Fallout Fallout 4 Thread

[Robotigan]

Dude, what? Who gives a shit about the voiced protag or his background?

Most players. Why do you think they immediately pivoted back to silent protags for 76 and Starfield?

Quests are shit because the writing is shit, 95% of the map is just "Go there and shoot shit up, lmao", there's almost no dialogues (and the ones that are there are shit), and even character development got dumbed down with the cutting of skills! Bethesda's catalog is full of games with shitloads of NPCs to chat up (think of Morrowind, for heaven's sake!), shitload of quests that are sometimes even pretty fun, factions and world building to get immersed in, and of course character development.

You are vastly overstating Morrowind's writing. The character writing and prose in Morrowind is exactly what you'd expect for a video game from 2002. Most of it isn't even dialogue, it's the lore codex dropped into the dialogue menus. Cool idea, but clearly not the same thing as real dialogue. What's you're really talking about is the setting and premise. Yes, I agree those are really intriguing.

Are you retarded? What "my own candidate"? You think I have a dude in Bethesda that's primed and ready to take charge right after Todd commits seppuku because people shat on Fallout 4? What populist uprising – interns eating Pete Hines alive and appointing Chris Avellone as the God-Emperor of Bethesda? What the hell am I even reading? Take your pills, schizo.

It's an analogy.

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

Bethesda games have never had good writing. Writing for them is an excuse to implement gameplay. In a way, they follow the id Software school of game design. Morrowind does not have good writing, just cool concepts and visuals. That's it. There's a divide between "things you enjoy" and "things that are good".

 

[Sigourn]

Morrowind didn't have good writing but Fallout 4's is just plain RETARDED.
All dialogue is lackluster or blatantly unfunny. The game tries so hard to present dialogue as "funny" or "thoughtful" but it fails on all accounts.

 

[Silverfish]

Just because RPGs have combat doesn't mean Fallout 4's combat is suitable to an RPG. Your stats may as well not be there.

Funny enough, ignoring specialization and balancing stats (4 points in everything) leads to one of the best builds in the game. You get most of the crafting perks, both lockpicking and hacking, loot-based stuff like more ammo or more money, your choice of the ranged weapon perks, even melee is viable despite low strength, since power armor frames boost that anyway.

 

[Hirato]

Honestly, getting rid of skills and turning it into a 100% perk based affair was the smartest thing Bethesda did in Fallout 4.
Problem is: they do nothing interesting with it, and the bulk of the perks are just pointless things like bumping damage and stagger chance.

What they should've done was locked most of the gameplay systems down and add heavy restrictions the perks remove, and eventually elevate into godly territory.
Imagine if your character was too clueless to even use iron sights (or a scope) without a Perception perk.
Or if they were too clumsy to reload while running/sprinting without an Agility perk.
The basic idea being that every perk should expand your arsenal of available tactical options.

They're not good examples, but they're significantly more meaningful to character building than "+15% chance to hit in VATS".

 

[Gargaune]

Honestly, getting rid of skills and turning it into a 100% perk based affair was the smartest thing Bethesda did in Fallout 4.

When you consider the substance behind the naming conventions, they didn't even do that, really, it's the same sort of consolidation Deus Ex 4 did - passive skills and active feats or perks got rebranded under the same name, pulling from the same progression resource, but they still exist. Rifleman or Lockpicking are skills that passively affect your basic performance (even if they have fewer, larger thresholds), whereas stuff like Awareness or Mysterious Stranger unlock new options and behaviours.

It's a simplified system, yes, and it's not particularly exciting or well balanced (or leveraged, for that matter), but it's not terrible either. Early to mid-game I generally found myself interested in picking something off that table and it's only late-game that it devolved into meh territory, I think it was a mistake to let people keep leveling past 50. And it could've been far, far worse, as Cyberpunk showed us - consider the difference between "+20% damage with rifles" or "+15% change to hit in VATS" and "+3.42(6)% fire damage for 6 seconds after you kill someone while standing on your head, but only if it's a Monday."

 

[Aya Cash]

Borderlands games were the better looter shooters. Better shooting/combat, better weapons and loot, none of the lousy bloat like base building. Also it didn't pretend to be anything more than a shooter, unlike this game. The RPG elements in this are lul worthy.

 

[Vic]

Morrowind didn't have good writing but Fallout 4's is just plain RETARDED.
All dialogue is lackluster or blatantly unfunny. The game tries so hard to present dialogue as "funny" or "thoughtful" but it fails on all accounts.

that’s what you get if you don’t have Kirkbride writing weird shit. Have you not played Oblivion, Fallout 3 or Skyrim?

 

[tritosine2k]

Honestly, getting rid of skills and turning it into a 100% perk based affair was the smartest thing Bethesda did in Fallout 4.
Problem is: they do nothing interesting with it, and the bulk of the perks are just pointless things like bumping damage and stagger chance.

What they should've done was locked most of the gameplay systems down and add heavy restrictions the perks remove, and eventually elevate into godly territory.
Imagine if your character was too clueless to even use iron sights (or a scope) without a Perception perk.
Or if they were too clumsy to reload while running/sprinting without an Agility perk.
The basic idea being that every perk should expand your arsenal of available tactical options.

They're not good examples, but they're significantly more meaningful to character building than "+15% chance to hit in VATS".

This mod sounds interesting. Might be a while before I can take it for a spin. If anyone is interested, here it is.

https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/72923

Real.AI recalibrates hundreds of engine level subroutines to make Fallout 4's NPCs behave more organically by removing a lot of the limitations left over from the console port. Experience Fallout 4's AI at its full potential.

Funny these two posts are related if you read the link on the second you'll realize the NPC-s don't have perks just some wacky threshold stuff

recalibrates hundreds of engine level subroutines

Still you get to loot the weapon they shot you with, so that already turns things in Bethesda's favor nowadays. And they cut that from Starfield. So not for long.

 

[Gargaune]

Still you get to loot the weapon they shot you with, so that already turns things in Bethesda's favor nowadays. And they cut that from Starfield. So not for long.

Wait, what now? Starfield won't let me take NPCs' shit?

 

[tritosine2k]

Still you get to loot the weapon they shot you with, so that already turns things in Bethesda's favor nowadays. And they cut that from Starfield. So not for long.

Wait, what now? Starfield won't let me take NPCs' shit?

Yeah I remember Todd said it explicitly prob already the case in '76 idk.

 

[Gargaune]

Yeah I remember Todd said it explicitly prob already the case in '76 idk.

That sucks. I'm getting a bad feeling about Starfield's itemisation...

 

[Fedora Master]

There is nothing to discuss about FO4 other than "It's shit" and "It shouldn't be discussed". Anyone who says otherwise is a liar.

 

[Silverfish]

There is nothing to discuss about FO4 other than "It's shit" and "It shouldn't be discussed". Anyone who says otherwise is a liar.

Fallout 4 discussion is a waste of time when we could be having the 3,752,589th iteration of "which New Vegas faction is the best?"

 

[GloomFrost]

Morrowind didn't have good writing but Fallout 4's is just plain RETARDED.
All dialogue is lackluster or blatantly unfunny. The game tries so hard to present dialogue as "funny" or "thoughtful" but it fails on all accounts.

that’s what you get if you don’t have Kirkbride writing weird shit. Have you not played Oblivion, Fallout 3 or Skyrim?

Oblivion had some really good quests (some of the best Bethesda ever made), both writing and gameplay wise. Quests in F3, F4 and Skyrim were a massive and noticeable decline in comparison.

 

[Robotigan]

Bethesda games have never had good writing. Writing for them is an excuse to implement gameplay. In a way, they follow the id Software school of game design. Morrowind does not have good writing, just cool concepts and visuals. That's it. There's a divide between "things you enjoy" and "things that are good".

I wonder if the reaction to Bethesda's Fallout writing would be milder if more Codexians had watched the movie Dr. Strangelove.

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

Bethesda games have never had good writing. Writing for them is an excuse to implement gameplay. In a way, they follow the id Software school of game design. Morrowind does not have good writing, just cool concepts and visuals. That's it. There's a divide between "things you enjoy" and "things that are good".

I wonder if the reaction to Bethesda's Fallout writing would be milder if more Codexians had watched the movie Dr. Strangelove.

I did, and before playing the games. Both Interplay's Fallout and Bethesda's Fallout fall more into the 90s Image comics side of things than anything else and it's okay, it's a product of that era.

 

[Wayward Son]

Fallout 4 is fun to play. Nuff said

 

[Jonathan "Zee Nekomimi]

 

[Axel_am]

Fallout 4 is fun to play. Nuff said

Yeah, I agree. Maybe if it wasn't called Fallout people would like it more.

 

[Sigourn]

What an ENJOYABLE RPG.

 

[None]

Todd's Law: The longer a Bethesda game goes without a sequel, the worse and more hideous its modding community becomes.

 

[Just Locus]

This mod sounds interesting. Might be a while before I can take it for a spin. If anyone is interested, here it is.

https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/72923

Real.AI recalibrates hundreds of engine level subroutines to make Fallout 4's NPCs behave more organically by removing a lot of the limitations left over from the console port. Experience Fallout 4's AI at its full potential.

The note on

 It removes the "blinders" from the NPCs. Bethesda gave NPCs a series of invisible barriers that blocked their senses, meaning that they were essentially existing in a kind of bubble.

is pretty interesting but also pretty retarded on Bethesda's part, They could very easily have had it so that the blinders activate if the player sets their difficulty to Easy or Very Easy, and Disable it on Normal and so forth.

I've heard that they coded it that way for "tech limitations" which if true, shows that their ancient ass engine is so broken that they had to disable a certain feature that makes the game more challenging just to accommodate it.

 

[Late Bloomer]

Illithid tadpole goes into Robobrain, what happens?

 

[tritosine2k]

This mod sounds interesting. Might be a while before I can take it for a spin. If anyone is interested, here it is.

https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/72923

Real.AI recalibrates hundreds of engine level subroutines to make Fallout 4's NPCs behave more organically by removing a lot of the limitations left over from the console port. Experience Fallout 4's AI at its full potential.

The note on

 It removes the "blinders" from the NPCs. Bethesda gave NPCs a series of invisible barriers that blocked their senses, meaning that they were essentially existing in a kind of bubble.

is pretty interesting but also pretty retarded on Bethesda's part, They could very easily have had it so that the blinders activate if the player sets their difficulty to Easy or Very Easy, and Disable it on Normal and so forth.

I've heard that they coded it that way for "tech limitations" which if true, shows that their ancient ass engine is so broken that they had to disable a certain feature that makes the game more challenging just to accommodate it.

It already goes off the rail with companions 10/10 times.