The disappointment of the Spouse

CT Phipps

CT Phipps

Carbon Dated and Proud
It's interesting but my biggest issue with Fallout 4 is probably the fact I think the game really wasted the opportunity of having a married protagonist. There's almost no other video game heroes who are happily married in video games and those who are married are almost certain to have their spouses murdered before the end of the intro.

I think it would have been interesting to have the Spouse be someone who the player could customize and would have a role in the game, either as someone who the player lost briefly only to hook back up with again later or be an opening companion.

Killing them just feels so....lazy.
 
Actually, you CAN customize the spouse. All you have to do is swap them out with the male, change up their appearance, and they'll stay that way even if you don't play as them. This also influences Shaun's appearance. The issue with this is the fact that 1, this contributes nothing because the Shaun-synth will always look exactly the same and the real Shaun always has that goddamn beard and the same hair so the customization is barely visible outside of eyes and skin color really.
 
Ragemage said:
Actually, you CAN customize the spouse. All you have to do is swap them out with the male, change up their appearance, and they'll stay that way even if you don't play as them. This also influences Shaun's appearance. The issue with this is the fact that 1, this contributes nothing because the Shaun-synth will always look exactly the same and the real Shaun always has that goddamn beard and the same hair so the customization is barely visible outside of eyes and skin color really.
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It's not the customization that bothers me, it's the fact they die within 10 minutes.

But yes, Synth Shaun is another element which seems like it should be something that is important but is completely not.

Mostly because it's creepy and horrifying with lots and lots of questions like "Does Synth Shaun age?" "Is he sentient because he certainly doesn't act that way?" "What does he remember" and so on.
 
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CT Phipps said:
Mostly because it's creepy and horrifying with lots and lots of questions like "Does Synth Shaun age?" "Is he sentient because he certainly doesn't act that way?" "What does he remember" and so on.
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I left the little shit to die in the Institute explosion. There isn't enough there to make me give a damn about him.

Think about this a minute, the very first time you actually meet the Shaun-bot face to face, he's immediately deactivated and the real Shaun shows up right afterwards. It just makes the kid feel completely pointless outside of a really, REALLY gimmicky way to trick you into thinking your son's still a little boy. Shaun-bot is only here for a bad plot twist. It would be interesting if the game actually addressed the fact that the synth might be able to grow up but literally no one mentions it, and even if you do save the Institute you can't ask anyone "Hey, so, does this kid grow up or am I stuck with a robo-son the rest of my life?" That's probably the main issue with Fallout 4 and why it's my least favorite game of all time. There are so many plotholes that could be fixed if they would just answer the simplest fucking questions but instead they decide to make everything either contrived bullshit for the sake of a plot twist or they don't bother explaining anything at all (hello Super Mutant experiments at the Institute).
 
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Could've had the spouse disappear into the wasteland and become someone completely different, like the head of a large faction or some kind of merc.
 
Prone Squanderer said:
Could've had the spouse disappear into the wasteland and become someone completely different, like the head of a large faction or some kind of merc.
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When I was thinking Bethesda was going to do something awesome in the game I thought it would go one of two ways.

1. Your spouse and Shaun are freed from the fridge early and you'd find them later with your spouse as an old woman and Shaun as now an adult. You'd have a really touching scene where you can catch up with your Spouse who went on to live a good life without you and either part peacefully with them or be angry you were essentially abandoned by them.

2. Your spouse would have been freed slightly earlier than you and you'd find her later having gone on to become an adventurer herself. You'd then have the option to renew your romance with them and take them as a Companion or admit you two had grown into different people.

Instead....*BLAM*

Ugh.
 
Yeah, I also didn't like the fact that they killed your spouse so early in the game. I get they're trying to create an emotional scene for the player, however in order to create an emotional scene like that we need to know and spend time with that character for proper buildup. Killing off the spouse got no reaction from me because I simply didn't have any good reason to care. Which is pretty much how I felt with every single emotional moment the game try and forces on you.

CT Phipps said:
1. Your spouse and Shaun are freed from the fridge early and you'd find them later with your spouse as an old woman and Shaun as now an adult. You'd have a really touching scene where you can catch up with your Spouse who went on to live a good life without you and either part peacefully with them or be angry you were essentially abandoned by them.
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This. This is what should've happened in the game.
 
As with basically every single aspect of Fallout 4, the spouse and PressXtoSHAAAAUUUUN were huge wasted opportunities.
With the theme of synths replacing people and the whole Blade Runner-esque "More human than human" thing the writing could have gone so many surprising ways, especially in the interactive medium of a video medium. Have your spouse woken up before you and then synth-cloned, and in the end you have to decide who is the real one. And the only way to be sure is to kill them. Let your spouse be an adventurer like you (but then he or she took a Fatboy to the knee... But it's okay, a stimpak healed it immediately), working basically against you throughout the game, reacting to your actions, and you only find out at the end.
Or have the player synth-cloned, with the other one working against you in a similar fashion... And in the end you can only find out for sure if the player or the antagonist is the synth by killing the antagonist. Let the game right in the beginning decide randomly wether the PC is a synth or not (anyone played the Blade Runner PC game?), and the player can find vague clues wether he or the antagonist is the synth.
Have your spouse thawed out and live a new life in the wasteland thinking you're dead, finding a new husband or wife and having more kids... One of them being named after him or her and being the right age, making the player chasing after him or her, only to realize in the end that your actual spouse is already dead, and that the person you're chasing is actually the offspring of your spouse.
Or you find your spouse early on, but it's a synth clone which you only realize when you find a hundred year old grave at the end.

So many possibilities to fuck with the player with that kind of theme going on. But instead, all you get is some talking to DiMA where you can't remember anything before the start of the day, despite being able to remember other details like how baseball works and so on.
So fucking sad.
 
JO'Geran said:
You know, it's funny, there's a well known Trope called Stuffed into the Fridge where they kill off a character in an emotionless way just to either get quick shocks, or to give the main protagonist a cheap revenge motive.

Fallout 4 took that literally.
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There's an interesting anecdote about the original character stuffed in a fridge: Alex. I don't remember her last name but the fact I *DO* remember Kyle Raynar's girlfriend's first name and her profession (photographer) actually showed she made a really strong impression. It was why the incident of killing her was such a big deal because, essentially, DC had made her so likable in her short appearances, GL fans were genuinely mad she was killed off in such a horrific way for cheap heat.

The Spouse doesn't get that much attention and kind of symbolizes the Paint by the Numbers nature of it.

There's really no good great "dramatic" moments in the game and the writing's laziness feels doubly strong because there's lots of places they could have done more with the material.

Hassknecht said:
So many possibilities to fuck with the player with that kind of theme going on. But instead, all you get is some talking to DiMA where you can't remember anything before the start of the day, despite being able to remember other details like how baseball works and so on.
So fucking sad.
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One of the few Console-friendly Mods which I really think worked was the one which added a Synth Companion made from the Spouse. Apparently, the Institute makes you for it. Obviously, they couldn't actually do the Laura Bailey writing for her but they did a lot with using her lines from the main game.

That actually might be an interestingly sick subplot for a more ambitious game. Go visit Shaun and discover he's made a fake mother as well as a fake Shaun.
 
There might be a cut quest that sounds like there was something like a possible synth replacement of the player's spouse planned.
Anyway, I really do think that this whole theme of "what does it mean to be human" could have worked so great in a video game as it's an interactive medium. Imagine playing the game like every other Bethesda fan, murdering billions of people everywhere. And in the end you meet your "clone" who is horrified at your actions because you murdered tons of people, confronting the player that all those faceless goons he or she murdered for caps and scrap were still human beings, an increasingly rare species after the apocalypse. Your "clone" instead has tried to rehabilitate the raiders to make the world a better place, working with the Institute to really develop the world.
But that would have required actual writing and more programming...
I mean, it already worked in Deus Ex, but that game was made by people with talent.


/edit: Hehehe, I just realized how awesome it would be if the game had some more random generation on what happens to your partner. Imagine shooting a horde of feral ghouls somewhere and when you loot them you notice a certain wedding ring...
That would actually lead to some proper replaying value.
Imagine your spouse being woken up some thirty years before you (not that you'd know). The game then randomly decides what happened to him or her. Life in the wasteland as a farmer with kids and then death, synth cloning, ghoulification, life as a raider...
Or maybe you just find your spouses' skeleton humourously arranged in a toilet by some raiders.
 
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But does't some up fallout 4. Would people where expecting and wanting never really quite got finished an happened. When I was playing the game I was thinking theres got to be err....rhhhh more to this or something ?. Yeah also you don't really get to have synth Shaun as a companion or anything or !!! Theres no real story their no sythn spouse either. Would of defiantly be interesting. But I think the bottom line is expected story turned out to be no story at all. It suggests theirs going to be story but there's really not they spent there time on quests like kid in the fridge or raid on abanathy farm 5
 
My problem is that there is a disconnect between player and character in an RPG off all things.

I'd rather the game try and build an emotional moment through an event rather than character.
 
Millim said:
My problem is that there is a disconnect between player and character in an RPG off all things.

I'd rather the game try and build an emotional moment through an event rather than character.
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Indeed, a fixed relationship adds too much stuff to the character, although RPG != blank slate character.
I think with the whole synth-stuff going on the game could have gone an almost Stanley Parable route of fucking with the player, or at least Bioshock. Have the player ask himself wether he murdered all those people because he had to or because he wanted to, and what it really means to be human in such a world.
 
Hassknecht said:
Indeed, a fixed relationship adds too much stuff to the character, although RPG != blank slate character.
I think with the whole synth-stuff going on the game could have gone an almost Stanley Parable route of fucking with the player, or at least Bioshock. Have the player ask himself wether he murdered all those people because he had to or because he wanted to, and what it really means to be human in such a world.
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Ah the Stanley Parable, I love that game.

I think Fallout 4 is beyond saving, yet I can't help imagining what it would be like having Stanley Parable's narrator in it. A bit of British sarcasm could make playing the game a lot better (actual sarcasm that is).
 
Prone Squanderer said:
Ah the Stanley Parable, I love that game.

I think Fallout 4 is beyond saving, yet I can't help imagining what it would be like having Stanley Parable's narrator in it. A bit of British sarcasm could make playing the game a lot better (actual sarcasm that is).
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Any actual sarcasm would have been great instead of the ultra-cringey "jokes" we got whenever we were dumb enough to click the "SARCASTIC" button. Especially with the male SS. At least Nick Valentine did it somewhat properly...
 
I've said before, I'd rather the game have gone the cyborg route, taking people in and turning them into machines for their own experimentation, trying to create a one state, basically a follow up to the Master's plan.

Hell, it would have been a nice twist if the person behind the Institute was getting their information from a remnant of the Master's army who traveled East looking for a place to call home.

You could have had the whole 'have you been killing people justly?' as in the villain wanted to help for Wasteland.

I wouldn't have minded a complete mind fuck as mentioned earlier.

It upsets me that Fallout 4 could have been really good, they had all the resources right there, yet they chose to make the simplest game they could.

I don't know if I blame Emil 100% for this however as Bethesda have stated that they only spend a short time in pre-production. I wouldn't be surprised if Todd or Pete rush a script out meaning Emil barely gets any time to actually do a first draft.

That's the only reason I can see the reason for Fallout 4, not even a Company like EA would allow the same story again, they would at least expect some kind of change.
 
The worst is that this time around they were super proud of their oh-so-deep and engaging story and focus on character, something they never did before (unless you count Reguard to some degree)... But they just suck at writing, so we got the blandest of blands possible.
 
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