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Thoughts on Fallout 4.


Fenrus

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A thread to post about your thoughts on Fallout 4. Such as likes/dislikes, the story, game play, favorite factions etc..

Some of mine to start:

Far Harbor was my favorite DLC.

I like the Nuka World location. But never played as a Raider. (Except for a test when the NW was new.)

I have thought for years that the option to be a raider should have been in the base game. Nukaworld's quest should have been for everyone. Like Far harbor's was.

My secret to enjoying Fallout 4 is to tell my own story, make some mods and build settlements. Expecially modded settlements filled with synths. :-)

I think the two factions that didn't allow your character to become leader were the two most 'thought out' factions quest wise. They both had longer quest lines. (I think when the game was being written , Bethesda thought most players would side with either the BOS or the RR.)

The Institute is my favorite faction, but its questline was very ordinary in places. I didn't mind being made Director, but there was nothing to do.

Who did 'Wallace' (recruited by the Institute) work for and where did he get his knowledge?.

The companions were generally well done. Sometimes I do wonder why there were so many blokes?

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i liked the general ambience of the game, it really gipped me with a feeling of loss, regret, melancholy, i don't know exactly how to describe it but i thought the developers caught the post apocalyptic mood well.

In fact so much so that it almost had the reverse effect of making me reluctant to replay it as much as i should, or did with TES.

Gameplay, weapons armour locations etc all interesting and good, questlines, factions much less so i did not feel the love for any of them and would have liked the ability to just free play without having to join them or take part.

Far Harbour yes terrific as with some other Beth games though it all felt a bit "rushed" .

Disliked the settlement system in the way that far too many and the upkeep also, seemed a little unrealistic ( ok i know its a fantasy game)

Overall: 8/10, could have been better-the opportunity was there but have played some which are an awful lot worse!

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6 hours ago, Fenrus said:

My secret to enjoying Fallout 4 is to tell my own story

This is the secret to all of Bethesda's games, in my book.  I've said this before, but Bethesda's games are, for me, blank canvases on which I can paint my own pictures. I often ignore most (sometimes all) of Bethesda's stories.  Bethesda's stories are the least interesting parts of their games, as far as I'm concerned.  I've only finished the main quest of each Fallout and Elder Scrolls game once. 

I dislike the pre-made backstory of both Fallout 3 and Fallout 4.  But, on the other hand, I think the writing in Fallout 4 is superior to Bethesda's previous games.  NPC characterization is far superior to anything they achieved in the past.  I think the competing factions were a great step forward for Bethesda, an advance over Skyrim's civil war.  

I find The Commonwealth to be a more enjoyable game world than any previous Fallout setting, going all the way back to Fallout 1.  Boston is my undisputed, all-time favorite Bethesda city, so far.  It is the first city they have created that actually feels like a genuine city to me.  

But the shining glory of Fallout 4 is the settlement system, in my opinion.  It is a splendid roleplay tool.  I have spent entire games creating roleplay scenarios around various settlements.  It is a great step forward over Morrowind's House Strongholds and Raven Rock, and Skyrim's Hearthfires.

 

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Liked:

The character building system.  Was a bit different than in the past, but the perks chart and SPECIAL ended up working better than I thought it would.

The companions, particularly those with back story missions.

That two of the factions didn't require you to become their leader.  I like that setting a lot better and IMO makes a lot more sense.

Far Harbor.  Much better than the MQ and had some real choice/consequences.  (Hated the memory game after having done it once and then over and over again in replays.  Needs a mod like 'Skip the Fade' for Dragon Age Origins).

The game world design was great overall.

 

Disliked:

The Main Quest.  Giving you the incentive to find your child, and then suddenly jerking that away so you can check on a settlement ... WTH where they thinking?

Voice PC.  Could never get into that.  So many of my role-plays are totally different characters in my mind, yet all sounded exactly the same.

Nuka World.  Great place to visit, but should have been given as a Raider option from the start of the game.  Like choose the Minutemen or Raiders to join, and from there go to either Diamond City or Nuka World.

The two factions that forced you to be the leader.  In either case it made no sense whatsoever to do so.  So forced.

ALL THE MAGIC.  Turning cinder blocks into 2 ton cement slabs and just placing them with magic.  Bloat Flies carrying magically enhanced missile launchers as loot.  Turning metal scrap into automated machine gun turrets with unlimited ammo.

Too much game-play dependence on settlement building.  Last I checked the FO franchise was not a building sim, but FO4 certainly can be defined as one.  You can literally do that and little else in the game.  Add to that half the DLC were just for settlement building, and the others added more things to build also.  The overall game really lost focus there.  The only time I felt like I was playing a FO game was when I completely ignored the settlement building aspect of it.

 

These are just off the top of my head ... pre-morning coffee.  I'm sure there's a lot more I liked/disliked.  However overall I've not been able to make myself play the game in years.  I put in well over a 1,000 hours into it, but so much FUBAR game logic that I just can't enjoy it anymore. 

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2 hours ago, LeBurns said:

Voice PC. 

I can't believe I forgot this!  Yes, I agree absolutely.   I have nothing against Courtenay Taylor's acting (I've never played Nate, so can't comment on Delenay's work), and in fact I think she does a great job.  But voicing a character in a game in which we can make our own characters severely limits roleplaying, and that is never a good thing.  Every time I play Fallout 4 I am forced to play Taylor's concept of the protagonist, which is rarely my concept of the protagonist.   

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I hope Bethesda never have a voiced PC again. (Nate's voice isn't so bad. I have only played Nora once.) The worst thing is when the game forces my character to say something completely out of character. (Actually Skyrim did that in a couple of places also, In the Thieves guild I think.)

Settlement building magic: I like settlement building a lot, but when it comes to doing the main quest I consider it cheating. When the game was newer I only did the Institute or BOS quest lines because of this. (It took a few years before I did the RR and MM quests. Never saw either of them as capable of taking down the Institute by themselves.)

 

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8 hours ago, Fenrus said:

I hope Bethesda never have a voiced PC again. (Nate's voice isn't so bad. I have only played Nora once.) The worst thing is when the game forces my character to say something completely out of character. (Actually Skyrim did that in a couple of places also, In the Thieves guild I think.)

Settlement building magic: I like settlement building a lot, but when it comes to doing the main quest I consider it cheating. When the game was newer I only did the Institute or BOS quest lines because of this. (It took a few years before I did the RR and MM quests. Never saw either of them as capable of taking down the Institute by themselves.)

 

I did like how different the BOS and RR endings were though.  The BOS was just brute force.  Make a giant robot and blast your way in ... so much like the BOS.  The RR on the other hand, all about spies and setting up an internal rebellion.  Completely different ways of going about it.  The one that never made sense to me was the MM version of the ending, though 'holding the fort' was a cool mission, and of course shooting down the BOS airship.  But sneaking in through the sewers ... really.

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14 hours ago, LeBurns said:

The one that never made sense to me was the MM version of the ending, though 'holding the fort' was a cool mission, and of course shooting down the BOS airship.  But sneaking in through the sewers ... really.

I was just checking out a video (linked below) which said they weren't sure if settlement building was to be in the game. So I guess they rushed the MM quests.

(It is funny how they say the teleporter is the only way into the Institute - except for the entrance Beth had to make for the Minutemen :-) )

Youtube: History of Bethesda studios.  - Jump to 1 hour and 19 minutes. He says that settlement building was on 'the cutting block for so long.'

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9 hours ago, Fenrus said:

I was just checking out a video (linked below) which said they weren't sure if settlement building was to be in the game. So I guess they rushed the MM quests.

(It is funny how they say the teleporter is the only way into the Institute - except for the entrance Beth had to make for the Minutemen :-) )

Youtube: History of Bethesda studios.  - Jump to 1 hour and 19 minutes. He says that settlement building was on 'the cutting block for so long.'

I recall reading that the settlement building was something just tagged on near the end and initially they didn't think much of it.  But then they apparently realized how shallow the actual game was and pushed resources into settlement building as a filler, even adding more settlement locations just to have more stuff on the map.  Course later half their DLC were specifically settlement building related.

In FO4 you can literally turn the game into a settlement building sim.  Just grab a few locations, do as little fighting as possible, set up beacons and start building for and taking care of settlers.  Hunt for resources to make more things.  Etc. and so on.  It's now a settlement sim.  Compare that to Skyrim, where you can ignore the MQ, but even so you are still role-playing.  Just an explorer finding new locations, a vampire hunter (or a vampire yourself), running a faction, whatever you're doing you are still role-playing.  Not so with FO4.  In FO4 you can literally stop role-playing and start playing a settlement sim because all the expanded resources are there for you to do it.  They put too much focus on it IMO.  I would have preferred more detailed locations (instead of 30+ blank slates for us to fill in) and named NPC's with quests, etc.  You know something that would have actually took BGS some effort to make, to make it more of a role-playing game.

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On 7/2/2021 at 1:56 PM, LeBurns said:

I would have preferred more detailed locations (instead of 30+ blank slates for us to fill in) and named NPC's with quests, etc.  You know something that would have actually took BGS some effort to make, to make it more of a role-playing game.

Hey, that's usually my text. (In other words) :lol:

 

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10 hours ago, Rotzi said:

Hey, that's usually my text. (In other words) :lol:

 

I am the same. I would have liked Sanctuary to have been a major settlement that you encounter after coming out of the vault. From there you are sent to other built up settlements where you piece together clues about what happened to Shaun.

(But this would mean hiring better writers. Most of Beth's quests involve exploring and fighting through a 'dungeon' to reach some point. They aren't so good with 'town' based quests.)

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Likes: Far Harbor (location, story and some of the characters), Nuka World (Only location), crafting system (armor and weapon mods), parts of the stories in main or side quests, the general idea of settlement building (it is a powerful tool to create, even in vanilla, really astonishing bases/settlements)

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On 7/2/2021 at 1:56 PM, LeBurns said:

I recall reading that the settlement building was something just tagged on near the end and initially they didn't think much of it.

Would explain why some of the locations were more then unfit for building. Or why there was no way to clean up better and not be forced to build a settlement where dead ghouls are part of the scenery without the ability to remove them properly in vanilla.

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  • 3 weeks later...

I have been playing Fallout 3 for the last 3 weeks now(for ol times sake) and just because I wanted to compare I loaded up New Vegas(haven't played in nearly 2 years) and played for a bit. So as I was playing I started to realize just how much I like Fallout 4 so much more. So many things, smoother camera/aiming, building settlements(yes I do like that part even more so with mods), better looking weapons/armor, I crash much less(in fact very rarely) in 4 than the other Fallouts. It's just to much to actually list but I like 4 that much more, yes I have my gripes but I love it much more than I hate it(at times, lol). I am really wanting to finish up my FO3 run as I want to go back to 4 as I haven't played it in nearly 5 1/2 months. There are some things I think need some improvement but at least to me I think the games are as a whole getting better. 

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I like Fallout 4 better than Fallout 3 or New Vegas too.  :)

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Only the fact that it is open world and has mods on console keeps me playing it from time to time. I still have ongoing games in F3 and NV (i just doesn't make pictures of it) at the moment and the next two weeks (vacation) hopefully some time to play them a little more. F3 is still my favourite Fallout, i played through it several times. After playing F4 for the first time i was rather disappointed that it was so different then 3 and NV. I made two other playthroughs to end it with different factions and tried to build up some settlements (still vanilla). But after finishing the main quest i never touched those games again. It always boils down for me to settlement building (and the game constantly pushing in that direction) and that is something i'm not fond of.  I think i will never finish it again (start a new game from time to time although almost zero chance to finish it) . But, since you can't argue about taste i accept that other people like it more. :)  

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6 hours ago, Rotzi said:

Only the fact that it is open world and has mods on console keeps me playing it from time to time. I still have ongoing games in F3 and NV (i just doesn't make pictures of it) at the moment and the next two weeks (vacation) hopefully some time to play them a little more. F3 is still my favourite Fallout, i played through it several times. After playing F4 for the first time i was rather disappointed that it was so different then 3 and NV. I made two other playthroughs to end it with different factions and tried to build up some settlements (still vanilla). But after finishing the main quest i never touched those games again. It always boils down for me to settlement building (and the game constantly pushing in that direction) and that is something i'm not fond of.  I think i will never finish it again (start a new game from time to time although almost zero chance to finish it) . But, since you can't argue about taste i accept that other people like it more. :)  

I completely agree with you on this. What I don't understand are the people that still argue to this day that 3 or NV are better than 4 in every way and rip others down for liking 4. Ok, so they think 3/NV is better, ok go play but don't put down others for playing 4(not pointing fingers at anyone specific). I still haven't finished a single run on NV(no seriously). I played 3 back on the 360 many many times and I am enjoying my current run on pc(yay mods!). I have fun playing NV, I just get bored and then play something else. I need to find a large quest mod to keep me busy longer. We are all different we all like different games, I'm ok with that, lol.

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1 hour ago, Handy6373 said:

I still haven't finished a single run on NV(no seriously). 

I haven't either.  I'll be honest: I haven't liked any Obsidian game.  I liked New Vegas better than other Obsidian games I've played, but I still couldn't finish it. 

It doesn't help that I had to live in the real Las Vegas for six years.  My mother moved us there when I was a teenager and I hated every single second of it.  As a result, the game world taps into terrible memories for me.  

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I've managed to play NV all of one time, completely vanilla, without even any of the DLCs that came later on. I didn't really care for it much myself either. It's definitely not the kind of game that Obsidian is good at. Open world free form is not their thing, so their attempts to railroad things with artificial barriers and impossible creature spawns to block certain paths in the early game REALLY grated badly on me. I much prefer both Fallout 3 and Fallout 4 in terms of world design.

It's probably a stalemate as to which company is better at story writing. People fawn over NV like it's supposed to be godlike, but I found it to be about as mundane and lackluster as anything else that's out there.

Fallout 4 may be a bit forced in its execution of the story, but IMO it did a better job of casting you in the ROLE of the character - much like CDPR does a good job of casting you in the ROLE of Geralt or V. I don't even mind the voiced protagonist, but for the purposes of modding it does make things more difficult to deal with.

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8 hours ago, Rotzi said:

Only the fact that it is open world and has mods on console keeps me playing it from time to time. I still have ongoing games in F3 and NV (i just doesn't make pictures of it) at the moment and the next two weeks (vacation) hopefully some time to play them a little more. F3 is still my favourite Fallout, i played through it several times. After playing F4 for the first time i was rather disappointed that it was so different then 3 and NV. I made two other playthroughs to end it with different factions and tried to build up some settlements (still vanilla). But after finishing the main quest i never touched those games again. It always boils down for me to settlement building (and the game constantly pushing in that direction) and that is something i'm not fond of.  I think i will never finish it again (start a new game from time to time although almost zero chance to finish it) . But, since you can't argue about taste i accept that other people like it more. :)  

Well graphically of course FO4 wins, as it should.  However there are game features I liked a lot better in FO3 and NV (though some I didn't I'll admit), and the stories where better.  I've already listed my likes/dislikes of FO4 above, but of those dislikes I did list none of those are in FO3 or NV.  Not saying I couldn't make a list for those games, but dislikes were not so bad that I never want to play the games again ... like FO4.

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9 minutes ago, LeBurns said:

Well graphically of course FO4 wins, as it should.  However there are game features I liked a lot better in FO3 and NV (though some I didn't I'll admit), and the stories where better.  I've already listed my likes/dislikes of FO4 above, but of those dislikes I did list none of those are in FO3 or NV.  Not saying I couldn't make a list for those games, but dislikes were not so bad that I never want to play the games again ... like FO4.

For me each game has things I really like and things that drive me to insanity. What I do think 3/NV does better is the dialog options depending on science, charisma and child at heart perk(examples). Where did all that go when writing 4? In Skyrim SE and Fallout 3/NV it doesn't bother me in any way your character doesn't talk neither does it bother me that they talk in 4. I can see where it's easier for mod authors to add dialog without the main character having spoken words. But there have been many very creative authors that made it work(fallout 4). Story wise for me I'm not sure that one game beats the other, they each have story parts that leave me thinking "um what where you thinking when you wrote this(shaking my hands in the air)". But I'm not a writer so I will not judge it just say all of them were "meh". I love the open worlds and that's what keeps me playing.

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I really don't understand some of the arguments people make against FO4.

I see a lot of "it's not a real RPG", either because it doesn't have some specific feature that they think an RPG should have (that half the ones out there don't), or because it's too scripted as to what kind of character you can play and what the intended quest progression is. Yet, a lot of these are the same people who adored Witcher 3, which to me felt more like watching a series of interconnected short films about someone else's story and characters than playing a game.

I also see a lot of people complain about the "dumbing down" of the weapon system. Personally, I loathed weapon maintenance from the earlier games. The idea that you had to keep finding other weapons to break down for parts every 20 shots (okay, an exaggeration, but still) to keep your primary weapon functional was just an unnecessary grind to me. I do like the FO4 weapon system, although I found the majority of "legendary" weapons to be mediocre at best, and the unique weapons (junk jet, broadsider, etc.) were interesting but seemed more of a joke than a real option for play. Once I found my gauss rifle that was buffed for VATS, I pretty much had my go-to for the remainder of the game.

I would have loved to see DLCs to flesh out some of the minor factions. The Atom Cats in particular I think could have made for a fun DLC, especially if expanding settlements allowed them to create other chapters of the organization. Of the story DLC they did do, I really enjoyed Far Harbor, thought Nuka-World as a setting was loads of fun (if at times seemed rushed), but that the raider plotlines were too one-sided as a concession to the people ranting about how the game wasn't a "real" RPG because you couldn't decide to be an absolute villain (despite how you could certainly be so quite easily with either the BoS or the institute). I was especially disappointed by how abrupt the DLC ended if you chose to eliminate the raiders. I would have loved to see that story progress, turning NW into a vibrant trade hub, and maybe even repairing a number of the rides, since the power was back on and plentiful.

I also would have loved to see a DLC for the Minutemen to go beyond just a settlement network and into actually rebuilding the Commonwealth. Especially if you've taken the perks to have advanced pre-war science and engineering knowledge. If you've got the tech to turn a handful of pencils and a few mailboxes into a working firearm, and make teleporters and advanced power plants, you should be able to figure out how to do some basic building construction that doesn't involve pallets and perforated sheet metal. Especially since you meet and can befriend ghouls who have been around since pre-war who should have loads of knowledge to share after having 1) a pre-war education and 2) centuries of life experience. And once you have access to Institute tech, this should be even easier. Repair the tracks and get some light rail going back and forth between the major settlements. Do something permanent about some of the more problematic supermutant locations. Find some old textbooks, encyclopedias, how-to books, and so on, and start publishing and distributing knowledge. Get in contact with Washington about that whole free-and-plentiful fresh water thing - with institute tech can that be replicated? So many possibilities other than endless quests of rescuing kidnapped people or defending settlements.

I adored the settlement building aspects of the game, and it's one of the few things that keeps me playing after poking into every corner of the maps. I don't really find replayability in this kind of game, because for me exploration and discovery is huge, not deciding how my character who I've decided this time is going to side with Faction X would react to the same stuff I've already been through the first time. I didn't think it was anywhere near fleshed out enough, and there were some issues that only mods could fix (what do you mean, I can't poke a hole through that sheet metal or wood plank wall to run a power cord through?), but overall I really liked it. That said, it can be entirely ignored, so I don't understand how much the people who didn't like it focus on it, as if there wasn't a ton of other stuff to do in the game.

One thing that really irked me in previous games was that imo awful karma system. The worst example of it for me (SPOILERS) was when I worked so hard to get the ghouls allowed into the tower (gaining karma each time I made progress), only to leave and return to find out that they'd had a "disagreement" with the other tenants and had killed everyone. Also, how is it that going in somewhere and killing all of those "bad guys" trying to kill me was just dandy, but once all of them were dead picking up some object was theft and horrible, horrible karma? And really, shouldn't such a system be faction specific? Using FO4 as an example, what should build karma for a RR character is going to be vastly different from a BoS character.

I found DLCs in prior games to be a mixed bag. I loved Old World Blues, got really bored with Dead Money by the time it let me leave, and hated hated hated Lonesome Road. Aside from being an absolute grind and visually and thematically uninspired, I didn't give a damn about Ulysses and hated that it railroaded me into a backstory that did not at all fit my character that I'd played the entire main game and two of the other DLCs with. And people complain about FO4 limiting who you can choose? Bleah. Hated. Lonesome Road pretty much ended my enthusiasm for the game, and I never got around to playing Honest Hearts. In FO3 I loved Broken Steel, but read what the other DLCs involved, and none of them really grabbed my attention. FO4 came out before I got to any of them, and I haven't gone back.

Something I really loved about FO4 is that there's SO MUCH story out there that you have to actually find, look at, and think about, rather than having it pushed on you with a map marker. From the humorous to the deeply tragic, the things you can stumble across while exploring the Commonwealth add so much. Even just a pair of skeletons on a bed holding hands, combined with some pictures and personal letters scattered about, can tell a story. And some of the more tragic stories were downright heartbreaking (ex: be cautious using storage containers as safe rooms). I also loved the moral ambiguity of some of the situations. For example the whole Roger Warwick situation (which reminds me in a way of certain aspects of the very end of the movie World's End). I also find it very interesting that the way the factions are presented, there are still to this day robust arguments over which factions are evil with large groups of players vociferously and without irony supporting or opposing every major faction.

I enjoyed FO3 and FONV. But I've got a lot more out of FO4.

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The beef about more male companions than female companions is certainly justified, if you ignore whether or not they can be romanced.  There are seven (nine if you include DLC) male companions and three female companions.  On the other hand, all three female companions can be romanced and only four of the seven (or nine) male companions can be romanced.  One of those four, who turned out to be my favorite after I used a mod to slightly improve his appearance, was probably intended to be a joke (Hancock).  I like to travel with Hancock and Longfellow because they are in agreement with my philosophies regarding killing and looting.  It is unfortunate that Longfellow cannot be romanced but I suppose they never expected any old women to be playing the game.  *laughing*

Settlement building is absolutely my favorite activity in the game, followed by exploring the environment and blowing the heads off deserving a$$holes.  I love finding little stories on the terminals and on holotapes.  The game is horribly melancholic for me if I stop to think about it.  If I were really walking around in the ruins of my civilization, 220 years after everyone I knew had died, I would be an emotional wreck.  But as an upbeat take on rebuilding my civilization, I love the game.

 

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27 minutes ago, slink said:

Settlement building is absolutely my favorite activity in the game, followed by exploring the environment and blowing the heads off deserving a$$holes.  I love finding little stories on the terminals and on holotapes.  The game is horribly melancholic for me if I stop to think about it.  If I were really walking around in the ruins of my civilization, 220 years after everyone I knew had died, I would be an emotional wreck.  But as an upbeat take on rebuilding my civilization, I love the game.

 

I like settlement building also and own many games where that's what you do.  I also got very caught up in settlement building in FO4 and liked it.  But, that's not what I bought FO4 for and the 'feature' could quickly become the reason why I was playing instead of playing a FO role-playing game.  Since I already have settlement building sims I can play, I really wanted more Fallout rpg in my Fallout 4 game.  And again it feels like it was added to fill in an otherwise shallow game, or at least one they could have added a lot more role-playing to specifically to all the empty locations that could have been filled with broken down settlements with NPC's and quests, etc.  About ten locations to add new stuff would be fine.  30+ is changing the game genre entirely.  IMO at least.  Logged well over 1,000 hours into the game, so I got my money's worth out of it regardless.

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