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Fallout 4 has one of the weirdest openings I've seen in a long time
- Thread starter Fantastapotamus
- Start date
Except it's still bad even if it's in the world. The thing that you recapped is called "premise", not "storytelling" and most definitely it's not related to the OP's topic who specifically mentions first few hours.
Sodding_Gamer
Member
Funnily enough I didn't think of this at all.
In fact, I thought that because the vaults were already built ages ago, that these people knocking on doors already know what's about to happen (have been told by the government) so they get round to people and put them in the vault as soon as they can before the bombs actually hit. So when he showed up that guy already knew what was about to happen.
Whilst I can understand people frustrated in not spending some time in the vault, but for me I was glad to be out and about straight away.
I do however think that instead of skipping the "living inside the vault" tutorial they had in F3 they could of spent more time in pre-apocalypse times and set the tutorial for longer there instead. And that way you could get more character development in for the story twist that happens in the vault... if you know what I mean? Would of made the twist more impactful.
Either way, it's bethesda. I didn't expect much in the writing/story department lol.
In fact, I thought that because the vaults were already built ages ago, that these people knocking on doors already know what's about to happen (have been told by the government) so they get round to people and put them in the vault as soon as they can before the bombs actually hit. So when he showed up that guy already knew what was about to happen.
Whilst I can understand people frustrated in not spending some time in the vault, but for me I was glad to be out and about straight away.
I do however think that instead of skipping the "living inside the vault" tutorial they had in F3 they could of spent more time in pre-apocalypse times and set the tutorial for longer there instead. And that way you could get more character development in for the story twist that happens in the vault... if you know what I mean? Would of made the twist more impactful.
Either way, it's bethesda. I didn't expect much in the writing/story department lol.
for me the worse of it was when you wake up and you go to your wife's body and says I will find who did this, and thats it. no emotion, nothing, it was really poorly acted.
yeah, its weird to be doind other stuff when you want to find your kid, but hey, you are taking advice from a drugged out lady as to where you should go to find him, so theres that.
Plus, I played 100+ hours through 3 mass effect games, and I had a party in sheppards apartment while the reapers were killing millions of people. the main character doing side stuff while looking for his son does not phase me at all.
yeah, its weird to be doind other stuff when you want to find your kid, but hey, you are taking advice from a drugged out lady as to where you should go to find him, so theres that.
Plus, I played 100+ hours through 3 mass effect games, and I had a party in sheppards apartment while the reapers were killing millions of people. the main character doing side stuff while looking for his son does not phase me at all.
Strife In a Teacup
Member
To Bethesda's credit, this part is actually explained in the terminals in the Vault itself. It even explains how they were suprised/glad to get the couple with the child at the last minute.
Moff
Member
F3 was a lot better, I remember being actually impressed by F3's beginning in the vault and the first town. mostly because I expected nothing after the extremely shallow oblivion, but still.
F4 is a lot worse than that, very rushed, zero immersion, and that "war never changes" intro movie, ugh. dumb.
F4 is a lot worse than that, very rushed, zero immersion, and that "war never changes" intro movie, ugh. dumb.
Stallion Dan
Member
Yeah, I felt the power armour/deathclaw/general thing happened way too fast, like I didn't earn any of it.
Teletraan1
Banned
I read all that as well. It seemed pretty straightforward to me. Each vault is a social experiment. The entire beginning was not executed very well but it gets you into the game faster than before. I think that people have an expectation that they are going to spend a bit of time in the vault at first (which I never enjoy) after they released that Fallout Shelter mobile game. I was glad to be out of there and proclaimed wasteland Jesus as soon as possible.
I agree with pretty much anything except the minor point you make about no one telling you the Vault was a cryonics chamber, that's the point. The majority of all Vault-Tec Vaults are not actually supposed to shield survivors from the horrors of the nuclear apocalypse, they are secretly testing facilities. A lot of the fun of the Fallout game is finding these Vaults and discovering what sick thing Vault-Tec was experimenting with in whichever Vault you happened to be exploring at the time.
That said, Bethesda needs to just outsource all story and quest design to Obsidian they clearly don't know how to write open-world stories let alone a Fallout story. Why the hell does everyone act like the bombs fell yesterday? It's kind of cute that Diamond City, unlike Megaton, has a small "farm" and water reclamation center but it's hilarious to think they could sustain the population of that town. New Vegas, on the other hand, had acres upon acres of farmland to sustain the population complete with miles of irrigation and Brahamin to graze the land because Obsidian cared and thought about these things.
That said, Bethesda needs to just outsource all story and quest design to Obsidian they clearly don't know how to write open-world stories let alone a Fallout story. Why the hell does everyone act like the bombs fell yesterday? It's kind of cute that Diamond City, unlike Megaton, has a small "farm" and water reclamation center but it's hilarious to think they could sustain the population of that town. New Vegas, on the other hand, had acres upon acres of farmland to sustain the population complete with miles of irrigation and Brahamin to graze the land because Obsidian cared and thought about these things.
Count of Monte Sawed-Off
un33dab@dpu$$y
Even though I do have some problems with the intro here, recalling MGSV's tedious as fuck intro section, makes me somewhat appreciate its brevity.
But it doesn't. It's basically a weaker Bioshock opening that will be still be a slog to replay.
Fantastapotamus
Wrong about commas, wrong about everything
Again, New Vegas had a similar set-up, just better executed and much fast: Somebody shot you, you survive, find out who shot you. That's really it at the beginning.
But they didn't waste my time with an intro sequence that's rushed and uninteresting.
If that's all you need, wouldn't you then say that the opening was way too long?
Sickboy007
Member
My hunch is that the "before the bomb" part was cut massively to streamline the intro, that's why it feels so rushed. They kept the main beats but condensed a 1-2 hour story in 15 minutes.
DrROBschiz
Member
I think that was the right decision overall
Probably would have been really annoyed if the intro dragged on any longer
Fantastapotamus
Wrong about commas, wrong about everything
I read the system logs. I don't think they really make things that much better. Didn't find a hidden weapon though, unless you are talking about the
one in the safe with a master lock on it.
Or maybe I missed them. I read some, but none of them were really that satisfying, so maybe I didn't read the right ones?
Strife In a Teacup
Member
At least Ron Perlman was the Anchorman, that was a nice touch. Still should have been him narrating the intro though.
Exactly. FO4's opening is horrible because of the forced emotional attachment it is trying to place on the player. If somebody actually stole your son and killed your wife would you really spend 50 or so hours dicking around and rebuilding 300 year old settlements? NV's setup didn't force anything on to you, some dude shot you and you could simply decide you wanted to track him down or just forget about it. Plus, you find Benny very early and resolve that whole situation pretty quick. The game's story isn't about you getting shot in the face and getting revenge, the story is about New Vegas and how you shape it's future, if it has any main story at all.
It really is pretty bad. The timing of everything is hilarious. It is also weird how that one soldier says "send the elevator down" when the bomb hits and then stands there waiting for his death. Like realistically he and all the other soldiers wouldn't try and save their lives by going in the elevator too. I mean there is not much you can do when such a bomb drops...
I agree with the earlier poster talking about the fact that literally no one in 200 years has bothered to pick up all the trash all over the place. There's shit lying around everywhere.Plus there are weapons, medical gear and currency just sitting around for anyone to take it, but no one has ever thought to do so. No one in this post-apocalyptic society of scavengers has thought to pick stuff up and re-use it/scrap it before you come along.
TechnicPuppet
Nothing! I said nothing!
I'm 20 hours odds in.
I've setup the radio station in the castle and joined the brotherhood.
OP I gotta hand it to you, I laughed my ass off while reading this.
That sounds terrible. Like, I would rather you just awaken in a vault with literally no memory of anything and just go and do whatever. At least then its conceivable you could have SOME experience fighting / killing / leading / scavenging / whatever.
The funniest is the "bombs drop 2 minutes later." It would be like if in the Last of Us they didn't skip ahead, but instead just had Joel wander 2 blocks over to an instantly quarantined city and meet Tess and Ellie. It's seriously the easiest thing to avoid - just skip time. If they showed little vignettes from your pre-bomb life it would be so much better, but all in one day.... really?
That sounds terrible. Like, I would rather you just awaken in a vault with literally no memory of anything and just go and do whatever. At least then its conceivable you could have SOME experience fighting / killing / leading / scavenging / whatever.
The funniest is the "bombs drop 2 minutes later." It would be like if in the Last of Us they didn't skip ahead, but instead just had Joel wander 2 blocks over to an instantly quarantined city and meet Tess and Ellie. It's seriously the easiest thing to avoid - just skip time. If they showed little vignettes from your pre-bomb life it would be so much better, but all in one day.... really?
Fantastapotamus
Wrong about commas, wrong about everything
Well, that's your job now.
(At least at places where you can build a town)
Thanks
And yeah, that's why this is so weird to me. If you don't care about telling a "mainstory" (WHICH IS FINE, just look at what New Vegas did!) why put all the effort into setting up your non-story?
The F4 opening is just in the middle of everything. It doesn't set up a good story, because it is rushed, but it's also long enough to be annoying to replay if you want to do that. Either options would be fine. Take some time to set up your world or throw me in it.
MandrakeUK
Member
I am about 15 minutes further than you and my reaction at that point was pretty much:
LOL. that was so my expression also.
old manatee
Banned
They hired some for New Vegas.
Hot Coldman
Banned
The bombs going off after you are signed up for the bunker is what fuels my "VaultTec manipulated the governments into starting the war" theory
Pre-release, their statements seemed to imply it was an area they targeted for improvement. Ha.
Alcoholikaust
Member
Noticed this when I got to play it early last week- such a weak intro-almost laughable-but the game is still very fun (for me)
Sevenfold
Member
The intro is awful. Not helped by its proximity to MGSV's grand opening. It's fleshed out by some lore in the terminals, but even so, it's incredibly badly paced as an introduction (and you only learn how to press E/A/X)
I expected nothing else but it getting in the way of me starting my game!
I feel like so much of Bethesda's internal structure is just a remnant from when they were a smaller studio with less credentials. As in, they're all friends and it would be really awkward to fire / replace the shitty writers and animators. Which when I think of it like that I can't really blame them for.
Can't tell if you're being sarcastic..... but they're clearly going for the same kind of pacing / effect with the whole intro.
Vital Tundra
Member
Yup, Bethesda, once again just not getting it right. Should have kept things past the old world (we don't need it, we know what happens), should have kept the protagonist a more clean slate and NO voice acting, and gave the player the chance to feel it in by waking up with your dead partner and missing child and diguring it out. I'm the savior schtick Bethesda has been doing lately is annoying as all hell.
How? What difference would it make if you were frozen in 5 minutes or 5 weeks?
The main problem I see with the opening is not even how fast everything is, it's that you're not a blank slate. In previous mainline/canon Fallout games you were always a blank slate for the player to fill in: In Fallout 1 you were a random inhabitant of Vault 13 without a relevant backstory, in Fallout 2 you were 'the Chosen One' simply because you won a lottery and the only backstory you had was that you were the grandkid of the main character from the first game, in Fallout 3 you obviously watched your character grow up and thus kind of created your own backstory and in New Vegas you're a courier with a non-disclosed past that you can fill in yourself.
In Fallout 4 however you play a guy/woman with a very pronounced past life. He/she has a spouse and a child, lives in a busy neighourhood, has studied, is a war veteran, etc. You have very little to project in the character yourself and even if you decide to go for a particular playthrough/build it ends up feeling out of place with the start of the game. Why would this guy/gal who was a perfectly normal, upstanding citizen before the war suddenly resort to murdering everybody and being a dick when he wakes up? Because it's a game and you can, but from a roleplaying and story perspective it makes very little sense.
In Fallout 4 however you play a guy/woman with a very pronounced past life. He/she has a spouse and a child, lives in a busy neighourhood, has studied, is a war veteran, etc. You have very little to project in the character yourself and even if you decide to go for a particular playthrough/build it ends up feeling out of place with the start of the game. Why would this guy/gal who was a perfectly normal, upstanding citizen before the war suddenly resort to murdering everybody and being a dick when he wakes up? Because it's a game and you can, but from a roleplaying and story perspective it makes very little sense.
Rushersauce
Banned
Of course it won't! It's the best modern Fallout experience you can get. It was created by Obsidian (a team composed of people who worked on the original fallouts). It also has amazing writers and, if you're into Fallout's lore/story, it will add just more pleasure.
Hot Coldman
Banned
BUT YOU HAVE A CHILD YOU ARE NEEDED FOR VAULTTEC TO IMPOSE GENETIC SUPERIORITY ON THE FUTURE WORLD
I'm fucking with people
Ok, let's break it down.
You are living on the brink of nuclear destruction, anyone who, like me, lived through the cold war, will know just how much of a strain on your mind that can be.
The bombs drop, you rush to the shelter assuming everything is going to be ok down there.........
You wake up, witness your partner getting murdered and your son is kidnapped, you then realise that you've been in stasis for 200 years, let's be honest, in terms of mental state, after all that, all bets are off, I would imagine most people would go a bit loopy.
I get where those that are disappointed with it are coming from, in terms of pure role player, having any kind of back story is bad, but from a story telling perspective, I think it's an interesting prospect.
I mean it's pretty much standard P.A. fiction fare, typical fish out of water thrust into a life of survival and murder.
The only thing they could have done better is introduced weapons and combat into the story a little more gently, as it's a bit heavy handed as it is.
You are living on the brink of nuclear destruction, anyone who, like me, lived through the cold war, will know just how much of a strain on your mind that can be.
The bombs drop, you rush to the shelter assuming everything is going to be ok down there.........
You wake up, witness your partner getting murdered and your son is kidnapped, you then realise that you've been in stasis for 200 years, let's be honest, in terms of mental state, after all that, all bets are off, I would imagine most people would go a bit loopy.
I get where those that are disappointed with it are coming from, in terms of pure role player, having any kind of back story is bad, but from a story telling perspective, I think it's an interesting prospect.
I mean it's pretty much standard P.A. fiction fare, typical fish out of water thrust into a life of survival and murder.
The only thing they could have done better is introduced weapons and combat into the story a little more gently, as it's a bit heavy handed as it is.
SuperSonic1305
Member
While we're on this subject I find it very immersion breaking that they gave the character a voice. In games with silent protagonists the developers don't have to write dialogue reactions because the reaction effectively comes from you as a player. You read some twist plot point or see some new scary enemy and you react as the player. When the character is voiced and doesn't react to some extraordinary moment or plot reveal it breaks my immersion. They voiced a reaction to seeing the first rad roach but nothing when you find out the true nature of the vault you were just in from the terminals. You'd think the character would be a little surprised to find out it was just an experiment. Also, when they happen upon a firefight for the first time and just start shooting with no context or reaction.
Improvement over Fallout 3, NV, and Skyrim.
Could not download quickstart mods fast enough
More_Badass
Member
Your character's non-reactions to the world is annoying
But everything else - the Vault, the cryogenics, etc. - make sense IMO
The Vaults were never about safety. They're all designed to be different social experiments or used for scientific research on human subjects
There's a lot of info on the terminals about the Vault 111 experiment, the procedures they were supposed to follow, and such
But everything else - the Vault, the cryogenics, etc. - make sense IMO
The Vaults were never about safety. They're all designed to be different social experiments or used for scientific research on human subjects
There's a lot of info on the terminals about the Vault 111 experiment, the procedures they were supposed to follow, and such
Fantastapotamus
Wrong about commas, wrong about everything
Yeah, I agree. I always try and play those games as a loner, who is more interested in himself than the rest of the world (I wonder what that says about me). But not only are my dialogue options severly limited in F4, most of them are just....uhm too friendly.
Even the "sarcastic" option is usually more like "Haha sarcasm" and not "fuck you sarcasm" (if that makes any sense.
Iorv3th
Member
Except that
everyone except you dies in cryo due to asphyxiation. What are the odds that the MC is the only one to survive somehow even though all the other machines malfunctioned
Just some of this stuff seemed really weird and broke any sense of immersion in the early part of the game.
captainnapalm
Member
It really doesn't. You are for all intents and purposes, a blank slate. What happened before means very little considering what you're faced with now. I don't know why people are making this so hard for themselves to understand. You're now alone in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, forced to survive or die, kill or be killed. You're been royally screwed over, and had everything taken from you. Yet people are obsessing over 'but I was a nice guy!'?
Well, about the world going to hell just as you are entering the vault. While convenient timing for storytelling, sometimes luck is on your side as well. Not saying it is great writing, but just like those bombs could've been dropped months later/earlier, it doesn't mean this timing is not plausible at all. For all the people that were earlier or too late in Fallout's world, the story now revolves around a person that was just there on the right time.
I don't get why this is necessarily bad storytelling.
I don't get why this is necessarily bad storytelling.
Huh? The opening of New Vegas is literally just Doc Mitchell checking you out so you can create your character and letting you loose in the world. That entire sequence lasts maybe 5 minutes.
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