what do you think of new vegas?
it was a step in the right direction from fallout 3, but it was unfinished. the best modern fallout game in terms of RPG mechanics, story, and characters. it was held back by the janky engine bethesda stuck them with, poor graphics (as a result of the engine and time constraints also enforced on them by bethesda), and a fairly empty game world. bugs were also a significant problem, but not as bad as F3. traits were an excellent idea, so were dialogue skill checks. having meaningful character builds meant you could play the game many different ways and make any different choices thanks to the good storytelling and quest design all without getting too bored. on the contrary, fallout 4 quests were either binary (do
good thing or
bad thing!!!) or else completely linear. there's no reason to replay them because even if you decide ahead of time to pick the other option, the choices are almost always at the end so you still play the SAME QUEST for different ending. it's just not satisfying.
take the quest in NV where you have to find the person in town who killed Boone's wife. you get very little direction, and you have to go basically character to character asking questions to figure it out. if you get it wrong and the wrong person dies, you lose the opportunity to get Boone as a follower for the rest of the game. if that same quest were in fallout 4, you'd have like 2 characters to talk to with quest markers over their heads, and you'd have to do a random chance skill check to make them admit to the crime. then you'd give them to boone to shoot and whether or not you got the right person he's become a follower because some-loving-how bethesda thinks that players HATE not being able to play the entire game in one playthrough.
fallout 3 at least gave me the opportunity to play a game with consequence, even if it was cheesy and handicapped. one of the, if not THE, first evil choice you can make in the F3 is to explode an entire city. that has consequence for your ENTIRE GAME. you lose out on all that character interaction and like a dozen quests involving those characters. it NECESSITATED a second playthrough because it let the player make a choice that MATTERED.
if i could get a game with the graphics and gunplay of fallout 4 but with the RPG elements, quests, and characters from NV i'd be a happy boy. the F4 crafting system was excellent, so i'd love to see that expanded on too - I want more options that make actual tradeoffs rather than straight upgrades.
if bethesda would also stop throwing away all the lore from previous games that'd be excellent as well. even discounting that they ignore F1 and F2's lore for the most part, there's no loving reason why the only assault rifle in F4 is some stuffty steampunk lewis gun. they also need to stop pretending the bombs fell yesterday, and that literally nobody has done anything worth talking about since. there's some ghoul child in a fridge in F4 who has apparently been in there for 200 years, and yet someway somehow had NO IDEA what was happening. for 200 years. you'd think they dont even care about the lore.
what loving sucks the most about bethesda is that they're probably the worst possible development team for their games. they're stupid, plain and simple. they dont respect or appreciate their IPs, and the appeal to the lowest common denominator in a handicapped race to the bottom, where the end goal is oversimplification and linearity. forget them.
