Quazimofo said:
I never quite understood how people were able to overlook the mediocre (at best) writing throughout the game.
Well, for starters: people have different opinions... so to some it clearly isn't mediocre.
Whilst I'd personally agree the writing could sometimes be awful, and the overall story was quite rushed and overly compacted, some of the writing was pretty good (Kellog's memory sequence is excellent, ditto much of - the at times superb - Far Harbour), and it's mostly the best quality voice acting and recording Bethesda have featured in a TES or Fallout. Courtenay Taylor is also superb as the [female] lead, and of what I've heard from LP's the bloke's more than good enough, too.
Those areas certainly represent a forward step from Bethesda.
Thematically it has some depth, too, i.e. presenting the Institute, Brotherhood, and Railroad as complicated folk typically made up of individuals who don't necessarily agree with each other as to their own crusade's cause.
It's like Skyrim: a sandbox with a sign claiming it's a theater, but all the actors are buzz light-year or sheriff Woody toys: a cool/otherwise appealing face, cool dress, and competent voice actor; half a dozen lines, of which 2 are 'hello' and 'goodbye'; and nothing else.
Well, iffy characterisations aside you're kinda missing the point of Bethesda's creations; TES and nu-Fallout are canvasses to tell your own stories. The player has to put a lot of the work in to get the most out of it.
...granted, Fallout 4's defined narrative and anti-RP opening is problematic, but even there it's not so simple in that it can be wholly dismissed, because---
I'm not gonna say it's an objectively shit game, but it sure as hell isn't good by RPG standards. Character progression and dialogue doesn't make an RPG...
Well, that depends on how you specifically choose to define RPG.
Which is better: Skyrim or Fallout 4 as a role-playing game? They're structured differently so it's a little misleading, but whilst Skryim has more RP freedom re background and motivation (which for me are foundational elements of ideal 'true' form of RP'ing), Fallout 4 does allow the player to lean the mostly defined PC towards the different factions, which in turn reflect very different sets of motivations and/or goals. A character who sides with the Brotherhood most likely wouldn't dream of siding with the Railroad, and so there are building blocks to use to craft story/RP arcs.
By comparison there is absolutely no choice whatsoever in Skyrim's MQ, and that total lack of choice extends to the dialogue, too, in that Fallout 4's system
at least allows for a little more flavour text to help project your chosen, er, sub-type of role cut from the Sole Survivor's thematic cloth.
Then there's Fallout 4's role-playing trump card, for those who embrace it: the build mode. Nothing in any of the previous TES's or Fallout's can match what that system adds in terms of what amounts to environmental player narrative, as well as just plain pure creativity.
I used to create my own mods on Morrowind, including houses (and like a lot of people I also obsessively interior decorated with TES3's physics-free dropped items on vanilla), and Bethesda simply bolted on a simplified CS to Fallout 4, empowering the player -
particularly with mods - to shape their environment, base, settlement, etc, however they see fit. Great for role-playing, and creative expression.
Kinda wish triple A RPGs were still a thing, but at least isometric ones are making a comeback. Yay, wasteland!
Each to their own; I think I'd rather plunge rusty
forks sporks into my eyes than play games that look like they were ripped from the '80's or '90's (and that very much includes fiddly PC flavoured control systems) - ideally, first-person or go home. Failing that, 3rdP.
I can't be immersed in a world I'm looking down on like some kind of--- er, videogame... For me the sense of projecting a role requires a full environment to explore and first-person. Bethesda's mainline games are flawed, and at times rather terrible, but no one else is providing the service they do and on the same scale (or with such mod potential and support).
I was a diehard Morrowhiner back in the day, but Fallout 4's actually been by far the most fun I've had with a Bethesda game since then, and that's doubly odd considering I've never really liked Fallout's world (swords > guns for me). Ah, and finally that's another thing in F4's credit; the core gameplay - which I don't think most would argue against being the best core game to actually play they've ever created. Not that hard, relatively speaking, to nail the basics of ranged combat, but it was still done very well.
