Fallout 4 Is Better Than You Think? Part 2 

[Bethesda] "do you like the new speech system?" A - Yes X - I think it's fine Y - Yes, please tell me more about it B - I'm a little busy right now. Give me 5 minutes, then I'll pop back and tell you how good I think it is

I like the mod that replaces baby Shaun with a rock. Just a rock wrapped in a blanket.

That quote from the writer is the whiniest thing I've ever heard. Imagine if all authors did that, we wouldn't have any good fiction. "Why write a good compelling story when some people won't pay attention?" For the people that will. That's why

"Years of consumption lead to shortages of every major resource" Infinite diesel generators everywhere

My biggest issue with Fallout 4 was the disconnect between gameplay and the storytelling, especially in the first act. The gameplay is encouraging the player to explore, wander, loot and craft, while the narrative urgency is telling the player to rush to Diamond City to find Shaun. It's such a strong hook for the main character that putting off the hunt for your kidnapped son to scrounge for more duct tape or help a random settlement feels jarringly inconsistent.

Remember...Strugis couldn't manage to crack a low level computer hack in the beginning, but by the end he was able to teleport you no problem... Guess Sturgis was really hitting the books when I wasn't there to see him pounding an invisible nail into a wall for no reason.

There's such a lack of connection to the Shaun character that I felt worse every time Dogmeat whimpered in combat than I did when I left the old and the young Shaun for dead in the Institute.

Probably the most baffling thing about the story of this game is the whole idea that the institute didn't just grab all of the frozen vaulters and keep them on ice inside the institute... they did mention needing samples that hadn't been affected by the surface conditions, and it was a whole storage of them... the player could have woken up inside the institute or accidentally tossed out a garbage chute or something and the game wouldn't even have needed to change much... it may have even improved the story if Kellogg was more of a grey character aligned with the institute who you bump into on the surface doing something brutal rather than specifically an enemy you are trying to hunt down from the get-go.

The Power Armor issue could have been solved SO EASILY. It malfunctions, spits you out, and can't be fixed. Done. You got a taste, now you're hungry for more.

I think I was a bit more upset at the story developers comment that “players don’t care about lore in an RPG because they are building shacks, so why bother?”. Another frustration when they were asked why a boy could still be alive if he was locked in a fridge before the war, even as a ghoul. Their response was essentially, “who cares? It’s a video game.” Drives me nuts that people with such little care were able to work on a game that was so anticipated by fans.

I've never heard someone so passionately loving of a work, but also passionately vicious towards its flaws. If the mainstream news media were like you, we would have a much more well educated society, my friend.

I agree that it was odd how we got no time to know Nora/Nate in the opening. Another great example from Fallout 3 was Jonas. Jonas is a kind hearted guy that is a family friend and is the best friend to James/Dad. He tried talking James out of leaving the Vault. We get to know Jonas through the time skips in Vault 101. We even get dialogue options where we can joke with him cause he has a dry sense of humor. During the chaos, he gets beaten to death by the guards as they think that he is trying to kill them all. Amata tells us this as to the urgency on why we have to leave The Vault. It is the holy smokes, Jonas was killed, Dad is gone, I've got to get out of here. A beautiful opening that was missed in some ways in FO4.

Something I swear about Vault 111 that lots of people miss is that cryo stasis arguably wasn't its true purpose. It's stated in the terminals that the scientists and security are to mostly stay separate, and everyone opines that they will be happy to get out since there isn't enough food to last for 6 months, the minimum amount of time they have to stay in the Vault before they can leave, which the overseer states he is against because he knows that won't be long enough to be safe. And so, you have a vault with 2 distinct factions each distrustful of the other, a lack of food to create and exacerbate tension, a hellscape outside if anyone can live long enough to reach it, and a large number of freezers which all conveniently happen to be full. Vault 111 was really a cannibalism experiment, to test a) whether the staff in the vault would give in to save themselves from starvation, or instead face a blasted hellscape which they could not survive in, rather than resort to eating the people in their care, and b) who would cave first under pressure and how, and then how the other staff or faction would react. Because there was a civil war and a breakout the vault got a 'good' ending (relatively), but because the staff didn't give in the cannibalism test is now only implication rather than confirmed certainty, which is why so many people seem to miss it. It's subtle enough that you can't really be sure, but given the constant discussion of lack of food and Vault-tec's penchant for terrible moral dilemmas, I'd say this is pretty compelling Yes this is a rewording of my comment on the original upload. I can't remember how I phrased it then

Institute: We need robotic janitors to clean our floors Mr Handy: **exists**

3:41 “i was thinking we could go to the park” “you know there’s a plague, right!?” oooh this one aged well

“In Fallout 4.....no means yes” -Many a True Nerd 2020

I feel like Fallout 4 is a min/maxed rpg build. What it does well, it does *really* well What it whiffs, it flippen' *whiff

I think - and note that I’m not defending Bethesda with this - the reason they made Shaun a baby was because they figured a lot of players would catch on to the fact that the Sole Survivor was frozen for longer than they realised and Shaun was likely no longer a baby. Thus when you go through Kelloggs memories and see 10 year old “Shaun” they can show their timeline fuckery early and double-bluff you into not thinking about 60 year old real Shaun. Honestly I think they missed a trick by not having the SS make a bigger deal out of realising that they think they’ve missed ten years of Shaun’s life and they’ve wasted so much time asking about an infant. But as stated, by this point no player actually gave a shit about Shaun.

The worst part of the dialogue wheel isn't even just the 4 set options, but the fact they rarely do anything different from each other. "Y" could lead to a broad questions topic, not just a singular question like it does it most cases. A spoke of the wheel could lead to option A, another to option B, and the 3rd as some special option, or let's talk about this later. Instead most dialogue functions as an interactive cutscene

The problem with the Institute seems like one that could have been easily fixed, If one doubled down on their isolationism. Here you have essentially a vault that was so afraid to go outside, that no one ever did. Not one of the inhabitants of the institute has ever left the comfort of their walls for 200 years. Instead - Sent Robots to the surface/outer wasteland world, To scavenge and bring back resources and components that the institute could not build themselves. But a Robot is only as good as its programming. A Mister Handy Is only gonna be able to do so much. The Institute needed better and smarter robots. Robots who were capable of carrying out more complex tasks. And then there was the problem of remaining undetected. Someone was eventually gonna wonder where all these brand new robots were coming from. So the institute needed their robots to blend in. To be able to pose as normal scavengers, as to not draw attention to themselves. Unfortunately for them - the opposite happened. - one of their test models malfunction, and cause the shootout in Diamond city. - The incident where institute synt's slaughtered an entire town (whatever it was called) over a rare piece of tecknology happened. The Institutes scanners had picked upp and pinpoint the location of the Teck. The synts were programmed to collect it. But when the Townsfolk were told to hand it over, they had no idear what the synts were talking about, as the scavenger family had kept their rare find hidden, less someone else might try to grabb it. - And so the synts, following their simple programing - Saw the Townsfolk as an obstruction to their goal, and slaughtered them all. The robots had only carried out their goal. The institute knew nothing of the matter until it was to late. This only served to draw attention to the synts and the Institute. A robot is only as good as its programming. And So the Institute needed Robots who were so advanced that they could learn and addapt. Robots who could do nothing short of think for themselves, in order to operate on the independent level that the institute needed them to. One could even make a joke about the vault dweller from Fallout 1, As to while one vault had to sent a lone dweller to gather an important piece of teck (a water chip), The Institute did not even do that. they sent a robot rather then one of their own. Unfortunately for them. Machines who were so advanced could eventually begin to draw their own conclusions. At first everything whent fine. But the more exsposed a Synth was to the outside world, the more it learned from these outside influences, the more it might come to the conclusion that it did not want to be subserviant. Eventually, Synths started to go missing. And in response, The institute had to send other synths after them. Both to collect their property, and to stop them from spreading secrets of the institute. It was a problem that the Institute had to set up a whole sub-division just to deal with. And it is not an easy problem. For up there, in the scary wasteland, where no institute member has ever set foot, the synths have much more free range then they would like to admit. Synths might just start to help other synths, or befriend wastelanders enough to get them to help them too. This was how the Railroad was formed. Suddenly you have to send Courser's to eliminate anyone who might know anything about the institute. Suddenly you have to set up a network of spies on the surface, to try and gather information of your synths and the wastelands in the area. Suddenly - you have to remove and replace people to keep the wastelanders disorganized with missinformation and political sabotage. Suddenly. You are the Bogeyman. And not only that. How would the Institute know if the Scavenger models that do return faithfully from every mission are not secretly playing the long game? What if their own are working to undermine the institute from within? What if the Institute Itself has been infiltrated? Suddenly the Bogeyman of the Commonwealth has become the Bogeyman of the Institute itself. It's a problem that won't go away. Because a Synth is programed to learn and adapt. And its ideas of freedom comes not from some faulty programing. They come from its experiences in the wasteland. So there you have it: A solid explanation to why the institute would make Human like Synths. To scavege and go undetected. Not to sweep the floors. (wow this became a long rant. I just realy though it was an interesting Idear to think about.)

I think the opening of the game shows the juxtaposition of the American Dream and the effect of war. In real life society usually ignores major issues until the effects are on your doorstep, like the vault Tec guy.

Personally, I think *"The Devil's Due"* should have been your introduction to Deathclaws. Because I wasn't spoilt when I played that mission and it freaked me out to no end.

On a somewhat random, but not unrelated note, I remember that first shootout in Diamond City between the two brothers. I had the bright idea to use VATS to determine which one had more health, and noticed that the one who eventually won the shootout had substantially higher HP! It was such a cool Fallout moment and an a-ha detective moment, and I promptly shot the one with higher health. Everyone around me turned hostile, including the brother (I'm pretty sure), and I was forced to reload a save, as no meaningful change happened as a result of my deduction. Instead, I was forced to let the synth brother win the fight and move on. I appreciate a lot about Fallout 4, and you've made me think a lot about how the development cycle and the changing industry across those years affected the final game and all the things that went right nonetheless. But man, would it have been cool to see deeper writing and random choices like that.

Far Harbor was so good it almost made up for the main game. It's crazy that they thought the plot twist of Shawn being an adult would work when you can guess it's probably going to happen before you even leave the vault.

Jon: "Take Easy City Downs, it's an old Horse Racing track now used for Robot Races. Factions are betting, there's hints of a scam." Me: ...Wait, what? That's really unique! How did I never know about this!? Jon: "Everyone shoots you on sight, there's no quests." Me, a big lumbering obvious "shoot me" sign: Oh.

"Kid in a Fridge" would be so easy to fix - the ghoul family are con artists who play on the character's sympathies to get a rival gang cleared out, and then a bunch of caps. The kid was only there for a couple of days, but he is a 200 year old child, stopped from aging by sone quirk of ghoulism and is there to hand the player character sob story after sob story to turn players into his servants. (Think a bigger con than Aqua Cura)

I think they made Shaun a baby so that he would be in the same pod as your partner, and they would have an easy excuse to kill your partner off. But frankly, they could easily have made them start to open your pod by mistake before getting Shaun, and you still get the excuse of your pod opening later. Plus you would have this actual emotional moment where your partner is suffocating and you can only watch.

They could’ve started you out with just the frame of the power armor, or something of that essence. Then you can build your armor bit by bit. They could have also made deathclaws very formidable and terrifying, instead of battling it in this quest, you have to lead the minutemen carefully around it maybe through tunnels where the deathclaw is lurking. Then when you get settled slightly in Sanctuary it attacks the settlement after following you back, stalking it’s prey.

You may have noticed this video briefly appeared and disappeared earlier - sorry about that, I just had to fix a tiny audio bug.

Playing as the female character, who is a law school graduate and homemaker, and on the first day out of the Vault she's mowing down a whole gang of raiders with a mini gun. Its not exactly believable role playing.

After watching both parts of this essay many, many times, my biggest takeaway here is that if Bethesda were to kick Emil Pagliarulo to the curb as swiftly and unceremoniously as he deserves and replace him with literally any randomly selected long-time fan of the franchise, then we could be certain that the narrative and lore of any future Fallout projects would at least be treated with greater respect, if not also be better written.

I’d love to see a pre-war/nuke drop mod that expands on Sanctuary and having a few quests from your neighbors to create a bit of attachment before the nuke alarm sounds. Between the Vault-Tec rep knocking on the door and Codsworth informing you of the news. I’d love to experience Sanctuary before the nuke, and helping/hanging with neighbors would put more emotion behind tearing their houses down for the extra supplies

The issue with Shaun being a baby isn't even about the fact that the player ends up with no real connection to Shaun before the bombs fall but also that Shaun would have NO CONNECTION to the parent ahead of the plot twist. Synth or not, that kid would be like "I have NO idea who you are."

You know what got me? "The Minutemen: Protect the People at a minutes notice" You know what would massively help with that and be hilariously literal? A freaking Commonwealth-wide teleporter. Powered by a fancy new reactor. That is now unguarded. Because you killed all the synths and scientists with guns. .. Nah. blow it up xD

8:50, that Idea with the neighbor could easily be expanded on to making them the firsts companion you have in the game, have them react to the world the same time you do, that way you can really dive into this whole "Fish out of water" idea they were shooting for.

I want a game where you're the overseer and all leave at 50 years. VaultTec would send you out well prepared. At first, but after a few months, that supply gradually runs out. Your goal is to keep as many vaulters as possible safe and then build a shelter that becomes a successful town but you dont build anything, you give orders, and they do it. You try to set up a new location for your entire group. This includes food, water, safety, etc. You wont be able to do all of that, so you have to form an alliance for a trading partner. This could be a way to set up a local coalition government. Hell, you could even capture raiders and if your place is nice, they might want to join and become a good citizen. This is what the series is missing. You actually grow and develop a civilization. Youre an ultimate wastelander. You can also choose a lead role other than initial Mayor; You could be head of security or lead the engineering department.

"There's a plague and everyone is just going about their life like normal". To be fair, that's pretty realistic unfortunately...

Maybe the Institute would’ve worked better if they were Transhumanists who genuinely want to help everyone.... by “improving” them. The memory den shows you can transfer and alter memories. What if the ultimate goal is to turn everyone into Synths? And if a person has personality flaws, let’s change those. Oops, this person’s past is causing conflicts with townsfolk, erase their past. One of the ethical dilemmas would be, are they actually transferring human consciousness to a new body, or are they killing the original and replacing them with a copy? Transhumanism seems like a more logical goal than just making realistic looking janitors.

Another issue I have with the dialogue system is when you're talking to shopkeepers. Whenever you ask them questions about the local area, what's going on in town, etc., they always end their answers with something along the lines of, "Anyway, were you looking to buy something?" to get you back to the main dialogue wheel. And they do this for _every_ question you ask, including followup questions to the first one. It just comes across as really awkward and stilted, and makes me feel less like a Wasteland wanderer and more like a tourist who's oblivious to how much he's irritating the locals.

The part where you spoke about going into areas that seemed designed to harbor quests, just to be shot on sight and have no choice but to initiate combat, really helped me understand why I played fo3 and NV the way I did. 4 was my first fallout game, and it was where I fell in love with the franchise. I think I was so programmed into the ‘shooter’ idea of things that when I played the older games, I didn’t realize that not everyone would be immediately hostile on sight- hence why I went into the ultra luxe for the pheeble will quest and just started shooting everyone down, or why I absolutely obliterated the republic of Dave. I thought everyone was automatically going to be hostile towards me.

They do mention their former careers a few times. Nate's dialogue with the Railroad say's "Once, I pledged my life to protect my countrymen, I don;t see this as any different", compared to Nora's "I risk my life for people everyday". - Likewise Nate tells Danse that HE was a member of the army, whereas Nora says her husband was. When dealing with the USS Constitution they both have different dialogue with "Lookout" with Nate being identified by his military service, Nora by her driving license (which for some reason includes that she was a lawyer). This is just a snippet of course, and they're often out of place when it comes to full RP'ing as recognising a character was once a Lawyer when you're trying to be some kind of fire obsessed serial killer doesn't always fly. It's why Bethesda cut a home terminal in your pre-war house that went into backstory, especially Nora's showing she was willing to fight the rich/powerful, as it would have ultimately pushed any female character to being good, and good alone. Whereas without it she could of been a lawyer like Saul Goodman. Just saying, it does come up, and it's almost always awkward if you're trying to play something that doesn't fit with those careers (like for Nate not being BOS or Minutemen)

I know why they included romance options, but like, canonically it's just another way it makes the player character seem uhhh without empathy. The murder of their spouse has basically 0 impact on the main character

This would explain why my first impression of the game was positive. When Codsworth told me to go to Concord. I said not now and explored. I found Abernathy Farm where they explained caps and raiders and asked me to get a locket back. That mission led be into Concord where I walked into the middle of a firefight. Not the back like if I came from Sanctuary. I was shot at immediately and had to fight. If I had came up from behind and wasn't forced to engage. A normal person would just say no thanks these people are violent, and leave. But I had to fight to survive then Preston asked for help. After that when I saved them. They went back to sanctuary and I continued with my locket quest. I never went back to sanctuary until much later. I went exploring the world as I slowly made my way to Diamond City.

The narrative choices of the opening section only work if you want your character to be a synth who had the false memory of Sanctuary Hills and their family being perfect implanted in order to better motivate them to kill Kellogg and find the Institute. This also explains the differences between pre-war and post-war sanctuary, such as the lack of a bomb shelter behind the neighbour’s house. This is a really annoying if you don’t wan’t your sole surviver to be a synth though.

To help appease the algorithm here's a quick tip for the YOLO run. Trudy at the drumlin diner has a silenced pipe bolt action pistol for sale GUARANTEED! Remove the silencer and attach it to the pipe sniper you find in the house in concord and voila you have the best early game weapon for a sneaky stealth build :)

Besides the “keep it simple” mentality for dialog, they would have been better off stealing the Bioware dialog wheel. Organizes responses and questions efficiently, leaves room for special choices based on skills or faction affiliation. And if a set of options merely progress the dialog, the Dragon Age series offers icons to express what the tone will be.

30:45 I literally fell in love with the game in the first 2 hours. This was also my first fallout

I met a guy who was a writer on Fallout 4. He was in charge of writing the companions which I think are one of the most interesting parts of the game. He seemed genuine and wanted to create a good story for the side quests he also worked on, unfortunately the other writers didn’t seems to care as much like he did.

I don't mind the institute not making sense or the fact that you'd have died from radiation poisoning before you would have dropped down into vault 111, what really bugs me is that when kellog shoots your spouse you hear a very distinct sound of a single spent casing hitting the floor, which would not happen, it's a REVOLVER, revolvers don't eject spent casing until you reload which drops all 6 casings at once

I never liked how you can become the leader of the institute, whilst working and being treated as a glorified mailman for them, and not having the choice to stop synth production and replacement to focus on other technologies (Farming and medical stuff) that mihht get wastelanders to like (or at least don't mind) them.

Part 1 made me appreciate what I took for granted about Fallout 4 doing right, and Part 2 gave a great perspective on why certain decisions were made from the dev team regarding story choices/dialogue options -- decisions I found very frustrating, mind you, but it was interesting to hear the dev team's point of view. Excellent points from Jon all-round, particularly regarding the introduction and the lack of player attachment to Shaun, along with the missteps with introducing the Minutemen, and the dissonance between the overarching story (find your son!) and the rest of the quests/gameplay (take it slow, build up settlements, etc). Fantastic work.

"In the first act, no faction will shoot you on sight, no matter how much they hate you." What? I mean what are you defining as the first act here? The Legion will send assassin squads after you *constantly* if you kill vulpes, and they start pretty much immediately after you go through the canyon beside Nipton.

Possible alternative to the beginning of the game. You’re a 19 year old come back home to your parents after being kicked out of Basic Training, after being drafted. Don’t explain why. But this sets up how you know how to handle weapons and survival skills. Check your discharge papers to set SPECIAL. Like the video suggests, spend time in Sanctuary. Meet the neighbors, help them out or be mean to them. Reconnect with a group of friends, and establish your past through dialog choices. Then, you win a lottery for VAULT 111, but only for you and one other person. Then the bombs drop. Going off the rails here, but instead of the only survivor, most of the Vault is still alive, if frozen. Tie the Vault dwellers into the Settlement system, as all these people are going to need a place to go when unfrozen. Make them unto their own Faction! Or don’t. Leave them on ice. Or sell the Vault to another faction. Or slavers.

Another issue: I still don't really understand what's going on in the Battle of Bunker Hill. I don't understand why everyone and their grandpa seems to show up.

That dev dissing player interest in the story had clearly never heard of the Witcher...

in the first act, i wish you had mentioned Kingdom Come Delivererance, especially the prologue. a perfect example of what fallout 4 could have done with its prolouge

I also did like how companions worked in Fallout 4. They had affinity levels that went up or down depending on your actions. If it got maxed out they idolize you and the player gains a permanent companion perk. If it drops too low they permanently leave you. During various quests they comment on the situation and voice their opinions on your and others actions and give/lose affinity accordingly. In order to unlock companion quests you have to raise affinity enough and completing the quests are required to max out their affinity. The problem was that maxing affinity could be a bit of a grind. I get that it needs to take effort, but I did not like going out of my way to do tasks like modding, hacking, lock picking to max affinity in a reasonable amount of time. There were set point gains for liked/disliked and hated/loved. It could have been better by having affinity gain/loss be much more depending on the action. Doing actions companions approve of in quests should give a lot more points than mundane exploration activities. Therefore you still need to put effort into making companions idolize you, but you don’t have to go out of your way grinding to max it in a reasonable amount of time.

Shows up to the BoS in X-01 power armor...”betcha can’t wait to get your hands on a set of T-60!”

If you want to expand the introduction, perhaps wair for the bombs to fall after Nate's speech at the veteran's hall. Meet the neighbors there, mingle with them. Have some interactions. Make some personality choices according to those interactions, and see how you spouse handles the same situations. Etc.

I don't spend 30 hours building shacks. I spend 15 minutes building a quick base I can come back to from time to time to store loot and upgrade my gear. Bauble heads are a side effect of 20 hours of exploration and searching for more stories.

An entire hour with no midroll ads... You sir, are a hero.

Emil: Why create complex quests with deep dialogue options and skill-checks, when it's more time and cost effective to chuck in a few legendary items in a chest next to a holotope explaining what happened?

I personaly feel the "big problem" of Fallout 4's Introquest could have been solved by just moving the first encounter with the Minutemen into South Boston. Also I feel that something like that was planned because in the game as it is, you can find several different ways to get the map marker for Diamond City; you can get it through a Wasteland Survival Guide; Dialoge with Trashcan Carla who is always sitting at Concord's edge; you get unique dialog options with Abernathy at his farm, if you have no clue of the Minutemen etc. where they explain the new world with Caps and Raiders and stuff. Therefore I am convinced the Intro of the game as it is now is a relic of an early build or even a example given for the Moneyproviders at the time to convince them to finance this project. I am pretty sure that if the Quest "Out of Time" wouldn't end with the start of the first Minutemen Quest the first impression of Fallout 4 would be extremely different, and you wouldn't have this debate that you are given a Power Armor after only 1h of gameplay and therefor the game is "just a simple shooter". But with all the critique of the game I have to say, Fallout 4 is an amazing game if you like interaction with the gameworld itself and gameplay and environmental driven storytelling. I just love the game for what it is, it is not "better" or "worse" than Fallout 3 or NV it is just a different game. Like Apples and Pears, they appear similar but they are two completely different things.

The character progression system and the way it translates to gameplay is why FO4 is my favorite Fallout game. Survival mode is wonderful, I still play regularly.

I think my biggest complaint about FO4 is that it seems like someone told a producer that the average gamer only spends a handful of hours on a game, so devs were forced to make the first two hours to be the most awesome possible. Getting power armor and fighting deathclaws were end-game experiences in every other game; in FO4, it's in the tutorial.

I’ve always felt the default names Nate and Nora were a last second decision. I say that because when the game first came out Codsworth couldn’t say either name.

You actually nailed it. I hope they took what you said to heart for the next one. Don’t make the first character you meat be impossible to kill if you want it to feel free. Add A LOT more side quests with specific options. DONT make the dialogue box just be a disguised railroad but give choices. Survival mode= awesome.. settlement building = awesome . Make more side quests that you can manipulate (worth saying again)

I admit what I did after completing the main quest was build up the minutemen to their maximum potential with artillery at every settlement and trade routes connecting all of them. Then I decided get a few mods then make a few of my settlements recreations of scenes from 1984 and building a secret base on the island where the leaders secretly meet up to plan the future of the commonwealth. Now I'm slowly trying to figure out how to tie the enclave into it. The farmers won't notice a thing unless they visit the biggest settlements.

Around the 30 minute mark the point about the Minutemen and how: A. Preston is unkillable. B. You'll end up in the cycle of 'kill raiders, help settlement, kill raiders' with The Minutemen if you're new. Those are two things that hit me when I started playing. I hadn't played a Fallout game in years, but I was extremely excited with the look of Fallout 4. I ended up dropping the game for a while because I wasn't sure what I was supposed to do. I assumed Preston would lead me in the direction of the main quest, but he kept giving me radiant quests. I thought maybe it was like the Thieves' Guild in Skyrim and you need to do X number of radiant quests to get main missions but that wasn't true either. It never struck me until Jon mentioned it that Preston is just Yes Man. It makes a ton of sense now, but it sent the totally wrong impression and for a long time spoiled the game for me. Once I got back into it and focused on other stuff like exploration I had more fun, and when I went into the Brotherhood quest-line I realized how entertaining the game can be but that first experience with a major faction nearly ruined the game for me.

11 minutes in, and this is feeling less like a "Better than you Think" and more like a "What went wrong and how to fix it"

My first impression of Fallout 4 was "This is okay" until I got to the settlements where my interest in the game plummeted for a few days until I gave it another solid try. Now I think it's amazing.

First of all, a great review and super work and effort you must have put in. I watched both videos. However, in my opinion, you did miss out on Fallout 4s actual biggest problem. What I think you missed or to be more precise didn't get more into is, that the enormous limitation of choice and therefore the sometimes senseless results coming out of it. The first time I played Fallout 4, I sided with the Institute. Shaun dies and I (as a leader of a faction now) have to destroy all other factions, despite sympathizing with them just hours ago and working in my mind like the Minutemen would support. I was really confused about why I have no option to either make peace or control them. The second time I played it, I sided with the Minutemen to essentially force every faction to peace. As the general I was I thought that I was the decision-maker. But for whatever reason, no I had to destroy the Institut. In my third attempt, I tried to be the selfish assh*le villain but as much as I tried I ended up helping everyone and then declared war on anyone else as before. Then, the Nuka-World DLC came out. I was in my railroad character, trying to help from the shadow. Finding a place, where I could build a settlement supported my thoughts on uniting the slaves against the Raiders and regain power. How this DLC playes out everyone knows though. What I want to say in short: The game forces you to follow a strict line. If you don't obey, go kill everyone and leave the world empty. Mods managed to fix at least some problems.

one thing that truly confuses me is just... Why would people think Shaun is still a baby? You know you got frozen again after they took him. When I played, and found Father was Shaun, the only twist was that Shaun is the leader of the institute. I never ever would have thought Shaun would still have been a baby

So when this game came out, my Nora just set about doing all the side quests, not finding Shaun, eventually finished the game after becoming a beast. My second playthrough as Nate a couple years later was immediately after the birth of my own son, when he was about the same age as baby Shaun. I wasn't expecting it, but it really did hit exponentially harder, and so I persued the main story much harder, even telling Preston I wouldn't stay and help them with Sanctuary. I skipped out on building settlements, my favorite part, until much later in the game. It basically did a 180 on how I felt about that particular plot point. ...Didn't really change Father's fate, but the idea of my baby being lost... yeah.

Spot on about Survival mode. Once I tried it out ALL of my characters have played on survival. It's the way the game should be played for, like you said, it actually gives meaning to many elements in the game and makes the experience way more interesting. (Though I'd recommend one to use a mod to enable console commands because this is a Beth game with some shitty quest breaking bugs.)

I really like this video. The tone is great; it really feels like you're pacing across a room ranting. Ranting intellectually, that is; you're criticising and complimenting a game that you love very well, and it's amazing how the game is nearly 5 years old now but this came out last week. Subscribed :)

It would have been cool to have a bit of time in the cul-de-sac prior to having to go into the vault, you could have some of the tutorial, see Sean grow up a bit to develop attachment. Nate could teach Nora to shoot to explain why she's competent with a gun pre being frozen for example.

Got a lot of steel to shape. God's be praised! Wait, wrong game.

41:00 Jon it's so like you to slowly grab everything in the room except the magazine. You looked at it like four times mate! Eats me alive every time I watch this

If we actually spent some time with our spouse and/or neighbors before the bombs fell, people would critique it the same way they do with Fallout 3. A lot of people think the opening is too slow.

The problem with Shaun not being a baby is because him and the other parent would not be in the same pod. Without them being in the same pod you still have your significant other.

I always assumed that a lot of the Institute's dumb mistakes were because of exactly the same reason Shaun chose you to lead it; for all their intellect, they have very few people with any sense of leadership or practical experience due to their highly sheltered lives. While they've survived for 200+ years on their technological progress alone, Shaun is at least smart enough to know they can't keep it up forever without a restructuring of how the Institute operates. That, however, brings up another problem with the Institute; why are none of their quests dedicated to fixing these glaring problems with their management? There are a handful of quests where you make minor decisions for them, but the vast majority are centered around neutralizing threats to them, something that they absolutely don't need Kellogg or you to do. The only thing you really do in an effort to fix their problems is secure a power source. They have limitless potential to create a futuristic utopia, but even with your involvement, the Institute is little more than a less omnicidal, slightly more competent Think Tank.

Imagine if sanctuary hills was a town and was run by codsworth, who can’t die, so he’s had experience over time making him much cooler and instead of getting introduced to an abandoned street, you see a town that maybe you can control with the workshop sort of like bunker hill but with more power

Just finished part 1 and 2 of this video essay. You really hit the nail on the head with every point made in both parts. I found myself really disliking certain aspects of fallout 4 when I fist played it, feeling as though it was rushed and unfinished compared, to my impression playing Skyrim. But the more characters I made and more exploration plus not putting much care into the main story, the more I started loving the game. Now it’s one of my favorites to sink endless hours into.

I always imagined that the Institute was gonna pull a Westworld. They have incredible disdain for the people on the surface and seeing how the CPG turned out... with their synth rep being the only survivor. I figured that the ultimate end goal for the Institute was going to be copy and pasting regular humans into superior synth bodies. Bodies that would be better suited to life on the surface and rebuilding the world. I figured the main character was some sort of Experiment. We learned about how most of the subjects in the vault died after their cryo pods malfunctioned. And DIMA from Far Harbor even seems to allude that you might not be as human as you think. I figured the protagonist of Fallout 4 was perhaps the first successful human to synth transformation. With your memories and personality copied over into a gen 3. And that the entire point of Shaun "releasing" you from the vault, was to see exactly how successful it was. And, from a narrative perspective, it made sense since the Institute needed Shaun in the first place to make the Gen 3s work. It makes sense that he would turn to his father/mother to proceed with the next step in the plan, as well as ya know... getting to meet at least one parent before he kicks the bucket. I was waiting the whole game for this plot twist but it never came. And I was so disappointed because even this bare bones idea is more interesting than the final product we got.

Jon's knowledge of who all can be killed gives me hope.

If the developers at Bethesda watch part one and two of this series, and correct and keep the same all the pluses and minuses, we'll have the best game ever.

I waited till I had an AMR with explosive rounds before I decided to clear the quarry of deathclaws in NV. Meanwhile the deathclaw encounter in Concord feels like a minor inconvenience thanks to the PA and the minigun.

Talked about this with a friend the other day. Would have been far more interesting if the SS tracked down "rumors" of Sean, only to discover many different synth Seans, all at different ages, some knowing what they are, others not, some as antagonists, some not. This ties into our feeling that the game should have built up the synth replacements far more in the game and made them more important (essentially switch up the main quest a bit). Let's face it, anyone genre savvy figured out many years could have passed since the SS was frozen (as well as guess that "Sean" would wind up as a possible antagonist at the end). Make the mystery be "who is the real Sean" and lead it into synth replacement and a truly nefarious (or altruisitic/gray) goal of the Institute. Don't tell the player they have to care about this kid they never knew.

Take a drink every time Jon says "heavy lifting." What I love about this is that it is a constructive critique of the game. Other reviewers will say "FO4 sucks and here's why." Whereas Jon points out "Hey, this and that where very good but if they did this other thing, it would have made a lot more sense." This is the reason I watch, a guy who cares about the games he plays and wants to see the best out of it. Edit: Now watching the whole video and not one mention of the best faction of all, the Atom Cats! Tsk tsk lol jk

Thank you for these two videos about Fallout 4, Jon. I tried playing FO4 when it had first come. The furthest I got was finding Nick Valentine. After watching the first episode of Fallout 4 YOLO and these two videos I am giving FO4 another chance.

I love how synths are created with underwear on them, it makes me think that they are unable to change their undies😂😂 I just imagine hearing the argument "you can't even change your underwear you're not a human!!"

God, that line about the story always makes me so angry every time I hear it. Who hurt you, Emil? What player base betrayed you so that you're so g-damn bitter? :P

the game's problems seems to boil down to this: it's a lake that's a mile wide but a millimeter deep one thing I feel was missed, was that bethesda has incrementally crept their way away from "play as you want; be good, be evil, be chaotic neutral. each has their place and the game is tailored for this" and are moving constantly toward "you are the messiah, and you don't get the option to be anything other than the knight in shining armour. you WILL accept and complete the quest to save the cat in the tree" they've tried to pull this back a bit with nuka world and fallout 76 settlers due to complaints from fans, but the trend is very noticeable when having some retrospective on the ability to actually role play their games as a bad guy over the years. the direction the RPGs are going feels more like arcade games than something with depth. streamlining is useful for obtuse and convoluted systems, but it's gone completely overboard when entire chunks of the game are sliced out like real speech options and RP in an RPG. streamline something too much and it becomes just another featureless nothing

I just want to say concerning the intro sequence criticism: I do believe the scene was still depicted convincingly. When there is a resource scarcity it does not affect everyone in the same way. First it hits people in poorer countries who were already struggling. And then the lower class society. The protagonists seem to be upper middle class citizens. It is clear they don't instantly live in a run down shack. We also have little information. For example we do not know how long the pair had to wait for their Mr Handy to be delivered. There may have been a two year waiting list. It is also noteworthy how none of the other neighbors seems to have one. Across the house there are not that many valuable items and there is not a large stock of supplies, cleaner etc laying around. In fact they don't have a store room, just washing machine one. Now if we factor in most products in this world we are being presented are local and always just one or two brands, that could indicate a highly disrupted world trade network. Imagine it for a second in our real world if everyone only cleaned their clothes with Abraxo - that would mean there was no choice of other products. And as to people not looking as if the world was at the brink of war: This is also a natural reaction. What are they supposed to do? Quit their jobs and hide in caves? For how long? No one knows what is going to happen and when. Some people had already prepared personal shelters is what we see 200 years later. They mostly didn't make it there in time though. And where would you flee to if the whole world is in crisis? In our world people flee from poor to rich countries - but the family is already living decently in America. And finally, we can take the Ukrainian war as an example because it has wide media cover: The day before Russia attacked people in Kiev were still sitting calmly in restaurants having a relatively normal evening. They just said Russia was number one conversation topic but most people did not believe in an attack since it was highly unlogic to do so. Same with starting a nuclear war. Sure, a few people leave countries in crisis early on because they know something bad is about to happen, but the large majority squeezes into overcrowded train stations when it's already too late. Some waited even longer and found themselves in besieged cities. People can't just grab their things and leave while there is uncertainty in the air - we are not conditioned to do that. Now imagine it if there was no safe place to flee to anyway since everybody is in the same boat when it comes to nukes - why would there be another atmosphere than calm anticipation in the intro? Yes, it would have been nice to live in the old world for a while to create an emotional connection. And to get more information about what was really going on, how life felt back then. And I bet some people would make characters that never leave, because that's what always happens with early game happy places. Anyone remember "pre" in the original Guild Wars? There were entire guilds dedicated to never leaving it. Clearly a missed roleplaying opportunity. (sorry for the long text but those were long videos so you probably understand starting something that requires explanation)

I think the reason why everithing look fine in the intro, is because its probably a rich/upper class neighborhood that aren't affected by the crysis of the war. Thats probably also the reason why they have access to vault.

the thing that kills me the most is when you have two quests and one character to talk with. yea, I need to ask a brotherhood dude about things, but instead my character IMMIDIATELY starts talking about synth shelter from Far Harbor but I, like, didn't even want to mention it?? but I have to, because I have no other way to ask him about anything else now??? same with (possible spoilers) a character from far harbor. I just wanted to talk to her about some radiant quest but all I got were "you are a synth" option from another quest?? wtf was that

The Minutemen are honestly a neat idea for a faction, though the problem is that they don't really work as a "Yes Man" failsafe faction. The Minutemen are actually on paper a very "partisan" faction that'd be easy to piss off. They're essentially anti-raiders and are vaguely akin to The Regulators in Fallout 3, and they ought to have a similar role in theory. For example, if you do an evil playthrough, what should happen is that the various villages you've harmed start banding together and blamo! You have to deal with hit squads sent by The Minutemen. By contrast, an actual failsafe faction ought to be one that's very amoral. The best is actually The Institute for this, I'd argue, as they're pretty separate from the main world.

Tutorial idea. Have a number of quests for a few different issues. One quest could have a soldier/drill Sargent needing you to show some new recruits how to shoot streight(if your the wife your husband could joke how great of a shot you are(and if you miss they actuallypick on you)). Another could have two neighbors fighting with one another, accusing the other and defending themselves. Have them both be correct about the other but you need to investigate to find out. The game says pick one but have a third option(that's not obvious) to rat them both out. A quest/activity with your spouse to actually get to know them. While out having a bunch of other little things pop up that color their opinion of you until their death. Ending with the vault when you've returned. Honestly the Tutorial was just soooooo rushed. I wouldn't have minded it being a bit longer to get me invested. Insert meme about how a plie of garbage being more important than your son.

Oh my god I love these videos. They're fucking great. A very nice work man, congrats.