Pre-war Protagonist: What would you have done with it?

[cossayos]

With their story about the Institute they have painted themselves into a corner. They wanted it to be emotional, so they took your son to run the show and present you with what they consider a dilemma.

 

The son story was bound to fail right from the get go. You get no chance to feel any kind of attachment and when you're good and ready to enter the Institute, six to seven months have passed with you building a life of your own.

 

The spouse being a companion would have required some serious story writing. Not Bethesda's strong suit. It would just be an appendix like the romance options, which are just tagged on in a listless manner. If you go with romances in any game, make them believable and make them count in a role playing sense. Not just handing over some perk and get some sleep benefit.

 

The story could have been better if you played the offspring - male or female. Since I didn't follow the hype train before release, I was pretty sure that I would play the child when I first fired up the game and went into character creation. Playing the parent first surprised and then dismayed me right at the start, since it was clear that this would be a railroaded storyline.

[Moraelin]

Yeah, I suspect that most people would have had no reason to even consider following the Institute without the son angle. I mean let's face it, they do everything evil that the Enclave ever did (kidnapping, experimenting on people with FEV, etc) and added some evil stuff off their own that the Enclave never did (e.g., slavery.)

 

I mean, hell, they top even raiders. At least raiders tend to leave you alive if you hand over the caps and crops. If noting else, for the return business. Whereas the Institute can murder a whole major settlement like University Point pretty much just for not having what the Institute wanted, or murder and replace some random guy just so he can grow experimental plants for them up on the surface. Or murder a whole vault just to tie up loos ends, when all they wanted was a baby. Etc.

 

If anyone else but Shaun were to present that choice -- much less take the hard-line that if you don't join them NOW you're to be shot at on sight -- I'm guessing the majority of people wouldn't even bother pretending that's not the evil choice.

[charwo]

Yeah, I suspect that most people would have had no reason to even consider following the Institute without the son angle. I mean let's face it, they do everything evil that the Enclave ever did (kidnapping, experimenting on people with FEV, etc) and added some evil stuff off their own that the Enclave never did (e.g., slavery.)

 

I mean, hell, they top even raiders. At least raiders tend to leave you alive if you hand over the caps and crops. If noting else, for the return business. Whereas the Institute can murder a whole major settlement like University Point pretty much just for not having what the Institute wanted, or murder and replace some random guy just so he can grow experimental plants for them up on the surface. Or murder a whole vault just to tie up loos ends, when all they wanted was a baby. Etc.

 

If anyone else but Shaun were to present that choice -- much less take the hard-line that if you don't join them NOW you're to be shot at on sight -- I'm guessing the majority of people wouldn't even bother pretending that's not the evil choice.

More importantly without Shaun being in a position to make you head of the Institute, there's be no hope of redemption. If you can't lead the Institute there's no reason not to burn it to the ground.

 

And it's not really a choice to 'side with your son.' If he'd been 10 years old in 2077 and you'd known him for a bit, raised him, then yeah, there could be pre-war bonding to justify it. If you had two good scenes of father son bonding, talking about Science or history, or what he thinks is wrong with the Institute that he can't change, anything to humanize him and make him sound less like a sociopath. The way they wrote Shaun was as a sociopath that doesn't really give a damn about anything, even using his parent as a side experiment.

 

But in terms of what my SS survivor would do, he'd HAVE backyard Fallout shelter. He's not scared of the radiation because he's got a small stockpile of Rad-X and Rad Away, and he's got family beyond the wife and son, and would consider it cowardly to leave society to crumble into the nothing. He wants to go down swinging, and the wife won't leave because he won't leave. He has some PTSD, but it's his country and if it needs him, he'll be there.

 

I think it'd make a better story. And as far as the Lovecraft thing, I meant the cults, not the monsters. Misanthropic humans making things worse, hinting at, but never confirming, the things in between the cracks. Besides Cabot House was good; it would have been great they'd gone all out and had three more quests just like it. Cabot House was the best thing by far in Fallout 4, which proves Bethesda should never, ever be allowed to make another Fallout game (but we saw this with Fallout 3). But if their interests and writing talent are actually on Lovecraft, I want to see more and not less of it.

[Deleted918306User]

I was thinking a bit. They could have redone it to make the spouse not only a companion, but allow you to switch between them if you wanted.

 

Want Nate with his military and power armor experience to go help out the BoS? Switch to him. Want to deal with the leaders of a settlement? Nora. During the game Nora could become better at combat, Nate could become better at dealing with people. The lines are already all in the game anyway. Certain NPC's would only speak to/be friendly with one or the other, but not both. You could do it, it just would have required more work.

 

As far as the Institute goes, that whole part of the story is weak.

 

You've been playing a character who has spent weeks or months ripping through the best the Commonwealth has to offer. When "Shaun" says "I am your son" my first reaction on my first playthrough was to call him a liar and shoot him in the face, then make my escape. There's no reason to join the Institute. Even the Enclave would be a preferable choice. The Institute is the worst of Ivory Tower Fascism, perfectly willing to let die/kill all of surface humanity just for their utopia, deliberately sabotaging any attempt by the surface dwellers to get their s#*! together.

 

They should have just went with "These are the bad guys..." not "You can join any faction."

 

The other major problem I ran into is that neither Nate or Nora ever react to the places they HAD to have visited before Skydark. Go the guard armory? Neither of them go "I remember this place..." There's a few throwaway lines, but mostly when talking to NPC's to remind you, the player, that they are pre-apocalypse.

 

I'll admit, I've been having more fun using an alternate start mod and running my own scenario.

[Moraelin]

Hmm... I like the way you think. I do miss the switching between party members in old games, and giving them specialized skills and stuff.

[Deleted918306User]

All the voice lines are still in there. The big question is whether or not you could enable switching back and forth and if the game itself could handle keeping track of two different sets of skills, perks, inventories, quest markers.

 

I wish I knew modding. I'd love to start out by making a Synth appear that looks like the dead spouse to do a proof of concept.

 

Then see if you could make the other spouse into a companion.

 

Then see if you could enable switching between.

 

Then see if it's possible to store the variables needed.

 

Now, it would require some story rewrite. But let's be honest, a 2nd year creative writing student could do better than that dog of a main quest.

 

The big question is: What do you do with Shaun?

 

I'm all for leaving the weird baby potato-creature out of the story, BUT, Shaun could be a driving motivator to building settlements. Mama Murphy with her chair would be a great babysitter.

 

"You wanna live in Sanctuary, you gotta work, your job is watch this here potato creature, Mamma Murphy..."

 

But you could ditch that weird mutant spawn (Nate obviously had a fusion leak in his suit all those years he was fighting the Chinese) all together and not damage the story.

 

Unlike Bethesda's "Middle of the Road" approach, it might be worth it to slice out the PC being able to join the Institute. I mean, they didn't give us the option of joining The Master or the Enclave and that worked just fine. There is such a thing as "too many options" because it makes them all feel watered down.

 

Huh, it could be done, but you'd probably need a whole team. Animators, scripters, coders, mesh and texture artists, and above all, a small core of writers to make sure everything goes in line.

 

But hell, by that time, you might as well make "Fallout 4.5..."

[cossayos]

More importantly without Shaun being in a position to make you head of the Institute, there's be no hope of redemption. If you can't lead the Institute there's no reason not to burn it to the ground.

 

 

 

 

 

Why? The BOS isn't much better in that department, and so is the Railroad. They're all maniacs in different ways.

 

It all depends on how you view your character and it's development. If I like to play a Blofeld kind of person I go with the Institute anytime. I did the BOS ending this time round, just to see how it pans out. It's even less satisfying than the Institute for me, since Maxon's still around to go about his genocidal plans.

 

Even worse, when I blew up the Institute with the Minutemen, they went out of their way to not kill the hiding scientists. No such luck with the BOS. They simply shout everything that moved.

[Moraelin]

Well, yes, I kept saying all along that the BOS and the Railroad ARE deranged and murderous a-holes. But I still find the Institute to be FAR worse.

 

For example the BOS actively fights against raiders and supermutants and ferals all over the commonwealth, although it has nothing to do with their war effort and uses up manpower and material. Which is SOME measure of good-will towards the people below. Even settlements which aren't providing them with food or anything. Basically the dialogue with Maxson says it all. He actually cares about saving the people below albeit while being a bigotted fanatic.

 

Meanwhile the Institute kidnaps people, murders people, and experiments with FEV on people.

 

And while one could argue that the BOS are essentially trying to rule the world in a paternal autocratic fashion, with an iron power fist, the Institute actively destabilizes the place and keeps it in chaos. The Institute isn't even trying to offer their own leadership to the place, they just keep it in turmoil.

 

There's a bit of a difference between trying to impose your own order, fascistic as it may be, and all the stuff that the Institute is doing. Mind you, I'm not saying that the BOS are GOOD in a D&D sense. I'm just saying the Institute is far worse.

[cossayos]

 

There's a bit of a difference between trying to impose your own order, fascistic as it may be, and all the stuff that the Institute is doing. Mind you, I'm not saying that the BOS are GOOD in a D&D sense. I'm just saying the Institute is far worse.

 

But it all depends on what you make of it after Shaun is gone. Offscreen, of course. You can turn it into anything you want in your imagination. No such luck with the BOS or the Railroad, since you never rise to the top.

 

My favorite ending ist still the Minutemen. Not because I like dressup and history reanactors that much, but because they don't actually hurt anyone in the long run.

[Moraelin]

All the voice lines are still in there. The big question is whether or not you could enable switching back and forth and if the game itself could handle keeping track of two different sets of skills, perks, inventories, quest markers.

Quests would be the same for both, skills don't exist, inventories are already separate, and each NPC already has its own set of stats and perks. E.g., it's possible to give Danse all heavy weapon levels, while not having any myself.

 

Well... almost.

 

There are a few perks, mostly and notably all the S.P.E.C.I.A.L. perks, which apply specifically to the player for some deranged reason. If you try to give Danse all 9 perception perks, actually your character now gets +9 to perception.

 

So basically the switch script would have to explicitly setav those variables.

 

Also I doubt that you can reliably just tell the game that another character is the main one now. The ID of the player character is pretty much hard-coded. So basically you wouldn't be as much switching the active character as copying the face and stats and everything between the main character and the companion.

 

Fortunately enough, though, we do have the largely unused "Husband" and "Wife" NPCs, which just store the state at the beginning of the game, so I suppose those could be used to store the state regardless of which of them is currently copied to the protagonist and which to the companion.