Timecodes for major points in the video. Music time codes coming later. 0:00 - Intro 34:17 - End of the Pre-amble -- 35:10 - Part One - The Beginning -- 35:39 - Intro Narration/Intro/Player Character 48:42 - Interaction Dialogue 50:04 - Tonal Issues 52:27 - Lack of Choice / Illusion of Choice/Shaun 56:09 - Intro Nuke / Vault 111 -- 1:00:35 - Part Two -- The (Lack of) Freedom Trail -- 1:00:49 - Sanctuary Hills / Concord / Lack of Choice / Power Armor 1:16:21 - Mama Murphy / Diamond City / Piper 1:33:52 - Nick Valentine / Kellog / Dogmeat 1:44:08 - Fort Hagen / Memory Den 1:46:40 - Kellog's Backstory & Memories 1:53:35 - The Glowing Sea 1:55:33 - Virgil / Anti-Super Mutant Cure / Courser Chip 2:00:20 - The RailRoad 2:07:23 - The Minutemen -- 2:10:21 - Part Three - What a Twist! -- 2:10:44 - The Institute 2:12:24 - The Twist / Kellog(yes again) 2:20:31 - Killing at the Intro / "The Old man" / Contrivances for the Twist 2:28:58 - Short discussion on writing 2:29:43 - Previous Fallout Games in comparison to FO4 / Emil Pagliarulo / Writing Rant 2:35:26 - Contrivances to all the Important beats of the Story / Lucky Coincidences 2:47:51 - Ending
I want to thank you for better articulating what I've been feeling about the subjective argument for years. It's something that's been nagging me for a long time because I just didn't know how to put it in words. I had one discussion about how all art not created equally. Meaning one piece of art can just simply be better than another. They disagreed and ever since then it's really been stuck in my mind. So it's safe to say the intro to this critique had me glued to my screen
@@buttons551Taking a shot at someone you never watched while blocking that same person’s another way to say “I’m not wearing any panties” without directly saying so.
The best part for me is the "bethesda likes to transforme you in a leader of everything". This is the reason that bothers me the most about skyrim. You become leader of virtually every faction in the game. If bethesda had made new vegas, in the end you would be leader of good springs, Sheriff of primm, owner of lucky 38 and the strip, the new king, president of ncr, caesar, lead doc of jacobstown, overseer of boomers and elder of BoS. And remeber, mr new vegas will always remind everyone to adore you for everything you've done. Huahua
@@Guynguyen8082 you will become a god that is unable to change or impact anything because there's few choices and even fewer consequences when Bethesda makes it.
@@DJWeapon8 What kind of god doesn't have the power to decide the fate of men? Bethesda gives you the right to be a god without being a god. How miserable it is to be so divine and have no power. Huahuahua
In fact, the problem lies in the fact that you are only a leader in name, and you are not actively leading the course of events. You hold the title of chairman, But you really only have one chair
As the lead writer for Fallout 4 said (paraphrased) "Why write an award winning story when people will use it as paper aeroplanes?". In essence, stating that it is not worth creating a story if players may choose to not pay attention to it, rather than players being compelled to pay attention to a story because it is worth paying attention to.
"why write an award winning story when people will use it as paper airplanes" and "keep it simple stupid" And at the same time emil says he wrote an amazing and complex story, dude just has a huge ego without the charisma or smarts to hide it
I have always found this mentality silly. Espically when I talk to players of morrowind and they end up engaging and completeing the main quest most of the time.
@@sup1602 Yeah that's always been REALLY fucking weird on Emil's part in my opinion. It's like the guy just completely forgot about the concept of "engagement" and how the various levels of it can either make people blitz through quests/missions to get even more story, world-building, and characterization they care about or abandon all of that because the story, world, and characters don't engage them at all.
Piper's ideal Diamond City: Nate/Nora: "Hi, I'm new here in town. My baby was kidnapped half a state away, I've got literally no concept of how long ago it was." Mayor: "By Ysmir! Irileth, send a detachment to Sanctuary Hills at once!"
@undeadMonk "that thing out there is an Institute Synth. Just like the children's stories and the legends!" "Legends don't kidnap civilians. We need to move, now!"
@@kingofthegrill "Gage, out of my way, traitor!" "You're not stopping us this time, Preston!" "Fine, I hope that Institute Synth takes you all back to the Nuka-Cola amusement park!" *15 second pause signifying the generation of a radiant quest* "In the meantime, there's a settlement that needs our help. Here, I'll mark it on your map."
@superplayerex2431 "that thing we fought was a Synth. No doubt, from the children's stories and the legends. The harbingers of the end game." *dialogue gets stuck for two minutes, camera shifts to a weird angle* "Here, I've marked it on your map. Go kill the Synth, for the glory of the Minutemen. Fight, or die well."
Something people don't understand is, if you really love the franchise/game, you are the first one that should point out the flaws and criticize it. Thats the difference between an Fan and a Fanboy
True but you should also speak the truth about all the good improvements over there older games and there are alot of improvements over fallout 3 and new vegas when you look at mechanics of how the game is played and the graphical improvements Plus replayability for me Fallout 4 is the most replayable
@@michaelmorton6566Nobody denies there's improvement, and every critique I've seen of 4 actually cedes that the gunplay is a lot better than before. But that doesn't mean criticism can't be levelled or has to be tempered, especially when the flaws and damage to the IP *far* outweighs the improvements.
The stupidest part of the intro, is that the prewar world was supposed to be terrible. Massive fuel and food shortages, even full on riots due to food shortages. The new plague was another problem and the whole reason the FEV was made in the first place. You already mentioned riots, but Bethesda really did make it out like it was a slightly more grounded episode of the Jetsons. There were so many more interesting things they could've done with a prewar scene, but they forgot that the world wasn't supposed to be some idyllic paradise until the bombs dropped for no reason. I'm going to make the laziest summary I possibly can for the entirety of Fallout four and I only need two words. "Wasted potential." That's all this game is, a lot of wasted potential.
True. Pre-War America would be a dystopia. I believe GTA 2 perfectly portrays what Pre-War Fallout would have been like. Its kind of a shame Rockstar didn't do much else with Anywhere City.
Because like Shamus Young said (Rest In Peace), *Bethesda has never understood Fallout.* And with how Starfield looks right now, it looks like they don't understand that either. Like. How the hell are you "One of the last space explorers" when your civilization is so advanced that *commercial spaceships **_cost as much as 100 sandwiches_* and the Universe is infinite meaning space exploration is infinite as well? Space exploration and planet colonization would be THE ONLY businesses in such a technologically advanced civilization!
@@DJWeapon8 Unless your civilization is litterally collapsing and regressing technologically being one of the last space explorers is indeed pretty damn dumb.
I have to strongly disagree with you; the pre-war world was supposed be, at least on the outside, amazing. The fuel issues were resolved shortly after the war started, the country was united against the "evil Reds", it's always been designed to look like Norman Rockwell's America, with a sci-fi spin. Now, yes, underneath it all, we constantly learn about the corruption, the pollution, the brutality. But it's the contrast between that and the perfect life people thought they had that is the source of so much of the dark humor. FEV was designed a super-soldier serum for the war, unless there's some retcon I'm not aware of somewhere.
@@BWMagusthe FEV was designed to make "super soldiers" by making soldiers resistant to chemical and biological attacks that communist china was using. But it turns out that it just mutates them horribly. US government sees some potential for this and made Mariposa Military Base to research it further.
The fact Pete responded with "we don't want to discuss the realism of a game with super mutants and talking ghouls" should crush any hope anyone has of Bethesda getting their shit in line. It's proof that the "It's got flying dragons and sentient cats so you don't get to question why a dog is talking to you" line in Skyrim wasn't just a throwaway joke, it's their entire philosophy. They feel entitled to use this feedback loop of absurdity to get away with writing the most inchoate and incoherent shit ever just to shove in WACKY AND ZANY content, by pretty much gaslighting their entire fanbase into believing the series always was wacky, zany and incoherent to begin with. "You're complaining that ghouls shouldn't be able to survive for decades without food or water? Well you're talking about wrinkly radiation men, so your argument is automatically invalid."
It wouldn't be so bad if they had just tried to handwave it in a way that wasn't insulting. It wasn't even that hard!! It literally could've been "I'm using telepathy". It's been established in Morrowind that telepathy exists! One of Ergala's questions involves telepaths reading people's minds! EDIT: Hell, the Daedric Princes THEMSELVES can speak using Telepathy! Meridia, Vaermina, Mehrunes Dagon, Molag Bal, Azura, Boethiah, Malacath, Sheogorath. Every single time they speak to you without being seen directly, it can be assumed that they're using telepathy! This can be seen as far back as Morrowind, where Malacath, Sheogorath and Azura (using those three examples because those are the three I've personally witnessed) all speak into your mind when you activate their shrines. Hell, Azura speaks using telepathy in your dreams at the very start of the game, Dagoth Ur speaks using Telepathy during some dreams and when you enter his fortress at Red Mountain before you enter his chamber, and Azura also speaks to you telepathically when you pick up the Moon-And-Star ring. The telepathy explanation was RIGHT THERE. WHY THE FUCK DIDN'T THEY USE IT?!?!
It's this mentality that made Saints Row turn into Taints Row 2022, and people don't seem to have any idea what that's going to do to storytelling as a whole as we know it.
I mean… you don’t have to play the games? Seems you get pretty unreasonably angry when playing. I loved the game and think they did an incredible job with an extremely detailed world and a ton of new lore expanding the fallout universe.
I believe the Nick situation is a retread of Paarthurnax reveal. Some people's expectations were subverted, so we gotta pull it off again. And yet Emil has not recognized why the situation was appropriate for it in Skyrim but not in his story. The Greybeards had a far better reason to keep Paarthurnax hidden, it's bad optics for the uneducated humans below to hear their ancient respected order is led by a beast. More importantly however, High Hrothgar wasn't an often visited location, and even the pilgrims were not allowed inside the monastery, let alone Throat of the World. Despite all that, Blades still find out and want to make an attempt on his life. Furthermore, there are enough context clues to figure it out beforehand, and even if you didn't, and even if your first instinct upon seeing a dragon is to attack it, Paarth will not go down in a single hit, and he can fly away to explain himself.
The writing of Fallout 4 seems to have been based exclusively around “epic moments”; for instance the whole intro speech delivered by Nate seems like something, which would have been made to look “epic” at the reveal of the fact that the protagonist is voiced. Bethesda seems to have fallen for the same trap that Marvel has fallen into, wherein they focus much more on “hard hitting moments” instead of ensuring that the whole narrative makes even the slightest bit of sense. I hate the fact that modern games so often focus on incorporating “cool things” and “fun vibes” instead of actually writing captivating and logical plots.
Also, even as a 14 year old who had known fallout only from my playing of new vegas beforehand F4 seemed monumentally dumb and shallow. I do have to say that at the time I did enjoy the gunplay, graphics and the junk system; however as time went on I found myself often returning to f:nv and even going back to play F1 and F2, while F4 remained on the shelf, unplayed.
@@kdzr0017I remember playing NV as my first Fallout in like 8th grade and then later on in HS playing 3, and all I could think of was "wow, I wanna play New Vegas again".
Game of Thrones Season 8 did the same. They made a plot to string as many "cool shot, bro" moments together as possible, even if any semblance of logic had to be sacrificed to do so.
I think the voiced protagonist is also a factor why we have so few dialogue choices today. Fallout 1 could put 6 dialogue choices on every conversation and there wouldn't be much overhead because they're just text. With a voiced protagonist, that would add more development time because of voice recording and more salary to pay out to these voice actors. That's why I don't mind indie games that have a silent protagonist.
Don't forget that Nate and Nora are prewar and have no concept of the economy in fallout and there is never a scene or dialogue from the main character to indicate they are unaware that caps is the currency, I thought that was a major lapse in thought and writing.
Same problem with Fallout 3. You spend your whole life in a vault, then when you get out into the wasteland, you somehow already know that people use bottle caps as currency, despite being taught early on that nobody's ever left Vault 101.
The is actually one early place were you get a conversation about caps and post war crops. Abernathy Farm, the one close to sanctuary. But its easily missed and it never comes up again. Except the butcher in diamond city, where you can make a comment about two headed cows being weird.
@@mortemtyrannus8813 its amazing really how they could SPECIFICALLY point out that noone's left the vault and not a single person at the company though about the consequenses that would have on the inhabitants knowledge of the outside world
A note about Emil Pagliarulo "paper airplanes" quote: it explains why Skyrim and Fallout 4 especially shove you to go do the main story. It explains why the entire world centers around it and you, the player, playing through the story. They think the story is so good, that they have to slowly give you less and less options to avoid playing it.
It's hilarious how many skyrim fans claim the game is all about freedom and you are not forced into doing anything, but you are forced to turn into a wereworlf in the Companions questline or it doesn't continue, at one point in the civil war you have to do a main quest to kill the dragon outside of Whiterun to continue the civil war questline, and at another point you have to complete the civil war to continue the main quest to have the meeting about capturing a dragon to go to sovengarde.
Bethesda makes incredible sandboxes but do so at the expense of their story. Now this itself wouldn't be a problem if they acknowledged it and leaned into their strengths - look to the _Just Cause_ or _Far Cry_ games as examples of how this could work well. But because Bethesda is determined to be the "RPG Devs™️", we get games like _Skyrim_ and _FO4_ where it's obvious the story was treated as an afterthought
@@okagron If you want to unlock all the shouts in skyrim, you're forced to join the companions, the stormcloaks/imperials, the college of winterhold, the thieves guild, the dark brotherhood, and the bards college. Good luck roleplaying as just the dragonborn. Also having to join the college of winterhold to get the gauldur amulet is awful too.
Emil Pagliarulo talking about storytelling is so funny if you take it as him making explaining that they add bad time sinks so they don’t have to write a good story
Said it long time ago, but Bethesda stopped making rpgs long time ago - they just make fancy shooters with good visuals and branching paths. Which is, mind you, okay - what is not okay is that they insist on masking their attempts as rpgs, which is just insulting at this point.
That's the weird thing, FPS games are trying to be more RPG, but RPGs are trying to ditch RPG mechanics. Fallout 4 just ended up being a discount Far Cry. Fallout should be highlighting their differences with games like Far Cry instead of trying to be Far Cry. Stop simplifying the dialogue, remove the radiant quests, commit to being an RPG like Witcher 3 did.
Compared to more detailed and well written games, where you discover more and more things about the world and it's inhabitants as you play, Fallout 4 becomes more shallow the more you dig into it
@@Guynguyen8082 at this point anything with Emil and Todd. It’s gonna be a shitshow. Even half the stuff they showed recently is literally fallout 4 but people are still hyped for it. The whole showcase was 2015 fallout 4 showcase back then lol
@@xSpooKee Yup. Learned my lesson by getting all hyped up and wowed by all the new stuff during that Fallout 4 gameplay demo. Only to then watch the video review after video review on how bad it is, how much it gutted the RPG foundations the Fallout series had, and the disdain it had for the Fallout lore.
Regarding power armor being littered all over the world with nobody claiming or repairing them, this is made even more egregious by the existence of the Atom Cats, a faction of power armor mechanics who collect and restore power armor like muscle car nerds. XD
Oh yeah that's right! I totally forgot about them because while they could've been a new and interesting faction, there's only like 1 quest relating to them and they don't have any unique personalities
It's literally like going out in the streets and finding perfectly functioning tanks everywhere, with the keys in the glovebox and pristine fuel still filling the tank.
@@ZorotheGallade That's more literal in Fallout 4's case since Power Armor was desiged to basically BE walking tank suits. Which anybody can apparently just open and hop inside to do whatever they want until the armor either breaks or the fusion cores die.
Unfortunately he actively ignores criticism, as the handy clip Cree put in the video shows. Definitely explains why they put so little effort into 4, in spite of having New Vegas as a solid template to try to ape.
Emil won't waste his time with these stupid "video essays". You wanna know why? Because Skyrim and Fallout 4 are their most successful games ever, its what brought in the widest audience and the most money. You may not like it but that's a fact. So it makes no sense for them to listen, because what they are currently doing brings in the money.
@@kakapac6982 Precisely, they know how to attract a wide audience even if their creations have a puddle's depth, whether they are plothole-ridden or not.
@@yazajin exactly. The modders had to put in effort and a personal hand in fixing it up. Making it that much more special to them. Even someone who just downloads from nexus still needs to set the game up to be ready for modding and peruse the site for mods that they want and download it. There's personal involvement in it. It's the difference between buying a premade and assembled product VS making it yourself. Even if its not as good as the premade one, the one you made yourself is going to hold more value on some subconscious primal level to you due to the work you put into it. Guaranteed if mods are impossible in Bethesda games, they wouldn't have so many "fans". Let alone fanboys white knighting them and defending their crap products.
What's really funny is they can't make a good main quest to save their life. Pretty much every Bethesda game has fun side quests and a completely crap main quest.
@@DJWeapon8fans shouldn’t have to do this crap as well. Ridiculous that for a decade now fans have turned Skyrim and fallout 4 into perfectly running games, and Bethesda just turns around to make another game.
Ron Perlman found out that war does indeed change. Upon learning this, he felt so betrayed that he stopped answering Todd Howard's phone calls for a time. They would eventually speak again, but it wasn't the conversation either of them had hoped for. Todd tried to place the blame on Interplay, but Ron wasn't having _any_ of it. His response: "but you knew all along". Those would be the last words spoken between the two. Rumor has it that Ron even got rid of his Todd Howard cardboard cutout.
Its good to be critical of things you enjoy, helps you understand what it is that you like about them, dislike and why you do. Happy to see you go back and touch up you're earlier content.
My wife wanted to play Fallout 4 with me so we did, despite my warnings. As we played, I saw the smile on her face fade slowly as the story played out. Our nightly Fallout 4 sessions started became more like a chore because she wanted to finish the game. While she had fun with the gunplay, her distaste for the dialogue "choices" and overall narrative was always present. She ended up finishing the game following the Brotherhood and we both just sat there as the credits rolled. I asked her what she thought of it and how she felt. She paused for a while and then said she just felt empty. She had lots of remaining questions to which I had to just shrug and laugh, as the answer was often worse than not knowing. She didn't hate the game overall, though she definitely has no interest in playing it ever again. I asked her if she wanted to try the dlc and she just laughed. While Fallout 4 is a terrible game, it didn't end our marriage and we still laugh from time to time about our struggle to finish the game. Looking forward to the upcoming parts, keep up the good work!
@@simpoly6929 yes, she liked the story of NV much better and liked being able to craft her character the way she wanted to. She thought the gunplay was just alright, she's more familiar with COD when it comes to FPS games. She said she'd like to replay FNV at some point, but would probably wait a year or so. FNV is one of my favorite games and I was really glad she liked it too.
The DLC is better than the base game. If I had to recommend F4 for any reason it would be because of the DLC. As for the base game, survival mode made it a lot more enjoyable for me. But at the end of the day it just turns it into a mediocre survival game. The world is good, exploration is good, combat is decent. But ultimately it does indeed leave you hollow at the end. The game just doesn't have anything to say. Which is fine sometimes. Mindless fun can be good, but it's not what I look for in a Fallout game, especially after being spoiled with New Vegas. Even though NV can get a bit cheesy towards the end of Lonesome Road with Ulysses and his turgid pseudo-intellectual shtick (I still love it though), it had a lot to say. It is thought provoking, and that's on top of everything else that makes it great. F4... not so much.
i have about 210 mods for Fallout 4 , a good number are Performance and Stability mods. The rest are quest and story mods that enhance it. @@arandomcommenter412
@@arandomcommenter412ironically, you aitn wrong, bethesda is AMAZING at making solid ground works for modders, and the modders do better at story telling, and ive always said "how is it some random dude in his basement can do better than a company with HUNDREDS of millions in budget and HUNDREDS of fuckers making the game? It shows just how little they care if at all
Every time I hear the "totally unexpected twist", I get "The Empire Strikes Back" flashbacks. - This situation is far more complicated than you could imagine. - I know enough. I know you kidnapped my son. - No. I am your son.
Fun fact - in concord, once you clear out the museum of freedom, talk to preston and sturges, you can literally just walk right out the front door and the raiders will still act like you were on the roof and attack
I read this in september 2024 and couldn't figure out what the connection was with last month's $200M disaster of a game. Then I realized you were talking about the city...
@@Monothefox wait what? 😂 Edit: oh that concord. That was an absolute dumpster fire. Even if it was F2P, it would still be crap. Even worse were the devs and 'fans' of the game being rude to players who gave any form of criticism
56:29 That's something they did right with the Survivalist in NV. In one of his logs he mentions he was lucky to not being looking in the same direction the bomb falled. He also mentions mercy killing the old marriage that was near to him due to them being blinded by the bombs.
@@BWMagus Aren't you implying that the bombs don't make you blind because they're to far to have an effect? Because it wouldn't have sense if a nuclear explosion in your face doesn't affect your sigh.
@@DarthFhenix55 Yes, because you're north of Concord, which is north of Lexington, which is north of Boston, and the bomb is equally far south of Boston. You are in fact quite far from the low-yield bombs of the Fallout universe (they use atom bombs, not hydrogen bombs). You are MILES away. Now, how far do you need to be to not be blinded? I don't know. Nothing in any game tells us. But that means what happens in this game does not contradict anything previously established, and I'm pretty sure it doesn't contradict real-life, or at least it's uncertain.
Bringing up tonal issues in the intro, I remember the exact moment I knew I wasn't gonna buy this game. I was watching one of those "first 30 minutes of Fallout 4" videos and in the starting vault there's a gun behind a Master lock, and if you try to interact with it your character goes "Heh, looks like I'll be coming back for you later!" Not 5 minutes after watching your baby get ripped from your dead spouse's hands and your character starts quipping about how they want a cool gun.
It's like an alien wrote the dialogue in F4 - like, it would've been so easy to have your character go "I'm gonna use this to melt those bastards" or whatever and it would've fed into the narrative. Same thing with all other dialogue. I doubt Emil actually understands human emotions or human culture, otherwise the fact that YOUR SPOUSE WAS MURDERED AND YOUR BABY SON KIDNAPPED would've had far-reaching consequences onto all voiced lines by your character.
And if you're playing as the wife, you're a LAWYER. You were practicing, took a short period off for the birth of your son, then the bombs dropped and you get frozen. Then in the first day after being unfrozen you're single handedly gunning down large groups of opponents in the shattered remains of what for you was home a few weeks prior.
@@fools_opinionsweeks my ass, more like hours! If youre quick enough within two days you can have the story finished...... 48 hours after waking up from the most horrific war in human history im now a sentinal in the brotherhood and COMPLETELY fine with my new role in life..... That is the bit that makes no sense.... Ghost of tsushima did it right, at first he has MASSIVE issues with stealth but over time and the span of the game he accepts it more and more, until finally its just who he is now.... Where as with this shite game the player be like hurr durr me get to blow stuff up hurr durr even though my family was FUCKING MURDERED just minutes ago in my mind....
The fact that POKEMON, a game that was on a Game Boy, has more comprehensive balancing than a triple A modern RPG is ridiculous. I didn't even know about that feature until you brought it up in your video. That just makes the beginning of the game so much more ridiculous.
You begin to realize that most of Bethesda's plot points are designed so that certain moments can happen in the game. Col. Autumn surviving Project Purity or the twist with Father being an old man were so important to the writers that they were willing to make the rest of the story make no sense just to accommodate them. Bethesda decides that they want to do X in their story, even if it contradicts with A, B, C, D... and they'll just brute force it into the end product to get the result they want because they think it doesn't actually matter and that all the players care about is cool moments, explosions, and giant shootouts.
Quick suggestions on fixing the opening: instead of Nate and Nora , you're a neighbor who just recently moved into the area , the neighborhood is mostly veterans and their families so they're going to have a pre-Halloween cook out since the weather's nice . You're invited and after dropping off your 111 invite with your "corrected" entry form with your Special and info on that form. You get get to spend a bit doing mini games that teach you how to shoot (a bb gun ) throw a ball and a few verbal party games where you can reveal information about your character or be purposefully vague such as you being former military or having family that is in or again vagueness. You're given a single choice when you are asked to handle Shaun of which parent is holding him and then as you're about to dig in for the food the bombs start falling and you're rushed to the vaults. From there the parent holding Shuan gets blasted and Shuan stolen with you and the several of the other goers refrozen . When you're let out now it's with Nate or Nora , both who are distraught over Shaun and their spouse with the ability to recruit them. Nate being a capable character focused on big guns and melee weapons cold sniper with only his focus of his son in mind. Nora on the other hand is being very analytical with her approach , she's using her legal acumen to batter peace make between the wasteland
Its actually kinda poetic and genius writing that the Concord crew gets put on "ice" if you refuse to help them. You were the back-up to the institute and in turn you can enact the same fate on the Minutemen making them the genetic back-up for your quest.
One more thing you could have said about Codsworth: When you exit the vault and go to your house he is still there, 200 years later, and it looks like he is cleaning or repairing... If thats all he basically did for the past two centuries why is your house decrepit, run down and dirty like all the others?
Exactly! That was so confusing to me lmfao, it takes almost no effort to keep a house clean and repaired once it is cleaned and repaired so i dont get it, it clearly shows bethesda know nothing of lawn care/house care.....
@@drew8155no. It absolutely is not. You realise this robot was designed to walk your dog and literally wash your dishes? It’s as capable as any human. Given 210 years and it didn’t sweep the floor?.. Do you have any conceptual idea of how long 200 years is?.. nobody came across your house in 200 years? There’s evidence of people coming to sanctuary because there are cooking and chem stations etc, so what? They didn’t loot any of the buildings? They didn’t take the robot etc? Absolute nonsense
1:33:45 Actually, New Vegas had a side quest about Michael Angelo, the guy that made the neon signs for New Vegas, establishing how these new casinos got their own lights.
And IIRC, only the strip has working neon signage. The rest of the mojave's business signs either has incandescent light bulbs or are just straight up broken.
I think the difference between settings makes it sensible. People have done a lot of rebuilding on the West Coast and NCR life somewhat resembles pre war standards in areas. New Vegas itself is essentially an oasis with an established reason why it's largely in tact. In the Commonwealth, people can't even bother to sweep, so neon signs are more conspicuous.
I should've worded my comment a bit better honestly, I was more so praising New Vegas for pointing out where these neon signs were coming from! I honestly just find New Vegas' take on the wasteland more, as I feel like Fallout 1, 2, 3 and 4 have dealt with the uncivilised wasteland a bit too much. The politics of the post nuclear world are so much more interesting!@@Goodroosters
@@Goodroostersyea i even found a settler with a skeleton in his bed that is clearly at the very least DECADES old at this point and they dont even move it..... Its just insane, i get not sweeping but a fuckin skeleton? Come on man move that shit somewhere else.... Quincy is a good example since they moved most of the corpses to one burn pile to ATTEMPT to get rid of them, and that is the sad part about this game, there are little nuggets everywhere of how good it COULD have been but isnt....
How about instead of having a salesman with convenient timing who you can't say no to come around and destroy your suspension of disbelief, just say the guy bought an insurance policy when he returned from the war and be done with it.
Could frame the SPECIAL questionnaire as an article in the newspaper too, like how old newspapers sometimes have crossword puzzles. Like a "tick the box that most applies to you" and then you feed it to the robot butler who dispenses your results, which can be altered manually after the questionnaire
I keep making the same mistake with Fallout 4. I'm always like "oh come on, Fallout 4 isn't such a bad game!" Then I notice my game with 50+ mods. Goddammit!
@@swarmofhungrydeathclawsi personally love the world and the combat its just sad that i mod it into essentially a new cod game and hell even gears of war now with their armor and gun mods lmfao, INSTEAD OF playing it for what it was meant to, for the story, to me fallout is now a modded free roam gears game lmfao, and funnily enough i still play new vegas to this day without bugging, glitchint etc, and STILL enjoy it even though ive played it hundreds of times now.... Just goes to show what effort gets you in a gaming worls
They really could have have just had the file on Virgil on Kellogg, and you get it off of his corpse. him having the file for what was likely his next target would make sense, and if he has still told you the Institute has Shaun, then finding the Ex-institute scientist in the glowing sea would still be the next goal. as for finding out the institute use teleportation, you have Virgil for that.
people should keep in mind that a piece of criticism should tell you as much about the critic's criteria as much as the work that is being critiqued. what i take away from your videos about you is that you like internal consistency, variety in solutions, and actually doing research and that's the type of critic that i'd like to hear more from when it comes to this type of game
This is probably the last thing you want to hear after all the effort you put into making this, but when can we expect the second part of the Fallout 3 analysis?
Should've made them part of a press release that was set a couple hours, minimum, into the main questline. At least then you wouldn't go from zero to god within the first five minutes of gameplay. But what am I saying? This is Todd Howard we're talking about. If you're not a god within the first five minutes, it's a bad game.
I'd like to think that Mama Murphy has her psychic abilities constantly, but is taking advantage of the MC's paranoia to fuel her addiction, and she never "loses" her abilities, just pretends to have that power wear off after consuming them, unless there's a piece of evidence that contradicts this. Other than that, great vid
Yeah, she's probably a psyker and her powers are probably innate, but I don't think she's intentionally misleading anyone. She seems to genuinely believe that drugs are the only way to access her "sight" and doesn't seem to enjoy it because the visions usually show horrible things, but she believes it's necessary to protect the group. You can convince her to go clean, so I think she's sincere.
@@cameron9206agreed, but that isnt always a bad thing, some speculation is ok, but not yhe whole damn thing, i dont even think people know what psykers are anymore..... I say some speculation is ok, but not to the levep bethesda expects from us
Lol. That colonel Autumn super serum always made me laugh. Whats the point of seizing project purity as a bargaining chip to rally the people when you can just synthesize this serum and cure everyone of radiation? Hell, that serum might even purify the water on its own. Matter of fact; the code for the purify is literally just a 3-digit code a robot could type in until they get it right. Autumn should’ve killed the Lone Wanderer in Raven Rock, Orb’d the citadel and then shutdown Eden. (Omega initiative has a what if where he does exactly that) But obviously im putting more into this than Emil did. Anyway, great video man.
@@AbstractTraitorHero probably because originally the enclave wasn't just a fascist group, they were an antagonist group, yes, but they wanted what they believed would be the best for America and the people, just like every faction in the fallout universe.
I'm so glad and relieved I'm not the only one who thought the Tinker Tom courser chip bit just went on for WAY too long. The le-epic-spy-movie dialogue he has during it doesn't really help when you're just awkwardly standing awkwardly next to him like a god damn scarecrow.
Imagine how the Courser fight would have gone in a narrative-driven, non-RPG story, if they embraced that. Could have fought it like normal, and then a cutscene plays where he stumbles backwards into a fire, and comes out like the Terminator for round 2, really hammer in how unkillable these things are. But nope, it's just the Kellogg fight again, making the Courser seem as difficult to defeat as basically any other enemy, thus making the Commonwealth seem like a bunch of pansy milk drinkers jumping at shadows and radroaches.
In F3, that kids mom was going to die by literal radroaches, but at least those were vault dwellers. The survival incompetence of the commonwealth people always baffles me
Have you NOT seen the settlers? Ive witnessed them lose a fight to ONE radroach...... There were SIX settlers and one glowint legendary roach.... Yes it was legendary but ITS A FUCKIN RADROACH FOR FUCKS SAKE!!!
@@Mglue3yes as it does for EVERY human...... The older we get the tough we get cuz theres a reason why we lived to such an old age in a world like fallout.... And that is just an in game mechanic, you are THE ONLY one that does that and even then you arent cuz the enemies NORMALLY scale to whatever you are, so the enemies are worse, they gwt stronger by doing nothing!
1:53:10 I thought for sure they were setting up that Kellogg would take over Nick's body. Maybe even give us the opportunity to choose which one we keep as a sidekick.
That Super Brad guy is an.. interesting fellow. Not only did he say what you showed in your video (which, boo-fucking-hoo, someone called out lies for what they are). He also made an 8 hour retrospective on New Vegas, which in that video, he said capitalism is a big part of the story. When he talked about House, he never mentioned his plan for the future, and desperately injected his view on capitalism to a world, where what he tried applying it to, just doesn't work. Talking about pathetic. Otherwise, this was a good start to the Analysis series, and I'm looking forward to you finishing it by 2030.
I mean if you look at the ending slides though it doesn’t take that much imagination to realize that Mr. house is already a despot and will only make some sort of restrictive tyranny out of all of the technology he has
@@Guynguyen8082 He decides to harp on Creetosis and claiming MATN argued with opinions, strawmanning the owl guy to be attacking an opinion instead of what he says in the video.
We're all obnoxious to somebody else in countless ways, but when I heard him say "I feel sorry for that guy" because someone critiqued his arguments, I was astonished at how petty it felt. Not to mention how distasteful his preclusive anticipation for, and preemptive dismissal of, a lengthy critique of his own video sounded.
I recall back in 2015 when Todd Howard himself presenting Fallout 4 to a live stage audience said "You're going to be in the pre-war world for a while." I don't know about you, but "a while" to me isn't 5 minutes. I know it's a vague usage of time but still there could've been better words for it. At this point I see Todd Howard as more of a "salesman" trying to sell you something.
Knowing Emil and his group of... just... amazing... people... there was probably some ideas on the white board about pre-war life that they told Todd, and Todd, being Todd, told what would become sweet little lies when they wiped the board clean and just said "who cares, people just want to build shacks for 60 hours, so let's just make it short to get to the shooty pew pew action".
One way to fix the opening/blank slate is having your character be visiting their sibling, in-law, and nephew when the apocalypse happens. Nate and Nora both die, leaving you to find your nephew. It would help justify some of the later decisions too.
I think what made me most mad at Shaun was there’s a terminal. I think it’s beside him when he’s on his death bed. It tells you his biggest reason for NOW unfreezing you is because he knows he’ll die soon. So yeah. Screw Shaun. Let’s agree with it taking him decades to become leader. Around 30-40. He still had so long to use his power to unfreeze us but didn’t until he knew he was about to die. And then we have everything after that.
"You live in a perfect little neighborhood in a perfect little house with your significant other and child. Everything is beautiful and there's not a care in the world, la-di-da. I sure hope nothing bad happens on today, october 23rd 2077" cgdshjdsgdfhjagf
That UA-camr who said "don't make a long response video, I won't watch it" really rubbed me the wrong way. The way they say it just screams "I'm not wrong and I don't care what you think". Of course, nobody is forced to respond to a video, but doing that was pretty shitty imo.
It doesn't matter wether you're Nora or Nate. Shaun is overestimating your skills regardless. He was a baby when he was kidnapped, he couldn't have remembered any details about his parents. Now that I think about it, why does he even know who you are? He was too young to remember anything and I highly doubt the institute told him stories about his parents, it doesn't make sense. He could've found out later in life but at that point why would he even care?
It's why they should've had Kellogg knock out and kidnap both the parent not played AND Shaun. That way Shaun actually has a connection to his kin while also explaining just why they want to make synths: to essentially recreate the dead
Well, this is headcannon but, its reasonable for a child to want to find the parents they never met, hell the entire movie of joe dirt for example, spent his entire life lookin for his parents not even knowing what they look like, no this isnt part of the game but it makes sense since he is leader of it all and would havw access to that info now and curiosity is a very cruel bitch to scientists lmfao
55:08 So, realistically, you would get at least a couple of hours warning before the bombs hit since the bombardment would start from the East Coast. The opening could be a bit longer no issue to help create some connection to your family. This would also let you meet characters that could end up ghoulified later that you get to meet, besides the Vault-Tech guy that is. Hell an idea I had back when i first started following your channel was to have the leadership of the Gunners have several Ghouls that were serving in the Military when the bombs first dropped, so they're actually a remnant of the Military. Maybe even have one of them be a war buddy of Nate. This kind of stuff would help liven up the contrast between before and after the war, with the PC having a fresher memory of the past compared to the wastelanders who have to decypher it from the remnants of the old world and the pre-war ghouls with a more nostalgic outlook.
51:36 “She’s supposedly a journalist, but she doesn’t actually do any journalism, she just rants about the Institute.” Sure, but this is actually realistic.
When I first stumbled into the (apparently) empty Istitute, with only a disembodied voice on the PA system, I thought maybe the Institute scientists were all dead and the voice was the main computer (like in sky captain and the world of tomorrow, sort of), who had kept things going and produced synths. That would've been better.
I admire how analytical you are with how Fallout 4. Admittedly, this is the first game of the Fallout series I have played, as I was gravitated towards the building mechanics from videos I saw online. But the more I played, the more I paid attention to the storyline. And the more I paid attention to Fallout 4's story, the more I wanted a breakdown of its positives and negatives. And I'm seeing how the nature of this game's direction deviates from the original three games' flow. Your video definitely conveys the issues that this installment has, especially when tied in with the previous titles. Bravo, Creetosis. I enjoyed your perception skills. Definitely goes beyond level 10. I can't wait to see the coming parts.
Emil forgets that the reason for building shacks is woven into the story and the propensity for roleplay. The reason why somebody is spending time 'building shacks', or building and curating settlements is often entirely dependent on their faction choices and the roleplay that comes with it. The importance of settlement building and the kinds of settlements that people build are often a tool to enhance faction roleplay in partnership with story-based roleplay. I've put a decent amount of time into settlement building because it helps me to make the faction I'm playing and game world a little richer because there's a deficit of that richness in the story. He's absolutely right that I'm spending more time on that than the story. But he critically forgets that it's BECAUSE of the story that I'm having to compensate with my own world building. I liked the settlement system a lot, but that's absolutely no excuse for lazy writing. The system alongside good writing would have only resulted in a better game, nobody can dispute that point.
Emil says "Why bother writing a great book when the reader's are just going to make paper airplanes out of the pages?" Well they'll only make paper airplanes due to sheer boredom because your book is bad to amuse themselves. I did the same as you. The worldbuilding is lackluster in 4, so I spent more time making settlements to justify and flesh out the socio economic lore of the Commonwealth than I did with the linear main story. Farms. Waystations and rest stops for caravans. Riverside and seaside piers for water transport and trade. Infrastructure in general. Important stuff for a civilization to function, fictional or otherwise.
About the settlement building in fallout 5 if they go this route I would prefer an sim settlement option where I can start it up and just let the ppl decide and help if I wanted to build the city as I want but as is the settlement building is too damn tedious and that’s coming from someone who has built up every settlement in the game I don’t want to have to do that in every fallout game moving forward would rather have some type of automated hands off option Kind wish sim settlements was a creation club mod I could opt to buy so that it becomes cc content and doesn’t conflict with the mods I actually want to use over that 700 mb mod
@@DJWeapon8yea emil is a pathetic loser, someone should show him, harry potter, lord of the rings, etc..... emil is a pathetic loser who legit HAD to have been a nepotism hire.......
You know thinking about to Cornell Autumn rad immunity thing. Bethesda could have just shown Autumn turning into a ghoul in PJ purity. Then just destroy lamplight and move the kids into big town to show that they went through lamplight.
Christ, the idea that in a fantasy setting you can just do whatever is ridiculous, I mean, you can, but you have to integrate those unrealistic elements in the story and the worldbuilding, in a way that makes sense... it doesn't matter if a village is terrorized by a dragon, or a bear, characters still have to have believable abilities and motivations... As I always say, it's better to pretend that only fallout 1, 2 and New Vegas are cannon, it's a much more peaceful existence...
Jfc, what a time to be alive, when you need to explain the very basics of constructive criticism at the beginning of a video. Will gladly watch this refreshed version. Your takes are always worth listening. Never change, Cree. Never change.
For the discussion surrounding Power Armor, as talked about around 1:12:00, there's a quote that always come to my mind: "Something given has no value" - Mr. Radzcek, Starship Troopers.
I forget what mod changes it (it might be SawyerBatty) but there's a mod I have in my TTW install that allows you to wear power armor without training, but it only gives you the full benefits if you have the training perk. So while it still allows you to use Power Armor if you manage to find it, you won't be able to use it well until you actually get the training perk either from the BoS missions in either section of TTW (I think that's where you get it in NV?) or Operation Anchorage in the FO3 section of TTW. It's just a neat QOL thing. EDIT: TTW is Tale of Two Wastelands, by the way.
Thats blatantly false, what if your mother gave you an engraved lighter to smoke cigars with? Now all of a sudden it has value huh..... Too many FOOLS such as yourself tryin to sound all deep and shit lmfao
I think the rights to fallout should be stripped from them on a legal level, they clearly have a hatred of their fans and lore, and WILLFULLY sell unfinished products and sometimes poisonous products ie the power armor helms with mold in them..... They dropped the ball so hard even the australian government was like "dude, just give them their money back if they want a refund you scummy fucks" EVEN A GOVERNMENT thought what they did was scummy, let that sink in.....
I know that the Enclave should have been dead, but considering Nate is a veteran of the Great War, just imagine if there was a storyline where he discovers the Enclave and they're close to a civil war between the Reformers and Purists. Obviously, they have no power since Raven Rock was destroyed, but they have Vertibirds, Power Armor, and the like. The numbers are drastically smaller, of course. However, your character could help one side win over the other, maybe have the Enclave grow in power like the Minutemen or BoS over the game. Hell, maybe have the Enclave consider doing what the Institute did on the Purist side to show how far they're gone.
I think that Bethesda should of just made new factions and not depend on ones that are set in the future of the world or on the other side of the country. If they made new independent factions it would of opened up a much wider world and saved them having to retcon everything.
@@FKYT they did, to be fair. 3 of 4 of the major factions are completely new. The problem is that they can't write for shit. The Minutemen are boring and filled with meaningless radiant quests. The Railroad is stupid and wouldn't last against the Institute. The Institute are hollow bad guys full of contradictions. And you can't explore, discuss, or control, in depth, their ideologies because they didn't bother writing for it and the dialogue system they replaced isn't built to allow it. That's not even counting the "minor factions" that 4 has and how shallow they are. Being nothing more than wAcKy fIfTiES caricatures.
After watching you from this original video in fact all those years ago! I can tell you have very much improved and might of taken some notes from other great content makers like PatricianTV. Even if it might of not been intended, I'll be enjoying this video and the future parts for sure!.
I realized this game's version of "Choice" is essentially the Anna Dewitt Problem at the end of Bioshock Infinite. *SPOILERS* Where the game tells you that you can refuse to give up the girl, but the story literally won't proceed until you do. Tim Cain would say, "How can we make your Negative response *Forward* the story in an interesting way?" Emil and Howard say, "You're free to leave, and you won't be penalized for not engaging, but if you want to experience the content, there's only one way forward." It's a series of linear stories that you can pick and choose from, in order to give the Player the illusion that they carved out their own path, and have given their player an "identity through their actions." It's a series of Binary Yes Engage, No Don't, Statements.
I agree with all the criticism, but I WILL defend it on at least one point. It is never stated one nuke went off and that caused the entire glowing sea. If you explore the glowing sea you can find nuclear reactor stations. Getting nuked is certainly a good reason to say they melted down, basically turning the area into Chernobyl. So THAT part at least does make sense. The rest of it, not so much.
If starfield ends up as bad or worse than fallout 4, I won’t be surprised to see massive cope videos from BGS fanboys like MATN or Oxhorn like they did with fallout 3/4
It's not really coping, as a noticeable majority of casual gamers are genuinely satisfied with recent Bethesda titles (excluding f76). They enjoy playing Skyrim and Fallout 4 and they'll most likely enjoy playing Starfield. Most people just wouldn't give a shit if some obscure UA-camr made a 5-hour long criticism of Starfield's story. Some fanboys will whine, sure, but most fans won't even pay attention to it. That's because most people don't care about how well written Bethesda games are or what is the depth of their RPG mechanics. They mostly play Bethesda games to explore the open world, play with mods or just fuck around, not scrutinize the level of complexity of these games' storylines, roleplaying and worldbuilding. Please note that I'm not trying to defend Bethesda, but it's simply how thing are.
@@youarealwayscorrect eh its still coping. Sunk cost fallacy and all that. The casuals, when disappointed with their 60 maybe 70+ US dollar purchase, would often think up of contrivances to justify their subpar purchase. Such as deluding themselves into thinking that they are satisfied with the product.
@@DJWeapon8 not really. If you ask any modern casual gamer to tell you what is the best open-world fantasy RPG that they've ever played and would definitely recommend to their friends, the most likely scenario is that they'd bring up Skyrim (followed by Witcher 3). There's a reason why Skyrim and Fallout 4 still have a pretty huge and consistent player count on steam. Once again, this is not me defending Skyrim. This is just how it is. Tons of people genuinely enjoy this type of gameplay and that's why these games are so successful in terms of mass appeal, even a decade later. Do you really think that most average Joes care that some bunch of oldschool gamers from the nerdy parts of the internet don't like the game that they like? If Starfield plans to follow the same formula, dedicated to providing a huge amount of casual open-world shenanigans and modding galore, then I'm sure that it's going to be a hit among the mass customers as well, with millions of people genuinely enjoying it and spending hundreds of hours playing the new Bethesda title for the next decade, without paying much attention to any harsh criticism, while Bethesda will unavoidably stick to this same formula for their next project.
At the end of the day... None of these complaints will even matter as newer, casual "fans" will look past any kind of negative changes as they don't even realize that they ARE changes. Cutting edge dialogue and world building isn't Fallout to them. The Brotherhood of Steel, Deathclaws and generic raiders are all they think of when they think of the IP.
Then go play New Vegas in your little corner over there, and let people enjoy what they want. I swear you spend more time bitching why New Vegas is better than actually playing it.
Nah, I've still seen plenty of new fans bitch about some these things. Like why are there 10 times as many mindlessly hostile raiders than there are normal people? It's ridiculous.
Honestly I dont agree my first fallout game was 3 and upon playing New Vegas I very quickly picked up on a difference in how they were made. Even now I’d consider myself a casual fan of the series given I’ve only played 3, barely any of 4 and a whole lot of NV
@@rhenisnotok8077 You're actually part of a pretty large group of people who took up 3, but then got drawn to New Vegas. Funny enough, that's the camp I'm in myself. I'm mainly talking about people who only really got into the series with Fallout 4. Most of those folks played a little bit of 3 and practically skipped New Vegas.
@@smink5447ive seen people call new vegas "an empty desert simulator" and im like if you want looting and shooting fuck right back the fuck off to fortnite you mindless child
I'm only speaking from my own experience here, but I tried watching MATN's vids a while ago and found myself bouncing hard off them. Something about his candour and positivity seems so staged to me. I could be completely wrong here obviously, his stuff just doesn't gel with me. I'd much rather enjoy something while being cognizant of its flaws and in spite of those flaws instead of being so toxically positive that you dismiss criticism as being pointlessly negative.
They should've just made Kellogg a full on Borg like Adam Smasher it would've maintain the twist and his memories more impactful going from a kid with a troubled childhood to a old jaded merc and then to someone more machine then man no emotions or remorse only Carrying out the orders of his scientific overloads
2:19:05 Boy I wish there was something to keep track of all these nuances. Like a design document. 2:20:31 It would be so damn cool if all of your neighbours lived in the institute alive and well for some time. There maybe would have been a motivation for you to join them.
Thank you for properly stating the issue on Nate and Nora's backstory. The issue is not just "Oh he has a voice and backstory so I can't roleplay" they didn't fucking do anything with either option. Good shit man can't wait to finish the series, this is gonna be good!
Why doesn’t Bethesda just make a game set around the time of fallout 1? They clearly prefer that sort of vibe in there worlds. Then we can justify how undeveloped the worlds are compared to in two and new vegas
I'd say make it even earlier than that. 5 to 40 years after the great war. The problem for them is that if they set it earlier to explain and justify why their maps look like literal wastelands with no advancement or recovery, then they can't leverage the original games' factions for iCoNoGrApHy. Like the supermutants, brotherhood of steel, enclave, etc, because those things don't exist yet in-universe. Then again, Fallout 76 is set the earliest in the series, but it has super mutants, brotherhood of steel, and enclave completely contradicting the previous games' histories and lore... So...
May I introduce you to Fallout 76? Edit... previous response points out what Bugsthesda did with Fallout 76... which is set, iirc 1 year after the bombs fell... but they have included all those "iconic" factions due to $$$ issues.
A really, really thorough analysis. This must have taken a LOT of work ! Fallout 4 was the first movie or game where the "twist" was obvious from the opening cut scene. My partner and I both just immediately asked eachother "why does he think his son is a baby?".... waking up after being suspended for hundreds of years why would you think your son is still a baby when you have no idea when he was taken. The whole plot & twist made no sense right from the start. Fallout 4 was the first game I played where the story actually HARMED the game experience. The story/writing was so jarring & inconsistent it DESTROYED any immersion you had in the world. It is very rare for a game to have such bad writing that it destroys immersion. I have played hundreds and hundreds of games and only 3 have writing which has seriously harmed the game... that is Fallout 4, Saints Row Reboot & Starfield. In Starfield, listening to any starborn dialogue immediately kills all the immersion in the game and makes me just want to switch off the game.
Fallout 4 was okay at the start. I thought, "Eh, there's a lot of tropes and the story seems like schlock, but that's okay. Not everything has to be a Pulitzer..." Then I got to, "Of course, teleportation!" and I got pissed. The story was contrived and ridiculous up to that point, but that was when I knew it flew off the rails and into orbit. I didn't even bother finishing the story; I played around with settlement building until that felt pointless (because it was) and just slowly stopped playing altogether. It was then I realized I was done with Bethesda. Thank god I missed all that hype and mess with Starfield. I had made observations when it was announced on various UA-cam videos that I was getting strong Anthem vibes. The insane hype and then the insane disappointment. I wish some people, mostly middle aged gamers like me, would realize that leaving things in your past doesn't mean you're somehow betraying it. I'd rather walk away with halfway decent memories than carry deep resentment in the current day. I wish they would realize that chasing faded glory is a waste of precious time. I wish they would stop replacing what should be their personality with consumer products and corporate loyalty.
It really seems to me that Bethesda gave up completely on the idea of worldbuilding and think that creating a concise and believable universe is stupid because "it's just a video game", or something like that. Plus, with their idea of "humor" (which, btw, the sarcastic dialogue options in Fallout 4 are just... ridiculous, at best). I used to think they were incompetent, but now I think it's on purpose, as if they're trying to make games "cool", or show that they're not nerds or something.
I really think they fucked themselves up. It's my opinion that they had alot of the writing and stuff done, and then upper-management said "Hey, this New Vegas thing is doing well--we need to copy this, so add more companions, make is possible to join one of several factions to finish the game, including the villains. And that means cramming in a fail-safe faction in case you fuck up the others" and so on, and the team, already not the best team, had to try to add in a shitload more stuff.
Which is a goddamn shame because worldbuilding is one of the more fun parts of being a writer or creative. Especially if your foundation is solidly conceptualized so that other elements just naturally build off of it which in turn allows you to build off more elements. Like a feedback loop where everything is consistent and fits together. That is super satisfying. All of it actually works. _Unlike what Todd claims._
@@DJWeapon8 I'm not a writer, but I would imagine so. Also, I'm not sure about Fallout 4, but Skyrim didn't have any designated writers, leaving that responsibility to the quest designers themselves, which is a damn shame. I would imagine it was the same for Fallout 4. It's truly sad because it's getting harder to be excited about Bethesda's new releases, given that they will probably keep that design philosophy going.
It's even weirder considering that he doesn't even need the glasses as a human, I initially though it was just him keeping some vestigial reminder of when he was human to help keep himself sane in isolation, but it actually served no purpose. My best guess is whoever designed him thought; "I need some stereotypical signifier that he's a scientist, better put glasses on him".
@@grayman4951 Considering Fallout 4 also has the BoS toss around Latin to try to make them sound smart, I wouldn't be surprised if the glasses were added for the same reason.
@Yan-tz9pn The Legion actually has reasons for using Latin. It was part of how Caesar replaced the cultures of the tribes the Legion conquered and absorbed. It also fit with the fact Caesar was attempting to replicate ancient Rome. The BoS don't have any good excuses for suddenly using an obsolete language. Bethesda didn't even bother with making up an explanation.
@@Mirthful_Midori I get what you’re saying, but I guess the BoS obsession with pre war books in fo3 might be an explanation. Could have been some history books and peaked the interest of some scribes/knights like it did Edward.
Regarding the first segment: I literally *loved* how on NV I could make a former Legion slave, who somehow got free a couple of years before, found his/her way into the Mojave working as a courier, until the Legion itself came to the Nevada. Or how I could just as easily create a character who was a retired NCR spec ops (even a good 'patriotic' variant or an asshole/brutal variant), or basically anything I wanted. Bioware showed *some* promise on how you could come to terms with the voiced protagonist and the role-playing freedom, when they introduce the option of having two possible voices in DA Inquisition. A game like Fallout should have dome something similar, but with more options of potential voices and maybe even 'inflexions' of delivery.
Just watched all your parts. Excellent analysis Creetosis. While I do like Fallout 4 and think the Railroad is my favorite (and best written, which admitedly isn't a high bar when the alternatives are the Institute and Brotherhood), I can certainly respect your issues with its presentation, and more generally the game as a whole
some loose notes: - I remember thinking, every now and then, "hey maybe this emil guy comes to hodd toward's office with good story ideas but gets turned away" -- we'll never know -- but yeah, he's just terrible - I started watching this video *while* playing fallout 4 -- the settlement building part is my "therapy" thing, what I do while I need to relax a bit between other tasks. amazing, huh? - to this day, I remember thinking "that's it" after my first playthrough. oh well.. loved the video! looking forward to the next parts ps:: sorry for the broken english
2:02:40 there is at least another mention about literacy: in a building near Concord there is the hideout of a small gang of raiders. Sneaking in through the secret door alloe the player to overhear a conversation between two raiders on the fact that one of them can read and the other one would learn to read. However, it's just a fun fact; even if we suppose that most raiders can't write or read, we know that among of them several leaders and lieutenants can, so they could easily reach Railroad's hideout and kill railroads without many problem.
I was 15 when fallout 4 came out and i remember being ao excited for it i preordered it. I remember playing it a shit ton and beating it but after awhile i felt like something was wrong, I couldn't figure out what it was. I stopped playing it after getting every achievement. And then when i got a PC i figured out why I didn't like it. It feels like it punishes you for wanting to explore topics more deeply. And wants you to play the game without paying attention
I would’ve hoped that Bethesda would’ve taken the tagline “war never changes” and tried to do something different with it each game, and not just throw the BoS into a literal war with some other faction every time.
I like to think that because Nate is a veteran, he taught Nora basic CQC and how to use firearms so that she could protect herself if something happened to him. That's the only conceivable reason why a suburban housewife/lawyer would instantly be good at fighting off all the dangers of the wasteland. But the fact that I'm having to impose my own headcanon on a preestablished character to make her work is not ideal. They could have at least made her an ex-cop or something. Actually, that could have made for some really cool interactions with Nick. "Oh, you're a detective? Cool! I used to be a cop before the war. Speaking of which, you've got the same name as a guy I used to work with..."
I hate the subjectivity argument as well, I tell people that make that argument that it's totally fine to like something even if it's terrible but defending the thing you like with nonarguments makes you look like a petulant child that can't handle criticism of any kind and they act like their interests are a personality trait it's so cringe
these videos are so well said and coherent, I wish Bethesda would realize these critiques come from a place of love and not hate. we want these nostalgic games we love to shine but Bethesda and some fans seemingly don't. I've been waiting over a decade for TES6 and FO5, but as it stands I have better games to spend my time with than whatever those are going to end up being. I wish people would stop pumping their money directly into the Bethesda pipeline and realize there are better wastes of time out there, then maybe they'll actually realize they're in the wrong. side note; I've become so good at ignoring bad in game writing that I completely forgot Nate and Nora had backstories because I erase it from my mind to roleplay my characters LOL.
Timecodes for major points in the video. Music time codes coming later.
0:00 - Intro
34:17 - End of the Pre-amble
-- 35:10 - Part One - The Beginning --
35:39 - Intro Narration/Intro/Player Character
48:42 - Interaction Dialogue
50:04 - Tonal Issues
52:27 - Lack of Choice / Illusion of Choice/Shaun
56:09 - Intro Nuke / Vault 111
-- 1:00:35 - Part Two -- The (Lack of) Freedom Trail --
1:00:49 - Sanctuary Hills / Concord / Lack of Choice / Power Armor
1:16:21 - Mama Murphy / Diamond City / Piper
1:33:52 - Nick Valentine / Kellog / Dogmeat
1:44:08 - Fort Hagen / Memory Den
1:46:40 - Kellog's Backstory & Memories
1:53:35 - The Glowing Sea
1:55:33 - Virgil / Anti-Super Mutant Cure / Courser Chip
2:00:20 - The RailRoad
2:07:23 - The Minutemen
-- 2:10:21 - Part Three - What a Twist! --
2:10:44 - The Institute
2:12:24 - The Twist / Kellog(yes again)
2:20:31 - Killing at the Intro / "The Old man" / Contrivances for the Twist
2:28:58 - Short discussion on writing
2:29:43 - Previous Fallout Games in comparison to FO4 / Emil Pagliarulo / Writing Rant
2:35:26 - Contrivances to all the Important beats of the Story / Lucky Coincidences
2:47:51 - Ending
I want to thank you for better articulating what I've been feeling about the subjective argument for years. It's something that's been nagging me for a long time because I just didn't know how to put it in words. I had one discussion about how all art not created equally. Meaning one piece of art can just simply be better than another. They disagreed and ever since then it's really been stuck in my mind. So it's safe to say the intro to this critique had me glued to my screen
@@buttons551Taking a shot at someone you never watched while blocking that same person’s another way to say “I’m not wearing any panties” without directly saying so.
i always just end up murdering the settlers at tenpines, cause corvega is way too hard at level 1-10… you still pass the quest lmfao
Are you gonna make a fallout NV isn’t better then you think
But Creetosis "It just works!"
The best part for me is the "bethesda likes to transforme you in a leader of everything".
This is the reason that bothers me the most about skyrim. You become leader of virtually every faction in the game.
If bethesda had made new vegas, in the end you would be leader of good springs, Sheriff of primm, owner of lucky 38 and the strip, the new king, president of ncr, caesar, lead doc of jacobstown, overseer of boomers and elder of BoS.
And remeber, mr new vegas will always remind everyone to adore you for everything you've done. Huahua
jesus, you’re right lmfao
Jesus.
Imagining a New Vegas made solely by bethesda is nightmare material.
@@Guynguyen8082 you will become a god that is unable to change or impact anything because there's few choices and even fewer consequences when Bethesda makes it.
@@DJWeapon8 What kind of god doesn't have the power to decide the fate of men?
Bethesda gives you the right to be a god without being a god. How miserable it is to be so divine and have no power. Huahuahua
In fact, the problem lies in the fact that you are only a leader in name, and you are not actively leading the course of events. You hold the title of chairman, But you really only have one chair
As the lead writer for Fallout 4 said (paraphrased) "Why write an award winning story when people will use it as paper aeroplanes?". In essence, stating that it is not worth creating a story if players may choose to not pay attention to it, rather than players being compelled to pay attention to a story because it is worth paying attention to.
And like I commented way back when.
People will only make paper airplanes out of your story if your story is boring.
Exactly.
"why write an award winning story when people will use it as paper airplanes" and "keep it simple stupid"
And at the same time emil says he wrote an amazing and complex story, dude just has a huge ego without the charisma or smarts to hide it
I have always found this mentality silly. Espically when I talk to players of morrowind and they end up engaging and completeing the main quest most of the time.
@@sup1602 Yeah that's always been REALLY fucking weird on Emil's part in my opinion. It's like the guy just completely forgot about the concept of "engagement" and how the various levels of it can either make people blitz through quests/missions to get even more story, world-building, and characterization they care about or abandon all of that because the story, world, and characters don't engage them at all.
Piper's ideal Diamond City:
Nate/Nora: "Hi, I'm new here in town. My baby was kidnapped half a state away, I've got literally no concept of how long ago it was."
Mayor: "By Ysmir! Irileth, send a detachment to Sanctuary Hills at once!"
"What would you have us do now, Hancock - trust in the strength of our walls? Against _kidnappers!?"_
@undeadMonk "that thing out there is an Institute Synth. Just like the children's stories and the legends!"
"Legends don't kidnap civilians. We need to move, now!"
@@kingofthegrill "Gage, out of my way, traitor!"
"You're not stopping us this time, Preston!"
"Fine, I hope that Institute Synth takes you all back to the Nuka-Cola amusement park!"
*15 second pause signifying the generation of a radiant quest*
"In the meantime, there's a settlement that needs our help. Here, I'll mark it on your map."
@superplayerex2431 "that thing we fought was a Synth. No doubt, from the children's stories and the legends. The harbingers of the end game."
*dialogue gets stuck for two minutes, camera shifts to a weird angle*
"Here, I've marked it on your map. Go kill the Synth, for the glory of the Minutemen. Fight, or die well."
Concord is only like 15 miles from fenway
Something people don't understand is, if you really love the franchise/game, you are the first one that should point out the flaws and criticize it.
Thats the difference between an Fan and a Fanboy
Yeah, if we didn't love the game we wouldn't have bothered to argue for and against it.
@@thegrayyernautI assume you meant franchise
True but you should also speak the truth about all the good improvements over there older games and there are alot of improvements over fallout 3 and new vegas when you look at mechanics of how the game is played and the graphical improvements Plus replayability for me Fallout 4 is the most replayable
@@michaelmorton6566Nobody denies there's improvement, and every critique I've seen of 4 actually cedes that the gunplay is a lot better than before. But that doesn't mean criticism can't be levelled or has to be tempered, especially when the flaws and damage to the IP *far* outweighs the improvements.
Tks mantis needs to hear this
The stupidest part of the intro, is that the prewar world was supposed to be terrible. Massive fuel and food shortages, even full on riots due to food shortages. The new plague was another problem and the whole reason the FEV was made in the first place. You already mentioned riots, but Bethesda really did make it out like it was a slightly more grounded episode of the Jetsons. There were so many more interesting things they could've done with a prewar scene, but they forgot that the world wasn't supposed to be some idyllic paradise until the bombs dropped for no reason.
I'm going to make the laziest summary I possibly can for the entirety of Fallout four and I only need two words. "Wasted potential." That's all this game is, a lot of wasted potential.
True. Pre-War America would be a dystopia. I believe GTA 2 perfectly portrays what Pre-War Fallout would have been like. Its kind of a shame Rockstar didn't do much else with Anywhere City.
Because like Shamus Young said (Rest In Peace), *Bethesda has never understood Fallout.*
And with how Starfield looks right now, it looks like they don't understand that either.
Like. How the hell are you "One of the last space explorers" when your civilization is so advanced that *commercial spaceships **_cost as much as 100 sandwiches_* and the Universe is infinite meaning space exploration is infinite as well?
Space exploration and planet colonization would be THE ONLY businesses in such a technologically advanced civilization!
@@DJWeapon8 Unless your civilization is litterally collapsing and regressing technologically being one of the last space explorers is indeed pretty damn dumb.
I have to strongly disagree with you; the pre-war world was supposed be, at least on the outside, amazing. The fuel issues were resolved shortly after the war started, the country was united against the "evil Reds", it's always been designed to look like Norman Rockwell's America, with a sci-fi spin. Now, yes, underneath it all, we constantly learn about the corruption, the pollution, the brutality. But it's the contrast between that and the perfect life people thought they had that is the source of so much of the dark humor. FEV was designed a super-soldier serum for the war, unless there's some retcon I'm not aware of somewhere.
@@BWMagusthe FEV was designed to make "super soldiers" by making soldiers resistant to chemical and biological attacks that communist china was using.
But it turns out that it just mutates them horribly.
US government sees some potential for this and made Mariposa Military Base to research it further.
The fact Pete responded with "we don't want to discuss the realism of a game with super mutants and talking ghouls" should crush any hope anyone has of Bethesda getting their shit in line. It's proof that the "It's got flying dragons and sentient cats so you don't get to question why a dog is talking to you" line in Skyrim wasn't just a throwaway joke, it's their entire philosophy. They feel entitled to use this feedback loop of absurdity to get away with writing the most inchoate and incoherent shit ever just to shove in WACKY AND ZANY content, by pretty much gaslighting their entire fanbase into believing the series always was wacky, zany and incoherent to begin with. "You're complaining that ghouls shouldn't be able to survive for decades without food or water? Well you're talking about wrinkly radiation men, so your argument is automatically invalid."
love that you made me google inchoate.
It wouldn't be so bad if they had just tried to handwave it in a way that wasn't insulting. It wasn't even that hard!! It literally could've been "I'm using telepathy". It's been established in Morrowind that telepathy exists! One of Ergala's questions involves telepaths reading people's minds!
EDIT: Hell, the Daedric Princes THEMSELVES can speak using Telepathy! Meridia, Vaermina, Mehrunes Dagon, Molag Bal, Azura, Boethiah, Malacath, Sheogorath.
Every single time they speak to you without being seen directly, it can be assumed that they're using telepathy! This can be seen as far back as Morrowind, where Malacath, Sheogorath and Azura (using those three examples because those are the three I've personally witnessed) all speak into your mind when you activate their shrines. Hell, Azura speaks using telepathy in your dreams at the very start of the game, Dagoth Ur speaks using Telepathy during some dreams and when you enter his fortress at Red Mountain before you enter his chamber, and Azura also speaks to you telepathically when you pick up the Moon-And-Star ring.
The telepathy explanation was RIGHT THERE. WHY THE FUCK DIDN'T THEY USE IT?!?!
It's this mentality that made Saints Row turn into Taints Row 2022, and people don't seem to have any idea what that's going to do to storytelling as a whole as we know it.
Pete "The Mouth of Sauron" Heinz is a monster, murderer, oathbreaker and a thief.
I mean… you don’t have to play the games? Seems you get pretty unreasonably angry when playing. I loved the game and think they did an incredible job with an extremely detailed world and a ton of new lore expanding the fallout universe.
I believe the Nick situation is a retread of Paarthurnax reveal. Some people's expectations were subverted, so we gotta pull it off again. And yet Emil has not recognized why the situation was appropriate for it in Skyrim but not in his story. The Greybeards had a far better reason to keep Paarthurnax hidden, it's bad optics for the uneducated humans below to hear their ancient respected order is led by a beast. More importantly however, High Hrothgar wasn't an often visited location, and even the pilgrims were not allowed inside the monastery, let alone Throat of the World. Despite all that, Blades still find out and want to make an attempt on his life. Furthermore, there are enough context clues to figure it out beforehand, and even if you didn't, and even if your first instinct upon seeing a dragon is to attack it, Paarth will not go down in a single hit, and he can fly away to explain himself.
If you read the shrines along the way to High Hrothgar, it even mentions Paarthurnax by name.
The writing of Fallout 4 seems to have been based exclusively around “epic moments”; for instance the whole intro speech delivered by Nate seems like something, which would have been made to look “epic” at the reveal of the fact that the protagonist is voiced. Bethesda seems to have fallen for the same trap that Marvel has fallen into, wherein they focus much more on “hard hitting moments” instead of ensuring that the whole narrative makes even the slightest bit of sense. I hate the fact that modern games so often focus on incorporating “cool things” and “fun vibes” instead of actually writing captivating and logical plots.
Also, even as a 14 year old who had known fallout only from my playing of new vegas beforehand F4 seemed monumentally dumb and shallow. I do have to say that at the time I did enjoy the gunplay, graphics and the junk system; however as time went on I found myself often returning to f:nv and even going back to play F1 and F2, while F4 remained on the shelf, unplayed.
@@kdzr0017I remember playing NV as my first Fallout in like 8th grade and then later on in HS playing 3, and all I could think of was "wow, I wanna play New Vegas again".
Game of Thrones Season 8 did the same. They made a plot to string as many "cool shot, bro" moments together as possible, even if any semblance of logic had to be sacrificed to do so.
I think the voiced protagonist is also a factor why we have so few dialogue choices today. Fallout 1 could put 6 dialogue choices on every conversation and there wouldn't be much overhead because they're just text. With a voiced protagonist, that would add more development time because of voice recording and more salary to pay out to these voice actors. That's why I don't mind indie games that have a silent protagonist.
@@One.Zero.One101Why not just make the voice actor say all the lines he/she needs to say?
“Is a lone security guard supposed to take on an entire military group?”
HALF LIFE: BLUE SHIFT
To be fair Barney had a good amount of help from Gordan
@@LoverOfManyArts Heh,
Gordan Freemon
@@burgertime6372cicero fryman
@@pluieuwu JOHN FREEMAN!
Cordon tiefan
Don't forget that Nate and Nora are prewar and have no concept of the economy in fallout and there is never a scene or dialogue from the main character to indicate they are unaware that caps is the currency, I thought that was a major lapse in thought and writing.
Same problem with Fallout 3. You spend your whole life in a vault, then when you get out into the wasteland, you somehow already know that people use bottle caps as currency, despite being taught early on that nobody's ever left Vault 101.
The is actually one early place were you get a conversation about caps and post war crops. Abernathy Farm, the one close to sanctuary. But its easily missed and it never comes up again.
Except the butcher in diamond city, where you can make a comment about two headed cows being weird.
@@mortemtyrannus8813 its amazing really how they could SPECIFICALLY point out that noone's left the vault and not a single person at the company though about the consequenses that would have on the inhabitants knowledge of the outside world
A note about Emil Pagliarulo "paper airplanes" quote: it explains why Skyrim and Fallout 4 especially shove you to go do the main story. It explains why the entire world centers around it and you, the player, playing through the story. They think the story is so good, that they have to slowly give you less and less options to avoid playing it.
It's hilarious how many skyrim fans claim the game is all about freedom and you are not forced into doing anything, but you are forced to turn into a wereworlf in the Companions questline or it doesn't continue, at one point in the civil war you have to do a main quest to kill the dragon outside of Whiterun to continue the civil war questline, and at another point you have to complete the civil war to continue the main quest to have the meeting about capturing a dragon to go to sovengarde.
Bethesda makes incredible sandboxes but do so at the expense of their story.
Now this itself wouldn't be a problem if they acknowledged it and leaned into their strengths - look to the _Just Cause_ or _Far Cry_ games as examples of how this could work well.
But because Bethesda is determined to be the "RPG Devs™️", we get games like _Skyrim_ and _FO4_ where it's obvious the story was treated as an afterthought
@@okagron If you want to unlock all the shouts in skyrim, you're forced to join the companions, the stormcloaks/imperials, the college of winterhold, the thieves guild, the dark brotherhood, and the bards college. Good luck roleplaying as just the dragonborn. Also having to join the college of winterhold to get the gauldur amulet is awful too.
Emil Pagliarulo talking about storytelling is so funny if you take it as him making explaining that they add bad time sinks so they don’t have to write a good story
Its the writing equivalent of Bread and Circuses.
Distract the players with fancy looking nonsense so they don't notice the more egregious nonsense!
Its sad, the man gave up and keeps telling people its "what the players want"
Emil has been shitting up bethesda since bloodmoon. He's gotta go or you know grow as a writer and take criticism.
@@sup1602 Bloodmoon was forever ago. Plenty of time to grow since then.
@@Glumpsy Guess he just needs the boot then.
Emil: No one cares about story
Fallout fanbase: *constant praise of New Vegas story elements*
Im thinking of doing a few vids on how shit his writing is.
That Black Mesa scientist is gonna have several thousand heart attacks from having to be scared by all the swearing by the end of this.
Creetosis doesn't need to hear that, he's self-trained professional.
Said it long time ago, but Bethesda stopped making rpgs long time ago - they just make fancy shooters with good visuals and branching paths. Which is, mind you, okay - what is not okay is that they insist on masking their attempts as rpgs, which is just insulting at this point.
Are the paths really branching if they all end up at the same conclusion, but with different paintjobs and flags on the city you never visit.
@@kyosokutaiumm lemme think.
No.
That's the weird thing, FPS games are trying to be more RPG, but RPGs are trying to ditch RPG mechanics. Fallout 4 just ended up being a discount Far Cry. Fallout should be highlighting their differences with games like Far Cry instead of trying to be Far Cry. Stop simplifying the dialogue, remove the radiant quests, commit to being an RPG like Witcher 3 did.
Good visuals?
Compared to more detailed and well written games, where you discover more and more things about the world and it's inhabitants as you play, Fallout 4 becomes more shallow the more you dig into it
The only depth this game has is in how bad it gets.
@@Creetosis yep and starfield is gonna be like it too.
@@Guynguyen8082 at this point anything with Emil and Todd. It’s gonna be a shitshow. Even half the stuff they showed recently is literally fallout 4 but people are still hyped for it. The whole showcase was 2015 fallout 4 showcase back then lol
@@xSpooKee Yup.
Learned my lesson by getting all hyped up and wowed by all the new stuff during that Fallout 4 gameplay demo.
Only to then watch the video review after video review on how bad it is, how much it gutted the RPG foundations the Fallout series had, and the disdain it had for the Fallout lore.
You keep trying to dig deeper but end up somehow digging a lake as deep as a puddle
Regarding power armor being littered all over the world with nobody claiming or repairing them, this is made even more egregious by the existence of the Atom Cats, a faction of power armor mechanics who collect and restore power armor like muscle car nerds. XD
Oh yeah that's right! I totally forgot about them because while they could've been a new and interesting faction, there's only like 1 quest relating to them and they don't have any unique personalities
It's literally like going out in the streets and finding perfectly functioning tanks everywhere, with the keys in the glovebox and pristine fuel still filling the tank.
@@ZorotheGalladenot to mention literally everybody (and their lawyer wife, cough) knows how to use one.
@@ZorotheGallade That's more literal in Fallout 4's case since Power Armor was desiged to basically BE walking tank suits. Which anybody can apparently just open and hop inside to do whatever they want until the armor either breaks or the fusion cores die.
@@visassess8607 I have 1,000 hours in the game and they're so forgettable that I've literally never done their quest lol
Wish we could get Emil to watch this. Not that he'd change anything for future games.
Unfortunately he actively ignores criticism, as the handy clip Cree put in the video shows. Definitely explains why they put so little effort into 4, in spite of having New Vegas as a solid template to try to ape.
@@Mirthful_Midori The people who developed the 2022 Saint's Row game would be very proud, and so would Anita Sarkeesian and Zoë Quinn.
Emil won't waste his time with these stupid "video essays". You wanna know why? Because Skyrim and Fallout 4 are their most successful games ever, its what brought in the widest audience and the most money. You may not like it but that's a fact. So it makes no sense for them to listen, because what they are currently doing brings in the money.
@@kakapac6982 Precisely, they know how to attract a wide audience even if their creations have a puddle's depth, whether they are plothole-ridden or not.
@@TheBreakingBenny Exactly, you either accept it for what it is and have fun or whine about it on the internet even though its falling on deaf ears
As is typical with Bethesda titles, they crafted a really fun sandbox that's riddled with bugs, crashes, and terrible writing.
That's more fondly remembered because fans did the grunt work fixing it up in the years after.
@@yazajin exactly.
The modders had to put in effort and a personal hand in fixing it up. Making it that much more special to them.
Even someone who just downloads from nexus still needs to set the game up to be ready for modding and peruse the site for mods that they want and download it. There's personal involvement in it.
It's the difference between buying a premade and assembled product VS making it yourself.
Even if its not as good as the premade one, the one you made yourself is going to hold more value on some subconscious primal level to you due to the work you put into it.
Guaranteed if mods are impossible in Bethesda games, they wouldn't have so many "fans". Let alone fanboys white knighting them and defending their crap products.
@@DJWeapon8 same with obsidian titles honestly fans you've gotta get real and hold these 2 shit companies equally accountable the shilling is sad now
What's really funny is they can't make a good main quest to save their life. Pretty much every Bethesda game has fun side quests and a completely crap main quest.
@@DJWeapon8fans shouldn’t have to do this crap as well. Ridiculous that for a decade now fans have turned Skyrim and fallout 4 into perfectly running games, and Bethesda just turns around to make another game.
Ron Perlman found out that war does indeed change. Upon learning this, he felt so betrayed that he stopped answering Todd Howard's phone calls for a time. They would eventually speak again, but it wasn't the conversation either of them had hoped for. Todd tried to place the blame on Interplay, but Ron wasn't having _any_ of it. His response: "but you knew all along". Those would be the last words spoken between the two. Rumor has it that Ron even got rid of his Todd Howard cardboard cutout.
Its good to be critical of things you enjoy, helps you understand what it is that you like about them, dislike and why you do. Happy to see you go back and touch up you're earlier content.
My wife wanted to play Fallout 4 with me so we did, despite my warnings. As we played, I saw the smile on her face fade slowly as the story played out. Our nightly Fallout 4 sessions started became more like a chore because she wanted to finish the game. While she had fun with the gunplay, her distaste for the dialogue "choices" and overall narrative was always present. She ended up finishing the game following the Brotherhood and we both just sat there as the credits rolled. I asked her what she thought of it and how she felt. She paused for a while and then said she just felt empty. She had lots of remaining questions to which I had to just shrug and laugh, as the answer was often worse than not knowing. She didn't hate the game overall, though she definitely has no interest in playing it ever again. I asked her if she wanted to try the dlc and she just laughed. While Fallout 4 is a terrible game, it didn't end our marriage and we still laugh from time to time about our struggle to finish the game.
Looking forward to the upcoming parts, keep up the good work!
That moment when Fallout 4 could have ended a weaker marriage. Holy hell wtf ahaha
Have you and your wife played fallout new vegas?
@@simpoly6929 yes, she liked the story of NV much better and liked being able to craft her character the way she wanted to. She thought the gunplay was just alright, she's more familiar with COD when it comes to FPS games. She said she'd like to replay FNV at some point, but would probably wait a year or so. FNV is one of my favorite games and I was really glad she liked it too.
The DLC is better than the base game. If I had to recommend F4 for any reason it would be because of the DLC. As for the base game, survival mode made it a lot more enjoyable for me. But at the end of the day it just turns it into a mediocre survival game. The world is good, exploration is good, combat is decent. But ultimately it does indeed leave you hollow at the end. The game just doesn't have anything to say. Which is fine sometimes. Mindless fun can be good, but it's not what I look for in a Fallout game, especially after being spoiled with New Vegas.
Even though NV can get a bit cheesy towards the end of Lonesome Road with Ulysses and his turgid pseudo-intellectual shtick (I still love it though), it had a lot to say. It is thought provoking, and that's on top of everything else that makes it great. F4... not so much.
"While Fallout 4 is a terrible game, it didn't end our marriage"
Just leaving that to stew.
i will never get tired of people shitting on f4. god bless you Creetosis, god bless.
I can't wait for 2025 where we'll get 12 hours long dissections of everything Starfield did wrong
Hey, it can be a decent game, after about 50 heavily game changing mods…
i have about 210 mods for Fallout 4 , a good number are Performance and Stability mods. The rest are quest and story mods that enhance it. @@arandomcommenter412
@@arandomcommenter412ironically, you aitn wrong, bethesda is AMAZING at making solid ground works for modders, and the modders do better at story telling, and ive always said "how is it some random dude in his basement can do better than a company with HUNDREDS of millions in budget and HUNDREDS of fuckers making the game? It shows just how little they care if at all
@@arandomcommenter412 true, I do find it fun with enough mods
Every time I hear the "totally unexpected twist", I get "The Empire Strikes Back" flashbacks.
- This situation is far more complicated than you could imagine.
- I know enough. I know you kidnapped my son.
- No. I am your son.
That’s pretty much it. The only thing it lacks is the Sole Survivor screaming “NOooooOOoo! It’s impossible” in Bethesda bored VA fashion.
@@nicoloenricorimoldi7425 And then gets a foot chopped off.
And then flies up into the air and gets rescued by a boat
Fun fact - in concord, once you clear out the museum of freedom, talk to preston and sturges, you can literally just walk right out the front door and the raiders will still act like you were on the roof and attack
I read this in september 2024 and couldn't figure out what the connection was with last month's $200M disaster of a game. Then I realized you were talking about the city...
@@Monothefox wait what? 😂
Edit: oh that concord. That was an absolute dumpster fire. Even if it was F2P, it would still be crap. Even worse were the devs and 'fans' of the game being rude to players who gave any form of criticism
56:29 That's something they did right with the Survivalist in NV. In one of his logs he mentions he was lucky to not being looking in the same direction the bomb falled. He also mentions mercy killing the old marriage that was near to him due to them being blinded by the bombs.
Meh, we don't know precisely how close one has to be to these precise bombs to not be blinded.
@@BWMagus In both cases the bomb were detonated close to the people, so that doesn't matter here.
@@DarthFhenix55 "The distance doesn't matter, because of the distance." That makes no sense, dude.
@@BWMagus Aren't you implying that the bombs don't make you blind because they're to far to have an effect? Because it wouldn't have sense if a nuclear explosion in your face doesn't affect your sigh.
@@DarthFhenix55 Yes, because you're north of Concord, which is north of Lexington, which is north of Boston, and the bomb is equally far south of Boston. You are in fact quite far from the low-yield bombs of the Fallout universe (they use atom bombs, not hydrogen bombs). You are MILES away. Now, how far do you need to be to not be blinded? I don't know. Nothing in any game tells us. But that means what happens in this game does not contradict anything previously established, and I'm pretty sure it doesn't contradict real-life, or at least it's uncertain.
Bringing up tonal issues in the intro, I remember the exact moment I knew I wasn't gonna buy this game.
I was watching one of those "first 30 minutes of Fallout 4" videos and in the starting vault there's a gun behind a Master lock, and if you try to interact with it your character goes "Heh, looks like I'll be coming back for you later!"
Not 5 minutes after watching your baby get ripped from your dead spouse's hands and your character starts quipping about how they want a cool gun.
It's like an alien wrote the dialogue in F4 - like, it would've been so easy to have your character go "I'm gonna use this to melt those bastards" or whatever and it would've fed into the narrative.
Same thing with all other dialogue. I doubt Emil actually understands human emotions or human culture, otherwise the fact that YOUR SPOUSE WAS MURDERED AND YOUR BABY SON KIDNAPPED would've had far-reaching consequences onto all voiced lines by your character.
And if you're playing as the wife, you're a LAWYER. You were practicing, took a short period off for the birth of your son, then the bombs dropped and you get frozen. Then in the first day after being unfrozen you're single handedly gunning down large groups of opponents in the shattered remains of what for you was home a few weeks prior.
@@fools_opinionsweeks my ass, more like hours! If youre quick enough within two days you can have the story finished...... 48 hours after waking up from the most horrific war in human history im now a sentinal in the brotherhood and COMPLETELY fine with my new role in life..... That is the bit that makes no sense.... Ghost of tsushima did it right, at first he has MASSIVE issues with stealth but over time and the span of the game he accepts it more and more, until finally its just who he is now.... Where as with this shite game the player be like hurr durr me get to blow stuff up hurr durr even though my family was FUCKING MURDERED just minutes ago in my mind....
The fact that POKEMON, a game that was on a Game Boy, has more comprehensive balancing than a triple A modern RPG is ridiculous. I didn't even know about that feature until you brought it up in your video. That just makes the beginning of the game so much more ridiculous.
You begin to realize that most of Bethesda's plot points are designed so that certain moments can happen in the game. Col. Autumn surviving Project Purity or the twist with Father being an old man were so important to the writers that they were willing to make the rest of the story make no sense just to accommodate them. Bethesda decides that they want to do X in their story, even if it contradicts with A, B, C, D... and they'll just brute force it into the end product to get the result they want because they think it doesn't actually matter and that all the players care about is cool moments, explosions, and giant shootouts.
Quick suggestions on fixing the opening: instead of Nate and Nora , you're a neighbor who just recently moved into the area , the neighborhood is mostly veterans and their families so they're going to have a pre-Halloween cook out since the weather's nice . You're invited and after dropping off your 111 invite with your "corrected" entry form with your Special and info on that form. You get get to spend a bit doing mini games that teach you how to shoot (a bb gun ) throw a ball and a few verbal party games where you can reveal information about your character or be purposefully vague such as you being former military or having family that is in or again vagueness. You're given a single choice when you are asked to handle Shaun of which parent is holding him and then as you're about to dig in for the food the bombs start falling and you're rushed to the vaults. From there the parent holding Shuan gets blasted and Shuan stolen with you and the several of the other goers refrozen . When you're let out now it's with Nate or Nora , both who are distraught over Shaun and their spouse with the ability to recruit them. Nate being a capable character focused on big guns and melee weapons cold sniper with only his focus of his son in mind. Nora on the other hand is being very analytical with her approach , she's using her legal acumen to batter peace make between the wasteland
here we go again.
Ah shit !
Once more into the breach lads
But why though this video is the same
Ah shit! Here we go again!
My thoughts exactly
You made a point about facial scars being common in the wasteland, so would baldness because radiation can make your hair fall out. (no pun intended)
Its actually kinda poetic and genius writing that the Concord crew gets put on "ice" if you refuse to help them. You were the back-up to the institute and in turn you can enact the same fate on the Minutemen making them the genetic back-up for your quest.
In the words of George Lucas: it's like poetry it rhymes
One more thing you could have said about Codsworth: When you exit the vault and go to your house he is still there, 200 years later, and it looks like he is cleaning or repairing... If thats all he basically did for the past two centuries why is your house decrepit, run down and dirty like all the others?
Exactly! That was so confusing to me lmfao, it takes almost no effort to keep a house clean and repaired once it is cleaned and repaired so i dont get it, it clearly shows bethesda know nothing of lawn care/house care.....
@@drew8155no. It absolutely is not.
You realise this robot was designed to walk your dog and literally wash your dishes? It’s as capable as any human.
Given 210 years and it didn’t sweep the floor?..
Do you have any conceptual idea of how long 200 years is?.. nobody came across your house in 200 years? There’s evidence of people coming to sanctuary because there are cooking and chem stations etc, so what? They didn’t loot any of the buildings? They didn’t take the robot etc?
Absolute nonsense
@@drew8155 yikes. Just take the L and stfu.
1:33:45
Actually, New Vegas had a side quest about Michael Angelo, the guy that made the neon signs for New Vegas, establishing how these new casinos got their own lights.
And IIRC, only the strip has working neon signage. The rest of the mojave's business signs either has incandescent light bulbs or are just straight up broken.
I think the difference between settings makes it sensible. People have done a lot of rebuilding on the West Coast and NCR life somewhat resembles pre war standards in areas. New Vegas itself is essentially an oasis with an established reason why it's largely in tact. In the Commonwealth, people can't even bother to sweep, so neon signs are more conspicuous.
I should've worded my comment a bit better honestly, I was more so praising New Vegas for pointing out where these neon signs were coming from!
I honestly just find New Vegas' take on the wasteland more, as I feel like Fallout 1, 2, 3 and 4 have dealt with the uncivilised wasteland a bit too much. The politics of the post nuclear world are so much more interesting!@@Goodroosters
@@mr.harmuzad4201 yahoo!
@@Goodroostersyea i even found a settler with a skeleton in his bed that is clearly at the very least DECADES old at this point and they dont even move it..... Its just insane, i get not sweeping but a fuckin skeleton? Come on man move that shit somewhere else.... Quincy is a good example since they moved most of the corpses to one burn pile to ATTEMPT to get rid of them, and that is the sad part about this game, there are little nuggets everywhere of how good it COULD have been but isnt....
Every time you say "Synths" in your end rant about Nora and combat training, I hear "Simps" and it makes this way more amusing
How about instead of having a salesman with convenient timing who you can't say no to come around and destroy your suspension of disbelief, just say the guy bought an insurance policy when he returned from the war and be done with it.
Could frame the SPECIAL questionnaire as an article in the newspaper too, like how old newspapers sometimes have crossword puzzles. Like a "tick the box that most applies to you" and then you feed it to the robot butler who dispenses your results, which can be altered manually after the questionnaire
I keep making the same mistake with Fallout 4. I'm always like "oh come on, Fallout 4 isn't such a bad game!" Then I notice my game with 50+ mods. Goddammit!
I'll spend 2 hours modding it.
Then, hop on and run around for 10 minutes before getting bored and uninstalling it for another year.
@@swarmofhungrydeathclawsi personally love the world and the combat its just sad that i mod it into essentially a new cod game and hell even gears of war now with their armor and gun mods lmfao, INSTEAD OF playing it for what it was meant to, for the story, to me fallout is now a modded free roam gears game lmfao, and funnily enough i still play new vegas to this day without bugging, glitchint etc, and STILL enjoy it even though ive played it hundreds of times now.... Just goes to show what effort gets you in a gaming worls
Surprisingly I needed twice as many mods to make 4 comfortable enough to play compared to New Vegas.
@@FerunaLutelou i found a really good UI mod for FNV that makes it more like Fallouts 1 and 2. its called Revenge of the Talking Heads.
@@themanwithnoname1839I’m the opposite. The world is so dull and empty. No amount of mods can save it. It’s just a bad game.
They really could have have just had the file on Virgil on Kellogg, and you get it off of his corpse. him having the file for what was likely his next target would make sense, and if he has still told you the Institute has Shaun, then finding the Ex-institute scientist in the glowing sea would still be the next goal. as for finding out the institute use teleportation, you have Virgil for that.
people should keep in mind that a piece of criticism should tell you as much about the critic's criteria as much as the work that is being critiqued. what i take away from your videos about you is that you like internal consistency, variety in solutions, and actually doing research and that's the type of critic that i'd like to hear more from when it comes to this type of game
This is probably the last thing you want to hear after all the effort you put into making this, but when can we expect the second part of the Fallout 3 analysis?
No Eta on it right now. I have been poking at it, though.
@@Creetosis I bet I’m not the only one waiting for part 2 of it! Would love to see it some day.
@@CreetosisOr maybe the Skyrim analysis?
The Power Armor and Death Claw fight at the beginning was pure journo bait for the game, how anyone enjoyed this is beyond me.
Should've made them part of a press release that was set a couple hours, minimum, into the main questline. At least then you wouldn't go from zero to god within the first five minutes of gameplay. But what am I saying? This is Todd Howard we're talking about. If you're not a god within the first five minutes, it's a bad game.
I'd like to think that Mama Murphy has her psychic abilities constantly, but is taking advantage of the MC's paranoia to fuel her addiction, and she never "loses" her abilities, just pretends to have that power wear off after consuming them, unless there's a piece of evidence that contradicts this.
Other than that, great vid
Yeah, she's probably a psyker and her powers are probably innate, but I don't think she's intentionally misleading anyone. She seems to genuinely believe that drugs are the only way to access her "sight" and doesn't seem to enjoy it because the visions usually show horrible things, but she believes it's necessary to protect the group. You can convince her to go clean, so I think she's sincere.
that's you just writing for bethesda at that point and thats what their lazy asses want
@@cameron9206agreed, but that isnt always a bad thing, some speculation is ok, but not yhe whole damn thing, i dont even think people know what psykers are anymore..... I say some speculation is ok, but not to the levep bethesda expects from us
Lol. That colonel Autumn super serum always made me laugh. Whats the point of seizing project purity as a bargaining chip to rally the people when you can just synthesize this serum and cure everyone of radiation? Hell, that serum might even purify the water on its own. Matter of fact; the code for the purify is literally just a 3-digit code a robot could type in until they get it right. Autumn should’ve killed the Lone Wanderer in Raven Rock, Orb’d the citadel and then shutdown Eden. (Omega initiative has a what if where he does exactly that) But obviously im putting more into this than Emil did. Anyway, great video man.
Omega initiative?
@@AbstractTraitorHeroA youtuber that theorizes about the enclave and fallout, among other things.
@@myriad9597 Ah I don't have any interest in the fascist goons of the fallout universe tbh much. Bit strange to at all really?
He wasn't trying to rally people; they were going to poison the water to kill everyone.
@@AbstractTraitorHero probably because originally the enclave wasn't just a fascist group, they were an antagonist group, yes, but they wanted what they believed would be the best for America and the people, just like every faction in the fallout universe.
I'm so glad and relieved I'm not the only one who thought the Tinker Tom courser chip bit just went on for WAY too long. The le-epic-spy-movie dialogue he has during it doesn't really help when you're just awkwardly standing awkwardly next to him like a god damn scarecrow.
I hate that I repeated myself but I refuse to edit my comment, lmao.
Imagine how the Courser fight would have gone in a narrative-driven, non-RPG story, if they embraced that. Could have fought it like normal, and then a cutscene plays where he stumbles backwards into a fire, and comes out like the Terminator for round 2, really hammer in how unkillable these things are. But nope, it's just the Kellogg fight again, making the Courser seem as difficult to defeat as basically any other enemy, thus making the Commonwealth seem like a bunch of pansy milk drinkers jumping at shadows and radroaches.
In F3, that kids mom was going to die by literal radroaches, but at least those were vault dwellers.
The survival incompetence of the commonwealth people always baffles me
To be fair, as a protagonist, you are like a life force vampire. Every kill makes you stronger.
Have you NOT seen the settlers? Ive witnessed them lose a fight to ONE radroach...... There were SIX settlers and one glowint legendary roach.... Yes it was legendary but ITS A FUCKIN RADROACH FOR FUCKS SAKE!!!
@@Mglue3yes as it does for EVERY human...... The older we get the tough we get cuz theres a reason why we lived to such an old age in a world like fallout.... And that is just an in game mechanic, you are THE ONLY one that does that and even then you arent cuz the enemies NORMALLY scale to whatever you are, so the enemies are worse, they gwt stronger by doing nothing!
1:53:10 I thought for sure they were setting up that Kellogg would take over Nick's body. Maybe even give us the opportunity to choose which one we keep as a sidekick.
That Super Brad guy is an.. interesting fellow. Not only did he say what you showed in your video (which, boo-fucking-hoo, someone called out lies for what they are). He also made an 8 hour retrospective on New Vegas, which in that video, he said capitalism is a big part of the story. When he talked about House, he never mentioned his plan for the future, and desperately injected his view on capitalism to a world, where what he tried applying it to, just doesn't work. Talking about pathetic.
Otherwise, this was a good start to the Analysis series, and I'm looking forward to you finishing it by 2030.
One could say it's "super rad" to defend arguments in bad faith and shut one's ears just to avoid having to think critically.
I mean if you look at the ending slides though it doesn’t take that much imagination to realize that Mr. house is already a despot and will only make some sort of restrictive tyranny out of all of the technology he has
@@Guynguyen8082 He decides to harp on Creetosis and claiming MATN argued with opinions, strawmanning the owl guy to be attacking an opinion instead of what he says in the video.
We're all obnoxious to somebody else in countless ways, but when I heard him say "I feel sorry for that guy" because someone critiqued his arguments, I was astonished at how petty it felt. Not to mention how distasteful his preclusive anticipation for, and preemptive dismissal of, a lengthy critique of his own video sounded.
I recall back in 2015 when Todd Howard himself presenting Fallout 4 to a live stage audience said "You're going to be in the pre-war world for a while." I don't know about you, but "a while" to me isn't 5 minutes. I know it's a vague usage of time but still there could've been better words for it. At this point I see Todd Howard as more of a "salesman" trying to sell you something.
Knowing Emil and his group of... just... amazing... people... there was probably some ideas on the white board about pre-war life that they told Todd, and Todd, being Todd, told what would become sweet little lies when they wiped the board clean and just said "who cares, people just want to build shacks for 60 hours, so let's just make it short to get to the shooty pew pew action".
One way to fix the opening/blank slate is having your character be visiting their sibling, in-law, and nephew when the apocalypse happens. Nate and Nora both die, leaving you to find your nephew. It would help justify some of the later decisions too.
I think what made me most mad at Shaun was there’s a terminal. I think it’s beside him when he’s on his death bed. It tells you his biggest reason for NOW unfreezing you is because he knows he’ll die soon. So yeah. Screw Shaun. Let’s agree with it taking him decades to become leader. Around 30-40. He still had so long to use his power to unfreeze us but didn’t until he knew he was about to die. And then we have everything after that.
"You live in a perfect little neighborhood in a perfect little house with your significant other and child. Everything is beautiful and there's not a care in the world, la-di-da. I sure hope nothing bad happens on today, october 23rd 2077" cgdshjdsgdfhjagf
That UA-camr who said "don't make a long response video, I won't watch it" really rubbed me the wrong way. The way they say it just screams "I'm not wrong and I don't care what you think". Of course, nobody is forced to respond to a video, but doing that was pretty shitty imo.
It doesn't matter wether you're Nora or Nate. Shaun is overestimating your skills regardless. He was a baby when he was kidnapped, he couldn't have remembered any details about his parents.
Now that I think about it, why does he even know who you are? He was too young to remember anything and I highly doubt the institute told him stories about his parents, it doesn't make sense.
He could've found out later in life but at that point why would he even care?
It's why they should've had Kellogg knock out and kidnap both the parent not played AND Shaun. That way Shaun actually has a connection to his kin while also explaining just why they want to make synths: to essentially recreate the dead
Well, this is headcannon but, its reasonable for a child to want to find the parents they never met, hell the entire movie of joe dirt for example, spent his entire life lookin for his parents not even knowing what they look like, no this isnt part of the game but it makes sense since he is leader of it all and would havw access to that info now and curiosity is a very cruel bitch to scientists lmfao
@@themanwithnoname1839Would be nice if we SAW that in the game tho.
55:08
So, realistically, you would get at least a couple of hours warning before the bombs hit since the bombardment would start from the East Coast. The opening could be a bit longer no issue to help create some connection to your family. This would also let you meet characters that could end up ghoulified later that you get to meet, besides the Vault-Tech guy that is. Hell an idea I had back when i first started following your channel was to have the leadership of the Gunners have several Ghouls that were serving in the Military when the bombs first dropped, so they're actually a remnant of the Military. Maybe even have one of them be a war buddy of Nate.
This kind of stuff would help liven up the contrast between before and after the war, with the PC having a fresher memory of the past compared to the wastelanders who have to decypher it from the remnants of the old world and the pre-war ghouls with a more nostalgic outlook.
51:36 “She’s supposedly a journalist, but she doesn’t actually do any journalism, she just rants about the Institute.” Sure, but this is actually realistic.
When I first stumbled into the (apparently) empty Istitute, with only a disembodied voice on the PA system, I thought maybe the Institute scientists were all dead and the voice was the main computer (like in sky captain and the world of tomorrow, sort of), who had kept things going and produced synths.
That would've been better.
"This is a game series about choice."
No, it WAS a game series about choice. That ship has clearly sailed and I don't forsee its return anytime soon.
I admire how analytical you are with how Fallout 4. Admittedly, this is the first game of the Fallout series I have played, as I was gravitated towards the building mechanics from videos I saw online. But the more I played, the more I paid attention to the storyline. And the more I paid attention to Fallout 4's story, the more I wanted a breakdown of its positives and negatives. And I'm seeing how the nature of this game's direction deviates from the original three games' flow. Your video definitely conveys the issues that this installment has, especially when tied in with the previous titles. Bravo, Creetosis. I enjoyed your perception skills. Definitely goes beyond level 10. I can't wait to see the coming parts.
Thank you! That means a lot!
@@Creetosis No worries! I'm looking forward to the next part!
Emil forgets that the reason for building shacks is woven into the story and the propensity for roleplay.
The reason why somebody is spending time 'building shacks', or building and curating settlements is often entirely dependent on their faction choices and the roleplay that comes with it. The importance of settlement building and the kinds of settlements that people build are often a tool to enhance faction roleplay in partnership with story-based roleplay.
I've put a decent amount of time into settlement building because it helps me to make the faction I'm playing and game world a little richer because there's a deficit of that richness in the story.
He's absolutely right that I'm spending more time on that than the story. But he critically forgets that it's BECAUSE of the story that I'm having to compensate with my own world building. I liked the settlement system a lot, but that's absolutely no excuse for lazy writing. The system alongside good writing would have only resulted in a better game, nobody can dispute that point.
Emil says "Why bother writing a great book when the reader's are just going to make paper airplanes out of the pages?"
Well they'll only make paper airplanes due to sheer boredom because your book is bad to amuse themselves.
I did the same as you.
The worldbuilding is lackluster in 4, so I spent more time making settlements to justify and flesh out the socio economic lore of the Commonwealth than I did with the linear main story.
Farms.
Waystations and rest stops for caravans.
Riverside and seaside piers for water transport and trade.
Infrastructure in general. Important stuff for a civilization to function, fictional or otherwise.
About the settlement building in fallout 5 if they go this route I would prefer an sim settlement option where I can start it up and just let the ppl decide and help if I wanted to build the city as I want
but as is the settlement building is too damn tedious and that’s coming from someone who has built up every settlement in the game I don’t want to have to do that in every fallout game moving forward would rather have some type of automated hands off option
Kind wish sim settlements was a creation club mod I could opt to buy so that it becomes cc content and doesn’t conflict with the mods I actually want to use over that 700 mb mod
@@DJWeapon8yea emil is a pathetic loser, someone should show him, harry potter, lord of the rings, etc..... emil is a pathetic loser who legit HAD to have been a nepotism hire.......
You know thinking about to Cornell Autumn rad immunity thing. Bethesda could have just shown Autumn turning into a ghoul in PJ purity. Then just destroy lamplight and move the kids into big town to show that they went through lamplight.
"....not because I'm a hater, but because I want things I care about to be good not just do well."
Real Pokemon fans crying hard AF
Christ, the idea that in a fantasy setting you can just do whatever is ridiculous, I mean, you can, but you have to integrate those unrealistic elements in the story and the worldbuilding, in a way that makes sense... it doesn't matter if a village is terrorized by a dragon, or a bear, characters still have to have believable abilities and motivations...
As I always say, it's better to pretend that only fallout 1, 2 and New Vegas are cannon, it's a much more peaceful existence...
Jfc, what a time to be alive, when you need to explain the very basics of constructive criticism at the beginning of a video.
Will gladly watch this refreshed version. Your takes are always worth listening. Never change, Cree. Never change.
For the discussion surrounding Power Armor, as talked about around 1:12:00, there's a quote that always come to my mind: "Something given has no value" - Mr. Radzcek, Starship Troopers.
I forget what mod changes it (it might be SawyerBatty) but there's a mod I have in my TTW install that allows you to wear power armor without training, but it only gives you the full benefits if you have the training perk.
So while it still allows you to use Power Armor if you manage to find it, you won't be able to use it well until you actually get the training perk either from the BoS missions in either section of TTW (I think that's where you get it in NV?) or Operation Anchorage in the FO3 section of TTW.
It's just a neat QOL thing.
EDIT: TTW is Tale of Two Wastelands, by the way.
Thats blatantly false, what if your mother gave you an engraved lighter to smoke cigars with? Now all of a sudden it has value huh..... Too many FOOLS such as yourself tryin to sound all deep and shit lmfao
Its the same as those retards who say we cant be absolutely certain of anything, when EVERYONE is absolutely certain they will die one day....
I love Fallout 4. It's incredible to think of how much more wonderful this game could be if Bethesda didn't drop the ball so hard.
I think the rights to fallout should be stripped from them on a legal level, they clearly have a hatred of their fans and lore, and WILLFULLY sell unfinished products and sometimes poisonous products ie the power armor helms with mold in them..... They dropped the ball so hard even the australian government was like "dude, just give them their money back if they want a refund you scummy fucks" EVEN A GOVERNMENT thought what they did was scummy, let that sink in.....
I know that the Enclave should have been dead, but considering Nate is a veteran of the Great War, just imagine if there was a storyline where he discovers the Enclave and they're close to a civil war between the Reformers and Purists. Obviously, they have no power since Raven Rock was destroyed, but they have Vertibirds, Power Armor, and the like. The numbers are drastically smaller, of course. However, your character could help one side win over the other, maybe have the Enclave grow in power like the Minutemen or BoS over the game. Hell, maybe have the Enclave consider doing what the Institute did on the Purist side to show how far they're gone.
I think that Bethesda should of just made new factions and not depend on ones that are set in the future of the world or on the other side of the country. If they made new independent factions it would of opened up a much wider world and saved them having to retcon everything.
@@FKYT they did, to be fair.
3 of 4 of the major factions are completely new.
The problem is that they can't write for shit.
The Minutemen are boring and filled with meaningless radiant quests.
The Railroad is stupid and wouldn't last against the Institute.
The Institute are hollow bad guys full of contradictions.
And you can't explore, discuss, or control, in depth, their ideologies because they didn't bother writing for it and the dialogue system they replaced isn't built to allow it.
That's not even counting the "minor factions" that 4 has and how shallow they are. Being nothing more than wAcKy fIfTiES caricatures.
Just play the america rising mod, or the "For the enclave" mod for new vegas.
there's a great mod for that, and its undergoing a rework. Its called America Rising: Tale of the Enclave.
After watching you from this original video in fact all those years ago! I can tell you have very much improved and might of taken some notes from other great content makers like PatricianTV. Even if it might of not been intended, I'll be enjoying this video and the future parts for sure!.
I realized this game's version of "Choice" is essentially the Anna Dewitt Problem at the end of Bioshock Infinite.
*SPOILERS*
Where the game tells you that you can refuse to give up the girl, but the story literally won't proceed until you do.
Tim Cain would say, "How can we make your Negative response *Forward* the story in an interesting way?"
Emil and Howard say, "You're free to leave, and you won't be penalized for not engaging, but if you want to experience the content, there's only one way forward."
It's a series of linear stories that you can pick and choose from, in order to give the Player the illusion that they carved out their own path, and have given their player an "identity through their actions." It's a series of Binary Yes Engage, No Don't, Statements.
I agree with all the criticism, but I WILL defend it on at least one point.
It is never stated one nuke went off and that caused the entire glowing sea. If you explore the glowing sea you can find nuclear reactor stations. Getting nuked is certainly a good reason to say they melted down, basically turning the area into Chernobyl. So THAT part at least does make sense. The rest of it, not so much.
If starfield ends up as bad or worse than fallout 4, I won’t be surprised to see massive cope videos from BGS fanboys like MATN or Oxhorn like they did with fallout 3/4
It will be and cope stocks will be at an all time high. Also pre-cope about what sorry state ES6 will be in on release.
Did oxhorn's fat ass even cover starfield?
I didn't see his bowler hat wearing mug when I wan browsing through the YT search results.
It's not really coping, as a noticeable majority of casual gamers are genuinely satisfied with recent Bethesda titles (excluding f76). They enjoy playing Skyrim and Fallout 4 and they'll most likely enjoy playing Starfield. Most people just wouldn't give a shit if some obscure UA-camr made a 5-hour long criticism of Starfield's story. Some fanboys will whine, sure, but most fans won't even pay attention to it.
That's because most people don't care about how well written Bethesda games are or what is the depth of their RPG mechanics. They mostly play Bethesda games to explore the open world, play with mods or just fuck around, not scrutinize the level of complexity of these games' storylines, roleplaying and worldbuilding.
Please note that I'm not trying to defend Bethesda, but it's simply how thing are.
@@youarealwayscorrect eh its still coping.
Sunk cost fallacy and all that.
The casuals, when disappointed with their 60 maybe 70+ US dollar purchase, would often think up of contrivances to justify their subpar purchase.
Such as deluding themselves into thinking that they are satisfied with the product.
@@DJWeapon8 not really. If you ask any modern casual gamer to tell you what is the best open-world fantasy RPG that they've ever played and would definitely recommend to their friends, the most likely scenario is that they'd bring up Skyrim (followed by Witcher 3). There's a reason why Skyrim and Fallout 4 still have a pretty huge and consistent player count on steam.
Once again, this is not me defending Skyrim. This is just how it is. Tons of people genuinely enjoy this type of gameplay and that's why these games are so successful in terms of mass appeal, even a decade later. Do you really think that most average Joes care that some bunch of oldschool gamers from the nerdy parts of the internet don't like the game that they like?
If Starfield plans to follow the same formula, dedicated to providing a huge amount of casual open-world shenanigans and modding galore, then I'm sure that it's going to be a hit among the mass customers as well, with millions of people genuinely enjoying it and spending hundreds of hours playing the new Bethesda title for the next decade, without paying much attention to any harsh criticism, while Bethesda will unavoidably stick to this same formula for their next project.
At the end of the day... None of these complaints will even matter as newer, casual "fans" will look past any kind of negative changes as they don't even realize that they ARE changes. Cutting edge dialogue and world building isn't Fallout to them. The Brotherhood of Steel, Deathclaws and generic raiders are all they think of when they think of the IP.
Then go play New Vegas in your little corner over there, and let people enjoy what they want. I swear you spend more time bitching why New Vegas is better than actually playing it.
Nah, I've still seen plenty of new fans bitch about some these things. Like why are there 10 times as many mindlessly hostile raiders than there are normal people? It's ridiculous.
Honestly I dont agree my first fallout game was 3 and upon playing New Vegas I very quickly picked up on a difference in how they were made. Even now I’d consider myself a casual fan of the series given I’ve only played 3, barely any of 4 and a whole lot of NV
@@rhenisnotok8077 You're actually part of a pretty large group of people who took up 3, but then got drawn to New Vegas. Funny enough, that's the camp I'm in myself. I'm mainly talking about people who only really got into the series with Fallout 4. Most of those folks played a little bit of 3 and practically skipped New Vegas.
@@smink5447ive seen people call new vegas "an empty desert simulator" and im like if you want looting and shooting fuck right back the fuck off to fortnite you mindless child
I'm only speaking from my own experience here, but I tried watching MATN's vids a while ago and found myself bouncing hard off them. Something about his candour and positivity seems so staged to me. I could be completely wrong here obviously, his stuff just doesn't gel with me. I'd much rather enjoy something while being cognizant of its flaws and in spite of those flaws instead of being so toxically positive that you dismiss criticism as being pointlessly negative.
They should've just made Kellogg a full on Borg like Adam Smasher it would've maintain the twist and his memories more impactful going from a kid with a troubled childhood to a old jaded merc and then to someone more machine then man no emotions or remorse only Carrying out the orders of his scientific overloads
Really hope to see you actually finish this thing finally my man, you've restarted this a lot by now.
I DO respect that you did not feel satisified with the old stuff and are restarting because of that.
Imagine playing as Shaun. He'll go "its shauning time" and proceeds to shaun all over the place.
Boss level cringe
ive been looking forward to this. time to get sad at the death of one of my favorite franchises again.
2:19:05 Boy I wish there was something to keep track of all these nuances. Like a design document.
2:20:31 It would be so damn cool if all of your neighbours lived in the institute alive and well for some time. There maybe would have been a motivation for you to join them.
Thank you for properly stating the issue on Nate and Nora's backstory. The issue is not just "Oh he has a voice and backstory so I can't roleplay" they didn't fucking do anything with either option.
Good shit man can't wait to finish the series, this is gonna be good!
Why doesn’t Bethesda just make a game set around the time of fallout 1? They clearly prefer that sort of vibe in there worlds. Then we can justify how undeveloped the worlds are compared to in two and new vegas
I'd say make it even earlier than that.
5 to 40 years after the great war.
The problem for them is that if they set it earlier to explain and justify why their maps look like literal wastelands with no advancement or recovery, then they can't leverage the original games' factions for iCoNoGrApHy. Like the supermutants, brotherhood of steel, enclave, etc, because those things don't exist yet in-universe.
Then again, Fallout 76 is set the earliest in the series, but it has super mutants, brotherhood of steel, and enclave completely contradicting the previous games' histories and lore... So...
May I introduce you to Fallout 76?
Edit... previous response points out what Bugsthesda did with Fallout 76... which is set, iirc 1 year after the bombs fell... but they have included all those "iconic" factions due to $$$ issues.
Because fo3 was meant to be 20 years after the war, except they wanted BoS, super mutants, caps etc so they had to set it after fo2
A really, really thorough analysis. This must have taken a LOT of work ! Fallout 4 was the first movie or game where the "twist" was obvious from the opening cut scene. My partner and I both just immediately asked eachother "why does he think his son is a baby?".... waking up after being suspended for hundreds of years why would you think your son is still a baby when you have no idea when he was taken. The whole plot & twist made no sense right from the start. Fallout 4 was the first game I played where the story actually HARMED the game experience. The story/writing was so jarring & inconsistent it DESTROYED any immersion you had in the world. It is very rare for a game to have such bad writing that it destroys immersion. I have played hundreds and hundreds of games and only 3 have writing which has seriously harmed the game... that is Fallout 4, Saints Row Reboot & Starfield. In Starfield, listening to any starborn dialogue immediately kills all the immersion in the game and makes me just want to switch off the game.
Fallout 4 was okay at the start. I thought, "Eh, there's a lot of tropes and the story seems like schlock, but that's okay. Not everything has to be a Pulitzer..." Then I got to, "Of course, teleportation!" and I got pissed. The story was contrived and ridiculous up to that point, but that was when I knew it flew off the rails and into orbit. I didn't even bother finishing the story; I played around with settlement building until that felt pointless (because it was) and just slowly stopped playing altogether. It was then I realized I was done with Bethesda. Thank god I missed all that hype and mess with Starfield. I had made observations when it was announced on various UA-cam videos that I was getting strong Anthem vibes. The insane hype and then the insane disappointment. I wish some people, mostly middle aged gamers like me, would realize that leaving things in your past doesn't mean you're somehow betraying it. I'd rather walk away with halfway decent memories than carry deep resentment in the current day. I wish they would realize that chasing faded glory is a waste of precious time. I wish they would stop replacing what should be their personality with consumer products and corporate loyalty.
Oh boy! A new Creetosis video on my birthday.
It really seems to me that Bethesda gave up completely on the idea of worldbuilding and think that creating a concise and believable universe is stupid because "it's just a video game", or something like that. Plus, with their idea of "humor" (which, btw, the sarcastic dialogue options in Fallout 4 are just... ridiculous, at best).
I used to think they were incompetent, but now I think it's on purpose, as if they're trying to make games "cool", or show that they're not nerds or something.
I really think they fucked themselves up. It's my opinion that they had alot of the writing and stuff done, and then upper-management said "Hey, this New Vegas thing is doing well--we need to copy this, so add more companions, make is possible to join one of several factions to finish the game, including the villains. And that means cramming in a fail-safe faction in case you fuck up the others" and so on, and the team, already not the best team, had to try to add in a shitload more stuff.
Which is a goddamn shame because worldbuilding is one of the more fun parts of being a writer or creative. Especially if your foundation is solidly conceptualized so that other elements just naturally build off of it which in turn allows you to build off more elements. Like a feedback loop where everything is consistent and fits together. That is super satisfying.
All of it actually works. _Unlike what Todd claims._
@@DJWeapon8 I'm not a writer, but I would imagine so. Also, I'm not sure about Fallout 4, but Skyrim didn't have any designated writers, leaving that responsibility to the quest designers themselves, which is a damn shame. I would imagine it was the same for Fallout 4.
It's truly sad because it's getting harder to be excited about Bethesda's new releases, given that they will probably keep that design philosophy going.
Never thought about the strange fact that Virgil decided to modify and wear completely useless broken glasses for some reason
It's even weirder considering that he doesn't even need the glasses as a human, I initially though it was just him keeping some vestigial reminder of when he was human to help keep himself sane in isolation, but it actually served no purpose. My best guess is whoever designed him thought; "I need some stereotypical signifier that he's a scientist, better put glasses on him".
@@grayman4951 Considering Fallout 4 also has the BoS toss around Latin to try to make them sound smart, I wouldn't be surprised if the glasses were added for the same reason.
@@Mirthful_MidoriLatin isn’t impossible for them to know. Half of new vegas is in Latin lol
@Yan-tz9pn The Legion actually has reasons for using Latin. It was part of how Caesar replaced the cultures of the tribes the Legion conquered and absorbed. It also fit with the fact Caesar was attempting to replicate ancient Rome.
The BoS don't have any good excuses for suddenly using an obsolete language. Bethesda didn't even bother with making up an explanation.
@@Mirthful_Midori I get what you’re saying, but I guess the BoS obsession with pre war books in fo3 might be an explanation.
Could have been some history books and peaked the interest of some scribes/knights like it did Edward.
You have the same level of interaction towards your own son as a packet of Mac N cheese.
the way he called the baby a near inanimate object sent me lmaoo
This is what brought me to this channel. Time to do it all again.
Regarding the first segment: I literally *loved* how on NV I could make a former Legion slave, who somehow got free a couple of years before, found his/her way into the Mojave working as a courier, until the Legion itself came to the Nevada. Or how I could just as easily create a character who was a retired NCR spec ops (even a good 'patriotic' variant or an asshole/brutal variant), or basically anything I wanted. Bioware showed *some* promise on how you could come to terms with the voiced protagonist and the role-playing freedom, when they introduce the option of having two possible voices in DA Inquisition. A game like Fallout should have dome something similar, but with more options of potential voices and maybe even 'inflexions' of delivery.
Just watched all your parts. Excellent analysis Creetosis. While I do like Fallout 4 and think the Railroad is my favorite (and best written, which admitedly isn't a high bar when the alternatives are the Institute and Brotherhood), I can certainly respect your issues with its presentation, and more generally the game as a whole
some loose notes:
- I remember thinking, every now and then, "hey maybe this emil guy comes to hodd toward's office with good story ideas but gets turned away" -- we'll never know -- but yeah, he's just terrible
- I started watching this video *while* playing fallout 4 -- the settlement building part is my "therapy" thing, what I do while I need to relax a bit between other tasks. amazing, huh?
- to this day, I remember thinking "that's it" after my first playthrough. oh well..
loved the video! looking forward to the next parts
ps:: sorry for the broken english
2:02:40 there is at least another mention about literacy: in a building near Concord there is the hideout of a small gang of raiders. Sneaking in through the secret door alloe the player to overhear a conversation between two raiders on the fact that one of them can read and the other one would learn to read.
However, it's just a fun fact; even if we suppose that most raiders can't write or read, we know that among of them several leaders and lieutenants can, so they could easily reach Railroad's hideout and kill railroads without many problem.
Erm okay dude, but this is the ONLY game with dynamic junk scavenging. Maybe let that sink in for a bit
lmao
Dynamic™ Junk™ Scavening™ Economy™
God. MATN is such a pretentious hack.
I would but I already scrapped it for the ceramics
I was 15 when fallout 4 came out and i remember being ao excited for it i preordered it. I remember playing it a shit ton and beating it but after awhile i felt like something was wrong, I couldn't figure out what it was. I stopped playing it after getting every achievement. And then when i got a PC i figured out why I didn't like it. It feels like it punishes you for wanting to explore topics more deeply. And wants you to play the game without paying attention
That "honeymoon" phase is the hardest to get out of for some.
Especially when a lot of us were a whole lot younger when playing 3 & 4
im redoing Fallout New Vegas myself. and Fallout 1 and 2. I refuse to acknowledge 76 even exists tbh. @Mosiak1897
Col. Autumn injected additional plot armor...
Plot armor is indeed rare... until its not.
I would’ve hoped that Bethesda would’ve taken the tagline “war never changes” and tried to do something different with it each game, and not just throw the BoS into a literal war with some other faction every time.
I like to think that because Nate is a veteran, he taught Nora basic CQC and how to use firearms so that she could protect herself if something happened to him. That's the only conceivable reason why a suburban housewife/lawyer would instantly be good at fighting off all the dangers of the wasteland. But the fact that I'm having to impose my own headcanon on a preestablished character to make her work is not ideal. They could have at least made her an ex-cop or something. Actually, that could have made for some really cool interactions with Nick. "Oh, you're a detective? Cool! I used to be a cop before the war. Speaking of which, you've got the same name as a guy I used to work with..."
I hate the subjectivity argument as well, I tell people that make that argument that it's totally fine to like something even if it's terrible but defending the thing you like with nonarguments makes you look like a petulant child that can't handle criticism of any kind and they act like their interests are a personality trait it's so cringe
these videos are so well said and coherent, I wish Bethesda would realize these critiques come from a place of love and not hate. we want these nostalgic games we love to shine but Bethesda and some fans seemingly don't. I've been waiting over a decade for TES6 and FO5, but as it stands I have better games to spend my time with than whatever those are going to end up being. I wish people would stop pumping their money directly into the Bethesda pipeline and realize there are better wastes of time out there, then maybe they'll actually realize they're in the wrong. side note; I've become so good at ignoring bad in game writing that I completely forgot Nate and Nora had backstories because I erase it from my mind to roleplay my characters LOL.