Fallout 4 is coming soon.. is there a new OB Fallout Scheduled?

[Elerond]

OMG. The more time I spend with this game the more infuriated I get about the beyond terrible inventory management interface. I know it's a Bethesda trademark but at least an option to "sort by last added" should be there.

 

I would take even mark that shows what stuff is new and ability to hide things that you wear from trade screen.

[sorophx]

just saw a vertibird operated by a bunch of mercs (Gunners). apparently, there are so many vertibirds in the East, and so much fuel for them, anyone can get one

[Fenixp]

Remember the bit from Jagged Alliance 2 where you've had to 'liberate' the airport in order to get access to a helicopter? I imagine that's what happened.

[Longknife]

I sincerely wonder....

 

Ok so I'm no fan of the writing in FO4, and quite frankly, I consider it bad. Like, objectively bad. Yes yes, opinions, but yes, I would be quick to say people that enjoy the writing haven't asked enough questions or haven't encountered good writing before. Point is I just cannot fathom viewing the writing as good.

 

I have to wonder: lackluster writing is not uncommon in the video games industry. Do you guys think this is a result of companies ALWAYS prioritizing coders and programmers over writers and thinking one of their programmers will suffice as a writer (aka being cheap), do you think this is actually their best effort at writing, or do companies actually think gamers can't process more complex and well-thought out stories or something? Sometimes I just feel like the video games industry will NOT stop pandering to gamers and treating them like children, even when it's clear this is not welcomed or wanted. I really really wish I could sit down with any major company and hear the why of it, because as I said this is a pattern with the industry and there has to be a reason for it. This has just been on my mind because I'm watching a favorite streamer do his playthrough, and in one scene, I both saw a potential plot hole AND a situation where they felt an NPC needed to spell something out for you. AKA, they showed a villain acting more human and less moustache-twirling evil, and then an NPC blatantly says "GUESS HE WAS HUMAN TOO AND HAD HIS GOOD SIDES, HOW DOES THIS MAKE YOU FEEL," as if they were worried that was too complex for us to understand unless they walked us through it and spelled it out for us.

 

 

 

 

On a side note, can anyone do me a favor?

 

This is sort of off-topic but I don't know where else to post it. Ages ago, someone on the Bethesda forums (Tagaziel, if my memory is amazing) sat down and used evidence from New Vegas to calculate out how much House planned to charge the NCR for electricity after winning the Hoover Dam battle. The amount that came out was nothing short of absolutely absurd. It was an amount that would easily bankrupt the NCR and kill it if they wanted any large or modest amount of power from Hoover Dam. It was so large that we didn't know what to make of it, and many of us wondered if it was an oversight; yknow, like someone didn't think to sit down, look at all the numbers they'd provided us with and crunch them together to see how much House would be charging. It was equally possible House truly wished to starve out the NCR of it's money and resources, thus forcing them to fall apart, thereby expanding his own sphere of influence when people come running to the resource-filled oasis that is New Vegas.

 

Well, recently asked Sawyer on his blog and he was kind enough to answer.

 

 Was suprised to see this, cause yeah it more or less confirms House has every intention to starve out the NCR's economy and win over as much of their resources as possible. I mean, he practically is going to war with them, albeit economically.

 

Someone mind posting that to Bethesda's New Vegas forums? I would but I'm banned because warnings expiring is obviously a silly outdated practice.   I only ask cause I know some of those guys would be really interested in hearing about this. I'd appreciate it and I'm sure some of them would too. Sorry for bringing up something technically off-topic like this too, but just didn't know any better way to bring it up.

 

Also my tumblr name has nothing to do with an outrageous ego and everything to do with thinking North Korea is Best Korea. Just sayin'.

[Fenixp]

I'd write a longass post about writing in videogames, but Extra Credits have already done this a long time ago, much better:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KG1ziCvLkJ0&ab_channel=ExtraCredits

[Longknife]

I'd write a longass post about writing in videogames, but Extra Credits have already done this a long time ago, much better:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KG1ziCvLkJ0&ab_channel=ExtraCredits

 

Thanks, I'll give it a watch.

[Undecaf]

I never could stand that Extra Credits guy and that style of his that scratches the suface while trying to appear as a lecturing expert.

[Lexx]

Yeah, well, the writing is still bad, though. In case of Fallout 4, it felt so bad to me, I am not at all mad about not being able to continue playing the game.

 

Everyone is like woo, woo, Bethesda is so great in environmental storytelling, but I just can't feel / see it. In fact, oftentimes it seems more like super lazy to me as well- yeah, there is a skeletton with whisky and a gun, cool story bro.

 

I'd like to have cool interactions with npcs, and do quests the way I want, and have it all tied together with a narrative that isn't setup in a way I can totally feel it only exists to justify sending me over the whole worldmap over and over again. That's pretty much why I prefer New Vegas over Fallout 3. While FNV also has a great deal of fetch quests, it isn't made up in a way I feel it only exists to have me "accidentally" stumble over skelettons that "tell stories" and give me fat loot and stuff.

Edited November 29, 2015 by Lexx

[Fenixp]

I never could stand that Extra Credits guy and that style of his that scratches the suface while trying to appear as a lecturing expert.

That's the point, Extra Credits is trying to give people a superficial starting point from which they can start researching a topic - my biggest beef with their videos is that they don't provide a list of sources in spite of those being fairly easy to find. I'm derailing tho.

[Humanoid]

Yeah, well, the writing is still bad, though. In case of Fallout 4, it felt so bad to me, I am not at all mad about not being able to continue playing the game.

 

Everyone is like woo, woo, Bethesda is so great in environmental storytelling, but I just can't feel / see it. In fact, oftentimes it seems more like super lazy to me as well- yeah, there is a skeletton with whisky and a gun, cool story bro.

 

I'd like to have cool interactions with npcs, and do quests the way I want, and have it all tied together with a narrative that isn't setup in a way I can totally feel it only exists to justify sending me over the whole worldmap over and over again. That's pretty much why I prefer New Vegas over Fallout 3. While FNV also has a great deal of fetch quests, it isn't made up in a way I feel it only exists to have me "accidentally" stumble over skelettons that "tell stories" and give me fat loot and stuff.

 

It's probably one competent but low-ranking guy that gets assigned to "hey, go fill up this location with some random clutter" and does the best he can with it, but no one ever recognises his work.

 

Random aside: Something I read recently reminded me of the Operation Anchorage DLC for Fallout 3. I watched an LP of it once and it's the all time low of videogame writing. It's as far behind the rest of Fallout 3 as the rest of Fallout 3 is behind New Vegas.

[sorophx]

 

I never could stand that Extra Credits guy and that style of his that scratches the suface while trying to appear as a lecturing expert.

That's the point, Extra Credits is trying to give people a superficial starting point from which they can start researching a topic - my biggest beef with their videos is that they don't provide a list of sources in spite of those being fairly easy to find. I'm derailing tho.

 

they lost all credibility with me when they panned New Vegas and praised Fallout 3 for "world building" or something...

[Fenixp]

I don't even know such an episode of Extra Credits exists :-P Still, I absolutely believe F3 has much better world building than New Vegas. Fallout 3 manages to construct an amazing world in spite of its writing - you know, directly trough gameplay, exploration, environmental storytelling. Take away the friendly NPCs and quests from both F3 and NV. What you are left with in NV is a bunch of disjointed locations which might be cool by themselves, but aren't all that much fun to find and explore. The game's world is sadly not very coherent. Fallout 3, on the other hand, remains a functional game. In fact that was the first thing I criticized about New Vegas, and that's the reason why there are quite a few people who do prefer F3 to NV (I should probably say that I'm not one of them, I vastly prefer New Vegas). Bethesda has over 20 years of experience with games which are pretty much exclusively concerned with world building, they're kind of good at it.

 

Still, saying "You disagree with me, you have no credibility any longer!" is just a tiny bit juvenile :-P

Edited November 29, 2015 by Fenixp

[Lexx]

And I see it exactly the other way around. I find the Fallout 3 gameworld to be completely random. There is a settlement in a bombcrater (with an unexploded bomb, cool), around the corner is a raider infested ruined town, around the corner is a settlement on a bridge, close by is an old baseball field with raiders, behind the next mountain are bloatflies, a bit further you get dogs, then at some point you find some supermarket with raiders, and then there is this town with super mutants, I think it was rather close by as well, etc. etc. we got these points already so, so often.

 

Like so many people already said before, Fallout 3 is a theme park, while New Vegas is not. I find the gameworld of New Vegas to be much more coherent, because it feels real and connected. In Fo3 everything is somewhat isolated from each other. Everything is living in their own small world(cell).

 

Vegas is connected with different town parts. There might not be so many skelettons with whisky and guns, but we have West Side, Freeside, North Vegas Square, the Strip, even the Vegas Sewers are filled with (non-aggressive) refugees, etc. all separate locations similar to Fo3 locations (small quest hubs), yet they feel belonging to each other. Sorry, but this simply doesn't exist in Fallout 3. In Fallout 3 you have these small isolated non-gunplay areas with a few talkative NPCs, surrounded by combat zones. And that's exactly what I hate so much, and what is once again present in Fallout 4.

Edited November 29, 2015 by Lexx

[Fenixp]

Thing is that the world in New Vegas is not connected and coherent trough world design itself, it does so via writing, which is so infinitely superior to Fallout 3 that yes, at the end of the day, game world as presented in New Vegas feels more real and alive. There's also a difference in how Fallout 3 and New Vegas present themselves - New Vegas is a very localized map, it's basically New Vegas and near surroundings. Fallout 3 is trying to present a much larger area, but with typically Bethesdaistic compression - they always create massive worlds where everything is strangely far too close together, and if you're not used to this design approach, it can feel extremely weird.

Edited November 29, 2015 by Fenixp

[Lexx]

But this isn't true. If I remember right, the way from the north of the map to the south is basically half the length it takes from Vegas to the Hub. E.g. if you would double the total map height and follow the Long 15 this far, you'd arrive at the Hub. If my memory serves me right, from a "real life point of view", New Vegas' map is more compressed than Fallout 3's Washington D.C.

 

/Edit: New Vegas is basically Vegas + surrounding, while Fallout 3 is only a part of Washington D.C. + a tad wasteland in the west.

Edited November 29, 2015 by Lexx

[Longknife]

Everyone is like woo, woo, Bethesda is so great in environmental storytelling, but I just can't feel / see it. In fact, oftentimes it seems more like super lazy to me as well- yeah, there is a skeletton with whisky and a gun, cool story bro.

 

 

The ONLY game I have ever played that used environmental storytelling in a good way that had a lot of impact towards the main story was Dark Souls. That's the only game that really made me appreciate that environmental storytelling can actually work, with it's subtle hints towards the back plot and lore told through all the scenery. Aside from that, the only thing that comes to mind is I appreciate the realistic consistency of New Vegas locations, AKA for example a convenience store down the road from the Mojave Outpost has understandably already been looted quite a bit, whereas an old headquarters with active security robots is understandably still filled with loot.

 

Still, the second example is flavor, not critical. I REALLY appreciate it, don't get me wrong, I'm just trying to put it in perspective that...if New Vegas' main storyline was god awful, then no, the realistic consistency of the world would not save it. Not by a longshot. It's a cherry on top, not part of the main substance, and if the main substance is dog poop, a cherry on top will not save it. It's just a wasted cherry.

 

And that's the case with FO3 and FO4. I enjoy some of the humorous things Bethesda does with locations because you know what, when I'm exploring, yes, I can briefly forget that their storytelling makes no god damn sense and just enjoy the goofy stuff they stuck around the world for the sheer novelty of it, but this does not change that the main narrative and main plot just makes no god damned sense, no matter how many times you try to wrap your head around it. At best, the potential to see something funny in a location just gives me incentive to explore, nothing more. I find a "plunger museum," think ok that's interesting, memorable and unique and I wanna find more wacky stuff like this, but that doesn't suddenly cause Little Lamplight to make any sense. It does NOT distract me enough that I'll be willing to forget giant plot holes in the main story.

Edited November 29, 2015 by Longknife

[Fenixp]

But this isn't true. If I remember right, the way from the north of the map to the south is basically half the length it takes from Vegas to the Hub. E.g. if you would double the total map height and follow the Long 15 this far, you'd arrive at the Hub. If my memory serves me right, from a "real life point of view", New Vegas' map is more compressed than Fallout 3's Washington D.C.

Yeah I know the map in F3 is smaller, but that hardly matters in imaginary game units of distance. As I said, it's an approach which is weird to anybody not familiar with Bethesda's way of doing things, and the reason they have designed the map in this fashion is because otherwise, vast majority of the map would be empty desert, which New Vegas just proves. And... Well, empty desert is not particularly engaging.

[Lexx]

Then don't use a gameworld like that. I am certain it is possible to design around that without forcefully trying to add interesting locations every 10 meters. It's the same thing I hate in the Mad Max game- if it's a big empty desert, then show it as that and don't add "points of interest" around every corner. The player can see it's a big desert, no need to disproove that with "we NEED to add content to this area!". Same with any other open world game. They all try to shovel stuff into my face, because the designers think I need action every minute, without keeping the setting / current location in mind.

 

The games already offer a fast travel function... so why not use that for something useful and stop unnecessarily bloating the gameworld.

Edited November 29, 2015 by Lexx

[Fenixp]

They try to shovel stuff into your face because, from world design perspective, it's the superior way of doing things when developing a game for wide audience, which is precisely what Bethesda does - and that would bring us back to Extra Credits video which is made by people who concern themselves by design decisions which work universally as opposed to those that work on niche audiences. Now I'm not necessarily trying to prove that 'everything you say is wrong', I absolutely believe that you prefer the way New Vegas handles its world design. Thing is... Let's put it this way, I can not visualize a single location from New Vegas.

 

I remember them by their factions, I remember them by their function, I have no clue how did they even look like. I played F3 on release, and when I close my eyes I can still see what you saw after leaving the vault, I can see the bomb-based city, the city inside the crashed ship, the ruins of Washington. I have played New Vegas about 2 years ago and I played it for a lot longer than F3 and come out empty. In Fallout 3, the art style was a lot more profiled, locations a lot more interesting and fun to explore, the world was, quite simply, designed better to engage the player and keep him entertained. Since that's sort of what I'm looking for in most of my games, I'm absolutely going to call that 'better world design'. The world just worked, all by itself, whereas world in New Vegas was purely utilitarian, designed to convey the general message that you're walking the wasteland and here's where people live and that's about it. And there's nothing wrong with that per se - but when you tear it from context of the game's writing, it falls apart. World from Fallout 3 does not.

 

Also, I hate fast travel :-P

[HoonDing]

Environmental storytelling. Bears engaging in oral sex in a shack in the middle of nowhere.

 

Also, FO4 main story is okay.

Edited November 29, 2015 by HoonDing

[Longknife]

Environmental storytelling. Bears engaging in oral sex in a shack in the middle of nowhere.

 

Also, FO4 main story is okay.

 

 

THEN WHY ARE THEY MAKING SYNTHS?!?

 

 

Sorry, just cannot get over that.

 

Spent so long scouring let's plays giving Bethesda the benefit of the doubt, assuming I'd missed the critical dialog line explaining why the Institute saw fit to invest that much time and effort into building synths rather than looking into things like agriculture, radiation and food production, only to discover that the true answer is "becuz Blaed rannur is KEWL" in typical Bethesda fashion.

Edited November 29, 2015 by Longknife

[CoM_Solaufein]

OMG. The more time I spend with this game the more infuriated I get about the beyond terrible inventory management interface. I know it's a Bethesda trademark but at least an option to "sort by last added" should be there.

There's a mod at Nexus that adds tags on the inventory items to make it easier. Selling stuff is annoying as hell. I wish they had tabs when you want to sell stuff at stores. Like have weapons and armor under one tab, junk in another and crafting under another. I hate scrolling through all of that stuff that I want to sell.

[sorophx]

 In Fallout 3, the art style was a lot more profiled, locations a lot more interesting and fun to explore, the world was, quite simply, designed better to engage the player and keep him entertained.

oh my, disagree on all points 

[Sakai]

 

OMG. The more time I spend with this game the more infuriated I get about the beyond terrible inventory management interface. I know it's a Bethesda trademark but at least an option to "sort by last added" should be there.

There's a mod at Nexus that adds tags on the inventory items to make it easier. Selling stuff is annoying as hell. I wish they had tabs when you want to sell stuff at stores. Like have weapons and armor under one tab, junk in another and crafting under another. I hate scrolling through all of that stuff that I want to sell.

 

There are tabs for that actually. Where it says "All" there's an arrow you can click.

[HoonDing]

I easily defended the Castle after sending all companions there. They're immortal so it doesn't matter if you built defenses or not.

 

Reminded me a bit of Crossroad Keep in NWN2. You can leave the keep in complete ruins and still easily beat the shadow army.