Places that had potential

Knight In Leather Armor

Knight In Leather Armor

Badger Nutsack
Lets name off some places in Fallout 4 that had potential but was utterly wasted by Bethesda!

(inb4 all of the locations)

There's a massive cargo ship on the south western part of the map that harbors unique raiders. This raider gang is an all ghoul raider gang with a twist, they're all from Norway. Their dialogue when fighting you is different Norwegian sentences consisting of "Leave us alone!" And "Go away!".

But because BethSoft doesn't believe in anything other than American you are forced to kill these rare ghouls, saying "I'm coming home..." in Norwegian. I was very pissed off by this encounter, as you can't even try and be friendly with them. Why can't Curie or Nick or Codsworth have some knowledge on Norway? Curie can speak Japanese, so why can't she speak others? Codsworth might know a bit and Nick might know a little bit of Norwegian, but like every raider encounter you are forced to slaughter them all.
 
Bethesda don't believe in anything other than shooty shooty bang bang, period. There were no end of locations that could've offered some interesting interaction which didn't just involve turning the whole place into a shooting gallery. Obvious ones: Combat Zone, Easy City Downs. But no no, raiders = kill, no room for anything other than more murder.
 
Lanfear said:
Bethesda don't believe in anything other than shooty shooty bang bang, period. There were no end of locations that could've offered some interesting interaction that didn't just involve turning the whole place into a shooting gallery. Obvious ones: Combat Zone, Easy City Downs. But no no, raiders = kill, no room for anything other than more murder.
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I was expecting a comment like this. Yeah yeah, pretty much every location in Fo4 is a raider/gunner/SM slaughter house, but I want to know a certain location you found interesting and explain how it had potential.
 
Combat Zone, Easy City Downs. One could've been a fighting arena a la The Thorn from FNV. The other could've been an actual race track with betting and some miscellaneous quests to rig races and etc. Missed opportunities across the galaxy.
 
Lanfear said:
Combat Zone, Easy City Downs. One could've been a fighting arena a la The Thorn from FNV. The other could've been an actual race track with betting and some miscellaneous quests to rig races and etc. Missed opportunities across the galaxy.
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The Combat Zone actually had its own quest line and fully voiced dialogue for the one ghoul and the SS. Of course it's scrapped.
 
Gunners/Gunners plaza. A merc/evil faction with firepower, vertibirds for some reason, and a connection to a companion. I'm guessing that this was a joinable faction in concept but as most things in the game lacked any kind of follow through, they could have even gone all Bethesda rehash and had that fucktard Jericho be a high ranking member of the faction.
 
Spacemunkey said:
Gunners/Gunners plaza. A merc/evil faction with firepower, vertibirds for some reason, and a connection to a companion. I'm guessing that this was a joinable faction in concept but as most things in the game lacked any kind of follow through, they could have even gone all Bethesda rehash and had that fucktard Jericho be a high ranking member of the faction.
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I remember Gunner Plaza. I killed a ton of raiders with Hancock and found a radio station and named character in which I frantically reloaded a save in hopes of me actually being able to join the Gunners, only to find out they attack you no matter what.
 
I never understood why "Talon Company" tried to kill you on sight for no fucking reason in Fallout 3, and I don't understand why the "Gunners" in Fallout 4 do likewise. Who are these morons all working for, and why is "kill absolutely anyone that's not us" their MO?
 
Lanfear said:
I never understood why "Talon Company" tried to kill you on sight for no fucking reason in Fallout 3, and I don't understand why the "Gunners" in Fallout 4 do likewise. Who are these morons all working for, and why is "kill absolutely anyone that's not us" their MO?
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Because-
Super Mutants/Raiders/Mercenary Company's/Feral Animals=The generic Orc's of Fallout.
 
Lanfear said:
I never understood why "Talon Company" tried to kill you on sight for no fucking reason in Fallout 3, and I don't understand why the "Gunners" in Fallout 4 do likewise. Who are these morons all working for, and why is "kill absolutely anyone that's not us" their MO?
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Bethesda merc 101: kill everyone and hope to get paid retroactively.
 
The Covenant in Fallout 4 was not really great but it is how the entire game should have played out. For once in 50 hours of playing you aren't tasked with immediately shooting everything and mindlessly looting stuff. For once, in that 50 hours, the game makes you talk to characters in the game.

This is of course limited by the awful dialogue wheel, as exemplified by the fact that to get in the Covenant you are interviewed with the infamous G.O.A.T. from Fallout 3. And the difference is glaring. I'm reposting what I showed in another thread on the Covenant. It is the difference in dialogue choices for the exact same question from the G.O.A.T.:

In Fallout 3, you were presented with this list of options to choose from:
1) "But doctor, wouldn't that cause a parabolic destabilization of the fission singularity?" - Science

2) "Yeah? Up yours too, buddy!" - Speech

3) Say nothing, grab a nearby pipe and hit the scientist in the head to knock him out. For all you knew, he was planning to blow up the vault. - Melee

4) Say nothing, but slip away before the scientist can continue his rant. - Sneak

In Fallout 4, you can only choose from these responses:
1) Science
2) Insult him
3) Knock him out
4) Sneak Out

There you have it folks, Fallout 3 had infinitely better dialogue and role-playing opportunity than Fallout 4. When I found East City Downs and Combat Zone and so many other areas - guess what? You cannot talk to ANYONE, only shooty shooty looty looty nonsense.

Fallout used to be about exploring the economics, politics, and social aspects of a post-apocalyptic universe, now it's about having Flamers of Freezing and minecraft. What a mess.
 
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Boston


On a serious note I thought Lexington was such a waste, I remember first arriving there thinking "Wow is this an actual city with people?" then I proceeded to walk into a parking garage only to end up killing a horde of zombies.
I walk back out after I activate a securitron and...oh a whole bunch of gunners/raiders(I can't tell the difference since they're all the same to me) that I have to slaughter nearby.
Then by that time after I checked out the wonderful emptiness of the cafe I got sick of the place and left.
I mean is the game trying to tell me that people weren't trying to inhabit that place before it was overrun by monsters? That instead of saying "Hey look an abandoned city to inhabit and rebuild!" they instead said "Hey everyone look there's a rotting wooden hut we can live in and it doesn't even have a door!".
 
Irwin John Finster said:
The Covenant in Fallout 4 was not really great but it is how the entire game should have played out. For once in 50 hours of playing you aren't tasked with immediately shooting everything and mindlessly looting stuff. For once, in that 50 hours, the game makes you talk to characters in the game.

This is of course limited by the awful dialogue wheel, as exemplified by the fact that to get in the Covenant you are interviewed with the infamous G.O.A.T. from Fallout 3. And the difference is glaring. I'm reposting what I showed in another thread on the Covenant. It is the difference in dialogue choices for the exact same question from the G.O.A.T.:

What a mess.
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I personally felt the whole SAFE test was shoehorned in just for a giggle or two and say " Remember Fallout 3? Yeah, it's canon."

Like, I rekted those sewer guys and stole all their armor, which looked pretty militia like so I was okay with it, but it cannot be a huge coincidence that Covenant holds a test to rat out synths that also is apart of Vault 101's education.

Anyways, I think Covenant is one big reference to Fo3 but is still kinda cool. You can side with or against Covenant while most of the game would only let you side against Covenant because Fallout players only want to be Messiahs.
 
Both the Combat Zone and Easy City Downs had a lot of potential, because they followed the general theme that Raiders have a life outside of raiding. Both are interesting takes on their community and exploring it more profoundly would have been great; though I am entirely too aware that Bethesda would never allow something like moral complexity get in the way of your killing sprees, it would have been really intriguing and absorbing to explore raiders as people, to gain insight into their lives and as to why they raid. It would have also offered a place to frequent for evil characters (even though karma, both mechanically and in terms of roleplaying, has been done away with entirely) and to gain morally dubious quests.

I also thought the Institute could have been handled better, if not in terms of architecture then in terms of presentation. I never got the feeling that the people who worked there lived there too; it was too clean, too clinical. Finding their rooms barren and more often than not empty made me feel unsatisfied; I also found it hard to believe that they managed to achieve all that they did, what with the relatively meager facilities they had been provided with. If they'd done away with the central plaza entirely and designed it like a Vault, tightly packed and claustrophobic, I would have found it intriguing; if they'd given the scientists more personality than their lobotomised servitors, I would have found it intriguing; if they'd made the Institute more morally grey and clearly working with humanity's best interests at heart, I would have found it intriguing, but none of those things happened.

Almost every location in the game could have been improved with some clever mise en scene and interesting quests, but what we got instead is a wasteland full of mindless bullet sponges with a surprisingly binary faction morality spectrum, yet no satisfaction from siding with either good or evil.
 
I felt the story (like many people) was handled in a piss poor way.
It's a shame, because I could see how the premise could work, there's something Fallout about it, but the way Bethesda pulled it off made it an absolute shambles.
Imagine if the game started you off waking up in Vault 111, all the other residents wake up with you. You are handled your Vault Boy and you strike up conversation with the people of Vault 111, learning that these people were frozen before the war and hid this was the experiment they were involved in.
You all head out and Kellogg is there with a few Synths, they shoot the residents but you manage to escape. You then play out the start of the game trying to track down Kellogg. You do so and when you go through his brain (one of the highlights of F4 I may add) you learn he was part of the institute and went against them. The man behind it is the Overseerer of Vault 111, who woke up several decades earlier to find the Institute and work for them.
You try to find a way into the Institute, the Railroad want to save them but the Brotherhood of Steel want to salvage their parts, to study them and possibly use their technology.

You make it to the Institute here Father reveals reveals that he wants to replace the Wasteland with people like Kellogg, so Boston would be free of Illness and death. He also states that the residents of Vault 111 are Synths with memories implemented from Pre-War America who were put in the Vault to see if it could be done. The operation was a success but Kellogg soon found Synths to be an abomination to mankind and went on a quest to redeem himself from being what he hates. Then we have a story about what is good, do you join the side that wants to save runaways from the Institutes experiments? Do you want to go with the group who find these for religious and scientific reasons, to study what makes the Synths work and maybe use that technology for the greater good of the BoS, which could indirectly help the everyday man? Or go with the group who want to change humankind in order to fulfil their own greater good and make people nearly indestructible at the expense of losing their humanity?

That there would have been so much better than "Oh, need to find my son. I'll do it after I build this toilet"
 
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