Fallout 4 – Why Was it So Divisive?

The RPG has seen an explosion in popularity thanks to Amazon's TV show, but it was Bethesda's most controversial Fallout for a long time.

[thorstein]

I loved it. And I platinum'd it. I guess it's like most "divisive" games. If you don't like it, so what? Let those that do, enjoy it.

[Eonjay]

The article is trying to create fud where there was none. It has an 87 meta (on PS4). There is nothing divisive about it. It was well received. Period. I don't remember any arguments except for some performance issues when it first came out. Thats it.

[VenomUK]

I really enjoyed Fallout 4.
I loved the halfway goal of what you are building towards. I had a good sense of what it was and then when you finally are almost there the music builds up - beautiful!

@Eonjay Forget the meta scores there are plenty of people who loved Fallout 3 but thought Fallout 4 was a bit of anticlimax and I do get it. Pete Hines the retired head of Bethesda's PR was even asked about it, and his answer was that it was because it simply didn't have the novelty of being brand new that Fallout 3 had.

[Profchaos]

No venture beyond that so many of the hardcore gatekeep the franchise hard as 4 was far more popular and simplified many of the rpg elements refined shooting to the point where vats was optional the game was far more accessible and sold the most out of every franchise entry to date.

It's my personal favourite I get why people love 3 or NV but I do hate seeing people crap on 4 and the people who like it.

[neutralgamer1992]

It was a good shooter especially coming from FO3/NV game wise improvements wise but it was a below average RPG and that’s where many felt ROG elements should have been deeper

[CantThinkOfAUsername]

Whatever they do, Fallout 5 is guaranteed to be dogsh*t.

[GamerRN]

What are you basing that off of?

[dumahim]

Bethesda

[GamerRN]

Bethesda what...

[CantThinkOfAUsername]

- Fallout 4's story, characters, dialogue, and quests. They even managed to make the Vaults boring.
- Fallout 76 is Fallout 4 online. Same crap.
- Starfield doubled down on the crappiness of all these aspects despite being a new IP.

People bought and liked all of these games, which sends the message that we want more of this. I don't know about you, but I don't like being treated as a child and my intelligence insulted by developers.

[ChasterMies]

Fallout 4 wasn’t so much divisive as not very good. But there aren’t many first person RPGs so what else are fans of the genre supposed to play?

[FPS_D3TH]

I think it was the lack of morality gameplay and lack of path to completion options compared to what fallout 3 and New Vegas offered. I think the issue mostly arose because of the voiced protagonist and how many lines of dialogue that needed to be recorded. Didn’t leave for many options beyond “good” “sarcastic douche” and the odd question or two for nearly every interaction. Personally I thought the game was fantastic as an adventure and exploration game, I liked the park system and base building, but the rpg aspects were fairly gutted. It made shooting much more tolerable too but it still wasn’t anything fantastic. The faction choices were ok and I felt like they all provided a more grey moral choice dilemma compared to older games which felt more good/evil but it wasn’t presented as such as prominently as I would’ve liked. You had to do some more internal and critical thinking of your own to come to decide why you’d support one faction over another unless you were in it just for some in game benefit or another.

[kneon]

I didn't like any of the factions, so when it got to the point that I had to choose, I chose to stop playing

[jznrpg]

I finished the game but you are correct. I was thinking I don’t really know which one to pick as I don’t really care for any of them. I was near the Institute so I just went with that quest line. A lame way to choose who will win but I didn’t really prefer one over the others

[EazyC]

I don't think FNV was good/evil. You have evil with Caesar's Legion, then everything else is different shades of grey imo and quite relative to your own political views! 😅

[Friendlygamer]

1 Bad writing, the main quest is terrible. The sense of urgency of the story is at odds with the open world nature of the game

2 Boring, bland factions

3 too much personality for the main character. The game decides that you're married, that you love your son, your voice... a rpg like fallout should have a blank slate mc

4 dead open world. Fallout 3 and nv have a bunch of small cities and locations on their maps that give you interesting quests and dialogue. In Fallout 4 it feels like 80 per cent of the map is focused on combat and environmental storytelling, it feels more like a post apocalyptic action game rather than a dialogue heavy rpg

Fallout 4 is a very fun open world fps with really cool environmental storytelling but a very poor rpg

[EazyC]

Spot on!

[anast]

All the choices were the same. The combat and story were bad. The camp building minigame was just to add time to the game and it was done poorly at that. They used the Skyrim map. Most of the characters were forgettable and the graphics were stuck on the previous gen. Basically, the game was not good at any point beside for a very few savable moments which were only found in the paid DLC.

[HankHill]

I liked it, but it was watered down compared to 3 and NV.

[KwietStorm_BLM]

The whole settlement system ended up being a persistent annoying fetch quest, with someone needing help every 10 minutes. And it got worse the more settlements you freed. There was no point in building anything, other than being a beta for Fallout 76. The graphics and mechanics are the best in the series, but the story progression and game world weren't much of anything.

[isarai]

This is actually what killed it for me honestly, by the time i realized i could completely ignore the settlement stuff i already had a terrible taste about the game and haven't picked it up since

[-Foxtrot]

Shame they didn't just narrow it down to like a dozen really well done settlements each with it's own 3 well thought out missions then that would be it.

Also if we're talking about settlements, it's a shame they didn't give you more creativity. Some places were not flat enough for building or they had things within the settlement you couldn't delete.

[isarai]

I also wish the gunsmithing was so reliant on the settlement stuff. But it really was like grind for dozens of hours or do the settlement stuff to really get deep into the gunsmithing

[dumahim]

I was so pissed when I built a wall around my settlement with all sorts of defenses, and then saw the attackers spawning inside the walls.

[Phoenix76]

I use to use a mod (on console) that put concrete walls around all the settlements. Solved the problem

[MrDead]

Because it was less than what we had before, when you get a new game in a series you expect it to build on what people love not take away. I still enjoyed Fallout 4 and play it to this day, but mainly for the map, the settlement building and the mods that have turned it into a better game. Fallout 4 without the mods is a dull game, the others still hold their own.

[jznrpg]

Each Bethesda game since FO3/NV and Morrowind has been less than the games before it. I really enjoyed those 3 but each new one after that I noticed things that were taken out and I thought they were going to add on to what was there to make it even better. Then FO76 came out and Blades then Starfield and it’s been crap for a while.

[Demetrius]

Will be playing for rhe first time since the update for ps5 coming out definitely will have fun, we need more post apocalyptic gems I'm so ready for stalker for series x hopefully it really releases this year

[FPS_D3TH]

Super hyped for Stalker 2! Always preferred that series and it’s mods over Fallout but I enjoy both.

[shinoff2183]

Neither of them can fk with the og fallouts.

[Xristo]

Currently replaying FO4 using the "A StoryWealth" mod compilation (600+ mods).... loving it so far!

[shinoff2183]

It's cause it wad dumbed down, alot of us hated the base building , etc. It's definitely the worst one. I still like it but it's got faults

[jznrpg]

It’s ok but could have been so much more.

[OneLove]

It was good but new vegas was still better. It also felt a bit lacking.

[CptFalcon]

The gameplay was pretty fun but that's about it.

The game was nothing more than an empty shell lifting on the Fallout legacy in name only. It's storyline was bland and unimpressive and the side quests were forgettable.
The world itself was strange and felt cheap, the settlements and communities were static and did not feel alive.
What made matters worse is that they put too much emphasis to the settlement builder. While it could have been a fun extra aspect to the game they used it as a cheap replacement of real living and breathing settlements with their own backstories like the settlements in New Vegas or even in FO3.

[MaximusTKG]

I quite like Fallout 4. In comparison to say, Fallout 3 and New Vegas, the sense of exploration was not necessarily lost but changed. My favorite parts of 3 and NV were the exploration required to find the coolest and rarest of items and weapons etc... There are some in 4 sure, but the focus kind of went toward building good weapons and armor, as opposed to finding them through exploration.

[lex-1020]

It's not some great mystery. It's been talked about to death by this point.

My big issue with FO4 is that they sacrificed a lot of the RPG systems in the game in an effort to make it more accessible to the action shooter crowd.

[Good-Smurf]

Despite their effort the shooting still feels sucks if it wasn't for settlement building its no longer RPG game just a looter shooter with base building mechanics anything else were severely dumbed down and simplified.
S.P.E.C.I.A.L doesn't feel Special anymore and perks sucks.

[Barlos]

Settlements. They ruined the game for me.

[Good-Smurf]

I'm into some city simulator once in a while so I have plenty of fun with settlements with mods obviously.
But it was definitely taking too much importance over any other parts of the game to the point that I feel like that's all I'm doing, and Quests are just there for whatever the reason you forgot why you're out there in the first place within an hour.

[Profchaos]

I personally loved it and rank it as my favourite to date

[RhinoGamer88]

I love all but 76. But frankly, the show is just okay, maybe a 7 out of 10. Not digging the leads at all. #bulgingeyes

[Barlos]

I don't mind them on the whole, but the only one I don't like is Maximus. He just comes across as incompetent, and he just seemed to lie his way through the entire season. Plus, I don't know if he was written this way or it was just bad acting, but he never changes his expressions or shows any emotion, he always just looks bored or half asleep.

[RhinoGamer88]

Agreed, he looks stoned half the time...

[gold_drake]

i didnt hate it, but god i had so many bugs and glitches ha.

[RGB]

It was a parody of Fallout 3 which was a parody of a real Fallout game. :SHRUGS:
It was still fun but outside Fallout/2/New Vegas, you are getting a Todd's reading of what Fallout is, not what it was or should be.
Now notwithstanding, I played it for over 300 hours, got the platinum on PS4, and enjoyed it for what it's worth, it just doesn't hold a candle to New Vegas as a 3D Fallout, and no BGS Fallout ever will. They just don't get the setting, the humour, and especially the RPG elements.

[Good-Smurf]

Fallout 4 is pretty good actually but without mods it became a time sink title that goes nowhere fast.
Too much time spent on settlement building and management instead of looking for your child and quests doesn't feel like quests they kind of just started for no rhyme or reason.
Its Map are also not fun to explore not to mention long and frequent load times going in and out of each indoor location.

[Firebird360]

F4 is awesome but f3 is still my favorite.

[Shiore2u]

Because it was an okay shooter, but a terrible Fallout game. Story and RPG elements were severely lacking. A causality of Bethesda's mass appeal idiot-proof design plaguing their games since Skyrim. Fallout 3 even with all it's problems is and always will be the peak of Bethesda's ability with this IP.

[EazyC]

I don't care what anyone says, it was a hard pivot to an "open world action game with RPG elements", akin to Far Cry, whereas the Fallout series was HEAVILY dependent upon the concept of morality, choice and consequence in a world very different to our own. It's a very shallow experience with Fallout 4 in comparison.

It was also missing any real role-playing element as far as skills go. In New Vegas, a charisma + speech build was MASSIVELY different from a melee + strength build. Fallout 4 has a veneer of this with SPECIAL etc, but it's just that -- a shallow veneer.

The issue I have with Bethesda is this: Obsidian literally showed them, using Beth's their OWN assets, what it takes to make a deep first-person RPG that everyone loves with FNV....why not even take notes?

[Daeloki]

It seems to be a case of if you played Fallout 3 and New Vegas, you were team "Hate Fallout 4" and if you didn't, you likely enjoyed Fallout 4. Obviously a very simplified view, but among my friends that seemed to be the case. The ones who hated it kept comparing it to things they enjoyed in Fallout 3. For me Fallout 4 was my first in the series, and I enjoyed it a lot.

[Kosic]

I didn't find 4 all that, the feeling to it was off compared to 3 and new Vegas.
I tried it a few times and each time, I've given up roughly in the same spot.

[Futureshark]

I found there was too much busywork for Preston right at the start of the game almost, put me off. I could have ignored him and wandered off, but I wanted to see the story but those missions were dull.
Maybe I'll spin it up again with the new update.

[Rols]

Most divisive or controversial? The author clearly doesn’t remember Fallout 76 at launch. It was a disaster back then but Bethesda has turned it around.