I love how this is supposed to kick dirt at the skeptics on whether fallout 4 is a good fallout game or not and this just further cements on how lackluster the game is in terms of choice.

@Jaramr that doesn't work because the Intimidation perk is either bugged or overhyped when in reality it's a crappy perk. You have to keep your gun on the target at all times, and holstering it will make the target hostile again right off the bat. I'm also pretty sure the aiming has to be on the subject, so you can't move away from him/her/it, otherwise it'll just get hostile all over again.

That involves a lot cheesing tho, and a lot of save scumming. In New Vegas, the speech checks are always the same, so if you know your "milestones" you can pass them with flying colours everytime (they used this system instead of that in FO3 where people saved / reloaded all the time to pass checks) The charisma perks in FO4 is not auto-success, just like the speech-checks ain't.

It still provides a alternative to fighting instead of avoiding the encounter all together. If there was no chance of failure like in New Vegas, then those intimidation perks would be used all the time since they would be much more cost-effective than fighting. It wouldn't be balanced at all.

I agree. That said, seeing them locked behind a 10 CHA score was kind of a letdown for me.


Playing that way from the very beginning is a really rough ride. You still have to fight when you fail a pacify check, and burning almost half your special points to gain the ability right away puts you in the barrel for quite a while, as far as survivability goes.

Yes, but saying it makes it more viable than FO3 or NV is kinda not correct. The games just goes about it differently, for better or worse, depending on who you ask.

Without save-scumming, you will never be able to make a pacifist run in FO4 for example, whereas, it is entirely plausible in New Vegas (haven't tried in FO3 tho)

I'd say its correct. There are two required kills in Fallout 3's main quest, and none in Fallout New Vegas, but otherwise avoiding the combat encounters comes down to the same procedure, running away from enemies. Fallout 4 gives the option between running away and intimidating, so its effectively two options with the end result being the same in avoiding enemies.

All of the games have enemies just start shooting at you when you approach them. I don't really see how New Vegas is any different than Fallout 4 in this regard, since you are still required to engage in combat when traveling through the world. Some of the quests may be resolved more diplomatically but unless someone has homebrewed a mod to make this possible you aren't going to be able to talk those raider tribes like the Vipers in the southern parts of the map out of shooting at you.

I've done New Vegas in under two hours without shooting a thing (world record is just about 24 minutes + a little, but that is through exploiting a glitch). You can avoid all enemies in the wild through sneaking, and Vipers? You don't come near any of them if done correctly. Anyways, as said, it depends on who you ask, and I'm not about to make this into a contest between the games. It is plausible, so I'll leave it at that.

It requires a lot of map knowledge and sneaky beaky. Ive never attempted it, but it seems that much the same would be involved in Fallout 4 as in New Vegas. I can't quite remember if there's a required kill or not in Fallout 4, I do know that there's the radroach at the start and Colonel Autumn at the end for Fallout 3.

You don't have to kill Colonel Autumn with high speech.

Really? Ive always fought the endbosses of everything for that whole climatic showdown thing and never went diplomacy. I thought the Autumn fight was required.

In FO4

But I have never tried a pacifist run in FO3, so can't say anything about it. And yes, in New Vegas, it requires some know-how, so it isn't really an option for first-timers at all.

There's two consecutive speech checks with increasing difficulty to convince him stand down. There's also an easier option if you've destroyed Raven Rock.

The events I'm referring to are mostly known right off the bat at the start of the game. They wouldn't be a spoiler for anyone who's already this thread, which is also marker for (Spoil


I don't see how that really matters, though. The MQ isn't exactly hard to identify and separate from the rest. Though even if you don't consider Conchord part of it since it's skippable, there is plenty of killing pushed on you in the parts that are not. My only point was that the main character doesn't have to mind anyone's business but his own, and he'll still end up having to kill people all the freaking time.

And my point was that s/he's basically just set up to start killing people on the off chance that it'll help him progress, since there's almost never any reason for him to think that any of the people he's ventilating are involved or even informed, and he simply takes everything people tell him on faith while riding the rail through the slaughter house. We don't actually disagree on that, as far as I can tell. I think of it as lazy storytelling, Bethesda probably thinks of it as meeting customer expectations. There's no doubt my opinions put me in a minority.

Minding your own business, you could find who you're looking for with nothing more than Dogmeat and your Pipboy, but the customers who shape the market for "AAA" Looter games want blood first and convincing storytelling when it doesn't get in the way of the loot chain. It is what it is. We (should) all know what we're getting when we buy a First Person Looter, but I'm going to be supremely happy if/when this genres simulation standards outgrow the narrative-replacement supplements that the industry and players take for granted. The better the graphics get, the more convincing the worlds become, and the more mainstream gaming becomes, then the less willing players will be to spend 20-30 hours on a glorified step and fetch mission. I hope.


We're still stuck playing Supermutants..."Kill. Loot. Return." Not much has really changed about the underlying dynamics of it all since Wolfenstein.

I pretty much agree with all of that.

Though I will point out that the game was marketed as an RPG that offered a great deal of choice. Not a FPS Looter, like Borderlands or the like.

True. For giggles I looked up how they're marketing Borderlands these days:


"Borderlands is an action role-playing first person shooter video game..."


Gotta cover all the bases, I guess...wouldn't want to miss a customer. lol

If you guys took the time to see the videos and the walkthrough you'll see that he doesn't relying on companions at all, besides the first time he encounters them. He plays completely alone, since the Companions kills would counts as actually kills in the game data.

So he's using smart thinking to solve XP gain with low intelligence and Idiot Savant, by crafting in settlements until lvl 10, than doing quicksaving to proc Idiot Savan when completing quests. He's also relying on stealth to go hidden from some enemies, and getting quest items without anyone seeing him.

In the start he couldn't pacify everyone, so he used smart ways to attract enemies towards other enemies. Than he starts to passing through dangerous places by pacifying the enemies with help of quicksave.

Than he started to use the attack command on pacify enemies to manipulate enemies and make them kill each other.

He's using dialogue to get some extra Charisma checks, so he can get more money, or to solve things without combat or having to do it himself. He's some quests by just talking his way through. Of course not all of them. And some quests that he needs to go accompanied someone else... that person do the job for him. Sometimes is a companion but since It's the first mission before he's actually is available as a companion, the game doesn't count those kills as yours.

It's not the most easy way to play, not at all. Specially at the beginning... but it's possible. Honestly I don't see why people is so much fighting over this. I do understand and agree that FO4 is more action driven than FO3, but I wouldn't say at all that this game is just Kill Kill Kill.

There are a lot of new things I didn't knew there. For example, meeting your companions in a non predictable order (as the game devs would think you would meet), unlock new dialogues and different reactions from them. Of course the main quest like and dialogues remains, but It's interesting that they put the time to record and do this different encounters.

What lots of people on here, and even the person who made the videos said, is that while yes, you can certainly finish the game without getting a "1" on your kill counter, there's really no point, because basically doing it by justo getting other characters to kill for you. That's not a true pacifist playthrough. It's like saying Gus from Breaking Bad ain't a dangerous villain because he uses hired thugs for most of the hands-on work.


There are very few quests that actually offer a nonviolent option. Those that do tend to not even present said option until you have already passed through a good deal of enemies to reach it. How many quests in New Vegas can you use your speech skill to complete without firing a shot? That's rarely, if ever possible in Fallout 4.


I don't know how you can chastise people who see it this way for not watching the video, when the guy who played it himself agrees in the article.

They'd be dead the first super mutant squad you meet.

I do understand that point.

But if you think about Skyrim, FO3, none of them had main quest lines that doesn't require someone to be killed in the process. Either way, in all of those games, a Pacifying build needs someone to kill for them, even If it's convincing enemies to kill each other.

FO3, FONV and FO4 was never a RPG that allow you to don't use any kind of combat ever. Fallout series, since Bethesda got the licenses, was always an Action RPG. And a lot of those quests, the game gives you 2 or sometimes 3 ways to solve this. There are also very few moments in FO3 where you have more than 3 options to solve things.

Like I said, I agree that FO4 is more action driven, and mainly because the combat is actually a big game mechanic this time, way different from FO3, where VATS was the only reliable combat option. So FO3 players felt a lot more that the RPG was more present in this regard. And I Know a lot of people doesn't like the more simple dialogue system, I won't even go into that.

My point is that FO from Bethesda has always been a more Action RPG than original FO1/2. The difference is that FO4 shooting mechanics works, so people are sad because they like to relying on infinite time thinking VATS instead of being forced to do decisions more quickly, and so they claim that FO4 is now an FPS with RPG elements, or It's Borderlands, which imo is totally ridiculous, but ok, It's just my opinion. Borderlands has a very more refine shooting mechanic than FO4.

No one, myself or anyone else, ever thought or claimed they did. Still trying to figure out what if any relevant point you ever had here...