Fallout V: Old Thread Blues

[Balmas]

After a bit of thought, I would like to revise my statement on Fallout 4 and it's coherency of story. While it's much improved over the likes of Fallout 3, even a cursory bit of thought reveals that Bethesda couldn't write their way out of a moist paper bag with a razor-tipped pen covered with acid.

Spoiler

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The prologue is not long enough to establish your character or get attached to Nora/SHAAAWWN/Frank, but just long enough to get boring.

Once you finish the over-long vault of tutorial-ness, you get home, and find Codsworth still tottering around. Keep in mind, in the prologue you find a can of Mr. Handy fuel, which implies that they actually use an oil-based fuel of some kind. And Codsworth has been active for two hundred years, apparently without refueling. He says he's been active the entire time, but somehow your house looks just as dirty as any of the others in the neighborhood and it's obvious that your house hasn't seen a broom in decades.

You get to Concord, and find a man who's strapped a laser cannon onto a hunting rifle with a bit of duct tape. Unfortunately, instead of embracing what it means to have interesting characters with needs and wants, we get Preston Garvey, who, if he were a spice, would be flour.

(Incidentally, Preston's companion quest isn't so much a quest as it is the beginning of one. "I was going to give up but then you helped us so I kept going" is just as stale and boring as Preston himself. Also incidentally, THERE'S A SETTLEMENT THAT NEEDS OUR HELP.)

We're directed to Diamond City, and from there to where Nick is being held hostage by the local group of anachronistic cosplayers. Why is there the Italian mafia holed up in a vault? What do they want? How do they survive? How is organized crime a thing when there's no government to fight against? How do they survive with no source of food, no reason for being there, nothing to sustain them? A large portion of the game is dedicated to making sure that your people have food, water, beds; the only thing these people hve is maybe the beds.

We find Nick, and are almost immediately given a chance to spare the life of two people who we've never met, who we've been given no reason to attach to, no reason to want to spare. Who cares? Nobody, because Darla is never mentioned before ten seconds you meet her, and how you treat her will have no consequences in the game. Welcome to the wonderful world of false, meaningless choices.

By this time, you're probably aware that something strange is going on with the timing of when SHAWWWWN was stolen. Unfortunately, your character has all the awareness of a cinderblock, and so you have to go through an elaborate series of setpieces before your character realizes that hey, maybe you're not looking for a baby. And because there's a voiced protagonist, I have no choice but to spew the drivel that passes for writing.

Here's the thing, Bethesda. When you make a voiced protagonist, you're kind of making a contract with the players that there's going to be an interesting protagonist. You say that you're goign to make a character with motivations and desires, who will be interesting. Unfortunately, Bethesda seems to have heard of writers, but never actually employed one, and we get a mess of four-options-no-choices.

You go into town and get your first hint of the situation with synths. Everything is set up to make you curious about what's going on, but you're then given no chance to actually indulge that curiosity by asking about what actually marks a synth, whether all synths have components, etc.

Here we find our first major plot hole. Kellogg left town "a while back." We don't know how long ago that was. However, we later find out that when it happened, Kellogg had what looks like Shaun with him. That gives us two options, both of which are problematic.
-Option A: Kellogg was here with synth!Shaun, and left recently. This option seems more likely, as a courser comes to retrieve the kid, and Gen-3 synths don't come into being until after Father gets into the Institute. Alright, let's go with that. Question: Why? Why does a kid robot need to follow Kellogg around? What purpose does this serve? Why take a kid synth experiment out of a controlled environment and place him with a man who Father hates?
-Option B: This is the original Shawn. This implies that Kellogg hasn't aged a day since then. Because yada, yada, cyborg etc. Except that this means that the Institute has solved the problem of aging, and for some reason hasn't seen fit to apply it to their great leader, who is now old and dying. It also has some interesting questions for the next point.

You find your way into Kellogg's house. Keep in mind, you don't know how long it's been since Kellogg left; you probably know that there's been some time passed, since people who know kellogg know that he was here with a child, but nobody seems to want to give you an actual value between "a while back" and "more than a few days."

Nevertheless, you manage to figure out that Kellogg has a favorite brand of cigars. Keep in mind, cigars are products of an advanced civilization. Remember also that in order to have a favored brand, you need to have more than one. Tobacco does not grow anywhere near Boston, and these are San Francisco Sunlights, from the old world city on the west coast. No doubt Kellogg hoarded these and brought them with him to the east coast, savoring his stash for at least sixty years. That's why he left half a box in town when he left, and then smoked just the tip of one every five minutes as he walked from Diamond City to Fort Hagen.

Naturally, radiation gives dogs superpowers, which is how Dogmeat was able to follow the scent after we-don't-know-how-long it's been. My, what a happy coincidence that Kellogg has left town just long enough for the townspeople to know that he hasn't just stepped out on an errand, but not long enough that the house has been reclaimed or for the days-old trail to have gone too cold to be tracked by a dog.

Finally, by some chain of deus ex machinas, you manage to track down Kellogg. He knows you're here, bypassing any stealth you might possess, and taunts you with how you should just go home. Finally, you're standing in his lair. He is armed, he is dangerous, and he has you surrounded. Now, you have several options here. And he actually seems like he doesn't want to fight you. Do you:
-Realize that this man probably knows some useful secrets about the Institute, including where it is and how to get in and out. Maybe you can try to plie him for information.
-Realize that he's got the jump on you, and pretend to play nice so you can get to a more advantageous position.
-Talk him around to helping you. After all, it's been a mighty interesting chain of coincidences that have led you to his door. Maybe you can find some evidence that Father is double-crossing him.
-Realize that he's just a soldier for hire, doing his job, and at this point you're not really all that different from him.

Or, do you choose instead to announce your intention to attack to the heavily armed mercenary, backed up by heavily armed synths, who is trying to surrender?

Whoops, silly me, none of the above matter. Because now, your blank-slate character is railroaded into being not just an idiot, but a bloodthirsty murderer, because all of your options are false choices again, which mean that the preceding five minutes of bloated exposition is just the writer trying to get you to buy into thinking your choices have meaning.

And this is just the first act.

[GloatingSwine]

It helps to think of this as the true Fallout 4 canon:

[factotum]

After a bit of thought, I would like to revise my statement on Fallout 4 and it's coherency of story. While it's much improved over the likes of Fallout 3, even a cursory bit of thought reveals that Bethesda couldn't write their way out of a moist paper bag with a razor-tipped pen covered with acid.

Just to note one point you bring up in that wall of text: we already *know* that Kellogg has some sort of anti-aging stuff, because he looks to be roughly the same age when he kidnaps Shaun originally as he is when you catch up with him 60 years later. (And no, he isn't a Gen-3 synth, because he doesn't have a regular synth component on his corpse). You also missed something that I think is a pretty massive plot hole, namely: why is everyone else in the Vault dead when you wake up the second time? They all seem to have suffocated in their pods, but *you* didn't do that, and the corpses are all frozen again so the pods must have re-frozen at some point. This raises two possibilities:

a) The pods can all be individually activated and de-activated, so Kellogg re-froze you and left everyone else alive until they suffocated, *then* refroze the pods. Which begs the question, why didn't the Institute just defrost Shaun and the main character's partner and leave everyone else frozen so there'd be no witnesses?

b) The pods all have to be activated and de-activated together. So, since you were still alive when you got re-frozen, why is no-one else?

[Triaxx]

Nah, German Shepherds are really like that. IE entirely too much smarter than they have reason or right to be.

[Dhavaer]

Just to note one point you bring up in that wall of text: we already *know* that Kellogg has some sort of anti-aging stuff, because he looks to be roughly the same age when he kidnaps Shaun originally as he is when you catch up with him 60 years later. (And no, he isn't a Gen-3 synth, because he doesn't have a regular synth component on his corpse). You also missed something that I think is a pretty massive plot hole, namely: why is everyone else in the Vault dead when you wake up the second time? They all seem to have suffocated in their pods, but *you* didn't do that, and the corpses are all frozen again so the pods must have re-frozen at some point. This raises two possibilities:

a) The pods can all be individually activated and de-activated, so Kellogg re-froze you and left everyone else alive until they suffocated, *then* refroze the pods. Which begs the question, why didn't the Institute just defrost Shaun and the main character's partner and leave everyone else frozen so there'd be no witnesses?

b) The pods all have to be activated and de-activated together. So, since you were still alive when you got re-frozen, why is no-one else?

Maybe they can be individually activated but can only be deactivated together? That's stupid, but Vault-Tec are pretty bad at making Vaults.

How much gear does everyone usually carry around with them? I find myself constantly less than 50 units away from being overburdened, carrying three weapons (Deliverer, a sniper rifle, and an assault weapon of some kind), armour and some amount of food and explosives.

[rooster707]

How much gear does everyone usually carry around with them? I find myself constantly less than 50 units away from being overburdened, carrying three weapons (Deliverer, a sniper rifle, and an assault weapon of some kind), armour and some amount of food and explosives.

I tend to carry a lot of gear, but I've realized that most of the weight in my inventory actually comes from aid items (beer, chems, Nuka-Cola) that I compulsively hoard but never use. As long as I remember to dump all that every now and then, I'm fine.

Gear-wise, I usually carry my sniper rifle, the Deliverer (now called the Deliverator), my two-shot revolver, an energy weapon, and lately a melee weapon. I stopped using armor a while ago because it's so heavy; now I pretty much wear the Silver Shroud costume all the time unless I need to pass a charisma check, in which case I change into Agatha's Dress mid-conversation.

[tonberrian]

Pre-power armor, I've usually got somewhere around 110 out of like 270 or so with pocketed gear. Full set of combat armor, Righteous Authority, a plasma sniper, and a combat rifle. Food-wise I only keep 5 units of each type of thing that's under a pound and maybe one of each that is a pound, and only cooked stuff.

[Starbuck_II]

Just to note one point you bring up in that wall of text: we already *know* that Kellogg has some sort of anti-aging stuff, because he looks to be roughly the same age when he kidnaps Shaun originally as he is when you catch up with him 60 years later. (And no, he isn't a Gen-3 synth, because he doesn't have a regular synth component on his corpse). You also missed something that I think is a pretty massive plot hole, namely: why is everyone else in the Vault dead when you wake up the second time? They all seem to have suffocated in their pods, but *you* didn't do that, and the corpses are all frozen again so the pods must have re-frozen at some point. This raises two possibilities:

a) The pods can all be individually activated and de-activated, so Kellogg re-froze you and left everyone else alive until they suffocated, *then* refroze the pods. Which begs the question, why didn't the Institute just defrost Shaun and the main character's partner and leave everyone else frozen so there'd be no witnesses?

b) The pods all have to be activated and de-activated together. So, since you were still alive when you got re-frozen, why is no-one else?

Actually, if you investigate the vault, it seems the life support system was failing (randomly?).
In his dream, you can see that they are all alive when he unfroze you.

As for the reason? The terminals show the life support was switched off. My guess was that the Vault only had so much consumables left for it's life support system, and so to extend that lifespan, they shut off the other pods to prioritize and preserve their next-best sample. You.

Maybe, it was on purpose, the Institute turned off the others to keep you alive in case they need a back up.

Later when you meet the "kid": Shaun says the backup needed to be the same DNA strand.

Killing your spouse was just for fun: she could have been a back up at same time.

[VoxRationis]

I too am terrible about hoarding aid items. I almost never use anything but Stimpacks and Radaway, partly because almost all of my teammates hate chem use. I rarely realize that and clear away my excess aid items, though I have done so for certain characters, once I get a good home base going with a well-organized stash system. I also tend to hoard grenades, but I'm getting better about clearing out my grenade inventory.
My weapon loadout changes by character, obviously, but I tend to carry a sniper rifle, a shotgun, a mid-range unscoped rifle (I often use Righteous Authority for this purpose), a silenced pistol (Deliverer if I'm willing to put up with the Railroad),
I just recently found out that Survival mode affects more than healing and saves, and started a new file for that mode, so it'll be interesting to see how I deal with the reduced carrying capacity (which is even further reduced by the need to carry food and water).

@Balmas: Yeah, it gets real irksome how few choices there are in that game. The choices are even more limited, in my experience, because I'm afraid to ever pick the "Sarcastic" option, since it varies so drastically in tone. (For example: when talking to Piper about Nick Valentine, the option is a witty remark on his heart-shaped neon sign. When talking to Dr. Amari about the Railroad, the option is a really stupid "joke" about your preferred password. When talking to other characters, you just come across as an insensitive ******* by insulting them after they lose their friends and loved ones.)

[Blackhawk748]

Psycho-Jet. I love Psycho-Jet. RIP AND TEAR!!!

[factotum]

When talking to other characters, you just come across as an insensitive ******* by insulting them after they lose their friends and loved ones.

But it doesn't ever actually change their outlook toward you, does it? You can be as horrible as you like toward people and they'll still sell you stuff, or give you quests, or whatever else they're required to do by the game, because Bethesda are terrified that someone might criticise them for gating off bits of their content...

[Triaxx]

I have a hard time feeling anything but annoyance for most of the F4 companions. I love Ada, and Codsworth, but beyond that, they're all kind of annoying. Mostly I travel around with Bazooka Joe, and Sir William. (Custom Automatron followers, there's a patch for Robot Home Defense that let's me take additional robot companions along.)

I'm currently sitting at 127 of 285, because I've stopped worrying about the armor I'm wearing over my under armor. Going higher than Shadowed Light Leather seems to be entirely pointless, it just adds a bunch of weight for no additional return value. Anything that can kill you in light leather can likely also wipe you out in Heavy Robot.

[VoxRationis]

I have a hard time feeling anything but annoyance for most of the F4 companions. I love Ada, and Codsworth, but beyond that, they're all kind of annoying.

My main issue with companions is that collecting scrap is so big a part of the game, and then all the companions chide you for it (even though most of them live in houses made of scrap). I'm finding Deacon kind of refreshing because he only chides you for taking low-value junk (although he doesn't take value/weight ratio into account, because he gives me crap about picking up packs of cigarettes).

(Custom Automatron followers, there's a patch for Robot Home Defense that let's me take additional robot companions along.)

I wish it were part of the base game that you could have multiple regular followers. Maybe make companions a little harder to get to compensate, but really, what person in a post-apocalyptic scavenger world only travels with 1 of their friends at a time?

It's especially bad when you're teaming up with Valentine to track down Kellogg, and he tells you that "we can't all go running around the Commonwealth" if you have a companion with you after his scripted movements end. Really, Valentine? You're willing to go traipsing around to God-knows-where with me, but not if I have Piper along too? Are you that jealous of your friends' attention that you can't stand to see them hang out with each other?

Arbitrary party size limits are the most annoying thing RPGs ever invented. If they really don't want me to have a party above a certain size, maybe they shouldn't put that many recruitable party members into the game. Or maybe they should make it such that you can't recruit that many at once without including people of incompatible beliefs and morals. If I made a post-apocalyptic RPG, it would probably end up running a little like Oregon Trail, with managing the health and resources of a small group of people.

*Ahem*
Moving on from that topic, I've started a game in Survival mode, and I'm finding that the geography of the game was clearly not designed to be played sans fast travel. Sanctuary is supposed to be this important place to you, a home base, a sanctuary for both you and for these important recurring NPCs, but it's tucked away in the most remote corner of the map. Returning to it after visiting Diamond City entails crossing half the map, including several zones filled with hordes of feral ghouls that surround the primary route between these two important locations. Returning to it repeatedly is going to be more trouble than it's worth.
My current thinking is that I'm going to grab Hangman's Alley as quickly as I possibly can, stuff the latter location with all my valuables, and let a supply line provisioner worry about the route through Lexington.

[Triaxx]

Thus my like of the Automatron companions who don't get involved in the 'I MUST LOVES YOU.' perkitis.

I almost never fast travel anyway. Half the fun is stomping around shooting things, the other half is stomping around within a couple pounds of the weight limit and watching the robots generate more.

[DodgerH2O]

Spoiler: Kellogg

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I feel that everything actually makes more sense if you assume that the whole Kellogg thing was a contrivance by Father for the purpose of recruiting the Sole Survivor. That implant that conveniently can be accessed by a semi-famous facility in the area? Planted by Father, filled with false memories. You are given permission to access all the Institute records, supposedly, but if Father planned everything out that far ahead, why would he not remove anything except what he wanted the Survivor to find?

The Survivor's child could have been removed any number of years before, Father merely has determined the best way to manipulate a parent and used it. Even the others at the Institute find the child synth a bit creepy, but it gives Father the ability to negotiate with the most capable person in the Commonwealth. By the number of people who just opened fire, he didn't quite judge motivations as well as he could, but in many cases the Sole Survivor becomes manipulated into progressing Father's agenda, even beyond death itself. Seems like he replaced Kellogg easily with the Sole Survivor. Perhaps he has done this before, but misjudged his tool and wished to make a clean go at it, so set up Kellogg's death and replacement in one fell swoop.

Edit: Not that I believe Bethesda wrote this intentionally, but it's the headcanon I came up with to explain the plot holes to my own satisfaction.

[Avilan the Grey]

It's the only faction which actually has a chance of making that 'better future' be better for everyone in general. Brotherhood is wanting to Godwin everyone, Institue wants to be Big Brother, Railroad doesn't actually give a darn for non-synth people.

Small correction:
The institute wants to Stepford-wife everyone. What you gather from dialogue snippets in the Institute and what they are doing on the surface is actually to kill and replace every human in the Commonwealth with Android dopplegangers. If you listen to some of the people in the lab (close to the synth gorillas) they let it slip that they are months, if not weeks, from unleashing this plan on the Commonwealth.

After a bit of thought, I would like to revise my statement on Fallout 4 and it's coherency of story. While it's much improved over the likes of Fallout 3, even a cursory bit of thought reveals that Bethesda couldn't write their way out of a moist paper bag with a razor-tipped pen covered with acid.

Spoiler

Show

The prologue is not long enough to establish your character or get attached to Nora/SHAAAWWN/Frank, but just long enough to get boring.

Once you finish the over-long vault of tutorial-ness, you get home, and find Codsworth still tottering around. Keep in mind, in the prologue you find a can of Mr. Handy fuel, which implies that they actually use an oil-based fuel of some kind. And Codsworth has been active for two hundred years, apparently without refueling. He says he's been active the entire time, but somehow your house looks just as dirty as any of the others in the neighborhood and it's obvious that your house hasn't seen a broom in decades.

You get to Concord, and find a man who's strapped a laser cannon onto a hunting rifle with a bit of duct tape. Unfortunately, instead of embracing what it means to have interesting characters with needs and wants, we get Preston Garvey, who, if he were a spice, would be flour.

(Incidentally, Preston's companion quest isn't so much a quest as it is the beginning of one. "I was going to give up but then you helped us so I kept going" is just as stale and boring as Preston himself. Also incidentally, THERE'S A SETTLEMENT THAT NEEDS OUR HELP.)

We're directed to Diamond City, and from there to where Nick is being held hostage by the local group of anachronistic cosplayers. Why is there the Italian mafia holed up in a vault? What do they want? How do they survive? How is organized crime a thing when there's no government to fight against? How do they survive with no source of food, no reason for being there, nothing to sustain them? A large portion of the game is dedicated to making sure that your people have food, water, beds; the only thing these people hve is maybe the beds.

We find Nick, and are almost immediately given a chance to spare the life of two people who we've never met, who we've been given no reason to attach to, no reason to want to spare. Who cares? Nobody, because Darla is never mentioned before ten seconds you meet her, and how you treat her will have no consequences in the game. Welcome to the wonderful world of false, meaningless choices.

By this time, you're probably aware that something strange is going on with the timing of when SHAWWWWN was stolen. Unfortunately, your character has all the awareness of a cinderblock, and so you have to go through an elaborate series of setpieces before your character realizes that hey, maybe you're not looking for a baby. And because there's a voiced protagonist, I have no choice but to spew the drivel that passes for writing.

Here's the thing, Bethesda. When you make a voiced protagonist, you're kind of making a contract with the players that there's going to be an interesting protagonist. You say that you're goign to make a character with motivations and desires, who will be interesting. Unfortunately, Bethesda seems to have heard of writers, but never actually employed one, and we get a mess of four-options-no-choices.

You go into town and get your first hint of the situation with synths. Everything is set up to make you curious about what's going on, but you're then given no chance to actually indulge that curiosity by asking about what actually marks a synth, whether all synths have components, etc.

Here we find our first major plot hole. Kellogg left town "a while back." We don't know how long ago that was. However, we later find out that when it happened, Kellogg had what looks like Shaun with him. That gives us two options, both of which are problematic.
-Option A: Kellogg was here with synth!Shaun, and left recently. This option seems more likely, as a courser comes to retrieve the kid, and Gen-3 synths don't come into being until after Father gets into the Institute. Alright, let's go with that. Question: Why? Why does a kid robot need to follow Kellogg around? What purpose does this serve? Why take a kid synth experiment out of a controlled environment and place him with a man who Father hates?
-Option B: This is the original Shawn. This implies that Kellogg hasn't aged a day since then. Because yada, yada, cyborg etc. Except that this means that the Institute has solved the problem of aging, and for some reason hasn't seen fit to apply it to their great leader, who is now old and dying. It also has some interesting questions for the next point.

You find your way into Kellogg's house. Keep in mind, you don't know how long it's been since Kellogg left; you probably know that there's been some time passed, since people who know kellogg know that he was here with a child, but nobody seems to want to give you an actual value between "a while back" and "more than a few days."

Nevertheless, you manage to figure out that Kellogg has a favorite brand of cigars. Keep in mind, cigars are products of an advanced civilization. Remember also that in order to have a favored brand, you need to have more than one. Tobacco does not grow anywhere near Boston, and these are San Francisco Sunlights, from the old world city on the west coast. No doubt Kellogg hoarded these and brought them with him to the east coast, savoring his stash for at least sixty years. That's why he left half a box in town when he left, and then smoked just the tip of one every five minutes as he walked from Diamond City to Fort Hagen.

Naturally, radiation gives dogs superpowers, which is how Dogmeat was able to follow the scent after we-don't-know-how-long it's been. My, what a happy coincidence that Kellogg has left town just long enough for the townspeople to know that he hasn't just stepped out on an errand, but not long enough that the house has been reclaimed or for the days-old trail to have gone too cold to be tracked by a dog.

Finally, by some chain of deus ex machinas, you manage to track down Kellogg. He knows you're here, bypassing any stealth you might possess, and taunts you with how you should just go home. Finally, you're standing in his lair. He is armed, he is dangerous, and he has you surrounded. Now, you have several options here. And he actually seems like he doesn't want to fight you. Do you:
-Realize that this man probably knows some useful secrets about the Institute, including where it is and how to get in and out. Maybe you can try to plie him for information.
-Realize that he's got the jump on you, and pretend to play nice so you can get to a more advantageous position.
-Talk him around to helping you. After all, it's been a mighty interesting chain of coincidences that have led you to his door. Maybe you can find some evidence that Father is double-crossing him.
-Realize that he's just a soldier for hire, doing his job, and at this point you're not really all that different from him.

Or, do you choose instead to announce your intention to attack to the heavily armed mercenary, backed up by heavily armed synths, who is trying to surrender?

Whoops, silly me, none of the above matter. Because now, your blank-slate character is railroaded into being not just an idiot, but a bloodthirsty murderer, because all of your options are false choices again, which mean that the preceding five minutes of bloated exposition is just the writer trying to get you to buy into thinking your choices have meaning.

And this is just the first act.

Spoiler: Some points are okay, some are just weird to me.

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About the first one... NEVER understood this complaint. How much bloody time do you need to get attached to people in games? It seems you, for example, would not be able to play an RPG and enjoy it because you actually don't play out a 5 year backstory in real time? I would love to see you play a pen and paper RPG and see how you completely fail to connect to the other player characters because "We just met".

The Mr Handy Fuel is only jarring to me if I think about it too much. It is far more annoying to me that the constant respawns in locations not only spawns the same group of people but respawns electronic security too. Like the building with a gazillion turrets outside the entrance. Shoot them all, and one week later somebody, probably the Murder-Fairy, have repaired them all to pristine condition.

Kellog and Synth!Shawn is not a plot hole. Father is baiting you by that point, leading you to the Institute AND setting you up to murder Kellog for revenge (killing your better half was never part of the plan; it seems to me Father wanted you BOTH to come find him at some point). Also it is bloody obvious that that isn't the original Shawn since it happend what, a month or so ago? "A while back" but not long enough that the Mayor's office hasn't re-rented that place to someone else.

That said I would LOVE to see a colab between Bioware and Bethesday. Bethesda are champions of enviromental story telling and their un-told stories that you just find out there are often both amazing, sweet, horrible... you name it. But they have never been good with the over-reaching arc. It always peters out after a while.

[Dhavaer]

That said I would LOVE to see a colab between Bioware and Bethesday. Bethesda are champions of enviromental story telling and their un-told stories that you just find out there are often both amazing, sweet, horrible... you name it. But they have never been good with the over-reaching arc. It always peters out after a while.

I'd like to see a game with the overall story written by Obsidian, the characters by Bioware, the environments created by Bethesda and the QA done by Blizzard.

[Balmas]

It helps to think of this as the true Fallout 4 canon:

I accept this as canon. And, oddly enough, a man who explores the post-apocalyptic world in search of a hangover cure actually does seem like something that could be reasonably found in Fallout. Maybe there's a vault that has no water purifier; only a small vineyard and a brewery.

Just to note one point you bring up in that wall of text: we already *know* that Kellogg has some sort of anti-aging stuff, because he looks to be roughly the same age when he kidnaps Shaun originally as he is when you catch up with him 60 years later. (And no, he isn't a Gen-3 synth, because he doesn't have a regular synth component on his corpse).

Good point. I note, though, that even knowing this one detail doesn't magically make sense of the plot hole. The Institute, as demonstrated by Kellogg, have effectively eliminated or greatly reduced the speed at which one ages. Why haven't all the important leader figures of the Institute received these implants? I could buy that they're expensive and hard to produce, and why not give at least one set to Father, at the very least?

How much gear does everyone usually carry around with them? I find myself constantly less than 50 units away from being overburdened, carrying three weapons (Deliverer, a sniper rifle, and an assault weapon of some kind), armour and some amount of food and explosives.

I've trimmed my list of weapons to bring quite substantially. Initially it was the exploding shotgun, the Overseer's Guardian, a .50 cal Instigating Sniper Rifle, and the Deliverer to grind critical hits. Of late, though, I've reduced it to an Instigating Gauss Rifle for sneak attacks, a Plasma sniper for general work, and the Deliverer to grind delicious VATS crits. Then for armor I have a ballistic weave mk.5 sweatervest, and a full set of Sentinel leather armor that Armorsmith allows me to equip over the top of it.

Maybe, it was on purpose, the Institute turned off the others to keep you alive in case they need a back up.

Later when you meet the "kid": Shaun says the backup needed to be the same DNA strand.

Killing your spouse was just for fun: she could have been a back up at same time.

I can accept that it's a matter of just not seeing the rest of the vault, but it seems odd to me that in the entire Vault, you and your wife were the only two to have a baby.

@Balmas: Yeah, it gets real irksome how few choices there are in that game. The choices are even more limited, in my experience, because I'm afraid to ever pick the "Sarcastic" option, since it varies so drastically in tone. (For example: when talking to Piper about Nick Valentine, the option is a witty remark on his heart-shaped neon sign. When talking to Dr. Amari about the Railroad, the option is a really stupid "joke" about your preferred password. When talking to other characters, you just come across as an insensitive ******* by insulting them after they lose their friends and loved ones.)

The dialogue system was another mistake in Fallout 4's litany, but I don't want to get into it because otherwise I won't get to bed until four in the morning.

But it doesn't ever actually change their outlook toward you, does it? You can be as horrible as you like toward people and they'll still sell you stuff, or give you quests, or whatever else they're required to do by the game, because Bethesda are terrified that someone might criticise them for gating off bits of their content...

Fun fact. You know that singer down in the Third Rail? The one you can take on a date and then seduce into bed with you? You can take a companion you've "married," bring them along, cheat on them in front of them, and they will never mention it.

I wish it were part of the base game that you could have multiple regular followers. Maybe make companions a little harder to get to compensate, but really, what person in a post-apocalyptic scavenger world only travels with 1 of their friends at a time?

It's especially bad when you're teaming up with Valentine to track down Kellogg, and he tells you that "we can't all go running around the Commonwealth" if you have a companion with you after his scripted movements end. Really, Valentine? You're willing to go traipsing around to God-knows-where with me, but not if I have Piper along too? Are you that jealous of your friends' attention that you can't stand to see them hang out with each other?

Arbitrary party size limits are the most annoying thing RPGs ever invented. If they really don't want me to have a party above a certain size, maybe they shouldn't put that many recruitable party members into the game. Or maybe they should make it such that you can't recruit that many at once without including people of incompatible beliefs and morals. If I made a post-apocalyptic RPG, it would probably end up running a little like Oregon Trail, with managing the health and resources of a small group of people.

I like the way that Fallout 2 handled things: Your number of followers is based off your charisma. Presumably, you're able to reconcile a larger group of people to working together if you're better at talking to them.

*Ahem*
Moving on from that topic, I've started a game in Survival mode, and I'm finding that the geography of the game was clearly not designed to be played sans fast travel. Sanctuary is supposed to be this important place to you, a home base, a sanctuary for both you and for these important recurring NPCs, but it's tucked away in the most remote corner of the map. Returning to it after visiting Diamond City entails crossing half the map, including several zones filled with hordes of feral ghouls that surround the primary route between these two important locations. Returning to it repeatedly is going to be more trouble than it's worth.
My current thinking is that I'm going to grab Hangman's Alley as quickly as I possibly can, stuff the latter location with all my valuables, and let a supply line provisioner worry about the route through Lexington.

Aye, Hangman's Alley is one of the better Survival Mode settlements, as it's small without being cramped, located right next to Diamond City, and is right across the river from the Institute's fast-travel point.

Spoiler: Kellogg

Show

I feel that everything actually makes more sense if you assume that the whole Kellogg thing was a contrivance by Father for the purpose of recruiting the Sole Survivor. That implant that conveniently can be accessed by a semi-famous facility in the area? Planted by Father, filled with false memories. You are given permission to access all the Institute records, supposedly, but if Father planned everything out that far ahead, why would he not remove anything except what he wanted the Survivor to find?

The Survivor's child could have been removed any number of years before, Father merely has determined the best way to manipulate a parent and used it. Even the others at the Institute find the child synth a bit creepy, but it gives Father the ability to negotiate with the most capable person in the Commonwealth. By the number of people who just opened fire, he didn't quite judge motivations as well as he could, but in many cases the Sole Survivor becomes manipulated into progressing Father's agenda, even beyond death itself. Seems like he replaced Kellogg easily with the Sole Survivor. Perhaps he has done this before, but misjudged his tool and wished to make a clean go at it, so set up Kellogg's death and replacement in one fell swoop.

Okay, let's say that's true, and Kellogg was ordered away years ago. How come his cigars are still where he's left them? How come Dogmeat can still track his scent? Kat Elbrecht, of the National Police Bloodhound Association, estimates that under ideal conditions (moist areas with lots of vegetation, little sunlight, and no wind) a scent will last 3-4 weeks at most. Rain will help to catch the scent, but will make it pool and collect where puddles and rivers are. And if it's windy, the scent gets dispersed so that even four days might make the trail impossible to follow.

What I'm saying is, we have a very narrow window where the Sole Survivor can actually be able to catch Kellogg. It'd require way too many coincidences for Father to reliably plan this; he'd need to assume that A) the SS gets to Diamond City in time: B) he's able to both remember and identify Kellogg, and someone can point him in the right direction: C) that the SS somehow has a means to track Kellogg: and D) that the weather has cooperated with the plan, and hasn't had a random rad-storm wipe out the scent. At that point, it's not so much a Xanatos Gambit by Shaun to both kill Kellogg and get the SS to find him; it's a miracle that all these things lined up at once.

Small correction:
The institute wants to Stepford-wife everyone. What you gather from dialogue snippets in the Institute and what they are doing on the surface is actually to kill and replace every human in the Commonwealth with Android dopplegangers. If you listen to some of the people in the lab (close to the synth gorillas) they let it slip that they are months, if not weeks, from unleashing this plan on the Commonwealth.

I still have to ask, though: Why?

What does this gain them? If they're planning on killing everyone anyway as a part of this process, then why bother replacing them? If you want peace between the settlements, then it should be enough to just replace the leaders; replacing everyone is overkill and really more work than it's worth. If they need farmers, then it should be enough to just steal or establish a farm somewhere isolated, bring in some human-like synths, and hey presto, farm and farmers with no risk of discovery and no need to kill anyone. Why push for human-like synths whose primary advantage over previous generations is intelligence, and then argue that they're only programmed to have that intelligence and so don't count as real people? What is the point of replacing everyone with people who aren't people?

About the first one... NEVER understood this complaint. How much bloody time do you need to get attached to people in games? It seems you, for example, would not be able to play an RPG and enjoy it because you actually don't play out a 5 year backstory in real time? I would love to see you play a pen and paper RPG and see how you completely fail to connect to the other player characters because "We just met".

I feel that this is a false equivalence. Normally, when you play a tabletop RPG, you're actually sitting there, with people that, presumably, you've known for more than five minutes. During those first five minutes of the game, you might be bonding with a character, but it's much more likely that you're enhancing an already existing bond with the players.

To make matters worse, the example you've given doesn't even make sense in the context of the complaint. Let's say that it's the first session. You've just met for the first time, and you've rushed through the introductions. Within five minutes, you're escorted from tavern to dungeon, and wouldn't you know it, the bard gets one-shotted by a goblin who got a lucky crit with a greataxe. How invested are you in that character? How much will that death impact you? You might commiserate with the Bard's player, kinda rib him about how he might want to bring more character sheets next time if this continues. But that death, while it sucks, will probably not impact you the same as it would if the same bard died after you'd spent six months getting to know Irileth the Caterwauler, who is unlucky in love, speaks with a Russian accent, and wants to start his own tavern with the money he gets from adventuring.

The problem is exacerbated in Fallout 4, though. When you're playing a video game, you don't have the benefit of that bond with your fellow players. All of your ties to a character have to come from interactions in game. When your spouse dies, you've learned... what? What have you found that ties you to this person? They're your spouse, you have a kid together that was conceived in a local park, you know their profession, that they want your family to be safe... and that's about it. How do you connect to that? How does that motivate you to do everything the plot demands of you?

To borrow and make the metaphor more accurate, imagine that the GM tells you that you're married to an NPC, with a son. They're given paper-thin characterization. Then the plot comes knocking, and the spouse-NPC is killed and your son kidnapped. Would you feel enough attachment to that NPC for it to fuel an entire campaign? You have no say in it; it's just dropped on you with no notice, and the GM expects you to buy in. In a tabletop RPG, I'd accept it, because presumably I like the GM and can appreciate the amount of time it takes to set this thing up. However, I'd still feel a bit annoyed at having no say in this plot. I could accept that yes, this character means a lot to my character. But I'd be lying if five minutes with a personality-less NPC would make it mean a lot to me.

The Mr Handy Fuel is only jarring to me if I think about it too much. It is far more annoying to me that the constant respawns in locations not only spawns the same group of people but respawns electronic security too. Like the building with a gazillion turrets outside the entrance. Shoot them all, and one week later somebody, probably the Murder-Fairy, have repaired them all to pristine condition.

And every raider has respawned. Somehow every cash register is full of pre-war money again. And I can only imagine that somewhere out there is the most anal-retentive janitor who's cursing the jerkwad who comes in and keeps stealing all his duct tape. "Dammit, now I have to find more and place it in exactly the same spots!"

Kellog and Synth!Shawn is not a plot hole. Father is baiting you by that point, leading you to the Institute AND setting you up to murder Kellog for revenge (killing your better half was never part of the plan; it seems to me Father wanted you BOTH to come find him at some point). Also it is bloody obvious that that isn't the original Shawn since it happend what, a month or so ago? "A while back" but not long enough that the Mayor's office hasn't re-rented that place to someone else.

See above. If Father is baiting you, then it's not so much a concrete plan as it is a vague hope that the stars will align and you'll arrive in time, Kellogg will have left a trail for you to follow, you'll actually be able to find that trail and follow it, and that the weather doesn't make any of the above impossible. That's assuming that your weak idiot butt doesn't die, first.

Actually, I'm kind of curious what happens if, out of pure contrariness, you skip Red Rocket entirely. Does Dogmeat follow you beforehand? Is he scripted to chase you until you meet him? Or does he just randomly teleport to you and force you to see him once you leave Kellogg's house?

[Triaxx]

It's possible to completely avoid Dogmeat, if you're interested. Just stay away from Red Rocket and he won't wander. Save Preston and let him wander back to Sanctuary. As long as you don't enter the Red Rocket build area, Dogmeat won't bother you, at least until you need him.

If you don't have Dogmeat as an 'available' companion, Nick will Teleport him to you with a magic whistle. And then after the 'chase', he becomes available.

[Grim Portent]

Balmas, the reason they don't use the cybernetics Kellogg has on more people is explained in Father's terminal in the Institute. He personally felt the cybernetics division was ultimately going against their long term goals and ethics and shut it down despite the potential benefits. As he put it in the response to a request he was sent to reconsider, the Institute's goal is to preserve humanity, not some flesh and steel perversion of it.

EDIT: Oh, and if you don't get Dogmeat at Red Rocket then Nick Valentine introduces you to him to get him to help track Kellogg. As I recall he whistles and Dogmeat walks up to Kellogg's house.

[factotum]

As he put it in the response to a request he was sent to reconsider, the Institute's goal is to preserve humanity, not some flesh and steel perversion of it.

Yet, when you meet him on the roof of the CIT ruins, Shaun seems pretty much determined that the Commonwealth is a lost cause, along with all the people in it. So, when he says their goal is to preserve humanity, he *really* means "Preserve humanity as it exists inside the Institute, and anyone else can go hang". From that point of view, killing everyone on the surface would make sense, as Balmas says--one gets the impression that the only reason they haven't done that already is because they don't have the capability to do it, rather than not having the *will* to do so.

[Grim Portent]

The impression I got from talking to the various Institute members and eavesdropping on them is that they lack the will (and resources) to do anything much with the surface population. They've just written them off as a lost cause and put them out of mind most of the time, with the exception of the younger idealistic Institute members who still think it would be nice to help them. The leadership seem to be willing to just wait for everyone else to just die out on their own time while they manage their own affairs underground.

[Balmas]

Balmas, the reason they don't use the cybernetics Kellogg has on more people is explained in Father's terminal in the Institute. He personally felt the cybernetics division was ultimately going against their long term goals and ethics and shut it down despite the potential benefits. As he put it in the response to a request he was sent to reconsider, the Institute's goal is to preserve humanity, not some flesh and steel perversion of it.

So, in order to save humanity, he threw away the technology that could have done away with death via old age. Instead, they're going with the plan that involves killing everyone outside the Institute and replacing them with synthetic replacements of them for no adequately explained reason.

Seems legit.

EDIT: Oh, and if you don't get Dogmeat at Red Rocket then Nick Valentine introduces you to him to get him to help track Kellogg. As I recall he whistles and Dogmeat walks up to Kellogg's house.

It's possible to completely avoid Dogmeat, if you're interested. Just stay away from Red Rocket and he won't wander. Save Preston and let him wander back to Sanctuary. As long as you don't enter the Red Rocket build area, Dogmeat won't bother you, at least until you need him.

If you don't have Dogmeat as an 'available' companion, Nick will Teleport him to you with a magic whistle. And then after the 'chase', he becomes available.

Good to know. If that's the case, then there's really no point in avoiding him.

[GloatingSwine]

Good point. I note, though, that even knowing this one detail doesn't magically make sense of the plot hole. The Institute, as demonstrated by Kellogg, have effectively eliminated or greatly reduced the speed at which one ages. Why haven't all the important leader figures of the Institute received these implants? I could buy that they're expensive and hard to produce, and why not give at least one set to Father, at the very least?

The real answer is that Bethesda wanted to preserve the bull**** twist that doesn't make sense and kills the narrative engagement when it happens. What's even worse is that they put another means of immortality into the game and didn't bother to use it here to explain the bull**** they wanted to explain.

I still have to ask, though: Why?

What does this gain them? If they're planning on killing everyone anyway as a part of this process, then why bother replacing them? If you want peace between the settlements, then it should be enough to just replace the leaders; replacing everyone is overkill and really more work than it's worth. If they need farmers, then it should be enough to just steal or establish a farm somewhere isolated, bring in some human-like synths, and hey presto, farm and farmers with no risk of discovery and no need to kill anyone. Why push for human-like synths whose primary advantage over previous generations is intelligence, and then argue that they're only programmed to have that intelligence and so don't count as real people? What is the point of replacing everyone with people who aren't people?

Why is that Bethesda are bad at worldbuilding and plot and they didn't think about it very hard. The Institute doesn't have a developed set of goals or wants, they just do stuff. They're less rational than the Think Tank and they were written to be insane and silly.

[VoxRationis]

Small correction:
The institute wants to Stepford-wife everyone. What you gather from dialogue snippets in the Institute and what they are doing on the surface is actually to kill and replace every human in the Commonwealth with Android dopplegangers. If you listen to some of the people in the lab (close to the synth gorillas) they let it slip that they are months, if not weeks, from unleashing this plan on the Commonwealth.

Really? What do they say? I've searched through most of the nooks and crannies of the Institute and I haven't seen reference to that plan (though on my first playthrough, I assumed that that was what "Phase 3" meant).

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Here's the thing. Fallout: New Vegas has consequences for your actions. In some cases, permanent non-alterable changes. Your choices are reflected in the ending scenes. Even in a DLC, your actions will change what happens in the final cutscene. Does the Happy Trails Caravan grow in power from the new trade route, or does it slowly dwindle and die because of lack of trading partners? Do the Sorrows and the Dead Horses become militant, to Daniel's sorrow, or do they find that you can temper vengeance with mercy? And that's just one little DLC section. The actions of one person, you, shifted the balance of force for an entire region.

This gives the player a sense of accomplishment. You made a difference, and that difference is recognized and respected.

This is completely absent in Fallout 4. Any choices are largely arbitrary and has no real impact on anything, because the plot must go on, running on rails that no one may change. Your only real 'choice' is 'who do you want to exterminate, and who do you want to do it with'. That's it. And even there, most of your choices, up to a specific point, don't matter. There's maybe five or six choices in the game that will have an impact over which factions you may or may not side with, and even there, the Minutemen will still follow you, no matter how villainous you've been.

If you're going to make an animated movie. Bloody well call it an animated movie, not a video game.

[GloatingSwine]

The Toaster in Old World Blues has more of an ending than Fallout 4 does.

Not even sarcasm. It's a longer epilogue text.

And it has two different ones as well based on your karma.

[Blackhawk748]

Ok so im having a problem with the NMM. I just downloaded the newest version and the thing wont work. It starts up, but then immediately gives me an error message, the Tracelog says that i have "no games installed" but thats obviously not true.

[Bohandas]

Why is Fallout 4 called Fallout 4? It's definitely at least the fifth game in the series (Fallout 1, Fallout 2, Fallout 3, and Fallout New Vegas) and possibly as much as the eighth (if you include Fallout Shelter and the Brotherhood of Steel games).

[Triaxx]

There was one brotherhood of steel game and Fallout Tactics. They were so different in style And execution that they should not be lumped together.

That said neither of them are properly part of the main series proper.