official Fallout 4

[JaySharkz]

really excited for this game. been watching a lot of trailers on youtube. can't wait to get my hands on this game! Goodbye sunlight! lol

[dipsylalapo Supervisor]

I've read up and a little about this game and watched the various videos and announcements. I had a quick question, how much will the previous two games play a part in the sequel? Will I be missing anything from a story perspective?

I own but haven't found the time (yet) to play through them.  

[Louisifer]

I've read up and a little about this game and watched the various videos and announcements. I had a quick question, how much will the previous two games play a part in the sequel? Will I be missing anything from a story perspective?

I own but haven't found the time (yet) to play through them.  

From the information we know of FO4 it will be set 2 months after FO3 in 2277 and New Vegas is set in 2281, so they should be unaware of FO3 events in FO4.

They tend to reference 1 & 2 but you wont miss anything vital by starting with FO4, just make sure you play the others at some point if you like games with lots of lore.

[dragontology]

I've read up and a little about this game and watched the various videos and announcements. I had a quick question, how much will the previous two games play a part in the sequel? Will I be missing anything from a story perspective?

I own but haven't found the time (yet) to play through them.  

New Vegas won't play a part at all. One quest in Fallout 3 refers to events in the setting of Fallout 4, but it's not essential. You could look up "The Replicated Man" on the Fallout wiki. Knowing who the runaway android is won't help you complete the quest. It's mostly investigating.

Also, a scientist in 3, unrelated to that quest, heads north toward that place, so we may see them again, but it's also entirely possible they get killed on the way, so I wouldn't expect to see them again.

The most you'll miss is experience with the major Fallout factions. We don't know how big a part the Enclave will play. They were in Fallout 3. Haven't seen them in promotional materials for 4. The Brotherhood of Steel however will be in 4. Smaller factions like the Gun Runners and Caesar's Legion... the Legion most likely won't be. Gun Runners, could go either way. New California Republic, a major faction, but a west coast one, surely won't. Though they could be mentioned. Having played 3 and New Vegas, I'll have that experience and certain prejudices, but due to the nature of the post-apocalyptic wastelands and the lack of communication, my knowledge will only go so far.

You should be fine.

[dipsylalapo Supervisor]

Ah thanks guys that's good to know. I'll probably end up buying a digital copy of FO4 so will get the others as a bonus.

[dragontology]

Has Bethesda definitively said whether or not those who pre-ordered from Amazon will get a Steam key? The Amazon page does not have any mention of one. I see that GMG is selling the Season Pass and Reddit is saying you can get it for 23% off using code 23PERC-AUTUMN-SAVING, which also can be applied to the base game, for a total of $69.30 for both. NOT BAD.

What I'm wondering is, since I pre-ordered the Pip-Boy edition, I know I'm getting a physical copy of the game. I'm sure it will be a Steam game, with a Steam code I can add, but how does that work? Do the discs just copy the files to a Steam installation, and the code is needed to actually play? I'm just worried because as far as I can tell, Bethesda has not said. I'm willing to buy the Season Pass at full price (Bethesda deserves it, IMO) but a sale is a sale and I'm already paying $120.

[The Evil Overlord]

... And if there's any truth to what the Bungie tin foil hat brigade say, Sleeper Simulant' quest line should be well underway the same date '

[compl3x]

 

 

I really like this videos. They're fun and they are keeping the hype alive. My expectations for most things is pretty low but I have high hopes for this. Please, please don't let FO4 suck. 

[Victor Rambo]

PC Systems Requirements (Requires Internet Connection and Free Steam Account to Activate)

Minimum
 

• Windows 7/8/10 (64-bit OS required)
• Intel Core i5-2300 2.8 GHz/AMD Phenom II X4 945 3.0 GHz or equivalent
• 8 GB RAM
• 30 GB free HDD space
• NVIDIA GTX 550 Ti 2GB/AMD Radeon HD 7870 2GB or equivalent

Recommended
 

• Windows 7/8/10 (64-bit OS required)
• Intel Core i7 4790 3.6 GHz/AMD FX-9590 4.7 GHz or equivalent
• 8 GB RAM
• 30 GB free HDD space
• NVIDIA GTX 780 3GB/AMD Radeon R9 290X 4GB or equivalent

 

[Louisifer]

Recommended is a tad higher than I expected. Hopefully I can get Ultra at 30fps.

[dragontology]

They also confirmed that the game requires Steam (surprise surprise) and that the Pip-Boy app will also work on Windows Phone devices (a real surprise). More information:

Does Fallout 4 have gamepad support on PC?
Fallout 4 has plug & play compatibility with both the Xbox One and Xbox 360 controllers. Alternate controller options may require additional user adjustments

Does Fallout 4 support Steam Achievements?
Yes.

What platforms and phones support the Fallout 4 Pip-Boy App?
The Fallout 4 Pip-Boy App is usable in tandem with Fallout 4 on Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC. The App is supported on iOS, Android, and Windows Phone devices.

When will the Pip-Boy App become available?
It will be available for the launch of Fallout 4 on November 10.

What phones will fit in the Pip-Boy Edition Pip-Boy?
The Pip-Boy included will have foam inserts that fit iPhone 6/6s, iPhone 5/5s, iPhone 4/4S, Samsung Galaxy S5, Samsung Galaxy S4, and Samsung Galaxy S3. In addition, using the customizable foam insert you should be able to fit most other popular smartphone devices. As we wanted to stay faithful to the dimensions of the in-game model, any smartphones larger than the models listed will not fit inside the wearable device, but can still use the Pip-Boy App.

Release Time
Want to know exactly when you can start playing Fallout 4? Digitally the game will become available on November 10, 2015, at 12:01 am (local time) in all territories (In North America, the unlock time will be 12:01 am EST), except Asia (available at 12 am on Wednesday, November 11th) and Japan (available at 12 am on Thursday, December 17th).

What languages does Fallout 4 support?

• In North America, Fallout 4 supports English/French voice/text.
• In South America, Fallout 4 supports English voice/text, as well as BR-PT and Latin American Spanish text.
• In the United Kingdom and Australia/New Zealand, Fallout 4 supports English voice/text only.
• In most European territories, Fallout 4 supports English/French/Italian/German/Spanish voice/text
• In Russia and Poland, Fallout 4 supports English voice/text and Polish/Russian text.
• In Asia, Fallout 4 supports English voice/text and English voice / Traditional Chinese text.
• In Japan, Fallout 4 supports Japanese voice/text.

Note: On consoles, you may need to adjust the system level language settings to gain access to additional languages.

Is there a pre-order bonus?
Everyone who pre-orders a physical copy of the regular or Pip-Boy Edition of the game will receive a Perk Poster with your copy of the game. Digital pre-order bonuses vary by retailer, check with your retailer for more info.

Source: Bethesda blog

[Luc2k]

I wonder if they'll try to revive the paid mods thing once this launches seeing as it's a new game.

[dragontology]

I wonder if they'll try to revive the paid mods thing once this launches seeing as it's a new game.

Well, it's certainly possible. Especially on the Xbox One. Hard to say how Sony will do it. But the Xbox 360 had paid mods before Skyrim was even released (Rockband 2 & 3 custom songs released on Rockband Network using Microsoft XNA tech) so I think monetizing user generated content is important to Microsoft. With the Rockband Network, profits were split about evenly between Microsoft, Harmonix (Rockband developer), and the author or authoring group who "made" the song (wrote the QTE charts). And songs cost $1, $2, or $3.

The big difference being that all Rockband songs (from Harmonix or the Network) were all wholly independent things. One could not affect any others. A badly authored song would only affect itself, and these were widely tested. They had to be. Microsoft had very specific rules. Like if someone used the QTE charts to make a swastika, even if the chart's notes unintentionally resembled one, that was an automatic fail. Not that I ever saw any discernible shapes in Rockband notes (though I primarily sang), it was possible. That rule and others like it would be more important in Fallout 4 mods. A modder could theoretically place a swastika in the game, and maybe hide it, and it could get past the censors, but if Microsoft finds out, it's gone. The swastika ban is something we can perhaps all agree on, but they also banned nudity, profanity, and depiction of drug or alcohol use — then again, all Rockband titles have been rated T, for Teen. Maybe many of those restrictions would be lifted for an M-rated game.

I'm actually okay with paid modding, given some basic caveats. One, the Creation Kit has to be well documented and busted wide open for everyone. Early on in Skyrim modding, people were discovering little tricks to make mods work better. These were shared, but wouldn't be shared if paid mods were a thing, because competition. So say there are exploits A, B, C, and D that all do a particular thing. Chances are, a mod using exploit A and a mod using exploit C would not be compatible. So we really need everyone on the same page. Mods need to be open source. And to that end, secondly, copycat mods need to be cracked down on. To get a mod paid, it absolutely must be original work. But then what happens if somebody copies a paid mod and releases it for free? We can't really stop that, and do we really want to? Should an idea be completely off the table because somebody is making money off of it? Third, and perhaps most important, we need a high level of QA involving Bethesda for any paid-for mod.

And Bethesda needs to provide a mod manager and conflict database that guarantees the game will run with these mods, and a way to forcibly disable one mod or another in a conflict. Another really good thing they could do is lock all mods to a character. So you start a character, and when you do so, you choose the mods you're going to use. Those mods can never be removed or updated, nor can you add more. You have to delete the character and start over. Otherwise, they cannot assure quality at all.

Really, what I would like to see is the best mods, selected by Bethesda, rolled into community DLC patches. These would be free mods that would be cherry picked for their contribution to the game. They would still be free, but buying them would compensate both Bethesda and the modder, and they would be guaranteed to work with all the content, so this is where the best mods would wind up, and everything would still be free. The difference between paying and not is basically support. Paying for the mods would guarantee they would work with other officially picked mods, and the first-party content, and of course seeing the modders who work the hardest compensated for their work.

[trag3dy]

I wonder if they'll try to revive the paid mods thing once this launches seeing as it's a new game.

I think they'll definitely try but I think this time will try to bring it in under the radar. Which I don't see happening, fortunately.  And I don't think it'll work if they are still going to try to take 70% of the mod sales or whatever that insane percentage was.

[dragontology]

I think they'll definitely try but I think this time will try to bring it in under the radar. Which I don't see happening, fortunately.  And I don't think it'll work if they are still going to try to take 70% of the mod sales or whatever that insane percentage was.

45%. Valve claimed 30%, which is probably why you're thinking 70%. It was 75% IIRC between Bethesda and Valve, with the modder getting 25%. And IIRC they were only getting paid in Steam credit, and only in $100 increments, so they had to sell $400 worth of their mod to get their first $100 credit. If their 99¢ mod only sold 399 copies, they got paid nothing. At least that was my understanding.

The platform owner (Valve, in this case, but also Microsoft and Sony) will always take about a third, and the game developer will get a third as well. So the person doing the actual work will get less than half, at most a third. And that's a real shame, but I don't see it changing any time soon.

[The_Decryptor Veteran]

Yeah, if modders want more of the share they should argue for a better deal from Bethesda (or such), problem with the original paid mod attempt is that it wasn't the modders who were complaining about the money

[+Asmodai MVC]

45%. Valve claimed 30%, which is probably why you're thinking 70%. It was 75% IIRC between Bethesda and Valve, with the modder getting 25%. And IIRC they were only getting paid in Steam credit, and only in $100 increments, so they had to sell $400 worth of their mod to get their first $100 credit. If their 99¢ mod only sold 399 copies, they got paid nothing. At least that was my understanding.

The platform owner (Valve, in this case, but also Microsoft and Sony) will always take about a third, and the game developer will get a third as well. So the person doing the actual work will get less than half, at most a third. And that's a real shame, but I don't see it changing any time soon.

I agree it's unlikely the 30% cut for Valve will change as it's the standard cut for Steam as well as Microsoft, Google, and Apple Stores (probably PlayStation as well).  I DO think Bethesda can and should lower their 45% cut however because they aren't doing anything they weren't doing before.  Yes they have mod tools but Bethesda games have had mod tools for several releases now and they haven't been taking a cut, their cut is in the sale of the game itself.  I'm not saying they shouldn't get ANYTHING but if they need to reduce their cut to 20% or less so the mod creators gets AT LEAST 50%.  I don't know where they got 45% from, that was nuts.

My understanding is the $100 increments thing is also pretty standard (I think even google ads works like that) because these companies don't want to have to do a money transfer on every $0.99 purchase.  That's reasonable in my mind however they SHOULD cut a check when it hits that mark not give Steam credit (maybe offer a Steam credit OPTION).  I had a friend who was super excited when he got his first check from google for hitting the $100 (or whatever their threshold was) that he didn't even cash it, he had it framed.

[dragontology]

Agility video is up — I like this one better than the last couple. And Agility has been the best stat, at least in 3, not counting INT Min/Maxing.

Speaking of SPECIAL, what kind of builds are y'all looking to do? I forget how many SPECIAL points we got, but I'm pretty sure everything started with a base 5. As for me, I used to dump Charisma, but I think I'm going to take it to at least 7, and have Agility at 7 or 8. I'm going to want to know which stat(s) crafting is tied to, because I really want to build my own settlement. Strength will probably be needed to some extent for building buildings, I would think. Probably going to start with a gunslinger, inspired by Stephen King's Roland Deschain, from the Dark Tower books. Lovingly called "tall, dark, and ugly" by his friends, he's part John Wayne and part Lancelot. The gunslingers were sort of like knights with guns. So he's got this code of honor, though he doesn't like a lot of people, only trusting a few. And he doesn't like fancy guns, instead opting for revolvers and pistols, maybe the occasional rifle. He's good with his hands, but more for fixing things than throwing grenades. Not a very ambitious build for Fallout, but an easy enough one to stay true to.

[trag3dy]

[Louisifer]

Sneaky reveal half way through 

 

[+Asmodai MVC]

Agility video is up — I like this one better than the last couple. And Agility has been the best stat, at least in 3, not counting INT Min/Maxing.

Speaking of SPECIAL, what kind of builds are y'all looking to do? I forget how many SPECIAL points we got, but I'm pretty sure everything started with a base 5. As for me, I used to dump Charisma, but I think I'm going to take it to at least 7, and have Agility at 7 or 8. I'm going to want to know which stat(s) crafting is tied to, because I really want to build my own settlement. Strength will probably be needed to some extent for building buildings, I would think. Probably going to start with a gunslinger, inspired by Stephen King's Roland Deschain, from the Dark Tower books. Lovingly called "tall, dark, and ugly" by his friends, he's part John Wayne and part Lancelot. The gunslingers were sort of like knights with guns. So he's got this code of honor, though he doesn't like a lot of people, only trusting a few. And he doesn't like fancy guns, instead opting for revolvers and pistols, maybe the occasional rifle. He's good with his hands, but more for fixing things than throwing grenades. Not a very ambitious build for Fallout, but an easy enough one to stay true to.

You don't start with base 5 anymore.  In the new system you start with 28 total points to spread between the seven attributes.  Each attribute can be from 1 to 10.  For each point you put in an attribute you unlock a perk (you don't get it, you just unlock the possibility of picking it when you level up).  Some perks have multiple levels as well so you can pick the same one multiple times for increased bonus.  Alternately you can give up a perk when you level and raise one of your SPECIALs instead.  There is no level cap and so if you include the multiple ranks for perks there are over 270 available.

Source

[dragontology]

Much of that I knew, some I didn't. So a balanced player out of the gate will have 4s across the board.

Over 270? Well if we said there were just 270, and there's no cap on raising SPECIALs, the highest level to give a reward would be 312. 7 SPECIALS times 10 equals 70 SPECIAL points possible, subtract the 28 you start with and that's 42. Again, assuming you can use 42 levels to raise SPECIALs. Add 42 to 270 and voila, 312.

Wonder how many XP, how much grinding, it would take to go from 311 to 312. I bet a lot more than it takes to go from 310 to 311. And that's assuming you want it all. I'm not fond of the cannibal perk, or the Mysterious Stranger. I never take Bloody Mess, either (makes looting difficult).

[McCordRm]

I just pre-ordered this on the PS4. I'm really surprised there aren't any in-game pre-order rewards: costume, weapons, etc. Especially for a title this big.

[The_Decryptor Veteran]

I like that, annoyed me with Fallout New Vegas that you got special weapons (Like a grenade launcher) if you pre-ordered it from the right place.

[+Audioboxer Subscriber²]

I like that, annoyed me with Fallout New Vegas that you got special weapons (Like a grenade launcher) if you pre-ordered it from the right place.

Bingo!

This game is probably the only one that will challenge The Witcher 3 for me.