5 easy ways to fix The Main Story In Fallout 4

oh that's right we went there from a gameplay perspective Fallout 4 is arguably the best of all Fallout games I mean there's always going to be a few that disagree with one game mechanic or another as a deal breaker but for the majority of fans of the 3D generation Fallout games it's tough to beat fallout 4. until you start talking about the storyline for the main quest that is then things take a dark turn very quickly I don't think there's any contestation when I say that Fallout 4's main story while calling it an incomplete incoherent mess is probably an insult to incomplete incoherent messes everywhere but it's not like the Fallout 4 story is completely Beyond Redemption right well that's why today Gray's detective agency is on the case and ready to present our findings for five easy things Bethesda most certainly should have done to fix the main quest line in Fallout 4 and just in case there was any doubt whatsoever spoilers to a nine-year-old game okay this sounds like a non-issue what in Adam's glow is removing Mama Murphy going to accomplish well you see Fallout 4's main story has one major disconnect okay it has several but we'll address each of those in their own due time but the biggest one that tends to rub a large number of players the wrong way is the manner in which Fallout 4 frames the time sensitivity of finding Sean contrasted with the open world exploration aspect of well all Fallout games now this can be done such as in the case of Fallout 1 that puts a time limit on how long you are allowed to take performing at least a large portion of the main task but Fallout 4 really doesn't have that penalty system in place it just says you need to go find your missing child ASAP but then it says can you spend a few in-game weeks turning a tato Farm into a giant trade Hub and also have you been up to see gray garden whole places run by robots and can you respond to this distress signal and investigate this Museum people are talking about and by the way have you heard about that farm run by ghouls isn't that so let's ask ourselves what single point in the Fallout 4 story changes in an increasingly hopeless search for your child in the vast reaches of the Commonwealth into a targeted linear activity with clear directives that's right it's the sole survivor's conversation with Mama Miffy Mama Murphy is just sort of a cheap callback to earlier Fallout games using some Supernatural ability to see the future but conveniently is missing the important bits like your son's a geriatric dick now or how about you just go straight to the glowing sea and get it over with what she does is tells you to go directly to Diamond City and that your son is most definitely still alive without her telling you these things there's little motivation for us to treat our search as time sensitive and we don't really have much of a reason to travel directly to Diamond City now we don't want to get rid of her completely because Mama Murphy's presence is the motivation of the Raiders in Concord to have trapped the Quincy survivors in the museum of Freedom which is a nice piece of World building on the part of Bethesda but we could how to put this gently kill her off before she has a chance to tell the Survivor to go to Diamond City maybe give her a bad case of the natural causes while you're out mini gunning deathclaws and the like Anyway without her and this conversation the trail just goes cold in Concord the game can take sort of a Witcher 3 sort of direction there's a lot of points of interest you could look at in hopes of picking up the trail again there's a lot of factions with the resources that could help you in your search the lack of Direction lets you choose okay do I want to start searching in Diamond City do I want to try good neighbor or Bunker Hill instead do I want to reach out to the real road to the Minutemen to the Brotherhood of Steel to get the resources I need to continue my search lack of Direction may be frustrating to some players but sort of expected when you're trying to solve a 58 year old missing person's case there's just not a lot of evidence left to go on beyond what Sean intentionally Left Behind to lead you to Kellogg this lets you explore the Commonwealth with a legitimate lack of urgency without ever forgetting what is most important to the Soul Survivor finding their child but that motivation also falls flat for a lot of players so let's go ahead and jump straight to our next fix [Music] the point of tutorials is they're supposed to happen very early in game to help you figure out the controls and mechanics early enough that you can get into enjoying the rest of the game as soon as possible but certain things like the settlement building tutorial don't really occur until after about one to three hours of gameplay depending on how slow of a player you are and whether you're playing a stealth tank whatever your playstyle is and that's even assuming that you didn't go off the beat and path and start exploring the various markers on your HUD now the tutorials are not the actual issue here they are the fix you see the main problem that many players have with the sole survivor is that they are expected to empathize with the Soul Survivor I have a whole video about that here they have just witnessed their spouse murdered in front of them and their child taken but when our only exposure to our spouse is a few offhand comments some kissy wissy schmoozy woozy compliments in front of the bathroom mirror and a single conversation and considering the extent of our interactions with the infant Sean is tickling him and spinning his mobile it's just not enough to get many players emotionally invested in the soul survive fiber circumstances what the sole survivor needs is just more time for players to get to know them their family their hopes fears and desires the prologue is simply too short to accomplish that but if we move tutorials to the prologue that could give us the time we need to start caring about the Soul Survivor instead of starting our game on the Saturday morning of October 23 2077 Why not start Friday afternoon on the 22nd you're just getting home from work and you catch your face in the rear view mirror as you pull into the driveway that takes place at the character creation screen you step inside your home where your spouse is waiting to greet you while holding Sean they ask you how work was you answer and do the same naturally Nate and Nora would have different responses given that they have different professions and Sean gets fussy so they hand Sean over to you and ask you to feed him while they run off to do something it's not really important it's just a chance for you to notice that there's this little thing in your arms that is depending on you this is all mundane daily stuff not really important or Earth shattering but it shows you that your character has a role to play Within the context of a family Dynamic when your spouse returns they take Sean and tell you that the new mod you ordered for codsworth that allows him to refuel himself has arrived which you know will be important as he spends 210 years alone in your house they can express how much they know you love tinkering and how much you hate having to refill codsworth yourself so they send you off to the shop for some alone time and you head over to a workbench to install the mod this introduces you to the idea of upgradable items just as you finish up with codsworth you notice some soldiers on their daily Patrol through the neighborhood struggling with a set of t-45 power armor that's stuck and won't move as you approach the group the sergeant asks you to keep your distance but the sole survivor can state that they are a veteran and have seen the issue they are experiencing and knows how to correct it the sole survivor can pull the fusion core out of the t-45 causing the soldier in sight to disembark the suit then receding the core fixes the issue and the soldier climbs back in and can move around you can offer some technobabble solution like older t45s had issues with voltage regulation and you have to purge the power source to clear the dirty power something like that this engagement would serve to expose players to the idea that power armor is going to function very differently in Fallout 4 than in previous Fallout games and sort of fixed that whole question of how does Nora know how to use power armor when she was a lawyer if she was a Jag officer that would explain how she has Power Armor training experience and Small Arms all while having a JD degree and kind of hint at how Nate and Nora might have met it could also show that the resource Wars aren't going too Rosy when martial law is in effect and the streets of America are being patrolled by National Guard after this encounter you can head around to your backyard codsworth is taking care of Sean and your spouse asks you to help them build a new shed in the backyard and set up some new lawn furniture that you got last weekend and still haven't got around to opening until you open up the workshop build a shed place a table with a parasol and set up some chairs Boom the workshop mechanic has been established you've done a favor for your spouse and you both now share the feeling of accomplishing a shared task finally Sean gets fussy and your partner is about to take him from codsworth to put him to bed but the sole survivor enter Jackson says they'll do it reinforcing the idea to the player that the sole survivor is happy in this life and wants to be a contributing member of the family the Soul Survivor sings Sean to sleep and everyone goes to bed the following Saturday morning can proceed more or less the same way as before minus the need for the character creation screen you now rush to the Vault with a child you fed played with comforted and lulled to sleep with a spouse you shared meaningful and meaningless conversations with who's demonstrated their affection for Independence on the sole survivor all of which would greatly Aid the player in becoming emotionally invested in their characters and help with the motivation when it comes time to try to find Sean is it perfect no not really but it gives the Soul Survivor much more of a Fighting Chance at being a truly memorable RPG protagonist character on par with the Ezio auditories and geralt of rivias another major issue that players have with the sole survivor is the fact that not once do they question whether their child is even alive and whether they are still an infant at least not until their quest to explore Kellogg's memories but even then they see a child that looks 10-ish years old now they unquestioningly assume that 10 years have passed since Sean was taken there are three key things that Bethesda could have done to both allow the sole survivor to convey to the player that they aren't a clueless [ __ ] and continue to pursue their Quest because at the very least they need closure on this deeply personal matter after completing when Freedom calls when our removal of Mama Murphy creates a dead end in our search this would have been a perfect time for the sole survivor to drop to their knees overcome with grief and decide to go pay our final respects to our spouse who you know we just sort of left in the vault with barely a passing thought on your way back to Vault 111 you can pick some blood Leaf some thistle some Hub flowers mutated Fern flowers and place a bouquet of flowers at the base of your spouse's cryopod you can acknowledge that you don't know how much time has passed that you don't know where to start looking for Sean whether he's even still alive you don't know how you're going to be able to go on without them but you vow to them that you will never stop searching for the child you made together your open world exploration incentive remains intact while your search for Sean also is still on the table it's just a lot more open-ended the second event is much more simple after Kellogg's memories if taking care of Sean have been revealed the sole survivor would have reason to believe that Sean's at least 10 years old but there's also not really a date stamp on any of those memories either so there's a real possibility that Sean's even older after all Kellogg did taunt them saying that their kid was quite a bit older than they were probably expecting that would cause anyone doubts it would have been nice if they can fight it in Piper or Nick or hell even Dogmeat just as a means of exposition that they are beginning to lose hope that Sean's even still alive or whether they should continue the search because even if he's still alive there's a very real chance that Sean could be much older with a family of their own but they could be bitter about their upbringing could blame you for not protecting him or could have genuinely been raised by someone else who treated him as their own would he be able or even willing to reciprocate their feelings to that end it should have been no surprise to the sole survivor when father says that he is Sean just because they aren't surprised doesn't mean it can't be a cathartic moment the third and final event is that instead of the generic cutscene that is almost universally reviled by Fallout 4 players that plays at the end of the main quests it would have been much better to allow the Soul Survivor to choose a permanent burial site for their spouse maybe somewhere close to Sean maybe in Wildwood Cemetery in a family plot maybe in the backyard of their pre-war home maybe somewhere of the sole survivor is choosing in a small ceremony attended by all of the surviving companions they recruited along the way the sole survivor can say some parting words to their spouse acknowledging Sean's Fate The Path they've chosen and their plan for the future whether they need to move on and say goodbye or conversely whether they can't find find a way to move forward at the end they can turn and walk away while their companions who respectfully watch them leave in Silence the game doesn't have to end there the next time you fast travel away all of your companions can return to their previous locations and Fallout 4 can do its usual post-game time wasting pointlessness it just seems like a much more personal goodbye than the world has changed but war never changes Brahmin plot that we got if you're going to write a story set around a defined protagonist you have to acknowledge your protagonist in your conclusion with all of these missed opportunities it's easy to get tunnel vision and forget the opportunity to Target the like button in advance and sync some AP into that sucker viewer engagement is a metric we use to determine the sort of content that provides the most value to you a random person on the internet who has the power to choose whether I can afford the upkeep on my pre-war home this month please thank you and now on with our list I'm not gonna lie I got goosebumps the first time I completed the quest to explore Kellogg's memories and Nick started taunting me in Kellogg's voice I was legitimately terrified about what I had just done then Nick started talking normally and I relaxed a bit saying to myself that's definitely gonna be brought up again but it wasn't that was the end of Kellogg Whiskey Tango Foxtrot over they had all of the pieces of a great resolution to Kellogg's story but they wasted it imagine this you just completed Nick's companion Quest everyone's sort of forgotten about Kellogg's little teaser in the memory Den by now and he's just had his heartfelt moment saying goodbye to the real Nick's girlfriend and rigor Gerger Kellogg's voice forces through mocking Nick as a clueless machine avenging a Corpse's memory now it's time for Kellogg to get what he wants he wants a new body and gives the Soul Survivor an ultimatum either Nick disappears for good or the sole survivor must help him capture a courser and transfer what's left of himself into their body then Nick will be Nick and they can all go their separate ways as the two two of you track the synth together you can butt heads over Kellogg's methods calling him out as a hypocrite because the loss of his wife and child led him down the path that eventually deprived the Soul Survivor of theirs causing Kellogg to acknowledge the parallels in their circumstances and admit a level of respect that they owe the sole survivor after the mission goes off without a hitch the courser addresses the sole survivor and says that before he heads off to get some facial surgery to look like his old self again he offers them a choice either it's time to move on from the Commonwealth and disappear into the waste and you'll never see them again or they can meet at a set time and place to finish what was started if the sole survivor chooses to let Kellogg go they can try to talk him into going back to San Francisco to spend his final days watching over his family Graves and to let go of the hatred he's carried all these years or simply say that if you ever see him again you'll kill him or if you choose to end things you can meet back in Vault 111 Where it All Began for a Final Duel it seems fitting its final moment of Vengeance that you can bring up at the burial ceremony from our earlier point in all cases Nick is still Nick without any danger of Kellogg ever popping back in at some point because Bethesda doesn't know how to tie up Loose Ends this is probably the hardest thing we've ever listed in our easy fixes list but this is by far the most frustrating aspect of late gameplay and it is the fact that none of the major factions in Fallout 4 are willing to play nice with one another the Minutemen can actually to a certain degree complement all other factions Paladin dance is quoted as saying that the Minutemen reminded him of the Brotherhood of Steel under Owen Lyon's leadership which in the moment was stated as a slight insult but does seem to suggest that there is enough common ground or at the very least usefulness that the Minutemen could be able to work side by side with the Brotherhood similarly Desdemona refuses to play nice with the Minutemen despite the fact that they never once lift a finger against the railroad her only argument against an alliance is a shallow over generalized assertion that the Minutemen reflect the shared values of the Commonwealth which are rotten which I probably don't have to tell you is as Hollow and Prejudiced as Maxin claiming that dance is a soulless automaton because he was born in a lab instead of a womb a partnership where the Minutemen provide the general secure already in Manpower and the railroad provide the intelligence Network and covert Ops arms seems like a match made in heaven but Desdemona refuses to accept help from them even though she has direct access to the general of the Minutemen and even if the sole survivor chooses to side with the Minutemen assuming they allowed The Institute to evacuate before they blew it up she'll even continue to accept the services of the general as a railroad agent in the aftermath why why couldn't a few lines of dialogue and a couple lines of code be written to allow both factions to storm The Institute together granted I've never been part of AAA video game development team but holy Adams irradiated balls does it seem like this could have been accomplished with just a few dozen man hours plus localized voice recording and all now pairings between the Institute and other factions are harder but not impossible to justify especially if you're leaning into the Institute equals evil Direction where they are basically just pitting the other factions against each other and using the others as cannon fodder Railroad and Brotherhood Partnerships aren't impossible but they would certainly require a removal of certain dogmatic leadership elements before either side could be convinced to play nice the railroad is full of zealots so I'm not sure anyone could be convinced to join with the Brotherhood of Steel however maybe Pam could convince them since she's driven entirely by Logic and statistics but Arthur Maxson would definitely need to be replaced with someone more logical and empathetic which is almost as hard to find a member of the BOS who would be a suitable leader to replace him pretty much all of the Proctors Lancer Captain Kells all are just really terrible options Brandis possibly Proctor Ingram or dance would be the only possible choices but they are all way too far down the chain of command to be reasonably placed next in line for Elder certain cut content that supposedly gave the Soul Survivor the option to replace Maxim with dance notwithstanding also those options would all lie pretty heavily with the Soul Survivor pulling the you owe me card instead of acting out of any personal conviction there's just so many roadblocks that I don't think there's any easy way to accomplish the mythical piece useful ending where all factions are allied with one another to achieve a common goal unless you also implemented our five easy ways to fix each of the factions alongside I feel like there's a super cut video on the way which by the way we've applied this five easy ways to fix series to each of the major factions in Fallout 4. so if you haven't checked those out and are interested well they're out there would implementing any or all of these fixes change the order in which you rank Fallout games naturally I'm a bit biased here but I think these changes could actually put Fallout 4 neck and neck with Fallout New Vegas from a story perspective I'd definitely like to hear your thoughts and ideas in the comments below if you're interested in checking out our sister Channel gray galaxies follows the same commentary format and discusses a wide variety of sci-fi topics until next time stay safe and we hope to see you here next time at gray gaming

Channel: Grey Gaming

Views: 143,671

Keywords: Fallout 4, Fallout Lore, Fallout Story

Id: i-Tiz04lWQE

Length: 18min 54sec (1134 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 16 2023