Fallout 4

That's the problem though. The Nuclear Family in the F4 opening is just the trope played straight. There's no contrast or commentary or anything. Its Tranquility Lane without the tongue in cheek. The contrast is cool, but only if you do something with it. Hence, have the 1950s aesthetic with deep tension hiding underneath that there are massive riots happening down town with the same 'wholesome swell' families that live out there and everyone else is afraid that one of the families on their block will jump them for a tank of gas.

Its wasted potential.

Yeah, I agree with that. I understand why they did it, because I suppose they wanted to start with the notion that there was some good in this world, including the pre-war world. But that sequence could've used some more bite.

edited 28th Nov '17 5:10:53 AM by Unsung

Agreed - if we'd travelled to Concord, maybe on a bus a la Skyrim (Cart) and seen the rioters, seen the sheen scratched off, then dumped into the suburban area a bit. You could've seen more of the map in its hey day, explored a bit, gone through the normal motions (Teaching you about bartering, or even had a tutorial of you building your fence with a pip boy). Eh, they could've tweaked it.

The rest of the game is grand, hits the spot for me. I just feel they could've laden the LOSS of things tonnes if they'd played up the pre war, seen the veneer of totalitarianism overlaid on the shiny new cars.

So not only do you see your home blown to pieces, as you walk into Concord, you see those shops and pub you visited... all now wrecked - those people at the bar, sat on the sofas? still there, skeletal. Bones strewn. The playground full of children? Blasted. The Shop? Corpses nailed up behind the counter.

The juxtaposition could've been committed to more.

But that's a "What if" - what we got wasn't bad, got the job done to set up the story they wanted to tell. Just think it could've been really nailed. But I get they wanted to just get people into the action - it's the genre.

The problem with that is it wants the Protagonist and their spouse to be in the middle of ALL the craziness versus some of the craziness. The Protagonist is still in a society terrified of being killed by nuclear war and DOES get killed by nuclear war along with all of their neighbors.

None of the other stuff is necessary.

It's also a weird disconnect to say they have the idealized nuclear family when it does fall apart so damned quickly.

The pre-war world of Fallout is falling apart in a lot of other ways that culminate in full-on nuclear annihilation. By not showing how far gone the pre-war world actually was, you lose what is by far the most frightening part of an atomic war, the idea that it was possible, even inevitable, and with it, the way that constant gun-to-the-head mentality degrades the value of human dignity all on its own.

edited 28th Nov '17 7:26:13 AM by Unsung

I mean, their family IS pretty good. Happy. It falls apart due to external circumstances, nothing internally.

And you can see from the neighbourhood that there seems to be more equality going on. We didn't need a whole chapter, but maybe a bit more. Seeing US soldiers shooting civilians breaking in would've been more shocking. We got close.

Maybe one game just needs to be a bit more.... close to the apocalypse. So you play someone in part of the US DURING the nuclear holocaust. Of course, all the records of that time say how horrendous it is, with radiation.

But then you get the Survivalist in HH. The Raiders as they are make more sense then - so close they've gone mad with it all. That was the F3 argument - that it should've been maybe only a few decades afterwards.

Fallout 3 having Mad Max-style raiders doesn't make much sense, does it? I remember thinking that at the time, but it's been a while and I kind of just gloss over it now. Even the Khans weren't like that, not even in the first game. The real atrocities were reserved for the ghouls and supermutants, and the Reno Families and the Enclave.

Mad Max sort of gets away with it because it was the '80s, and because it *is* only a few decades after the apocalypse, where it's more of a Lord of the Flies situation and these outliers have been left to their own devices with no one to restrain them. Fallout 3 is really kind of ridiculous in terms of just how awful the Capital Wasteland is. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense for anyone outside of a Vault to live there at all. Though I guess the sheer number of Vaults opening up and spewing out their inhabitants every few decades might account for the few small settlements that there are.

Yeah I get they wanted bombed out DC and the vibe, and I think the shooter leanings influenced a lot of that.

They should've had some handwavium about chemicals or the Pentagon having some weird weapon that drove people crazy, which could explain why the area is so whacked out...

But it was a relaunch in a way of the series so sort of forgivable? But there needs to be more options to actually TALK to some of the raiders before them being default hostile. As RPS says - let me talk to the monsters.

For my PC playthrough I'm tempted to go for full Minutemen run, but keep a save for just before the Institute... then maybe side with them. PTSD sole survivor suddenly sees all that modern creature comfort? Holy HELL would they go "Hmmm, tempting. I got mine..."

Not if by the time they reached them, they'd already spent all their time and efforts nation-building in the Commonwealth. A nation whose residents are regularly kidnapped and turned into abominations.

The only thing that prompted me to join the Institute, besides that sweet sweet cheevo, was to keep the classical radio station active.

One of the things that made me miss the Karma system. Like, if you had to maintain Neutral Karma to join them, that would be a neat little touch.

I dunno the Institute are one of the more Stupid Evil groups out there.

They're certainly short sighted but there isn't a lot of active malice, for the most part. They just generally don't care much about anybody but themselves, and even then there's infighting.

Neutral seems about right.

They literally murder anybody above ground who look at them funny. And that is just about everyone they encounter.

Good point. There's a bit more reaching to be done to justify an institute ending. I was disappointed at their motives. I was expecting something more. But then the only real external example we get is Zimmer from FO 3 before this point and he's downright contemptuous of everything in the Wasteland.

Eh, the Institute's evil are purely the result of Father, Kellog, and the Courser organization guy. Everyone else actually thinks they're a bunch of good guys and even gives you praise for stopping the Synth Raider gang. The problem with the Institute is isn't a faction, it's a CITY and it has evil leaders.

There's no reason to blow up the Institute when Father is going to be dead in a few weeks and you killed Kellog already.

edited 28th Nov '17 8:59:02 AM by CharlesPhipps

It's probably why Piper (Despite going YOU SUCK) then writes the article of tentative hope.

Though Nick is probably justifiably pissed. Like NV, what happens after the credits is left to your imagination. Depends how willing the SS is to just shoot problematic elements / change things. And how much actual authority they HAVE as a Director.

They were aiming for this. It's the game they wanted, whether it was good or not.

Personally, if we're going to have a game delving into the war/apocalypse, I'd rather the game not timeskip at all. Have you survive the war as a ghoul, and deal with the wasteland while finding other ghouls. I mean, we already know there've been towns of ghouls before. There's one in the original and one in three. Those are the only two I've personally seen or heard of, but they open the door to others. So while the humans are buried safely in their vaults, you can be running around dodging supermutants and the newly mutating wildlife while trying to find a safe place to settle down and bring other ghouls to.

They can use their character creation system in the pre-war intro and then degrade what you make into a ghoul when the bombs fall.

Eh, the only proper response for zombies is headshots.

:)

[wears an Enclave t-shirt]

edited 28th Nov '17 9:07:18 AM by CharlesPhipps

That'd be cool. I know Beth wouldn't do it (yet) but imagine getting a weird Dwarf Fortress vibe - so the towns and factions you set up then have to deal with newly emerging humans...

Somewhere in the Midwest could be fun for that.... less impacted, but more concentrated urban areas?

How're you gonna go and forget Gecko and Broken Hills in Fallout 2? Hell, 2 even had a deathclaw town.

Yeah, I too would say it'd have to be a more rural area. Somewhere that isn't as impacted. While I like the idea of a ghoul protagonist in theory, I think it'd be harder to execute in practice. The voice would get grating quickly and, regardless of how interesting it might be, players tend to like playing human characters over all else and I'm not sure how many wouldn't be turned off by having all the looks of Deadpool without the face mask.

If it gets set in a more rural location, you could still have plenty of settlements, possibly get some new mechanics (driving, for starters, should still be functional) and radiation wouldn't be nearly as widespread to create goulification despite being early on. You'd probably have to juxtapose it with a near by bombed out city so we can still have the dungeon raiding.

Plus, we could see the starts of post-war society building up and exploring how the raiders evolved from muggers and rioters in the street to those guys who have camps in the hills. It'd be a very different flavor of Fallout and I think it could be really interesting. The intro of the bombs dropping could also be a lot more subtle with television stations shutting out and then there's massive clouds and lights off in the horizon, but you're still too far away for it to do anything to you. That could be cool.

I didn't get very far in two. I read about it, but forgot, even though I figured there were such things there.

You're forgetting that this game does have face masks. If somebody did this they could totally throw in a Deadpool easter egg. Or, you know, a knock off version named something totally clever that I can't come up with this late at night.

ETA: Also, the voice should be something you can turn on and off, or just plain not have at all. Four is the first game with a voiced protagonist, and frankly, it's rather unnecessary.

edited 28th Nov '17 7:38:59 PM by Journeyman

I think within lore there's a bit more flexibility to an individual ghoul's look and voice. From off the top of my head, Raul speaks relatively normally, and of course Jason Bright has some different weird voicestuff going on. It probably depends a bit on how long they've been a ghoul, and on a case-by-case basis what exact parts have started falling away. So while it'd be a bit off a cop-out to just give the player a perfectly average voice, you don't necessarily need to give them an over-the-top, distractingly raspy voice.

Now, I'd find character customisation as a ghoul pretty weirdly fun if they really went all-in, but that probably would take some resources for something that I imagine a lot of players wouldn't really be behind. Which maybe is fine, not all stories have to appeal to everyone, but I think realistically we're only going to see playable ghouls, if we ever do, as part of a choose-your-race thing. But I'd love a story directly made for ghoul characters, so hey, never say never. I don't really think we're going to see an all-ghoul story, though.

For what it's worth, my understanding of the immediate post-war Fallout was that there were human survivors, and that there weren't that many ghouls. It's not got that much coverage, so you can really do a lot without outright breaking canon, but I remember the Survivalist in Honest Hearts. He has to bunker down for several months for the environment to be survivable again, but once he comes out he starts seeing human survivors, while the only ghouls he sees are feral ones. Of course, that's over in Zion.

edited 29th Nov '17 2:30:06 AM by Lavaeolus

Yeah and ghoulification didn't kick in for a while. Think it's mentioned as a weird side effect of the FEV.

As for how to do it, you could be in a bunker yourself, alone, trapped, and the tutorial is about catching creatures, eating, crafting new gear (SO that's the whole tutorial) and learning to explore after your nice perky mid-50's dream is shattered.

Also, it'd make your protag more believable as an untrained "normie". And yeah, ghoulification could be implemented in an interesting way - I remember the talk around Van Buren having maybe an option to be a Super Mutant, and it even got as far as New Vegas, but the engine wouldn't have coped with the different body sizes.

You could make a really creepy fallout with open, desolate fields, abandoned farmsteads. As you escape the edge of suburbia and the radiation and move into the mountains you see the remnants of rioters and looters give way to nascent raider tribes (Think The Crossed in terms of crazy psychosis) - even meet Army remnants (So, sort of not-Brotherhood proto-Brotherhood types. Without the tech fascist / Enclave vibe)

Plus it'd avoid the continuity issues about linking it to the current fallouts - isolated, allows us to explore the history of the fallout verse... and maybe if it's less "open world" and has a chapter structure, you could have it so your character gets to the modern day. OR a sequence of games a la ME / Dragon age where you see your decisions impact the region.

There's a way for Beth to save assets - same map, but each game just imports decisions and makes changes to set areas - so you minimise art costs for each game and overlay quests. And then your protag can be a direct import (If a ghoul) or a descendant (So, maybe some gear carries over, or skills. The ghoul gets more to carry over, but the trade off is they look like a ghoul and get auto hits to charisma or something?)

Any story mods people are trying out? I heard Fusion City is impressive, as is the Brotherhood revamp, but not sure I want a full Story mod in the game until I plunge through my PC playthrough.

What you described sounds like it's better as a Tell Tale Fallout game, personally. Not saying Beth couldn't do something like that, but it doesn't seem their style to cut down on the open world themselves.