Fallout 4

[Unionhack]

Nah, male voice is rad. Sarcastic options are the best.

It's no 'British Male Inquisitor from Dragon Age' voice but it's still nice.

[legoless]

Don't think I've ever played a JRPG.

Has anybody come out with a mod that mutes the PC and adds fallout 3 style dialogue boxes?

There's a silent protagonist mod, but I haven't seen anything transcribing the dialogue options yet. I prefer to play vanilla usually but I might give one of those a go.

Um...go back to Skyrim and look at the dialogue options. In Fallout, you get 4. In Skyrim, you get 1-3 (unless you're silent in the Brotherhood quests). All of those options are moral, jerk off, or neutral. I don't see any difference there, really. There are more dialogue options in Fallout and yes, it is interactive when you can converse with npcs while hearing and seeing your protagonist talk. Your choices and dialogue affect others' opinions of you, and they'll tell you. That's pretty interactive. Of course, this doesn't work for everyone, but it's definitely grown on me to the point where dialogue in Skyrim seems 'meh' now.

Skyrim doesn't have that problem, since you can clearly see what your character is about to say, and don't have to sit through a cinematic sequence if a certain line is out of character. Skyrim also had lots of neutral lines; I don't want to gushingly say "yes, of course, I'd be glad to help" to every NPC request. IMO the voice acting makes it feel like you're watching a movie when you enter dialogue, not playing as a character.

Nah, male voice is rad. Sarcastic options are the best.

I like both the voice actors, they're done really well. The quality of the acting isn't really the problem though.

[Kerr]

Tangentially, the voiced protagonist isn't horrible, and I've been able to roleplay in spite of an "established" character backstory.

I have to disagree. I tried to keep an open mind about the voiced protagonist, but it's been shockingly detrimental to the RPG experience so far. I have no idea what my character is going to come out with every time I enter dialogue, and the only options are 'overtly moral' or 'sarcastically moral'. Aside from picking a different gender, I can't see how you could ever hope to develop a significantly different character on a second playthrough.

I love the game, actually, and enjoy the dialogue system. It's interactive and the voiced protagonist gives my character life.

I can understand the second voice giving life to a conversation, but interactive it is not. I've never seen a more railroaded system in an RPG before.

It was probably the worst dialogue system I've seen in an RPG and it was my biggest problem with it. I put a lot of points into Intelligence and Charisma, because you know, Fallout, and it kind of made me feel like a fool. There was one quest in my 80 hour playthrough where high intelligence helped, and all it was was fixing a broken thing without having to find the part. Roleplaying as a whole has been gutted and not just with [&@%!] vague dialogue or forced backstory. I can deal with backstory and more established characters like Adam in Human Revolution if they're done well, but the Fallout 4 protag isn't that established, they exist in an awkward middle ground between being established and not being established. You care about you're son, kind of, you do [&@%!] off for like three months and build up Fort Independence for the Minutemen, but in story they try to set it up like all you've been doing is trying to find him. Also you seem to instantly know what bottlecaps are, it's almost like your protagonist has played a Fallout game before. Stats infer nothing about your character anymore, a character with high perception won't be particularly perceptive. It doesn't matter how perceptive you are, you can only become better at lockpicking when you reach the same level threeshold as everyone else, so you can't really specialise your build in any way, and nor should you. Roleplaying has not been completely eliminated, but it has been greatly diminished. Your character's not a person you create that acts like a person so much as you make a player avatar for you the player to consume the content Bethesda provides.

I still liked what the game is and it was what I expected it to be, I'm pretty sure I liked it more than Fallout 3. That the dialogue system could be as bad as it is and that I still liked the game as much as I did does show that Bethesda is good at making the stuff they care about. But yeah, I was disappointed that it wasn't what I wanted it to be and that Bethesda don't seem to be as interested in a lot of the stuff I care about.

There's a silent protagonist mod, but I haven't seen anything transcribing the dialogue options yet. I prefer to play vanilla usually but I might give one of those a go.

Oh, even if the dialogue wasn't super vague (and it is, "sarcastic") and you could see exactly what it says, often it doesn't get much better. Another problem is tone, if you've ever spoken to another human you should realize that you could say the exact same words to someone but that the tone and what words you put emphasis on will impact the meaning. And before someone mentions it, I already know not every dialogue option are as bad as these ones.

Hidden:

[Dohva.]

Skyrim also had lots of neutral lines; I don't want to gushingly say "yes, of course, I'd be glad to help" to every NPC request.

Yeah, those gushing-to-say-yes dialogue options are annoying. I'm with you on that. However, there are plenty of other times when you can say no to quests, too. Maybe not the faction ones (and for this, I figured it's because the game is forcing me into a certain direction with my faction of choice). You can reject many quests, some side ones, some not:

Spoiler:

Dugout Inn, getting the swatter cards & mitt, collecting ferns, taking back the castle, joining the Brotherhood, joining the Railroad, joining the Institute, etc.

@ Kerr, 80 hours? (285 here) Sorry, but I don't think that's enough time to see all that such a big game as Fallout has to offer. But hey, you said that it isn't what you like...doesn't mean the game sucks. Also, 2 dialogue samples from the entire game don't really prove the dialogue system is awful (which, it isn't). There's some good lines, like this one:

Spoiler:

YouTube Link

I'm not necessarily defending Fallout as being the best game of all time (Pac Man gets that title in my book), as much as I'm trying to provide broader perspective. I've spent a lot of time playing and even though it's not a perfect game, it's pretty darn sweet. Clearly, it's not everyone's cup of tea and that's totally fine. Then again I come from the Atari era, so cinematic scenes in video games during dialogue is something I never dreamed of.

[Vilhelm Valhalla]

[Deleted]

[legoless]

In fairness, Fallout 3 had that never-ending childhood sequence as well. I guess they wanted to mix it up a little, and add that element of being the "Chosen One" by making your character 200 years old. Not too dissimilar to finding out you're the reincarnation of a millennia-gone Chimer general really.

[Vilhelm Valhalla]

[Deleted]

[legoless]

Agreed. Could not care less about "Shaun" or Liam Neeson.

[Dohva.]

Vilhelm, I agree with most of your points. You're right in that the voiced protagonist combined with the main story does make a challenge for more than one play through with a different character. It's my chief complaint about the game. I'm working on my 3rd ending at the moment, but I've used Chloe for all the runs. I have two 'character' games, both her. I did a purist run the first time, then Railroad, now working on the Minutemen ending with the Chloe I used for the Railroad (they look a slight bit different because I messed around more with the second face). Anyway, I can't imagine doing another run with a completely different character. In Skyrim, I made 5 characters. But in New Vegas, I only ever had one.

Regarding caring about an object vs a person, I think it depends on you as an individual. Maybe it's because I'm a mom, but I felt connected to Fallout 4's story and thought that it was well written and emotional. I like it much more than Skyrim or New Vegas's story lines (haven't played FO3 yet but did a bit of 2 and don't remember a darn thing about it).

[Kerr]

Well I think the problem is Bethesda are using stories for their main questlines which don't really gel with the way people tend to play Bethesda games, that being putting the main quest on hold, running off in the direction of whatever catches their fancy and doing tonnes of sides quests and exploration. Oblivion, Fallout 3, Skyrim and Fallout 4 all try to connect you closely to the main questline. In Oblivion there are portals to Oblivion opening all over the world and most players will probably not be trying to sort that out and instead go off and join the Arena or Dark Brotherhood or whatever else catches their fancy for a few dozen hours before going back to the main quest. So it becomes kind of weird when in Fallout 4, your character really cares about their son but you as a player have been actively putting off searching for your son. Now none of this is saying that Bethesda games are bad and that their main questlines are all terrible, just that there are some problems that arise due to the conflict between what the story wants you to do and what players and honestly, the game itself wants you to do. Someone who just rushes the story of Fallout 4 is going to have a lesser experience than someone who explores the world and picks up side quests and builds up a settlement.

Compare that to Fallout 2 where you leave home with little more than the clothes on your back hoping to find a GECK. So you go to all the different settlements and see what you can find out about a GECK. At the same time you do other things because this is going to take a while, and you'll need some good equipment if you're going to survive in the wasteland. So you have a really good reason for why you are going all over the world, talking to everyone and picking up all these side quests. Which is what you'd want to do regardless of what the main quest was, but the main quest is something which complements how are naturally going to play Fallout 2 instead of working against it so you don't have any of that tension.

[Dohva.]

At the same time you do other things because this is going to take a while, and you'll need some good equipment if you're going to survive in the wasteland. So you have a really good reason for why you are going all over the world, talking to everyone and picking up all these side quests. Which is what you'd want to do regardless of what the main quest was, but the main quest is something which complements how are naturally going to play Fallout 2 instead of working against it so you don't have any of that tension.

The same approach can be taken in games such as Skyrim and FO4. The Institute is a huge mystery when you exit the vault. Your child could be anywhere. No one knows where the Institute is...or what they really are. Doing side quests, exploring the Wasteland, and building settlements are all ways of gaining experience, more caps to get better armor and weapons, but mainly gaining power through the Minutemen and perhaps the Railroad and Brotherhood factions if you choose to join, making friends and building alliances.

You're building an army to battle the Institute. That's going to take a while, as you put it. The only difference is that in this story, it's a child you're after, not an object. Yes, there tends to be more immediacy with that but as my husband put it the other day, you eventually find out that your son is fine, very much alive, and that you're going to need to raise hell in order to get him back. So therefore, none of the side quests and exploring you do goes in vain because it's all helping you become more powerful in the process.

The same could be said for Skyrim when you fight Alduin. I mean...what could be more pressing than dragons breathing down your neck at every turn? Yet we all still ignore the main quest for a while because we know that getting powerful is necessary. It's all the same, really.

[Vilhelm Valhalla]

[Deleted]

[DorostheConqueror]

That's precisely the same problem I have. Overall, I think F4 is the best in the series, but the Shaun/parent/you'll-be-who-we-tell-you-to-be nonsense puts a serious damper on the role-playing. They've got to cut this crap out, and hopefully the negative response they're getting will finally make Bethesda realize that players don't want to watch a movie; they don't want to be told a story, they want to make one. (although I'm not holding my breath)

I'm dabbling in a few more playthroughs, and here are some of the ways I've been trying to get around Bethesda's bollocks:

x- Shaun is actually my nephew (and/or adopted). Spouse and I were keeping him at our home because reasons, so, while I'd obviously like to get him back, it's not as urgent as it could have been.
x- Shaun has no relation to me, and is part of a carefully-crafted cover identity. I'm doing a female survivor run-through with the following backstory: Survivor is in reality a highly-trained Chinese-American military operative. Her "husband" (actually her commanding officer, an agent of what would become the Enclave) is preparing her for above-top-secret, black-ops operations (a false flag attack on a European capital that will be blamed on Communists, for example). Her on-record career, "Housewife, law student" is part of this cover; everything about her life in Sanctuary Hills is a lie. She may or may not be a victim of MK-Ultra, and may or may not know "the truth" about the fictional life which the Enclave built for her.
x- Survivor is a babysitter. Shaun's father may or may not be having an affair with the babysitter, Shaun's "real" mom may or may not still be in the picture at the time the bombs drop.
x- Shaun is a robot. I built "him" as an early protoype Synth, using classified robotics technology and vat-grown genetic material (suitable for high INT characters, particularly ones with a background in military science and/or a job at CIT)
x- Shaun is someone I kidnapped. I'm doing this for a current "raider" style playthrough; Survivor nabbed Shaun from a wealthy banking magnate, and was planning on ransoming him back for $50 million. Survivor decides to keep looking for Shaun, because Survivor is not particularly bright, and she assumes that (with two centuries accumulated interest) she could sell Shaun to the banker's descendants for even MORE money.

And, of course:

x- No player voice/ no intro/ skip dialogue mods. Because [&@%!] that [&@%!] plot.

[Dohva.]

x- Survivor is a babysitter. Shaun's father may or may not be having an affair with the babysitter, Shaun's "real" mom may or may not still be in the picture at the time the bombs drop.

I think this one may be my favorite.

[MetaCthulhu]

x- Shaun is actually my nephew (and/or adopted). Spouse and I were keeping him at our home because reasons, so, while I'd obviously like to get him back, it's not as urgent as it could have been.

Brrrrr that's cold.

[Dohva.]

Does anyone have advice/suggestions on how to keep settlements happy...after you've tried literally everything? I'm having issues with Finch Farm and Sunshine Tidings. Their happiness is hella down even though they have radios, bars, vendors, caravans, and enough necessities. Finch Farm is especially problematic. Whenever I stop by there, the farm is torn to shreds, people keep leaving, but I'm not getting messages on the Pip-boy saying they're in trouble. They have a high defense rating with several guards, etc. I'm close to shutting down that operation, moving all of the settlers to somewhere else, and leaving the family to survive on their own. I don't understand what else they could possibly need. Anyone else have this problem?

[Unionhack]

Try individually assigning settlers to beds, make sure the beds aren't near each other, that you leave a good supply of water and food in the workshop, and make sure your generators are nowhere near where they sleep; or for optimal results, far away from them in general.

[Dohva.]

Wow, thank you. I hadn't thought of any of those things. Finicky [&@%!], aren't they? And to think...before you even set up the beacon they're starving and suffering in the Wastes. Ungrateful little jerks.

EDIT:
I moved the turrets away from the house (Taffington) and one of the generators. The happiness shot up back to green. Also...does anyone know if the Brahmin can be assigned? Whenever I highlight them in the workshop, they show up as red/unassigned but attempting to assign someone to them isn't happening. Glitch?

[Kerr]

Fallout 4 DLC Revealed

Hidden:

Two of them are item pack, customization things. One is a new adventure in a new land for the Valentine Detective Agency. Yeah, more Nick! I love Nick, I hope he tags along for the ride.

The robots DLC is $5, the creatures and general customising is $10 and adventure in Far Harbor is $25. Also, the Season Pass will be going up from $30 to $50 on March 1st. So if you want the buy the DLC digitally instead of waiting for the inevitable Ultimate Legendary Complete Game of the Year Edition, now's the time to buy it. It also seems Bethesda hates listing things in Euro.

Automatron will be out in March, Wasteland Workshop April and Far Habor May.

[Vilhelm Valhalla]

[Deleted]

[dremorababe]

Great. Now Beth should go work on TESVI. Okay I don't mean to be salty because I actually love Fallout but I'm just desperate for TESVI...and I have slow internet so I won't be able to download the DLC's anyway.

[The SheoDovah]

Maybe, at E3, find out, we shall. Or it's more ESO stuff.

[Dohva.]

Great. Now Beth should go work on TESVI. Okay I don't mean to be salty because I actually love Fallout but I'm just desperate for TESVI...

LOL DIIITTTOOO.

Although I watched a Matty Plays video on the new survival mode and let me just say "drool"! Wow. Freaking amazing all I ever wanted. Although Chloe is now level 78 I might have to do another play through with her on full survival mode.

[Vilhelm Valhalla]

[Deleted]

[Dohva.]

Anyone else see the Robot making trailer that's out? It looks pretty amazing. I hope to finally be able to pimp Codsworth.