I've really been enjoying Fallout 4, but I see the story ending in sight. What's like it that I may next enjoy?

The Game Room
21

If you like zombies and scrounging, I highly recommend State of Decay 2. There is base building and crafting, but not nearly as free and detailed as FO4. But there is definitely tons of looting and scrounging to do in an open world with only a hint of official story. The real story is emergent from the random survivors you find/recruit and the mission you choose to do.

It’s 3rd person though, if that matters to you. But there’s hundreds of weapons, most of which are based on real life. Not like FO4 where there is like 5 base guns with a bunch of modifications.

Plus assault rifles actually look like rifles and not an old ww1/2 water cooled machine gun. I’m not even a huge gun guy, but that bothered me a lot about FO4. Though it didn’t stop me from playing it multiple times for hundreds of hours. But to put that in perspective, I just hit 3500 hours in State of Decay 2.

SoD2 is available on gamepass.

22

It’s not an FPS (Skyrim isn’t either), but Witcher 3 has a nice big set of maps to explore with a good variety of plot quests, side quests, equipment to discover or craft, etc.

I also really enjoyed Fallout 4 (more than New Vegas, definitely).

23

You, me, and pretty much everyone else. Not to mention most of the existing ‘classic’ Fallout 1&2, or 3 and NV guns. But, as always there are mods for that. So many modern firearm replacers there’s a freaking glut of them. On my original Fallout 4 steam review, I gave it a 70/100. With the 20 or so mods I use (one new companion, 4ish story mods, then the armorsmith and weaponsmith mods) there are probably a dozen different weapons and armor replacements and enhancements. Combined with a few flavor mods (less boring perks, and reducing chances your settlements festooned with guns still get overrun if you don’t show up) I’d give it more like a 90/100.

If (and this is another big if) you want a more ‘realistic’ survival mode, or one that lets you turn elements of it on or off, or remove ‘high difficulty = bullet sponge’ there are fixes aplenty. It’s the old smartphone saw: There’s an app (mod) for that!

@hogarth - I liked most of the gameplay (especially with mods) of Fallout 4 over NV, but the story and DLC (with the exception of Far Harbor) was IMHO much better in New Vegas and 4. And I think that’s the main gripe with F4 as well, the main storyline was not very moving. Which is why the efforts to port NV into the F4 mechanics is such a popular effort.

24

Really? To me, F4 has plenty of weapons ranging from being based on real life to fantastically ridiculous- conventional rifles, shotguns and pistols using many different types of ammo; laser rifles and pistols; gamma guns; heavy artillery like missile launchers, shredding mini guns, and of course, the Fat Man. My favorite score, no surprise I’m sure, is finding a mini nuke. I’ve revisited cleared sites where I found mini nukes just hoping the loot respawned along with the mutants or raiders, and often been rewarded.

One of my favorite weapons is a scoped assault rifle I bought for a good price at Guns and Guns in Goodneighbor (only around 560 caps). It’s the only weapon I bought, not looted. It uses 5.56 rounds, which I had collected a couple thousand of from turrets I destroyed but hadn’t found a weapon using that ammo. It’s lots of fun to shoot synths with it because they break into pieces before collapsing.

I’m like a chef with the weapons…”hmm, let’s start out with a night vision sniper rifle, then the ole trusty combat shotgun for the main course, then we’ll finish up with a nice melee weapon”.

If State of Decay has a lot more weapons, I’m very interested (though too many weapons and I might be facing choice paralysis :roll_eyes:)

25

Killing a Suicider without causing an explosion is another way to obtain a mini nuke.

Have you been down to West Roxbury yet?

26

Yep, as soon as I hear the telltale beeping I get out my highest powered sniper rifle and try to take him out before he gets all up in my grill.

No, I don’t believe I have! I’m really impressed by how expansive the F4 world is— as many places as I’ve been to, I keep discovering more.

27

That place is like a nexus for Suiciders. Three of 'em if they haven’t recently detonated themselves in some nearby skirmish; they respawn, though.

28

I’m not sure why this is a big deal? I mean, yes, clearly the ‘assault rifle’ in FO4 is nothing like what we would call an assault rifle, and is indeed a big water-cooled machine gun. But it’s designed for use by someone wearing a fusion-powered armoured exoskeleton, so an M-16 or AK-47 equivalent would seem a bit wimpy in that role. Presumably it is rifled, and used in assaults, so I don’t know why it’s a problem for it to be called an assault rifle in the world of FO4. If you want something that’s closer to what we call assault rifles in this timeline, there are guns like that in FO4 as well (most notably the 7.62-firing guns from Nuka World).

29

I recently finished a massive Fallout 4 replay. I also really got into the scrounging and crafting aspects, and was looking for something new the scratch that particular itch. I ended up playing a little zombie shooter called Last Stand: Aftermath. Despite it’s terribly generic title, it’s a fun little top down shooter where you travel between various zombie infested levels, trying to scrounge enough fuel, ammo, and weapons to get to the next. It’s not an RPG, or open world, but it is the sort of game where finding a box full of electronic scrap parts is genuinely exciting.

30

And in fact, in the original artist concept work it was called a machine gun (for use in power armor), and the internal filename for its mesh is meshes/weapons/machinegun

Which is why it looks like an unlikely love child of a Vickers gun and a Lewis gun

31

Hey, them F4 weapons ain’t gotta look good, just shoot good.

32

Let me first say that Fallout New Vegas is my favorite game of all time. That said, I’m not sure I recommend it for the OP. Here’s why.

Fallout 1 was an isometric RPG.
Fallout 2 was an isometric RPG.
Fallout 3 was a 3-D RPG.
Fallout New Vegas was a 3-D RPG.
Fallout 4 was a first person shooter.

One of these things is not like the others. :slight_smile:

If you are an RPG fan, Fallout and the Elder Scrolls were the two best things out there for years. Bethesda (with some help by Obsidian for FNV) was the undisputed king of the RPG.

But there is a valid criticism of RPGs in general. A really good RPG has a lot of lore and depth, and you really have to think to get immersed in all of it. For a casual gamer who doesn’t want to spend that much time and effort, true RPGs can be confusing and difficult. But you can’t have it both ways. Either the game is designed for RPG fans who love depth and lore and want to be immersed in a deep and complex setting, or the game is designed for casual games who can play through without a lot of thought.

In Fallout New Vegas, what you do at every step matters. There is a lot of depth and importance in many of the conversations. Say the wrong thing to someone, and you can lock off entire quests. To a casual gamer, all of these conversation options are annoying and cumbersome. To an RPG player, they are the meat of the game and are essential to an in-depth RPG experience. Fallout 4 by comparison is much different. Every conversation ends in the same place. There’s no branching. This is what you expect of a shooter, where the conversations just move the plot along so that you can get to the next exciting combat.

This is why Fallout 4 is hated so much by Fallout fans. The Fallout franchise up to that point had been one of the best in-depth series RPG games around. And then Fallout 4 came along and it wasn’t really an RPG. You only make one choice in all of Fallout 4, which faction you want to win. The rest is completely linear, and all other conversation options don’t matter.

Fallout 3 has one ending. Fallout 4 has four endings. Fallout New Vegas has different endings for each faction. There are four main factions, so four main endings, but then each lesser faction has multiple different endings, so the total number of possible endings is rather huge. Again, great for an RPG, but way too complex for a casual game.

The OP likes the first person shooter and the world building. By comparison, Fallout New Vegas has a clunky combat system that is best described as adequate for an RPG but kinda lacking for a shooter. Fallout New Vegas also has no world building, though there are mods for that (in fact, Fallout 4 got the idea for world building from one of FNV’s more popular mods). The OP also likes scavenging and crafting, which exists in FNV but is much more limited and doesn’t tie into the world building system (because FNV doesn’t have a world building system).

Feral ghouls are a bit terrifying in FO4. They are much more mundane in FNV, to the point where if you started with FO4, you are going to be downright disappointed by FNV’s ghouls.

Power armor was greatly improved for FO4. You are going to be sorely disappointed in FNV’s version of power armor as well. FNV’s power armor feels more like you are just strapping on an outfit. It doesn’t have the feel of something massive and mechanical like FO4’s version. If you like chunking around in heavy power armor while blasting away at nasty wasteland critters, you are going to be disappointed in FNV.

As far as the dark humor goes, that is better in the older games, especially in Fallout 1 and 2. FO4’s quirkiness and dark humor is significantly watered down compared to the older games.

FO3’s storyline is very linear, but it is interesting and well done.

FNV has the best storyline, just because you have so many options while playing through it. One valid criticism of FNV’s storyline is that unlike every other game in the series, you don’t start out in a vault and you’re not a vault dweller.

FO4’s storyline is ham-fisted and horrible and has huge gaping plot holes everywhere. So yes, compared to FO4, FO3’s storyline is definitely better.

The OP doesn’t mention mods. If you get into modding your game, FO3, FNV, and FO4 are all heavily moddable. However, mod support in FO3 and FNV is clunky and fiddly. Installing mods on FO4 is much easier.

As far as the Elder Scrolls series goes, that series did not have the huge change in direction that Fallout experienced between FNV and FO4, but the Elder Scrolls series has slowly been moving away from the in-depth RPG to a more casual gaming type of style. The quests in Skyrim are simpler, the puzzles are basically kindergarten-level, and the side quests are short. If you do the College of Winterhold quests for example, it’s basically you do a couple of minor things and POOF! You’re now the Arch-Mage, in charge of the entire college.

I think the OP would like Skyrim, though. There’s no world building, and crafting is limited, but you can stomp around through combat after combat, then take a break and get involved in some short side quests or just go roaming around looking for bad guys and bad creatures to wipe out. The storyline is a lot better than FO4’s storyline, though Skyrim’s storyline is more than a bit formulaic.

33

The first two games are on sale for $5 each right now so there’s little risk involved, but I will say that the first game starts as a definite slow burn. It’s based off the Metro 2033 novel and they probably put a little too much effort into staying with the novel at the expense of pacing. And it’s very linear and not very RPG – there’s a few side missions and a morality system but no big conversation system, etc. But it’s a good story and excellent world building with a strong survival vibe as you creep through tunnels and use janky homemade weapons and count your bullets, deciding on a stealthy or deliberately hostile approach.

The second game, Metro: Last Light, isn’t based off the novel Metro 2034 at all and is a better paced game for it. I’d still play 2033 first for the context. Mechanically and thematically, it’s much the same as the first game.

Metro: Exodus is very loosely based off the ending of Metro 2035 and has you leaving the tunnels to look for other survivors outside the Metro. It’s not exactly open world but more “open zone” where you travel from map to map, doing the stuff you need to do in that region. If the other games felt too linear, this one might be more what you’d like. I enjoyed all three games though. Also (unrelated side note) the Metro 2033 audiobook is great.

34

This is my take on it:

Play through it all, picking a faction and watch the ending. Then get all add-ons and start anew. Now that you know how the journey’s going to end, you can approach the whole thing in a different way, to wit:

Once you’re out of the vault, go home, scrap and scavenge everything, but do not build anything in Sanctuary. All the materials you gather will come in handy later.

Start heading south, but whatever you do, do not go near Concord. One very annoying feature of the game is that when you go near certain locations, the game will throw quests at you that will keep nagging, and eventually ruin the game for you. None more so than hooking up with the Minutemen. The reason for this is that when you’ve played a bit further along, Preston (forgot the name) will start sending you to “Settlements that need our help”.

It would be fine if this only happened when you’re actively doing Minutemen stuff, but the Vault-Signal will chime even when you’re off the map, say in Far Harbour. Fast travelling to the settlement will most of the time result in you being too late, or that no bad guys show up at all. If it’s one of the settlements that you’ve spruced up and built a ton of protection for, you’ll see all your efforts burn. If you do want to play the minutemen quests, save them for last.

Keep going south - the further you go, the tougher the enemies, so even if you steadily level up, stealth is your friend. You’re heading for Vault 88 and should hopefully be at level 11-14 when you get there. The enemies outside are kinda tough so your best tactic is to snipe and hide. They don’t re-gen health so with patience, the Vault is yours.

You’ve got a vault. Woot. And it’s humungous. Clearing it out and building will get you a load of XP and you’ll level up quickly. A warning: never ever clear out the passages to the other entrances, since Supermutants will be constantly raiding you. You’ll also find a ton of loot.

When you’ve done with this, you’re ready for Nuka-World. You should be at level 25 at this point and when you go there, you’ll get a warning about it being for level 30 and up. This is not a problem as almost all enemies you’ll face are fairly easy to take down. Once in Nuke-World you’ll get two of the most useful items in the whole game

The Problem Solver. A fully automatic, scoped silenced sniper rifle that does an insane amount of damage and will be the only firearm you’ll need for the rest of the game. Since it’s fully auto, it works in close quarters, the scope and silencer is perfect for stealth. No matter your play style, you’ll never need another gun. Put the rest on display on nice gun racks in your vault.

For melee you’ll get The Instigating Disciples Blade, which will be your ace in the whole. With the correct build all - I do mean all - enemies are killed with one swipe.
Now: get ready to slice and dice your way through the rest of the game, since at this point, you should be at level 40, have all the money, ammo and loot you’ll ever need.

35

Just turn Preston down when he asks you to lead the Minutemen. I did that my first play through and then had no idea why people kept complaining about the radiant “Settlement needs your help” nags.

I had no idea how much easier I was making my life, I just thought Preston sounded pathetic begging some Unfrozen Cavewoman Lawyer who had been in this world for two hours to lead his group of losers.

36

I have a mod installed which disables that annoying quest. I drop Preston off at Sanctuary Hills and then I never have to bother with the Minutemen ever again.

I also made a mod that removes his stupid hat.

37

I named my dog after him.

38

Does your dog constantly bark at random things? If so then that name might be appropriate.

39

Not too much, but it is an endless cycle of, “Hey, time to feed me!” “Hey, time for walks!” “Hey! Time to feed me again!”

40

I have also played all of them and I don’t think this is right. I hated the village building in Fallout 4, but it was still an RPG like Fallout 3 and New Vegas.

I will agree that FNV has the best storyline. I kind of like the “hey, who shot me and left me for dead” storyline over some of the other games storylines.