The Courier
Blain is a pain.
I've been having a lot of conversations with my boyfriend lately regarding the upcoming Fallout 4. And it's yielded an interesting divide in opinion that I wanted to share. This is an anecdotal post, sorry if anyone falls asleep, I tend to ramble.
For a bit of background, I'm a big fan of classic CRPG's and generally find Fallout 2 to be my top Fallout game. When it's not jockeying for position with New Vegas, anyway. I personally prefer the gameplay, art style and 50's shenanigans of modern fallout, whilst the in depth role-play, choice and consequences and open endedness of the originals really wets my whistle versus the more constricted recent entries. Needless to say, I'm firmly in the middle of the whole classic vs. modern game design element. I like both, pretty much. (The comforting resemblance to Deus Ex does butter me up, I'll admit.)
My boyfriend, Chris, however, is a newly minted fan. I introduced him to New Vegas firstly, and now he's flipping back and forth between FO3 and the first game. He loves Fallout; however, mainly in it's current form. This is largely due to the way in which one interacts with the environment. He loves nothing more than simply scavenging through the environment for bits and bobbles to bring home to Megaton/Lucky 38 or whatever bombed out shell he's chosen as his home.
I tend to roleplay as specific individuals, especially as The Courier given his/her undefined background, shaped by past events that lead them to interact with the denizens of the Wasteland in wildly outlandish and specific ways. My greatest joys often come from passed skill checks, amusing dialogue and multi-pathed quests. Essentially, I am a fairly common type for someone whose played RPG's as long as I have. My experience is often acclimate to a choose-your-own-adventure book.
Chris, on the other hand, comes from a gaming background of simulation and strategy games with a large helping of the Battletech tabletop game and it's many gaming excursions. As such, his style of roleplay is unrestricted by genre conventions and expectations, being that before I came along he hadn't played many if any Computer/Console RPG's. Whereas I value dialogue, story and complex systems of play, he values the ability to shape himself and his adventures in ways that aren't predefined by developer whim. His biggest problem with Skyrim, a game I enjoy but often deride for shitty writing, unchanging backdrop and poor character motivation? The physics keep knocking the shit off his shelves he spent a full thirty minutes carefully placing and arranging according to his character's habit of collecting skulls and "Shinies".
The difference in values has led me to really reassess how I view Fallout 4 in particular. On one hand, the dialogue looks to have been cut down, at least in choices per dialogue tree. The skill system I have so enjoyed tweaking and planning for five games now may have been scrapped, cutting down on the intricate character building I had embarked on in New Vegas in particular. This too was affected by the definite background of having a spouse and a child, limiting the roleplay related to my character's sexual proclivity and marital status. I'm not even going to get started on how I feel about the "press a button to critical".
But on the other hand, the world seems more detailed and artistically pleasing than ever, really encouraging the player to be interested in the world around them rather than blindly following quest lines. On top of this is a vast crafting system, not just for weapons which look appropriately jury rigged, but creating settlements, finally letting the player make a physical, tangible change in the environment. One that also makes logical sense, as before you were always the man with no name on his way through-never a settler with dreams and aspirations for a new world.
I am finding more and more, as I replay each Fallout game from FO1 to NV, that applying this other way of thinking has drawn me in in exciting new ways my prior efforts' more narrow-minded, sequential approach did not. Bethesda has always driven a spike between my duplicitous gaming personality, especially with their take on my beloved Fallout, but I'm learning to approach the games with new eyes. And it's not all so bad. This direction could really be something special. Cautious optimism tends to be preferable to outright cynicism, at least in my book. Anyway, I thought it would be nice to generate a little positive conversation about the new game that wasn't just blind optimism and Bethesda-stroking.
Can't possibly be worse than Oblivion, anyway.*
*Anything's better than a whole game's worth of rude jackoff's whose faces resemble scrotums manipulated to resemble a crude abstract painting of a human face by an amputee with cerebral palsy. (I apologize, I used that one earlier in a conversation and just had to write it down somewhere.)
For a bit of background, I'm a big fan of classic CRPG's and generally find Fallout 2 to be my top Fallout game. When it's not jockeying for position with New Vegas, anyway. I personally prefer the gameplay, art style and 50's shenanigans of modern fallout, whilst the in depth role-play, choice and consequences and open endedness of the originals really wets my whistle versus the more constricted recent entries. Needless to say, I'm firmly in the middle of the whole classic vs. modern game design element. I like both, pretty much. (The comforting resemblance to Deus Ex does butter me up, I'll admit.)
My boyfriend, Chris, however, is a newly minted fan. I introduced him to New Vegas firstly, and now he's flipping back and forth between FO3 and the first game. He loves Fallout; however, mainly in it's current form. This is largely due to the way in which one interacts with the environment. He loves nothing more than simply scavenging through the environment for bits and bobbles to bring home to Megaton/Lucky 38 or whatever bombed out shell he's chosen as his home.
I tend to roleplay as specific individuals, especially as The Courier given his/her undefined background, shaped by past events that lead them to interact with the denizens of the Wasteland in wildly outlandish and specific ways. My greatest joys often come from passed skill checks, amusing dialogue and multi-pathed quests. Essentially, I am a fairly common type for someone whose played RPG's as long as I have. My experience is often acclimate to a choose-your-own-adventure book.
Chris, on the other hand, comes from a gaming background of simulation and strategy games with a large helping of the Battletech tabletop game and it's many gaming excursions. As such, his style of roleplay is unrestricted by genre conventions and expectations, being that before I came along he hadn't played many if any Computer/Console RPG's. Whereas I value dialogue, story and complex systems of play, he values the ability to shape himself and his adventures in ways that aren't predefined by developer whim. His biggest problem with Skyrim, a game I enjoy but often deride for shitty writing, unchanging backdrop and poor character motivation? The physics keep knocking the shit off his shelves he spent a full thirty minutes carefully placing and arranging according to his character's habit of collecting skulls and "Shinies".
The difference in values has led me to really reassess how I view Fallout 4 in particular. On one hand, the dialogue looks to have been cut down, at least in choices per dialogue tree. The skill system I have so enjoyed tweaking and planning for five games now may have been scrapped, cutting down on the intricate character building I had embarked on in New Vegas in particular. This too was affected by the definite background of having a spouse and a child, limiting the roleplay related to my character's sexual proclivity and marital status. I'm not even going to get started on how I feel about the "press a button to critical".
But on the other hand, the world seems more detailed and artistically pleasing than ever, really encouraging the player to be interested in the world around them rather than blindly following quest lines. On top of this is a vast crafting system, not just for weapons which look appropriately jury rigged, but creating settlements, finally letting the player make a physical, tangible change in the environment. One that also makes logical sense, as before you were always the man with no name on his way through-never a settler with dreams and aspirations for a new world.
I am finding more and more, as I replay each Fallout game from FO1 to NV, that applying this other way of thinking has drawn me in in exciting new ways my prior efforts' more narrow-minded, sequential approach did not. Bethesda has always driven a spike between my duplicitous gaming personality, especially with their take on my beloved Fallout, but I'm learning to approach the games with new eyes. And it's not all so bad. This direction could really be something special. Cautious optimism tends to be preferable to outright cynicism, at least in my book. Anyway, I thought it would be nice to generate a little positive conversation about the new game that wasn't just blind optimism and Bethesda-stroking.
Can't possibly be worse than Oblivion, anyway.*
*Anything's better than a whole game's worth of rude jackoff's whose faces resemble scrotums manipulated to resemble a crude abstract painting of a human face by an amputee with cerebral palsy. (I apologize, I used that one earlier in a conversation and just had to write it down somewhere.)
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