Be Excellent To Each Other

I think it does match up relatively well assuming you allow for landscape changes from a nuclear war etc. If you zoom in a bit on a map of the Boston bay area the Fallout map has Quincy Bay and Pleasure Bay and that kind of thing. Although the big island there doesn't match up with any of the ones in that area in real life (i.e. Thomson, Spectacle and Long Island).

Except from what we've been told, Boston largely escaped the worst of the bombing. It shouldn't change that much.

Well I guess the simplest thing in the world would have been to take a map of Boston and start plonking stuff on it but I guess instead what they've done is taken their time and made it playable with some inevitable concessions which could upset the 0.01% of players who are familiar with the actual place.

Indeed. I did mention this earlier.

Dribble...

Mine is coming tomorrow, DPD I believe. Only bummer is DPD always turn up between 3-5pm

I am going to have to have a morning of ignorance tomorrow

Cool! Mine has not arrived yet

Could be Peddocks Island? I'm looking at Google Maps right now and the whole thing is (to my eye) really pretty damned close once you work out the scale.

I don't know why, but I'm just not excited for this at all. Given my love of post-apocalyptic fiction and media, and how much I enjoyed 3 and New Vegas, it surprises me that I just can't summon up the urge to buy this.

I think New Vegas has spoiled me, and I'm fully expecting this to be a return to the Bethesda style of story-telling rather than the Obsidian style.

Review embargo (and the embargo of the embargo) are now up

Gamespot : 9/10

Polygon : 9.5/10

IGN : 9.5/10

Eurogamer : Recommended

Videogamer : 9/10

Push Square : 9/10

God is Geek : 9/10

Jimquisiton : 9.5/10

Game Informer : 9/10

Destructoid : 7.5/10

Yeah, that's probably the closest in location.

Having skimmed a few, the meta-review seems to be: very much more of the same, still riddled with bugs and glitches, GameByro still sucks, the game is still great. It's unlikely to win over anyone who didn't like the others. GreatIfYouLikedTheOthers/10.

I bought Oblivion, Skyrim and Fallout 3. All brand new at full price, didn't manage more than 10-15 hours with any of them.

I have concluded I don't like Bethesda's games very much

Maybe I would have liked New Vegas more. Either way I'm not taking a chance on Fallout 4 ahead of it turning up in a sale.

Plus Bethesda's games always seem to be technically shonky, buggy, with crappy animations and the graphics engine doesn't seem to have got much better over the years either.

EDIT - Or what DocG's meta-review says I suppose! (Which appeared as I was typing.)

Reviews sound good but it's a total mess apparently.

New Vegas wasn't much better bugs-wise, although the story goes that Bethesda were the ones tasked with the QA for New Vegas and also pushed for release on a set date so Obsidian didn't have time to fix anything for release.

The setting (and the main plotline, and even the way side-quests intermingled with it subtly) were so much nicer in New Vegas though, it was incredible.

I read a deconstruction of Fallout 3's setting and plot a few months ago that highlighted how it was just complete and utter shash, and I can't believe I didn't notice it at the time. I enjoyed playing it immensely, but can't go back to it now because after NV it feels like a huge step backwards.

The shonky animations and some of the game design choices don't fill me with confidence for F4. NV introduced skill-based dialogue checks (i.e. if you had speech over a certain level, you were guaranteed to pass) over F3 (and F4s) percentaged based checks.

That just makes so much more sense - if you've poured skill points into a particular skill to raise it up above a certain threshold, making it so that that effort is potentially wasted and locks you out of particular quest branches is stupid IMO.

Look forward to playing the patched version if I get it for Christmas. I'll be avoiding this thread from now on because you're shit for spoilers

The best thing about any Fallout game is time. Fallout 3 was initially pretty broken and unfinished. For example if you completed the main game you could not go back, so you had to put off the ending and go back to before the final quest. They fixed it with Broken Steel, allowing you to continue your game.

RE - New Vegas? as I said, the best thing about Fallout games is time in, time spent. New Vegas was more polished, looked nicer and the setting was indeed lovely but it lacked the depth of Fallout 3. Most of the buildings going out of New Vegas itself were either empty or boarded up and there were lots of times where I felt let down. The airport, for example, could have had a story behind it and maybe a side quest but no, it was all locked down and apart from a large Rad Scorpion there was nothing there.

One of the things I loved about Fallout 3 was the ability to wander into these buildings for some respite, only to find they were infested with ghouls or contained something else to side track me like the Moonbeam/Sidney quest.

It took far longer to play through Fallout 3 with all of its DLC than New Vegas. I would assume that it was because Obsidian really didn't get that long to do it. Two years IIRC? The more time they put into quests and fine details the better the game IMO. I also kinda liked the dreariness of Fallout 3 it was definitely far less friendly than New Vegas.

BTW as for New Vegas.. I experienced one major bug when I first started playing. It was a companion bug and they got stuck in the wall and there was nothing you could do about it apart from update the game and start again. IIRC I lost about 17 hours. So it too was buggy and also why Obsidian did not get the bonus from Bethesda that they were counting on (something to do with review % needing to reach 90% but they missed it by about 3%).

Sorry to have to tell you this, but you won't be able to play that on your PC.

Low INT, low CHAR, high strength, med perception and endurance and go for melee and explosives. And low luck.

Now why on Earth wasn't the image included in my quote? Doesn't make much sense without it.

I don't really know if it was technically better or not because NV bored the shit out of me fairly quickly. Perhaps it was playing it too soon after FO3 but something just felt lacking, don't know if it was the writing or the setting or what but it all just felt like a chore and then I stopped and never went back to it.

18 FPS maxed out at 4k on a 980ti.



So what fucking chance do I stand then, if that's supposedly optimised.

God, it's a fucking mess. I really, really wished it wouldn't be but even some one as hooked on Fallout games has to admit it's a fucking mess.

From the Eurogamer review:


Huh, guess they never played NV then.

That's on max settings, which probably includes a ridiculous draw distance. Surely it can be relaxed a bit.

I know but it's a five year old engine with a few tweaks.

Are we thinking of the same airport? McCarran International? The one that is the main base and headquarters of the NCR in New Vegas? That had lots of stuff to do inside it?


That's another thing that puts me off Bethesda. They were responsible for the QA on New Vegas and didn't give Obsidian enough time to sort things out, yet still held them to what is frankly an absurd clause in their contract - it was Metacritic review score, which is hardly a good method of reviewing someone's performance. From Engadget:

They scored 84.

To be slightly fair I think that's relatively common in the games industry. I've certainly heard stories of individual staff member contracts and bonuses having clauses relating to Metacritic ratings. I sort of understand it to a degree, the idea of paying someone more for coming out with a genuinely good game is fair enough but how do you measure something so objective? Aggregating review scores isn't perfect but it's about the best thing you could really do.

How many pixels on the PS4 (in gigaflops)?

Yeah, nothing wrong with that - but Metacritic? I suppose there's probably not many other options, but (at the time at least, not sure if they've changed it since) Metacritic accepted scores from pretty much anyone, with no oversight or vetting, which hardly makes it fair.

I suppose the most bitter pill to swallow is that it missed by 1 point, and that had it not been for bugs that they either didn't have time to fix thanks to having to effectively outsource QA back to Bethesda, or couldn't fix because of Bethesda's shitty engine, it probably would have been fine.

No it's not. It's fucking bullshit, is what it is. Metacritic is the biggest con going. It's an average of people's OPINIONS (which are subjective). How can that be used as an objective barometer of anything?

Ahem. F2 introduced skill-based checks for dialogue

It can't be, because there is no objective barometer for 'how good is a game'. The average of a load of subjective opinions is the closest you're likely to get.

Yeah, I'm not defending the practise if you're not going to give someone time to make the game decent, that's bullshit regardless of anything else of course.

And I admit I don't know how they decide which critic's opinions are allowed into the mix which is a potential problem. I just checked their FAQ page and it just give the vague response of, "Several times each year, we will reevaluate our publication lists and may make additions and/or deletions."

They shouldn't have bonuses built into these contracts like that at all. It's despicable.

Performance comparison.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digit ... e-analysis

No bonuses at all, or just no bonus for good reviews?

The emphasis on 'like that'.

Also certain publications are more weighted than others. So it's a total sham.

Objection sustained

Ah, I missed those two words

That was it. I remember them being at 90% at one point but it went down.

A really shitty thing to do IMO..

With regards to the airport there was a sealed building about mid way down the runway with a plane and some suitcases but nothing you could explore or what not. And this happened a few times in New Vegas for me.

The vaults were really good, though, and that one full of plants drove me to insanity

I don't have an issue with a bonus being based on making a 'good' game. Assuming it is a genuine bonus payment and the general agreed fee isn't tied to it. I certainly don't see how it can be considered despicable in any sense.

EE have bonuses worked into customer satisfaction surveys. When you buy a phone, you get a text that directs you to a short survey. It's on a scale of 1-10 but anything on an 8 or below will lose the member of staff that served you some of their bonus.

So yeah, pretty damn shitty.

That's different, asking the general public's opinion on anything is fucking stupid thing to do.

Or gives incentives them to work harder.

Especially despicable in this case as it wasn't really a bonus payment (which I would consider to be a "one-off" payment) but royalties.

I guess you can argue that Obsidian didn't have to accept the contract and could have tried negotiating that clause out, but it only narrowly missed out on hitting the mark (and indeed, from memory, up until right before the "deadline" it was higher than the mark needed) and as a result Obsidian had to lay off quite a few people.

I didn't say I had an issue with developers receiving bonuses for making a 'good' game. I would prefer it was done on sales, tbh. It's not a brilliant barometer either, but at least that way the publisher is making enough money that paying out those bonuses isn't a problem. Metacritic is arse.

Not so, the survey is based on how the person serves you but the general public use it as a way to sound off against their mobile coverage, the queue in the shop and even things like how accessible the car park is to the shop.

You can imagine my friends annoyance at going above and beyond with a customer to then 'only' getting a 7 because the coverage in the customers house is no good.

Fucking ludicrous.

Yeah but if you're comparing the average scores of different operators then surely after enough reviews it must be showing something. Whether it's showing exactly what you think is another matter mind.

It's showing a skewed average of different people's subjective opinions. It effectively means nothing. Fine, base your purchasing decisions on it, it's your life. But people's remuneration should not be affected or influenced by it.

I can see the point for aggregator sites when it's for price-checking and things like that. But for reviews? No.