Wasted Potential

Mr Fish

Mr Fish

Slippy sloppy, The
What do you think is a wasted potential in Fallout 4? And when I say that I mean Fallout 4 'on its own merits'. The whole game is a wasted potential but let's keep things a bit more narrowed down, a'ight?

So, rooftops.
Have ya'll who've played the game noticed just how bare the rooftops are? In games when I can jump around freely I love getting on top of stuff and finding neat little secrets that I would only have found if I decided to take it upon myself to jump up there. But in Fallout 4? There's fuck all to find on the roofs. Sure, occasionally a rooftop will have something on it but the exception is not the rule. "But The User Formerly Known As Mr Fish, why ever would there be stuff on top of the rooftops in the first place?" Hello? Post-apocalypse? Scavenging? Looting shit? Stashing stuff? Why wouldn't people use roofs or high places to store shit they wanted to get to later? And I don't even mean super-mega-awesome loot either. What about a scavenger that wanted a safe place to sleep in a sleeping bag and so he went up on the roof but died from an illness or whatever? What about shit just being flung there by drunken raiders?

Seriously, look at the rooftops. Look at how barren then are of anything whatsoever. Never mind that it is stupid that most of these buildings are standing after 210 years of no maintenance; If they have been standing for so long how come some of them are completely blank? I mean completely blank. Not even a dirt texture placed on top of the roof texture. Just blank roof texture.

Wasted potential. I love jumping up on shit to find neat secrets and Fallout 4 was a real downer in this regard.

(btw, drunk, so sorry for any fuck ups in my writing)
 
Combat Zone:

"Oh cool an arena, I wonder if I can fight in it, or make bets in it. Nope, the Raiders are attacking me on sight."
 
Being brief, so someone else doesn't alert moderation, my problems with Fallout 4 aren't the rooves.

They (probably) spent a lot of money and accumulated convincing art and improved an ageing engine, but content itself would have been better done or at least edited and finished by another developer--though I guess this has been said countless times and is truistic. But yes, they made something, using (probably) a lot of money, it did not meet potential which is relevant. Someone may do something with what has been accumulated. Rooves aren't first on my list.
 
Since Combat Zone and East City Downs are always mentioned in these discussions, I'll go over an area that doesn't get brought up much, Libertalia.

Libertalia is essentially a giant raider settlement made out of floating cargo ships. Ironically enough it's also about the same distance in the opposite direction from Sanctuary, making it an Anti-Sanctuary. This place is owned by raiders and run by raiders, who, it turns out, are actually ex-Minutemen, and used to run with Preston Garvey. This place could've been the first area where we'd actually get to see a human side to the raiders. See how they live their day to day lives, see WHY they raid, see them making an actual settlement instead of just raiding. Sorta like the Powder Gangers from NV, who were a well developed raiding faction with actual goals, a small history, and ambitions.

Instead it's just another shoot-out area. No communicating with the raiders, no talking to the raiders, no anything with the raiders outside of shooting them. We can't even turn it into a settlement after we kill everyone. It just sits there until a new group of raiders spawn. This place could've been the perfect starting point for a Raider Faction. Think of it like the opposite of the Minutemen. We could have founded settlements but instead of making them full of settlers they're filled with raiders instead. It would've added some very much needed evil choices into this game. Maybe the climax mission could've been to help the raiders take over Diamond City or Goodneighbor, the opposite of helping the Minutemen reclaim The Castle. As it stands now we aren't allowed to be evil. Libertalia was the perfect evil faction base and they squandered it. They could've just made a rip-off of the Powder Gangers and it would've been better than what we actually got.
 
I've talked ad nauseum about the wasted potential in this game from an RPG perspective so I'll try this from a different pov. They wasted an opportunity to go full on FPS by dicking around with minimal token RPG elements. No real cover system or ability to vault over shit, bullet sponge enemies with horrible AI and path finding, and a lack of any real diversity in weapons outside of enchantments. I get it BGS this is now an FPS, but at least make it a good one.
 
There's so much I can say, but I will go with the Main Quest.
Even through it's typical and just a rehash of F3, it could have been handled so much better.
Now we take the opening, why was the opening played straight?
If it was done as a parody of the that era, it could have worked. Or if we got a bit more time, it could have been fine.
What about the conflicts between the main factions? Wouldn't it have been more interesting if you could see rising tension between the BoS and the Railroad? Instead we just go out and shoot the opposite side because they maybe a threat.
How about finding your son?
It was so half assed it could have been taken out the story and nothing would have changed.

Maybe Bethesda should just try to stop tugging the heartstrings and try to make a good script.
 
When you're at Libertalia, just stand still for a minute or two and focus close up on the ships bobbing in the water, see for yourself the absolutely super-duper quality of the level making in this particular spot. A phrase comes to mind that I usually use for spying less attractive women at a distance: "Nice from far, but far from nice."
 
I don't recall that much (thankfully) anymore but I would say the Gunners.
Instead of them being better armed raiders, why not have them being real mercenaries or an invading army (soldiers from Ronto for example) with which the player can interact?

I'd probably made them into a full faction and kicked out the BOS (other than a token presence)

The factions would be:

The Minutemen (redesigned of course)
The Nation of Ronto (a military nation that has decided to bring 'civilization and order' to the Commonwealth)
The Institute (perhaps that idea that the actually Institute scientists were killed long ago by the synths who have now replaced them)
 
Places like Lexington being such wasted potential, I mean seriously the whole purpose of putting it there was for the ghouls that live next door to the generic raiders that are called gunners with no other purpose. A fucking dungeon in its own right, you could've just removed it from the map all together and you wouldn't tell the difference since 95% of places are used for the sole purpose of putting popamole enemies there.
 
I thought the Institute was the biggest fuck up, there've been a couple of recommendations on how to fix them here. My favourite was one that said they shouldn't have hid underground but lorded over everyone in a massive skyscraper (probably the John Hancock building), acting as an unreachable superpower guarded by shittonnes of synths and turrets, allowing the Commonwealth to decay as they begin their machinations to completely take over, sort of like Mr. House but less capitalistic.
 
Hey Izak, I actually had such an idea regarding the Institute myself before what we saw in Fallout 4.
Kind of like my idea for Robot City, the Institute have build this sort of 'City of Tomorrow' in the ruins of Boston, surrounded by collapsed buildings, metal skeletons of buildings, and so on.

I think that would be more intriguing to the player, seeing this advanced city in the middle of all these ruins, monorails and perhaps flying machines moving between the buildings.
At night the entire place lit up, spotlights move around and so on.
 
That might have been what I remember, though I think what I read had more sinister undertones. It's a good idea either way, the Institute could have been far more interesting and, I think the potential of the concept has been squandered, it's a damn shame, they could have been Fallout's version of Polis from Metro.
 
Wasted Potential:

Unarmed combat (Punching Attacks or Fist Attacks).
With a grand total of 4 weapons and a whooping 1 perk for it (5 ranks) it is ridiculous why they even made Unarmed in the first place... It would have made more sense if they had just merged the unarmed with the melee in terms of perks and gotten 1 free perk with 5 ranks for whatever other perk for Strength they wanted to make.

Wasted Potential:

Make your settlements.
As they stand they are little more than glorified Player houses we can customize where we can grow crops and get free stuff from time to time.

Wasted Potential:

Factions.
Well we all know how much potential the factions could have had...
 
Dr Fallout said:
Didn't we discuss this a lot anyway?

Because there is a LOT of wasted potential.
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Yeah but we're known as the Seething Red Jewel of the Interwealth. We have to uphold our reputation. Fallout 4 is never allowed a break from our searing hatred. I'm ready and willing to talk about how much I despise this game every single day until they announce they're letting Obsidian take over the franchise.
 
Ragemage said:
Yeah but we're known as the Seething Red Jewel of the Interwealth. We have to uphold our reputation. Fallout 4 is never allowed a break from our searing hatred. I'm ready and willing to talk about how much I despise this game every single day until they announce they're letting Obsidian take over the franchise.
Click to expand...
...
WHERE IS MY PITCHFORK?!
 
Dr Fallout said:
...
WHERE IS MY PITCHFORK?!
Click to expand...

Here, you can use mine
latest
 
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