I have to agree with many other posters here that, for some reason, FNV has become a Holy Grail to many Fallout folks.

I question why?

I have said many times that, while I love the game, it lacks motivation, heart and soul.

As I said, I loved playing it, but ALL of the factions were reprehensible and I did not want to help any of them. The entire conflict was pointless to me and I had no motivation to help any of them.

And Vegas itself? Oh, who cares. A bunch of [censored]s, cannibals, mummies and crime families. It was easier just to take it over myself.

Frankly, I loved the DLCs and I have to admit that the characters were certainly entertaining, but I simply couldn't find my character's motivation to even care. Plus the Mojave is just so bleedin' boring! Oh, look, another giant ant, another scorpion, another darkstalker, OOOOO! a deathclaw...yawn...

Loved the combat, loved survival mode (bored to tears with the ammunition breakdown junk), and loved gunning everything down, but, in the end, I just kept asking... "What is the point to all of this?".

Biggest flaw for me is suddenly being forgiven everything as I'm leaving Vegas. For goodness sake, I've been slaughtering you're people for months now! You've even been sending deathsquads after me that I've gotten great equipment from! Now you forgive me! Sheesh.

Oh. So the part it didn't give a flyin' fig about or have any motivation to even care about was the main quest. Funny. I missed that.

Yes really, if you think differently then you're just pulling the wool over your eyes. How is finding your son, a son that for all your character knows is long dead, more urgent then finding a water chip to save your entire vault which you know is alive or saving arroyo from dehydration and starvation, again a settlement you know is alive.

The urgency is entirely on you, even if you're role-playing. Again, you ignore the point you can be evasive about why you're joining the factions or say you don't want to talk about it, you can say to every NPC that "I don't want to talk about it" or "I have my reasons" instead of talking about your son UNLESS it's related to the main story.

Same thing with the water chip in Fallout 1, same thing with the Geck in fallout 2, same thing with your dad in fallout 3 and YES SAME THING WITH THE PLATINUM CHIP IN NEW VEGAS

Get over it, this is a common theme in the fallout games, Fallout 4 isn't creating some new type of urgency that you can't overcome and saying otherwise is complete bullcrap.

They create regions with zero crime or corruption, with perfect stability for the residents in the region (they don't enslave cities, only rebellious groups, leaving the residents to do as they please). In the vast majority of ways they produce a far more stable and pleasant society for everyone. All of this was going to be in the game, but Bethesda pushed Obsidian to a deadline and so it had to be cut - still it is talked about in game by people who aren't Legion.

While I'm not trying to convince you of anything, as I said it's pointless, I don't know how that can't be interpreted as very morally complex situation - one that begs on a deep level do the ends justify the means? It's also nuanced and aware of history, using concepts like total warfare which Caesar uses in his approach to other factions - and using Rome's history and iconography to manipulate the populace in a way similar to what Hitler did.

If you call people committing a massacre reminiscent of My Lai the good guys then yeah sure, they're "good". There's plenty of other instances where they're bad, but that's a pretty stark example of them needlessly acting as bad guys.

Because your character says they want to find their son, they never say they want to do the stuff in the other plot lines. Personality is attributed to the character, absent from the other games where personality was your own making.

In FO1/2/3 you play a character who because of their treatment at the hands of their close-knit community - for FO1/2 stuff you don't see so really any upbringing you like, for FO3 you have a direct hand in your upbringing to become good or bad or neutral - can have any personality type. In FO:NV you're any person who accepted a job as a courier - hence any person you want to be with any background you want.

In FO4 you're a caring parent. And you know when you play the game again, you're a caring parent. The time after that, still a caring parent.

What are you talking about? You don't know your son is long dead and your character still thinks he's an infant. You still don't get it. Unlike previous fallouts in FO4 the character makes decisions for you. Soo.... if i want to join the BoS and meet elder maxon at the Prydwen? Guess what? Have to find Kellog....who tells me about shaun. Can i spare Kellog like i did Benny? NOPE. Imagination doesn't fix the lack of options/actions

Re: the notion that you're a caring parent: Yes, I can agree that it is centric on that point until you actually meet your son (which, for all intents and purposes, is not very far in the game), after that, it's up to you.

On all my playthroughs, at that point, it seemed like I did not care any more and there were more pressing issues to consider.

On this playthrough, the factions and the general stability of the Commonwealth seems to be much more pressing to me than finding my son. I've picked up from early on that things are definitely out of wack with my son from very early on, particularly after the Kellogg quest, so my motivation seems much less urgent. My time sense is definitely off. Frankly, I'm justifying it as, he's either alive or dead, and, at this point, it's just not that important. If he's alive, he'll probably remain that way for whatever nefarious scheme there happens to be, but, in all likelyhood, he's dead. That seems to be the way of the Commonwealth.

Yes, most definitely an Evolution of the Bethesda Way.

It's astonishing the amount of game-play, role-play content to be found in playing this game, and places not even marked on the map, even when discovered (and for good reason, in my view). If you do find such a location gem, take a screenshot if you want to more easily find it again.

Beautifully crafted game.

The Legion is creating tyranny. They execute and torture anyone who even looks at them wrong, the higher up in the order the more bullcrap you can get away with. Take the Legate, he killed a pack brahmin simply because it was in his way, no compensation to the trader and the trader will tell you "I knew better then to complain" that's not creating a safe society, that's creating a society where if you say one wrong thing BOOM DEAD. There is also the whole thing where women in the Legion are nothing but slave and cattle, [censored] a woman is legal and the idea of "free women" in the Legion is entirely a fan theory instead of a fact.

Literally every quality of the Legion is set up to make them into the bad guy, there is not one redeeming factor for the Legion given in New Vegas just slavery, tyranny, [censored], slavery, racism and cruelty. Everything they do is bad, just because they don't have raiders in their land doesn't mean a damn thing because if you so much as do something to annoy a Legion soldier BOOM ONTO THE CROSS WITH YOU.

There is no morally complex thing about the legion, it's a regime built on slavery, [censored], sixism, racism, cruelty and unity through destroying everything that makes a person unless it has a thing Caesar wants. Caesar being the only truly free person in the Legion. Saying there is moral complexity to the Legion is like saying there is moral complexity to Ted Bundy, Charles Manson, Joseph Kony, Spanish Conquistadors and any other serial killer and imperialistic oppressor.

NCR admit that Bitter Springs was an accident, do you know how hard it is to communicate on a battlefield? Even nowadays it's hard to constantly have 100% crystal clarity between the soldiers on the frontlines and HQ. The NCR doesn't have satellite communication with crystal clear audio and feedback not to mention they're also juggling transmissions from the soldiers who were attacking the Khans head on.

Hell, the NCR shows more civility to the Khans then Caesar does and you know what the NCR has the most reason to exterminate the Khans. Throughout the NCR's history dating all the way back to when Shady Sands was just a small farming community the khans have been raiding and killing them. We saw it in Fallout 1 and Fallout 2 and do you know why the Khans were attacked when the NCR came into the Mojave? Because the Khans were raiding caravans and killing NCR settlers, Bitter Springs was in retaliation to the Khans attacking the NCR.

And in fallout 1 your character says they want to find the water chip and in Fallout 2 your character says they want to find the GECK and in Fallout 3 your character says they want to find their dad and in New Vegas your character says they want to find the platinum chip

OH MY GOD IT'S LIKE IT'S A RECURRING THEME, oh wait because it is. THIS HAS BEEN IN LITERALLY EVERY FALLOUT GAME. A fact you CONTINUE to ignore. The urgency is ALL ON YOU, accept it already and deal with it, you're wrong.

I would add:

Major Cons:

-Continuing the trend of less an RPG and more Action game.

-Quests, too many radiant, too much repetition, too much of go X, kill Y, less C&C, less branching/multi layered quests with multiple methods of completion.

-Charisma only skill check in game.

Just like a baby. SHOUTING MAKES ME RIGHT!!!!!. He's not wrong, that's hes opinion...just like you have yours

What are you talking about? The game if 5/7 and 11/10 on IGN. It has no flaws

To an extent Fallouts are recurring themes, by their very nature, but this Fallout steps forward by extending new dimensions to the game-play, role-play. That is what I find when playing this game, it's only my opinion, but it's the only one that counts for me.

Oh, so basically, they're being extremely vague in showing what exactly happens with the mod to the weapon, as not enough stats are being shown on exactly happens.

What is the role play options in a game where the only skill check is based on your Charisma stat? Sure, if you can play pretend, it has "role play", but you can "play pretend" in Madden or NHL 15 or Mario Kart, that doesn't mean those games add new dimensions to role-play. Seriously, what did this game add to "role play dimensions"?? Cuz to me it gutted just about everything needed to role play and left behind a nice pile of bloody guts for you to play with as you massacre your way from raider camp to raider camp to mutant camp to finally find someone to talk to who then send you out to murder more crap.

You do know a lot of RPGs do that, right? In fact most rpgs just do speech checks and not skill checks. Not having skill checks doesn't make it any less of an RPG. Also a good percent of Fallout games had missions where the only option was to kill stuff, New Vegas was the only one where you can do a legit pacifist run.

^^^ FO4 in a nutshell

Sure, you don't need skill checks specifically, but the games generally have multiple options to complete a quest, which sometimes involve skills or your wits or etc etc etc. That, is what makes it less of an RPG, and in FO 4 it doesn't make any sense(even when your character acts like a bad ass, it uses Charisma instead of say Strength, which is like saying a clever cute 10 year old could intimidate a raider). I know previous Fallout games like the back of my hand and while there are quests that involve killing(mainly in FO 2 raider camp) and a location that involves combat (Fo 2 Mariposa) you can walk around the game solving every other quest non-violently until Horrigan(which you also can sit and watch) and in FO 1 you don't have to kill a thing to complete it, I've done it. The VAST majority of previous Fallout game % wise had multiple paths that dealt with negotiations. That was until the whole action RPG thing started in FO 3, and at least FONV had more options to avoid combat than 3 or 4, although it isn't perfect either, it is still better, and had multiple dialogue paths based on skills/specials(not just speech).

Because intimidation is more about speech then it is about showing your guns off. You still need to convince a person you mean business. If you ask me I'd say intimidation requires MORE charisma then strength especially if you're all talk about it.

Scaring somebody with a gun isn't intimidation. Scaring someone with force of personality is intimidation.

Well said @Cider!

I dunno.
The whole game timer in F1 and the visions from the village shaman in F2 kind of imply urgency.

You don't know that your son isn't dead either.
As for Kellogg, you still have to meet him, because he is the guy that can get in and out of the institute.
You don't have to kill him because he took Shaun, either. My character killed him because Kellogg was going to kill my character. Just because Benny was all "No hard feelings, it was just business" doesn't mean that Kellogg is the same way.
Yes, Shaun being taken is a part of the story. But it doesn't have to be your characters motivation. And seeing as how Kellogg did take Shaun, even if you don't care about your son, it is still natural that it would be brought up in a conversation with him.

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Intimidation...... Why are you all suggesting that it should be a speech only thing?
Have you never walked past someone that looks intimidating, without them ever saying a word to you?
Never seen a girl or guy who you can't get the nerve up to talk to, because she/he is intimidatingly beautiful/handsome?
No one here has ever been bullied by someone, who has the charisma and looks of a box of rocks, but outweighs you significantly?
If someone points a gun at your face, and you feel fear, you are in fact intimidated. You are being made to feel timid.
You can be intimidated by someone's personality, but to say that's the only way, is like saying you can only be killed by a sword.

Which is why there is a speech based perk attached to it in New Vegas, Terrifying Presence. Well done at making a terrible point.

This is a lie. You never mention you want it unless you as the player desire to. 100% fact. Show me otherwise or stop being completely ridiculous about it. I quite frankly don't care about anything else in the franchise, comparisons to the penultimate game - i.e. the current state of the franchise before this - is really the metric for where the series was headed before now.

It's a faction designed around total warfare, both in a practical and idealistic sense. It's harsh but so is a post-apocalyptic nuclear wasteland, and yes people are established to allowed to act how they like so long as it's by Legion rules in Legion territory - no male or female slavery.

Still, with all what you said in mind, that doesn't make them the goody two-shoes you were painting them to be does it?

1. Yea a perk that rarely ever saw any use in the game and I cheated to have it literally at the beginning of the game, it barely came up.

2. That is not a lie, you have the opportunity in New Vegas to say numerous times why you're going after Benny and one of the reasons is the platinum chip, apparently I know the game you're championing more then you. You can do the same thing in Fallout 4 which, again, is a point you're ignoring.

3. Yup and religious persecution, [censored], destruction of culture, imperialism, sixism, racism, raiding, slavery, going back on your deals, screwing your allies over only to absorb them, slaughter their ill and elder, sell the women into slavery so they can be used as pack mules, laborers or [censored] toys for legionnaires while killing the men who don't agree to follow your way of life and then forcing the children to either be trained as legionnaires or die while the girls are sold into slavery and bred to be no better then pack mules and breeding sow are all good things! Wow such moral complexity.

Everyone in the Legion is a slave, that's the entire point. No where in the game does it state there is anyone free in the Legion but Caesar. The idea of women not being slaves is once again nothing but a fan theory that is never stated anywhere in the game or official sources.

4. No they certainly are portrayed to have problems but even with that in mind they're still 100% painted as the good guys.

Clappy hands! As violent images and thunder shaking words of intimidation rock my mind

Right but not unless you choose to. He is saying(and i'm not agreeing with him just clarifying because i don't remember it that way) that your character in FO4 mentions Shaun without being prompted to do so.

No, they actually don't. Unless it's part of the main story and even then in certain conversations you can completely not mention Shaun. Again, it's entirely optional in conversations just like when you're hunting down benny and the platinum chip in New vegas.