FeelTheRads said:
Notice the "how you like" part.
You are still able to finish the game. Just not the way you'd like it.
True enough. But my character is not exactly great in the combat department, so going toe to toe with The Master would be difficult.
And as I said, most likely you need science to activate the bomb.
Yup.
As to why you can't bypass the door any other way... well, don't know... maybe they didn't thought of it, maybe they didn't have time to do it, maybe they wanted it to make it difficult, maybe because some things just don't have alternatives... fuck knows. There's already three alternatives to finish The Master each requiring a different set of skills, maybe alternatives to alternatives is a bit too much to ask even from Fallout.
I guess you're right. I think it was mostly my initial expectation of being able to finish off the Master with my leet science skills that were let down a bit when I realised lockpicking was the actual skill I needed.
This doesn't, however, change the fact that Science and Repair are mostly useless. I encountered one place in the whole game where Repair was more than marginally useful, ditto with Science.
So yeah, basically you want to be able to play the game however you want without any regard to the skills you picked.
No. What I want is for the skills I picked to be more than just marginally useful. I don't think it's fun when some skills are clearly just superior to others.
Sorry, but thems the breaks. Games are supposed to punish you for stupid decisions
How is it a stupid decision to not tag lockpick, in favor of repair or science? Suppose that I know nothing about the game before playing it. Do you reckon, then, that lockpicking would immediately be the skill that sprung to my mind when I pondered which of them would be the most useful?
A game should punish players for dumb decisions, true. But not tagging lockpicking is not a
dumb decision, it's a character choice. One that ended up haunting me because lockpicking or speech clearly are superior to what I chose. And I don't mean just in this case either. Like I said earlier, I used Science once in the whole game. Lockpicking and speech have more than a few occassions where they're very handy.
and whining because you made one, yet can still finish the game, is pretty ... umm... retarded?
Well, after thinking it through I agree I have no business complaining that I can't get through the door with my low lockpicking skill. You and FeelTheRads are both right about that. What I find limiting about Fallout, however, is that my lack of lockpicking also prevents me from putting my science and repair skills to any use in this case. I feel like I have a character who's geared towards finding technical solutions to a problem (in this case setting off a bomb), yet the game doesn't give me enough opportunities to do this. In this case because I didn't tag another skill which has nothing to do with Repair or Science.
The game does allow various paths to finish the game, and each path relies on a certain set of skills. However, even without those skills, it's still possible to finish the game, although those lovely "alternate paths" aren't available to you. Makes sense to me.
Sure, it makes sense. I would argue, however, that it's still poor game design when one of the only moments in the game where you can achieve your goal with science is also dependent on whether you have good lockpicking.
