Nobody likes being forced to care about little kids. Especially gamers. We got burned when BioWare thought players would get more emotionally invested in a random unnamed kid we've never met before more than all of our companions who we've known for years. It didn't end well.
Now other games like Hard Rain (even includes a boy named SHAUN!) The Walking Dead and The Last of Us are far more appropriate for this kind of story telling because unlike Mass Effect and Fallout 4, the entire point of these games ARE about telling a story with set characters and the kids they're looking out for. The reason it doesn't work for games like Mass Effect and Fallout 4 is because you're making the player do care about something that's clearly what you like but not what we like. I can understand that you want to make this story more personal than the previous entries, but having a fixed story where we cannot control any outcome that matters just doesn't feel satisfying, when you've got so much baggage you force us to care about. To make matters worse, you gave us this piece of work.
You pretty much threw every piece of established lore mechanic out the window to satisfy another 'save the child!' quest line which was pretty terrible in and of itself.
Not to mention I thought Ghouls had to eat to survive so apparently this kid is either a fluke or they changed the rules again. I hate kids in games as much as i do in movies, they're rarely written right. That's one thing Last of Us did really well to the point I swear everyone just followed their teenage sisters around to get things right lol. Honestly they coulda turned that into an Crystal Skull joke with an Indy-like character stuck in the fridge. This game didn't have nearly as much weird humor that the older ones did. I fear the series could end up going too mainstream.
BTW, in case anyone doesn't know you can get a robot named Drinking Buddy that you can send back to one of your settlements. I thought it was kind of lame because every beer recipe you bring him has the same buffs. Then a friend said if you put any Nuka Cola in it when you say "I'll take a beer" it will make them ice cold. Hopefully once the creation kit comes out someone will make a Nuka Cola fridge that will do that like in F3. Here's where the robot is: http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Trouble_Brewin'
I did the mission when you're supposed to get him for the hotel in Goodneighbour and did the neighbourly thing of letting them keep him. You still get free drinks though.
I did the mission when you're supposed to get him for the hotel in Goodneighbour and did the neighbourly thing of letting them keep him. You still get free drinks though.
Yeaaaahh... There's a lot of stuff that keeps poking me in the back of the brain as "off". I still am grumpy at the lack of commentary or observation on the changes between the Boston I knew before going into cryo and the Wasteland as it is now. I feel the most empathy in the game every time I run across someone who did the right thing and survived the attack, but then died sealed in a bunker or department-store vault. I hear the radio broadcasts, I find their skeletons, the two superimpose there in the moment and I have a pang of "Sorry I'm late..." These were the PC's contemporaries -- them and the non-feral Ghouls. I want to be able to talk more with the Peabodies, Daisy, the Vault-Tec rep, and the folks at the Slog about life before the bombs. I want to be able to use my military background (as the male protagonist) to good effect, leading the Minutemen and cowing the Brotherhood.
I want to be able to grieve my wife and the loss of my child, who I come to realize over the course of gameplay is lost to me (first the fear I won't find him, then the shock of him being ten years old and having missed out on his entire childhood,
then the worse shock of the ten-year-old being a synth and my actual son being an old man whose life I missed utterly, who is alien to me and my values as he was raised by the damn Institute. With such a gulf of years and not having been able to influence him at all, he isn't my son any more. We are related genetically, but he's a monster. I want to be able to kill him and the synth Shaun, so I can mourn properly. Got no problem with synth kids -- just not that kid.
And I agree about the railroading (ha!) of the plot. Part of why I'm focusing on side quests and crafting is to kill time hoping the DLC gives us more endgame options. I'm nearly-single-handedly depopulating the Commonwealth of super mutants, feral ghouls, and raiders (regardless of what they call themselves). Unless they propagate by spores, there's no way they should be respawning in such numbers, and right smack in the places I've cleared without traveling there from somewhere else. I wantot be able to establish settlements everywhere. Aside form the XP that would generate, it just makes sense. Why risk supply lines through hostile territory when I could control all that territory. I want to be able to go back to Becky Fallon in Diamond City and tell her to move out of that basement and into her family's old department store. I want to be able to tie allies like the Atom Cats into the network. I want to be able to equip the Minutemen with all this T-45f power armor I've put together. The Brotherhood would find them a harder nut to crack, and with them being led by a pre-War retired-Army soldier in T-60f/X-01mkVI power armor, they will have to treat, by God.
I want to be able to lead the Minutemen back to their role as guardians of peace and justice in the Old Repub-- er... Commonwealth, fold the Railroad into things legitimately, take over the Institute and lay all their cards on the table so people won't be afraid of them any more, and sit down to make an accord with the Brotherhood, where we share our tech with them, but they can take their "we get to keep all the old-world tech" attitude and stick it. And we'll have the armor and guns to back it up. And if they decide to be jerks about it, I'll one-shot Maxson in the frikkin' head with my modded legendary gauss rifle Great Vengeance (currently 403 damage per shot), and take them over, too. Set up Danse as my deputy in absentia.
I had no trouble backing the NCR in New Vegas because I helped get the NCR going back in the original Fallout. I remember how big of jerks the Brotherhood's been in every game except Fallout 3. Out-jerked only by the Enclave. I objected to the player character having to sacrifice himself in Fallout 3, and the maguffin of trying to find your dad overshadowing everything. Fallout falters when it forgets/deviates from its basic premise, dating back to the first game -- rebuilding a new civilization out of the ashes of the old. Where I get tetchy with Fallout 4 is where the game seems to be actively preventing me from doing that.
Ok... so once you "store all junk" it eventually just converts it to whatever base material it is, but you don't have to manually "scrap" those items like you scrap guns and armor.
I pick up everything that isn't bolted down. I am finally doing okay on adhesive, but am having a hard time keeping enough aluminum on hand. *sigh* Oil and copper are also important ones to watch for (wiring and turrets). I pulled a few pieces of junk out that I want to keep and display, that I've stashed along with other items that meet that description. Stashed since I can't keep people out of my frikkin 'house in Sanctuary, so I can't display them. *grump*
For simplicity of everything, I occasionally take all my non-basic-component junk out and drop it all in the street, then scrap it. That way, when I need to set up a new settlement and get it connected to the supply network, I can just take some of the relevant raw materials, rather than hunting for the stuff that has what I need and weighs more.
I didn't know the Local Leader perk linked all of the materials. Good to know.
It isn't instantaneous, just to warn ya. The provisioner has to make it back and forth once, near as I can tell. I haul what I need to a settlement, build a generator and recruitment antenna and some turrets, then come back later when there are some extra people and assign one to the supply line, then come back later and actually build all the stuff they need.
I'm currently looking on Wiki to see what weapons have the highest base damage so I can start hunting for those.
Gauss rifle. Why I've been hanging onto every 2mm EC ammo I can find. I adore the YCS/186 in New Vegas, and did my best to max this one out. Sadly, they don't start showing up until you get into the 30s. The best gun I had starting out was a rapid 10mm pistol that whoever I looted it off of had fitted with a better receiver and a bigger mag than I could at that point. Great rate of fire and reload time. Then I scored a legendary pipe revolver that fired an extra projectile that I tricked out and named the Minuteman Sequoia. It held my pride of place for most-damage-per-shot up until I was able to properly mod up the Righteous Authority (the laser rifle Danse gives you). With the Gunslinger and Rifleman perks, they started doing some serious damage. As I said above, between the maxed out Rifleman perk and high enough Science! and Gun Nut perks to give it all the best stuff, my gauss rifle is currently doing 403 damage per shot. I'm hoping to find a legendary one that shoots an extra projectile per shot so I can effectively double that, just for pure insanity.
I also don't like how you can't even attempt to pick a higher level lock or hack a higher level computer without your perk being that level. THAT is lame. I liked how it was done in Skyrim better where skills level up based on their use. Pick more locks, your lock pick gets higher. Sneak more, your sneak gets higher. Not crazy about this new system.
I don't mind so much. While I do really like the Skyrim system, you also had to take certain perks to get to others. I like how you can go with any perk on the chart in Fallout 4, provided you meet the base stat and level requirements. I've leveled quickly enough, it's only been mildly agonizing waiting until I get to the level I can take this or that rank of a particular perk. I had to bump a couple primary stats along the way, but I took a couple minutes to that what I was going to take when, and no level-u[ has gone to waste or been just a "well, I'll just bank it" bit of indecision. All ranks in Strong Back and Armorer and Gun Nut and Science! and Lady Killer... both ranks in Scrapper and Local Leader, all but the highest in Locksmith and Hacker (because the highest ranks are useless to me)...
My "second act" plans are to boost my Perception and Agility and start working on Sniper and Ninja and Grim Reaper's Sprint and Cap Collector and Scrounger and Action Boy and Quick Hands and Gun-Fu and... *chuckle* I spent the "first act" building up what I consider the essentials as quickly as possible -- unlocking the abilities to make better weapons and armor, set up supply lines and stores and crafting stations, unlock or hack anything... Not the focus is mainly going to be on doing more damage, more quickly.
Gauss rifle. Why I've been hanging onto every 2mm EC ammo I can find. I adore the YCS/186 in New Vegas, and did my best to max this one out. Sadly, they don't start showing up until you get into the 30s. my gauss rifle is currently doing 403 damage per shot. I'm hoping to find a legendary one that shoots an extra projectile per shot so I can effectively double that, just for pure insanity.
--Jonah
In the previous games the gauss has wicked damage but the rate of fire is lousy I my opinion. If there's a way to trick that out to make it shoot faster I'll definitely hunt for one and hold onto it.
Another thing that gets me is why doesn't the a female character get to be a soldier and the husband a lawyer but instead they keep the exact same storylines they had no matter which they choose. I know that the opening is shot from the male character's POV but it would have been neat to swap out their backgrounds. Honestly if i'd woke up after 200 years i'd be confused as hell, not jumping into fights that make giant mole rats or mosquito seem to not raise an eyebrow lol
:lol That's my favorite quote of the thread! The writers seemed a little confused about what the BoS is in this game. At some point the BoS is going to either have to be killed off (not literally necessarily) or change to help people (like Veronica said in NV). Obviously taking technology away isn't really helping since everyone has weapons. Also you never see them actually do that, that I can remember. Maybe instead of re-nuking half of Boston they could try helping people with shelter and defense against Raiders and Supermutants?
Maxson, especially, is all messed up in F4. Check out his backstory. He's the last descendant of the guy who started the BoS in the midst/aftermath of the Great War. He was named Arthur and raised on stories of the Arthurian legend and Camelot. When his dad died, his mom sent him East to Lyons' faction of the Brotherhood, where he spent his teenage years around BoS who actually seemed to emboy that Arthurian ideal of helping those who cannot help themselves. His airship in F4 is even named after King Arthur's ship! So how they hell did he fall so far so fast after the Lyons' deaths? It's only been about ten years since F3.
But yeah, all throughout the other games the BoS are not likable. They're enemies in the original Fallout. They're early enemies in Fallout 2, eclipsed as the game goes on by the Enclave. They're the player characters in Fallout: Tactics and Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel (in both cases, from the Midwest branch of the BoS, out of Chicago)... but none of them are worthwhile human beings. They're killhappy jerk-faces, as always. So I agree their macro-character arc needs to evolve, or else they need to just get wiped out in favor of a faction who can grow and gain wisdom.
In the previous games the gauss has wicked damage but the rate of fire is lousy I my opinion. If there's a way to trick that out to make it shoot faster I'll definitely hunt for one and hold onto it.
That is one thing I'll give the F4 gauss rifle. It's got a wicked nice rate of fire. With the receiver and barrel mods, I have an ammo capacity of twenty shots. And with the recoil-compensating stock and muzzle brake, you lose some range, but the accuracy goes way up and the recoil goes way down. Add some perks on top of that (Sniper, for instance), and you can get a lot of magentically-accelerated fire accurately downrange fast. Not that a high rate of fire is needed much with that gun. I'm stealth one-shotting most of my enemies. *heh* Mirelurk queen in my face took maybe four. Not sure. I, uh... may have panicked and kept firing without realizing she was already dead. :$
No they aren't. Not sure what "Original Fallout" you're talking about, but in the first Fallout the BoS can actually help you attack the Super Mutant infested military base. Don't recall anything they did to make them enemies. They give you quests, you can even join. If you're karma is high enough, you'll even get a suit of Power Armor. Hardly the things "enemies" would do.
I just finished the main story last night, kept 3 of the 4 factions alive which took some Googling to make sure I didn't alienate anyone. Now I'm just doing all the radiant/sidequests with my companions
No they aren't. Not sure what "Original Fallout" you're talking about, but in the first Fallout the BoS can actually help you attack the Super Mutant infested military base. Don't recall anything they did to make them enemies. They give you quests, you can even join. If you're karma is high enough, you'll even get a suit of Power Armor. Hardly the things "enemies" would do.
I should heed my own advice. It's been long enough since I played the first two, I had to resort to the wiki. You're right. There were hints of the direction they'd go in Fallout 2, but they were still small and local enough in Fallout, and the NCR hadn't gotten going yet to generate friction, so they were fairly mellow at that point. It was between 2 and 3 that they turned into jerks and almost got themselves wiped out by the NCR. It's still a point of tension in the BoS arc where we are now.
I should heed my own advice. It's been long enough since I played the first two, I had to resort to the wiki. You're right. There were hints of the direction they'd go in Fallout 2, but they were still small and local enough in Fallout, and the NCR hadn't gotten going yet to generate friction, so they were fairly mellow at that point. It was between 2 and 3 that they turned into jerks and almost got themselves wiped out by the NCR. It's still a point of tension in the BoS arc where we are now.
One of the things I loved about F3 was how they were sort of separated between the Lyons Brotherhood and the Brotherhood Outcasts. I wish they would have expanded more on that as far as their story arc. I'd believe Maxon to be the leader of the Outcasts for sure. Easier to believe than him leading the Brotherhood led by Lyons.
But, what you have to understand, is it really comes down to bad writing. The game is without a doubt awesome as hell, but the writing left a lot to be desired for me personally. Especially when the plot they had to work with was pretty much golden.
In short, us Brotherhood fans got the short end of the stick. That I can't argue.
