This game is weird one; I think on a while, short and sweet, it's a good game with some very noticible blemishes. It's worth buying on sale and outside of steam physical copies of the game are dirt cheap now so play it for sure.

The big positives of this game come from the gameplay, music, and graphics. It's kinda hard to believe this is the same engine that Fallout 3 used and even though Skyrim was nice looking this is still amazing. All the cloths, weapons, creatures, people are all really pretty. There are some places where things don't shine but the amount of color and variation in enviornment and terrain and skins and metals is terrific.

The gameplay is also really good. I played a bunch of Fallout 3 and by the end I came away kind of upset. As good as the good stuff was the look of the game and the feel of it really dragged it down. New Vegas helped a bit but it still felt like more of the same. Here things like shooting don't only feel better they feel nearly perfect. You can aim down sights smoothly, shots hit where you aim, there's a lot more feedback with shots, combat also feels more weighty; it's just an over all perfection of this game.

The music also shines through. While there isnt much the stuff that is there is memorable and doesnt overstay its welcome. The main theme especially shines.

Ok...the negatives.

The dialouge and story overall suffers a lot in this game. The dialouge options have been watered down to four options for speech and beyond that each one is always approval,disapproval,sarcasm,or question. All they can change is how you recieve the same information. The best part of them is the speech checks and those arent exactly a regular part of conversation. It's clear why this has been done, there is now a stupid amount of voiced dialouge in this game and it's nice especially for a "next gen RPG" but I feel like there could have still had more dialouge and if they couldnt it's really okay not to voice everything.

The main story is also remarkably weak. Besides New Vegas the main quests usually are but this one is especially poor becasue of one big mistake, the same one as 3. Before you are even named, have your stats picked or have made your face, you are given a family and a backstory. In a game where you character changes as you wander a wasteland where the old world doesnt matter it seems odd and almost dumb to do this. There are benefits to this, seeing th world prewar, interacting with people who are interested in a 200 year old person, and the biggest positive, having a really polished and nice opening. This could have been done without the family aspect though, or it could have been optional.

I think an easy change to this would be the same opening but your family is never seen. Maybe the gameplay starts with you on the couch as your view moves away from the TV into the actual game (Like past openings) your butler bot tells you something that encourages you to go start your day and make your character and so on and so forth.

The addition of this family is the main stories whole crux. Without spoliers it weighs the game down and I often found myself more interested in other people and side stories.

Other than that the game really is amazing. It's nice to see that despite Bethesda's faults they can make a game that's fun to play; maybe they just need different people in the writers room.