Kimball and Oliver are indeed screwed if the Mojave Expedition fails....but Caesar and Lanius would survive defeat just fine (unless the Courier kills them). Caesar would present it as a temporary setback, and/or a test by the God Mars to prove their worthiness. Lanius, of course, would kill anyone who backtalked him. Anyhow, just because Kimball and Oliver are not very bright doesn't mean they aren't right in this instance....as they say a broken clock is still correct twice a day. Control of Hoover Dam and access to the Colorado is a worthy strategic goal that will be of immense benefit to the NCR in the short and long term. And Clark County, NV is a hotbed of anarchy right on thier border, threatened by the Legion, who Kimball correctly identifies as dangerous to the NCR. Having no knowledge of House's plans...no one does but House...it's clear the good residents of Clark County will be overrun if they don't do something. The only defense they had was the Desert Rangers, who were worn down by the Legion to the point they had to petition to join the NCR to get the support then needed to keep up the struggle.

And Hanlon...his Smedley Butler act doesn't entirely hide the fact that he despises the residents of the Mojave as ingrates and doesn't really care what will happen to them if the NCR pulls out....and the Legion steps in to fill the vacuum (don't forget he has no idea what House is up to..he thinks House is just another shortsighted ingrate). His point of view is only vindicated if House wins....as he can safely play Smedley Butler in the NCR Senate, knowing there is a strong buffer state between the Legion and the NCR. If the expected happens and the Legion wins, he ends up dead in most cases and in the rest will be contending with the Legion as the AO moves to the NCR's border regions.

Though I hate to admit it, the Legion actually has a sound economy...it's money is worth four times the NCR's paper money. It's true that they need conquests to bring in slaves, but Caesar isn't attacking the NCR because he has to in order to keep his economy afloat...he even tells you if Kimball had staged a coup and made himself Dictator instead of entering politics he wouldn't be attacking the NCR at all....he's doing it for his own personal glory and to transition his Regime from a nomadic Tribe to a Nation-State (albeit a Totalitarian Dictatorship with him as Maximum Leader). Like most Totalitarian Regimes, the Legion depends on a Cult of Personality surrounding the Leader. The best way to remove the Legion as a threat is to kill both Caesar and Lanius and deflate the cult of Personality once and for all. Caesar has to go as he is the most effective leader they have and will never waver from reaching what he sees as his Destiny, and Lanius too as he will use his own strength and Caesar's legacy to keep the Legion going in the short term....consensus seemed to be a year or two....meaning a lot more people will die before the wheels finally come off the Legion's cart. With the pair of them dead, there is no clear successor....which means the knives will come out as ambitious Lieutenants start dreaming of being Caesar themselves. The Legion will tear itself apart, all the NCR or House has to do is stand back and break out the popcorn. Once the smoke clears, they can start making deals to pit the little Caesars against each other and manage them all as a annoyance rather than a existential threat.

i still fail to see the problem with the main quet, u cant choose to make peace on NV, one of the 3 factions will win.

One of them, or no one. Going for the Yes Man ending, neither of the three main factions gets control, you do. You can however, if choosing to go with Mr.House, broker a fragile "peace" by persuading the leaders from the Legion and NCR to withdraw, altho it still requires you to kill the BoS (iirc) which isn't a major player in Mojave.

How did yet another F4 discussion turn in to an FNV discussion. Get back on track! FNV is, like, so 2010!

um


Again, impractical? Yes.
Am I being a smart ass? Again, yes.
But when your kill counter shows 0, guess what that means?
We can agree to disagree on this though, as I don't think either is going to change the others mind. Cheers.

In the other Fallout games, even as a tree hugging flower child, blowing kisses at everyone you meet, you were responsible for a hell of a lot of death and destruction. If didn't matter if you pulled the trigger yourself or not. People died because you chose to do something and people died because you chose not to do something.

Some people (I am not accusing you of being one of these people, btw) on these boards have this strange idea that if they have no hands-on involvement that they are not responsible in any way. "Oh, I never went to Junkyard. So the super mutants destroying the Children of the Apocalypse wasn't my doing." [censored], you were too busy handing out flowers at every crossroad to bother dealing with the Master in a timely manner. You could have stopped it from happening, instead you chose to do nothing and allowed it to happen.

I am not saying that there should be no diplomatic solutions to situations in the game. I actually believe there aren't enough. I am saying there should not be a diplomatic solution TO the game. That is to say, BGS should not plan and write one. If someone finds a way due to a flaw in the code that is all fine and dandy, but it should NOT be intended.

By the standards of the Fallout universe, MacCready is a nice guy. He certainly isn't anywhere near being the nicest, but compared to the usual bastard you find out there in the Commonwealth, he is almost saintly. If a nice guy (relatively) like him in all seriousness state he has killed people just for a drink, you should start getting the idea of just how messed up things are. You could rebuild Andersonville Prison in the Commonwealth to house your criminal element and people would wonder about your sanity for going through the expense of building a country club for the criminals.

I understand that people have preferences and that those preferences may not agree with mine, but people are asking that the game be changed in ways that just doesn't fit the premise of Fallout in order to suit their preferences. That is what my football/chess anology was about.

You can broker a cease fire, not an end to hostilities.

That does not mean that fighting is going to break out any time soon, but it doesn't mean it won't. If only means nobody is shooting at anyone at the end of the game.

In the real world we have had cease fires that have only lasted a few hours before hostilities resumed and other cease fires have lasted more than a century. Hell, the last time I checked about 20 years ago (I may have missed something so it may not still be true) the United States was still officially at war with the Florida Seminoles.

True. But there are option to end feuds between factions like the NCR, BoS, and Great Khans(if you side with NCR) without them killing each other and if you go for independence you can you have the option to kill factions or spare them(in the Great Khans case ask them to live and move to the Midwest).

Where's the fun if no one gets hurt?

Yes! That's the rub I'm looking for in the newer game. It also smacks of real life. Sometimes, the people that refuse to act because of this or that principle wind up causing the most damage in the end. But they can live happily knowing they did everything they could...in their own minds. That's the element that the newer versions are missing, like that whole layer of depth and ability to mold the events of the story in your character's own idiom were just stripped away.

I don't mind all that much, really. The game is a blast, just as it is. But can't help feeling a little disappointed when I'm railroaded into a violent confrontation that I know I could have mediated in real life without even standing up.

And I'll once more throw a high-five your way for nailing that critical element of the game. If "peace" ever came to the Wasteland, it would more or less invalidate the theme of every game to date. War never changes. (Read: "There is only war." [I knew the power armor always reminded me of Space Marine armor.]) Each game started with a nuke, and each game ends with a nuke. (Liberty Prime threw mini-nukes...so that still counts.)

In a way, I always felt some of the characters sounded a bit too cheerful in FO3 and 4. Those weren't the voices I heard in my head playing FO1 and 2. If I did get that impression from the dialogue, the NPC usually tried to murder me and/or rob me blind later. Except for Harold. But he was a ghoul in denial with a tree growing out of his head, so it balances itself out. I think the Scavs you find around the Wasteland that draw on you and tell you to get lost should be about as cheerful as an NPC gets...unless they're sharking you. (Like the @#$%! you meet when you get to the Hardware District the first time...I can't believe I fell for that. That was well-played.)

I, also, was not referring to "You", personally. What I should have said was: anyone has a preference, anyone thinks their own preference is the best (How could we not? It's our preference.), and if a game happens to fall in line with that, according to anyone, it's just fine -- why change it? To anyone that has a different preference -- how could it possibly remain this way? It's the job of a "true-gold RPG" (I'm going to coin this term) to be sure ALL preferences have a way of meaningfully expressing themselves through the gameplay.

Once again, don't care that much concerning Fallout 4, anyway. This topic has always been an interesting debate to me, but I've had more fun with this game than I've had since Morrowind. Close enough is definitely good enough in this case -- but the next one can always be better!

True and some of those option make 0 sense, lets be real, why in name of god the BoS or the Khans will join with NCR. Not only the NCR have kill most of both factions, but the NCR have been on War with both faction on the past.

That is my point. I know NV handle faction better, but at the same time, allowing u to solve everything trow diplomatic (bc non lethal play-through) make 0 sense. Most when most of the lore on the game is base on war.

Hmm, i agree that BoS surrendering and waving in the NCR front makes little sense because of their creed and such .

But for the Khans is different, they're tribals, they might be considered like the natives that accept the peace with the colonialist powers in order to survive.

And yeah, in their eyes, an harsh peace with the NCR is better than the total annihilation.

However, in FO4 with have to deal with pretty much hyper-radicals from all factions, none of them, except the minutemans (you!) would be willing to make peace with their enemies, because the reasons behind the war are of primary safety - net existance threat.

Try to think it as if you were Maxson or Shaun or Desdemona.... would you entirely give up your principles? how would you pretend it from your enemies?

Institute vs Brotherhood: Technological supremacy being the main reason behind the war, neither side would willing to accept the other might have anything better than them that might pose their very existance into danger.

Institute vs Railroad: everlasting war, ideological gap/view on synth's life, impossible to find an agreement between them without either side giving up on their principles.

BoS vs Railroad: Same as above, even if between them isn't any real old hatred BoS views the synths as abominations, RR does consider them on pair with humans and willing to protect them and their freedom with own lifes, for either side, is a kill or be killed matter for which is no in between.

I wouldn't say join in any circumstance. It is a temporarily alliance vs a common enemy "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" sort of thing. Khans have no interest in more blood if it spells utter doom for them (they already got their nose bloodied at Bitter Springs). BoS, is well, but a mere shadow. They really have their backs to the wall, and can't risk a direct confrontation. Once The Legion is driven off, all bets are off regarding this temporarily uneasy alliance. So it makes perfect sense in my view.

Other than the Goodneighbor quests around the Shroud, I'm just not seeing much "wow that's cool," nor are there many character I care about.

Mind you, I'm not that far in, because the devs just basically phoned in the UI for PC and it's taken this long to even *mostly* fix that loose **** (thank you F4SE).

But even *those* quests are pretty much "go kill all the things," with a costume and radio show.

I am seeing a *ton* of missed opportunities in terms of what you could do with protectrons, negotiations, trading... instead I'm wandering somewhere and some gang faction randomly attacks me and I kill them all.

The radiant quests were a bit repetitive in Skyrim, but they seem more so now.

I don't know that some person or group is "to blame" per se, but it does seem the industry has decided Ultima was bad business and COD is good business.

I haven't read the whole thread, but I suspect that the main reason for the direction the game has evolved comes down to one thing: development and testing time.

The more you introduce branches into the "binary tree" of the game design, the more you create potentially unintended consequences, and/or the need for heavy-handed preventative mechanisms to prevent such unintended consequences. I would imagine that just the amount of options in the game at present produce a quite large number of permutations in terms of possible "end states."

The other issue is: design continuity. How many NPCs in FO1 or FO2 had speaking parts? How many lines did they deliver? What was the quality/fame/talent standard of those voice actors, and what was the total budget?

Speaking of voice acting, I have noticed that about every third person in the game is Garrus.

Being distinctive isn't always a boon.

In terms of the number of characters in game who are voiced by the same actor . . . I would guess we all might be surprised at how many characters we implicitly think of as being 'distinctive' are actually voiced by the same actor. I watched a video of a large fraction of the more notable voice actors that included an image of their character, the voice actor and a sample of their dialogue and I was surprised at how many different characters I had not connected as being the same actor.

End of the day, entertainment is all about smoke and mirrors and what convinces one member of the audience might not convince another. But it is all chicanery. Bethesda has shifted the tricks in their dog and pony show toward the middle value of the various demographics they estimate are potential customers. A game like FO2, with lots of unspoken dialogue that you have to read and anolyze and a few spoken characters wouldn't seem to be a very good mark for that "middle target."

Can anyone name a game made in the last 10 years with that much of a lack of immersive visual elements and that few of voiced actors (but that much choice and alternatives) which sold anywhere near as much as say Skyrim?

If a game that was more-or-less identical to say FO2 in terms of "structure" or "roleplaying dynamics" and with an equal lack of voiced characters, and an equal lack of immersive social interactive media presentations BUT with modernized 3d graphics and high resolutions (think JABIA?) were made . . . which is what a lot of players seem to want . . . the real question is: would it sell as well as FO4 is selling? Would it create as much of a cultural buzz? (Hell, my freaking Java instructor who plays ZERO games and who has a Ph.D. in information security has heard of the damn thing!).

Silent movies are classics and it is true the artistry of some of them will never be matched much less surpassed. But they will never again achieve the same market penetration they achieved when they were new. Art evolves.

Don't get me wrong, I would love it if every single character in the game had _some_ possibility to be interacted with AND if word of your reputation spread and had a sensible and realistic impact on all future interactions. Go around buddying up to Raiders but then bumping them off while they are asleep? Sure it might work the first couple times, but eventually word would get around and the end result might be the same: you become persona non grata to all raiders.

Try diplomatic solutions with everyone, including the most blood-thirsty, "settler-torturing" raiders, and never actually stab them in the back? Again, might work wonders for a while, but eventually word is going to get back to Preston and every other peaceable person in the Wasteland (including the BoS, RR, and maybe even the Institute) and pretty soon you are persona non grata to all the "non-hostile factions," which could effectively = 'game over' in terms of being able to "finish" the game via any of the established endings.

Caesar had to make an example out of Graham because failure is not tolerated. New Vegas and the NCR are both ideologic enemies. Another failure and the loss of raw fightingpower could be fatal even for big C himself. Caesar is actually doomed to die and prune to mental degeneration if you don't help him to fight his tumor. The next in line is always Lanius and Lanius may be a dreadfull commander but he still to narrowminded to consider a change of tactics. It is likley that this will hurt the Legion's moral when there is no success.
True but that doesn't mean he can't be used.

The Legion needs conquest to survive. Caesar is wise enough to see that the Legion needs to make the next step. When the Legion took Denver their economy proves how [censored] it actually is. They had far more trouble than they should have due to a lack of supplies because they can't raid enough. The Legion faces the same problem when they go back to their territory. They left a lot of scorched earth.

True, but Shaun is going to die, leadership of the institute will change in the near future.( always a good opportunity for a new start ) In best case, the new director is the SS who already has connections to BoS and RR. Being leader of the MM at the same time, the infiltration program and therefore the Gen 3 Synths become unnecessary anyways. When you stop Synth 3 production, the main reason for the conflict is gone. I won't say it will be easy, ( Maxson and Desmonda are proberbly still stubborn, but none of them is able to win without my help anyway ) ) but that is where I would see a small chance.

Diplomacy does not end with the major factions. We still have Diamond City, Bunker Hill, Goodneighbour and Vault 81. If every faction except the Railroad wins then their lives are drasticly going to change.

Minutemen, BOS and Institute all seek to controll the Commonwealth in one way or another. This doesn't get adressed at all. The Victor will not ignore them.

BTW Making 3 major factions out of 4 mutually exclusiv just shows the one dimentional design direction. They should have at least expanded it with more minor factions/ faction interaction.

I'm assuming you mean the SM destroying the Followers of the Apocalypse, not Children. Just a FYI, that is a bug in the game, no matter how you complete the game you will always get the FoTA is destroyed by SM, because the quest needed to prevent said ending was cut from the game, and so the opposite condition, FoTA being fine, can never be accomplished. So yeah, we can't stop it from happening.

Lastly, I disagree that any diplomatic solution should be because of a flaw in the code. If the story is going to allow for one, then it should be written, otherwise it just fake garbage.

Whew! Just before the thread was locked!

I agree completely with this, and I think there's more. Bethesda games have grown along a different path altogether from the original Interplay titles. Whereas Interplay developed a strong storyline with gripping characters and a system that focused on character interaction with a cool, but hardly centerpiece, world -- Bethesda focuses on creating expansive, handcrafted environments (every direction you look at any moment is a vista), and then "filling" them with characters and a story.

It's two different approaches, and of course, you always trade something away if you choose the path A instead of path B. You mention how few speaking characters there were in Fallout 1 and 2, but their stories were told through all of the dialogue (the written stuff and voice-acted parts). Most of the characters were much more distinctive and created much more flavor. They were better evolved and felt far more Dynamic. (Ironically, the AI for companions was about as terrible as Bethesda's...and they were much less developed than non-companion NPCs). That's because Interplay chose to focus on this aspect of development over better graphics or a more detailed combat system. (Honestly, they put most of the graphical "oomph" into the awesomely graphic combat death animations and the cool animated expressions for the limited face-to-face dialogue system. The majority of the world [while cool!] was all made from the same handful of tilesets in both games.)

_______________

Beth has really got something amazing with their world-building skills, but I think that structure better serves the more free-form gameplay of TES than it does Fallout. (I'm not complaining -- I'm just criticizing because it's a valid point for future consideration.) I think TES needs less focus on a "main story" and more focus on a "main goal".

It would be nice for the game to tell you: "Save the world from Alduin! You could join the Legion/Stormcloaks...but you do what you want. Bye!" That's it. No, "Go see the Jarl of Whiterun, then get the Dragonstone, then talk to this innkeep (who's really a spy!), then..."

Forget all of that. Just set the player loose. Whenever they meet a new faction (Whiterun, Solitude, The Greybeards, The Companions, the College...) they can speak to the leadership and have a chance to understand that faction's goals:

-The Blades want to destroy Alduin and banish him forever

-The Legion wishes to do the same, but not until the War is decided

-The Stormcloaks want to capture Alduin and harness his power

-The Mage's College wants to trade knowledge with him to broker a peace

-The Theive's Guild wants to use this to escalate the war so they have easier pickings

-The Greybeards worship Alduin in their own way, and want to bring him to surrender and admit the voice of men is stronger...

-Etc.

The player simply picks a side or three, and pursues the game to a conclusion. The conclusion that best fits the vision of their character.

Fallout requires a bit more narrative structure, as it is not so much about a free-form adventure to whatever end, but more of a social dialogue of human society, vices, and corruption. I think Fallout wants a more structured and cinematic approach to capture the themes originally created by the originals. It's more about meaningful interactions with NPCs during conversations -- more about the How and Why behind what you choose to do -- more about the setup that leads to a set-piece confrontation and the "fallout" of its conclusion... -- and less about roaming around looking for a random bandit camps to loot.

great post.

I agree, very well said Plebian. I try to read every other users posts with an open mind and let it influence my thinking process maybe even learn from it. Sometimes you eventually have to just suspend that in the face of intuitively un-reconcilable inconsistencies. For example, there were some guys on here in weeks past saying "I've finished _the WHOLE_ game in 100 hours!" At the time few of us had more than 100 hours of play, and so we maybe scratched our heads and expressed disbelief. Having now played if 4 or 5 times that much, I can say with great confidence that such a claim was utter BS. There is far too much "hidden" or "obscure" content and far too many layers to much of the content.

To anyone who thinks they've "finished" it, one can simply ask:

1. Have you fully explored all the "caves?" (meaning those places that go by that "name")

2. Have you found and fully reconciled all the crashed "vessels?" (some of which will crash sometime AFTER the first time you pass their "crash site")

3. Have you fully investigated the whereabouts and/or final disposition of all the named residents of the Boston metro area who are referenced in materials or dialogues in games (this one is huge, but I can tell you, in at least some cases the loose ends can be tied up, so maybe all of them?)

I'm tempted to respond to the myriad flavors of "this game should have been more like FONV or the older FOs" with similar empirical questions:

4. Have you actually tallied up the number of locations, total area of navigable land, drawn out the binary trees for all the quest lines and done every other act of documentation and anolysis necessary to objectively say with confidence: "FO4 has less choice" or "FO4 has more kill, kill, KILL?"

It may be true that FO4 "feels" like it has less choice or has more "kill, kill, KILL" at least for you and the way you play the game, but can you objectively SAY that (for example) FONV had LESS kill, kill, KILL? Can you even describe what empirical comparisons would be necessary to judge such a claim?

It would seem that, one would at least need a database representation of all the quests or other 'consequential' scenarios in both games, and some sort of quantitative variables that represent whether there are "non-killing" alternatives to accomplish the goals of the scenario (though as someone pointed out, this would necessarily get complicated by a play style in which the PC uses other in game actors to kill on their behalf, or situations where lack of action by the PC leads to death). In the absence of such empirical evidence, I will have to go with my own 'gut feeling' on the question and conclude that: there is a lot of "killing" in all the Fallout games, and _most_ quests are most obviously and easily resolved by doing some killing. Perhaps there were slightly more options in FONV that did not involve direct involvement by the PC in killing in FONV than in FO4, but I honestly don't feel confident of that. I remember doing a LOT of killing in FONV. I also remember plenty of dialogues with more branches in them and where various attribute checks were involved, but at the end assessment, my recollection is that MOST quests in FONV were no different in overall structure to those in FO4: a. Go here; b. Find entity or object; c. take or interact with entity or object (and in the case of that latter sometimes led to interesting cinematics like the rocket launch, but the same is also true of some quests in FO4 . . .); d. *Ping!* get completed quest tag + XP, else (and here I sense there really is a proportional difference in FONV compared to FO4); e. return to quest-giver and get tag + XP.

Most of the differences that stick out for me are the visuals and the lack of voice protagonist (which I think is the wave of the future, and I argue that most of you will see the light once the first "Voiced Protagonist Mods" come out and you get to play through the whole game with a male Cheech impersonator's voice, or a female Lady GaGA, or a male Randy Savage, Snoop Dogg, female Sandra Burnhart, etc., etc., etc. . . . HELL! each of us could just do the voice recording in our OWN normal voices and then apply whatever regional dialect we exhibit to the title et voila! totally different flavor of game! Believe me, you guys are going to LOVE playing the male protagonist with my sarcastic Missouri drawl!). I think most of the "differences" in story and narrative structure are probably overblown and moreover, I doubt that enough players have honestly played the game enough to truly GET the full structure of FO4.

I think FO4 is like a kimono-clad courtesan Samurai; she Jumps out and lops off heads left and right, but then as far as what is under that garment, she reveals a little more over time and slowly.

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