24 replies to this topic

[t Khrist]

MechregSurn, on 25 November 2015 - 08:20 AM, said:

Fallout 4 should have been more true to the table top.

Bethesda lied, Fallout died.

[Alistair Winter]

Dino Might, on 25 November 2015 - 06:18 AM, said:

Not disagreeing with any of the points being made here - FO1&2 were masterpieces, and I just don't think we're going to get something like that again in the near future. Most of us have a limited enough attention span, that it's not worth the investment to make a modern version of those games, which would require so much more writing, coding, and testing.

FO4 already has a few hundred thousand lines of dialogue at least. If you wanted to make the experience more variable depending on what you did, then you'd need to have 10 or 20 times as much recorded. Just imagine the resources required to get what we want. It was easier when it was simple text based conversation. Older games had more depth because they relied less on graphics and sound and more on the player's imagination to see and hear what was going on based on what was written.

Now we have the graphics and sound, but not enough depth in writing, so now, we have to imagine the depth.

This is beautifully written, and you make some excellent points. I also think it's something of a lost art, really. And I think a lot of developers are so keen to make a sandbox game that they lose the ability to tell a story. For example, I bought Pillars of Eternity a while back. I was part of the earliest crowdfunding, because I thought it would be similar to Fallout in many ways. However, Pillars of Eternity has the same problem as Fallout 4. The developers basically let you decide who your character is and what his or her background is. You're a clean sheet of paper when you start the game. Which sounds kind of appealing, except that this means your character is a clean sheet of paper throughout the story, because there's no way they can make individual stories for every possible background. As a result, you're totally disconnected from the world around you and your character basically just runs around doing whatever quests, as a faceless avatar for you, the player.

In Fallout 1 & 2, you could basically decide to be anything from a psychopathic, evil brute to an apathetic, self-indulgent alcoholic gambler or a cowardly, shy genius. But the game still worked because

• You still had an identity and a goal that defined you. You could transform into something else as you moved through the wasteland and got more experienced (e.g. you could go from a nice vault dweller to a brutal lord of the wasteland as you travelled for several months), but this was always part of the background. And the game was tailored so your options made sense within this context.
  By comparison, my Fallout 4 character was a beautiful young lady with a young child and a law degree. (If you look at some of the books in your house during the first part of the intro, your character actually makes a comment about her law degree, so I didn''t make it up). Less than an hour later, she was frozen for two-hundred years. When she wakes up, she stumbles into a small town where someone gives her a suit of FRICKIN POWER ARMOUR FROM THE FUTURE and A MINIGUN, and she's suddenly slaying raiders in the post-apocalyptic wasteland. The young lady was probably still on maternity leave before she got frozen, for God's sake.
  
• The game was built to support your choices and make sense of them. If you decided your character was super intelligent, you could say super intelligent things and other characters would recognise you as super intelligent. If you decided your character was sexy and charismatic, you could play accordingly, and other characters would treat you accordingly. This doesn't happen in Fallout 4, except for a very shallow Persuasion mechanic.

Dino Might, on 25 November 2015 - 06:18 AM, said:

I wish it were the other way around, but I still appreciate FO4 for what it is. So I create backstories for my characters. One guy is going to be a secret enclave assassin, dispatched to the Commonwealth to eliminate all organizational leadership to allow subsequent operations and conquest of the region. Obviously, the greatest threat to this plan is the noodlebot. He must be destroyed at all costs.

I have only gone through about 1/3 of the story, I think, so I am a bit biased, not knowing what's going to happen and still being excited to learn about it. But I can see where things are going already, and yes, the story is not that enthralling. So, I'm making up my own story as I go along.

I do that a little bit. I definitely have an idea of who my character is and what his / her personality is like. But I can't make up the whole story myself. At that point, I may as well just get my G.I. Joe's down from the attic and play with those. I enjoy roleplaying, but I need to interact with other living people either directly or indirectly, by participating in an immersive story someone else prepared.

Lily from animove, on 25 November 2015 - 07:56 AM, said:

you mean between
being good
more good then needed and
way too good than actually needed?

Basically this. In Fallout 4, it's fairly easy to be a master warrior, master hacker, master scientist, master lockpicker, master thief, master armorsmith, master gunsmith, master speaker and a leader of men, all at the same time.

Lily from animove, on 25 November 2015 - 07:56 AM, said:

yes game lacks sex. It was in the other FO's and led to quite some interesting things. It is part of humans nature and a good RPG does actually involve it. Not talking about the "quality of whats shown" because thats rather irrelevant. But survival, food and a bit of sex belong into a realistic world, because they are the main driving components of humanity. So hey after you built all the cities can you even marry? (well we know the answer, it was just a rethorical question).

In this game, I didn't feel the lack of sex was an issue, simply because my character is basically a few days away from having her son kidnapped and her husband shot. Even if I was into watching my female characters have sex in computer RPGs (which I'm not), it would just be really weird if she decided to go have freaky gangbang sex with a ghoul and a couple of supermutants. Or even the hunky Paladin Danse.
"Hey, I just lost my baby and husband yesterday. I could really use a quickie right now."

Didn't make sense to me.

However, I do think the game lacks sex everywhere else. How are you going to have a post-apocalyptic wasteland without any brothels and drug-addict prostitutes on the streets?

Lily from animove, on 25 November 2015 - 07:56 AM, said:

So think about it, what is it that makes your single character being the guy building loads of fotresses, uhh I mean settlements in a few weeks, while entire mankind struggled to do so for all these years? Instead they kept sitting in half broken houses "living" there not even considering to repair the most basic stuffs.

Which is another thing that bugs me about this game. The timeframe. In Fallout 1 & 2, you had a clock and a calendar. You knew exactly how much time had passed. If you wanted to travel across the map without a car, it could set you back weeks. By the end of the game, you had potentially changed the wasteland forever, but it had taken you months (up to 100 days in Fallout 1) or years. And while your character had changed and evolved throughout the journey, he or she had survived the wasteland for months or years as well.

From the time I awoke from the Vault in Fallout 4 until the main quest was over, I think my character slept a total of 3 or 4 times. Which wasn't really necessary. I basically changed the Commonwealth in a few days, setting up multiple settlements and villages with a solid infrastructure, defenses, you name it.

I know a lot of players don't mind it, because there's no way you can make the map big enough to the point where it literally takes weeks to walk across it. But in my mind, the lack of a timeframe seriously messes with immersion.

Dino Might, on 25 November 2015 - 06:18 AM, said:

Yeah FO4 world is alive but it feels not real as in: "this feels like it truly would be 210! years after the bombs dropped." They still live in half broken houses with litter around that anyone would initually first clean off when going to live there. Many places actually lack the details to feel realistic. So you can build bathtubes out of material, and they still look old and rotten, while the wepaons you build look just normal. You can even build rather complex rifles, yet not even nail 2 bords correctly next to each other? What kind fo derp si my character actually? You scrap trees for wood and make baords looking 30years old. Surely if you only find these half rusty metal plates you ahve not much to attahc to your house as a roof, but wouldn't you clean of this rust first? or is the feeling of rust on your face just 2kool in the morning when wakign up under this roof? And these lack of correct details is what makes the game lack true soul and heart. Yes the game has features but they were just somehow put together to work. They do not correctly fit into each other nor "how it would really be if that world would exist"
It's not "recently" ater the war where people out of emergency slap anything togrther they can find.
For me, these details make a good RPG, because they add the true realism instead just a soulless "feature."

I agree completely. It doesn't feel real at all. It feels like the whole world has slept for 200 years, not just your character. Why are people still living in houses filled with trash, with no access to food or water, and in the broken bathroom there's still a pre-war first aid kit with stimpacks? Why are there still bottles of Nuka Cola in every vending machine? Why is it so easy to find pre-war tech in this game? In Fallout 1&2, I had to lockpick my way through hell just to find a few scraps of beef jerky.

[Night Thastus]

Gosh. This series of posts look well thought-out, level-headed and calm. That's nice in a way. Don't see that too often in here, much less on the internet in general. I applaud all involved for keeping a nice discussion.

I feel at odds with Fallout. I loved Morrowind, was on OK terms with Oblivion, and liked Skyrim once it got patched up and modded to all hell.

But Fallout? I tried Fallout 3. I figured (and according to the advice I got): It's like TES with guns, right? I should like this.

Perhaps I didn't give it enough of a chance. I'm not sure. But I tried Fallout 3 and just couldn't bring myself to finish it. I got maybe 2 hours in and just quit. Maybe it's because I'm spoiled. I'm getting used to "Streamlined" games where all the mechanics are simple and make sense. Where there isn't a whole lot of thinking involved. I hate that part of myself, but here it is.

I was just able to beat Morrowind recently (I'm a little proud) and it had some older-school mechanics. Heck, it's a significantly older game than Fallout 3, If I remember right.

Maybe I'll go back and try it again, but I just didn't feel compelled. I got into some main town with a Sheriff and a bomb and some other stuff and just...eh. I really don't know why. I just didn't feel compelled to continue on with my journey.

Edited by Night Thastus, 28 November 2015 - 10:30 PM.

[Lily from animove]

Alistair Winter, on 28 November 2015 - 08:49 PM, said:

In Fallout 1 & 2, you could basically decide to be anything from a psychopathic, evil brute to an apathetic, self-indulgent alcoholic gambler or a cowardly, shy genius. But the game still worked because

• You still had an identity and a goal that defined you. You could transform into something else as you moved through the wasteland and got more experienced (e.g. you could go from a nice vault dweller to a brutal lord of the wasteland as you travelled for several months), but this was always part of the background. And the game was tailored so your options made sense within this context.
  
  
  By comparison, my Fallout 4 character was a beautiful young lady with a young child and a law degree. (If you look at some of the books in your house during the first part of the intro, your character actually makes a comment about her law degree, so I didn''t make it up). Less than an hour later, she was frozen for two-hundred years. When she wakes up, she stumbles into a small town where someone gives her a suit of FRICKIN POWER ARMOUR FROM THE FUTURE and A MINIGUN, and she's suddenly slaying raiders in the post-apocalyptic wasteland. The young lady was probably still on maternity leave before she got frozen, for God's sake.
  
• The game was built to support your choices and make sense of them. If you decided your character was super intelligent, you could say super intelligent things and other characters would recognise you as super intelligent. If you decided your character was sexy and charismatic, you could play accordingly, and other characters would treat you accordingly. This doesn't happen in Fallout 4, except for a very shallow Persuasion mechanic.

That is a bit one of the first things I don't like much. For a most sandboxish FO4 the characters own story is too much predefined. That is good or story driven games, not for open world ones. In the older games your own created character had no story aside the rough background he was not bound to. in FO3 you just had your dad, and some friends, and not so much friends. But past this your character was rather free. Same in FO 1 and 2.

Alistair Winter, on 28 November 2015 - 08:49 PM, said:

I do that a little bit. I definitely have an idea of who my character is and what his / her personality is like. But I can't make up the whole story myself. At that point, I may as well just get my G.I. Joe's down from the attic and play with those. I enjoy roleplaying, but I need to interact with other living people either directly or indirectly, by participating in an immersive story someone else prepared.

yeah roleplay requires a spcific amount of "feedback" form other elements in the world. But this lacks in FO4. No matter how badass or good guy you are.

Alistair Winter, on 28 November 2015 - 08:49 PM, said:

In this game, I didn't feel the lack of sex was an issue, simply because my character is basically a few days away from having her son kidnapped and her husband shot. Even if I was into watching my female characters have sex in computer RPGs (which I'm not), it would just be really weird if she decided to go have freaky gangbang sex with a ghoul and a couple of supermutants. Or even the hunky Paladin Danse.
"Hey, I just lost my baby and husband yesterday. I could really use a quickie right now."

Didn't make sense to me.

It's the wasteland, everyone genes on his/her own! But yeah the lack of time that elapsed is one of these issues that keeps your character rather much bound to the "recent" events. Which also limites the Roleplay aspect. One day, mom and wife, next day, raider slaughting superwarrior(ess). Surely very immersive.

Alistair Winter, on 28 November 2015 - 08:49 PM, said:

Which is another thing that bugs me about this game. The timeframe. In Fallout 1 & 2, you had a clock and a calendar. You knew exactly how much time had passed. If you wanted to travel across the map without a car, it could set you back weeks. By the end of the game, you had potentially changed the wasteland forever, but it had taken you months (up to 100 days in Fallout 1) or years. And while your character had changed and evolved throughout the journey, he or she had survived the wasteland for months or years as well.

From the time I awoke from the Vault in Fallout 4 until the main quest was over, I think my character slept a total of 3 or 4 times. Which wasn't really necessary. I basically changed the Commonwealth in a few days, setting up multiple settlements and villages with a solid infrastructure, defenses, you name it.

I know a lot of players don't mind it, because there's no way you can make the map big enough to the point where it literally takes weeks to walk across it. But in my mind, the lack of a timeframe seriously messes with immersion.

doesn't needs to be made big. FO 1+2 generated "timeflow" by the travels. F4 could have used the settlement building for this. But instead "plop" building is set. They could have added a crafting timer which would quickskip X time per structure depending on what you build. Also, a need for sleep so you have to make rests instead of rushing through the wasteland that fast.

Also think about how crowded this makes the wasteland and how many people you met in this short time on such a small area. This is just made to kep the player "entertained with fighting".
Stretching the time also stretches the density of population.

Alistair Winter, on 28 November 2015 - 08:49 PM, said:

I agree completely. It doesn't feel real at all. It feels like the whole world has slept for 200 years, not just your character. Why are people still living in houses filled with trash, with no access to food or water, and in the broken bathroom there's still a pre-war first aid kit with stimpacks? Why are there still bottles of Nuka Cola in every vending machine? Why is it so easy to find pre-war tech in this game? In Fallout 1&2, I had to lockpick my way through hell just to find a few scraps of beef jerky.

haha, yeah those funny details, with all those people roaming around these stuff would have been looted along time ago. And the material of the vending machine itself probably too.
The issue is how the devs have chosen the timeline to advance while the world didn't accordingly to keep some "fallout feeling". It may have been better they had chosen just another location and a more parallel timeline to the other FO games.

@Night Morrorwind was in my opinion still the best, surely graphically not so advanced, but the world and everything felt great. Maybe except form magick not regenerating which made "skilling" magic based skills more staying in the bad or getting addicted to magic potions.

Edited by Lily from animove, 30 November 2015 - 02:57 AM.