charwo Posted January 18, 2016 Share Posted January 18, 2016 I've spent a lot of time being very upset with my Fallout 4 purchase decision. But I gotta say a lot of the rancor is buyer beware and the fact that it's not a good GAME, because FPS are garbage, all of them. The story though is much, MUCH improved from Fallout 3. I f*#@ing HATED Fallout 3 vanilla, and as I'm working on fanfic to make something of that tailing pond of a story I actually like, I find trying to plan out a Fallout 4 fic actually causes less reworking. In the first place, there's nothing funny about Fallout 3. it wants to be absurd but it's childish in it's attempts. One side quest aside, Fallout 4 is absent, which is awesome because no humor is better than bad humor. Granted there are things I absolutely hate (the endings) it's actually a solid core. I guess I'm admitting I have less to complain about than some others because I have no interest in being anything other than a (well paid) girl scout. So the lack of roleplaying was virtually unnoticed by me, cause I was gonna do the right thing anyway. I do think people wanted to be amoral are plenty right to be upset. Yes, you're a bastard for murdering NPCs left and right, but that was always a choice RPGs are supposed to give you. Especially Fallout. All I need to make a decent story out of this is to turn the Glowing Sea into a radioactive Lost Woods (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheLostWoods), remove Diamond City and expand it to be Boston between Bunker Hill to the north, Jamaica Plains to the south, east to an active Boston Harbor to west to Vault 81. Then you turn it into city noir (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CityNoir) besieged to the south by Supermutants and to the north from Raiders from the hinterlands of New England looking to pillage the outlying communities of the only functioning, modern city in the northeast. Now there was issues I have that are my own piccolos (Green world, Social Experiment didn't happen because it's stupid, as is rockets on the USS Constitution) but the central concept and the companions are everything I could ask for in a game (other than having to purge two of the other factions). Well, that and Shaun comes off like a Psychopath. I'd have to change that bunches. Of all the things I'm peeved about, it's the waste of Boston itself that makes me shake in rage. They made objectively terrible design decisions by having the city abandoned to the wolves. But the thing Fallout 4 has really hammered home to me is that a good plot is not enough to make a game. FPS all the time is BORING. Action becomes repetitive without all the things that make action movies work: snappy dialog, charismatic villains and a hero who has a chance to show people he's an actual human being. Did the people at Bethesda watch Die Hard? Or Dirty Harry? Or even things like Saving Private Ryan? If they want a more action-y game, then they need the pacing and pathos to match. So if I were to try and fix Fallout 4 in a fic form, I'd actually cut out almost all the exploring, all of the shooting, and create what I cannot in the game: a character driven arc of a story where a man out of time has to struggle and decide what is right and wrong, what is responsible and ideal, in the world where all his sources of identity are compromised or gone. As much as I feel uncomfortable saying this, if they didn't want to make a CPRG, they should have let Tell Tale make this game. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nonoodles Posted January 18, 2016 Share Posted January 18, 2016 I find trying to plan out a Fallout 4 fic actually causes less reworking Well possibly because FO4 did take a few cues from New Vegas regarding factions and companions and not having goofy tidal basin purification schemes as the pivot of the story*. Ironically, the only faction that struck me as well-defined was the legacy one, the Brotherhood of Steel. Railroad and MM are too one-note and the Institute's motivations, short term or long term, remain vague till the end. I'm all for someone fleshing them out/changing the entire plot/removing Shaun/giving a better, lengthier prelude before the bombs dropped. remove Diamond City and expand it to be Boston between Bunker Hill to the north, Jamaica Plains to the south, east to an active Boston Harbor to west to Vault 81. Then you turn it into city noir (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CityNoir) besieged to the south by Supermutants and to the north from Raiders from the hinterlands of New England looking to pillage the outlying communities of the only functioning, modern city in the northeast.They made objectively terrible design decisions by having the city abandoned to the wolves. Well, DC at first glance is a natural choice for establishing a settlement since the stadium walls provide a natural defence. All the same, a well aimed mini nuke would theoretically flatten it in seconds. Having a sprawling city inhabited by relatively normal people would be a refreshing change. Gotta say the two vanilla settlements are thematically hazy - DC was like Megaton and Goodneighbour was run by ...mafia guys? Whatever. Was there ever something about GN and the Triggermen? As a matter of fact, the small factions are largely wasted in this game - Triggermen, Atom Cats, Combat Zone (not a faction really but you know). The school in DC was a nice acknowledgment that certain Skyrim mods made sense. Can't have childrenz running around all day doin' nuthin' : D character driven arc of a story where a man out of time has to struggle and decide what is right and wrong, what is responsible and ideal, in the world where all his sources of identity are compromised or gone. Yes, the man/woman out of time motif never took off ingame, did it. They might as well have foregone the whole pre-war intro for all the social and psychological adjustments your character had to undergo. I'd say it's a shame but one gets the feeling BGS writers are not very interested in writing, which is rather odd coming from a studio that's known to have provided the gaming world with one of its richest mythic lore. Maybe they just don't like science fiction? Post apoc? *admittedly, replacing it with a no less goofy scheme to mass produce humanlike androids in order to replace real people because. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
charwo Posted January 18, 2016 Author Share Posted January 18, 2016 Well, I think that Goodneighbor kinda makes sense even in an expanded Boston, where basically urban mobsters and warlords keep the peace. It worked in Mogadishu. But the way I figure, my Boston would be mostly Goodneighbor with a nice corridor to the Commons for people in the Fens (the stand folk in DC).At the same time, all of this is premature as I'm working on one fanfic to see if I can actually do it and moreover, if I were still wanting to do a Fallout 4 thing, I'd want to incorporate all the DLC that is yet to come out.You know, DC even as is is a wasted oppurtunity, there are virutally no stand houses and none whatsoever on the evelvated stands. This thing should be a sardine can considering how good the wall is supposed to be.That said, Piper as an actual journalist with an actual small paper with staff and such, Nick with a real brick and mortar office and Myor McDoungh lording it up in a heavily fortified Mass. Statehouse strikes me better. I almost want to do it simply because it'd be cool to have an actual rector at the North Church running interference for the railroad, and Nick meeting informants while feeding ducks in Boston Commons. Not to mention answer the question: "But what about the Lone Wanderer?" In this story, two words: Firebase Witchcraft. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nonoodles Posted January 19, 2016 Share Posted January 19, 2016 Don't get me wrong, I really like Goodneighbour and its sleazy, speakeasy noir undertones and I'm not questioning the plausibility of a place run by gangsters. I'm just wondering why it has this mafia-ish vibe other than 'hey, 1950s!' For e.g., FNV explained how the KIngs came to be and even if it's a bit far fetched, I found the explanation acceptable on multiple levels, chiefly as homage to a great pop icon. Agreed, have you seen the concept art for DC? I suppose they had to cut back on its density because of performance. Let's cross our fingers and hope someone brings the concept back to life. Nick meeting informants while feeding ducks in Boston Commons. Ooh that's so le Carré :ninja:. I'd love to read something interstitial that explores and really fleshes out a lot of the characters you meet, like your concept of Piper as someone who runs a newspaper office comprising more than two people. Or a chapter written from Danse's or Maxson's pov, or any of the minor npcs you meet on the Prydwen. Or why any of the RR members are in the RR. Even a bit of Barney Rook, who kind of fits the role of FO3's crazed survivalist, Arkansas. So many questions and potentially interesting people, the game is simply begging for fanfic expanding on all its nooks and crannies. :D Can I ask where you'll be posting your stories? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
charwo Posted January 20, 2016 Author Share Posted January 20, 2016 Well, I'm not working on a Fallout 4 fic, certainly not yet, but here, I uploaded some of what I have written so far of Fallout 3 https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11742684/1/Le-Enfant-Terribles It's fanfiction, but I did my best thus far. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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