Comparisons with Skyrim

[Boombro]

How is it wrong? It doesn't makes sense to auto pass imo and adds more challenge to high end gameplay. While it need tweaking, I like the change.

 

I have to agree, I went to DC right away and never met the MM in my second run. You can do that in the past fallout as well. You can exist vault 101 and go rivet city or the vault your dad is. Or head to Vegas in FNV.

 

Also it true some stuff people complains about don't make sense. The oddist is why the wife can use a gun.

[Moraelin]

Yes, well, there'll always be a few nutters who find it TOTALLY immersion breaking and awful and just short of a personal insult if women in a game can do anything but cook food and pop babies.

 

Actually, it was even funnier in Skyrim, when it was packed as history. Just proving again that the loudest to scream about lore or history are those who have no frikken clue of either. I mean, gee, a game modelled after a culture where even christian authors that were overtly hostile of such pagan customs, agreed that they had shieldmaidens, and the game actually has armed women. Must be so ahistorical :wink:

 

Yet the same pseudo-history peddlers didn't have a problem with male mages, although it was seriously frowned upon as unmanly to use anything but maybe divination. And even Odin got called unmanly to his face for having learned Seidr magic from Freya, although, admittedly, it's Loki doing the name calling. But nah, if it's giving a guy ahistorical privileges, that doesn't bother anyone.

[Boombro]

Nah, they were saying she was a lawyer not a soldier. Edited January 14, 2016 by Boombro

[Moraelin]

Well, yeah, I know. But nevertheless it's hard not to notice that, for example, James from FO3 was a medic who hadn't shot any weapon in 19 years, and people didn't have any problem with his being able to shoot his way across the DC wasteland in search of a GECK. It's still somehow only if you're a woman that apparently you'd need special forces training to even know which end of a gun to hold :tongue:

[DimosZargarda]

Well technically its not her shooting its you, if you want immersersion how bout doing some bad aiming on purpose?

[Arnaeus]

Nah, they were saying she was a lawyer not a soldier.

 

Maybe she's JAG? Also her husband is a veteran - don't you think he'd make sure his wife can defend herself? Maybe they're both gun nuts and were armed to the teeth even before war started. Maybe she even had krav maga training and can slaughter anything in close combat without a weapon.

 

The game doesn't tell, right?

[Raycheetah]

I think the broader issue (such as may exist) with Nora as the PC is her general facility with military arms and equipment. Never mind the fact that any mook/settler can hop in power armor and operate it just fine, but using such gear as a minigun, or even fragmentation grenades (which can be trickier than many realize) should be beyond an untrained civilian's (of either gender; I'm looking at you, Lone Wanderer of Vault 101!) abilities. However, ignoring the game conceit of simplicity of play, we can imagine any backstory we want for the Sole Survivor of Vault 101. Could be Nora spent some time in the Fallout equivalent of the Women's Auxiliary Corps, perhaps explaining why Vault-Tec was rewarding her family's service, and not just her husband's.

 

Ultimately, it doesn't really matter. FO4 doesn't provide enough of an alternative to frequent and bloody combat to make Nora a radically different alternative to her husband, and any Charisma-based skills her law background may bring will only supplement the gunplay, not supplant it.

 

At least Bethesda didn't create both as absolute templates to be followed. =^[.]^=

[Moraelin]

I think a minigun should actually be fairly easy to operate. At that RPM and weapon weight you're looking basically more like at something like a continuous force, than at a weapon shaking wildly around. It would also realistically use very underpowered ammo, because, well, even in power armour you wouldn't be able to take the literal TONS of thrust a Vulcan produces. So assuming you have the physical strength, it would actually be rather easy to keep it on target.

 

But the army tends to be "tuned" so to speak so they can use almost everyone in a war. It's not just for super-muscular Grognak types. I think only like two people in my platoon were anywhere near the fit sporty type when we joined (and no, I wasn't among them), while at the other end two were barely at the bare minimum weight and height to join, and, so unfit that a ten year old girl could have beat them up. I'm not going for hyperbole there, btw. They train you from there, yes, but what I'm trying to say is that the weapon and equipment are designed and purchased with that in mind. None of them are made to require a Grognak type to operate. If the army ever designed a minigun that can be operated by an infantryman without a bipod/tripod, it too wouldn't require superhuman strength. Even accounting for size difference and such, at least half the women would have no trouble operating it.

 

I think the bigger issue in all such game is a whole other one than being able to physically use a weapon. It's the PTSD that would be the real killer. Even the most trained soldiers tend to break down. And thanks to those pesky mirror neurons, shooting someone at close enough range is... kinda like shooting yourself. It's actually more stressful than being under fire. People have been known to break to various degrees after shooting even one person. To kill hundreds of people, like in the game, and still keep ticking like nothing happened, your character would have to be a bigger psychopath than Father.

 

And yes, that goes for both genders.

 

But somehow THAT seems to fly right under the radar of anyone that's that hell-bent on enforcing realism.

[Raycheetah]

I wasn't speaking of physical ability, but the technical understanding of the mechanical operation of the weapon. Even reloading a minigun would be more than any untrained individual could sort out on the fly. Even the operation of simpler firearms like assault rifles (we really need a selective fire option mod!) or even bolt-action rifles are not immediately obvious to a tyro; different models of self-loading handguns have the safety in different places, and an uninformed individual might struggle to find the magazine release, or not know to rack the slide to chamber the first round. Miniguns and the like are much more complicated mechanisms, and someone who didn't know what the safety spoon was for might find using a fragmentation grenade fatal on the first try. ='[.]'=

[charwo]

I think a minigun should actually be fairly easy to operate. At that RPM and weapon weight you're looking basically more like at something like a continuous force, than at a weapon shaking wildly around. It would also realistically use very underpowered ammo, because, well, even in power armour you wouldn't be able to take the literal TONS of thrust a Vulcan produces. So assuming you have the physical strength, it would actually be rather easy to keep it on target.

 

But the army tends to be "tuned" so to speak so they can use almost everyone in a war. It's not just for super-muscular Grognak types. I think only like two people in my platoon were anywhere near the fit sporty type when we joined (and no, I wasn't among them), while at the other end two were barely at the bare minimum weight and height to join, and, so unfit that a ten year old girl could have beat them up. I'm not going for hyperbole there, btw. They train you from there, yes, but what I'm trying to say is that the weapon and equipment are designed and purchased with that in mind. None of them are made to require a Grognak type to operate. If the army ever designed a minigun that can be operated by an infantryman without a bipod/tripod, it too wouldn't require superhuman strength. Even accounting for size difference and such, at least half the women would have no trouble operating it.

 

I think the bigger issue in all such game is a whole other one than being able to physically use a weapon. It's the PTSD that would be the real killer. Even the most trained soldiers tend to break down. And thanks to those pesky mirror neurons, shooting someone at close enough range is... kinda like shooting yourself. It's actually more stressful than being under fire. People have been known to break to various degrees after shooting even one person. To kill hundreds of people, like in the game, and still keep ticking like nothing happened, your character would have to be a bigger psychopath than Father.

 

And yes, that goes for both genders.

 

But somehow THAT seems to fly right under the radar of anyone that's that hell-bent on enforcing realism.

While not one of my Skyrim gripes, PTSD is a huge issue I feel no RPG has ever covered very well. I personally head cannon it that your health is mostly your mental well being, because however effective stimpacks are, neither they nor food are going to magically pull bullets out of your sternum. What's especailly missing from the female perspective is that she can't claim to be a hardened killer, something you don't get in JAG or much of anything short of infantry work. Which means it's likely even the male SS isn't prepared for the constant barrage of killing.

 

It would be nice to at least be able to select a few backgrounds concurrant with the type of background: An Intelligence bonus for a litigator, versus a charisma bonus for say public defender, or Robotic perks for a field mechanic versus a rank in Big Guns for being a heavy ordnance gunner or something like that. Just a hint would have been good.

 

As far as PTSD goes, there's no way to really make it work in a mod except for positive bonuses: such as getting temporary stat boosts from talking down foes. Because it would be highly, HIGHLY punishing to have say radiation damage upon a kill in a game where nothing is designed for non-killing. At no point have I felt like I was playing a pre-war survivor. This is a power fantasy game, pure and end of story. It's actually worse that New Vegas in that regard, but it's easy, real easy to think of a Courier as battle scarred and a remorseless killer if things go down. Bethesda does not reward or plan for non-violence. This is the thoughtless in Ugly Thoughtless and Lazy