Ways to Roleplay the Sole Survivor

[charwo]

For all of you roleplayers here, I think I speak for everyone that there's a f*#@ton of ludo-narrative dissonance in Fallout 4. Within the span of a waking day, the SS, male or female gets their world blown up, frozen, spouse killed, baby kidnapped, and then come out finding from Codsworth it's 210 years later.....and then you're available to do side quests and other basic RPG s#*!. Then I saw this other thread where a poster named Dainsgames said he's taking it slow, having his SS scout around and find Abernathy Farm, so he knows the world is dangerous but not completely full of assholes. This is a great idea, and I'd take it a step further: imagine for a few days to a few weeks, the SS and Codsworth help the Abernathy's in exchange for room and board: a working MR. Handy alone could be wonderful for all kinds of things. And if you're into green world stuff like I am, it makes sense the SS could survive the very brutal New England winter, which would be coming very soon, and then jump to spring and make things all pretty. Then one day, the raiders turn up shake down the Abernathy's, the SS follows them to Concord and bam.....main story.

 

I was thinking there could be other ways to make a coherent story out of the main game, like:

From Concord to getting into the Institute, only do main story quests as the SS would be relentless once on the trial of his/her son.

Then go to Far Harbor because Father is well....that could cause a real freakout.

Don't open the spouse's cyropod so they don't thaw out....so they might be able to to be revived.

Have it that information like those Vault-Tec Survival Guide video were uploaded into their brains while they were sleeping. It would go a long way to making the female SS more justified I'd think. Technology has done stranger things in Fallout.

 

Cause I like to roleplay, I'd love to hear any and all tips others have because.....the story as written is.....it's not bad, it's certainly better than Fallout 3 but it needs more justification, and more than a little tweaking.

[Moosebillywilly]

A close friend has, for her latest playthrough, attempted to avoid the Minutemen altogether. Her character, having talked to Codsworth, decided that Concord sounded too dangerous...she's a lawyer, not a fighter...and, reasoning that the farmland around Sanctuary would be safer, headed out west. What she found convinced her that the economy could be made to function and has, since then and with the aid of her trusty pack brahmin, been rebuilding the Commonwealth one settlement at a time. Many hours in, she is based at the Sunshine Tidings co-op and continues to avoid Concord, which her character never liked anyway. Whenever she passes, all she can hear is gunfire, and there's probably nothing there worth the trouble. She describes her character as a "gimlet-eyed capitalist", and pretty much everything her character does is motivated by profit. It is remarkable how well the game is accommodating of this. She has needed several mods that make the economy work better, and much of her fortune is derived from pretty hardcore chem-dealing but, nevertheless, her character is pretty well developed. If only she wasn't called Boobies.

 

One of my first impressions of Fallout 4 was that Concord was a design error on the part of Bethesda. Both Springvale in Fallout 3 and Goodsprings in NV gave an excellent impression of what the game would bring. When you go to Concord you met Preston Garvey and, ten minutes later, you're stamping around in power-armour. Personally, I wish that Concord had been far bleaker. For me, at least, it set the wrong tone and spoon fed the player too much.

Edited April 14, 2016 by Moosebillywilly

[CyrusAmell]

When you do the Silver Shroud questline, I pretend he or she is going through a midlife crises.

Edited April 14, 2016 by CyrusAmell

[UnderwaterFrenetic]

I play a sociopath who tells every companion what they want to hear, earning their loyalty and love, before banishing them to lives of back-breaking, soul-crushing labor on various settlements, while she lives a life of leisure in a large mansion and drinks ice cold beers daily. Also, she asks people about her baby son and shows concern for him so that people aren't suspicious, but completes hundreds of various sidequests and radiant quests in the meantime, for no particular reason. She also greedily takes all of the money the settlements earn to feed her drug habit, hoards junk so she might add to the stately palatial pleasure dome she calls a house, and despite all her caps and materials, she has never once built her settlers a working toilet.

 

Honestly, I didn't start out roleplaying, but considering the above actions, I guess I'm an anti-hero? Maybe not a hero. Anti? Auntie?

 

Auntie Hero.

[TheVampireDante]

Mine's insane.

 

She snapped after the initial events, the bombing, husbands death, loss of child and then finding out the world's a ruin. She hears Nate's voice in her head as she travels the commonwealth, and with him being a soldier he becomes more prominent when she fights.

To help with that I'm using a mod that adds more spoken comments during combat - but I'm using the male version on a female character.

 

So she speaks normal around friendly people and during quests, but in combat she "hears" Nate spouting off random remarks at opponents.

[minngarm]

The main quest was written like it was the only quest. They failed to write in logical side extensions, times when you should have like what FO3 did with megaton > GNR and GNR > the VR vault w/e it was called. Those were perfect times for the player character to get lost, same with the exit of the vault. Or side tracked into other things.

 

The problem is with the emotional stakes so high, world nuked, spouse murdered in front of you, baby taken, the PC has no reason to stop at all from advancing where it is logical to do so, and most of the side content is written so that it needs to be played before the final of the main quest.

 

I just can't properly feel a reason for the PC to stop at any point from getting their son back to even help a settlement or anything else really.

[Moosebillywilly]

 

I just can't properly feel a reason for the PC to stop at any point from getting their son back to even help a settlement or anything else really.

The game certainly sets things up that way. I was annoyed with my character for not acknowledging, after talking with Codsworth for the first time, that Shaun could have been kidnapped anything up to two hundred years ago. I hoped that my PC would be brighter than that. Then you go off to Concord and Mama Murphy sends you straight off to Diamond City, and so on. Like I said above, I thought Concord was a mistake by Bethesda and, as you say, you are a little railroaded from the start.

[minngarm]

 

 

I just can't properly feel a reason for the PC to stop at any point from getting their son back to even help a settlement or anything else really.

The game certainly sets things up that way. I was annoyed with my character for not acknowledging, after talking with Codsworth for the first time, that Shaun could have been kidnapped anything up to two hundred years ago. I hoped that my PC would be brighter than that. Then you go off to Concord and Mama Murphy sends you straight off to Diamond City, and so on. Like I said above, I thought Concord was a mistake by Bethesda and, as you say, you are a little railroaded from the start.

 

Yea checking for a activity log in the vault would have been my first bet after sweeping it clear. Next freaking the frack out when i saw what used to be my home when I exited.

 

On top of tossing death claws and PA at you they just really rush the entire thing.

 

Really the DC could have been replaced with a radscorpion and it would have been much more fitting and terrifying.

[Moosebillywilly]

 

 

 

I just can't properly feel a reason for the PC to stop at any point from getting their son back to even help a settlement or anything else really.

The game certainly sets things up that way. I was annoyed with my character for not acknowledging, after talking with Codsworth for the first time, that Shaun could have been kidnapped anything up to two hundred years ago. I hoped that my PC would be brighter than that. Then you go off to Concord and Mama Murphy sends you straight off to Diamond City, and so on. Like I said above, I thought Concord was a mistake by Bethesda and, as you say, you are a little railroaded from the start.

 

Yea checking for a activity log in the vault would have been my first bet after sweeping it clear. Next freaking the frack out when i saw what used to be my home when I exited.

 

On top of tossing death claws and PA at you they just really rush the entire thing.

 

Really the DC could have been replaced with a radscorpion and it would have been much more fitting and terrifying.

 

Or just stick Vault 111 right in the middle of the Glowing Sea. They should have a few hazmat suits in a vault anyway. Codsworth's a Mr Handy, he'll be fine.

[Raycheetah]

Another issue with the pacing of the MQ is that things are always "Rush! Rush!" to the next part. Get to the Institute, and you don't even get a chance to sleep in the room you're assigned before a courser is nagging you to go talk to the boss about the next assignment.

 

It is possible to take a breather when you're supposed to make contact with the Railroad. After all, with their special, secret code which even the geniuses at the Institute can't use to track 'em down, it only makes sense that the SS might not immediately find them. Then some time off the MQ can be justified, at least until you, the player, decide it's time to carry on.

 

But then, Bethesda isn't writing great fiction here. It's a story on rails. ='[.]'=