FFXIV and Fallout 4

After taking a month or so off playing FFXIV, with the release of patch 3.1, I jumped back in and have been playing somewhat regularly. I find myself unmotivated, so far, to play the new raid, Void Ark, mostly because I don't like 24 man raids, as my stupid brain cannot wrap itself around healing 8 people among 24. I hear it's kind of easy, though, so I'll probably run it this weekend.


I've run one of the new dungeons, St. Mocianne's Arboretum, and I kind of don't see the point? It's a nice dungeon and pretty fun, and apparently drops i185 gear which is slightly better than upgraded Law gear, but what's the point? There are so many easier ways to get better gear, and unless you're JUST getting to level 60, none of that will be current. I suppose the point is to let people play something besides Neverreap and Fractal Continuum, both of which I've played probably more than any dungeon in the game for the Esoterics tomestones. Those dungeons are the reason I took a break from FFXIV, actually.


The nice thing is, hunting is viable again! I'm surprised I missed it, to be honest, but I've had fun the past few days creating a party in PF and looking around for A and S ranks. Yesterday I was able to find 2 A ranks myself, which is always fun because you can share it with your active party first, let everybody get there or at least get close, before calling it in /shout and your hunt linkshells. That way no one in the party misses it, and your PF usually fills up really fast if it's not full since yours is the only one up when you announce the coordinates. I was able to make about 1500 seals last night, which netted me 3 Clan Mark Logs, which are items you can trade to upgrade your i200 eso gear to i210. I think I'm going to go for 6 first, to upgrade my chest piece on my WHM, so then I can dye it.


I also spent $7.50 of real world money to buy 10 pots of virtual red metallic dye. *ahem* Moving on...


I've been playing on PS4, now, too, which is interesting for a few reasons. The PS3, it will come as a surprise to no one, is missing quite a bit of incidental detail. Every area in the game, be it ARR or HW, looks WAY different, to the degree where I sometimes get a bit lost. I'm not complaining, as the draw distance and resolution make the game even more gorgeous than it was. And even without a SSD on the PS4, giant groups of people killing a hunt don't seem to hurt the framerate (or make the hunt completely disappear, which was the most infuriating thing in the game when it used to happen to me on PS3). I did have a hunt in which the framerate dropped a bit - an S Rank had spawned in La Noscea somewhere - but I was still able to target the hunt and got full credit and all that, and it's not like the framerate was TOO bad, just noticeable.


The reason I bought the PS4 was for Fallout 4, which just came out, so I've been playing that too. I'm enjoying it so far, but it is 100% a sequel to Fallout 3, not New Vegas, which are both good games, though I vastly prefer New Vegas. Fallout 4, as fun as it is, just feels so much less like a cohesive world than NV did. Yes, there's a story and yes, there are questlines, but they seem so barebones compared to NV that it makes me kind of sad. The fact that it's much harder to talk your way out of problems because of the changes they made to the stats and leveling up system doesn't help. I used to try to talk my way through NV, which was fun, because I'd charm people into doing what I wanted them to, rather than have to fight every single person I come across. Thus far, across 15 hours or so of Fallout 4, there have been very few non hostile characters, though I have not made it to Boston yet, so that could change. It's just been "oh, there's a person, I bet they're hostile," and then, inevitably, they are.


All that said, however, Fallout 4 plays a lot better in terms of combat than 3 or even NV. I suck at shooters, though I'm able to aim a bit better in this one and have actually used VATS less than I thought I would (though I still use it often enough that I would consider not playing these games if Bethesda took VATS out entirely). I love the base building and gear modding stuff, and have really only scratched the surface of both. I'm starting to run into a bit of an ammo problem, but as soon as I hit level 13, I've decided to take the perk that makes you find more ammo, as I've heard it's pretty effective. Hopefully that helps.


The game is gorgeous, and so far, runs extremely well. I've run into very few buggy situations so far, which is unusual for a Bethesda Fallout, though I'm sure the closer I get to Boston, the more bugs I'm sure to encounter. As long as my save files and questlines don't get screwed, I'll be fine with them, I think.


I have to complain about the main story so far, though. Spoilers start in the next sentence for those of you who care. You start the game before the war, married with a child, with a live in butler robot who helps around the house. You talk to your wife, play with your kid a little bit, then the sirens go off and you have to sprint to the vault where you're cryogenically frozen. Before that, though, you get to see the world before the bombs fell, and it's really nice! I would have liked to explore outside just a little bit before having to jump into the vault, but the game doesn't let you leave the house until the sirens go off. I get why they did this - they didn't want me wandering off outside of the starting town - but the house you're in is pretty unimpressive. You run past some nice looking homes and lots of people who will surely die, then into the vault, where you're frozen. You unfreeze at one point, watch your wife, who's in the cryogenic chamber across from you, get shot and your child stolen, then refrozen. You're thawed an unknown period of time later and then the game proper starts.


I have issues with this. First off - how convenient that I was unthawed to watch my wife get killed and my baby stolen! I think it would have been more effective to be unthawed someday and THEN find out my wife is dead, and my kid is nowhere to be found. Maybe leave some notes in the computer terminal that hints to my kids fate or something. It's a small point, I suppose, but it's poor storytelling, something I don't think Obsidian, the writers of New Vegas, would have done.


Aside from all that, too, why does Bethesda keep giving the player character in Fallout a family? I did not give a shit about my dad in Fallout 3, nor do I care about my wife or kid, both of whom I've spent five minutes (and just an hour or two in game time) with in Fallout 4! If ever there was a series where the player character should be a cipher, it's the frickin Fallout games, yet now my character even has a voice actor. Why?! Unlike most other RPGs I play, I play Fallout to actually roleplay, and having some douchey voice come out of my character takes me out of that big time. Doesn't help that the voice acting seems very flat, too. "Streamlining" the dialogue trees, too, seems like a huge misstep to me, as now it's very difficult to talk your way out of situations like you could before. Now, when you level up, you get to select a new perk - which are attainable based on how many SPECIAL points you have, rather than individual stats like "Lockpicking" or "Persuasion" or whatever. I could be wrong as I'm only level 12 now, but the system as it is now seems to really encourage minmaxing, which I'd also rather not do in a Fallout game.


Where Bethesda has improved, though, is in world design. For all the fun I had in Fallout 3, I frickin hated exploring in that game, which was a huge problem. You had to go through all kinds of tunnels and subways to get anywhere, and the map didn't do you any favors when it came to figuring out which subway went where. Even when you were in the overworld, there were piles of rubble EVERYWHERE, nearly right off the bat, which limited where you could go. New Vegas blew 3 out of the water for many reasons, but this was the biggie for me. Fallout 4 continues the trend in New Vegas, and actually has a much more interesting and less annoying world to explore.


I just wish there was more personality to it. Again, I'm not yet to Boston, but New Vegas had all kinds of people working to different ends in nearly every inch of its world. There are still questlines I've never seen in that game, despite at least five playthroughs! Don't get me wrong, all of this might be moot and I might find myself with a great bunch of settlements soon, but that would be a bit surprising outside of Boston proper, I'd think.


All of this sounds like I hate Fallout 4 - I don't! It's a great game, but it just makes me really want the guys from Obsidian to make another Fallout, as I prefer their stuff.