Fallout VI: Shotguns and Six-Shooters

[Rynjin]

The video posted upthread makes a compelling argument that everything is slave to the Explore > Loot > Craft cycle, including the story and the factions, because most faction quests are just a pointer to go to a new place to explore and loot.

That's a very much lesser issue. A few hours into my first playthrough of the game I got tired of picking up mounds of trash to craft better gear, sure. My solution was just to console up a bunch of crafting gear and just let the perks and finding the actual weapons be my locks on how strong my gear gets.

It DID increase my enjoyment of the game by a lot, but it was still drug down by everything else around it. I explored for a bit, and it was fun, but eventually I decided "Hey, let's help Danse out like he asked" and went and retrieved the satellite doohickey for him. As expected, I got to (sort of) join the Brotherhood after that. Okay, cool, I'm a probationary member of the Brotherhood of Steel, but at least I can help secure and fortify this outpost, right? Wrong. The only missions I get are generic "Kill these Ghouls" or "Find this doohickey". But I figured, I do enough of these and then I'll get an actual next mission from Dane and the Brotherhood plotline will progress.

"Wrong again, dip****" the game merrily exclaims after I complete five of each mission. I get bored and leave them to their broke down police station, and don't go back. Until, lo and behold, the Brotherhood appears after I get bored enough to actually do the story missions. It was at this point I basically said "Screw this game, I'm out" and dropped it for about a week, but I picked it back up again figuring hey, at least now I can do the Brotherhood plotline, that'll be fun.

But nope "MAIN QUEST IN DISGUISE, WOO, TRICKED AGAIN *******" the game shouts, waving its junk in my face at this point, and I drop the game again.

I pick it back up again later, exploring around and actually having fun again, until I pick up mention of these "Eddie Winter" holotapes from an old police station and I go on an ADVENTURE. I drag my ass all around the Commonwealth looking for these things. I was having fun, man, never really knew what to expect in these places, unmarked in any quest log, I had to rely a bit on remembering the next station marked on the map, it was cool. Sometimes they were filled with raiders, sometimes completely empty, IIRC there was a deathclaw near one, I had a blast, and actually gained quite a few levels exploring some of the ruins and whatnot I came across along the way. All told I spent maybe 6, 8 hours exploring the Commonwealth to find these tapes. I was convinced this was going to lead to some kind of awesome loot, like the MIRV gun from FO3 that you needed to find all those passwords for. Only problem...I couldn't find tape #1. I went to all the locations, I had tapes 2-9 and 0, but I could not for the life of me figure out where tape 1 was. I fast traveled back to all the places before and checked the computers because they gave me clues to all the others...and nothin'.

Eventually, I break down and look it up on the wiki and learn...hey, this is actually a companion quest for Nick Valentine, a character I've never traveled with, but think is pretty cool, so hey, why not pick him up. I read a little further to see what I need to do to unlock it. 750 affinity, cool, expected, it's a companion quest. Oh, but you also have to complete Dangerous Minds. What's this? A side quest? One of Nick Valentine's detective mysteries?

Nope, it's another damn main quest story mission. {{scrubbed}} so I drop the game again for a loooong time, and only pick it up because I really was curious how that quest ends. In my mind, that's the end of the story. Valentine gets his guy (and what an anticlimax after all that, and barely any reward to speak of for it), and he and the main character go off and keep running that detective agency.

Which, as I find out, is a hell of a lot more interesting than what the story actually is about (which I learned by watching TeamFourStar's playthrough of it) which is exactly what I thought it'd be. "Oh no, you went into cryo sleep for an indeterminate amount of time and your son is now older than you and leader of the evil organization? WHAT A TWEEST~"

TL;DR: This game's story literally ruins everything fun about it.