Fallout began as a computer RPG for the first two entries before laying dormant. Bethesda purchased the rights to the series and modernized the third entry into a first person RPG with shooting elements in 2008 during the explosion of the FPS genre in the gaming market. Fallout 4 marks a transition from its numbered predecessor's core into a game that caters even more to the dominant genre in the market.
Bethesda has fashioned Fallout 4 into an FPS with RPG elements, inverting the formula. Gone is the need to select perks and skills that specialize a build around one's primary stats. A perk locked behind a primary stat requirement no longer necessitates a 2nd playthrough or a hefty investment of caps to purchase said primary stat. Players can now acquire them with the skill points gained every level up, allowing players to easily overcome all limitations given enough time.
An RPG should be judged primarily by how its stats system allows the player to express his intention in the shaping of his character and the overall game world. A shooter should be judged on how good it feels and how well it allows the player to use the mechanics to express his intention. Thus Fallout 4's lean stat system and its more robust shooting require critiquing the game on its gun play primarily. The critique covers two important contexts: Fallout 4 compared to its Bethesda predecessor and Fallout 4 in the broad context of shooters.
I. The Vulgarity of Fallout 3
Gamebryo is a twisted and stiff engine and the version Fallout 3 uses is particularly bad. At release, players enjoyed the smoothness of the CoD 4 era Infinity Ward 3 (IW3) engine and HL2: Episode 2's Source engine. One can immediately see how much of a step back F3 is in this context. It features rather abysmal movement, polish, and feedback.
Concerning movement, the acceleration is very high and there is little friction. The movement causes overcommitting to peeks around corners as the player slides then comes to a sudden stop. This slippery and stiff movement feels abysmal compared to the smoothness of the IW3 and Source engines. Even the slippery GoldSource engine found in Half-Life 1 is superior given its use of counter-strafing to come to a complete standstill.
Recoil animations in Fallout 3 are slow and floaty when firing both pistols and rifles. Reloading is a rigid unpleasant animation. SMGs in particular lack any sort of recoil animation when fired, giving off only a slight shake. Guns in CoD 4 have quick powerful feeling recoil. Aiming down sight and firing an AK-74u in the CoD 4 competitive promod is immensely satisfying. The gun chatters loudly as the model's recoil start up animations jump up before violently being reset. The quick 90 degree bounce of the Deagle in CoD 4 along with the blindingly fast backward patter of the smg in HL2 provide great feedback for players. Fallout 3 lacks this polish.
Fallout 3's guns feel bad not only because of the animations, but also because of the lack of screen shake, a visceral cinematic effect. CoD 4 and HL2 also lack screen shake, but they have so much polish on their animations that they otherwise don't need it. Fallout 3 could have kept it's poor animations and benefited greatly from screen shake. One of the few guns with screen shake in Fallout 3 is the minigun. It's slight, but keeps the gun feeling more visceral when fired. Firing the glock and smg in Half-Life 1 is a visceral affair. The game's speed, high movement accuracy, and screen shake all provide for sublime gun play. This kind of polish could have easily improved Fallout 3.
II. Shallow AI
As any game with shooting elements, the point is to dispatch enemies quickly while taking as little damage as possible. The dominant strategy in F3 is to dispatch enemies while backpedaling or to turn corners to escape an enemy's line of sight. Crouching is only used to sneak and get criticals as there is very little cover that can effectively be used throughout the game. Occasionally there are cars or desks that can be used, but the only instance cover is tremendously useful is when taking pot shots at enemies from the tops of hill and then crouching behind said hills to reload.
If one's build is effectively optimized, Time to Kill (TTK) is very low in F3. Headshots in VATs do tons of damage. Two or three enemies can be dispatched before having to reload a clip, pushing players to be frugal with their effective, scarce, and expensive ammo. Only elite enemies such as the game's super mutants take multiple clips to dispatch.
Stimpaks in F3 heal immediately which makes the moment to moment decision making not matter as much. A player can gamble taking reckless shots at powerful enemies in the open because he can heal himself immediately. An example would be quick risky peeking from around a corner. Even worse, one can backpedal with unscoped bolt rifles and take quick headshots as enemies barrel at you. Thus the primary strategy is not to minimize damage as much as one should, but to shoot as much as one can, as the player can instantly heal during a gun fight.
III. The 7 Year Quest for Polish
Fallout 4's polish and gun fights are much less vulgar than its predecessor. F4's gun play features much more dynamic game feel. The scope in, reload, and recoil all have weight and complexity compared to the floaty and simple animations in F3. F4 contains feedback aplenty every time guns are fired compared to the relatively few guns that had any sort of fleshed out game feel in its predecessor. The 10mm Pistol has a visceral recoil animation that quickly pounces back when fired. The mild to moderate screen shake when firing smgs, pistols, and rifles provide great feedback during the longer gun fights of F4. Its game feel is flashier overall and provides for a more fun and polished experience.
Strategy and positioning is marginally more complex in 4. When an enemy takes cover, one can flank it, reload, or use a stimpak which now heal over time. To be very clear, having enemies use cover and intermittently peer out from behind is slightly less basic than having an enemy run right at you. The AI is still incredibly stupid as you only have to wait for it to expose itself before firing. Furthermore the vulgarity of the Gamebryo engine still exists. The issue of landscape and cover not being accurately mapped in the game is still is an incredibly annoying issue. A massive super mutant can be exposed while taking cover behind a concrete divider or lamppost and be untouchable because the hitbox for the cover is much larger than the rendered in game object visually clues us in on. This problem is most egregious when it comes to some railings on metal walkways and catwalks. The gaps in some of these railings still cannot be shot through with guns. Not all cover has this issue, but it still is much too common.
Time-to-kill is longer as enemies weave in and out of cover. F3 contained enemies walking and running in straight lines to the player as they pulled the trigger. They never used cover and would get stunned and flinch about erratically when the player landed a critical headshot. F4's crits also stun enemies, but their animations are much easier to capitalize upon without VATs. Overall F4's animations are better and are much more dynamic. The longer gun fights are more complex than the quick firing and backpedaling in F3. Enemies approach the player, take positions of varying distances, and respond to the player. Having some enemies take pot shots from the high ground while other enemies fire from cover and more shoot from medium and close range allows for more marginally more dynamic gameplay.
Although more polished, I think players are stuck on the fact that the shooting is much better than Fallout 3 without examining how it stacks up in shooters in general. F4 has elevated itself into the ranks of other mediocre console shooters. The closest comparison I can find for Fallout 4 is Destiny, a game with similar engagements. Enemies will either charge or take cover and periodically peek out. This kind of shooting meta is simple, especially considering the intelligence of AI in other games like F.E.A.R. from 2005. In F.E.A.R., enemies would flank, use cover, team up, retreat, use grenades, bunch up, disperse, all anticipating and reacting to the enemies position and movement. Games where enemies boringly hide and peek constantly are thoroughly regressive and cannot stack up to even ancient games like DOOM.
The worst part of being a game in the same vein as Destiny is that guns in Fallout 4 feel a bit worse. Bungie understands polish. Guns feel good to use as they have moderate but manageable recoil and have powerful animations for both recoil and reloading. When fired, even while aimed down sight, there is notable screen shake. This kind of cinematic effect has been a mainstay for Bungie since the assault rifle in Halo 1. But comparing the polish of Destiny to Fallout 4 shows a clear winner. Fallout 4 contains guns that jump in a much weightier and quicker fashion than before. They lack the poor and floaty animations found in Fallout 3. But an annoying aspect is how the gun's recoil obscures the enemy. I think the developers did this to compensate for the only minor screen shake the guns have. Instead of shaking the screen more in a console game, the guns bounce more, unfortunately obscuring targets until the animation resets.
Lastly as a Counter-Strike: Global Offensive player and a former Call of Duty player, shooters with aim down sights and no spray patterns are down right regressive and has been so since its inception as a mechanic in the early 2000s. Spray patterns allow players to compensate recoil skillfully. As a player gets better, he can hit enemies from farther away more accurately. It excises not only hip fire's wide random sprays forcing players to shoot enemies up close but also ADS' movement penalty slowing down engagements to a crawl. I can excuse ADS in an RPG with shooting elements, but not in a shooter with RPG elements.
To conclude, Fallout 4 succeeds in much the same way as Destiny. Guns have polish and feel good while enemies utilize cover and peek out occasionally. And just like Destiny, it is a mediocre affair, made worse by Gamebryo issues and the poor execution of some animation elements. The poor mapping of the environment behind which enemies take cover can make the shooting occasionally frustrating and the way the guns recoil and obscure the target make gun fights fairly annoying. As a shooter, Fallout 4 is much less stiff, containing smoother and satisfying movement as well as gunplay. But the inclusion of ADS as well as dumb AI confines it within the mediocrity of modern shooters.
Bethesda has fashioned Fallout 4 into an FPS with RPG elements, inverting the formula. Gone is the need to select perks and skills that specialize a build around one's primary stats. A perk locked behind a primary stat requirement no longer necessitates a 2nd playthrough or a hefty investment of caps to purchase said primary stat. Players can now acquire them with the skill points gained every level up, allowing players to easily overcome all limitations given enough time.
An RPG should be judged primarily by how its stats system allows the player to express his intention in the shaping of his character and the overall game world. A shooter should be judged on how good it feels and how well it allows the player to use the mechanics to express his intention. Thus Fallout 4's lean stat system and its more robust shooting require critiquing the game on its gun play primarily. The critique covers two important contexts: Fallout 4 compared to its Bethesda predecessor and Fallout 4 in the broad context of shooters.
I. The Vulgarity of Fallout 3
Gamebryo is a twisted and stiff engine and the version Fallout 3 uses is particularly bad. At release, players enjoyed the smoothness of the CoD 4 era Infinity Ward 3 (IW3) engine and HL2: Episode 2's Source engine. One can immediately see how much of a step back F3 is in this context. It features rather abysmal movement, polish, and feedback.
Concerning movement, the acceleration is very high and there is little friction. The movement causes overcommitting to peeks around corners as the player slides then comes to a sudden stop. This slippery and stiff movement feels abysmal compared to the smoothness of the IW3 and Source engines. Even the slippery GoldSource engine found in Half-Life 1 is superior given its use of counter-strafing to come to a complete standstill.
Recoil animations in Fallout 3 are slow and floaty when firing both pistols and rifles. Reloading is a rigid unpleasant animation. SMGs in particular lack any sort of recoil animation when fired, giving off only a slight shake. Guns in CoD 4 have quick powerful feeling recoil. Aiming down sight and firing an AK-74u in the CoD 4 competitive promod is immensely satisfying. The gun chatters loudly as the model's recoil start up animations jump up before violently being reset. The quick 90 degree bounce of the Deagle in CoD 4 along with the blindingly fast backward patter of the smg in HL2 provide great feedback for players. Fallout 3 lacks this polish.
Fallout 3's guns feel bad not only because of the animations, but also because of the lack of screen shake, a visceral cinematic effect. CoD 4 and HL2 also lack screen shake, but they have so much polish on their animations that they otherwise don't need it. Fallout 3 could have kept it's poor animations and benefited greatly from screen shake. One of the few guns with screen shake in Fallout 3 is the minigun. It's slight, but keeps the gun feeling more visceral when fired. Firing the glock and smg in Half-Life 1 is a visceral affair. The game's speed, high movement accuracy, and screen shake all provide for sublime gun play. This kind of polish could have easily improved Fallout 3.
II. Shallow AI
As any game with shooting elements, the point is to dispatch enemies quickly while taking as little damage as possible. The dominant strategy in F3 is to dispatch enemies while backpedaling or to turn corners to escape an enemy's line of sight. Crouching is only used to sneak and get criticals as there is very little cover that can effectively be used throughout the game. Occasionally there are cars or desks that can be used, but the only instance cover is tremendously useful is when taking pot shots at enemies from the tops of hill and then crouching behind said hills to reload.
If one's build is effectively optimized, Time to Kill (TTK) is very low in F3. Headshots in VATs do tons of damage. Two or three enemies can be dispatched before having to reload a clip, pushing players to be frugal with their effective, scarce, and expensive ammo. Only elite enemies such as the game's super mutants take multiple clips to dispatch.
Stimpaks in F3 heal immediately which makes the moment to moment decision making not matter as much. A player can gamble taking reckless shots at powerful enemies in the open because he can heal himself immediately. An example would be quick risky peeking from around a corner. Even worse, one can backpedal with unscoped bolt rifles and take quick headshots as enemies barrel at you. Thus the primary strategy is not to minimize damage as much as one should, but to shoot as much as one can, as the player can instantly heal during a gun fight.
III. The 7 Year Quest for Polish
Fallout 4's polish and gun fights are much less vulgar than its predecessor. F4's gun play features much more dynamic game feel. The scope in, reload, and recoil all have weight and complexity compared to the floaty and simple animations in F3. F4 contains feedback aplenty every time guns are fired compared to the relatively few guns that had any sort of fleshed out game feel in its predecessor. The 10mm Pistol has a visceral recoil animation that quickly pounces back when fired. The mild to moderate screen shake when firing smgs, pistols, and rifles provide great feedback during the longer gun fights of F4. Its game feel is flashier overall and provides for a more fun and polished experience.
Strategy and positioning is marginally more complex in 4. When an enemy takes cover, one can flank it, reload, or use a stimpak which now heal over time. To be very clear, having enemies use cover and intermittently peer out from behind is slightly less basic than having an enemy run right at you. The AI is still incredibly stupid as you only have to wait for it to expose itself before firing. Furthermore the vulgarity of the Gamebryo engine still exists. The issue of landscape and cover not being accurately mapped in the game is still is an incredibly annoying issue. A massive super mutant can be exposed while taking cover behind a concrete divider or lamppost and be untouchable because the hitbox for the cover is much larger than the rendered in game object visually clues us in on. This problem is most egregious when it comes to some railings on metal walkways and catwalks. The gaps in some of these railings still cannot be shot through with guns. Not all cover has this issue, but it still is much too common.
Time-to-kill is longer as enemies weave in and out of cover. F3 contained enemies walking and running in straight lines to the player as they pulled the trigger. They never used cover and would get stunned and flinch about erratically when the player landed a critical headshot. F4's crits also stun enemies, but their animations are much easier to capitalize upon without VATs. Overall F4's animations are better and are much more dynamic. The longer gun fights are more complex than the quick firing and backpedaling in F3. Enemies approach the player, take positions of varying distances, and respond to the player. Having some enemies take pot shots from the high ground while other enemies fire from cover and more shoot from medium and close range allows for more marginally more dynamic gameplay.
Although more polished, I think players are stuck on the fact that the shooting is much better than Fallout 3 without examining how it stacks up in shooters in general. F4 has elevated itself into the ranks of other mediocre console shooters. The closest comparison I can find for Fallout 4 is Destiny, a game with similar engagements. Enemies will either charge or take cover and periodically peek out. This kind of shooting meta is simple, especially considering the intelligence of AI in other games like F.E.A.R. from 2005. In F.E.A.R., enemies would flank, use cover, team up, retreat, use grenades, bunch up, disperse, all anticipating and reacting to the enemies position and movement. Games where enemies boringly hide and peek constantly are thoroughly regressive and cannot stack up to even ancient games like DOOM.
The worst part of being a game in the same vein as Destiny is that guns in Fallout 4 feel a bit worse. Bungie understands polish. Guns feel good to use as they have moderate but manageable recoil and have powerful animations for both recoil and reloading. When fired, even while aimed down sight, there is notable screen shake. This kind of cinematic effect has been a mainstay for Bungie since the assault rifle in Halo 1. But comparing the polish of Destiny to Fallout 4 shows a clear winner. Fallout 4 contains guns that jump in a much weightier and quicker fashion than before. They lack the poor and floaty animations found in Fallout 3. But an annoying aspect is how the gun's recoil obscures the enemy. I think the developers did this to compensate for the only minor screen shake the guns have. Instead of shaking the screen more in a console game, the guns bounce more, unfortunately obscuring targets until the animation resets.
Lastly as a Counter-Strike: Global Offensive player and a former Call of Duty player, shooters with aim down sights and no spray patterns are down right regressive and has been so since its inception as a mechanic in the early 2000s. Spray patterns allow players to compensate recoil skillfully. As a player gets better, he can hit enemies from farther away more accurately. It excises not only hip fire's wide random sprays forcing players to shoot enemies up close but also ADS' movement penalty slowing down engagements to a crawl. I can excuse ADS in an RPG with shooting elements, but not in a shooter with RPG elements.
To conclude, Fallout 4 succeeds in much the same way as Destiny. Guns have polish and feel good while enemies utilize cover and peek out occasionally. And just like Destiny, it is a mediocre affair, made worse by Gamebryo issues and the poor execution of some animation elements. The poor mapping of the environment behind which enemies take cover can make the shooting occasionally frustrating and the way the guns recoil and obscure the target make gun fights fairly annoying. As a shooter, Fallout 4 is much less stiff, containing smoother and satisfying movement as well as gunplay. But the inclusion of ADS as well as dumb AI confines it within the mediocrity of modern shooters.
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