Salem: A Town of Wasted Potential

TheKingofVault14

TheKingofVault14

Fallout Fan For Life!
Salem-Fallout4.jpg


Out of all the towns in Fallout 4, Salem of all places is the most uninteresting and underused one in the game!

From my very first playthrough, I was really expecting to see something interesting and cool when I would eventually get to there, and when I did, all I found was a fight between an old man and some mirelurks. And a completely lackluster questline that was 'The Devil's Due' in The Museum of Witchcraft.


And TBH, I really liked the original idea for this town that was scrapped, over with what we got in the final game. Even though it sounded ridiculous the first time I heard Emil Pagliarulo describe it in the Bethesda NOCLIP documentary, IMO it sounded a lot better than The Devil's Due quest!

Here's what the original idea was:
[NOTE: Yes I copied and pasted this info from the Fallout Wiki, and I did it like this because of convenience, don't @ me!]

;-)


"Salem was originally going to feature a questline involving children who gained magic powers through mutations. They would be persecuted by people from the town of Danvers, who viewed them as witches. The magic users were originally given spells from The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim to use, but these spells were later removed from the engine, causing technical difficulties. Danvers was also cut from the game due to being too close to Salem, leading to the quest being cut and replaced by the quest The Devil's Due."




You see? Seems quite out there am I right?
(Even though we've had weirder things happen in the previous installments)




Still, I would've preferred something like this over the stupid Deathclaw Egg quest anyday!
And they didn't even have to make it about superpowers, they could've made it into a Synth Hunt going on in the town, would've quite fitting given the location, and theme of the series which is history repeating itself.



I don't know, what are your guy's thoughts on this location?
 
Seems like an example of Bethesda not knowing how to write anything outside of the fantasy genre.

Still, sounds like that quest line had more potential than what we got. The deathclaw in the museum or whatever is a cool setpiece, which is completely ruined by the “reveal” that that monster that killed all those gunners and made all that scary noise was just a deathclaw.

The mutant children with magic powers sounds appropriately Fallout in a Twilight Zone sort of way, but something tells me that these children wouldn’t be portrayed as “psykers”, but rather as little wizards that just needed a little radiation to give them access to the magick energy that permeates the Fallout world. Call me cynical.

Edit: Yeah, making it into a Synth thing would’ve been more fitting thematically, comparing the Salem witch-hunts to the paranoia people of the Commonwealth supposedly feel towards being replaced by synths. Which isn’t actually touched on much in the game, despite Emil’s efforts.
 
The Salem magic kids vs Danvers magic kid thing is actually such a shockingly atrocious idea that I found it hard to believe that even Emil could have thoughtit was god. It's like something a 14 year old would write for a Fallout quest about their hometown. Because that's literally what it is, it's all just an extrapolation from the fact that he was from Salem and their highschool football team was rivals, and then combining it with the fact that Salem is associated with magic.

Trite as it is, obviously the better route would have been to do something about synth paranoia. Despite this supposedly being one of the major things about the game world, I think that Covenant is literally the only side quest that actually deals with it? Like at all? It's baffling how little it actually shows up. And if they went the synth paranoia route, then they could actually make a settlement with things to do and with relations to the rest of the world, rather than just another set of ruins filled iwth monsters.
 
Theres a warehouse up near that area that I really liked and wanted to use as a settlement. It was pretty close to the super mutant satellite dishes. I coupdn't build there though. Quite a bit in this game was just not utilized to it's full potential. It's something that's present in Skyrim as well. Hopefully not a trend they bring to the next TES. I'm willing to bet Starfield will have a lot of this.
 
Morgan_ said:
Theres a warehouse up near that area that I really liked and wanted to use as a settlement. It was pretty close to the super mutant satellite dishes. I coupdn't build there though. Quite a bit in this game was just not utilized to it's full potential. It's something that's present in Skyrim as well. Hopefully not a trend they bring to the next TES. I'm willing to bet Starfield will have a lot of this.
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It looks like Starfield is going to put a lot more focus on the settlement construction shit to me, I imagine the places where you can build will be less limited than Fo4
 
Just sad, we have an entire maps worth of incredibly untrusting and paranoid people, not knowing if their wife or son has been taken and replaced by an identical android, and they didn't even think to make some kind of "Salem Synth trials" quest??
 
RoadkillSoap said:
Just sad, we have an entire maps worth of incredibly untrusting and paranoid people, not knowing if their wife or son has been taken and replaced by an identical android, and they didn't even think to make some kind of "Salem Synth trials" quest??
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I'm sure they did think of it, but thought it was too obvious, and Emil having lived in Salem as a child wanted to do something special for it that wasn't so obvious. But when that didn't pan out, they just decided to go with a small easy dumb quest.
 
Hardboiled Android said:
I'm sure they did think of it, but thought it was too obvious, and Emil having lived in Salem as a child wanted to do something special for it that wasn't so obvious. But when that didn't pan out, they just decided to go with a small easy dumb quest.
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Yeah, I can see that being the case. Pretty obvious, c'mon Emil! It would've been a lot better than what we actually got in the end. :-x
 
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