Ah, but Bethesda games have famously been mod-friendly. To the point that a few of the more impressive mod creators have ended up employed in the industry.
And the fact that Bethesda has made lots of money selling officially-blessed jumbo-sized mods.
Some of the more extensive FO3 and FO:NV mods are every bit as detailed, well-acted, and immersive as the DLC Bethesda sold for the core game.
Mods aren’t just added content. Mods are everything. Mods can make huge changes or subtle.
They can change the UI, they can change the balance, they can change how mechanics work, they can fix the bugs the developers won’t, they can make the game incredibly beautiful (and it’s stupid hipster bullshit to say games are somehow better if they look worse or you’re above pleb concerns like how it looks - it’s the same game, just more beautiful and more immersive - it can also change the gameplay by, for example, making much darker dungeons so that you rely on torch and light spells more and it plays out more like a suspense/horror game).
They can improve the physics. They can change the economy. They can improve the AI, or do stuff like add followers to give a party-based feel to the game, or allow you much more control over how your followers act. They can make the world feel more alive by adding more people and redesigning the art of places to feel more real and lived in. They can tweak how crime and guards work to make the stealth and crime systems much more rewarding. They can add weapons and armor and gear. Add spells or completely change how the magic system works. Completely rework the perk system, and add new ways to really customize your character. The things you can do are too countless to list here.
And they can do all sorts of minor tweaks. Two random tiny mods that are important to me, for example. I play as an obsessive collector, and in Oblivion when you picked an herb for alchemy, nothing would happen, it would still stay there graphically. There might be 2-3 of those herbs per bush, so you’d have to circle around it clicking “gather” over and over to make sure you got everything. So someone added a simple mod to make the thing you picked disappear when you picked it. Instantly and dramatically improved the gathering experience. They later added it into the base game of skyrim.
Or when you were carrying a whole mess of potion, they’d be organized alphabetically. If you wanted an invisibility potion, you might have to go to G for “greater invisibility” or L for “lesser invisibility” or m for “minor invisibility” - there’s a mod that re-orders the words so that you’d have “Invisibility - greater” “Invisibility - lesser” next to each other on the list.
There are thousands of little tweaks like this that can make the game exactly what you want it to be, add more what you want to it and remove what you don’t like. This is in addition to all of the huge content mods that add quests and characters and areas.
The unmodded versions of Bethesda games are sad shells of what the game could be - just starting points. I think it’s honestly a tragedy that most people will only ever experience the games in their vanilla forms, since they can become so amazing, they can be come whatever you want.
Yeah, since Morrowind, I have modded every Elder Scroll and Fallout game. I have long forgotten what things are mods and what things are the original game. When I see youtube videos of the original games, I find it jarring how much is missing.
So does that mean you won’t ever play unmodded Fallout 4, the way it was intended (slightly crap)? You make a very compelling case for modding, but to my old-fashioned way of thinking, part of the game is playing within the confines set by its creator. Isn’t modding a bit like listening to a storyteller weave a magical tale, only to butt in with extra characters, improved descriptors, etc?
I’m sure you’re right though, really. But I’m also sure I’ll enjoy the ‘vanilla’ game well enough.
I like to think of it as making sure that George Lucas gets help writing, casting, directing and editing the prequels.
Mods must certainly be a major problem for those who are fans of author theory. That’s ok.
Playing a Bethesda game at release is a lot like playing an Early Access game. You can play, and have a good deal of fun, but you’re always looking at each feature and thinking “Okay, this has potential, looking forward to seeing how it gets developed when modders take a stab at it.”
You’re generally right about modders and tone, though. Even the good content mods tend to stick out like a sore thumb with poorly written, out of place dialogue. I generally look forward to interesting feature tweaks rather than added content.
A cool little live action(ish) trailer dropped today:
This site says the PipBoy edition wasavailable again, and immediately sold out again:
Looking at the character development system, it’s not clear that without a skill system you can hope to eventually be passably good at everything, as you could with the other Bethesda RPGs and in the old Fallouts. Or, maybe you start passably good, and only become excellent at some things?
Generally, I tend to go with speech skill to succeed at those early all-or-nothing checks, and evolve into the wasteland warrior. It would be interesting to play a game where who you are on creation pretty much dominates who you are later on, but I'd like to know ahead of time.There’s not really a level cap, so you could, theoretically, have everything capped, eventually.
Still, that’s 300ish levels you need to gain. Supposedly at the Fallout 3 rate, so it should take quite a while.
If I’m understanding this right, your ability with, say, guns is basically whatever you get from your Agility plus whatever you get from your Perception? You don’t get to boost it by spending skill points. So your stats have to go up for your character to get better at shooting, except for certain perks that will help but don’t seem to be in the nature of “20% higher targeting in V.A.T.S.” or anything like that.
Where are you getting the 300 approximation? Do we know that you earn a certain fraction of a stat point per level?
the 300ish is from this:
Every time you level up, you choose an available perk. There are an announced 270 perks (including repeats) you can take. Or you can increase a stat (7x10 total points - 28 starting points) - also, perks require certain minimum stat levels. So, a bit over 300 total. (There’s another 70 or so perks you get from magazines/books, but those don’t require level-ups).
Your shooting skill is mostly going to be your normal FPS gamer ability. I don’t know how much stats are going to do things like reduce gun sway or increase damage, but it’s likely. Certain perks are going to directly improve things like odds-of-headshot-in-VATS, or energy weapon damage, etc.
Man, less than 3 weeks away! I’m hyped, but haven’t seen the marketing push we saw with Fallout 3.
Although I barley watch TV anymore these days…
I don’t know that there’s any less marketing. Certainly it’s popping up on my radar all the time. But if you’re right my guess would be that back in the day they had to introduce the franchise to people who weren’t fans of the original franchise, or turn-based overhead RPGs in general. Now, they just have to let the world know Fallout is back, and the buzz creates itself.
Also, the fact that they’re coming out with videos every week or so, did a brief promotion with a Fallout-themed PS4 controller… I don’t know. There is a certain self-selection here, because the way YouTube works these days, I get videos about Fallout 4 recommended next no matter how many Neil DeGrasse Tyson videos I watch in a row. The hype gets auto-funneled to me. But I only recall a couple of videos actually churned out by Bethesda for Fallout 3, and at that time that was all my pants could handle anyway.
I’m hoping Valve reached out to them and put the steam controller in their radar. Would love native support for it. That thing is quickly becoming my go to gamepad.
I also gotta figure we’re going to see the return of paid mod support for this game.
One thing that I’m perhaps a little surprised to be so excited about is that the gameplay videos show different combat animations. I’ve been seeing the same animations countless times during the better part of decade, but it never occurred to me to be sick of seeing them until I saw some Fallout footage without them. Man, I can’t wait to see a raider run up to me and do something different.
I know in the opening they’ve got that one voice actor who does so many goddamned voices for Bethesda. He’s got a good voice, but I already knew I was sick of hearing him even before I first talked to a wrinkled old guy in New Vegas to find to my elation that he didn’t have that same old guy voice. I hope he wasn’t overused in this game either. Also, I hope they got more people doing ghoul voices than Krusty the Clown and she-Krusty.
Agreed. Animations were very limited in number and variation, and the going joke since Oblivion has of course, been the whole “Bethesda only has 3 voice actors!”.
They need to improve on that front, and it looks like they might just have.
Ron Perlman? He’s only ever been the narrator in these things, with the exception of Fallout 1 when he also voiced Butch Harris.
A Fallout game without Ron Perlman narrating is wrong.
ETA: Or are you referring to one of the actual character voices?
If you haven’t noticed the overuse of the voice I’m talking about, then consider yourself blessed. I should probably not give you any more clues so that you may remain in this blessed state forever and anon.