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[Copenap]

that's all i really care about with these games (& i'd say very good lore), so the other stuff, weak as it is, doesn't really bother me. the interesting/entertaining side missions, & the multiple stories, told via terminals & holotapes, were more than enough to guarantee me a great time. it's unfortunate that the main narrative sucks, but we seem to be stuck in the 'age of main narratives sucking' at this point ...

Where are these interesting side quests? Finished the game tpday and I don't remember a single ome that was wothwhile.

 

[QaaQer]

Idk if it is fair to hate on the writing without knowing who they were writing for. The professional game reviewer collective thought it was worth 87 out of 100 critic points and it sold 14 million or something, so I think they achieved what they set out to do.

 

[Blue Ninja]

What exactly is unparalleded about their world building. The same copy and paste dungeons in Skyrim?

Or the other generic building and designed in Fallout 4?

Did you even play Skyrim? Plenty of cool dungeons in that game. The 'copy and paste'-remark can be applied to Oblivion all you want, but Skyrim's dungeons felt a lot better.

Fallout 4's world building is great because of its atmosphere. The mood it creates. There's little stories hidden in every corner. For instance, there's a computer terminal you discover where a father recorded a rhyme for his children so they can remember the location of their fallout shelter. When you follow the directions and enter the shelter, you find the skeletal remains of the parents embraced on their bed. There's two child-sized graves next to them.

There's plenty more little things like that. I, personally, haven't played any other games that match that kind of worldbuilding. The Witcher 3 was good, but it excelled in a whole other way, with lots of tidbits and text descriptions. So that's why, for me, their world building is unparallelled. Nothing about the game felt 'generic' to me.

Ehhhh not really

Great comment.

I was tolerating the awful writing up to a point, but these two things is where Bethesda really failed hard IMO.

First off, The Railroad declaring war was completely out of character with the game's portrayal of the faction as you said. I wanted my character to say: "Guys, remember when your last hideout was compromised and you moved to another one instead of nuking the shit out of the Institute? Why aren't we doing that this time?" But no, it's time to murder all Brotherhood members just because.

Secondly, the Institute being the evil faction was hilariously badly handled. I don't even know how Bethesda managed to fuck that up. You've got a faction that kidnaps (and murders) people and kidnapped your kid and everybody is scared of them. So the player has a great reason to hate them and/or to join them if they generally chose to play as a mass murderer. And then you get there and... everybody is reasonable and nice, forgives you for killing Coursers because 'you didn't know', grow plants and manufacture animals to return the world to it's former state, don't care if you twist their words to promise a better tomorrow where everybody co-exists and make you director, basically promising that you will be able to decide to introduce the synths to the Commonwealth peacefully and stop the kidnappings. And yet the game still considers this the evil faction/choice.

What the hell Bethesda? How do you screw up your token 'evil' faction? I mean, there's morally grey and there's doing a complete 180 with one of your main factions without even fucking acknowledging it. Imagine that if in New Vegas when you finally got to the Caesar's Legion base the leadership all turned out to be pacifists who are really against anything the Legion does, but simply do it because 'it is necessary'. That would be fucking weird. The Institute after the reveal is fucking weird.

Haha, yeah, exactly. Everyone in the Institute was just super cheerful and helpful, but it just requires you to disregard the fact that they're literally all working to replace people on the surface with their synthetic creations.

I was disappointed I couldn't take my own stance in the game. I'm all for the liberation of existing synths, but I gladly blew up the Institute to stop them from making any more. It's not the Synth's fault they were created, so they shouldn't be punished for that. I also felt like having an organisation like the Brotherhood around would be good for the stability in the Commonwealth, but nooo. If I side with the Railroad, I have to blow 'em out of the sky. If I side with the Brotherhood, I have to wipe out the Railroad.

 

[Psychoward]

Fallout New New Orleans by Obsidian asap pls

 

[Zukuu]

I don't see how people can see the railroad as the bad group. Very interesting...

How can you not? They are worse than peta.

 

[ChaoticBlue]

and still despite all the problems...


GAME OF THE YEAR

 

[Azzanadra]

Honestly, nothing can be worse than Skyrim. It was as if Bethesda pu less effort into the main story than some of the side quest chains. At least fallout tends to focus more on a central plot, whereas it was near non-existent in Skyrim.

 

[The Last Wizard]

Fallout New New Orleans by Obsidian asap pls

You mean new nawlens, but obsidian makes it day 1

 

[The Lamonster]

and still despite all the problems...


GAME OF THE YEAR

It's a lot like the new Amazon TV show The Man in the High Castle -

amazing amazing world building...cheap characters

 

[Psychoward]

and still despite all the problems...


GAME OF THE YEAR

Eh I mean people can still enjoy it more than any other game released even with its faults. That was Skyrim for me in 2011, even though Deus Ex gave it a serious run for its money.

 

[Solid Samus]

Oh, this game keeps you in the dark, alright. You already have that giant robot? Odds are you may have already locked yourself into the Brotherhood path without even realizing it, making enemies out of nowhere with the other factions of the game.

Shit's definitely problematic. Or at least crappy. This game is too far gone; I tried to hold onto the hope that modders can make this thing into a more engaging and worthwhile RPG for as long as I could, but the more I think about it, the more I realize that that would necessitate massive structural overhauls, not to mention the total removal of voice acting, and of course rewriting the entire game.

That might perfectly explain why some people are so vociferous in shutting down any critical discussion of these games. It's like they tap into a very emotional part of some people's brains.

I honestly don't understand how you guys are still peddling this narrative amongst yourselves, haha. I mean, it's like some of you have never actually seen GAF's Fallout threads before, because -no offense- but the notion that people don't allow for criticism of Bethesda around here is kind of ridiculous. It's been months since you could post a Bethesda thread that didn't include, or eventually become, a thorough deconstruction of Bethesda or a Fallout 3 vs. New Vegas tangent. On the very day that Fallout 4 had been first announced, it had already been months since you could post a Bethesda thread that didn't include, or eventually become, a thorough deconstruction of Bethesda or a Fallout 3 vs. New Vegas tangent

 

[Spaghetti]

i thought problematic had other connotations in the modern context.

i think the word OP was searching for is "shite"

i totally agree though. shallow, transparent writing.

 

[Alienous]

Fallout New New Orleans by Obsidian asap pls

It would have to be New New Orleans, wouldn't it?

 

[KingHenrik30]

My problem is that really none of the factions are likeable.

 

[tuxfool]

It would have to be New New Orleans, wouldn't it?

Newest Orleans.

 

[StrongBlackVine]

Idk if it is fair to hate on the writing without knowing who they were writing for. The professional game reviewer collective thought it was worth 87 out of 100 critic points and it sold 14 million or something, so I think they achieved what they set out to do.

Make a dumb game for the masses? And it shipped 14 million or whatever, not sold yet.

 

[blame space]

sorry the role-playing is too deep for you guys.

 

[UncleSporky]

The root of the entire problem is the decision to voice the protagonist. It'd be too expensive and difficult to have the same volume of dialogue options as before, or with the same length of sentences even. So you grunt out "sure" or "I don't think so" to every situation presented to you.

Voiced protagonist meant they wanted to shrink the number of lines of dialogue down to a max of 4 in every dialogue choice, which also conveniently maps to ABXY and looks like the dialogue wheel some other devs have been using. Except Fallout never lent itself to that kind of simplicity - I want 6 options including one that requires high science and one that requires high repair, or whatever. But...they also took out skills, so none of that.

Every design decision compounded to affect the writing and ultimately the endings/conflict resolutions available.

I'm not asking for the franchise to stagnate but sometimes you don't need to mess with a good thing.

 

[Coriolanus]

How can you not? They are worse than peta.

How? Until the Institute invasion, they only kill in self-defense, and they work for the liberation of de facto slaves, plus they're firmly in "don't mess with us and we won't mess with you" territory. What did they do until then that would make one say that?

 

[Gurgelhals]

Make a dumb game for the masses?

Basically. And given that Toddlers Howard seems to be a typical nerd-turned-fratboy type of person it's to be expected...

I just wish they wouldn't do this to the Fallout series, which once represented the complete antithesis of a dumb games for the masses. Or they should at least be consistent with their gradual dumbification of the series and not tease us by having Obsidian do an intelligent entry in between (on the other hand we at least got one more good and proper Fallout game out of that one, so I guess I shouldn't complain).

 

[joecanada]

Minutemen just want to destroy the institute facility, and thats really only because the institute attacked the Castle. When invading the institute with the minutemen they specifically say don't kill anyone who wants to escape.

ah ya right, the minutemen aren't quite as aggressive. you can actually make them stand down at one point, which you should be able to do much, much more in this game. I guess the idea is that you really are in charge of the minutemen but you never get that far with any of the others.... although the institute "say" you are the director, they don't really seem to listen to you... like when they want you to go to the final solution, you are like "uhh, nooo" and they go "yes, it's too late for peace" or something and thats it? how about no we put it to a vote or no your outta here! just uhh... ok lets get out the nukes. LOL... Like I said they could have done with less is more.. .you say forget it and they put it to a vote and vote you off the board of directors.....,

and then you come back and murder them all and say "ok, I am disbanding the board" now I am the king of the institute.
Lol.

 

[wild_ookami]

I think I’m pretty far into Fallout 4 now and I have to say this game has some of the weakest writing in any Bethesda game I’ve played to date. In Oblivion, Fallout 3, and Skyrim, I thought the “gaps” in the logic of the plot and characters were present though perhaps exaggerated, but here for the first time I think they actively dilute my enjoyment of the game. The lack of narrative focus, absolutely constant and bizarrely character and faction motivation, and, perhaps most important, the paucity of reliable information given to players to actually make reasonable decisions (harming player agency) have not gotten enough attention from the community at large, I think.

Everyone’s written about the stilted intro and how cartoonish the factions are in their ultimate end games, which, aside from the intro, I don’t think is a new problem for Bethesda. Typically, though, I feel like at least as a player I’ve experienced the narrative and characters in a linear fashion such that the information presented to me usually is coherent. For example, the plot of Fallout 3 is sugary stuff, but I don’t remember it being delivered out of sequence (that is, characters referencing things they had no business knowing) even if you reach Rivet City early because of the way the dialogue was constructed. Here I feel like every character is clearly just a waypoint to the next story mission, and characters that either don’t know me or don’t know what I’ve done are referencing things they have no business knowing. I was playing a mission and one of the side characters told me I should use my dog to help sniff out a trail. At first I said to myself…wow, that’s a great idea! And then I was more impressed by how this character knew I had a dog.

Too many characters in the game, particularly those who lead factions, expect you to act without reasonable motivations. When you’re given a motivation, and you want to learn more about it or perhaps question it, the dialogue system is not equipped for you to do so. This seems to be compounded by the nonlinearity of the game, which means that some of the characters in each faction seem reasonable and consistent until they’re not. Dr. Li at the Institute is my favorite example. So I got pretty far along in the Brotherhood of Steel questline while I was simultaneously pursuing the main story. I got the “Get Dr. Li back” quest and headed off to the Institute for the first time. I met her and she was pretty nasty to me and swore up and down she’d never leave the Institute for the Brotherhood. But, whatever, I got her to leave for a “secret project” after a short quest that took me about 10 minutes. Then it turns out the secret project is her basically working on a giant robot that carries massive nuclear bombs. Wonder what that will be used for?

As I’m pursuing these questlines, I’m realizing I don’t have enough information to know where I’m actually going with any of this. The Brotherhood hates the Institute. The Institute believes in enslaving synths because whatever (I have done a few missions and basically I am not sure what their issue is entirely yet…not hopeful it will convincingly materialize). The Minutemen, the peaceful vanguards of the Commonwealth, suddenly want to destroy everyone else. I’m also being asked to destroy the Railroad by everyone. I’ve only been there once or twice and they seemed like nasty people, but I’m not even sure why some groups hate other groups. And why is Danse such a big dumbass after “his” twist? Shouldn’t he want to help me go one way in particular?

I’m pretty surprised by how little information I feel I have to make a decision. In New Vegas, I feel like I was asked to make an informed decision between a few factions with obviously conflicting objectives. Nobody was perfect, but each side had their particular viewpoint reinforced by what I was seeing in the world. In Fallout 4, I feel like I have to make a choice without knowing the implications of said choice among a bunch of groups that seem to hate each other just because (and some groups hate each other for reasons I am not even really sure of). This seems like really basic stuff and a big regression even from their earlier works for Bethesda, and it really doesn’t work at all with the dialogue system.

I just feel so completely in the dark about everything. I very obviously don’t want to continue with the Brotherhood questline because I’m pretty sure I know what that robot is going to do when I know so little about the other factions (despite having worked with most of them for quite some time).

If I were Bethesda, without even improving the quality of the writing overall, I think I would less stringently demarcate “this is where the story will branch” to players. I feel so conflicted because the story has obviously branched, and I feel like any decision I make may be held against me because I wasn’t able to fully understand the consequence of what I was doing. I think I would also try to ensure the player gets more time through the main quest with each faction because the main quest ultimately requires you to pick a side.

I’m pretty bummed about how this game turned out. It just seems like the story, perhaps matching the gameplay, is a collection of poorly executed ideas and themes that feels like a “greatest hits” version of their previous games without the care or consideration given to any of them in their original incarnations.

I completely agree. The bolded in particular really bothered me. Though I haven't gotten far enough to see all of the factions yet.

While I'm still enjoying my playthrough, I don't feel as invested as I was in the previous Fallout games due to the writing.

 

[Solid Samus]

This is not completely true. Father told you that they tried to make a government but it failed because people tried to take advantage of that for more power

Preston Garvey told me that the government was pretty much ready to go.

Spoiler

Until a single Institute Synth rolled up and killed every single person at their first meeting.

lol

 

[The Lamonster]

Basically. And given that Toddlers Howard seems to be a typical nerd-turned-fratboy type of person it's to be expected...

I just wish they wouldn't do this to the Fallout series, which once represented the complete antithesis of a dumb games for the masses. Or they should at least be consistent with their gradual dumbification of the series and not tease us by having Obsidian do an intelligent entry in between (on the other hand we at least got one more good and proper Fallout game out of that one, so I guess I shouldn't complain).

and we still don't know if Obsidian are doing another spinoff after FO4.

 

[Rushersauce]

and we still don't know if Obsidian are doing another spinoff after FO4.

We can dream, buddy.
We can dream....

 

[Broank]

Honestly I feel like the whole overarching synth premise is by far the most intriguing of the Fallout/Elder scrolls games. Yea it has problems but In the end they all have major problems with the interplay of the factions and in terms of being able to do everything you want. Even with New Vegas, in all its perfectness and with all the praise it gets showered from the heavens, I actually had the most weird head scratching things happen to me playing that.

 

[semiconscious]

Where are these interesting side quests? Finished the game tpday and I don't remember a single ome that was wothwhile.

side quests i enjoyed the most: silver shroud, cabot house, u.s.s. constitution, 'here there be monsters' (

Spoiler

chinese sub

), 'diamond city blues', & 'devil's due' (

Spoiler

salem

). also liked some others (including the character-related ones). if you didn't consider any of these 'worthwhile', well, that's just the way it goes, i guess ...

 

[LouisaFerre]

We can dream, buddy.
We can dream....

They might be more reluctant to considering how the contract with New Vegas went.

 

[Rakthar]

Fallout 4's world building is great because of its atmosphere. The mood it creates. There's little stories hidden in every corner. For instance, there's a computer terminal you discover where a father recorded a rhyme for his children so they can remember the location of their fallout shelter. When you follow the directions and enter the shelter, you find the skeletal remains of the parents embraced on their bed. There's two child-sized graves next to them.

There's plenty more little things like that. I, personally, haven't played any other games that match that kind of worldbuilding.

I genuinely have a question about this, since I have the complete and opposite experience. Who cares about these setpieces, how do they matter, and what's compelling about what it's portraying?

So you explore a hospital, and you discover that they were sent a dangerous virus and some people were trying to figure it out and now there are ghouls. You go to a shipping company and you discover that they were shipped a deathclaw or something and it got loose and everyone died. You go to a bomb shelter and you find that people were trying to get in and there's skeletons at the door where they died.

Who cares? There was a NUCLEAR APOCALYPSE THAT DESTROYED THE WORLD. Why did it matter if the kids made it to those parents in the bomb shelter? 200 years of desolation and devastation followed, so it was irrelevant whether the kids made it or not.

I found exploring dungeons in Oblivion and Fallout 3 interesting. It started to feel a bit old with Skyrim and New Vegas but I went with it. With Fallout 4, I feel like I'm completely done exploring these weird environmental stories. Who cares what the hospital was doing when the nukes fell, they were screwed either way. Who cares what the army was doing at a checkpoint, they were going to die in a few months from radiation, starvation, ghouls, mutants, raiders, disease, fire, etc. Who cares whether people made it to a vault? They were going to be horrifically experimented on if they did.

What I'm saying is I have a hard time caring about environmental stories set in a totally burned out wasteland that 200 years later is barely worth living in and is full of radiation, mutants, corpses, and raiders. Were the previous 200 years better? Presumably they were worse. So what's compelling about a story where a family made it to a bomb shelter so they could live through 200 years of hell and maybe in the process build some child graves?

These environmental setpieces have cutesy stories of people that almost made it, or people that were trying to survive the apocalypse but didn't, or various ways that the people who survived died. After seeing one set of these in DC, another in Las Vegas, yet another in Boston, is there value in seeing more? These "aw shucks, they almost made it" (to a future that wasn't worth making it to) stories don't feel very fresh anymore.

 

[UncleSporky]

I genuinely have a question about this, since I have the complete and opposite experience. Who cares about these setpieces, how do they matter, and what's compelling about what it's portraying?

So you explore a hospital, and you discover that they were sent a dangerous virus and some people were trying to figure it out and now there are ghouls. You go to a shipping company and you discover that they were shipped a deathclaw or something and it got loose and everyone died. You go to a bomb shelter and you find that people were trying to get in and there's skeletons at the door where they died.

Who cares? There was a NUCLEAR APOCALYPSE THAT DESTROYED THE WORLD. Why did it matter if the kids made it to those parents in the bomb shelter? 200 years of desolation and devastation followed, so it was irrelevant whether the kids made it or not.

I found exploring dungeons in Oblivion and Fallout 3 interesting. It started to feel a bit old with Skyrim and New Vegas but I went with it. With Fallout 4, I feel like I'm completely done exploring these weird environmental stories. Who cares what the hospital was doing when the nukes fell, they were screwed either way. Who cares what the army was doing at a checkpoint, they were going to die in a few months from radiation, starvation, ghouls, mutants, raiders, disease, fire, etc. Who cares whether people made it to a vault? They were going to be horrifically experimented on if they did.

What I'm saying is I have a hard time caring about environmental stories set in a totally burned out wasteland that 200 years later is barely worth living in and is full of radiation, mutants, corpses, and raiders. Were the previous 200 years better? Presumably they were worse. So what's compelling about a story where a family made it to a bomb shelter so they could live through 200 years of hell and maybe in the process build some child graves?

These environmental setpieces have cutesy stories of people that almost made it, or people that were trying to survive the apocalypse but didn't, or various ways that the people who survived died. After seeing one set of these in DC, another in Las Vegas, yet another in Boston, is there value in seeing more? These "aw shucks, they almost made it" (to a future that wasn't worth making it to) stories don't feel very fresh anymore.

Typically because it means more cool loot for you. Their notes and clues are your gain. Plus cool resolutions to their stories and of course the setpieces involved. Often little rooms sealed away for 200 years with a neat item on the table, or a little shrine dedicated to a town's history, etc.

This was actually something significant missing from Skyrim in general, usually there was no story, you just discover this crypt and explore it for no reason.

 

[Takuan]

On The Institute kidnapping and replacing people:

Spoiler

I assumed they were doing this to gather intel on what was happening above ground and to manipulate groups of people. They didn't see Synths as the next step in human evolution; they saw them as tools and only tools to be used for the cause, and weren't subtle about it.

I fully agree with OP. Many interesting themes they could've explored in more depth, and they could've gone in far more directions than they actually did. There are some bright spots, but the main story is a wasted opportunity.

Given the game's impressive commercial success, Fallout 5 is probably going to be a cinematic corridor shooter.

I can only hope Obsidian Fallout 4 is a thing.

 

[Dixon's Jet]

Who would trust ANYTHING Todd says!?

Lurking the No Mutants Allowed forums taught me that Fallout fans can be a little hysterical, but also that Todd Howard is a huge farce.

 

[silvermember]

Did you even play Skyrim? Plenty of cool dungeons in that game. The 'copy and paste'-remark can be applied to Oblivion all you want, but Skyrim's dungeons felt a lot better.

Fallout 4's world building is great because of its atmosphere. The mood it creates. There's little stories hidden in every corner. For instance, there's a computer terminal you discover where a father recorded a rhyme for his children so they can remember the location of their fallout shelter. When you follow the directions and enter the shelter, you find the skeletal remains of the parents embraced on their bed. There's two child-sized graves next to them.

There's plenty more little things like that. I, personally, haven't played any other games that match that kind of worldbuilding. The Witcher 3 was good, but it excelled in a whole other way, with lots of tidbits and text descriptions. So that's why, for me, their world building is unparallelled. Nothing about the game felt 'generic' to me.



Great comment.



Haha, yeah, exactly. Everyone in the Institute was just super cheerful and helpful, but it just requires you to disregard the fact that they're literally all working to replace people on the surface with their synthetic creations.

I was disappointed I couldn't take my own stance in the game. I'm all for the liberation of existing synths, but I gladly blew up the Institute to stop them from making any more. It's not the Synth's fault they were created, so they shouldn't be punished for that. I also felt like having an organisation like the Brotherhood around would be good for the stability in the Commonwealth, but nooo. If I side with the Railroad, I have to blow 'em out of the sky. If I side with the Brotherhood, I have to wipe out the Railroad.

If you say so. I played shyrim and their dungeons were nothing to be proud of. I mean compared to oblivion it is better but oblivion wasn't something to be proud of.

 

[Brian_FETO]

I love the world and the characters but yeah, motivations and dialogue choices are a huge annoyance. I don't give a fuck about the character's son. It's nice to have a "goal" to keep you going in a huge game like this but I've had no time to give a fuck about this person's plot device family.

Also had an annoying moment in post-quest dialogue yesterday (regarding a certain cyborg brain piece)

Spoiler

After killing Kellogg, you have to pick up the brain piece from him. You go back and they're saying they need to know where the Institute is but the only person who could've told them was Kellogg. And I'm like "aha! I have his brain!" But I can't say anything, instead I have to sit through another minute or two of bullshit dialogue until suddenly Nick's like "wait a minute....blew his brains out....brain....wait a second"

 

[Frozenprince]

Preston Garvey told me that the government was pretty much ready to go.

Spoiler

Until a single Institute Synth rolled up and killed every single person at their first meeting.

lol

That's just it. There is no verification to what ANYBODY is telling you. You never actually really know anything. And in a narrative structure, that's a cardinal sin.

 

[Sou Da]

Fallout New New Orleans by Obsidian asap pls

Why would you want those yuppies to write the South?

 

[Replicant]

I feel Fallout 4 tries too hard to be tongue-in-cheek, as exemplified in the opening video and the opening plot. But they should have stopped with the opening video and treated the actual plot with serious tone.

 

[Psychoward]

Why would you want those yuppies to write the South?

Because it hasn't been explored in Fallout yet, outside of Point Lookout which was Maryland. I also have trust in Obsidian to write almost any setting and make it captivating and they've expressed interest in either revisiting the West Coast or doing NOLA. Also I live there lol.

 

[Grisby]

I finished the main quest yesterday, and I really disliked how it was basically everyone just wants

Spoiler

to kill everyone else

. I didn't really feel like I was a character with choices, but someone who was searching for

Spoiler

a son

that I didn't really care about.

The world building and atmosphere are off the charts, and the gunplay was actually fun compared to the previous iterations, but having a voiced MC just didn't work here.

Most of the companions are neat, good even, but they run out of dialog options fast, and don't really comment on the things happening around you. Like a lot of people said, it all just feels really stitched together, narratively speaking.

We can dream, buddy.
We can dream....

That is something to look forward to. Hope it runs ok though, I know Obsidian has a reputation for some buggy ass stuff, but New Vegas ran way worse than F3 on my 360.

 

[UncleSporky]

That's just it. There is no verification to what ANYBODY is telling you. You never actually really know anything. And in a narrative structure, that's a cardinal sin.

Well, I mean...to some extent this is alright. If the above was verified then you would definitely for sure know that the Institute is evil and only evil people would side with them. Leaving things ambiguous, "he said she said" is better for making the player actually choose instead of having everything spelled out for them.

If everything in the game was totally verified and crystal clear then people would complain about that too.

 

[CloudWolf]

Fallout New New Orleans by Obsidian asap pls

Nah, Fallout: The Boneyard. I want to see post-apocalyptic Los Angeles again.

 

[TheChaos]

Fallout New New Orleans by Obsidian asap pls

Pfft, Fallout Hawaii or bust.

 

[AEREC]

I genuinely have a question about this, since I have the complete and opposite experience. Who cares about these setpieces, how do they matter, and what's compelling about what it's portraying?

So you explore a hospital, and you discover that they were sent a dangerous virus and some people were trying to figure it out and now there are ghouls. You go to a shipping company and you discover that they were shipped a deathclaw or something and it got loose and everyone died. You go to a bomb shelter and you find that people were trying to get in and there's skeletons at the door where they died.

Who cares? There was a NUCLEAR APOCALYPSE THAT DESTROYED THE WORLD. Why did it matter if the kids made it to those parents in the bomb shelter? 200 years of desolation and devastation followed, so it was irrelevant whether the kids made it or not.

I found exploring dungeons in Oblivion and Fallout 3 interesting. It started to feel a bit old with Skyrim and New Vegas but I went with it. With Fallout 4, I feel like I'm completely done exploring these weird environmental stories. Who cares what the hospital was doing when the nukes fell, they were screwed either way. Who cares what the army was doing at a checkpoint, they were going to die in a few months from radiation, starvation, ghouls, mutants, raiders, disease, fire, etc. Who cares whether people made it to a vault? They were going to be horrifically experimented on if they did.

What I'm saying is I have a hard time caring about environmental stories set in a totally burned out wasteland that 200 years later is barely worth living in and is full of radiation, mutants, corpses, and raiders. Were the previous 200 years better? Presumably they were worse. So what's compelling about a story where a family made it to a bomb shelter so they could live through 200 years of hell and maybe in the process build some child graves?

These environmental setpieces have cutesy stories of people that almost made it, or people that were trying to survive the apocalypse but didn't, or various ways that the people who survived died. After seeing one set of these in DC, another in Las Vegas, yet another in Boston, is there value in seeing more? These "aw shucks, they almost made it" (to a future that wasn't worth making it to) stories don't feel very fresh anymore.

It adds more character to the world.

 

[Tatsumaki Senpuukyaku!]

there are wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy too many people in fallout 4 who were alive before the war (and in previous fallout games, but FO4 seemed to take that shit to a new level)

 

[Sou Da]

Because it hasn't been explored in Fallout yet, outside of Point Lookout which was Maryland. I also have trust in Obsidian to write almost any setting and make it captivating and they've expressed interest in either revisiting the West Coast or doing NOLA. Also I live there lol.

EA pls revive Fountain of Dreams and give to

Spoiler

Bioware Austin.

I just want my Florida game, RIP Fallout Tactics 2.

 

[Rushersauce]

Fallout New San Francisco. You thought houses were expensive before war? Think again.
Fallout New San Francisco puts you in the post apocalyptic San Francisco. Here, the thing trying to kill you is not the wasteland and its inhabitants, but the high mortgage!

 

[Psychoward]

Nah, Fallout: The Boneyard. I want to see post-apocalyptic Los Angeles again.

luck for you then cause that was 1 of the 2 settings Obsidian openly expressed interest in

 

[lazygecko]

Fallout New San Francisco. You thought houses were expensive before war? Think again.
Fallout New San Francisco puts you in the post apocalyptic San Francisco. Here, the thing trying to kill you is not the wasteland and its inhabitants, but the high mortgage!

San Francisco was rebuilt by Chinese refugees and featured in Fallout 2.

 

[firehawk12]

With all this talk about the writing and quest design of Fallout 4, I wonder why game reviewers didn't mention any of this stuff. It's not even "more of the same" - it seems lesser than Fallout 3 and Skyrim.

 

[Rushersauce]

San Francisco was rebuilt by Chinese refugees and featured in Fallout 2.

Who said we can't revisit SF? I know SF is in Fallout 2. My post was, also, a joke.