Fallout 76. Worried? Excited? Both?

[The_Jackal]

Sure, which is why Fifa, Madden, etc have all been the exact same game with yearly releases for 10 years. Because they appeal to the lowest common denominator. Maybe that's what you want for Fallout, but it's not for me. If you enjoy stuff like that then I'm glad for you, but I'm still sad to see the types of games that I enjoy die to make way for it.

Sorry, wrong. What's expected of a sports game is wildly different than what's expected for other titles. You don't have any real lattitude in terms of how you can shake up the gameplay in a sports title. It's a fixed format, like racing games. Those games are, for all intents and purposes, sausage-factory remakes of the same game, year after year. Apples to oranges comparisons will not avail you in this argument.

I really don't find "you'll understand when you're older" to be a compelling argument. Or anything but condescending really. I doubt you're older than me anyway.

I'm 45, you don't have to guess.

That aside, of course bad writing is going to bother someone who only views the content for the sake of being immersed in the story, and I can't believe you'd seriously argue otherwise.

Try me.

If you don't care about the stories then why can't you just go play Rust, CoD, or any of the other billion games that aren't story driven, and leave the story driven franchises to people who enjoy them? I suspect you care about the stories here more.

It's not that I don't care about the stories. I like a good story. I loved Bioshock Infinite, I liked most of the player arcs in SW:TOR. And Fallout 4 had some good writing in it. I liked the character of Hancock, I liked the U.S.S. Constitution quest, and I liked the Silver Shroud arc, and some other bits too. But I refused to let bad writing get in the way of enjoying a good game, because gameplay is what I bought the game for. But as for why I don't play Rust or COD, I don't have to. I'm not the one lobbying to turn the Fallout franchise back into a "True RPG". I like what Bethesda is doing, and I'm willing to forgive them their faults, because there's no game on the market which offers the combination of freedom, exploration, customization, and production values that Bethesda has.

You literally just told me what I ought to enjoy. In the last paragraph.

No, I didn't. I told you that just because you think the bad Fallout 4 story is a deal breaker doesn't make it a bad game. I told you, if deep, involved stories, and meaningful decisions are important to you, you're far better served by buying Obsidian's back catalog.

I don't believe I implied any sort of mental illness for disagreeing with me? At the very least, I didn't intend to. I understand that you don't like these sorts of RPG games with dialogue trees and such, but Fallout has traditionally always appealed to the audience that does enjoy these things. Of course we're sad to see one of our favorite franchises stop appealing to us. Wouldn't you be?

The mental illness remark was directed at Ryjin, who wrote:

Yes, narratives are important to people. This is not news. People have always enjoyed a story.

Do you not enjoy books? Films? Serialized television series? Have you never been emotionally invested in a plot or character in any of the above?

None of those are different in that aspect than a video game. People get attached to characters, because they are enjoyable, or relatable, or just well written enough to feel real within the context of the fiction. That is the purpose of a narrative in a game, or character writing in any OTHER medium, really.

If you've not felt that before...I'm sorry for you, I guess. Maybe go see a psychologist?

I felt the remark deserved a retort.

[QUOTE]As for Obsidian, I'd say that anyone you're even having this conversation with in the first place probably grew up with their games and has already played them.[QUOTE]

I haven't touched an Interplay game since Baldur's Gate II, TBH. Not my cup of tea. But Pillars of Eternity released a new expansion recently.

These terms mean the same thing, so sure. The games are homogenized to appeal to the widest audiences possible. They take no risks and they offer nothing unique. They're not without value, but there's a reason that EA signed contracts with the major sports leagues so that no one else could make a similar game. Any time you water a product down to appeal to everyone, the product will suffer. You'd be hard pressed to find any example of art or entertainment that was actually improved by homogenization. It's just a sad fact that it's more profitable to make a game that's mediocre to everyone than to make one that's exceptional to its target market.

Except "lowest common denominator" is incredibly snobbish and pejorative, and in any case, I don't agree with your premise that's what Bethesda is trying to do (ie: broaden appeal at any price). In fact, I've found their progression in their game design has been remarkably consistent: They've tried to create broad, sprawling worlds, with lots of detail in which the player is encouraged to become immersed. They wouldn't pack their games with so much text behind hacked terminals if they just wanted to make a big, dumb post-apocalypse sandbox. Now they have spent a tremendous amount of effort improving their games' production values, and that has a price, but I wouldn't conflate that with homogenization, it's just a market trend that has taken hold consistently across the triple-A gaming industry.