The CT Phipps talks about things he liked in Fallout 4 thread

CT Phipps

CT Phipps

Carbon Dated and Proud
This should be good. Because there's a lot I DIDN'T like in this game but I welcome, actually, people telling me why I'm wrong. In fact, I could be incredibly wrong. Still, I am going to do single posts on elements which I adored about Fallout 4.

Things like quests, characters, and elements I unequivocally adored and why. I will also include some [Negative] articles to show contrast to the better.

Vault 81 and "Hole in the Wall"
Cait and "Benign Intervention"
"The Last Voyage of the USS Constitution"
Covenant and "Human Error"
"The Silver Shroud"
"Here be Monsters"
"A Kid in the Fridge" [Negative]
"The Secret of Cabot House" [Negative]
Curie and "Emergent Behavior"
Diamond City
The Glowing Sea
Red Rocket Station
Nick Valentine
Commonwealth Raiders and the Corvega Assembly Plant
The Brotherhood vs. The Institute
 
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Vault 81 and Hole in the Wall

In terms of good things about Fallout 4, I'm going to have to say that these two elements rank very highly for stuff which I genuinely enjoyed about it. The social experiment Vaults have been kind of overdone, especially in Bethesda, because they're easy "dungeons" to explore and usually have a bunch of monsters and reused environments to do. Vault 81 is a great exception to this rule and joins Vault 101 as possibly one of the few functioning Vaults which still remain in business.

I think Vault 81 is unique in Fallout 4 because it's one of the few places which manages to find that careful balance between idyllic while not being stupid or unrealistic. The people of Vault 81 are wary enough of strangers not to get themselves massacred by people like the Fiends while also being opening enough they don't isolate themselves to the point of oblivion.

There's also conflict in the Vault but it's conflict of a believable sort with adultery, drug use, and children potentially going missing. It's one of the places I felt which really managed to tug on the old heart strings as it was a place there were likable characters as well as people who you would want to protect. Indeed, it's kind of interesting to note that Vault 81 played such a small role in the story as they could easily have expanded it to be a major part of things. Indeed, it could well have been the source of the Sole Survivor and had a better origin. Imagine coming from Vault 81, for example, and knowing your spouse from there.

A Hole in the Wall is a adventure I think which works well because it is a human story which subverts the stereotypical evil of VaultTech. I've never quite bought there's so many fanatics in their service that every Vault Overseer will maintain loyalty to the company when they might be the only humans left alive in their little pocket-kingdoms. Here, the Vault Overseer acted rationally in stopping the experiment and also mercifully too. Even the mad scientists had a good motive as "curing all diseases" is a more sane motivation than the deranged human sacrifice Vault (which I actually liked).

While the lack of customization is notable, I think Vault 81's "home" is probably the one the Sole Survivor would want to raise a potential family in.
 
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I liked the graphics. really brings out the boner in me when I see their mannequin- like npcs. honestly though I do like the graphics. piper was hot and the creature designs were neat, if a bit uninspired.
though it is worth noting that despite the improved graphics the art style has moved pretty far away from fallout in fo4...
I also liked the music the DJ played.
though most of it had no place in a fallout game tbh.
I also liked... umm... I think I'll leave the rest to you, Phipps.
 
Cait and Vault 95

Okay, it makes no damn sense she is a Scottish woman trying to do an Irish accent in an American post-apocalypse environment. But everything else? Love. When I first recruited Cait, I thought she was going to be the "bad companion" and approve of everything evil while hating everything good. Also, a bit of fanservice in her corset outer wear. There's elements of this with her but I actually felt they made a deeper more compelling character than that.

For me, the best moment of my companion relationship with Cait was the discussion about her awful childhood where she gets sold into slavery as soon as she's presumably feminine enough to appeal to people who like adults. How she's horribly treated but ultimately better treated by the Raiders than she was by her parents and then returns home to kill them. My Sole Survivor was a goodie two shoes but his reaction was, "that was justice.'

Cait disagreed and was a little appalled I thought so.

"Benign Intervention" also led us to Vault 95, which had one of the more horrible Vault experiments because it's the kind of thing which is so absolutely cruel yet not nearly as cartoonish as, say, driving people mad with white noise. VaultTech wanted to see if their process could get people clean and it did-but ruined them with the temptation to go back to their old ways.

I also liked Cait's romance in the way it's clearly so uncomfortable and awkward for her to realize someone thinks she has value other than just a killing or partying tool. It's not the most original place to build a romance but very similar to many real life ones. Plus, she's one of the more fetching companions.
 
The Last Voyage of the U.S.S. Constitution

The most singularly relevant to the game's themes of robot vs. human sapience. Actually, I'm sorry to say I'm mostly serious about this. The game was heavy handed and weaksauce with the question of, "Are Synths humans?" They look, act, and (if you're with Curie or Dance) **** like humans.

There's no question they're people in the game so the question of Synth rights is a nonstarter.
But what about the robot crew? They're likable and bizarre characters but they're clearly malfunctioning. Is their malfunction a sign of their sapience, though? Have they moved beyond their original programming to become actual people?

Yes, it's a violation of the fact the ZAX computers are supposed to be the only ones advanced enough to have personalities but I'm willing to overlook that, especially as something similiar happened with the Geth in Mass Effect. Parallel processing or something.

The quest is hilarious from start to finish but there's a decent enough moral choice here between the Scavengers, who are undoubtedly "Real" People vs. the Crew who may just be a bunch of very peculiar animatronics. There's also the issue of the fact the "Real" People are complete assholes while the Crew are likable weirdos. For most of us, the choice is simple and we help them achieve their dream.

Sort of.

It's funny, bizarre, and enjoyable. So much so it's one of the most iconic quests of the game and for good reason.

Oh and unsurprisingly, this is notably one of the few quests in the game where you make Skill checks other than Speech.
 
Covenant and "Human Error"

Covenant, like The Last Voyage of the USS Constitution, is a sign the game could have been far stronger with a coherent policy on Synths as well as Synth rights. Covenant is, in fact, unique in the fact it's actually a sidequest which reinforces and highlights the game's central themes.

What central themes, you ask?

Well, there's that. Just like sacrifice was a poorly developed central theme in Fallout 3, the central themes of Fallout 4 are: "Paranoia", Infighting, "What it means to be human." Covenant is an idealized-looking little trading village which is perhaps the only place in the countryside which is smart enough to make dozens of little sentry drones to spam attackers. It was settled by people who had their lives ruined by the Institute and are searching for ways to determine who is a Synth and who isn't.

They pretty much directly lift the Voight-Kampff from Blade Runner but it actually works because the whole thing FEELS ridiculous yet vaguely menacing. The people here are clearly grasping at straws to find a way to find the monsters among them and it has made them monsters.

The fact the mission ends with a choice which is an actual CHOICE of letting them torture and murder a teenage girl because she's probably not human (as if it matters) or destroying an entire village of deeply damaged people after you massacre them is a good one. It's possible to resettle Covenant but I think that's a bad idea. It's better to leave it as a marker of a dead civilization and whether the Sole Survivor made the right choice.

I truly enjoyed how CREEPY the place was and who doesn't love Deezer's lemonade?
 
The Silver Shroud

Face it, you know you loved it.

The Silver Shroud quest is gleefully insane from beginning to end and I loved they managed to bring it back for the Nuka World DLC. The whole idea of wanting to inspire the Wasteland by putting on the costume of a radio play version of THE SHADOW is awesome. It's also nicely incorporated throughout the story.

You begin with the Silver Shroud radio plays, you have the conversations with their broadcaster, you learn about the Silver Shroud from the terminals in the comic book store, and you gradually start to build up the legend of the Silver Shroud throughout Goodneighbor thanks to the actions you undertake.

Hancock, of course, is impressed because he did the EXACT SAME THING.

I think what I liked best about the story is that it has semi "realistic" consequences for the hero's actions. After hamming it up for a bit, murdering the worst of Goodneighbor's criminals, you end up getting your friend almost killed (or killed if you want to fail the mission so that you have a reasonably tragic backstory).

I also love that the Silver Shroud armor is upgradeable.

For me, the highlight of the story is when you confront your arch-nemesis in the basement and then claim to be the Silver Shroud even though you have no reason to anymore--it's genuinely unsettling to him as he isn't sure if you're fooling him or outright insane. Still, it makes his goons back off and is the best way to end up saving your little buddy.
 
Here be Monsters

I always liked this quest because it has the potential to be really heartwarming. You have the last survivor of the United States military and the last (potential) survivor of the Chinese military meeting. Furthermore, said Chinese Captain is also the man who nuked Boston and destroyed his home as well as led (indirectly) to the death of his wife. I, honestly, have no problem with those players who chose to murder Captain Zao.

I probably would have.

However, if you note the man has literally been imprisoned for 200 years among the corpses of his own former crew, you have a man who has suffered enough. He's been tortured, literally, for his sins by becoming a hideously deformed mutant forced to watch his crew go insane at the expense of the very same items he used to destroy the people of Boston.

Now only you, his victim, can ease his torment.

They could have probably done more with this but the premise, itself, was a pretty great one. The only part I don't like about it is the fact you get to drop micro-nukes as a "reward." I can't imagine there's anything less the Sole Survivor wants to do than drop any more nuclear weapons on his homeland. I also loved Captain Zao's farewell--to rebuild China no matter what it takes. You do that, Zao.

THEN WE CAN NUKE IT AGAIN.

I also give credit for using the periscope the way they did so, even if you don't find the kid, you have a reason to investigate.
 
CT Phipps said:
Even the mad scientists had a good motive as "curing all diseases" is a more sane motivation than the deranged human sacrifice Vault (which I actually liked).
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More blindness to what is actually going on? V11 was one of the most optimistic vaults in conception. It trusted in human potential. But humans are weak and selfish, and instead of making a stand to either all live or die together, they preferred someone else's death over their own. The first one to die was the poor bastard that told them the bad news and by sacrificing the Overseer, they ended up cleaning the Vault of decent people. When they ran out, people used counter-propaganda to avoid dying. When around a hundred-ish people were left, they just started killing each other becouse some wanted to die with the Vault. Of this only three people remained, which is the first source of information about the place. For some reason, one of the three died, other was shot by the third and thus, the last dweller of Vault 11 ran free. Maybe he's still alive. There's even the theory that it's the Courier.

What would Bethesda have done? Added that last survivor as an old man in The Strip, who'd send you for, dunno, a violin ;), and at the end of the dungeon there'd be a massive robot boss. All across the place there'd be ghouls even if all inhabitants were dead.
 
CT Phipps said:
There's no question they're people in the game so the question of Synth rights is a nonstarter.
But what about the robot crew? They're likable and bizarre characters but they're clearly malfunctioning. Is their malfunction a sign of their sapience, though? Have they moved beyond their original programming to become actual people?

Yes, it's a violation of the fact the ZAX computers are supposed to be the only ones advanced enough to have personalities but I'm willing to overlook that, especially as something similiar happened with the Geth in Mass Effect. Parallel processing or something.
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While I found the Captain and his crew to be entertaining, I'd be more willing to go with the theory they have automated personalities, not full-blown AI with self-awareness.


Arnust said:
When around a hundred-ish people were left, they just started killing each other becouse some wanted to die with the Vault. Of this only three people remained, which is the first source of information about the place. For some reason, one of the three died, other was shot by the third and thus, the last dweller of Vault 11 ran free. Maybe he's still alive. There's even the theory that it's the Courier.
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There are 16 (maybe 17) skeletons in the Sacrificial Chamber. Since they offed an Overseer once a year, we can say the Vault only lasted 16-17 years, meaning that one survivor is long dead and definitely cannot be the Courier. Obsidian had made a Vault 11 survivor NPC but must have realised it wasn't possible for him to still be alive and thus cut him.

Besides, the theory that No-Bark is in fact the survivor would have been more plausible than the Courier.

EDIT: They started killing each other because of Overseer Stone changing the rules of who is picked to be sacrificed. Instead of voting people it was changed to being picked by the Vault's computer, rendering the Vault's political groups powerless.
 
Prone Squanderer said:
While I found the Captain and his crew to be entertaining, I'd be more willing to go with the theory they have automated personalities, not full-blown AI with self-awareness.




There are 16 (maybe 17) skeletons in the Sacrificial Chamber. Since they offed an Overseer once a year, we can say the Vault only lasted 16-17 years, meaning that one survivor is long dead and definitely cannot be the Courier. Obsidian had made a Vault 11 survivor NPC but must have realised it wasn't possible for him to still be alive and thus cut him.

Besides, the theory that No-Bark is in fact the survivor would have been more plausible than the Courier.

EDIT: They started killing each other because of Overseer Stone changing the rules of who is picked to be sacrificed. Instead of voting people it was changed to being picked by the Vault's computer, rendering the Vault's political groups powerless.
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Yup, that's better. Still, it's not important if we headcanon things here, right ;) ?
 
I'd reply but apparently @Arnust doesn't realize what the words "like" means since he is defending a quest from no criticism. The only opinion I have about it is that it was really well-designed and fun. Then again, people have this weird idea I dislike Fallout 1, 2, and New Vegas when they're all on my top ten favorite games of all time list.

NV is, in fact, my favorite Fallout game.

Prone Squanderer said:
Are you being a tad bit cheeky here Arnust? ;)

@CT Phipps I'm sorry if you've already said what you think of these quests before, but what are your thoughts on Cabot House and Kid in the Fridge?
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Sure, I'll handle those next.
 
A Kid in a Fridge

Unfortunately, this is one of the quests that is not one of the ones I'm positive about and is one which causes all manner of distress on these forums as well as others. It depends on the premise of ghouls being immortal zombies rather than actual living beings who need food, water, and human interaction not to go insane.

Mind you, there's nothing actually wrong with the quest even if it's not particularly inspiring. If they'd left out the Great War element, then you'd have a story of a ghoul child playing out in the streets who gets himself locked up in a fridge only to need rescuing. Absolutely nothing would change other than the bizarre premise's plot hole disappearing. You also didn't need it to be a ghoul child and it could just be a normal child.

I mean, I suppose you could think the kid is just making up a story about how long he's been in the fridge but that IS headcanon and I see no reason to try and justify the plot holes of the story. There's a difference between interpreting games from facts and possibilities versus just making up stuff about them. I will say that A Kid in the Fridge at least provides you with the opportunity to make the Sole Survivor be an asshole. That's fairly rare.

In this case, Kid in a Fridge is a quest which gets a lot of vitriol for the fact it completely forgets the "rules" which Fallout operates on for its characters. An equivalent would be meeting a woman who is the daughter of a Draugr in Skyrim, forgetting that they're immortal corpses and not vampires.

Also, at the risk of disturbing questions but WHY does the Gunner want a ghoul boy as a slave?
 
CT Phipps said:
I'd reply but apparently @Arnust doesn't realize what the words "like" means since he is defending a quest from no criticism. The only opinion I have about it is that it was really well-designed and fun. Then again, people have this weird idea I dislike Fallout 1, 2, and New Vegas when they're all on my top ten favorite games of all time list.
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I'm happy that you like it. It's just that it wasn't a lolrandom vault, and i said why it's not (and @Prone Squanderer showed the proper evidences) which is one of your favourite things in Fallout.

Btw, never did the quest but that Captain Zao guy is a ghoul, isn't he? Did he have food, water and a way to not become batshit insane?
 
Arnust said:
Btw, never did the quest but that Captain Zao guy is a ghoul, isn't he? Did he have food, water and a way to not become batshit insane?
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It doesn't show that he does but he also lives on the ocean and isn't trapped in the Yangtze. The submarine isn't sealed over or anything. Theoretically, he could go fishing, scavenge, or hunt on the nearby island or any number of other things. We don't see it but its possible, unlike, say, A Kid in the Fridge.

In the case of not going batshit insane, he has the benefit of the fact his crew went gradually insane versus him being alone the entirety of the time. Hell, I'm actually fairly sure Captain Zao isn't entirely there from his limited isolation let alone 200 years.

So while it doesn't explain how he lives, it doesn't necessarily constitute a plot hole either.
 
The Secret of Cabot House

I actually like this quest a lot.

Cabot House is a quest which, unfortunately, presses the lore of aliens in Fallout 4 and thus ignites the berserk button of those who hate the concept of it. I've mentioned I'd prefer if the game would go the Deus Ex route and make it ambiguous whether the aliens of Mothership Zeta were real or not--either by making MZ a hallucination/dream or revealing the good folks at NASA Pre-War genetically engineered a slave race of pilots they planned to take the Enclave's survivors to the Moon or Mars. The whole "government fakes UFOs" thing is significantly more palatable to me than the idea they might have caused the Great War.

But there's no indication of anything like that. Instead, the presentation in this game and Fallout 3 is Cabot House is aliens are real, Lorenzo Cabot found a device which provides him immortality, and then his family vampirizes their father to stay immortal from the 19th century onward. It's a bizarre premise which has nothing to do with radiation, social satire, or any ot the "rules" which Fallout follows but instead is one large reference to H.P. Lovecraft. Unlike, "A Kid in the Fridge" though, there's actually some decent interaction and characterization sure plus an interesting moral dilemma.

Jack Cabot, his sister, his mother, and their ghoul servant make an interesting collection of eccentrics. Jack is a nice enough fellow and a great employer but what he's done to his father is monstrous. His sister actually has a really good story about what it's like to survive the apocalypse in "style" where you don't have to live like an animal for centuries only to come away with a warped perspective on human suffering.

She's monstrously selfish and supposed to be but not in an obvious evil way but a spoiled petty one--which is better writing than many characters. You never quite get a handle on the mother as she pretends to be concerned about her children but may well just want to be young and beautiful forever. I also like the character of Edward Deegan who is a servant to a trio of rich assholes for questionable reasons--but has made them a sort of family.

Basically, you deal with the Addam Family a bit and their dark secret before deciding to kill Lorenzo or let him enact some well-justified revenge. I mean, let's face it, you've killed people for a lot weaker reasons than Lorenzo has. Simultaneously, Jack Cabot is someone your character may have developed an oddball friendship with. It's also nice to see there actually are humans who can clean up after themselves and not live like animals in the year 2300.

This is another story which really could have been made more palatable, if still weird, had the characters been a little different. Say, make Lorenzo Cabot and his father individuals who worked for WestTek on a cure for the New Plague but discovered something weird involving radiation as well as "genetic samples they possessed." They'd still be immortals but it wouldn't have the whole alien business dragging it down. Still, I felt it had strong characters who had actual charisma as well as choice.

I kind of regret the Cabots were also not more explict parodies of the Kennedys, though. That would have been awesome.
 
Curie and Emergent Behavior

I'm both very fond of this quest and not wholly enthused about it for multiple reasons.

I like Curie in the fact she's an adorable little machine. I also appreciate the fact the adventure also acknowledges limitations to her programming. Despite the fact as a Ms. Handy, she shouldn't have nearly the level of emotional depth she does, her conversation says she is incapable of loving and growing like a "normal"person. Curie was programmed to love and be devoted to her "owner" so that's what she does and that's an interesting little thing. It also makes the "marriage" of a certain school teacher and his robot all the weirder.

The quest for Curie to become a real girl is something which has actual relevance to the main Synth quest as well as a lot of interesting ethical questions. For example, you're basically moving the brain of a robot into a "real" person's corpse. Is Synth Curie actually the "real" Curie or just the original person with Curie's personality inside her now? Is brain-transfer the transfer of a soul? Does such a thing exist in the Fallout universe?

My own observation is that Curie (the robot) "dies" in Emergent Behavior while her memories pass on to the braindead Synth. You then are traveling with her for the rest of the story. Interestingly, Automatron actually provides you a similar option for Codsworth as I believe making him a Robobrain achieves a similar (albeit more gruesome) result. I'm also inclined to agree with @Prone Squanderer that they're not sentient like the robots of the USS Constitution.

This was actually the subject of a quest in Deus Ex: Mankind Divided with the character of Eliza Cassan.

She was bound and limited by her programming until she absorbed the memories and consciousness of a dead Hyron Drone/imprisoned woman. Among other things, this caused her feelings for Adam Jensen to change from benign curiosity/protectiveness to become something closer to actual love.

None of these questions really get resolved but if the game is taking a firm stand on "Robots are people too" then this is a good story to prove it to be the case. Certainly, it's proof positive of Synths having emotions and feelings in a way which robots do not. Indeed, that is my big issue with the adventure because it's as close to a definitive answer on the question of Synth sentience as you could scientifically prove.

It's just a pity you can't have Curie talk about it to the Institute Board. In any case, my Sole Survivor doesn't begin a romance with Curie because while a post-apocalypse polygamist ala the Great Hero Dave of the Republic of Dave, he doesn't sleep with:

A. Children (as her new state makes her)

B. His own descendants (unlike possibly Dave)

French accent or no.
 
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