Why the Preston Garvey hate?

[stebbinsd]

I always thought it was weird that Preston Garvey got so much hate from fans of Fallout 4.

I found this really obscure guy on youtube. He presented what I think is a pretty interesting argument for why people hate Preston.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6pQ6i5tHlvE

What do you guys think?

[snapper69]

Personally, I don't hate Preston, sure, he can be annoying, but so what?

[montky]

@stebbinsd

that is an interesting lore reflection,

and thanks for sharing that link to an interesting vid.

 

 

 

for me, a lot of it is summed up visually

by a humorous comic drawn by "JonX0r_draws".

 

I don't mind the character of General Garvey,

I just think it was written with not a lot of verisimilitude,

and those ambient quests were repetitive and annoying,

which led people to conflate the quests with the quest-giver...

 

General Garvey did the best they could after the betrayal at Quincy;

it wasn't Garvey's fault,

and they did the best they could to track north to Concord, and stumble into Codsworth and all.

They would have continued on to Sanctuary anyway.

 

General Garvey is one of the first people the Sole Survivor meets in the 2290s;

General Garvey helps the Sole Survivor to transition to that situation,

and General Garvey helps the Sole Survivor seek options to find out more about V111.

one day, it's 2077, and then, it's fire and sirens, screaming and running,

and the next day that you wake up... it's 2290s.

General Garvey was there for the Sole Survivor when no-one else might be,

and is one of the few people the Sole Survivor would really trust.

The Sole Survivor might have temporarily held an honorary title of 'General',

but, that would only be until General Garvey returned from sabbatical.

 

I'd like to think, with time and training,

the Minutemen could become a great force in the Boston Commonwealth again.

The BoS, in a show of good will, would be very much inclined to provide the Minutemen with that time and training,

in exchange for a lend of some of their technology...

 

The minutemen's history leads back to the Diamond City incident - a supermutant raid in 2180s.

by the 2290s, they're a shadow of their former selves,

but, it is crucial to understanding the Enclave and how they're a little different in Boston than elsewhere.

The BoS didn't help or couldn't help in 2180, but the Enclave did.

|the Enclave may or may not have been doubly responsible for that incident, and or the source of the Institute's FEV program...

the Enclave may have lied to the Commonwealth about their true intentions, and there may be more than one Enclave faction, just as there are many variants of BoS...|

so, if the Atom Cats are descended from the Central BoS and the Enclave or Enclave remnants...

maybe they can be brought into the BoS, and maybe, after a long time, the Enclave can make peace with the BoS...

if the Atom Cats are just wastelanders with stolen tech... they'd better get serious or give up,

as they'd be considered by both the BoS and Enclave as 'fence-sitters/usurpers".

it would only be a matter of time before they would be liquidated one way or the other...

 

in many settlements, the minutemen'd be analogous to the "Wasteland Regulators" in previous FO games.

they, alongside the BoS, the "garbage men", Diamond City patrols etc,

would be some of the few out in the wasteland genuinely trying to help folks out.

Unlike the Atom Cats, the Minutemen remain autonomous after the BoS re-enter the Boston Commonwealth.

The Atom Cats likely join the BoS, though that's another story.

 

Preston serves near the border in my continuity;

he's posted to Murkwater Gas Refinery and Somerville Border Checkpoint.

He has a lot of discretion in his mission - to seek resources in the Glowing Sea, and chart paths through the wastes,

as well as, control and coordinate the defense of that border sector,

and liaise with BoS and other factions in that area to detect Enclave and synths.

 

Preston is a general of the minutemen, a Regulator in many city-states and settlements around boston, and an Honorary Initiate of the BoS.

an obi-wan or GL john stewart type figure, his non-violent resolutions to complex situations make him a vital part of

the interregnum and treaty of Boston. In a world that is quick to anger, Preston finds other ways...

His sojurns to the glowing sea are the stuff of legend - and all in his care return from their voyages to share the tale,

a feat few who go to the glowing sea survive to attest to.

 

When he gets older, he retires to Diamond City, where he will continue to serve,

as a 'lecturer' at the Books of the Air at Diamond City. and, perhaps, as 'Mayor" of Diamond City,

to oversee an accord with Goodneighbor.

Perhaps he goes to the Good Institute, to assist there with chairperson Li and chairperson Virgil, in reforming the Institute...

or maybe, having done his duty,

Preston leaves the Boston Commonwealth on a trade caravan... destined to become a ghoul,

Preston sets off for Necropolis. What would Preston feel about turning into a ghoul? would that make him like Hancock?

where would it stop... would he become like the mindless ghouls he's blasted, or hideous beasts he's faced in the Glowing Wastes?

 

Preston and Hawthorne may wind up together, or perhaps Preston and a vault dweller from V81?

who knows... Preston was always a very aloof and private person.

 

 

[Moraelin]

It's fun to navel-gaze and confabulate, but the simplest and most obvious explanation is just the obvious: that, from what I observed in actual let's plays, people just gradually get annoyed at his neverending giving you quests without asking, if you even get anywhere near him.

 

You can even see the gradual transition in for example Gronkh's LP. It starts with Preston being cool, and gradually it turns into actively trying to run away from Preston mid-conversation, and eventually frustrated "NOOOO!" outbursts when he has to talk to Preston. He's not a very philosophical guy, and nothing in his wisecracks hints of any deeper reason for hating Preston. It's just pure annoyance.

 

The quests ARE repetitive and uninteresting, but then again so are Ada's, for that matter or any of the Railroad quests, and you don't see people raging against Drummer Boy. What's the difference? Well, those have the basic human decency to not just push oders on you. You have to actively ask for a radiant quest (e.g., Ada) or you can just say some form of "not now" and walk away.

 

Hell, at the VERY LEAST, you have to actively initiate the conversation with other quest givers. I mean, Drummer Boy may effectively tell you that PAM has a radiant quest for you, but you actually have to go initiate the conversation with PAM for anything to go into your quest log. PAM doesn't actively hunt you down to mark things on your map while you're just trying to upgrade your weapon at a bench. You could leave your character in PAM's room overnight, and you won't wake up with crap marked on your map.

 

I'd bet real money that if Preston only gave you quests if you ask for them, nobody would mind him.

[PoorlyAged]

I was going to wax philosophical about the annoying implementation of PG and his guest giving behaviors, but Moraelin beat me to it. Well said.

Edited March 29, 2017 by PoorlyAged

[Moraelin]

That said, to actually address the video, my impression of that VGA guy is that he's... not intellectually equipped to even be having that discussion. Not only it's really just yet another case of random guy justifying his cognitive dissonance over why HIS choice of factions is the absolutely right one, but he blatantly doesn't even understand Checkov's Gun or game design. Or really, even literary theory, since he brings that up.

 

First of all, Checkov never said that you shouldn't have sub-plots. Yes, if you draw attention to a gun, it should be in SOME way relevant to the STORY, but he never said that only the main theme counts. It can just as well go off as a way to introduce some character, or show off one of their character traits, or to introduce a sub-plot, or whatever.

 

In fact, I will also draw your attention to other solid literary techniques such as the Red Herring, the MacGuffin, or the Foreshadowing.

 

- The gun can go off to misdirrect, e.g., to introduce a wrong suspect, or get you thinking that someone is being targetted by a killer, when they're not the actual target. I.e., it can be a part of the Red Herring, or even BE the Red Herring.

 

- The gun can go off as a means to introduce some McGuffin. E.g., to show that some character had some kind of shield.

 

- The gun can go off in some way that foreshadows something that's yet to come in the main plot. It doesn't have to kill someone from the main plot, nor even be wielded by someone from the main plot. Because that's not the role of a foreshadow. One role of a foreshadow and why it's a very powerful technique is that when the main thing happens, it won't be for the first time, so you don't disbelieve it when it matters.

 

Hell, the gun doesn't even strictly speaking have to literally go off. It can itself be a Red Herring (e.g., you can suspect someone is the killer because they have a Webley revolver, uncommon in the USA, and the victim was shot with one, but then it turns out it's not actually the murder weapon) or whatever.

 

 

Furthermore, the notion that every important character has to be for or against the main theme is so frikken stupid, it's priceless. It just shows that he never even heard of the basic and important archetype: the contagonist. The contagonist isn't necessarily against you or what you're trying to achieve, that's the job of the antagonist. Nor is he there to help you. The contagonist is there to try to sidetrack, delay or tempt the hero away from the main goal or plot. And not necessarily out of malice or even opposition to that goal.

 

E.g., if the cop's father in law offers him a corporate job away from chasing that serial killer, that's a contagonist. Or if his wife asks him to find a less dangerous job, yeah, that can be a contagonist too. He or she's not necessarily against the hero (again, he's not the antagonist), nor do they have to care either way about the hero's goal. They just have to be the guy or gal trying to pull him off the track.

 

Or to give an actual example of a contagonist, albeit not the best one for discussing Checkov's gun, here's a famous one: Darth Vader. Yeah, he's not an antagonist. He's a contagonist. He tries to get Luke away from the main plot.

 

And in a sense, Preston is a bit of a contagonist, albeit not the main one. The fact that he tries to keep you busy with other stuff and would rather you not take on one of the main factions if you don't immediately have to, yeah, fits that archetype.

 

 

Not to mention that it's idiotic to do the whole analysis from the premise that everyone will choose the same side and for the same reasons. It's a game, not a novel. You choose your own ending, and your own reasons for it. You choose who you ally with. The notion that it has to even be based on that philosophical question of synth rights, and settle it once and for all, is stupid. You only need to read the board discussions to realize that people choose sides and endings based on LOTS of other reasons than solving the dilemma of synths.

 

E.g., one of the most popular endings is based on just not murderizing more than one of the warring factions. Hell, some people even wanted some ending where they don't kill any faction. In either case being able to side with a faction that's more or less neural towards all three is quite essential.

 

 

EDIT: Finally, Checkov's Gun isn't anywhere near as absolute a law of writing as he seems to think. E.g., you know which trilogy is one of the most popular ever? Yeah, Lord Of The Rings. It describes at length LOTS of stuff that won't be a part of the main plot at all, nor really of any plot at all, but just set the atmosphere.

 

So... yeah...

[Greslin]

I always thought it was weird that Preston Garvey got so much hate from fans of Fallout 4.

 

I found this really obscure guy on youtube. He presented what I think is a pretty interesting argument for why people hate Preston.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6pQ6i5tHlvE

 

What do you guys think?

 

I was just reading this story on Cracked.com last night: 5 Fictional Characters Who Don't Deserve Our Hate

 

It makes a lot of good points about pop culture characters that for some reason inspired misguided waves of popular vitriol. Their #1 on the list? Jar Jar Binks.

 

 

And consider this: The Star Wars prequels are, by and large, not good movies. This is shocking, I know. And when people finally accepted the fact that these long-awaited movies were pretty shitty, all that rage had to go someplace. It's difficult to be mindlessly angry that "the tone of these films is different than what I experienced as a child!" or "trade agreements seem to be an odd element of what is essentially space opera!' or even "this is a kid's movie and I don't understand that!" None of those are very catchy. But "Jar Jar Sucks!" is. It's simple, to the point, and allows you to vent all this cultural frustration.

 

I think something similar is happening there with Preston. I don't have an issue with him, but I know that others do.

 

Bethesda-bashing is sort of a tradition in the Fallout community, and they don't really make it easier on themselves when they do things like constantly break their own story continuities in front of a lore-obsessed fanbase. But every time a new Fallout game comes out, an army of haters comes out to meet it, and the battles begin anew over the mechanics that people don't like, the characters we find annoying, the audiences we'd rather exclude, and basically the popularized, commercially successful game Bethesda wrote versus the niche-y Kickstarter game that we'd wished they'd written.

 

But I'm not bashing either the community or Bethesda here. Just saying that the dynamic exists. A lot of people look at their heavily modded FO3 build, compare it to their out-of-the-box FO4, and howl to heaven, conveniently forgetting the constantly crashing mess that vanilla FO3 (and, frankly, vanilla FNV) was. I actually see it as somewhat necessary - much of that irrational attack posture has led directly to some really incredible mods, which Bethesda then use to inspire the features of the next game. A lot of FO4 came from popular mods in FO3 and FNV, which in turn came from spirited rounds of Bethesda-bashing. That's where George Lucas went wrong; he fought his fans, rather than simply co-opting and learning from them.

 

But even then, that tension does have to flow somewhere. Someone needs to take the fall, be the rallying cry, the symbol of all dissatisfaction. And Preston got the job.

 

Preston is the Jar Jar Binks of Fallout 4.

[stebbinsd]

That said, to actually address the video, my impression of that VGA guy is that he's... not intellectually equipped to even be having that discussion. Not only it's really just yet another case of random guy justifying his cognitive dissonance over why HIS choice of factions is the absolutely right one, but he blatantly doesn't even understand Checkov's Gun or game design. Or really, even literary theory, since he brings that up.

 

First of all, Checkov never said that you shouldn't have sub-plots. Yes, if you draw attention to a gun, it should be in SOME way relevant to the STORY, but he never said that only the main theme counts. It can just as well go off as a way to introduce some character, or show off one of their character traits, or to introduce a sub-plot, or whatever.

 

In fact, I will also draw your attention to other solid literary techniques such as the Red Herring, the MacGuffin, or the Foreshadowing.

 

- The gun can go off to misdirrect, e.g., to introduce a wrong suspect, or get you thinking that someone is being targetted by a killer, when they're not the actual target. I.e., it can be a part of the Red Herring, or even BE the Red Herring.

 

- The gun can go off as a means to introduce some McGuffin. E.g., to show that some character had some kind of shield.

 

- The gun can go off in some way that foreshadows something that's yet to come in the main plot. It doesn't have to kill someone from the main plot, nor even be wielded by someone from the main plot. Because that's not the role of a foreshadow. One role of a foreshadow and why it's a very powerful technique is that when the main thing happens, it won't be for the first time, so you don't disbelieve it when it matters.

 

Hell, the gun doesn't even strictly speaking have to literally go off. It can itself be a Red Herring (e.g., you can suspect someone is the killer because they have a Webley revolver, uncommon in the USA, and the victim was shot with one, but then it turns out it's not actually the murder weapon) or whatever.

 

 

Furthermore, the notion that every important character has to be for or against the main theme is so frikken stupid, it's priceless. It just shows that he never even heard of the basic and important archetype: the contagonist. The contagonist isn't necessarily against you or what you're trying to achieve, that's the job of the antagonist. Nor is he there to help you. The contagonist is there to try to sidetrack, delay or tempt the hero away from the main goal or plot. And not necessarily out of malice or even opposition to that goal.

 

E.g., if the cop's father in law offers him a corporate job away from chasing that serial killer, that's a contagonist. Or if his wife asks him to find a less dangerous job, yeah, that can be a contagonist too. He or she's not necessarily against the hero (again, he's not the antagonist), nor do they have to care either way about the hero's goal. They just have to be the guy or gal trying to pull him off the track.

 

Or to give an actual example of a contagonist, albeit not the best one for discussing Checkov's gun, here's a famous one: Darth Vader. Yeah, he's not an antagonist. He's a contagonist. He tries to get Luke away from the main plot.

I wonder if the Minutemen technically count as a contagonist. They'll willingly assist you in building the relay. How can they be a contagonist and an aid at the same time? How are they any more of a contagonist than Virgil?

[stebbinsd]

 

I always thought it was weird that Preston Garvey got so much hate from fans of Fallout 4.

 

I found this really obscure guy on youtube. He presented what I think is a pretty interesting argument for why people hate Preston.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6pQ6i5tHlvE

 

What do you guys think?

 

I was just reading this story on Cracked.com last night: 5 Fictional Characters Who Don't Deserve Our Hate

 

It makes a lot of good points about pop culture characters that for some reason inspired misguided waves of popular vitriol. Their #1 on the list? Jar Jar Binks.

Cracked's arguments for Jar Jar are hardly comperable to Preston Garvey. The Sole Survivor was never "dragged" into joining the Minutemen. You have to agree to join them - which you don't have to do - before he'll start laying radiant quests on you. You have to agree to help the people of Tempines Bluff before he'll ask you to join the Minutemen.

 

And if you decline either Tempines Bluff or joining the Minutemen, he harbors absolutely no ill will against you.

 

Also, he asks this of you, specifically, after seeing you in action in Concord. He thinks you can lead the Minutemen back from the brink, not just because you're the player and this is a video game and so it has to be the player who does everything, but because he's impressed with your combat and leadership skills. This is in stark contrast with the Cracked article which says "At no point do you claim to be a hero or a warrior or a diplomat."

 

There's even a line of dialogue to this effect. When you ask him why he thinks you would be a good Minuteman, he replies "You saved us in Concord. There wasn't anything in it for you. You had your own problems to deal with. But you did it anyway."

Edited March 28, 2017 by stebbinsd

[Moraelin]

The contagonist can even be allied to the protagonist (or the antagonist, but that's the case that needs no explaining.) Makes it easier to have him around the protagonist when it would be unfeasible to have the antagonist there creating drama.

 

Plus, archetypes are kinda like Cabot's serum: best not used in their pure state. You can have what's called Complex Characters, which are more than one archetype at the same time. Probably the most trivial combination with contagonist is to have him be the skeptic too, for example.

 

As for minutemen vs Virgil, _IMHO_ the minutemen count as contagonist precisely because they'd rather you do something else than the main quest. As the video point out, they don't even see why would you want to mess with the institute, until the point where the Institute is actually hostile and attacks the Castle. As far as Preston is concerned, he'd rather have you rebuilding and defending villages. Hell, even when you mention to him that someone's stole your baby right at the start, what does he do? Tell you to hurry to DC and pick the trail, maybe? Nah, send you to help Tenpints Bluff first.

 

Virgil doesn't pull anny of that stuff. What he sends you to do is directly the next step in the main quest, so I don't see how it could count as delaying you.

 

Now mind you, Preston isn't really the best written contagonist, but, eh, he delays you just the same.

 

IMHO.