Fallout 4

[Ruki]

Why are you so upset about it?

[SeanDMan]

Why aren't the rest of you?!

[SeanDMan]

New video from day two, haven't watched it, already too enraged.

https://youtu.be/1xQuMaOykZo?t=2m8s

[Ruki]

Because it looks amazing

[apsham]

I love, love, love everything I've seen so far.

Friend at work was playing Fallout Shelter - I can't wait for it to come to Android.

[VerbalPuke]

This looks fun. I wish PS4 wasn't so expensive ... i want to play this and ruin my social life/commitment to my family.

[9 to 5]

Assuming the story is good, this is bound to be the best Fallout yet.

[Summers]

I'm so excited at being able to have PC mods used on the X1 version.

Hopefully they can do something similar with games like Minecraft.

[9 to 5]

This looks fun. I wish PS4 wasn't so expensive ... i want to play this and ruin my social life/commitment to my family.

Rent the family out for it.

[LL!]

Because it looks amazing

This.

And not just "Ruki Amazing" either! The real kind.

[SeanDMan]

All of you are wrong.

teol is so upset by how bad this game looks he won't even watch the trailer

[Meacon Keaton]

Sucks to be TEOL!

[SeanDMan]

No I envy teol. Ignorance of this awfulness is bliss.

[Pizza]

What's the difference between a wheel and a list?

[Meacon Keaton]

This punchline better be good, or you'll just upset Sean even more.

[SeanDMan]

*Sharpens shiv*

[apsham]

I assume the wheel assumes that you don't see what you say, just the general idea of what you're going to say.

Which still doesn't bother me because it'll likely have to be a bit better than past games to encompass conversation options that have to do with stats or traits.

[9 to 5]

TEOL said he is happy with it.

[GoGo Yubari]

Team Codsworth.

[SeanDMan]

TEOL said he is happy with it.

Never felt more betrayed. Going it alone then!

Firstly, I'd like to point out some issues with the way Bethesda makes universes in general, and address their dialogue, and the wheel of doom, after.

I will spoiler it all because it is very long.

Now, this is all copied from a blog:

http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=27085

I don't agree with all of it, but it's a good read, so let's look at some key sections of the text.

The original Fallout game was a gritty world where you explore the vast California desert in search of a water purification chip. It drew influences from Mad Max, campy 50s sci-fi movies, and pulpy comics of the same era. It had a streak of pitch-black comedy running throughout it. It wasnt about the 1950s, it was about the future that the 1950s anticipated. It was a game that took place in the future of the past.

Bethesda saw this template and concluded that a Fallout game needed to take place in the desert, it needed to be about water, it should contain screwball comedy, and that it should be the 1950s forever.

In Fallout 1, you needed a water chip to save the lives of your people who lived in an underground vault. In Fallout 3 youre trying to clean water for a wasteland that you have no reason to care about, for people who seem to be doing okay without your help, because your idiot dad told you too. (Yes, Dad is an idiot. I know he sounds smart because hes got the voice of Liam Neeson, and Liam Neeson can make anything sound brilliant, but trust me: Dad is a bone-head. Well get to him later.)

They tried to keep the desert concept, but moved the game to Washington D.C. where a desert motif makes no sense. They tried to keep the pulp sc-fi tone, but it was often undercut by Bethesdas putty-faced NPCs, horrendous washed out color palette, and blunt attempts at photo-realism. They completely misunderstood the humor, replacing dark comedy with goofball situations. And finally, the whole 50s thing was greatly exaggerated and then rendered nonsensical by moving the timeline forward to 200 years after the war.

This fundamental misunderstanding of the Fallout tone and themes infuses the game and is the source of nearly every major design failing.

The original Fallout was a setting where we were just a single generation away from the Old World. People still remembered it, and it still shaped the way people thought. People were still sifting through the ashes, trying to cling to the ruined world. They were still dressing, speaking, and thinking like people from a retro-50s future. But that tension between the old world and the new can only last so long. It certainly isnt going to survive for 200 years.

Two hundred years ago, men wore knee-high stockings, powdered wigs, and got married at 14 years old. 200 years is a long time, and technology has transformed us and our culture in countless ways. The change would be at least that dramatic in the other direction, moving from a world of plenty to a world of ruin. To put it another way: 200 years after a nuclear war, people arent going to be forming greaser gangs.

200 years after the bombs fell, the old world should just be gone. But no. In Fallout 3 people still dress the same, stores still have Old World food on the shelves, the old machines still work, and people still talk about the war the way we discuss 9/11. Nobody has made any new music, culture, customs, clothing, or tools. They havent even swept the dang floor.

Re: Clothing: I guess raiders have their painspike armor. Which means the only culture to develop in the last 200 years has been from the psychotic cannibal raiders.

Note that Im NOT saying that the Bethesda writers should have made up some crazy future-world with all new cultures. If they did, it would barely feel like earth. It might feel something like Zeno Clash, but it certainly wouldnt feel like the Mad Max / 50s pulp sci-fi mashup the series is known for. Im saying that they shouldnt have moved the story forward 200 years. The Fallout world makes the most sense while youve still got some people around to remember the war. The farther you get from N-Day, the harder it is to maintain that unique Fallout flavor, the harder it is to conceive how society would develop, and the harder it is to justify having old-world customs, attitudes, gadgets, and food.

Why was this done? So that the events of Fallout 3 wouldnt conflict with the events of the previous two games? This 200 year thing is a really ugly hack to solve that problem. And it was a waste, since they ended up retconning and altering lots of big ideas from the earlier games anyway.

Since the writer could barely make a single quest that didnt implode under the weight of its internal contradictions, they should have made things as easy on themselves and just stuck to the one generation after the war idea the series began with. Like all the other missteps, it was a move that caused more problems than it solved and riddled the whole thing with plot holes.

There is an interesting discussion in science fiction literature that began with Star Wars, and it worked like so: if we move forward in time, why don't we move forward in tech? Why do we continue to use the same old Star Destroyers, the same old blasters. Why doesn't society change on a fundamental level? The issue is consistency of canon; if things advanced too much, it's not retrofuturism, it's just futurism.

And idea was put forward that became known "technocultstagnation". Basically, that because society was fucked, nothing could advance, so for the most part things stayed the same. Thus, whatever progress was made, whatever advances in technology, they became Big Deals. They were usually remarked on and plot important. But they were isolated incidents.

In Fallout 3, however, this is taken to an absurd degree. It's 200 years after the bombs fell, and people are living in piecemeal shacks made up of leftover rubble, eating old, irradiated pre war processed food, and have basically nothing in the way of functioning government or society. Fallout 3's world has NO cohestion, NO infrastructure, NO logical way of surviving till the end of the week, nevermind 200 years till now and until the end of time.

This is a huge failing on Bethesda's part.

I know this question is really irritating to some people. They see it as some kind of unreasonable demand for a super-realistic simulation. But the question of What do they eat? isnt some dumb pedantic complaint, like a gun enthusiast demanding to know where everyone gets gun oil or a computer technician asking why the computers havent all failed due to magnetic degradation.

The fact that human beings need food and that food takes work to accumulate is a completely universal truth that has shaped our entire history and culture. Human beings hate work, but we do it anyway because we need to eat. In a survivalist society, it shapes how we form families, where we build towns, what we do for a living, what resources we value, what animals we domesticate, how we dress, and countless other details about our outlook and day-to-day life.

If this was a story where the sides were fighting over some pre-war super-weapon, then we wouldnt need to think too hard about where food comes from. But Fallout 3 makes the struggle for water central to the plot, and then completely fails to lay the groundwork for it.

I said previously that I wasnt going to pick on the game for having small farms or scaling things down. But this world has no farms at all. Think about the major cities in the game: Megaton. Tenpenny Tower. Little Lamplight. Big Town. Paradise Falls. The Citadel. These places have not a single farm or means of acquiring food between them. The people do no work. This is supposedly some desperate post-war hellhole where people must fight to survive, but we never see that struggle. Most people dont even have jobs.

Wait, thats not true. The slavers work. They go out, kidnap people, and then lock them in cages because theres nothing for the slaves to do. Fallout 3 is so devoid of work that even slaves are idle.

By comparison, this is a screenshot from Fallout 1. Farms aplenty.

Roleplaying is about two things in principle: the choices you make, and the consequences of those choices.

In a world that cannot logically function, your choices become irrelevant, because the consequences are irrelevant. It doesn't matter if I fail, these people have no viable way to continue living anyway.

In the words of Dr. Manhattan, why would I save a world that I don't have a stake in? If these people exist without the systems they need to exist, what is the lack of one more system? (the next point addressed)

Im not asking for something exotic. Fallout 1 had farms, tucked on the edges of the maps so you could imagine they continued on, just outside of the playable gamespace. Fallout New Vegas had farms that you could walk through, and observe people farming. This is basic environment design 101: How does this world work?

The game takes place around Washington DC, but Bethesda thought that Fallout = desert, so they made a version of Washington DC where it never, ever rains. So people have survived for 200 years without a drop of rain and without growing so much as a single carrot.

Yes, Fallout 3 allows you to scavenge food from 200 year old grocery stores. Ill hand-wave food spoilage and just assume its part of the setting. If the writers say a box of deviled eggs can sit un-refrigerated for 200 years and still be nourishing, then fine. But again, that stuff should have run out over a century ago. And nobody seems keen on going out to gather it anyway.

There are cows and rats to eat, but theres nothing for those creatures to eat. Theres no food chain. With no rain and no food, every single living creature in the capital wasteland dropped dead 199 years ago. There should be nothing left to save.

If Bethesda just wanted to make a big dumb shooter about shooting big dumb mutants with big dumb guns, they could have done that. But instead they made up this business with water, and its completely unsupported by what were shown. I didnt freak out when I didnt find any farms in Rage. Its totally fair to say youre not supposed to ask questions about how people in Serious Sam make a living. But Fallout 3 is presenting us with a problem: The people of the Capital Wasteland need water! You cant think about this problem without the whole thing flying apart. Were constantly interacting with a premise that doesnt exist.

People have managed to survive for an astounding 200 years without rain and without Dads nonsensical water purifier. They must be getting water from somewhere. What makes the problem urgent now? How would more water (or cleaner water) help these people? If you dropped a tanker truck of fresh clean water at the gates of Megaton, how would the people be better off? It wouldnt help their harvest, since they grow no food. It wouldnt help their health, since nobody seems to be sick. It wouldnt save them from dangerous or arduous work.

Yes, the game has these ridiculous karma dispenser guys outside the major cities. They claim to be dying of thirst no matter how much water you give them. That doesnt support the notion that the wasteland needs water, it just draws attention to the fact that most people dont. Why doesnt this beggar just walk ten steps into town? Those people seem to have both food and water without making any effort.

Imagine a version of Skyrim where somebody keeps telling you that the world is being destroyed by dragons, but you never actually see a single dragon anywhere in your travels. Instead theres just a lone singed peasant outside of town who tells you he needs a health potion because he was attacked by a dragon, and he always needs a health potion no matter how many you give him, and hes the only guy in the world that seems to have a problem with dragons. Thats Fallout 3.

You cant claim were not supposed to question this stuff. This is central to the premise, and everything you do is supposedly in the service of giving these people water. Dont present a problem for me to solve and then demand I not think about it.

But the icing on the cake is that theres a Mr. Handy robot in the game. He lives in your house. And he can make fresh, clean water for you, for no work at all. He doesnt even need energy. He just needs time for his condensers to work. Which means hes basically a dehumidifier. And the wasteland is full of these robots. If these people needed clean water, they could just gather up Mr. Handy parts and put them to work condensing them all the water they need.

Mr. Handy breaks the entire premise of the game. And they made him part of the players house.

Again, Im not asking for something unreasonable. If your goal is give the people water then establishing that people want water is just basic, bare-bones, low-level motivation for the player. Thats the reason the story exists in the first place.

And I've addressed how easy it is to remove fallout from water already. Anyway, Bethesda: can't be trusted to write logical settings.

I've heard it said that of the Black Isle/Obsidian Fallouts, there is a cohesive world, sewn together by overarching needs and desires, basic, if cobbled together attempts at infrastructure, and some form of politics. Fallout 3 is like an amusement park; sure, the rides are fun, but they aren't connected or joined together in any way, you just ride them until you throw up and then feel hallow and empty inside.

But let's talk about dialogue wheels in particular.

That is a problem.

So there are two big problems with a fully voiced character and mapping conversations to a dialogue wheel.

First, let's take the old way of doing things.

"Hey Sean, your opinion of Fallout is wrong and you should feel bad."

"Yeah I guess you're right." (positive karma)

"HEY MAN FUCK YOU." (negative karma)

"I WILL KILL YOUR FUCKING CHILDREN!" (terrifying presence)

"Well, that is just, like, your opinion man." (goodbye)

"Well actually, if you consider what we know..." (Intelligence roll)

"I know what I want in a game, and when you consider what we have seen..." (Charisma roll)

By using a scrolling vertical list, we could offer as many diologue options as needed to fit the conversation, to branch it into multiple paths, to change it based on whether you wanted to be an asshole or a nice guy.

Now, let's take a look at the new way of doing things.

"Hey Sean, your opinion of Fallout is wrong and you should feel bad."

A Button "Yeah I guess you're right." (positive karma)

B Button "HEY MAN FUCK YOU!" (negative karma)

X Button "Whatever." (neutral option)

Y Button "What's wrong with my opinion?" (asking for clarification)

Can you immediately see a problem? If every dialogue option is keyed to this wheel, in this way, this is going to be a very linear game. In games like Mass Effect, or KOTOR, where you have a Prick/Hero/Just a guy option in dialogue, no one roleplays, everyone just goes all in. This is my evil character, this is my good character etc. It eliminates nuance, it eliminates grey areas, and it makes every choice a linear one, predetermined from when you roll the stats at the start of the game. Thumbs way down to these systems. There's nothing wrong with Mass Effect if you don't want your choices to actually matter and you define the culmination of all your hard work as "the light! The light is a different color!", but I have higher standards in my entertainment.

So that is my problem with the wheel. It's possible the wheel ends up being eight spokes instead of four, but we saw no evidence of that at E3. Prove me wrong Pete.

I'd also like to say that there's nothing inherently wrong with a linear game: The Last Of Us was almost completely linear as an example with only one path through it, and it was lauded as a great cinematic like experience. It just cuts down on the player agency, and on the replayability. The more choices you have and the more consequences those choices have, the richer the experience in my opinion.

As far as a voiced protagonist goes, it's simple economics. Again, let's take a look at the old system.

"Todd Howard, we have a problem. We need to add a line of dialogue to the quest in Bartertown."

"Okay... what does that entail?"

"Well, we'd have to bring in The Guy Who Runs Bartertown to voice the new line."

"Okay, well, if you think it's that important."

Under the new system, it's much more complex.

"Todd Howard, we have a problem. We need to add a line of dialogue to the quest in Bartertown."

"Okay... what does that entail?"

"Well, we'd have to bring in The Guy Who Runs Bartertown to voice the new line. And we'd have to bring in our clone of Troy Baker to voice the protagonists' lines."

"Hmmm. That sounds expensive."

"There's another problem too. We already used all four buttons on the controller."

"Well we can't add more buttons. This game has to be an immersive X-Box One experience. Look, forget the quest. Just leave it broken and we can pretend it's a bug or whatever. Or just set it up so that if they try and use a dialogue option you don't like it locks up."

"Okay boss, no problem."

Now if we have a dialogue wheel that can be more than four choices, then fine, but again, now that you have a voiced protagonist, every line of dialogue is twice as expensive. In an interview Todd Howard said that they have had the actors in the studios for roughly two years at this point. But now that the game is in an almost ready state, being played and tested, is there still budget room for improvement?

So yeah, I'm sceptical. Fallout 3 was okay, but certainly should have been better. Bethesda made a great Fallout experience when they made The Pitt but otherwise Fallout 3 was a big thematic and dramatic let down. I don't trust them to do the setting or the writing justice and adding a four button dialogue wheel and having every line read by Troy Baker doesn't do fuck all to reassure me.