Recent reviews by Brandybuck

This is the next iteration of the Bethesda Game Studios formula for success. Open world, free form, a thousand things to do, player freedom, roleplaying, live another life. It's The Elder Scrolls meets Fallout meets space. It hits all of the right notes. It's raising the bar for all other games for the next decade.

More details. It's a huge game. A thousand worlds across a hundred star systems. There is starship combat and starship building. Create and outpost and mine resources, building it up as a base or as a factory. Buy a home in a city and decorate it to your content. Huge variety of modifiable weapons. Plus spacesuit/helmet/pack modding. Plus cooking and pharma crafting. Plus research station to learn new stuff to craft.

The best companions to date for any Bethesda game. Some followers are a bit lackluster, but still better than most of what we got in prior games. The core companions are primo though. Become lifelong friends, or romance and then marry them. With engaging companion storylines. Plus six joinable factions, each with their own storyline.

The narrative structure is about finding the player character's story, rather than listening to the developer's story. There is a developer's story, but it is not on rails. Some people will love this, others not so much. But if you have played other Bethesda games you know what it is like.

The exploration is different of course, because space is huge! There is no way to do a Skyrim style exploration in a game with a hundred star systems and a thousand worlds. There just isn't. But the exploration is still there. Stuff to find, events to witness, adventure awaiting. My first real quest after the tutorial and intro, started with a simple hail from a passing ship. Next thing I know I'm embroiled in adventure involving two opposing armies joining forces against a common enemy to save the colonists. And they needed my help. Took two evenings to finish. And then there are choices and consequences. Not talking about an epilogue slideshow, but real consequences that affect the game as you play it. There are emotional highs and lows.

This is good stuff. This is Bethesda at its peak. Don't miss it.

This DLC is one part Vault-Tec shenanigans and four parts settlement building. If you love settlement building you now have a YUUGE set of new Vault-Tec pieces to build with, plus lots of furniture and doo-dads to go in your new vault. The rationale for being able to build a vault is a bit flimsy, but sufficient. The story side of the DLC is a bit weak, but fun. Balance has been added by not making the goodies available right off the bat. One must unlock the new building items and mounds of resources by visiting and engaging with Vault 88, deep in Gunner territory. Vault-Tec Workshop blows Wasteland Workshop out of the water. This is what the other two workshops should have been.

A fun DLC. It includes a short string of quests to find the mysterious Mechanist, but this DLC is much more than that. It's about making your own highly customized robots. Plus some new armor (including the Mechanist's Suit) and weapons to round out the mix. Make Mr Handys, Assaultrons, Protectrons, Sentry Bots, and Robobrains, or mix and match them. Give them wild and wacky armor and weapons. They can be your companion at your side or they can be a settler working your fields. I made a series of Tradebots to connect up my settlements. Plus a GlaDOS bot to defend my main town. Good stuff.

Back when this was on sale it was a huge bargain. It's still a deal even now though. If you plan to get all of the DLCs then do yourself a favor and save some money by getting the Season Pass.

Graphics

To my eye the graphics are awesome. They're not perfect, but they are so much better than Fallout 3 and New Vegas graphics it isn't funny. The game looks like a heavily modded Skyrim. They textures could be better, but they are still very good. It's the lighting and post processing, however, that push the graphics from merely good to great. I'm running at medium to high settings, and had no stuttering except in a few rare spots in the game.

The only disappointment with the graphics was that the character and companions seemed to be lit with different lights than the environment.

Voice Acting

The voice acting is superb in this game. There is much less re-use of voice actors than in prior titles, so that each NPC feels unique. The voice acting itself feels better as well. Which leads us into a controversy: the voiced protagonist. Personally the voiced protagonist did not bother me, and I rather liked it. But I was playing a middle class suburban white dude, so the voice matched. Not sure how well it would have worked with other character types. On the other hand, I think the major portion of the controversy is the dialog wheel, which really isn't about the voice acting at all. More on that later.

Gameplay / Combat

This is not an FPS and neither is it a pure RPG. It's a mix of the two, with a huge helping of open world sandbox. It's probably the most sandboxy game Bethesda has made since Morrowind. The Fallout games have always been heavily combat oriented, and this is no exception. Playing as a pure pacifist is not possible, but then again, it was not possible in any prior Fallout game either.

Gun combat feels much better in this game. I don't play any FPS games, so I can't say whether Fallout 4 combat lives up to the standards of shooters, but it's certainly better than the prior titles without requiring player investment into twitch implants. There are iron sights on everything, guns have recoil, etc. I was worried about slow-mo VATS, but it works out really well, and the game doesn't feel like you need VATS just to survive.

Speaking of surviving, this game is HARD! Yes, some people are still complaining that the game is too easy even on survival mode, but for the average BGS player this game will kick your butt. Stuff does not level with the character, so running across high level creatures at lower level is not only possible, it will definitely happen.

Game Mechanics

Fallout 4 completely removed skills, and replaced them with dozens of new perks, the vast majority of which have multiple ranks. I was a wee bit worried about this, but in actual practice it works just fine. Non-combat skills in the prior Fallouts were mostly gating devices, and the equivalent perks provide the same results.

I've never liked improvable stats in any game, and this one is no exception. I'll definitely be looking for (or writing) a mod that disallows spending perks on stats (what you start with is what you get). On the other hand, the stats actually work like skills this time around. And all stats are important, there are no "dump stats". A low Charisma is going to hurt you just as much as a low Strength or Agility.

Companions / NPCs

The companions in this game are the best followers Bethesda has ever done. They have actual personalities, and comment on nearly everything you do. New Vegas has pretty good followers, but I think Fallout 4 followers beat them in the personality department. Each follower has their likes and dislikes, and if you do too much of what they dislike they will take off. On the other hand, get your relationship up high enough and you can earn a nice perk. Most (not all) companions have real roles in the game, rather than just standing around waiting for the player to find them. For example, Hancock is the mayor of Goodneighbor whether or not he's following the player. This goes a long ways towards making them feel believable.

NPCs aren't too shabby either. Not every NPC has a name, but even the ones that don't feel real and believable. Even the raiders have some personality. Different raider groups can have different raider subcultures, and interactions with fellow raider groups. I was even attacked once by a group of raiders out for revenge for my killing off a different raider group. It's stuff like this that makes the world come alive.

Crafting / Settlements

Crafting is big in this game. A lot of cues were taken from New Vegas and expanded upon. Weapons and armor (including power armor) have a huge variety of modifications available, to the point that one can take a simple pipe pistol and mod it into a powerful sniper rifle. There is a bewildering variety of weapon and armor customizations. Crafting also includes cooking and chems. There's not as much variety as with Skyrim, but enough to keep it interesting and useful.

On the other hand, there is no longer any need to repair weapons or armor. Only power armor takes damage. This didn't bother me too much, as I think Fallout 3 and New Vegas overdid the damage. Weapons simply do not degrade that way in real life. Armor does however, and I would have liked to see armor repair (for regular armor) kept in the game. What I really miss though is ammo reloading.

The big crafting mechanic is settlements. You can build your own towns! I didn't do much of it in my playthrough, I mostly tried to keep my few settlers well fed and defended, but never did much in the way of building. It's all there though. You can build new houses, guard towers, walls, all powered up and fortified, with farms, water purification plants, etc. Settlements can have up to 20 settlers (or more, depending on your Charisma), and you can run caravans between settlements, set up stores, etc. It's a big system, and I plan to do more of it on my next playthrough.

Quests / Content

This is a world meant for exploring. There are a few hundred named locations in the world, and those are just the ones marked on the map. There may be just as many points of interest that aren't named. There's a LOT of stuff out there to find! There are settlements, farms, cabins, wrecked airplanes, ruined scout camps, infested grocery stores, fish packing plants, vaults, collapsing corporate headquarters, collapsing high schools, drive in theaters, parks, historical sites, night clubs, etc, etc.

There is a ton of content, with more named quests than the prior titles. Many of these quests are "radiant" quests, meaning that they are repeatable in different locations. But oddly enough, many players complain that there's nothing to do. I think this is because the quests are very sandboxy, and you have to explore around to find many of them. While there are dozens and dozens of side quests, there really aren't any side quest storylines. The quests tend to be single standalone affairs. As such it's more like Fallout 3 than New Vegas, and very different from Oblivion and Skyrim which had extended and elaborate side quest and faction storylines.

The main story line, on the other hand, is the best Bethesda has done, and in my opinion even beats out New Vegas. I've never cried at the end of any game, but if I were one to do so, this game would do it. There's also quite a few "head as