Bethesda is destroying the gay legacy of Fallout

[Irwin John Finster]

Why is it that no one seems to accept that the character is the role?

Of all the many and varied problems I have with Fallout2, FO3 and FO4, and even a few in Fallout ~the PC background was never one of them; and the lack of background in Elder Scrolls was my chief peeve with that whole series.

Immutable constants in a PC's history help to better define the role; they actually make it easier to extrapolate how a character would behave ~when not playing a sociopathic/quasi phychotic PC; and when you are playing one of those... where is the challenge in roleplaying that? Anyone can roleplay the joker, try roleplaying Alfred sometime.

I don't know, because many prefer having a blank character which means we can roleplay as a million personages that can affect the game somewhat?

This was the one unique niche that Bethesda had. Their characters were whoever we wanted them to be beyond a brief background such as Courier or Vault Dweller, Prisoner in Elder Scrolls - now they're eliminating a part of why their games are unique. Problem is, they are not as good as the other developers at what they're trying to do, so they should have just stuck with their niche in this regard.

 

[Kilgore Trout]

Why is it that no one seems to accept that the character is the role?

Of all the many and varied problems I have with Fallout2, FO3 and FO4, and even a few in Fallout ~the PC background was never one of them; and the lack of background in Elder Scrolls was my chief peeve with that whole series.

Immutable constants in a PC's history help to better define the role; they actually make it easier to extrapolate how a character would behave ~when not playing a sociopathic/quasi phychotic PC; and when you are playing one of those... where is the challenge in roleplaying that? Anyone can roleplay the joker, try roleplaying Alfred sometime.

I think it's possibly to find a balance between the constraints of the narrative and player freedom to define the character. Perhaps the early Fallouts leaned a bit too much on the side of player freedom, but this also establishes a precedent - people expect a game called Fallout to allow you a lot of leeway in defining your character, in a way that they don't expect a Batman game or, say, The Witcher to allow similar leeway. I think the Witcher series gives you a lot of freedom to define just who Geralt is, but at the end of the day you are always the White Wolf. Fallout has never been like this, and so I think people are entirely justified in complaining about how restricted Fallout 4 is.

It would also be a different matter if Fallout 4 gave us an interesting character like Geralt to define, but that's just it, it doesn't. It gives us characters who are little more than card board cutouts while simultaneously denying the player the freedom to flesh them out into something more. Thus Fallout 4 gives us the worst of both worlds: a blank slate without the ability to write anything interesting or unique on it.

 

[Dr Fallout]

Why is it that no one seems to accept that the character is the role?

Of all the many and varied problems I have with Fallout2, FO3 and FO4, and even a few in Fallout ~the PC background was never one of them; and the lack of background in Elder Scrolls was my chief peeve with that whole series.

Immutable constants in a PC's history help to better define the role; they actually make it easier to extrapolate how a character would behave ~when not playing a sociopathic/quasi phychotic PC; and when you are playing one of those... where is the challenge in roleplaying that? Anyone can roleplay the joker, try roleplaying Alfred sometime.

I think it's possibly to find a balance between the constraints of the narrative and player freedom to define the character. Perhaps the early Fallouts leaned a bit too much on the side of player freedom, but this also establishes a precedent - people expect a game called Fallout to allow you a lot of leeway in defining your character, in a way that they don't expect a Batman game or, say, The Witcher to allow similar leeway. I think the Witcher series gives you a lot of freedom to define just who Geralt is, but at the end of the day you are always the White Wolf. Fallout has never been like this, and so I think people are entirely justified in complaining about how restricted Fallout 4 is.

It would also be a different matter if Fallout 4 gave us an interesting character like Geralt to define, but that's just it, it doesn't. It gives us characters who are little more than card board cutouts while simultaneously denying the player the freedom to flesh them out into something more. Thus Fallout 4 gives us the worst of both worlds: a blank slate without the ability to write anything interesting or unique on it.

Yeah agreed. Geralt was interesting to roleplay, the Sole Survivor.

 

[Irwin John Finster]

Why is it that no one seems to accept that the character is the role?

Of all the many and varied problems I have with Fallout2, FO3 and FO4, and even a few in Fallout ~the PC background was never one of them; and the lack of background in Elder Scrolls was my chief peeve with that whole series.

Immutable constants in a PC's history help to better define the role; they actually make it easier to extrapolate how a character would behave ~when not playing a sociopathic/quasi phychotic PC; and when you are playing one of those... where is the challenge in roleplaying that? Anyone can roleplay the joker, try roleplaying Alfred sometime.

I think it's possibly to find a balance between the constraints of the narrative and player freedom to define the character. Perhaps the early Fallouts leaned a bit too much on the side of player freedom, but this also establishes a precedent - people expect a game called Fallout to allow you a lot of leeway in defining your character, in a way that they don't expect a Batman game or, say, The Witcher to allow similar leeway. I think the Witcher series gives you a lot of freedom to define just who Geralt is, but at the end of the day you are always the White Wolf. Fallout has never been like this, and so I think people are entirely justified in complaining about how restricted Fallout 4 is.

It would also be a different matter if Fallout 4 gave us an interesting character like Geralt to define, but that's just it, it doesn't. It gives us characters who are little more than card board cutouts while simultaneously denying the player the freedom to flesh them out into something more. Thus Fallout 4 gives us the worst of both worlds: a blank slate without the ability to write anything interesting or unique on it.

Yeah agreed. Geralt was interesting to roleplay, the Sole Survivor.

Therein lies the problem. Bethesda's writers are not good, and yet here they are trying to write a Geralt character into the game. Before, their character was a blank slate - good for them, good for us. Now, their awful talent is just brought to the forefront in their attempt to do something other developers will always do better. Instead, they should have stuck to their niche of providing games with blank slate characters, which is what made Bethesda's games unique for role playing among the other modern games.

 

[Dr Fallout]

Exactly! Making your own character was what made Bethesda's game worth it.

 

[Gizmojunk]

Fallout imposed the strictest background I've seen in an RPG without a fixed PC ~and even that was just an option; Fallout proffers three fixed PCs at the start.

And regardless of choice, Fallout provided a PC that grew up in a box. They were raised in an isolated ~institutionalized environment, with [presumably] strict cultural norms, and beliefs. Every day of their life they were fed by the (internal) government. They lived life like a submarine crew ~from birth. That dictates the character's mindset and outlook ~on reality itself. (It can't not)

Fallout was presumably as much about culture shock as anything else. They left the vault almost certainly expecting to return (back to the 'real' world) once they were done... expecting a barren waste populated at best by horribly mutated life. Finding out that they were wrong most likely changed their outlook a bit, but even so, they still expected to return at the end.

In way I think parts of the movie 'Blast from the Past' can show it best:

Spoiler

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8e5OF-jF56U


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Z3N3KquVJY

 

[Monco]

And regardless of choice, Fallout provided a PC that grew up in a box. They were raised in an isolated ~institutionalized environment, with [presumably] strict cultural norms, and beliefs. Every day of their life they were fed by the (internal) government. They lived life like a submarine crew ~from birth. That dictates the character's mindset and outlook ~on reality itself. (It can't not)

People can react very differently to the same situation, after all two people that grow up in the same neighborhood their whole childhood are never going to be exactly the same, and they could very well be wildly different. Growing up in a vault does impose SOME restrictions on your character, but it also allows plenty of lee-way, at least way more than FO4 allows for.

 

[Ben Soto]

You do realize that forcing a canon onto your character is nothing new. F:NV forced you to not only be a courier but also a key part of the Divide's success. F1's main character is canonically male and most likely Albert Cole, and I know there's more somewhere. Besides, maybe the whole Nora x Nate was a sham and they were pretending to be straight.

I don't even know how to respond to someone who writes off the immense limitations of the voiced protagonist in Fallout 4 as being even in the same ballpark as starting out as an unvoiced courier in New Vegas.

No amount of debate can possibly convince someone as unreasonable as yourself that Fallout: New Vegas or Fallout 3 had more opportunity to role play the protagonist the way you wanted to play him or her.

Thankfully there are plenty of reasonable people here who can see that the voiced protagonist and AWFUL DIALOGUE WHEEL with a total of FOUR CHOICES in Fallout 4 with the set backstory is far more limiting than previous games, and the only people who think this is even in the same league as New Vegas or the original Fallouts are patently ignorant.

Who the hell mentioned a dialogue wheel? I'm talking backstory, not idiotic mechanics.

 

[Dr Fallout]

You do realize that forcing a canon onto your character is nothing new. F:NV forced you to not only be a courier but also a key part of the Divide's success. F1's main character is canonically male and most likely Albert Cole, and I know there's more somewhere. Besides, maybe the whole Nora x Nate was a sham and they were pretending to be straight.

I don't even know how to respond to someone who writes off the immense limitations of the voiced protagonist in Fallout 4 as being even in the same ballpark as starting out as an unvoiced courier in New Vegas.

No amount of debate can possibly convince someone as unreasonable as yourself that Fallout: New Vegas or Fallout 3 had more opportunity to role play the protagonist the way you wanted to play him or her.

Thankfully there are plenty of reasonable people here who can see that the voiced protagonist and AWFUL DIALOGUE WHEEL with a total of FOUR CHOICES in Fallout 4 with the set backstory is far more limiting than previous games, and the only people who think this is even in the same league as New Vegas or the original Fallouts are patently ignorant.

Who the hell mentioned a dialogue wheel? I'm talking backstory, not idiotic mechanics.

Ah, but mechanics help define backstory.

 

[Gizmojunk]

People can react very differently to the same situation, after all two people that grow up in the same neighborhood their whole childhood are never going to be exactly the same, and they could very well be wildly different. Growing up in a vault does impose SOME restrictions on your character, but it also allows plenty of lee-way, at least way more than FO4 allows for.

Living in the same neighborhood is by no stretch the same situation; what's closer is having a bunch of 16-25 year-olds that have never watched the TV, used the Internet, or left the grounds of their cult or internment camp ~and they were born there. This fixes certain concepts as absolute, and prevents other concepts from ever occurring to them.

*This actually happens BTW, there was a young man lucky enough to escape that very situation, and made the national news, and when he got out, he did not know of or understand the concept of money; and it's a good bet that his understanding of world history was fabricated. In the context of a Fallout Vault, they would know and believe what they have always been told/ seen/ and done. You get broadened culture from a neighborhood, not a time capsule like the vaults (and the vault had existed 80 years before Fallout begins, and the PC leaves it to explore the outside world). The vaults would practically spit out Gary clones all coming from the same culturally homogenized population, with the same assumptions, and general world view ~at least at first... They might react in all different ways once they had been out in the world for a time.

 

[MercenarySnake]

I did want to play as a lesbian until I realized if I did then the female character I created would be forced to be with someone she never wanted to be with and giving birth to a son she never wanted then being thrown into a world to find a son she never cared about or wanted to give birth to.
Meanwhile when you want to say a different reason then "Muh boy!" but then Bethesda says "But but look at the options in the dialogue wheel we wanted you to care about your son so you must."
Even if you don't care Bethesda will shove it down your throat.

 

[Dr Fallout]

I did want to play as a lesbian until I realized if I did then the female character I created would be forced to be with someone she never wanted to be with and giving birth to a son she never wanted then being thrown into a world to find a son she never cared about or wanted to give birth to.
Meanwhile when you want to say a different reason then "Muh boy!" but then Bethesda says "But but look at the options in the dialogue wheel we wanted you to care about your son so you must."
Even if you don't care Bethesda will shove it down your throat.

I wanted to play a gay man, following the McDoodle line (how do they get kids? No idea) since Howard McDoodle left Vault 13. Didn't have that choice.

 

[MercenarySnake]

I did want to play as a lesbian until I realized if I did then the female character I created would be forced to be with someone she never wanted to be with and giving birth to a son she never wanted then being thrown into a world to find a son she never cared about or wanted to give birth to.
Meanwhile when you want to say a different reason then "Muh boy!" but then Bethesda says "But but look at the options in the dialogue wheel we wanted you to care about your son so you must."
Even if you don't care Bethesda will shove it down your throat.

I wanted to play a gay man, following the McDoodle line (how do they get kids? No idea) since Howard McDoodle left Vault 13. Didn't have that choice.

Nice name, wait did you continue going through with playing as a gay man? I'm sure once an alternate start mod like Skyrim's comes out you can do that. On the funny side of things you can make your wife look like a man.

 

[Dr Fallout]

I did want to play as a lesbian until I realized if I did then the female character I created would be forced to be with someone she never wanted to be with and giving birth to a son she never wanted then being thrown into a world to find a son she never cared about or wanted to give birth to.
Meanwhile when you want to say a different reason then "Muh boy!" but then Bethesda says "But but look at the options in the dialogue wheel we wanted you to care about your son so you must."
Even if you don't care Bethesda will shove it down your throat.

I wanted to play a gay man, following the McDoodle line (how do they get kids? No idea) since Howard McDoodle left Vault 13. Didn't have that choice.

Nice name, wait did you continue going through with playing as a gay man? I'm sure once an alternate start mod like Skyrim's comes out you can do that. On the funny side of things you can make your wife look like a man.

In Fallout 4? No, but yes, I made a family and played a gay every time. The McDoodle line, sine Fallout 1! They were in Fallout 2 and Fallout New Vegas. Hmm... nice idea!

 

[MercenarySnake]

I did want to play as a lesbian until I realized if I did then the female character I created would be forced to be with someone she never wanted to be with and giving birth to a son she never wanted then being thrown into a world to find a son she never cared about or wanted to give birth to.
Meanwhile when you want to say a different reason then "Muh boy!" but then Bethesda says "But but look at the options in the dialogue wheel we wanted you to care about your son so you must."
Even if you don't care Bethesda will shove it down your throat.

I wanted to play a gay man, following the McDoodle line (how do they get kids? No idea) since Howard McDoodle left Vault 13. Didn't have that choice.

Nice name, wait did you continue going through with playing as a gay man? I'm sure once an alternate start mod like Skyrim's comes out you can do that. On the funny side of things you can make your wife look like a man.

In Fallout 4? No, but yes, I made a family and played a gay every time. The McDoodle line, sine Fallout 1! They were in Fallout 2 and Fallout New Vegas. Hmm... nice idea!

What about 3?

 

[Atomic Cowboy]

The fact that this game pissed off the GLBT/Social Justice crowd, and this twerp in particular, is about the only positive thing you can say about it. Less than 1% of the population is gay; stop demanding that the other 99% bend over to make you feel welcome.

 

[Joshua]

The fact that this game pissed off the GLBT/Social Justice crowd, and this twerp in particular, is about the only positive thing you can say about it. Less than 1% of the population is gay; stop demanding that the other 99% bend over to make you feel welcome.

You sir, are a moron.


Just wanted to say that New Vegas really did it well with 2/8 of your companions being gay. It wasn't obvious or in your face, and not just because you can sleep with them or whatever. It just came up casually in dialogue and wasn't a big deal. As if its a normal thing, like it should be.

 

[Crni Vuk]

People can react very differently to the same situation, after all two people that grow up in the same neighborhood their whole childhood are never going to be exactly the same, and they could very well be wildly different. Growing up in a vault does impose SOME restrictions on your character, but it also allows plenty of lee-way, at least way more than FO4 allows for.

Living in the same neighborhood is by no stretch the same situation; what's closer is having a bunch of 16-25 year-olds that have never watched the TV, used the Internet, or left the grounds of their cult or internment camp ~and they were born there. This fixes certain concepts as absolute, and prevents other concepts from ever occurring to them.

*This actually happens BTW, there was a young man lucky enough to escape that very situation, and made the national news, and when he got out, he did not know of or understand the concept of money; and it's a good bet that his understanding of world history was fabricated. In the context of a Fallout Vault, they would know and believe what they have always been told/ seen/ and done. You get broadened culture from a neighborhood, not a time capsule like the vaults (and the vault had existed 80 years before Fallout begins, and the PC leaves it to explore the outside world). The vaults would practically spit out Gary clones all coming from the same culturally homogenized population, with the same assumptions, and general world view ~at least at first... They might react in all different ways once they had been out in the world for a time.

Imagine the stories they can tell when they return to their caves!

 

[Dr Fallout]

I did want to play as a lesbian until I realized if I did then the female character I created would be forced to be with someone she never wanted to be with and giving birth to a son she never wanted then being thrown into a world to find a son she never cared about or wanted to give birth to.
Meanwhile when you want to say a different reason then "Muh boy!" but then Bethesda says "But but look at the options in the dialogue wheel we wanted you to care about your son so you must."
Even if you don't care Bethesda will shove it down your throat.

I wanted to play a gay man, following the McDoodle line (how do they get kids? No idea) since Howard McDoodle left Vault 13. Didn't have that choice.

Nice name, wait did you continue going through with playing as a gay man? I'm sure once an alternate start mod like Skyrim's comes out you can do that. On the funny side of things you can make your wife look like a man.

In Fallout 4? No, but yes, I made a family and played a gay every time. The McDoodle line, sine Fallout 1! They were in Fallout 2 and Fallout New Vegas. Hmm... nice idea!

What about 3?

No. I did not grace the game with the McDoodle presence.

 

[MercenarySnake]

I did want to play as a lesbian until I realized if I did then the female character I created would be forced to be with someone she never wanted to be with and giving birth to a son she never wanted then being thrown into a world to find a son she never cared about or wanted to give birth to.
Meanwhile when you want to say a different reason then "Muh boy!" but then Bethesda says "But but look at the options in the dialogue wheel we wanted you to care about your son so you must."
Even if you don't care Bethesda will shove it down your throat.

I wanted to play a gay man, following the McDoodle line (how do they get kids? No idea) since Howard McDoodle left Vault 13. Didn't have that choice.

Nice name, wait did you continue going through with playing as a gay man? I'm sure once an alternate start mod like Skyrim's comes out you can do that. On the funny side of things you can make your wife look like a man.

In Fallout 4? No, but yes, I made a family and played a gay every time. The McDoodle line, sine Fallout 1! They were in Fallout 2 and Fallout New Vegas. Hmm... nice idea!

What about 3?

No. I did not grace the game with the McDoodle presence.

I'm guessing it wouldn't even be worth spitting in its general direction? Glad my friend warned me about that shit game back then. From what I read up or watched on YouTube it looks like a mess. Is there any eye patches in Fallout 4?