Something I swear about Vault 111 that lots of people miss is that cryo stasis arguably wasn't its true purpose. It's stated in the terminals that the scientists and security are to mostly stay separate, and everyone opines that they will be happy to get out since there isn't enough food to last for 6 months, the minimum amount of time they have to stay in the Vault before they can leave, which the overseer states he is against because he knows that won't be long enough to be safe. And so, you have a vault with 2 distinct factions each distrustful of the other, a lack of food to create and exacerbate tension, a hellscape outside if anyone can live long enough to reach it, and a large number of freezers which all conveniently happen to be full. Vault 111 was really a cannibalism experiment, to test a) whether the staff in the vault would give in to save themselves from starvation, or instead face a blasted hellscape which they could not survive in, rather than resort to eating the people in their care, and b) who would cave first under pressure and how, and then how the other staff or faction would react. Because there was a civil war and a breakout the vault got a 'good' ending (relatively), but because the staff didn't give in the cannibalism test is now only implication rather than confirmed certainty, which is why so many people seem to miss it. It's subtle enough that you can't really be sure, but given the constant discussion of lack of food and Vault-tec's penchant for terrible moral dilemmas, I'd say this is pretty compelling Yes this is a rewording of my comment on the original upload. I can't remember how I phrased it then
Also, given our inability to even access ~96% of the other cryostasis tubes (and even then only able to see our spouse's body and take their ring), the rest of the people in that vault could be fully eaten except for the head/skull, and we would be none the wiser.
My biggest issue with Fallout 4 was the disconnect between gameplay and the storytelling, especially in the first act. The gameplay is encouraging the player to explore, wander, loot and craft, while the narrative urgency is telling the player to rush to Diamond City to find Shaun. It's such a strong hook for the main character that putting off the hunt for your kidnapped son to scrounge for more duct tape or help a random settlement feels jarringly inconsistent.
I love spending 15 hours meandering around the Northwestern part of the map, helping settlers find lockets, fixing the pipes in a quarry, helping Dnance get a radio transmitter. And when I finally, reluctantly, go to Diamond City, Nora asks everyone with a quivering voice about her baby. Oh right, I was looking for Shaun! I completely forgot.
So many games struggle with this, even Witcher leaves you guilty doing sidequests. Fo4 is especially strong case because the early game pathway is so weak so the explore loot loop is even more tempting
That's a problem that all of the modern Fallout games struggle with, though. While looking for your dad, you're sidetracked by other problems, tasks, and jobs. Looking for Benny (either to enact revenge or recover the platinum chip, or both), you get sidetracked by more quests.
@@Mega-Brick Perhaps, but it’s more exaggerated in FO4. In 3, we’re look for a grown man whom we have no immediate reason to suspect is in danger. In NV, a quest for revenge or whatever, doesn’t have any urgency. You’ll deal with Benny when we get there. Shaun, on the other hand, is a kidnapped baby. And you’re the patent, and you have no clue why he was kidnapped, or what could be happening to him.
That quote from the writer is the whiniest thing I've ever heard. Imagine if all authors did that, we wouldn't have any good fiction. "Why write a good compelling story when some people won't pay attention?" For the people that will. That's why
There was a more proper explanation for the Institute and the Synths, it just got cut from the original game. Also, too much writing is what gives us pretentious jackasses like Ulysses.
[Bethesda] "do you like the new speech system?" A - Yes X - I think it's fine Y - Yes, please tell me more about it B - I'm a little busy right now. Give me 5 minutes, then I'll pop back and tell you how good I think it is
Wasn't just perks that it had no interaction with either, there was just no interaction with the WORLD in the speech checks either Like, early on, I went in and lockpicked my way into the mayors safe. It pretty much reveals a secret about him .. you can do NOTHING with this information. Apparently in the end game, a quest pops up where you get to do stuff related to said information.. and events happen and blah, and it's like.. could have resolved all of this 40 hours ago if the game had just acknowledged the fact that I knew his secret and could act on it. Like y'know, a decent roleplaying game would let you That was the point when I mentally checked out of Fallout 4. Just disappointing. It's great as an action game, but it's not at all what I wanted from a fallout title
I remember somebody defending it because "It feels like a conversation! In NV it feels like you are in an interrogation" like when you are... Asking somebody about something
ah yes the best dialogue options: charisma check that doesn't work because your charisma isn't high enough and literally the same dialogue option, but it works now because my char is dressed in some stupid pre-war costume with +2 charisma points on it I reeeeeaaaallllyyy miss New Vegas dialogue
Personally, I think *"The Devil's Due"* should have been your introduction to Deathclaws. Because I wasn't spoilt when I played that mission and it freaked me out to no end.
@Insert_text_here Tbf, I was still spooked when I assumed it would be a Deathclaw, and much more so when it turned out to be a savage death-claw, a demonic looking creature which Id not seen before. And much the more since I only had a sword at the time, leading to a dark souls style boss fight
@Insert_text_here Yeah, it was great because I'd seen a couple from afar, but always fled or snuck around them (except the one early on in Concord), so being forced to confront one face to face in such an atmospheric location, it was perfect
Honestly the Deathclaw in Concord kills that confrontation for me more than the power armor. If we only had the power fantasy of mowing down raiders with a mini gun it'd be fine, not great but passable. You're likely to run out of bullets mowing down the raiders on higher difficulties and you'll probably come out the fight with only two or three pieces of armor still intact. Couple that with the fact that your fusion core will be mostly spent by the time you get to Sanctuary and now you got some nice tools you can hardly use until mid game. Spoiling the Deathclaw's introduction to the game so early is the flaccid fart on an otherwise decent encounter and it cheapens the appearance of such a powerful enemy later in the game. While still very threatening, they just don't have the same shock value they had in prior games. Devil's Due would have been THE perfect quest to introduce you to Deathclaws. As many people have stated it's a fantastically simple, but effective way to put you in a tight space with a monster you'll have a tough time handling. No power armor, no minigun, just you and the tools you brought in for a job you weren't prepared for. If they had used this quest as the trigger for Deathclaws to start spawning throughout the world outside the glowing sea, that would've been even better.
It also happens in new vegas, it would be 10x better if there wasen't that guy telling you about them, imagine going to that road and 80 deathclaws tearing you apart lfmao
@@Matt-td8xw I don't have a problem with that. New Vegas is a much more down to earth game, and Deathclaws being an understand, but very serious, problem is fitting. Remember, they're effectively as serious of a barrier as a total rockslide, and they're only treated casually because they're able to be given a wide berth. It also helps set the tone that the NCR isn't doing a very good job managing this, and that Mr. House doesn't seem to particularly care about serious problems outside of the Strip, so it's a bit of establishment for the faction as well.
There's such a lack of connection to the Shaun character that I felt worse every time Dogmeat whimpered in combat than I did when I left the old and the young Shaun for dead in the Institute.
The only reason I liked this game is because of the connection I had with my son. I don't care if you liked it for the gameplay or shit. If I wanted that I would have played a stupid ass game like Skyrim or cod. You hate fallout 4 just like the rest. Either you loved Shaun's character or you hate fallout 4. No middle ground.
I think - and note that I’m not defending Bethesda with this - the reason they made Shaun a baby was because they figured a lot of players would catch on to the fact that the Sole Survivor was frozen for longer than they realised and Shaun was likely no longer a baby. Thus when you go through Kelloggs memories and see 10 year old “Shaun” they can show their timeline fuckery early and double-bluff you into not thinking about 60 year old real Shaun. Honestly I think they missed a trick by not having the SS make a bigger deal out of realising that they think they’ve missed ten years of Shaun’s life and they’ve wasted so much time asking about an infant. But as stated, by this point no player actually gave a shit about Shaun.
Perhaps if Shawn had been a bigger part of the SS's life post freezing. Have us care for and watch shawn grow after, say, rescuing the minutemen. Enable a Fable style aging system, God knows sone players took in-game years to rescue shawn. Make the players engage with and care about shaw that way. Better than saying, 'heres your baby. You love it because of course you do. Here's three seconds of it crying.'
i like your point and it makes a lot of sense but i think the fact that as a character i had to go around asking about a baby, led me to think "I mean what if he isn't a baby anymore, we really dont know how long we were frozen again" and it really killed the reveal for me, i just kind of had a moment of "yeah, thats about what i expected" I dont know i would have thought that so quickly if he were a bit older
Another thing that helped me catch onto their double-bluff early is that F4 is canonically 10 years later that F3. I think the writers were banking a little on F3 nostalgia for the players trying to possibly link shaun with the Capital Wasteland. It doesn't work though because that's a huge rube goldberg machine of mental gymnastics to go through for a kid i'm "meh" at best about.
"Kid in a Fridge" would be so easy to fix - the ghoul family are con artists who play on the character's sympathies to get a rival gang cleared out, and then a bunch of caps. The kid was only there for a couple of days, but he is a 200 year old child, stopped from aging by sone quirk of ghoulism and is there to hand the player character sob story after sob story to turn players into his servants. (Think a bigger con than Aqua Cura)
@@itsclemtime2357 The ghoul con artist called his water "aqua cura". He had a couple of ghouls who emptied bottles of water into bathtubs, and then refilled the bottles with contaminated and irradiated water. They then changed the label and sold it as Aqua Cura.
A more lore-friendly turn would be that the kid's not a ghoul at all, just made up to look like one by his adoptive con artist ghoul parents. They wanted to earn some extra caps, and happened to take in the kid off the street, so they made up a story about being a family from before the war and took their show on the road. A child Ghoul is rare, and one that never to ages has never been heard of before. The kid gets captured, and is being held for sale to the highest bidder. Maybe a distant collector, or possibly the institute for experimentation. You rock in, kill the merc(s), rescue the kid, and the ghouls vow to never run scams again. Alternatively, you could Charisma or Medical Skill your way up to the kid and wipe off his makeup in front of bidders. You could even just buy the kid back if you want to bypass the fight.
I agree that it was odd how we got no time to know Nora/Nate in the opening. Another great example from Fallout 3 was Jonas. Jonas is a kind hearted guy that is a family friend and is the best friend to James/Dad. He tried talking James out of leaving the Vault. We get to know Jonas through the time skips in Vault 101. We even get dialogue options where we can joke with him cause he has a dry sense of humor. During the chaos, he gets beaten to death by the guards as they think that he is trying to kill them all. Amata tells us this as to the urgency on why we have to leave The Vault. It is the holy smokes, Jonas was killed, Dad is gone, I've got to get out of here. A beautiful opening that was missed in some ways in FO4.
I couldn't agree more. Leaving the vault in 3 was tense and emotional. Leaving the vault in 4 just made me wonder why I couldn't keep using the vault as my main base during the game.
That's a good explanation! I love the game as well and am on I think my 5th playthrough, but there are some things that really annoy me. I just overlook them...
i had the thought that you were saying fallout 4 is playing fallout new vegas but you can max everything in new vegas (everything that matters) but i guess instead its fallout 4 is playing.... fallout 4?
Yah. I feel that Fallout 3 was the most well-balanced of the Bethesda RPGs, whereas New Vegas and 4 are polar opposites. Vegas has great stories, but no dungeons and not a lot to explore for (as John mentioned) leaving it's gameplay rather weak. Fallout 4 has great gameplay and character build options, but it's story is largely crap. There are exceptions in both games, though I would say NV wins better here, simply because Fallout 4s only good story moments are not along the main campaign AT ALL, and I actually missed them ALL on my first time through the game. Fallout 3 is not without flaws. But I feel it's flaws are evenly spread. Story is solid, with a lot of it's best material (Tranquility Lane and Wasteland Survival guide) being part of the main story, or right along the main story path. Exploration feels good when there's always a chance to find a skill book for special loot, at a minimum. It's well rounded, maybe with exploration being a strong point. And horrible moments, like the lack of talking to the Vault 101 Guards, or the original ending choice (No, you can't send the radiation resistant companion in because reasons. And yes, the devs did think of this and even wrote and voiced dialogue to prove it), are few and far between. In fact, I think those are the only two actively horrible parts in the game (Maaaybe Power of the Atom, as having the option to nuke a town as soon as you leave the vault is a character jumping off the moral cliff, but then, it's hardly the only moral choice in the early game). So it's generally good... but it does suffer from not being really strong in any one area, like FO4 or NV.
I think the opening of the game shows the juxtaposition of the American Dream and the effect of war. In real life society usually ignores major issues until the effects are on your doorstep, like the vault Tec guy.
Jon: "Take Easy City Downs, it's an old Horse Racing track now used for Robot Races. Factions are betting, there's hints of a scam." Me: ...Wait, what? That's really unique! How did I never know about this!? Jon: "Everyone shoots you on sight, there's no quests." Me, a big lumbering obvious "shoot me" sign: Oh.
I feel you. If your someone who uses quests as the motivation to explore, like me, then you end up missing so much. I walked past so many marked locations thinking “I’m sure there’s a quest that will send me here.” But that never happens cause half the quests are radiant and boring af
@@claymathews8814 I was just replaying for a second time, and heading through the Boston streets. And I stumbled on a raider camp Id never seen before. It was actually really well designed, but the game never leads you here. The game is terrible for questing. But, it still has that Bethesda world design, where there’s something neat everywhere you look.
How in the goddamn fuck do the raiders make money with their betting circuit and fight club when they scare away any customer by attempting to murder anyone who might be willing to pay them??
@@arellajardin8188 This is actually why I've eventually come around to seeing 4 as one of my favorite games in the series. I tend to be more exploration focused than quest focused, primarily aiming to obtain various materials, or complete various quests, in survival difficulty. Because of that, I end up spending most of my time outside of quests, engaging in the combat->loot->build cycle, and rather little time caring about the terrible dialogue function.
Um, the whole point of Easy City Downs it to sneak into the robot storage, figure out that you can change the race program and have the robots kill everyone and then blow them up! [duh]
Probably the most baffling thing about the story of this game is the whole idea that the institute didn't just grab all of the frozen vaulters and keep them on ice inside the institute... they did mention needing samples that hadn't been affected by the surface conditions, and it was a whole storage of them... the player could have woken up inside the institute or accidentally tossed out a garbage chute or something and the game wouldn't even have needed to change much... it may have even improved the story if Kellogg was more of a grey character aligned with the institute who you bump into on the surface doing something brutal rather than specifically an enemy you are trying to hunt down from the get-go.
The thing is; 1. The experiment worked on the first try, and the Institute was able to create all the synths they would ever need using Shaun's DNA. They had no need for any of the remaining vault dwellers. 2. If they ever did need more samples, there is a perfectly serviceable cryogenics facility just a quantum jump away. No need to spend all that time, money, and energy building your own, when vault 111 is right there. The cryo-pods were fully functional until Father decided to turn them off remotely, and theoretically could have run indefinitely.
You know what got me? "The Minutemen: Protect the People at a minutes notice" You know what would massively help with that and be hilariously literal? A freaking Commonwealth-wide teleporter. Powered by a fancy new reactor. That is now unguarded. Because you killed all the synths and scientists with guns. .. Nah. blow it up xD
I had a similar thought about that really nice Space Odyssey-themed hotel down there. And I personally beheaded EVERY SINGLE PERSON down there with my plasma rifle, so I know it's safe now.
Wow, i never really thought about that....that actually makes a lot of sense. Come to think of it exactly WHY does the Minutemen AND the Railroad for that matter, blow up the institute? Like its very obvious the Brotherhood is their to hunt down and go to war with the Institute for their own reasons. sure they could also salvage all the institutes tech but eh i can kinda forgive them nuking the place. But the RAILROAD is all about protecting synths and freeing them from the institute, but as far as i know synths cant reproduce (far as i know no one ever mentions it, the gen 3s probably can if they are as human as everyone says). Like the only reason the institute is BAD is the people running it, if those people are DEAD or you run them out of the place and the synths take over, boom slavery over no need to nuke the place in hind sight. The Minutemen though.....i mean why would they blow the place up, again you can kill everyone or run them out of their (in fact Preston WANTS you to sound the EVAC alarm, cus i guess he thinks their all innocent of anything the institute did wrong) all they would have to do is plug that pipe and/or disable the relay and then no one will ever find the place. I guess its a thing where the game is very liner in story, synths are either: 1. bad thus you blow up the institute. 2. people, but you still blow up the institute because i guess slavery bad, but again no reason to REALLY blow the place up. 3. Property and not sentient thus you side with the institute. The Minutemen end is just "Institute bad thus it must go boom", sounds like something a super mutant would say.
Playing devil's advocate for a second, the faction you pick kinda ends up learning teleportation tech when you go to them to help in getting into the institute for the first time. Granted the tech they make is very rudimentary and blows up after you use it, but it's still tech that they know how to make and is likely something they'd capitalize on after a few years of tinkering
There's actually a teleportation system in operation valkyrie, or outcasts and remnants, well I don't know which, but it's a Thuggysmurf mod. 12 pulowski preservation shelters scattered across the commonwealth are turned into teleportation pods that lead to a central hub with traders from which you can go to one of the other preservation shelters
They do mention their former careers a few times. Nate's dialogue with the Railroad say's "Once, I pledged my life to protect my countrymen, I don;t see this as any different", compared to Nora's "I risk my life for people everyday". - Likewise Nate tells Danse that HE was a member of the army, whereas Nora says her husband was. When dealing with the USS Constitution they both have different dialogue with "Lookout" with Nate being identified by his military service, Nora by her driving license (which for some reason includes that she was a lawyer). This is just a snippet of course, and they're often out of place when it comes to full RP'ing as recognising a character was once a Lawyer when you're trying to be some kind of fire obsessed serial killer doesn't always fly. It's why Bethesda cut a home terminal in your pre-war house that went into backstory, especially Nora's showing she was willing to fight the rich/powerful, as it would have ultimately pushed any female character to being good, and good alone. Whereas without it she could of been a lawyer like Saul Goodman. Just saying, it does come up, and it's almost always awkward if you're trying to play something that doesn't fit with those careers (like for Nate not being BOS or Minutemen)
It always bothered me that Danse doesn't really respond to you saying you were in the military. He's there on a recon mission and he encounters someone claiming to have spent time in a military that there's no real evidence of unless you count the institute or the gunners, so Danse should say something like "Oh, you mean you were a merc?" or at least give us SOMETHING. Everyone just goes along with the male protagonist saying they "swore an oath to [their] country" or whatever and in any other fallout I think there would have been more followup dialogue whenever he brings up his backstory
@@BlindAlex117 Imagine if they gave some sort of Ulysses-type character to contrast with Nate's supposed patriotism, and maybe give a critique on what that sort of oath might mean when that oath is made in service of ideals that were objectively evil. That could have been neat.
Whenever I play an evil character in FO4, it helps to have a headcanon that The Sole Survivor suffered severe mental trauma following the events that took place in Vault 111. That way you can justify doing psychotic or morally reprehensible things, despite game guiding you into being nice (Most of the time).
I’ve always felt the default names Nate and Nora were a last second decision. I say that because when the game first came out Codsworth couldn’t say either name.
I've never heard someone so passionately loving of a work, but also passionately vicious towards its flaws. If the mainstream news media were like you, we would have a much more well educated society, my friend.
I also did like how companions worked in Fallout 4. They had affinity levels that went up or down depending on your actions. If it got maxed out they idolize you and the player gains a permanent companion perk. If it drops too low they permanently leave you. During various quests they comment on the situation and voice their opinions on your and others actions and give/lose affinity accordingly. In order to unlock companion quests you have to raise affinity enough and completing the quests are required to max out their affinity. The problem was that maxing affinity could be a bit of a grind. I get that it needs to take effort, but I did not like going out of my way to do tasks like modding, hacking, lock picking to max affinity in a reasonable amount of time. There were set point gains for liked/disliked and hated/loved. It could have been better by having affinity gain/loss be much more depending on the action. Doing actions companions approve of in quests should give a lot more points than mundane exploration activities. Therefore you still need to put effort into making companions idolize you, but you don’t have to go out of your way grinding to max it in a reasonable amount of time.
Isn't it the same as NV (not sure about F3, never played it with companions)? The only difference is NV doesn't show you "liked" or ""disliked" messages, affinity just changes without you being notified.
Except...I couldn't give a rat's ass about any of them. Sheldon is annoying and keeps hitting on you after having been repeatedly told not to. McCready is incredibly needy. Cath is a bad girl, until you get her clean and then she becomes a good girl. And literally all of them are dumb as rocks and prevent the player from using stealth effectively. Their sole purpose is to show up, max out, give a perk and then spend the rest of their lives farming vegetables in the most remote settlement I have available.
Remember...Strugis couldn't manage to crack a low level computer hack in the beginning, but by the end he was able to teleport you no problem... Guess Sturgis was really hitting the books when I wasn't there to see him pounding an invisible nail into a wall for no reason.
It's possible that seeing Virigl's schematics triggered an innate understanding of the technology, given he's a Synth and all. Doesn't really excuse Bethesda's writing, it's just a headcanon to salvage the experience somewhat.
I never liked how you can become the leader of the institute, whilst working and being treated as a glorified mailman for them, and not having the choice to stop synth production and replacement to focus on other technologies (Farming and medical stuff) that mihht get wastelanders to like (or at least don't mind) them.
I know someone who chose the Institute because their headcanon was that they could use their expertise and resources to help the people of the commonwealth and rebuild society. But I agree, I find it unsatisfying.
Frustrating as it is from the pov of a gamer, it reflects the reality in many large corrupt real world institutions. In fact the quest line that you go through to become the leader of the institute makes it very clear that they are looking for someone who will carry on with business as usual. A safe pair of hands. Someone to continue father's role who will not upset the section heads. It's like becoming CEO of a major corporation. You can't just waltz in and start ordering powerful shareholding boardmembers around or they'll just vote you off the board/get rid of you. If your leadership of the institute had been through a hostile takeover, things might be different. In attitude, the Institute reflects many of the worst aspects of the pre-war world. If you follow the questline to become the new leader, you are at the very least tacitly approving of that. To then go against the vetting process they put you through and try to make them more moral and humanitarian is really contrary to what they've become over the last 200 years. It may not be impossible for your character to slowly change things, but given what they did to get there, why would they? Unless you are metagaming. That's the crux of the matter.
@@ShadowSonic2 You mean well, but lack deeper understanding of electricity generation. Diesel generators consume A LOT of fuel. If you cant supply gas pumps, then you cant supply small scale generators.
@@OkurkaBinLadin but it's not so much gas that's on shortage as it is oil. gas can be made over and over again from corn, and we see in fallout 4. you just can't kill corn.
@@ShadowSonic2 you know, people got angry at fallout NV: the frontier, because the devs violated the lore by making all the cars run on bio-diesel, while the mod takes place in a frozen Westland. So I can see why people get angry about Bathesda putting non-nuclear energy sources everywhere in a world, that was almost out of fossil fuels.
@@boneman-calciumenjoyer8290 You can make gas and diesel from things other than oil. Like acid and bones. The Great War was over the major gas producer, Oil. But there are alternatives, just not ones the big businesses running America at the time cared for.
To help appease the algorithm here's a quick tip for the YOLO run. Trudy at the drumlin diner has a silenced pipe bolt action pistol for sale GUARANTEED! Remove the silencer and attach it to the pipe sniper you find in the house in concord and voila you have the best early game weapon for a sneaky stealth build :)
pretty angel Between us all there are probably thousands of little tips we could give Jon for YOLO, like the fact there is a guaranteed hazmat suit that's quite easy to get in Cambridge polymer labs to help him with early game rads. There is also a ledge you can stand on outside Cambridge Police station next to the metal walkway where the ghouls can't get you, making that fight a cake walk, meaning you can get from there to righteous authority risk free. Also if you take all the drugs from diamond city blues and make 60 psychojet and 60 bufftats it gets you so much Xp it gains you 1.5 to 2 levels which could be handy when rushing to a perk he might need to progress.
I think I was a bit more upset at the story developers comment that “players don’t care about lore in an RPG because they are building shacks, so why bother?”. Another frustration when they were asked why a boy could still be alive if he was locked in a fridge before the war, even as a ghoul. Their response was essentially, “who cares? It’s a video game.” Drives me nuts that people with such little care were able to work on a game that was so anticipated by fans.
You have to realize that this is a business. They have an idea how much money they want to make on a game and tailor it according to how many people will buy it. Not necessarily their hardcore fans, but new players. It's naive to think a company cares one way or the other about their hardcore fans because enough people, new and old, will buy it creating a big enough profit for them. It's just the way of the world.
It's frankly insulating to the intelligence of who they think their audience is not to mention an active admittance of contempt for them. Disgusting that someone like they hold decision making power over a franchise
I never encountered that one, but at least it's acceptable as a Weird Wasteland occurance. Contrast this with Not-Whitey Bulger. Nick, one of the most prominent companions, has this whole quest. You have to search police stations across the wasteland in order to find out what happened to this criminal. And so when you get Kid in a Fridge, but with a small apartment, it's really pathetic. It would have been much better for him to have long gone feral (and made sense lore wise). Or for him to have spent all that time locked alone to become philosophical, and genuinely desiring to reform. Instead... we get a guy whose just been locked in his basement for 200 years, and doesn't really seem to have been bothered by spending 4x as much time alone as he ever did free and in the company of others.
Another issue: I still don't really understand what's going on in the Battle of Bunker Hill. I don't understand why everyone and their grandpa seems to show up.
My understanding is that is was something similar to the cold war. The railroad knew they were in danger, so they sent a few heavies to protect them. The institute knew this and decided to send more coursers than usual as a show of force. The BOS heard of this and sent vertibirds to take out two major opponents at once. To protect their assets, the railroad sends more members, and the battle escalates
Ya, especially when the game gives you the "option" to inform both the railroad and brotherhood. Still not sure what doing that even DOES out side of check off a quest objective, mabye MORE then usuall show up i have no idea.
@@theencolony5595 True but that arguement kinda falls apart when you get the options to inform them of the institute going to bunker hill, if i recall the dialogue correctly, Maxen says something along the lines of "what? we had no idea thanks for telling me." i forget what the railroad tells you but probably something similar or something that fits with you being a double agent.
@@jaywerner8415 remember those are different timelines. It's entirely possible that not having the SS to spy for them, they got a different CI that told them
The worst part of the dialogue wheel isn't even just the 4 set options, but the fact they rarely do anything different from each other. "Y" could lead to a broad questions topic, not just a singular question like it does it most cases. A spoke of the wheel could lead to option A, another to option B, and the 3rd as some special option, or let's talk about this later. Instead most dialogue functions as an interactive cutscene
"Instead most dialogue functions as an interactive cutscene" That's the best description of this problem. The dialogue wheel made the conversations less conversational. It doesn't feel like you're talking to NPCs, it feels like the NPCs are talking at you. It feels more like an exposition dump rather than a conversation.
Maybe the Institute would’ve worked better if they were Transhumanists who genuinely want to help everyone.... by “improving” them. The memory den shows you can transfer and alter memories. What if the ultimate goal is to turn everyone into Synths? And if a person has personality flaws, let’s change those. Oops, this person’s past is causing conflicts with townsfolk, erase their past. One of the ethical dilemmas would be, are they actually transferring human consciousness to a new body, or are they killing the original and replacing them with a copy? Transhumanism seems like a more logical goal than just making realistic looking janitors.
@Madam Meouff Not exactly cultists. Just scientists who threw ethics out the window, and anything is free game so long as the outcome is an improvement. So replacing everyone, including themselves, with Synths, is their way of making sure “humanity” survives.
Also, I really hate how dumb they are. Like killing everyone in University Point to get a laser rifle that doesn’t need reloading. Like, the girl who found it, wanted to sell the technology. Just buy the damn thing.
I'm pretty sure their actual goal was to infiltrate the commomwealth with legitimate actors having the exact genetic disposition to be skilled in certain areas with gen 3 and not janitors, who are likely botched or waiting to assume a role.
Besides the “keep it simple” mentality for dialog, they would have been better off stealing the Bioware dialog wheel. Organizes responses and questions efficiently, leaves room for special choices based on skills or faction affiliation. And if a set of options merely progress the dialog, the Dragon Age series offers icons to express what the tone will be.
I'm a fan of the Extended Dialogue Interface (XDI) mod. Brings back the dialogue box and includes symbols for the function of each dialogue option. Works well with the voiced protagonist too.
Honestly they didn't even need to do that. Removing the speech box just feels like 'hey controllers have 4 directional buttons, let's use those' when the boxes were fine, hell Skyrim still used a list. It's a combination of cutting corners due to the data a voiced protagonist required and removing elements of the script required for that, for better or worse. And for the most part, it makes the vocal protagonist elements hollow because the options hamstring the character.
@@gratuitouslurking8610 There is a least some rationale for using an abbreviated wheel when you have a voiced protagonist. Because reading out the full sentence, then listening to the VA say what you just read, is a little off putting. Best solution, don’t have Voiced, unless the character is someone specific. Or, there’s Witcher 3. Geralt is voiced, and his dialog options are abbreviated. He puts more flair into what he says, compared to what you chose. Interestingly, FO4 protagonist dialog is all short. Like, the single advantage of the system, is the protagonist could be verbose. And they talk in abrupt sentences.
Around the 30 minute mark the point about the Minutemen and how: A. Preston is unkillable. B. You'll end up in the cycle of 'kill raiders, help settlement, kill raiders' with The Minutemen if you're new. Those are two things that hit me when I started playing. I hadn't played a Fallout game in years, but I was extremely excited with the look of Fallout 4. I ended up dropping the game for a while because I wasn't sure what I was supposed to do. I assumed Preston would lead me in the direction of the main quest, but he kept giving me radiant quests. I thought maybe it was like the Thieves' Guild in Skyrim and you need to do X number of radiant quests to get main missions but that wasn't true either. It never struck me until Jon mentioned it that Preston is just Yes Man. It makes a ton of sense now, but it sent the totally wrong impression and for a long time spoiled the game for me. Once I got back into it and focused on other stuff like exploration I had more fun, and when I went into the Brotherhood quest-line I realized how entertaining the game can be but that first experience with a major faction nearly ruined the game for me.
I've played Fo4 two times. The first walkthrough was not completed because of a gamebreaking glitch. The second was with the minimal involvement in Minutemen affairs and it was actually a better experience. However I don't see how's BoS's storyline is any better, when you get repetive quests (get that artifact, clear that location).
Someone patched it to have Preston give quests less frequently. I don't know if it was Bethesda or the modders of the Unofficial Patch, because I've never played the game unmodded.
it would have been smart to have Codsworth be the "yes man fallback", he's your butler bot, it'd make sense he'd help you go trough everything to get a semblance of normal life back (so the bare minimum: fix sanctuary, find Shawn and maybe get a new romantic partner), i think that'd work a lot better as it's pretty much the main quest anyway and Cods is yours, tied to the pre-war world and can't have stakes in anything new (other than maybe getting some maintenance). And on top of that, it'd free the minutemen as a true faction that'd actually help the settlements (yours or not) independently and you could just help them from a distance (do the bare minimum, help them rebuild and recruit) or actually join them.
Mama Murphy was the NPC designed to push you onwards with the main quest. She'll even interrupt you turning in a quest to Preston if she's walking by. Replays have had me Ignore Concord as long as possible and use Red Rocket and ignoring Diamond City as well. The game feels a lot different when one blows off Concord and Diamond City till boredom forces advancement of the main plot.
On a somewhat random, but not unrelated note, I remember that first shootout in Diamond City between the two brothers. I had the bright idea to use VATS to determine which one had more health, and noticed that the one who eventually won the shootout had substantially higher HP! It was such a cool Fallout moment and an a-ha detective moment, and I promptly shot the one with higher health. Everyone around me turned hostile, including the brother (I'm pretty sure), and I was forced to reload a save, as no meaningful change happened as a result of my deduction. Instead, I was forced to let the synth brother win the fight and move on. I appreciate a lot about Fallout 4, and you've made me think a lot about how the development cycle and the changing industry across those years affected the final game and all the things that went right nonetheless. But man, would it have been cool to see deeper writing and random choices like that.
So when this game came out, my Nora just set about doing all the side quests, not finding Shaun, eventually finished the game after becoming a beast. My second playthrough as Nate a couple years later was immediately after the birth of my own son, when he was about the same age as baby Shaun. I wasn't expecting it, but it really did hit exponentially harder, and so I persued the main story much harder, even telling Preston I wouldn't stay and help them with Sanctuary. I skipped out on building settlements, my favorite part, until much later in the game. It basically did a 180 on how I felt about that particular plot point. ...Didn't really change Father's fate, but the idea of my baby being lost... yeah.
The issue with Shaun being a baby isn't even about the fact that the player ends up with no real connection to Shaun before the bombs fall but also that Shaun would have NO CONNECTION to the parent ahead of the plot twist. Synth or not, that kid would be like "I have NO idea who you are."
To be fair he mentions that when you meet him, at first he didnt think about it much but then he became the boss and looked up or got shown the records, hell he even says he set Kellogg up to fight you. Sure he has no EMOTIONAL connection to you but he knows who you are.
Im sure he would know who the guy is due to Shaun being apart of the institute and probl read Reports i mean he dos go about planning your release among other things in hope of getting you to do what he wants. So clearly what he has no real Emotional Pull towerds you, He dos know who you are. kinda like a Adoptive child being adopted at the age of 1 and living with a happy family he will just bond with that family, The Parents im sure will tell him he is indeed adopted but the kid be like 'Well Shoot oh well still my family' and move along as apart of him and prob have no real emotional attachmeant
True but Shawn isn't really too important in the grand scheme of things. Technically speaking, the Institute is the Commonwealth's best chance at improving. Teleportation technology could send much needed supplies to locations in need of supplies. Synths act as an extremely cheap source of protection and labor. There are no need for gen 3 synths in the end since everyone lives with synths anyways. The Institute genetically modifies plants to grow faster, produce larger yields, and consume less water. Best of all, the Institute has a group of scientists that are genuinely curious. Scientists who intend on improving their technology or new technologies. I've always had the dream of the Commonwealth where you get to do more with the factions you choose after the game. In reality, it's only the Institute that has anything to do after the game. But imagine having a synth rollout of better generation one's which are only work horses. They start clearing and making the foundation for a bigger, cleaner, better city than ever seen before. Solar panels on the roofs of the buildings providing power during the day and a small battery underground to power the residential buildings at night. A teleporter there allows traders to come and go much quicker. Factories that run on clean energy that provide useful materials such as pip boys, clothing, clean water, etc. This starts bringing money into the new city and attention. Once the city starts getting money coming, the nearby farmers are given better seeds and their produce gets purchased by the people. Water needs to be treated and so on and so forth. You get the idea. You essentially build a new city where you provide shelter, water, and a job. Once they start making their own money, they purchase new clothes and food, etc. I know this is really long but it genuinely interests me the ins and outs of what we take for granted. Even phones but that's another essay
@@snakevenom4954 I Mean debaitible, Yeah there Tech is good but so is the Enclave but they are basicly Racist assholes / Hitler Nazis of the future and such. The Institue goes about things pretty badly, Fuck you we are taking your random peons and fucken replacing them with Synths not only that but the Synths are trying to rebel against the Institute ask me there going to fail sooner or later its not like the Brotherhood that has multible chapters as well they dont seem to be on that scale at all.
That’s just plain wrong. Most Adopted children which never knew their parents are very driven to find their real parents. Not caring about your parents is the real abnormal behavior. Though I guess Shaun was specifically characterized as a total psychopath, so in his case it made sense.
Possible alternative to the beginning of the game. You’re a 19 year old come back home to your parents after being kicked out of Basic Training, after being drafted. Don’t explain why. But this sets up how you know how to handle weapons and survival skills. Check your discharge papers to set SPECIAL. Like the video suggests, spend time in Sanctuary. Meet the neighbors, help them out or be mean to them. Reconnect with a group of friends, and establish your past through dialog choices. Then, you win a lottery for VAULT 111, but only for you and one other person. Then the bombs drop. Going off the rails here, but instead of the only survivor, most of the Vault is still alive, if frozen. Tie the Vault dwellers into the Settlement system, as all these people are going to need a place to go when unfrozen. Make them unto their own Faction! Or don’t. Leave them on ice. Or sell the Vault to another faction. Or slavers.
Or your 21 and got discharged rightfully or wrongfully allowing the player to have a little more freedom if they want to be evil or a good person accused of something they didn’t do
@@klausklaus504 I like that. Yes, you were drafted, and you served. Maybe a friend in Sanctuary asks you how you served. Field Medic, Soldier, Engineer, Clerk. And this gives you a free perk point in something. Point is, you’re home and ready to start your life..... and bombs drop.
Maybe I'm a bit crazy for wanting marathon-length games, but it'd be cool if there was an entire chapter on the unfolding political instability of the world. You get back from the military, settle down, make some career choices, have a straight marriage, a secret gay one (because it's a 1950s culture), or an open gay one just to piss everyone off. You can have children, acquire real estate, flip or collect cars, hoard to the point your love interest gets annoyed at you or leaves. Do financially well or poorly based on the decisions. Modify, repair, rent out your car(s), house(s), etc. Breed pets and sell them. Run a furniture store, an auto shop, robot store (NERD!), food store, etc. Or be an employee... heck, be a janitor, lol. Every role major or minor in society would have a mini-game. You'd be so fully immersed. You'd hear the news get worse and worse and wish people would just calm down. AND THEN the bombs come down. When you come out, you can choose to leave it all behind, or try to restore the neighborhood you put so much effort into. You can be a raider, pragmatist (neutral), or a "good guy". And yes, all the stuff you did in chapter 1, affects the post-apocalyptic landscape.
@@manictiger Eh, I feel like people who much prefer the action (or even just post apocalyptic-themed) part of the game would absolutely HATE that "0th act", especially those among them who have a habit of making many new characters to try out different builds.
Perhaps you could tie unfreezing people from the vault to fusion cores in some manner? Like, you need a lot of power to unfreeze someone or something. Now using power armor carries an additional price- it's using the same resource that you could be using to unfreeze your pre-war friends. It'd also give fusion cores a bit more of a use for people who don't want to use power armor (as they can easily accumulate dozens of fusion cores towards the end of the game).
I always imagined that the Institute was gonna pull a Westworld. They have incredible disdain for the people on the surface and seeing how the CPG turned out... with their synth rep being the only survivor. I figured that the ultimate end goal for the Institute was going to be copy and pasting regular humans into superior synth bodies. Bodies that would be better suited to life on the surface and rebuilding the world. I figured the main character was some sort of Experiment. We learned about how most of the subjects in the vault died after their cryo pods malfunctioned. And DIMA from Far Harbor even seems to allude that you might not be as human as you think. I figured the protagonist of Fallout 4 was perhaps the first successful human to synth transformation. With your memories and personality copied over into a gen 3. And that the entire point of Shaun "releasing" you from the vault, was to see exactly how successful it was. And, from a narrative perspective, it made sense since the Institute needed Shaun in the first place to make the Gen 3s work. It makes sense that he would turn to his father/mother to proceed with the next step in the plan, as well as ya know... getting to meet at least one parent before he kicks the bucket. I was waiting the whole game for this plot twist but it never came. And I was so disappointed because even this bare bones idea is more interesting than the final product we got.
It would certainly explain away the pacing drop after the introduction, once you no longer have much of a rush to find your son. Maybe the fake starting memories they implanted didn't stick or resonate that well, but did serve to mask the exact moment you were switched on for your trial run until you inevitably return "home" for evaluation. I know it's just poor writing, but fooling myself at least lets me mess about the wasteland with my sanity in check.
I know why they included romance options, but like, canonically it's just another way it makes the player character seem uhhh without empathy. The murder of their spouse has basically 0 impact on the main character
Canonically, their (Nate and Nora) relationship on the surface is very up for interpretation and for all we know they could have been the local swingers of Sanctuary Hills. Now you're roaming the wasteland with a hot piece of ass like codsworth... How can I resist the urge to ding his chronometer?
@@FonVegen comfort is one thing, also not judging one way or the other here, but romance is another. Most people need to morn and thats never shown. And naratively its heartless to jump staight to another after the death of a lover. Its just too fast for most people and can serve to distance player from the character and the story.
I think it can be summarised by the fact that due to Todd Howard's direction they wrote the entire game into a corner when he really wanted the game to start pre war with a family etc. So many different things that weren't properly addressed resulting in a huge disconnection between a player and their character. Hence the fact by the time people actually meet Saun, they pretty much want to kill him due to having no real personal connection and being responsible for fucking up the commonwealth for decades.
They could’ve started you out with just the frame of the power armor, or something of that essence. Then you can build your armor bit by bit. They could have also made deathclaws very formidable and terrifying, instead of battling it in this quest, you have to lead the minutemen carefully around it maybe through tunnels where the deathclaw is lurking. Then when you get settled slightly in Sanctuary it attacks the settlement after following you back, stalking it’s prey.
Talked about this with a friend the other day. Would have been far more interesting if the SS tracked down "rumors" of Sean, only to discover many different synth Seans, all at different ages, some knowing what they are, others not, some as antagonists, some not. This ties into our feeling that the game should have built up the synth replacements far more in the game and made them more important (essentially switch up the main quest a bit). Let's face it, anyone genre savvy figured out many years could have passed since the SS was frozen (as well as guess that "Sean" would wind up as a possible antagonist at the end). Make the mystery be "who is the real Sean" and lead it into synth replacement and a truly nefarious (or altruisitic/gray) goal of the Institute. Don't tell the player they have to care about this kid they never knew.
You didn't have to be genre savvy. You've got heavy hints in dialogues with NPCs and on some terminals. Also, if the protagonist would have decent to high intelligence, there were logs in the Vault 101 terminals contatining events with dates. So the answer was there since the beginning. So after reading those logs I was confused when the protagonist was talking to everyone about searching for his/her baby.
@@michamarkowski2204 I always took that as the SS just trying to cling to what they know rather than face the probable truth that they missed so much of Shaun's life.
""All you know of robots are those buckets of bolts -- Those Mr. Handshakers and whatnot. Well... that's not ALL a robot can be... Not in the Commonwealth."" -Dr. Zimmer, Director, SRB. They knew; but apparently the proven, low-tech solutions just weren't cool enough.
This part of the video confused me because he already went over why gen 3s exist. The whole point of the gen 3 program is to infiltrate, spy on, and influence the human societies above ground. Plus they use them as guinea pigs for medical experiments since they're biologically similar to humans. Then there are coursers which are specifically engineered for combat.
@@derekeidum1307 spy on human above ground but why? dont they want to be isolationists? isnt it easier to spy otherwise? they can even make animal synths in game, why replace humans and create tons of conflict?
I always assumed that a lot of the Institute's dumb mistakes were because of exactly the same reason Shaun chose you to lead it; for all their intellect, they have very few people with any sense of leadership or practical experience due to their highly sheltered lives. While they've survived for 200+ years on their technological progress alone, Shaun is at least smart enough to know they can't keep it up forever without a restructuring of how the Institute operates. That, however, brings up another problem with the Institute; why are none of their quests dedicated to fixing these glaring problems with their management? There are a handful of quests where you make minor decisions for them, but the vast majority are centered around neutralizing threats to them, something that they absolutely don't need Kellogg or you to do. The only thing you really do in an effort to fix their problems is secure a power source. They have limitless potential to create a futuristic utopia, but even with your involvement, the Institute is little more than a less omnicidal, slightly more competent Think Tank.
We won't know unless one of the writers ever says something about it, but I don't think that's accidental or "headcannon" Fallout 3 and 4 have a lot of content that makes fun of distracted academics and how listless they can get, and The Institute is supposed to be descendants of MIT surviviors. But... there is a quest that deals with trying to fix the glaring issues with management, if only briefly.
@@louisvaught2495 One of the things with the institute is their attitude to the gen 3 synths. It seems like the original founder of the synth project wanted to create immortal synthetic humans, to redefine mankind, and take over form the actual humans. Yet by the time the Institute is able to create such miracles they have got used to the mechanical synths doing all the grunt work, and then treat the gen 3s exactly like the mechnaical 1s and 2s totally forgetting the original point of the project.
They're classic 1950's Hollywood scientists -- brilliant at technical issues, clueless at life. The sort of character who needs a Race Bannon type to drag them out of the lab and make common-sense decisions for them.
Tbh I ended up adding in ‘Covid in the commonwealth’.. haven’t yet got the stats to kick start it.. few npcs with facemasks so far & bit of virus chatter..
"You know there's the New Plague that causes you to bleed out of every orifice in excruciating pain until you die the most horrible death, right?" "Yeah but we can't let it control our lives, it's time to learn to live with it and get back to our poorly ventilated offices and coffee shops."
And I am confident that if not for a certain annoying orange and his retinue TURNING it into a political belief, we'd have actually responded to this thing appropriately.
Emil: Why create complex quests with deep dialogue options and skill-checks, when it's more time and cost effective to chuck in a few legendary items in a chest next to a holotope explaining what happened?
In their next game; they might as well just get rid of all the NPCs and do every storytelling via holotapes! ...oh. wait. They actually did. In a way, FO76's original design had been the logical next iteration of FO4's "who listens to the stories anyway". :/
@@atomic.3200 I have no problems with this approach. The first town of FO76 is actually one of my favorite locations. Listening to the stories of the immediate aftermath of the bombs, of how people survived, of how they coped, of the on-and-off zealous madness of the preacher, who went between practical knowledge and his job as spiritual caretaker, and despairing about missing the rapture and having been damned to Hell. Fallout 76s problem was that this was the entire game. The emotional impact of these stories loses it's punch when you realize that every story ends with "And then they were all killed by the Scorched." The fact that the game was even advertised ahead of time as having no humans in it basically spoiled every quest, because there was no sense of loss and despair when you made it to the airport and find that, surprise!, the Responders are all dead. It's not helped by the fact that that first town was the only really good part of 76s story. I was REALLY hopeful about the quality of the rest of the games story-telling after that opening... but dear lord did that train take a nose-dive off of a cliff.
I feel like it happened because people criticized Fallout 3's main quest and never discovered/ignored the _well written_, effort-filled side quests that are out of the way.
the game's problems seems to boil down to this: it's a lake that's a mile wide but a millimeter deep one thing I feel was missed, was that bethesda has incrementally crept their way away from "play as you want; be good, be evil, be chaotic neutral. each has their place and the game is tailored for this" and are moving constantly toward "you are the messiah, and you don't get the option to be anything other than the knight in shining armour. you WILL accept and complete the quest to save the cat in the tree" they've tried to pull this back a bit with nuka world and fallout 76 settlers due to complaints from fans, but the trend is very noticeable when having some retrospective on the ability to actually role play their games as a bad guy over the years. the direction the RPGs are going feels more like arcade games than something with depth. streamlining is useful for obtuse and convoluted systems, but it's gone completely overboard when entire chunks of the game are sliced out like real speech options and RP in an RPG. streamline something too much and it becomes just another featureless nothing
" it's a lake that's a mile wide but a millimeter deep" I've seen Fallout 4 described this way before and it's so true. Even something like the settlement building fits that bill. Like why not just have made like 8 settlements you could claim and make them deep with actual characters and stories and have some unique features to the towns the way Diamond city is in a ball park or how megaton is built around a nuke? They overextended so hard with F4 that while I feel like it's better than people give it credit for it doesn't feel complete without DLC/mods.
Unpopular but true - Fallout went from a PC game to a Console game - with all the limitations included. It kills me watching controller usage - like watching a drone move around. Thank god for aim assist.....
Either I am not quite getting your idiom, but the phrase 'it's a lake that's a mile wide but a millimeter deep' hardly seems correct. The game has depth, its just not in the first few hours. You ccould say that about call of duty or something, but not fallout 4! And while your other complains are undastandable, especially the 'knight in shining armour thing', the gameplay more than makes up for that. I tried NV. i played though it once, and i did not even have enough fun to replay it one.
I've seen this argument so many times but the game let me bust into the institute killing everything in my way in a fit of rage to brag to my dying son that I was about to nuke his organisation, deliberately didn't send out the evacuation notice and shot shaun in the face mid sentence. Then NPC's from all over the commonwealth that I had met shamed me for using excessive force and not saving lives when I easily could have and people try to say you can't play as an evil character? actually lol
I don't mind the institute not making sense or the fact that you'd have died from radiation poisoning before you would have dropped down into vault 111, what really bugs me is that when kellog shoots your spouse you hear a very distinct sound of a single spent casing hitting the floor, which would not happen, it's a REVOLVER, revolvers don't eject spent casing until you reload which drops all 6 casings at once
I'll bet it was some design 'rule of cool' thing. The casing hitting the floor was for dramatic effect, reality be damned. Shadow the hedgehog has a similar thing in the opening trailer, where Shadow is clearly wielding an auto/simi-automatic rifle, and chambers a round by cocking the under barrel slide, as if it was a shotgun. The point is, devs or management doesn't care about design consistency when setting dramatic or 'cool' comes along.
Wow I never questioned that until just now. That is really silly isnt it. And technically you don't have to drop all 6 casings thats just a really LAZY reload animation, just like the one for the lever action rifle that reloads 5 shots regardless of whats in the gun, hell im starting to question if the double barrel shotgun reloads one shell if you only fire one shot. You can just pop out the spent casings and load those chambers of the cylinder, hell the 357 in New Vegas had the OLD style reload where you rotate the cylinder and eject the casing one at a time out a loading gate on the back of the gun.
The magazine for the pipe rifle doesn't actually feed the rounds into the action and The hunting rifle is also left handed for no reason.... They just didn't nail the realism of the weapons in 4. New Vegas was fantastic on that front.
Far Harbor was so good it almost made up for the main game. It's crazy that they thought the plot twist of Shawn being an adult would work when you can guess it's probably going to happen before you even leave the vault.
I think my biggest complaint about FO4 is that it seems like someone told a producer that the average gamer only spends a handful of hours on a game, so devs were forced to make the first two hours to be the most awesome possible. Getting power armor and fighting deathclaws were end-game experiences in every other game; in FO4, it's in the tutorial.
+1 to this man. My thoughts exactly and it's a damn shame too. Why does Fallout 4 have to be different than every other Fallout game in terms of the main story narrative, conversation style with NPC's etc.. Bethesda should of spent a bit more time on actually giving us a proper RPG experience than a washed-out streak of piss that the only thing that could fix the game are Mods! Even with mods Bethesda were/are charging people to use mods, it's insanity!
C'mon - it's the effect of Streamers/Early reviewers. This is nothing new - especially in MMO's. They figure these 'journalists' only have a limited amount of time they will spend on a game before moving on to something else - need those views.... So the beginning areas tend to be way more interesting or exciting than the 'meat' of games.
Regarding the writing, my guess is that someone, somewhere, once successfully convinced Pagliarulo that his work was unimportant and unappreciated and that he shouldn't take it too seriously. Unfortunately, Pagliarulo not only took it to heart, but became actively and unapologetically spiteful about his role in directing lore and narrative. Literally the worst possible outcome.
Honestly they're not wrong you do only have 2 hours to capture someones attention in video games which is quite frankly a ton of time. I mean how much time do you give to a movie your not enjoying? A book, a show hell a movie trailer? Minutes seconds? You have to lead with your best foot forward and fallout 4 does a really good job at this.
Take a drink every time Jon says "heavy lifting." What I love about this is that it is a constructive critique of the game. Other reviewers will say "FO4 sucks and here's why." Whereas Jon points out "Hey, this and that where very good but if they did this other thing, it would have made a lot more sense." This is the reason I watch, a guy who cares about the games he plays and wants to see the best out of it. Edit: Now watching the whole video and not one mention of the best faction of all, the Atom Cats! Tsk tsk lol jk
But let's be real, most of these "F4 sucks" videos are filled with facts. They changed so much about an iconic franchise in order to appeal a wider/more casual audience that it's only natural when veterans and people who really understood what Fallout was about come out and have strong, negative opinions. I've been playing Fallout for more than a decade, and i have no shame to admit that i've put into F4 since release more than a couple thousand hours; It's a great game, but a terrible Fallout.
The problem with the Institute seems like one that could have been easily fixed, If one doubled down on their isolationism. Here you have essentially a vault that was so afraid to go outside, that no one ever did. Not one of the inhabitants of the institute has ever left the comfort of their walls for 200 years. Instead - Sent Robots to the surface/outer wasteland world, To scavenge and bring back resources and components that the institute could not build themselves. But a Robot is only as good as its programming. A Mister Handy Is only gonna be able to do so much. The Institute needed better and smarter robots. Robots who were capable of carrying out more complex tasks. And then there was the problem of remaining undetected. Someone was eventually gonna wonder where all these brand new robots were coming from. So the institute needed their robots to blend in. To be able to pose as normal scavengers, as to not draw attention to themselves. Unfortunately for them - the opposite happened. - one of their test models malfunction, and cause the shootout in Diamond city. - The incident where institute synt's slaughtered an entire town (whatever it was called) over a rare piece of tecknology happened. The Institutes scanners had picked upp and pinpoint the location of the Teck. The synts were programmed to collect it. But when the Townsfolk were told to hand it over, they had no idear what the synts were talking about, as the scavenger family had kept their rare find hidden, less someone else might try to grabb it. - And so the synts, following their simple programing - Saw the Townsfolk as an obstruction to their goal, and slaughtered them all. The robots had only carried out their goal. The institute knew nothing of the matter until it was to late. This only served to draw attention to the synts and the Institute. A robot is only as good as its programming. And So the Institute needed Robots who were so advanced that they could learn and addapt. Robots who could do nothing short of think for themselves, in order to operate on the independent level that the institute needed them to. One could even make a joke about the vault dweller from Fallout 1, As to while one vault had to sent a lone dweller to gather an important piece of teck (a water chip), The Institute did not even do that. they sent a robot rather then one of their own. Unfortunately for them. Machines who were so advanced could eventually begin to draw their own conclusions. At first everything whent fine. But the more exsposed a Synth was to the outside world, the more it learned from these outside influences, the more it might come to the conclusion that it did not want to be subserviant. Eventually, Synths started to go missing. And in response, The institute had to send other synths after them. Both to collect their property, and to stop them from spreading secrets of the institute. It was a problem that the Institute had to set up a whole sub-division just to deal with. And it is not an easy problem. For up there, in the scary wasteland, where no institute member has ever set foot, the synths have much more free range then they would like to admit. Synths might just start to help other synths, or befriend wastelanders enough to get them to help them too. This was how the Railroad was formed. Suddenly you have to send Courser's to eliminate anyone who might know anything about the institute. Suddenly you have to set up a network of spies on the surface, to try and gather information of your synths and the wastelands in the area. Suddenly - you have to remove and replace people to keep the wastelanders disorganized with missinformation and political sabotage. Suddenly. You are the Bogeyman. And not only that. How would the Institute know if the Scavenger models that do return faithfully from every mission are not secretly playing the long game? What if their own are working to undermine the institute from within? What if the Institute Itself has been infiltrated? Suddenly the Bogeyman of the Commonwealth has become the Bogeyman of the Institute itself. It's a problem that won't go away. Because a Synth is programed to learn and adapt. And its ideas of freedom comes not from some faulty programing. They come from its experiences in the wasteland. So there you have it: A solid explanation to why the institute would make Human like Synths. To scavege and go undetected. Not to sweep the floors. (wow this became a long rant. I just realy though it was an interesting Idear to think about.)
"the problem whith institute seems to be able to be fixed easly" *proceeds to make a whole essay about how it can be easly fixed.* Lol. Sorry i had to.
Honestly if this is how the Institute was written in fallout 4, I might have enjoyed their quests more, typically I side with the brotherhood or minutemen because I don't care for doing any quests for the institute
@@eddieperaza8948 iirc he refuses to let you progress in the Minutemen quest line unless you turn on your raider factions and kill them, if you do that then you can continue though he still will be locked from being a companion forever
the thing that kills me the most is when you have two quests and one character to talk with. yea, I need to ask a brotherhood dude about things, but instead my character IMMIDIATELY starts talking about synth shelter from Far Harbor but I, like, didn't even want to mention it?? but I have to, because I have no other way to ask him about anything else now??? same with (possible spoilers) a character from far harbor. I just wanted to talk to her about some radiant quest but all I got were "you are a synth" option from another quest?? wtf was that
one thing that truly confuses me is just... Why would people think Shaun is still a baby? You know you got frozen again after they took him. When I played, and found Father was Shaun, the only twist was that Shaun is the leader of the institute. I never ever would have thought Shaun would still have been a baby
Exactly, I don't think anyone was really fooled. If anything, it sets you up to expect time has passed. It would have been more of a twist if they didn't wake you up the first time, so you didn't know what happened.
Shorewall Jon immediately called the same twist in his first play through. He was thinking the Sole Survivor was an idiot for continually asking about a baby.
Yeah. I agree with Shorewall. I think that's what bothered me most about the writing. At the intro of Fallout 4, Bethesda started off with this great narrative, building this amazing story and world - and even before the first half of the game, they then proceeded to do everything possible to demolish it. Preston, the Railroad, the Brotherhood, the Institute, Father - I mean it was janky at best. When I think about it, some of the factions' motivations are still perplexing in a sort of cognitive dissonant way. Shame the best elements of F4 are overshadowed by the weakest - and possibly unintentional ones.
To be honest, Sole Survivor has nothing better to ask for. What can they chase, but a baby. How would they even describe the child but as "baby"? So best they ahve is Kelloggs description and baby. So sole survivors wakes up and... then what? Do they assume Shaun is dead? Do they assume it's been zilion years and its' not worht searchign? Or maybe it's just been a week, or a month? There is no way to tell how much time has passed, and the corposes you find in the pods have not decayed, so not even that can tell you how much has paased since Kelloggs visit. So, you are left with no idea how long it has been, it could be mere days, or it could be years. Only things you have is "last I saw Shaun was a baby" and Kelloggs appearence. So it makes sense for Sole Survivor to be asking for a baby, because that is the only solid description they have. After they get Kelloggs memories, we see Shaun as 10 years old, which also marks last time anyone talks about baby Shaun.
I think they made Shaun a baby so that he would be in the same pod as your partner, and they would have an easy excuse to kill your partner off. But frankly, they could easily have made them start to open your pod by mistake before getting Shaun, and you still get the excuse of your pod opening later. Plus you would have this actual emotional moment where your partner is suffocating and you can only watch.
They could have also just opened all the pods and killed everyone else, which is completely in character for them and especially for a mission assigned to Kellog who seems to have a penchant for doing exactly that kind of work. Could have maybe even served as extra motivation for tracking them down.
I feel like it would have also changed the dynamic of your interaction with Shaun as an old man of he could actually remember you from before the war. Whether it would be for better or worse you would still be more emotionally invested.
God, that line about the story always makes me so angry every time I hear it. Who hurt you, Emil? What player base betrayed you so that you're so g-damn bitter? :P
Especially because it is not true when it comes to his own work. The questlines he wrote for Oblivion and Skyrim are extremely detailed and have a lot of extre dialogue you can dick through like returning to the greybeards after killing Alduin and learning that the hole point of the story may not been to kill Alduin but to return him to the gods so they could send him back to destroy the world once and for all.
@@bebo2629 I wonder if he made that remark after the decision to change the dialogue system. Or if he was told to focus on environmental storytelling (terminals, holotapes, etc.) and had to give a politically safe answer so he could keep his job. It’s easier to believe that than to believe that a creative, organized person in a high-level position hit their head on a rock and forgot how much people love deep storytelling in the Fallout series…😖
@@jennaheiser625 Very good point. Whenever a quote like this comes up it's important to remember they're employees who also have to think about not pissing off their boss and not just creative artists working on their own projects.
The problem with Shaun not being a baby is because him and the other parent would not be in the same pod. Without them being in the same pod you still have your significant other.
Your SO can still be dead. But your point stands. Bethesda thought they were writing this tear jerker that would hype you up to go out and take the Wasteland by storm, but they were wrong.
They could have had them pry open your SO's pod, determine he/she'd been affected by background radiation or exposure through their life/career, dispose of the SO, and then open the child's pod, maybe
He could have been a toddler or small child, someone who would have still fit in the pod. It would have been so much more distressing. Desperately crying and actively clinging to your SO as they battle to keep ahold of them. Especially if you had of spent more than 4 seconds with them.
@@facade2027 difference is you couldn't even use that tesla armor until you got power armor training from the Brotherhood (or the Outcasts if you have Operation Anchorage).
I still don't get why the BoS isn't using X-02 from Fallout 3 considering they beat the Enclave twice in that game and Sarah even says they'll be scavanging Adams Air Force Base. You'd think the elite troops would have that and the lower ranking troops would have T-45 and T-60 armor in 4.
I’d love to see a pre-war/nuke drop mod that expands on Sanctuary and having a few quests from your neighbors to create a bit of attachment before the nuke alarm sounds. Between the Vault-Tec rep knocking on the door and Codsworth informing you of the news. I’d love to experience Sanctuary before the nuke, and helping/hanging with neighbors would put more emotion behind tearing their houses down for the extra supplies
Maybe attend a neighborhood barbecue for 10 minutes, and have a couple small tasks "Grab the Nuka Cola from the fridge" "Help set the picnic table" It would help with the vintage americana vibes because what's more american nuclear family than a community bbq? And just as you return home, you get the news from the tv like you did in the in base game
The Minutemen are honestly a neat idea for a faction, though the problem is that they don't really work as a "Yes Man" failsafe faction. The Minutemen are actually on paper a very "partisan" faction that'd be easy to piss off. They're essentially anti-raiders and are vaguely akin to The Regulators in Fallout 3, and they ought to have a similar role in theory. For example, if you do an evil playthrough, what should happen is that the various villages you've harmed start banding together and blamo! You have to deal with hit squads sent by The Minutemen. By contrast, an actual failsafe faction ought to be one that's very amoral. The best is actually The Institute for this, I'd argue, as they're pretty separate from the main world.
Now, mind you, creating "Yes Man"-style factions is actually pretty difficult by nature. In fact, even Yes Man is...kind of dumb when you think about it. His story relies on a rather contrived set of circumstances that exist basically to create a situation the player can't screw up. I'd probably instead suggest having there be no straight-up failsafe faction per se, but give something like "if you destroy every faction, you win".
Mechanically another problem is that The Minutemen also have a very specific playstyle in mind. Namely, they're very much focused on building stuff. If you don't want to do settlement building, then The Minutemen probably aren't for you...which is a problem for a 'yes man' faction.
Personally, I think that a Yes-Man option should either yield a worse ending like if you brought about more destruction with no point, or got betrayed after it's too late to stop. Or if it was much harder to do. The point is to give an option you can always fall back on, so it needs a reason to choose the factions that you can actually fail, and be locked out of. Minutemen and Wild Card are my go-to ending for New Vegas and 4, not because I can't break them, but because I really think they are the best choice.
Well the failsafe option should essentially be "take over everything for yourself". Every action you take, good or evil would be working towards that goal unless you are actively aiding another factions power. Not to mention this is something people really, really want to do, just look at how popular yes man and the minutemen are, even if they rarely *actually* let you feel like the boss. This is why i kind of like Nuka World, because it lets you become dictator and actually use that power for something once you enforce your rule. I just think the fact that it was raiders didn't make it as sellable to most people, since i imagine they see themselves as a kind of benevolent dictator in that they and they alone could make the world better. The nuka raiders only make the world worse.
I'm told in the fluf the Gen3 synths are being used to scavenge undetected. but we literally never see that or are told it by a character and I can't even confirm its true.
I love the cool locations that didn’t have a quest I think one is Cambridge middle school or something where the principle gave the students brain pills though bullies but one bully took the mentats and blackmailed the principal.
Part 1 made me appreciate what I took for granted about Fallout 4 doing right, and Part 2 gave a great perspective on why certain decisions were made from the dev team regarding story choices/dialogue options -- decisions I found very frustrating, mind you, but it was interesting to hear the dev team's point of view. Excellent points from Jon all-round, particularly regarding the introduction and the lack of player attachment to Shaun, along with the missteps with introducing the Minutemen, and the dissonance between the overarching story (find your son!) and the rest of the quests/gameplay (take it slow, build up settlements, etc). Fantastic work.
Jon, you missed the bit about the Warwick Homestead being really good land because it was a pre-war waste treatment plant and therefore the soil was full of nutrients. That's why the Institute wanted control of it, as opposed to setting up a new farm in an isolated area. This - combined with other examples like the mayor and Sturges - disprove your claim that "The institute made Gen3s and then doesn't do anything with them". Also, the Gen3s DO go out on scavenging runs - that's how they're getting out of the Institute and escaping into the care of the Railroad! On the topic of the Institute's reactor, you could argue that a nigh-unlimited source of energy *would* allow the Institute true independence. In FO:NV's Dead Money, the Sierra Madre Vending Machines are self-contained matter reconfiguration devices, using nuclear fission/fusion to turn useless junk into tools, food, chems, basically anything the machine has a template for. It's unclear what was powering these machines, but splitting and fusing atoms takes a lot of energy, which the Institute would have if they could get their reactor online. Thus, even though nothing changes for the Institute immediately after turning the reactor on, the potential for the Institute to develop their own matter rejigglers is there, and if they were to share that technology with the rest of the world, it would be a game-changing boon for post-war America. Because as is abundantly clear, growing enough food to feed everyone is one of the biggest problems of post-apocalypse life. Fertile farmland is scarce and farming is hard work, both of which contribute to raiders (and the Brotherhood) preying on farmers rather than attempt to grow food themselves.
Except that's not how wastewater treatment plants work. Waste is stored in concrete tanks, filled with everything that goes down drains, including chemicals. Once the bugs have eaten as much of the digestible waste as possible the water is drained off and goes through chlorine chambers until they come out almost sterile. If anything leaked into the soil, from damage tanks, it would spoil the land not make it fertile.
@@FunkBastid Well remember, the player character is in charge now. The Institute tried to help the people of the Commonwealth originally, but it fell through. It's perfectly plausible that they could be directed to try again, especially under the guidance of someone who knows the surface.
Trogdor ya, except none of them respect your leadership, and as soon as Shaun’s out of the way they’re likely to put someone in charge who toes the company line if the PC doesn’t.
Playing as the female character, who is a law school graduate and homemaker, and on the first day out of the Vault she's mowing down a whole gang of raiders with a mini gun. Its not exactly believable role playing.
@Evilmike42 would've absolutely loved nora to be like "yeah good luck, assholes, idk how to do that" instead of getting three ways to say yes and one way to say "fine but i don't want to do this"
It is annoying that she understands power armour.... If ssgt holotape next to the power armour explained how to use it at least it would have been better. I think they should have made it so no matter what your character was the soldier and your partner was the lawyer to explain why you're a survivor
@@oscarhawkley Yea the fact that power armor no longer requires training to use is a huge oversight on the writing team's part. FO3 and NV both required you to be taught how to use it, but now a prewar civilian lawyer with presumably little to no fire arms training is just mowing down raiders with a mini gun and full suit? Hard to suspend my disbelief for something like this just because it's a "cool set piece". I just thought about this, but do the raiders trigger if you don't get in the armor? I wonder if you could just start sniping them from the roof or the balcony Preston was shooting from.
Doesn't make sense? Dude, Power Armor is a metal-clad, bulletproof, hydraulically-powered personal war platform. The whole point of Power Armor is that it's so overwhelming that it makes you a killing machine no matter who you are. It also ties well with the theme of the game. You're thrown into a hostile environment that doesn't care who you were previously. Welcome to the wasteland, darling. Learn as you go. Further, here's a little secret for you: You are not supposed to play a female character. That's why the intro is centered on the man. It's why he's the default character and the girl needs to be selected. Women are not action heroes. But, because culture expects us to treat women and men as if they're the same, the devs have an obligation to include the option to play as a woman, even if it doesn't make any sense. If that were to happen IRL, Nora would just sit on the floor and cry or at best suffer a horrible death in a wasteland she is completely unprepared to face. Just play as a man.
Seriously, Bethesda ( Todd) needs to hire Many A True Nerd to help in the development of the next Fallout game. I know Emil has been around for a long time and they are all like family pretty much at Bethesda, but he really did drop the ball with “ KISS” ( Keep It Simple Stupid) in Fallout 4. Emil under estimates the Fallout fanbase.
Yeah, I didn't know about that, but it is offensive. It completely disregards what makes a Bethesda Open World Game good. And like Jon said, they focused on details for the environment, but not the quests or story?
KISS is both useful at times and also an incredibly backwards way of looking at things, when something doesn't serve any purpose keep it simple, like the undewater details, there is little to no reason someone goes underwater there is no active content in there yet they spend so much time modelling the underwater areas, Lakes make sense since they are near where you might travel, but the ocean is completely a wate of resources since there is no underwater combat or quests there, so those resources could have gone to make more compelling areas for people to find and explore within the commonwealth. But if you think that using KISS for the parts of the game that players mainly engage with is a stupid stupid and I do mean stupid idea, simplifying quests and the dialogue system just feels backwards as a way of looking to make an RPG, on the other hand they made combat more complex which if you ask me is the opposite of their KISS idea and that is by far the most polished and interesting part of the game exactly because it became less simplistic.
Jon played the first 2 Fallout games as if they were Bethesda "games" and literally broke them and their atmosphere. I doubt he could do any good if he really were to have a say in Bethesdas "game" "developement".
@@GAnimeRO What do you mean when you say he "played the first 2 Fallout games as if they were Bethesda "games" " and that he "broke" them? Didn't watch his playthroughs of those two yet
After watching both parts of this essay many, many times, my biggest takeaway here is that if Bethesda were to kick Emil Pagliarulo to the curb as swiftly and unceremoniously as he deserves and replace him with literally any randomly selected long-time fan of the franchise, then we could be certain that the narrative and lore of any future Fallout projects would at least be treated with greater respect, if not also be better written.
Its funny how what Bethesda was going for with its conversation system has been done better in Mass Effect and Dragon Age. Its not 4 options, its a wheel, and that wheel can expand for more options. in certain convos they even tell you the tone of what you can say. it manages to be slick and minimalistic while still giving you a wealth of options. They should give it a look moving forward if they plan to keep voice acting.
@@excalibur2772 Having it all written out doesn't gel with having it voiced though. Having the short blurb makes hearing the full line better, which is why most RPGs that switch to VO do it that way.
What happened when Fallout 4 came out? While the game does allow me to play the sniper and assassin archetypes that I love in shooters, it rubs me into the problem I've had with the game's overhaul to Skills ever since I heard the news about it. That you're dependent on Perks to build your character, unlike Skills of past games where you could specialize in a few and make yourself very good at one thing very quickly, with Perks to round out the rest. Stat requirements are perfectly realistic and actually help define characters strengths and flaws. One of the big reasons that F4 sucks balls is the simplified SPECIAL system where anyone can wield any weapon, it doesn't matter what your strength is, or your perception, etc. Here is the problem with Bethesda's approach to the lore of Fallout. When Micheal Kirkbride created the lore of modern Elder Scrolls he wanted the lore to be "open source", kinda like D&D, for anyone to edit, mess with and have fun with. Problem is Bethesda does that same approach with Fallout's lore which is more set in stone. They keep wanting to use the Elder Scrolls formula with Fallout and it just doesn't work no matter how hard they try to make it so. The difference between Morrowind and Skyrim is in the genre. It wasn't just taking away a stat system - it was a change from adventure RPG to action-adventure. The change in factions is terrible, I agree. Even in Morrowind I hated how I could become Archcanon of the Temple - surely there's someone more qualified! Why am I, a foreigner, head of a House whose lands could altogether make a formidable kingdom in their own right? Sure, general implication is figurehead status, but why not just make it to where the supporting councilman uses me to seize power themselves, thank me generously, and tell me I should go on my merry way? I don't need to be the head of everything. So you see, Morrowind kind of started that special snowflake in faction thing, but not to the degree of Oblivion or Skyrim. In Oblivion they at least tried to make it sensible - you replace the Gray Fox so the last one can resume his life, you personally save the Fighter's, DB and Mages Guilds so you maybe deserve the top rank, and the stories along the way were fun...but mantling Sheogorath? That's where it began. Power fantasies are where the money is these days, probably because of the great recession and the fact that the vast majority of gamers will never have any real acclaim or power in their lives. I'm the Arch-Mage and everything else because irl I'm a part-time retail associate and the best I'll ever hope for is a private psychological practice in 20 years, but I can become the fucking Arch-Mage in a few hours if I want with minimal effort. I love Fallout 1 & 2. I really like Fallout 3 & Fallout New Vegas. F*ck Fallout 4. To me the newer Fallouts feel bigger but are so watered down compared to the originals. I can create a character in either of the first 2 games, I can go explore and beat the game. Then a week a month or a year later I can go create another character, beat the game again but have a different experience. I'll get different quests depending on my build, or I can solve the quest a different way or different dialog options maybe meet someone new. In the newer games in doesn't matter how you build your character because everything will be the same. To me role playing depth in a role playing game is important. If I want to role play I'll play the first 2 games. If I just want to walk around a open world I play the newer ones. Completely missed the nostalgia bait thing for New Vegas and saying that as a criticism. Whoever wrote that post forgot that Fallout 3 blatantly fuses the plots of the first two games, uses two of the most popular factions of the first two games for no other reason than they are the most popular, brings back characters like Harold for no reason, and has GECK as a plot macguffin because Fallout 2 did it. This is easily some of the biggest nostalgia riding i have ever seen. Still having a ball with Fallout 4, but goddamn do I wish Bethesda could let Fallout be its own thing away from the design sensibilities of Skyrim. Not even Elder Scrolls, just Skyrim specifically. Not a fan of the perk tree. Not a fan of stripping out Skills. Not a fan of the voiced protagonist despite the fact that his voice work is really good. I love the way Bethesda builds game spaces, and I love the way that they approach exploration, but the landmark to quest ratio in this game is pitiful. Replacing good, honest content with radiant quests is just bad. Not good at all. The Father of Fallout, Brian Fargo once stated. Nov, 1st. 2015. "If Fallout ever begins to feel like you're playing a different game than what was originally planned, then it's not a Fallout." "On 20th November 2015, Brian Fargo was interviewed about some of his works as current head of InXile Entertainment. One of such comments was that he seemed to dislike how the current holder of the Fallout title was taking Fallout out of its roots and leaning the genre into parts that Fallout was trying to avoid being back in 2003" Backstory is done to help prevent things like plotholes and inconsistency, while you might not see a lot of the back story for a character or location (unless you are playing bethsofts games where everyone tells you their life story...) it serves a VERY important purpose. The people in FO3 don't have reasons, motives, ideas, or a past. They are just there to give you some sort of goal in killing or collecting things. TBH the only character in FO3 I liked was Moira and even she was flat, but at least she had an interesting personality and voice. It's no wonder RPGs haven't really evolved in two decades. It's easier to call voice acting and choice of perspective "evolution", when what cRPG fans really want is a game that offers many more opportunities, mimicking how tabletop RPGs work. Evolution is being able to tell Constable Owens that some bandits are going to rob the bank, instead of simply refusing a quest from a shady Argonian and being unable to warn the guards about it. Evolution is being able to electrocute the water an NPC is standing in, as opposed to electricity doing jack shit. Evolution is being able to plant C4 by a cliffside and cause a shitload of rocks to fall onto the enemy camp. Evolution is being able to blast open the shitload of doors you see in fucking New Vegas, but of course you can't because this retarded way of making games means you have to make a bunch of buildings with nothing inside of them and which you cannot access.
Just right - it's a similar system but actually reacts to the player's decisions. I still find it bizarre they went so simplistic for F4 but did much better for ME and DA.
I was going to say that myself. Also plenty of food? Two Salisbury Steaks in the fridge and a couple Nuka Colas. The two protagonists are very likely luckier than most. Most of the resource wars were so that the US would have access to all the last resources, screw the rest of the world. You don't really see any alternative techs like Wind Generators and Solar being used in any major way. It's as if the US were ready to just use up everything before destroying everything. Enclave anyone?
@@jessedavis5992 1% would still be 3 million in the U.S. We all have our own opinions on this Pandemic but 200,000+ is still a very large number. One way to look at it is its 60+ 9/11's.
The part where you spoke about going into areas that seemed designed to harbor quests, just to be shot on sight and have no choice but to initiate combat, really helped me understand why I played fo3 and NV the way I did. 4 was my first fallout game, and it was where I fell in love with the franchise. I think I was so programmed into the ‘shooter’ idea of things that when I played the older games, I didn’t realize that not everyone would be immediately hostile on sight- hence why I went into the ultra luxe for the pheeble will quest and just started shooting everyone down, or why I absolutely obliterated the republic of Dave. I thought everyone was automatically going to be hostile towards me.
Hopefully now that Bethesda is Microsoft's property Emil Pagliarulo will not be allowed to direct anything other than maybe some filler radiant quests with no meaning that he loves so much.
According to Wikipedia, he was also the lead writer for Fallout 3. Now, I know that some Fallout fans hate that game too. But as Jon's "Fallout 3 is better than you think" video showed, Fallout 3 has a ton of interesting stories and dialogue options hidden away that you have to find for yourself. I wonder how much Pagliarulo's cynicism with Fallout 4 came from the vocal hate for Fallout 3. One thing I'm noticing in my current replay of Fallout 4 is how much the game desperately wants you to know about all its quests, from the Fight Zone and Witchcraft Museum quests starting just from you overhearing a conversation in the distance to how even saying "No" to a quest giver starts the quest anyway.
@@NimjaIV That's definitely it. It doesn't just affect Fallout 4's narrative, either, because Jon also raises a point in his Fallout 3 video about the Grognak text-based RPG. In Fallout 3 you can find it on a terminal hidden out of the way. In Fallout 4, it's on a holotape in the middle of a room that's important to the main quest. It really speaks to the philosophy behind Fallout 4's design.
The problem with Fallout 4 is that it isn't a Fallout sequel: it's a Skyrim one. Think about everything positive you have to say versus everything negative, then cross that with what you would and wouldn't expect from "Skyrim 2: Don't Mention The Other Elder Scrolls." Stronger combat, stronger crafting, better loot system, stronger environmental design, better building, expanded perk system, more involved factions, more developed companions, utilitarian dialogue options, focus on radiant quests, the pushing of the player into positions of authority despite still being an errand boy, the slightly nonsensical faction storylines, the separation of player build and roleplaying potential... Honestly Fallout 4 is Skyrim but with the things most people talked loudly about wanting while not fixing the problems most people paid less attention to. But Skyrim fills a very specific "explore, kill, loot" catharsis that ultimately isn't the same itch that people play Fallout for.
I remember prior to Fallout 4's release, there was an article that pointed out how Fallout and The Elder Scrolls are two remarkably different experiences: Fallout's about quest, choice, and narrative as an RPG while The Elder Scrolls is about dungeon-crawling as an RPG. In Fallout, different approaches to a quest leads to different outcomes. In Skyrim, different approaches to a quest leads to the same outcome. Fallout 4 very much fits the latter.
Now I remember something I said to a friend pretty soon after Fallout 4's release - but long enough that we'd come to grips with it. That F4 retroactively made me enjoy Skyrim less. Since a lot of the problems I had with F4 I could see the beginnings of in Skyrim. Fallout 3 is still great though. Even more so with Tale of Two Wastelands
I agree; Skyrim also holds a special place just due to how atmospheric it can be at times. I know, I know, "muh immersion", but it legitimately is really cool to play when disabling the HUD, cranking up that amazing soundtrack and just basking in the chilly, foresty, natural atmos. This, on the other hand, does not hold true for Fallout 4 (or Fallout in general). Completely different vibe, obviously, and it should remain that way I'd say.
I like Skyrim and never played the other Elder Scrolls, but I'm curious why there's so much adoration for Skyrim and so much criticism of Fallout 4 if they essentially followed similar paths within their franchises? Does Fallout just have a more hardcore fanbase, or did Elder Scrolls never offer the same level of choice and dialogue as Fallout did?
I met a guy who was a writer on Fallout 4. He was in charge of writing the companions which I think are one of the most interesting parts of the game. He seemed genuine and wanted to create a good story for the side quests he also worked on, unfortunately the other writers didn’t seems to care as much like he did.
@Fuck Google thematic naming. "Sanctuary hills" it's a small island of seemingly perfect suburban idyll. Before the bombs it seems perfectly tranquil, when you come back you see the dirty underbelly of the area, learning that the local red rocket was dumping radioactive waste illegally and the street played host to a well organised drug dealer. I think its relevant that your character can only realise this after the bombs shatter the American "dream" the residents live in. (Unfortunatly the intro speech and his milotary service clash with that theme quite harshly)
After my recent playthrough earlier this year and after years of not touching since I completed my last achievement on Nuka World during late 2016. I no longer hate the game and discovered elements I enjoyed, forgotten about and I found some quests that surprised me in positive ways and other aspects I grew an appreciation for. Sadly I still have a lot of problems. Most of the negatives I had with the dialogue, the perks never really being integrated into the quests and dialogue very often besides a few areas. There's also my issues with how the story was handled, which all combined remained as severe issues for me overall that prevented me from enjoying the game fully. I always felt those elements are what I loved in the previous games. Those elements being brushed aside is what negatively impacted the game for me, even after years of maturing and moving away from a lot of the fanbase to clear my head and to eventually have my love for gaming sparked back. I had fun in certain areas and I found the game to still be pretty good, but it's not something I will replay frequently like the previous games and even Fallout 3. I also played the game with mods that removed some of my issues with the base game and adding more content to spice up the overall sandbox. Also, a few mods that allowed me to build a tonne more of robots endlessly because building silly robots is a guilty pleasure haha. I also enjoyed Far Harbour despite my negative feelings towards the base game. In conclusion, I still have a lot of issues with the game that mostly was unchanged since the last time I fully played the game. However, I also discovered new aspects I grew to appreciate, some I rediscovered and there are new things I enjoyed. Really the game is a mixed bag for me overall, but I still enjoyed it despite it all. The great thing about Fallout 4 is the brilliant modding community who are creating new experiences and possibly giving the series a new breath of fresh air like Miami, Cascadia and even the remakes of both Fallout 3 and New Vegas. On a side note, there are a few features from Fallout 4 that I cannot play New Vegas without is the excellent loot menu and sprint. The loot menu saved me a tonne of time and I can easily say it's one of the best things Fallout 4 brought to the table.
Another issue I have with the dialogue system is when you're talking to shopkeepers. Whenever you ask them questions about the local area, what's going on in town, etc., they always end their answers with something along the lines of, "Anyway, were you looking to buy something?" to get you back to the main dialogue wheel. And they do this for _every_ question you ask, including followup questions to the first one. It just comes across as really awkward and stilted, and makes me feel less like a Wasteland wanderer and more like a tourist who's oblivious to how much he's irritating the locals.
The director wants to focus on details while lead writer wants to forgo all those details and streamline everything? That honestly sums up modern Bethesda better than any other analysis I've heard before. Huge worlds, hundreds of NPCs, hundreds of dungeons, small environmental details, rich settings with backstories enough to keep lore nerds busy for for years, but the guy directing our path in that world thinks that writing a proper story is waste of time. And if that isn't a self-fulfilling prophecy I don't know what is. Yeah, of course players aren't gonna engage with your story if you don't make it interesting and it's not gonna be interesting when it's written by that kind of pessimist prick. And when you keep pumping out games with bad main stories of course players aren't even gonna bother following them because they expect nothing. Of course it doesn't help that their shitty engine makes expressing the stories even harder since I'm not sure if it can even be used to create proper cutscene and it's so hard to change the world alongside the story that random BoS patrols after F4 first act are considered worth praising by Bethesda standards. I seriously hope Microsoft manages to strong-arm Bethesda to give up their engine and fire Emil because players aren't what prevent good Fallout/ES stories from happening.
You, an intellectual, are not the person his comment is aimed at. His original comment is aimed at the lowest common denominator which makes up the vast majority of their consumer base. The majority in your group of potential consumers is the one you pander to if you want to make as much money as you possibly can off of your project. Whether you like it or not, you're a minority in the community and the majority of people who are buying the game want to experience fallout with the popular game concepts and mechanics that they are use to and enjoy in other games. So, whether anyone wants it or not, for the game to be developed with the kind of quality that it was developed with- you have to make compromises here and there with the majority (which are retards) and that's what that developer was saying. They know their market, they did their research. They made money off of it. Some hardcore fans such as yourself didn't like it, but by the time they decided (usually quite hastily, as our reviewer friend above points out) didn't like it they couldn't refund the game, so it's a moot point. What the developer is saying, is true. It's a harsh truth, but it is true. Most consumers are going to be happy with what they made and a vocal minority are going to say it sucks dick because it wasn't new vegas 2.0.
@@Lubedupsquid It hasn't been outright confirmed, unfortunately. We have to hope it's true. Not quite sure how the man behind Oblivion's Dark Brotherhood storyline ended up gutting Skyrim and Fallout 4's stories, but it's clear he's better utilised in a job that doesn't require much writing.
@@Butterkin The problem there is capitalism and trying to appeal to as many people as possible with something they sort of want, in a socialist society games could be made out of love with specific ideas in mind, stories and ways of telling them that fit different players.
The whole thing about Shaun being a baby was just to subvert expectations. They were going for a whole 'sixth sense' reveal in that Shaun was in his 60's when you were expecting him to be an infant. They intentionally never discuss his age, and in any vague threads where they do speak about him... like when you speak to people in Diamond City about Kellog having a kid with him, they never mention the age or size of the kid, only that it was a 'kid'.
The second I got refrozen I knew I'd meet him when he was older. I knew i wasn't looking for a baby despite the game forcing me to. It was no surprise. What i thought would happen was I would meet him in passing and never know until the game points it out.
I've played over 600 hours of Fallout 4 and never realize there was a sniper nest in sanctuary. I don't think I ever got on the roofs other than my house or the house across the street where the npcs would end up on the roof.
Same here. In my first playthrough I did find that one small basement in Sanctuary Hills. That was surprising to me. I was also disappointed that part could not be used more.
in the first act, i wish you had mentioned Kingdom Come Delivererance, especially the prologue. a perfect example of what fallout 4 could have done with its prolouge
Yeah tbh that always bothered me about that first quest. You come into Concord knowing there are hostile people there because Codworth told you so. So you see some people fighting but how would your character know who the "bad guys" are? How do you know the guy on the balcony with his laser musket is the good guy? Because he only tells you about the other settlers inside after you've killed all the raiders. And the only reason you know they are raiders is because the game labeled them with a red name.
@@AlyenaMango first thing I thought when I played the game. I didn’t trust Preston at all and was confused why I had to kill these people. I couldn’t believe I was playing a fallout game when I first played this game hahaha. Such a bad game.
You forgot to mention how you could avoid concord entirely. When u first meet codswordth and he tasks u to check concord you could do so , then back off without killing any raider. You could then inform him that concord only has few raiders. From that point the entire story will progresss normally and u'll only be prompted to visit concord if u have no way of building a teleporter later in the game. The minutemen quest is very similar to that of yes man in this regard, the only problem being the location of preston. Concord is the first town u get to visit if u aren't actively going out of your way to avoid it. Sadly this option prevents u from earning the magazine at vault 81, ur choices also don't really affect the minutemen that much as they'll never die even after completing the main story. They'll be forever in the museum of freedom waiting for u. I also like to add that technically the second encounter u get with a dethclaw is the one at Salem since it's one of the first quests u'll get upon visiting Diamond city , either by talking to Mr handy bartender or by hearing the residents of the city. If you avoid concord, the game pretty much has a solid introduction and feels more rpg like. Now, all we need is a mod that prevents preston from spawning in the museum of freedom until u visit quincy or encounter one of the many minutemen corpses. Also, I'd like to see your opinion on some of the quest mods that attempt to fix bethesda's writing. For example Sim settlement conqueror or combat zone restored.
If the goal of the Institute is to create the perfect human, to replace the flawed humans on the "surface", then everything in relation to the FEV project as well as wiping out settlements and the Common Wealth Provisional Government. So as to keep everything on the surface in a state of chaos, keep any type of centralized government from forming to oppose them would be the priority. You should really travel with X-88 as a companion to hear his dialogue. Once the Institute has created and perfect the Synths the plan is to begin to replace the "flawed" Surface Dwellers. Again as you pointed out the story telling is not very good, I blame LAZY writing. The excuse that the individual made for the writing could be said about other aspects of the game world. So it does not sound legit to me. i think it was an effort to save face and divert criticism.
Or maybe their goal long ago was to replace the flawed humans in the Institute. I think it would have been cool to discover that they were all Gen 3 synths but they didn't even know it.
I think the Institute really should of been written for their surface layer to come off as "We're the good guys! After all we are the best scientists EVER!". However, the more you progress into their little faction the more you find out and confirm one or multiple ways that you are siding with a vast group of people or peoples who are just as vile, Corrupt, and awesomely powerful as the real life thirteen Illuminati bloodlines. This would of been perfect for the Institute.
But the institute almost entirely holds the view that humans are superior to synths, and from a practical stand point they should prioritise gen 1 and 2 synths because they don't need to sleep or eat unlike gen 3 synths. The only gen 3 synths i think could serve a purpose are the ones on surface missions like the mayor or the coursers. But then the institute have gen 3 synths working in the institute and they often escape causing even more problems. From a writing point of view they are bizzare
@@SkaterBlades Hmmm.... I was think along the lines that they thought they were superior to everyone else. Especially the surface dwellers. I mean who has a motto "ManKind Redefined" unless they think the are superior to everyone else.
The character progression system and the way it translates to gameplay is why FO4 is my favorite Fallout game. Survival mode is wonderful, I still play regularly.
The lack of enough side quests definitely has the biggest effect on the game. During a longer playthrough it ends up feeling like there's just nothing to do.
Which is entirely the opposite of Skyrim where it feels like even after a hundred and fifty hours of playing, there’s still likely a shit ton of things you have yet to discover or people to talk to.
@@klausklaus504 They've got a select few good ones but the rest take 5 minutes to complete. 4 has fewer quests but they're all longer and are more self contained stories
Spiffo longer doesn’t mean better I was bored to death by most fallout 4 quests durning the USS constitution quest I just quit after it was just a shameless fetch quest
Some Bethesda employee is about to be in for a big surprise when they clicks on this video because they're feeling down and needs something to cheer them up
Hopefully they find both parts. Hopefully they're smart enough to realize that both of those parts taken together are a genuine, objective, good-faith criticism and take the details of the essay to heart without being dismissive or emotional.
@@seeibe No thanks to management/the higher-ups. How people keep forgetting about ZeniMax while calling EA and Activision demon spawn keeps baffling me.
@@dylandugan76 This didn’t necessarily come across as good faith to me, tho. I feel like Jon should’ve recognized that this game’s been unduly shat upon for several years now, and he completely torpedoed his previous arguments by basically saying “Nah, Fallout 4’s actually shit, lol fam.”
Maybe I'm under thinking it but to me a single change to speech would go along way. The y button should be 'more', pressing would refresh the other 3 options to lore info and questions with y becoming 'back'. This would give 6 options total which is mostly on par with the old system m
Yeah, I actually wanted 16 possibilities. First wheel giving an attitude leading a series of four choices in that attitudes vein. Get a writer who cares about story, lore and world building, not too hard to implement. Would take quite a few writers though.
just the old system, it worked, no voiced protagonist since that sucks, whilst the previous games had some lines I wish I could hear voiced most are better silent. Fuck it, everyone gets screen reader voice unless line is important, saves a lot of work, allows way more writing faster and could even allow some randomness in lines. also whilst doing that add screen reader to terminals and pipboy for us blind players.
I personaly feel the "big problem" of Fallout 4's Introquest could have been solved by just moving the first encounter with the Minutemen into South Boston. Also I feel that something like that was planned because in the game as it is, you can find several different ways to get the map marker for Diamond City; you can get it through a Wasteland Survival Guide; Dialoge with Trashcan Carla who is always sitting at Concord's edge; you get unique dialog options with Abernathy at his farm, if you have no clue of the Minutemen etc. where they explain the new world with Caps and Raiders and stuff. Therefore I am convinced the Intro of the game as it is now is a relic of an early build or even a example given for the Moneyproviders at the time to convince them to finance this project. I am pretty sure that if the Quest "Out of Time" wouldn't end with the start of the first Minutemen Quest the first impression of Fallout 4 would be extremely different, and you wouldn't have this debate that you are given a Power Armor after only 1h of gameplay and therefor the game is "just a simple shooter". But with all the critique of the game I have to say, Fallout 4 is an amazing game if you like interaction with the gameworld itself and gameplay and environmental driven storytelling. I just love the game for what it is, it is not "better" or "worse" than Fallout 3 or NV it is just a different game. Like Apples and Pears, they appear similar but they are two completely different things.
While normally I'd think it a weak plot device, I'm now thinking what if the SS woke up with amnesia? Cut out the 2077 start, then reveal it with flashbacks and revelations. You'd be forced to start a new life in this strange world (regardless of backstory), before slowly remembering your life before the war. Eventually discovering you had a child and that the child was stolen. This I think would change the nonexistent empathy for your family into sympathy for your own character who is remembering a life stolen from them. Just as the sadness for that sinks in top it all up with the worrying and potentially unanswerable question: was it the cryo process that made you lose your memories, or are you a synth recovering memories that aren't really yours. How you interpret that may lead you to either take revenge, accept your new life, or take back your old life, through which ever faction you built your new life in. Maybe this is only sounding like a good idea to me because it would put a patch over the issues Jon has brought up? Or maybe it's because I've recently watched the original Bourne films? But I kinda want to play that game now :D
I can't speak for anyone, but Danse was tagged as essential when I first met him. One run, I tried to make an enemy of the BoS from the beginning by just murdering Danse and his teammates, but they just didn't stay down.
@@etcetera1995 Yeah, probably he's essential so the ghouls don't kill him (I've seen him actually lose all his health from the battle before, so its a failsafe). He might be essential durin the ArcJet quest as well (although I don't know) so something random doesn't kill him. I know for a fact that you can kill him after the Brotherhood of Steel arrive.
"In the first act, no faction will shoot you on sight, no matter how much they hate you." What? I mean what are you defining as the first act here? The Legion will send assassin squads after you *constantly* if you kill vulpes, and they start pretty much immediately after you go through the canyon beside Nipton.
The hit squad is an exception but if you walk up to faction NPCs in towns or hand placed placed spawns in the world they will be neutral. It allows you to always approach potential quest givers no matter your reputation until a certain stage is reached in the main quest.
As a parent, the into is particularly frustrating. The first time I played, I felt the emotions when my spouse died and my son was kidnapped, but from there, the game makes it very hard to remain interested in them. I thought I was going to wind up in a single-minded pursuit of my son and his kidnappers, but the game draws you away from that with Preston's radiant quests and the distractions along the way. Since we had no real time to get connected to our family, I quickly lost interest in them. Felt pretty guilty for a while....
I feel the same, main stories for these kinds of games shouldn't be so important that you don't want to do any side quests or explore before you complete the main plot if that makes many sense
I usually run the 'Start Me Up' mod and ignore the whole 'find my son' route. Like you said, you spend so much time kissing Preston's hairy ass, you don't care enough about your dead spouse and missing son to bother looking for them.
I'll say it again. This man would be the best judge out there. All the facts and all the angles. He gets the system and knows how to work it. Another good analysis my good sir. P.S. or a forensics officer
I'd think, the Institutes complexity addiction is its feature, rather than storytelling bug. They inherited it from the organization they were before the War. They were this universe's version of MIT, correct?
They're the most organized unorganized faction, because they're just a bunch of descendants of professors and university/college students, although it was a sunday when the bombs dropped, so there were probably more professors than students who hid underground anyways the point is: they are very unorganised, their system is broken, just like a real college/university
My first impression of Fallout 4 was "This is okay" until I got to the settlements where my interest in the game plummeted for a few days until I gave it another solid try. Now I think it's amazing.
The Institute: "Gorillas! 🦍 Gorillas are on the verge of complete extinction. If I was to-" Darth Sasquach: "Nooooooo." The Institute: "No No No, -If I was to create a hurd of Synthetic Gorillas in the Bio facility, YOU wouldn't have anything to say about it."
It really feels like they tried to go for a much more realistic interpretation of the Big MT's Think Tank (Fallout NV), but without that juicy over-the-top campiness, it just doesn't quite work, as their incredulous incompetence completely contrasts with their rather calm & collected professional exterior. Not to mention the really cool aspect of Morpheus having put in that fail-safe to precisely avoid the Think Tank wreaking havoc other places - while he himself is also a dementia-ridden old geezer.
@@JarenLemon "I got the DNA of the endangered rattle snake, and put it right where it belonged, in the genome of another fearce predator!" they're litterally the Old World Blues brains, but worse.
If only they had that sense. I would pay for the "FOR SCIENCE OF COURSE!" Big mt feel. I think it can be summed up as "well we know better than you so why would we bother explaining" redditor shit. They dont have a motive, or a pursuit of science, they simply developed for the sake of development, ratherthan curiosity or scientific discovery
![[LIVE] : ONE ลุมพินี 87 วันนี้!! คู่เอก "ก้องชัย vs โชคปรีชา"](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/YN6e7HVnekw/mqdefault.jpg)
You may have noticed this video briefly appeared and disappeared earlier - sorry about that, I just had to fix a tiny audio bug.
But But?
Ever the perfectionist, Jon. We all love you for it.
Up for round 2!
Swear I never heard an audio bug in the original posting but I'll trust your -1 perception for now
IT JUST WORKS
Something I swear about Vault 111 that lots of people miss is that cryo stasis arguably wasn't its true purpose. It's stated in the terminals that the scientists and security are to mostly stay separate, and everyone opines that they will be happy to get out since there isn't enough food to last for 6 months, the minimum amount of time they have to stay in the Vault before they can leave, which the overseer states he is against because he knows that won't be long enough to be safe. And so, you have a vault with 2 distinct factions each distrustful of the other, a lack of food to create and exacerbate tension, a hellscape outside if anyone can live long enough to reach it, and a large number of freezers which all conveniently happen to be full. Vault 111 was really a cannibalism experiment, to test a) whether the staff in the vault would give in to save themselves from starvation, or instead face a blasted hellscape which they could not survive in, rather than resort to eating the people in their care, and b) who would cave first under pressure and how, and then how the other staff or faction would react. Because there was a civil war and a breakout the vault got a 'good' ending (relatively), but because the staff didn't give in the cannibalism test is now only implication rather than confirmed certainty, which is why so many people seem to miss it. It's subtle enough that you can't really be sure, but given the constant discussion of lack of food and Vault-tec's penchant for terrible moral dilemmas, I'd say this is pretty compelling
Yes this is a rewording of my comment on the original upload. I can't remember how I phrased it then
Also, given our inability to even access ~96% of the other cryostasis tubes (and even then only able to see our spouse's body and take their ring), the rest of the people in that vault could be fully eaten except for the head/skull, and we would be none the wiser.
@@nadrewod999 father stated that he turned off all of the life support in all of the cryopods except for the lone survivor and their spouse
Yikes and mind blown
didn't expect cannibalism test and it seems right.
They could of easily eaten the cryo frozen people...
Kellogg style,open the door and shoot straigth to the heart
My biggest issue with Fallout 4 was the disconnect between gameplay and the storytelling, especially in the first act. The gameplay is encouraging the player to explore, wander, loot and craft, while the narrative urgency is telling the player to rush to Diamond City to find Shaun. It's such a strong hook for the main character that putting off the hunt for your kidnapped son to scrounge for more duct tape or help a random settlement feels jarringly inconsistent.
This. 100%
I love spending 15 hours meandering around the Northwestern part of the map, helping settlers find lockets, fixing the pipes in a quarry, helping Dnance get a radio transmitter. And when I finally, reluctantly, go to Diamond City, Nora asks everyone with a quivering voice about her baby. Oh right, I was looking for Shaun! I completely forgot.
So many games struggle with this, even Witcher leaves you guilty doing sidequests. Fo4 is especially strong case because the early game pathway is so weak so the explore loot loop is even more tempting
That's a problem that all of the modern Fallout games struggle with, though. While looking for your dad, you're sidetracked by other problems, tasks, and jobs. Looking for Benny (either to enact revenge or recover the platinum chip, or both), you get sidetracked by more quests.
@@Mega-Brick Perhaps, but it’s more exaggerated in FO4. In 3, we’re look for a grown man whom we have no immediate reason to suspect is in danger. In NV, a quest for revenge or whatever, doesn’t have any urgency. You’ll deal with Benny when we get there.
Shaun, on the other hand, is a kidnapped baby. And you’re the patent, and you have no clue why he was kidnapped, or what could be happening to him.
That quote from the writer is the whiniest thing I've ever heard. Imagine if all authors did that, we wouldn't have any good fiction. "Why write a good compelling story when some people won't pay attention?" For the people that will. That's why
Emil: Too much writing isn't always productive.
*Every professional writer has left the chat
There was a more proper explanation for the Institute and the Synths, it just got cut from the original game.
Also, too much writing is what gives us pretentious jackasses like Ulysses.
@@ShadowSonic2 Yes, but there's a difference between overwritten and not even functional as a story
@@TheWhoamaters Want to know what the original plot was?
@@ShadowSonic2 Please, I can only know so many tragedies
[Bethesda] "do you like the new speech system?"
A - Yes
X - I think it's fine
Y - Yes, please tell me more about it
B - I'm a little busy right now. Give me 5 minutes, then I'll pop back and tell you how good I think it is
Wasn't just perks that it had no interaction with either, there was just no interaction with the WORLD in the speech checks either
Like, early on, I went in and lockpicked my way into the mayors safe. It pretty much reveals a secret about him
.. you can do NOTHING with this information. Apparently in the end game, a quest pops up where you get to do stuff related to said information.. and events happen and blah, and it's like.. could have resolved all of this 40 hours ago if the game had just acknowledged the fact that I knew his secret and could act on it. Like y'know, a decent roleplaying game would let you
That was the point when I mentally checked out of Fallout 4. Just disappointing.
It's great as an action game, but it's not at all what I wanted from a fallout title
I remember somebody defending it because "It feels like a conversation! In NV it feels like you are in an interrogation" like when you are... Asking somebody about something
ah yes the best dialogue options:
charisma check that doesn't work because your charisma isn't high enough
and
literally the same dialogue option, but it works now because my char is dressed in some stupid pre-war costume with +2 charisma points on it
I reeeeeaaaallllyyy miss New Vegas dialogue
[Exits speaking range]
Quick saving...
*pulls out fatman*
Or the option to literally walk away at any time, which you morons conveniently always leave out.
Personally, I think *"The Devil's Due"* should have been your introduction to Deathclaws. Because I wasn't spoilt when I played that mission and it freaked me out to no end.
@Insert_text_here Tbf, I was still spooked when I assumed it would be a Deathclaw, and much more so when it turned out to be a savage death-claw, a demonic looking creature which Id not seen before. And much the more since I only had a sword at the time, leading to a dark souls style boss fight
@Insert_text_here Yeah, it was great because I'd seen a couple from afar, but always fled or snuck around them (except the one early on in Concord), so being forced to confront one face to face in such an atmospheric location, it was perfect
Honestly the Deathclaw in Concord kills that confrontation for me more than the power armor. If we only had the power fantasy of mowing down raiders with a mini gun it'd be fine, not great but passable. You're likely to run out of bullets mowing down the raiders on higher difficulties and you'll probably come out the fight with only two or three pieces of armor still intact. Couple that with the fact that your fusion core will be mostly spent by the time you get to Sanctuary and now you got some nice tools you can hardly use until mid game.
Spoiling the Deathclaw's introduction to the game so early is the flaccid fart on an otherwise decent encounter and it cheapens the appearance of such a powerful enemy later in the game. While still very threatening, they just don't have the same shock value they had in prior games.
Devil's Due would have been THE perfect quest to introduce you to Deathclaws. As many people have stated it's a fantastically simple, but effective way to put you in a tight space with a monster you'll have a tough time handling. No power armor, no minigun, just you and the tools you brought in for a job you weren't prepared for. If they had used this quest as the trigger for Deathclaws to start spawning throughout the world outside the glowing sea, that would've been even better.
It also happens in new vegas, it would be 10x better if there wasen't that guy telling you about them, imagine going to that road and 80 deathclaws tearing you apart lfmao
@@Matt-td8xw I don't have a problem with that. New Vegas is a much more down to earth game, and Deathclaws being an understand, but very serious, problem is fitting. Remember, they're effectively as serious of a barrier as a total rockslide, and they're only treated casually because they're able to be given a wide berth. It also helps set the tone that the NCR isn't doing a very good job managing this, and that Mr. House doesn't seem to particularly care about serious problems outside of the Strip, so it's a bit of establishment for the faction as well.
An entire hour with no midroll ads... You sir, are a hero.
There's such a lack of connection to the Shaun character that I felt worse every time Dogmeat whimpered in combat than I did when I left the old and the young Shaun for dead in the Institute.
In other words, Dogmeat is the Best Boy. :3
Fallout 5 should be about finding Dogmeat
@@squidlytv all fallouts are about finding dogmeat.
@@themudpit621 true but if someone kidnapped dogmeat...
The only reason I liked this game is because of the connection I had with my son. I don't care if you liked it for the gameplay or shit. If I wanted that I would have played a stupid ass game like Skyrim or cod. You hate fallout 4 just like the rest. Either you loved Shaun's character or you hate fallout 4. No middle ground.
I think - and note that I’m not defending Bethesda with this - the reason they made Shaun a baby was because they figured a lot of players would catch on to the fact that the Sole Survivor was frozen for longer than they realised and Shaun was likely no longer a baby.
Thus when you go through Kelloggs memories and see 10 year old “Shaun” they can show their timeline fuckery early and double-bluff you into not thinking about 60 year old real Shaun. Honestly I think they missed a trick by not having the SS make a bigger deal out of realising that they think they’ve missed ten years of Shaun’s life and they’ve wasted so much time asking about an infant. But as stated, by this point no player actually gave a shit about Shaun.
Perhaps if Shawn had been a bigger part of the SS's life post freezing. Have us care for and watch shawn grow after, say, rescuing the minutemen. Enable a Fable style aging system, God knows sone players took in-game years to rescue shawn. Make the players engage with and care about shaw that way. Better than saying, 'heres your baby. You love it because of course you do. Here's three seconds of it crying.'
i like your point and it makes a lot of sense but i think the fact that as a character i had to go around asking about a baby, led me to think "I mean what if he isn't a baby anymore, we really dont know how long we were frozen again" and it really killed the reveal for me, i just kind of had a moment of "yeah, thats about what i expected" I dont know i would have thought that so quickly if he were a bit older
Another thing that helped me catch onto their double-bluff early is that F4 is canonically 10 years later that F3. I think the writers were banking a little on F3 nostalgia for the players trying to possibly link shaun with the Capital Wasteland. It doesn't work though because that's a huge rube goldberg machine of mental gymnastics to go through for a kid i'm "meh" at best about.
I suspect part of it was not wanting to make the protagonist too old.
That's exactly the reason, for sure. You nailed it.
I like the mod that replaces baby Shaun with a rock. Just a rock wrapped in a blanket.
So Zeus?
What about the fat man mod that replaces mini nukes with baby shauns?
I think I’d have a deeper emotional connection to that rock than the actual baby Shaun
I'd like one that just renamed him to Macguffin.
@@LikelyToBeEatenByAGrue You mean McMuffin?
"Kid in a Fridge" would be so easy to fix - the ghoul family are con artists who play on the character's sympathies to get a rival gang cleared out, and then a bunch of caps. The kid was only there for a couple of days, but he is a 200 year old child, stopped from aging by sone quirk of ghoulism and is there to hand the player character sob story after sob story to turn players into his servants. (Think a bigger con than Aqua Cura)
And evidently the kid was used to con the Gunners. Because I never understood why they wanted him so badly. Annoying quest.
Sean, do you mean Aqua Pura?
@@itsclemtime2357 The ghoul con artist called his water "aqua cura". He had a couple of ghouls who emptied bottles of water into bathtubs, and then refilled the bottles with contaminated and irradiated water. They then changed the label and sold it as Aqua Cura.
@Sean B. YES
A more lore-friendly turn would be that the kid's not a ghoul at all, just made up to look like one by his adoptive con artist ghoul parents. They wanted to earn some extra caps, and happened to take in the kid off the street, so they made up a story about being a family from before the war and took their show on the road.
A child Ghoul is rare, and one that never to ages has never been heard of before. The kid gets captured, and is being held for sale to the highest bidder. Maybe a distant collector, or possibly the institute for experimentation. You rock in, kill the merc(s), rescue the kid, and the ghouls vow to never run scams again. Alternatively, you could Charisma or Medical Skill your way up to the kid and wipe off his makeup in front of bidders. You could even just buy the kid back if you want to bypass the fight.
I agree that it was odd how we got no time to know Nora/Nate in the opening. Another great example from Fallout 3 was Jonas. Jonas is a kind hearted guy that is a family friend and is the best friend to James/Dad. He tried talking James out of leaving the Vault. We get to know Jonas through the time skips in Vault 101. We even get dialogue options where we can joke with him cause he has a dry sense of humor. During the chaos, he gets beaten to death by the guards as they think that he is trying to kill them all. Amata tells us this as to the urgency on why we have to leave The Vault. It is the holy smokes, Jonas was killed, Dad is gone, I've got to get out of here. A beautiful opening that was missed in some ways in FO4.
I couldn't agree more. Leaving the vault in 3 was tense and emotional.
Leaving the vault in 4 just made me wonder why I couldn't keep using the vault as my main base during the game.
I feel like Fallout 4 is a min/maxed rpg build. What it does well, it does *really* well
What it whiffs, it flippen' *whiff
Oh yeah this game whiffs some pretty easy ones down the plate, and no foolin'. But I really enjoy what FO4 does well.
That's a good explanation! I love the game as well and am on I think my 5th playthrough, but there are some things that really annoy me. I just overlook them...
I'm glad you made the effort to post this comment again, so I could 👍 it again.
i had the thought that you were saying fallout 4 is playing fallout new vegas but you can max everything in new vegas (everything that matters) but i guess instead its fallout 4 is playing.... fallout 4?
Yah. I feel that Fallout 3 was the most well-balanced of the Bethesda RPGs, whereas New Vegas and 4 are polar opposites. Vegas has great stories, but no dungeons and not a lot to explore for (as John mentioned) leaving it's gameplay rather weak. Fallout 4 has great gameplay and character build options, but it's story is largely crap. There are exceptions in both games, though I would say NV wins better here, simply because Fallout 4s only good story moments are not along the main campaign AT ALL, and I actually missed them ALL on my first time through the game.
Fallout 3 is not without flaws. But I feel it's flaws are evenly spread. Story is solid, with a lot of it's best material (Tranquility Lane and Wasteland Survival guide) being part of the main story, or right along the main story path. Exploration feels good when there's always a chance to find a skill book for special loot, at a minimum. It's well rounded, maybe with exploration being a strong point. And horrible moments, like the lack of talking to the Vault 101 Guards, or the original ending choice (No, you can't send the radiation resistant companion in because reasons. And yes, the devs did think of this and even wrote and voiced dialogue to prove it), are few and far between. In fact, I think those are the only two actively horrible parts in the game (Maaaybe Power of the Atom, as having the option to nuke a town as soon as you leave the vault is a character jumping off the moral cliff, but then, it's hardly the only moral choice in the early game). So it's generally good... but it does suffer from not being really strong in any one area, like FO4 or NV.
I think the opening of the game shows the juxtaposition of the American Dream and the effect of war. In real life society usually ignores major issues until the effects are on your doorstep, like the vault Tec guy.
Best take here
But the point he is making is that the issues were on their doorstep
@@bibtebo it's all fake memories planted in your synth brain.
@@bibtebo The issuses of today's world are on your doorstep, yet yu still live your normal life
Plus when you play as the male PC he actually says "I'm glad you got me." And Nora says "He's been looking for you for a while"
Jon: "Take Easy City Downs, it's an old Horse Racing track now used for Robot Races. Factions are betting, there's hints of a scam."
Me: ...Wait, what? That's really unique! How did I never know about this!?
Jon: "Everyone shoots you on sight, there's no quests."
Me, a big lumbering obvious "shoot me" sign: Oh.
I feel you. If your someone who uses quests as the motivation to explore, like me, then you end up missing so much. I walked past so many marked locations thinking “I’m sure there’s a quest that will send me here.” But that never happens cause half the quests are radiant and boring af
@@claymathews8814 I was just replaying for a second time, and heading through the Boston streets. And I stumbled on a raider camp Id never seen before. It was actually really well designed, but the game never leads you here. The game is terrible for questing. But, it still has that Bethesda world design, where there’s something neat everywhere you look.
How in the goddamn fuck do the raiders make money with their betting circuit and fight club when they scare away any customer by attempting to murder anyone who might be willing to pay them??
@@arellajardin8188 This is actually why I've eventually come around to seeing 4 as one of my favorite games in the series. I tend to be more exploration focused than quest focused, primarily aiming to obtain various materials, or complete various quests, in survival difficulty.
Because of that, I end up spending most of my time outside of quests, engaging in the combat->loot->build cycle, and rather little time caring about the terrible dialogue function.
Um, the whole point of Easy City Downs it to sneak into the robot storage, figure out that you can change the race program and have the robots kill everyone and then blow them up! [duh]
Probably the most baffling thing about the story of this game is the whole idea that the institute didn't just grab all of the frozen vaulters and keep them on ice inside the institute... they did mention needing samples that hadn't been affected by the surface conditions, and it was a whole storage of them... the player could have woken up inside the institute or accidentally tossed out a garbage chute or something and the game wouldn't even have needed to change much... it may have even improved the story if Kellogg was more of a grey character aligned with the institute who you bump into on the surface doing something brutal rather than specifically an enemy you are trying to hunt down from the get-go.
The thing is;
1. The experiment worked on the first try, and the Institute was able to create all the synths they would ever need using Shaun's DNA. They had no need for any of the remaining vault dwellers.
2. If they ever did need more samples, there is a perfectly serviceable cryogenics facility just a quantum jump away. No need to spend all that time, money, and energy building your own, when vault 111 is right there. The cryo-pods were fully functional until Father decided to turn them off remotely, and theoretically could have run indefinitely.
You know what got me? "The Minutemen: Protect the People at a minutes notice"
You know what would massively help with that and be hilariously literal?
A freaking Commonwealth-wide teleporter. Powered by a fancy new reactor. That is now unguarded. Because you killed all the synths and scientists with guns.
..
Nah. blow it up xD
I had a similar thought about that really nice Space Odyssey-themed hotel down there. And I personally beheaded EVERY SINGLE PERSON down there with my plasma rifle, so I know it's safe now.
Wow, i never really thought about that....that actually makes a lot of sense. Come to think of it exactly WHY does the Minutemen AND the Railroad for that matter, blow up the institute?
Like its very obvious the Brotherhood is their to hunt down and go to war with the Institute for their own reasons. sure they could also salvage all the institutes tech but eh i can kinda forgive them nuking the place.
But the RAILROAD is all about protecting synths and freeing them from the institute, but as far as i know synths cant reproduce (far as i know no one ever mentions it, the gen 3s probably can if they are as human as everyone says). Like the only reason the institute is BAD is the people running it, if those people are DEAD or you run them out of the place and the synths take over, boom slavery over no need to nuke the place in hind sight.
The Minutemen though.....i mean why would they blow the place up, again you can kill everyone or run them out of their (in fact Preston WANTS you to sound the EVAC alarm, cus i guess he thinks their all innocent of anything the institute did wrong) all they would have to do is plug that pipe and/or disable the relay and then no one will ever find the place.
I guess its a thing where the game is very liner in story, synths are either: 1. bad thus you blow up the institute. 2. people, but you still blow up the institute because i guess slavery bad, but again no reason to REALLY blow the place up. 3. Property and not sentient thus you side with the institute. The Minutemen end is just "Institute bad thus it must go boom", sounds like something a super mutant would say.
Playing devil's advocate for a second, the faction you pick kinda ends up learning teleportation tech when you go to them to help in getting into the institute for the first time. Granted the tech they make is very rudimentary and blows up after you use it, but it's still tech that they know how to make and is likely something they'd capitalize on after a few years of tinkering
There's actually a teleportation system in operation valkyrie, or outcasts and remnants, well I don't know which, but it's a Thuggysmurf mod.
12 pulowski preservation shelters scattered across the commonwealth are turned into teleportation pods that lead to a central hub with traders from which you can go to one of the other preservation shelters
They could also put some doctors in there to help out the people of the commonwealth who go to the Minutemen out of desperation.
They do mention their former careers a few times. Nate's dialogue with the Railroad say's "Once, I pledged my life to protect my countrymen, I don;t see this as any different", compared to Nora's "I risk my life for people everyday". - Likewise Nate tells Danse that HE was a member of the army, whereas Nora says her husband was. When dealing with the USS Constitution they both have different dialogue with "Lookout" with Nate being identified by his military service, Nora by her driving license (which for some reason includes that she was a lawyer).
This is just a snippet of course, and they're often out of place when it comes to full RP'ing as recognising a character was once a Lawyer when you're trying to be some kind of fire obsessed serial killer doesn't always fly. It's why Bethesda cut a home terminal in your pre-war house that went into backstory, especially Nora's showing she was willing to fight the rich/powerful, as it would have ultimately pushed any female character to being good, and good alone. Whereas without it she could of been a lawyer like Saul Goodman.
Just saying, it does come up, and it's almost always awkward if you're trying to play something that doesn't fit with those careers (like for Nate not being BOS or Minutemen)
It always bothered me that Danse doesn't really respond to you saying you were in the military. He's there on a recon mission and he encounters someone claiming to have spent time in a military that there's no real evidence of unless you count the institute or the gunners, so Danse should say something like "Oh, you mean you were a merc?" or at least give us SOMETHING. Everyone just goes along with the male protagonist saying they "swore an oath to [their] country" or whatever and in any other fallout I think there would have been more followup dialogue whenever he brings up his backstory
Wait... doesn't everyone's license say that they're a lawyer on the back?
@@Nyundaa She could have been a JAG Officer, then she could have had basic army training.
@@BlindAlex117 Imagine if they gave some sort of Ulysses-type character to contrast with Nate's supposed patriotism, and maybe give a critique on what that sort of oath might mean when that oath is made in service of ideals that were objectively evil. That could have been neat.
Whenever I play an evil character in FO4, it helps to have a headcanon that The Sole Survivor suffered severe mental trauma following the events that took place in Vault 111. That way you can justify doing psychotic or morally reprehensible things, despite game guiding you into being nice (Most of the time).
I’ve always felt the default names Nate and Nora were a last second decision. I say that because when the game first came out Codsworth couldn’t say either name.
@@brremsilverte.9022 who?
@Horrid Gamer Sue
@@EE-os2ko Joe Mamma
I've never heard someone so passionately loving of a work, but also passionately vicious towards its flaws. If the mainstream news media were like you, we would have a much more well educated society, my friend.
Imagine being his girlfriend
@@edluthe1591 I'm sure I'd feel very confused 😂😂😂
All for the clicks.
His general technique is to make maps that fit actual territory.
@@calebjanus2000 Its more like all for expressing his honest opinions
I also did like how companions worked in Fallout 4. They had affinity levels that went up or down depending on your actions. If it got maxed out they idolize you and the player gains a permanent companion perk. If it drops too low they permanently leave you.
During various quests they comment on the situation and voice their opinions on your and others actions and give/lose affinity accordingly. In order to unlock companion quests you have to raise affinity enough and completing the quests are required to max out their affinity.
The problem was that maxing affinity could be a bit of a grind. I get that it needs to take effort, but I did not like going out of my way to do tasks like modding, hacking, lock picking to max affinity in a reasonable amount of time. There were set point gains for liked/disliked and hated/loved. It could have been better by having affinity gain/loss be much more depending on the action. Doing actions companions approve of in quests should give a lot more points than mundane exploration activities. Therefore you still need to put effort into making companions idolize you, but you don’t have to go out of your way grinding to max it in a reasonable amount of time.
Isn't it the same as NV (not sure about F3, never played it with companions)? The only difference is NV doesn't show you "liked" or ""disliked" messages, affinity just changes without you being notified.
Except...I couldn't give a rat's ass about any of them. Sheldon is annoying and keeps hitting on you after having been repeatedly told not to. McCready is incredibly needy. Cath is a bad girl, until you get her clean and then she becomes a good girl.
And literally all of them are dumb as rocks and prevent the player from using stealth effectively. Their sole purpose is to show up, max out, give a perk and then spend the rest of their lives farming vegetables in the most remote settlement I have available.
@@Landrassa1 Sheldon?
Landrassa1 sheldon?
@@Landrassa1 Cath?
Remember...Strugis couldn't manage to crack a low level computer hack in the beginning, but by the end he was able to teleport you no problem...
Guess Sturgis was really hitting the books when I wasn't there to see him pounding an invisible nail into a wall for no reason.
Yeah, i find it funny. Sturgis makes teleport device :) Typical Bethesda. And invisible nail :) Everything seems fake and decoration only.
Hitting that nail gave out loads of XP
He's one weird synth.
It's possible that seeing Virigl's schematics triggered an innate understanding of the technology, given he's a Synth and all.
Doesn't really excuse Bethesda's writing, it's just a headcanon to salvage the experience somewhat.
an invisible nail into a steel wall no less.
I never liked how you can become the leader of the institute, whilst working and being treated as a glorified mailman for them, and not having the choice to stop synth production and replacement to focus on other technologies (Farming and medical stuff) that mihht get wastelanders to like (or at least don't mind) them.
Also First upload gang
I know someone who chose the Institute because their headcanon was that they could use their expertise and resources to help the people of the commonwealth and rebuild society. But I agree, I find it unsatisfying.
Frustrating as it is from the pov of a gamer, it reflects the reality in many large corrupt real world institutions. In fact the quest line that you go through to become the leader of the institute makes it very clear that they are looking for someone who will carry on with business as usual. A safe pair of hands. Someone to continue father's role who will not upset the section heads. It's like becoming CEO of a major corporation. You can't just waltz in and start ordering powerful shareholding boardmembers around or they'll just vote you off the board/get rid of you. If your leadership of the institute had been through a hostile takeover, things might be different.
In attitude, the Institute reflects many of the worst aspects of the pre-war world. If you follow the questline to become the new leader, you are at the very least tacitly approving of that. To then go against the vetting process they put you through and try to make them more moral and humanitarian is really contrary to what they've become over the last 200 years. It may not be impossible for your character to slowly change things, but given what they did to get there, why would they? Unless you are metagaming. That's the crux of the matter.
Fallout 4 really would've benefited from a "Broken Steel"-like expansion for the main factions. Do stuff with them _after_ the game's ending.
dont diss mailmen, they can drop anyone with their big iron on their hip
"Years of consumption lead to shortages of every major resource"
Infinite diesel generators everywhere
Shortages on a Global scale, that means there's still plenty left for the small scale level of a few settlements.
@@ShadowSonic2 You mean well, but lack deeper understanding of electricity generation.
Diesel generators consume A LOT of fuel. If you cant supply gas pumps, then you cant supply small scale generators.
@@OkurkaBinLadin but it's not so much gas that's on shortage as it is oil. gas can be made over and over again from corn, and we see in fallout 4. you just can't kill corn.
@@ShadowSonic2 you know, people got angry at fallout NV: the frontier, because the devs violated the lore by making all the cars run on bio-diesel, while the mod takes place in a frozen Westland.
So I can see why people get angry about Bathesda putting non-nuclear energy sources everywhere in a world, that was almost out of fossil fuels.
@@boneman-calciumenjoyer8290 You can make gas and diesel from things other than oil. Like acid and bones.
The Great War was over the major gas producer, Oil. But there are alternatives, just not ones the big businesses running America at the time cared for.
To help appease the algorithm here's a quick tip for the YOLO run. Trudy at the drumlin diner has a silenced pipe bolt action pistol for sale GUARANTEED! Remove the silencer and attach it to the pipe sniper you find in the house in concord and voila you have the best early game weapon for a sneaky stealth build :)
I'm comenting so that maybe Jon sees this, it could really save his life in YOLO
Ooh I didn't know that. I usually just put early levels into crafting so I can make my own silencer. That's a game changer.
Also always has the cool robot slaying sword but don't think that would be helpful
@@baconous689 now that one I did know :) Thought that was a cool little detail.
pretty angel Between us all there are probably thousands of little tips we could give Jon for YOLO, like the fact there is a guaranteed hazmat suit that's quite easy to get in Cambridge polymer labs to help him with early game rads. There is also a ledge you can stand on outside Cambridge Police station next to the metal walkway where the ghouls can't get you, making that fight a cake walk, meaning you can get from there to righteous authority risk free. Also if you take all the drugs from diamond city blues and make 60 psychojet and 60 bufftats it gets you so much Xp it gains you 1.5 to 2 levels which could be handy when rushing to a perk he might need to progress.
I think I was a bit more upset at the story developers comment that “players don’t care about lore in an RPG because they are building shacks, so why bother?”. Another frustration when they were asked why a boy could still be alive if he was locked in a fridge before the war, even as a ghoul. Their response was essentially, “who cares? It’s a video game.” Drives me nuts that people with such little care were able to work on a game that was so anticipated by fans.
Yeah, it's the modern equivalent of "Let them eat cake."
You have to realize that this is a business. They have an idea how much money they want to make on a game and tailor it according to how many people will buy it. Not necessarily their hardcore fans, but new players. It's naive to think a company cares one way or the other about their hardcore fans because enough people, new and old, will buy it creating a big enough profit for them. It's just the way of the world.
It's frankly insulating to the intelligence of who they think their audience is not to mention an active admittance of contempt for them. Disgusting that someone like they hold decision making power over a franchise
garmtpug They could just make some stuff up, they’re the only ones who can after all. But no, It’s just ‚who cares?‘
I never encountered that one, but at least it's acceptable as a Weird Wasteland occurance.
Contrast this with Not-Whitey Bulger. Nick, one of the most prominent companions, has this whole quest. You have to search police stations across the wasteland in order to find out what happened to this criminal. And so when you get Kid in a Fridge, but with a small apartment, it's really pathetic. It would have been much better for him to have long gone feral (and made sense lore wise). Or for him to have spent all that time locked alone to become philosophical, and genuinely desiring to reform. Instead... we get a guy whose just been locked in his basement for 200 years, and doesn't really seem to have been bothered by spending 4x as much time alone as he ever did free and in the company of others.
Another issue: I still don't really understand what's going on in the Battle of Bunker Hill. I don't understand why everyone and their grandpa seems to show up.
yeah 5 synths in a basement dont seem to be important enough to shove that much military into an outpost
My understanding is that is was something similar to the cold war. The railroad knew they were in danger, so they sent a few heavies to protect them. The institute knew this and decided to send more coursers than usual as a show of force. The BOS heard of this and sent vertibirds to take out two major opponents at once. To protect their assets, the railroad sends more members, and the battle escalates
Ya, especially when the game gives you the "option" to inform both the railroad and brotherhood. Still not sure what doing that even DOES out side of check off a quest objective, mabye MORE then usuall show up i have no idea.
@@theencolony5595 True but that arguement kinda falls apart when you get the options to inform them of the institute going to bunker hill, if i recall the dialogue correctly, Maxen says something along the lines of "what? we had no idea thanks for telling me." i forget what the railroad tells you but probably something similar or something that fits with you being a double agent.
@@jaywerner8415 remember those are different timelines. It's entirely possible that not having the SS to spy for them, they got a different CI that told them
The worst part of the dialogue wheel isn't even just the 4 set options, but the fact they rarely do anything different from each other. "Y" could lead to a broad questions topic, not just a singular question like it does it most cases. A spoke of the wheel could lead to option A, another to option B, and the 3rd as some special option, or let's talk about this later. Instead most dialogue functions as an interactive cutscene
"Instead most dialogue functions as an interactive cutscene"
That's the best description of this problem. The dialogue wheel made the conversations less conversational. It doesn't feel like you're talking to NPCs, it feels like the NPCs are talking at you. It feels more like an exposition dump rather than a conversation.
Maybe the Institute would’ve worked better if they were Transhumanists who genuinely want to help everyone.... by “improving” them. The memory den shows you can transfer and alter memories. What if the ultimate goal is to turn everyone into Synths? And if a person has personality flaws, let’s change those. Oops, this person’s past is causing conflicts with townsfolk, erase their past. One of the ethical dilemmas would be, are they actually transferring human consciousness to a new body, or are they killing the original and replacing them with a copy?
Transhumanism seems like a more logical goal than just making realistic looking janitors.
Yeah. As it was, I think the Institute is just biologically engineering their own slave race. :D
@Madam Meouff Not exactly cultists. Just scientists who threw ethics out the window, and anything is free game so long as the outcome is an improvement. So replacing everyone, including themselves, with Synths, is their way of making sure “humanity” survives.
Also, I really hate how dumb they are. Like killing everyone in University Point to get a laser rifle that doesn’t need reloading. Like, the girl who found it, wanted to sell the technology. Just buy the damn thing.
I'm pretty sure their actual goal was to infiltrate the commomwealth with legitimate actors having the exact genetic disposition to be skilled in certain areas with gen 3 and not janitors, who are likely botched or waiting to assume a role.
the problem with making the Institute eugenicists is that it does rather exempt them from being morally ambiguous.
Besides the “keep it simple” mentality for dialog, they would have been better off stealing the Bioware dialog wheel. Organizes responses and questions efficiently, leaves room for special choices based on skills or faction affiliation. And if a set of options merely progress the dialog, the Dragon Age series offers icons to express what the tone will be.
I'm a fan of the Extended Dialogue Interface (XDI) mod. Brings back the dialogue box and includes symbols for the function of each dialogue option. Works well with the voiced protagonist too.
Honestly they didn't even need to do that. Removing the speech box just feels like 'hey controllers have 4 directional buttons, let's use those' when the boxes were fine, hell Skyrim still used a list. It's a combination of cutting corners due to the data a voiced protagonist required and removing elements of the script required for that, for better or worse. And for the most part, it makes the vocal protagonist elements hollow because the options hamstring the character.
Idk why but I HATE how Biowares wheel looks it just looks so ugly
@@gratuitouslurking8610 There is a least some rationale for using an abbreviated wheel when you have a voiced protagonist. Because reading out the full sentence, then listening to the VA say what you just read, is a little off putting.
Best solution, don’t have Voiced, unless the character is someone specific. Or, there’s Witcher 3. Geralt is voiced, and his dialog options are abbreviated. He puts more flair into what he says, compared to what you chose. Interestingly, FO4 protagonist dialog is all short. Like, the single advantage of the system, is the protagonist could be verbose. And they talk in abrupt sentences.
Yesssss
Around the 30 minute mark the point about the Minutemen and how:
A. Preston is unkillable.
B. You'll end up in the cycle of 'kill raiders, help settlement, kill raiders' with The Minutemen if you're new.
Those are two things that hit me when I started playing. I hadn't played a Fallout game in years, but I was extremely excited with the look of Fallout 4. I ended up dropping the game for a while because I wasn't sure what I was supposed to do. I assumed Preston would lead me in the direction of the main quest, but he kept giving me radiant quests. I thought maybe it was like the Thieves' Guild in Skyrim and you need to do X number of radiant quests to get main missions but that wasn't true either.
It never struck me until Jon mentioned it that Preston is just Yes Man. It makes a ton of sense now, but it sent the totally wrong impression and for a long time spoiled the game for me. Once I got back into it and focused on other stuff like exploration I had more fun, and when I went into the Brotherhood quest-line I realized how entertaining the game can be but that first experience with a major faction nearly ruined the game for me.
I've played Fo4 two times. The first walkthrough was not completed because of a gamebreaking glitch. The second was with the minimal involvement in Minutemen affairs and it was actually a better experience. However I don't see how's BoS's storyline is any better, when you get repetive quests (get that artifact, clear that location).
Someone patched it to have Preston give quests less frequently. I don't know if it was Bethesda or the modders of the Unofficial Patch, because I've never played the game unmodded.
it would have been smart to have Codsworth be the "yes man fallback", he's your butler bot, it'd make sense he'd help you go trough everything to get a semblance of normal life back (so the bare minimum: fix sanctuary, find Shawn and maybe get a new romantic partner), i think that'd work a lot better as it's pretty much the main quest anyway and Cods is yours, tied to the pre-war world and can't have stakes in anything new (other than maybe getting some maintenance). And on top of that, it'd free the minutemen as a true faction that'd actually help the settlements (yours or not) independently and you could just help them from a distance (do the bare minimum, help them rebuild and recruit) or actually join them.
Yeah I'm not used to unlimited fetch quests in Bethesda games and it took me like 10 missions from him and a quick Google search to find out
Mama Murphy was the NPC designed to push you onwards with the main quest. She'll even interrupt you turning in a quest to Preston if she's walking by. Replays have had me Ignore Concord as long as possible and use Red Rocket and ignoring Diamond City as well. The game feels a lot different when one blows off Concord and Diamond City till boredom forces advancement of the main plot.
On a somewhat random, but not unrelated note, I remember that first shootout in Diamond City between the two brothers. I had the bright idea to use VATS to determine which one had more health, and noticed that the one who eventually won the shootout had substantially higher HP! It was such a cool Fallout moment and an a-ha detective moment, and I promptly shot the one with higher health. Everyone around me turned hostile, including the brother (I'm pretty sure), and I was forced to reload a save, as no meaningful change happened as a result of my deduction. Instead, I was forced to let the synth brother win the fight and move on. I appreciate a lot about Fallout 4, and you've made me think a lot about how the development cycle and the changing industry across those years affected the final game and all the things that went right nonetheless. But man, would it have been cool to see deeper writing and random choices like that.
So when this game came out, my Nora just set about doing all the side quests, not finding Shaun, eventually finished the game after becoming a beast.
My second playthrough as Nate a couple years later was immediately after the birth of my own son, when he was about the same age as baby Shaun. I wasn't expecting it, but it really did hit exponentially harder, and so I persued the main story much harder, even telling Preston I wouldn't stay and help them with Sanctuary. I skipped out on building settlements, my favorite part, until much later in the game. It basically did a 180 on how I felt about that particular plot point. ...Didn't really change Father's fate, but the idea of my baby being lost... yeah.
Goes to show how much childbirth brainwashes you
The issue with Shaun being a baby isn't even about the fact that the player ends up with no real connection to Shaun before the bombs fall but also that Shaun would have NO CONNECTION to the parent ahead of the plot twist. Synth or not, that kid would be like "I have NO idea who you are."
To be fair he mentions that when you meet him, at first he didnt think about it much but then he became the boss and looked up or got shown the records, hell he even says he set Kellogg up to fight you. Sure he has no EMOTIONAL connection to you but he knows who you are.
Im sure he would know who the guy is due to Shaun being apart of the institute and probl read Reports i mean he dos go about planning your release among other things in hope of getting you to do what he wants.
So clearly what he has no real Emotional Pull towerds you, He dos know who you are.
kinda like a Adoptive child being adopted at the age of 1 and living with a happy family he will just bond with that family, The Parents im sure will tell him he is indeed adopted but the kid be like 'Well Shoot oh well still my family' and move along as apart of him and prob have no real emotional attachmeant
True but Shawn isn't really too important in the grand scheme of things. Technically speaking, the Institute is the Commonwealth's best chance at improving. Teleportation technology could send much needed supplies to locations in need of supplies. Synths act as an extremely cheap source of protection and labor. There are no need for gen 3 synths in the end since everyone lives with synths anyways. The Institute genetically modifies plants to grow faster, produce larger yields, and consume less water. Best of all, the Institute has a group of scientists that are genuinely curious. Scientists who intend on improving their technology or new technologies. I've always had the dream of the Commonwealth where you get to do more with the factions you choose after the game. In reality, it's only the Institute that has anything to do after the game. But imagine having a synth rollout of better generation one's which are only work horses. They start clearing and making the foundation for a bigger, cleaner, better city than ever seen before. Solar panels on the roofs of the buildings providing power during the day and a small battery underground to power the residential buildings at night. A teleporter there allows traders to come and go much quicker. Factories that run on clean energy that provide useful materials such as pip boys, clothing, clean water, etc. This starts bringing money into the new city and attention. Once the city starts getting money coming, the nearby farmers are given better seeds and their produce gets purchased by the people. Water needs to be treated and so on and so forth. You get the idea. You essentially build a new city where you provide shelter, water, and a job. Once they start making their own money, they purchase new clothes and food, etc. I know this is really long but it genuinely interests me the ins and outs of what we take for granted. Even phones but that's another essay
@@snakevenom4954 I Mean debaitible, Yeah there Tech is good but so is the Enclave but they are basicly Racist assholes / Hitler Nazis of the future and such.
The Institue goes about things pretty badly, Fuck you we are taking your random peons and fucken replacing them with Synths
not only that but the Synths are trying to rebel against the Institute ask me there going to fail sooner or later its not like the Brotherhood that has multible chapters as well
they dont seem to be on that scale at all.
That’s just plain wrong.
Most Adopted children which never knew their parents are very driven to find their real parents. Not caring about your parents is the real abnormal behavior.
Though I guess Shaun was specifically characterized as a total psychopath, so in his case it made sense.
Possible alternative to the beginning of the game. You’re a 19 year old come back home to your parents after being kicked out of Basic Training, after being drafted. Don’t explain why. But this sets up how you know how to handle weapons and survival skills. Check your discharge papers to set SPECIAL.
Like the video suggests, spend time in Sanctuary. Meet the neighbors, help them out or be mean to them. Reconnect with a group of friends, and establish your past through dialog choices. Then, you win a lottery for VAULT 111, but only for you and one other person. Then the bombs drop.
Going off the rails here, but instead of the only survivor, most of the Vault is still alive, if frozen. Tie the Vault dwellers into the Settlement system, as all these people are going to need a place to go when unfrozen. Make them unto their own Faction! Or don’t. Leave them on ice. Or sell the Vault to another faction. Or slavers.
Or your 21 and got discharged rightfully or wrongfully allowing the player to have a little more freedom if they want to be evil or a good person accused of something they didn’t do
@@klausklaus504 I like that. Yes, you were drafted, and you served. Maybe a friend in Sanctuary asks you how you served. Field Medic, Soldier, Engineer, Clerk. And this gives you a free perk point in something. Point is, you’re home and ready to start your life..... and bombs drop.
Maybe I'm a bit crazy for wanting marathon-length games, but it'd be cool if there was an entire chapter on the unfolding political instability of the world. You get back from the military, settle down, make some career choices, have a straight marriage, a secret gay one (because it's a 1950s culture), or an open gay one just to piss everyone off. You can have children, acquire real estate, flip or collect cars, hoard to the point your love interest gets annoyed at you or leaves. Do financially well or poorly based on the decisions. Modify, repair, rent out your car(s), house(s), etc. Breed pets and sell them. Run a furniture store, an auto shop, robot store (NERD!), food store, etc. Or be an employee... heck, be a janitor, lol. Every role major or minor in society would have a mini-game. You'd be so fully immersed. You'd hear the news get worse and worse and wish people would just calm down. AND THEN the bombs come down.
When you come out, you can choose to leave it all behind, or try to restore the neighborhood you put so much effort into. You can be a raider, pragmatist (neutral), or a "good guy". And yes, all the stuff you did in chapter 1, affects the post-apocalyptic landscape.
@@manictiger Eh, I feel like people who much prefer the action (or even just post apocalyptic-themed) part of the game would absolutely HATE that "0th act", especially those among them who have a habit of making many new characters to try out different builds.
Perhaps you could tie unfreezing people from the vault to fusion cores in some manner? Like, you need a lot of power to unfreeze someone or something.
Now using power armor carries an additional price- it's using the same resource that you could be using to unfreeze your pre-war friends. It'd also give fusion cores a bit more of a use for people who don't want to use power armor (as they can easily accumulate dozens of fusion cores towards the end of the game).
“In Fallout 4.....no means yes” -Many a True Nerd 2020
Joe
I always imagined that the Institute was gonna pull a Westworld. They have incredible disdain for the people on the surface and seeing how the CPG turned out... with their synth rep being the only survivor. I figured that the ultimate end goal for the Institute was going to be copy and pasting regular humans into superior synth bodies. Bodies that would be better suited to life on the surface and rebuilding the world. I figured the main character was some sort of Experiment. We learned about how most of the subjects in the vault died after their cryo pods malfunctioned. And DIMA from Far Harbor even seems to allude that you might not be as human as you think. I figured the protagonist of Fallout 4 was perhaps the first successful human to synth transformation. With your memories and personality copied over into a gen 3. And that the entire point of Shaun "releasing" you from the vault, was to see exactly how successful it was. And, from a narrative perspective, it made sense since the Institute needed Shaun in the first place to make the Gen 3s work. It makes sense that he would turn to his father/mother to proceed with the next step in the plan, as well as ya know... getting to meet at least one parent before he kicks the bucket. I was waiting the whole game for this plot twist but it never came. And I was so disappointed because even this bare bones idea is more interesting than the final product we got.
It would certainly explain away the pacing drop after the introduction, once you no longer have much of a rush to find your son. Maybe the fake starting memories they implanted didn't stick or resonate that well, but did serve to mask the exact moment you were switched on for your trial run until you inevitably return "home" for evaluation.
I know it's just poor writing, but fooling myself at least lets me mess about the wasteland with my sanity in check.
Wait this would’ve been so cool and made so much sense I’m genuinely upset this isn’t real.
I know why they included romance options, but like, canonically it's just another way it makes the player character seem uhhh without empathy. The murder of their spouse has basically 0 impact on the main character
your spouse just died in front of you and your child taken and you can romance people a week later
Not defending the morality or lack of empathy portrayed there, but some people will seek comfort in another's arms after a tragic loss.
Canonically, their (Nate and Nora) relationship on the surface is very up for interpretation and for all we know they could have been the local swingers of Sanctuary Hills. Now you're roaming the wasteland with a hot piece of ass like codsworth... How can I resist the urge to ding his chronometer?
@@FonVegen comfort is one thing, also not judging one way or the other here, but romance is another. Most people need to morn and thats never shown. And naratively its heartless to jump staight to another after the death of a lover. Its just too fast for most people and can serve to distance player from the character and the story.
I think it can be summarised by the fact that due to Todd Howard's direction they wrote the entire game into a corner when he really wanted the game to start pre war with a family etc. So many different things that weren't properly addressed resulting in a huge disconnection between a player and their character. Hence the fact by the time people actually meet Saun, they pretty much want to kill him due to having no real personal connection and being responsible for fucking up the commonwealth for decades.
Got a lot of steel to shape.
God's be praised!
Wait, wrong game.
Do you get to the cloud district very often?
Its a fine day with you around
*starts singing Ragnar the Red*
_you never should have come here!_
hmph, must've been the wind.
Either you're here to get showered in sparks, or you're looking to buy...out with it..
They could’ve started you out with just the frame of the power armor, or something of that essence. Then you can build your armor bit by bit. They could have also made deathclaws very formidable and terrifying, instead of battling it in this quest, you have to lead the minutemen carefully around it maybe through tunnels where the deathclaw is lurking. Then when you get settled slightly in Sanctuary it attacks the settlement after following you back, stalking it’s prey.
Talked about this with a friend the other day. Would have been far more interesting if the SS tracked down "rumors" of Sean, only to discover many different synth Seans, all at different ages, some knowing what they are, others not, some as antagonists, some not. This ties into our feeling that the game should have built up the synth replacements far more in the game and made them more important (essentially switch up the main quest a bit). Let's face it, anyone genre savvy figured out many years could have passed since the SS was frozen (as well as guess that "Sean" would wind up as a possible antagonist at the end). Make the mystery be "who is the real Sean" and lead it into synth replacement and a truly nefarious (or altruisitic/gray) goal of the Institute. Don't tell the player they have to care about this kid they never knew.
I like this idea.
You didn't have to be genre savvy. You've got heavy hints in dialogues with NPCs and on some terminals. Also, if the protagonist would have decent to high intelligence, there were logs in the Vault 101 terminals contatining events with dates. So the answer was there since the beginning. So after reading those logs I was confused when the protagonist was talking to everyone about searching for his/her baby.
@@michamarkowski2204 He/she asks about "Their son" more than "Their baby".
@@ShadowSonic2 But he/she describes the son as a baby anyway.
@@michamarkowski2204 I always took that as the SS just trying to cling to what they know rather than face the probable truth that they missed so much of Shaun's life.
Institute: We need robotic janitors to clean our floors
Mr Handy: **exists**
""All you know of robots are those buckets of bolts -- Those Mr. Handshakers and whatnot. Well... that's not ALL a robot can be... Not in the Commonwealth.""
-Dr. Zimmer, Director, SRB.
They knew; but apparently the proven, low-tech solutions just weren't cool enough.
@@fuzzyfuzzyfungus And they're put to such good use too!
This part of the video confused me because he already went over why gen 3s exist. The whole point of the gen 3 program is to infiltrate, spy on, and influence the human societies above ground. Plus they use them as guinea pigs for medical experiments since they're biologically similar to humans. Then there are coursers which are specifically engineered for combat.
@@derekeidum1307 spy on human above ground but why? dont they want to be isolationists? isnt it easier to spy otherwise? they can even make animal synths in game, why replace humans and create tons of conflict?
@@SpikedKirby They actually have synth birds all over the Commonwealth for espionage, so it makes even less sense.
I always assumed that a lot of the Institute's dumb mistakes were because of exactly the same reason Shaun chose you to lead it; for all their intellect, they have very few people with any sense of leadership or practical experience due to their highly sheltered lives. While they've survived for 200+ years on their technological progress alone, Shaun is at least smart enough to know they can't keep it up forever without a restructuring of how the Institute operates.
That, however, brings up another problem with the Institute; why are none of their quests dedicated to fixing these glaring problems with their management? There are a handful of quests where you make minor decisions for them, but the vast majority are centered around neutralizing threats to them, something that they absolutely don't need Kellogg or you to do. The only thing you really do in an effort to fix their problems is secure a power source. They have limitless potential to create a futuristic utopia, but even with your involvement, the Institute is little more than a less omnicidal, slightly more competent Think Tank.
We won't know unless one of the writers ever says something about it, but I don't think that's accidental or "headcannon"
Fallout 3 and 4 have a lot of content that makes fun of distracted academics and how listless they can get, and The Institute is supposed to be descendants of MIT surviviors.
But... there is a quest that deals with trying to fix the glaring issues with management, if only briefly.
@@louisvaught2495 One of the things with the institute is their attitude to the gen 3 synths. It seems like the original founder of the synth project wanted to create immortal synthetic humans, to redefine mankind, and take over form the actual humans. Yet by the time the Institute is able to create such miracles they have got used to the mechanical synths doing all the grunt work, and then treat the gen 3s exactly like the mechnaical 1s and 2s totally forgetting the original point of the project.
They're classic 1950's Hollywood scientists -- brilliant at technical issues, clueless at life. The sort of character who needs a Race Bannon type to drag them out of the lab and make common-sense decisions for them.
3:41 “i was thinking we could go to the park” “you know there’s a plague, right!?” oooh this one aged well
Tbh I ended up adding in ‘Covid in the commonwealth’.. haven’t yet got the stats to kick start it.. few npcs with facemasks so far & bit of virus chatter..
"You know there's the New Plague that causes you to bleed out of every orifice in excruciating pain until you die the most horrible death, right?"
"Yeah but we can't let it control our lives, it's time to learn to live with it and get back to our poorly ventilated offices and coffee shops."
And I am confident that if not for a certain annoying orange and his retinue TURNING it into a political belief, we'd have actually responded to this thing appropriately.
This was published after the pandemic started
@@joshuasteelflex4662 Months after.
Emil: Why create complex quests with deep dialogue options and skill-checks, when it's more time and cost effective to chuck in a few legendary items in a chest next to a holotope explaining what happened?
In their next game; they might as well just get rid of all the NPCs and do every storytelling via holotapes! ...oh. wait. They actually did.
In a way, FO76's original design had been the logical next iteration of FO4's "who listens to the stories anyway". :/
@@atomic.3200 I have no problems with this approach. The first town of FO76 is actually one of my favorite locations. Listening to the stories of the immediate aftermath of the bombs, of how people survived, of how they coped, of the on-and-off zealous madness of the preacher, who went between practical knowledge and his job as spiritual caretaker, and despairing about missing the rapture and having been damned to Hell.
Fallout 76s problem was that this was the entire game. The emotional impact of these stories loses it's punch when you realize that every story ends with "And then they were all killed by the Scorched." The fact that the game was even advertised ahead of time as having no humans in it basically spoiled every quest, because there was no sense of loss and despair when you made it to the airport and find that, surprise!, the Responders are all dead.
It's not helped by the fact that that first town was the only really good part of 76s story. I was REALLY hopeful about the quality of the rest of the games story-telling after that opening... but dear lord did that train take a nose-dive off of a cliff.
I feel like it happened because people criticized Fallout 3's main quest and never discovered/ignored the _well written_, effort-filled side quests that are out of the way.
Emil Pagliarulo said KISS is the best formula to write a story, for video games of course. :)
The man needs to have a sit-down with the quest designers over at CD Projekt, they'll set him straight.
the game's problems seems to boil down to this: it's a lake that's a mile wide but a millimeter deep
one thing I feel was missed, was that bethesda has incrementally crept their way away from "play as you want; be good, be evil, be chaotic neutral. each has their place and the game is tailored for this" and are moving constantly toward "you are the messiah, and you don't get the option to be anything other than the knight in shining armour. you WILL accept and complete the quest to save the cat in the tree"
they've tried to pull this back a bit with nuka world and fallout 76 settlers due to complaints from fans, but the trend is very noticeable when having some retrospective on the ability to actually role play their games as a bad guy over the years.
the direction the RPGs are going feels more like arcade games than something with depth. streamlining is useful for obtuse and convoluted systems, but it's gone completely overboard when entire chunks of the game are sliced out like real speech options and RP in an RPG. streamline something too much and it becomes just another featureless nothing
chaotic neutral... that's a blast from the past lol
" it's a lake that's a mile wide but a millimeter deep"
I've seen Fallout 4 described this way before and it's so true. Even something like the settlement building fits that bill. Like why not just have made like 8 settlements you could claim and make them deep with actual characters and stories and have some unique features to the towns the way Diamond city is in a ball park or how megaton is built around a nuke? They overextended so hard with F4 that while I feel like it's better than people give it credit for it doesn't feel complete without DLC/mods.
Unpopular but true - Fallout went from a PC game to a Console game - with all the limitations included. It kills me watching controller usage - like watching a drone move around. Thank god for aim assist.....
Either I am not quite getting your idiom, but the phrase 'it's a lake that's a mile wide but a millimeter deep' hardly seems correct. The game has depth, its just not in the first few hours. You ccould say that about call of duty or something, but not fallout 4! And while your other complains are undastandable, especially the 'knight in shining armour thing', the gameplay more than makes up for that. I tried NV. i played though it once, and i did not even have enough fun to replay it one.
I've seen this argument so many times but the game let me bust into the institute killing everything in my way in a fit of rage to brag to my dying son that I was about to nuke his organisation, deliberately didn't send out the evacuation notice and shot shaun in the face mid sentence. Then NPC's from all over the commonwealth that I had met shamed me for using excessive force and not saving lives when I easily could have and people try to say you can't play as an evil character? actually lol
I don't mind the institute not making sense or the fact that you'd have died from radiation poisoning before you would have dropped down into vault 111, what really bugs me is that when kellog shoots your spouse you hear a very distinct sound of a single spent casing hitting the floor, which would not happen, it's a REVOLVER, revolvers don't eject spent casing until you reload which drops all 6 casings at once
I'll bet it was some design 'rule of cool' thing. The casing hitting the floor was for dramatic effect, reality be damned. Shadow the hedgehog has a similar thing in the opening trailer, where Shadow is clearly wielding an auto/simi-automatic rifle, and chambers a round by cocking the under barrel slide, as if it was a shotgun.
The point is, devs or management doesn't care about design consistency when setting dramatic or 'cool' comes along.
Thank you for bring this up :)
Wow I never questioned that until just now. That is really silly isnt it. And technically you don't have to drop all 6 casings thats just a really LAZY reload animation, just like the one for the lever action rifle that reloads 5 shots regardless of whats in the gun, hell im starting to question if the double barrel shotgun reloads one shell if you only fire one shot. You can just pop out the spent casings and load those chambers of the cylinder, hell the 357 in New Vegas had the OLD style reload where you rotate the cylinder and eject the casing one at a time out a loading gate on the back of the gun.
The magazine for the pipe rifle doesn't actually feed the rounds into the action and The hunting rifle is also left handed for no reason.... They just didn't nail the realism of the weapons in 4. New Vegas was fantastic on that front.
You are my favorite kind of autistic nerd. Much love brother
Far Harbor was so good it almost made up for the main game. It's crazy that they thought the plot twist of Shawn being an adult would work when you can guess it's probably going to happen before you even leave the vault.
I think my biggest complaint about FO4 is that it seems like someone told a producer that the average gamer only spends a handful of hours on a game, so devs were forced to make the first two hours to be the most awesome possible. Getting power armor and fighting deathclaws were end-game experiences in every other game; in FO4, it's in the tutorial.
+1 to this man. My thoughts exactly and it's a damn shame too. Why does Fallout 4 have to be different than every other Fallout game in terms of the main story narrative, conversation style with NPC's etc.. Bethesda should of spent a bit more time on actually giving us a proper RPG experience than a washed-out streak of piss that the only thing that could fix the game are Mods! Even with mods Bethesda were/are charging people to use mods, it's insanity!
C'mon - it's the effect of Streamers/Early reviewers. This is nothing new - especially in MMO's. They figure these 'journalists' only have a limited amount of time they will spend on a game before moving on to something else - need those views.... So the beginning areas tend to be way more interesting or exciting than the 'meat' of games.
Regarding the writing, my guess is that someone, somewhere, once successfully convinced Pagliarulo that his work was unimportant and unappreciated and that he shouldn't take it too seriously. Unfortunately, Pagliarulo not only took it to heart, but became actively and unapologetically spiteful about his role in directing lore and narrative. Literally the worst possible outcome.
To be frank, "someone" would be righ.
Teenagers do have short attention span.
Honestly they're not wrong you do only have 2 hours to capture someones attention in video games which is quite frankly a ton of time. I mean how much time do you give to a movie your not enjoying? A book, a show hell a movie trailer? Minutes seconds? You have to lead with your best foot forward and fallout 4 does a really good job at this.
Take a drink every time Jon says "heavy lifting."
What I love about this is that it is a constructive critique of the game. Other reviewers will say "FO4 sucks and here's why." Whereas Jon points out "Hey, this and that where very good but if they did this other thing, it would have made a lot more sense." This is the reason I watch, a guy who cares about the games he plays and wants to see the best out of it.
Edit: Now watching the whole video and not one mention of the best faction of all, the Atom Cats! Tsk tsk lol jk
I love diplomacy as well!
Tunnel Snakes or bust.
But let's be real, most of these "F4 sucks" videos are filled with facts. They changed so much about an iconic franchise in order to appeal a wider/more casual audience that it's only natural when veterans and people who really understood what Fallout was about come out and have strong, negative opinions.
I've been playing Fallout for more than a decade, and i have no shame to admit that i've put into F4 since release more than a couple thousand hours; It's a great game, but a terrible Fallout.
@@OutlawRiot exactly, u can call your video fallout 4 sucks and explain rationally why, and it's perfectly fin
@Mr Culec "The people who go the hardest on these games when they're messed up are probably the ones who care the most!"
THIS.
The problem with the Institute seems like one that could have been easily fixed, If one doubled down on their isolationism. Here you have essentially a vault that was so afraid to go outside, that no one ever did. Not one of the inhabitants of the institute has ever left the comfort of their walls for 200 years. Instead - Sent Robots to the surface/outer wasteland world, To scavenge and bring back resources and components that the institute could not build themselves. But a Robot is only as good as its programming. A Mister Handy Is only gonna be able to do so much. The Institute needed better and smarter robots. Robots who were capable of carrying out more complex tasks.
And then there was the problem of remaining undetected. Someone was eventually gonna wonder where all these brand new robots were coming from. So the institute needed their robots to blend in. To be able to pose as normal scavengers, as to not draw attention to themselves.
Unfortunately for them - the opposite happened.
- one of their test models malfunction, and cause the shootout in Diamond city.
- The incident where institute synt's slaughtered an entire town (whatever it was called) over a rare piece of tecknology happened. The Institutes scanners had picked upp and pinpoint the location of the Teck. The synts were programmed to collect it. But when the Townsfolk were told to hand it over, they had no idear what the synts were talking about, as the scavenger family had kept their rare find hidden, less someone else might try to grabb it. - And so the synts, following their simple programing - Saw the Townsfolk as an obstruction to their goal, and slaughtered them all.
The robots had only carried out their goal. The institute knew nothing of the matter until it was to late. This only served to draw attention to the synts and the Institute.
A robot is only as good as its programming. And So the Institute needed Robots who were so advanced that they could learn and addapt. Robots who could do nothing short of think for themselves, in order to operate on the independent level that the institute needed them to.
One could even make a joke about the vault dweller from Fallout 1, As to while one vault had to sent a lone dweller to gather an important piece of teck (a water chip), The Institute did not even do that. they sent a robot rather then one of their own.
Unfortunately for them. Machines who were so advanced could eventually begin to draw their own conclusions.
At first everything whent fine. But the more exsposed a Synth was to the outside world, the more it learned from these outside influences, the more it might come to the conclusion that it did not want to be subserviant.
Eventually, Synths started to go missing. And in response, The institute had to send other synths after them. Both to collect their property, and to stop them from spreading secrets of the institute.
It was a problem that the Institute had to set up a whole sub-division just to deal with. And it is not an easy problem. For up there, in the scary wasteland, where no institute member has ever set foot, the synths have much more free range then they would like to admit.
Synths might just start to help other synths, or befriend wastelanders enough to get them to help them too. This was how the Railroad was formed.
Suddenly you have to send Courser's to eliminate anyone who might know anything about the institute. Suddenly you have to set up a network of spies on the surface, to try and gather information of your synths and the wastelands in the area. Suddenly - you have to remove and replace people to keep the wastelanders disorganized with missinformation and political sabotage.
Suddenly. You are the Bogeyman.
And not only that. How would the Institute know if the Scavenger models that do return faithfully from every mission are not secretly playing the long game? What if their own are working to undermine the institute from within?
What if the Institute Itself has been infiltrated? Suddenly the Bogeyman of the Commonwealth has become the Bogeyman of the Institute itself.
It's a problem that won't go away. Because a Synth is programed to learn and adapt. And its ideas of freedom comes not from some faulty programing. They come from its experiences in the wasteland.
So there you have it: A solid explanation to why the institute would make Human like Synths.
To scavege and go undetected. Not to sweep the floors.
(wow this became a long rant. I just realy though it was an interesting Idear to think about.)
I know I’m replying several months after you posted this but I have to say this is amazing and I hope you know that
"the problem whith institute seems to be able to be fixed easly"
*proceeds to make a whole essay about how it can be easly fixed.*
Lol. Sorry i had to.
@@towarzyszmarcin474
This is true.
@@Blahaj_enjoyer173
I know I only noticed your reply several months later, but thank you.
Honestly if this is how the Institute was written in fallout 4, I might have enjoyed their quests more, typically I side with the brotherhood or minutemen because I don't care for doing any quests for the institute
Jon's knowledge of who all can be killed gives me hope.
@@pbsixgun6 so can you effectively lock yourself out of an ending that way?
@@eddieperaza8948 iirc he refuses to let you progress in the Minutemen quest line unless you turn on your raider factions and kill them, if you do that then you can continue though he still will be locked from being a companion forever
the thing that kills me the most is when you have two quests and one character to talk with. yea, I need to ask a brotherhood dude about things, but instead my character IMMIDIATELY starts talking about synth shelter from Far Harbor but I, like, didn't even want to mention it?? but I have to, because I have no other way to ask him about anything else now???
same with (possible spoilers) a character from far harbor. I just wanted to talk to her about some radiant quest but all I got were "you are a synth" option from another quest?? wtf was that
one thing that truly confuses me is just... Why would people think Shaun is still a baby? You know you got frozen again after they took him. When I played, and found Father was Shaun, the only twist was that Shaun is the leader of the institute. I never ever would have thought Shaun would still have been a baby
Exactly, I don't think anyone was really fooled. If anything, it sets you up to expect time has passed. It would have been more of a twist if they didn't wake you up the first time, so you didn't know what happened.
Shorewall Jon immediately called the same twist in his first play through. He was thinking the Sole Survivor was an idiot for continually asking about a baby.
Yeah. I agree with Shorewall. I think that's what bothered me most about the writing. At the intro of Fallout 4, Bethesda started off with this great narrative, building this amazing story and world - and even before the first half of the game, they then proceeded to do everything possible to demolish it. Preston, the Railroad, the Brotherhood, the Institute, Father - I mean it was janky at best. When I think about it, some of the factions' motivations are still perplexing in a sort of cognitive dissonant way. Shame the best elements of F4 are overshadowed by the weakest - and possibly unintentional ones.
me neither, when i was thawed the second time , my first thought was "how much time just passed? that kid could be dead by now..."
To be honest, Sole Survivor has nothing better to ask for. What can they chase, but a baby. How would they even describe the child but as "baby"? So best they ahve is Kelloggs description and baby. So sole survivors wakes up and... then what? Do they assume Shaun is dead? Do they assume it's been zilion years and its' not worht searchign? Or maybe it's just been a week, or a month?
There is no way to tell how much time has passed, and the corposes you find in the pods have not decayed, so not even that can tell you how much has paased since Kelloggs visit. So, you are left with no idea how long it has been, it could be mere days, or it could be years. Only things you have is "last I saw Shaun was a baby" and Kelloggs appearence.
So it makes sense for Sole Survivor to be asking for a baby, because that is the only solid description they have.
After they get Kelloggs memories, we see Shaun as 10 years old, which also marks last time anyone talks about baby Shaun.
I think they made Shaun a baby so that he would be in the same pod as your partner, and they would have an easy excuse to kill your partner off. But frankly, they could easily have made them start to open your pod by mistake before getting Shaun, and you still get the excuse of your pod opening later. Plus you would have this actual emotional moment where your partner is suffocating and you can only watch.
They could have also just opened all the pods and killed everyone else, which is completely in character for them and especially for a mission assigned to Kellog who seems to have a penchant for doing exactly that kind of work.
Could have maybe even served as extra motivation for tracking them down.
I feel like it would have also changed the dynamic of your interaction with Shaun as an old man of he could actually remember you from before the war. Whether it would be for better or worse you would still be more emotionally invested.
They could easily have had you separated at the checkpoint. Your partner left to die at the surface.
God, that line about the story always makes me so angry every time I hear it. Who hurt you, Emil? What player base betrayed you so that you're so g-damn bitter? :P
Especially because it is not true when it comes to his own work. The questlines he wrote for Oblivion and Skyrim are extremely detailed and have a lot of extre dialogue you can dick through like returning to the greybeards after killing Alduin and learning that the hole point of the story may not been to kill Alduin but to return him to the gods so they could send him back to destroy the world once and for all.
@@bebo2629 I wonder if he made that remark after the decision to change the dialogue system. Or if he was told to focus on environmental storytelling (terminals, holotapes, etc.) and had to give a politically safe answer so he could keep his job. It’s easier to believe that than to believe that a creative, organized person in a high-level position hit their head on a rock and forgot how much people love deep storytelling in the Fallout series…😖
@@jennaheiser625 Very good point. Whenever a quote like this comes up it's important to remember they're employees who also have to think about not pissing off their boss and not just creative artists working on their own projects.
The problem with Shaun not being a baby is because him and the other parent would not be in the same pod. Without them being in the same pod you still have your significant other.
Your SO can still be dead. But your point stands. Bethesda thought they were writing this tear jerker that would hype you up to go out and take the Wasteland by storm, but they were wrong.
They could have had them pry open your SO's pod, determine he/she'd been affected by background radiation or exposure through their life/career, dispose of the SO, and then open the child's pod, maybe
He could have been a toddler or small child, someone who would have still fit in the pod. It would have been so much more distressing. Desperately crying and actively clinging to your SO as they battle to keep ahold of them.
Especially if you had of spent more than 4 seconds with them.
Good point!
a lot of the pods failed over the years which killed the occupants, so they could've just done that.
Shows up to the BoS in X-01 power armor...”betcha can’t wait to get your hands on a set of T-60!”
Im mean you can show up to the brotherhood in 3 with telsa armor and lyons’ll be like: T-45 FOR YOU
@@facade2027 or even better have some recon armor.
Emilio Rocha nah i aint a stealth kinda gal. Guns blazing or nothing
@@facade2027 difference is you couldn't even use that tesla armor until you got power armor training from the Brotherhood (or the Outcasts if you have Operation Anchorage).
I still don't get why the BoS isn't using X-02 from Fallout 3 considering they beat the Enclave twice in that game and Sarah even says they'll be scavanging Adams Air Force Base. You'd think the elite troops would have that and the lower ranking troops would have T-45 and T-60 armor in 4.
I’d love to see a pre-war/nuke drop mod that expands on Sanctuary and having a few quests from your neighbors to create a bit of attachment before the nuke alarm sounds. Between the Vault-Tec rep knocking on the door and Codsworth informing you of the news. I’d love to experience Sanctuary before the nuke, and helping/hanging with neighbors would put more emotion behind tearing their houses down for the extra supplies
Maybe attend a neighborhood barbecue for 10 minutes, and have a couple small tasks "Grab the Nuka Cola from the fridge" "Help set the picnic table" It would help with the vintage americana vibes because what's more american nuclear family than a community bbq? And just as you return home, you get the news from the tv like you did in the in base game
All my friends thought I was crazy when I first started playing and asked how long I *get* to play in Sanctuary before the bombs fall
The Minutemen are honestly a neat idea for a faction, though the problem is that they don't really work as a "Yes Man" failsafe faction. The Minutemen are actually on paper a very "partisan" faction that'd be easy to piss off. They're essentially anti-raiders and are vaguely akin to The Regulators in Fallout 3, and they ought to have a similar role in theory. For example, if you do an evil playthrough, what should happen is that the various villages you've harmed start banding together and blamo! You have to deal with hit squads sent by The Minutemen.
By contrast, an actual failsafe faction ought to be one that's very amoral. The best is actually The Institute for this, I'd argue, as they're pretty separate from the main world.
Now, mind you, creating "Yes Man"-style factions is actually pretty difficult by nature. In fact, even Yes Man is...kind of dumb when you think about it. His story relies on a rather contrived set of circumstances that exist basically to create a situation the player can't screw up.
I'd probably instead suggest having there be no straight-up failsafe faction per se, but give something like "if you destroy every faction, you win".
Mechanically another problem is that The Minutemen also have a very specific playstyle in mind. Namely, they're very much focused on building stuff. If you don't want to do settlement building, then The Minutemen probably aren't for you...which is a problem for a 'yes man' faction.
Personally, I think that a Yes-Man option should either yield a worse ending like if you brought about more destruction with no point, or got betrayed after it's too late to stop. Or if it was much harder to do. The point is to give an option you can always fall back on, so it needs a reason to choose the factions that you can actually fail, and be locked out of.
Minutemen and Wild Card are my go-to ending for New Vegas and 4, not because I can't break them, but because I really think they are the best choice.
Well the failsafe option should essentially be "take over everything for yourself". Every action you take, good or evil would be working towards that goal unless you are actively aiding another factions power. Not to mention this is something people really, really want to do, just look at how popular yes man and the minutemen are, even if they rarely *actually* let you feel like the boss. This is why i kind of like Nuka World, because it lets you become dictator and actually use that power for something once you enforce your rule. I just think the fact that it was raiders didn't make it as sellable to most people, since i imagine they see themselves as a kind of benevolent dictator in that they and they alone could make the world better. The nuka raiders only make the world worse.
Im starting to notice Fallout fans have such awful morality takes
It would of been cool if the Gen 3's were used as "important" synths, like a synth squad leader would be a gen 3.
The synths gen 3 should be like the Spartan IIs from Halo.
aren’t coursers gen 3?
Isn't that effectively what the coursers were?
@@retrospectus no, coursers are special gen 3's who reclaim synths!
I'm told in the fluf the Gen3 synths are being used to scavenge undetected. but we literally never see that or are told it by a character and I can't even confirm its true.
I love the cool locations that didn’t have a quest I think one is Cambridge middle school or something where the principle gave the students brain pills though bullies but one bully took the mentats and blackmailed the principal.
It was an interesting area for sure
Part 1 made me appreciate what I took for granted about Fallout 4 doing right, and Part 2 gave a great perspective on why certain decisions were made from the dev team regarding story choices/dialogue options -- decisions I found very frustrating, mind you, but it was interesting to hear the dev team's point of view. Excellent points from Jon all-round, particularly regarding the introduction and the lack of player attachment to Shaun, along with the missteps with introducing the Minutemen, and the dissonance between the overarching story (find your son!) and the rest of the quests/gameplay (take it slow, build up settlements, etc). Fantastic work.
Jon, you missed the bit about the Warwick Homestead being really good land because it was a pre-war waste treatment plant and therefore the soil was full of nutrients. That's why the Institute wanted control of it, as opposed to setting up a new farm in an isolated area. This - combined with other examples like the mayor and Sturges - disprove your claim that "The institute made Gen3s and then doesn't do anything with them". Also, the Gen3s DO go out on scavenging runs - that's how they're getting out of the Institute and escaping into the care of the Railroad!
On the topic of the Institute's reactor, you could argue that a nigh-unlimited source of energy *would* allow the Institute true independence. In FO:NV's Dead Money, the Sierra Madre Vending Machines are self-contained matter reconfiguration devices, using nuclear fission/fusion to turn useless junk into tools, food, chems, basically anything the machine has a template for. It's unclear what was powering these machines, but splitting and fusing atoms takes a lot of energy, which the Institute would have if they could get their reactor online. Thus, even though nothing changes for the Institute immediately after turning the reactor on, the potential for the Institute to develop their own matter rejigglers is there, and if they were to share that technology with the rest of the world, it would be a game-changing boon for post-war America. Because as is abundantly clear, growing enough food to feed everyone is one of the biggest problems of post-apocalypse life. Fertile farmland is scarce and farming is hard work, both of which contribute to raiders (and the Brotherhood) preying on farmers rather than attempt to grow food themselves.
Except that's not how wastewater treatment plants work. Waste is stored in concrete tanks, filled with everything that goes down drains, including chemicals. Once the bugs have eaten as much of the digestible waste as possible the water is drained off and goes through chlorine chambers until they come out almost sterile. If anything leaked into the soil, from damage tanks, it would spoil the land not make it fertile.
@@nuhuh4564 Be that as it may, that's the reason that is given. Radiation doesn't sometimes make people turn into immortal zombies, either.
Yes, I’m sure the misanthropic technophiles are establishing an unlimited power supply for the good of the people across the country.
@@FunkBastid Well remember, the player character is in charge now. The Institute tried to help the people of the Commonwealth originally, but it fell through. It's perfectly plausible that they could be directed to try again, especially under the guidance of someone who knows the surface.
Trogdor ya, except none of them respect your leadership, and as soon as Shaun’s out of the way they’re likely to put someone in charge who toes the company line if the PC doesn’t.
Playing as the female character, who is a law school graduate and homemaker, and on the first day out of the Vault she's mowing down a whole gang of raiders with a mini gun. Its not exactly believable role playing.
@Evilmike42 would've absolutely loved nora to be like "yeah good luck, assholes, idk how to do that" instead of getting three ways to say yes and one way to say "fine but i don't want to do this"
It is annoying that she understands power armour....
If ssgt holotape next to the power armour explained how to use it at least it would have been better.
I think they should have made it so no matter what your character was the soldier and your partner was the lawyer to explain why you're a survivor
@@oscarhawkley Yea the fact that power armor no longer requires training to use is a huge oversight on the writing team's part. FO3 and NV both required you to be taught how to use it, but now a prewar civilian lawyer with presumably little to no fire arms training is just mowing down raiders with a mini gun and full suit? Hard to suspend my disbelief for something like this just because it's a "cool set piece".
I just thought about this, but do the raiders trigger if you don't get in the armor? I wonder if you could just start sniping them from the roof or the balcony Preston was shooting from.
@Blue That's good never knew that, though why do the raiders comment about you not wearing the armor? Were they all expecting to get decimated?
Doesn't make sense? Dude, Power Armor is a metal-clad, bulletproof, hydraulically-powered personal war platform. The whole point of Power Armor is that it's so overwhelming that it makes you a killing machine no matter who you are.
It also ties well with the theme of the game. You're thrown into a hostile environment that doesn't care who you were previously. Welcome to the wasteland, darling. Learn as you go.
Further, here's a little secret for you: You are not supposed to play a female character. That's why the intro is centered on the man. It's why he's the default character and the girl needs to be selected. Women are not action heroes. But, because culture expects us to treat women and men as if they're the same, the devs have an obligation to include the option to play as a woman, even if it doesn't make any sense.
If that were to happen IRL, Nora would just sit on the floor and cry or at best suffer a horrible death in a wasteland she is completely unprepared to face. Just play as a man.
Seriously, Bethesda ( Todd) needs to hire Many A True Nerd to help in the development of the next Fallout game. I know Emil has been around for a long time and they are all like family pretty much at Bethesda, but he really did drop the ball with “ KISS” ( Keep It Simple Stupid) in Fallout 4. Emil under estimates the Fallout fanbase.
Yeah, I didn't know about that, but it is offensive. It completely disregards what makes a Bethesda Open World Game good. And like Jon said, they focused on details for the environment, but not the quests or story?
KISS is both useful at times and also an incredibly backwards way of looking at things, when something doesn't serve any purpose keep it simple, like the undewater details, there is little to no reason someone goes underwater there is no active content in there yet they spend so much time modelling the underwater areas, Lakes make sense since they are near where you might travel, but the ocean is completely a wate of resources since there is no underwater combat or quests there, so those resources could have gone to make more compelling areas for people to find and explore within the commonwealth.
But if you think that using KISS for the parts of the game that players mainly engage with is a stupid stupid and I do mean stupid idea, simplifying quests and the dialogue system just feels backwards as a way of looking to make an RPG, on the other hand they made combat more complex which if you ask me is the opposite of their KISS idea and that is by far the most polished and interesting part of the game exactly because it became less simplistic.
Jon played the first 2 Fallout games as if they were Bethesda "games" and literally broke them and their atmosphere. I doubt he could do any good if he really were to have a say in Bethesdas "game" "developement".
@@GAnimeRO What do you mean when you say he "played the first 2 Fallout games as if they were Bethesda "games" " and that he "broke" them?
Didn't watch his playthroughs of those two yet
After watching both parts of this essay many, many times, my biggest takeaway here is that if Bethesda were to kick Emil Pagliarulo to the curb as swiftly and unceremoniously as he deserves and replace him with literally any randomly selected long-time fan of the franchise, then we could be certain that the narrative and lore of any future Fallout projects would at least be treated with greater respect, if not also be better written.
Its funny how what Bethesda was going for with its conversation system has been done better in Mass Effect and Dragon Age. Its not 4 options, its a wheel, and that wheel can expand for more options. in certain convos they even tell you the tone of what you can say. it manages to be slick and minimalistic while still giving you a wealth of options. They should give it a look moving forward if they plan to keep voice acting.
List looks better, the wheel design still limits options and looks much uglier than the button one
@@excalibur2772 Having it all written out doesn't gel with having it voiced though. Having the short blurb makes hearing the full line better, which is why most RPGs that switch to VO do it that way.
What happened when Fallout 4 came out? While the game does allow me to play the sniper and assassin archetypes that I love in shooters, it rubs me into the problem I've had with the game's overhaul to Skills ever since I heard the news about it. That you're dependent on Perks to build your character, unlike Skills of past games where you could specialize in a few and make yourself very good at one thing very quickly, with Perks to round out the rest. Stat requirements are perfectly realistic and actually help define characters strengths and flaws. One of the big reasons that F4 sucks balls is the simplified SPECIAL system where anyone can wield any weapon, it doesn't matter what your strength is, or your perception, etc.
Here is the problem with Bethesda's approach to the lore of Fallout. When Micheal Kirkbride created the lore of modern Elder Scrolls he wanted the lore to be "open source", kinda like D&D, for anyone to edit, mess with and have fun with. Problem is Bethesda does that same approach with Fallout's lore which is more set in stone. They keep wanting to use the Elder Scrolls formula with Fallout and it just doesn't work no matter how hard they try to make it so.
The difference between Morrowind and Skyrim is in the genre. It wasn't just taking away a stat system - it was a change from adventure RPG to action-adventure.
The change in factions is terrible, I agree. Even in Morrowind I hated how I could become Archcanon of the Temple - surely there's someone more qualified! Why am I, a foreigner, head of a House whose lands could altogether make a formidable kingdom in their own right? Sure, general implication is figurehead status, but why not just make it to where the supporting councilman uses me to seize power themselves, thank me generously, and tell me I should go on my merry way? I don't need to be the head of everything.
So you see, Morrowind kind of started that special snowflake in faction thing, but not to the degree of Oblivion or Skyrim. In Oblivion they at least tried to make it sensible - you replace the Gray Fox so the last one can resume his life, you personally save the Fighter's, DB and Mages Guilds so you maybe deserve the top rank, and the stories along the way were fun...but mantling Sheogorath? That's where it began.
Power fantasies are where the money is these days, probably because of the great recession and the fact that the vast majority of gamers will never have any real acclaim or power in their lives. I'm the Arch-Mage and everything else because irl I'm a part-time retail associate and the best I'll ever hope for is a private psychological practice in 20 years, but I can become the fucking Arch-Mage in a few hours if I want with minimal effort.
I love Fallout 1 & 2. I really like Fallout 3 & Fallout New Vegas. F*ck Fallout 4. To me the newer Fallouts feel bigger but are so watered down compared to the originals. I can create a character in either of the first 2 games, I can go explore and beat the game. Then a week a month or a year later I can go create another character, beat the game again but have a different experience. I'll get different quests depending on my build, or I can solve the quest a different way or different dialog options maybe meet someone new. In the newer games in doesn't matter how you build your character because everything will be the same. To me role playing depth in a role playing game is important. If I want to role play I'll play the first 2 games. If I just want to walk around a open world I play the newer ones.
Completely missed the nostalgia bait thing for New Vegas and saying that as a criticism. Whoever wrote that post forgot that Fallout 3 blatantly fuses the plots of the first two games, uses two of the most popular factions of the first two games for no other reason than they are the most popular, brings back characters like Harold for no reason, and has GECK as a plot macguffin because Fallout 2 did it. This is easily some of the biggest nostalgia riding i have ever seen.
Still having a ball with Fallout 4, but goddamn do I wish Bethesda could let Fallout be its own thing away from the design sensibilities of Skyrim. Not even Elder Scrolls, just Skyrim specifically. Not a fan of the perk tree. Not a fan of stripping out Skills. Not a fan of the voiced protagonist despite the fact that his voice work is really good. I love the way Bethesda builds game spaces, and I love the way that they approach exploration, but the landmark to quest ratio in this game is pitiful. Replacing good, honest content with radiant quests is just bad. Not good at all.
The Father of Fallout, Brian Fargo once stated. Nov, 1st. 2015. "If Fallout ever begins to feel like you're playing a different game than what was originally planned, then it's not a Fallout."
"On 20th November 2015, Brian Fargo was interviewed about some of his works as current head of InXile Entertainment. One of such comments was that he seemed to dislike how the current holder of the Fallout title was taking Fallout out of its roots and leaning the genre into parts that Fallout was trying to avoid being back in 2003"
Backstory is done to help prevent things like plotholes and inconsistency, while you might not see a lot of the back story for a character or location (unless you are playing bethsofts games where everyone tells you their life story...) it serves a VERY important purpose. The people in FO3 don't have reasons, motives, ideas, or a past. They are just there to give you some sort of goal in killing or collecting things. TBH the only character in FO3 I liked was Moira and even she was flat, but at least she had an interesting personality and voice.
It's no wonder RPGs haven't really evolved in two decades. It's easier to call voice acting and choice of perspective "evolution", when what cRPG fans really want is a game that offers many more opportunities, mimicking how tabletop RPGs work. Evolution is being able to tell Constable Owens that some bandits are going to rob the bank, instead of simply refusing a quest from a shady Argonian and being unable to warn the guards about it. Evolution is being able to electrocute the water an NPC is standing in, as opposed to electricity doing jack shit. Evolution is being able to plant C4 by a cliffside and cause a shitload of rocks to fall onto the enemy camp. Evolution is being able to blast open the shitload of doors you see in fucking New Vegas, but of course you can't because this retarded way of making games means you have to make a bunch of buildings with nothing inside of them and which you cannot access.
@@CrazyPrince7 You can still list with short sentences than having a very ugly Monster can colored wheel that screams 2007 Halo design.
Just right - it's a similar system but actually reacts to the player's decisions. I still find it bizarre they went so simplistic for F4 but did much better for ME and DA.
"There's a plague and everyone is just going about their life like normal". To be fair, that's pretty realistic unfortunately...
I was just about to mention this. As far as I know, Bethesda NAILED it! 11/10 for realism..... f*ck
I was going to say that myself. Also plenty of food? Two Salisbury Steaks in the fridge and a couple Nuka Colas. The two protagonists are very likely luckier than most. Most of the resource wars were so that the US would have access to all the last resources, screw the rest of the world. You don't really see any alternative techs like Wind Generators and Solar being used in any major way. It's as if the US were ready to just use up everything before destroying everything. Enclave anyone?
@@rolandgunslinger37 How do you use up Nuclear power? I never understood that.
To call the rona a plague is a gross over exaggeration, less than a 1% death rate
@@jessedavis5992 1% would still be 3 million in the U.S. We all have our own opinions on this Pandemic but 200,000+ is still a very large number. One way to look at it is its 60+ 9/11's.
11 minutes in, and this is feeling less like a "Better than you Think" and more like a "What went wrong and how to fix it"
It still feels that way an hour in...
That's why it's got the '?'
It's more balanced that way. Part 1 was about praising the game and Part 2 is about the issues.
The part where you spoke about going into areas that seemed designed to harbor quests, just to be shot on sight and have no choice but to initiate combat, really helped me understand why I played fo3 and NV the way I did. 4 was my first fallout game, and it was where I fell in love with the franchise. I think I was so programmed into the ‘shooter’ idea of things that when I played the older games, I didn’t realize that not everyone would be immediately hostile on sight- hence why I went into the ultra luxe for the pheeble will quest and just started shooting everyone down, or why I absolutely obliterated the republic of Dave. I thought everyone was automatically going to be hostile towards me.
Hopefully now that Bethesda is Microsoft's property Emil Pagliarulo will not be allowed to direct anything other than maybe some filler radiant quests with no meaning that he loves so much.
Seriously, that guy should not be allowed in the fucking studio.
I was gonna comment that it seemed like a lot of issues with Fallout 4 came from this dude.
Sadly they probably won't be able to prise John Gonzales back from Guerilla Games...
According to Wikipedia, he was also the lead writer for Fallout 3. Now, I know that some Fallout fans hate that game too. But as Jon's "Fallout 3 is better than you think" video showed, Fallout 3 has a ton of interesting stories and dialogue options hidden away that you have to find for yourself.
I wonder how much Pagliarulo's cynicism with Fallout 4 came from the vocal hate for Fallout 3. One thing I'm noticing in my current replay of Fallout 4 is how much the game desperately wants you to know about all its quests, from the Fight Zone and Witchcraft Museum quests starting just from you overhearing a conversation in the distance to how even saying "No" to a quest giver starts the quest anyway.
@@NimjaIV That's definitely it. It doesn't just affect Fallout 4's narrative, either, because Jon also raises a point in his Fallout 3 video about the Grognak text-based RPG. In Fallout 3 you can find it on a terminal hidden out of the way. In Fallout 4, it's on a holotape in the middle of a room that's important to the main quest. It really speaks to the philosophy behind Fallout 4's design.
The problem with Fallout 4 is that it isn't a Fallout sequel: it's a Skyrim one.
Think about everything positive you have to say versus everything negative, then cross that with what you would and wouldn't expect from "Skyrim 2: Don't Mention The Other Elder Scrolls."
Stronger combat, stronger crafting, better loot system, stronger environmental design, better building, expanded perk system, more involved factions, more developed companions, utilitarian dialogue options, focus on radiant quests, the pushing of the player into positions of authority despite still being an errand boy, the slightly nonsensical faction storylines, the separation of player build and roleplaying potential...
Honestly Fallout 4 is Skyrim but with the things most people talked loudly about wanting while not fixing the problems most people paid less attention to. But Skyrim fills a very specific "explore, kill, loot" catharsis that ultimately isn't the same itch that people play Fallout for.
I remember prior to Fallout 4's release, there was an article that pointed out how Fallout and The Elder Scrolls are two remarkably different experiences: Fallout's about quest, choice, and narrative as an RPG while The Elder Scrolls is about dungeon-crawling as an RPG. In Fallout, different approaches to a quest leads to different outcomes. In Skyrim, different approaches to a quest leads to the same outcome. Fallout 4 very much fits the latter.
Now I remember something I said to a friend pretty soon after Fallout 4's release - but long enough that we'd come to grips with it. That F4 retroactively made me enjoy Skyrim less. Since a lot of the problems I had with F4 I could see the beginnings of in Skyrim.
Fallout 3 is still great though. Even more so with Tale of Two Wastelands
I agree; Skyrim also holds a special place just due to how atmospheric it can be at times. I know, I know, "muh immersion", but it legitimately is really cool to play when disabling the HUD, cranking up that amazing soundtrack and just basking in the chilly, foresty, natural atmos. This, on the other hand, does not hold true for Fallout 4 (or Fallout in general). Completely different vibe, obviously, and it should remain that way I'd say.
What you see as a problem, is actually why fallout 4 is so successful
I like Skyrim and never played the other Elder Scrolls, but I'm curious why there's so much adoration for Skyrim and so much criticism of Fallout 4 if they essentially followed similar paths within their franchises? Does Fallout just have a more hardcore fanbase, or did Elder Scrolls never offer the same level of choice and dialogue as Fallout did?
This is a very fine video, do you hear me? I SAY A VERY FINE VIDEO.
Fax
Could be better.
@@oddtomato1049 the only part that is bad here is when he said that fallout 4 is better than you think
@@notfreeman1776 Disagree
@@KobeKeats since you know, F4 isnt better than i think it is
I met a guy who was a writer on Fallout 4. He was in charge of writing the companions which I think are one of the most interesting parts of the game. He seemed genuine and wanted to create a good story for the side quests he also worked on, unfortunately the other writers didn’t seems to care as much like he did.
The intro talking about how bad things are and then popping into the American dream is really driving the, "you are a synth," theory.
And the you are a synth theory is upended by the Institute being a ridiculous faction with no clear motive.
@Fuck Google thematic naming. "Sanctuary hills" it's a small island of seemingly perfect suburban idyll.
Before the bombs it seems perfectly tranquil, when you come back you see the dirty underbelly of the area, learning that the local red rocket was dumping radioactive waste illegally and the street played host to a well organised drug dealer.
I think its relevant that your character can only realise this after the bombs shatter the American "dream" the residents live in.
(Unfortunatly the intro speech and his milotary service clash with that theme quite harshly)
@Fuck Google there’s legit a hill leading up to vault- nvm
@Fuck Google because what sounds better “sanctuary hills” or fucking “sanctuary moat”
@@dillpicklesock "Sanctuary Near-A-Hill"
It would've been really interesting if Sanctuary was Fallout4's Goodsprings. The town should've been "shantified" just like Diamond City.
After my recent playthrough earlier this year and after years of not touching since I completed my last achievement on Nuka World during late 2016. I no longer hate the game and discovered elements I enjoyed, forgotten about and I found some quests that surprised me in positive ways and other aspects I grew an appreciation for.
Sadly I still have a lot of problems. Most of the negatives I had with the dialogue, the perks never really being integrated into the quests and dialogue very often besides a few areas. There's also my issues with how the story was handled, which all combined remained as severe issues for me overall that prevented me from enjoying the game fully. I always felt those elements are what I loved in the previous games. Those elements being brushed aside is what negatively impacted the game for me, even after years of maturing and moving away from a lot of the fanbase to clear my head and to eventually have my love for gaming sparked back.
I had fun in certain areas and I found the game to still be pretty good, but it's not something I will replay frequently like the previous games and even Fallout 3. I also played the game with mods that removed some of my issues with the base game and adding more content to spice up the overall sandbox. Also, a few mods that allowed me to build a tonne more of robots endlessly because building silly robots is a guilty pleasure haha. I also enjoyed Far Harbour despite my negative feelings towards the base game.
In conclusion, I still have a lot of issues with the game that mostly was unchanged since the last time I fully played the game. However, I also discovered new aspects I grew to appreciate, some I rediscovered and there are new things I enjoyed. Really the game is a mixed bag for me overall, but I still enjoyed it despite it all. The great thing about Fallout 4 is the brilliant modding community who are creating new experiences and possibly giving the series a new breath of fresh air like Miami, Cascadia and even the remakes of both Fallout 3 and New Vegas.
On a side note, there are a few features from Fallout 4 that I cannot play New Vegas without is the excellent loot menu and sprint. The loot menu saved me a tonne of time and I can easily say it's one of the best things Fallout 4 brought to the table.
Another issue I have with the dialogue system is when you're talking to shopkeepers. Whenever you ask them questions about the local area, what's going on in town, etc., they always end their answers with something along the lines of, "Anyway, were you looking to buy something?" to get you back to the main dialogue wheel. And they do this for _every_ question you ask, including followup questions to the first one. It just comes across as really awkward and stilted, and makes me feel less like a Wasteland wanderer and more like a tourist who's oblivious to how much he's irritating the locals.
The director wants to focus on details while lead writer wants to forgo all those details and streamline everything? That honestly sums up modern Bethesda better than any other analysis I've heard before. Huge worlds, hundreds of NPCs, hundreds of dungeons, small environmental details, rich settings with backstories enough to keep lore nerds busy for for years, but the guy directing our path in that world thinks that writing a proper story is waste of time. And if that isn't a self-fulfilling prophecy I don't know what is. Yeah, of course players aren't gonna engage with your story if you don't make it interesting and it's not gonna be interesting when it's written by that kind of pessimist prick. And when you keep pumping out games with bad main stories of course players aren't even gonna bother following them because they expect nothing. Of course it doesn't help that their shitty engine makes expressing the stories even harder since I'm not sure if it can even be used to create proper cutscene and it's so hard to change the world alongside the story that random BoS patrols after F4 first act are considered worth praising by Bethesda standards.
I seriously hope Microsoft manages to strong-arm Bethesda to give up their engine and fire Emil because players aren't what prevent good Fallout/ES stories from happening.
You, an intellectual, are not the person his comment is aimed at. His original comment is aimed at the lowest common denominator which makes up the vast majority of their consumer base. The majority in your group of potential consumers is the one you pander to if you want to make as much money as you possibly can off of your project. Whether you like it or not, you're a minority in the community and the majority of people who are buying the game want to experience fallout with the popular game concepts and mechanics that they are use to and enjoy in other games. So, whether anyone wants it or not, for the game to be developed with the kind of quality that it was developed with- you have to make compromises here and there with the majority (which are retards) and that's what that developer was saying. They know their market, they did their research. They made money off of it. Some hardcore fans such as yourself didn't like it, but by the time they decided (usually quite hastily, as our reviewer friend above points out) didn't like it they couldn't refund the game, so it's a moot point.
What the developer is saying, is true. It's a harsh truth, but it is true. Most consumers are going to be happy with what they made and a vocal minority are going to say it sucks dick because it wasn't new vegas 2.0.
Well thankfully Emil isn't the lead writer on Starfield
@@Xeno7373 oh damn that’s great news
@@Lubedupsquid It hasn't been outright confirmed, unfortunately. We have to hope it's true. Not quite sure how the man behind Oblivion's Dark Brotherhood storyline ended up gutting Skyrim and Fallout 4's stories, but it's clear he's better utilised in a job that doesn't require much writing.
@@Butterkin The problem there is capitalism and trying to appeal to as many people as possible with something they sort of want, in a socialist society games could be made out of love with specific ideas in mind, stories and ways of telling them that fit different players.
The whole thing about Shaun being a baby was just to subvert expectations. They were going for a whole 'sixth sense' reveal in that Shaun was in his 60's when you were expecting him to be an infant. They intentionally never discuss his age, and in any vague threads where they do speak about him... like when you speak to people in Diamond City about Kellog having a kid with him, they never mention the age or size of the kid, only that it was a 'kid'.
The second I got refrozen I knew I'd meet him when he was older. I knew i wasn't looking for a baby despite the game forcing me to. It was no surprise. What i thought would happen was I would meet him in passing and never know until the game points it out.
It's pretty clear he was supposed to be the kid with Kellogg until that got retconned.
I've played over 600 hours of Fallout 4 and never realize there was a sniper nest in sanctuary. I don't think I ever got on the roofs other than my house or the house across the street where the npcs would end up on the roof.
Same here. In my first playthrough I did find that one small basement in Sanctuary Hills. That was surprising to me. I was also disappointed that part could not be used more.
Oops. I destroyed all of sanctuary with scrap everything, lol. Guess I won't be able to see that without starting a new game.
If you play Frost there is a sniper and his gear up on top of that house just waiting to kill you if you can make it back to your home!
in the first act, i wish you had mentioned Kingdom Come Delivererance, especially the prologue. a perfect example of what fallout 4 could have done with its prolouge
You should've been able to join the raiders attacking Preston and his crew
There's a mod for that. It adds Raiders as a faction and has a fairly long quest chain too.
Yeah tbh that always bothered me about that first quest. You come into Concord knowing there are hostile people there because Codworth told you so. So you see some people fighting but how would your character know who the "bad guys" are? How do you know the guy on the balcony with his laser musket is the good guy? Because he only tells you about the other settlers inside after you've killed all the raiders. And the only reason you know they are raiders is because the game labeled them with a red name.
@@AlyenaMango This is actually a really good point
@@AlyenaMango first thing I thought when I played the game. I didn’t trust Preston at all and was confused why I had to kill these people. I couldn’t believe I was playing a fallout game when I first played this game hahaha. Such a bad game.
You forgot to mention how you could avoid concord entirely. When u first meet codswordth and he tasks u to check concord you could do so , then back off without killing any raider. You could then inform him that concord only has few raiders. From that point the entire story will progresss normally and u'll only be prompted to visit concord if u have no way of building a teleporter later in the game.
The minutemen quest is very similar to that of yes man in this regard, the only problem being the location of preston. Concord is the first town u get to visit if u aren't actively going out of your way to avoid it.
Sadly this option prevents u from earning the magazine at vault 81, ur choices also don't really affect the minutemen that much as they'll never die even after completing the main story. They'll be forever in the museum of freedom waiting for u.
I also like to add that technically the second encounter u get with a dethclaw is the one at Salem since it's one of the first quests u'll get upon visiting Diamond city , either by talking to Mr handy bartender or by hearing the residents of the city. If you avoid concord, the game pretty much has a solid introduction and feels more rpg like. Now, all we need is a mod that prevents preston from spawning in the museum of freedom until u visit quincy or encounter one of the many minutemen corpses.
Also,
I'd like to see your opinion on some of the quest mods that attempt to fix bethesda's writing. For example Sim settlement conqueror or combat zone restored.
If the goal of the Institute is to create the perfect human, to replace the flawed humans on the "surface", then everything in relation to the FEV project as well as wiping out settlements and the Common Wealth Provisional Government. So as to keep everything on the surface in a state of chaos, keep any type of centralized government from forming to oppose them would be the priority. You should really travel with X-88 as a companion to hear his dialogue. Once the Institute has created and perfect the Synths the plan is to begin to replace the "flawed" Surface Dwellers.
Again as you pointed out the story telling is not very good, I blame LAZY writing. The excuse that the individual made for the writing could be said about other aspects of the game world. So it does not sound legit to me. i think it was an effort to save face and divert criticism.
Or maybe their goal long ago was to replace the flawed humans in the Institute. I think it would have been cool to discover that they were all Gen 3 synths but they didn't even know it.
I think the Institute really should of been written for their surface layer to come off as "We're the good guys! After all we are the best scientists EVER!". However, the more you progress into their little faction the more you find out and confirm one or multiple ways that you are siding with a vast group of people or peoples who are just as vile, Corrupt, and awesomely powerful as the real life thirteen Illuminati bloodlines. This would of been perfect for the Institute.
But the institute almost entirely holds the view that humans are superior to synths, and from a practical stand point they should prioritise gen 1 and 2 synths because they don't need to sleep or eat unlike gen 3 synths. The only gen 3 synths i think could serve a purpose are the ones on surface missions like the mayor or the coursers. But then the institute have gen 3 synths working in the institute and they often escape causing even more problems. From a writing point of view they are bizzare
@@SkaterBlades Hmmm.... I was think along the lines that they thought they were superior to everyone else. Especially the surface dwellers. I mean who has a motto "ManKind Redefined" unless they think the are superior to everyone else.
The character progression system and the way it translates to gameplay is why FO4 is my favorite Fallout game. Survival mode is wonderful, I still play regularly.
The lack of enough side quests definitely has the biggest effect on the game. During a longer playthrough it ends up feeling like there's just nothing to do.
Which is entirely the opposite of Skyrim where it feels like even after a hundred and fifty hours of playing, there’s still likely a shit ton of things you have yet to discover or people to talk to.
The side quests in fallout 4 are all longer than the average sidequest in 3 or new vegas though.
Spiffo yeah longer but 3 and new Vegas have way better quests
@@klausklaus504 They've got a select few good ones but the rest take 5 minutes to complete. 4 has fewer quests but they're all longer and are more self contained stories
Spiffo longer doesn’t mean better I was bored to death by most fallout 4 quests durning the USS constitution quest I just quit after it was just a shameless fetch quest
Some Bethesda employee is about to be in for a big surprise when they clicks on this video because they're feeling down and needs something to cheer them up
Most regular employees know the flaws of the product they're making. They'd like to fix the flaws but management usually won't let them.
Hopefully they find both parts. Hopefully they're smart enough to realize that both of those parts taken together are a genuine, objective, good-faith criticism and take the details of the essay to heart without being dismissive or emotional.
@@seeibe
No thanks to management/the higher-ups.
How people keep forgetting about ZeniMax while calling EA and Activision demon spawn keeps baffling me.
@@seeibe In this case, a lot of the issues have to do with the engine and its limitations.
@@dylandugan76 This didn’t necessarily come across as good faith to me, tho. I feel like Jon should’ve recognized that this game’s been unduly shat upon for several years now, and he completely torpedoed his previous arguments by basically saying “Nah, Fallout 4’s actually shit, lol fam.”
Maybe I'm under thinking it but to me a single change to speech would go along way. The y button should be 'more', pressing would refresh the other 3 options to lore info and questions with y becoming 'back'. This would give 6 options total which is mostly on par with the old system m
Yessss they started doing that a little in far harbor, but still, was a little late.
Yeah, I actually wanted 16 possibilities. First wheel giving an attitude leading a series of four choices in that attitudes vein. Get a writer who cares about story, lore and world building, not too hard to implement. Would take quite a few writers though.
Nah man. Too much submenus , makes it look like the Sims lol
Or they could just go back to the vastly superior older system.
just the old system, it worked, no voiced protagonist since that sucks, whilst the previous games had some lines I wish I could hear voiced most are better silent. Fuck it, everyone gets screen reader voice unless line is important, saves a lot of work, allows way more writing faster and could even allow some randomness in lines. also whilst doing that add screen reader to terminals and pipboy for us blind players.
I personaly feel the "big problem" of Fallout 4's Introquest could have been solved by just moving the first encounter with the Minutemen into South Boston.
Also I feel that something like that was planned because in the game as it is, you can find several different ways to get the map marker for Diamond City; you can get it through a Wasteland Survival Guide; Dialoge with Trashcan Carla who is always sitting at Concord's edge; you get unique dialog options with Abernathy at his farm, if you have no clue of the Minutemen etc. where they explain the new world with Caps and Raiders and stuff.
Therefore I am convinced the Intro of the game as it is now is a relic of an early build or even a example given for the Moneyproviders at the time to convince them to finance this project.
I am pretty sure that if the Quest "Out of Time" wouldn't end with the start of the first Minutemen Quest the first impression of Fallout 4 would be extremely different, and you wouldn't have this debate that you are given a Power Armor after only 1h of gameplay and therefor the game is "just a simple shooter".
But with all the critique of the game I have to say, Fallout 4 is an amazing game if you like interaction with the gameworld itself and gameplay and environmental driven storytelling.
I just love the game for what it is, it is not "better" or "worse" than Fallout 3 or NV it is just a different game. Like Apples and Pears, they appear similar but they are two completely different things.
While normally I'd think it a weak plot device, I'm now thinking what if the SS woke up with amnesia? Cut out the 2077 start, then reveal it with flashbacks and revelations. You'd be forced to start a new life in this strange world (regardless of backstory), before slowly remembering your life before the war. Eventually discovering you had a child and that the child was stolen. This I think would change the nonexistent empathy for your family into sympathy for your own character who is remembering a life stolen from them. Just as the sadness for that sinks in top it all up with the worrying and potentially unanswerable question: was it the cryo process that made you lose your memories, or are you a synth recovering memories that aren't really yours. How you interpret that may lead you to either take revenge, accept your new life, or take back your old life, through which ever faction you built your new life in.
Maybe this is only sounding like a good idea to me because it would put a patch over the issues Jon has brought up? Or maybe it's because I've recently watched the original Bourne films? But I kinda want to play that game now :D
I can't speak for anyone, but Danse was tagged as essential when I first met him. One run, I tried to make an enemy of the BoS from the beginning by just murdering Danse and his teammates, but they just didn't stay down.
@Bob Sacamano ... Well that would explain it. Because I unloaded on him once all the ghouls were dead, but before he entered the station.
@@etcetera1995 Yeah, probably he's essential so the ghouls don't kill him (I've seen him actually lose all his health from the battle before, so its a failsafe). He might be essential durin the ArcJet quest as well (although I don't know) so something random doesn't kill him. I know for a fact that you can kill him after the Brotherhood of Steel arrive.
Shout-outs to the one "but" that got away...
"In the first act, no faction will shoot you on sight, no matter how much they hate you."
What? I mean what are you defining as the first act here? The Legion will send assassin squads after you *constantly* if you kill vulpes, and they start pretty much immediately after you go through the canyon beside Nipton.
The hit squad is an exception but if you walk up to faction NPCs in towns or hand placed placed spawns in the world they will be neutral.
It allows you to always approach potential quest givers no matter your reputation until a certain stage is reached in the main quest.
As a parent, the into is particularly frustrating. The first time I played, I felt the emotions when my spouse died and my son was kidnapped, but from there, the game makes it very hard to remain interested in them. I thought I was going to wind up in a single-minded pursuit of my son and his kidnappers, but the game draws you away from that with Preston's radiant quests and the distractions along the way. Since we had no real time to get connected to our family, I quickly lost interest in them. Felt pretty guilty for a while....
I feel the same, main stories for these kinds of games shouldn't be so important that you don't want to do any side quests or explore before you complete the main plot if that makes many sense
I usually run the 'Start Me Up' mod and ignore the whole 'find my son' route. Like you said, you spend so much time kissing Preston's hairy ass,
you don't care enough about your dead spouse and missing son to bother looking for them.
I'll say it again. This man would be the best judge out there. All the facts and all the angles. He gets the system and knows how to work it. Another good analysis my good sir.
P.S. or a forensics officer
Then again, his infamous Perception of 1...
ChristianC and his besthedsa shilling
@@klausklaus504 It's only shilling if you don't believe everything you say.
ChristianC the entire point of the 3 video was shilling in an attempt to get invited to the green brier event
@@klausklaus504 [citation needed]
I'd think, the Institutes complexity addiction is its feature, rather than storytelling bug. They inherited it from the organization they were before the War.
They were this universe's version of MIT, correct?
They're the most organized unorganized faction, because they're just a bunch of descendants of professors and university/college students, although it was a sunday when the bombs dropped, so there were probably more professors than students who hid underground
anyways the point is: they are very unorganised, their system is broken, just like a real college/university
My first impression of Fallout 4 was "This is okay" until I got to the settlements where my interest in the game plummeted for a few days until I gave it another solid try. Now I think it's amazing.
The Institute can be summed up as “your scientists were more preoccupied with whether or not they could, Instead of whether or not they should”
The Institute: "Gorillas! 🦍 Gorillas are on the verge of complete extinction. If I was to-"
Darth Sasquach: "Nooooooo."
The Institute: "No No No, -If I was to create a hurd of Synthetic Gorillas in the Bio facility, YOU wouldn't have anything to say about it."
It really feels like they tried to go for a much more realistic interpretation of the Big MT's Think Tank (Fallout NV), but without that juicy over-the-top campiness, it just doesn't quite work, as their incredulous incompetence completely contrasts with their rather calm & collected professional exterior. Not to mention the really cool aspect of Morpheus having put in that fail-safe to precisely avoid the Think Tank wreaking havoc other places - while he himself is also a dementia-ridden old geezer.
@@JarenLemon "I got the DNA of the endangered rattle snake, and put it right where it belonged, in the genome of another fearce predator!" they're litterally the Old World Blues brains, but worse.
@@sweetwheatsy Yea the whole science without limits dynamic doesn't work when your mad scientists are boring everymen.
If only they had that sense. I would pay for the "FOR SCIENCE OF COURSE!" Big mt feel. I think it can be summed up as "well we know better than you so why would we bother explaining" redditor shit. They dont have a motive, or a pursuit of science, they simply developed for the sake of development, ratherthan curiosity or scientific discovery