Fallout 4

Doesn't the Wild Card ending of NV point out that you don't have enough influence or power to protect the Mojave? If you're in any way trying to be a good person, the Legion is right out and House is pretty morally objectionable. So it really comes down to a question of is trying to do good but failing at it a better result than teaming up with something that isn't as good (the NCR) but can be improved?

As for the Factions in Fallout 4. I really wish they would have made more endings with possibilities for various combinations. Ideally I'd take out the Brotherhood and Institute and go for a combined Minutemen/Railroad ending. Either that or have there be a possibility of taking over leadership of the Brotherhood somehow, or taking out Maxson and replacing him with someone else. And have some sort of actual change come about from your influence. Like if you do decide to take over the Institute, let's have some actual leadership decisions be made and a questline to ensure those decisions are carried out.

Edited by danime91 on Oct 15th 2018 at 9:53:02 AM

In the end, the Securitron army is only really designed to patrol and police Vegas, and defend it from any encroaching powers. Lonesome Roads has Ulysses imply that if Vegas is left alone, it could grow, expand until it slowly envelops the whole Mojave, but yes — in the Independent ending you can't establish power over all the Mojave, and Novac, Goodsprings et al. are mostly left to develop as-is, for better and for worse. The NCR and the Legion can take everyone under their banner and forcibly implant a more unified society, but while the NCR is viewed much more favourably than the Legion, neither have won over the locals' love.

It's an interesting choice that still leaves room for some interpretation. I don't really like to go around ragging on Fallout 4, but I felt the Minutemen were much more disappointing in terms of balancing player agency and motivation. Of course, New Vegas does, admittedly among other things, have an definitive, slide-heavy ending. Fallout 4 by design kind of has its ending fart out, with you being punted back to the Wasteland with everything mostly as it always was. The Fallout 4 endingless approach has its advantages for the sandbox kind of game FO4 is, but I think if we're going to have that work with meaningful faction choice it might be wise to develop the post-game further. As you say, Institute leadership feels kind of meaningless.

Edited by Lavaeolus on Oct 15th 2018 at 6:22:23 PM

The patrol network you can build DOES make a difference though. They clear roads for you. And they do a pretty fine job of it, as long as you bother to equip them.

When I say 'balancing player agency and motivation', I might have phrased that confusingly. I don't think the Minutemen really do a successful job at granting the player agency, in that their questline feels mostly out of your hand, you don't really have much choice in how the Minutemen develop. After you set them up, the Minutemen will be appearing everywhere without much insight from you.

At the same time, in regards to motivation, the game gives you this faction that, by the writing, you are 100% in charge of. Additionally, you seem to possess no real accountability — doesn't matter how much you piss off Preston, doesn't matter if you become a raider^note Unless you do it before saving Preston, once you're in charge you're in charge. So from the writing perspective, okay, maybe that's a good motivation to side with them. But where the Independent ending will possibly point you elsewhere by going into a long list of all the places still struggling without the help of broader civilisation, I just don't think there's much weight in deciding whether to back the Minutemen or not. For instance, while they have their own faults writing-wise, the Institute does have this: you're in charge, but it feels a bit like a deal with the devil and you can't just reshape the Institute completely. If you feel synths are alive, as I think the game tends to push you towards, or if you're one who interacts with most of your (largely anti-Institute) companions, it'll be a decision with some weight.

I do like the patrols and stuff in giving some reactivity, some of the NPC changes, but it feels quickly shallow if you spend any amount of time inhabiting the world after the main quest officially closes. Another solution, I suppose, might be to focus the main quest on less world-significant choices that feel like they'd dramatically change the context of the world.

Edited by Lavaeolus on Oct 15th 2018 at 6:55:03 PM

The Minutemen definitely suffer from The Main Characters Do Everything "leader of an organization is still running around doing errands" syndrome. I would have liked to have a more advanced system where you can equip squads and send them off on missions, but I recognize that would have taken far more time and effort to implement than it would really be worth.

What would have been easier would be to integrate the Minutemen into the main plot a bit more. I think being able to shape the Minutemen around your ideals and ultimately having them ally with one of the three factions would have made them much more relevant. Each of the three factions would find a local army extremely helpful, and it would give them a degree of legitimacy that they don't otherwise have. The Railroad doesn't even have an army unless you ally them with the Minutemen, and that ending is poorly done so that I could barely tell I did it right.

I say this not having been able to finish FO 4 due to losing interest, but could it have been the sort of thing where FNV's "don't look at this too closely" approach could have worked? Just spawn Minutemen troops automatically as you approach a given town, with the number and relative level of the troops increasing based on the number of settlements saved? And have various tiers of equipment that could be unlocked by handing off related equipment/junk/caps to a given NPC or possibly Preston himself? I find players are willing to use their imaginations quite a bit as long as they're seeing some direct correlation between their actions and an onscreen outcome.

Edited by Unsung on Nov 26th 2018 at 12:01:09 PM

Really what I kind of want is something like Spore, where there are different types of gameplay at different levels, except, you know, done better than Spore. Like, there's the FPS RPG aspect of going around shooting and looting and interacting and recruiting, but then there's the leadership aspect where once you're advanced enough in a certain faction's questline to be making managerial decisions, it turns into a kind of tycoon or sim game. Something like what Sim Settlements does, but for factions. Of course, that's just pie in the sky wishful thinking, since that would require a huge overhaul and expansion of scope of the game, but still, I'd like a game like that someday.

They already implemented that for your settlements. You can build a "job management" terminal that assigns jobs to the settlers. If they advanced that a little more.....

Personally, I got a great kick out of the settlements thing. It's one of the main reasons I can't bring myself to start up a new game, because then I'd have to go and build up my settlements again...

Yeah, but I'm saying I want a comprehensive faction management system along with story/quest structure to make joining a faction meaningful. Like, you can take control or at least get high enough in the hierarchy of any of the factions and then actually make decisions on how they run and are operated. Like, take control of the Brotherhood of Steel and slowly change them from their xenophobic ways back to the Brotherhood that Elder Lyons had created. Or get the Railroad to become more of a Followers of the Apocalypse style organization that would expand synth awareness by providing aid to the wasteland rather than just hiding away. Combine all that with more management style gameplay, and it would be perfect.

That could have worked. Like dan said, what I really wanted was something more advanced, but your suggestion would at least make you feel a little like you're having an impact. And it would have been relatively simple to implement. Just a couple triggers for patrols and when they get upgrades.

Various Assassin's Creed games have done things where you conquer forts and then send fleets or squads off on missions, so that's a good place to start.

Found out there's no more Josh at Shoddy Cast.

RIP

Alright, falling back into this Fallout 4 nightmare. I have a Level 30 pro-Minutemen Nate who has crossed into the Institute, gone to the Railroad as the plot demands, and associated with the Brotherhood.

I'm on a mission with X-6-whatever the frig to recapture a Synth from Raiders. Nate wouldn't want to disappoint his son, but he doesn't hate Synths either. To be honest, I think this is best negotiated from a first time playthrough with the player choosing what they believe in. Thing is, I've looked at Fallout 4 from so many angles that none of the faction quests or goals are interesting to me, which impacts how I play because I like to roleplay and mold my character towards a certain goal. Problem being, I tried to play "human with differing opinions and shifting allegiances" and now I'm stuck with several unfinished quests that make realistic play decisions impossible - why go help the Synth when the Brotherhood wants Synths dead? Why requisition supplies from settlements for the Brotherhood when I'm with the Minutemen.

F-ck this playthrough. Time to start over. For the... 34th time?

I'll do a Minutemen Nate (but properly by grabbing up all of the Settlements first) and a Brotherhood Nate (forget Preston and Sanctuary) and an Institute Nate (dress him up in a lab coat, be like Rick Sanchez and be rude to everyone and a complete alcoholic genius), and maybe a Railroad Nate.

But good lord will that get old. The vanilla perks suck. The vanilla enemies suck. Time to get some mods.

Except mods mean no achievements. No artificial validation acknowledging that my time invested into this, my 34th time starting this game over, is worth anything.

Internal conflict, go!

I have 2 friends who've told me they never finished Fallout 4. So maybe I'll just do that, delete Level 30 Nate and just play around with new characters. Maybe. Playing on Very Hard makes the game challenging and fun for a little while.

Soble: Just blitz the storyline to get it out of the way. Achievements be damned.

The vast majority of my replays is just me faffing about with mods and exploring the custom content.

That playthrough sounds nearly as convoluted as trying for the "golden ending" where you get as far in the Brotherhood, Railroad and Minutemen questlines to defeat the Institute without any of the previous three factions killing each other.

There's a mod specifically to re-enable achievements if you're using other mods.

Also, a warning - the Railroad questline is almost identical to the Institute questline since you're, you know, infiltrating them. So if you do one, you won't miss much by skipping the other.

I've finally gotten the dreaded 0kb Save Bug. Thing is, I only started getting it when I purchased those free t-shirt Creation Club mods. I think I'll keep playing the save I was using until a certain point, then delete and re-install my PS 4 game so I can clear the CC mods out of the cache and get back to playing normally again.

So far everything plays well after I uninstalled then reinstalled Fallout 4 without CC mods. Have to lose all my save for it though; not just my cloud saves either by the fist character I made and got the platinum with.

give me some feedback on this

a perk

that at STR 10

Lets you equip mininukes as throwable grenades

Unless you can lob them a good distance it might be more trouble than it is worth. But like the Fatman launcher, it could be situationally useful.

None of my Soleys would touch that perk. They're usually dangerous enough to themselves with normal frag grenades and the like, and know to stick with ballistic weapons, as they're just better.

I personally do really well with thrown explosives. I just wish I had more use for the mininukes I never carry Fatman launchers. Too heavy. Need more room for loot

Well, if you're into chucking bombs around, more power to you.

That perk would be useful if you do like making things go BOOOM!!!

Specifically i like finding high ground. Far cry makes that much more natural. You know what though, i still like Bethesda's looting system more than anything. Think they'd keep that even if they migrated engines?

Probably. It depends on what engine they use and how much time the developers get to play with it. Looting systems may need a lot of work compared to relatively simple stuff like character movement. I think the Avalanche engine would be a good starting point, but others here aren't so keen on the idea. (BTW, Avalanche Studios, the engine's owners, have been tapped by Bethesda to do Rage 2. Which makes me think that the news that ESVI may be done on Gamebryo is highlariously stupid.)

Just because one of the games under their umbrella is using a different engine does not mean they won't be using another iteration of Creation Engine. Going by that logic they could have just as easily have used the id Tech engine powering the newer Doom games for Fallout 76. Yet here they are using a modified variant of Creation Engine for the third time in a row.

That STR 10 perk sounds more like a Level 50 Demolition's Expert perk.