"yeah, that'll work, no one's really going to care anyway" or they seriously thought that was good voice work.
I don't really subscribe to the notion that Bethesda is malicious, or at least not in 2014/2015, so I'd say it's a case of the latter rather than the former. They've always been incredibly naïve, for better and worse. I don't really even think FO4 has bad voice acting, Kellogg was great, and there's one line you can say to Kellogg that's always stuck with me because you can tell Nate is on the cusp of crying.
"Goddamn it, you mercenary motherfucker. Where. Is. My. Son?!"
I think in the end the voiced MC wasn't a bad idea, it was just in the worst possible place for it. Could've avoided the ludonarrative dissonance entirely if they played to the storylines strengths via a linear side game like Redguard.
but I guess not. Setting aside the fact that, so far, these raiders haven't been shit because shooting a pipe sniper rifle is not that hard, apparently our character knows how to use Power Armor for some reason. I can handwave this and maybe say the male character probably used it during the war, but how did Nora, our female equivalent, know how to use this armor?
Well, in 4's defense Power Armor Training was something 3/NV came up with since there Power Armor is far more useful.
I can nitpick that in 1 you play as a vault dweller that I imagine has little experience with that sort of thing, and in 2 you play as some tribal who's probably never even heard of power armor before he sees the wrecked vertibird in Klamath. It doesn't stop either character from slipping into a suit as soon as they have access to one.
The truth of the matter is, like many things in 4, sense was sacrificed for the sake of gameplay, and it often doesn't land like Bethesda probably intended it to. but for the case of power armor usage that part of lore has always been contested.
I also have no idea how long that Vertibirds even been there, but if Brotherhood of Steel members, because let's be honest, are roaming around the wastes in these things, wouldn't those crashed choppers attract salvagers?
it crashed there during the war as per the holotape located on the desk next to it. as for the scavengers, Concord was already somewhat of a raider hotspot before the minutemen arrived there, so that one isn't really going to be attracting many folks. The other issue is that the entirety of the upper left corner of the map is already said to be pretty depopulated and abandoned. You have to remember that the Commonwealth you play in is not the actual scale of the real life/in-lore Commonwealth, I don't know how true this is but it's like 1:150 scale in terms of real life scale. Most of the other crashed vertibirds in the wealth are also in locations that have nearby raiders, ferals, security, etc, and no one is nearly as powerful as you are.
This whole opening act has felt like a tutorial mission
Which it is
and it even hands you "powerful gear" (the minigun just flat out sucks in this game I sold it for 300 caps) on a silver platter before you even get a chance to actually dive deep into the Boston wastes. We even killed a Deathclaw by pumping bullets into it like a sponge absorbing water and we're, of course, the hero that managed to completely shift the entire outcome of the quest by being there to be a god in the machine essentially. I really love Emil Pagliarulo's work guys...
That whole section was for sure fabricated entirely for E3 and to be the hook for the first two hours of the game. Well, maybe not really.
That was certainly the main idea behind it, but I think on the gameplay level it's supposed to:
- introduce the new power armor system
- give the player their first heavy weapon/energy weapon
- first combat gauntlet, and pretty much designed for a lot of the combat "improvements" that 4 made, like a dedicated grenade key, iron sights, and wall peeking.
- introduce charisma checks
- introduce the minutemen
- be cool and fun
the problem is that it checks like only 3&1/2 of the boxes. if anything, they should've given you the raider power armor that you'll never use.
