GirlWithBig1s

Intro is male-centred, it would have been better if they had let Ron Pearlman do his thing there. Kept it gender neutral and classic Fallout at the same time. Why they didn't I cannot quite fathom. Then they put us in half-by-half pre-made characters - married with kids. No longer a blank canvas for you to paint on, but either a war veteran if you pick the guy or a lawyer if you pick the gal (thought he gets the intro video, she, uh, indeed, a diploma). Why not both veterans? Or neither? Or better still, a different story altogether that didn't try to force you into the roles they made for you, or half made. Being born to 'random' parents is one thing (Fallout 3 and even previous games) is one thing, being given a spouse and kid another. Dialogue wheel, oh how I detest thee. It is like a guessing game what your character will say at times. Voice acting is doing this and will do so until it can be replaced with natural sound synthetic voices (synths, ha, yeah...) that can express (user controlled) emotions. As it stands now, it constantly sandbags you in addition to severely limiting the number of options open to you (after all, can't record dialogue for another three years just to add one more option to each encounter, and how would it work on a controllers directional pad any way?). Voice acting has, since it entered the RPG genre, served to limit the options in dialogue, even when it was 'only' used for NPCs. RPG sandboxes are not the best genre for it, whereas it works fine in games with a non-sandbox world and a completely pre-set character (by-the-rail-shooters, for instance). Personally I cannot wait for 'alternative start' mods to come in. Start as a single neighbour of this couple, or live somewhere else (a few other Vaults out there, after all), giving us this blank canvas again. Or even as a ghoul, for those interested in that, perhaps trapped for 200 years (it happens, you know)? But most of all, a mod that turns the wheel into a list with the full dialogue text displayed. That alone would have made me rank this eight (8) instead. The artificial 'care-for-me' scenario and shoe-horning into a role that not all may enjoy or desire cost it two stars. The third is lost due to the obvious concession to controller support with half-hearted keyboard+mouse alternative seeming tacked on - and even lacking in clear controls at time (such as scrolling on the mouse doesn't show more text on the terminals, but rather the unannounced Enter key). Bizarre feeling to it, and overly large text for a computer screen. Again, mods will fix it, in time, but it is sad to see this haunt nearly all games these days. Also wish I could assign more keys for functions so the did not share the same. Support keyboards properly, please. It is also a bit jarring to step out of the vault and turn from grieving to mass killing literally within minutes, yet later in the game you can feel sorrow over killing a mid-level henchman, albeit briefly. Yes, it's Fallout, fighting is part of it, but it is poorly paced and feels jarring. Like all those films where the 'hero' kills countless 'goons' and refuses to kill the Main Bad because 'there's been enough killing'. I say. I have not had many bugs, I must say, apart from once when I had to reload a save (save often, make it a habit, not just because of potential bugs) - mostly my bugs have been hilarious air-born bodies upon death and other harmless ones (shot a raider in the head, he launched straight up for, oh, 100 metres or so). I came prepared for worse, but I might have gotten lucky. Graphics are fine. It does not strive to be ultra-realistic but to have its own style. It achieves that. What is clumsy are some facial animations, mostly. All this said, I enjoy it and will probably keep playing for a long time (I still play Skyrim, with maxed out number of mods), I just hope Bethesda reverts back to the blank canvas and proper RPG dialogue interface. I recommend it, with these reservations in mind.