The Commonwealth is no joke
Well, I don’t trust Todd Howard to make a good game anymore. Does that count?
What the game needed was some real roleplay choices. Its a fine shooter, but is lacking in basically every other department without mods.
>Yes >Yes, but angry >No, but eventually yes.
I never felt paranoid. The game is all goofy. The most fun I had with fallout 4 was settlement building. With mods. I literally clocked the story the moment the cryotube started to turn on for the second time. All of the factions are pretty much exactly what’s on the tin. Nukaworld was fun I think? I honestly only remember my sick settlements.
I get creepiness with headphones on. Even non noise cancelling ones. I’m using Soundcore Aeroclips and it’s incredibly fun and spooky. Also, turn the radio to classic or off for the creepiest experience.
Far Harbor was the best part of the game; actually felt like a real RPG instead of a themepark
and even then it was predictable from the get go.
Nonsense.
First of all, it’s a quick-save game. There’s almost no meaningful stakes. Even if someone turned out to be a synth that betrayed you, at worst you’d just go back to the last auto save.
Second, even if they did the combat is so janky you’d probably get shot a couple times, realize what’s happening, and then win the fight anyway.
Third, that never happens.
The whole game is an incoherent mess. It’s three under baked games in a trench coat.
If you save-scum then that is on you for not knowing how to play a role-playing-game.
Making non-optimal choices is part of the gameplay to weave better stories.
“save scum” is a new term for me. Is it similar to “save spamming”?
Reloading saves until you get the outcome you’re after.
The game is designed around save scumming. There’s no mechanism to follow dying or failure. There are instant death scenarios. It’s not a good game.
There are instant death scenarios.
Ahh yes, dying because you walked up to a car incorrectly and the physics glitched out. Good times!
car, bucket, pebble…
quick-save game.
Not if you play survival mode, the only way to play 4.
Apparently it saves when you sleep in a bed, so I guess there are some stakes but they’re still pretty low.
Never played survival mode myself
I highly highly recommend you give survival mode a try. Prepare to die a lot trying to get past concord. So many weird mechanics start making a ton of sense.
What?
The whole synth plot went nowhere and did nothing.
What was there to be paranoid about? Apart from the scary number of players siding with the techno fascists.
the good synth plot is in FO3.
That’s exactly what I was thinking. At no point do I ever see the synths being a problem. By default they’re strictly driven by the institute and have no autonomy, on their own they’re literally a slave class vying for freedom. No one ever turns on you, no one ever betrays you, every single character you encounter is exactly honest about who they are and whether or not they’re good people.
If they wanted a sense of paranoia, they should have had encountera where you’re attacked by doubles of your recently dismissed party members, or characters with more than one dimension.
Then they kinda failed, since you’re never really threatened by anything to make you paranoid of synths. Lotta talk about how anyone could be one and betray you; but it never really happens in a way that would really get the player paranoid. They even have a list of actual synth plants throughout the commonwealth inside a terminal at the Institute which you get access to fairly early on, removing almost every possible mystery about it.
The Thing did a much better job of inducing paranoia that your allies may actually be the monster.
If telling not showing things in a movie is a cardinal sin of writing, then it should be considered doubly awful for a video game to tell you, not show you, and not even let you act it out.
The synths in FO4 always seemed like a random boogeyman, apart from a few jump scares and fights that doesn’t really matter, they don’t seem to be that scary.
The entire institute thing about replacing people with synths is just dumb, they already have synth birds to spy on the commonwealth, why replace people at all? Better to just introduce new people with less risk of detection
Well some of the plants were beyond spies. The mayor of Diamond City is one of them which means the city was basically ran by the Institute.
Yep! That was my take.
Spoilers: when one of your followers discovers they were secretly a synth, it wasn’t a big realization. It was like, “Yeah okay so imma go explore over there and kill some more super mutants. You wanna come and carry my burden or nah?”
Bethesda just can’t seem to nail strong consistent storytelling. At least not compared to Rockstar, or dare I say it, Ubisoft. Which is weird because their DLC, like Shivering Isles/Tribunal & Blood Moon, and Far Harbor were pretty good in the story department.
Yes, Todd, we get it.
You’re the one we shouldn’t trust.
Yeah, paranoia if the next NPC is gonna pester you endlessly about stupid radiant quests
“Another settlement needs your help! I’m too busy walking in circles around Sanctuary”
I hate how useless the NPCs are. I’ve built up a very strong economy for my settlements, the Minutemen can be armed to the teeth, and yet the general is the one being asked to personally go clear out some feral ghouls?
First thing I do before every play through, is install the mod that let’s you kill that fucker.
My wife had a custom birthday card made for me with the Minutemen logo and “Happy birthday! Another settlement needs your help!”
If raiders are using the corvega assembly plant as a base for the third time this play session, maybe we should take over that as the settlement instead of Outpost Zimonja, Preston.
Fallout 4 was just missing a good game with graphics that aren’t from 2008
Todd, what the fuck are you talking about?
There’s a lot of science and tech in the fallout universe that is impractical, but can be handwaved as to why it exists. Even with aliens they made it work by sticking to the area 51 type of little green men that fit in line with the aesthetic.
The synths though? I don’t think they fit. At all. It’s a sci-fi concept that’s too future-tech for fallout.
I think you’re right that the tech doesn’t connect to anything else. You just have to believe that the Institute existed and developed in relative isolation underground, with a lot of great science minds inventing things. In that way, it actually makes sense that synth tech isn’t connected to anything else. But I still agree that thematically, it’s kinda off. Nuclear power in everything down to motorcycles… that’s on-theme. Artificial humans indistinguishable from the real thing? That’s different. Still, I’m okay with different.
Nah, it fits. The aesthetic isn’t pure retro futurism. There was a healthy amount of later sci-fi mixed from the start with the body horror of the master and super mutants. That sort of stuff feels more 80s than 50s or 60s. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? was written in 68 and Blade Runner was made in 82. That mix of both old and new sci-fi is part of what makes Fallout such an interesting setting.
I think it fits pretty well
It’s strange that you take exception to the one aspect that is most likely. You’re apparently okay with super mutants, death claws, ghouls, and giant bugs, etc. but not robots?
It’s 200 years in the future, and the Institute has continued development that whole time, it fits perfectly because it’s future tech. It was just developed in secret.
All the things you mentioned are in line with post-nuke mutations the series has going on, even the FEV.
May I remind you that the Fallout series does have robots, just not in the style of Fallout 4’s synths.
The show does a much better job of conveying the horror and seriousness of the wasteland. I agree, the game is more goofy. But, that’s fine, games are supposed to be fun, I’m glad it doesn’t take itself seriously.
I prefer the mostly serious tone of the first two games. It makes the goofy elements contrast much better. If it’s all goofy I don’t really think the jokes land - kinda like in Borderlands.
