Comparisons with Skyrim

[Moraelin]

Some is actually hinted in dialogues too. E.g., Judge Zell's gang being new in town is pretty much shoved in your face if you take that quest in the game.

 

The raiders also routinely talk about the other gangs and their leaders if you just crouch in a corner and listen instead of rolling them over, Blitzkrieg style. (Though, admittedly, blitzing through IS fun.) They talk about joining some other leader's gang, or what they found in some place, or that someone wiped out Ack-Ack's gang and left no survivors, and stuff like that.

 

Makes it pretty clear to me that they are distinct gangs, to be honest. Even if they don't have a neon sign over their head saying "Ack-Ack's Raider" or "Boomer's Raider".

 

Edit: Which, if we're comparing it to Skyrim, is already more than Skyrim had. Other than the Silver Hand, there were pretty much no dialogues or written notes or anything to indicate that they're anything else than yet another generic bandit.

 

I mean, don't get me wrong, I wouldn't say no to some more distinct names or distinctive gang clothing or something. But for me it's more like under "it would be nice to have", than under "deal breaker". Is all I'm saying.

[Boombro]

What wrong in leaving notes and PCs to learn about something? How is that a problem? A raider writes in PC his dairy, you read it. How is that wrong, immersion breaking or whatever? Bad guys can write their feelings too you know! They are humans just like us!

[nonoodles]

What wrong in leaving notes and PCs to learn about something? How is that a problem? A raider writes in PC his dairy, you read it. How is that wrong, immersion breaking or whatever? Bad guys can write their feelings too you know! They are humans just like us!

 

Well, I suppose the reality break lies in how these bad guys are so universally well-lettered. It's understood that this is part of the game world so nobody really complains, and it does bring a level of depth to an incident that's otherwise your usual shooter. As for keeping diaries or journals? Frankly, how many folks living off of robbing and murdering people actually bother to keep a well-written record of their exploits and feelings? It's something that does vaguely bother me when playing a mod where you pick up a note or log that completely belies the rough-shod nature of the npc you just slew to get on with the quest, to the extent where I'm afraid I felt compelled to de-gentrify a certain note in a certain mod.

 

By and large, though, methinks FO4 suffers in having central motives/themes that were either not gone into depth ingame (the family man/woman aspect) or deals with concepts that are still too far removed from present day concerns (sentient AI, their rights or lack of it). A little too alienating if not pulled off well. Skyrim had a simple staple fantasy hero theme (kill the world-threatening villain) and a civil war scenario that handled broadly familiar concepts of peace, war. patriotism, loyalty, fealty.

[Boombro]

Many bad guys wrote dairies back in the way. It hardly odd.

[Raycheetah]

 

What wrong in leaving notes and PCs to learn about something? How is that a problem? A raider writes in PC his dairy, you read it. How is that wrong, immersion breaking or whatever? Bad guys can write their feelings too you know! They are humans just like us!

 

Well, I suppose the reality break lies in how these bad guys are so universally well-lettered.

 

I think it's in the Mass State House that you find a Settler's note complaining of the irony of having been kidnapped because of their useful literacy.

 

Like everybody else in the Commonwealth, some raiders are literate, some, not so much. It's simply a function of background. =^[.]^=

[Moraelin]

And for example in West Everett Estate you have a tape that makes it clear that the mutant leader captured a raider to operate the recorder for him.

 

Edit: also, I think most of the raider notes are hardly soul searching diaries. Zell for example keeps a rather clinical log of people kidnapped and tortured. The leader of the Forged is also hardly sentimental or doing any soul searching. Etc.

 

Edit: also, a lot of the logs are not by the raiders as such. Most of the information on for example West Everett, leading to the point where they were taken over by raiders, is by the previous inhabitants.

[nonoodles]

It's a bit odd but like I said, it doesn't bother me a lot. I'd rather have this than nothing but raider meatbags for target practice. :)

[charwo]

Ah, looks like now we're getting some more insightful dialogue. Good.

 

Actually, if you go through all the dialogues in the game, and the terminals, and all, quite a few of your complaints are actually explained. In game.

 

The commonwealth is the way it is, in a nutshell, because it's been destabilized all the time, and even more so recently. You're not only seeing the fallout (literal as well as figurative) of the nukes 210 years ago, but of MUCH more recent events like the CPG massacre and the destruction of the Minutemen. You're seeing ANOTHER collapse into chaos.

 

Especially the Minutemen are conspicuously mentioned as being once strong enough to keep the Institute in check. Then bad stuff starts to happen to them, including an all out Gunner assault on them. Who paid for that? Hmm, I dunno, but I can venture a guess, based on whose agenda it was to keep MA fragmented and in chaos.

 

That goes for the Raiders too, btw. If you check out the information in the game, a lot of the groups are actually very recent. It doesn't have to be sustainable for 200 years. It's just a bunch of hoodlums moving in to fill the power vacuum in the short run.

 

That said, since you like to appeal to history, I'd point out that we DID have dark ages lasting for hundreds of years. More than once, in fact. See, for example, the Greek dark ages after the collapse at the end of the bronze age. Society doesn't form brand new over night.

 

That said, it's just a game. They rarely make sense to the level of detail that you seem to demand. E.g., what's with all the fortifications and the RECENTLY destroyed ones (the one where the arena champion's dad was, for example) in Oblivion, if there are no external threats until then? What's with all the walls in Morrowind, if one can fly over them or teleport right in? Etc.

 

There is so much wrong with everything you said.

 

First, beyond the fact hat "too clever by half" modern art is iin fact mostly pretenious garbage, it at least tries to engage in it's subject matter. The famous "This is not a pipe" painting of a pipe is too clever by half,but it is trying to reveal a truth about it's subject, which happens to be itself, a paiting of a real object. Nothing Bethesda does is that clever, or trying to be that insightful. The most clever thing I've ever seen Bethesda do is making the Dwarves into a race of Elves.

 

I saw the raider's notes. I saw nothing to indicate these were invading refugees or that they were driven to this lifestyle, the sole exception being Gabriel's terminal, but that was only for Gabriel and his initial cadre in Libertalia. If I had gotten anything out of what they were actually doing with the money (buying guns, training troops, repairing the boats, buying fishing nets) I'd complain a lot less. But there's other huge holes at other raider locations. The biggest question is at the Federal Ration Sotckpile, which is: how is there still edible food in there after 200 years?! I have it headcannon, and I think it's the correct interpretation the Federal Ration Stockpile has a food sythesizer somewhere in the base which allows limited food production, not unlike a Sierra Madre Vending Machine, which were common, but presumable with limited production capacity. The problem with this, is there's no food synthizier, anywhere, not in in either Bethesda Fallouts, although it is assumed in the Vaults.

 

Or look at Beantown Brewery: they apperently making some beer for internal consumption, but the real money is not using the Brewery as a fortified structure, but in making beer and selling it at a profit. But no attempt was made. It's like all these raiders do is sit around and wait to raid. This would make sense in the immdiate post-apocalyse where people wouldn't have the basic skills on hand to make best of their situation, but if these were disgruntled farmboys (and barring an intact Boston with vertical agriculture done by robots, nearly everyone would need to be farming in order to eat), they'd see a HUGE bounty in making large scale hooch. They wouldn't need to try and raid for food, they could trade for it, maybe if they were still total scumbags, kidnap people to work in or clean up the Brewery. But here's nothing like that kind of ambition. Bandits in Borderlands are unskilled and made psychotic by Pandora, bandits in Skyrim are outlaws hunted by the government. Raiders in Fallout have no such confining circumstances. In any case, most real life raiding cultures are only part time raiders; they trade at least as often as they raid. A grasshopper is only a locust a faction of the time.

 

Also, the idea the Insitute paid the Gunners to liquidate Quincy is a nice idea, but there's no evidence for it. And it's not their style. As for the floating potions and alls in Morrowind, I always thought the walls were as much to keep animals out as much as bandits; the walls of the civil centers were to keep the rural population under control (pre-empt peasant revolts) rather than keep out invading armies, which the Empire lacked in the third era. And, while this is kind of a side issue, I found as ruler in Europa Universalis, you don't want to give your cities TOO thick of walls, in case there's a city revolt. Low walls make it much easier to retake a rebellious city.

[Moraelin]

Well, beauty is in the eye of the beerholder. It may be pretentious garbage, but I'm told it's art.

 

Plus, if the purpose of art is to make you think, heh, just look at how much it made you think about fishing fleets, and pirates, and society. I'd say then that it's done the job, innit?

 

THAT said,

 

1. Well, I'm a smug, arrogant and I dare say even snarky barstard. I have no problem with explanations that boil down to people being idiots. Raiders not fully exploiting the potential of a building? Well, I can totally believe that.

 

In fact, people acting less than optimal is the most common thing in history. The Vikings also didn't get the whole value of the manuscripts from raided monasteries, for example. Most common finds related to such raids are ripped-out golden or silver decorations from the bindings and covers, while selling the manuscript would have brought more money.

 

2. While I would like a perfect game, I'm also aware that any publisher has a finite budget. Anything that comes out at the end of that process is going to be a compromise. Basically I can see what they did with that in FO4, and personally I'm pretty content with the result.

 

Yes, it would be nice if they scripted raiders to send convoys to buy beer and whatnot, but that cost would have to come out of said budget. If you get that, there's no money for something else. Am I happier to have an extra building or something instead of that. Yep.

 

3. Again, there is no requirement that art represents 100% accurate reality. Not to mention, that there would be not much of that escaping reality if everything 100% reflected reality.

 

Most game and movie settings take whatever liberties are needed with reality, to either make the point or, as above, to not blow the budget.

 

And there's no requirement to explain everything to you either.

 

Why are those clocks melting in Salvador Dali's painting? When DOES Godot arrive? Does he? How exactly does the Hulk puff up? Exactly how does the TARDIS have more space inside than its outer bounds? Why doesn't time travel violate conservation of energy and matter? Why does the space distortion in Call Of Cthulhu not come with a massive gravity field too, as per general relativity? Why does metal armour or even power armour stop anything, when a .308 round can go through about 1cm of steel at point blank range, and if it hits perpendicularly?

 

Who cares, really? Enjoy it as it is, or don't. But don't be surprised if most of us find making a fuss about details to be just a pointless waste of time.

 

4. It also doesn't help that a lot of the complaints I've seen so far, boil down to anything between arguments from ignorance and just... Dunning-Kruger.

 

E.g., why don't the raiders restore a freighter and use it as a pirate ship? Well, geee, lemme see. The fuel alone for a container ship can be anywhere between 10,000 and 20,000 USD per DAY, and maintenance costs about half that much. Even with today's infrastructure, that's the equivalent of the salaries of 200 people or so to keep it going and maintained all around the year. (Not all on the docks, mind you. Also refinery employees, truckers, steel mill workers, etc.) And that's AFTER raising and repairing it in the first place. Without that infrastructure? There aren't enough people on the map to keep that ship going.

 

Not to mention that a thin skinned cargo ship makes a piss-poor pirate vessel for the same reason any berk in a fishing boat was a menace to them near Somalia. Because anyone with a missile launcher can put a big hole in it.

 

I.e., that argument was just... silly. To say the least.

 

E.g., why don't raiders trade beer? Well, how do you know they don't? Did you interview every gang out there and every caravan from Bunker Hill, or what? What do you base that on?

 

It seems to me like a classic argument from ignorance. Textbook one, in fact. You don't have information shoved in your face that they do, therefore they don't.

 

And then do a whole butthurt fuss over something that you just pulled out of your own rear, basically. Well, if you don't like what you made up out of thin air, make up something else.

 

Etc.

[Moraelin]

And again, what does it have to do with Skyrim anyway? You never saw the raiders in mines (e.g., Halted Stream Camp or Fort Fellhammer) trading in metal in Skyrim, either. You didn't see the marauders in Broken Oar Grotto trade in fish or anything. You weren't actually shown the Silver Hand actually trading leather items, although they seem to skin quite a bunch of werewolves.

 

So even accepting that FO4 COULD show more details of how the world works, WTH does that have to do with Skyrim, since it didn't either?