I'm just so glad I'm not the only one strongly saddened and disappointed with Bethesdas streamlining obsession. A lot of people detect the erosion of the spirit of Fallout in 4, I just hope Bethesda wakes up and cares. Come on big B learn from this and don't make me loose my fav game of all time.

Poor excuse when the SS literally obliterates Libertalia's raider population and the chief raider opens dialogue with you (paraphrasing as to avoid spoilers). Or the Forged leader that also has dialogue with you (even though it leads to more shooting).

Why is Tower Tom the exception when he, of all the other boss-men, is more likely to negotiate and have a discussion.

Libertallia is led by a former Minuteman named Wire.... and he doesn't talk to you. And the Forged leader just talks to gloat.

All the other raider leaders, such as Ack-Ack, Bear, Bedlam, Boomer, Bosco, Chancer, Clutch, Demo, Gaff, Gristle, Jared, Lefty, Red Tourette, Scutter, Slab, Slough, Sparta, Tweez. Walter, Whiplash, and Zeller(all the ones I could find using Fo4edit) don't say anything to you. He's not the exception by any stretch of the imagination.

I didn't encounter Wire in my playthrough.

Again, you're missing the forest for the trees.

Well he's there, and its his computer in the captains cabin on the largest ship.

How so? All of the named raider leaders refuse to speak to you unless its VERY specific circumstances.

-In Gabriel's case you have an Institute Courser with you.

-In Sinjin's case he specially kidnapped Kent to lure you out.

-And in the fordged guy's case he wasn't really talking to you so much as he was gloating(which all raider bosses do to some degree, and telling that Finch guy to kill the prisoner to prove his worth)

In Tower Tom's case, he didn't want you, he didn't care about you, you didn't have someone that garners respect like a Courser does with you, you were just some [censored] who attacked his base/men. He has no reason to stop to talk to you, only to try to get vengeance for interfering with a matter that doesn't concern you. Just like all the other raider bosses.

More choices in a videogame is like having more horsepower in a car. No matter how much horsepower my car has, I could always be happy with a little bit more.

Doesn't make my car bad though.

I've spent the last 3 months writing a quest mod that is crammed full of choices, and for what I predict is only going to be about 4 hours of gameplay, it has taken me just under 300 pages in my notebook to write it all. Choices are fun, but I'm not going to fault a 100+ hour game for having areas with less choices than others.

So, give him a reason maybe? Oh right, that reason exists, they just didn't bother to capitalize on it at all. The fact his men waltzed into his base camp with a prisoner in tow, Tower Tom is likely to have learned what the situation and deduced that you're coming after him, at which point you could have had a trade or a chance to persuade Tower Tom to hand over the prisoner.

He has every reason to talk to you considering that they're running on thin ice and have a shortage of food. Maybe using the Vadim guy as a bargaining chip for food?

Why would he talk to you when he can just, in his opinion, simply kill you and take your stuff?

And how is Vadim going to supply him with food? He runs a bar, not the Diamond City food market. He doesn't have the food for that. And whats Tower tom going to pay him with? happy dreams? He is a raider, not a merchant, he steals [censored] from others, he doesn't pay them for it. The only thing Vadim could supply him with is beer, and they already have enough of that given that their base is a literal brewery.

That doesn't even make sense. Stop trying to shoehorn poorly thought out reasoning for why everyone and htier grandmother would have some reason to talk to you. that kind of dumb [censored] already led to the idiotic NCRCF questline in New Vegas.

Equal to Skyrim, one of the biggest hits in the history of gaming. I think no one here is naive enough to expect something different from f4 or future BGS games, right?


talking about wrong decisions, I WANT TO CONNECT THE JUNKS FENCES BETHESDA, FFS. THAT GAPS ARE DRIVE ME CRAZY!!!!!!!

Because when 90% of the content in the game involves shooting, maiming, and killing someone or something, I would like the opportunity to take solace in side quests that offer unique variations in both their approach and their conclusions.

Vadim is a citizen of Diamond City. That's the bargaining chip. Whether Diamond City would agree to pay a ransom for him is debatable (considering they don't give a [censored] about kidnappings), but the fact that you show up at their front door is all that's needed to facilitate a dialogue. If a jet-junky guarding the front-door to Vault 3 has enough sense to question you, and agree to let you pass on the pretense of trading drugs, then I imagine that the guy who's running low on food might see the bigger picture and open a dialogue with someone looking for a kidnapped victim from a city with a lot of supplies.

But please, do continue defending the [censored], paper thin dialogue choices that fail to make any impression. I'd rather have the idiotic NCRCF questline than the brain-dead run and gun quests that compose the majority of what there is to do in the CW.

And you have a number of them.

No it isn't, because, as you state, and as everyone knows, Diamond City doesn't care about kidnappings. He would already know that isn't going to go anywhere, which is why he likely didn't try to do that immediately after he kidnapped him. The fact that you show up at their front door only shows they need to kill the intruder, and get better security. Also, IIRC, the fiends in Vault 3 only don't attack you if you are wearing Khan armor... since they are allied to the Khans. Tower Tom isn't allied to anyone but the raiders out of BAFTL.

But please, do continue to make up illogical situations to try to force dialogue checks that have no actual reason to exist in the game. Because the quality of RPgs has nothing to do with how consistent and believable the world is.

Yeah, all of 10%. Your attitude is precisely why we have seen a devolution and stripping down of things like perk checks and variation in dialogue. What we have left is a shell of a game measured in how many bullets your character has unloaded into CW inhabitants. Skyrim was the precursor, and I fear that Fallout 4 is the nail in the coffin.

Kill. Loot. Return. The game.

Did you play the last few Bethesda games? I cant speak for 1 or 2, but most Bethesda games boil down to exactly what you are describing. Sure some skill checks could get you out of certain situations(which I do miss and hope there are more of in the DLC) but for the most part you had to kill somebody to complete a quest. A post apocalyptic world isnt usually known for having the friendliest inhabitants. It makes perfect sense that a large portion of the world is set out to kill you.

And before anyone mentions NV, you should realize that was a completely different company with a completely different style of making games (Obsidian makes story driven games while Bethesda makes exploration driven games).

Why not zoidberg? err I mean why not both? (sorry couldn't resist).

lol good one.

Thats pretty much what Morrowind is. Kill some dude and come back. Or collect mushrooms and come back.

A lot of this game reminds me of Morrowind. That 90% thing that people talk about is exactly true with Morrowind, and although the percentages of more gameplay driven quests versus story driven have varied pretty heavily across the games that would come we're pretty much right back to how Morrowind felt in that regard.

If there is one thing you can always count on though, its the strengths and weaknesses of every Bethesda game being completely different from the one that preceded it. Although Fallout 4 may share Morrowind's weaknesses in questing and dialogue, and its strengths in writing and world building, the combat I think is going to age pretty well 13 years from now, and its very clear in a lot of other areas that its not 100% the same it was in 2002.

Completely true.

Kill. Loot. Return. Get your hundred caps. The game

The way pretty much all the quests are structured the same and there are no other solutions to resolving a conflict of any kind makes the replay value of this game (a supposed rpg none the less) highly questionable.

Agreed. Never understood why people act as if Morrowind had some amazing quest when it pretty much boiled down to the same kill, loot, return philosophy that infected Skyrim and Fallout 4. Some I would say are even worse than those radiant ones found in the latter two.

Really in terms of quest variety and entertainment, Oblivion was the only BGS studios game that stood out with maybe Fallout 3 behind. Too bad it's severely lacking in other areas.

Just because you have no imagination doesn't mean people are trying to shoehorn in stuff. The raiders are shown in the game as accepting recruits, how do they do this when the behavior with you is shoot first? Eh? Hmm? The game even states that the Raiders work with Bunker Hill by accepting pay outs, and a raider toll shows they don't just shoot people but make people pay them to cross their territory.

Also, you answered the mother errr question yourself. Vadim owns a bar, the raiders are sitting on a brewery. Trade the beer to Vadim who sells it, Vadim can give them caps or use the caps to buy food in DC and give them food. There is a quest similar to that in FO 2, regarding a still. Also in FONV you can go in without Khan armor but you need to pass a skill check.

How do the raiders recruit if they just kill everyone eh??? eh??? Hmmm?

How did McCready join the Gunners?? Hmm? Must of been hard for him to approach them dodging bullets to hand them his resume.

Also, the NCRCF quest, those are convicts. It makes sense they not all psychopathic murderers who shoot people on site, many of them I'm sure are non-violent offenders.

I'd say that Fallout 3 and Oblivion have some good questing in them. But then the games although still being obviously the same dynasty have that same completely different strengths and weaknesses things I talked about. I absolutely do not like how Cyrodiil is done as a western fantasy land, whereas I find that Fallout 3 is so much of a improvement in that area it feels like a complete turnaround.

It's something I admire out of Bethesda, actually. Despite the games all following the same formula, New Vegas included, they still manage to stand out as their own experience without any one game being a noticeable upgrade or downgrade of the other. It's nice that I can play Morrowind today and still feel like its worth playing because Oblivion is absolutely not a Morrowind 2 and Skyrim is absolutely not a Oblivion 2.

that signature lol lol

Sounds true enough but we are talking about a supposed rpg here not just a videogame but a specific genre that should be putting emphasis on player choice. Choice in an rpg is not like horsepower in a car but more like the engine and all the electronics within the frame. At least to me and I think a lot of others.

It's also unfortunate that Cyrodill being a generic medieval/pseudo-Roman knock off is now part of the lore with the whole Talos CHIM shizzle. If Oblivion had the whole unique jungle with Akaviri and Elven vibe that it was suppose to have as well as unique locations/dungeons it would undoubtedly be the perfect TES game in my opinion.

Definitely. Games like Fable and Kingdom Of Amalur have tried to implement some of Bethesda's formulas in their own game and while they are both good in their own way, they just don't feel as immersive or interactable.

*sigh* I would have hoped they learned that by Fallout 4

Here is hoping that Witcher 3 will give them a lesson or two.

if Cyrodiil had gone full Roman I think I would have liked it a lot more. But then I think ill just like roman-branded fictional anything at this point.

But I find it hard to get mad at Cyrodiil being the way it is when the game is almost 10 years old, and I think most of what I didn't like there is gone by now. The Empire in Skyrim was all the way Roman, and Skyrim itself was also a lot more interesting of a culture than it was down south. I really enjoy how the societies of the factions of Fallout 4 were made, especially the Brotherhood, and I think on that end I am as happy as I can be.

I still like Vvardenfel and Morrowind the best in terms of lore, but then I don't think the game would have svcked up as much money as it did in later years if it continued being that absolutely weird. And ill take TES getting the money it needs to both keep existing and expand in technology and content over whatever hangups I have over the weird content any day.