Patient Gamers

Fallout 4 kind of in a weird place where it's simultaneously a bad Fallout game and arguably the best Bethesda game.

Thank you

That's how I've described fallout 4 since it first came out. Nice to see someone else had the same thought. It's a great game and I've put a ton of time into it and I play through it every 2 years at most.

But it's really not a great fallout game. The game overall is excellent but it feels the least fallout-y, to me at least.

Play Morrowind and your opinion might change on them having to be shallow. It's hard to get into, but it is the 3D one that takes its world very seriously.

For example, there's a faction that uses magic and levitation is a thing in Morrowind. Their buildings are built vertically with shafts connecting floors you almost have to levitate through. Skyrim did these in the DLC that includes some of Morrowind, but they just made them floaty elivators, not a skill your character can use.

It is hard to get into though. The key thing to know is its actually an RPG. Your character stats matter more than your player skills. If you aren't trained in using a sword, you aren't going to be able to use one effectively. The game won't stop you from trying, but you'll miss a lot. Also things like using up your stamina sprinting (what feels like normal speed) and being tired makes your character tired and they can't hit things. They'll also be worse with bartering/talking with people because basically they're standing there drenched in sweat and panting, which doesn't look nice and people don't really like dealing with it.

Bethesda has strayed far from this path though and I doubt we'll ever see it come back.

Also, the only temporarily impactful decision you make is which flavor if the final mission you'll do. You don't actually have to choose one until the very end. You can somehow be not just friendly, but high rank with all four at the same time, despite the conflict of interest.

They make you think your making choices sometimes (though honestly rarely in F04 because of the dialog system you mentioned), but you never do really. It's an alright survival shooter thing, but a bad RPG. You choose abilities, but you rarely choose a role. You're given your role at the start, and your only choice is to follow it.

Yes!! I felt the same way!

Particularly the ham fisted way it's written, you're really led to choose the railroad path, but I felt I never got a proper explanation on how the institute was bad (the why is clear).

I ended up going with the institute and I got a really underwhelming ending

I put in 1300 hrs into fo4 just for the settlement building. With mods though.

"I heard people complaining about the bed situation...." NPC carrieing a bedroll on her back.

That part about weapons and armour rang true for me as well. I spent a lot of time just wandering the commonwealth looking for junk to upgrade with and levelling my gunsmith up as a result. I think this is the most I've really explored in a game. Personally I didn't really go in looking for anything so I was pleasantly surprised. But I definitely can see how say, someone going in for full role playing immersion from a game wouldn't feel quite the same.

Which modern Fallout game would you suggest for someone who loved the first 2 and generally prefers classic (and modern classic style) RPGs and deep stories?

Noted! I have been meaning to cross outer worlds off my list for a while.

Snow mods in the summer. Desert mods in the winter.

It revived the game for me. Changed settings so it would grow without my tedious input, so thankful for that. Show up to settlements over time to find evolving cities that are actually worth visiting and make the game feel alive, like you didn’t build every shack in the wasteland personally with the toaster you hauled from a national guard building.

Kind of funny when you know Fallout is a satiric version of USA society

This is my running complaint with most Bethesda RPGs. Just about everything scales by player level, which can put you in situations where enemies are downright impossible to kill if you're too spec'd into non-combats.

I got so hooked into the settlement building. Downloaded a handful of settlement mods and spent 3 whole days repairing and outfitting the Castle. Then something happened to my mods folder and I had to redownload them all and didn’t make note of the order I had them in before. Loaded in the game and everything was broken/invisible. Huge letdown and I took a 7 month break. Now I’m getting back to it and finishing the main story before doing the DLCs

At first I dabbled quite a bit with it, decorating up the castle. But as time went on I honestly stopped paying attention to it.