Backstage - OOC Forums
General Discussion => The Speakeasy: OOG/Off-topic Discussion => Topic started by: Mizhara on 05 Nov 2015, 09:30
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Enjoy! (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5aJfebzkrM)
Obviously some story element spoilers in the trailer, if you prefer to go in blind.
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Raiders, super mutants, deathclaws, the Brotherhood of Steel. nothing unsurprising or new there.
Synths are new. Kind of. There was 1 in Fallout 3, but they looked 100% human. These look more synthetic.
Sole survivor, in suspended animation for 200 years, seems a bit of a cop-out. Kind of cheap storytelling. They're a vault dweller, usually that requires a Vault, and a reason to leave the Vault and quest across the landscape. Being the sole survivor, in suspended animation, means no Vault, and an automatic reason to leave and go do stuff.
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The settlement building stuff is new to the series, and something I'm kind of giddy about.
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ooo, build your own village and all that ? could be interesting, yeah.
especially if/when extensive mods start appearing. Could be some interesting things with that concept.
Along with all the usual suspects when it comes to elder scrolls/fallout 3/new vegas mods.
"realistic deathclaw toenails", "nude ak-47", "Shiba Dogemeat remodel" and so on, lol
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Oh, as for "100% human", the trailer did show a normal guy proclaiming he's not a synth so I suspect part of the story is how synths are "infiltrating" human society etc. Should they be allowed the same rights and such as "real" humans and so on.
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Looking forward to the mods, might get in on it as I did with Skyrim.
Not sure how quickly I will pick it up, but likely I'll wait for a sale next year to give modders time to fiddle with it.
Synth hype!
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Might wait for a mega sale on steam in a year or so packaging all the DLC and at a huge discount, also enough time for the bugs to be worked out, etc.
They really should have just made this an MMO, though.
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Might wait for a mega sale on steam in a year or so packaging all the DLC and at a huge discount, also enough time for the bugs to be worked out, etc.
They really should have just made this an MMO, though.
Yeah, that worked out so well for Elder Scrolls, KotoR and so on. Fuck that shit, I play Fallout for my singleplayer exploration, wandering and faffing about. I have zero interest in dealing with XxSephirothxX bunnyjumping past me as I sneak around, yelling "dethclw aggro ROFL". Bit hard to mod an MMO to the level we expect from these games too.
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Might wait for a mega sale on steam in a year or so packaging all the DLC and at a huge discount, also enough time for the bugs to be worked out, etc.
They really should have just made this an MMO, though.
Yeah, that worked out so well for Elder Scrolls, KotoR and so on. Fuck that shit, I play Fallout for my singleplayer exploration, wandering and faffing about. I have zero interest in dealing with XxSephirothxX bunnyjumping past me as I sneak around, yelling "dethclw aggro ROFL". Bit hard to mod an MMO to the level we expect from these games too.
Sorry needed to be more specific, I mean maybe a system similar to the new metal gear solid? Doesn't it mostly do single player but you can build/raid opponants player bases or something?
A 'themepark' fallout MMO would be stupendously terrible, but there is a lot of potential for the setting, and if they pulled it off would be very neat. Rival 'vaults' you could start from, etc...
Actually I could totally go for a turn-based, tactical strategy/RPG game set in the universe of Fallout, wouldn't that be cool? :bear:
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Not sure how quickly I will pick it up, but likely I'll wait for a sale next year to give modders time to fiddle with it.
This more or less for me. I'm obligated to pick it up as a Boston native, but when I've got other things to be doing around launch time, I'm not gonna force myself to suffer through the one feature Bethesda includes in all of its games at launch: ridiculous numbers of bugs and poor design decisions.
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Might wait for a mega sale on steam in a year or so packaging all the DLC and at a huge discount, also enough time for the bugs to be worked out, etc.
They really should have just made this an MMO, though.
Yeah, that worked out so well for Elder Scrolls, KotoR and so on. Fuck that shit, I play Fallout for my singleplayer exploration, wandering and faffing about. I have zero interest in dealing with XxSephirothxX bunnyjumping past me as I sneak around, yelling "dethclw aggro ROFL". Bit hard to mod an MMO to the level we expect from these games too.
Sorry needed to be more specific, I mean maybe a system similar to the new metal gear solid? Doesn't it mostly do single player but you can build/raid opponants player bases or something?
A 'themepark' fallout MMO would be stupendously terrible, but there is a lot of potential for the setting, and if they pulled it off would be very neat. Rival 'vaults' you could start from, etc...
Actually I could totally go for a turn-based, tactical strategy/RPG game set in the universe of Fallout, wouldn't that be cool? :bear:
... I'll allow it.
But I'm watching you.
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Already pre-ordered. Can't wait.
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Heretical notion, but hear me out...
I might actually delay playing this the first couple of days, and instead play through Legacy of the Void's campaign. Blizz games tends to be very well polished, so doing that for a couple of days and giving Bethesda a couple of days for emergency patches might be a good idea. Besides, if I start FO4 I'll be playing that exclusively until I've maxed out a character, finished the story, explored the entire map and so on, which basically means I wouldn't get to LotV for a month or more. On the other hand, LotV will have a very finite amount of gameplay, maxing out at maybe three to four playthroughs at most, as I couldn't give a toss about multiplayer.
Hmm. Yeah, I think that'll be the best way. LotV campaign first, once, then a FO4 playthrough, a second LotV playthrough for breathing room, then another FO4 playthrough etc.
... good grief, having to strategize your gaming? Publishers, get your shit together and stop releasing things on the same day.
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Mhh... not the game for me...
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Heretical notion, but hear me out...
I might actually delay playing this the first couple of days, and instead play through Legacy of the Void's campaign. Blizz games tends to be very well polished, so doing that for a couple of days and giving Bethesda a couple of days for emergency patches might be a good idea. Besides, if I start FO4 I'll be playing that exclusively until I've maxed out a character, finished the story, explored the entire map and so on, which basically means I wouldn't get to LotV for a month or more. On the other hand, LotV will have a very finite amount of gameplay, maxing out at maybe three to four playthroughs at most, as I couldn't give a toss about multiplayer.
Hmm. Yeah, I think that'll be the best way. LotV campaign first, once, then a FO4 playthrough, a second LotV playthrough for breathing room, then another FO4 playthrough etc.
... good grief, having to strategize your gaming? Publishers, get your shit together and stop releasing things on the same day.
This is actually a very solid plan, if you can resist installing and starting your F4 campaign.
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If indeed.
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http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2015/11/09/fallout-4-review-pc/
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And here's an aggregate of reviews (https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/3s4k5n/fallout_4_review_thread/), big and small.
Seems to largely be quite positive, but I'm a bit worried that it might be Skyrim Part Deux, where the initial reviews are raving and two weeks later everyone realizes that it might be vast as the ocean but deep as a puddle. There's also the obvious problem where the great majority of gaming "press" displays a complete and utter enslavement to hype. If something's hyped as fuck, it's ten out of ten, game of the year no matter how it's really playin'.
In short, I'm putting zero stocks in reviews. Not that it matters, it's FO4 so it's already purchased and pre-loaded and will likely get hundreds of hours of playtime anyway.
The bit that really worries me is the conversation mechanic. It definitely looks horrible. Everything else I'm pretty much on board with.
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And here's an aggregate of reviews (https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/3s4k5n/fallout_4_review_thread/), big and small.
Seems to largely be quite positive, but I'm a bit worried that it might be Skyrim Part Deux, where the initial reviews are raving and two weeks later everyone realizes that it might be vast as the ocean but deep as a puddle. There's also the obvious problem where the great majority of gaming "press" displays a complete and utter enslavement to hype. If something's hyped as fuck, it's ten out of ten, game of the year no matter how it's really playin'.
In short, I'm putting zero stocks in reviews. Not that it matters, it's FO4 so it's already purchased and pre-loaded and will likely get hundreds of hours of playtime anyway.
The bit that really worries me is the conversation mechanic. It definitely looks horrible. Everything else I'm pretty much on board with.
Yeap.
I really mostly agree with RPS reviews though, so I like that this article is nuanced, talks about all the fun he had and the time he would continue to spend there after a 50 hour playthrough, but doesn't pull punches with the games defects.
But it is as we thought, Skyrim with Guns. For good or bad ; )
Let us know how your play goes :)
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Looking forward to the Backstage FO4 RP play-through fiction thread.
;)
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For the love of God, save before you get onto an elevator.
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For the love of God, save before you get onto an elevator.
Nub. Playing a Bethesda game without wearing out the quicksave key, and having three separate savegames at any given moment covering the last five minutes of gameplay? Someone hasn't played these games before.
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Looking forward to the Backstage FO4 RP play-through fiction thread.
;)
If we say Vik's name 3 times does he appear?
Vikarion Vikarion Vikarion \o\
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For the love of God, save before you get onto an elevator.
Nub. Playing a Bethesda game without wearing out the quicksave key, and having three separate savegames at any given moment covering the last five minutes of gameplay? Someone hasn't played these games before.
I laughed out loud at that one.
Have fun on your runs you people of the wasteland
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So, still have the epilogue for LotV to do before I start up FO4 (and what a test of will that has been), but reading up on things make it quite apparent that this release has some major issues. A lot of nonsense like physics tied to framerate, different sensitivities on different axis, forced v-sync, forced mouse acceleration and smoothing and other complete bullshit things that seem to be carried over from the console focused development.
Here's a few guides on how to tweak your FO4 installation to not be retarded:
Reddit post for some ini tweaking (https://www.reddit.com/r/fo4/comments/3s6ile/disable_vsync_for_zero_input_lag_and_limit_fps/) and a Steam Guide (https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=551069501) for a some similar and some different bits of tweaking. These should let you get a more decent experience.
Be aware that ini tweaks etc are notorious for being herpderped by game updates, so you might have to do them over and over again as Bethesda pushes patches.
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Looking forward to the Backstage FO4 RP play-through fiction thread.
;)
If we say Vik's name 3 times does he appear?
Vikarion Vikarion Vikarion \o\
Yes. :) It's going to happen. Not soon, cause I have work, but yeah.
Also, while I don't like some elements of the Fallout 4 interface, the anti-frustration measures are enough to make up for that. And the atmospherics are excellent. This is the first Fallout game where the wasteland can actually invoke nostalgia and sadness for me. Which is awesome.
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Looking forward to the Backstage FO4 RP play-through fiction thread.
;)
If we say Vik's name 3 times does he appear?
Vikarion Vikarion Vikarion \o\
Yes. :) It's going to happen. Not soon, cause I have work, but yeah.
Also, while I don't like some elements of the Fallout 4 interface, the anti-frustration measures are enough to make up for that. And the atmospherics are excellent. This is the first Fallout game where the wasteland can actually invoke nostalgia and sadness for me. Which is awesome.
A WILD VIKARION SUDDENLY APPEARS
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Op success. :lol:
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Sad to say my first impressions here are terrible. The graphics are fine and so on, but the whole game stinks of consoleitis. Every single bit of the interface is made for a controller, and it's actually a terrible experience to play with KBnM. When it's even worse than FO3/NV and Skyrim, that should say a thing or two. Sometimes they actually expect you to use both the arrow keys and wasd for things, simultaneously, and don't even get me started on the conversation picker.
Ah well, I got used to other horrible UIs so I'll get used to this.
The complaints about mouse acceleration and smoothing are also spot on. Actually aiming is damn near impossible. I'll be having to dive into the guides I linked above to try and salvage this mess.
I am very disappointed at this state of affairs. I could play FO3/NV and Skyrim vanilla, modless, but this is going to take a lot of people a lot of manhours to unfuck.
Story and world-design seems to be good though, but don't take my word for it just yet. I'm not that far in.
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I might sit this one out. Bethesda sandboxes are great, don't get me wrong, but there's a quality of having been here and done this a few times before. Also, my favorite parts of Bethesda's work are archery and alchemy, so unless they hand me a bow and let me compound my own poisons out of found materials this is already playing second fiddle.
Think I'll focus on Eve and save my "other game" enthusiasm for "Bloodborne: The Old Hunters" and "Dark Souls 3."
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I have to disagree about the control issues. While Mizhara's impression was also mine at the start of the game, I've quickly come to realize that there's an underlying logic behind the control scheme, and it doesn't take long to intuitively pick up. The conversation setup is pretty much the same as Mass Effect's, and you can use your mouse to select choices, so I don't see the problem there.
There are two areas where the control scheme really does suffer: the workshop, and the perk menu. The Perk menu requires you to hold down the right mouse button and move to scroll up and down, which is odd. The workshop simply suffers from needing too many keys because there are so many options. Nonetheless, I find that the ease of building things and putting a settlement together once you've mastered the scheme more than makes up for it.
I haven't had any problems with mouse-smoothing or aiming. It may just be the sucky guns you get at the start. Once you get an upgraded 10mm pistol with accuracy enhancers, you can easily hit just about any target.
I'm really enjoying this game.
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I'm enjoying Fallout so far. I've got about 16 hours in already. <.<
There are some control issues, but they haven't bothered me that much. Yes they're obviously a port, but they are manageable and the UI itself is far better than Skyrim's.
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I have heard it's mostly skyrim with gun? A big, empty open space with a bare minimum story that can't compete on the same level than NV (because Obsidian).
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I have heard it's mostly skyrim with gun? A big, empty open space with a bare minimum story that can't compete on the same level than NV (because Obsidian).
Story is far more than "bare minimum". It's actually somewhat hard to avoid.
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I meant more in terms of depth/quality..
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Well whaddaya know, managed to unlock the framerate and deactivate the mouse acceleration and smoothing, making the actual movement and aiming etc actually kind of decent. That broke lockpicking. Completely. I'll have to force a framerate differently I guess. Who the actual fuck ties physics and gameplay to framerate in 2015?
Ah well, at least I got in a full five minutes of that before the crash that forced me to do the very first forced reboot in over a year.
Time to fiddle with the Nvidia controlpanel so I might get a reasonable framerate lock instead of freakin' 30. Unlocked I get over a hundred FPS so there's really no excuse for locking it to anything below 60, even if you somehow get over the fact that they tied gameplay to freakin' framerate in twenty fuckin' fifteen.
The game may be fucking amazing underneath all this shit, but come on. These are fucking basics these days and there's really no god damn excuse. If this had been any other IP, the devs would have been hauled out on the street and whipped by now.
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I meant more in terms of depth/quality..
Bethesda has vastly improved for Fallout 4. They've actually learned how to story and character. It's not quite Bioware/Obsidian, no, but compared to previous Bethesda titles it's really really good.
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As for framerate locking, I can't even get to 30 with graphics on medium-high.
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Yeah, that'd keep you safe but you'd think Bethesda would know reasonably high-end PCs do exist and would accommodate that. Everything's set to max except I turned off motion blur (never seen a game implement that well anyway), so getting 100+ unlocked does say nice things about optimization. Not so nice things about the physics.
Got it locked to 60 and it seems to have fixed things somewhat, but this time the driver crashed, heh.
It's been a long time since I've had to fight a game this vigorously to make it work acceptably. Having to dive through inis and pref files is more nostalgic than the game itself.
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Considering how much money they are printing they have little incentive for more quality control in the future. ie if they sell this many with a buggy port why spend another month of QA next time?
Would have been nice in a different gfx engine though, saw some nice mockups of fallout areas in cryengine, was very pretty.
Anyway gogo mech suits have fun yall
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The engine hardly does your art direction.
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It's been a long time since I've had to fight a game this vigorously to make it work acceptably. Having to dive through inis and pref files is more nostalgic than the game itself.
Ironically, this is the least bug-ridden Bethesda game I've had. I've only had one CTD, and one keyboard freeze (happened when alt-tabbing while in conversation).
What you describe is what I had with other Bethesda games, but not with this one.
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I have no problems with the visuals. Hell, I still think FO3 and NV holds up just fine visually, vanilla. They're actually fantastic examples of how it's not what your engine is capable of that matters, but what you do with it. Wandering the wastelands have always been a fantastic experience because of the design style and art they've used rather than polygon count and texture resolution. I'll never complain about higher quality in those things, but nor are they the be-all and end-all of visual quality.
Sneaking through subway tunnels and slow walking through the wastelands have always felt amazing to me, because both Bethesda and Obsidian have been very good at art design, asset creation, world building and so on.
My gripes with this release has entirely been about the UI and technical aspects from being a rather shitty console port in all aspects but optimization. I expected it to be bad given the previous releases, but this was worse than expected. Like X games etc, it's something I'll probably get used to in time, but there's no way around the fact that it's terrible design.
It's really weird how some of the best games out there tends to hide underneath some terrible UIs.
@Samira: It's not so much the bugs (I've only really experienced a few, one major crash, one driver crash which may be Nvidia's fault, and a few conversation/subtitle derps) as it is the UI design and interface setup. I mean really, forced mouse acceleration, mouse smoothing, framerate lock at thirty, no FOV options in menus, every in-game interface being clearly controller focused etc etc. This is really bad porting.
Most of it's fortunately fixable if you're willing to dive through three different .inis to mess with it, but the basic UI design is just not fixable. At least not until the modders have had a lot of time working on it and maybe not even then depending on how they're built into the game.
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That's because most of the best games are made for both PC and console, and thus are typically built to accommodate the limitations of consoles.
Fucking consoles. PC Master Race.
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Bethesda titles have consistently put "huge" ahead of "functional." This is a tradition going back two decades.
Anybody else remember the elevators in "Daggerfall"? Tied to your PC's internal clock. Keep constantly jumping, pray you don't get a long load mid-ascent, and keep a Slow Fall and Teleport on tap just in case. In a pinch, just leave the damn elevator at the bottom of the shaft and CLIMB the damn thing.
Or levitate.
Edit:
Did anyone else do their fast travel in Morrowind via ballistic arc? Load a random magic item with Jump up to its eyeballs (duration: maybe 2 seconds), hurl yourself into the sky, use Slow Fall to give yourself a safe landing? Had to be able to see the ground coming, though. Foggy days were my bane....
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I updated my drivers before DLing FO4, and I haven't had any problems, aside from one freeze when I quicksaved/quickloaded about 50 times in a half-hour in roughly the same spot.
I don't think it's just having a high-end computer that screws things up. Mine's about as high-end as you can get before water-cooling and SLI (don't need SLI, have one of the latest Nvidia cards), and I've had no problems.
I expect Bethesda will be pushing out a patch to solve for those issues soon, though. I have to say that I mostly like the UI, though. Don't really get the hate.
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I have no problems with the visuals. Hell, I still think FO3 and NV holds up just fine visually, vanilla. They're actually fantastic examples of how it's not what your engine is capable of that matters, but what you do with it. Wandering the wastelands have always been a fantastic experience because of the design style and art they've used rather than polygon count and texture resolution. I'll never complain about higher quality in those things, but nor are they the be-all and end-all of visual quality.
I feel like we played different games! I personally think most Bethesda games are just sort of brown and grey smears that have an overall 'washed out' look to them? If that makes sense? I think I might like something more in the 'Rage' direction for color palette. I mean that came out in 2011 and still looks better than fallout 4 to me? I think people like these games because of the freedom to take your time and explore all the nooks and crannies and different adventures and super customization, not for the visuals?
But all this Fallout talk makes me want to buy it RIGHT NOW. HALLLP.
(http://www.abload.de/img/rage2011-10-0521-18-01pqwf.jpg)
(http://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--kKuIX3ft--/18herh9toexndjpg.jpg)
(http://www.abload.de/img/rage2011-10-0520-04-202rhi.jpg)
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I don't know why Rage never appealed to me. I think it's a problem with that supertexture thingy they did with that engine. It gives the same feeling Doom did, that every item is just a giant bit of plastic with paint on it. A gun never looked like it was made out of different parts, just one big thing with a texture on it.
There's no doubt FO4 and Skyrim etc are extremely dated when it comes to the engine, and it certainly shows. My argument isn't that games like Rage and things they do in the CryEngine etc aren't technically far superior to FO4. I'm just saying Bethesda etc do so much more with their limited engine in terms of design, style and so on than Id has ever done with their stuff and that bridges the gap quite well.
There's certainly subjective arguments to be made on things like color palettes and so on (I'm certainly going to get the mod that removes the sepia filter on FO4), but as open world games go I've never really seen anything that can compare to the Fallout games in visual excellence. It's all about the style and design over technical superiority.
Oh, and Rage doesn't get anywhere near counting as an open world game. That damn thing was so railed and limited in where you could go and what you could do, it wasn't even funny.
If you want fantastic visuals for a setting, without just open-world games counting though, nothing will beat Metro: Last Light. They knocked that one out of the fucking park and it's post-apocalyptica to boot.
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I don't know why Rage never appealed to me. I think it's a problem with that supertexture thingy they did with that engine. It gives the same feeling Doom did, that every item is just a giant bit of plastic with paint on it. A gun never looked like it was made out of different parts, just one big thing with a texture on it.
There's no doubt FO4 and Skyrim etc are extremely dated when it comes to the engine, and it certainly shows. My argument isn't that games like Rage and things they do in the CryEngine etc aren't technically far superior to FO4. I'm just saying Bethesda etc do so much more with their limited engine in terms of design, style and so on than Id has ever done with their stuff and that bridges the gap quite well.
There's certainly subjective arguments to be made on things like color palettes and so on (I'm certainly going to get the mod that removes the sepia filter on FO4), but as open world games go I've never really seen anything that can compare to the Fallout games in visual excellence. It's all about the style and design over technical superiority.
Oh, and Rage doesn't get anywhere near counting as an open world game. That damn thing was so railed and limited in where you could go and what you could do, it wasn't even funny.
If you want fantastic visuals for a setting, without just open-world games counting though, nothing will beat Metro: Last Light. They knocked that one out of the fucking park and it's post-apocalyptica to boot.
Yup. Definitely not including RAGE in near the same game category as Fallout. Rage did do a bit much of the 'hard' outline veering into Borderlands territory, you're right about the gun things.
Hmm.
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Maybe it's because I don't have a great computer but...
The day of 'bad graphics' is IMO long behind us. There's not a single new game that comes out that I don't go 'wow' when I look at it. Maybe they have different levels of quality? If they do, I don't notice it at all. Skyrim, Dragon Age Inquisition, Fallout 4, all of it looks pretty fucking amazing to me.
If anything I'd rather devs stop trying to push the bar. The differences are essentially invisible to me but come with horrible hardware requirements. Skyrim and Fallout 4 both look more or less the same to me, yet I can run the first on max graphics and the latter only on mediumish.
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I don't know if I agree. While graphics aren't everything, they certainly do matter. Back when UT2K4 came out, I couldn't imagine how they could possibly make better looking games. We never needed better graphics than that, or Unreal 2 or Half Life or Duke Nukem 3D or Doom or... see where I'm going with this?
I can most certainly see quite a bit of difference between generations of games and individual releases etc, and improved visuals do partly rely on improved graphics technologies. You may not see much difference on a lower end machine, but when you're building computers with 980ti's and so on the differences become very apparent and affects the enjoyment of the game. Might as well stick with consoles if these things don't matter.
Where I'll make a concession is in regards to optimization and making these graphics intense things optional. Include sufficiently low requirement options that people can play on low-end hardware. Just don't stop pushing the envelope for those of us who do have hardware that can rock maxed settings on most games. We spend this much money exactly because we see the difference and enjoy it.
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User reviews are tanking, by the way. No Fallout game has been this low rated on Steam, ever. Probably partly because they changed the formula and didn't do anything really innovative, probably quite a big part because of the consoletarded UI. Hype got too real.
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It's only natural that graphics get better and better. When you suddenly have graphic cards with twice more graphic memory, you usually tend to use textures twice the size... And so on, grossly simplified.
But that's just the tech aspect of it. It's important, and can add a lot of shininess, but the most fundamental part is the art direction and production value (or, mimetism, cinematics, screenplay, all the little things that make it stand out).
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art direction
Is exactly what I feel Bethesda (and to a slightly lesser degree Obsidian) nailed so well in FO3 and NV, raising what is technically lesser visual performance to an excellent visual experience. It's the same with FO4, which is quite demonstrably a lesser technical visual experience but quite well done when it comes to art direction and such.
FO4 has -really- surpassed Skyrim though, Samira. There's been a lot of moments in my slightly shy of eight hours of gameplay where I've stopped and just admired the views. There was this one bit where the sun was barely piercing the fog I was in, coming down the side of this ravine and I just had to stop and go third person view and stare for a bit. It was gorgeous.
Again, technically a lesser engine, but damn if Bethesda doesn't know how to use it.
... for visuals. Their actual coding and such is fucking atrocious. I've started a counter of how many cars I see suddenly start bouncing near the edge of the active cell.
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FO4 has lower graphics for me than Skyrim did. The optimization is really bad. Like, textures on everything but my own character are as blurry as Vampire the Masquerade or something, since even though I have textures on Ultra the game just... can't process them well? Loading a small room first thing will get everything at high res, but as soon as I load a new area, especially the open world, the textures get shot.
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My quick take
Main complaint: Graphics chuggy. Should be smoother than this.
Game overall: If you like Fallout, you will like this game. It's a straight line in progression, making incremental improvements. Nothing revolutionary or awe-inspiring (that was Witcher 3 for me this year) but still fun and enjoyable so far. Doesnt really disappoint but doesnt really blow me away either. B+ effort
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Main complaint: Graphics chuggy. Should be smoother than this.
Unlock the framerate and set a new v-sync in Nvidia control panel or whatever you use.
FO4 has lower graphics for me than Skyrim did. The optimization is really bad. Like, textures on everything but my own character are as blurry as Vampire the Masquerade or something, since even though I have textures on Ultra the game just... can't process them well? Loading a small room first thing will get everything at high res, but as soon as I load a new area, especially the open world, the textures get shot.
Get a new PC.
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Get a new PC.
Wouldn't that be nice?
I could run Battlefront 3 with max full graphics and no FPS loss. Same with Dragon Age Inquisition. Fallout 4 is the only recent game I'm experiencing any issues with.
Just did a canyourunit test. My video card only has half the video RAM but is otherwise fine (Geforce GTX 650 Ti Boost). Seems my issue is the CPU. I have an Intel Core i3-2100 @ 3.10GHz, which is apparently not enough.
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Think I figured out my issue though. Apparently trying to run the game with Ultra textures is what causes it to fail to render any texture above the lowest. Going with High textures seems to allow it to load everything with decent res.
So I'll just stop trying to cherry pick stuff and just run with the recommended settings, since apparently those are the best for me.
*Edit* That or it has something to do with alt-tabbing, since all the textures died again the moment I alt-tabbed to post this. Bethesda games hate alt-tabbing.
Okay, none of that helped. Still getting issues. Less of them, but still getting them. Sigh.
[spoiler](http://i.imgur.com/qs82y5s.png)[/spoiler]
https://www.reddit.com/r/fo4/comments/3sb7c7/this_is_why_the_textures_look_low_res_some_kind/
Other people having the issue. Assumption seems to be an LoD bug rather than actual computer capability.
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Keep in mind that running textures at max res can be really intensive on medium or low end graphic cards (650 Ti is medium range, starting level for gaming) since they won't always have the required graphic memory to store them.
Just as an example, going from a generic high to ultra setting might up your textures from 1024x1024 on average to twice more (2048), which will eat up 4 times more graphic memory.
The GPU power is another matter that will mostly play on the ability to display everything, from resource intensive rendering to post treatment.
The CPU itself, while often secondary, when too old or low end, can cause issues too, especially when it comes to physical engines, pathfind, and especially AI calculations, roughly.
Of course though, as you say there is always the bug possibility, especially with Bethesda...
EDIT : Are some random of your textures flickering like crazy between low res / high res? It's often indicative to graphic memory overload. Also on your screenshot, the tires are clearly low res. The people on reddit that speak about mipmapping clearly don't know what mipmapping is for (it prevents the textures to get blurry when seen at a very low angle, especially important for ground textures most of the time).
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Might wait for a mega sale on steam in a year or so packaging all the DLC and at a huge discount, also enough time for the bugs to be worked out, etc.
They really should have just made this an MMO, though.
hmmm.... while i know a much longer and more in depth response is in order....
NOPE.
Nopenopenopenopenope.
Fallout is a very solitary experience, and ALWAYS should be.
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Might wait for a mega sale on steam in a year or so packaging all the DLC and at a huge discount, also enough time for the bugs to be worked out, etc.
They really should have just made this an MMO, though.
hmmm.... while i know a much longer and more in depth response is in order....
NOPE.
Nopenopenopenopenope.
Fallout is a very solitary experience, and ALWAYS should be.
Silas' post further down explains it a bit better.
Sorry needed to be more specific, I mean maybe a system similar to the new metal gear solid? Doesn't it mostly do single player but you can build/raid opponants player bases or something?
A 'themepark' fallout MMO would be stupendously terrible, but there is a lot of potential for the setting, and if they pulled it off would be very neat. Rival 'vaults' you could start from, etc...
Actually I could totally go for a turn-based, tactical strategy/RPG game set in the universe of Fallout, wouldn't that be cool? :bear:
It's a potentially good idea, if it's opt-in. Some slight changes to the game as it is now could very well support a mid/late-game mechanic where you pit your settlement against another player or yourself against another player's settlement.
Still, I'd never opt in, unless it was after finishing all the main stuff and when I'd transitioned into the subsequent "faff around" playthroughs. Not sure it's doable to have that kind of mechanic and still have the insane modability and console-command-fest that is half the fun of these games, but I'm sure there could be a solution like having to tag a game as "vanilla" from the start with disabling mods and console commands, then letting you opt-in on multiplayer when you wish.
Then again, there's Saint's Row, GTA and Just Cause if it's multiplayer mayhem you're after.
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EDIT : Are some random of your textures flickering like crazy between low res / high res?
Nope. LoD bug is the only thing that explains it for me. I can start up the game in the overworld with ultra textures and have everything loaded in and looking great, no fps issues, but the moment I load a new area (or move significantly across the overworld) a significant portion of the objects will be defaulting to low res textures. Quicksaving and reloading will then fix the textures.
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If it does it on lower texture settings as well, definitely a bug. Bethesda game after all.
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Feature I really miss, for some reason: Visible gunmodels when holstered. While I'm in first person mode 99% of the time, I liked having a rifle slung over my back or a pistol at my side.
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Metacritic user review section is getting brigaded to hell. Currently clocking around 50%. Steam user rating significantly higher at about 78%.
Bethsoft got their money but there's a lot of noise about lack of RPG elements relative to prior FO titles. Doesn't sound good to me, might step back a little longer and see how things shake out.
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Eh, as far as RPG elements, it's pretty much exactly how it's been since 3, in effect. FO3 and onwards have been exceedingly low on the actual roleplaying side of things and this outing just makes the progression system different rather than simpler/more complex. It's pretty much the same kind of thing, in the end.
I've been a raving Fallout fan since the original was first released and can with some authority say that as far as the actual gameplay mechanics, worldbuilding and story this is the same kind of quality we've always gotten. My gripes with the game are entirely based on the UI design choices and shitty consoleitis tendencies, along with certain retarded things like framerate locks, mouse acceleration etc.
The reason the game is getting completely shat on by user reviews are partly because of the above, but also because the game was hyped beyond belief before release to the point where it could only ever disappoint.
Besides, the only ones really taking the time to do reviews are the people who are raging. Given the amount of sales they've had, and number of concurrent players on Steam, it'd appear the reasonable and satisfied users are more busy playing the game than shitposting.
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I heard that New Vegas was something else entirely though.
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Good points... and Steam did show about 300000 in game when I went to compare the ratings a short while back.
One thing I did like about NV over FO3 was how the Super Mutants got a bit of their humanity back, and it captured a little of the 'society rebuilds' that I remember from the older FO titles.
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Yeah, NV was more Post-apocalyptic Western rather than Post-apocalyptic Hellscape, and the writing was far more solid. Still, better story-telling is not the same as better roleplaying. NV was not much different from FO3 in that regard.
If we ignore the UI design and technical aspects, I'd say that the only complaint I'd actually lend my ear to would be a subjective one, namely that the map is too densely packed. Whether this is due to limitations on other platforms or if it's a conscious design choice, I don't know, but while you can still wander all over the place and spend a lot of time doing so you will be stumbling on things constantly rather than "wandering the wastes" like in the predecessors.
This is both a good and a bad thing, and I'm honestly not entirely sure where I land on that scale.
Oh, and one more thing I do somewhat miss from NV: Ammo crafting. Maybe it's in there somewhere and I just haven't found it, but where I could sacrifice ammo amount for better ammo through crafting in NV, here a shotgun shell is just a shotgun shell, with no differences between them. This is obviously offset by an extremely better and more complex item customization mechanic (weapons, armor and even chemical crafting where you can create, combine and do whimsical things with chems and explosives), but I still miss it a bit.
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Things still feel pretty spread out for me, but then I go full immersion and literally walk everywhere, so otherwise short distances feel very long.
And yeah, crafting ammo would be nice. I love the crafting system otherwise though. I'm getting really attached to my weapons. Even after replacing the double-barrel shotgun I've been using for like 15 levels with a combat shotgun, I didn't have the heart to sell/scrap my original.
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One different thing from the other games, enemies are actually a threat. Even the humble raiders can fuck you up badly if you screw up. Ammo is scarcer and stimpaks work as they should (timed regen, not instant) so you have to balance ammo use across different weapons and for the first time in a very long time, I've actually scouted a location and gone "nope, not yet".
... also, a Suddenly Deathclaw at night is a seriously pants-pissingly scary moment.
Ghouls are actually somewhat frightening the way they run, dodge and lunge now. Hell, they're like extra strong rage infected. Suddenly that corpse turns out not to be a corpse, or a cellar window bursts open to reveal a ghoul wriggling in to try and chew on your trachea a little bit.
Mirelurks fucked me bad, just two of them, early on. Dogs can be dangerous as hell too.
There's no doubt to me that the game as a game has improved immensely over the predecessors, once they unfuck the UI with mods.
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One different thing from the other games, enemies are actually a threat. Even the humble raiders can fuck you up badly if you screw up. Ammo is scarcer and stimpaks work as they should (timed regen, not instant) so you have to balance ammo use across different weapons and for the first time in a very long time, I've actually scouted a location and gone "nope, not yet".
... also, a Suddenly Deathclaw at night is a seriously pants-pissingly scary moment.
Ghouls are actually somewhat frightening the way they run, dodge and lunge now. Hell, they're like extra strong rage infected. Suddenly that corpse turns out not to be a corpse, or a cellar window bursts open to reveal a ghoul wriggling in to try and chew on your trachea a little bit.
Mirelurks fucked me bad, just two of them, early on. Dogs can be dangerous as hell too.
There's no doubt to me that the game as a game has improved immensely over the predecessors, once they unfuck the UI with mods.
Okay, now I'm tempted.
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One caveat to that. Enemies are way more grenade happy, which ups the difficulty but also can be... weird, depending on where you're fighting at the time.
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I read that the AI is very basic... I mean, people complained. Is that a bother, or just not really incidental (or just flat out wrong)?
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AI isn't all that basic that I've noticed. I've found it quite good. I have died many, many times due to being flanked, grenaded, ambushed, and so on. They're also feel much more aware of stealthing players than the silliness of previous Bethesda games.
As Miz said, even raiders will fuck you up late in the game. Particularly with grenades, and mines. (speaking of grenades and mines, they actually feel very immersive. A grenade or mine exploding beneath you means you're death animation is going to be a leg or two blowing off, just like one would expect from stepping on a mine).
Also yes, Mizhara. I shrieked the first time a ghoul corpse got up next to me, and they still scare the hell out of me when they start creeping up on you from places you thought you had cleared. They're the main reason I've stuck with a shotgun as my primary weapon, since pistols and rifles really did not cut it in the beginning of the game when I first encountered them. And yeah, their animations are really awesome.
This is my favorite Bethesda game so far.
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Basic... kind of. Compared to actual First Person Shooters it's kind of basic, but for open-world games? Kind of decent. I've been flushed out with 'nades, flanked, hunted down by search parties when not being quite as stealthy as I thought I was and so on. It's basic, but functional. Their movement in combat is much much much better than before, as they'll seek cover or dodge etc. Oh, and shoot from cover, leaning around corners and such.
I've seen much better AI and enemy behaviour in bespoke FPS games, and in -some- hybrids like the latest Deus Ex, but never in an open world RPG like this.
Edit: Samira, early on (or without a shotgun) you really want to get headshots on Ghouls. Keeping your nerves in check and lining up good shots saved me more than spray and pray when they're massing or lunging. Of course, if you've got the ammo for it, the combat shotgun kind of renders them trivial. Expensive slaughter, but slaughter nonetheless.
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Screw it. Purchased. With season pass for the DLC.
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Just make sure you pick up anything and everything that'll count as or refine into adhesive. Duct tape, wonderglue, anything and everything. Also, veggies, since you can make starch with that stuff which in turn can be used as adhesive.
Fuckin' everything you make needs it. It's the most needed crafting material out there, I swear.
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Until you start running out of screws.
Or ceramic.
Or anything.
Every time I put search on for a component I needed, I end up running out of a different one by the time I get enough of the other one. Hrng.
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I've never ran out of any of those things before I run out of adhesives. I did pick that scrapping or scavenging or whatever it was called perk that gives me more rare stuff when I scrap early on, so screws etc are very easy to come by just from scrapping weapons I pick up. Ceramics and such, I just went into construction mode and scrapped damn near everything in Sanctuary (broken houses, everything inside whole houses and such) and I've still yet to run out of the basics.
Funnily enough, after posting that last post, I saw a loading tip telling me to always look for adhesives as it was used in almost everything and rarest to find.
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Adhesives is the most needed for item crafting, along with screws. I did run out of adhesives earlier but I've had it on my Search selection for at least ten levels now so I have a good stock. Screws I've found hard because I don't have the 'get screws when breaking down weapons' perk and items that typically have screws are often relatively heavy and I can only hold so much with strength 1 + limited fast traveling.
Ceramic you start running out of when you really focus on settlement building.
Also, some screenies.
Wasteland Sami:
[spoiler](http://i.imgur.com/5OVFrxh.png)[/spoiler]
WIP Sanctuary bridge fort.
[spoiler](http://i.imgur.com/KG5G7Mw.png)
(http://i.imgur.com/t515MCg.png)[/spoiler]
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Spent so long in the character creation menu. I crafted myself a perfect survivor with a backstory and everything, reflected in her looks. Then about thirty minutes into the game, she looked pretty much like this and have pretty much stuck with it other than upgrading and modding the armor pieces on her to Shadowed/Pocketed.
[spoiler](https://i.imgur.com/Zu8RnUR.png)[/spoiler]
Time well spent.
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Such raider
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Such raider survivor
ftfy
My survivor is a sneaky sharpshooter. A ghost of the wasteland. Anything that survives as she passes by never saw or heard her. No one knows her face and one day when the wastelands have been transformed by the actions of this lone survivor, she will disappear simply by taking off her mask and there'll be one more settler somewhere living out her days with her dog.
Occasionally though, as new threats arise to threaten the wastes, the Ghost will deal with that and spawn new stories and whispered rumors.
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Sneaky shooting best shooting.
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Especially with a few perks adding to the crit multiplier, as well as damage percentage to the weapon. Headshots get stupidly powerful.
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A mod that will replace the conversation system to a usable function, showing what you're saying etc. (http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/1235/?)
Eight days after release.
Modders, you guys are fucking awesome.
Edit: I put a direct link to the mod instead of a discussion thread about it.
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Biggest tech advance in this game over the previous iterations in the engine is the view from up high. Holy heck. Get to the top of that Genetic Engineering place in Cambridge and look out over Boston - it's incredible.
Biggest art direction advance, for me, would be the increase in vegetation and colour. Boston is every bit as fucked up as Arizona or Washington, but the Capital Wasteland was terrible for looking like the fires stopped like, a year ago - tops. Boston looks like it's had time to recover - albeit at a lower level of diversity and fertility than before. Still not where things WOULD be after two centuries, I think, but it looks more alive and more familiar than the Capital Wasteland ever did.
Innovations:-
1. Buildable settlements. I feel like this is the biggest candidate for further development with Mods/DLC. Right now the system is just not as developed as it could be and that's a great niche for a "Hearth and Home" style development pack. More styles. More variants. Certainly more themes. I'd love to see a style of building where you actually forge new materials and use them to produce new looking structures, for example.
2. Roleplaying opportunities. Needs more factions, more companions and a greater depth of complexity in relationships. You can already task settlement inhabitants - why not have said inhabitants be more individualistic? Right now it doesn't matter who does what, where. It should - and you should have a more flexible management system than leading people by the hand to whichever job you want them to do - and more flexibility to managing your group of settlements as a whole. Another DLC?
3. More territory. More adventures. With the current density of unique encounters in FO4, it is going to be difficult to shoehorn content into the existing map - so we'll need to expand that map, probably. FO3 did with The Pit and that one set down the river, so we can probably expect that, too?
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Yeah, ignoring UI issues and some tech issues that I've gone over ad nauseum FO4 certainly did raise the bar quite a bit otherwise, but I wouldn't call them innovations. They're iterative improvements on what we've seen before in previous Bethesda games, which in turn tends to be things modders added in previous games. Building homes and such was fairly quickly modded into the games, so Skyrim got a DLC for it, which in turn became a full thing in FO4.
As for roleplaying opportunities, they actually lowered them compared to previous outings. I'm a bit disappointed by the way they handled factions and how to interact with them, and how interacting with them affects how you deal with other factions. Followers reacting a bit to what you do is a good thing, but not innovative either as that happened already back in the previous Fallout outings.
One thing they did make all new (as far as I know) is how interior cells now interact with exterior cells. If it rains or there's a radstorm or something in an outside cell, and you're in an interior cell in that area, rain and thunder and even lightning flashes will occur in the interior cell as well. It'll even rain through holes in the roofs etc. You can even hear combat going on outside (or inside if you're outside) if NPCs are going at it near you. I'm not sure how much work that took, getting that ancient and endlessly hacked together engine to do these things, but I'm impressed. It's one of those little touches that takes a lot of work, and aren't at all necessary but just makes you nod in appreciation with a little smile as radstorms practically shake the building you're inside.
There's even rain occlusion in the exterior cells, letting roofs keep the rain off. Just a little pity the "you're wet because rain" shader still applies.
The various fog and environmental effects are also top notch. It's remarkable how much every area can change immensely based on the weather you're in. I haven't seen confirmation of it yet, but I've also heard there's an actual weather system in place where various weather (storms, fog, radstorms, rain, etc) actually moves across the map in patterns. Radstorms for instance supposedly are "born" in the Glowing Sea and move outwards throughout the Boston Wastelands. Take that as the rumor it is, until you see confirmation somewhere, but in my experience it might very well be true.
Edit: I am slightly miffed by the performance impact of some effects in urban areas. Go into the cities when there's some fog and god rays and you can see a steady framerate-locked 60 go all the way down to 30, depending on what you're facing. And this is with a gaming system that's pretty much top of the line. The game doesn't look -that- good that it justifies 30 or below on systems like mine. It seems to be well optimized most of the time, but these... less impressive bits are a bit vexing.
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Huge list of mods (https://www.reddit.com/r/Fallout/comments/3tygf8/fallout_4_mods_to_improve_your_experience_as_of/) for FO4, in various categories from graphics/visual improvements, through quality of life stuff, settlement building and more. I'm quite impressed with this list and will be having some fun with a lot of these.
To no one's great surprise, a Bethesda game is being taken from good to excellent by the modders.
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Apparently they put the Cheers bar in the game. Guess I know one landmark I'll recognize when I walk past it eventually.
Used to make my mom drive us past it all the time when I'd go into work with her when I was little.
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Huh, didn't know that. I may even have been there and not realized.
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It's called "Prost Bar" or something similar I think. Don't have the imgur album on hand atm.
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I'll look it up later. I'm currently binging Blizz games, after my second LotV playthrough. Turns out I -can- like mobas, if they're Heroes of the Storm where they've taken out a lot of the derp mechanics of other mobas (last hitting, etc) and polished the rest to a mirror finish. No idea if it'll have staying power, as I kind of hate the monetizing model. Just let me buy a god damn game, guys. I'll pay forty to sixty bucks, euro, pounds or dollarydoos, whatever, for a game and I'll happily play it. I'll even add some more money to your bank accounts if I find skins or other vanity stuff I like enough (and I like your game enough). Making me either grind my ass off for ages -or- pay the equivalent of between three and ten full releases to have all the content gives me the bleeding shits.
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Well ... after leveling one character to 50 and another (better) one on the rise, I think I'm ready to render a verdict.
Pretty damn good game.
A few general thoughts:
* No VATS grenade-hucking! BOO HISS! (I've also been finding explosives underpowered, generally.)
* Survival mode, theoretically super-hard, is too easy. It starts off really rough, but if you have any meaningful synchronicity among your perks it gets way easier in a hurry. Admittedly, that's with a stealth build running solo so that I don't have any allies to screw it up for me.
* On the subject of perks: certain builds are horrifically unbalanced. I've been running a stealth gunslinger type with the Deliverer, the Railroad's unique 10mm silenced pistol, and the little thing one-shots most targets (the Sandman perk is a must if you use silenced guns-- it's how you build up stealth gun headshots to be a match for stealth melee). What it doesn't one-shot, it minces with multiple sneak attacks. If you take Concentrated Fire, you can build even a 1% hit chance (due to distance, not cover) into an easy kill by burning the better part of a clip downrange. It is now the only weapon I bother to carry. You can do much the same thing with a silenced, VATS-enhanced tactical hunting rifle; just optimize for VATS efficiency and save that blingy marksman stock for the rifle you actually snipe with.
* The Penetrator perk is initially disappointing (I briefly got the idea that it just plain didn't work) until you realize that while it doesn't just let you shoot through walls or even a few things it seems like you should, what it does let you do is horrifying. Like, line up enemies, aim a headshot at the last in line, and watch everybody keel over. Or casually blow the usually nigh-unhittable fusion power core on a sentry bot with a single pistol shot. Or blow the face plate off a mirelurk from behind.
* The enemy burrowing/teleport/instant detection mechanic: awesome and fun when mole rats do it (pistol-based whack-a-mole!). Horrifying (at first, good), then frustrating (bad) when legendary albino radscorpions do it.
Having something fragile able to pull those kinds of shenanigans is one thing; an armored melee nightmare that I can't get out of melee with is something else again. It's pretty cool having something that makes me actively look for a rock to stand on, but less cool when the damn thing shows decidedly super-arthropod intelligence by realizing that it can't reach me, I can hurt it, and therefore it should hide until I set one goddamn foot down on soft, diggable ground again.
Add the Legendary instant-regeneration ability and you've got a seriously problematic critter. This is the sole exception I've encountered to survival mode being too easy.
* I wanted a New Vegas-style survival mode, but that would get pretty pointless with all the homesteading you end up doing.
About that:
* I initially didn't give a damn, but it does do a fine job of making me feel invested in the game. Local Leader is damn near mandatory and (therefore) should be MUCH easier to acquire.
* Expanding settlements as fast as Preston wants you to is actually a bad idea. Better to take it slow and fortify things properly as you go.
* Missile turrets: So. Worth. It.
* ... On which note, I wish the silly system wouldn't keep giving me "help defend" objectives and doing HORRIBLE things to my settlements if I don't show up, considering that showing up usually means standing there and twiddling my thumbs while listening to raiders dying in volleys of rocket fire. I know it's not set up to properly run battles in my absence, but low level enemies against even one missile turret is a slaughter. So far even combat armored Gunners get reliably dismembered.
On the plot:
I've seen some complaints about the lack of a karma system and factions (outside the raiders, supermutants, and other always-hostile "hazard" factions) you really want to kill. Essentially everybody you can side with has some good points, some bad points, and some good people working for them. However, the factions are at loggerheads and at least one, probably two, will just have to go ... meaning, everybody dies, including people you like.
I actually like this change. Considering the game's "war ... war never changes" postapocalyptic theme, the good-versus-evil structure was always inherently hypocritical. You can't very well go make a story about the tragic aftermath of nuclear war and then make it "okay" to (often literally) nuke all the bad people. Ultimately, a lot of who you end up siding with, whom you define as "good" or as "evil," depends on your beliefs about some pretty arguable and complicated issues, not on who's nice and who isn't.
If you take sides sufficiently to see it through to the end, people who probably don't deserve it, who might even be your friends, will die. Too bad. That's war, and war never changes.
Right on. Well goddamn done, Bethesda.
For the record, I ended up siding with the Institute for my first playthrough. The Railroad has a point about respect for sapient life and the Brotherhood's probably not wrong about technological hubris, but I'm NOT about to blow the Commonwealth's equivalent of Isaac Asimov's Foundation to perdition just because the rest of the Commonwealth is scared of them.
... even if they do have an unfortunate habit of trying to strip the Commonwealth for parts.
... and they forgot to institute all three Laws of Robotics.
... and they haven't quite worked out that there's no meaningful difference between people they've created and people they didn't create-- there are definite signs that they're picking up on that, though.
... and there's that whole doppelganger program they've got going.
Okay, so they're legitimately scary. I'm still not about to just kill them all. Besides, that teleporter is really useful for saving time on settlement defense.
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The fact that you become the leader of the Institute if you join them basically completely nullifies the Railroad's point. It's not given as an option in the game, but there would theoretically be nothing stopping you from deciding to give more freedoms to the synths once you take over. Same thing with the other bad points (like deposing people to install infiltrators).
So yeah, Institute is the bunch I went with. It overall seems to have the best intentions in mind, and its major bad points are stuff you realistically wouldn't have to settle with once you become boss. Changing the system from within is always better than nuking it.
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The fact that you become the leader of the Institute if you join them basically completely nullifies the Railroad's point. It's not given as an option in the game, but there would theoretically be nothing stopping you from deciding to give more freedoms to the synths once you take over. Same thing with the other bad points (like deposing people to install infiltrators).
So yeah, Institute is the bunch I went with. It overall seems to have the best intentions in mind, and its major bad points are stuff you realistically wouldn't have to settle with once you become boss. Changing the system from within is always better than nuking it.
Concur, but I also note that the Institute is one faction where you wouldn't realistically be able to just change policy by fiat. You're the Director, but the board isn't just a board of advisers.
My ultimate concerns with the Institute, such as they are, relate more to their approach to the wasteland than their treatment of synths. Even leaving the doppelgangers aside, they've basically (per Father, that speech you give over the radio, and certain missions) given up on the surface, which means they're free to use it as a laboratory (GMO melons, anyone?) and resource cache. Their approach to wastelanders reminds me a lot of how the Caldari approach Nonentities: "I don't really mean you any harm, but you're not useful. Just stay out of my way if you don't want to get hurt."
They may not plan on making the surface world "cease to exist," themselves, whatever Tinker Tom's suspicions, but they certainly don't put any effort into preserving it. What they want, they mostly just take, and gen 1 synths in the wasteland operate weapons-free by default.
All that said, once I set up a savegame in proximity to all the various faction endings so I can see them all and check-list them off my trophy collection, my current character will also probably side with the Institute. [spoiler]Even with everything I've said, and everything she's gone through, I can't see my character killing her own son, even if he's dying, older than she is, and a wee bit morally compromised.[/spoiler]
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It's a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Everyone is using it as a resource cache, because that's the only way you can survive.
"I don't really mean you any harm, but you're not useful. Just stay out of my way if you don't want to get hurt." is, IMO, the rule of the wasteland. The only case where that's different is with raiders, because raiders do mean people harm. In a post-apocalyptic setting, everyone is a scavenger.
Also, they are seeking to preserve it. It's just, preservation to them is a matter of repairing the damage, not just accepting the irradiated husk that is left.
[spoiler]And yes, for mine, the Institute's goals were really rather secondary to A) finding her son, and B) being the safest, most secure, most advanced place left on Earth. She wasn't a soldier, or a freedom fighter, or a policewoman, or a mayor. She found what she had been looking for, in the most livable place left in the wasteland, so no reason to leave it. What negatives there were are ones that can be corrected with time.[/spoiler]
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Yeah, that's the counter-argument I make in my own head.
The counter-counter argument is that most people other than Raiders and the Institute don't displace or kill the current residents in order to get what they want. That, however, (counter-counter-counter) might be more to do with who's been in charge when than any pervasive Institutional attitude.
[spoiler]The initial head of Synth Retention was enough of an obvious problem that I had no problem whatsoever with framing him for a bunch of synth escapes to make sure the Institute was rid of him. In fact, the story the true malefactor/benefactor came up with for the frameup job was one I suspected from the start, and was disappointed to learn I was wrong.
Apparently I'm not over-burdened with moral qualms when it comes to producing the right outcome.[/spoiler]