It's minor compared to all the other shit wrong with 4, but the more I look back on it, the worse the character designs are too. 3 and NV didn't have good character models, but they were at least unique and had variety. Everyone in 4 looks practically the same to me, and it makes the already barebones RPG aspect of the game even more repetitive and shallow.
Oh, so Bethesda should listen to the fans when it comes to the Fallout 2 fans wanting things, but they should tell the Enclave fans to fuck off?
To be fair, that matters very little in the endgame. The Powder Gangers are pleb-tier threats at best, and the most use you can have for them is using them as target practice if you want to bump up your karma rating.
Like every main Elder Scrolls and Fallout game in existence? Sure, the NCR/Caesar/House need you to do this thing NOW so they can get things ready for the upcoming final battle, but at any time, you can take a stop, go take a vacation in the Sierra Madre, the Big MT, the Divide, or Zion Canyon, and put Caesar, the NCR, or House on the waiting list while you gallivant around shooting tribals, blasting robo-scorpions, or running after another courier in some radioactive shithole. I can understand the NCR being lenient about it, since they need all the help they can get, but realistically, House or Caesar would get pissy at you if you took too long with their quests. I especially can't see Caesar tolerating the courier taking too long to complete a quest because they went gallivanting around in the Mojave or somewhere else.And, despite how exciting the game tries to be in those opening hours, Bethesda kneecapped their pacing by immediately forcing the SS into settlement busywork right out the gate, when you should be extra and especially concerned about finding your son. You go from bang bang shooty to 'please clean up the trash and do everything for us player'
I literally never said that. Fallout 2 is pretty retarded in my opinion, I think people think much too highly of it. The Enclave were just as retarded there as they are in 3 or any other material.
You clearly don't.
Yeah you CAN stop right when the plot gets moving at the midway or 1/3rd of the way into the game but the difference is in context and pacing. At the start of New Vegas your courier isn't aware of any of that shit, fucking around in the wastes is encouraged at that point when the stakes are low and the endgame isn't gearing up.
I didn't say the rest of the games never suffered from a similar issue, just that 4 has it worse.
It's still a faction that most Fallout fans want back, especially considering the fact that they keep adding them in by mods. So again, you gain nothing by keeping them out.
You do. Especially if you want your game to sell well with the fans.
Er, you can fuck around with the wastes even AFTER you got orders from Caesar or House to go finish a job. And they never question you about it, which is unrealistic as all hell, since both sides are gearing up for war, and there's obviously a short timetable before Lanius makes his move. Not to mention that there's also the part where the Courier IS RESPONSIBLE for the chip, so it makes no sense that the Courier just fucks around when he or she IS HELD RESPONSIBLE for not delivering the chip. The note on the delivery even says this to the Courier:
They all suffer from it, and the older games even moreso.
It does, to a certain extent, because so much potential is missing. Like how a FORMER AMERICAN SOLDIER like the Sole Survivor would have been the perfect starting character to join the Enclave, since the Enclave is the continuation of the government of the United States. Imagine being rescued from stasis by them, following their orders because you've been trained to follow orders as a soldier of old world America, and slowly realizing that they may not have America's best interests at heart. Now wouldn't that be a good starting point?
I agree that FO2 gets the rose tint treatment a lot after 3 came along. It's definitely better than 4 or 76, but I actually think it's just about on par with 3 in terms of story. Both 2 and 3 have significantly dumbed-down writing from their prequel/sequel 1 and NV, and where 3 overdid it on the 50s culture references and aesthetics, 2 overdid it on the 90s pop culture reference. I think the Enclave was handled relatively well, but time constraints and rushed development fucked them over in the end. Dick Richardson and other Enclave guys you meet often give pretty good arguments for what the Enclave does and why, you're just railroaded into having to fight them no matter what. Big letdown from being able to join the Master, who also gets revealed as having reasonable motivations despite seeming blatantly evil before you meet him, even if "joining" him was obviously a less fleshed-out alternative. 3 had a chance to do something better with its factions, maybe giving you an actual choice between Lyons, Autumn, Eden, and the Outcasts, but it only did things very marginally better than 2 with a binary "help the Brotherhood and destroy the Enclave" or "help the Enclave and help the Brotherhood and destroy the Enclave and destroy the Brotherhood".
Don't really agree with that take. The chip's your responsibility, but it's not your fault for losing it and you wouldn't be blamed for it. You got robbed, shot, and left for dead. If anything, the Courier just chilling in the Mojave would make sense for a while, saying "fuck that" to doing more courier work at the moment. The NCR, Caesar, and even House are only interested in the Courier (at first) because of what he does to track down Benny, not because he specifically was carrying the platinum chip. Even that was just luck, since you just so happened to be the courier the Mojave Express assigned to carry the not-dummy package. It's everything you do while on Benny's trail that makes the major factions see you as a potential agent. If you didn't ever go after the chip, House would try to take Benny down and/or look for a new employee, Benny would try to take over, and NCR and Legion wouldn't even know you exist.
This. The way your character is written it makes almost no sense for you to be willing to do anything but beeline it straight to your kid. In New Vegas there's a vast number of reasons and justifications you can come up with as to why you are willing to head off the beaten path.
No it doesn't. As the Courier, it is your job to get that damn chip back to House. They even state in the package order that you can be criminally charged for not bringing in the chip, so going off the beaten path makes no sense.
Sorry but I don't understand this. How is a mailman that stopped caring over a package that got them shot even under threat of criminal charges make less sense than a parent who just (in their head) watched their spouse get murdered and son kidnapped all of a sudden stop caring about said kid?
Because at least a parent isn't legally obligated in the post-apocalypse to get back their kid. If the Courier fails to deliver the chip, then the offended party is legally well within their rights to fry them.
Did you actually play New Vegas?
Yes, I did. And if you check your notes, you find this:
I don't know how autistic you have to be to make an argument like this about a parent losing their child being more realistic, to say nothing of how every early dialogue choice you have early on is "MY SON OH FUCK MY SON WHERE IS MY SON THEY TOOK MY SON!"
It doesn't,
I hated the lack of weapon variety. I understand that you're able to change a 10mm pistol into what is functionally an SMG, but I still would have liked to have an SMG. Pipe weapons are also ugly as goddamn fuck.
Sure, if you're a complete psychopath of a parent (which the Sole Survivor is explicitly written not to be, they are clearly deeply invested in discovering and recovering their baby, regardless of how you play them otherwise)
Every early dialogue choice. Then you can basically not care about the brat later on because your search obviously ran a brick wall and you now have to deal with the fact that A) an occupying army of power-armored yahoos is on their way to the Commonwealth, and B) people are getting kidnapped and replaced by clones of themselves.
If they don't give two flying fucks about the job, then why would they have taken it in the first place? Also, I highly doubt the mercenary teams would give a flying shit about your excuses; they'll just blow your brains out, because that's what they're paid to do. Of course, this never happens, because the last time Bethesda tried timed quests, it was a disaster in Elder Scrolls, so I highly doubt Obsidian would go for that measure of "realism".
You can wind up waging a war on your own son and killing him if you wish to. And again, that's more realistic than some courier who took up a job delivering a package and knowing about the rather lethal consequences of failing it, then not caring that the package got away. Especially since some parents today are complete psychopaths, even ones who talk like they care about their kids, so that is realistic.
Legality in the Fallout world, especially in the time of New Vegas, means "you're a crook, henceforth, you'll either be killed or be enslaved."
Why would he care? He's not the one getting charged as a criminal or having mercenary teams go after him.
They might have, but the last time Bethesda added timed quests in a game, it was a mess. So yes, you can faff about and do all the DLCs before even getting close to the vicinity of New Vegas, even though that's unrealistic as all hell. I mean, shit, that's what I did. By the time I got to New Vegas, I had DLC weapons up the ass and enough money to just waltz right into the front door. But in my roleplaying, I justify that by saying that the original Courier 6 already got stung to death by cazadores, and the person Benny shot in the face was someone whom Courier 6 passed his package on to before he died from cazador poison.
Not when people with money are looking for your ass. It's rather easy for say, Caesar's Legion or the NCR to find you if you cross them. Shit, even the Brotherhood, who are hiding in the bunker with their thumbs up their asses, can still find Veronica and kill her co-workers if she joins the Followers.
The letter is there to provide an incentive to get out there but yes, you also learn pretty quickly that nobody that represents the courier service is especially concerned with the lost package. It's more likely that they use that contract as a way to keep people at least somewhat liable so they don't just steal shit and disappear. A mercenary reclamation team also has no real incentive to kill you if they were to hypothetically come after you if you don't have the fucking thing they want.
The letter is an incentive because it says that you can be branded a criminal if you fail to finish this delivery. And the mercs have the incentive that they're paid to go after anyone who fails to uphold their contract. In New Vegas, being charged as a criminal ends with a bullet to the head. So if you failed to deliver it, it doesn't matter if you have the package or not, you're a filthy criminal, and you get a bullet to the head. In the lore spelled out by the loading screens, even the NCR who are portrayed as soft and weak execute criminals on sight after that whole Powder Gangers fiasco. So why would mercenary reclamation teams act otherwise?
