y

First of before I go into my scathing criticism I'd like to say that I love almost everything about this game. The environment is one of the best ever in an open world game. Some areas are incredibly atmospheric. The Glowing Sea reminds me of STALKER in some ways. The city of Boston is vast and filled with content. The vertibird flight and settlements are an astonishing technical acheivement. The story and concepts behind the Institute and Brotherhood of Steel are phenomenal. The motivations behind those factions are complex, morally grey, believable, and logical (mostly). The combat is far better than Fallout 3 and is highly challenging on even lower difficulties.

Ok here is the problem...a really really big problem that Bethesda should have NEVER overlooked for even a second. It is so big that it greatly diminishes most of the good things in this game....

I can't make the character that I want!!!!

Nevermind that our entire backstory was already chosen for us and consistes of ONE OPTION! It gets worse than that. What is the point of a lush and active open world if I'm forced to be a good natured, emotionally sensitive parent from beginning to end?! At no point in the entire game as far as I can recall was I ever allowed to be a complete jerk in any conversation. Every single dialogue choice consists of:

1. polite and sweet

2. polite and indirect

3. polite but impatient

4. coyish and adorable

I don't have any problem with the character having voice acting because it is very easy to modify the file and change the tone/pitch of the voice file. My problem is how meaningless most conversation choices are and how brief and devoid of content my character's sentences are. You really cannot piss off any character in the major quest lines even if you really want to. Angering and destroying your relations with any faction is ultimtely accidental and may or may not have been something that your character really wanted. If you try to become a complete monster and massacre entire towns and cities, the game basically breaks. The characters will not even remember that you did that. Fallout 3 wasn't much better in this regard but at least there was the Megaton incident. I can't be a bad guy in conversation and If I try to be a bad guy via deeds, the game punishes me for going outside the narrowly defined preset character personality and BREAKS ITSELF. How could the wasteland not notice that the guy/gal from Vault 111 singlehandedly massacred the population of the great green jewel?! Why couldn't Bethesda just write a few lines of dialogue here and there to remind me that the wasteland hates and/or fears me? Clearly I am the most famous person in the wasteland. Why not have raider groups suddenly appear and try to sweet talk me into joining them?

Why does the most lethal and brutal fighter in the commonwealth sound like he/she is about to cry in nearly every encounter with an NPC?!

I'm leaving out the problems with the main quest just to avoid spoilers but I'm sure we can all think of a few wasted opportunities when it came to our relations with the main characters.

My proposed solution is that Bethesda should from now on completely SCRAP the intro scene backstory. They should do something similar to what New Vegas did. You wake up in a situation that could happen to anyone tough enough to survive it, not just good natured soccor moms who never really wanted to hurt anyone. Give us a choice in who our character is. I love the morally grey story that you guys wrote for the factions but please allow us to do the same with our character!

Until then, I can't call this game an open world sandbox. It doesn't know what it is....yet

Here is an example of what I would have liked to see:

"You bastards took my family and my life away from me. Now I'm going to F you up! Give me what I want or I'll turn this town into rubble!"

No more super sensitive soccor mom crap....

That's one of the reasons I did not purchase Fallout 4 at all, still. Because of that dialogue like everyone else says the four choices. Yes, yes, no, yes and the dialogue wheel.

I don't think I can ever stand video games with a dialogue system like that and four choices for dialogue.

The Mass Effect video games are just about the only video games I'm ok with having the four choices, all of the other video games no. I like having dialogue lines and more than four choices with more than one branching paths.

And I also like having failable quests as well.

The quests were really good. It's just too bad that my character can't DELIBERATELY fail anything or backstab anyone. We are always forced to try and be a good person even if we fail. Not cool.

Having no failable quests and always being a good person svcks .

I think this just confirms that not even mods will never ever make me purchase Fallout 4 ever.

I like being a bad person every now and then in Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas.

I want people to hate me or like me depending on the choices I make.

I am interested in playing a young female scientist with an adorable personality. That's lucky for me because outside of that archetype, the game options completely evaporate.

I could sort of attempt to be a badass soldier in the Brotherhood of steel but that only works if I avoid most conversations outside of that questline. As soon as my badass killer starts SOBBING about his son and being utterly polite to Institute and Railroad staff, the immersion just falls apart....ugh

The sarcastic options sound particularly absurd coming from the mouth of the male character. My gawd....

Failed quests are very real in Fallout 4, and very possible to accomplish. This is not a game where you an simply agree to do something for somebody, then sit on you ass and expect everyone to wait around indefinitely for you to get around to it...eventually...some day.

You shouldn't pass judgement on something you don't know enough about. Buy and play the game first, then make your decisions. Until then, your opinions and criticisms of the game hold zero weight.

I know immortal companions and immortal NPC's is a no for me. I hated the Essential NPC's system ever since The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion released for sale.

The removal of armor and weapons degradation system.

And level scaling of both loot and NPC's.

And this is related to failed quests, how?

Look, don't mistake me for someone who doesn't have gripes with Beth and their handling of the games they make. I have, and have aired my gripes with them on plenty of occasions, but every single one of their games I've criticized, I had the good sense to at least play it before I passed judgement on it.

...and, for all my complaints (and I do have many) I have managed to find a way to enjoy their games regardless of their shortcomings.

Second on second play through now and there is really no variation at all. I want to see the endings but it is going to be a long boring slog of more of the same. It's hard to get in the mood when I can't really choose my personality.

What the hell are you talking about? Quests are not timed.

You are wrong on your first point and then you accuse me of being ignorant about the game.

Stop talking...just stop

There are timed quests, I've failed one. However they all seem to be unimportant like save kidnapped settler (the one I failed).
Might have had something else to say. May Edit.
Edit: Yep. Two things.
1: Defend your settlements quests are obviously timed. Probably didn't need to add this.
2: You can role play you just need more imagination. I'm gonna start a second character who was a Chinese spy. Imagination everybody. Think within the box but grow strange. Like an irradiated plant. Grow strange with imagination!

I respectfully disagree with the original post and think that this particular area is part of what makes Fallout 4 such a great game.

But art will never please everyone.

I typed up a whole big post pointing out stuff, that had already been pointed out in many other threads before, so I just erased it.

People are basically asking for Bethsada Game Studio's to not be BSG anymore, to be more like some other company and to change their whole focus to something else entirely all under the assumption that the next game of course will have all of the amazing things that the company is already known for.

Some don't want a clone of your other favorite game because its not even on our like list.

Iv'e enjoyed playing the game but most of the time, the dialogue wheel, no matter what you chose takes you down a one way path. That's not to say you don't have choices to make because you do on many of the quest. This may not make sense but I feel Bethesda works so hard creating the world you find yourself in with their games, the people of this world are there to just keep throwing you back out into this world. Your main interaction is with the world you find yourself in. This isn't true with FONV. Your main interaction is with people and the world takes a back seat.

I'm still playing the game, trying to piece together the big picture because there are so many unanswered questions. I'm hoping the answers are there and Iv'e just not found them yet. I love playing the game.

OP has zero idea wtf he's even talking about...Quite a few failable quests...

Armor I could see, but I'm glad they ditched the weapon degradation. If you can't do it right, don't do it, and Fallout 3/Fallout: New Vegas didn't do it right.

I'd say it's about companions. Generally it's assumed that when the player finds a quest he will probably want to do it, so the dialogue tree gives you multiple ways to say yes and only rarely a way to say no. The multiple versions of yes seems to have the purpose of raising or lowering companion disposition rather than impacting the quest. Piper likes it when you are helpful, but not when you ask for pay while Cait is the opposite, for example.

In Bethesda games I always play the nice guy on my first playthrough, then on my second I play the murdering [censored] that steals and pillages his way around. I think a lot of people like to do that, to experience both sides.

I've yet to start my second playthrough, but I'm looking forward to it just to see how limited the dialogue is for myself. I'm thinking of calling it my 'HATE NEWSPAPERS' playthrough, it seems like thats quickly becoming a Fallout 4 meme.

I think Bethesda did not want to give people a dialog option that would allow them to insult someone to the point where a normal person would just end the conversation.

I wished that there were just some downright evil conversation options for characters to make things more interesting for an evil playthrough.

I find it really odd that people blow sunshine out of CDPR's backside for The Witcher and then moan and complain about Bethesda. Fallout 4 in terms of character options and even dialogue choices and character pathing makes The Witcher 3 look tepid, yet there is so much praise for W3 and its 'complex' story and choices.

But complaining is what all the cool kids do, it is all the rage on the Facebooks and the YousTube. Who wants to be the nerd that actually likes things and enjoys themselves when you can be a critic and whine about everything?

The hipster must constantly demonstrate his superiority over the drooling masses by panning whatever it is that they approve of, even when he approved of it himself before it became popular.

Well isn't that something. I always figured that this was a glitch

Could you be more specific?

What you just said does not make any sense. I did not mention any other games (other than a very small point about the beginning of NV).

The fetch quests are a clone of every other lazily made game that has mostly fetch quests. You cannot seriously be accusing the design for being too original for me....