Sitting at over 10 days of game-on time now. As with the past Beth games, once I get hooked, I'm gone. I was cycling through several good games, but not anymore. My system may as well be hardcoded with Fallout 4 right now.
I finished the story with the BoS, but I left myself saves to follow the Minutemen and the Institute to the end. I felt awful after playing good soldier for the BoS.
Maxson is a mass-murdering xenophobe, and following him means doing a lot more harm than good to the Commonwealth.
So I loaded up the save to follow a different path, with the Minutemen, and that ended up disappointing me as well.
Same nuclear detonation blasting a huge radioactive hole in the middle of Boston. Garvey's reaction to the event is that of a good man, but that doesn't change the horrible outcome. Also, his enmity with the Institute is never clearly explained. Perhaps I've forgotten some details from early in the game. Either way, it felt very odd to me that Garvey wanted to pursue a course of destruction just as much as Maxson. It felt way out of place for his character.
My greatest disappointment is that so much is rigidly forced in the storyline.
Shaun may be a 60-something scientist with a myopic view of the world, but he is my son. (I suppose it's possible that he really isn't, but nothing in the quest paths I've followed so far points to him being a synth or impostor.) My greatest motivation after discovering this nifty time-bending twist was to somehow reconcile the Institute with at least one of the factions above ground. As far as I can tell, that's completely impossible, and 2-dimensionally so. Father (Shaun), who comes across as so enlightened when first met, becomes an impenetrable stone wall when the game gets to the Mass Fusion quest. The folks above ground are similarly closed to any persuasion or negotiation. The game simply did not go there, and that's a shame. I have to let the Institute enslave mankind, or kill my son along with a lot of promising technology and half a city.
I have yet to follow the Institute
through the Mass Fusion branching point
(which I want to do) or the Railroad (which interests me the least), so perhaps there's something I'm missing, and there's a way to a better future for this world.
Edit: On to the gameplay feelings. Overall, terrific. It's definitely Bethesda, and we all know what quirks and problems that brings. Accepting or overlooking those, the improvements from the previous installment are most welcome. Gunplay feels a lot more like it should, and VATS is not strictly necessary anymore. Being able to mod gear is terrific, as is the addition of true power armor. I probably spent as much time tinkering as I did doing anything else. The perk system is quite good, and the lack of a hard level cap makes playing for a very long time more rewarding. I read somewhere that to get all the SPECIAL ranks and all the perks takes something like 270 levels. I'm at story end game, and I'm at Level 74 on the BoS branch, and 73 on the Minutemen branch.
The weapons are extremely varied as a result of their moddability, and the addition of legendary prefixes and unique named items. Expanding positively on the obvious influence from Borderlands, it's possible to exchange parts between guns of the same basic design, as well as craft them with the proper resources and perks. It takes 4 ranks in 3 different perks, plus at least one rank in a 4th to be able to craft everything possible for gear.
I got so hooked on power armor that I really didn't invest nearly as much time on the normal wearables. Those can be modded extensively as well, and your outfit can consist of up to 8 items (underarmor, 6-piece armor, glasses) and each one of those can have perk boosters or legendary bonuses. Next playthrough, I'll try to resist the allure of those shiny hulking mechanized suits, and develop some killer regular armor instead.
Power armor is the shit, though. It's my single favorite enhancement over FO3. You really feel like you're in a mech suit, and once you have a jetpack, you'll never go back. That's only one of many mods for each piece of the PA set, which themselves come in 4 different flavors suitable for different character levels. Each can be strengthened in 5 increments above base level as well. Overall, quite engrossing for a tinkerer.
Bugs and issues abound, as in all the big Beth games. Not many crashes after the update to 1.4, but I still got infinitely stuck in a dialog or totally frozen on occasion, or something didn't trigger properly, etc. Their saving grace is the many save files possible, and being able to save at any time. I hear that the revamped survival difficulty will do away with quick saving, and restrict saving to sleeping in a bed. For such rickety game tech, that is a huge mistake.
Edit 2: Oh, and gotta have Automatron. You haven't really played FO4 until you can make your own robot companions, or mod Codsworth into a British battle beast of a valet.
