Fantastapotamus
Wrong about commas, wrong about everything
SPOILERS FOR THE FIRST FEW MISSIONS/HOUR
So let me start this by saying that Fallout 4 is not a bad game. I don't think it's amazing either but it's not bad. It's definitely the most shallow game Bethesda has ever produced and I hate that the game literally showers you in guns and ammo from the start, but I still enjoy wandering around and exloring the world.
However. The first few hours of Fallout 4 are so incredibly awkward, I can't really fathom it. Especially if you consider how smart they handeled the opening for Fallout 3. Obviously just repeating the same thing wouldn't be great either but what they came up with instead is kinda mind-boggeling. So I'm gonna run you through the events of maybe the first hour or so and you tell me if any of this sounds.....weird to you.
First of, it's already weird to me that the character I make already has a long history in this world, I'm married, I have a son and apparently I studied Law at some point cause there is a diploma. But whatever. Not important (right now)
So the game starts, and a few seconds after character creation somebody knocks on the door of your house: It's a Vault-Tec guy, informing you that you and your family got a place in the new Vault Tec bunker that conveniently was built ~2 minutes away from your house. Sweet.
After you close the door, your house robot informs you that your baby-son (that you love very much, so you are told) needs you to press the A key for him, so you go there and do it. IMMEDIATELY after this happens your robot calls you again, because the fucking bombs are dropping. Yes. Literally SECONDS after you were informed that you got a place in the Vault-Tec bunker, the bombs are dropping. If this Vaul-Tec guy would have been here a minute later, the entire game wouldn't happen.
So your partner grabs your son and you rush to the bunker, get on some plattform and get to safety as an atomic explosion sweeps accross the land, and approximately 5 feets above your head (no, that's really how it is. You are on an elevator going down and the blast misses you by ~5 feet). In the bunker you are immediately rushed to some "deconatmination" chamber which turns out to be a cryogenic chamber (nobody told you because it's supposed to be a secret for some reason) and you, and your husband/son are frozen. Then you wake up, some dudes steal your son and kill your husband and take off. You get out, stumble through the tutorial and finally make it back to your house (which is a nice scene, I have to admit).
Assuming you don't do what people usually do in Bethesda games, i.e. ignore the plot and run away to do other stuff, you then go to a very small destroyed town that's probably 2 minutes away from your home. You see some raider attacking a building and being the protagonist and all you intervene (or again, run off and return 50 hours later). So you kill ~5 raiders and are then given a Power Armor, rip a minigun off a plane and kill another 10 raiders and a deathclaw. Yes. Yes that happening. Remember, that at this point, for your character, s/he has been in this world for maybe an hour. For her (or him) the bombs went off not even a day ago. But whatever, it's videogames. Gotta start with a big fight, right?
So you save the day and the 4 people in the building decide "Hey, it's not save here! Let's all move to that place that is 2 minutes away from here, nobody will find us there" (Of course it takes them ~30 minutes to get there because they sure are in no hurry getting through the open wasteland in the middle of the night). Then the head-dude of the survivors basically says "Wow, you did so great, why don't you and only you rebuilt this entire village?" which is basically the town-building tutorial. After you do that (you can skip it if you want) you go on one other mission for this guy, after which he IMMEDIATELY (I know I use that word too much) makes to the leader of the organisation he's part of (to be fair, he says he is the last one but it's still an organisation people in the wasteland know everywhere and of course you will rebuild it to it's former glory, whether you want to or not). Again, yes that happens: Imm...Right after your return he just says "Wow, you killed more Raiders. You know what, I'm gonna call you General from now on and YOU are now the leader of our movement. I know you can do it because you helped us earlier. Now go and rebuild some other towns too!"
Listen, I'm not one of those ludonarrative disonance people, right? But this is just silly. In the span of maybe 2 hours, your character experiences this:
-Her entire world get's blown up
-Her husband is killed
-Her son is kidnapped
-She kills a couple of people (I think it's implied that you were a veteran but it's not really explained?)
-She is in sole charge of rebuilding a village
-And now she also is the leader of some well known, if dead, movement in this world she knows nothing about.
As I said earlier, the game wastes(lands) NO time, showering you with guns. Heck, you get a laser rifle and a freaking Minigun in the mission I just talked about. AND a power armor. But not only that, imm...promptly after your arrival you are just instantly decleared to be one of the most important people around. Instantly.
Come on, this is really weird. And when I say weird, I mean BAD.
It's the typical "Oh no, my starting village! Oh no, my beloved NPCs!" cliche at the start of any RPG, laired with the "YOU....are the chosen one! You have to lead us...." crap on top of it.
What is even happening. At this point I expect to be crowned king of the universe any second now, I just need my magical starship. As I said, I still like the game but wow, this was bad.
What are your thought on it?
Edit: I wrote way too much about this, sorry. Also, please don't just say "Well, you didn't really expect Bethesda to write a good story, didn't you?" I'm gonna ignore a bad story just because the people behind it always make bad stories. That's not how it's supposed to work
So let me start this by saying that Fallout 4 is not a bad game. I don't think it's amazing either but it's not bad. It's definitely the most shallow game Bethesda has ever produced and I hate that the game literally showers you in guns and ammo from the start, but I still enjoy wandering around and exloring the world.
However. The first few hours of Fallout 4 are so incredibly awkward, I can't really fathom it. Especially if you consider how smart they handeled the opening for Fallout 3. Obviously just repeating the same thing wouldn't be great either but what they came up with instead is kinda mind-boggeling. So I'm gonna run you through the events of maybe the first hour or so and you tell me if any of this sounds.....weird to you.
First of, it's already weird to me that the character I make already has a long history in this world, I'm married, I have a son and apparently I studied Law at some point cause there is a diploma. But whatever. Not important (right now)
So the game starts, and a few seconds after character creation somebody knocks on the door of your house: It's a Vault-Tec guy, informing you that you and your family got a place in the new Vault Tec bunker that conveniently was built ~2 minutes away from your house. Sweet.
After you close the door, your house robot informs you that your baby-son (that you love very much, so you are told) needs you to press the A key for him, so you go there and do it. IMMEDIATELY after this happens your robot calls you again, because the fucking bombs are dropping. Yes. Literally SECONDS after you were informed that you got a place in the Vault-Tec bunker, the bombs are dropping. If this Vaul-Tec guy would have been here a minute later, the entire game wouldn't happen.
So your partner grabs your son and you rush to the bunker, get on some plattform and get to safety as an atomic explosion sweeps accross the land, and approximately 5 feets above your head (no, that's really how it is. You are on an elevator going down and the blast misses you by ~5 feet). In the bunker you are immediately rushed to some "deconatmination" chamber which turns out to be a cryogenic chamber (nobody told you because it's supposed to be a secret for some reason) and you, and your husband/son are frozen. Then you wake up, some dudes steal your son and kill your husband and take off. You get out, stumble through the tutorial and finally make it back to your house (which is a nice scene, I have to admit).
Assuming you don't do what people usually do in Bethesda games, i.e. ignore the plot and run away to do other stuff, you then go to a very small destroyed town that's probably 2 minutes away from your home. You see some raider attacking a building and being the protagonist and all you intervene (or again, run off and return 50 hours later). So you kill ~5 raiders and are then given a Power Armor, rip a minigun off a plane and kill another 10 raiders and a deathclaw. Yes. Yes that happening. Remember, that at this point, for your character, s/he has been in this world for maybe an hour. For her (or him) the bombs went off not even a day ago. But whatever, it's videogames. Gotta start with a big fight, right?
So you save the day and the 4 people in the building decide "Hey, it's not save here! Let's all move to that place that is 2 minutes away from here, nobody will find us there" (Of course it takes them ~30 minutes to get there because they sure are in no hurry getting through the open wasteland in the middle of the night). Then the head-dude of the survivors basically says "Wow, you did so great, why don't you and only you rebuilt this entire village?" which is basically the town-building tutorial. After you do that (you can skip it if you want) you go on one other mission for this guy, after which he IMMEDIATELY (I know I use that word too much) makes to the leader of the organisation he's part of (to be fair, he says he is the last one but it's still an organisation people in the wasteland know everywhere and of course you will rebuild it to it's former glory, whether you want to or not). Again, yes that happens: Imm...Right after your return he just says "Wow, you killed more Raiders. You know what, I'm gonna call you General from now on and YOU are now the leader of our movement. I know you can do it because you helped us earlier. Now go and rebuild some other towns too!"
Listen, I'm not one of those ludonarrative disonance people, right? But this is just silly. In the span of maybe 2 hours, your character experiences this:
-Her entire world get's blown up
-Her husband is killed
-Her son is kidnapped
-She kills a couple of people (I think it's implied that you were a veteran but it's not really explained?)
-She is in sole charge of rebuilding a village
-And now she also is the leader of some well known, if dead, movement in this world she knows nothing about.
As I said earlier, the game wastes(lands) NO time, showering you with guns. Heck, you get a laser rifle and a freaking Minigun in the mission I just talked about. AND a power armor. But not only that, imm...promptly after your arrival you are just instantly decleared to be one of the most important people around. Instantly.
Come on, this is really weird. And when I say weird, I mean BAD.
It's the typical "Oh no, my starting village! Oh no, my beloved NPCs!" cliche at the start of any RPG, laired with the "YOU....are the chosen one! You have to lead us...." crap on top of it.
What is even happening. At this point I expect to be crowned king of the universe any second now, I just need my magical starship. As I said, I still like the game but wow, this was bad.
What are your thought on it?
Edit: I wrote way too much about this, sorry. Also, please don't just say "Well, you didn't really expect Bethesda to write a good story, didn't you?" I'm gonna ignore a bad story just because the people behind it always make bad stories. That's not how it's supposed to work
