Wasteland survival guide is amongs the worst things written in Fallout 3. It is like they purposly tried to make it bad, unaware that they were already bad in the first place.
There is no way i could picture myself anyone willingly running like a moron in a minefield or get irradiated or any of those craps, especially if the person who asked you is a fucking lunatic. And that person could simply ask a doctor or a mechanist about how those things works, without sacrificing countless of research assistants. They utterly failed to aknowledge that you are supposed to be a person, a person with goals, self-preservation, and common sense.
I was discussing this quest in another thread and while the written could've been much, much better, it actually shows that the devs knows how to construct a default RPG quest.
Forget the writing for a moment if you please, because honestly, not much is salvageable in FO3.
But the quest itself is not bad from a RPG perspective, quite the contrary actually.
The player is instigated to explore the world, the quest mix itself with other quests, the player is rewarded after performing certain tasks or the real reward is found while performing the quest and the NPC motive can be questioned, with a decision of how to deal with it left to the player.
After all, you can end the quest in multiple ways.
The problem is the writing, isn't? Dialogs, reasons, motives, NPC and player agenda and so on.
The funny thing is Moira Brown is actually a good NPC, but the writing crush her to bits, it could've been done so much better and make her a trully memorable character.
No-bark Noonan is much better at being nonsense - or "crazy" - than her and his dialogs are one of the most funny and entertaining things I've encountered in Nevada.
Don't know why Bethesda don't hire a professional writer when creating games, because they repeated the same awful decisions in FO4 and amplified them.
FO4 been a simple shooter is the least of the problems.
And before people asks, no, Emil Pugliarulo don't have academic formation or even college in literature, writing or anything equivalent, he's a game designer.
Who happens to WRITTEN the entire FO3 and FO4 story and side-quests!
It's like giving me, a simple techy savvy nerd, the control of all US nuclear strategic missiles and hope I would keep the peace.
Are you people mad?
