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Fallout 4 isn't very interesting... How would you have done it?

triplestation

triplestation

Member
SPOILERS OBVIOUSLY

im coming to the end of the main quest and all three factions in dispute with each other straight want each other killed and thats the only way its gonna go

i haven't come to find any of them remotely interesting but i still see that there are good people in all the factions, but still these ultimatums are so ham-fisted

its like if someone gave you 3 cats you dont really care about and said two of them need to be killed while dramatic music plays, thats the game

its such a gorgeous world but the lore and story telling is so bland >.<

i personally would have liked it if the game was like mad max: fury road with one main antagonist like immortan joe who hogs the wastelands resources for starters who even the brotherhood of steel is cautious about messing with
 
Honestly, I would have just let Obsidian handle it. It's obvious Bethesda don't have the writing chops to make something cohesive and well written. Far Harbour was an improvement though.
 
Add a lot of middleground options. Let the hero persuade the other factions to join another factions cause.

Or at least give dialogue options that ridicule a faction when you discover that their cause isn't the cleanest, like when you had to take down a rogue android that became the leader of a gang, you never bring that up to the Railroad.
 
I would have put Obsidian on the job, you know. They actually care about Fallout and respect the lore and stuff! They made the only good Fallout last gen
 
but i mean what kind of story would you want to play in a fallout universe?

are there any movies or novels you would take inspiration from?
 
More interesting side quests similar to New Vegas would have been nice. More factions and choices that matter would have also been nice.
 
I don't honestly believe there was a way to salvage the story they were trying to tell there. Everything from the top to bottom (the intro, Sean, the Institute, the Railroad etc) was terrible, and with the RPG elements removed you couldn't tell them all to fuck off, so you were trapped going down one of these nonsensical, terrible routes.

The entire game was built on a foundation of terrible, terrible ideas. There were no quick fixes.
 
What I would have done? I would have focused down on developing the interrelations between the factions and you act as an outsider. The Blow up everything or not ending is stupid, there needs to be more shades. More thought put into how time and progression actually works. More skill points, Inability to become a god in all stats. Trade Offs Everywhere. Oh and More Shelters. Super disappointing how few in number the interesting shelters ended up being in comparison to F3.
 
Before anything else I'd start with completely jettisoning Synths and the Institute from the plot and story. They are by far the worst additions Bethesda has made to the Fallout franchise. Tonally and conceptually they just don't fit in this world. They drive me right up the wall.
 
I was hyped as hell, till I saw leaked footage, them useing same crap from fallout 3 (same grocery store, same lockpicking, hacking)

I wouldn't have done that. Lol
 
I'd like for once to have a character that wasn't the center of the universe. Just some random trying to survive. Gives us multiple starting options or one option with the least background possible. Like in new vegas.
 
Also, fuck the settlement building component. Complete and utter trash. That development time would have been better spent with literally anything else instead.
 
Give it to Obsidian. There was an interesting premise that felt at odds with the established world, mostly because of how badly written and drab it was. Obsidian also understand that being an RPG goes beyond having a skill tree. It should be part of ever aspect of gameplay.
 
More RPG elements
More Vaults
Hire some actual writers
Dump that trash engine


Still enjoyed FO4, but not nearly as much as NV.
 
Not leaned nearly so hard on the building/colonization element, or at the least, make more content that didn't rely so heavily on it. There's a large dearth of interesting stuff to do outside of it.

Relatedly, not dumb the FO3/NV skill/levelling system. the new one isn't terrible, but as a byproduct, everything simplified down waaaaaaaaay too much at times.
 
A complete retool of how the game is played and designed.

I would have ditched nearly everything and made it closer to The Last of Us mechanically. There is nothing interesting, nothing unique with Fallout anymore that other games haven't simply done better.

Have it take place in the Fallout universe with the main objective creating a settlement in a rogue like fashion with your main character being the first person to live in it. Have your characters attributes be heavily RPG based in terms of speed, strength, agility, gun skills, negotiating, general charisma...

Fuck the stupid main story nobody gives a shit about. Create a world (which is why everyone plays Fallout), create a system for dynamic NPC interaction in terms of settlement wars (like in Walking Dead) that last for years and years as people grow, die, get killed, leave, what have you.

Basically, create the Fallout version of Dwarf Fortress with AAA production.

Don't pretend to be something you're not when so much of the game is designed around the settlement system. Grow some balls and just make a spin-off next time.
 
I actually liked quite a few things with Fallout 4 , sadly I feel like the game suffers mostly for a terrible set of endings that fail to respect the time invested and RPG / moral choices of the protagonist.

It's immensively frustrating to maintain good standing with all four factions for 99% of the game, only to be forced in the last few missions to kill people you worked with for most of the game because Bethesda was too anxious to ship it as fast as possible to make proper endings for each factions and allow players to talk down and defuse the situation before the factions go all out war.

It's especially frustrating because by the time you reach endgame, you're pretty much leader of most of the factions.. It makes no sense that a guy that's simultaneously the General of the Minuteman, the new Director of the Institute, an Elder of the Brotherhood and pretty much MVP of the Railroad can't even bring up the fact that most of the factions aren't fundamentally bad and they can be reasoned with now that you're their leader. Honestly, a good RPG would have allowed the player finish the game with all four factions pretty much friendly, or at least neutral with each others.
 
I would have had a whole different setting entirely. Boston just wasnt very interesting to me. The major reveal was done very poorly as well imo. ANd the game wrapped up in an instant it felt like
 
One of my biggest problems with Fallout 4 is that almost every discovery you make while exploring just results in combat. The best example of this is the robot race track you can find. It could have been a cool gambling side activity, but it ends up being just another shoot out.
 
As far as faction choices go, it's definitely a step up from 3. In that it's as simple as 'oh, these guys are good, these guys are evil', while in Fallout 4 every faction is more mixed. Each Fallout 4 faction has "good" intentions, but is flawed in some way.

I really do wish it was more multi-threaded than 'here ya go, now pick option A, B, C, or D!'. That's something New Vegas handled pretty well. I also wish that there were more interesting quests, NPCs, and locations. Some of them are cool, but a lot of it is so throwaway. There's a bunch of locations and characters that are only relevant for like one or two quests...

Compared to 3, it's an improvement for me, but a step back in most places compared to New Vegas. I would love for Obsidian to make a new Fallout. I want them to do another so badly...
 
1# i would have had more Cross Character interaction and questing.
Example - after doing character quests with Valintine, you could have pipers sister or Travis give a detailed retelling of the Event, have more NPC's notice and react to past and current events.
The world felt way more stale then previous iterations. like the faction systems in NV where assassins come for you.
2# More weapons and most recurring franchise weapons. They completely rewrote the lore with the weapons in the common wealth and the fact that the CW is suppose to be more advanced and half the weapons are made of junk doesn't add up.
3# I would have scrapped the Random "QUESTS" from the MM and instead have tried to add a NEMISIS like system from Shadow of Moridor. I REALLY wanted this, this is what i imagined next-gen meant in 2010-2011 while playing NV and Skyrim, a RPG in a more realized "not necessarily bigger" world. where the world reacts to your actions.
4# skip the settlement building entirely. maybe make major quest built around both game-play but size and visually upgrading settlements.
5# expand character creation.
Example- in Skyrim you can choose your race, i find it odd you can't choose to be a goul,super mutant, actual Raider. even TESO has vampire and werewolves quest for transformation. but thats all i got a 1:44am sorry.
 
TheUnsunghero26 said:
One of my biggest problems with Fallout 4 is that almost every discovery you make while exploring just results in combat. The best example of this is the robot race track you can find. It could have been a cool gambling side activity, but it ends up being just another shoot out.
Click to expand...

Pretty much. I'm playing through NV again, and choosing to dump points into Repair or Science or Speech actually matters. You can approach problems in different ways.

In 4, everything just leads to you shooting your way out of trouble.

The factions were also handled really poorly. In NV, the Legion is the cartoonish outlier as the other factions/choices all are actually quite interesting and nuanced and force you to think about the decision you make in terms of the future of the region. In 4, there isn't one likable or realistic or worthwhile faction. The Minutemen come the closest, but since you're apparently the only effective member of the faction, they end up being more like ineffectual losers than a ragtag bunch that you help to stabilize the region.

They (and the Brotherhood) also apparently don't value a stable power source or clean water.
 
Would've had it set somewhere in the midwest (chicago or detroit) rather than boston

Hired a team with writing ability or just have obsidian do everything

as far as gameplay i don't have the answers but I would prob hand that off to someone else and hope they fixed it / made it better
 
They need competent writers. Boston was a pretty dull setting in and of itself, I guess they pursued it because of the whole Institute thing, but they didn't even handle that well. Also the very idea of the main storyline is terrible given the nature of the game. Why throw you into a big ass open world and give you a pressing mission like finding your child? It's only natural that people will get sidetracked and completely lose track of the child their supposed to save. Voiced protagonist didn't really add anything either.

And then they need decent missions, and to quit heavily relying on their shitty random mission generator.

But I do give them credit for putting effort into companions. The Fallout 4 cast is on par with what Obsidian provided for New Vegas. And I did like think the new character progression system was great.
 
Pick another location. I had zero interest in exploring Boston, unlike Vegas or D.C.

Hopefully Fallout 5 is set in New York, LA, or even out of the country.
 
I put around five hours into this game yesterday and had to stop. I'm officially done with Bethesda Game Studios. I honestly don't feel like their titles have evolved in over a decade. I was completely underwhelmed with what I played.

Fortunately, Bethesda's other studios are doing great work that I'm really into.
 
The main quest is built from such horrible ideas like everything related to the fucking Institute, you simply can't fix Fallout 4's story. You have to burn all that trash down and restart from the beginning.
 
I really am irked by the idea that the player character is the center of the known universe in these types of games.

Why not allow us to be away from the center of the overall conflicts in the games, and really dive into just our story. The other stuff can be, but it needs to continue whether or not we get involved at any point. The characters don't need to see us like we will turn the tide, unless of course organically, we can. Maybe we can earn our way to being known in a small sense, but the main drawback I have with F4 is that the entire known universe just seems to drag along at my pace, rather than making me react to it.
 
There's no way to really salvage what there is of the game. I hate the gameplay, and the story is bad. I'd start over and focus on actual RPG elements and bring in competent writers.
 
I've had the game since it launched last year and it literally just started to click with me last week. I'm still not at all sold on the overarching story just like the OP, but I've finally found a groove with how I like to interact with the game. I find a lot of the microstories and sidequests to be pretty compelling as standalone tales within the setting, and I've finally come to just accept the poor interfacing and some of the weird functionality with the settlement systems and kind of getting into that big time.

Really, I just kind of wish the main story was a lot better. I think the start is fine before the war begins, but once you leave the Vault it's just progressively less and less impressive.

I'd also like to see a Fallout setting that's actually capable of showing a bit more of an alternative to the desolate, ruinous browns and grays that the series is traditionally known for. The PC has that interesting mod that converts the world into a more lush, nature-reclaimed Last of Us-esque place... But Fallout seems very insistent on sticking with purely urban American environments that are starting to feel a lot less distinct as time goes on.
 
Get rid of the main storyline completely. Make the player build around an archtype of their deciding, then place person in a semi-random part of the world with semi-random gear, matching their archetype.

In otherwords, create a better Role-Playing experience that doesn't rely on a poorly developed storyline that I don't care about.
 
Fallout 4 was dire. I'm not a massive enthusiast of open world RPGs, I play them fairly casually but even I was confused by the obvious shortcomings. Basically echoing everyone else, but;

1) Better writers. It was all poorly written, some of it really plumbed the depths of mediocrity. Right from the initial set up you could tell you weren't going to get anything even vaguely intelligent or interesting out of the writing.

2) The main plot had too much urgency. Missing children! GOTTA GO FAST FIND SEAN! But I'll just spend a few days fucking about with a base first yeah.

3) Big one for me, the world felt....wrong. It was nice enough to potter about in at times, but it didn't really feel like 200 years had passed or that a nuke had gone off just over there. My community of dinky wooden houses weathered that 200 years and nuke blast pretty well. It felt more like 20 years and no nuke to me. I was never quite invested. It all felt like a big map with stuff just randomly scattered about, none of it felt cohesive. Compare that to say Witcher 3 where the landscape feels natural, ancient, the towns and villages feel like they've grown organically over time, they fit with the environment they're in. Witcher 3 conveyed more cohesion, more sense of place and life in a single small fishing village on the windswept edge of Skellige than F4 managed in the entirety of the time I played it.

4) Needs better questions add t's, not dull quests. And dull characters. That whole Minuteman quest line was bad. And they want to make me leader after like 20 minutes! Daft.

5) Voiced protagonist was a baaaaaaad idea, as we're the stunted go nowhere say the same stuff dialogue options. Also see above, it was all poorly written and just so dull. I was skipping through the chat.

I gave it maybe 15 hrs or so and never really shook the feeling that it was all a bit amateur feeling. Also I was playing Witcher 3 at the time too (still am!) which just highlighted the myriad shortcomings in F4.
 
Gator86 said:
Also, fuck the settlement building component. Complete and utter trash. That development time would have been better spent with literally anything else instead.
Click to expand...

I did enjoy building my base but it's pretty much an insult to have building materials slapped onto the season pass.
 
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