What is it with Bethesda and nonsensical settlements?

[Meurzh]

This has to be a trope in their 'Fallout' games.

In Fallout 4, we have Diamond City and Goodneighbor. If any kind of sense is to be made (and it's not), these settlements should never have stood a chance.

The most obvious threat should be the legions upon legions of super mutants, especially those wielding mini nukes. If they all decided to lay siege to the city one day, the suiciders could just either run into the walls and guards or just toss their nukes in the general direction of the settlement and they'd be charging inside the stadium within no time.

Seriously. How do these guards wearing umpire gear with shitty machine gun turrets even defend such a place?

I'm curious how they can even get supply lines maintained in such a hostile environment. They also have a large water purifier (lol fuck you Fallout 3).

I'll let someone else explain why Goodneighbor is ridiculous because I'm running out of time.

 

[ZigzagPX4]

Rough guess, the super mutants, raiders and other assorted threats all eliminate each other at a perfectly convienent rate, rendering them far too scattered and unorganised to ever attack any major settlement properly. Seeing as there are Gunners and Super Mutants right outside the unlocked thin wooden door to Goodneighbor, I would say fighting each other to a standstill is the only way they haven't made any progress yet.

Sorry, but that's probably as substantial an explanation as you can get. Bethesda goes for impressing players first and explanation last, if ever at all.

 

[Irwin John Finster]

It's really quite simple. These people do not care to think these things through. Their executives say things like "Not interested in discussing realism in a post apoc game with talking mutants." They have no business creating fictional universes. This video explains it very well:


They are not good writers, they don't care, they're lazy writers, and they would do better to license the franchise to better writers such as Obsidian and then rake in all the cash while they stay far away from the creative development process and focus on dumbing down the Elder Scrolls as much as possible.

 

[Ninja]

I love MrBtongue's videos. He is really good at explaining thoughts I've had, but can't really put to words.

 

[Tom Bishop]

There isn't a city in the entire Fallout universe that could realistically protect itself from the hordes and hordes of Super Mutants, ghouls, and raiders present in the Commonwealth. If the enemy population was a bit more reasonable, I'd say these settlements would have adequate defenses. The problem lies with Bethesda's failure to fill the overworld with anything but enemies, enemies, and more enemies.

 

[Irwin John Finster]

Also, 7 years since Fallout 3 and Diamond City and Goodneighbor are the only major settlements in the game.

I'm about to replay KOTOR 1 and 2 and both of those games have more numerous and interesting settlements and dialogue options than Fallout 4 and they were made more than 10 years ago!

 

[PossibleCabbage]

How defensible settlements are depends largely on how effective walls and barred doors are against well-equipped attackers. I mean, if the game isn't designed to let the PC get through an obstacle they're not going to be able to knock down that door or wall no matter how many missiles they shoot at it, it's potentially an explanation that "construction is really durable in the Fallout world."

 

[Crni Vuk]

if mere posters and cakes survive for 270+ years. What do you think how tough those fucking walls must be?

 

[Meurzh]

if mere posters and cakes survive for 270+ years. What do you think how tough those fucking walls must be?

Are they walls that 'never expire'?

 

[Knight In Leather Armor]

Covenant makes a bit of sense considering it has way too many turrets for a small group of raiders to do anything or the passing mutant raiding party. What I don't get about Covenant is that ITS ENTIRE TOWN GUARD is in a SEWER that's NOWHERE NEAR IT.

Covenant's survivability ends with the turrets as a large group of raiders or SMs could easily wipe it out because the Covenant Guard is too busy referencing Fallout 3 in a way that Bethesda thinks is cool to actually do anything.

Basically almost none of Fallout 4's settlements would be alive in real life as they'd probably be easily trampled. Especially Diamond City, who only survived thanks to the Minutemen who saved them from a SM invasion.

 

[Dr Fallout]

There isn't a city in the entire Fallout universe that could realistically protect itself from the hordes and hordes of Super Mutants, ghouls, and raiders present in the Commonwealth. If the enemy population was a bit more reasonable, I'd say these settlements would have adequate defenses. The problem lies with Bethesda's failure to fill the overworld with anything but enemies, enemies, and more enemies.

Umm... yeah... I find a large army of thousands of armed men with trucks and heavy weaponry can easily survive that. You know, like Shady Sands!

 

[GlutinousRice]

Basically almost none of Fallout 4's settlements would be alive in real life as they'd probably be easily trampled. Especially Diamond City, who only survived thanks to the Minutemen who saved them from a SM invasion.

In real life nobody in their right mind would build a settlement in a war zone.

That one of the problem of fps direction Bethesda has chosen. In Fallout 1/2/Tactics, you wander in a large region and occasionally make hostile encounters to spice up your travel. The Bethesda recipe, due to limitation engine and hardware, and the fact that it will be boring to hike around a region the size of California, reduced the size of the map to a single city, but at the same time you have to keep the player busy, so you end up with a ludicrous concentration of enemies that won't happen normally, unless you happen to live in Syria right now (in which case I'm sorry for you).

 

[Dr Fallout]

In real life nobody in their right mind would build a settlement in a war zone.

That one of the problem of fps direction Bethesda has chosen. In Fallout 1/2/Tactics, you wander in a large region and occasionally make hostile encounters to spice up your travel. The Bethesda recipe, due to limitation engine and hardware, and the fact that it will be boring to hike around a region the size of California, reduced the size of the map to a single city, but at the same time you have to keep the player busy, so you end up with a ludicrous concentration of enemies that won't happen normally, unless you happen to live in Syria right now (in which case I'm sorry for you).

Fallout New Vegas did it right. Not too many to be ridiculous, enough to be fun.

 

[ZigzagPX4]

The Bethesda recipe, due to limitation engine and hardware, and the fact that it will be boring to hike around a region the size of California, reduced the size of the map to a single city, but at the same time you have to keep the player busy, so you end up with a ludicrous concentration of enemies that won't happen normally, unless you happen to live in Syria right now (in which case I'm sorry for you).

They could solve this by segmenting the open world into smaller open worlds, like The Witcher 3 did. Maybe even smaller, to a Deus Ex extent. Travelling between these smaller open worlds would be done with the traditional fast travel system and there would be randomised - maybe even procedurally generated - areas for the encounters in between.

Think Witcher 3, but between Kaer Morhen, White Orchard, Velen & Novigrad, and Skellige, there would be random events. In Bethesda's case, each world would be smaller, but that way they could realistically convey large distances without having to sacrifice their open-world exploration.

 

[Spacemunkey]

They could solve this by segmenting the open world into smaller open worlds, like The Witcher 3 did. Maybe even smaller, to a Deus Ex extent. Travelling between these smaller open worlds would be done with the traditional fast travel system and there would be randomised - maybe even procedurally generated - areas for the encounters in between.

Think Witcher 3, but between Kaer Morhen, White Orchard, Velen & Novigrad, and Skellige, there would be random events. In Bethesda's case, each world would be smaller, but that way they could realistically convey large distances without having to sacrifice their open-world exploration.

You'd think since Bioware did that in Dragon Age BGS would have copi...I mean done their own version of it.

 

[Risewild]

They could solve this by segmenting the open world into smaller open worlds, like The Witcher 3 did. Maybe even smaller, to a Deus Ex extent. Travelling between these smaller open worlds would be done with the traditional fast travel system and there would be randomised - maybe even procedurally generated - areas for the encounters in between.

Think Witcher 3, but between Kaer Morhen, White Orchard, Velen & Novigrad, and Skellige, there would be random events. In Bethesda's case, each world would be smaller, but that way they could realistically convey large distances without having to sacrifice their open-world exploration.

The problem is that the Bethesda fans call themselves explorers, they love walk everywhere and kill everything in between. Most Fallout 4 supporters praise the "wonderful" exploration in that game.

Also making it like that would be more close to the classic fallout games with the travel being on a overmap and just have the random encounters and actual locations be on different maps, and we all know Bethesda would never make anything closer to the original games, they have to always "improve" over those "boring", "ugly" and "hard" old things.

 

[Crni Vuk]

They could solve this by segmenting the open world into smaller open worlds, like The Witcher 3 did. Maybe even smaller, to a Deus Ex extent. Travelling between these smaller open worlds would be done with the traditional fast travel system and there would be randomised - maybe even procedurally generated - areas for the encounters in between.

Think Witcher 3, but between Kaer Morhen, White Orchard, Velen & Novigrad, and Skellige, there would be random events. In Bethesda's case, each world would be smaller, but that way they could realistically convey large distances without having to sacrifice their open-world exploration.

A crazy idea, I know, but maybe there could be a type of map system? You know with a grid, and where your character moved over the map, while days where represented by seconds, there could be random encounters even! And some of your skills ... let us call it ... yes! Outdoorsman! Could influence what encounters and enemies you face.
I think this would be a great adition to Fallout as role playing game!

 

[Dr Fallout]

A crazy idea, I know, but maybe there could be a type of map system? You know with a grid, and where your character moved over the map, while days where represented by seconds, there could be random encounters even! And some of your skills ... let us call it ... yes! Outdoorsman! Could influence what encounters and enemies you face.
I think this would be a great adition to Fallout as role playing game!

Woah, that's a cool idea. We should do that. And maybe add ghouls that aren't total zombies? Or maybe even... a small village isolated and prey to bandits?

 

[MercenarySnake]

A crazy idea, I know, but maybe there could be a type of map system? You know with a grid, and where your character moved over the map, while days where represented by seconds, there could be random encounters even! And some of your skills ... let us call it ... yes! Outdoorsman! Could influence what encounters and enemies you face.
I think this would be a great adition to Fallout as role playing game!

Damn it you beat me to it, I was thinking the same thing just like how the first two Fallouts did it while still showing all of the landmarks you encountered after finding them.
Cuts all the dull walking simulator portions(I can't stand the boring walking everywhere portions) but not things like encounters.

 

[Dr Fallout]

Damn it you beat me to it, I was thinking the same thing just like how the first two Fallouts did it while still showing all of the landmarks you encountered after finding them.
Cuts all the dull walking simulator portions(I can't stand the boring walking everywhere portions) but not things like encounters.

Suddenly exploration is actually fun!