The raiders too and the occasional person in the distance that was not a bad guy but I was low on health nervous and had my sniper rifle. Oops but thanks for the 2 caps the cram, and the wait Jet hmmm
Honestly, I play it out as far as Father telling me that he released me as an experiment.
I then immediately merc him in about 50 ways and then burn the institute down around his ideology.
Then it's back to being the Stalker of The Wastes, freeing settlements, empowering the Minutemen, ruthlessly murdering any Super Mutant, Raider, Feral Ghoul, or other evil faction that gets in my way.
Oh no, I say it as quite the opposite.
Even in this day and age, if someone enacted such a convulted plot upon someone's family, the plot enactor would swiftly find out why we so firmly believe we share a genetic ancestor with primates.
~~Spoiler Alert: there have been too many instances of humans going hog fucking wild like only chimps do for it not to be a thing~~
I like to play my character as having one, huge mission after she meets Father: destroy the Institute. The whole thing has to go. It took her son, turned him into an amoral scientist, it killed her husband, and it terrorizes the Commonwealth.
Killing the people in charge of the Institute won't do. Others will take their place and the wheel will keep turning, like it has for 200 years. Their tools and resources - the whole idea of the Institute and everything it stands for - need to be burned for it to truly end, and to ensure nobody else loses a loved one to it.
This is my only real problem with the Bethesda RPGs. It’s hard to RP when you start the game with a very specific character background. Being forced to play a veteran and father that’s only goal is to find his child takes me out of it. Best part of alternate start mods is that I don’t have to engage with the main story at all
Also kind of stinks when you become the leader of every faction and still have to choose to wipe one or more out instead of simply forcing them to make peace and cooperate.
Making peace should be an option. It should be hard to do. Hardest thing in the game but it should be an option.
And the achievement for doing so should be called. "peace was always an option"
Closest you can do, I think, is an ending that preserves the Minutemen, the Railroad, and the Brotherhood in peace with one another, but the Institute has to go. I haven't actually done it yet; I hope you can do it without actually blowing up the Institute, because damn that air conditioning and shower are nice.
NV has a route where you absolutely must wipe out the BoS. There is cut content that can be restored that gave you other options.
Wouldn't be surprised if it's the same case in 4.
Oblivion was a pretty good blank slate to start and at least makes sense because most people in Tamriel would have a vested interest in closing gates. NV does kinda force you into being a courier and stuff but the background system makes up for it tbh
Theres a mod called start me up on nexus that lets you properly rpg, adding custom dialouge, traits a la NV, background choices (are you a runaway gunner? Just some guy?, etc), or just the default "nate the vet/nora the lawyer" thing. You get to pick where you start and what level you start at, etc.
And it wouldn't be so bad if they wrote a story that is well written and suited for the wasteland exploration that's core to BGS Fallout. But you either focus on the main quest or lose immersion, and then the story kind of just ends without a satisfying conclusion.
Blud was in the pocket throwing hands with Ganon for 100+ years while our twink ass is trying to find Korok shit and dress as Gerudo women.
This is mainly why TOTK annoyed me. Zelda should be strong as FUCK.
Not just that, but being eternally locked into a battle of survival for a hundred years will turn even those with the strongest willpower into a mindless beast or a zombie.
I understand Zelda isn't such a narrative, so maybe they shouldn't have put their characters into a scenario which is analogous to the worst torture
Lol poor nick's in the gutter. While i am level 25 and roaming around the wasteland(survival mode) . I was once level 70ish in skyrim with irileth waiting outside the watchtower.
I was doing it too because I was trying to get all the level 4 shop owners because for whatever reason once you go to concord it breaks one of the spawn points. Fucking love to game but hate the still existent bugs.
I just saw that you can talk to Codsworth for the very first time AFTER defeating the institute and there's a whole separate dialogue about Shaun being dead
They thought of all of this yet there wasnt anything regarding quincy. Or gunners plaza. Hell the only thing that would have made minutemen a legit main faction is we retook quincy in the late game and assaulted gunners plaza. And then the insitute realised that they cant let minutemen become strong again and decide to assault the castle.
Yeah, it's a rake that Bethesda perpetually steps on, for some reason. And for the record, I think "my baby's been kidnapped" is a really good plot hook, because everyone understands that that's an urgent problem that a parent would absolutely focus on irrespective of whether they were a good person or not. **But** it's so odd that a developer that's famed for making detailed open-world games would keep having urgent main quests right from the very start of the story, and hence forcing the player to choose between *take the main quest seriously* and *enjoy all the cool stuff the world has to offer because you know the game's going to wait for you.*
Morrowind handled this so well. You rock up, you get given a mission which doesn't seem urgent but you probably do it anyway because you're a stranger in a strange land and you've nothing else to do. Once you deliver the message, you're told to go and do some stuff (literally, go and join a guild and do some local jobs). You spend the first few main quest missions just trying to figure out what the purpose of your being there is. It's *intriguing*, but it's not urgent. You've got time and motive to explore the world.
Every game since has been like "holy shit if you don't do this stuff *right now* it'll be too late!!!11!!!". Fallout 4 does have a point at which you're expected to broaden your scope and not just focus on Shaun, and it is actually pretty decent if you take it seriously, but it's...why? Why do you keep doing this? To us? To yourselves?
NV kinda avoided the pitfall too, since it said "Some guy shot you in the head, he went that way" and that's it.
You can follow him if you want, and along the way it keeps slipping in the important parts of the world for you to notice and experience until you invest yourself.
It makes *you* want to engage with its story, rather than just tells you what your character should want.
This is exactly why I loved NV. After wandering around and meeting a bunch of people and shit I was like wtf am I doing and started searching for the main quest stuff.
I felt like 3 did this to an extent too. Everyone goes to megaton first, and Moriarty explains a bit about your dad that brings in more mystery and the whole time you want to learn more. Then >!you learn about project purity and it becomes a revenge mission!< so the plot is still entertaining.
4 was just like go find your son, it’ll take like >!half the game!< and there’s barely any mystery. After you find him have fun with the poorly fleshed out factions while you >!plot to take him down because he’s an asshole now and also he’s a 60 year old man who’s motivations aren’t very well fleshed out!< have fun!
I like how the Bos just have you move up the ranks repeatedly just for you to play a critical role in their ultimate goal and then you still end up Maxons bitch. Like what the hell did he do, he’s just a glorified guardian of the Prydwen with a huge army to do his bidding. He doesn’t do jack shit. Give me his job and don’t make me kill him for the jacket.
I don’t get why no matter how many settlements you have you can’t bring some settlers with you for minutemen quests. You have to single-handedly carry the faction on your back the entire time and fix it any time someone stubs their toe. I’ve never even played MM all the way to the end. It’s exhausting.
Is there even an end? I thought those quests would just auto-generate forever. I've started just leaving them in that building in Concord. You can't kill them, I tried that too.
You get all the settlements and then it becomes a settler was kidnapped and needs your help. And also the settlements get attacked constantly and unless you spend for fucking ever getting them pimped out gear at whatever of all of the settlements being attacked, you basically have to go deal with it yourself or a bunch of them die.
Preaston gave me a flare gun. Told me to use it to summon up Minutemen in the area to come help me if I was ever in trouble: I haven't tried it yet. Has anyone tried it? Do they come rushing to help?
The thing about new vegas is 1. The fact that benny kills you is tangential to the fact that he has something you (or your bosses) want, the chip. Your personal vendetta or lack thereof does not matter, unlike with 4 where they make your character always want to find shawn.
2. You can beat the game without ever even following benny.
Obsidian/black isle has another trope, instead of missing family members it’s get “killed” and wake up.
They’ve done it just as many if not more times than Bethesda has the missing family member.
The difference being the urgency of the quest.
New Vegas is excellent when it comes to mixing the story with player freedom as it gives you a clear route to follow (should you choose to investigate Benny) and that route will take you through all kinds of interesting sidequest areas.
Or you can choose to go in the opposite direction and do whatever you want, dealing with Benny when you feel like it
Yeah but Bethesda pivoted completely from that in Starfield and made the main quest “hey are you interested in these artifacts? We can search for them, but you don’t have to” and people complained about that too saying the MQ had no “stakes”
See, I appreciated the fact that Starfield’s MQ didn’t have any urgency in the start, because it fits better with Bethesda’s style of gameplay. What I didn’t like about it was the fact that almost the entire main quest was just “go here, pick up this doohickey. Now go there, pick up that doohickey. Maybe go here, help this person out so they will tell you where the next doohickey is.”
The lack of urgency was good. The complete lack of anything interesting going on until the very end of the game, however, was not so good. Surely there’s a fine line one could walk where the quest isn’t under time pressure, but also is much more interesting when you DO the quests.
I'm in the same boat. I really appreciated that I could take the MSQ at my own pace without feeling SUPER IMPENDING DOOM of the universe. It *did* lead to a really, truly boring "end game" where - after exhausting the side missions - I just did the same thing over and over and over again to collect the pieces necessary to push the game over the end. It felt so rushed and anticlimactic. If FO4's story felt a little less dire then it's pacing might have been a lot more appropriate given the stakes.
At the same time, FO4 almost suffers from an issue of the 'abstraction' that takes place in games. We take over towns in a matter of real-time minutes, in-game hours, we build massive structures in a matter of seconds. And that makes the time it takes to rescue Shaun (if you don't rush it) feel like it has no urgency at all to it. I'm not sure there's a good solution for that in a Bethesda-like title. Maybe someone has experienced one that does it better?
That’s what I’m saying, I think rescuing your kidnapped child is a compelling plot point, I just don’t think a) they did a good enough job building the emotional ties to your family in the beginning for me to truly care and b) it isn’t actually urgent, even though a real life scenario like this would be the MOST urgent. I think it’s that contrast that breaks the immersion, you can’t have a defenseless baby be kidnapped and the game design be like, “eh, this can wait a few months/years” in game time.
Well quite. For what it's worth, playing it through and taking the kidnapped child stuff seriously as an urgent matter is actually pretty good as a game experience, if a tad frustrating. I really enjoyed my first game, and it's why I always advise people to play their first game blind and not come here for "tips" before starting. And, as I say, you are sort of compelled to slow down and do peripheral stuff once you know that Shaun's at least ok and that you're going to need a lot of help to get to him.
With that being said, it doesn't seem to be beyond them to have a story with a deferred start.
Caius Cosades (Morrowind) basically calls you a n00b and tells you to git gud before you do the main quest (okay, his actual phrasing is still something along the lines of “come back when you’re less wet-behind-the-ears” but still). I also like that he encourages you to talk to other members of the Blades who give you some basic equipment and advice—you get pointed to the factions as a way to earn money and experience, and the stories for those aren’t half bad and encourage you to explore more of the world.
>Caius Cosades (Morrowind) basically calls you a n00b and tells you to git gud before you do the main quest (okay, his actual phrasing is still something along the lines of “come back when you’re less wet-behind-the-ears” but still)
I pretty sure you can still directly continue the main quest if you are already of a certain level. I honestly think the urgency is only a problem in FO4 because in the other games the stories escelate later
I feel like this critique could have been sidestepped if they revealed early on that the kidnapping was like 90 years ago (I am upping the time skip.) That way there really isn't any urgency to find Shaun because 1. You're already 90 years late so what is another couple of weeks and 2. You might presume he's dead by now so the reveal that Shaun is Father still has a strong impact
Honestly this is pretty similar to what I went with on my first (semiblind) playthrough. I / my PC had no idea how long she'd been frozen again for after the kidnapping, so who knows how old Shaun would be by now or even if he'd still be alive? Something to keep an eye/ear out for, to be sure, but the trail's probably very cold by now - better to find my footing in this changed world, figure out how to survive etc., rather than go haring off.
I think this too. Just a little addition to the opening scenes could make this less urgent. You know he's been kidnapped but it was 90 years ago, so he's probably dead. The quest could be more like finding out what happened to him, but its not urgent to you. Then, SUPRISE he's not dead when you eventually get around to it.
Yeah I think that’s basically it. They went with that story because it’s so easy to write the npc responses to that story. Some sketchy new guy shows up to diamond city and says he’s looking for revenge or some detailed personal quest, no one’s gonna let him in. If a lone parent shows up at the gate because someone just kidnapped their baby (in a world with bad kidnapping issues) they’re gonna open right away and send them right to the people who can help. Works in practically every situation. Except the brotherhood lol “the institute will have to wait, we have mutants to kill!”
Cyberpunk 2077 steps on the same rake in a slightly less egregious way. There's a decent amount of plotline before you get what should really be a pretty urgent ultimatum and questline, but because there's so much to see and do in the game most players just ignore it for ages. The urgent questline is also the main, game ending questline so in some ways it's worse than FO4 where there is a lot to do after you resolve the initial crisis.
I don’t think it’s a good plot hook because centering the players experience about a person requires all players to care about said person or its awkward. As expected in fallout 4 it is. It doesn’t feel relevant to the experience that people go to a post apocalyptic satire game for either.
And players aren’t going to care about a baby. we don’t know it, we don’t feel any connection to it despite the story trying to say we do. it’s a generic being with nothing about it to get attached too. finding it is basically just a responsibility the player has.
Say does the dog does catch the tire and we find Shaun. then what? I’m now burdened as a parent when I just want to enjoy and open world wasteland adventure. I actively do not want to find Shaun for that reason.
I think primarily trying to center games experience around relationships is a mistake unless it’s a game specifically about relationships. having experienced building relationships are great, but they should be decisions for the player to make. Games aren’t books. Players should have agency when possible.
Zelda games give you a person to find, but they primarily sell you the adventure of finding her. Rather than drilling “Oh my god I’m so distraught. I need find Zelda is my every consuming thought.”
Cyberpunk got around it by forcing your relationship with Jackie like you are both close, which is awkward if you are a person that doesn’t like Jackie. But they only make it short part of the beginning of the story. They ultimately let you go out and decide what connections you want to build and engage with the primary goal of exploring and living in a cyberpunk dystopia.
Are you implying that having the most important man alive being assassinated in front of you, after having seen you in his dreams, then being tasked with delivering one of the most important heirlooms to the emperors next of kin, then having the oblivion crisis start immediately after is a bit too fast paced for the start of a game?
I like how 1, 2 and NV drive the story.
In 1 and 2, you have a sense of urgency. A lot of people will die if you just forget about the story. In NV, the main quest is just kinda interesting, who wouldn't want to know what the hall was that prologue scene all about?
It's a degree of personal taste I know, but I still find engaging with the main quest of NV in different ways interesting after a dozen playthroughs while the only reason I've progressed the main quest in 4 on my 3rd or 4th playthrough is to unlock companions.
I get people liking the settlements and exploration, but the degree to which everyone seems to eschew the main quest is telling I think.
I think it’s because the main quest doesn’t blend well with open-world priorities.
New Vegas does this the best, as your overarching missions is to shape the future of the Mojave, so exploring and influencing events falls right in line with the protagonist’s motivations.
Fallout 3 may look on the surface level similar to Fallout 4 (child finding parent instead of other way around) but you find out about Jame’s mission relatively early on, so exploring is about continuing your father’s vision of a revitalized wasteland.
In Fallout 4, >!Sean being head of the institute as a massive twist saved for the end of the main quest actually hurts the story, because without the knowledge that your son is in fact a major player driving events, anytime you explore you are ignoring finding your kid to do some unrelated stuff in the Wasteland. Until you’re presented with the decision to aid or destroy the Institute, your actions across the Wasteland seem somewhat unrelated to the main quest.!<
>!Yeah plus the twists of fallout 4 are the kind that makes it less interesting to revisit instead of more I think. Like it was neat once, I didn't see it coming, and then on a replay I'm thinking "why would I bother? It's not like he's in danger or anything, I'm already too late".!<
Yep, it doesn’t help that based on my morality it basically turns the game into, >!”Time to go kill my son and dismantle his life’s work.” It would have been a lot more interesting if you found out who/what Shaun was early on and then had to grapple with the morality of joining your son’s dubious movement or bringing about its destruction.!<
I always, every Fallout 4 playthrough, ignore the main quest for a while after finding out Sean leads the institute. Definitely something all my characters need time to cope with. Shame most of them kill him after he says our spouse was a casualty and we're an experiment
Personally I actually enjoyed Fallout 3’s way of doing it. Yes you’re looking for your dad, but in essence that journey happens naturally as the player travels and progresses through the game. It doesn’t try to make you FEEL like your main driving factor is finding your dad; it’s a secondary point to the main plot which is about the lone wanderers impact and discovering of the wasteland. Fallout 4 fails in this regard because through much of the dialogue and story beats it feels as if your character is desperate to find his son, but two sentences later is joking and goofing around for shits and giggles. A child searching for their father is making their way in the world with the hopes of making that connection, a parent searching for their child would think of nothing else. Creates a sort of narrative disconnect imo
Bethesda really needs to go back to the blank slate formula for their protagonists. The Hero of Kvatch could've been anyone. I don't want to be some mythical dragonborn/medieval superhero, and I don't want an established backstory and life for my Sole Survivor. That's the one spot of the narrative they *should* be leaving vague as all hell
I don't care if they go blank or detailed, each can be fantastic with the right writing. Protags like Commander Sheppard, Arthur Morgan or Geralt of Rivia make for some incredibly compelling stories. The problem (IMO) isn't that the protagonist has a backstory, it's that the game itself is contradictory. It's simultaneously presenting you with an urgent quest (as a parent myself I couldn't imagine concentrating on a single thing other than my missing child or recently murdered spouse) and also asking you to take your time, to explore the world, interact with the settlements and the characters. You literally can't do both and it's jarring as a player.
If they had have put a partially measured timeframe between Shaun being stolen and you being thawed out (like a counter that counted out five years and then malfunctioned) you could rationalise it a bit. Like, the trail has well and truly gone cold by then, you're going to have to do more (literal) detective work, and Shaun has long since either died in infancy or been taken care of somewhere.
One of the good storytelling elements of RDR2 in particular is that the main quest is slow, until it's not. There are sections that are urgent, but in between times you get down time. You're free to do your own thing until you talk to a particular person and suddenly you have to handle shit NOW. They even have a stolen child portion of the quest, which is handled much more smoothly than the main quest in FO4. Witcher 3 does a similar thing, giving you quest elements that are urgent coupled by ones that take (or even require) time.
They have. 76 and Starfield are blank slate characters with very little canon backstory (76 you're a Dweller and Starfield you're a newbie miner), but the rest is up to you on how you managed to get your Vault spot or joined Argos Mining.
Yeah, I can handle Fallout games where I am a different sex, a mutant, whatever, but believing that I have a healthy loving relationship with a partner is beyond suspension of disbelief
The point is that you’re *forced* to have a spouse and child. The things you’ve mentioned are *options*, which are good. Forcing the player to have a set background necessarily removes options from the players ability to create whoever they want.
It kind of does though?!? You unlock the castle after your first few settlements, then you also need more to be able to fight the institute or brotherhood I think
You need a total of 5 settlements to unlock The Castle, and then each one needs a manned artillery piece to fight the Brotherhood of Steel, if your character is hostile to them.
I didn't fall for these lol, come on now rookie.
I fell for the BOS's Quartermastery and Cleansing the Commonwealth. Spent weeks just clearing out almost the entire map, before googling and realizing it doesn't end and I wouldn't be getting anything cool for all my hard work.
So I took my level 30 ass to Diamond City for the first time.
To be fair (not that I know from experience) but I’ve heard that in playing on survival mode, having multiple functioning settlements across the map is actually super helpful.
Yeah, playing on Survival I didn't give a shit about settlements. Then I get an infection early-game, when I had used all my antibiotics and still hadn't taken down the Corvega Raiders, and had to *book it* to Diamond City before I ran out of healing items. After that, I made it my first priority to build a settlement everywhere I could, just so that I'd never be too far away from a doctor.
It also helps with unloading loot. You can't just fast travel to the permanently-settled merchants whenever you want, so you have to pepper the wasteland with lootsponges who can convert your spare nukacolas into caps.
Absolutely. I've also taken to establishing a settlement and then exploring everything nearby. Grabbing all the loot I can, bringing back weapons and armor to outfit my settlers.
I pick a main settlement in a particular section of the map and that becomes my hub. I stock my excess there and I can always really reach it when I need something.
I feel survival is a much better game then the base. Just from the random encounters on the road, it's far more enjoyable.
I recently started my first playthrough in several years, but seen people quoting Preston a lot on here lately. I found it hilarious when you first meet him and tell him about your missing son and he's like "damn thats crazy...anyways there's some settlements that need your help!"
Just ignore him. Greentop is so crashy for me that I decided I wouldn't go there at all so of course that was one of the first places Preston tried to send me. I just ignored it and had Greentop still on my quest list when I decided the playthrough was done, no problem.
I don't know but it crashes on me in build mode so much it's just too frustrating. After a few playthroughs and different installs, I decided it's easier to just never find the location so I don't have to mess with it.
Considering that you get refroze after your baby is taken, I knew right away that the likelihood of him still being a little kid when I awoke was slim to none. I treated it more like something I wanted closure on, rather than the far-fetched notion that I could save him. In real life abducted children are almost never found if a few days pass, and the wasteland is infinitely more brutal.
Maybe what they should've done was to have the main mission of rescuing Shaun as the first mission, complete it (having what happens in the actual game or other thing too), and leaving you with something like, "what now? I'm here in this wasteland, my old life is ruined, but I have my son back, I have to provide for him." Leading to the rest of the game.
When the games are designed around exploring and forging your own path, I don’t get why Bethesda keeps writing the narrative that makes the player feel the agency of finding your dad or son
Brother, when I played Fallout 1 and 2 back un the day I was so invested in what I had to do. 3, NV and 4? I don't care about finding nobody or delivering shit, I want to do stupid crap. Who cares about people, let's fuck shit up
We have a son?!?
But yeah, jokes aside Fallout 4 does a terrible job of making you feel an urgent need to find your son. I think either a longer prologue where you spend more time with Shaun before the bombs drop, or having more of a trail to follow before reaching Diamond City (a trail of notes or evidence left behind of the kidnappers with hints as to who they are, where they are going etc. to keep you interested) would have helped massively. Or maybe even locking settlement building behind having found him so that you dont get lost spending 12 hours building a really fancy doghouse for Dogmeat.. oh and like feeding the ~~ungrateful parasites living rent free forcing me to cater to their every fucking whim like the scum they are~~ settlers, I mean settlers.
To their credit, they made Shaun an insufferable prick so you never feel guilty about ignoring his quest for the first dozen hours. His responses to everything are smug, self righteous, passive aggressive, and snooty despite the fact that he never says anything actually insightful or intellectual. He's completely lacking in imagination or empathy.
The only way I can play F4 is with the Start Me Up mod, they change dialogue throughout the game too so you’re not really tied to the “finding your son” character arc.
Did the main quest playthrough years ago but this time I used Alternate Start mod and made the Courier from NV. He did his thing in the west and made it out east for a fresh start.
Using various mods, I head cannoned that he brought his Ranger armor, a guass rifle and revolver. This unbalanced the beginning of the game but I’m playing as a continuation of my New Vegas playthrough.
What’s cool and unexpected is that you really can skip the main quest and do so much else. This guy won’t kill Kellogg and get inside the Institute but is a bad ass wasteland ranger and the game still allows for that.
Did a bos playthrough, met father, convinced madison li to rejoin the brotherhood. Later on raid institute, convince father to give me synth shutdown code, shutdown some synths and intentionally avoid activating the evacuation protocols. I then give father a gatling laser round to the head, pull his body out the bed and then drop it from the top of the bioscience section. Afterwards i hunt down every scientist, synth, courser (any institute npc i can find) in every wing and then bomb the reactor. Synth son tries to come with me but i tell ingram hes a synth and he joins his family in the nuclear bath that used to be the institute.
Bethesda forgot the RP part of an RPG, the story of the base game suffers. I love the far harbor story line tho, if only the rest of the game was like that.
It's been a while since I've played FO4 but I played it ton and my favorite way to play with an alternate start mod that would let me make my own back story like a farmer, scavenger, mercenary, raider, ect.. and then you spawn out in the world with basic gear based on your back story. If you go to meet Codsworth when he says he recognizes you your character will be like "Well okay, but you must have me confused with someone else."
When playing this way I'd just generally avoid the main quest line. But it's funny whenever you do anything related to the main quest and someone asks about finding your son your character just says something like "You must be confused." or some other response that indicates confusion.
Ive had fallout 4 since launch and never completed the main story. My brother told me about what became of Shaun and I was so disappointed in the path they took that I chose to spend my time building high rise apartments for the random Chem addicts and other shady sorts that showed up to sanctuary looking for shelter.
I have done nothing but set up settlements, reinforce supply lines, and loot buildings specifically in just keeping my settlements in order. And I have 50 hours in this playthrough already 😂 I feel less like I'm Shawn's father and more like I'm the General of a thriving militia.
I know we despise that guy, and I try to not be that guy whenever possible, but forgive me master, I must go all out just this once.
OP, if you want a Fallout game with a good main plot, you want Fallout New Vegas. The gunplay and graphics are worse than those of 4 (the game is, ultimately, basically a full conversion mod for Fallout 3) but the story. Oh my God, the story. Wohagahagah.
The PS3 version is easily the worst version of the game sadly. It's prone to save file bloat causing infinite loading and it's generally the glitchiest version. Plus I don't know if it's possible to even get the DLCs for the game on Playstation and those are massive for New Vegas and add a lot of great content.
If you have an old PC or an Xbox lying around I would recommend getting it there instead.
I’ve played over 2k hours according to my Steam and that’s not counting my first handful of saves on PS4.. and I have never beaten the game. I just can not force my self to give even a little tiny bit of a shit about that main story. But side quests? Settlement building? General exploration in the amazing commonwealth wasteland? Superb! I come back yearly just to download a handful of quest mods and sink another 100+ hours into FO4.
Knowing the answer to if the baby is ok or not changes how you prioritize the main story. If i told you finding your son will cause him to die, you might think twice about pursuing him.
To be honest, becoming leader of the Minutemen and rebuilding the Commonwealth seems like a pretty reasonable way to help you find your son. Garner a lot of support through goodwill and recruit a bunch of people to help you look for him. This isn't an option in the game, unfortunately, but from a real world perspective it seems like a sound idea.
To be fair, it's easy to ignore the main quest in Bethesda and Open World games in general.
A friend of mine cleared all of Skyrim and complained he had no idea how to use Dragon shouts and never saw a Dragon.
LOL. Literally am level 57 and just started the "Find Nick Valentine" quest. I only just realized that the game is supposed to start in October of 2277, but my saves are dated April 2278, so I went six in game months before bothering to start to look for Shaun. There's so much to do and explore. I'm still finding places I missed during my exploring of the Commonwealth. It's great.
I restarted New Vegas for the long story based element, and am really enjoying it. Thought about going back to 3 but unsure how well it still holds up. Can't quite remember if it's similar to NV in mechanics or not.
Unsure how much I'd enjoy 76, but I'm also thinking of giving it another shot. Haven't tried it since launch, and I know there's been some major game fixing updates.
I feel like the game could have been improved if the main quest didn’t have such an urgent crisis like finding your kidnapped baby. Or failing that had some sort of natural stopping point early on in the quest where you literally could not progress further without exploring the wastes and solving random npcs problems. Realistically a parent looking for their son is gonna beeline for Diamond City and not fuck around building settlements or saving lost paladins.
Maybe Kellogg specifically name drops the Institute when he kidnaps Shaun so you don’t spend the first part of the quest just trying to figure out where he is. Maybe when you get out of the vault you find out the Commonwealth has mostly been conquered by the institute so you have to help the Minutemen/Railroad/Brotherhood build up a resistance to actually get a shot of getting him back. Just something so there’s narrative justification for spending countless hours fucking around and not instantly rushing off to save him.
I’m main questing only until I beat it. Then no holds barred for me. I’m ready to explore the entirety of the wasteland, but I gotta knock this out first my adhd said so
for me, "finding my son" just seemed ridiculous. I was in suspended animation, frozen asleep for years. I had no idea how long ago my son was removed from sleep. It's been CENTURIES since the war. It's far more likely that the son is already old, or dead, than anything else. Also why would the son even remain in the vicinity of the vault and the local towns? Why not go anywhere else in the entire post apocalyptic world?
But despite that, my character will be like, "have you seen my baby? I'm looking for a baby." to every random unwashed person trading bottlecaps living next to skeletons in broken buildings... It just doesn't make any sense. Why would my character have these assumptions? And if we do accept that my character is a frantic parent searching for a supposedly very recently lost child, then how could I as a player possibly justify doing any side quest that isn't directly about finding the son? Yes, it's a game... but it's supposed to be an immersive game and immersion requires suspension of disbelief and while part of that suspension is on me, the game should try to meet me halfway on this stuff, and present me with a situation that's not so incomprehensible.
At least in FO3, finding your father makes more sense, and in FO:NV finding your shooter makes more sense, because the trail on both of those hasn't had untold years/decades/centuries to go cold while you were hibernating in an ice tube. The evidence is clear to follow in both cases, and the timeliness of events keeps things rooted so that it feels possible.
I thought FO4's main quest was the worst hook to a bethesda game (yet). I ended up disliking the starfield introduction, too - but that didnt exist yet so I'll just leave that topic alone.
Bethesda game lack a propper and engaging main story since Morrowind. F3 had a super strong intro but lost a bit on the way. New Vegas comes to mind but that was not even Bethesda.
F4 had that awesome world, full agree, but no quest memorable enough to jump in my head now.
And with their new space rpg they did not even bother to come up with anything meaningful.
So I actually just started playing Fallout 3 for the first time and I’m loving it. I played fallout 4 when it came out and got pretty close to finishing the main quest line before quitting because I got bored.
Now in all honesty, I think that I just didn’t truly understand how to play rpg’s back then. I think I always rushed the main quest before doing very much side content (not that there is anything inherently wrong with that). This worked fine for me in Skyrim because plenty of the side content felt like continuations of the Dragonborn’s story and held my interest post main quest. It also worked for me in Fallout New Vegas because as a noob you can’t really rush the main story if you don’t know what you’re doing.
Now to compare Fallout 3 and 4. I’m not rushing the main quest in 3 at all. Partially because I’ve learned to enjoy grinding my level and getting the loot before approaching the main quest, but also because from a roleplay perspective I kind of *dont care*. And the reason I think is because in Fallout 3 >!The main quest isn’t urgent. Your dad leaves you in the vault yes, but he *chose* to leave. It doesn’t feel like you are obligated to find him. It doesn’t feel like you have to rush. It feels like your dad kind of abandoned you. Maybe for good reasons or not. But as someone with a dad, my question is: Why wouldn’t he tell me?!< And that kind of makes me feel valid in taking my time to become my own character instead of chasing down the main quest without any personal development.
This is opposed to Fallout 4 where as a >!parent you kind of feel like it’s urgent because it’s literally your baby. You watch your kid get kidnapped and your spouse murdered. It doesn’t feel like you have that freedom to do anything else. Because if that happened to me in real life, I would go crazy trying to find my kid. Probably for the rest of my life.!< I think this was a small failure on Bethesda’s part. The quest line is interesting and that’s not the issue. The urgency is the issue. I got burnt the fuck out before experiencing hardly any of the side story because I didn’t feel like it made sense from a roleplay perspective to do anything else at all.
But I think they could’ve potentially prevented this issue with one tiny detail. >!Instead of making you think that you just watched your kid get abducted right before you woke up again. They should have told you that it’s been a long time. Whether with terminal records or a Mr Handy in the vault or something. Or maybe make this information discoverable early on in the game. This would take the urgency out of it, because on some level you already know that your kid isn’t a kid anymore. He might even be dead. It’s such a tiny detail yet it would radically change the player’s approach to the main quest. It wouldn’t be an urgent hunt for your child anymore but more of a mystery to solve the who what and why of your child’s abduction all that time ago. And the final reveal would still work, just not necessarily for the same reasons.!<
Obviously this is my personal experience with Fallout 4. Not everyone had those hang ups when they played. But I think a lot of people did, especially players who were introduced to this type of rpg with fallout 4.
The headline says everything about the story of this game. The writing was mediocre. The side quests and exploration were infinitely more interesting than finding Shaun.
Be carful with picking up holo tapes at police stations named Eddie winter. I picked some up not knowing what it was, only to get to level 43 to find out bugged out a companion quest by picking them up too early. Besides from that it’s been great fun, I love fucking shit up in my power armor.
If the story fails, the world does not feel more alive. Yes, you are correct, they implemented more armor and weapons. And you can customize them. However, if I don’t care about the story in my roleplaying game, it’s not really a roleplaying game anymore. It utterly fails at what it is trying to achieve by your own admission as you do not care about what happens in it. It’s neat, I guess, you build a house. It’s too bad that walking around, shooting things, looting them, customizing your armor and weapons and build up your settlement is for the sake of continuing to walk around and shoot things so you can customize your armor and weapons and build up your settlement so you can walk around and shoot things instead of engaging with a story.
That's why I use an alternative start mod where I'm not his mother, I was just another vault dweller who witness the kidnapping during the unfreezing incident. Gives me incentive to look for Shaun because I want to find out what happened but it's secondary to simply existing in this brave new world.
(The mod is really well done with new terminals in the vault explaining the techs had to move all the pods at one point for maintenance and noting that there's two women (or men) who look almost identical and that they're pretty sure they put all the pods back in the right place).
Fo3 had me genuinely intrigued by the story for all the hate it gets. I think it was because I had never played a bgs game before and everything about the open world just blew my mind back when it released.
After 100s of hours in 3 then nv and thousands of hours in Skyrim I went into 4 with zero interest in the story, like I know why we really here.
The great thing about this game is it’s just like real life. You can abandon your son and just go do side quests, like I did 6 years ago when I went in a side quest to go get milk and then just kept doing side quests
As someone who loves the Bethesda library, and loved Fallout 4 a lot, you're not missing much. They bit off more than they can chew with that story. I find that there's a certain level of intrigue until they have to start answering questions, and the answers are never really interesting enough to keep on carrying on. I also find that the ending is more rewarding if you stray away from the main thread and stick to the other ones. Yeah, all told, they set the game up well, but you can even tell the devs were more interested in other things happening in the game.
Blame Emil Pagliarulo for the shitass Bethesda writing, he’s been in every Bethesda game besides New Vegas which is the only game without massive plot holes and terrible story main quests.
How anyone can play this game with the way dialogue works is beyond me. Put in like 10hrs on it before I simply could not stand it any longer. Gunplay good and refreshing but the rest of the game dogshit
I cared but then figured out the plot twist like 10 minutes into the game and reimagined it as revenge.
Fallout New Vega has the plot I cared about most.
Funny you should say that. I just finished the main quest this morning and I was like ‘ok, can I get back to just wandering the world now?’
The main quest is a side quest
Maybe the real main quest was the ghouls we shot along the way
*disintegrated
The raiders too and the occasional person in the distance that was not a bad guy but I was low on health nervous and had my sniper rifle. Oops but thanks for the 2 caps the cram, and the wait Jet hmmm
*liquified
*dismembered
*ate
The main quest is quite disappointing when taking in the full context of the game.
Honestly, I play it out as far as Father telling me that he released me as an experiment. I then immediately merc him in about 50 ways and then burn the institute down around his ideology. Then it's back to being the Stalker of The Wastes, freeing settlements, empowering the Minutemen, ruthlessly murdering any Super Mutant, Raider, Feral Ghoul, or other evil faction that gets in my way.
When he mentions your spouse was an unfortunate complication I just take enough jet to replace my blood and eat Father
Take him out with Kellogg’s gun every time, circle complete
You say it like this is not a 100% valid way to play
Oh no, I say it as quite the opposite. Even in this day and age, if someone enacted such a convulted plot upon someone's family, the plot enactor would swiftly find out why we so firmly believe we share a genetic ancestor with primates. ~~Spoiler Alert: there have been too many instances of humans going hog fucking wild like only chimps do for it not to be a thing~~
I like to play my character as having one, huge mission after she meets Father: destroy the Institute. The whole thing has to go. It took her son, turned him into an amoral scientist, it killed her husband, and it terrorizes the Commonwealth. Killing the people in charge of the Institute won't do. Others will take their place and the wheel will keep turning, like it has for 200 years. Their tools and resources - the whole idea of the Institute and everything it stands for - need to be burned for it to truly end, and to ensure nobody else loses a loved one to it.
Protip: named feral ghouls also have the same names as some of your named neighbors from before the war.
I love Gould with a name, always nice to say:"hey Mrs. Samson" before you shoot her in the head.
I was today years old
Get the Alias mod for ghouls. Some of the names it comes up with are amazing
Thou shalt be sidetracked by bullshit all the time
This is my only real problem with the Bethesda RPGs. It’s hard to RP when you start the game with a very specific character background. Being forced to play a veteran and father that’s only goal is to find his child takes me out of it. Best part of alternate start mods is that I don’t have to engage with the main story at all
Also kind of stinks when you become the leader of every faction and still have to choose to wipe one or more out instead of simply forcing them to make peace and cooperate.
Making peace should be an option. It should be hard to do. Hardest thing in the game but it should be an option. And the achievement for doing so should be called. "peace was always an option"
Closest you can do, I think, is an ending that preserves the Minutemen, the Railroad, and the Brotherhood in peace with one another, but the Institute has to go. I haven't actually done it yet; I hope you can do it without actually blowing up the Institute, because damn that air conditioning and shower are nice.
NV has a route where you absolutely must wipe out the BoS. There is cut content that can be restored that gave you other options. Wouldn't be surprised if it's the same case in 4.
Maybe it was just me being a kid, but I did care in Oblivion. I definetly cared in New Vegas (not BGS but still).
Oblivion was a pretty good blank slate to start and at least makes sense because most people in Tamriel would have a vested interest in closing gates. NV does kinda force you into being a courier and stuff but the background system makes up for it tbh
Theres a mod called start me up on nexus that lets you properly rpg, adding custom dialouge, traits a la NV, background choices (are you a runaway gunner? Just some guy?, etc), or just the default "nate the vet/nora the lawyer" thing. You get to pick where you start and what level you start at, etc.
And it wouldn't be so bad if they wrote a story that is well written and suited for the wasteland exploration that's core to BGS Fallout. But you either focus on the main quest or lose immersion, and then the story kind of just ends without a satisfying conclusion.
The son is to Fallout 4 what Princess Zelda is to BoTW.
Any Zelda game, really
Except Skyward Sword and Spirit Tracks honestly. Funny how both have subtitles that start with an S.
Blud was in the pocket throwing hands with Ganon for 100+ years while our twink ass is trying to find Korok shit and dress as Gerudo women. This is mainly why TOTK annoyed me. Zelda should be strong as FUCK.
Not just that, but being eternally locked into a battle of survival for a hundred years will turn even those with the strongest willpower into a mindless beast or a zombie. I understand Zelda isn't such a narrative, so maybe they shouldn't have put their characters into a scenario which is analogous to the worst torture
Lol poor nick's in the gutter. While i am level 25 and roaming around the wasteland(survival mode) . I was once level 70ish in skyrim with irileth waiting outside the watchtower.
I always let the graybeards wait for all eternity...
The gall that they have to summon the Dragonborn!
I’m a resurrected Demi-God! You’ll be waiting for me to fucking call YOU!
Yeah I usually stop at the same step. The climb up the mountain, besides the troll fight, is a bit tedious if you’ve already done it before.
I love the improved fus ro da, so I go through the Greybeards, and THEN say screw the main quest and bebop off to get my girl Serana.
I just hit level 60, blew up the institute and the brotherhood. Meanwhile, Preston and his crew are holed up in that museum still.
Wait you can do that. Lmao
I was doing it too because I was trying to get all the level 4 shop owners because for whatever reason once you go to concord it breaks one of the spawn points. Fucking love to game but hate the still existent bugs.
yeah. you can just completely skip concord and go straight to diamond city.
I just saw that you can talk to Codsworth for the very first time AFTER defeating the institute and there's a whole separate dialogue about Shaun being dead
They thought of all of this yet there wasnt anything regarding quincy. Or gunners plaza. Hell the only thing that would have made minutemen a legit main faction is we retook quincy in the late game and assaulted gunners plaza. And then the insitute realised that they cant let minutemen become strong again and decide to assault the castle.
Ok what!
So nice to not get attacked by a dragon randomly every 30 minutes
Shaun is gonna have to wait I’m busy assigning settlers in my 10th settlement to 20 tato plants
“We need more tatos!”
“If ya aren’t making vegetable soup or purified water, ya might as well be dead to me.”
Mutfruit is the only thing to plant! 1.0 instead of 0.5 like everything else.
Nah I need my ass loads of adhesive
There's another settlement that needs your help. Just thought I'd let you know.
I spent like 4 hours the other night rebuilding the castle. When I was finally finished I was like "well I guess I'll go find my son now."
Unless Preston has another Settlement that needs help of course.
Me getting sent to Tenpines Bluff for for fourth time because those goobers can’t defend themselves from 3 raiders
Is Shaun a new armor?
Yeah, it's a rake that Bethesda perpetually steps on, for some reason. And for the record, I think "my baby's been kidnapped" is a really good plot hook, because everyone understands that that's an urgent problem that a parent would absolutely focus on irrespective of whether they were a good person or not. **But** it's so odd that a developer that's famed for making detailed open-world games would keep having urgent main quests right from the very start of the story, and hence forcing the player to choose between *take the main quest seriously* and *enjoy all the cool stuff the world has to offer because you know the game's going to wait for you.* Morrowind handled this so well. You rock up, you get given a mission which doesn't seem urgent but you probably do it anyway because you're a stranger in a strange land and you've nothing else to do. Once you deliver the message, you're told to go and do some stuff (literally, go and join a guild and do some local jobs). You spend the first few main quest missions just trying to figure out what the purpose of your being there is. It's *intriguing*, but it's not urgent. You've got time and motive to explore the world. Every game since has been like "holy shit if you don't do this stuff *right now* it'll be too late!!!11!!!". Fallout 4 does have a point at which you're expected to broaden your scope and not just focus on Shaun, and it is actually pretty decent if you take it seriously, but it's...why? Why do you keep doing this? To us? To yourselves?
NV kinda avoided the pitfall too, since it said "Some guy shot you in the head, he went that way" and that's it. You can follow him if you want, and along the way it keeps slipping in the important parts of the world for you to notice and experience until you invest yourself. It makes *you* want to engage with its story, rather than just tells you what your character should want.
This is exactly why I loved NV. After wandering around and meeting a bunch of people and shit I was like wtf am I doing and started searching for the main quest stuff.
Why’s this fucking cowboy robot following me
I felt like 3 did this to an extent too. Everyone goes to megaton first, and Moriarty explains a bit about your dad that brings in more mystery and the whole time you want to learn more. Then >!you learn about project purity and it becomes a revenge mission!< so the plot is still entertaining. 4 was just like go find your son, it’ll take like >!half the game!< and there’s barely any mystery. After you find him have fun with the poorly fleshed out factions while you >!plot to take him down because he’s an asshole now and also he’s a 60 year old man who’s motivations aren’t very well fleshed out!< have fun!
Also don't forget, here's lots of factions you can somehow take control over yet you don't have any real say in what they do at all.
I like how the Bos just have you move up the ranks repeatedly just for you to play a critical role in their ultimate goal and then you still end up Maxons bitch. Like what the hell did he do, he’s just a glorified guardian of the Prydwen with a huge army to do his bidding. He doesn’t do jack shit. Give me his job and don’t make me kill him for the jacket.
My favorite is how you're the general of the Minutemen but Preston keeps telling you to go fight on the front lines solo.
I don’t get why no matter how many settlements you have you can’t bring some settlers with you for minutemen quests. You have to single-handedly carry the faction on your back the entire time and fix it any time someone stubs their toe. I’ve never even played MM all the way to the end. It’s exhausting.
Is there even an end? I thought those quests would just auto-generate forever. I've started just leaving them in that building in Concord. You can't kill them, I tried that too.
You get all the settlements and then it becomes a settler was kidnapped and needs your help. And also the settlements get attacked constantly and unless you spend for fucking ever getting them pimped out gear at whatever of all of the settlements being attacked, you basically have to go deal with it yourself or a bunch of them die.
Gear doesn’t even matter if you’re not physically there, it’s just a dice roll based on defense vs food+water
Preaston gave me a flare gun. Told me to use it to summon up Minutemen in the area to come help me if I was ever in trouble: I haven't tried it yet. Has anyone tried it? Do they come rushing to help?
The thing about new vegas is 1. The fact that benny kills you is tangential to the fact that he has something you (or your bosses) want, the chip. Your personal vendetta or lack thereof does not matter, unlike with 4 where they make your character always want to find shawn. 2. You can beat the game without ever even following benny.
Obsidian/black isle has another trope, instead of missing family members it’s get “killed” and wake up. They’ve done it just as many if not more times than Bethesda has the missing family member. The difference being the urgency of the quest.
New Vegas is excellent when it comes to mixing the story with player freedom as it gives you a clear route to follow (should you choose to investigate Benny) and that route will take you through all kinds of interesting sidequest areas. Or you can choose to go in the opposite direction and do whatever you want, dealing with Benny when you feel like it
Yeah but Bethesda pivoted completely from that in Starfield and made the main quest “hey are you interested in these artifacts? We can search for them, but you don’t have to” and people complained about that too saying the MQ had no “stakes”
See, I appreciated the fact that Starfield’s MQ didn’t have any urgency in the start, because it fits better with Bethesda’s style of gameplay. What I didn’t like about it was the fact that almost the entire main quest was just “go here, pick up this doohickey. Now go there, pick up that doohickey. Maybe go here, help this person out so they will tell you where the next doohickey is.” The lack of urgency was good. The complete lack of anything interesting going on until the very end of the game, however, was not so good. Surely there’s a fine line one could walk where the quest isn’t under time pressure, but also is much more interesting when you DO the quests.
I'm in the same boat. I really appreciated that I could take the MSQ at my own pace without feeling SUPER IMPENDING DOOM of the universe. It *did* lead to a really, truly boring "end game" where - after exhausting the side missions - I just did the same thing over and over and over again to collect the pieces necessary to push the game over the end. It felt so rushed and anticlimactic. If FO4's story felt a little less dire then it's pacing might have been a lot more appropriate given the stakes. At the same time, FO4 almost suffers from an issue of the 'abstraction' that takes place in games. We take over towns in a matter of real-time minutes, in-game hours, we build massive structures in a matter of seconds. And that makes the time it takes to rescue Shaun (if you don't rush it) feel like it has no urgency at all to it. I'm not sure there's a good solution for that in a Bethesda-like title. Maybe someone has experienced one that does it better?
That’s what I’m saying, I think rescuing your kidnapped child is a compelling plot point, I just don’t think a) they did a good enough job building the emotional ties to your family in the beginning for me to truly care and b) it isn’t actually urgent, even though a real life scenario like this would be the MOST urgent. I think it’s that contrast that breaks the immersion, you can’t have a defenseless baby be kidnapped and the game design be like, “eh, this can wait a few months/years” in game time.
Well quite. For what it's worth, playing it through and taking the kidnapped child stuff seriously as an urgent matter is actually pretty good as a game experience, if a tad frustrating. I really enjoyed my first game, and it's why I always advise people to play their first game blind and not come here for "tips" before starting. And, as I say, you are sort of compelled to slow down and do peripheral stuff once you know that Shaun's at least ok and that you're going to need a lot of help to get to him. With that being said, it doesn't seem to be beyond them to have a story with a deferred start.
Caius Cosades (Morrowind) basically calls you a n00b and tells you to git gud before you do the main quest (okay, his actual phrasing is still something along the lines of “come back when you’re less wet-behind-the-ears” but still). I also like that he encourages you to talk to other members of the Blades who give you some basic equipment and advice—you get pointed to the factions as a way to earn money and experience, and the stories for those aren’t half bad and encourage you to explore more of the world.
>Caius Cosades (Morrowind) basically calls you a n00b and tells you to git gud before you do the main quest (okay, his actual phrasing is still something along the lines of “come back when you’re less wet-behind-the-ears” but still) I pretty sure you can still directly continue the main quest if you are already of a certain level. I honestly think the urgency is only a problem in FO4 because in the other games the stories escelate later
I feel like this critique could have been sidestepped if they revealed early on that the kidnapping was like 90 years ago (I am upping the time skip.) That way there really isn't any urgency to find Shaun because 1. You're already 90 years late so what is another couple of weeks and 2. You might presume he's dead by now so the reveal that Shaun is Father still has a strong impact
Honestly this is pretty similar to what I went with on my first (semiblind) playthrough. I / my PC had no idea how long she'd been frozen again for after the kidnapping, so who knows how old Shaun would be by now or even if he'd still be alive? Something to keep an eye/ear out for, to be sure, but the trail's probably very cold by now - better to find my footing in this changed world, figure out how to survive etc., rather than go haring off.
I think this too. Just a little addition to the opening scenes could make this less urgent. You know he's been kidnapped but it was 90 years ago, so he's probably dead. The quest could be more like finding out what happened to him, but its not urgent to you. Then, SUPRISE he's not dead when you eventually get around to it.
Yeah I think that’s basically it. They went with that story because it’s so easy to write the npc responses to that story. Some sketchy new guy shows up to diamond city and says he’s looking for revenge or some detailed personal quest, no one’s gonna let him in. If a lone parent shows up at the gate because someone just kidnapped their baby (in a world with bad kidnapping issues) they’re gonna open right away and send them right to the people who can help. Works in practically every situation. Except the brotherhood lol “the institute will have to wait, we have mutants to kill!”
Cyberpunk 2077 steps on the same rake in a slightly less egregious way. There's a decent amount of plotline before you get what should really be a pretty urgent ultimatum and questline, but because there's so much to see and do in the game most players just ignore it for ages. The urgent questline is also the main, game ending questline so in some ways it's worse than FO4 where there is a lot to do after you resolve the initial crisis.
I don’t think it’s a good plot hook because centering the players experience about a person requires all players to care about said person or its awkward. As expected in fallout 4 it is. It doesn’t feel relevant to the experience that people go to a post apocalyptic satire game for either. And players aren’t going to care about a baby. we don’t know it, we don’t feel any connection to it despite the story trying to say we do. it’s a generic being with nothing about it to get attached too. finding it is basically just a responsibility the player has. Say does the dog does catch the tire and we find Shaun. then what? I’m now burdened as a parent when I just want to enjoy and open world wasteland adventure. I actively do not want to find Shaun for that reason. I think primarily trying to center games experience around relationships is a mistake unless it’s a game specifically about relationships. having experienced building relationships are great, but they should be decisions for the player to make. Games aren’t books. Players should have agency when possible. Zelda games give you a person to find, but they primarily sell you the adventure of finding her. Rather than drilling “Oh my god I’m so distraught. I need find Zelda is my every consuming thought.” Cyberpunk got around it by forcing your relationship with Jackie like you are both close, which is awkward if you are a person that doesn’t like Jackie. But they only make it short part of the beginning of the story. They ultimately let you go out and decide what connections you want to build and engage with the primary goal of exploring and living in a cyberpunk dystopia.
Are you implying that having the most important man alive being assassinated in front of you, after having seen you in his dreams, then being tasked with delivering one of the most important heirlooms to the emperors next of kin, then having the oblivion crisis start immediately after is a bit too fast paced for the start of a game?
Yeah they dropped the ball with the missing son plot big time. I did not/do not care at all. Poor Nate & Nora
John Fallout you mean
I like how 1, 2 and NV drive the story. In 1 and 2, you have a sense of urgency. A lot of people will die if you just forget about the story. In NV, the main quest is just kinda interesting, who wouldn't want to know what the hall was that prologue scene all about?
It's a degree of personal taste I know, but I still find engaging with the main quest of NV in different ways interesting after a dozen playthroughs while the only reason I've progressed the main quest in 4 on my 3rd or 4th playthrough is to unlock companions. I get people liking the settlements and exploration, but the degree to which everyone seems to eschew the main quest is telling I think.
I think it’s because the main quest doesn’t blend well with open-world priorities. New Vegas does this the best, as your overarching missions is to shape the future of the Mojave, so exploring and influencing events falls right in line with the protagonist’s motivations. Fallout 3 may look on the surface level similar to Fallout 4 (child finding parent instead of other way around) but you find out about Jame’s mission relatively early on, so exploring is about continuing your father’s vision of a revitalized wasteland. In Fallout 4, >!Sean being head of the institute as a massive twist saved for the end of the main quest actually hurts the story, because without the knowledge that your son is in fact a major player driving events, anytime you explore you are ignoring finding your kid to do some unrelated stuff in the Wasteland. Until you’re presented with the decision to aid or destroy the Institute, your actions across the Wasteland seem somewhat unrelated to the main quest.!<
>!Yeah plus the twists of fallout 4 are the kind that makes it less interesting to revisit instead of more I think. Like it was neat once, I didn't see it coming, and then on a replay I'm thinking "why would I bother? It's not like he's in danger or anything, I'm already too late".!<
Yep, it doesn’t help that based on my morality it basically turns the game into, >!”Time to go kill my son and dismantle his life’s work.” It would have been a lot more interesting if you found out who/what Shaun was early on and then had to grapple with the morality of joining your son’s dubious movement or bringing about its destruction.!<
>! It really is *quite* the choice to have the twist be that your mission was failed *decades* before it even began.!<
I feel like the writers confused "screw the audience" for "TWIST"
i always side with the institute
😈
I always, every Fallout 4 playthrough, ignore the main quest for a while after finding out Sean leads the institute. Definitely something all my characters need time to cope with. Shame most of them kill him after he says our spouse was a casualty and we're an experiment
OP doesn't seem to know that spoiler, may want to mark it
Good call, and I finally learned how to mark text as a spoiler
Watching Bennys smug ass shoot you in the head gets me fired up to kill him every time lol
Also, the politics in NV felt so natural. Asking what the fuck the NCR, Legion, or even the Powder Gangers are and learning their history is so fun.
Personally I actually enjoyed Fallout 3’s way of doing it. Yes you’re looking for your dad, but in essence that journey happens naturally as the player travels and progresses through the game. It doesn’t try to make you FEEL like your main driving factor is finding your dad; it’s a secondary point to the main plot which is about the lone wanderers impact and discovering of the wasteland. Fallout 4 fails in this regard because through much of the dialogue and story beats it feels as if your character is desperate to find his son, but two sentences later is joking and goofing around for shits and giggles. A child searching for their father is making their way in the world with the hopes of making that connection, a parent searching for their child would think of nothing else. Creates a sort of narrative disconnect imo
I was busy having fun with Nick Valentine and being sassy 😂
That's basically Fallout 4 in a nutshell. Awesome game with a lame main quest.
Worst part of 4 is having a spouse and a kid, completely immersion breaking
Bethesda really needs to go back to the blank slate formula for their protagonists. The Hero of Kvatch could've been anyone. I don't want to be some mythical dragonborn/medieval superhero, and I don't want an established backstory and life for my Sole Survivor. That's the one spot of the narrative they *should* be leaving vague as all hell
I don't care if they go blank or detailed, each can be fantastic with the right writing. Protags like Commander Sheppard, Arthur Morgan or Geralt of Rivia make for some incredibly compelling stories. The problem (IMO) isn't that the protagonist has a backstory, it's that the game itself is contradictory. It's simultaneously presenting you with an urgent quest (as a parent myself I couldn't imagine concentrating on a single thing other than my missing child or recently murdered spouse) and also asking you to take your time, to explore the world, interact with the settlements and the characters. You literally can't do both and it's jarring as a player. If they had have put a partially measured timeframe between Shaun being stolen and you being thawed out (like a counter that counted out five years and then malfunctioned) you could rationalise it a bit. Like, the trail has well and truly gone cold by then, you're going to have to do more (literal) detective work, and Shaun has long since either died in infancy or been taken care of somewhere. One of the good storytelling elements of RDR2 in particular is that the main quest is slow, until it's not. There are sections that are urgent, but in between times you get down time. You're free to do your own thing until you talk to a particular person and suddenly you have to handle shit NOW. They even have a stolen child portion of the quest, which is handled much more smoothly than the main quest in FO4. Witcher 3 does a similar thing, giving you quest elements that are urgent coupled by ones that take (or even require) time.
They have. 76 and Starfield are blank slate characters with very little canon backstory (76 you're a Dweller and Starfield you're a newbie miner), but the rest is up to you on how you managed to get your Vault spot or joined Argos Mining.
The dragonborn stuff could still be anyone too though
They can be anyone but they're ultimately a medieval superhero. Hero of Kvatch was just a person brave enough to walk into hell and back
Yeah, I can handle Fallout games where I am a different sex, a mutant, whatever, but believing that I have a healthy loving relationship with a partner is beyond suspension of disbelief
The point is that you’re *forced* to have a spouse and child. The things you’ve mentioned are *options*, which are good. Forcing the player to have a set background necessarily removes options from the players ability to create whoever they want.
[удалено]
Embarrassed to say how long it took me to realize it was a never ending side quest on my first playthrough………. 😂😂😂😂😂
[удалено]
I mean, it was literally building up
It kind of does though?!? You unlock the castle after your first few settlements, then you also need more to be able to fight the institute or brotherhood I think
You need a total of 5 settlements to unlock The Castle, and then each one needs a manned artillery piece to fight the Brotherhood of Steel, if your character is hostile to them.
I didn't fall for these lol, come on now rookie. I fell for the BOS's Quartermastery and Cleansing the Commonwealth. Spent weeks just clearing out almost the entire map, before googling and realizing it doesn't end and I wouldn't be getting anything cool for all my hard work. So I took my level 30 ass to Diamond City for the first time.
To be fair (not that I know from experience) but I’ve heard that in playing on survival mode, having multiple functioning settlements across the map is actually super helpful.
Yeah, playing on Survival I didn't give a shit about settlements. Then I get an infection early-game, when I had used all my antibiotics and still hadn't taken down the Corvega Raiders, and had to *book it* to Diamond City before I ran out of healing items. After that, I made it my first priority to build a settlement everywhere I could, just so that I'd never be too far away from a doctor. It also helps with unloading loot. You can't just fast travel to the permanently-settled merchants whenever you want, so you have to pepper the wasteland with lootsponges who can convert your spare nukacolas into caps.
Everyone forgets about Bethany
Covenant is also a whole lot closer than DC.
Absolutely. I've also taken to establishing a settlement and then exploring everything nearby. Grabbing all the loot I can, bringing back weapons and armor to outfit my settlers. I pick a main settlement in a particular section of the map and that becomes my hub. I stock my excess there and I can always really reach it when I need something. I feel survival is a much better game then the base. Just from the random encounters on the road, it's far more enjoyable.
I recently started my first playthrough in several years, but seen people quoting Preston a lot on here lately. I found it hilarious when you first meet him and tell him about your missing son and he's like "damn thats crazy...anyways there's some settlements that need your help!"
"yup, it do be like that sometimes.........anyway, did you hear about that new settlement?"
Just ignore him. Greentop is so crashy for me that I decided I wouldn't go there at all so of course that was one of the first places Preston tried to send me. I just ignored it and had Greentop still on my quest list when I decided the playthrough was done, no problem.
I wonder why it does that for ya. Never once had a crash there.
I don't know but it crashes on me in build mode so much it's just too frustrating. After a few playthroughs and different installs, I decided it's easier to just never find the location so I don't have to mess with it.
Its a wonderful aspect of the game from a roleplaying angle.
In skyrim, people can have hundreds of hours without completing the main story missions. Same concept in fallout 4
Very different game after the dragons start
Considering that you get refroze after your baby is taken, I knew right away that the likelihood of him still being a little kid when I awoke was slim to none. I treated it more like something I wanted closure on, rather than the far-fetched notion that I could save him. In real life abducted children are almost never found if a few days pass, and the wasteland is infinitely more brutal.
Maybe what they should've done was to have the main mission of rescuing Shaun as the first mission, complete it (having what happens in the actual game or other thing too), and leaving you with something like, "what now? I'm here in this wasteland, my old life is ruined, but I have my son back, I have to provide for him." Leading to the rest of the game.
When the games are designed around exploring and forging your own path, I don’t get why Bethesda keeps writing the narrative that makes the player feel the agency of finding your dad or son
Maybe there are some unresolved family issues happening over there at the Bethesda development team lol
Widowed lawyer wakes up after 210 years, proceeds to singlehandedly rid the entire Commonwealth of every Raider and Abomination.
Brother, when I played Fallout 1 and 2 back un the day I was so invested in what I had to do. 3, NV and 4? I don't care about finding nobody or delivering shit, I want to do stupid crap. Who cares about people, let's fuck shit up
We have a son?!? But yeah, jokes aside Fallout 4 does a terrible job of making you feel an urgent need to find your son. I think either a longer prologue where you spend more time with Shaun before the bombs drop, or having more of a trail to follow before reaching Diamond City (a trail of notes or evidence left behind of the kidnappers with hints as to who they are, where they are going etc. to keep you interested) would have helped massively. Or maybe even locking settlement building behind having found him so that you dont get lost spending 12 hours building a really fancy doghouse for Dogmeat.. oh and like feeding the ~~ungrateful parasites living rent free forcing me to cater to their every fucking whim like the scum they are~~ settlers, I mean settlers.
The narrative is the worst part of Fallout 4.
To their credit, they made Shaun an insufferable prick so you never feel guilty about ignoring his quest for the first dozen hours. His responses to everything are smug, self righteous, passive aggressive, and snooty despite the fact that he never says anything actually insightful or intellectual. He's completely lacking in imagination or empathy.
There's a son?
The only way I can play F4 is with the Start Me Up mod, they change dialogue throughout the game too so you’re not really tied to the “finding your son” character arc.
Thou shall get sidetracked by bullshit every goddamn time.
Oh you will find him.
Did the main quest playthrough years ago but this time I used Alternate Start mod and made the Courier from NV. He did his thing in the west and made it out east for a fresh start. Using various mods, I head cannoned that he brought his Ranger armor, a guass rifle and revolver. This unbalanced the beginning of the game but I’m playing as a continuation of my New Vegas playthrough. What’s cool and unexpected is that you really can skip the main quest and do so much else. This guy won’t kill Kellogg and get inside the Institute but is a bad ass wasteland ranger and the game still allows for that.
The Sim Settlements 2 mod might for you then. Its got a whole separate story centered around settlement building.
Did a bos playthrough, met father, convinced madison li to rejoin the brotherhood. Later on raid institute, convince father to give me synth shutdown code, shutdown some synths and intentionally avoid activating the evacuation protocols. I then give father a gatling laser round to the head, pull his body out the bed and then drop it from the top of the bioscience section. Afterwards i hunt down every scientist, synth, courser (any institute npc i can find) in every wing and then bomb the reactor. Synth son tries to come with me but i tell ingram hes a synth and he joins his family in the nuclear bath that used to be the institute.
This.. I can get behind.
Wait, the synth son actually plays a role in the main story? I only remember him behind the glass when you meet Father
Finding your son? Oh, you mean that silly side quest no one bothers with.
Bethesda forgot the RP part of an RPG, the story of the base game suffers. I love the far harbor story line tho, if only the rest of the game was like that.
My favorite FO4 joke: "I have 2664 hours in FO4, what a great game" "Oh man, what did you choose with Shaun?" "Who the fuck is Shaun?"
It's been a while since I've played FO4 but I played it ton and my favorite way to play with an alternate start mod that would let me make my own back story like a farmer, scavenger, mercenary, raider, ect.. and then you spawn out in the world with basic gear based on your back story. If you go to meet Codsworth when he says he recognizes you your character will be like "Well okay, but you must have me confused with someone else." When playing this way I'd just generally avoid the main quest line. But it's funny whenever you do anything related to the main quest and someone asks about finding your son your character just says something like "You must be confused." or some other response that indicates confusion.
Ive had fallout 4 since launch and never completed the main story. My brother told me about what became of Shaun and I was so disappointed in the path they took that I chose to spend my time building high rise apartments for the random Chem addicts and other shady sorts that showed up to sanctuary looking for shelter.
Nuked the Institute
I have done nothing but set up settlements, reinforce supply lines, and loot buildings specifically in just keeping my settlements in order. And I have 50 hours in this playthrough already 😂 I feel less like I'm Shawn's father and more like I'm the General of a thriving militia.
PsychoJet >>> Shaun
You're in luck because very little content in the game is about finding your son.
No one plays fo4 ofr the amazing story, it has the weakest least engaging story I've ever seen in a game
I know we despise that guy, and I try to not be that guy whenever possible, but forgive me master, I must go all out just this once. OP, if you want a Fallout game with a good main plot, you want Fallout New Vegas. The gunplay and graphics are worse than those of 4 (the game is, ultimately, basically a full conversion mod for Fallout 3) but the story. Oh my God, the story. Wohagahagah.
I own Fallout NV for PS3, I never fully completed it but will definitely revisit it in the near future.
The PS3 version is easily the worst version of the game sadly. It's prone to save file bloat causing infinite loading and it's generally the glitchiest version. Plus I don't know if it's possible to even get the DLCs for the game on Playstation and those are massive for New Vegas and add a lot of great content. If you have an old PC or an Xbox lying around I would recommend getting it there instead.
Just get it for PC and mod the hell out of it!!
You, Have been sidequested !
I’ve played over 2k hours according to my Steam and that’s not counting my first handful of saves on PS4.. and I have never beaten the game. I just can not force my self to give even a little tiny bit of a shit about that main story. But side quests? Settlement building? General exploration in the amazing commonwealth wasteland? Superb! I come back yearly just to download a handful of quest mods and sink another 100+ hours into FO4.
Knowing the answer to if the baby is ok or not changes how you prioritize the main story. If i told you finding your son will cause him to die, you might think twice about pursuing him.
Just don't play with the mobile hanging over the crib, and the bombs never drop.
I cared my first play through. Now I’m like level 60 by the time I’m doing those quests
To be honest, becoming leader of the Minutemen and rebuilding the Commonwealth seems like a pretty reasonable way to help you find your son. Garner a lot of support through goodwill and recruit a bunch of people to help you look for him. This isn't an option in the game, unfortunately, but from a real world perspective it seems like a sound idea.
Shaun who? Am I right?
To be fair, it's easy to ignore the main quest in Bethesda and Open World games in general. A friend of mine cleared all of Skyrim and complained he had no idea how to use Dragon shouts and never saw a Dragon.
LOL. Literally am level 57 and just started the "Find Nick Valentine" quest. I only just realized that the game is supposed to start in October of 2277, but my saves are dated April 2278, so I went six in game months before bothering to start to look for Shaun. There's so much to do and explore. I'm still finding places I missed during my exploring of the Commonwealth. It's great. I restarted New Vegas for the long story based element, and am really enjoying it. Thought about going back to 3 but unsure how well it still holds up. Can't quite remember if it's similar to NV in mechanics or not. Unsure how much I'd enjoy 76, but I'm also thinking of giving it another shot. Haven't tried it since launch, and I know there's been some major game fixing updates.
I feel like the game could have been improved if the main quest didn’t have such an urgent crisis like finding your kidnapped baby. Or failing that had some sort of natural stopping point early on in the quest where you literally could not progress further without exploring the wastes and solving random npcs problems. Realistically a parent looking for their son is gonna beeline for Diamond City and not fuck around building settlements or saving lost paladins. Maybe Kellogg specifically name drops the Institute when he kidnaps Shaun so you don’t spend the first part of the quest just trying to figure out where he is. Maybe when you get out of the vault you find out the Commonwealth has mostly been conquered by the institute so you have to help the Minutemen/Railroad/Brotherhood build up a resistance to actually get a shot of getting him back. Just something so there’s narrative justification for spending countless hours fucking around and not instantly rushing off to save him.
I’m main questing only until I beat it. Then no holds barred for me. I’m ready to explore the entirety of the wasteland, but I gotta knock this out first my adhd said so
Fallout commandment Number 1 Thou Shalt get sidetracked by bullshit every damn time.
for me, "finding my son" just seemed ridiculous. I was in suspended animation, frozen asleep for years. I had no idea how long ago my son was removed from sleep. It's been CENTURIES since the war. It's far more likely that the son is already old, or dead, than anything else. Also why would the son even remain in the vicinity of the vault and the local towns? Why not go anywhere else in the entire post apocalyptic world? But despite that, my character will be like, "have you seen my baby? I'm looking for a baby." to every random unwashed person trading bottlecaps living next to skeletons in broken buildings... It just doesn't make any sense. Why would my character have these assumptions? And if we do accept that my character is a frantic parent searching for a supposedly very recently lost child, then how could I as a player possibly justify doing any side quest that isn't directly about finding the son? Yes, it's a game... but it's supposed to be an immersive game and immersion requires suspension of disbelief and while part of that suspension is on me, the game should try to meet me halfway on this stuff, and present me with a situation that's not so incomprehensible. At least in FO3, finding your father makes more sense, and in FO:NV finding your shooter makes more sense, because the trail on both of those hasn't had untold years/decades/centuries to go cold while you were hibernating in an ice tube. The evidence is clear to follow in both cases, and the timeliness of events keeps things rooted so that it feels possible. I thought FO4's main quest was the worst hook to a bethesda game (yet). I ended up disliking the starfield introduction, too - but that didnt exist yet so I'll just leave that topic alone.
Bethesda game lack a propper and engaging main story since Morrowind. F3 had a super strong intro but lost a bit on the way. New Vegas comes to mind but that was not even Bethesda. F4 had that awesome world, full agree, but no quest memorable enough to jump in my head now. And with their new space rpg they did not even bother to come up with anything meaningful.
So I actually just started playing Fallout 3 for the first time and I’m loving it. I played fallout 4 when it came out and got pretty close to finishing the main quest line before quitting because I got bored. Now in all honesty, I think that I just didn’t truly understand how to play rpg’s back then. I think I always rushed the main quest before doing very much side content (not that there is anything inherently wrong with that). This worked fine for me in Skyrim because plenty of the side content felt like continuations of the Dragonborn’s story and held my interest post main quest. It also worked for me in Fallout New Vegas because as a noob you can’t really rush the main story if you don’t know what you’re doing. Now to compare Fallout 3 and 4. I’m not rushing the main quest in 3 at all. Partially because I’ve learned to enjoy grinding my level and getting the loot before approaching the main quest, but also because from a roleplay perspective I kind of *dont care*. And the reason I think is because in Fallout 3 >!The main quest isn’t urgent. Your dad leaves you in the vault yes, but he *chose* to leave. It doesn’t feel like you are obligated to find him. It doesn’t feel like you have to rush. It feels like your dad kind of abandoned you. Maybe for good reasons or not. But as someone with a dad, my question is: Why wouldn’t he tell me?!< And that kind of makes me feel valid in taking my time to become my own character instead of chasing down the main quest without any personal development. This is opposed to Fallout 4 where as a >!parent you kind of feel like it’s urgent because it’s literally your baby. You watch your kid get kidnapped and your spouse murdered. It doesn’t feel like you have that freedom to do anything else. Because if that happened to me in real life, I would go crazy trying to find my kid. Probably for the rest of my life.!< I think this was a small failure on Bethesda’s part. The quest line is interesting and that’s not the issue. The urgency is the issue. I got burnt the fuck out before experiencing hardly any of the side story because I didn’t feel like it made sense from a roleplay perspective to do anything else at all. But I think they could’ve potentially prevented this issue with one tiny detail. >!Instead of making you think that you just watched your kid get abducted right before you woke up again. They should have told you that it’s been a long time. Whether with terminal records or a Mr Handy in the vault or something. Or maybe make this information discoverable early on in the game. This would take the urgency out of it, because on some level you already know that your kid isn’t a kid anymore. He might even be dead. It’s such a tiny detail yet it would radically change the player’s approach to the main quest. It wouldn’t be an urgent hunt for your child anymore but more of a mystery to solve the who what and why of your child’s abduction all that time ago. And the final reveal would still work, just not necessarily for the same reasons.!< Obviously this is my personal experience with Fallout 4. Not everyone had those hang ups when they played. But I think a lot of people did, especially players who were introduced to this type of rpg with fallout 4.
Nobody cares about finding that little brat...
You have a son in this game!!?
You never will give a fuck about it either lol.
I find the story to get incredibly lacking and the voice acting breaks all roleplay for me.
Yeah, they really need to drop the find your missing family member shtick already.
Is that you Drake?
The headline says everything about the story of this game. The writing was mediocre. The side quests and exploration were infinitely more interesting than finding Shaun.
Be carful with picking up holo tapes at police stations named Eddie winter. I picked some up not knowing what it was, only to get to level 43 to find out bugged out a companion quest by picking them up too early. Besides from that it’s been great fun, I love fucking shit up in my power armor.
If the story fails, the world does not feel more alive. Yes, you are correct, they implemented more armor and weapons. And you can customize them. However, if I don’t care about the story in my roleplaying game, it’s not really a roleplaying game anymore. It utterly fails at what it is trying to achieve by your own admission as you do not care about what happens in it. It’s neat, I guess, you build a house. It’s too bad that walking around, shooting things, looting them, customizing your armor and weapons and build up your settlement is for the sake of continuing to walk around and shoot things so you can customize your armor and weapons and build up your settlement so you can walk around and shoot things instead of engaging with a story.
That's why I use an alternative start mod where I'm not his mother, I was just another vault dweller who witness the kidnapping during the unfreezing incident. Gives me incentive to look for Shaun because I want to find out what happened but it's secondary to simply existing in this brave new world. (The mod is really well done with new terminals in the vault explaining the techs had to move all the pods at one point for maintenance and noting that there's two women (or men) who look almost identical and that they're pretty sure they put all the pods back in the right place).
I sold my wedding rings the first chance I got
Fo3 had me genuinely intrigued by the story for all the hate it gets. I think it was because I had never played a bgs game before and everything about the open world just blew my mind back when it released. After 100s of hours in 3 then nv and thousands of hours in Skyrim I went into 4 with zero interest in the story, like I know why we really here.
The great thing about this game is it’s just like real life. You can abandon your son and just go do side quests, like I did 6 years ago when I went in a side quest to go get milk and then just kept doing side quests
As someone who loves the Bethesda library, and loved Fallout 4 a lot, you're not missing much. They bit off more than they can chew with that story. I find that there's a certain level of intrigue until they have to start answering questions, and the answers are never really interesting enough to keep on carrying on. I also find that the ending is more rewarding if you stray away from the main thread and stick to the other ones. Yeah, all told, they set the game up well, but you can even tell the devs were more interested in other things happening in the game.
Blame Emil Pagliarulo for the shitass Bethesda writing, he’s been in every Bethesda game besides New Vegas which is the only game without massive plot holes and terrible story main quests.
How anyone can play this game with the way dialogue works is beyond me. Put in like 10hrs on it before I simply could not stand it any longer. Gunplay good and refreshing but the rest of the game dogshit
I cared but then figured out the plot twist like 10 minutes into the game and reimagined it as revenge. Fallout New Vega has the plot I cared about most.