[Games] Fallout 4 (Complete!)
Fallout 4 - Complete! (-ish)
I finally got myself to move forward with Fallout 4's main storyline. I could spend so, SO much more time just fiddling around doing "radiant" quests, building up settlements, scavenging junk, trying to upgrade the gear on the settlers, vainly trying to figure out WHY certain settlements are less happy than others (you've got heavy defenses, all the "happiness-raising" stores, excess food, excess water, full-fledged beds instead of mattresses, power, light, sometimes even better gear than what I carry around ... what ELSE?) ... and so on.
That ... and the main storyline was depressing me. Just as in Fallout: New Vegas, I reached a point where I didn't really want to commit to supporting one particular faction if it meant that I had to backstab someone else that I'd been on good terms with.
(Like, here I am, making peace between the Brotherhood of Steel and NCR, running errands for Mr. House, trying to make things happy for as many factions as possible as long as they aren't slaver pseudo-Romans wearing silly costumes ... and then: NCR: "Go kill or otherwise disable Mr. House." Me: "Uhm..." Mr. House: "Go wipe out the Brotherhood of Steel." Me (honorary Paladin of the Brotherhood of Steel, decked out in full BOS armor while he's telling me this): "ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!?!" Seriously, in the part where I get a chance to disable Mr. House, and I'm only given four options to explain WHY I'm doing this, I wish there were an extra option: "Because I'm a Paladin of the Brotherhood of Steel -- see this here badge? -- and you told me to slaughter the Brotherhood of Steel. You are too stupid and evil for me to take seriously.")
But Fallout 4 gives me a few more sucker-punches. There's one faction that is undeniably evil in its actions toward the outside world AND YET I don't want to go slaughtering it and all the people within its domain. There's another faction that seems to be frighteningly intolerant of mutants, synths, ghouls, etc., but they don't go murdering friendly super-mutants or intelligent ghouls on sight -- or even the rare friendly synth, for that matter -- and for the most part they seem to be on the right side of things. The trouble is that their solution to every problem is to BLOW IT UP BIG TIME. Then there's another faction that's all for synths, all altruistic, but their leader is so focused on this goal that she's cutthroat against anyone who might not be absolutely dedicated to their cause (i.e., unwilling to resort to violence), no matter how much that person has helped them in the past. And each faction, at some point, wants me to eliminate the two others, because it sees them (rightly, as it turns out, on all counts) as a threat.
A Spanner in the Works -- Or, How I Wish Game Events in Sandboxes Would Proceed
Every side has its flaws (some more glaringly obvious than others). The status quo can't really be maintained ... or, realistically, it shouldn't be, except that in this universe, NOTHING MOVES FORWARD until I complete the right quest, or complete the right dialog option.
I find myself wishing that Fallout followed a manner of progression more like "Last Express" -- though perhaps not quite as severe. In "Last Express," if you simply dawdle about, taking in the sights, not particularly getting involved in anything, the story WILL come to a conclusion (and not a very happy one) at certain points. You are the "spanner in the works" who can change things (but only to a certain degree -- I still find myself unhappy with the "win" outcome of that game).
Maybe the Battle for Hoover Dam should happen at a certain date, barring PC intervention. Various things the PC might do before that time can alter its outcome, and perhaps even postpone it (or speed it up!), and I can understand a certain amount of "flex" in the schedule for dramatic purposes, but the war shouldn't go on hold for YEARS of in-game time patiently waiting for the PC to finally go and agree to that final mission.
I realize there are downsides in this: If the timeline is too rushed, I'll miss stuff. If the timeline is too slow, it'll be little different from the status quo -- and in fact, a player might get bored, or it could feel just as artificial if the player feels obliged to go to Location X and then "Wait" until a key event occurs. "Last Express" largely worked as it did because the player was forced into a very limited area -- it wasn't a sandbox game by any means. I imagine there are perfectly good reasons for the programmers to do things as they do. I just wish I could explore the POSSIBILITY of a different model.
Ditto for Fallout 4. Even with the likely complications cited above, I wish there would be a certain progression of events. Instead of just "Companions," there might be NPCs you could simply choose to tag along with, and THAT is how you could be sure of getting the "full tour" from a certain point of view ... and you'd have a certain amount of replay value if you decide to choose differently the next time around. Stick with Paladin Danse, and you'll be guaranteed to catch all the major Brotherhood-of-Steel focused events. Follow Piper as she investigates things for Publick Occurrences, and you'll get a ringside seat to the major events befalling the Commonwealth until you decide to jump ship and cast your lot in with one of the major factions. Stick with Strong, and you'll just get to kill lots of stuff and never mind about some bigger events unfolding. Stick with Deacon if you want to go on the deluxe Railroad tour. Etc. If there's going to be a character who just tags along with you NO MATTER what you do, then leave that to characters who make sense as mere followers such as Dogmeat or Codsworth (and possibly MacCready if you hire him, Cait if you buy her contract, and possibly Curie).
Hancock strikes me as the sort of character that might be interesting to build a friendship with through repeated exchanges, but he still ought to be someone who calls the shots from Goodneighbor, not someone who suddenly dumps it all and follows you around (and then simply stays at whatever settlement YOU pick out, whenever you aren't traveling with him, vs. going home to Goodneighbor again).
But ... Settlements!
I suppose it would just depend on how much a player would tolerate the "replay for a different outcome" aspect. That might be hard to reconcile with the Settlement-building "mini-game" aspect. I mean, hey, I put some serious "work" into my masterpiece building projects. If I replay the game, that's all gone. But then ... same deal happens every time we try out a new modpack on Minecraft multiplayer server, and yet we keep coming back and trying out new things. So maybe there's hope.
(Even more so if they'd fix up the settlement-building interface a bit more. As-is, I had to resort to the console to "cheat" to place items right where I wanted. The "snap" feature is as much hindrance as it is help. If I'm supposed to build up from a wrecked building foundation, but I'm not allowed to add any parts that OVERLAP existing bits of broken wall or hole-ridden floor, then I wish I could just BULLDOZE the whole thing and start from a blank, flat foundation. And, hey, we know that there are cans of paint to be found. One mission involves interacting with a working paint-mixer. So it'd be nice if eventually I could work my way up toward things that looked nice and cared-for.)
Back to Timelines: The Golden Saucer
But more importantly it just strains my willful suspension of disbelief when so much is put into the sense that there are "big events" happening and big deals with the different characters AND YET it's like the Golden Saucer in Final Fantasy: Yes, the WORLD IS IN DANGER, but you can simply choose to waste days, weeks, maybe even YEARS if you're that crazy, playing in an arcade to your heart's delight, before you decide to move on and THEN Armageddon resumes its course. (Arguably, if that's the way things work, wouldn't the world be better off if you dawdled? Your dawdling is holding off the doom of the world!)
And so ... I just didn't feel much incentive to march on. It wasn't until I got the idea that perhaps I could get to the end without having to officially help the factions go to war against each other. I basically just stuck with the Minutemen, and if I ended up at a dialogue choice that forced me to pledge myself to Faction X and to become deadly enemies with Faction Y (unless Faction Y happened to be the all-around bad guys), then I'd back out and go to an earlier save point. (Because, see, if you are faced with that decision and fail to pledge yourself to Faction X, then Faction X hates you. ARGH!)
End-Game
I managed to get "The Minutemen Ending," taking on the Bad Guy Faction, without resulting in open warfare between the two other factions, despite their differing opinions on the goodness or badness of "synths."
I might go back and see if I can get the "Brotherhood of Steel" ending, if it's possible to do so without the BOS going to war with anyone except for the Bad Guys. Why? Because I so want to see Optimus Prim-- er, I mean, LIBERTY Prime -- take on the Bad Guys, convinced all the while that they are COMMUNISTS (due to his programming). Apparently at some point there was going to be a bit where if you went that route, you could personally ride on Liberty Prime (on a platform behind his head) and provide additional support with Fat Man launchers, RPGs, etc., and that would have been TOO COOL, but for some reason that didn't come about.
Trying Survival Mode (Not Quite The Same As Old Hardcore)
I might also at some point go back and try Survival mode. I tried that at first, thinking it would be something like my Fallout: New Vegas experience -- which was actually interesting in that it added such concerns as finding food and water. However, while in Fallout: New Vegas, "Hardcore" mode was a completely different setting than the overall difficulty setting, in Fallout 4 it is part of the same continuum as the regular difficulty settings. In other words, I try Survival, mole rats pop out of the ground and BOOM -- I'm dead. A raider pops out with a gun and hits me twice? BOOM, I'm dead.
Okay, so I need to be really careful -- I can see that now. But, good grief, I just ate, like, 3 minutes ago, tops, and I'm starving already? And dying of thirst? And I'm sleep deprived ... but apparently sleeping in this nice, pristine bed in Vault 111 is FORBIDDEN to me because of my urgent need to find my son. I really need to adjust the time scale on this, but -- oh, console commands are DISABLED. ARGH! I couldn't make it through the first Minutemen encounter in Concord, after several tries. I ended up just having to restart the game in regular mode.
But now that I've gone through the whole game and have some sense for the lay of the land (for instance, that I could have actually built some resources in Sanctuary and perhaps gotten myself some fresh water and cooked some molerat meat, and built a proper bed BEFORE traveling to Concord) maybe I'd have a better chance. It'd be quite a slog, what with the lack of fast-travel, and I worry that the "radiant quest" nature of settlement attacks ("such-and-such settlement is UNDER ATTACK and everyone is going to DIE automatically if you aren't there, even if the settlement is COMPLETELY surrounded by walls and a bazillion turrets and the settlers all have combat armor and laser gatlings!") would be worrisome; I've heard that the secret is to just stick to a handful of settlements in central locations, keep the other settlements unpopulated (unpopulated settlements for some reason never get raided, even if there's loot there for the picking), and simply DO NOT put up a radio beacon. (Apparently settlements with radio beacons are the only ones that get raided when the PC isn't around. Ghouls and super mutants must have radios. Other attacks can still happen while you're physically present, but the threat of "auto-fail" on account of your failure to arrive in time is moot then.)
Mods?
I'd love to play with some mods. Some add interesting new locations. Others play with the environment, or give me new ways to build up settlements (new items for the workshop). The trouble is that I've found that they're almost invariably BUGGY. Also -- not as big of a deal if I've already beaten the game -- they disable all the achievements.
One mod I really wish I could find, that I never thought I would want: a Level Cap. In Fallout 3 and New Vegas, with all the DLC, accumulating skills became something of a joke, if I played my cards correctly, because I could basically max out EVERY skill, and just be wasting resources if I found any more "skill books" past that point -- but I wouldn't ever get every Feat. In Fallout 4, though, there's no level cap. You keep getting more and more feats, and both you and your enemies keep getting more hit points. The downside to the latter is that weapon damage becomes progressively more negligible. (Arguably the Gamma Gun past a certain point might be the only sensible weapon to use against those few enemies who aren't radiation-proof, because it deals damage as "radiation poisoning" -- an issue no matter what your level is -- vs. a flat number of hit-points.) At a certain point, you're doing head-shots with a maxed-out sniper rifle and merely wounding some helmet-scorning bad guy, because he's a "leveled" opponent, and the "sneak and snipe" approach to confrontations becomes pointless.
... or a Vacation!
In the meantime, I think I need to give myself a vacation from the game for a while. Maybe hold off until I actually add in any of the DLC -- and hold off on THAT until the whole "Season's Pass" package is on a really big sale. With any luck that won't be for a very long time. I was actually holding off on getting Fallout 4 at all, because I knew it would be a big time sink for me. (I didn't buy it. Digital_Rampage got it for me. That was awfully generous of him, and I had a blast playing it, but ... there went what remained of my free time, y'know? Because I have zilch by means of the ability to manage my time sensibly, it seems, unless there's a deadline involved. I'm of a very divided mind on these things!)
Still, despite what gripes I might have, I think Fallout 3, New Vegas, and Fallout 4 have spoiled me on what I expect from video games. "Red Dead Redemption" almost fits up there in that category. (If only I could ride a HORSE in Fallout!) Basically, I love sandbox games, I love the RPG aspect, and I love the chance to fine-tune my character and choose different paths. It'll never quite compare to face-to-face RPGs in certain respects, but it'll still have its place in entertaining my desire to pick some random direction and EXPLORE. :)