Fallout London; What it's missing

Meaningful Exploration outside of certain areas I will not spoil.

The Good:

1. Pubs - The moment you see a pub icon you get excited. This usually means lore, loot and a new pub-coaster buff. THIS is how it's meant to be.

2. Main Story Areas - You know these are probably going to have some worthwhile looting and some good lore/questing.

3. Pindar Stations - Britain's Vaults. I am not sure how many their are but the three i have found have been fun to explore, had lore and interesting finds in them. I assume the rest (if there are more than 3?) are the same.

4. Historic Locations - Places that are Iconic are represented VERY well.

5. Underground Stations - These have all been fairly unique and interesting to explore so far for me, with loot.

6. Environmental Storytelling - Absolutely phenomenal. Bravo to the design here, the environments are incredibly well done.

The Bad:

1. Empty Locations - FAR too many named locations that seem like they could be really good to check out that are just...empty shells with junk/npcs to kill. Why bother? I find myself skipping past locations that I might otherwise explore such as Ministry of Defence outposts, Bunkers, Shops and so forth. At first, I explored, but they've all become very samey and the comlete lack of loot in them leaves me to just not bother. That's just dissapointing.

2. Magazines - From what I can gather, there appear to be at least four to five types of magazines and each issue gives more stacking buffs. This is great; unfortunately, they are so difficult to find in an area (and can be moved by physics!!!) that sometimes, you just walk right past them because they fell off a table during a combat engagement. Prime example here for me is the Battleship in the Thames. I only went back because a developer informed me that i missed a Dan Dare magazine inside. It took three hours, it was under a table and under a box that had fallen off the table ontop of it. This should simply NOT be possible.

The other point is that because so many areas have such poor loot and lack anything engaging to do aside from kill enemies, magazines COULD be in one of those empty buildings or spots. I wouldn't know because I stopped checkign them after the 30th round of no rewards.

3. SO MANY NAMED NPCS THAT DO NOTHING - Oh my god, why are there so many? Is this a backer thing? developers? I don't know but there are so many npc's that have names that are enemies or just don't do anything that I find myself running around trying to interact with them just to be sure i don't miss a quest.

Brings me back to point 1; There are so many named npc's that drop nothing. Nada. Wasting my time to kill them when they give me a smidgeon of level appropriate rewards and nothing unique.

4. Lack of unique rewards; This is a killer here. The fallout formula has got me used to the simple formula - If Enemy A is BOSS or NAMED, then loot = good, and will possibly get a named reward.

I have yet to come across anything and I am 20+ hours in. (17 on steam, swapped to GOG because crashes less)

5. A lack of lore; OK, I get that it's intimidating to write into an existing franchise like Fallout especially when you go out of the comfort zone and enter a new area. The writing is a mixed bag; some is fantastic, some is poor and some is suspiciously AI-like. That's fine. What's not fine is the sheer amount of areas that Fallout games have trained me to believe will contain something. A handwritten note, a computer terminal entry, a holotape, SOMETHING to explain the history behind a place or person.

There just isn't anything in so many places that it's really sad to see. In some areas its so well done that I forget it's not a AAA Bethesda release. (Imperial War Museum Holotapes are wonderfully done and deserve praise) but if you guys keep adding to this I would very much like to see a simple update that add's tiny tidbits to areas.

It really doesn't need to be much; A simple shopping list that never got furfilled, a goodbye note to a lover, little snapshots of life pre-fallout and post-fallout.

Which brings me to my final part.

6. Factions - WHO THE BLOODY 'ELL ARE ANY OF THESE PEOPLE?!?!?

I don't know, all I know is that various different gangs of assorted types in different clothing keep shooting at me and I massacre them. Why? Who are they? What was their purpose in X location, what did they do? Why are they here?

The Jack Tars. Why do they act/speak like they do? I want to know the history behind the faction. Same goes for the football hooligans - I want to know how they started. Did someone raid a football stadium and start a succesfull gang post-fallout that became a fad?

So far most of the factions encountered have little history or lore to find behind them outside of Angels, Tommies and Vandals. I really hope this is expanded upon. Again it can be through anything from terminal entries in a base you clear out, to notes on npc's. I just want something for my time.

TLDR: Please, please if you update add some more tangible rewards to exploration - Lore or Loot. Otherwise, having a blast. Thank you.

Well said. Better than my meager post. It just feels too empty. I know it's a 100 years later but looking at things, it sure doesn't look like they have done anything in 100 years to make a difference or make things better.

I enjoyed the bit I played but crashes and all the workarounds. I may come back if they come up with a smoother install, etc.