Sigh. Drives me a little batty when people seem to intentionally circumvent the point just to keep the argument going. I thought it was obvious what I was saying but let me try again:

If the game is actually constructed with evil options for dialog, quest completion and factions (etc, etc) and the game world responds to your actions, then yes this game allows for evil role-playing.

BUT

If the game does not include these things, you're only pretending it allows for an evil role-playing.

I'm not talking about whatever stuff it is your character has done (or not done) that you, the human playing the game, has noticed.

Haha alright. I'm just telling you what I've seen and done. But I guess you built the game so I'll stop. Hey what are you guys gonna do for the first DLC? I'm really curious to see what that will be

Not sure why you'd resort to this. I'm speaking a universal truth, here. If something was put in the game by the designers and part of the game's mechanics and the game reacts to it vs. the player pretending as if it were, while the game does not react around it.

Why is this so difficult to agree on? 2+2=4, right? There's not much of a discussion here. And I'm not discounting your experiences. If anything I saw part of what you wrote and thought "That's good. Chalk one up for the "being able to role play an evil character."

If Fallout 4 was a good immersive game you could be like:

"I'm just out of the vault and I have poor equipment, but I did get a short double barrel shotgun, now these people at Concord are asking for my help defeating the raiders, I will do that, I will kill them, but since I see that they are not much of a fighting force themselves, I will cap them in the head with my shotty and take their goods, because I need to survive now and I don't know these people or care about them"

But since Fallout 4 is a bad game and a stupid one, I can't do that, because all of them are unkillable and they don't actually need my help, BECAUSE they are unkillable. They could walk out and punch those raiders with their fists while eating lead with their faces, but the game is pretending they can't.

BS.

I had an option to help the covenant who seemed pretty evil, I declined but then I'm helping synths who i havn't figured out if they're good or not. Probably depends on the synth. Valentine seems nice enough. The institute seem to be at odds with many people and you can join them. I dont like too many choices because i dont want to miss out on stuff. It would be fine if i got an equally powerful gun/ reward from the other side. It doesn't bother me. I put enough settlers in raider armor, some heads on pikes and i feel more like a raider warlord than a local leader.

I kind of hated piper from the 1st time i saw her. Maybe i'm getting old and conservative in my old age. I told her i dont really care then i was worried I might miss out on missions or a whole companion and the only female romance option.

Well why would you want to be cartoonishly evil? I can understand being selfish or robbing caravans and farmers, but to murder everyone just makes the world empty. You play a character, not a caricature. The faction choices even reflect that, they're pretty damn grey from what i've seen. Except for the minutemen, they seen to be the best faction of any fallout.

Actually i wish the indie ending to fallout nv had some aspect of the minutemen in it. Would have made way more sense than everyone fending for themselves and vegas protected solely by robots.

In Fallout 2 you can be evil in ways that actually benefit your character either financially or in quest-resolving.

I'm sorry but Fallout lore is filled with caricature evil characters that killed everyone on sight. So why can't we play as one?

All in all, FO4 lacks an real evil branch for the exact same reason why FO3 is so black&white: artistic choice. FO3 is supposed to be a depressing world seen through the eyes of a kid who becomes either the Messiah or the Antichrist (why do you think there were so many Biblical references?) while FO4 is a story of a matured advlt who sees the world through shades of gray. Focus this time was given to making factions more complex than cartoonish.

Because Beth does not like repetition so for a change they made even the main antagonists not really evil (and to counter-balance, they made the good guys from FO3 eviler).

Well the dialogue is pretty limiting but I've killed quite a few people whether in cold blood or through a quest. Also I've done quite a few quests with different options/choices so.

It doesn't really fit imo. Army vet father becomes psycho cold blooded murder over the course of one day...seems weird. And what would be the point? Just murder everyone so you couldn't get more quests? I guess you're right though, we lack for murdering content

thats nice i guess.

You can be evil in FO4, the level of depravity actually makes me sick. Just saw this video which proves it.

https://youtu.be/Id7oOnsEcOg

Not for a long time have I felt sick at someone playing a video game and glorifying violence.

You guess? Yeah, options in an RPG....WHO NEEDS 'EM AMIRITE?

I think we're missing the point. Yes, we can be an evil scumbag in-game by killing, looting, etc. In-story, however, within the dialogue and the questline, there aren't different branches to resolve the issues. Specifically, a branch where you can join the 'bad guys', or in his example, the Raiders trying to kill Preston and Co. Instead, the worst you can be is a sarcastic, rude anti-hero who will begrudgingly help people for caps.

I was frozen for 200 years? Maybe something happened to me? Vaul-Tec experiment gone wrong is not nearly far-fetched. Also, maybe I'm not a male war vet, but a female lawyer and maybe I went nuts after I saw what happened to the world? Maybe I believe my son is dead and my husband is dead and I don't see any point in life anymore?

people DO realize the legion in New vegas was not meant to be evil mcevil corp, right? It was MEANT to be like the institute, it is just that Obsidian failed horribly at writing them.

No, I think it was because Bethesda was pressing them to release the game so they had to rush it.

Yeah, i guess thats nice. Pimpin your shotgun wedding wife is funny...i guess if your into that sort of thing. Its just there really isn't ever a practical reason to be evil. You usually get less exp (less quest givers remember), the devs don't put as much effort into it (remember ceaser's legion? Waste of dev energy given how half assed it was), and the rewards tend to svck. Bioware is bad about this, hell fallout 3 was bad about this.

I'd rather see more grey questlines with no definite good guy vs bad guy set up. All the fallout games haven't had satisfying evil factions you could join. the master dunked you, fallout 2 your forced to stop the enclave, Fallout three joining the enclave was just idiotic as it would kill you. Fallout new Vegas was better with its multiple factions but even the stupid dress wearing legion had hardly any content.

except even the devs of that game admit they did not do a good job at writing it.....so....nope.

If it were rushed, Legion would be shallow and lacking in lore.

But Legion isn't shallow and they don't lack lore. It is just that the good sides Obsidian wrote for them are lame.

Hm, sorry... maybe I shouldn't say Obsidian because Legion was created BEFORE Bethesda bought the Fallout franchise. Seeing as they did not write them from ground up, they did not have to do much rewriting to make them more sympathetic if they were aiming at it.

So no, this is not Beth's fault.

I guess you wouldn't follow the main quest then? Also lady lawyer becoming a cold blooded (effecient? who taught her to shoot so damn well?) killing machine seems even less likely. I don't know i think the game tried pretty hard to avoid black and white morality, hell even the institute isn't as bad as i thought it was going to be.

well your character is a family man trying to save his baby. So im guessing he probably wouldn't do tons of bad stuff. I really was hoping for karma to return in 4 though. I do like playing through bad/good/neutral runs and experiencing everything. I am only a couple hours into the game though so there might still be a lot of good moral/ethical decisions I just don't know.

I would have said this much gentler, but your general point is fair.

Obsidian is always better at giving options like that where as Bethesda is always more your choices don't really matter (see skyrim and FO3).