So I'm not holding out much hope for the dialogue, I think Bethesda is a lost cause on that one (nothing was more immersion-breaking than encountering Moira Brown and trying to come to terms with the fact that she was intended to be some sort of believable character). However, I think Skyrim has actually given me some hope that the game won't be quite so disappointing* as FO3.
The main quest was bland, you're the chosen one, you must defeat the dragons by killing them to death with murder. This is because you are the Chosen One. Good fun, but a bit formulaic and not ground-breaking.
However, I think the world was very well-made, and made sense in the context of the game. Towns have a reason to exist, there are farms, markets, inns, ports, cities make sense to be where they are. Combat, while again not amazing was interesting enough to soak up a decent amount of time without boring me completely.
What I will give them credit for is the concept of the civil war. Two sides, with neither being wholly in the right. Side with the empire, and you sign up for religious persecution and a healthy dollop of authoritarianism, side with the Stormcloaks, and you're helping spread xenophobia, insularism, and destabilising Tamriel at a time when it really needs to be united against external threats. It couldn't be further from the Boyscouthood of Steel from FO3 (although they lose points for leaving the civil war questline far less flashed out than the Kill the Dragons one)
Hopefully they can come up with something equally or more interesting for FO4 (and don't just troll us with androids!)
*When I say it was disappointing, that's not to say I didn't quite enjoy it for what it was, a reasonably fun action adventure game that held up okay so long as you didn't focus too hard on the dialogue, or the shallowness of the plot. It was disappointing in the sense of what it quite easily could have been, with only a few changes:
-Ditch some of the more egregious failures. Bury Little Lamplight, and make sure Sticky is impaled by a particularly sharp stalactite. Rewrite the Superhuman Gambit, which had potential to be interesting, but was abysmally executed, break Liberty Prime apart for scrap, have a long hard think about whether vampires belong in a Fallout game, etc.
-Make the minor factions a little less one-dimensional, raiders should be pragmatic, rather than psychotic. They shouldn't charge power-armoured juggernauts with tyre irons and pool cues, why would they do that? They have no chance of robbing them. Talon Company should have some sort of backstory. Instead of existing purely to hunt you down, maybe they could be hired to guard caravans, heck, using your barter skill to get them to guard Big Town (which now has a completely different backstory of its own) would be a pretty decent quest resolution.
-Most importantly, the main quest and factions. Still use a water purifier as a central doohickey if you're that attached to the idea, but the boyscouts/pure evil thing has to go.
o The Real Brotherhood, with all the cool toys and the fortress in the Pentagon? They're the assholes who worship technology and don't want to share. They have no interest in the purifier, but they really hate...
o The Outcasts. A small band of Brotherhood people who decided they wanted to use technology to help the wastelanders. The Brotherhood see them as traitors, and shoot on sight. The Outcasts are vastly outnumbered and outgunned by the Brotherhood, and also by...
o The Enclave. Led by President Eden (who is not a computer). He has nothing but contempt for anyone he sees as not being an American of pure genetic stock, and wants to wipe them out so his American supermen can rule the post-apocalyptic world. He is unaware of a contingent within his own organisation, led by...
o Colonel Augustus Autumn. Who believes just as passionately as his president in the superiority of the Enclave, but sees its place as dominating and ruling over the human inhabitants of the wasteland. He wants to mount a coup against Eden and his loyalists, and restore law and order (and unquestioned totalitarianism) to the Capital region.
The main questline would be a choice between
- the Outcasts (very hard, poor numbers, not much gear, but the "good" ending. You would need to either defeat the Brotherhood, or smooth over relations between the two factions, before facing down the threat from the Enclave. Ending slides would show how, in spite of your best efforts, they didn't have the power to keep order in the wasteland, and it remained full of warring factions, raiders, and mutants)
- The Brotherhood (significantly easier, more numbers, better gear, but with no interest in helping the wastelanders, ending slides show them becoming powerful and more or less unopposed)
-The Enclave (The "easiest" option in the game. As a pure blooded vault dweller, you can simply join them and go around killing everything that moves in the wasteland if that's your cup of tea. Ending slides, pretty much as you'd expect. Slightly more subtly, you can engineer a coup (or just butcher Eden and his loyalists) and put Colonel Autumn in charge, whereupon you fight the Brotherhood for control of the wasteland (or play the two factions of the Brotherhood off against each other until they destroy each other), in which case, ending slides show a wasteland where people for the most part have safety and security, unless they challenge the authority of the Enclave, in which case, they are publicly dispatched with a 9mm round to the cerebellum).
Of course, Bethesda, and most other game developers, would never have the balls to write a game where the ending that worked out the best for the denizens of the wasteland wasn't to side with the immediately obvious "good guys".
Anyway, that went off topic quickly.
tl;dr: Maybe Fallout 4 won't suck, Fallout 3 could have been much better, but I still had fun playing it.
