Why is Bethesda so focused on vault dwellers?

As long not everything ends in some kind of stupid whacko-test like a vault with 99% bears and 1% humans ... I am pretty sure Fallout 4 will be full of those again. You know what would not surprise me? A vault of historical reenactment where the British colonial troops are fighting the American colonists for the last 200 years or so. And the players decision will decide who wins!
 
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Crni Vuk said:
As long not everything ends in some kind of stupid whacko-test like a vault with 99% bears and 1% humans ... I am pretty sure Fallout 4 will be full of those again. You know what would not surprise me? A vault of historical reenactment where the British colonial troops are fighting the American colonists for the last 200 years or so. And the players decision will decide who wins!
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I can imagine that. Oh god... they're going to do it!
 
That would require to make it even more of a blank slate. I play myself with the Alternate Start mod.

It makes sense they don't allow the players to just pick being a high ranking member of a faction in the game out of the bat (Paladin? Couldn't you at least ask for beign a Scout at the beginning of the game?) there needs to be an incetive for players to engage in the different Faction questlines, it also prevents the player from having to choose their alliegance from the beginning without even knowing the setting beforehand or forcing them to be Mr Shaved head Space marine.
 
Because it is simply easier to stick to the same concept from the first game, rather than actually trying to come up with a different background for the protagonist.
 
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You can actually state you are an NCR soldier to the people at the Mojave Outpost and they will react accordingly, the game also gives a lot of options for you to choose wether you agree or not with groups and there are many different reactions to your actions in quests. Hell they don't even force you to engage Benny at all if you don't want to. You can complete the Game without setting foot inside the Tops. That's much better way to implement the character than forcing the player to have a backstory.
 
Fallout 3

You are a teenager who is looking for their missing father and inevitably save the Capital wasteland from the evil Enclave, even if you carry out their plans.

Fallout New Vegas: You are a courier for the Mojave Express, ambushed by Benny and some Khans. You have the ability to elevate or destroy any number of factions and can decide one of several fates for these factions and towns.

It's an RPG, it should allow you to play multiple types of character.

Fallout 3 lets you be a psychologically stunted scheissmessiah.

New Vegas lets you choose from a fairly deep well.
 
New Vegas doesn't force you to be a teenager either. It doesn't let you play as a super old dude without mods tho.

Beign a Vault Dweller forces you into a role, the role of the Naive newcomer with no knowledge every time you start a new character, In New Vegas you can easily role play a more knowledgeable person by not picking any of the inquiring dialogue options without breaking logic or reason. In fact most inquiring options in dialogue are written as "What do you think of X" rather than "What is X?" altho there are still some of them that you can AGAIN skip if you are roleplaying a character who is more familiar with the region.

And the Mojave Outpost thing is an OPTIONAL thing, as in, NOT CANON.
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Nothing is canon in the game until a later game confirms it, that's kind of the point of a game that allows you to roleplay. EVERYTHING is optional.
 
I preferred the "blank slate" of the Courier and appreciated the opportunity to shape my character via general interactions and dialogue options.

FO3 on the other hand, was a disappointment right off the bat--growing up in yet another control vault experimenting with isolation a la Vault 13 with my age, family, friends, childhood bully, etc., all laid out for me. Especially disconcerting is the fact that things will play out the way they will play out regardless of your actions. For example, join Butch in teasing Amata in that one segment... doesn't matter, she still comes to help you later anyway.

FO4 looks to be more of the same--A pre-war survivor of all things, cryogenically frozen like something out of Demolition Man, wandering around centuries later in the post-apocalyptic world looking for his family.

I notice the longer time marches on in Fallout, the more ridiculous gimmicks Bethesda writers must to resort to in order to justify a vault dweller protagonist.
 
I've got a feeling that one of the main reasons the character is from before the war is to let you ask about *everything* and have NPCs dump exposition on by by a truckload. You will be able to ask about the dumbest of things, because your character knows literally nothing of the post-war world. Same thing in F3, you knew nothing, so you it makes sense to ask stupid questions and be clueless. I guess this is the kind of audience surrogate Bethesda aims for, a clueless person. I can't say they're all that wrong...
 
generalissimofurioso said:
Ugh.

Need to learn how to mod so I can work on my ideas in game.

Maybe get a job in the industry.

Take it over from the inside.

:revolution::revolution::revolution:
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If you dance with the devil, the devil don't change. The devil changes you.

You probably won't have much chance in the triple A industry. They want people of the likes of Todd, Emil, Hines and such. Your best bet I think would be kick starter. Getting together with like minded people, making a decent campaign and the interest of the players.
 
True.

But I am the poor right now, so I have limited resources and limited time.

So I've been focusing on my writing and editing skills.

Soon as I get some more money and time, I do plan on getting into development.
 
Speaking of vault experiments I would facepalm if they had a vault dedicated to breeding humans with docile deathclaws or some other creature to make grotesque being hybrids.
 
Bioware used to be great with stories, now they just for the most part just recycle the same tropes over and over again while changing the setting. Since Kotor Bioware hasn't really changed much on their way of story telling, which was painfully obvious when you compare the companions of Kotor with Dragon Age.
 
Juza The Cloud said:
I liked Jade Empire too but you're right, Bioware companions have a certain "flavor" to them.
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Ahh, I really heard awsome things about Jade Empire, particulary the meta that is going on behind the game! But I guess I spoiled it already to much for my self at this point. I never played, so I can't say how good it is or if everything I have heard is true. It seems though that the twist they created here is a really good example of fridge logic. Got it all just from reviews though.

But from the games I played, Kotor, Dragon Age, Mass Effect, it seems that Bioware is loosing a lot of diversity these days. Kinda like what Bethesda is doing with Fallout where they just slap their TES-Open-World formula on everything.
 
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