My experience roleplaying in Fallout 4.

Knight In Leather Armor

Knight In Leather Armor

Badger Nutsack
So with the release of console mods I quickly downloaded as many different things I could, new guns, alternate starts, etc, and I wanted to make my own character and backstory like I did in New Vegas. So I'm going to tell NMA about my experience.


So I started out just outside of Diamond City's gates and ran down the street where my story would begin. I joined the DC security guards in fighting the nearby Super Mutants. I fought them and helped them and about 3 out of the 5 guards died, but the job was done. I talked to the guard and he said his generic line "Thanks for helping us blah blah blah" so I went into my cheat menu and gave myself 100 caps for helping the guy(made it like the guard gave me the caps)
I went around, helping the guard where I could then I decided to head into DC to get some supplies since I was running low on 45 ACP.

I run up and Piper forces me to be in her lie and I went into DC. And of course the choices I get in the McDoughnut and Piper argument is "I'm looking for Shaun" or "I'm looking for my baby omg" or "I'm not looking for anyone [mad face]" and finally "none of your business [mad face] I decided "Why not get Piper as a companion?" So I went into her office.

Here's the good part.

We go through the interview and I insist my character isn't from a vault, and the game forces me to talk about the crappy story "omg my son is kidnapped" when I wanted my character to be a mercenary from the Capital Wasteland.

This frustrated me a great deal but I tried to overlook it.
I went to Arturo and of course he says "hey it's the new girl" which I respond "no" to shut him down quickly blah blah

So I stopped that play through right after because it sucked

Can anyone here tell me they can actually roleplay on this devil touched shitstain on Fallout or can nobody at all go 5 feet without someone saying "hey you looking for your son"
 
Knight In Leather Armor said:
So with the release of console mods I quickly downloaded as many different things I could, new guns, alternate starts, etc, and I wanted to make my own character and backstory like I did in New Vegas. So I'm going to tell NMA about my experience.


So I started out just outside of Diamond City's gates and ran down the street where my story would begin. I joined the DC security guards in fighting the nearby Super Mutants. I fought them and helped them and about 3 out of the 5 guards died, but the job was done. I talked to the guard and he said his generic line "Thanks for helping us blah blah blah" so I went into my cheat menu and gave myself 100 caps for helping the guy(made it like the guard gave me the caps)
I went around, helping the guard where I could then I decided to head into DC to get some supplies since I was running low on 45 ACP.

I run up and Piper forces me to be in her lie and I went into DC. And of course the choices I get in the McDoughnut and Piper argument is "I'm looking for Shaun" or "I'm looking for my baby omg" or "I'm not looking for anyone [mad face]" and finally "none of your business [mad face] I decided "Why not get Piper as a companion?" So I went into her office.

Here's the good part.

We go through the interview and I insist my character isn't from a vault, and the game forces me to talk about the crappy story "omg my son is kidnapped" when I wanted my character to be a mercenary from the Capital Wasteland.

This frustrated me a great deal but I tried to overlook it.
I went to Arturo and of course he says "hey it's the new girl" which I respond "no" to shut him down quickly blah blah

So I stopped that play through right after because it sucked

Can anyone here tell me they can actually roleplay on this devil touched shitstain on Fallout or can nobody at all go 5 feet without someone saying "hey you looking for your son"
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Well, I was able to role-play a goody two-shoes who appears to be superficially worried about their son and has no notion of the meaning of the word "No" while being surprisingly open to polygamy and bisexuality even after the trauma of losing their spouse and having their child kidnapped before their eyes. Aside from the aforementioned default character, nope.

It's what apparently counts as role-playing in a Bethesda game these days.
 
Well, yesterday, I got to choose whether to keep the red paint on my t-60 or swap to green paint, AND I got to fuck a robot. If you don't think that's roleplaying then you're probably better off with a game like Call of Duty.
 
I found it really hard to roleplay in Fallout 4. Bethesda has made many mistakes, and the major ones are the gutting of the dialogue system from long sentences and sometimes paragraphs to something as rudimentary as "yes, no, OK, hate newspapers".

Another one is the idea of them deciding what your backstory is, you don't create the role, Bethesda does it for you. I'm not some kind of drooling child, I can make up my own backstory. In fact, making your own backstory is a key ingredient in a good role playing game.
 
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This is what pissed me off so much! Out of all the things this is what made me try to refund the game in less than three hours of play time. In the months before Fo4 dropped, when the hype train was at it's height, I went so far to construct my own elaborate homebrew set of rules on how I was going to roleplay my first character. I knew going in that there was going to be a 'good' and 'bad' ending. But I decided I was going to challenge myself for the good ending a little.

I decided to tie my ability to 'be good' with the amount of total humans killed on the statistics page. The rules were; with less than 0 kills I could pick whatever conversation options I want. With 1-25 kills, One out of every of every four conversation options had to be the bad, mercenary, or hard-ass one. 25 - 50 kills, every two options had to be a bad or hostile option, and with 50 - 75, it becomes three, and then with over a hundered dead mens under my belt, all four had to be 100% bad, since my character would pretty much be a hardened monster by anyone's standard at that point.

It was supposed to simulate my character turning from a naive father who just got hurled 200 years into the future into a realistic and more gritty wastelander, and add of bit of a resource management meta-game as I had to cherry pick who I had to be good or an asshole to.

And then I reached Concord ... and I realized I needed to kill raiders to progress ... and that there were no bad options ... only mildly annoyed options ... and then it became crystal clear at that moment that this game was not built with me in mind at all.
 
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I think role playing is really what you make it. To be fair, diamond city isn't the easiest place to ignore the search for your son at the onset, as the main quest directs you there as a true starting point for the search.

I didn't have much difficulty creating and playing the kind of character I wanted to be, and she was by no means a goody two shoes. But you have to work within the existing framework of the narrative, of course. I don't think there's a game out there that really lets you be Anything you want to be- at the very least, you're restricted by the setting.

But I have to say, I was pretty stoked when Far Harbour came out and I was able to do excatly what I had been wanting to for a while, which was role play a Child of Atom! The fact they including a robe that basically nullifies radiation was just perfect for what I wanted to achieve at the time.
 
Oh, oh you did? You got to roleplay for around 8 hours with the DLC huh? that's awesome for you, really it is. So glad for you man.

What about the 400 hour $60 experience you've waited seven years for the pleasure to pay for, though?
 
I totally got it. Between the handful of characters I played exploring the different factions, making a character that I felt would play well in each one (I still like my play through with the institue the best) I easily got 400+ hours of entertainment out of it.

Super cheap entertainment for sure.
 
MercenarySnake said:
I'm guessing most of those 400+ hours consisted of walking and shooting?
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With retrospect, I realise that I should have uninstalled the game after I realised that the only joy I got from the experience was the anticipation of building my own version of Fawlty Towers in game rather than trying to role-play. And even that went south with all the walking and shooting.
 
Sure it was, that's a big part of why I played them. I've been down with the whole open world, exploration type of game going all the way back to Arena, the first elder scrolls game.

Got to say, one of my favorite role playing experiences was with Tactics, believe it or not. I skipped the whole part about recruiting in game characters and made a full team of all my favorite characters I made playing Fallout 1 and 2. I don't remember the real story that much, it was pretty thin after all, but it was awesome to see this team of specialists that were cemented in my imagination through the pervious games advance through the missions together.

As far a FO4 goes, it's easy to sink too many hours in with the settlement options, but it can lead to some interesting play thrus.

On my institute run, my character became the bridge to them finally having standing armed force on the surface, in the form of the Minutemen.

I put Preston in a courser uniform with the airship captains hat and some sunglasses and he looks like some sort of gestoppo. Everyone else in my main base gets shadowed combat armour, a black BoS uniform and a beret or a gas mask, and it doesn't really look or feel like the Minutemen at a site at all- more like a group of jackbooted, elite special forces.

Now when I get a request to 'help' a settlement, Preston and I both know what that really mean. Go to that settlement with the radio beacon filling it up with settlers from day one and wipe it out so our synths can have a new base of operations.

Hell, I even used the wasteland workshop to set up an recruitment centre at outpost zojima, were possible conscripts fight bare knuckled to the death,, with whoever wins becoming a member and getting a new set of shadowed gear, three meals a day, and a position of security in this new army at one of the main outposts.

Sorry, that's a lot of reading, but role playing is what you make it. It's not all in the options they give you or the story they tell. It's in what you do with the framework presented. There's room for a lot of different, personal stories, if you've got the imagination.
 
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"Ive got word another settlement needs our 'help'. You know what to do... -.- "
 
LanguidLeo said:
Sure it was, that's a big part of why I played them. I've been down with the whole open world, exploration type of game going all the way back to Arena, the first elder scrolls game.

Got to say, one of my favorite role playing experiences was with Tactics, believe it or not. I skipped the whole part about recruiting in game characters and made a full team of all my favorite characters I made playing Fallout 1 and 2. I don't remember the real story that much, it was pretty thin after all, but it was awesome to see this team of specialists that were cemented in my imagination through the pervious games advance through the missions together.

As far a FO4 goes, it's easy to sink too many hours in with the settlement options, but it can lead to some interesting play thrus.

On my institute run, my character became the bridge to them finally having standing armed force on the surface, in the form of the Minutemen.

I put Preston in a courser uniform with the airship captains hat and some sunglasses and he looks like some sort of gestoppo. Everyone else in my main base gets shadowed combat armour, a black BoS uniform and a beret or a gas mask, and it doesn't really look or feel like the Minutemen at a site at all- more like a group of jackbooted, elite special forces.

Now when I get a request to 'help' a settlement, Preston and I both know what that really mean. Go to that settlement with the radio beacon filling it up with settlers from day one and wipe it out so our synths can have a new base of operations.

Hell, I even used the wasteland workshop to set up an recruitment centre at outpost zojima, were possible conscripts fight bare knuckled to the death,, with whoever wins becoming a member and getting a new set of shadowed gear, three meals a day, and a position of security in this new army at one of the main outposts.

Sorry, that's a lot of reading, but role playing is what you make it. It's not all in the options they give you or the story they tell. It's in what you do with the framework presented. There's room for a lot of different, personal stories, if you've got the imagination.
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I dunno about that. I prefer actual having a solid narrative with that framework when it comes to games. If there is nothing compelling about the framework presented, I don't feel compelled to continue with the game. That's why I stuck with games like Morrowind, Arcanum, Planescape: Torment, Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights, Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines and Pillars of Eternity. There was a reason to continue with those games which Fallout 4 does not have for me since it had a compelling narrative and world to progress through which FO4 lacked, hence the experience being summed up as being walking and shooting.
I think you'll have just more fun with games like X-COM though from what you were describing in your post. It can give you all that you were describing without pretending to be an RPG. I'll give you kudos on your efforts in customising your base in FO4 though; that must have taken a lot of time.

Also, you may want to avoid double-posting next time. It's apparently a bannable action.
 
CerberusGate said:
I dunno about that. I prefer actual having a solid narrative with that framework when it comes to games. If there is nothing compelling about the framework presented, I don't feel compelled to continue with the game. That's why I stuck with games like Morrowind, Arcanum, Planescape: Torment, Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights, Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines and Pillars of Eternity. There was a reason to continue with those games which Fallout 4 does not have for me since it had a compelling narrative and world to progress through which FO4 lacked, hence the experience being summed up as being walking and shooting.
I think you'll have just more fun with games like X-COM though from what you were describing in your post. It can give you all that you were describing without pretending to be an RPG. I'll give you kudos on your efforts in customising your base in FO4 though; that must have taken a lot of time.

Also, you may want to avoid double-posting next time. It's apparently a bannable action.
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Well, for sure FO4 left me scratching my head a few times. For example, it doesn't really make sense for the institue to be using or developing human synths in my mind, no matter what they tell you. But I chalk that up to fantasy scientists locked underground being intelligent, but not wise. More interested in pushing limits now, for science's sake, rather than the ramifications down the road. Maybe the whole idea isn't handled flawlessly, but I can't think of too many games where everything makes perfect sense anyway. But I haven't played a ton of games in this generation to compare it to.

Ah, in morrowind I never really felt like the neaverine (spelt that wrong for sure), and it wasn't as compelling to me as some of the other options, like being a pilgrim for the tribunal. I totally got behind being a child of Bhaal tho. I used be play a priest of Bhaal back in my DnD days, so those games were awesome.

I agree a compelling narritive can make a huge difference for some people, I've turned off lots of games after a few hours play because I've thought "this story is weak, am I suppose to complete these goals just because that game tells me too? Where's the part where they make me care about the people or setting?"

But in this case, the settlement option was something I've wanted every since FO1, to build my own little piece of post apocalypticia, so it struck a chord with me right at the start. Sometimes it's not the story, but the game options that give you the greatest chance to role play.

X com is on my bucket list of games I'll play someday, fairly certain I'd like.

Oh and sorry about the double post infraction, First time out of the vault.
 
My favorite was TotalBiscuit calling out Fallout 4 for being a terrible RPG. Its not just a small opinion of a few people anymore. Its pretty much objectively bad.

I roleplayed a guy who can't stand childish, dumbed down, cringe-inducing writing, repetitive MMO quests, and terrible dialogue wheels with a badly voice acted protagonist with the worst lines I've ever seen in a supposed "RPG," and ended up roleplaying a guy who cringed at the dialogue and childish writing so much that he uninstalled the game to make room for actual RPGs.

Maybe in my next playthrough I will roleplay an ultra casual gamer that hates RPGs and hates Fallout but really likes borderlands, minecraft and the Sims!
 
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