Fallout 4 - Prepare thyselves

http://waterfordwhispersnews.com/20...ays-with-husband-before-release-of-fallout-4/

 

LOL! Great article. I don't recall ever playing any of the Fallout games although I always thought they looked liked they would be fun.

 

I preordered long time ago. I am prepared.

 

My wife is going to visit her father for a week at the same time. Just a lucky coincidence.

 

Make sure you also pick up some Nuka Cola to go with it

http://www.polygon.com/2015/10/29/9639824/fallout-4-nuka-cola-quantum-target-jones-soda

 

Also related to actual game development I still refer to this article that is a couple years old by Bethesda on how they built Skyrim and their other open world games. I think it is a great resource on open world and modular reuse and shows one way of doing it that obviously works for them.

http://blog.joelburgess.com/2013/04/skyrims-modular-level-design-gdc-2013.html

 

I certainly wouldn't take any QA advice from them though. It's a good thing their games are great fun because they're also always horribly buggy

 

Agreed, but I think that goes hand in hand with large openworld games in general.

 

True, but Bethesda seems to be especially prone to it. I've not seen near the issues with Witcher 3 for example. But, the Fallout series is far more fun.

 

Fortunately their fanbase seems very willing to patch their games for them. If I weren't so eager to play I would be tempted to hold off until the unofficial patch mods have matured.

 

I've been explaining this to all my friends and my wife for months now.

It's coming.

 

It was really nice knowing all the real people I've met so far. But I have a virtual dog now.

 

Yup, see you in a couple of months Aurore.. It's been a pleasure..

It's going to be hilarious in the office:

> So what have you been doing today?
> Well I just made this building....
> That's a rectangle.
> Well let me get back to playing Fallout for some inspiration then...
> Umm yeah "inspiration"..

 

I never used my NPC in Fallout 3. I just got the dog and I left him in my house while I spent days collecting garden gnomes (and an entire garden gnome chess set). Only thing is, often times I'd come back to my house and all of the gnomes I nicely placed everywhere would be all over hell. And the dog would be standing there waiting for me... I swear it must have been his mission in life to completely wreck my feng shui every time I left the place.

 

I recommend fallout 2. I fondly remember mordino casino shootout.

 

Same. Bethesda's past NPCs simply got in the way. It'll be interesting to see if Fallout 4's will be worth using.

 

They often were great at tanking damage though.

 

Can't wait to see all the bugs, reminds me that we're only human and game development isn't easy.

 

For me, Fallout 1 is the best Fallout. Fallout 2 took itself a bit too less serious, had a bit too many pop culture references etc IMO. Not saying Fallout 2 wasn't awesome, just not as awesome
But for new players, the old Fallouts might be too dated (or not, have a 15 year old cousin who recently played both Fallout 1 and 2 and she loved them) and then I'd highly recommend Fallout: New Vegas over Fallout 3. New Vegas feels a lot more 'Fallout-y' than Fallout 3.

 

If I got any it'd be #1. I'd probably like that one more than 3 or 4 unless they are atypical AAA.

 

Tactics and 3 were the only ones I was ever really into. Never got into the others.

 

I'm playing Wasteland 2 Director's Cut right now and it's more Fallout-y than either of the two newer ones. Highly recommend to anyone who hasn't played it and needs a fix to get you through the next week.

 

As they say, to each its own. I started with Fallout 2 then played Fallout 1 and found Fallout 1 less interesting. I think humor made Fallout 2 more interesting. It was black comedy kind of humor, and it felt just about right for the settings. Fallout 1 felt kinda bland in comparison. Wasteland 2 kinda tried to do the same kind of atmosphere, but without much of success - it looks sillier, not sure why. There might be nostalgia glasses involved.

That's true. Some of the area of the new vegas strongly resemble maps from new reno, for example. Fallout 3 also is unsupported on windows 7 and requires voodoo to make it run without issues.

Also when the game is good, people generally will enjoy it, once they get used to graphics.

I tried to play that one multiple times and didn't get into it. Some components that made things fun for me is amiss. In Fo2 your character was a gal/dude in power armor, driving around wasteland in junk car in a company of his/her trusty gauss rifle and cyber dog, hunting supermutants and manamigoes. The world was dried and mostly dead with exception of few cities. Wasteland 2 has some sort of rural or even rednecky feeling about it. I guess the atmosphere wasn't quite right for me or something.

 

Odd because I never had any real problems with Fallout 3 on Windows 7. It would occasionally crash due to a long playing session (6 to 8 hours) but that holds true for practically any of Bethesda's games. Skyrim would be one of the exceptions as the engine for that was remarkably stable.

 

I have never played Fallout. But then again, I don't play many games like that anyways. I think the graphics look good, but games like that don't interest me hardly at all.

 

You got lucky.

I have a friend that wasted that wasted a lot of time trying to make it thing run without issues, and he's pretty much in power user category. There's big warning about Win7 incompatibility on fallout 3 steam's store page, and it is there for a good reason.

For example:
http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2825612
http://help.bethesda.net/app/answers/detail/a_id/9977/~/what-should-i-do-if-fallout-3-does-not-work-with-my-windows-7/8-machine?

New vegas, though, shouldn't cause any issue, as far as I know.

 

Fallout 4 and Rise Of The Tomb Raider - same day release (at least in Australia). It's like every Christmas, all at once.

 

Games always seem to be sensitive to certain configurations. I know Oblivion hated my computer for a long time and I'm fairly certain it was my AMD Phenom II X3 I was using at the time because when I eventually migrated to a newer system the problem went away and the only real difference was I upgraded to an AMD Phenom II X4.

 

Why choose? I really want to play both, but I preordered Fallout 4, so I'm going to wait to play Rise of the Tombraider.

 

Never got into this fallout thing.

 

I have both pre-ordered for launch day delivery to my office

 

The best place to play!

 

Got my pre-order, just a few more things to do before I'm ready...

 

Trust me, Fallout 3 (and New Vegas) are far from typical AAA. The voice acting is crap (say, compared to Naughty Dog), the graphics are average, and the game mechanics are kind of dated, yet Fallout 3 is my all-time fave game on any platform. Because the words, the stories - they’re just so original and so well-written. And it’s a massive open world where you may never even hear most of those stories by the time you’ve finished the game.

Take something like Vault 11 from New Vegas: it’s optional, and you may never even run across it until your third or fourth playthrough…but the story is a mind@#$%, and you could make a wildly original and engaging full-length movie just around the story of that one vault alone.

Six days to go!!! My family were warned months ago.

War. War never changes…

 

I just want to set the world on fiiiii-rrrre.

 

I gotta say that Fallout 3 main quest had that annoying "heroic" atmosphere present in it, it was similar to what I saw in, say, last single player Modern Warfare game I played (IIRC that was mw4). It felt really silly most of the time (especially with that

Spoiler

obligatody self-sactifice in the end

that was present in first versions of the game, or that part of the game where you

Spoiler

were captured via unavoidable cutscene

), and it was a step back from Fallout 2. The side quests though - those were really great. New vegas had atmosphere that was much closer to fallout 2.

 

No problem - I'll help out and play it for you - send me your copy and also your ps4 - it'll be like the gold farmers in Wow, but I won't require payment. Then you can focus on the job and the books and I'll give you updates every evening.

I was the same James (never really was a fps fan), I was more into the fantasy stuff Bethesda put out, but after reading how much rpg elements were implemented into the game (fallout 3) I found a new copy on sale and picked it up. Then it sat on my stack for about a month until I finally checked it out.
I think I played for like 10 days straight, and "was sick" for a couple of those.
Later I played 1 & 2, but never played New Vegas - when it came out, I was pretty spent on Fallout at the time, and New Vegas didn't visually improve over 3 very much.
I might have to talk Santa to putting an extra package under the tree this year - along side Witcher3. I know I lag behind the normal release schedule, but can't seem put down Unity and 3D Max long enough to get any good gaming in. Priorities!

 

Is your computer prepared though?

https://bethesda.net/#en/events/game/the-graphics-technology-of-fallout-4/2015/11/04/45

 

Mine certainly is, but I preordered for Xbox One.

 

Anyone else thinking their CPU requirements are exaggerated?

I have an i5-3450 and of all games I've played - none of them have truly utilized 100% of it. The 'bottleneck' have always been the GPU (esp. before when I had an old Radeon HD card).

Although if I recall correctly, Skyrims CPU requirements were also quite high at the time of release - and the game could be played on lower CPUs.

 

I can't help but feel like they are exaggerating, but at the same time I don't know how the latest console generation compares to personal computers in the processor department. Remember Skyrim was limited to the previous generation which for the PlayStation was difficult to work with.

 

I've always played it on PC but considering going PS4 for this - roughly the same experience?

 

Weren't they trying to get modding support onto the PS4? Can't imagine it'll support any mods that need a script extender but beyond that I don't think you'll see much of a difference aside from the controls.

 

So the campus I work at is having a Fallout 4 release party with prizes, snacks, and Rockstar.

Yeah, took me a minute too. Rockstar Energy drink NOT Rockstar games

 

Steam has started allowing you to pre-load the game. I'm almost up to one-tenth of the 24GB download.

 

Oo... I wonder if xbox one preloads are available yet. They said I'd be able to download it early.

 

It depends on your luck and bethesda's technical decisions. They had a history of breaking PS3 oblivion port, if I remember correctly.

Maybe you'll get superior experience, maybe you'll get inferior. My friend played Witcher 3 on PS4 and said that saving process takes forever there, while you can quicksave on PC any time you want. However, on the same PS4 loading screens in Dragon Age: Inquisition take few seconds, while I have enough time to read every single single hint displayed on my PC.

Also, there was Arkham Knight release disaster.

The thing is, IIRC modern consoles (PS4/XBO) has that feature where they share GPU and CPU memory. That feature is not present on PC by default, and can be a source of huge performance hit. So, as long as the devs don't rely on something like this, you are probably fine. Then again, it is bethesda, so they probably treat PC as their primary platform. Another thing is, it is bethesda game, so it will have loads of bugs, and you can't bring up cheat "console" on PS4.

So, with all that in mind, If I were you, I'd go with PC version.

Afaik the only situations when multicore CPU gets fully utilized is fluid simulation, rendering anything with photon mapping and unity's Enlighten baking.