Sure, if you went out and cleared areas of ghouls/mutants etc then there isn't much backstory. However, if you delve deeper (read notes, read logs on computer terminals etc) then there is much more of a rich backstory there than I first thought.

I had a really shitty session last night. I'm just following the missions that the Minute Man guy in Sanctuary is giving me plus following up on any radio signals I come across during my travels, and last night every single mission I tried out or location I explored saw me getting utterly murdered all to shit. My initial encounters with super-mutants went pretty well, partially due to me being flush with energy weapon ammo, but now I'm back to normal guns and getting my ass handed to me. Not helped by the fact I just keep stumbling into camps with many and varied super-mutant types (the fucking suicide bombers can get to fucking fuck) or even just loads of raiders wearing fucking power armour exo-skeletons! I'm not sure whether I just need to do something else to level up a bit or plough some (any!) time into weapon crafting or if this is just the game now, but either way it was a frustrating and not entirely enjoyable few hours. I'm also becoming pretty suspicious of the quality of the quests in general. Every single thing I've done now has been a very minor variant on 'go to location, shoot loads of people, instantly finish quest'. Even the one at Trinity Tower that saw me rescuing a guy had a thirty second conversation at the end to explain the backstory and that was it; there's no richness to the characters or interactions which is what really made the last two Fallout games. I really hope the main quest raises the level of this stuff or there's a serious danger of me getting bored.

The bad guys level up as you do. You need to mod your guns, buy better ones or hope you stumble across a good one somebody dropped. I struggled at the beginning, clearing places of Raiders when my best weapon was a pipe rifle that did 26 damage... First trip to a weapons bench and I walked away with a rifle that did something like 64 damage. Still not hugely impressive but so, so much better than what I had moments earlier. I then got the gun nut perk and now I can kill most things I come across before they kill me.

The boy has a shot gun that does 195 damage, he had to mod that.

I killed a feral ghoul the other day and he had three fusion cores on him, which was unexpected.

Yeah it's not been uncommon for me to find four at once in a drawer or something.

Only read on once you have entered the institute !

Schramm says the company’s new strategy of officially announcing Fallout 4 after four years of development and then shipping it five months later

How many hours in and what level are you, JC? Out of interest, purely wondering at what point you went through the main quest.

I have a serrated combat knife now. This does bleeding damage. You can carve up a super mutant like a Christmas turkey with it. Raiders die in one hit to the head. A suicide super mutant came at me but the room it Butler took the nuke for me. Awesome stuff.

I'd have been much more excited about modders making Fallout: New Vegas in the F1 engine.

You're weird. I tried playing FO (any of them) recently and it was a complete pain in the arse.

You're weird. I tried playing FO1 recently and it was a complete pain in the arse.

OK, FO2 then, if only for the ability to shove your companions out of the way when they block you into a toilet cubicle.

Last week I came across this satellite array as part of a side quest I stumbled into, but there were three or four super mutants guarding the place and I got my ass kicked. After levelling up, upgrading my armour and guns and getting a sniper rifle I went back to take them on again. A well placed strike against the suicide bomber guy that killed me a lot the first time round took out him and about four bad guys standing around him. "Awesome," I thought, "that means there can't be many of them left!" Ahahahaha. There were a fucking shitload more of them lurking around the structure including a legendary guy with a fucking laser rifle who could shoot at me from miles away. Also, as if to really rub it in that I had no chance, one of them mutated right in front of me from a normal guy to a legendary guy then kicked the shit out me. I noped the fuck out and I'm not going back until I'm much further into the game. Fucksticks.

Note to self - note which grenades you have equipped. Fighting a horde of ghouls, lobbed a frag over the back to thin them out a bit. Nothing happened - huh. Then there's a thin plume of smoke. Wait, what? I have smoke grenades? ....oh FUCK! JUMP ON IT!!

Huh. I assumed there was a super mutant companion, because you could find armour for them, but (middle main question spoilers)

I never really liked you.