Fallout 4
So, yeah, it's more Fallout. Honestly, I find the sense of (perhaps somewhat grisly) humor that seemed to be woven into the earlier games to be weaker. Otherwise, it's Fallout 3 + 10 years of in-world time, in a slightly different location. There are a lot of references to the previous (number-wise) game. In fact, a one-off little quest in 3 where a person from the mysterious "Institute" sends you off to find a synthetic person has become a core conceit of 4.
The combat mechanics are a little better than before. VATS only slows action greatly rather than totally pausing it - which has ups and downs. The non-VATS shooting, though, is much more precise and player-skill-based. I understand they consulted with another studio to help with that. Exploration is about the same as before. There's the additional aspect of being able to set up and maintain settlements (Farmville Fallout?), which is... a bit clunky, but does add something. I'm still not sure if the greater inclusion of power armor as something you can use most of the time (you could run out of fuel cells in the early game perhaps) rather than just as an end-game reward breaks the game. It certainly can make a pretty big difference in the danger of situations, though I find I sort of prefer to sneak around without it most of the time. The quests work reasonably well for the most part, though there's plenty of room for improvement and I'm only reaching the point of no return between the factions.
Really, the only thing that strikes me as bad is the conversation system. 90% of the time, your four response options are 1) ask for more info on the topic, 2) agree sarcastically, 3) agree helpfully/willingly, 4) disagree/agree reluctantly. All the responses are vague, not giving you a full feel of what you're really going to say. The occasional persuasion checks are shown in a different color, but don't really convey the outcome you're going for well. I suppose it cuts down on branching and keeps things simple from a design standpoint, but it feels really hollow to play. There have been many, many times I would liked to have been able to engage in some further discussion or questioning, but it just wasn't an option.
Still, as far as exploring, discovering, shooting, collecting, and building, it works fairly well.
What has me thinking most about the game, though, are the factions.
There are four notable factions in the game. Three of them hold stong, opposing beliefs. You can do stuff for all of them for a while, but eventually you can only really side with one of those three. And the question of what to do with synths (artificially-created people) seems even more central to the conflict than what to do with the Commonwealth.
1) The Minutemen are the less-political faction, and don't seem to really care who else you work with/for. I like them the most, though arguably that's because they're the simplest. They are a group of people banded together to protect people in the Commonwealth from threats - be they raiders or mutant beasts. Neat and admirable.
2) The Institute is a secretive and secluded group of scientists with advanced technology carried over from pre-War times. They created the synths, working from Gen 1 (skeletal robotics a la Terminator) and Gen 2 (looking more like mannequins) to the more recent Gen 3 (which seem to be flesh, bone, and DNA with possible cyber - virtually indistinguishable from human yet still programmable). They've become the boogeymen of the Commonwealth with their occasional abduction of people and infiltration with synths. They see synths as slaves and property and see life in the outside world as worthy only of scorn. They also have some questionable history of work with the mutating FEV virus, as if they weren't shady enough.
3) The Brotherhood of Steel, a staple of Fallout games, returns in force. This bunch is a derivative of the Lyon's Pride faction that existed in the Capital Wasteland of Fallout 3, but leadership has changed and they've gone back to more zealous ways. Under Elder Lyon's the BoS really made an effort to help people with their technology. Elder Maxson, however, adheres to the more original creed: "advanced technology is dangerous as it all but destroyed civilization, only we can be trusted with it, anyone else must be destroyed." The BoS sees synths as unquestionably evil and irredeemable, threats that must be eliminated.
4) The Railroad is dedicated to helping synths escape the Institute and live free - and to hell with anything that gets in the way of that. I find I like their desire to free synths, but this invariably puts them at odds with the Institute and BoS, and they're just so absolutist that it's a little mind-boggling. They seem to be willing to wipe out any number of people (or Institute-aligned synths) required to see synths freed.
So I don't really like any of the 3 enough to fully get behind them. I want to like the Brotherhood, but this incarnation is really too much a bunch of fascist assholes willing to nuke others into oblivion. I'm probably doing a Railroad run this time through as the "lesser of evils" since I like their basic principle the most, but their willingness to destroy the Institute seems odd, when that's the source of the people they value so much. The Institute itself has a few worthy ideals, but their casual disregard for everyone else is just too much. Plus I really want to be able to have a discussion with the Institute folks about why they feel the need to create synthetic humans based on "pure" DNA who can think, feel, improvise, and even desire freedom enough to have their memories replaced - yet they can't acknowledge these creations as anything more than machines. If they wanted machines, they could have stopped at Gen 2.
I guess I'm glad I can stick with the Minutemen regardless of the others (so far?), but I'm also a little tempted to see if there's a way to take out all three other factions just because they're all sort of dicks. >.>
The combat mechanics are a little better than before. VATS only slows action greatly rather than totally pausing it - which has ups and downs. The non-VATS shooting, though, is much more precise and player-skill-based. I understand they consulted with another studio to help with that. Exploration is about the same as before. There's the additional aspect of being able to set up and maintain settlements (Farmville Fallout?), which is... a bit clunky, but does add something. I'm still not sure if the greater inclusion of power armor as something you can use most of the time (you could run out of fuel cells in the early game perhaps) rather than just as an end-game reward breaks the game. It certainly can make a pretty big difference in the danger of situations, though I find I sort of prefer to sneak around without it most of the time. The quests work reasonably well for the most part, though there's plenty of room for improvement and I'm only reaching the point of no return between the factions.
Really, the only thing that strikes me as bad is the conversation system. 90% of the time, your four response options are 1) ask for more info on the topic, 2) agree sarcastically, 3) agree helpfully/willingly, 4) disagree/agree reluctantly. All the responses are vague, not giving you a full feel of what you're really going to say. The occasional persuasion checks are shown in a different color, but don't really convey the outcome you're going for well. I suppose it cuts down on branching and keeps things simple from a design standpoint, but it feels really hollow to play. There have been many, many times I would liked to have been able to engage in some further discussion or questioning, but it just wasn't an option.
Still, as far as exploring, discovering, shooting, collecting, and building, it works fairly well.
What has me thinking most about the game, though, are the factions.
There are four notable factions in the game. Three of them hold stong, opposing beliefs. You can do stuff for all of them for a while, but eventually you can only really side with one of those three. And the question of what to do with synths (artificially-created people) seems even more central to the conflict than what to do with the Commonwealth.
1) The Minutemen are the less-political faction, and don't seem to really care who else you work with/for. I like them the most, though arguably that's because they're the simplest. They are a group of people banded together to protect people in the Commonwealth from threats - be they raiders or mutant beasts. Neat and admirable.
2) The Institute is a secretive and secluded group of scientists with advanced technology carried over from pre-War times. They created the synths, working from Gen 1 (skeletal robotics a la Terminator) and Gen 2 (looking more like mannequins) to the more recent Gen 3 (which seem to be flesh, bone, and DNA with possible cyber - virtually indistinguishable from human yet still programmable). They've become the boogeymen of the Commonwealth with their occasional abduction of people and infiltration with synths. They see synths as slaves and property and see life in the outside world as worthy only of scorn. They also have some questionable history of work with the mutating FEV virus, as if they weren't shady enough.
3) The Brotherhood of Steel, a staple of Fallout games, returns in force. This bunch is a derivative of the Lyon's Pride faction that existed in the Capital Wasteland of Fallout 3, but leadership has changed and they've gone back to more zealous ways. Under Elder Lyon's the BoS really made an effort to help people with their technology. Elder Maxson, however, adheres to the more original creed: "advanced technology is dangerous as it all but destroyed civilization, only we can be trusted with it, anyone else must be destroyed." The BoS sees synths as unquestionably evil and irredeemable, threats that must be eliminated.
4) The Railroad is dedicated to helping synths escape the Institute and live free - and to hell with anything that gets in the way of that. I find I like their desire to free synths, but this invariably puts them at odds with the Institute and BoS, and they're just so absolutist that it's a little mind-boggling. They seem to be willing to wipe out any number of people (or Institute-aligned synths) required to see synths freed.
So I don't really like any of the 3 enough to fully get behind them. I want to like the Brotherhood, but this incarnation is really too much a bunch of fascist assholes willing to nuke others into oblivion. I'm probably doing a Railroad run this time through as the "lesser of evils" since I like their basic principle the most, but their willingness to destroy the Institute seems odd, when that's the source of the people they value so much. The Institute itself has a few worthy ideals, but their casual disregard for everyone else is just too much. Plus I really want to be able to have a discussion with the Institute folks about why they feel the need to create synthetic humans based on "pure" DNA who can think, feel, improvise, and even desire freedom enough to have their memories replaced - yet they can't acknowledge these creations as anything more than machines. If they wanted machines, they could have stopped at Gen 2.
I guess I'm glad I can stick with the Minutemen regardless of the others (so far?), but I'm also a little tempted to see if there's a way to take out all three other factions just because they're all sort of dicks. >.>
What? You don't like your Fallout Garrison Mother Base?
ReplyDelete*chuckles* Y'know, I like a lot of these "base management mini-games," but I'm just sort of offended that they seem to be in everything these days. Individually: - WoW garrisons were cool, but overemphasized and not sufficient long-term/endgame content. - MGS V's Mother Base is sort of neat, but 1) if you want to avoid PVP play it's incredibly limiting and 2) as patches have been released it's being pushed more and more with time-gated elements to encourage spending real money to shortcut through it. - Fallout 4's settlements are kind of limited and clunky (as said) on the design portion, but offer a lot of freedom there. Having to occasionally defend them is something I find an annoyance, personally.
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