Am I the only one who feels Bethesda dropped the ball on the Fallout 4 beginning?

[darkmage64]

My main problem with the game is complete lack of choice.

Why must I help Preston in the Concord?

I can think of several possibilities to give the player a choice to join the raiders.

 

For example:player kills almost all the raiders in Concord

but the last one (the boss)begs for his life and offers the player to join him and become outlaw.

So many possibilites from there......

But no go help settlements....

Preston disliked that.

[Stronglav]

 

My main problem with the game is complete lack of choice.

Why must I help Preston in the Concord?

I can think of several possibilities to give the player a choice to join the raiders.

 

For example:player kills almost all the raiders in Concord

but the last one (the boss)begs for his life and offers the player to join him and become outlaw.

So many possibilites from there......

But no go help settlements....

Preston disliked that.

 

F@#@#@K Preston and munitemen.I am sick and tired of them.But this game doesn't give me any choice.Another settlement needs your help.

 

I can refuse to become the general but then i cant move him out of the Sanctuary and cant capture it with my raiders.

 

So I do this:

 

1:Agree to become the general

2:go and kill two settlers at tempians bluff

3:unlock Vault 88

4:move him and Struges(also immortal)there for enitre game.No more settlement quests!!

5:Feed mama murphy the drugs and she dies.

6:The rest of the groop is mortal and can be killed.

7:Profit!!

Edited October 23, 2017 by Stronglav

[rppp01]

My current character didn't stop at Sanctuary and never went to Concord. He stopped at Red Rocket and cleaned up, upgraded his 10mm, put in a bed and a chest, left the wedding rings there, heard of Diamond City on the radio, saw the light at night, and went that direction. Never looked back. He followed the main quest up to the Memory Den. Realizing his kid wasn't an infant and possibly older than what looked like 10 years, he shelved it and is sort of figuring it all out.

 

He's level 18 and working RR and Automatron right now without issue. His main home is Hangman's Alley. Preston is still stuck in the Museum and Codsworth has no idea the SS exists. It's been so nice. Ive enjoyed this character.

[SirTwist]

I have a thread about my speculations about Father and Shaun. But let me say this, I think that Bethesda did drop the ball, and it wasn't just Fallout 4, but also Skyrim. They haven't done decent writing for a game since, IMO, Fallout 3 and Oblivion. I do like the mods that silence Preston about the radiant go here, talk to these people, and go kill a group of others, and report back to this place then him. At least that works, for me, in the short term. Long term, it might take me a while to take on the Castle, but oh well. Since I wiped my hard drive, I don't have my old play through, so I started a new one. This time, though, instead of going back to Tenpines Bluff to finish the quest, which I will do so eventually, I went to Goodneighbor to start the Silver Shroud stuff. At least the costume, etc. I don't plan on doing the rest until a little while later. I need to level a little before I really do the rest of the mission. And I want to do some other stuff while I am thinking about it. I think that is why there are so many mods for this game alone. And the dialogue choices are a real joke. Don't have sarcasm, at all, if you aren't going to do it right. The "sarcastic" comments are a joke, to me. I think that they need to just not be in the game. And what's with the console version of dialogue choices? Did we, as PC gamers get dumb all of a sudden? Do we need only 4 choices? I know Mass Effect had their limitations as to choices, but frakk me if BGS did drop the ball on that one as well. And the perk, skills, and special crap they made? what a bloody joke. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

[metaphorset]

I have a thread about my speculations about Father and Shaun. But let me say this, I think that Bethesda did drop the ball, and it wasn't just Fallout 4, but also Skyrim. They haven't done decent writing for a game since, IMO, Fallout 3 and Oblivion.

Decent, yes. But still not good. It really struck me in early 2012, when I still wasn't able to enter Whiterun due to a bug and even I as a experienced BGS Games Player couldn't bother with cheating my way through anymore. I should be so fair to mention that I didn't have any game breaking bugs with any of their previous games before.

 

While waiting for the next patch I was looking for something to play and for whatever reason chose to buy "The Witcher - Enhanced Edition". It felt quite similar to my first Morrowind experience back in 2002. The combat system was atrocious to get into, but the story was good enough to keep me going. It even stopped me from checking for Skyrim Updates until I finished the game (weeks later, btw. since I had a job and a life going on).

 

Since then I played all three Witcher games and that raised my bar quite a bit. Needless to say that BGS won't impress me with anything if their next TES and FO games aren't at least at a "Hearts of Stone" level regarding the story and the character depth.

 

So, the story telling is not the only problem I had with Skyrim. Combat was still bad, there were so many bugs, so many problems with narrative design and once you realize that you actually don't play Skyrim but a combination of Frostfall, iNeed, Wet&Cold and maybe half a dozen other mods to keep you entertained you realize that there is a fundamental problem with that "game".

 

 

The "sarcastic" comments are a joke, to me. I think that they need to just not be in the game. And what's with the console version of dialogue choices? Did we, as PC gamers get dumb all of a sudden? Do we need only 4 choices? I know Mass Effect had their limitations as to choices, but frakk me if BGS did drop the ball on that one as well. And the perk, skills, and special crap they made? what a bloody joke. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

 

 

Well, since they make 80% of the money due to console sales, it's no wonder they "optimize" the games for that kind of audience.

[Perraine]

The one thing I thought the game lacked was a "purpose" an underlying theme, that was always present, and that underlines and interweaves with the whole game, in sometimes minor and sometimes major ways. In FO3 we had the "Search for Dad" as we, sometimes windingly, followed in his path, and we also had the, not very high priority at the beginning, but getting bigger as the game went on, "Project Purity" theme. Those things gave the game a sense of purpose, that is sadly lacking in FO4.

 

Yes we have the "search for Shaun's kidnapper/spouse's killer" but it's never really mentioned or even alluded to throughout the game, except for the very, very narrow so called "main quest line", which in all honestly would take about one hour to complete if that's all you did.

 

In FO3, and more so in FONV, the "main quest" was interwoven throughout the whole game, and there was almost nothing you did or didn't do that was somehow tied to that theme.

[cossayos]

 

In FO3, and more so in FONV, the "main quest" was interwoven throughout the whole game, and there was almost nothing you did or didn't do that was somehow tied to that theme.

 

 

FONV was Obsidian's doing. Much better storytellers than Bethesda can ever dream to be.

[metaphorset]

FONV was Obsidian's doing. Much better storytellers than Bethesda can ever dream to be.

 

 

Better storytelling, better characters, better role playing elements. The biggest problems were the limited timeframe for development, the broken game engine and the fact that they had only a handful of people working for QA.

 

To be fair, I must admit that it helps quite a lot, that the Obsidian People knew exactly what kind of game they actually wanted to create. And they sticked to the plan. Bethesda's idea on the other hand... "See that mountain over there?..."

 

Fallout 3 is a bad shooter with some rpg elements.

Fallout 4 is... um... a decent shooter with rpg elements? A settlement building simulation with micromanagement? A (bad) physics simulation where you could build barely functioning Rube-Goldberg machines? Who knows...

[SirTwist]

I would say the best story, from Fallout 3 to Fallout 4, was in New Vegas, even though Obsidian didn't get a chance to finish the game properly. It's like one of their previous games that I still like, which is KOTOR II: The Sith Lords. The story line wasn't completely fleshed out. Every planet had missing parts, and plots, etc., and even needing work on other things. However, they were also rushed in that project, and had their elbow jostled too many times while trying to get things straight. Wonderful writing, and character backgrounds. Needed more work on the story, and even the planets, but still a great game. New Vegas is like that, great game, to a point, great story writing, great characters. The only thing lacking was the feeling of completeness, or areas where there could have been more worked into it. Lonesome Road could have been much better, and better choices, if they had written a better story for it to begin with. But I feel it was back to BGS for that one, and they screwed the pooch on it.

 

Anyway, I think that Fallout 4 fails in so many way. I have stated why in a few thread, but allow me some highlights. Fallout 4's perk chart is laughable, at best. The console dialogue is a mess, and sarcasm is non-existent. The settlement building should have been done in a DLC, if at all. And wasting 3 DLC's just on settlement building? There could have been better stories out there. Or even more. But they wanted more settlement stuff. And it's like they tried to "modernize" the game, but failed with it so badly. The game engine is the same one they had been using since Fallout 3, and perhaps even Oblivion. (Not sure about Morrowind, but still it is not that great of an engine.) They could have used a better engine, Unreal maybe, and the old levelling system, that worked well. And even added to the game. The dialogue was written, it seems by an 8 year old who didn't understand what they were writing. And the voiced PC? They could have done it much better. If nothing else, steal the dialogue from the Saint's Row games. That would be funny. And stick with the old stuff, it works, maybe not extremely well, or for a game pad, but it works. Also, the perk system didn't need a major overhaul. It needed adjusted for Fallout 4. And they could even had added in more RPG elements to it, and not just been a FPS first. Maybe BGS wants to dumb down games to show that their engine still works, despite being outdated.

[Evangela]

I'm probably the only fan of their games that loves their story writing. I don't like their coding habits though, having seen them all, and I know I can do better. But I can't write stories better than them. Thus no, I don't feel the beginning was ball dropping.