How Fallout 3 was, I would wait for a little bit before going for Fallout 4. For me personally, F3 was kind of a bland experience all over, I was actually surprised that I was bored playing the game. I did try it a year ago or so with game-fixing mods and so on but eventually I got still the same reaction; bored. For some reason the game just did not sit with me, same with Fallout: New Vegas.

I'll be sure to keep an eye to Fallout 4 but not going to buy it right away. From what I have seen so far of the game, seems very much like Fallout 3 (except that the main character seems to be voice-acted this time) and does not exactly tickle my fancy.

So I'd say wait and see, if it is worth it. That's what I'm going to do.

It's likely to be a good game, at least in a GTA V kind of sense; Bethesda now has more money than they know what to do with.

As far as the old Fallout player in me goes, I've long since divorced 3 and 4 from 1,2 and NV

Well, I did get Fallout 4 when it came out. I loved the game. And I am still playing it, even after the ending. I have 72 hours of gameplay, and 32 hours on the previous Fallout New Vegas.

I'm glad you're liking it. Sadly, for me it was completely different story, but again, I've been playing Fallouts since first one.
While I'm not saying "kill it with fire", but for my nearly three decades long gaming history, that's second game I request refund for. :D

Fallout 4 is going to divide people rather sharply to those who love it and those who hate it.
Played it for 2 months, loved it.

The bad.

Main story is bad. Not Fallout 3 bad, but still bad. Has great moments but also embarrassinly stupid plot failures.

The game is littered with little bugs, ranging from hilarious (like a traders cow stuck in the roof or bathroom of my base, or my companion suddenly spreading her arms and hovering around) to plot breaking (where NPC appears in unreachable position). The main quest works though, and finishing all sidequests with any given character is not likely to happen anyway.

The simultaneously good and bad.

Establishing and maintaining settlements, base building.
There's very little instruction to how the build system works, how to draw powerlines so the buildings have lights and stuff like that. How do you assign workers to gather crops or be guards. Takes a lot of work.
But I rather liked it, building towers, setting supply lines, all fun stuff.

The good.
Companions are well made and there's enough of them, the world is well built, both world and companions are IMO better than in any previous fallout. Some of the sidequests are good, parts of the main quest is good. There's 4 joinable factions, none of which are "evil" as such (though one of them is clearly "good")

Out of curiousity, did you used the unofficial patch? (http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout3/mods/19122/? ) Complain to Bethesda, no fix available.

No, no fan patches nor mods. I think not even the last patch by Bethesda. Will try if I ever play it again.

My copy had Games for Windows - LIVE, urrrgh.

Its like people are just so ignorant of history, and expects Bethesda to change after selling millions of copies of games consistently. "Fool me once shame on you, Fool me twice shame on me"

Unless one is looking for technical problems in Fallout 4, that's the only way to spoil the experience.

Otherwise, Fallout 4 is a huge success. I remember when I first saw the original Fallout packaging on the retail shelves, the game didn't exactly grab me at all. Fast forward on the timeline to today and Fallout 4 on the retail shelves has a completely opposite effect...

--- it's a hit!

:)

Is it worth it? Is cancer worth it?

Fallout 4 surprised me with its absolutely horrendous "fuck you customers" attitude. I was aware that it will be universally downgraded and declined even compared to batshit bad Fallout 3. But even Fallout 3 had enough meat and possibilities in its bowels that enabled New Vegas to be a good game on its own (except the awful gamebryo engine of course). There's a good reason that Bethesda completely ignores New Vegas and behaves like it doesn't exist. Because they're aware of how they've been outclassed by a sub-par studio that barely makes any games in their own game.
Fallout 4 looks and plays like a shovelware unity game sold in a bargain bin.

The 2001's gamebryo engine wasn't enough in 2015 and the purge of anything worthwile in the code copy-pasted in big chunks from Skyrim won't enable the New Vegas 2. What's left? A sub-par open-world shooter with the world, characters and plots written by neanderthals, that obviously didn't give a crap about the results. They knew that a multi-million advertisement company and cringe-worthy events aimed at autistic teen masses were more than enough to guarantee sales figures.
The game is a Bethesda gamebryo game X stripped from anything else worthwile. You walk and collect junk for the sole purpose of collecting junk and you constantly run backwards shooting your typical Bethesda HP bloats. That's the game. Occasionally, you will run forwards into mobs abusing the fuck out of vats system hitting melee criticals when the bar fills up (what in the actual the fuck?). How the fuck this clusterfuck was possibly released, when while wearing power armour and handling a two handed hammer, the hammer is two handed in the first person camera mode, but turns into one handed hammer if you switch to the third person camera mode? What the fuck? This pile of shit would be universally shat on by everyone out there, because its quality is shit even for modern AAA+ titles, if it wasn't called "FALLOUT OMG" and not multi-million advertisements and events with random celebrities that had no fucking clue what Fallout franchise is. Do you remember that promotional event? Random teen celebrities who were pointlessly bumping from the walls asking when the "Pip-boy guy will give that concert already?".
Hey, you have "settlement building" omg! A feature that was implemented only to force masses of Minecraft and other survival autism simulators players to buy this game. Holy crap this feature is bad and clearly shows how it was put together in Construction Set, which wasn't made for such things. Hope you enjoy your dumb mumbling settlers taking your power armors and sleeping in your bed, while you fulfill your american dream of owning a plantation and slave labour force. A typical busy-work of autism-gameplay mechanics millions of people worldwide waste their time in various Rusts, Arks and minecrafts with absolutely no impact whatsoever. You put few blocks and items together and voila, what a fucking achievement and innovation. Now enter the next dungeon and run backwards shooting your laser musket at that orc - I mean - supermutant.
There's absolutely no substance to this title and nothing will be added to the experience, but more settlement shit and loverslab mods.

The Vault tec salesman's notepad is an item - shield, by default of gamebryo engine's Construction Set tool. After the suicide thoughts-inducing intro scenes, where the salesman closes the door, the notepad is given a default shield animation from gamebryo's The Elder Scrolls games and is teleported to stick to his wrist.

I can only by mildly content with a lot of people realising the decade old already scam scheme Bethesda operates by. 2015 was already almost too late to pull that shit again. The sales were there, guaranteed by survival-autism crowds. But The Elder Scrolls 6, which sure as fuck will be another gamebryo copy-paste Bethesda game, only with less features, won't make it. Can't wait for VATS references in Elder Scroll's 6 ini files, though.

Fuck this game, really. While Fallout 3 was fun to laugh at and play through to see how retarded it was, and New Vegas was just a good game on its own on a shit engine, Fallout 4 is just insulting and a bottom line of quality.

Oh, and one more comment...

Including the dog companion was absolutely genius!

:)

Gamers & spectators alike were really impressed that the dog really behaved like its real-world counterpart.

:)

Your post may not be eloquent, but I found myself agreeing with every point still.

On the subject of the specific part I quoted, I think every Unity title I'm aware of has this really awkward cobbled together feel to them. Even Wasteland 2 plays like a turd and I'm sure that sentiment is going to earn me a lot of enemies around here. You used the word autism, but I'd rather just call it hipster garbage.

so.... I'll just explain my experience. Nothing but facts as I've experienced the game. Use it as you see fit in making your decisions.

I've only experienced 2 bugs. 1 is strictly cosmetic. With an NVidia gfx card and the latest drivers, my face texture gets messed up on occasion. I can simply quicksave and reload to fix it, but it comes back randomly on other reloads. This is only an issue when talking to others in 3rd person. So its not only cosmetic, but also manually fixable. Would love to see this fixed (I have submitted a detailed bug report since beta 3 patch did not fix it).

The other bug is more frustrating, but it also has a work around. If you are working on the settlement happiness achievement (which many don't care about), you can't leave your settlement until done as the people will turn angry as soon as you leave. They already applied a minor fix to this issue, but it didn't solve the problem 100% (although it did help). The simple work around is to wait until you really want to work on your settlement and do it all at once. As long as you don't leave town, the happiness meter works fine.

At level 50 with 155 hours of gametime under my belt, I've yet to see another bug.

The game does a poor job of communicating with the player (you). For instance, the people complaining about the quests simply don't know they are performing radial and endlessly repeating quests. Those quests are good as they provide a quick means to XP, resources, and a great way to boost your companion relationships. However, they aren't mandatory, and people should understand that they are intended only for people wanting to grind out certain things. Once you know which quests are radial/repeating, the game isn't nearly as monotonous as most are making it out. Another instance is hiding your weapon. Even the game hints suggest putting your weapon away... but I had to google how to do that. Its not a configurable key in the settings, you have to hold down another action key. There were multiple issues that I THOUGHT were bugs, but after researching, they turned out to be poorly communicated issues that were working as intended (and fully made sense once I understand what was supposed to be happening). Yet another example is in the homesteads. The game tells you that building a store will generate revenue. Thats it. How much? how do I get it? how often? no more info to be found in game. I finally found out that caps were input into the workbench and I had to withdraw from that. For quite a while I thought the bug existed where I wasn't getting paid, but it was simply a communication issue as to how and where I was getting paid.

The focal point of the game is free roaming exploration. If you did not like Skyrim, you probably won't like this. But, unlike many (reportedly), I also didn't experience many bugs with Skyrim. I'm a big fan of looting, hoarding, breaking/entering/lockpicking/hacking, etc. I love the bobbleheads, skill magazines, lunchboxes, etc. scattered all over the world. Snooping through folks' email, stealing their ink pens, and then dashing out to the next place is good fun in my book. This game is full of that. And some of the non-main-arc quests are very well written and voiced. The companions you can choose from are also very well written and voiced, but be prepared to send them packing as they constantly bump into and magically manage to step right in front of you just as you clicking that item they decided to block. grrrrrrrrrr. Still.... Piper is a must have companion. I also like dog and the detective.

The item sorting is atrocious. I've seen a few mods but still nothing solves the overall issue. Lots and lots of scrolling involved here. How silly to not have a simple search function. Same goes for the map.

I hope this is the last game I buy before the DLC is released. I was very upset to realize that the PIP boy edition came with a flyer for the DLC and not the DLC itself. So rather than make that mistake again, I'll set out to only purchase after the definitive version is released. This will also leave room for bug fixes, etc.

If you enjoyed Skyrim or Fallout 3, I would highly recommend this game. If you hate Bethesda no matter what they do, or don't like the standard quests that accompany most RPG games, I would strongly encourage you to wait this one out. Otherwise, its already worth the overpriced version I paid for to get the game. I have no regrets and am looking forward to the first DLC announcements. But I have learned my lesson. Fallout 5, Dishonored 2, Doom, etc... Doesn't matter the title, I owe it to myself to wait out the DLC cycle to see what direction the game goes before I will buy the original launch title.

Hope that helps folks genuinely looking to make a purchase decision.

Releasing Fallout 4 across different platforms (PS4, XBOX &Windows) certainly wasn't a bad idea, as well.

:)

Man...

On launch day, 750 million units in the 1st 24 hours...

Doggone!

:)