Straight Dope Message Board

[Johnny Angel]

My copy is not scheduled to appear until tomorrow, but some people have apparently already got it unlocked and the relevance of the anticipation thread is waning. And so, a new thread.

For my part, I think actually getting my hands on the game will severely cramp the time available to play Fallout Shelter, but let's face it once you start lining your halls with 50th level super-SPECIALs, there really isn't much more to do in the game.

[Kinthalis]

I liked the opening a lot, probably my favorite opening so far. Short and sweet and impact. I've already got people I want dead, and questions to answer.

I'm jumping around mouse and keyboard, xbone gamepad and Steam controller. Haven't decided on which I will stick with for the rest of the game, but they all feel good in their own way.

This game also oozes atmosphere. I think I spent something like 200 hours in Fallout 3, I think I'll be doing at least that much here if not more.

[Johnny Angel]

In Fallout 3 and New Vegas I have found that I enjoy squatting down and sniping without recourse to the V.A.T.S. system in which head shots seem to be a lot less effective. But surely it's difficult to pull off head shots with a thumb stick. How well is that aspect working out?

[Randy Seltzer]

Question: I've never played anything in the fallout series before but am thinking of picking it up. Would it be a mistake to start with FO4?

[Sicks Ate]

My own personal advice would be to start with 1...but if you're not accustomed to or don't enjoy top- down turn based stuff you might just start with 3.

Starting with 4 you'll surely think it's cool, but I gain a lot of enjoyment associating each to the other.

[motu]

Randy, starting with FO4 will be no problem, you do not need to know what happened before. No matter where you start, the Fallout world will be new to you, you may as well start where all of us "cool kids" are starting.

[Tamerlane]

Originally Posted by Sicks Ate

My own personal advice would be to start with 1...but if you're not accustomed to or don't enjoy top- down turn based stuff you might just start with 3.

Agreed, with the added caveat that if you only want to do just one other game, do Fallout: New Vegas. 3 is great, New Vegas ( which for all intents and purposes is really F4, with the new game being F5 ) is greater. Really the main Fallout games as a group have so far been a shining example of a successful franchise series. They're all good, though of course modern players first trying them may find the graphics on the original and 2 a bit underwhelming.

[asterion]

I'd add one caveat. If you are going to get FO3 or NV, it's probably best to get it on PC. I say this not in interest of a platform war, but because they are both really buggy. At least on PC the various mods and editor can help if you get stuck due to a bug. I played NV on a PS3 and it has some real problems with things like file size.

[Johnny Bravo]

Originally Posted by asterion

I'd add one caveat. If you are going to get FO3 or NV, it's probably best to get it on PC.

I'd agree here. If you watch the sales, you can snag complete editions of these games on PC for next to nothing.

[Hamlet]

Originally Posted by Randy Seltzer

Question: I've never played anything in the fallout series before but am thinking of picking it up. Would it be a mistake to start with FO4?

To go against the grain, I wouldn't recommend playing Fallout 1or 2, and start with FO3, then New Vegas. It's not a matter of missing great storytelling (none of them really do that), or missing a cohesive plot continutation. It's much more about learning the game and whether you like that kind of game or not. Rather than investing in a brand new Fallout 4 at its hefty price, I'd recommend buying FO3 for much cheaper, and see if you like it. If you do, then you can invest in New Vegas and FO4. Save you money until you're sure you'll like it.

But I'm not a huge fan of Fallouts 1 and 2, and the game came a long way between those and FO3.

[Mahaloth]

I love Fallout 1 and 2, but I would really skip them and go for Fallout 3 and New Vegas.

I have no idea which of those is better. Every time I play one, I think it is the superior game. I guess I might suggest picking New Vegas. It's quite the game. The legendary/ultimate version was less than $3 last week on some sites.

[Johnny Angel]

When I'm jumping into the middle of a series (or don't want to replay multiple past games to reacquaint myself with lore) I turn to YouTube. Here's a video series that doesn't review the history game-by-game but topic-by-topic:

https://youtu.be/nvqm_pPD-aQ?list=PL...103xp0PkkUCoPU

That's a fair bit to get through, though I think the edited cutscenes I watched to get caught up on The Witcher amounted to some 12 hours.

Here is a pretty brief summary in chronological order of events, placing the games themselves where they fall in the over-arcing history:

https://youtu.be/OyJbSxpjrf8

This one with a very similar selection of details may also help:

https://youtu.be/G-3bILg4RSI

Here, a multi-part series goes into more considerably more detail, including some stuff about the real-world history of the game series. 13 parts, 8-10 minutes each.

https://youtu.be/C01ZUJmAu_Y

[thelurkinghorror]

It runs okay on my aging machine. If you can run the previous ones it's probably "okay." But it looks like it's time for a new CPU/mobo.

Originally Posted by Randy Seltzer

Question: I've never played anything in the fallout series before but am thinking of picking it up. Would it be a mistake to start with FO4?

Summary of all the plot you need to know:

War never changes.

Seriously though, you might miss some Easter eggs and references, but the game takes place in a geographically new area. I mean, I haven't played enough to prove me wrong, but they make them accessible to new players.

I know at least one or two characters from Fallout 3 are returning. They were very minor character in that one.

IMHO: NV>2>3>1.

Everyone who says the previous games were buggy: I never noticed any bugs, and I LAUGH at the assertion that recent Bethesda games were "buggy." I've played Daggerfall, FFS, I'll show you bugs.

[Kinthalis]

Uhm, playing on survival...

I think my old D&d dungeon master designed the game. I remember meeting my end 6 minutes into a campaign at the hands of 3 Owl bears. THREE OWL BEARS at level 1. Looks like he's up to his old tricks, with death claws now.

[Arrogance Ex Machina]

Originally Posted by Kinthalis

Uhm, playing on survival...

I think my old D&d dungeon master designed the game. I remember meeting my end 6 minutes into a campaign at the hands of 3 Owl bears. THREE OWL BEARS at level 1. Looks like he's up to his old tricks, with death claws now.

If you headed north from the starting village in NV you found plenty of death claws as well.

[gnoitall]

Originally Posted by Kinthalis

Uhm, playing on survival...

I think my old D&d dungeon master designed the game. I remember meeting my end 6 minutes into a campaign at the hands of 3 Owl bears. THREE OWL BEARS at level 1. Looks like he's up to his old tricks, with death claws now.

That's not the first weird and out-of-level encounter in the Fallout universe.

My first playthrough of Fallout New Vegas, I wander up the hill from Goodsprings to see the cemetery. Cuz there are vital clues there to who tried to kill you.

I cautiously crest the hill. OK, there's a little harmless bloat fly. "Chatter-chatter" goes my 9mm grease gun and it's an ex bloat fly.

There's another one. Pop a 9mm or 5 in its head and swing around a bit further to the right.

OMG THAT IS THE BIGGEST WASP IN THE WORLD WTF I'M ALREADY DEAD!

I had to look up what a "Cazador" was. It has absolutely no business spawing in a starting zone and attacking a level 2 character.

[thelurkinghorror]

Yeah, the Deathclaws by the quarry are easy to avoid (unless you stop to throw things in it). The freaking cazadors though, man. And the real-life animal that they're based on are also horrifying.

One thing I noticed, maybe because a different design team, is that 4 has "rolled back" many of the New Vegas changes. For example, the first gun is 10mm again. In real life, 10mm is much more powerful than 9mm, and wouldn't make a good "weak" gun. I though New Vegas was much more realistic with respect to the firearms than 3, and apparently 4.

[Sicks Ate]

Looked at the side by side by side graphics comparison.

Considering that it was a PC on mega video settings, the consoles look pretty good. I have a feeling there will be plenty of PC players who have a similar graphics experience to consoles, if not substandard to them.

Interesting to note that from the comparisons I saw, anti- aliasing was actually noticeably better on the consoles.

Maybe more terrain pop-in on the Xb1 vs the PS4? Neither had as much brush etc. as the PC, but that doesn't hurt my feelings much.

From the Skyrim experience, what are the odds that the Xbox stutter or the frame rate issues on both consoles will be corrected by patches any time soon?

[Johnny Angel]

Before Fallout 3 came out, Bethesda said that the open world would contain areas where you would get killed if you wandered in, but other wise, you know, wide open. Fallout New Vegas had bad-assed enemies placed to railroad you into visiting certain places in a particular order. Of course, after you're played through you can pretty much figure how to run straight through to Dangerous Dan's Sacked Caravan where you can pick up some sweet armor and an energy weapon.

[Kinthalis]

Originally Posted by Sicks Ate

Looked at the side by side by side graphics comparison.

Considering that it was a PC on mega video settings, the consoles look pretty good. I have a feeling there will be plenty of PC players who have a similar graphics experience to consoles, if not substandard to them.

Interesting to note that from the comparisons I saw, anti- aliasing was actually noticeably better on the consoles.

Maybe more terrain pop-in on the Xb1 vs the PS4? Neither had as much brush etc. as the PC, but that doesn't hurt my feelings much.

From the Skyrim experience, what are the odds that the Xbox stutter or the frame rate issues on both consoles will be corrected by patches any time soon?

The anti-aliasing solution is identical on both PC and consoles actually. Assets and asset quality as well as view distance are also equal on Xbone and Ps4.

On PC though, view distance and terrain detail, and shadow distance are an order of magnitude better, as is the frame rate - and not just wiht a mega video card. We're talking i3 750 ti for a better experience.

Of course my 780ti is rocking higher ugrids and tweaked grass settings, you definitely need hardware muscle to get to some of the extra ini tweaks to run well, but man, od they make a hell of a difference.

[SenorBeef]

Originally Posted by Sicks Ate

L
Considering that it was a PC on mega video settings, the consoles look pretty good. I have a feeling there will be plenty of PC players who have a similar graphics experience to consoles, if not substandard to them.

The comparisons I've seen make the consoles look pretty bad, but even then, stock graphics are only temporary on PC. Skyrim looks like this (for example, there are other graphical looks you could choose) or this. And youtube doesn't even show the differences very well, because of the low frame rate, resolution, and bitrate, youtube looks way worse than what it actually appears like on PC, reducing the full effect of the comparison.

Anyway, does the game still use the retarded infinite-instant heal mechanic? I always hated in Bethesda games where you basically couldn't die so long as you were carrying a bunch of potions/stimpacks/cabbages/whatever. "Oh, I'm in a fight with a death claw. Oh, I took a big hit. Time to eat 50 cans of food instantly. Oh good, I feel better. Oh, got hit again, time to eat 20 boxes of cereal" - it's a ridiculous way to balance healing/survivability. I mean I mod that out, obviously, giving healing effects a cooldown and making them heal over time, but it's so bizarre to me that the stock game behavior is so obviously silly.

[Kinthalis]

I'm not sure if it's 'cause I'm on the hardest difficulty, but so far, healing hasn't been instantaneous. You can see how high our health will go after using a healing item, but it's takes a bit for your HP to go up.

So I couldn't do what you mentioned above when I met my first deathclaw. It hit me, took me down to a quarter hit points, I healed up to full and tried to run away, but when it caught me, my HP still hadn't gone up enough yet, and he killed me.

The Steam controller is becoming my default controller for a lot of games. Unlike the previous fallouts, the 1st person shooting in this one feels like... well a first person shooter, and twin sticks just frustrated me. The UI leaves much to be desired when it comes ot mouse and keybaord though - it's Skyrim all over again, so I actually don't mind the rest of the gamepad controls, so switching to the Steam game pad I'm getting much better camera control, and I've got a few extra inputs which I'm going to probably set up to make building and crafting a bit easier.

[Johnny Angel]

Stephen Fry's show QI made me aware of this forgotten bit of Americana, though I would be surprised if the people who made New Vegas had not heard of it, because the toy rockets with actual isotopes seems to be too close to a true story to be a coincidence:

https://www.orau.org/ptp/collection/...copes/ring.htm

[Ike Witt]

It's a lot of waiting for something that was 'pre-loaded'.

[MichaelEmouse]

Is it possible to take a look at the mods without buying F4?


How CPU-bound is it? I've heard of AMD GPUs doing badly because the CPU didn't play nice with the AMD GPU: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15wOp7_dD8E

If someone else also has an old Phenom II CPU or something like it, how is it running for you?

[Max the Immortal]

I've played it for about two hours now, and barely got out of the starting area. So far it runs really well for me, and the atmosphere is great. I'm not quite sold on the new dialogue system, though.

I'm also trying to decide whether I want to backtrack and distribute my SPECIAL points differently. I know you can boost your stats when you level up, but the perfectionist in me wonders about things like whether maxing out one's endurance early on gives better maximum health than starting low and building it up.

[Grumman]

Originally Posted by MichaelEmouse

Is it possible to take a look at the mods without buying F4?

There's the Fallout Nexus for starters, and I assume that the Steam Workshop will have some too.

[Kinthalis]

I spent all last night building up Sanctuary. I've barely explored much territory outside that.

Compare that to me spending all of maybe an couple of hours in all of Skyrim's 200+ hours playing around with my home bases.

This is a lot more fun.

[Mr. Kobayashi]

I was lukewarm on the idea of the new SPECIAL/perks system replacing the skills, but I'm finding it pretty intuitive so far.

I don't know whether or not to look up bobblehead locations...on the one hand boosting all your SPECIALs early on will be a big advantage, on the other I'm extremely wary of spoilers - one of the bobbleheads in Fallout 3, energy weapons IIRC, was only obtainable during the penultimate main story quest.

Anyone know if they are just out in the open, or are the locations of one or more really spoilery? Already picked up the PER one, it's in the

SPOILER:

room where you first meet Preston Garvey.

[Johnny Angel]

In Fallout 3, it was worth making the careful run to Rivet City to get the INT bobblehead early, because I hated missing out on 1 skill point per level. Here there doesn't seem to be any such pressure, unless there are bobbleheads that will give you things you'll turn out to have spent points already. I generally never boosted my skills over 90 unless I'd already gotten the bobblehead for them, because I hated to miss out the free 10 points, as little difference as it makes in the end.

[Johnny Angel]

Conan O'Brien does a little Fallout 4 Cosplay.

[Johnny Bravo]

Out, damned spoilers!

*grumbles and unsubscribes from thread*

[gnoitall]

Originally Posted by Johnny Bravo

Out, damned spoilers!

*grumbles and unsubscribes from thread*

Somehow, you overlooked the very real possibility of spoilers in a "Now Playing" thread?

Maybe a kindly mod can be prevailed upon to add "[spoilers]" to the title.

[Johnny Bravo]

I was being facetious - obviously there are going to be spoilers here.

[DCnDC]

Originally Posted by asterion

I'd add one caveat. If you are going to get FO3 or NV, it's probably best to get it on PC.

Caveat to this: FO3 doesn't play well with Windows 7 and up. It can be made to work, but it takes some doing. I was never able to get FO3 to work properly with Windows 8.1 (random freezes, crashes, and eventually wouldn't even open at all), and NV ran, but it was a pain in the ass and still experienced pretty frequent performance issues.

[Max the Immortal]

Played a few more hours. It's very immersive. Combat feels more dangerous than in previous Fallout games, but maybe that's just on account of my still being a lowbie. There's something oddly satisfying about wheeling around and capping a mole rat that's just surfaced behind you; it's weird when it happens ten times in a minute, though. Ghouls are pretty tricky to fend off. Sources of radiation seem much more common (IMO a good thing).

[Kinthalis]

Originally Posted by DCnDC

Caveat to this: FO3 doesn't play well with Windows 7 and up. It can be made to work, but it takes some doing. I was never able to get FO3 to work properly with Windows 8.1 (random freezes, crashes, and eventually wouldn't even open at all), and NV ran, but it was a pain in the ass and still experienced pretty frequent performance issues.

This was an issue with the Games for Windows service I believe. When they shut it down, you couldn't even play the game anymore as the GFW executable was outdated and it wouldn't autopatch.

But I believe they recently removed this from the steam version of the game, and now it runs fine on modern OS's. Same with New Vegas.

[Kinthalis]

Originally Posted by Max the Immortal

Played a few more hours. It's very immersive. Combat feels more dangerous than in previous Fallout games, but maybe that's just on account of my still being a lowbie. There's something oddly satisfying about wheeling around and capping a mole rat that's just surfaced behind you; it's weird when it happens ten times in a minute, though. Ghouls are pretty tricky to fend off. Sources of radiation seem much more common (IMO a good thing).

The AI is MUCH improved from the previous titles, and so is encounter design. Before, all enemies did pretty much the same thing: stood around waiting for you, then bee-lined straight for your position, or if they had ranged weapons, would stay planted where they were and fired in your general direction (maybe moving forward a bit if you tried to run).

Now? Merlocks ambush me from behind when I try to poach their eggs, Mole rats come popping out of the ground around you, enemies take cover and move from cover to cover, either to maneuver closer to you, or to fall back if you've got a lot of firepower. They also split up and flank you! Had several "Clever girl" (Jurassic Park!) moments with all manner of beasties and raiders.

Can't wait to play again tonight!

[madsircool]

Originally Posted by DCnDC

Caveat to this: FO3 doesn't play well with Windows 7 and up. It can be made to work, but it takes some doing. I was never able to get FO3 to work properly with Windows 8.1 (random freezes, crashes, and eventually wouldn't even open at all), and NV ran, but it was a pain in the ass and still experienced pretty frequent performance issues.

That certainly wasnt my experience. It played great on Win 7. Maybe it was some other hardware problem?

[DCnDC]

Originally Posted by Kinthalis

But I believe they recently removed this from the steam version of the game, and now it runs fine on modern OS's. Same with New Vegas.

Huh. Yeah I remember to get it to run I had to delete and reinstall GFWL then mess with the permissions and some other bullshit.

Guess I'll try it again tonight.

[madsircool]

Originally Posted by madsircool

That certainly wasnt my experience. It played great on Win 7. Maybe it was some other hardware problem?

Or what Kinthalis said.

[Kinthalis]

Originally Posted by DCnDC

Huh. Yeah I remember to get it to run I had to delete and reinstall GFWL then mess with the permissions and some other bullshit.

Guess I'll try it again tonight.

Pretty sure this was a patch only for the Steam version, so you gotta be playing that. I also recall hearing about people asking for and receiving steam keys for retail or GFW copies of the game. I think this was last year.

[DCnDC]

Originally Posted by Kinthalis

Pretty sure this was a patch only for the Steam version, so you gotta be playing that. I also recall hearing about people asking for and receiving steam keys for retail or GFW copies of the game. I think this was last year.

I have the Steam GOTY edition. I'll try it again tonight and report back.

[Jophiel]

Fallout 3 had problems with multicore processors. There is a simple .ini fix for it but I don't know if said fix ever made it into an official patch.

[Sicks Ate]

Originally Posted by Kinthalis

The anti-aliasing solution is identical on both PC and consoles actually. Assets and asset quality as well as view distance are also equal on Xbone and Ps4.

On PC though, view distance and terrain detail, and shadow distance are an order of magnitude better, as is the frame rate - and not just wiht a mega video card. We're talking i3 750 ti for a better experience.

Of course my 780ti is rocking higher ugrids and tweaked grass settings, you definitely need hardware muscle to get to some of the extra ini tweaks to run well, but man, od they make a hell of a difference.

Yeah. Dang it.

I guess the good news is that if all I need is mobo/CPU/GPU/RAM it won't set me back but maybe 4-500.

[kferr]

I have to say I'm a bit disappointed so far. On startup it tried to detect my video card but couldn't so defaulted to 'low'. I set it to 'high' and carried on. It crashed trying to start a new game. So reset it to 'medium' and got a game started. It's pretty jerky in places and there's something weird about the anti-aliasing. I'll reset it to 'low' and try again. My machine was top of the range when new 6 years ago, I'd hoped it would at least cope with the 'medium' settings. At least now I can justify shopping for a new machine. It also won't let me remap the keys how I want. I play left handed so use the arrow keys for movement and the number keypad keys for common activities such as reload and VATS.

[gnoitall]

Originally Posted by DCnDC

Caveat to this: FO3 doesn't play well with Windows 7 and up. It can be made to work, but it takes some doing. I was never able to get FO3 to work properly with Windows 8.1 (random freezes, crashes, and eventually wouldn't even open at all), and NV ran, but it was a pain in the ass and still experienced pretty frequent performance issues.

Originally Posted by Kinthalis

This was an issue with the Games for Windows service I believe. When they shut it down, you couldn't even play the game anymore as the GFW executable was outdated and it wouldn't autopatch.

But I believe they recently removed this from the steam version of the game, and now it runs fine on modern OS's. Same with New Vegas.

I never had any problems with the lastest bestest Steam version of FO3 on Windows 7 64-bit, after twidding .ini files and such. It doesn't seem to do Steam achievements like FO NV does, but no big loss to me.

OTOH, playing Fallout 3 within Fallout New Vegas is awesome sauce. It'll tide me over until I spring for FO4 (i.e., after the next major patch, because the initial release of every Bethesda Gamebryo/Creation engine game is a public beta they get people to pay to participate in )

[Kinthalis]

Originally Posted by kferr

I have to say I'm a bit disappointed so far. On startup it tried to detect my video card but couldn't so defaulted to 'low'. I set it to 'high' and carried on. It crashed trying to start a new game. So reset it to 'medium' and got a game started. It's pretty jerky in places and there's something weird about the anti-aliasing. I'll reset it to 'low' and try again. My machine was top of the range when new 6 years ago, I'd hoped it would at least cope with the 'medium' settings. At least now I can justify shopping for a new machine. It also won't let me remap the keys how I want. I play left handed so use the arrow keys for movement and the number keypad keys for common activities such as reload and VATS.

What are your specs? IF you have an Nvidia card, and running the latest drivers, open up the GeforceExperience app. It will auto set your Fallout 4 settings to something that runs well on your system.

[Ike Witt]

Dogmeat gets my dogs up and growling. It is both funny and annoying.

[DigitalC]

First time a games auto-detected settings put me at "medium", ugh time for an upgrade i guess.