Missing the Boston vibe...

Latomus

Latomus

First time out of the vault
We all know Fallout 4 has had a lot of promises to keep since it was announced at E3, and we also all know that it has failed to deliver on most of them rather spectacularly. My problem with the game, as a Massachusetts native, is the distinct lack of a Boston "atmosphere" to it. It just seems like another city full of ruins with maybe a few Boston landmarks thrown in (Bunker Hill and the Common come to mind, among others). Now I'm not saying Bethesda promised anything more than what it gave us explicitly, but they gave D.C. some character with the Metro and the Industrial Gothic theme, and of course the National Mall, going around. With Boston in Fallout 4, I see a bunch of brick and concrete buildings half-collapsed, some really out-of-place futuristic skyscrapers, a few generic highways (where's the Tobin?), and nothing to speak of the Big Dig. Not to mention they missed out on about half of Boston's really cool locations- Museum of Science, Independence Wharf, Mass-freaking-General!

And if we want to talk about collapse and decay over two centuries, let's talk about the city falling half into the sea. Hell, Back Bay is built on rotted pilings. The rest of the city is basically a landfill in real life. I would love to traverse a half-sunken city, with little alcoves and crannies and unique aquatic enemies, besides mirelurks everywhere. Wouldn't it be cool to sail the Constitution around the harbor not as some weird rocket-ship but as an actual sailing vessel, pummeling enemies into dust with a full broadside? I'd love to see little gondolas and rowboats and maybe even a player's own motorboat. I'd love to see settlements built upon stilts extending into a dark and wild Atlantic ocean. Give the settlers some real accents, instead of the maybe five different NPCs I can count on my hands that have a vaguely Boston accent. Where's the authentic food? Mirelurk chowder? Mutated lobster? Cod, by God, where is the cod?

Sorry for the rant. Here's a TL;DR: I went into this game expecting some homage to the city it ripped its creative license from, and I got next to nothing in return.
 
It does seem really weird that in the post-Bethesda Fallout we have characters with British, Irish, Russian, and New Zealand accents (among others) but post-apocalyptic Massachusetts is strangely lacking in Boston accents.

Even just a humorous quest where someone asks you to find the "cah pahk", would be a better diversion than killing more raiders though invariably there would be raiders at the car park.)
 
And there isn't even a place called the Harvard Yard. There isn't a (named) Harvard at all in fact, even though Cambridge is right smack dab in the middle of the map. Just "College Square". Weird choice, although I guess they wanted to avoid lawsuits.
 
The lack of regional accents are really apparent in vault 81 considering up until recently it has been a self sustaining vault; assuming most residents were from the area everyone in there should sound like they walked off the set of Good Will Hunting.
 
PossibleCabbage said:
It does seem really weird that in the post-Bethesda Fallout we have characters with British, Irish, Russian, and New Zealand accents (among others) but post-apocalyptic Massachusetts is strangely lacking in Boston accents.

Even just a humorous quest where someone asks you to find the "cah pahk", would be a better diversion than killing more raiders though invariably there would be raiders at the car park.)
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I didn't mind the accent with Lou Tenant in Fallout 1 (that guy had a great voice and dialogue) or with Moriarty in Fallout 3, but they went way overboard with the stereotyping in Fallout 4 with Cait being the most stereotypical drunk-Irish bar fighter possible. At that point it's just too much. For me, I draw the line there regarding characters having to make sense and fit in the world. The whole game is a bunch of cliches and stereotypes thrown together in the laziest way possible. I find nearly every character to be some terribly thrown together cliche that has been done a hundred times in a hundred ways. Even the whole drugged-out old psychic lady (Mama Murphy) is a cliche.

I find it all very silly and cartoonish and hastily thrown together.
 
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I just find it that not only accents, but on a much grander scale, Fallout 4 doesn't feel like Boston. It doesn't have a distinct flavor to it at all, really. It just seems like a bland, ruined city that I walk around and shoot raiders and ghouls and Super Mutants in.
 
Latomus said:
Fallout 4 doesn't feel like Boston. It just seems like a bland, ruined city that I walk around and shoot raiders and ghouls and Super Mutants in.
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That's because Fallout 4 is an offline-MMO. It's like playing singleplayer Borderlands with worse writing and characters.
 
They did try to put vague Boston accents in, the VA work in the game just isn't very good. "The chahge cahd."

I actually thought the mapping of the Boston area was one of the better aspects of the game, but I'm not a Boston native and I'm only passing familiar with the city. Which means I'm probably the sort of person they were trying to appeal to - someone who will see things like the Common and MIT and think "oh hey, this place totally looks like Boston!" Ah well. Every Bethesda-crafted Fallout city ends up feeling like little more a gutted ruin that you run around shooting things in, but I think that's in large part due to the fact that they give you little to do in their games aside from running around shooting stuff.
 
I feel sorry for Boston's gaming community. All the games that take place there comes out a clusterfuck. Assassin's Creed 3 and Fallout 4... the worst of their respective series.

Can we have a good game taking place in Boston, please?
 
ZigzagPX4 said:
I feel sorry for Boston's gaming community. All the games that take place there comes out a clusterfuck. Assassin's Creed 3 and Fallout 4... the worst of their respective series.

Can we have a good game taking place in Boston, please?
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So it goes. Hopefully the DLC (if it's set in New England) isn't atrocious.
 
Bethesda had a lot to work with in Boston. New England is known as the birth place of America and American culture. A place that has a lot of history, a lot of famous landmarks and places(and Beer!) and, from what a good friend of my brother who is from Massachusetts and is a die hard Patriots fan told me, a unique sports culture as well. Did Bethesda do much with what they were given? NOPE! Because that would require work and making video games aren't about work, there about shoving a game out as fast as you can and letting modders worry about silly things like.:evil:
 
I get the feeling that the game was rushed, it seemed like they had all the ground work laid for a fascinating recreation of the Massachusetts but right when they were going to add the important details Zenimax forced them to release it or their investors got twitchy.
They had everything laid out, Diamond city looked as though it would be a fascinating take on Bostonian sporting culture, they had 3 distinct museums (that I can think of off the top of my head) each exploring vastly different facets of American history and they had a bunch of landmarks acting as major settlements and/or quest locations, but alas in the end it came out it all ended up as nothing other then different locations to kill raiders and buy valuable screws .
 
I don't think the accents are too bad. They're at least better than the accents that you hear in pretty much any movie set in Boston. But aside from that, there isn't much there to make it feel like Boston. At the end of the day, picking through the ruins of a destroyed city isn't all that different to picking through the ruins of a different destroyed city. Having the same enemies from F3 doesn't help either.
 
As someone who was born and is still living in Massachusetts, this was my biggest gripe with the game. Hell, I was really hoping to see baseball games still being played at Fenway instead of it being a city. I mean think about it, what do humans do in a time of crisis? They distract themselves with as much entertainment as they can.

Also, there really could have been a lot of good ol' New England humor in this game (weather changing quickly, thick accents, or even seeing people drive refurbished cars shittily down the road).
 
MutatedPanda said:
As someone who was born and is still living in Massachusetts, this was my biggest gripe with the game. Hell, I was really hoping to see baseball games still being played at Fenway instead of it being a city. I mean think about it, what do humans do in a time of crisis? They distract themselves with as much entertainment as they can.

Also, there really could have been a lot of good ol' New England humor in this game (weather changing quickly, thick accents, or even seeing people drive refurbished cars shittily down the road).
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Actually, the weather does change quickly, a lot of characters has thick (though seemingly fake and stereotyped more than natural and local) accents, but no one knows what baseball is. There's this entire sequence where you talk with Moe Cronin while he's selling Swatters and he explains that baseball is some sort of death sport where people kill each other. If you tell him what it really is, he doesn't care, but the dialogue from whichever companion you have at the time indicates that baseball is basically a myth.

There's a large discrepancy in consistency between what the game world looks like and how much pre-war context remains. It's ridiculous how everyone talks like the entirety of the Commonwealth is a burned-out husk with nothing left to scour for, yet in actual gameplay there are several intact buildings filled to the brim with materials, resources and supplies.
 
ZigzagPX4 said:
It's ridiculous how everyone talks like the entirety of the Commonwealth is a burned-out husk with nothing left to scour for, yet in actual gameplay there are several intact buildings filled to the brim with materials, resources and supplies.
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Not as ridiculous as most of the other things in the game. Take X6-88 for example. The guy still admires me after i destroy the Institute.
 
Immortalkickass said:
Not as ridiculous as most of the other things in the game. Take X6-88 for example. The guy still admires me after i destroy the Institute.
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Apparently, if you shoot Dogmeat and then heal him in front of people, they fall in love with you.

Fallout 4 truly is a joy to behold 10/10 ign
 
Pioer didn't really strike me with a Boston accent. The ones I can name is the guard at the bottom of the lift when first entering Vault 114 after the Great War ("Everyone, please proceed to the stairs in an orderly fashion"), the male settler voice at Ten Pines Bluff (not very strong) and maybe Moe who sells Swattahs. I'll have to listen to Piper again but she never had a particularly strong accent from my memory.
 
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