LogFAQs > #929146356

deoxxys posted...

Lot of people hated how much more streamlined they made things like conversation options or other "causalization" of other elements.

Whenever you add a voiced protagonist, it dramatically limits the responses you can give as a player (and how you interpret them), which in turn restricts what sort of characters you can play.

What makes it worse in FO4's case is that the game basically tells you straight up who your character is, and really only gives you the choice to be polite or be a sarcastic asshole (just how asshole you tend to be actually discouraged me from ever using it, in spite of loving the more light-hearted sarcastic options in Dragon Age 2). You're more or less still delivering the same lines with the same meaning, only in different tones.

It's easy to see that as a minor issue if you don't actually care about the story or the character and mostly just want to explore and shoot stuff, but it kind of sucks if you do.

Personally, I just hated the incredibly stupid overarching stories of both games. FO3 is so railroady I've never been able to play it more than once because I feel funneled into making/playing the exact same type of character every single time, and I kind of shit on the entire intended narrative of FO4 so hard it broke the game (ie, killing Father when you first meet him automatically fails the entire third act of the game). Dictating the entire course of your life from birth to end in FO3 (and what your father and peers were like) kind of defines what your personality should be, to the point where you're really either playing the character they want you to or are "playing wrong" (and the original ending really just underlines this - the writer clearly had a story he wanted to tell, and fuck you if your inconvenient free will wants to play a different way). FO4 explicitly shows you who you were before the war, narrowing down your freedom of personality incredibly far, to the point where you can only really justify any other interpretation as you having gone completely insane from the stress. Either way, shitty narrative.

Conversely, I've played through New Vegas something like nine times, and every single time it felt like I was playing a different character who would react to things in different ways. By not telling you who the Courier was before the game starts, it gives more freedom for you to flesh out backstory in your head. Maybe you come from the heart of NCR territory, and left because you felt stifled. Or maybe because you felt the NCR needed you out there helping to tame the frontier. Maybe you were actually a tribal who wanted more out of life, or who was one of the survivors from a tribe the Legion conquered and assimilated that fled west. Maybe you're a former bandit who left that life behind. Maybe you actually came from another civilized area, or even a Vault, that exiled you for unspecified reasons. Maybe you're an agent of mercy, always trying to help people you meet. Maybe you're a mercenary, only motivated by caps. Maybe you're a rebel, who just wants to be on the open road where you're free. Maybe you're a cold-hearted killer, only doing what you do because it gives you an excuse to murder mofos left and right. It's your choice.

(cont)
---

"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family