Fallout Fallout 4 Thread

[circ]

I was thinking some time ago how to make FO4's story have more impact on the player and generally make more sense. So, I'm gonna outline some changes I had in mind.

Player never meets their spouse, or baby, ever. No Codsworth either.

You're all alone, no chaperone, the world's in slumber. You have a note on your kitchen table reminding you that your spouse went to visit relatives somewhere else in Bawston. Along with the baby. You set your stats at the same time you set your face? I dunno, didn't really put any thought into that.

No Vault-tec guy. You're involved with the vault in some way. Maybe a guard, you head to work, alarms go off and nukes hit and you're trapped, maybe see an empty pod and think WEW LAD THIS LOOKS SAFER. You're frozen. Like a fish stick in history.

You wake up many, many, MANY years later. Everybody else is dead. Bla bla bla, let's say there's a terminal entry that says everyone was supposed to die because of funding/construction fuck-up. You just happened to enter the one pod that was actually functional. LOL WHAT ARE THE CHANCES?

So, you're free to do whatever you want, but maybe you start wondering about your mystery spouse and baby. There's no obvious railroad to Diamond City, but in places you find pieces of Codsworth. That in itself becomes a side quest - reassembling your droid servant and querying about your spouse and baby. You just need the memory banks, any old scrap will do for the rest.

Later... You find the house your spouse went to, and think you found them, now in skeletal form. You can LARP anything you want since you know nothing about them, not even their appearance. And there's no reason to think it's not your spouse. But you see no sign of your baby. You find some clues though, much later (?), and eventually learn that the baby was found by some patrol that eventually ended up at the institute. No hokey bullshit radiation free DNA.

Kellogg's just some random institute merc and side quest. No Virgil because that shit's as dumb as the rest of it.

Actually everything after all alone is just made up as I go, but anyway, you're left with the challenge of getting into the institute. Well, every faction on the outside has atleast one synth or synth plant with them. Glory in Railroad, mechanic guy in Minutemen remnants, Danse in BoS. Kill 'em, dissect 'em, piece together all three components and you learn about needing a Courser component just like in vanilla. Now the killing part opens up a minor moral dilemma. BoS is no big deal, you just tell them Danse is a synth, and you off him. No probs. Glory you can convince it's for the GREATER GUD for Tau, but Minutemen mechanic you're probably just gonna have to kill secretly unless you want Preston to be angry. Let's say the alternative involves torture and forceful extraction of the component. Either way, you're going to have to resort to some eveel. If however you're going to be a pussy about it, a long time later after some major quest at some point, Courser's are going to attack one of the faction's you're most involved with, and people are going to die. You get your component but at a bigger cost. Preston - dead (AWW YISS), Desdemona - dead (Deacon too for the hell of it), and Maxson - dead. Gotta have some meaningful casualties.

Bla bla bla, big end reveal, you can choose to go over to the institute because your morality's compromised from earlier eveel acts, or maybe loosing faction heads broke you down. Who cares. Shaun is evil. No pussy-ass imma justify dis, just plain Darth Shaun.

Meaningful (not by much) choices. Drama. The American Way.

 

[Seethe]

But thats good isn't it? I mean, think of all the mods you don't have to hunt down to bring what little good there is in the game out. Think of all the load orders you don't have to manage, all the stability tests you don't have to run to make their shitty engine not shit itself every minute because you modded the game. Think of all the time you're saving by not having to do any of this - time you can spend playing games that are actually good, even without mods.

But what about THESE mods?

 

[typical user]

I was thinking some time ago how to make FO4's story have more impact on the player and generally make more sense. So, I'm gonna outline some changes I had in mind.

Player never meets their spouse, or baby, ever. No Codsworth either.

You're all alone, no chaperone, the world's in slumber. You have a note on your kitchen table reminding you that your spouse went to visit relatives somewhere else in Bawston. Along with the baby. You set your stats at the same time you set your face? I dunno, didn't really put any thought into that.

No Vault-tec guy. You're involved with the vault in some way. Maybe a guard, you head to work, alarms go off and nukes hit and you're trapped, maybe see an empty pod and think WEW LAD THIS LOOKS SAFER. You're frozen. Like a fish stick in history.

You wake up many, many, MANY years later. Everybody else is dead. Bla bla bla, let's say there's a terminal entry that says everyone was supposed to die because of funding/construction fuck-up. You just happened to enter the one pod that was actually functional. LOL WHAT ARE THE CHANCES?

So, you're free to do whatever you want, but maybe you start wondering about your mystery spouse and baby. There's no obvious railroad to Diamond City, but in places you find pieces of Codsworth. That in itself becomes a side quest - reassembling your droid servant and querying about your spouse and baby. You just need the memory banks, any old scrap will do for the rest.

Later... You find the house your spouse went to, and think you found them, now in skeletal form. You can LARP anything you want since you know nothing about them, not even their appearance. And there's no reason to think it's not your spouse. But you see no sign of your baby. You find some clues though, much later (?), and eventually learn that the baby was found by some patrol that eventually ended up at the institute. No hokey bullshit radiation free DNA.

Kellogg's just some random institute merc and side quest. No Virgil because that shit's as dumb as the rest of it.

Actually everything after all alone is just made up as I go, but anyway, you're left with the challenge of getting into the institute. Well, every faction on the outside has atleast one synth or synth plant with them. Glory in Railroad, mechanic guy in Minutemen remnants, Danse in BoS. Kill 'em, dissect 'em, piece together all three components and you learn about needing a Courser component just like in vanilla. Now the killing part opens up a minor moral dilemma. BoS is no big deal, you just tell them Danse is a synth, and you off him. No probs. Glory you can convince it's for the GREATER GUD for Tau, but Minutemen mechanic you're probably just gonna have to kill secretly unless you want Preston to be angry. Let's say the alternative involves torture and forceful extraction of the component. Either way, you're going to have to resort to some eveel. If however you're going to be a pussy about it, a long time later after some major quest at some point, Courser's are going to attack one of the faction's you're most involved with, and people are going to die. You get your component but at a bigger cost. Preston - dead (AWW YISS), Desdemona - dead (Deacon too for the hell of it), and Maxson - dead. Gotta have some meaningful casualties.

Bla bla bla, big end reveal, you can choose to go over to the institute because your morality's compromised from earlier eveel acts, or maybe loosing faction heads broke you down. Who cares. Shaun is evil. No pussy-ass imma justify dis, just plain Darth Shaun.

Meaningful (not by much) choices. Drama. The American Way.

Just fucking delete all these quests with Kellogg, Valentine and Virgil, make player travel from location to location and inquire more information from anyone about Institute and finally discover some sort entrance to their bunker.

You want to find your son but you don't have a lead so you can do whatever. That's how story was narrated in Fallout 1 and 2. Go find waterchip and GECK, approximate location: no goddamn clue; start in Shady Sands/Klamath and ask people there. In Fallout 4 everyone is like GO FIND VALENTINE, HE IS DETECTIVE HE CAN HELP YOU, then you have your fucking dog guide you through half a map because they didn't know what to do with Valentine then you have to get into VR pod to read memories from Kellogg brain because they didn't know what to do with Kellogg, then you need to go to Glowing Sea and talk with Virgil and only from that point the story somewhat starts to make sense but then you again have some magic science with McGuffin in coursers head.

Seriously it's not that complicated to just make a hide&seek quest and tell player to explore the fucking world.

 

[markec]

This might make the game more interesting http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/18898/?

 

[circ]

Seen gameplays. Take 9 parts Fallout 4 subway stations add 1 part one hit killed. Mix. Eat. Rush to toilet with diarrhea.

 

[The Dutch Ghost]

In the past I spend a lot of time on No Mutants Allowed on making up how I would change games like Fallout 3 to make it more fit with the Fallout lore from Fallout 1, 2, and now New Vegas.

I would need some more time to come up with a whole scenario, especially one in which I can at least think up some reason to reuse assets from Fallout 4.
Well, first of all I would skip the whole Pre War tutorial stuff, I would like to retain the idea that there are only vague details on what the world was before the great war, most of it coming from surviving books, news papers, computer files, videos and so on. Not even the Enclave back when they were around would know what the Pre War world was really like, having been raised and educated on modified history and propaganda.
The player could still start out as an icicle in a Vault were cryonic technology was being tested, but rather some story that the player had to enter the pod to equal the pressure to lower/deeper levels from the Vault, the player was told from the start that that he/she would be entering cryonic hibernation (perhaps being fed the story that this is how all the Vaults work, putting people in hibernation to wait out until the radiation lowers to acceptable levels while preserving supplies).
At the cryo pod's computer the player can make up the stats and skills of the player character, perhaps even choosing a background which comes with its own strengths and weaknesses. (choose 'soldier' as background? You will get a boost in combat skills but you might suffer at social or thinking skills)

The player would start the game waking up in the Vault, discovering that something is wrong as many of the other Vault Dwellers are either dead in their pods or are missing. Checking your own pod you discover though a science skill that it has also been opened earlier but you can not recall having awoken before.
Some more clues would be lying around indicating that someone has taken Vault Dwellers out of their pods and performing some kind of experiment on them, but what and why? And could it explain why some of your memories are missing?

I could actually work with the Synths but I would still try to change some of their basics. In general all of the Synths are mechanical, but the more advanced and 'smart' ones have a brain similar to the cybernetic brain found in the Sierra Army Depot you needed to give Skynet a body.
More, there are Synths that are covered in flesh a la the terminator, complete with bad breath, bleeding when injured and so on.
Finding out who is making these Synths and how it is connected to what you discovered in the Vault when you work up would be part of the first half of the campaign.
(the Synths would have their origins in a Pre War DARPA project, but their developed was continued during and after the War, explaining why their design is much more advanced than even the most advanced technology was before the War)

There would be no East Coast Brotherhood of Steel (want to introduce a new tech faction) or a Railroad (though there could be an anti slaver faction). The Minutemen could be salvaged but they would not be what they are portrayed as in Fallout 4, more a militia akin to the Desert Rangers. If the player wants to join them they will start out as a grunt.

Edit: still not happy with this, I think the player's background of being from the past should play a role of more importance. Right now there is still no real distinction between the PC and a regular Wastelander that could have woken up with amnesia in some kind of medical laboratory.

 

[typical user]

But why would player invastigate all that stuff on his own? He needs a motivation like missing spouse or some sort of fiasco that forces him to search the truth behind The Institute. Missing family or someone close telling us to get behind why CIT is constructing synths and kidnapping people is needed or otherwise there is not much motivation to keep going. In Fo1 you need to save your vault, in Fo2 your own village, in NV you want to off Benny but later on you will actually want to listen to his reasons (but the weak part is he still tries to cheat on you, instead of cooperating, he doesn't sound like he has lust for power more like lust for independency from Mr. House).

The Railroad could be mashed up with Minutemen to be some sort of east coast Desert Rangers with mission of fighting slavers and considering synths as those who deserve freedom but there should be some sort of in-fighting as whether or not they should save synths or just destroy Institute since they are kidnapping people. I don't have anything against Brotherhood of Steel, their reason for campaign in Commonwealth would be to destroy the source of synths that they have detected in Washinton DC, because they would find them as weapons not beings of free will. That would make sense to join one or the other so players would have a way to get inside the Institute (with Virgil's info on their whereabouts).

I don't like the fact that Bethesda created Minutemen because their colonialism is pretty much up your face. Preston Garvey uses laser musket, wears colonialist-like duster, you find his band in museum of freedom, Sanctuary is their homefront after you help them and in front of that settlement is XVIII century colonist statue. The Railroad is also a faction which uses revolutionary america's tropes, using lantern as their main symbol and having HQ in old mormon tunnels. I mean I don't mind subtle references but Bethesda is as subtle as a suicide bomber.

 

[The Dutch Ghost]

I was just making up stuff on the go when I wrote that piece of text. I by no means am happy or satisfied about it as I still would like to think out player motivation better, but in a way that it is in line with the idea of Fallout 1 and 2.
Definitely not interested in introducing a spouse, if the player started out as an icicle I would like the past to be pretty dead to the player, making the realization that the old world is gone have a bit more impact. There is no friend or family member of the past alive to seek out (perhaps they all died in the freezer), the player is alone in this brave new world and now must forge new friendships and alliances.
The player character is a blank slate whose Pre War background only matters in his or her skills, and that their role as being kept as an icicle in a Vault cryonic pod night have some influence on a main quest. (and I can think of a reason of even dropping the whole Vault background if nothing interesting can be done with it)

As for the Minutemen, the organization I have in mind mostly uses the name because of the historic significance/reputation it holds, making clear that they are an army of the people, seeking to protect the common folk against any kind of oppressor or threat.
But they would not dressed like old timey colonialists, or have their gear resemble anything from that time period (so no laser muskets)
Yeah, they should probably be merged with the anti slaver faction idea as that would work better, but I don't see them as Synth liberators as in my idea the Synths are rather different from what Fallout 4 made them. (not even sure if there is an Institute as I found the Institute to much of an Enclave/West Tek/Big MT clone)

 

[Nael]

My idea is that the player character of any Bethesda game is just a nudist trying to make anime real.

 

[pippin]

My idea is that the player character of any Bethesda game is just a nudist trying to make anime real.

trump supporter?

 

[Agame]

I don't like the fact that Bethesda created Minutemen because their colonialism is pretty much up your face. Preston Garvey uses laser musket, wears colonialist-like duster, you find his band in museum of freedom, Sanctuary is their homefront after you help them and in front of that settlement is XVIII century colonist statue. The Railroad is also a faction which uses revolutionary america's tropes, using lantern as their main symbol and having HQ in old mormon tunnels. I mean I don't mind subtle references but Bethesda is as subtle as a suicide bomber.

Someone at Bethesda saw someone playing through New Reno and I think this is the extent of their knowledge of what Fallout is.

And this is why we have the unholy clusterfuck of retardation that is F3 and 4.

 

[Wayward Son]

No, at least New Reno had decent quest design, iirc

 

[circ]

GUYS. OCTOBER 13TH IN THE YEAR 2016. 3 MONTHS AFTER RELEASING THE CK? STILL NOT A SINGLE MOD WORTH THE DOWNLOAD.

I should maybe elaborate a little bit. A lot of tools have to and had to be remade. Tit physics are not decoded. What else. Something about not being able to change landscape meshes without bugs appearing.

But it won't matter. Animation tools are out. People are still putting receivers on the left side of rifles. People are still using AWKCR.

Once Skyrim64 comes out the tools will be ready-ish for that and Fallout 4 dies.

 

[Agame]

The only fun I had with F3 was with the 'Wanderer Edition' mod. Will they remake that for F4?

 

[circ]

Oh right. Survivor mode is still shit. I doubt it. The Survivor mods all assume Bethesda's ideas are great, but poopel just want to save/not worry about diseases/sleep anywhere. Fuck everything else it's great.

 

[Blaine]

Fighting the good fight while the game is on sale.

 

[_V_]

As we know, the best thing about Beth's FO games is the interface. Totally immersive and made that even average Joes understand it without dying from information overflow.
So can some prestigious person here explain to me how I get from this

to this

I'm obviously too stupid to find out how to scroll down... on PC with mouse+keyboard)

 

[Hirato]

As we know, the best thing about Beth's FO games is the interface. Totally immersive and made that even average Joes understand it without dying from information overflow.
So can some prestigious person here explain to me how I get from this

to this

I'm obviously too stupid to find out how to scroll down... on PC with mouse+keyboard)

You'd probably do it via WASD, clicking/dragging is also likely, it might also center on the selected row and just go down that way via lots of clicks.
I don't really know how it works since I haven't played it yet.

 

[Jick Magger]

As I recall, I just did it by dragging the menu down with the mouse.

Fallout 4 just continues Bethesda's trend from Skyrim to make the PC interface real clunky and awkward to use. I wouldn't even say they're dumbing it down for consoles, because I don't to see how a lot of their decisions regarding the UI would be any easier to navigate when using a controller.

 

[circ]

Yeah it's either dragging or hitting the lower edge. I forget which.

 

[Bliblablubb]

Meh, the show "Westworld" ruined mah memories of Fallout 4. Well, the few good ones I had at least.

For those who don't watch the show:
The main character Dolores is a robot in the Westworld theme park who is slowly becoming self aware. Her role and daily cycle in the park is always the same for a long time, maybe even 30 years: she wakes up with naive optimism, goes painting at the lake, rides into town for shopping and meets her prince charming who escorts her back to the farm.
Only to be there in time for the "LUL EVIL" quest. Bandits, including park visitors, are raiding the farm, kill her parents and sweetheart and drag her into the barn for some cultural enrichment and lead poisoning.
Afterwards she gets repaired, memory erased and the cycle starts again. But she remembers.
And we're with her.
I expect her to go berserk before the end of the season.

Why do I tell that? Because the name of her homestead is... Abernathy farm.

Made me think about how often I ignored "help defend Abernathy farm" or didn't bother to rescue kidnapped Lucy for the nth time... yeah...


Thankfully computer graphics/AIs aren't good enough yet, but boy are we in for a world of emoshunal engagement once they have caught up.

 

[typical user]

As we know, the best thing about Beth's FO games is the interface. Totally immersive and made that even average Joes understand it without dying from information overflow.
So can some prestigious person here explain to me how I get from this

to this

I'm obviously too stupid to find out how to scroll down... on PC with mouse+keyboard)

Just move the mouse pointer down like you were using touch-screen, when it reaches bottom it will slide down and vice versa. You can also use scroll wheel to adjust how big the perk tree chart should be.

 

[Jackalope]

Meh, the show "Westworld" ruined mah memories of Fallout 4. Well, the few good ones I had at least.

Well, Westworld itself is a sandbox game, isn't it. You have players, NPCs, quests, even bugs. But that's kinda off topic so I'm gonna shut up now.

 

[The Dutch Ghost]

Meh, the show "Westworld" ruined mah memories of Fallout 4. Well, the few good ones I had at least...

Now that would have been an interesting game development, the NPCs in Fallout 4 actually becoming self aware, realizing that they keep repeating the same patterns, and are stuck in a horrible video game.
Suddenly we have farmers, bandits, and so on questioning themselves and their world, perhaps even wanting to overcome their programming and become the people they want to be.

Then just having four responses really would not be enough any more when they start asking why we players keep killing them or stealing their stuff.

 

[Akratus]

Meh, the show "Westworld" ruined mah memories of Fallout 4. Well, the few good ones I had at least...

Now that would have been an interesting game development, the NPCs in Fallout 4 actually becoming self aware, realizing that they keep repeating the same patterns, and are stuck in a horrible video game.