As long as "no, fuck you" and opening fire is a choice, I guess that works out.
Also known as "the Institute option".
Also known as the Marcy Long directive.
Speaking of which..the bitch up and randomly decided to move into my house and take my bed, all the while being her bitchy fuckass bitch self while I'm sorting my inventory or working on power armor.
I swear to god I'm going to make a Skycell and assign her a bed up there and give her a source of food and water and make her stay there forever, unless she wants to fly out the moon door.
0
Dr. ChaosPost nuclear nuisanceRegistered Userregular
edited September 2016
I'm hoping that when Fallout 5 finally rolls around by the time I'm in my 50s, they'll stop trying to make the main quests so personal. Bethesda can't write emotional storytelling, it's one of their Achilles heels.
Take more notes from TES. Make the main goals more about the world conflicts and politics than the player. Focus on their strong world building and exploration skills, no one cares about the stupid baby.
Well, the sole survivor does but thats mainly becuase they force you to. You can't do anything interesting with that like roleplaying as a cruel deadbeat who is finally happy to get away. Only one way to play the main angle there and thats as the angry vengeful dad/mom and it can come across jarring when you spend the rest of your time playing as somebody thats just pure greed and mayhem.
I'm hoping that when Fallout 5 finally rolls around by the time I'm in my 50s, they'll stop trying to make the main quests so personal. Bethesda can't write emotional storytelling, particularly in the Main story quests, it's one of their Achilles heels.
Take more notes from TES. Make the main goals more about the world conflicts and politics than the player. Focus on the world building and exploration, no one cares about the stupid baby.
Well, the sole survivor does but thats mainly becuase they force you to. You can't do anything interesting with that like roleplaying as a cruel deadbeat who is finally happy to get away. Only one way to play the main angle there and thats as the angry vengeful dad.
Why write a main quest when they can just copy it wholesale from the previous game.
I will be shocked if Fallout 5 isn't about...oh..say..a Nephew/Niece searching for their beloved Uncle/Aunt.
sigh..wish they'd just give up and license the franchise to Obsidian already..
Buttcleft on
0
Dr. ChaosPost nuclear nuisanceRegistered Userregular
I'm hoping that when Fallout 5 finally rolls around by the time I'm in my 50s, they'll stop trying to make the main quests so personal. Bethesda can't write emotional storytelling, particularly in the Main story quests, it's one of their Achilles heels.
Take more notes from TES. Make the main goals more about the world conflicts and politics than the player. Focus on the world building and exploration, no one cares about the stupid baby.
Well, the sole survivor does but thats mainly becuase they force you to. You can't do anything interesting with that like roleplaying as a cruel deadbeat who is finally happy to get away. Only one way to play the main angle there and thats as the angry vengeful dad.
Why write a main quest when they can just copy it wholesale from the previous game.
I will be shocked if Fallout 5 isn't about...oh..say..a Nephew/Niece searching for their beloved Uncle/Aunt.
Its going to be about somebody thats got to find both their father and their son.
During a family reunion, your entire family was abducted by RED super mutants (what a twist!) while you were in the bathroom with horrible diarrhea (said diarrhea will be something they spend entire streams talking about the innovation of) and oh no I've gone crosseyed. In the end, your aunt was really just a super mutant with a human mask on. DUN DUN DUNNNNN.
Note to Bethesda:
Adding a second enforced-morality path is not an improvement, especially not when it's directly opposite the one enforced by the rest of the game - meaning, you miss out on one or the other, if you're trying to play anything like consistency.
Steam, Warframe: Megajoule
0
Dr. ChaosPost nuclear nuisanceRegistered Userregular
edited September 2016
I wouldn't mind seeing a spinoff that takes place between Fallout 3 and 4 and details that super mutant war the Brotherhood went through that ended up starting them down their current path.
I think it would be pretty interesting to sort of show how the Brotherhood was slowly falling to pieces, equipment going to shit through a neverending war against raiders and mutants and resources being spent on the Capital Wasteland settlements that didn't pay off and only made the BOS weaker causing them to doubt Lyons as Maxson starts to become disillusioned. Detail how the Brotherhood's hearts and blood may have start to run cold and make you sympathize with them abit.
Focus on the Brotherhood and make it like a reverse X-COM. You start with everything and by the end just try to salvage whats left.
What I think would be epic is if it went back to when the BoS was born. That brief period when they could see the writing on the wall and we're just trying to flee and get something setup as the world burned down. Might be a bit too grim for fallout though.
I think the raider content kinda works because you have the entire rest of the game to be Good Guy McGee
So it's like, at least it's different
And it's not like game has any emotional story resonance, so I'm pretty much like "sure I'll kill some dudes fuck youuuu Preston"
I ain't care that much
Don't care for the raider thing but like how their settlements are useful loot generators. All I can say is they are lucky BoS can't get that mechanic with firebases and supply colonies.
Last night I was looking for Goodneighbor, because no matter how many playthroughs I do, I cant find the goddamn place without spending 2 hours wandering in circles.
This last time, of course, was utterly insane. It wasn't just battles, it complete and total war and anarchy. Super Mutants, Raiders, Rust Devils, Gunners, Minutemen, Mechanist Robots, and more. Every corner turned was a new front in a massive war between all the factions. By the time I fought my way through all the mess and found my way to Goodneighbor, I was so overloaded with legendaries, and loot that it was everything I could do to carry it, after jamming my companions inventories to max to boot. I've never seen such insane numbers of people in such a huge firefight covering such a massive area.
I think.i figured out goodneighbor's deal - first of all it's behind mass fusion - second of all, there's no fuckin' way to get near it without going through either a super mutant camp or raiders, or Gunners. Chance's are on survival you'll end up perpetually skirting around it.
I think.i figured out goodneighbor's deal - first of all it's behind mass fusion - second of all, there's no fuckin' way to get near it without going through either a super mutant camp or raiders, or Gunners. Chance's are on survival you'll end up perpetually skirting around it.
That part of the map is cartoonishly fucked
Almost every corner is some kind of asshole expo
God. I remember one particular "NOPE" moment while trying to find goodneighbor on survival. I'm pretty sure I had following me a list of
1 super mutant suicider
1 radscorpion
3 mole rats
2 legendary enemies
assorted other mans.
So..I spent some time making a bunch of kick ass heavily armored maxed out max tech robots to act as my caravans between settlements.
Robobrain heads, treads, torso, assaultron arms, laser gattling and missile launchers, heavy voltaic and hydraulic armor. You know, best of the best of the best.
Get them all set up, fast travel to the next settlement... all of them have turned into stripped down basic fresh build protectrons with nothing but their bare internals.
is this a known issue? apparently this is a known issue, and I'm fucked unless I revert to a previous save. Ugh.
So..I spent some time making a bunch of kick ass heavily armored maxed out max tech robots to act as my caravans between settlements.
Robobrain heads, treads, torso, assaultron arms, laser gattling and missile launchers, heavy voltaic and hydraulic armor. You know, best of the best of the best.
Get them all set up, fast travel to the next settlement... all of them have turned into stripped down basic fresh build protectrons with nothing but their bare internals.
is this a known issue? apparently this is a known issue, and I'm fucked unless I revert to a previous save. Ugh.
Just remember to team up with them first before sending them off.
So..I spent some time making a bunch of kick ass heavily armored maxed out max tech robots to act as my caravans between settlements.
Robobrain heads, treads, torso, assaultron arms, laser gattling and missile launchers, heavy voltaic and hydraulic armor. You know, best of the best of the best.
Get them all set up, fast travel to the next settlement... all of them have turned into stripped down basic fresh build protectrons with nothing but their bare internals.
is this a known issue? apparently this is a known issue, and I'm fucked unless I revert to a previous save. Ugh.
Just remember to team up with them first before sending them off.
does that prevent them from becoming a black whole where hopes and dreams go to die?
I'm kind of regretting doing a pistol build. There just isn't much variety.
If you're playing vanilla the pistol selection is very anemic, but there's a lot of mods that add cool or interesting pistols.
Right now I'm playing a pistol gunslinger with a colt 1911 as his primary, mostly because that's what I did for a lot of New Vegas and I liked it. Don't have the cool Joshua Graham model with the Bible verses engraved on it, unfortunately.
I'm kind of regretting doing a pistol build. There just isn't much variety.
If you're playing vanilla the pistol selection is very anemic, but there's a lot of mods that add cool or interesting pistols.
Right now I'm playing a pistol gunslinger with a colt 1911 as his primary, mostly because that's what I did for a lot of New Vegas and I liked it. Don't have the cool Joshua Graham model with the Bible verses engraved on it, unfortunately.
I've taken a look, but most of them are real guns, which I've been trying to avoid. I did grab the Rhino, though. I may just use the console to give myself the rifleman perks (up to the level I have for gunslinger).
I'm hoping that when Fallout 5 finally rolls around by the time I'm in my 50s, they'll stop trying to make the main quests so personal. Bethesda can't write emotional storytelling, particularly in the Main story quests, it's one of their Achilles heels.
Take more notes from TES. Make the main goals more about the world conflicts and politics than the player. Focus on the world building and exploration, no one cares about the stupid baby.
Well, the sole survivor does but thats mainly becuase they force you to. You can't do anything interesting with that like roleplaying as a cruel deadbeat who is finally happy to get away. Only one way to play the main angle there and thats as the angry vengeful dad.
Why write a main quest when they can just copy it wholesale from the previous game.
I will be shocked if Fallout 5 isn't about...oh..say..a Nephew/Niece searching for their beloved Uncle/Aunt.
sigh..wish they'd just give up and license the franchise to Obsidian already..
I don't think the FO4 plot is copied, per se, from FO3. I think it was more Bethesda seeing the complaints about how people didn't really get the feels about finding dad, and wrote FO4 going "You bastards didn't feel emotionally involve with FO3? Well here's some emotional involvement! Feel it! Feel it!!!"
One other thing is that super personal quests kind of conflict with the Bethesda open world gameplay. If you somehow became totally hooked into the main quest then all that settlement building and whatnot just become an annoying distraction. Assuming they weren't already an annoying distraction.
Shut up, Mr. Burton! You were not brought upon this world to get it!
0
BRIAN BLESSEDMaybe you aren't SPEAKING LOUDLY ENOUGHHHRegistered Userregular
Fuck, first time around I did get a little emotionally attached to the characters, because the game actually bothered to spend time exploring the PC and life in the Vault. I was absolutely cool and on board with that shit. Even more blank-slate type RPG storytelling from the old games had some amount of set plot. I thought learning the ropes about SPECIAL was fucking hilarious, handling Baby's First Combat through a BB Gun birthday present and punching the shit out of Tunnel Snakes was a cool way to frame the tutorials, and taking the GOAT to pick your talents was novel (if a little tedious).
They needed to put in more time spent pre-freeze for Fallout 4's story. Not only would it help the player actually know about their spouse and/or child for more than 10 minutes, it's also a goddamn interesting setting that they don't explore enough.
The only one in Fallout 4 I actually care about is Nick Valentine.
0
daveNYCWhy universe hate Waspinator?Registered Userregular
The FO3 hook was strange. The 30 minutes or so of growing up and making friends/punching people was good (though I never replayed it that much so it might have gotten way old), but the actual emotional hook of wanting to find your dad didn't work for me. The guy ran off and left me to face a really pissed off vault security team, sure I want to find him, but more in a "Boy Named Sue" sort of way, and even then I wasn't exactly driven. FO4 tries to dial the emotional stuff up to eleven, but then doesn't let things percolate enough. You're supposed to care about them because of their relationship with your character, but I didn't really care about them because of as the player I hadn't built a relationship with them.
Shut up, Mr. Burton! You were not brought upon this world to get it!
Fuck, first time around I did get a little emotionally attached to the characters, because the game actually bothered to spend time exploring the PC and life in the Vault. I was absolutely cool and on board with that shit. Even more blank-slate type RPG storytelling from the old games had some amount of set plot. I thought learning the ropes about SPECIAL was fucking hilarious, handling Baby's First Combat through a BB Gun birthday present and punching the shit out of Tunnel Snakes was a cool way to frame the tutorials, and taking the GOAT to pick your talents was novel (if a little tedious).
They needed to put in more time spent pre-freeze for Fallout 4's story. Not only would it help the player actually know about their spouse and/or child for more than 10 minutes, it's also a goddamn interesting setting that they don't explore enough.
I would have loved an hour(ish) hanging out with my pre-war neighbors at a fall barbecue, maybe swapping veteran/parent stories and defining a little bit about my own past and relationships (and what sort of people you and your spouse were - patriotic? counterculture beatniks? reactionaries? aloof cynics?), followed by another hour or so in the vault with those same people, so you could really feel the horror and devastation in the twin gut punches of the bombs and the vault's failure.
I guarantee you if they'd have done that people would have bitched about it, though. And, I mean, to be fair, you also want to avoid the opposite problem - I remember when playing Assassin's Creed 3 by the time I'd gotten to the actual meat of the game and I was adult Connor in the Assassin suit, I was starting to get pissed (it took me like six or seven hours, ie, several days worth of game time on my adult schedule). So you don't want to drag it out too much.
Instead they decided to let you hit the ground running. And, I mean, I honestly never really understood the griping over the FO3 intro. It just takes about 45-60 minutes even on your first go-through, and after that you never have to play it again - it autosaves for you at the Vault door, after which you can change everything about yourself if you want. So while the intro is long-ish, you only have to do it the once, and a 45-minute intro wasn't particularly unusual even by 2008 standards. I've played a lot of games that keep you restricted quite a bit longer than that.
Personally, I don't think it matters to me how long the intro was. Once I was out of the Vault, I would've still forgotten about the main quest an hour later and wandered off to do all the other things there are to do. I think the mistake was definitely making it too personal - every time I wandered into a random building instead of heading towards Diamond City or wherever, I was basically being a terrible parent. The main quest needs to be important, but not so important (or at least not so apparently urgent at first) that it doesn't leave room for you to be doing side quests. It's not until you get into the Institute that the main storyline gives you time to breathe.
Best of both worlds: have a decent length intro to let you get attached to pre-war life and so you understand how much this person loses when the war happens and they go into the vault, but remove Shaun entirely and have the main plot be them growing to appreciate what life there is afterwards and working to form a Commonwealth that they want to see grow into something greater.
All they needed to be was a person from the past thrust into the present. Having a lingering attachment come with them for them to find is unnecessary.
+4
BRIAN BLESSEDMaybe you aren't SPEAKING LOUDLY ENOUGHHHRegistered Userregular
edited September 2016
I think the one thing that might have worked out better for Fallout 4? Completely excise the actual scene involving them stealing Shaun and shooting the spouse. Have the player character simply wake up with the spouse dead, the child missing and everything fucked up. It works out because although there's still a sense of urgency in finding out where Shaun is, it's less clearly a case of "I HAVE TO FIND MY SON NOW" and more about investigating what actually happened to him, along with the mystery of whether or not he's actually alive.
The fact that the player is shown having their child taken away from them immediately makes every priority in the plot finding who took him in the first place (and being more time-sensitive), whereas if it was uncertain or unclear there would be more leeway for the player character to resign themselves to never knowing or choosing to chase the plot.
Fallout 3's hook for the player is still alright because the player starts off with a breadcrumb trail that leads them pretty much straight forward, but the story lets the player know that Dad didn't really want to be found in the first place and that he's probably able to handle himself outside. There's a less immediate sense of danger and threat in Fallout 3's opening than there is in Fallout 4, which does make a difference.
Also, those ten seconds of the player character walking out of the Vault doors into the great fuckin' unknown, your eyes adjusting to the sunlight to look upon the wasteland, is a pretty goddamn big videogames moment for me personally.
One thing I'd like to see is having the player choose a background during character creation that functions similarly to a class. This would not only effect how your character responds to certain things during the game, but would also determine certain some bonuses to help with the early game, like some attribute boosts, a unique perk, and some starting equipment.
Here's the sort of thing I have in mind:
Military Backgrounds
Sniper
+STR/+PER
Heavy Rifle perk
start with Sniper Rifle, Knife, Sniper's Armor, Sniper's Visor
Power Armor Mechanic
+STR/+INT
Repairman perk
start with T-45 Power Armor, Mechanic's Jumpsuit, Materials
Secret Agent
+PER/+CHA
Spy Games perk
start with Silenced Rifle, Tuxedo, Alcohol
Professor
+CHA/+INT
Scholar perk
start with Sweatervest, Eyeglasses
Pastor
+CHA/+LCK
Divine Blessing perk
start with Pastor's Vestments, Scripture, Relic
Larper
+INT/+LCK
Magic Missile perk
start with Wand, Bathrobe, Pointy Hat, Fake Beard
Mysterious Stranger
+AGI/+LCK
Role Reversal perk
start with Pistol, Trench Coat, Fedora
+3
daveNYCWhy universe hate Waspinator?Registered Userregular
Both FO3 and FO4 started you off in settings that were interesting and unique compared to the rest of their respective games. FO3 you're in a perfectly functional vault. In FO4, you're pre-war. I would have enjoyed being able to see more of the pre-war setting. Say they have you and the spouse take a nice walk to Concord for brunch with the neighbors or something. You see things all green, see the buildings when they're in good shape and people are living there, that way you get a harsh contrast to the post-war setting. I'm not sure how you'd be able to do that and contain the player's movements so that you wouldn't need to have a pre-war setup for the entire map.
The main quest has a lot of issues, so the only thing I think I can easily say I'd change (that wouldn't require insane levels of rewrites) is the
dead spouse. Have them be injured but still frozen, and the pod controls be locked. That'd give you some more goals (find Shaun, fix pod, get doctor to heal spouse after the defrost cycle) and cut down on the over the top melodrama somewhat. Plus the spouse seemed moderately not horrible as a character, so it'd be interesting to thaw them out and have them witness you as the lord of the wasteland.
Shut up, Mr. Burton! You were not brought upon this world to get it!
I guess they kind of fastforwarded the potentially fun part of establishing a background, checking out an unusual vault- or a neighbourhood-environment, and jumped to the part where you have to care about your fastforwarded background.
And the only thing the child does is being lifted two or three times. I cared more about Vaultsalesman, I wanted to find him.
Do any more traders move in after Open Season, are there any other changes, or did they just slap some quest-XP onto something you could have done anyway?
I guess they kind of fastforwarded the potentially fun part of establishing a background, checking out an unusual vault- or a neighbourhood-environment, and jumped to the part where you have to care about your fastforwarded background.
And the only thing the child does is being lifted two or three times. I cared more about Vaultsalesman, I wanted to find him.
Do any more traders move in after Open Season, are there any other changes, or did they just slap some quest-XP onto something you could have done anyway?
So uh (legit spoiler for a side quest)
You actually can find the Vault-tec Rep
He's a ghoul living in the Hotel Rexford in Goodneighbor
So I built up Codsworth with melee weapons and an assaultron head but for some reason he barely attacks with melee and Cyclopses instead. Is something messing with the AI? Does he need identical weapons on both arms or legs or an assaultron body?
Generally, combat-AI in gamebryo is mainly interested in which number is biggest, where the number is damage multiplied by a factor from a list of attack-categories. So AIs with different multiplier-lists can react differently to the same weapon.
So I built up Codsworth with melee weapons and an assaultron head but for some reason he barely attacks with melee and Cyclopses instead. Is something messing with the AI? Does he need identical weapons on both arms or legs or an assaultron body?
That's just the way the AI is in this game. Anything that has a ranged attack will use it almost exclusively, only switching to melee if something gets up in their grill.
Posts
Also known as "the Institute option".
Also known as the Marcy Long directive.
Speaking of which..the bitch up and randomly decided to move into my house and take my bed, all the while being her bitchy fuckass bitch self while I'm sorting my inventory or working on power armor.
I swear to god I'm going to make a Skycell and assign her a bed up there and give her a source of food and water and make her stay there forever, unless she wants to fly out the moon door.
Take more notes from TES. Make the main goals more about the world conflicts and politics than the player. Focus on their strong world building and exploration skills, no one cares about the stupid baby.
Well, the sole survivor does but thats mainly becuase they force you to. You can't do anything interesting with that like roleplaying as a cruel deadbeat who is finally happy to get away. Only one way to play the main angle there and thats as the angry vengeful dad/mom and it can come across jarring when you spend the rest of your time playing as somebody thats just pure greed and mayhem.
Why write a main quest when they can just copy it wholesale from the previous game.
I will be shocked if Fallout 5 isn't about...oh..say..a Nephew/Niece searching for their beloved Uncle/Aunt.
sigh..wish they'd just give up and license the franchise to Obsidian already..
Adding a second enforced-morality path is not an improvement, especially not when it's directly opposite the one enforced by the rest of the game - meaning, you miss out on one or the other, if you're trying to play anything like consistency.
Steam, Warframe: Megajoule
I think it would be pretty interesting to sort of show how the Brotherhood was slowly falling to pieces, equipment going to shit through a neverending war against raiders and mutants and resources being spent on the Capital Wasteland settlements that didn't pay off and only made the BOS weaker causing them to doubt Lyons as Maxson starts to become disillusioned. Detail how the Brotherhood's hearts and blood may have start to run cold and make you sympathize with them abit.
Focus on the Brotherhood and make it like a reverse X-COM. You start with everything and by the end just try to salvage whats left.
Don't care for the raider thing but like how their settlements are useful loot generators. All I can say is they are lucky BoS can't get that mechanic with firebases and supply colonies.
Last night I was looking for Goodneighbor, because no matter how many playthroughs I do, I cant find the goddamn place without spending 2 hours wandering in circles.
This last time, of course, was utterly insane. It wasn't just battles, it complete and total war and anarchy. Super Mutants, Raiders, Rust Devils, Gunners, Minutemen, Mechanist Robots, and more. Every corner turned was a new front in a massive war between all the factions. By the time I fought my way through all the mess and found my way to Goodneighbor, I was so overloaded with legendaries, and loot that it was everything I could do to carry it, after jamming my companions inventories to max to boot. I've never seen such insane numbers of people in such a huge firefight covering such a massive area.
That part of the map is cartoonishly fucked
Almost every corner is some kind of asshole expo
1 super mutant suicider
1 radscorpion
3 mole rats
2 legendary enemies
assorted other mans.
Robobrain heads, treads, torso, assaultron arms, laser gattling and missile launchers, heavy voltaic and hydraulic armor. You know, best of the best of the best.
Get them all set up, fast travel to the next settlement... all of them have turned into stripped down basic fresh build protectrons with nothing but their bare internals.
is this a known issue? apparently this is a known issue, and I'm fucked unless I revert to a previous save. Ugh.
Steam: MightyPotatoKing
Just remember to team up with them first before sending them off.
does that prevent them from becoming a black whole where hopes and dreams go to die?
@Konphujun this is why I save every few minutes and generate gigabytes of saves per day.
If you're playing vanilla the pistol selection is very anemic, but there's a lot of mods that add cool or interesting pistols.
Right now I'm playing a pistol gunslinger with a colt 1911 as his primary, mostly because that's what I did for a lot of New Vegas and I liked it. Don't have the cool Joshua Graham model with the Bible verses engraved on it, unfortunately.
I've taken a look, but most of them are real guns, which I've been trying to avoid. I did grab the Rhino, though. I may just use the console to give myself the rifleman perks (up to the level I have for gunslinger).
Steam: MightyPotatoKing
I'd been intending to get back into it for Far Harbor and Nuka World.
Instead I've dumped like 16 hours into my sweet ass vault.
I don't think the FO4 plot is copied, per se, from FO3. I think it was more Bethesda seeing the complaints about how people didn't really get the feels about finding dad, and wrote FO4 going "You bastards didn't feel emotionally involve with FO3? Well here's some emotional involvement! Feel it! Feel it!!!"
One other thing is that super personal quests kind of conflict with the Bethesda open world gameplay. If you somehow became totally hooked into the main quest then all that settlement building and whatnot just become an annoying distraction. Assuming they weren't already an annoying distraction.
They needed to put in more time spent pre-freeze for Fallout 4's story. Not only would it help the player actually know about their spouse and/or child for more than 10 minutes, it's also a goddamn interesting setting that they don't explore enough.
I would have loved an hour(ish) hanging out with my pre-war neighbors at a fall barbecue, maybe swapping veteran/parent stories and defining a little bit about my own past and relationships (and what sort of people you and your spouse were - patriotic? counterculture beatniks? reactionaries? aloof cynics?), followed by another hour or so in the vault with those same people, so you could really feel the horror and devastation in the twin gut punches of the bombs and the vault's failure.
I guarantee you if they'd have done that people would have bitched about it, though. And, I mean, to be fair, you also want to avoid the opposite problem - I remember when playing Assassin's Creed 3 by the time I'd gotten to the actual meat of the game and I was adult Connor in the Assassin suit, I was starting to get pissed (it took me like six or seven hours, ie, several days worth of game time on my adult schedule). So you don't want to drag it out too much.
Instead they decided to let you hit the ground running. And, I mean, I honestly never really understood the griping over the FO3 intro. It just takes about 45-60 minutes even on your first go-through, and after that you never have to play it again - it autosaves for you at the Vault door, after which you can change everything about yourself if you want. So while the intro is long-ish, you only have to do it the once, and a 45-minute intro wasn't particularly unusual even by 2008 standards. I've played a lot of games that keep you restricted quite a bit longer than that.
All they needed to be was a person from the past thrust into the present. Having a lingering attachment come with them for them to find is unnecessary.
The fact that the player is shown having their child taken away from them immediately makes every priority in the plot finding who took him in the first place (and being more time-sensitive), whereas if it was uncertain or unclear there would be more leeway for the player character to resign themselves to never knowing or choosing to chase the plot.
Fallout 3's hook for the player is still alright because the player starts off with a breadcrumb trail that leads them pretty much straight forward, but the story lets the player know that Dad didn't really want to be found in the first place and that he's probably able to handle himself outside. There's a less immediate sense of danger and threat in Fallout 3's opening than there is in Fallout 4, which does make a difference.
Also, those ten seconds of the player character walking out of the Vault doors into the great fuckin' unknown, your eyes adjusting to the sunlight to look upon the wasteland, is a pretty goddamn big videogames moment for me personally.
Here's the sort of thing I have in mind:
Military Backgrounds
Sniper
+STR/+PER
Heavy Rifle perk
start with Sniper Rifle, Knife, Sniper's Armor, Sniper's Visor
Power Armor Mechanic
+STR/+INT
Repairman perk
start with T-45 Power Armor, Mechanic's Jumpsuit, Materials
Secret Agent
+PER/+CHA
Spy Games perk
start with Silenced Rifle, Tuxedo, Alcohol
Combat Engineer
+PER/+INT
Tech Hunter perk
start with Laser Rifle, Engineer's Armor, Engineer's Helmet, Pulse Grenades, Materials
Recon Scout
+END/+AGI
Intel Gathering perk
start with Silenced Pistol, Stealth Suit, Recon Hood, Herbs, Dog Armor
Extralegal Backgrounds
Thug
+STR/+END
Savagry perk
start with Crowbar, Street Hoodie, Chems
Superhero
+STR/+CHA
Champion of Justice perk
start with Boxing Gloves, Hubris Comics Costume, Hubris Comics Mask, Mint Condition Manta Man #1
Vigilante
+STR/+LCK
Deus Vult perk
start with Sword, Black Body Armor, Black Helmet
Burglar
+PER/+END
Alley Oop perk
start with Bobby Pins, Silenced Rifle, Black Jumpsuit, Ski Mask, Pre-War Money
Thief
+PER/+AGI
Five Finger Discount perk
start with Bobby Pins, Pistol, Street Hoodie, Pre-War Money
Mercenary
+END/+LCK
Legendary Veteren perk
start with Machine Gun, Merc Armor, Bandanna, Pre-War Money, Carton of Cigarettes, Alcohol
Con Man
+CHA/+AGI
Hornswoggle perk
start with Pistol, Business Suit, Fedora, Pre-War Money, Bottle Caps
Hitman
+INT/+AGI
Always Professional perks
start with Automatic Laser Rifle, Business Suit, Sunglasses, Chems
Civilian Backgrounds
Survivalist
+STR/+AGI
Wildman perk
start with Machete, Machine Gun, Hunter's Overalls, Hunting Cap, Fishing Pole, Herbs, Vegetables, Meat
Unemployed
+PER/+LCK
Slacker perk
start with Stained Tanktop, Junk Food, Alcohol
Salesman
+END/+CHA
Door to Door perk
start with Commemorative Steak Knife, Trench Coat, Fedora, Junk, Pre-War Money
Scientist
+END/+INT
Geppetto perk
start with Laser Pistol, Lab Coat, Eyeglasses, Chems, Materials
Professor
+CHA/+INT
Scholar perk
start with Sweatervest, Eyeglasses
Pastor
+CHA/+LCK
Divine Blessing perk
start with Pastor's Vestments, Scripture, Relic
Larper
+INT/+LCK
Magic Missile perk
start with Wand, Bathrobe, Pointy Hat, Fake Beard
Mysterious Stranger
+AGI/+LCK
Role Reversal perk
start with Pistol, Trench Coat, Fedora
The main quest has a lot of issues, so the only thing I think I can easily say I'd change (that wouldn't require insane levels of rewrites) is the
And the only thing the child does is being lifted two or three times. I cared more about Vaultsalesman, I wanted to find him.
Do any more traders move in after Open Season, are there any other changes, or did they just slap some quest-XP onto something you could have done anyway?
So uh (legit spoiler for a side quest)
A complete breakfast. http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/9585/
turns out there's a time limit on that shit
whoops
also fun fact: i just spent last night building my big daddy automatron, Mr. Bubbles, a dream i've had since automatrons launch
But also Automatron is very buggy.
That's just the way the AI is in this game. Anything that has a ranged attack will use it almost exclusively, only switching to melee if something gets up in their grill.
Well, you can't breathe underwater.
Eat a mirelurk cake, or be Aquaboy.