*Sigh* Where do I start? You're reiterating everything that I was saying, except making a reverse claim that it does the opposite, that it takes it OFF the rail. I've already counter-claimed those things, and you're re-counter-claiming them. I would just be restating everything here again, so maybe I'll just point back to my old posts. I could go line for line if I had to, I guess.

I dunno, maybe you start with "CANNOT" and "ALWAYS", which aren't that "cannot" and "always"? You're free to roam in FNV, with same limitations as in real life - you can't pass through buildings, walls, and mountains (at least without special equipment), so you have to walk around them. Yes, your chances of success to go through "unintended" path are low, but what chance do you have in F2 to successfully reach Frisco (or Navarro) in one attempt without save-loading? Or what were your chances to safely pass through angry Cnucks; fans crowd while wearing Bruins jersey a day of that famous Stanley cup final? Where's the difference? Just ability to travel through mountains or "death valley" without repercussions or reminders like "you reached end of the world, nothing is there, turn back"?
You want to go to Novac? Go to Novac, there is Primm Pass or Radscorpion gulch. Not to mentioning rather tricky rock formation that allows you relatively safe passage around northern side of that ridge, without need to dealing with entire horde of deathclaws. You don't know about them? Well, travel there and see what's behind that hill, that's what I did, and I did that before reading any "guides" because there were none at the moment I played the game, and back in F1/2 era I didn't even know there are "guides", internet was expensive back in the days, so I haven't used it for this purpose. Same goes for F1/2, or even god awful 4. Where is your lust for adventure? How do you know where Redding is without actually going there?
F1/2 are somewhat *Javik mode on* "primitive" *Javik mode off* regarding approach to taking relief (landscape) into account. Yes, your travel speed was different in F1/2 depending on terrain you were moving through, but that's that, nothing more, no impassable terrain beside ocean. To an extent, that's understandable, as it was difficult to clearly mark impassable terrain such as mountains or ruins, to distinguish it from passable terrain. And gamers don't like to be confused! They became angry and irritated, and start to shitpost everywhere calling names!!11 /grin Therefore an option to automatically slow movement speed was chosen. In FNV we play from totally different perspective and actually see that impassable or hard to traverse terrain from ground level. Was it possible to make all terrain passable? Surely. And you can experience that, just hit ~ and type "TCL", there you go, you're totally free to roam, like in good old days. Just prepare to lose some part of storytelling and narration for your free roam. /grin
Not that railroading and corridoring would've helped story and narration in Fallout 4, as Bethesda is sure as hell can't write shit.
P.S. Why so serious?:p

Somebody please - do Fallout 3 finally. Everything that has FO in name after FO 2 is fake. But I must admit I played so called FO3 and NV. They lack of falloutish thing in it :/

Fallout: Tactics is actually, while a different type of game in many ways, still is very "Fallout" and should give you some of what you're looking for.

After that, you could try Wasteland 2, and while it is not the same feeling of Fallout, it's much more close to feeling and playing like Fallout 1+2 than anything else out there.

And again, while not of the same setting or lore, there is UnderRail, which has notable similarities (but completely its own thing too.)

...Um. So NV is railroaded because you follow a highway approximately .. 10% of the game (read: wrapper for main quest). While FO3 is not, since it has no writing, and you have this huge beacon you're constantly following to the radiation pool in Wash. DC. Which you only reach after passing through very specific tunnel and subway levels.

No. :p

Seriously, though - when you buy a license for a franchise in order to make sequels. And the first games were popular because of the story-telling, interesting and deep characters, the provocative themes, the challenging moral dilemmas, the multiple and very varied solutions to any number of quests, the way a small segment in the middle of nowhere suddenly turns out to be the biggest area in the game, how discovering lost locations unexpectedly fills in crucial information about the backstory that changes your perspective on what has happened up to this point and certainly affects the angle you view the main story segments later, etc., etc.

The kind of thing you get when you trade some of the interactivity that a live rpg-game session might give you, while you gain some of the polish that increased preparation time on the writing can result in.

So when that was what made the original Fallout games popular. What kind of asshole do you have to be to sell an action-game on the same license, while making it out to be a role-playing game..? I mean, it's admirably vicious and successful trolling of the highest order. I wish I could have come up with something like that to piss off the review-folks at IGN, for example. Conspire with a developer to make a game specifically to highlight how bad their reviews are, and to make them hate their job and quit for good.

But why would you go out of your way to annoy people in the way Bethesda did with FO3 and FO4? I just don't get it. Maybe they fancy themselves masters of all creation(in the fallout world), and they wanted to make sure the Fallout universe was destroyed forever, or something. A megalomaniac's attempt to get rid of the competition that their horrible "rpg" games are always labeled inferior to. Even when it's not called Fallout, but also Wasteland and Torment, etc. So they decided to try and destroy the Fallout "legacy" forever! So their games would come out on top!

I mean - couldn't they just have continued to make Oblivion and Morrowind instead?

well said!

They are greedy, soul-less, assholes for doing what they did to the beloved Fallout games. They banked on the name and reputation and sold the games (3, NV, 4, and that other POS bunker thing) to an entirely new audience who has no fucking clue.

I have a friend who just won't shut up about Fallout 4, even though I've told him the 3 games a disgrace to the name Fallout, that I have no interest, and that I'd poop in the face of the makers if i could. He just raves about how great they ALL are, and keeps saying "I know they don't have the stuff the originals do but it's still great because because because" and his becauses are empty and worthless things.

He's never played 1 or 2, he played them a little, like, not even 5 hours total between the 2, and he's just not interested He constantly complains about how they don't make games how they used to and he wishes something would grab him with awesomeness and depth and vary-ability like an old-school D&D roleplay session. GAAAHHH. I've tried over and over to tell him/show him the light, but he can't get over the addictive mindless crap that sucks up the mainstream.

:D hehe. Know what you mean.

Anyway, I'm sure we're all taking this mostly tongue in cheek, and so on. Or, it's not extremely serious. But it's a depressing thought in some ways that crpgs might actually have been at the absolute height with Torment and Fallout. And that things like Kotor2, Bloodlines, Wasteland to some extent, Bard's Tale perhaps, and the new Torment game (which.. actually seems promising), is basically even more marginal and unpopular (generally speaking) compared to what the Fallout games were.

Sort of saw that with Pillars of Eternity, and Obsidian with Dungeon Siege 3 before that - DS3 was a very accomplished game from a writing perspective, for example, and did a lot of interesting things with level design that DS1&2 presented as concepts (to have 3d designed levels that weren't tilesets, but full areas with routes - takes a bit of talent to design levels like the haunted mansion without getting too many dead areas). But it was a very linear game, in spite of the branching paths absolutely being longer and more deliberate than what you have in, say, Mass Effect. And the feedback Obsidian got with PoE was mainly about the mechanics of the game. And the writing and the skill at putting narratives into a digital world just becomes.. distant to the entire project. Even if that's what the entire game concept is created on. So that if narrative flow is not important, then the game just becomes.. mostly uninteresting.

Like what happened with Alpha Protocol, for example. The story-telling in that game is amazing - but that's not what the reviews focus on. For legitimate reasons to some degree, but still - it's very obvious that there's a very small core of people who care about.. getting to play scenarios written by world-class rpg game-masters, that we wouldn't have had the opportunity to see in any other context.

And the push to avoid focusing on story-telling comes also from inside Obsidian. Because they of course see the feedback and the kind of feedback that resonates with their active fans. It's something I saw whenever I would write complicated reviews about narrative flow as well - that a lot of people might read it, and like the sound of the concept, and have interest in interactive story-telling on a superficial level. It's a great and promising buzzword, I guess. But at the point where you demand something of your audience, that they should invest the amount of time it'd take to get immersed in a book - even just a kiosk-novel - then the interest evaporates.

Until you get to the point where the most glowing review about Fallout New Vegas is a lengthy expose by a reviewer going thirty meters away from the first town, finding a refrigerator with a skull in it, and then inventing a story about why that skull was there. And this became the most engaged description in the entire review.

Because that's really the level this is at - we're not interested in the alcoholism of one of the henchmen, or the backstory of the Boomers and any parralel world similarities to the Quakers, or any amount of location events that are so well described that they feel like they're happening in the actual game-world - rather than simply being a cutscene that happens within the game's setting. People happily skip past the first underground vault quest and the food supply for the airstrip area, for example. So why is that - is it too complicated, or not scripted and forced enough? Should it have been a mandatory quest you are gated into?

I mean, one thing would be if you went at this from the perspective that it's a battle between directed and scripted content, versus incidental story-telling that lets your imagination do the job. So that this is the baseline for the reviewing, at least. But that's not what happens - instead I think there's a genuine audience out there that prefers no story-telling, as long as the game is made out to appear interactive.

Or, interactivity is great - as long as the context can be described with a 10 second tv-spot like intro.

And that's kind of depressing to me.

Still trying to figure out that one myself.

I absolutely agree with you about that. And I understand your feelings. For myself, I separate fallout world into two category. Classic Fallout, and, let's call it "Elder Scrolls: Fallout" series. I don't intend to offend anybody's feelings. I tried to play it, but it has nothing like old games for me, nothing like Fallout that I first time played long time ago... But nothing can be done about it... desole... It's pointless to criticize new ones.
No offense to your friend. Nobody would understand what old Fallout is because for modern player it absolutely outdated.
And the new Fallout... well... you can either accept it, or ignore it. I do the second.

They are greedy, soul-less, assholes for doing what they did to the beloved Fallout games. They banked on the name and reputation and sold the games (3, NV, 4, and that other POS bunker thing) to an entirely new audience who has no fucking clue.

Just thought I'd add my 2 cents:

I avoided buying Fallout 4 until it was on sale (for like, 30 I believe). It's been worth it so far, for me.

The main thing I disliked going into it was a veering away from series' staples (skills and tagging, "silent" protagonist, skills actually mattering when it came to quest progression, etc), but I admit that I've been playing it quite a bit regardless and enjoying it for what it is. It's a bit more action-y and a little less RPG (which is the way most RPG series tend to be heading in the modern gaming era), but still pretty fun. It has my favorite map of the series so far, with good variety and some interesting locales to check out.

It has nothing on New Vegas story- and character-wise, but that game was handled by Obsidian, who can be hard to match when it comes to writing and choices available to the player. It's probably about as good as Fallout 3, although I felt more of a sense of urgency and personal investment in FO3 than 4, which is funny considering what's initially at stake.

The WORST thing I can say about Fallout 4 is that, unless you are playing a good guy (or a jerk with a heart of gold, I guess), it SUUUUUUCKS for roleplaying. In all Fallout games I've played, I do 3 playthroughs (at least): one with a good guy, one with a neutral girl, and one with an evil guy. My neutral girl playthrough has been "okay" (though it sucks being forced to make her care about her child so much, when I like playing her completely neutral) but my evil guy absolutely blows here. Being forced to be polite and say nice things and do everything I can for my son WHERE ARE YOU SHAAAAAUUUN when rolling a homicidal, kill-for-giggles, Chaotic Evil maniac is quite immersion-breaking.

In the end, still a decently fun and engrossing game, at least for the price I paid.

Honestly, you should never buy a Bethesda game (and it is getting to the point where nearly every console level game) at launch, or even within the first year of launch knowing that it is virtually guaranteed that the game will get DLC content, and eventually that DLC content will be rebundled as an "ultimate/definitive/GOTY/Greatest hits/whatever they want to call it/ edition" and within 3 to 6 months of that editions release it will be down to about 20$ mark anyway.

It makes no sense to buy the same thing over again. It makes no sense to pay for DLC at markup. In fact even though it is so uncommon for people to actually wait the year and a half average for these editions, Publishers are actively trying to combat people like myself who subscribe to this model (at least on the console side) and forcibly keep DLC as Downloads by making these types of editions and then making the DLC add ons as redeemable voucher codes. So that is yet another instance of the industry trying to forcibly dictate the market to the customer instead of the customer having their right to the only control they have over the market. All the more reason to not buy DLC in any other way than in condensed edition format, especially when it is also available in On Disc format.