[QUOTE=gbtygfvyg;49147693]Fucking Mirelurks would be 80% of the enemies.[/QUOTE]
Gatorlurks.
[QUOTE=Ganerumo;49131921]No it's not ? Bethesda games have always had this option. The story is always built around that aspect, even.
Nothing in Daggerfall motivates you to accomplish your imperial duties once your ship has crashed, other than honor - you can just become a deserter and never bother following your orders.
You're straight up told early in Morrowind that your orders aren't [I]that[/I] important, and that they won't mind if you take time to complete them, because by the start of the game everyone thinks it's just weird superstitions and mostly a waste of time and money to pursue it. If you go a little bit further in the MQ anyway, it becomes apparent that the prophecy isn't actually a 100% chance and that you're not [I]the[/I] nerevarine, just a candidate, meaning that the idea that you, as a potential reincarnation, never bothered moving forward and ended up just being some random guy is not only a possibility but an actual plot point.
In Oblivion you're told by an emperor and his bodyguard to bring the amulet to Jaufre but the game immediately drops you in a big ass world with no genuine motivation to actually bring it to Jaufre other than impending doom.
Skyrim allows you to immediately cower out of the situation when whoever you saved tells you that you should probably split up, at some point you can run in the completely opposite direction and never see them again. Alternatively, you can simply never answer the call of the greybeards, or never bother fetching some old stone from an annoying wizard.
All of the TES games have the additional story aspect that you start as a prisoner, meaning your character has an immediate reason to bail out on the main quest - you're not trustworthy, or you don't trust the empire because they tossed you in prison, often with no real reason or because of a streak of incompetence. If you want to roleplay as a cowardly, or otherwise distant character that doesn't really want to bother with this whole thing, you can.
Oh and Fallout 3 straight up has a holotape early in the game that has your dad telling you to [I]not find him[/I]. From this point on you can either follow the main quest and find him or you can obey him and just live your life in the wasteland. Eitherway and in all of those games you get access to the majority of the side quests plus all of the map and such.
[editline]a[/editline]
Fallout New Vegas (and Fallout 4) also follow that concept, by the way. Once you're out of Doc Mitchell's house, it's up to you to decide whether you want to go on with your assignment for pretty much nothing but vengeance and a very meager financial reward, or to take the opportunity to move on with your life and do something else instead. Your character being a courier and an otherwise blank slate, it's easy to assume he could have just been an aimless wanderer before and still wants to be an aimless wanderer now.
Additionally, and that's especially true for both New Vegas and Fallout 4, the story gives you several opportunities to just stop progressing and not break the flow or the story altogether. Since the story of all fallout games are always divided in two acts, one of which is upclose and personal and related to more direct matters (save the vault, save your village, find your dad, find benny, find your son) and a second act turned more towards the wasteland and a wider goal that affects a lot more people (the master's army, the enclave, the water purifier, hoover dam, [sp]the institute[/sp]), the games are designed to allow for the player to essentially stop after they've done the original task and never transition into the second half if they feel like their roleplayed character wouldn't be interested in these matters.
It's what differentiates Fallout and TES from most RPGs - the sense that you have the choice to do and the choice not to. In The Witcher, if you stop doing the main quest, the game just stops moving forward, you lose access to large chunks of the map, and you run out of sidequests relatively fast, with very few side quests that actually take as long as the MQ. Most RPGs revolve entirely around the main quest, with sidequests only being a means to ease the advance of the MQ, but that's not the case for Bethesda's game. It's not a superior or an inferior design decision, it's a rather different take on the genre that makes the games great and especially solid for actual roleplaying, which is why it's always bothered me that people call them "not RPGs", when they're some of the few games that actually fulfill to near perfection the original point of pen and paper RPGs - which is to roleplay.[/QUOTE]
This isn't what I was talking about though. In those other games you could do the main quest and still roleplay a bad guy. Morrowind's MQ has you do illegal business and it's up to the player to decide whether it's for a good cause or they're just evil. In Oblivion you stop Mehrunes Dagon from invading Tamriel, but that doesn't make you a good person, it just means you don't want to be invaded. It's the same with Skyrim, the main quest is just a case of stopping Alduin the World Eater from eating the world. In FO3 you go out to find dad but that's about it, beyond that you're your own character. New Vegas starts as a quest of revenge, motivation enough for anyone good or evil and then your choices affect the fate of the Mojave for better or worse.
None of those quests really force you into a certain personality. If you want to do the main quest of FO4 then you're stuck as a whiny emotional parent, tough shit if you wanted anyone else. In the post that I originally quoted you said if you want to roleplay otherwise you should avoid the main quest, but that's my point, you shouldn't have to. Every other game we both described allows the player to do the main quest without pushing this one particular character. Fallout 4 should follow suit and let you roleplay in the [B]main quest of a role-playing game[/B] but as you yourself indicated, it really doesn't.
[QUOTE=simkas;49117945]Fallout: New Florida would be rad. Imagine all the irradiated swamps with fucked up mutated alligators and other weird fucked up swamp creatures.[/QUOTE]
And then it takes place in Jacksonville lol
[editline]20th November 2015[/editline]
Skunk Ape 1/100 chance random encounter
About the dialogue system, it pains me to see that Bethesda went from this very intricate and detailed keyword-driven system in Morrowind to a emotion wheel where each of your choices is just a hue of the same canned response in Fallout 4.
But the keyword driven system definitely had its faults, sure. Sometimes the amount of topics was just completely overwhelming, and for each dialogue you chose, another 12 choices would pop up to the point where you'd wonder when the flood of dialogue would finally end. For those people who don't want to read all the stuff to get on with the story (and there is a lot of text that's completely irrelevant, you can literally end up just clicking keywords), that can be really tedious to get through, especially when the trigger for a specific quest is hidden in that dialogue. And it also didn't really allow the player to see what kind of questions would be asked -- would the NPC in question be angered by mentioning the topic or not? How would a single keyword formulate into a question, and how would that be received? And it also doesn't really give you any options of snarky responses, being a mean bastard or a good person.
It did have formulated sentence every now and then, but in those cases it would usually be crucial questions that you can't back out of and had to answer. For either answer you took, some gates would be closed on you, which I find quite restrictive. And finally, the persuasion system was also kind of barebones in execution in Morrowind. You'd usually just spam the same button in hopes of either pissing the person off to the point of attacking you, or to get him to like you so he'd answer your questions.
What it did allow however was for a lot of backstory, be it on the world, on the NPCs you meet, on the main-quest or completely unrelated things that didn't even have quests associated to them, it was so much more than just a generic "Rumors" button with canned mudcrab responses that Oblivion had. It also allows for easier modding, since the dialogue was completely unvoiced in Morrowind.
The listed dialogue system from Fallout 1-2, and the similar ones from Fallout 3, New Vegas, Skyrim and Oblivion also have their merits and drawbacks.
It allows for voice acting with a reasonable budget (imagine the Morrowind system with voice acting, the costs would go into the immeasurable for all the dialogue there was), and you could view what your character would say to NPCs. It allows for more direct conversations, where the player is way more invested in. Having a shorter list of options to choose from can also make the dialogue more interesting, because you'll exactly know what the question is, and you're not just clicking through vague keywords where you don't know what kind of info is going to be displayed. But on the other hand you're often going to end up talking to generic NPCs that have nothing more interesting to say to you than just a single dialogue of generic rumors, like it was so often the case in Oblivion (in Skyrim I'm not too sure, but of the little I played, it's probably not too different).
In a lot of ways, this system shines where the keyword system fails, and the opposite is also true. Personally I like this one better when it's done right, especially like in the Fallout games.
But the Bioware emotion-wheel seems to just take the worst of both systems and drastically restricts your choices even further to boot. You get neither the informative aspect of the keyword system, nor do you get the elaborate responses from the listed dialogue. You get to choose from a wheel of 4 vague keywords, to which the player character then generates his own response that you have no chance of predicting, since you can't really measure what "Yes", "No", "Sarcastic" and "Unsure" means in the context the character is in, and you don't know how the developer himself might have valued that response.
And since the character is voiced you're railroaded into sounding like a specific type of person, no matter what your actions were so far. It seems like they were trying to do a specific kind of story, with a specific kind of pre-determined protagonist while still allowing for the same free choices as in the previous Fallouts (to a degree). It also feels like something that is tailored for the kind of player that doesn't really have the patience to read through any dialogue he's giving, and just wants to shoot shit in the wasteland. I mean I can understand that sentiment for the amount of text in Morrowind, but for the Fallout system? Come on.
With every step forward in gameplay mechanics, they seem to take a step back in dialogue and story.
Hopefully they won't do it again with the next installment, or go even further by replacing the plot-essential dialogue with pre-rendered cutscenes. Now that would be a new low for Bethesda.
[QUOTE=Jackald;49151460]To me an RPG is defined by having a heavy emphasis on stats, characters fulfilling specific roles (as in Tank, magic, rogue, charisma, a specific build), and optional quests. An RPG doesn't have to have all three, it just has to focus on those elements to an extent.
Dungeons & Dragons (tabletop) - Lots of heavy stats, characters are in strict roles, quests are entirely freeform. Heavily an RPG, arguably the most RPG possible.
Dragon's Dogma - Stats, characters take up roles, optional quests. It's an RPG.
Dark Souls - Stats, your character takes on a certain role, but not-so-optional questing. Still an RPG, but less so than Dragon's Dogma
Fallout 3 - Stats, your character takes on a specific role, optional questing. It's an RPG
Fallout 4 - Not so much emphasis on stats, not as rigid roles, optional questing. It's an RPG, but less-so than Fallout 3.
Deus Ex - Not really many stats, you can kinda build Jensen to be a certain way, optional question. An RPG, but not as much as other examples.
Kingdom Hearts - a little emphasis on stats, but you don't build a character much and you don't do optional quests. It's not really an RPG.
Call of Duty 4 - No emphasis on stats, you don't build a character to be a specific role, and there's no optional quests. It's not an RPG.
[editline]20th November 2015[/editline]
The "role playing" in "Role playing game", i've always taken to mean the role you take in a party rather than role in the story. Like if you play as a tank or a wizard or a stealth bastard or what have you, that's your role. A game that lets you do everything at once isn't really letting you be a role.[/QUOTE]
lmao, your defintion of RPG comes down to PnP mechanics. Newsflash, you don't need PnP mechanics to be an RPG.
[QUOTE=Jackald;49151460]To me an RPG is defined by having a heavy emphasis on stats, characters fulfilling specific roles (as in Tank, magic, rogue, charisma, a specific build), and optional quests. An RPG doesn't have to have all three, it just has to focus on those elements to an extent.
Dungeons & Dragons (tabletop) - Lots of heavy stats, characters are in strict roles, quests are entirely freeform. Heavily an RPG, arguably the most RPG possible.
Dragon's Dogma - Stats, characters take up roles, optional quests. It's an RPG.
Dark Souls - Stats, your character takes on a certain role, but not-so-optional questing. Still an RPG, but less so than Dragon's Dogma
Fallout 3 - Stats, your character takes on a specific role, optional questing. It's an RPG
Fallout 4 - Not so much emphasis on stats, not as rigid roles, optional questing. It's an RPG, but less-so than Fallout 3.
Deus Ex - Not really many stats, you can kinda build Jensen to be a certain way, optional question. An RPG, but not as much as other examples.
Kingdom Hearts - a little emphasis on stats, but you don't build a character much and you don't do optional quests. It's not really an RPG.
Call of Duty 4 - No emphasis on stats, you don't build a character to be a specific role, and there's no optional quests. It's not an RPG.
[editline]20th November 2015[/editline]
The "role playing" in "Role playing game", i've always taken to mean the role you take in a party rather than role in the story. Like if you play as a tank or a wizard or a stealth bastard or what have you, that's your role. A game that lets you do everything at once isn't really letting you be a role.[/QUOTE]
Dude Deus Ex is a pretty fucking major RPG. It has the RP part down really well. I mean that game is nothing but shaping JC and the entire world around you from dialog and just organic actions. Along with stats, gear, and augmentation.
[QUOTE=HoodedSniper;49152564]Dude Deus Ex is a pretty fucking major RPG. It has the RP part down really well. I mean that game is nothing but shaping JC and the entire world around you from dialog and just organic actions. Along with stats, gear, and augmentation.[/QUOTE]
I think he meant human revolution in particular
Well for some people you just need a character to play for it to be an RPG.
aka people who don't know what RPG's are. Like Todd Howard who once said on the bethesda podcast that Red Dead Redemption was his favorite RPG of that year.
I think RPGs are meant to be designed with player freedom in mind. The 'Role' in roleplaying is a double entendre, meaning either the role your character plays in the story (typically being the driving force that can attempt and force the narrative where they want it to go [those pesky players!]) or by the role your player has in combat.
In the tabletop world, games focused entirely on stats and mechanics are typically categorized as Wargames. Games with little focus on stats or mechanics are Storytelling games. The Role-Playing Game ala D&D is the strike of balance between the two, making players use character to not only star in a story, but to also resolve the conflicts and overcome the challenges in those story by mechanical means. Usually when one game strays to far to one side, it becomes an 'X w/ RPG elements'.
Now, while Alpha Protocol and Mass Effect (and Fallout 4) have a less crunchy vision of 'stats', they are all RPGs in the way that they not only promote player freedom to affect the story as well as choose the way they wish to play the game in terms of how the resolve conflict. Some games offer this freedom better than others, but the point is that they do all offer it.
[editline]20th November 2015[/editline]
oh wow no editing posts that's cool, now I can't change 'combat' to 'the gameplay and mechanics'
[editline]20th November 2015[/editline]
and also should've stated that my definitions in the 'tabletop' paragraph are give-or-take and I don't think of them [I]that[/I] dogmatically.
Honestly, if it has a leveling and progression system along with a major focus on story, I'd consider it as an RPG.
As dumbed down and streamlined as the mechanics are in Fallout 4, and as bad as the writing is, it still has a core leveling and progression system as well as a focus on its (horribly done) story. Therefore, I'd still classify it as an RPG.
CoD's multiplayer has a leveling system, but there's no story in the multiplayer, so I wouldn't consider it as an RPG. Even though, by today's standards, it certainly could pass for one.
Deus Ex, both 1 and HR, I consider RPGs. Both have leveling systems as well as a major focus on their stories.
I may not like what Bethesda is doing with Fallout, but that doesn't mean that I don't respect their efforts, and I'm going around pretending that the game is something that it isn't.
I'd love to see more RPGs with Morrowinds caliber today, still play that game every so often even now.
I can fully understand issues people have with that type of RPGs though, not wanting to spend time setting up skill builds, or wanting combat to be more relevant to how good they as a player are - rather than their character.
More to the point, I completely consider Fallout 4 to be an RPG, albeit a rather simple one.
And I'm really not a fan of how they did the level-up through perk system, makes it feel like your levels don't really matter, except for being an arbitrary number blocking you from picking certain perks.
[QUOTE=Rahu X;49153633]Honestly, if it has a leveling and progression system along with a major focus on story, I'd consider it as an RPG.
As dumbed down and streamlined as the mechanics are in Fallout 4, and as bad as the writing is, it still has a core leveling and progression system as well as a focus on its (horribly done) story. Therefore, I'd still classify it as an RPG.
CoD's multiplayer has a leveling system, but there's no story in the multiplayer, so I wouldn't consider it as an RPG. [B]Even though, by today's standards, it certainly could pass for one.
[/B]
Deus Ex, both 1 and HR, I consider RPGs. Both have leveling systems as well as a major focus on their stories.
I may not like what Bethesda is doing with Fallout, but that doesn't mean that I don't respect their efforts, and I'm going around pretending that the game is something that it isn't.[/QUOTE]
uhh, no it wouldn't
STALKER is more of an RPG than CoD is and STALKER has almost so semblance of stats or leveling systems other than its completely static gear tree
why are we arguing about the definition of an RPG when the real question is why does bethesda suck at writing stories so hard
[QUOTE=HAKKAR!!!;49160675]why are we arguing about the definition of an RPG when the real question is why does bethesda suck at writing stories so hard[/QUOTE]
Too much time bug fixing and trying to update a painfully old engine is my bet. But even then it's not THAT hard to structure things just a little better. 4 is definitely an improvement but it feels like the MQ just got overtly simplified past half way.
[QUOTE=HAKKAR!!!;49160675]why are we arguing about the definition of an RPG when the real question is why does bethesda suck at writing stories so hard[/QUOTE]
At least it's an improvement over their past few games. It's still sloppy [sp]and the protagonist/family stuff is crap[/sp] but parts of it are good.
[QUOTE=HAKKAR!!!;49160675]why are we arguing about the definition of an RPG when the real question is why does bethesda suck at writing stories so hard[/QUOTE]
It's difficult to write a compelling story when the game offers pretty much integral freedom on anything not regarding the story.
It's either you write a really good story but the character, game progression, levels and pretty much everything else is locked into place (ie The Witcher), or you give the player the ability to drastically change the character, give them full control over where to go, what to do, how to do it and such, and you end up with a boring/mediocre story.
Bethesda would get shit on even more for going exclusively for the first option - proof being, fallout 4 sort of gave it a shot by giving the character a bit more personality, and people universally screamed about it, regardless of the prospect of mods allowing the player to flat out erase any present personality.
Morrowind had a good story because it was basically a giant mindfuck and it was only interesting because it was set in such a weird alien world. It wasn't a good plot, it was just a good setting.
Basically, Bethesda can't (and shouldn't) focus on storywriting, because it'd cut down on development of all other areas significantly. I don't care about how well written the story is if I get to walk around a wasteland with all sorts of weird guns and scavenge around for ammo and food.
They [I]are[/I] improving in a lot of ways even regarding writing (the sarcastic options are amazing) but it's not their main goal and I'm fine with that. If I want a good involving story, I'll go play another game, one that's not fully open world for a start.
You can just remove the voice lines and use the mod that's already out which puts out the full lines on the screen.
You were always restrained to a set of responses in fallout games, the only reason why people complain is because the protag is voiced by a (reasonably neutral) sounding actor this time.
To be honest the dialog options using any other skill than speech in the previous games felt really dumb because it'd basically widely invalidate the use of charisma/speech (since the majority of the dialogue related options weren't even linked to these two stats but instead to a ton of other shit) and would essentially boil down to "min-max this stat if you want an easy pass through a quest" options rather than anything actually roleplaying related.
And back then, people still complained about the writing for these options being shoddy and stuff like intelligence check dialogue options being really dumb (ie you need an intelligence of at least 7 to count to five) - both in fallout 3 and new vegas, the latter being praised for its great writing in every other instance than these dialogue options.
If you level up perks related to blowing shit up and killing things, then you're rewarded with better blowing shit up and killing things, not with dumb complete-this-quest-easily speech options.
[QUOTE=Ganerumo;49161224]It's difficult to write a compelling story when the game offers pretty much integral freedom on anything not regarding the story.
It's either you write a really good story but the character, game progression, levels and pretty much everything else is locked into place (ie The Witcher), [B]or you give the player the ability to drastically change the character, give them full control over where to go, what to do, how to do it and such, and you end up with a boring/mediocre story.
[/B]
Bethesda would get shit on even more for going exclusively for the first option - proof being, fallout 4 sort of gave it a shot by giving the character a bit more personality, and people universally screamed about it, regardless of the prospect of mods allowing the player to flat out erase any present personality.
Morrowind had a good story because it was basically a giant mindfuck and it was only interesting because it was set in such a weird alien world. It wasn't a good plot, it was just a good setting.
Basically, Bethesda can't (and shouldn't) focus on storywriting, because it'd cut down on development of all other areas significantly. I don't care about how well written the story is if I get to walk around a wasteland with all sorts of weird guns and scavenge around for ammo and food.
They [I]are[/I] improving in a lot of ways even regarding writing (the sarcastic options are amazing) but it's not their main goal and I'm fine with that. If I want a good involving story, I'll go play another game, one that's not fully open world for a start.[/QUOTE]
So... NV?
New Vegas is the same deal as Morrowind. It's a mediocre as fuck plot, but it has a good setting and excellent characters.
The actual main storyline of New Vegas is forgettable at best.
i dont get why the story is getting shit on so much, whats wrong with it?
[QUOTE=RichyZ;49161335]idk i think the skill based dialog options added to the roleplaying experience, whereas the lack of them detract from it in 4
funfact: every quest in fallout 4 can be done by every character regardless of skills, and only less than a handful have any sort of skillcheck, optional or otherwise
that is a problem, your character shouldn't be the god emperor of mankind capable of fixing everything straight from the get-go, with the only thing stopping you from doing everything is spongey enemies and leveled lists preventing you from using any stronger weapons[/QUOTE]
But the point of roleplaying is that you're willing to ignore some aspects of gameplay to fit your character. Having the opposite be true (ie you're [I]forced[/I] to play a certain way based on those stats you leveled up early on in the game) would just alienate all the players for nothing.
[editline]22nd November 2015[/editline]
[QUOTE=Vasey105;49161349]i dont get why the story is getting shit on so much, whats wrong with it?[/QUOTE]
It's pretty generic in a few aspects and people complain that your character actually has some motivation and isn't motivated because he saw pages of the script floating around.
New Vegas and Fallout 4 have the exact same quest progression though.
First act is a simple task and your factions don't matter.
Second act you have to choose one of four factions, and you're given a lot of quests.
Past a certain point, you become the enemy of the other factions, and you get mostly railroaded into the main quest until it ends.
In New Vegas your actions also had no impact on the factions. It was either "you helped the faction but you were a bad guy so your actions were questioned" or "you helped the faction and you were a good guy so you were bros". Only the secondary factions and sidequests were impacted by your actions.
[editline]a[/editline]
Also Fallout isn't a conventional pen & paper RPG and hasn't been since Fallout 2 (fallout 1 and 2 were already very simplified, casual versions of traditional RPGs, by the way), stop expecting it to work like a traditional p&p rpg in vanilla.
yeah i agree with you on the getting them to change their minds on stuff since really they should listen to you, but i do think the endings are a more of a test of character, since each faction has its ups and downs and isnt straight up good/evil, which ive never had to deal with before. having to sit and rthink about what i think is the right choice
The factions in Fallout 4 are all fairly well written with their own motivations, ups and downs and such, yet people still complain because they only see the negative aspects of each faction.
[QUOTE=Ganerumo;49161275]To be honest the dialog options using any other skill than speech in the previous games felt really dumb because it'd basically widely invalidate the use of charisma/speech (since the majority of the dialogue related options weren't even linked to these two stats but instead to a ton of other shit) and would essentially boil down to "min-max this stat if you want an easy pass through a quest" options rather than anything actually roleplaying related.
And back then, people still complained about the writing for these options being shoddy and stuff like intelligence check dialogue options being really dumb (ie you need an intelligence of at least 7 to count to five) - both in fallout 3 and new vegas, the latter being praised for its great writing in every other instance than these dialogue options.
If you level up perks related to blowing shit up and killing things, then you're rewarded with better blowing shit up and killing things, not with dumb complete-this-quest-easily speech options.[/QUOTE]
Really the only way dialogue checks could be [I]fully [/I]'roleplay' related is if the players had to type them in themselves. Video games lock you in to a certain amount of choices, the more choices and opportunities they give you to express how your character might act, the better. A person who's better at blowing shit up is not just good at blowing shit up out of pure luck, but because they are experts on how to blow shit up, why shouldn't this be reflected in dialogue?
I liked the skill checks since it usually lended to multiple ways of completing a quest. Sometimes you'd have quests where the charismatic guy simply just can't solve a problem in the way a knowledgeable guy can. This isn't some new thing that NV does, many RPGs have already done it and for good reason.
Also the reason why no one complained about NV's checks is because they were literally an improvement over FO3's and to criticize a game about a very small number checks being at certain thresholds is awfully superficial. It's like if I complained about the 'Armorer' skill in Oblivion being governed by Endurance, it doesn't really make sense but who gives a shit.
Also I'm going to need a citation on that check you just mentioned because I'm pretty sure that doesn't exist in NV and I'm positive it doesn't exist in 3 since that has no intelligence checks.
[QUOTE=RichyZ;49161418]the bos and institute are very much implied to be the bad factions
the bos ship captain wears a ss uniform basically its hilarious
[editline]21st November 2015[/editline]
the institute "we hate everything above ground and want to destroy/replace it to rebuild pre-war america"
bos "kill all ghouls, supermutants, and synths regardless of their sentience, control the populace through force and occupation"
im not even cherrypicking, those are their stated goals[/QUOTE]
institute are the 'implied' bad guys yeah, but once you find their motives and such its more complicated. i dont remember institute stating theyre going to destroy everything either
where does it say this?
[QUOTE=Ganerumo;49161346]New Vegas is the same deal as Morrowind. It's a mediocre as fuck plot, but it has a good setting and excellent characters.
The actual main storyline of New Vegas is forgettable at best.[/QUOTE]
The factions in NV literally are the main quest though.
By that logic, KOTOR II had a lame story because it's your bog standard hero's journey/redemption tale and Kreia is just some side dish.
[editline]21st November 2015[/editline]
[QUOTE=RichyZ;49161418]the bos and institute are very much implied to be the bad factions
the bos ship captain wears a ss uniform basically its hilarious
[editline]21st November 2015[/editline]
the institute "we hate everything above ground and want to destroy/replace it to rebuild pre-war america"
bos "kill all ghouls, supermutants, and synths regardless of their sentience, control the populace through force and occupation"
im not even cherrypicking, those are their stated goals[/QUOTE]
I'm fine with that tbh. There shouldn't be any reason why joinable factions have to be good.
People actually complained that there weren't enough dialogue options to be an evil asshole so if they're going to complain about this then they can just blow it out their ass.
[QUOTE=RichyZ;49161418]the bos and institute are very much implied to be the bad factions
the bos ship captain wears a ss uniform basically its hilarious[/QUOTE]
Keep that bias strong buddy
All the factions have their ups and downs and that's so overly simplifying you're pretty clearly not actually giving the game a chance.
Minor faction spoilers :
BOS [sp]has a point that the synths are dangerous, and that the institute can't control them, so the entire thing needs to be shut down before it goes out of hand. They're militaristic and to the point, but it brings results - they pacified DC while the commonwealth is a shithole. Meanwhile they're also very aggressive towards synths and Maxson is very belligerent, to the point where it's easy to consider that their power may get corrupted and it may lead to a east coast legion.[/sp]
Institute [sp]genuinely can save mankind by bringing it a new age of prosperity and their advancements are impressive, but they lack the manpower to actually handle all of it - their synths are mostly obedient but when one of them escapes it's actually a big deal, and the fact they're creating AIs that are sentient and self-aware is a pretty huge deal - bigger than they can contain. The way they treat synths is akin to slavery, but it's a necessary evil for all the good it brings.[/sp]
Railroad [sp]makes a fair point that gen 3 synths are so advanced that they can live normal lives if given the occasion and they make a fair point that the way synths are treated is more or less slavery. However they're small, not very well organized, easily tracked down despite their best efforts and the very nature of their work makes their troops mostly inconsistent and unreliable. Their optimism is also quite exaggerated as proven by the numerous murderous synths the player can find, and some robots that live WITH the railroad and who want to murder humans, not as part of their programming but as a self obtained, self driven life goal. Their idealism is not something that's necessarily good.[/sp]
Minutemen [sp]have good intentions but lack the framework to really accomplish it, as shown by the fact they're more or less dead by the time you show up. They're a rather old institution of the commonwealth as their rise to notoriety is already a century old, which means people trust them. Their pragmatism and simple goals mean they're trustworthy in the sense that they can't really go overboard - in fact their problem is the opposite. Since they rely so much on outside help, their luck can quickly run out and they can end up in situations where people are unwilling to help each other and may even resort to backstabbing instead. As proven by the events in Quincy and some missions at the Castle, the Minutemen are unable to listen to each other and get quickly overwhelmed when the task is too large, a problem the BoS or Institute do not suffer from at all.[/sp]
In a way they're quite close to what you can find in New Vegas. [sp]BoS is like the legion, ie "shit's gotta get cleansed before we can build good stuff", Railroad is like wild card where everyone gets a chance as long as they agree with you, Institute is like Mister House who's convinced shit's too fucked to be helped and the wasteland is basically a pool of resources for better things, and the minutemen are like the NCR, reliable on a direct standpoint but quickly falling apart as resources wear thin and decisions grow larger.[/sp]
[QUOTE=Ganerumo;49161224]It's difficult to write a compelling story when the game offers pretty much integral freedom on anything not regarding the story.
It's either you write a really good story but the character, game progression, levels and pretty much everything else is locked into place (ie The Witcher), or you give the player the ability to drastically change the character, give them full control over where to go, what to do, how to do it and such, and you end up with a boring/mediocre story.
Bethesda would get shit on even more for going exclusively for the first option - proof being, fallout 4 sort of gave it a shot by giving the character a bit more personality, and people universally screamed about it, regardless of the prospect of mods allowing the player to flat out erase any present personality.
Morrowind had a good story because it was basically a giant mindfuck and it was only interesting because it was set in such a weird alien world. It wasn't a good plot, it was just a good setting.
Basically, Bethesda can't (and shouldn't) focus on storywriting, because it'd cut down on development of all other areas significantly. I don't care about how well written the story is if I get to walk around a wasteland with all sorts of weird guns and scavenge around for ammo and food.
They [I]are[/I] improving in a lot of ways even regarding writing (the sarcastic options are amazing) but it's not their main goal and I'm fine with that. If I want a good involving story, I'll go play another game, one that's not fully open world for a start.[/QUOTE]
Morrowind has an excellent plot though. As it progresses there's a huge sense of history and the player's placed right in the middle of it. Just to scratch the surface for example's sake my favourite part is when you meet Vivec. He has a ton of optional [url=http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind:Vivec_(god)#Dialogue]dialogue[/url] where he explains just about everything, then he provides the player with documents that recount [url=http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind:The_Battle_of_Red_Mountain]alternate[/url] [url=http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Nerevar_at_Red_Mountain]takes[/url] on the Battle of Red Mountain, another explaining [url=http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Dagoth_Ur%27s_Plans]Dagoth Ur's plans[/url] and another with a [url=http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind:Plan_to_Defeat_Dagoth_Ur]plan to defeat him.[/url] Giving the player full control doesn't automatically mean the story will be worse off. There are plenty of RPGs that provide the player with that freedom and maintain great stories, and most of the Fallout games fit the bill.
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