So I played me some of that Nuka World.
Well, nothing makes sense.
But first maybe some positives. Kinda positives. I don't know. Does it matter?
I like the environment. It's kinda like New Vegas/Washington DC. Are you trying to appease NV and FO3 fans Bethesda? More on this later. That said, it doesn't make sense. How is a mountain between Boston and NW going to turn one area into some kind of dried up desert? But other than the parks there isn't shit to do. Place is pretty nicely detailed, I mean you could almost smell the stale butter and popcorn and cotton candy and nuts in the air when first entering, but despite the raiders it's just a lifeless trash heap of a location.
That's it for positive impressions maybe? The plot is kinda like - some raider boss takes over amusement park but instead of turning on the power, not that I get what difference that would make, he sits on his ass and does jack shit. NEVERMIND that I single handedly cleared the power plant in 10 minutes. You couldn't do that previous raider boss?? Despite the power issues, there seems to be plenty of power to go around, selectively. All power does is turn on all the rides and shit. Well your new companion has other ideas too but power seemed to be a big thing since it's the end game mission.
You had a chance to flesh out raiders some, but none of that happens. It's just - raider a, b and c and they each dress differently and have some superficial motivations. Writing's shit in other words. It's weird though, because the holotapes lying around and notes show some kind of writing skills, but I don't get why that skill is limited to exposition. MAYBE, Bethesda should fire the head writers because they can't write for shit and give promotions to all the interns that know how to remotely write.
The quest design is atrocious. A crime against humanity. I wish I was being hyperbolic and simplifying it when I say all of it consists of pretty much nothing but killing shit, but that's it. One quest tries to ape Dead Money NV DLC but fails badly, atleast I assume that's what it was going for. Another one seems to be inspired by the ghouls in space quest from NV, but it turns into a bad joke. Either way they all end up with no other choice than to kill shit. That said, it's nice that they added in an option to bypass 3-4 quests with the Robotic whatever perk. Why can't perks be used more often like that? What's the point of them otherwise.
Radiant sidequests mostly follow the same pattern. Except most of the time you have to go back to the Commonwealth to do them. Yeah fuck that.
As for new items and mobiles. Total joke. New handgun is a renamed .44 from vanilla. Has a new texture, that's pretty much a color tint. Oh my gawd. I do like the Kalashnikov clone though, atleast the way it handles. It looks like shit though. It's like when you were a kid and you carved blades and handguns and rifles from wood and they'd be big and clunky, at first anyway, but you knew what they were supposed to represent. Same thing, Bethesda can't design for shit. New knife, that somehow does x3 times the damage of a Commonwealth knife. Is it adamantium? Clothing just makes you cry. Obsidian showed them how to make western clothing, for example, and well, what you're given here ain't no western clothing. More like something a first time modder whips up in 10 minutes. Badly. Not all the clothing is bad, the raider stuff has some nice pieces. But even then it's marred by stupid decisions. Requiring new perks to upgrade the stuff. Scrounger, to add max pockets to armor? It makes sense, but it wasn't in vanilla, why would this armor be so special? Also you can only add ballistic weave to one piece of clothing, some shit magicians tux. Sure, you can just write your own mod in about an hour making everything weavable, but why would you have to? Fucking lazy ass motherfuckers.
Oh mobiles. Reskinned deathclaw. Two types of reskinned molerats. Reskinned mirelurk. Well there's a grasshopper and ants that seem to be kind of original. But they all share the same uninspiring AI.
A bunch of raiders will talk about the freedom of being a raider, taking what you want whatever. But shoot one of them in the face because he talked shit and everyone jumps you. Dude. That's not how this works. I get it, it's hard to script that, but if you can't do it even remotely right, then don't, or write around it. Don't be an idiot.
Also the PC's motivations to play ball with raiders. Someone in this thread I think, defended that kind of, but it just doesn't make any sense at all. You kill and enslave people and generally act like an asshole. Well you can kill off the raiders from the start, but that's 95% of the DLC gone. And no, you can't be evil in the Commonwealth, short of joining the Institute. I guess you could LARP it so that you join Minutemen, later join Institute and kill everyone else and then go off and join raiders in NW, but NW starts at level 30, you're gonna hold it off until you're 60 or something, plus you can stab the raiders in the dick later anyway. SORRY I WAS JUST PLAYING EEVEL LOL. What?
You know what would have made this a remotely passable DLC? Placing it in the Commonwealth. One, you don't have to travel by fucking monorail repeatedly, and two, you could have fleshed out the bland as fuck place that Bethesda's Boston is. Even if it was with pointless ferris wheels etc. And you could have introduced an evil playthrough somewhat properly. But nope. Do you have a functioning brain between your employees Bethesda? I think not but prove me wrong.
