British Accent/10
It's a little hard to understand but I'm enjoying it so far. I'll update this comment as I go along probably.
1. I really agree with you about the opening differences. With New Vegas, we want to track down Benny, we want to find out the motivation behind him shooting us over this chip. The first time through New Vegas, many players will take the long path through Primm, Nipton, and Novac in order to reach Freeside and then Vegas, and along the way they make pick up potential partners, learn about the world, and potentially learn about the guy who shot us. We want to find Benny because he wanted us dead, and we're curious as to why. It's a fantastic set up and makes for the classic revenge story.
In FO4 however, when someone comes along and shoots our wife/husband and takes our baby, I personally didn't feel an iota of connection to this baby or to my wife. Sure I customized the wife, but that's about the extent of connection I felt with her. I never had any interaction with her outside of her idle comments during character creation and I had even less with my baby. They really should have went the FO3 route of spacing out the prologue. Show Shaun being born, let us name our own fucking baby. They went through all the trouble of making Codsworth say stupid names, why not do that with other characters so we can rename our baby? We can't decide gender or the name of our baby, the only interaction we have with our baby is touching his stomach and spending his mobile, and that's literally it. I had 0 motivation to look for my son, none at all. And yet in game all my character does throughout the main quest is scream about how he wants his son back, the son I don't give a shit about as the player. It's just very poorly done.
2. The robot personalities are done much better in New Vegas, I agree with that as well. Victor, Jane, and Yes-Man are really the only robots we see with a full fledged personality, but they make sense. Victor was programmed to be friendly and cowboy-y so the locals wouldn't be afraid of him and think of him as more human so they'd keep him around and he could spy on them. Jane's personality was specifically scanned from a Mexican starlette as we learn from Raul, in order to make Mr. House's ideal lover in a machine. Yes-Man has the most distinct personality of the 3, but it was still programmed and they explain HOW he was programmed, through Emily Ortal and Benny. Through a logical loop, he is unable to refuse help to anyone who asks him, and he cannot lie about anything that's asked of him, which I find interesting.
In FO4 every single robot has a personality, emotions, feelings, and for no reason. Even with something as simple as a fucking house butler, it has the complexities of Jane, a robot specifically designed to be Mr. House's life long girlfriend.
3. I agree about how it's bullshit you can't interact with the raiders surrounding Preston's hideout at all akin to the quest "Run Goodsprings Run" where you can side with the Powder Gangers. I'll also point out that while in New Vegas, there are raiders that're hostile on sight, it's actually explained WHY they're hostile on sight. The Fiends are too hyped on drugs and will attack basically anything that isn't one of them. The only people they won't attack are Great Khans, and sometimes they're too drugged up to know the difference. The Jackals and the Vipers are very small raider groups and they're hostile on sight due to isoliationism thanks to the NCR.
In FO4 it's never explained why all raiders are hostile on sight, ESPECIALLY in Combat Zone, Libertalia, and East City Downs where they should actually be neutral to the player. It makes no sense for them to all go hostile on a single person entering their building, especially when it's just an arena/race car track/their city. That insinuates that they're hostile to everyone that isn't a raider, but if that's the case, how do they recruit?
4. Only thing I have to add on to what you said about Benny is I wish Kellogg was more like Benny. There's SO many ways to deal with Benny as you said. With Kellogg there's only 1.
5. Ughhhhh why did you have to remind me of Cabot Hoooouse. If Kid in a Fridge and Cabot House had been regulated to a Wild Wasteland-style perk, no one would be complaining about them. But instead we're supposed to take them as canon and it's ridiculous.
6. That's another thing I love love love about New Vegas. How much we can affect the ending. It's so good seeing all the factions we helped, or if we helped no one, seeing our giant robot army decimate everything from NCR to Legion. There's over FIFTY ending slides to New Vegas. There's only 2 ending slides in Fallout 4, with a male and female narrator technically making it 4. And that's it. Pathetic. The last time I gave a shit during the ending in a Bethesda game was Morrowind, that game had a really satisfying ending.
7. The only game in recent memory I feel has gotten romances absolutely 100% correct is Dragon Age Origins. You can flirt with multiple characters but once you start getting into a serious relationship with one of them, they expect you to stop flirting with the other potential lovers. If you continue to flirt they'll confront you about it and give you the ultimatum of either stop flirting with other people, or they won't date your character anymore. It's very nice and no other game has had this sort of system, not even Dragon Age Inquisition, its sister game. (though I like the romance in that game too, it just isn't as fleshed out as much as Origins)
8. I agree, the factions are done SO much better in New Vegas in that no one's perfect. It feels like in 4 they tried to make all the factions have flaws, but these flaws ended up creating huge plotholes. For example, a flaw with the Institute would be them making Super Mutants, but this is a plot hole because how the fuck would they have FEV, why would they make Super Mutants for 10 years for no reason, and so forth and so on. It's like that with every faction.
Basically just agree agree agree, I loved this review. Sums up how I feel very well.
