bethesda Game Studios, which is the developer that makes The Elder Scrolls, Fallout 3, and now, Fallout 4, and which I love).

6) Still on the verge of bankruptcy, Interplay sold all of the rights to Bethesda Softworks in 2007, but licensed back the rights to a Fallout MMO, conditioned on their getting $30M in funding and meeting certain development goals by April 2009, as well as launching within four years of starting development.

7) Having failed to reach the necessary funding and with their "Project V13" Fallout Online game in development hell at a newly reopened Black Isle after Jason Anderson left yet again (who they had hired back on to handle creative direction), they tried to pull some eleventh hour crap on the day before their April 2009 deadline by announcing nonsense plans to partner with some Bulgarian company to make the game happen.

8) Bethesda Softworks sued them in April 2009 and then reached an out-of-court settlement in 2012 to get back the rights to the MMO, as well as the rights to the original games in the series. Project V13 continued development at the new Black Isle, with all Fallout references stripped.

9) Interplay pulled a "screw you" by making the original games in the series free on Steam, GOG, etc. for a week or two before the rights were set to transfer to Bethesda in 2013.

10) As for where we're at today...well, remember all of those original Interplay devs who left for Obsidian and inXile? They've gone on to make Fallout: New Vegas (which incorporated a number of ideas from Van Buren) and Wasteland 2 (a sequel to the game that was the spiritual predecessor to the original Fallout), respectively. Meanwhile, Project V13 remains vaporware, even though we're now two years beyond the launch date that their rights were conditioned on reaching.

TL;DR: Interplay failed at making the Fallout MMO even before Bethesda Softworks got involved (in fact, that's why they got involved), and they've continued to fail ever since, even though their former devs have gone on to great acclaim in making new games related in various ways to the franchise. Also worth mentioning: I'm no fan of Bethesda Softworks, since they've demonstrated that they're a legal troll (e.g. all

Re:Saw it coming

[Anonymous Coward]

They have real news to cover up.

https://archive.is/bVWUM

https://8ch.net/sourcefraud/

Re:Saw it coming

[wallsg]

Valve can't count to three. HL, Portal, L4D, TF...

And the LORD spake, saying, "First shalt thou take out the Holy Pin, then shalt thou count to three, no more, no less. Three shall be the number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt thou not count, neither count thou two, excepting that thou then proceed to three. Five is right out. Once the number three, being the third number, be reached, then lobbest thou thy Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch towards thy foe, who being naughty in My sight, shall snuff it."

Re:Saw it coming

[Anonymous Coward]

please mod parent as off topic

Guess it's just your lucky day

[Anonymous Coward]

http://xkcd.com/1053

Re:Guess it's just your lucky day

[TechyImmigrant]

http://xkcd.com/1053

Yay. Today I'm one of the 10,000.

with the graphite magnet solar powered star cars

[Anonymous Coward]

we could live almost anywhere within seconds? what could stop us? https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=wmd+deception .. talk about fallout? https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=wmd+weather+starvation+religion .. rock on /. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zpYFAzhAZY

Super Monkey Ball

[tepples]

Isn't Fallout that game that the announcer in Super Monkey Ball name-drops all the time?

Re:with the graphite magnet solar powered star car

[Anonymous Coward]

You're a moron.

I'm excited

[Karmashock]

I love the fallout series.

They featured that dog heavily in the trailer... I hope the damn dog isn't so death prone in the new game. I love and hate those dogs.

They're my special friends while they're alive and then they die and I feel sad. :(

Forces me to cheat and bring the dog back to life or make him invulnerable or something. Unkillable puppy. :D

Re:I'm excited

[Anonymous Coward]

And Fallout 4 will be an online game just like Elder Scrolls online, and just as good. Bethesda has been dropping the ball a lot lately.

Re:I'm excited

[pla]

Shut your damned dirty whore mouth!

Online... Pffft, Even Bethesda wouldn't do something that jaw-droppingly stupid.

Re:I'm excited

[Anonymous Coward]

Bethesda didn't make Elder Scrolls Online, Zenimax did.

Re:I'm excited

[Karmashock]

Granted if they make it an MMO, it will be garbage.

Re:I'm excited

[Anonymous Coward]

ok Warner Brothers didn't make The Matrix, Village Roadshow did. New Line Cinema didn't make "The Lord of the Rings" movies, Wing Nut films and Saul Zaentz Co did. You're splitting hairs.

Bethesda owns the franchise and I'm pretty sure they had the final say as to whether it got released or not. So guess who gets the blame?

Re:I'm excited

[Triklyn]

i second the "shut your damn dirty, filthy whore mouth."

screw you, and the lies you spew forth.

Re:I'm excited

[blazer1024]

"That dog"?!? His NAME is Dogmeat! :D

Actually, that's probably the grandson of the original Dogmeat.

Re:I'm excited

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

You didn't take the "Puppies!" perk?

Re:I'm excited

[Anonymous Coward]

How? Dogmeat was fried in a secret military installation in California.

Re:I'm excited

[Darinbob]

I kept dogmeat alive all the way through and it was not very difficult except for the military base, and only because of those electric barriers. When your dog is better at killing super mutants than your followers who have guns, then why worry? FO3 was harder of course.

Re:I'm excited

[Karmashock]

No... I didn't even know that existed... Fallout 3 puppies perk. Nifty.

I just got so used to hacking him invulnerability that it didn't occur to me there might be a perk.

That perk is awesome. :D

Re:I'm excited

[Darinbob]

The perk is only with a DLC.

Re:I'm excited

[Karmashock]

I had all the DLC. I just didn't notice the perk.

My wish list:

[quietwalker]

I saw the article linked with things some folks want, and hated most of it. Vehicles? Really?

Here's what I'd like;
    - Companion characters & character development done by the Bioware teams (I'm gonna ignore the low-average quality from the Dragon Age Inquisition game). Bethesda Softworks does an admirable job with environment and atmosphere, but their NPC's are generally flat, with a few exceptions. Companions most of all. Multiple companions might be nice, Companion quests, idle-time squawking/interparty squawking, scenarios providing different options with different companions.

    - Combat that always feels like a challenge, and not just in a ninja-monkey way where their stats scale to your level. Perhaps limit the character growth and equipment attributes in a D&D 5'th ed sort of way. Adjustable, though (see 'customization' below)

      - They rock at allowing mods, but having a truly made-for-third-parties-without-a-debugger-running sort of script evaluation (profiling), execution, merging and management system would be swell. Knowing a module was going to crash - or even just which mod caused the crash - is a big help.

      - Enough customization to allow different play styles, not just different difficulty levels. For example, the New Vegas optional 'hardcore' mode requiring food, drink and sleep, but perhaps with a checklist of 'collectables' and an easy combat or excessive loot for folks who are more interested in achievements than someone who wants to soak up the atmosphere. This includes any time a dev said "But that won't work on console" - make it an option. None of this dumbing things down just because it has to run on a console.

      - That mod thing up there? I'm putting it here again because I like mods.

      - Oh, and an easy way to add songs to a playlist rotation, not requiring a mod with a new radio station, necessarily.

Re:My wish list:

[dj245]

I saw the article linked with things some folks want, and hated most of it. Vehicles? Really?

Done the right way, I think they could do vehicles right. Just look at GTA5- if you play in first person all of the time, the game is a believably realistic crime simulator. They sunk a lot of time and effort into making every aspect of the vehicles realistic, including believable damage models (cosmetic AND physical), realistic handling physics, etc. It is quite a departure from the arcade feel of the previous GTA games and IMO a huge improvement.

The last Fallout games, on the other hand, could do with a dose of realism. But Bethesda has shown time and again that they can't make a physics engine not be buggy.

Re:My wish list:

[Anonymous Coward]

mods, mods, and more mods will help.

knowing which mod caused the game to crash would be amazingly helpful (esp. since theyre still using the gamebryo engine)

Re:My wish list:

[Daniel Hoffmann]

A field of view slider would be nice for that first person mode. Also true for skyrim/fallout (at least I can set it in the console on those two)

Re:My wish list:

[slashdice]

What I'd like: fewer bugs. Fallout 3 was damn near unplayable on the XBox due to frequent lock ups. Nevermind stupid shit like getting stuck in the environment.

Re:My wish list:

[Anonymous Coward]

what i miss about the first couple games. actually being able to cripple your enemies... and then chasing them down.

i want to be able to make my enemies beg for their lives.

Re:My wish list:

[mattventura]

For how much work they put into making road vehicles realistic, I'm a little disappointed with how flying pales in comparison. I'm sure parts of it were balance issues (like airspeed and weapon ranges) but others just make flying feel cheaply done.

Re:My wish list:

[CronoCloud]

This includes any time a dev said "But that won't work on console" - make it an option. None of this dumbing things down just because it has to run on a console.

And vice versa, no dumbing things down because PC gamers are a bunch of filthy casual dudebro shooter and MOBA players.

See what I did there?

Though to be more accurate just because a dev might "think" something won't work on a console, doesn't mean that it actually won't work. PC devs are notoriously lazy and incompetent by console-dev standards and prone to underestimate console audiences.

Oh, and an easy way to add songs to a playlist rotation, not requiring a mod with a new radio station, necessarily.

There are these things called external music players like WMP, itunes, Winamp, etc etc. And also things like Spotify. Sure you'd miss out on whatever intros to songs, public service announcements, and news whatever Three Dog/Mr. Vegas analog in F4 will do, but you could have all the music you want.

Re:My wish list:

[nine-times]

Different strokes for different folks. Personally, I don't agree with your list either. I'm not so fixated on vehicles, though I wouldn't mind, especially if they make a massive world to explore, which is one of the things I'd like to see.

But personally, I'm not too interested in teams and companions. I know that's blasphemy to some RPG fans, but I feel like companions typically just end up being something else to worry about. If you let the AI run them, then the AI is always doing something stupid, and they get themselves killed or stuck. If I control them, then it's just like, "Ugh, now you've just added a lot of un-fun work to my game-playing." I don't like grinding to level up, carefully planning my stats for lots of different people, etc. I just want to play through the story and explore the world. But that's me.

Similarly, I'm not super-interested in having very complex combat. Again, I know, blasphemy. I'm already going to spend a couple hundred hours in-game, and I don't really want to add to it by having to reload 50 times because I need to place one of my party members more carefully or give him different instructions. I'm exaggerating, but basically at this point I'm a 'filthy casual'. I have a fair amount of stuff going on in my life, and I don't particularly want to have to "get good" at a game through practice and grinding. I want something I can slip into, play for a while, get some fun gameplay and good stories, and then go back to my life.

However, I would agree that there's something to having things feel challenging. I think that's part of the challenge of game-design, making things feel challenging without simply being difficult. I love the feeling of just barely scraping through a battle, but I don't enjoy reloading because I failed.

Also, I do like the idea of character customization in the sense that you might have a stealthy/smart character, and therefore maybe you're precluded from also being a badass tank. Or you can be a tank, but you might also be dumb and incapable of sneaking. I think one of the things that the original Fallout games did well was to not only allow that kind of character customization, but to have those customization affect which things you were able to do, and how the story unfolded. There might be a mission where you have to fight an enemy, but if your speech/persuasion was really high, you could talk your way out of it. If you're a science genius, maybe you can hack the security system rather than doing a frontal assault.

I remember once completing a Fallout 2 game with almost no combat because I was sneaky, persuasive, and smart. I'd love to see that kind of thing return. Unfortunately, Bethesda doesn't do that kind of thing, so I'm not holding my breath.

What I really want to see, first is a huge world that has the feel of reality to it. Bethesda has been getting better at that, so I have some hope. Skyrim was pretty big and detailed. You could wander for a good long time before hitting the edge. But I'd like to see them do more of that. Make more interesting/unique locations, more unique items. More interesting characters. Avoid making it feel like the dungeon/vault is a designed game level with enemies placed at regular intervals and random loot in every corner, and more like a real place where people live.

Try to make the missions feel varied, rather than having a million, "Go in this cave and kill this person" missions or "fetch me 20 of this item" missions. Allow multiple routes to get to the end of the mission, either using stealth or persuasion or technical know-how or combat. Give you options on how to complete the mission, and have those decisions make a difference in the world, and make a difference on how people treat you.

I'd also like to see a crafting system that allows for more than "collect 3 [item A]s and 2 [item B]s to make an [item C]." Let the player change the look of their clothes, armor, and weapons in-game (without modding). Let the player cha

Re:My wish list:

[Mashiki]

And vice versa, no dumbing things down because PC gamers are a bunch of filthy casual dudebro shooter and MOBA players.

See what I did there?

Right. Can you name the last time a game was dumbed down on a PC because the PC, and it was dumbed down because of shitty input design due to a controller, lack of draw distance because the PC can't draw it at that distance, cut 1k-3k textures down to 256 in size because the PC can't draw textures that large? How about cutting down AI pathing and fighting abilities because there isn't enough processing power in the PC. Load zones between areas including internal to external cells because of PC's? Well I can give you that one, it's been nearly 15 years.

Though to be more accurate just because a dev might "think" something won't work on a console, doesn't mean that it actually won't work. PC devs are notoriously lazy and incompetent by console-dev standards and prone to underestimate console audiences.

And that's where you're wrong. It's not that they "think" it won't work on a console, it simply won't work on a console in many cases. That was the problem with Witcher 3, the current gen in no way could keep up with PC's from 2-3 years ago, and it suffered because of it. And it's been true ever since the games were made for both sides, unless of course you're saying that a console built based on hardware from 2011-2013 and can be beaten by a PC built this year for under what both consoles cost is the problem.

Re:My wish list:

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

That's what surprised me so much about Skyrim: Fallout:NV had a fairly well fleshed out location based damage system, with both gameplay strategic implications and the pure gory amusement of taking limbs off.

Then they made a game set in a location where basically everyone carries a giant battleaxe or a huge sword all the time, and the only amputations are relatively rare decapitations that occur if and only if you have the right perk for your weapon type. Why?

Re:My wish list:

[Darinbob]

The "dumbing down" is because the consoles of the era typically couldn't support some basic stuff. Like saving games on demand. Or assuming really tiny television screen resolution. So you'd scale up rez on your PC to 1280x1024 and you'd end up with a really tiny unreadable user interface. Even in a game as new as Skyrim the default UI wouldn't scale up even though consoles are so much better now. Or any game with one of those ridiculous radial selection interfaces (makes sense if you only have a button and a joystick, it's utterly ridiculous if you've got a mouse and keyboard). Or the levels would be really small with frequent loading screens because the consoles couldn't pull in a whole level (think Thief 3). Or the complete inability to use your mouse to select things, or type in something to name your character, etc. Or worse of all in newer games are the "quick time events"; sure it makes sense when your control is limited with only 4 buttons to push, but on the PC it feels like the game is making fun of you and that after 20 hours in the game you're still being spoon fed the tutorial.

"Dumbed down" doesn't mean that the players are dumb, but that the game was intentionally hobbled. It especially applies in cases where a sequel to a game dropped many of the earlier features for a PC-only original.

Re:My wish list:

[Darinbob]

Having replayed skyrim recently, I think the vehicles could be like the horses. Not amazingly fast, no usable combat while in a vehicle, but if you've made it your personal goal to walk everywhere instead of insta-magic-travel then having a slightly faster mobility is handy while retaining immersion.

For the NPC companions, they're not there to help me fight, but to help me carry the loot! Except for dogmeat, he's there because he's not yet house trained.

Skyrim had a ton of quests, but I'd rather see fewer of them. Not because I don't like quests, but because they feel like they're holding my hand. I like having a really long term objective and then it's up to me to figure out the intermediate steps without any arrow pointing the way. Fallout 3 felt that way for the most part, there were lots of things to do without anyone in the game telling you to do them or vector quests that sent you straight to the hidden cave. Thus you get rewarded for exploring.

Re:My wish list:

[theArtificial]

PC devs are notoriously lazy and incompetent by console-dev standards and prone to underestimate console audiences.

Some of the games are made by the same studios. Some quick googling shows launch day patches for both consoles and titles. Witcher 3 day one patch, Halo Collection 20gb launch day patch. Evolve, GTAV the same thing... so this reeks of a No True Scotsman falacy with "good developers", as if the developers run the show. It's a business that's all about cranking titles out as fast as possible while papering over with hype. Just for the record what are some developers that you consider good? Constraints: They can't develop for the PC and can't have any launch day patches.

There are these things called external music players like WMP, itunes, Winamp, etc etc. And also things like Spotify. Sure you'd miss out on whatever intros to songs, public service announcements, and news whatever Three Dog/Mr. Vegas analog in F4 will do, but you could have all the music you want.

Or perhaps they can just allow players to play their files through the game? "Oh you like music? Just turn on your radio!" This was a feature request, not a half baked community suggestion request to be answered by someone's mom.

Re:My wish list:

[Darinbob]

In the old days you could not get patches for consoles at all. But PCs could so they'd get the patches and if there was a console version they'd be stuck. There's a long period of time between when a game goes to be pressed onto CDs or DVDs and by the time it arrives in the stores, so there's inevitably a few bugs or quirks that have been discovered in that period of time, or maybe a last minute rebalancing, etc.

Even today this is still often the case, you can't really get mods for newish games like Skyrim or Fallout 3 on consoles, you only get the patches but not the "unofficial" ones.

Re:My wish list:

[Mashiki]

It's about a month from stamping to distribution to stores, that's not very long.

Re:My wish list:

[Darinbob]

But more time from sending off to a printer until the CDs are ready, manuals are printed, and it's all boxed up.

Re:My wish list:

[Mashiki]

Nope, manuals, boxes all that stuff? It's done about 3-5 months before the game copies are produced. That's the easy stuff.

Re:My wish list:

[nine-times]

Skyrim had a ton of quests, but I'd rather see fewer of them. Not because I don't like quests, but because they feel like they're holding my hand. I like having a really long term objective and then it's up to me to figure out the intermediate steps without any arrow pointing the way.

Well I think that's not the same was wanting fewer quests, but wanting less hand-holding in the quests. For example, I wouldn't mind if quests didn't always give map-markers telling you exactly where to go. Or maybe the markers could be more vague, like a shading on the map showing an area, or instructions like "Head to this town, and then go northeast" and the town is marked, but the location isn't.

Because I agree with you in the sense that, after a while, these games can just turn into "Go wherever the marker points you, have a perfunctory conversation with an NPC, and then go to where the new marker points." I don't like that. However, I do like having a list of missions that I can be doing, and I like a little hand-holding. I don't like spending hours trying to figure out where I'm supposed to go and what I'm supposed to do because the developers made it all unclear, but I do like exploring, finding things, and figuring things out for myself.

Re:My wish list:

[CronoCloud]

Can you name the last time a game was dumbed down on a PC because the PC, and it was dumbed down because of shitty input design due to a controller,

Every game that uses sub-optimal digital WASD for movement? 2D platformers that used keyboard controls like Commander Keen? ARPG's where movement and attacking use the SAME mouse button.

lack of draw distance because the PC can't draw it at that distance, cut 1k-3k textures down to 256 in size because the PC can't draw textures that large?

3K textures? What kind of idiot uses textures that large, it's overkill. Only PC devs designing the next "you can't buy hardware that will actually run the game well yet" games like the original Crysis rather than for the hardware people actually own.

How about cutting down AI pathing and fighting abilities because there isn't enough processing power in the PC.

FreeRealms. The PC version had sucky pathfinding, compared to the PS3 version. And it was also blurrier and has inferior sound. The PC version also controlled like crap for movement, racing, demolition derby and the pirate minigame.

Load zones between areas including internal to external cells because of PC's? Well I can give you that one, it's been nearly 15 years.

I know of console games that don't have loading screens between areas, because they stream levels/areas on the fly. One noted version being EQOA. It has no loading screens between zones, something EQ on the PC did not have. You could walk from Fayspires to Qeynos and never see a load screen. The technique is less commonly used now because of all the cross platform development. PC's can't do it as well, they don't have the fast internal busses and specialized fast RAM.

That was the problem with Witcher 3, the current gen in no way could keep up with PC's from 2-3 years ago, and it suffered because of it.

The problem with the Witcher isn't that the consoles can't keep up, the problem is CD Projekt. Until relatively recently they were among the most "PC Master Race" of developers and publishers, being in Poland......well until witcher 2 of course.

As a formerly PC-centric European developer/publisher., they suck at working on consoles. Witcher 3 is only their second console game, and the first on a Sony platform. They simply don't have the necessary experience, yet.

They did say this:

âoeIf the consoles are not involved there is no Witcher 3 as it is,â said the studioâ(TM)s co-founder Marcin Iwinski, definitively. âoeWe can lay it out that simply. We just cannot afford it, because consoles allow us to go higher in terms of the possible or achievable sales; have a higher budget for the game, and invest it all into developing this huge, gigantic world.

that a console built based on hardware from 2011-2013 and can be beaten by a PC built this year for under what both consoles cost is the problem.

You can't build a machine for less than $399 that can match a PS4 or Xbox one. Not even a steam machine like that new console-ish alienware rig. And it still wouldn't have the specialized RAM or fast internal busses, and it would still run windows. with all the negatives that brings.

Re:My wish list:

[CronoCloud]

The "dumbing down" is because the consoles of the era typically couldn't support some basic stuff. Like saving games on demand.

There are NES and SNES games that can save on demand. Really. It's not a limitation of the hardware but more a design decision that some people mistook for a limitation.

Or assuming really tiny television screen resolution. So you'd scale up rez on your PC to 1280x1024 and you'd end up with a really tiny unreadable user interface. Even in a game as new as Skyrim the default UI wouldn't scale up even though consoles are so much better now.

It was bad on consoles too! Some games had too small text, some had too big. I'm remembering Darkstone on the PSone which has legibility problems if you play with anything less than an S-Video connection. One of the Hot Shots golf games has the SAME problem, exacerbated if you play it on a PS3 with upscaling.

You remember Oblivion's typeface? On the PS3 at 720p it's a bit too big which reduces the amount of information the game can show in inventory and whatnot. Skyrim is better with it's F3 sized font, but why can't they just give EVERYONE a UI scaling option. It would benefit PC gamers AND console gamers AND people with eyesight issues.

Or any game with one of those ridiculous radial selection interfaces (makes sense if you only have a button and a joystick, it's utterly ridiculous if you've got a mouse and keyboard).

Radial menus are FAST, that's why they use them. Once you get used to them you can do stuff amazingly fast. But...it does take time to adapt. You should have heard me cursing the radial menu in BG&E, the first game I played with one.

You're right in that they shouldn't implement them on the PC though, unless the gamer chooses to enable one while using a joypad. They're not designed for mouse use, they're slower that way.

I'm glad Diablo 3 has a variant of a radial system on consoles. It's a heck of a lot faster and less annoying dealing with inventory on the PS3/PS4 than it is on the PC. No more silly time consuming inventory tetris.

Or the levels would be really small with frequent loading screens because the consoles couldn't pull in a whole level (think Thief 3).

Thief 3's developer didn't know the trick of streaming levels on the fly? You don't need to load the whole level at once, just the parts around the player. Standard technique on the PS2. PC games don't do it. For one, they've usually had more RAM available and got used to being able to load entire levels. and secondly they didn't have the necessary fast RAM and internal busses to pull it off. Game development is more cross platform and with more former PC only devs doing console games they need to learn about tricks like that.

Strangely console Minecraft loads the entire "world" in ways the PC version doesn't. For example you can travel far enough from your wheat farm in the PC version that the "chunk" it's in won't update so your wheat will be at the same growth stage you left it in. That doesn't happen on the console version. That may be why the console version has limited world size. And perhaps also because Sony/Microsoft have limits on how much save space a game is allowed to use. They probably don't want to tell gamers "You've run out of space for your new CoD DLC because Minecraft has allocated 200GB for it's world save just in case you decide to go off exploring endlessly"

Or the complete inability to use your mouse to select things, or type in something to name your character, etc.

That's lazyness, because consoles have had USB ports since the PS2 days. I've got PS2 games that have mouse and keyboard support.

Or worse of all in newer games are the "quick time events"; sure it makes sense when your control is limited with only 4 buttons to push, but on the PC it feels like the game is making fun of

Re:My wish list:

[Darinbob]

Well, it's been over a month since Pillars of Eternity and the DVDs still haven't arrived.

Re:My wish list:

[CronoCloud]

some quick googling shows launch day patches for both consoles and titles.

Yes, you're right, console devs HAVE become lazier as well, thanks to internet connected consoles. In some ways they're becoming more like PC devs in the lackadaisacal attitudes towards "getting it right the first time". This is not a good thing.

Witcher 3 day one patch

CD Projekt is a former PC only developer in Europe....any console gamer can tell you that when a European Dev goes console, they tend to suck at first because their dev practices/methods are PC Centric and they have little experience on console. The Witcher 3 is only their second title and their first on a Sony platform. I expected to hear of problems.

I'm not saying they can't do a good game, it's just that they're not quite there yet.

Just for the record what are some developers that you consider good?

Squaresoft (pre Enix), Snowblind, Zipper, Naughty Dog, Media Molecule, Atlus, Nintendo, 4J

For cross platform I'd add Bioware and Blizzard to that. Not Bethesda, they do good games, but they seriously need more solid QA. It's sad to think that their least buggy console game on the PS3 was Oblivion, that was the one they handed off to 4J to do the port. Irrational was fairly good as is Firaxis.

Or perhaps they can just allow players to play their files through the game?

As much as that feature is appealing to some do you think that they should dedicate dev time to duplicate functionality already in other applications or the OS?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U...

Re:My wish list:

[theArtificial]

Snowblind is out of business, nice nod but not making anything for the current gen.
Squaresoft is dead, FFVII PC port was released by them.
Naughty dog, Uncharted 3 for example, was patched several times to address bugs, (within a week of launch). An improvement over launch day :)

I'm not saying they can't do a good game, it's just that they're not quite there yet.

I vote with my wallet and commend them for their lack of DRM in the past. Not to mention they take care of their customers.

For cross platform I'd add Bioware and Blizzard to that. Not Bethesda, they do good games, but they seriously need more solid QA. It's sad to think that their least buggy console game on the PS3 was Oblivion

Simply criminal. A vanilla experience robbed of Bethesda's strength: mods. Bioware was once a powerhouse, Mass Effect 3? Blizzard releases are strong.

As much as that feature is appealing to some do you think that they should dedicate dev time to duplicate functionality already in other applications or the OS?

Games do this all the time, take widgets for example. Typically the engines feature media playback functionality or a sound library is licensed, and judging by the glut of media players out there, they're not exactly taxing to write. The Xbox has games that do exactly this.

Happy Times

[PopeRatzo]

I just hope Bethesda takes as much care with the music in Fallout 4.

https://youtu.be/itc8yl9uLD8

Wish on the moon
And look for the gold in a rainbow
And you’ll find a happy time

You’ll hear a tune
That lives in the heart of a bluebird
And you’ll find a happy time

Though things may look very dark
Your dream is not in vein
For when do you find the rainbow?
Only after rain

So wish on the moon
And someday it may be tomorrow
You will suddenly hear chimes
And you’ll have your happy, happy time

So wish on the moon
And someday it may be tomorrow
You will suddenly hear chimes
And you’ll have your happy, happy time.

Re:Happy Times

[Joviex]

Why dont you just go listen to Ella Fitzgerald and/or the Ink Spots instead of waiting for them to compile those songs onto "their" soundtrack o.0

Re:Happy Times

[PopeRatzo]

Why dont you just go listen to Ella Fitzgerald and/or the Ink Spots instead of waiting for them to compile those songs onto "their" soundtrack o.0

I do listen to Ella Fitzgerald and the Ink Spots. However, there is a special charm to listening to them armed with a mini-gun in a poisonous, radioactive wasteland with a dog as my companion while fighting giant spiders.

Though, I suppose I could always just move to West Texas. Same difference.

Re:Happy Times

[slashdice]

A buddy of mine works there. He told me they *will* include the golden girls theme song. All I can say is - You're a pal and a cosmonaut!

Re:Happy Times

[CronoCloud]

However, there is a special charm to listening to them armed with a mini-gun in a poisonous, radioactive wasteland with a dog as my companion while fighting giant spiders.

You mean giant scorpions, F3 and New Vegas don't have Giant spiders They Also have giant flies, roaches, and ants with giant wasps and mantises added in NV.

Re:Happy Times

[PopeRatzo]

Aren't scorpions spiders? What do I know? The big crawly things,

I grew up in Vault 34. I didn't get to see any critters until I was like 17.

Re:Happy Times

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

The one case where 'special charm' started to blur into 'is how much I'm enjoying this a bad sign?' is when Sit and Dream is on the radio and you are ensconced in a concealed, elevated, location with your COS silencer rifle; and you suddenly realize that you are timing your headshots by waiting for either "Sleep, go to sleep" or "just lay down your weary head"(especially for decapitations).

It does add a certain ambiance; and it's not as though Cottonwood Cove isn't full of assholes who have it coming; but 'using soothing lullaby style song as background for covert sniper attack' seems like one of those things that might make me a bad person...

Re:Happy Times

[Darinbob]

Because having their soundtrack is better than having my own soundtrack from itunes. My music list isn't necessarily lore appropriate or in character. Sure some players want to have their deathmetal background music but that just wouldn't be the same thing. It's like wishing you could have your own music playing when you go to the movies. Didn't like the mix tape in Guardians of the Universe and wish you could have put some 90s music on it? I want to hear what they dream up, the good songs and the bad ones. It creates the atmosphere. Save using your own music for some dumb shooter game.

And face it, the Ink Spots got a whole new generation of fans from being included in the games, people who had never heard of them before and would never have added them to their own custom playlist. And Fallout New Vegas without songs from Dino? That would be a crime.

Fallout died after version 2.

[Anonymous Coward]

Nothing to see here.

Re:Fallout died after version 2.

[Darinbob]

I think FO2 wasn't as good as FO1. But FO3 reinvigorated it.

Modern Fallouts suck ass

[Anonymous Coward]

None of the modern fallouts recreate and capture the spirit of the two first ones.

Re:Modern Fallouts suck ass

[SuiteSisterMary]

None of the modern fallouts recreate and capture the spirit of the two first ones.

Somebody here hasn't played Fallout: New Vegas, and it isn't me.

Re:Modern Fallouts suck ass

[Anonymous Coward]

ICE CREAM!

Re:Modern Fallouts suck ass

[Anonymous Coward]

None of the modern fallouts recreate and capture the spirit of the two first ones.

That was modded insightful? Why? How?

I have played every single Fallout game. I love the first two games, they were great, but that takes nothing away from the newer ones. Fallout 3 was epic. I believe it might be the only game where I experienced my own birth. True, you couldn't kill children or be a fluffer (you could in earlier games), but what you could do was truly experience the world. Vault 108 is still one of my favorite things in the series (GARY!).

New Vegas brought back some of that post-apocalyptic chaos, but brought with it a host of bugs. Best thing in New Vegas was the Hardcore mode, something that I've wanted since the beginning. Having to balance radiation exposure versus food and drink to survive was really well done. New Vegas seems to be the game that even the biggest "back in my day" gamers would grudgingly accept.

Really looking forward to Fallout 4.

Re:Modern Fallouts suck ass

[Talderas]

Bethesda didn't make New Vegas.

Re:Modern Fallouts suck ass

[pnutjam]

One of the articles links asks for a return to the dark humor. Those guys must have missed New Vegas. Three was light on that, but who can forget "Fisto".

Re:Modern Fallouts suck ass

[brakarific]

Came here just to say the same thing. New Vegas wasn't Fallout 1&2, but it was very much in the same feel as the first two. Yes Man was pretty hilarious. Rad Scorpion Casserole from the old lady in Primm was pretty on point for the kind of humor in 1&2. The Kings, a gang of Elvis Impressionist, the RepConn Ghoul cult trying to fly to outerspace - that is all pretty much classic fallout.

Re:Modern Fallouts suck ass

[Anonymous Coward]

You are absolutely spot on, I was skeptical going into F3 especially hearing the reaction from friends had also played the originals, but that moment when I first stepped out of Vault 101 and saw the ruins of Springvale before me, man, I knew I was in for something new and different in the good way. I enjoyed F3, all its DLC, New Vegas all that (amazing!) DLC and now I'm ready for F4.

For people who prefer the F1&2 there was a new version of Wasteland kickstarted not that long ago, check it out, it might have what you're after, that said I'm ready to wander a blasted Boston

Re:Modern Fallouts suck ass

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

There is a legitimate argument to be made that 'Fallout' as in 'Old School Bioware RPG style; but with sardonic humor and the distinctive insanity of '50s civil-defense-and-suburbia taken to their logical extreme' did indeed die. The overhead, party-based, turn-based RPG, it is no more. Even Tactics, however tepidly it was received, was much closer to classic Fallout; and 'Van Beuren' died with Black Isle.

However, I'd agree that, while Bethesda didn't really understand the Fallout spirit(FO3 was a competent RPG and didn't do anything egregious in terms of fucking with canon; but it could have been transplanted into a non-fallout post-apocalypse without much modification), they did a fairly commendable job in reconciling the "the market wants first-person action RPGs" pressure with "Fallout is Not a first-person action RPG". It needed some refinement(the skills list, in particular, was much stronger in NV); but VATS was a surprisingly elegant compromise.

Obsidian understands the hell out of what makes Fallout Fallout, so NV was much more a 'Fallout' game, rather than just a 'post-apocalyptic game with fallout compatible canon', and they tightened up some of the v.1 mistakes from FO3's character and stat design. FO4 is, arguably, where we see if Bethesda has what it takes to establish a worthy 'east coast Fallout' aesthetic and gameworld(which needn't be the same as 'classic'; but can't just be another greyish post-nuclear shooter), or whether they did an adequate job of laying the foundations; but should really leave the game-building to Obsidian.

Re:Modern Fallouts suck ass

[shihonage]

It is insightful because it's 100% true. If you look at Fallout 1/2 walkthroughs, you will see the kind of non-linearity, environmental scripting depth and general feeling of freedom that no modern game provides. Fallout 3 especially was a complete corridor compared to this. In programming and design alone, the first two games are still better than ANYTHING out there. There's a CHASM of difference between "walk anywhere you want" and freedom of player agency. In a walking simulator, you'll still have to go through a series of linear mission checkpoint with no alternate choices.

As for witnessing your own birth, it's just a cutscene, and one you have to do EVERY TIME instead of just having a simple character creation screen.

Also, what is the point of "experiencing the world", if Fallout 3's writing was the worst I've ever seen in a game written by supposedly English speakers? Really, the entire gameworld was designed and written by people who's only ever written code. The NPCs are lifeless tusks with no point to their existence, none of them ever talk like real people, nothing makes sense!

Fallout 3 was so dumb, in the end you have an NPC who is resistant to radiation, and he makes YOU go into the radiation chamber. He refuses to go himself, why? Because, "it's your path and yours alone". Wait, what?

And what about the horrible UI? Loading screens upon entering every hut? Terrible combat with unbalanced VATS system? "SPECIAL" being just numbers on the screen which barely have any effect on anything in the environment, VASTLY unlike the original two games?

Moira gets exploded by a nuclear blast, instantly becomes a ghoul, and then asks you to "Not do it again, okay?" Cars filled with fuel 200 years after the war? Oversimplified, cartoonish take on the factions from the originals?

If you look at any documented Let's Play thread of Fallout 3, and you have read at least 3 books in your life, your brain will start leaking out of your ears. It is inevitable.

At least New Vegas tried to follow canon and have an actual world, and it had a ton more content, a ton more choice&consequence, SPECIAL was actually checked frequently on various occasions. Some NPCs actually behaved vaguely human! In all ways it was a far superior product.

Re:Modern Fallouts suck ass

[Darinbob]

But Obsidian screwed up a bunch of it too. They worked too hard to make sure you had to make hard moral choices which FO1&2 never did. Every single main quest ending felt like a wrong ending. Every faction to ally with were bastards. Sometimes on replays I avoid seeing some people because I know I'll get a quest that can not be resolved happily. Too many shades of gray in spots that should be black and white in a classical fallout world.

Re:Modern Fallouts suck ass

[Anonymous Coward]

All I got from the effort you put into your post is that you are an emotional reasoner that is angry about something and don't know the difference between facts and opinions.

Re:Modern Fallouts suck ass

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

That is true. I wasn't really expecting a happy story to come out of a brewing battle between a fanatical horde of brutal slavers and a theoretically well intentioned but feckless and corrupt 'democracy' waging a logistically and morally questionable campaign of occupation; but they really squeezed you in that, despite your substantial power in the late game(both as a combatant, and with the support of the boomers and so on); you never appear to have even the option of forcing any of the factions to accept some other outcome than the one it originally demanded; and they all pretty much demand that you stab a bunch of the others in the back for no terribly compelling reason, or just tear everything down and read that Freeside is still a failed state.

On the other hand, part of why that failure was felt so keenly is that getting an ending required fucking over factions and people you cared about, for somewhat dodgy reasons, and without the chance to attempt to broker a more favorable outcome. In FO3, Bethesda put in a few 'Big Moral Choice' moments; but they don't have much of an impact because they ring so hollow: "Hey, you are restarting the big purifier machine! Want to betray your parent's life's work and commit mass murder for no obvious benefit because the enclave computer told you to? Please choose Yes/no." "Good work on breaking through the Enclave defenses and gaining access to the satellite targeting system. Do you want to blow up the base of the enemy that has been dogging you for most of the game, or suddenly turn on the Brotherhood for absolutely no personal reward or coherent reason and blow their base into a smoking crater instead?"

The choices you make surrounding vault 101 are the closest they get to actually affecting or bittersweet outcomes, with success meaning saving a home that is no longer yours and so on; but the other choices, while present, are pretty much a bunch of 'so, do you want to carry on helping your buddies, or just fuck them over because of cartoonish evil?'

NV really crimped your ability to either shape the outcome, despite your importance, or to just maintain the status quo and wander off into the desert; but, while went overboard on the "That's terrible; but apparently the plot won't advance until I do somebody's hatchet job..." they at least avoid the "I've just been offered a 'moral choice' where one of the outcomes is unremittingly bad and doesn't even bother to tempt me in some way" issue.

Re:Modern Fallouts suck ass

[Totaku]

I always thought Moira's (relatively) up-beat and perky dialogue, post-nuke, to be extremely disturbing. Rather than have her yelling or screaming in agony, her response is haunting, and makes you feel the chilling effect of your choice.

excellent

[Anonymous Coward]

Can't wait for the new DRM

Re:excellent

[Darinbob]

Kind of sad, given that FO3 didn't have DRM, and the copy protection only existed during installation. You could bypass the launcher and run the game directly after install meaning you did not need the DVD in the drive in an era where getting no-dvd hacks was common. Then FO:NV screwed the pooch there by getting into bed with Valve/Steam, but it was from a different company. So when Bethesda got into bed with them too with Skyrim then I knew there was no more hope.

Re:Saw it coming FTFY

[Anonymous Coward]

"What will really shock you is that you'll NOT need Mods to even so much as use the menus... and you'll have to pay for them!"

this is an expected business model so the shock would be otherwise

Slashdot is now Reddit

[Anonymous Coward]

Which is why this is a story.

Been in the rumor mill for months

[Anonymous Coward]

And they picked Bawwston.

I know out was on the block, but I still didn't want it. Post apocalyptic big dig could have been cool. If it had been built before the bombs fell in the FO timeline.

Personally, I wanted Chicago.

Re:Been in the rumor mill for months

[Derec01]

Post apocalyptic big dig could have been cool. If it had been built before the bombs fell in the FO timeline.

In the Fallout timeline, the bombs fell in 2077. The Big Dig or something like it would very likely be around.

Re:Been in the rumor mill for months

[Darinbob]

Chicago area was already covered in Fallout: Tactics. I know some fans claim it's not canon, but I suspect the devs would have tried to keep from bulldozing it over.

Re:Been in the rumor mill for months

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

No location would be immune from a potential fuckup; but The Institute, from its brief appearance in FO3, would be something I'd love to get to poke around in. Seeing a large, significant; but not Washington city post-nuclear-war, will also be interesting(Boston definitely does enough to earn a nuke in any likely superpower-scale missile exchange; but the distribution would be different from Washington, since federal infrastructure is quite limited and a lot of the defense contractors and such are outside the city, where space is cheaper).

I could also seriously consider delighting in the presence of a group of non-feral-but-deeply-unhinged ghouls who have gone from revolutionary war reenactment into full-scale holding-bunker-hill-with-muskets for reasons they no longer understand. Not a joke that could take too much beating; but if ghoul in a tricorn hat happened to attempt an authentic black powder musket kill on my vault dweller, I'd be delighted.

Fallout 4!?

[puddingebola]

I'm still trying to get into Base Cochise in Wasteland. Does anyone know where the sewer entrance is in the Church of the Mushroom cloud?

Re:Fallout 4!?

[Anonymous Coward]

Here is a map for you, should show you exactly where to go.

Re:Fallout 4!?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah... imgur is good for something at least. Avoid the pit of despair!

How about linking to the fucking source?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is it so fucking difficult to link to http://fallout.bethsoft.com/ ?

After checking all the links and finding them all to other news sites, I made the mistake of clicking the link to polygon - their article is full of links: to polygon.

Fuck slashdot, and fuck any "news" site which links to nothing but other "news" sites. It's parasites all the way down.

MBTA

[Anonymous Coward]

So in this game, I take it the T looks about the same as it does IRL...

Re:MBTA

[Darinbob]

Except that you can arm yourself with lasers for a change.

Oh get off it

[Sycraft-fu]

They are different for sure, but that doesn't make them bad. I enjoyed Fallout 3 and I loved New Vegas. Are they the same kind of game as 1 and 2? No, not at all, but they are enjoyable all the same. Not everything needs to be the same all the time, you can have different things in the same universe and it can be fun.

By the same "things can never change" logic, Fallout 1 and 2 were no good because they were different from Wasteland, which was their predecessor (the universe was made because Interplay couldn't get the rights to Wasteland from EA).

Evaluate a game on its own merits. Don't demand that it be just like its predecessors.

Re:Oh get off it

[netsavior]

prepare to be downmodded by connoisseurs of turn based tactical games.

There is no place for FUN in video games, they must be ever faithful and must not progress past 1997 tech.

Don't give up on replayability

[Anonymous Coward]

The Radiant Quest system used in Skyrim sounds brilliant on paper: infinite quests, randomly generated and a little different each time. But the reality was a lot of fetch quests in similar looking caves. Bethesda may be tempted to bring that system across to Fallout 4, but there's an argument for abandoning dynamic quests altogether and opting for a smaller range of authored challenges.

The Radiant system still shows a lot of promise, they just need to keep what they've got and add even more randomness. If you've played enough Skyrim it should be clear that they copy-pasted a lot of the cave models, and much of the dungeons could be tiled and randomized; not just the loot. The assassin quest line is tons of fun but then the Radiant quests afterwards are all some guy standing around defenseless - it reeks from lack of effort. The war questline has some great battles that could return as skirmishes or rebellions afterwards, or with different objectives ("babysit this VIP" or "kill the enemy commander" for example).

TL;DR: It's not a bad idea, they just need to run with it. We've already got plenty of games designed for the first 20 hours of gameplay.

Re:Don't give up on replayability

[Darinbob]

They've been experimenting with this idea from the start. Daggerfall was one big gigantic pile of randomness. So it ended up as my least favorite game I've ever finished. In Morrowind they removed much of the randomness and started crafting things by hand, shrinking the game world down tremendously, and it's one of my favorite games.

Actually many of the "radiant" quests in Skyrim are interesting and hand crafted, it's just that often they're not recognized as being radiant quests. Some radiant quests you'll only get once. It's when you get to someone who has an infinite supply of quests (usually at the end of a faction's main quest line) that it starts to get really dumb.

If they add some dynamic quests to FO4 then they should be simpler things. As in escorting a caravan, nothing more or less, you get paid at the end and that's your reward (along with maybe finding some new locations). But I don't want anymore "Bob in Megaton has a problem with ghouls in his basement"...

And in this post-apocalyptic universe...

[Anonymous Coward]

The MBTA will run on schedule, all the time

Re:And in this post-apocalyptic universe...

[Darinbob]

But if you don't have enough caps to get off that train you may be riding it forever.

NO FUCKING DOGS!!!!

[__aasehi2499]

I BETTER BE ABLE TO KILL THAT MANGY MUTT THE MOMENT IT COMES ON SCREEN. FUCK DOGS(CATS TOO) not so many caps to offset the stupid filter that tells me not to use too many caps. fucking dogs

randomized vs authored content

[Shadow of Eternity]

Go play Quake 2, SiN, or pretty much any notable classic game. The problem isn't that it's too hard to make a satisfyingly meaty game by hand, the problem is that companies have gotten used to fucking people over by shipping barely functional boxes full of shit and bloom that have less meaningful content than expansion packs used to come with.

Re:randomized vs authored content

[Anonymous Coward]

The thing is, 7 years on and after long ago achieving 100% completion of the main games and their DLC (which was a first time experience for this gamer) there's something about the worlds I want to keep exploring / playing in, so if a quest generation system can give me that and keep things fresh then I can keep playing the game long after I finish everything else. To me that stretches out my 60 bux or whatever for a very long time...

Re:randomized vs authored content

[Darinbob]

I'm still playing Fallout 1 today (or tonight when I get home).

Re:with the graphite magnet solar powered star car

[Darinbob]

No, he sounds like one of the optional crazy ghoul companions you can have in FO4.

Deus Ex: Invisible War

[wikthemighty]

Deus Ex: Invisible War comes to mind...

Scaled down levels and simplified ammo systems so the XBOX could run it.

Re:Deus Ex: Invisible War

[Mashiki]

Well IW was scaled down because of consoles, not PC's so you're helpfully proving my point.

If its as good as FO3/FNV I am so there

[jonwil]

Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas are the best Sci-Fi RPGs I have ever played (and I am still playing through the various pieces of DLC for Fallout New Vegas having recently finished Old World Blues and started on Lonesome Road)

There aren't too many things that will make me not buy this. If Fallout 4 on PC doesn't have the awesome mod support Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas have I wont be buying it. If they add any extra crap DRM on top of the Steam DRM I wont be buying it. If they make the system requirements too great that my fairly beefy system can't play it I wont be buying it. And if they do anything to intentionally make it harder to reverse engineer the games data formats and stuff I wont be buying it.

Oh and they should put some effort into making the engine more stable and less prone to crashing (Fallout 3 and New Vegas aren't exactly the most stable games I have ever played)

Not too sure I like the idea of randomly generated dungeons or quests either, I much prefer the hand-built dungeons/quests of Oblivion, Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas to the randomly generated areas of games like Diablo 2.

Re:If its as good as FO3/FNV I am so there

[solios]

If F4 is moddable (and there's no sane reason for it not to be) then many launch issues will be sorted by the community within a year. As good as F3/FNV were it took fan support and fan-made patches to make them stable, let alone playable, on modern systems.

If you have F3: GOTY and have all DLC for New Vegas, you might want to give this a try at some point: Tale of Two Wastelands merges F3 into FNV and gives you an F3 start, the FNV rules, and access to everything in both wastelands. I added a TTW developer-supplied mod to slow down experience gain and after 120+ hours I still have plenty to do and I'm level 46 (FNV level cap) - using FNV mods like NVAC, Project Nevada, etc.

Re:If its as good as FO3/FNV I am so there

[ProfBooty]

If you think FO3 and new vegas are the best out there, you need to play the first two...

DarinBob = "Run, Forrest: RUN!!!"

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject "Forrest" & this -> http://tech.slashdot.org/comme...

DarinBob = "Run, Forrest: RUN!!!"

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject "Forrest" & this -> http://tech.slashdot.org/comme...

DarinBob = "Run, Forrest: RUN!!!"

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject "Forrest" & this -> http://tech.slashdot.org/comme...

DarinBob = "Run, Forrest: RUN!!!"

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject "Forrest" & this -> http://tech.slashdot.org/comme...

DarinBob = "Run, Forrest: RUN!!!"

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject "Forrest" & this -> http://tech.slashdot.org/comme...

DarinBob = "Run, Forrest: RUN!!!"

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject "Forrest" & this -> http://tech.slashdot.org/comme...

DarinBob = "Run, Forrest: RUN!!!"

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject "Forrest" & this -> http://tech.slashdot.org/comme...

DarinBob = "Run, Forrest: RUN!!!"

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject "Forrest" & this -> http://tech.slashdot.org/comme...

DarinBob = "Run, Forrest: RUN!!!"

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject "Forrest" & this -> http://tech.slashdot.org/comme...

DarinBob = "Run, Forrest: RUN!!!"

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject "Forrest" & this -> http://tech.slashdot.org/comme...

DarinBob = "Run, Forrest: RUN!!!"

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject "Forrest" & this -> http://tech.slashdot.org/comme...

DarinBob = "Run, Forrest: RUN!!!"

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject "Forrest" & this -> http://tech.slashdot.org/comme...

DarinBob = "Run, Forrest: RUN!!!"

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject "Forrest" & this -> http://tech.slashdot.org/comme...

DarinBob = "Run, Forrest: RUN!!!"

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject "Forrest" & this -> http://tech.slashdot.org/comme...

DarinBob = "Run, Forrest: RUN!!!"

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject "Forrest" & this -> http://tech.slashdot.org/comme...

DarinBob = "Run, Forrest: RUN!!!"

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject "Forrest" & this -> http://tech.slashdot.org/comme...

DarinBob = "Run, Forrest: RUN!!!"

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject "Forrest" & this -> http://tech.slashdot.org/comme...

DarinBob = "Run, Forrest: RUN!!!"

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject "Forrest" & this -> http://tech.slashdot.org/comme...

DarinBob = "Run, Forrest: RUN!!!"

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject "Forrest" & this -> http://tech.slashdot.org/comme...

DarinBob = "Run, Forrest: RUN!!!"

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject "Forrest" & this -> http://tech.slashdot.org/comme...

DarinBob = "Run, Forrest: RUN!!!"

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject "Forrest" & this -> http://tech.slashdot.org/comme...

DarinBob = "Run, Forrest: RUN!!!"

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject "Forrest" & this -> http://tech.slashdot.org/comme...

DarinBob = "Run, Forrest: RUN!!!"

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject "Forrest" & this -> http://tech.slashdot.org/comme...

DarinBob = "Run, Forrest: RUN!!!"

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject "Forrest" & this -> http://tech.slashdot.org/comme...

DarinBob = "Run, Forrest: RUN!!!"

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject "Forrest" & this -> http://tech.slashdot.org/comme...

DarinBob = "Run, Forrest: RUN!!!"

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject "Forrest" & this -> http://tech.slashdot.org/comme...

DarinBob = "Run, Forrest: RUN!!!"

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject "Forrest" & this -> http://tech.slashdot.org/comme...

DarinBob = "Run, Forrest: RUN!!!"

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject "Forrest" & this -> http://tech.slashdot.org/comme...

DarinBob = "Run, Forrest: RUN!!!"

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject "Forrest" & this -> http://tech.slashdot.org/comme...

DarinBob = "Run, Forrest: RUN!!!"

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject "Forrest" & this -> http://tech.slashdot.org/comme...

DarinBob = "Run, Forrest: RUN!!!"

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject "Forrest" & this -> http://tech.slashdot.org/comme...

whats up its tank and crash

[Anonymous Coward]

if you like gaming we are the dudes for you lmao that sounded cheesy. But yeah go watch are videos and tell how much you like or dis like us www.youtube.com/channel/UC8J0U0gq74ZW_c3s5el-AUQ