Remember the hype around Fallout 4?

Sure, and I was very happy.

If you know what Todd makes, you can be hyped for that, and not for what YouTubers are trying to sell it as.

Same for Starfield; I'm incredibly excited for it, moreso than any game in years, but I know what it won't be (amazing story, complex characters, systemic and emergent gameplay loops, etc), and can be hyped for what it will be (fallout 4 in space).

there may be a surprisingly good story in starfield, the guy who made the far harbor storyline is the lead quest designer, wil shen
- Always better to be pleasantly surprised than disappointed. ;)

I remember a bunch of posts on reddit when the first images released and tons of people were bashing it for having the same exact graphics as 3/new Vegas. I never felt more confused. It doesn’t have the greatest graphics of its time, but I still think they hold up pretty well.

I feel like a bit of a hypocrite, because I'll complain about almost every aspect of this game until I'm blue in the face, but I still put like 200+ hours into it. Same for Skyrim actually.

Mark of a true gamer IMHO. I hate most games I play for hundreds of hours.
- Well, clearly you don't hate them but are mixed about them. If you hated them then you would drop them within half an hour.
I liked Skyrim and will defend it but Fallout 4 had some inexcusable problems. I still played it and had a lot of fun once the mods rolled in but the base game is a mess in terms of story, dialogue, role-playing, balance, graphics, animations, etc...

The settlement building was pure silly sandbox, there was no reason to engage with it, no benefit it provided, in fact it only introduced extra nuisance if you engaged (in the form of annoying settlement raid alerts). The dialogue options may have as well been nonexistent and all the skill check mechanics were stripped out in favor of the most bog basic charisma checks. The leveling and SPECIAL mechanics ended up meaning every character was exactly the same, there was no build variety past 10 or 12 hours. If you wanted to argue there was it by was only stealth or no stealth, melee or ranged, but the balance between them was fubar.

The game was extraordinarily disappointing as someone who was a huge fan of Fallout since the original, liked 3, and loved New Vegas. FO4 was a step back in every way EXCEPT first-person shooter mechanics which wasn't even an true aspect of the franchise.

The one thing FO4 has going for it were mods. Like Skyrim before it, FO4 was completely reworked in multiple ways by different mods and that's what basically saved the game for me.

I had no real expectations going in and it's still one of my favorite games.

Always the best approach, really.

The story and the roleplaying were boilerplate, not something you want in a series known for being rich in both. Could tell you about 5 minutes after the prologue who the main antagonist really was. It was the kind of twist Vince Russo would pull in the old WCW days. The heavy focus on crafting and the pain of having to defend places throughout the wasteland was also a big turnoff for me. Felt like a lot of busywork and fluff to pad the game out. I avoid and drop games that don’t feel like they respect my time.

All in all, it wasn’t a good game for me, but I’m glad some folks enjoyed it.

i loved the environmental storytelling in the game. I think that's Bethesda's best development quality. Being able to walk to pretty much any building and find at minimum a skeleton with some props and at most a whole-ass computer log with its own little narrative was just so much fun.
- For all the quirks, the engine does a really good job at environmental story stuff.
  Killed a raider last week that got stuck bent over on a fence?
  Yup, still there.
  Send a dude on a supply run to another settlement? Hell yea, they're actually walking all the way there.
  I'd give people with specific jobs a uniform, kind of.
  Meanwhile, most games despawn dead enemies while you're still actively looking at them.
  
  It's not the best Fallout but it's a good sandbox.
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I liked it!

I've got such mixed feelings about Fallout 4. Yes, the story isn't great but tbh I was never expecting it to be very good. This game does come from the same company that in Fallout 3 wouldn't let you send Fawkes into the water purifier because by doing so you would break the story (sorry for spoilers on a 15 year old game).

Obviously where the game really shines is in the gun play/ combat and the gameplay loop. Those two factors alone make me want to replay FO4 every so often, however whenever I do, I always find myself inexorably drawn to settlement building, each time I do a replay I try to do as little of it as I can but still end up taking ages setting it all up.

I remember when I first completed Fallout 4, feeling underwhelmed by the story, I comforted myself by thinking "They spend ages working on the creation engine for this release, I'm sure that on the next game there will be more focus on the story". welp, 8 years since the last (single player) Fallout so it looks like that ain’t happening anytime soon.

Ooof, I remember all too well. I don’t see myself being hyped for Fallout 5.

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I understand the criticism of Fallout 4 and generally agree but I don't think the New Vegas comparison is a fair one.

New Vegas was built on top of Fallout 3 by Obsidian. It had the benefits of a complete game needing only a few engineering changes to accommodate it. Obsidian didn't have to spend nearly the amount of effort on assets and engine changes that Bethesda did and could put nearly everything into world building.
- Considering that New Vegas had a production window of 18 months, where Fallout 4’s was 7 years, I’d say it’s a fair comparison.

I never found dogmeat.