The problems with the rescue sequence are twofold: firstly, it relies on emotional appeal, which isn't going to work on everyone. It worked on me, because I've both been one of those generic grunts and because I have... issues about being a burden, but that's a pretty specific combination of circumstances. The second problem is what I was saying upthread about the half-baked PTSD angle. They bring it back up three or four times to make a pretty setpiece, but outside of a single line at the funeral, they never make good on it. There's no opportunity for the Courier to express remorse or disregard, no option to tell Blackthorne that "no, this was too much, you should have left me on that fucking cross", hell, no chance for the player to decide for themselves how much it effected the Courier. Like AJ and her rape trauma, the Courier's PTSD exists in a Schrodinger's box, alternating between non-existence and primary character trait, depending on if the developers have a "cool moment" they can use it as a justification for.
I can name at least three mods that might be of interest to you, no guesses which website hosts them.
That's the point. The emotional appeal didn't work for me, because it was just completely shallow. They make the Courier seem like a burden, and by extension, they make the player feel like they're a burden, just for playing the game. Which in turn, does the opposite of what a game should do. I get enough of that in real life, games are supposed to be an escape from that.
Sure, have it so that if the Courier didn't max out one particular skill or attribute, they become a burden since they have to be rescued, but if the Courier has say, maxxed-out intelligence or strength, or has the right perks, let them break out on their own and make it so that the player's investment in their character doesn't end up a waste.
I remember when KOTOR pulled the whole "you have to rescue yourself" thing at the halfway-point of the game, and it actually felt empowering, because you use one of your party members who gets loose then frees the others. Instead of playing as some OC that the mod-makers made, you get one of the party members that you've been leveling up during your playthrough, and that person now has to save everyone else. Which actually works-you've been leveling these guys up, and now one of them gets you loose after the enemy captures and tortures your ass. (The latter of which was done more tastefully in KOTOR than in Fallout: Frontier by having the Sith threaten to torture your girlfriend/boyfriend/character you spent hours with instead of removing the limbs of someone you barely even knew.)
This is just as bad as auto-dialogue was in Mass Effect 3. The Courier SHOULD have had the chance to express emotion or disregard, the chance to say "you wasted the lives of those men" or something along those lines. The player character no longer serves as the avatar of the player, but rather as a sock puppet for the authors to act in a very limited way.
Loves fallout so much he spends 7 year making his own game.
Makes any other game in the book other than fallout.
Directed by adept of Hideo Kojima.
At least Kojima has the sense to just fuck up his own series, without pretending that it's a lore-friendly add-on to another series.
If they were just going to be this silly, then at least they should have been honest about it from the outset and just admit that it's a dumb boom-fiesta action episode that would serve as a test bed for mechanics that can be applied to other mods.
Even the fucking Legion campaign makes no sense. Legate Valerius makes reforms to add women into the Legion, Caesar tells him to stop, and Valerius just secedes. My ass. If those Legionnaires with him had any speck of loyalty, or if it was lore-friendly at all, those Legion troops would have lynched Valerius the moment he started putting women in Legion armor, let alone when he seceded from Caesar.
At most, the only campaign that feels somewhat like Fallout is the Crusaders campaign, because New Canaan and the BoS are parts of Fallout lore, and their high-tech base happened to be one of House's old corporate HQs up in Portland. And of course, their story is the bog-standard "let's team up against the bad guys" plot that's cliche as fuck.
Actually if I remember correctly most of the lead devs admitted they'd never played New Vegas and didn't even particularly like the series.
It shows. A small renegade faction of the NCR won't have the manpower to take on the Legion, nor would they have enough vertibirds to fly into that dim-witted assault. Not even the Enclave in Fallout 3 could afford to waste that many vertibirds. Not to mention the fact that the NCR would have probably shot them all for treason before they got up north. The moment Oliver starts accusing Blackthorne of desertion, the Heavy Troopers in that base should have gone up to Blackthrone and punched his face in before throwing him and Gray into a cell.
Just why? It's not like they are some sjw infiltrating comic industry where they are forced to work on material they don't care.
Oh, but they are SJWs. That's why the resident Legion commander starts adding women into the military and secedes from Caesar when told to stop. That's why the NCR general in the mod whines about the NCR being a warmonger state even though he's fighting the same enemy they were. That's why they bemoaned those who wanted a playable Enclave faction by calling it a "pointless fascist power fantasy", despite the fact that they gave you the option to break a girl's mind and make her your bottom-bitch and let you join a legitimately fascist faction like the Legion.
Not to mention the whole conflict was unnecessary. Northern Legion vs. NCR Exiles makes no sense when A) Blackthorne and his people aren't aligned with the NCR, B) Valerius was going to secede from Caesar's Legion anyways due to his WAHMEN policy, and C) they all want to make a nation out of the Frontier, so this whole war between the Frontier NCR, the Northern Legion, and the Crusaders could have been avoided if they all just sat down and TALKED WITH EACH OTHER. They'd find out that they're all on the same side. Valerius isn't loyal to Caesar, Blackthorne isn't loyal to the NCR, the Domina isn't loyal to the BoS, so they could have all just teamed up and made their own nation in Portland instead of engaging in pointless combat.
