Good so far:

- It looks nice! Not just in terms of the engine doing a better job than in FO3, but also, the Commonwealth just looks better than the Capital Wasteland. The sky is actually blue, and everything doesn't have that slightly bilious green tinge that always made DC feel like the Matrix. There's even weather, which I wasn't expecting the first time it happened.

- The art design on stuff that wasn't inherited from the previous game is pretty good, and even the redesigns on most of the stuff that was (that I've encountered so far) are decent. The new 10mm pistol, for instance, looks more plausibly like an actual gun than the previous version, which is good, since you're evidently stuck with it for a while. I also like that they made Wonderglue containers a reasonable size, as opposed to the half-gallon jugs they were in FO3.

- The weapon mod system is stupidly complicated, yet I'm starting to like it, if only because its complicatedness comes in part from a wide range of customization options than the one in New Vegas, and FO3 didn't have one at all, so take the win, right?

- Having a bin to dump junk in that semi-automagically figures out what it's good for is nice.

- The new power armor mechanics are... interesting. I'm not sold on having to keep it fueled, particularly since that isn't compatible with the (Grodd help me, I'm about to use this word in a gaming-backstory context) lore of previous games; it's clearly just a way of imposing a new limit on an old toy. Reminds me a bit of when BioWare waved their hands around between Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2 and suddenly there was an ammunition mechanic for the weapons, although at least the fusion core thing is a reasonable explanation and not as head-slappingly stupid as the heat sinks thing. However, the modularity is interesting, the donning/doffing animation is cool, and I like the changes to the user interface. It did always strike me as a little weird that you'd still be consulting your wrist computer while wearing power armor. :)

- No crashes to desktop so far! In FO3 I'd have had four or five by this point, and at least one corrupted save.

- Did anyone else notice that Codsworth says your name when you meet up with him again after the tutorial? (Or at least has a fairly high percentage chance to be able to do so?) I thought I imagined it the first time. That is pretty badass.

Not so good so far:

- It's cute how Bethesda tried to address their legendary tendency toward clunky UIs (lookin' at you, Skyrim) and, in doing so, made the Fallout UI clunkier than it was before. Though at least there are hotkeys for the different Pip-Boy modes you want to look at before you actually look at your Pip-Boy, that's nice.

- No skills? Really? It's all stats and perks now? This and some of the design choices made in the clunky UI redesign noted above scream "dumbed down for the console peasantry and their pitifully inadequate input devices" to me, but maybe I'm just a jaded PC elitist. :)

- The character models actually look too good, by which I mean that they're so close to convincing it makes them less convincing than if they were just... less convincing. Everyone in Fallout 4 comes from the Uncanny Valley.

- Did non-power armor really need to be this stupidly complicated? I'm thinking no.

- Speaking of stupidly complicated, I don't get workshop mode. I mean, it's neat that they tried to include a town-builder subgame, but trying to play SimCity in the mayor's first-person view is just... no. Would it have killed them to go to some kind of god's-eye cam for things like building placement?

- Coupled to both of the previous points, the game is not very good at explaining any of this stuff. Or indeed very much of anything, mechanics-wise.

- This next thing is arguably something I screwed up for myself, but: I had a nice little homestead set up for myself in Sanctuary Hills before I went to Concord, and now these people have just moved in like they own the place. Fergus or whatever his name is is just blithely using all my workbenches and ordering me around like it was his idea; the others have taken over the adjoining house, which I settled in rather than my old one for convenience's sake and because hey, painful memories, you dig? But hey, gang, don't mind me, go ahead, use my bed, use my generator, eat my melon patch. I'll just go exile myself to the Red Rocket station and stay out of your way, shall I? Jeez.

- This is a super-minor thing, but, I'm sad the game no longer draws your holstered weapon when you're not carrying it around in your hand.

- I'm intrigued by the evident fact that the one piece of lost Old World technology that post-War humanity cannot make for itself, most powerfully yearns for, most desperately seeks and most jealously hoards, without which all the New World's innovations are useless, is not nuclear fusion, not energy weaponry, not telecommunications, no, it's a decent adhesive. Not a future scenario I would have anticipated.

--G.
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Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.