Not really. Ciri is under a spell that makes her invisible to the Wild Hunt for most of the game. Geralt doesn't know that until later but he isn't the main driver of the Wild Hunt story. A mere Witcher is busy waiting on the 400 year old elven sage to form a strategy. Makes sense to me.

The whole point of this thread is that Fallout 4 fails at letting you create your own character. That is why I called it a "critical flaw". All it had to do was give us complete freedom in our character concept and it would have been a total success. The writing in the main quests isn't half bad and some of the characters are interesting. It's just a crying shame that I'm playing one personality no matter what....might as well be Geralt instead!

Some people have entitlement syndrome yes. However, there is nothing wrong with being upset about a missed opportunity. Fallout 5 will make the same mistakes again if nobody makes a critique!

That would be a brilliant move on their part. Let's hope they are listening....

The main issue is not being able to say or do stupid stuff, because you can do that. That main issue is that it has absolutely.no.consequences.whatsoever. I could slaughter entire factions, I could commit a GENOCIDE and still march in to Diamond city where people would greet me with same repetitive monologs about "bad weather and sore feet" (figuratively speaking). I could throw around naked corpses and cut them in to bloody bits and pieces and the passing by NPC's would only greet me with a "hello..?" .. I have a freedom to do nearly anything, be as cruel as a man can be, and no one in the game cares two bits about it. That's my biggest problem. I want to have to face the consequences for playing the character I wanna play, I want to have my character be hated, feared, despised, envied, adored, loved.. Have the choices I make in the game actually affect on how my character is perceived.

It's called having to take responsibility for your actions, a thing maybe only us "the more mature crowd of gamers" can understand.

You know there used to be games where you could actually deny yourself the possibility to ever finnish the game if you [censored] up badly enough.... Stuff like that really made you pay attention and take regard in to your own actions, instead of just skipping dialog and cinematics to streamline through the story to reach the taken-for-granted ending. Those games we used to called RPG games, linear games were either platformers or shooters or something else.

Have to agree with OP - Beth have pretty much removed RP options.

For example, meeting Preston. You walk into that room, you've joined them, no matter what you say. They tell me they need help and have a plan. I tell them I've got my own problems. They lay out the plan anyway, including the key role that I just refused to take. I tell them it's suicide, it won't work and that I'm out. Preston has a go at me for ditching them and then... the game gives me the objective of retrieving the fusion core. Despite the fact that I just point blank refused to do it.

In other words, my dialogue choices are utterly irrelevant - that entire encounter is on rails and nothing I do will change it.

It's the same all over. Don't even have a choice about the dog - you go near him, he's yours.

FO4 is a good game - it's just not a good Fallout game. Fallout was always about choices and RPing - 4 is lacking in both.

Given that there are some failable quests, mostly settlement type quests I have encountered so far, there doesn't seem to be any consequence for failing it. Like, I got Jamaica plains settlement quest, and failed because I was doing other stuff, and then I got Jamaica plains settlement quest again later on. So, sure you can get a quest failed, but doesn't seem to do much of anything, in the long haul(mainly because just about every time you turn around there is another settlement quest.. then another...and another...and another....oh and then another).

Just because something is in your quest log, doesn't mean you have to do it. You know what they want you to do, but you have the choice of ignoring it, so there's actually a clear choice and consequence to that encounter, choose to help and start the minutemen questline, ignore it and the minutemen will never settle Sanctuary. The NPC's also properly react to the condition of the character, the dialogue will be different if I already have power armor or a fusion core. The whole encounter is actually a good example of choice and consequence being done properly.

Having the option to just ignore a quest isn't enough - in previous FO games, and TES, we have multiple resolution paths for even early encounters - so we could start a conversation and our words and actions would determine the outcome. My issue with the Preston encounter is that once I start it, there is only one outcome regardless of any dialogue choices I make.

You could put all this down to my own expectations not being met. I know I don't really have the right to expect anything except what I paid for (ie Fallout 4, as is), and for what it is the game is fantastic - it's just not as much of an RPG as previous Beth games were and I was looking forward to the RP element the most, so I'm a little disappointed.

I wanted to forge my own destiny - instead it appears that I'm here to witness other people forge theirs, and my choices are limited to helping them cheerfully or helping them while being a jerk to them (which they will disregard).

Where's my option to kill them, or sell them out to the raiders? As I've said, I'd settle for the option to just tell them to take a hike. But I want the actual option written in, rather than me simply leaving the quest incomplete.

Again, not a dealbreaker for me as I'm enjoying the game otherwise - just wish Beth hadn't let so much RP go.

It's one thing to allow the player to be a bad person in a dialog or in some situations but another to write a game around a person with a generally bad intention. I don't like really bad persons (although they have reasons and ideological excuses, even divine reasons to behave, like IS supporters, makes them not likeable) and I don't want to play them. I never played Thiefs Guild in TES f.e. and my only contact to the DB in Skyrim was for the purpose to kill the killers. I felt terrible to kill someone to achieve that goal but sometimes you have to do bad things to avoid worse things. So I lied to myself. I prefer games with groups and decisions that are more grey than black and white but I don't like games about villains. I could f.e. not ally with Raiders or Gunners in Fallout, they are just destructive. It's difficult for me to understand why people like to be killers or mafia guys in games, but ok, to each his own. But not as main story in a Bethesda game of the TES or Fallout label, please.

What the frick version are you playing where you see the options as only one personality? I certainly see different personalities in the options. Also really tired of folks pretending that the four options are the same or they're less than the one of two we got previously. Also mindboggling that the freedom is held up to pen and paper RPG standards when it never was before. But WTH , ignore all the actual ways the game plays out and make your point.

You can dismiss the dog at any time and never go near him again. You can walk away form Preston and they never settle Sanctuary but your mind is already made up.

the same stuff is said about each BGS game when it comes ( starting with Morrowind is my first experience with this ) then they suddenly become more RPG magically when the next one comes out no matter what.

My character nukes kittens for fun. I wan't dialog choices to reflect that.

Just kidding, don't even know if it that is possible, only that you can target them in VATS.. for shame Bethesda.. for shame.

Uhh, the quest is most certainly not C&C done properly. C&C is a hell of a lot more than walking away, based on that every quest in existence is C&C. No...

Adding a dialogue statement of "sorry, you are on your own" could add some flavour to the choice, even though the resulting action is the same as saying something else and walking away, and flavour should certainly not be underestimated as one of the key ingredients in making the RPG-experience feel genuine. But as far as consequences go, this one actually has some weight to it since the minutemen questline can have a severe impact on the type of adventure you forge.

Are your people for real? How is this a "good example"? There is no choice here at all. Compare this to the first quest in NW where you can side with either side (the villgers or the powdergangers) Or you can betray both sides. Or you can kill the powderganger leader the first time you meet him. Not to forget that you can influence the outcome by recruiting different villagers with different kinds of skills you have.

In Fallout 4 there is just one option, to go into the power armor and blow all the raiders away. The only other "option" is to not do the quest at all. How is that a "good example of choice and consequence". This is just getting silly.

It would even be a bit better if they at least let you ask Preston to use the power armor instead while you covered him from the balcony. Just something that could have any sort of variance in the quest.

No, choosing to ignore many of the other quests in the game has no impact on anything whatsoever, so they are quite different since choosing to ignore this quest means an entire settlement and questline is cancelled, which will have impacts for the remainder of the game.

Then again, what's the real consequence on walking away? They just hang around in that room for the rest of eternity waiting for you to change your mind while the raiders keep holding bay just around the corner.....

A real consequence would be that they get killed and looted by the raiders and/or deathclaw because you didn't help them... I have yet to face a single quest where negative response would lead to a negative consequence, the worst that can happen is that nothing at all happens and you can come back later to complete the quest anyway.

How is this different from walking away from any other questline. What kind of "impacts" will this have.

The game has to recognise and reinforce the choices you make. If you don't want to join the Minutemen, thats fine. But the game needs to recognize you turned them down and that ought to bite you in the ass or reward you. Or both. That can come in a number of different ways - maybe the dialogue you have with Preston ends on a sour note, and Preston & Co leave and set up in Sanctuary and whenever you go near the town they fire on you, maybe anothe rgroup reaches out to you because of the choice you made, maybe everyone in the world just wants you dead. By doing this, it gives characters and groups motivations and breathes life into a dull world.

Just choosing not to do the quest with it sitting in your log doesn't classify as choice or consequence. You haven't actually made a choice there at all, you've just left something indefinitely. And there isn't any consequence, the game hasn't initialised a section of code.

Many quests in the previous Fallout games were like that as well. After being asked to expose Gizmo in Fallout 1, I can leave Junktown for however long I want, and when I come back Killian will still be there waiting for me to provide him with the evidence he needed and Gizmo will not send any more assassins after him ever. In New Vegas I can leave Goodsprings at any point before completing the gunfight and the powder gangers will happily wait forever before attacking, and I can use all the services Goodsprings offers without ever needing to resolve the conflict. A real consequence in these cases would be that Killian eventually gets killed if you don't do anything, or that Goodsprings eventually gets invaded. So this isn't just an issue in Fallout 4.

Spoiler free section, but I can think of one very special location that can only be unlocked through the minutemen questline...so it's not actually the same as ignoring to collect some baseball card for 200 caps...

I just played a quest on my evil character (my first playthrough was more of a goodie fella, this one is a psycho). On this particular quest you are asked to kill an evil dude and rescue remaining NPCs who are held captive. I went on to kill the evil dude, then it occured to me that "Hey, why don't I torture and kill the NPC's aswell who I am supposed to rescue, no one would know it was me and I could just tell the quest giver they were already dead by the hand of that villain I was sent to kill" ... I proceeded with my plan, returned to the quest giver only to find her telling me "do the thing we talked about", so basically the only consequence for my action was to not ever be able to talk to the quest NPC again unless I load the game and play a goodie two shoes and save the day once again just like a real psychopath would do.

These are the things that make alot of us feel restricted and forced to play everything by the script. If only was I even able to tell her something, try and lie to her about how it went out, tell her to [censored] off, get attacked by her and her mates, but nothing.. It's as if it never happened and I am just denied the possibility of turning the quest in unless I magically resurrect the mutilated and violated corpses or load the game.

How boring and unoriginal..

Does not bother me in the least I think they did a great job w/ the game & chose a unique way of telling the main story. As far as the play my way is concerned it's an open world game it's what you make of it and with the addition of actual voice conversations between the player & many of the NPC's of course it's gonna be limited