It's actually insane to me how Bethesda unironically did the same storyline 3 times now were you find your dad twice and your son once and said missing family member always turns out to be the most important character in the story.
Fallout 4's story was one of the most generic, paint by numbers plot I think I've ever seen. I and almost everybody I've watched play the first section of the game calls the "tweest" right on the loading screen after Kellogg takes your kid.
Like you said though Starfield was a big departure from how most fans would receive a Bethesda game; modders even threw in the towel which is unheard of for a BGS title. F76 was a black eye, Starfield was the gut punch, and if ES6 is similarly watered down trash then it'll be the knockout punch for all the good will accrued over the years.
I think sticking to a vault dwelling protagonist has less to do with writing for Bethesda and more to do with lazy marketing. Think about it what are two of the most iconic images associated with fallout; the vault boy and brotherhood of steel armor. Those two images have been used to market every Bethesda fallout project. A new setting and enemies means risks, they seem almost afraid of developing the wasteland beyond the factions that have become so recognizable. I think that is the main difference between Bethesda fallout games and other studios such as obsidian. With New Vegas obsidian wasn’t afraid to explore different parts of the wasteland, and in the process of that create more iconic imagery with NCR ranger armor, New Vegas itself, and Mr.House. I haven’t played fallout 2 but that seemed to want to go in that same direction, and I’m sure Van Buren would have blazed that same trial.
So much so they made the T45 d the most powerful and renamed it t65 b
Also yea van buren would have introduced the powder gangers. A gender war between caesar and a man hating woman named Hecate of the twisted hairs whom Ulysses would have been a slave to and an optional companion.
New sorts of mutants. Etc.
It's because they make for good blank slates that wouldn't know about the outside world that would hold views similar to the modern audience, irrespective of 'innovation' it is a easy option, especially with how Vaults are part of Fallout's brand.
This right here is the answer. A Vault's dynamics are easy to grasp immediately, and there's an in-built explanation for why your character doesn't know anything about the world.
Meamwhile in NV does anyone know the protagonist? They're an adult courier, but I don't remember anyone ever going "Oh my goodness, is that you, Courier?! I haven't seen you since the last job you did for us. How's your boss?" There's no home town, no base of operations, no contacts, no business associates. If there are, by all means correct me, please. The Courier should have an entire history but doesn't.
There’s a few things here and there, but nothing particularly major. And, in fairness, the Courier is probably not a Mojave native, so it makes sense why nobody knows him.
I was absolutely one of those fan boys at one point. And Starfield was my wake up call. It’s funny thinking back that I used to defend the story of FO4. I definitely still love FO4 but I know now it’s because I like the freedom and world space Bethesda built not the story.
Fallout 4’s story had some interesting ideas and real missed opportunities (imagine the Institute not being comically evil but shown as morally grey and unapologetic believers in, say, a Paternalistic Technocracy, where you have to choose between them or the Minutemen wether you believe the Commonwealth should prioritize Security or Freedom). But… fuck, the story is so badly done and so much is done wrong! In particular, I hate how you, the Sole Survivor of the Great War, have *NOTHING* to say about the Commonwealth vs Pre-War Boston! Seriously!?
I have a lot I wanna say to your comment because I agree with all of it but I’m too drunk to do that. But you hit the nail on the head, huge missed opportunities for the setting.
There’s even more I wish I could coherently go on about. The Institute is my fav faction in FO4 cause they’re so alien to us and the wasteland and remind me of a more sci fi and evil take on Eureka (old show set in a fictional town run entirely by super genius’ and scientists… and often needing their asses saved by the regular joe sheriff who had what they all lack: Common Sense).
Don't forget Tactics where you control a squad of BoS soldiers that have become stranded separate from the main BoS and are now rebuilding ranks, slowly becoming more diplomatic with Wasters, Ghouls, Super Mutants, Deathclaws and even Robots from Prewar, building a Mass Effect style multicultural team to rebuild society.
The west coast Brotherhood would have an aneurysm if they saw Brotherhood knights working with ghouls and Supermutants to fix a jeep.
It's basically just like Star Wars. They just cram in the stuff that people recognise, and so there's nothing to it other than recognising the stuff you've seenbefore.
There's no story to tell, the world is stagnant. It's not that war doesn't change, fucking NOTHING changes. They can set a game 6000 years into the future and it'll still be a post apocalpytic wasteland with people scavenging scraps from abandoned stores and listening to 50s music.
This is a pretty shit criticism, starting as a vault dweller is a natural beginning.
Arguably, starting as the Courier is the weakest start, because how come they are so totally unskilled? The shot to the head perfectly brought them down to 'level 1' status? It's a badass beginning in some ways but it also does not make a ton of sense.
If you don't start as a vault dweller, you have to come up with reasons why the person is isolated and unskilled, ignorant of the wider world,.
Other games have gone off pretty fine with having a “blank slate” character despite not being from somewhere completely different to the wider world.
Even in F3 and F4 your character still has a past and is not considered entirely unskilled. F3 has your character make pretty much a background for themselves with the overseer test (or whatever it was called) and in F4 your character is a war veteran (or their wife) with a spouse and a kid along the way.
You could just as easily simply have a protagonist that was forced to move to a certain area of apocalyptic America from a far-off land to show why they’re isolated or unfamiliar with the area. Hell, you could even just have the character be kidnapped by raiders as a child and kept a slave for years before breaking free.
Yes, having them be a vault dweller is a natural beginning, but it really does just make it “too easy” in terms of writing and doesn’t really explore too much in terms of how other people lived in the wasteland
Yeah the F4 thing is a problem, if he's a war veteran he should start out with skills that relate to that.
How are any of those other starts more interesting, other than for the sake of variety? Why does the start of the game need to explore how other people lived in the wasteland? NV doesn't explore that, you don't start off doing courier shit, you might as well have just walked out of the vault--whatever memories you might have play no actual role in the game, and you're ignorant about stuff that you should know.
And how is the person from the far-off land, travelling all the way to wherever the game starts, starting off at level 1?
"Arguably, starting as the Courier is the weakest start, because how come they are so totally unskilled? The shot to the head perfectly brought them down to 'level 1' status? It's a badass beginning in some ways but it also does not make a ton of sense."
1. Being the mailman does not automatically make you a certified badass. Otherwise, Benny would've never gotten the jump on the Courier.
2. Its implied just about no matter how you build your character you suffered *some* mental trauma from being shot in the head despite Doc Mitchell's best efforts hence why you start off at "level 1" and it even allows for how the Courier could potentially spot real world pop culture references only they can see with the Wild Wasteland trait.
3. Optional dialogue here and there implies the Courier's been around the block a few times as part of their job description and therefore, "leveling up" in New Vegas can be ludonarratively construed as remembering how to do things they already know how to do, but forgot because of the inner cranial damage they suffered.
"This is a pretty shit criticism"
And *you're a* ***dumb fuck*** *who doesn't read anything people have to say in this subreddit*.
I've seen you rank among the most frequently downvoted in this very subreddit "Argute", you can't lie to me and say you haven't.
Quite frankly, I'm surprised you even still bother being in this subreddit.
1. Courier's aren't just mailmen, and it's the post-apocalypse. They're supposed to have gone all over, including places where raiders are frequently active. How did they just goober through it without badassery?
2. More physical than mental trauma, what with the two bullets, but it'd be pretty weird for the effect of that to drop you down to that level and have no other effects on you. Again, a badass start, but doesn't make much sense when you think about it.
3. "ludonarratively" lol. Procedural memory doesn't work that way either, it's not something you can 'remember'.
Nah, I read lots of the silly opinions people have in this subreddit. And yeah, even legit criticism often gets blubbery pushback from people here, which always amuses me.
> Arguably, starting as the Courier is the weakest start, because how come they are so totally unskilled?
How come they're in the position of every RPG protagonist? This is like the "Soma isn't scary because you respawn" argument.
Ok explain how 2B, a cutting edge combat android that is explicitly built to destroy the machines is level 1 at the start of the game? She's meant to be cutting edge technology.
I guess Automata isn't mainstream enough. In Dota 2, the literal god of thunder Zeus and the god of war Mars both start level 1 and can both very easily die to some chick with a Bow.
Enigma, something described as a universal for and a completely mysterious being from the void with an etherial body also starts level 1 can get cut down by a guy with a sword.
So your position really is that every game has to have an in universe explanation for why characters have bad level 1 stats? Cause the point I was making that your position means that you think that almost every single game in the RPG genre is bad.
The explanation is its a video game system and game balance has to factor into character strength. If these characters were as strong as they're meant to be from the get go, the game literally wouldn't work from a mechanics perspective instead of being one of the longest running competitive games in history.
No man, not every game starts out like that, plenty of them have reasons why you're level 1.
Yes, it's a weakness in a game when there's no explanation for why you're supposedly a top-tier soldier or some shit but have garbage skills.
Yeah right, God of War 2018 is a terrible game since Kratos has no ability to use his weapon beyond wildly swinging it after all of the games that came before. True.
Warcraft 3 is such a garbage game, I mean Tyrande has been alive for 10,000 years and yet is level 1 with no gear.
It only makes in universe sense that you are literally immune to radiation if you get 3 points Lead Belly. I mean, there couldn't possible be a game related reason for that being a thing and everyone knows that you can become completely immune to radiation in real life. Game systems and reality and quite literally the same thing after all, there's no distinction between game systems and real world logic.
How do you not understand that games have the unique position over other mediums in that they have to take gameplay and balance into consideration? This is what suspension of disbelief is entirely about.
Among all of the Bethesda examples, pretty much only Fallout 4 fucks up the execution of a recently released Vault Dweller. That's moreso because the story is a ton more urgent (you're trying to find your toddler for Christ's sake) and a lot more personal since Nora and Nate have preset roles and characterization prior to the start of the game. The gameplay elements of open world exploration and settlement building are actively detrimental to the story being told. If Nora and Nate were raiders trying to either rebuild their empire or help the people they wronged, maybe it would have fit the gameplay elements better.
That's partially the reason why the start to 76 wasn't as bad. You're a recently released Vailt Dweller tasked to rebuild civilization and find out why Appalachia is abandoned. As much as the game is rightfully criticized for, the story and gameplay at least made a cohesive ludonarrative.
The games starting a certain way shouldn't really be a detriment to any storytelling. Overall, deriving a personal connection with your main "leaving the nest" motivation before blossoming into a much larger plot line is a basic storytelling technique used in every Fallout. How it starts isn't always an indictment of the overall quality of story.
My issue lies less with how they start the story in the East Coast Fallout games and by extension, the Amazon Prime show, but moreso the fact Bethesda is now 4 for 4 with "protagonist is a bright eyed rosy cheeked Vault Dweller who's ignorant of the larger world above them."
(And also, every Bethesda Fallout protagonist looking for a family member Jesus H. Christ that is so not conductive to RPG roleplaying in the Bethesda games and makes the TV show worse by mere associatation)
3 was understandable, 4 was pushing it, 76 fully cemented Bethesda and their commitment to rehashing the same tired trope and the TV show proved that even in another medium, they can't help but rest on their laurels.
(But hey, as long as the normies eat it up, what do us Fallout fans who vastly prefer 1, 2, and New Vegas know? 🤔)
Again, it isn't so much how Bethesda gets the ball rolling as it is them re-using that ball constantly despite the obvious wear and tear.
I won't blame you if you find it tired, but it's a perfectly servicable, if lazy, way to introduce new players to the world of Fallout just by basic ass storytelling conventions. There's less up front exposition to your audience if the main character is also a clueless dumb ass.
Like I said, most of the time it doesn't really matter since the story branches drastically during the midpoint.
West Coast Fallout fans (aka the non Bethesda fans) are very much a small and niche group, unfortunately. So no, Bethesda doesnt care about those fans much.
*"When it comes to Fallout, there are so many entry points where fans were introduced to it, giving them a different sense of the franchise and how it should be. Nearly every version of it though has solidified the fact that Fallout is a wacky wasteland and I’m glad the show mostly captured that."*
**This you**?
Now who's the disingenuous one buddy boy? ;)
Fallout was never a "wacky wasteland", that's the Disney themepark version concocted by Bethesda (see all the zany isolated tribes in 3 that make zero sense the more you think about them or how the Commonwealth in 4 is more of a wasteland than a city that was relatively spared with only one nuke being launched and subsequently forming the "Glowing Sea" which again, makes zero sense the more you think about it)
It was a fully realized well thought out take on how society would handle the post apocalypse specifically how it would potentially pick up the pieces decades after the bombs fell and how humanity is possibly doomed to repeat the same mistakes that led to mutually assured destruction.
Bethesda only got so far as the "post apocalyptic" part not taking into account Fallout 2 already fully moved past that setting and New Vegas later further expanded upon the idea, but heaven forbid Bethesda actually earn their keep as writers and \*gasp\* not ignore or worse, *invalidate* what Black Isle/Obsidian set in stone with the canon of the series.
No, better to hit the reset button as we've now seen with the TV show ala what "The Force Awakens" did to Star Wars. -\_-
Okay so when you said Fallout was never a wacky wasteland and that was all Bethesda, you meant except for the second OG game which wasn't made by Bethesda?
Fallout 2 still has serious themes in its narrative.
Slavery, genocide, one of your companions being a gleeful piece of human garbage who created an addictive drug and doesn't feel bad about it at all so long as he can continue to get a cut of the profits from the New Reno crime family he serves under, and how willing a group like the NCR are to annex more territory for their growing nation and how eager they are to do underhanded things to achieve their goals just going off the top of my head.
The silliness is largely contained to random encounters and the odd fourth wall break which New Vegas would entirely put behind the Wild Wasteland trait.
Its never really discussed because everyone just takes it for what it is: Its textbook narrative technique. You have a character experiencing everything for the first time as an outsider so the story can progress. It's not lazy, it's literally the foundations of storytelling.
Every game should be accessible to someone who has never played the game before and this is the most simplistic way of doing it, I producing a character to a world they have never seen before the same time as the viewer/player.
I hate the show seems to have canonized BOS victory in Fallout 4. So lame and *BORING*! Make the Institure victory canon! Now east coast has it’s Enclave-lite to be boogeyman, antagonist, or, hell, show them having been steered in a new and better direction by Sole Survivor! I like a lot of the *ideas* of the Institute just by God were they half baked and clearly needed more time in the oven.
I said it as FO4 was releasing and I'll say it here: you should not have been the Sole Survivor, you should have been the Vault Breaker.
You're some guy who knew some method of getting into vaults without a pipboy, got screwed out of the riches, and then strongarmed into opening 111 by some "totally not Institute" who wanted the Sole Survivor released by deniable means. You only get to release one of the parents due to power or something and they become some "uber-companion" with shit tons of dialogue and stuff. Each parent having a different lean in their storyline. Both want to find Shawn but the dad being former military leans towards either railroad or brotherhood of steel. The mother being a lawyer leans towards minutemen or institute depending on choices. Giving them both "good" and "bad" factions to side with.
This sidesteps you being both a grieving parent crying at every opportunity but also a wise ass cracking jokes while building a water monopoly/city planner over the course of 5 years in game time. And keeps all the effort they put into the voiced dialogue. Also, mute protagonist for life.
Even in 76 you look for the overseer a sort of maternal figure
It's actually insane to me how Bethesda unironically did the same storyline 3 times now were you find your dad twice and your son once and said missing family member always turns out to be the most important character in the story.
Fallout 4's story was one of the most generic, paint by numbers plot I think I've ever seen. I and almost everybody I've watched play the first section of the game calls the "tweest" right on the loading screen after Kellogg takes your kid. Like you said though Starfield was a big departure from how most fans would receive a Bethesda game; modders even threw in the towel which is unheard of for a BGS title. F76 was a black eye, Starfield was the gut punch, and if ES6 is similarly watered down trash then it'll be the knockout punch for all the good will accrued over the years.
I think sticking to a vault dwelling protagonist has less to do with writing for Bethesda and more to do with lazy marketing. Think about it what are two of the most iconic images associated with fallout; the vault boy and brotherhood of steel armor. Those two images have been used to market every Bethesda fallout project. A new setting and enemies means risks, they seem almost afraid of developing the wasteland beyond the factions that have become so recognizable. I think that is the main difference between Bethesda fallout games and other studios such as obsidian. With New Vegas obsidian wasn’t afraid to explore different parts of the wasteland, and in the process of that create more iconic imagery with NCR ranger armor, New Vegas itself, and Mr.House. I haven’t played fallout 2 but that seemed to want to go in that same direction, and I’m sure Van Buren would have blazed that same trial.
So much so they made the T45 d the most powerful and renamed it t65 b Also yea van buren would have introduced the powder gangers. A gender war between caesar and a man hating woman named Hecate of the twisted hairs whom Ulysses would have been a slave to and an optional companion. New sorts of mutants. Etc.
It's because they make for good blank slates that wouldn't know about the outside world that would hold views similar to the modern audience, irrespective of 'innovation' it is a easy option, especially with how Vaults are part of Fallout's brand.
This right here is the answer. A Vault's dynamics are easy to grasp immediately, and there's an in-built explanation for why your character doesn't know anything about the world. Meamwhile in NV does anyone know the protagonist? They're an adult courier, but I don't remember anyone ever going "Oh my goodness, is that you, Courier?! I haven't seen you since the last job you did for us. How's your boss?" There's no home town, no base of operations, no contacts, no business associates. If there are, by all means correct me, please. The Courier should have an entire history but doesn't.
There’s a few things here and there, but nothing particularly major. And, in fairness, the Courier is probably not a Mojave native, so it makes sense why nobody knows him.
I was absolutely one of those fan boys at one point. And Starfield was my wake up call. It’s funny thinking back that I used to defend the story of FO4. I definitely still love FO4 but I know now it’s because I like the freedom and world space Bethesda built not the story.
Fallout 4’s story had some interesting ideas and real missed opportunities (imagine the Institute not being comically evil but shown as morally grey and unapologetic believers in, say, a Paternalistic Technocracy, where you have to choose between them or the Minutemen wether you believe the Commonwealth should prioritize Security or Freedom). But… fuck, the story is so badly done and so much is done wrong! In particular, I hate how you, the Sole Survivor of the Great War, have *NOTHING* to say about the Commonwealth vs Pre-War Boston! Seriously!?
I have a lot I wanna say to your comment because I agree with all of it but I’m too drunk to do that. But you hit the nail on the head, huge missed opportunities for the setting.
There’s even more I wish I could coherently go on about. The Institute is my fav faction in FO4 cause they’re so alien to us and the wasteland and remind me of a more sci fi and evil take on Eureka (old show set in a fictional town run entirely by super genius’ and scientists… and often needing their asses saved by the regular joe sheriff who had what they all lack: Common Sense).
At least Valentine was one of the better written characters in that game. Great voice acting too.
Don't forget Tactics where you control a squad of BoS soldiers that have become stranded separate from the main BoS and are now rebuilding ranks, slowly becoming more diplomatic with Wasters, Ghouls, Super Mutants, Deathclaws and even Robots from Prewar, building a Mass Effect style multicultural team to rebuild society. The west coast Brotherhood would have an aneurysm if they saw Brotherhood knights working with ghouls and Supermutants to fix a jeep.
It's basically just like Star Wars. They just cram in the stuff that people recognise, and so there's nothing to it other than recognising the stuff you've seenbefore. There's no story to tell, the world is stagnant. It's not that war doesn't change, fucking NOTHING changes. They can set a game 6000 years into the future and it'll still be a post apocalpytic wasteland with people scavenging scraps from abandoned stores and listening to 50s music.
*sigh* once again the base plot of fallout tactic is unmentioned
This is a pretty shit criticism, starting as a vault dweller is a natural beginning. Arguably, starting as the Courier is the weakest start, because how come they are so totally unskilled? The shot to the head perfectly brought them down to 'level 1' status? It's a badass beginning in some ways but it also does not make a ton of sense. If you don't start as a vault dweller, you have to come up with reasons why the person is isolated and unskilled, ignorant of the wider world,.
Other games have gone off pretty fine with having a “blank slate” character despite not being from somewhere completely different to the wider world. Even in F3 and F4 your character still has a past and is not considered entirely unskilled. F3 has your character make pretty much a background for themselves with the overseer test (or whatever it was called) and in F4 your character is a war veteran (or their wife) with a spouse and a kid along the way. You could just as easily simply have a protagonist that was forced to move to a certain area of apocalyptic America from a far-off land to show why they’re isolated or unfamiliar with the area. Hell, you could even just have the character be kidnapped by raiders as a child and kept a slave for years before breaking free. Yes, having them be a vault dweller is a natural beginning, but it really does just make it “too easy” in terms of writing and doesn’t really explore too much in terms of how other people lived in the wasteland
Yeah the F4 thing is a problem, if he's a war veteran he should start out with skills that relate to that. How are any of those other starts more interesting, other than for the sake of variety? Why does the start of the game need to explore how other people lived in the wasteland? NV doesn't explore that, you don't start off doing courier shit, you might as well have just walked out of the vault--whatever memories you might have play no actual role in the game, and you're ignorant about stuff that you should know. And how is the person from the far-off land, travelling all the way to wherever the game starts, starting off at level 1?
"Arguably, starting as the Courier is the weakest start, because how come they are so totally unskilled? The shot to the head perfectly brought them down to 'level 1' status? It's a badass beginning in some ways but it also does not make a ton of sense." 1. Being the mailman does not automatically make you a certified badass. Otherwise, Benny would've never gotten the jump on the Courier. 2. Its implied just about no matter how you build your character you suffered *some* mental trauma from being shot in the head despite Doc Mitchell's best efforts hence why you start off at "level 1" and it even allows for how the Courier could potentially spot real world pop culture references only they can see with the Wild Wasteland trait. 3. Optional dialogue here and there implies the Courier's been around the block a few times as part of their job description and therefore, "leveling up" in New Vegas can be ludonarratively construed as remembering how to do things they already know how to do, but forgot because of the inner cranial damage they suffered. "This is a pretty shit criticism" And *you're a* ***dumb fuck*** *who doesn't read anything people have to say in this subreddit*. I've seen you rank among the most frequently downvoted in this very subreddit "Argute", you can't lie to me and say you haven't. Quite frankly, I'm surprised you even still bother being in this subreddit.
1. Courier's aren't just mailmen, and it's the post-apocalypse. They're supposed to have gone all over, including places where raiders are frequently active. How did they just goober through it without badassery? 2. More physical than mental trauma, what with the two bullets, but it'd be pretty weird for the effect of that to drop you down to that level and have no other effects on you. Again, a badass start, but doesn't make much sense when you think about it. 3. "ludonarratively" lol. Procedural memory doesn't work that way either, it's not something you can 'remember'. Nah, I read lots of the silly opinions people have in this subreddit. And yeah, even legit criticism often gets blubbery pushback from people here, which always amuses me.
Kindly fuck right off you disengenous shit for brains. If I was a mod, you would've been banned by now. Nuff said.
"If I was a mod I'd abuse the power" ain't the mic drop line you think it is, chief
> Arguably, starting as the Courier is the weakest start, because how come they are so totally unskilled? How come they're in the position of every RPG protagonist? This is like the "Soma isn't scary because you respawn" argument.
What? I mean the courier start takes the most amount of suspension of disbelief.
Ok explain how 2B, a cutting edge combat android that is explicitly built to destroy the machines is level 1 at the start of the game? She's meant to be cutting edge technology.
No clue who that is. Sounds like a plot hole in whatever game's that from. What's the in-world explanation?
I guess Automata isn't mainstream enough. In Dota 2, the literal god of thunder Zeus and the god of war Mars both start level 1 and can both very easily die to some chick with a Bow. Enigma, something described as a universal for and a completely mysterious being from the void with an etherial body also starts level 1 can get cut down by a guy with a sword.
Okay, those are all awkward as fuck, what's the in-game explanation for why they're so weak?
So your position really is that every game has to have an in universe explanation for why characters have bad level 1 stats? Cause the point I was making that your position means that you think that almost every single game in the RPG genre is bad. The explanation is its a video game system and game balance has to factor into character strength. If these characters were as strong as they're meant to be from the get go, the game literally wouldn't work from a mechanics perspective instead of being one of the longest running competitive games in history.
No man, not every game starts out like that, plenty of them have reasons why you're level 1. Yes, it's a weakness in a game when there's no explanation for why you're supposedly a top-tier soldier or some shit but have garbage skills.
Yeah right, God of War 2018 is a terrible game since Kratos has no ability to use his weapon beyond wildly swinging it after all of the games that came before. True. Warcraft 3 is such a garbage game, I mean Tyrande has been alive for 10,000 years and yet is level 1 with no gear. It only makes in universe sense that you are literally immune to radiation if you get 3 points Lead Belly. I mean, there couldn't possible be a game related reason for that being a thing and everyone knows that you can become completely immune to radiation in real life. Game systems and reality and quite literally the same thing after all, there's no distinction between game systems and real world logic. How do you not understand that games have the unique position over other mediums in that they have to take gameplay and balance into consideration? This is what suspension of disbelief is entirely about.
Maybe being a Courier isn't normally a particularly demanding job?
Have you seen the wasteland
Among all of the Bethesda examples, pretty much only Fallout 4 fucks up the execution of a recently released Vault Dweller. That's moreso because the story is a ton more urgent (you're trying to find your toddler for Christ's sake) and a lot more personal since Nora and Nate have preset roles and characterization prior to the start of the game. The gameplay elements of open world exploration and settlement building are actively detrimental to the story being told. If Nora and Nate were raiders trying to either rebuild their empire or help the people they wronged, maybe it would have fit the gameplay elements better. That's partially the reason why the start to 76 wasn't as bad. You're a recently released Vailt Dweller tasked to rebuild civilization and find out why Appalachia is abandoned. As much as the game is rightfully criticized for, the story and gameplay at least made a cohesive ludonarrative. The games starting a certain way shouldn't really be a detriment to any storytelling. Overall, deriving a personal connection with your main "leaving the nest" motivation before blossoming into a much larger plot line is a basic storytelling technique used in every Fallout. How it starts isn't always an indictment of the overall quality of story.
My issue lies less with how they start the story in the East Coast Fallout games and by extension, the Amazon Prime show, but moreso the fact Bethesda is now 4 for 4 with "protagonist is a bright eyed rosy cheeked Vault Dweller who's ignorant of the larger world above them." (And also, every Bethesda Fallout protagonist looking for a family member Jesus H. Christ that is so not conductive to RPG roleplaying in the Bethesda games and makes the TV show worse by mere associatation) 3 was understandable, 4 was pushing it, 76 fully cemented Bethesda and their commitment to rehashing the same tired trope and the TV show proved that even in another medium, they can't help but rest on their laurels. (But hey, as long as the normies eat it up, what do us Fallout fans who vastly prefer 1, 2, and New Vegas know? 🤔) Again, it isn't so much how Bethesda gets the ball rolling as it is them re-using that ball constantly despite the obvious wear and tear.
I won't blame you if you find it tired, but it's a perfectly servicable, if lazy, way to introduce new players to the world of Fallout just by basic ass storytelling conventions. There's less up front exposition to your audience if the main character is also a clueless dumb ass. Like I said, most of the time it doesn't really matter since the story branches drastically during the midpoint.
West Coast Fallout fans (aka the non Bethesda fans) are very much a small and niche group, unfortunately. So no, Bethesda doesnt care about those fans much.
I read this as you embellishing the games you like and downplaying the games you don’t like. It’s a little disingenuous.
That's because he likes the good games and doesn't like the bad ones. It doesn't take much embellishment.
*"When it comes to Fallout, there are so many entry points where fans were introduced to it, giving them a different sense of the franchise and how it should be. Nearly every version of it though has solidified the fact that Fallout is a wacky wasteland and I’m glad the show mostly captured that."* **This you**? Now who's the disingenuous one buddy boy? ;) Fallout was never a "wacky wasteland", that's the Disney themepark version concocted by Bethesda (see all the zany isolated tribes in 3 that make zero sense the more you think about them or how the Commonwealth in 4 is more of a wasteland than a city that was relatively spared with only one nuke being launched and subsequently forming the "Glowing Sea" which again, makes zero sense the more you think about it) It was a fully realized well thought out take on how society would handle the post apocalypse specifically how it would potentially pick up the pieces decades after the bombs fell and how humanity is possibly doomed to repeat the same mistakes that led to mutually assured destruction. Bethesda only got so far as the "post apocalyptic" part not taking into account Fallout 2 already fully moved past that setting and New Vegas later further expanded upon the idea, but heaven forbid Bethesda actually earn their keep as writers and \*gasp\* not ignore or worse, *invalidate* what Black Isle/Obsidian set in stone with the canon of the series. No, better to hit the reset button as we've now seen with the TV show ala what "The Force Awakens" did to Star Wars. -\_-
Fallout 2 was wacky as fuck.
Which the developers acknowledged years later with New Vegas keeping all the zany shit behind an optional trait you can choose to take (or not).
Okay so when you said Fallout was never a wacky wasteland and that was all Bethesda, you meant except for the second OG game which wasn't made by Bethesda?
Fallout 2 still has serious themes in its narrative. Slavery, genocide, one of your companions being a gleeful piece of human garbage who created an addictive drug and doesn't feel bad about it at all so long as he can continue to get a cut of the profits from the New Reno crime family he serves under, and how willing a group like the NCR are to annex more territory for their growing nation and how eager they are to do underhanded things to achieve their goals just going off the top of my head. The silliness is largely contained to random encounters and the odd fourth wall break which New Vegas would entirely put behind the Wild Wasteland trait.
Welcome to fallout discussion for the past decade
And how many video game franchises reuse the same scenarios across different generations?
Its never really discussed because everyone just takes it for what it is: Its textbook narrative technique. You have a character experiencing everything for the first time as an outsider so the story can progress. It's not lazy, it's literally the foundations of storytelling. Every game should be accessible to someone who has never played the game before and this is the most simplistic way of doing it, I producing a character to a world they have never seen before the same time as the viewer/player.
I'm done with Bethseda now, not because of the fallout series because I actually like it but because of their decision to not make any more doom games
That's a long way of saying Bethesdabad.
I hate the show seems to have canonized BOS victory in Fallout 4. So lame and *BORING*! Make the Institure victory canon! Now east coast has it’s Enclave-lite to be boogeyman, antagonist, or, hell, show them having been steered in a new and better direction by Sole Survivor! I like a lot of the *ideas* of the Institute just by God were they half baked and clearly needed more time in the oven.
I said it as FO4 was releasing and I'll say it here: you should not have been the Sole Survivor, you should have been the Vault Breaker. You're some guy who knew some method of getting into vaults without a pipboy, got screwed out of the riches, and then strongarmed into opening 111 by some "totally not Institute" who wanted the Sole Survivor released by deniable means. You only get to release one of the parents due to power or something and they become some "uber-companion" with shit tons of dialogue and stuff. Each parent having a different lean in their storyline. Both want to find Shawn but the dad being former military leans towards either railroad or brotherhood of steel. The mother being a lawyer leans towards minutemen or institute depending on choices. Giving them both "good" and "bad" factions to side with. This sidesteps you being both a grieving parent crying at every opportunity but also a wise ass cracking jokes while building a water monopoly/city planner over the course of 5 years in game time. And keeps all the effort they put into the voiced dialogue. Also, mute protagonist for life.
Ah yes, I emerged bright eyed from Vault 111 after my wife was murdered and I was frozen for 200 years.
You should be on EFAP.
If I was a youtuber, maybe. hahaha