What is the proper solution to Tenpenny Tower

I can understand not liking the quest due to the characters, the karma, or the lack of consequences at large, but it makes no sense to me to dislike the quest because you don't know Roy will kill everyone. I really don't understand it. You let Roy in and you think it'll be alright, but then he kills everyone and you didn't know about it until it was too late.

Okay, but isn't what makes the ending slides to the series so great because you see what your actions did long after you did them? Some actions did good, some did bad, even if you had good intentions. I enjoy Mr. House's ending but it's a shame he kills the Kings as the ending slide goes or how Lily's endings are all bittersweet no matter your actions.
 
He kills them after you convince them to live together. It makes the choice meaningless and nonsensical. What is the point of outcomes if they are all the same?

With Mr. House and Lily it makes sense because that's how their characters are setup. Mr. House eliminates everyone that he deems unnecessary for his utopia and Lily is just a tragic character all around. Roy just kills everyone after you convince both parties to live together. If he was going to kill everyone anyway, why agree to a truce in the first place?
 
The thing I recently noticed is that if one reads Roy's character, it actually kind of makes it obvious he'd kill everyone. I guess since he's the "victim" his insults towards smoothskins are supposed to be interpreted as just regular dickheadedness. Since quite a few Fallout quests do allow for a peace deal to be done (Boulder City comes to mind), the player is most likely supposed to brush off Roy's bigotry. Roy pretty much is a bigot himself, taking the chance at a truce was most likely a shot in the dark with him. Tried it, hated it, since he's already in the tower he's not letting no smoothskin kick him back out. That's the way I see it.
 
I think it might be instructive to explain what the quest could have been. There could have been a way to discover Roy's plot, before or after going along with it.

A) a secret part of the metro tunnels that once found, you're told to stay out of, and have to sneak through without getting caught to find his journal. Which could reveal his plan, or simply provide useful info for outwitting him and the others into exposing the plan.
B) convincing the other two that normals aren't all bad by interacting with them. If you're respectful and kind they could volunteer the information without prodding. So that there's an unintentional solution, not just an unintentional failure.

C) catching Roy in the act of stealing the keys to the basement. Which could incentivize thinking outside of the box (of handholding), because you would need to choose to spy on him (possibly out of curiosity as to what he'll do as a resident, or to see how people react to him).
D) sabotaging the basement door preemptively, so that an alarm goes off and Roy gets caught when he tries to do it.

Honestly I could keep going, but you get the idea. It could have been a lesson in doubt and trust, where thinking logically actually accomplishes something. Rather than one where putting thought into just leads to a surprise fail, that seems like an awfully cheap way to make the world seem brutal. The narrative also could have had us tackle the grey issue of victims becoming victimizers in the cycle of violence. As well as the existence of people who simply latch onto victim narratives to do what they really want.
 
NMLevesque said:
Your choices all have the same outcome. Some innocent people die. Some wicked people die. Roy and his two besties is a lot fewer than 'all of Tenpenny Tower'. There's no way of knowing that, so what's the message? That you should be paranoid about Roy? That you should be technically evil if it means lucking into the least bad outcome? Is this meta? Should we praise them for being stupid on a technical level, because it meant accidentally bringing up a better question than the quest itself?

We can talk about intent vs outcome, trolley problems, and so on but the problem is that these questions are not part of the narrative. They're consequences of it, sure, but in direct contradiction to how the story is told. Damned if you do, dammed if you don't doesn't work when killing Roy et al only means a temporary drop in a borderline meaningless stat. Intent vs outcome doesn't work because if you intend to be lazy, you get a better outcome. I.E the message there would be 'sometimes the wrong intent gets the right results'. So basically 'go make accidents happen'. Which is just dumb. I could go on with other potential questions, but you get the idea.

The second problem is that this quest provides no answers. Which is also the major problem with Bethesda's writing for Fallout. It raises muddied questions, drops the mic, and walks offstage to leave us to come up with something better by thinking around what they actually wrote.
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Killing roy means more than that. It means a strengthened stigma separating the zombies and smoothskins. It means the residents, the ones who see ghouls as no more than mindless savages, were correct. No minds can be changed. It shows the player that the world doesn’t revolve around him, and that he can’t solve every problem with words. It’s a quest that humbles the kind of self rightous crusaders who believe they can single handedly give the wasteland a happy ending.
 
Ziggy Stardust said:
Killing roy means more than that. It means a strengthened stigma separating the zombies and smoothskins. It means the residents, the ones who see ghouls as no more than mindless savages, were correct. No minds can be changed. It shows the player that the world doesn’t revolve around him, and that he can’t solve every problem with words. It’s a quest that humbles the kind of self rightous crusaders who believe they can single handedly give the wasteland a happy ending.
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Plus the only real stigma is between the tower residents and Roy's ghouls. Wouldn't affect Underworld, Megaton and the other places that don't do much with ghouls.
 
Ziggy Stardust said:
Killing roy means more than that. It means a strengthened stigma separating the zombies and smoothskins. It means the residents, the ones who see ghouls as no more than mindless savages, were correct. No minds can be changed. It shows the player that the world doesn’t revolve around him, and that he can’t solve every problem with words. It’s a quest that humbles the kind of self rightous crusaders who believe they can single handedly give the wasteland a happy ending.
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We never see any increased stigma towards ghouls from normals, or vice versa though. What you can headcanon into the story is not salient to this conversation. There's also a problem with saying that the residents were right. If they had thought 'Roy and his gang' were too dangerous, then they would be right. A general prejudice is not justified as per the rest of the game.

On another note, cynical outcomes are fine. To clarify, in case there was any confusion, I didn't come up with options that have more positive outcomes because I just want positive outcomes. I can come up with other alterations to improve the story. To wit...

First, increase the number of non-feral ghouls with Roy so that it isn't just three wankers vs an entire hotel of stuffy jerks. Next, the seemingly peaceful option could have a standoff occur, when the ousted residents come back with mercenaries to reclaim Tenpenny Tower (before Roy massacres it...or after). That way, when it comes back to haunt you, it isn't a cheap 'and then' style plot point. It would have the player fail because of their own moves. Showing that means are just as important as ends. Or better yet, that the distinction between the two is arbitrary/just a matter of perspective.

Another option would be to drop the quest once you realize that your only options are A) force people out B) massacre Tenpennyans C) execute Roy et al. So you willingly fail the quest, but it doesn't get marked as complete (or a different quest replaces it when it is marked as a fail). After some time passes you hear Three Dog on the radio indicating that something has happened. When you arrive you can see that the two groups attacked each other. The wall is broken. Heavy casualties were inflicted on both sides.

I'm guessing I don't need to belabor the rest of the message here.
 
Ziggy Stardust said:
I’m unwatching this thread, due to a lack of actual answers to the original question. Goodbye.
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What are you talking about? Everyone here is literally discussing the quest and how there is no proper solution due to poor writing. When you make a choice it should be based on the player's view, not just good or bad, which is what this shitty quest does.
 
Ziggy Stardust said:
You’re right it’s poorly handled. What bethesda should have done was the exact same thing except being black isles. The fuck are you talking about, poorly handled? Also the game’s Karma system is dumb. We know. We’ve known since fallout 1. But it’s not an issue of which arm to cut off. It’s a challenge to the idea that every problem has a perfect solution, and proposes the idea that maybe some problems are best left alone. It challenges the ideas of right and wrong... you know, the thing everyone kisses the old fallouts asses about. You’ve gone to far down the rabbit hole of old times idolization that the light of reason can no longer reach you.
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thank you for saying the truth that guy is such a hypocrite
 
I think the point of Tenpenny Tower is meta. You're supposed to go for the living together thing, make both happy, take the third option. That's a normal quest. This quest punishes you, because if you listen to Roy for more than three seconds, you understand he's no better than any raider, and that killing people for not letting you into their community is no fucking excuse to slaughter them. If the Ghouls have the money to get in, they can afford to establish their own community.

The correct answer is absolutely to kill Roy and accept the losses of Michael and Betty as collateral damage. The only thing I consider bad writing is that you can't pop Roy in the ass and convince Michael you'll help the Ghouls IF he agrees not to be a murderous psychopath about it. Either that or get Tenpenny to agree and tell Roy his people can come, but not him. NEVER him, because he planned to slaughter the residents over being slighted.
 
Charwo said:
The correct answer is absolutely to kill Roy and accept the losses of Michael and Betty as collateral damage.
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But then the game scrutinizes you for doing it. :lmao:

And it's not even just a prompt from the karma system, an in-universe character criticizes you for it. There's having a dumb system doing its dumb thing, and then there's an in-universe character reinforcing that dumb system.
 
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Norzan said:
But then the game scrutinizes you for doing it. :lmao:

And it's not even just a prompt from the karma system, an in-universe character criticizes you for it. There's having a dumb system doing its dumb thing, and then there's an in-universe character reinforcing that dumb system.
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I know, because you're supposed to the right thing, not because Three Dog says so, but BECAUSE it's the right thing, It's necessary to take the bad publicity and the minor karma ding. Neither really matter. I like Three Dog as a character, I'd also like to tell him to go fuck himself to his face for defending Roy because Three Dog wasn't there, I was.
 
I usually choose to help integrate the ghouls into Tenpenny Tower, then blow Roy's stupid fucking brains out of his ass after he murders everybody, including Daring.

Edit: After reading a lot of the replies, I gotta say I don't dislike the quest. I love it's moral ambiguity and how every single outcome has downsides. Unfortunately I can't agree with saying it's a poorly-written quest.

Last Edit: Calm the hell down guys, some of you are freaking out over this when you really don't need to be.
 
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I mean, you get the very handy Ghoul Mask for killing the Tenpenny residents, and you can pretty much loot everything they would have made you pay for, so...

Probably best to side with the Ghouls at first, help them kill everyone, then kill the Ghouls once you have the mask

Then make Tenpenny your base and become its new owner
 
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