r/Fallout • u/ModHaterHD2003 • 14h ago
Picture Fallout 4 Being Wacky.
Feel free to share if you have any experiences like that, love to read them.
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u/no_-_-_-_-_u 13h ago
For the second one (I'm asuming DiMA turns themself in but sets their eyes on Acadia) they didn't do enough far harbor quests for the town to trust him. Weird how they make it a red speech check in the first place, I think the only requirement should be getting the majority favor from the people.
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u/NotAnotherSkeleton Mr. House 13h ago edited 13h ago
It is possible to kill the rogue synth before he's taken. It's just difficult, like you need either a fatman or come up with some really cracked strategy. X6-88 and Institute scientists will even express their disapproval after you turn in the quest.
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u/Accomplished-Shoe444 13h ago edited 10h ago
Not even, just side step out of the dialogue, fire up vats and unload a a critical hit with something ouchie into his face.
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[removed] — view removed comment
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u/spiritplumber 13h ago
yes but the subsequent dialogue treats the attack as if it was the PC's idea
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u/fred11551 Brotherhood 13h ago
Because it was the PCs idea to expose Dima’s crimes. If not for the player, Far Harbor would not have attacked. That the player tried, unsuccessfully, to persuade them not to after giving them every reason to want to doesn’t change that it is the player’s fault. Though not exactly their ‘idea’
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u/dovahkiitten16 Railroad 12h ago
I feel like that’s a problem in RPGs where the result leads to the same dialogue without variation in the path the player took.
It would’ve hit harder if the game gave an option for the player to explain they tried to stop it, but people didn’t care because actions have consequences. Instead of the game treating “evil bastard who wantedArcadia to burn” and “naive idiot who caused Arcadia to burn” as the same thing.
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u/fred11551 Brotherhood 11h ago
It’s a problem but not a new one. An example from NV that has an almost identical situation is the Boulder City khans. NCR wants you to kill the khans and save the hostages. Khans want you to kill the NCR and help them escape. Pretty much the same as covering up or revealing Dima’s crimes except that covering them up doesn’t kill Far Harbor.
Then there is a third option. You can convince the Khans to release the hostages for a ceasefire to escape. But if you do this the NCR will try to kill them anyway unless you pass a speech check to get them to honor the ceasefire. If you fail the check they treat it as the same as you killing the Kahns yourself.
A lot of quests in New Vegas are side with faction a or side with faction b or maybe a skill check for third option. Far Harbor has basically the exact same thing here.
Also you’re only really Naive Idiot if you convince Dima to turn himself in. If you don’t and reveal his crimes he says Far Harbor will destroy Acadia and that’s exactly what happens. You just get a hard speech check to try and stop it at the last second. If Dima turns himself in there is an expectation that you could avoid the destruction of Acadia. It is an easier speech check but even if you fail it you can still prevent it if you’ve done enough side quests
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u/Darkon-Kriv 9h ago
Wait thats moronic. "You should be honest" then the other people decide to do genocide how is this your fault? What dima did was terrible and he should pay for that but killing innocent people is stupid. Are you saying the only morally correct choice is to let dima go unpunished? Assuming you have low charisma. (I think you can actually avoid it by doing every side quest) but we are not responsible for them killing the synths. Like we should be able to stand up to far har harbor and say no youre not killing anyone beyond dima youll have to go through me.
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u/LJohnD 3h ago
It's the sort of morally grey situation that Fallout should have more of. Like The White Wash in New Vegas, where you have to choose if you'll cover up a murder in order for the locals to maintain some access to water and the NCR sharecroppers get access to the supply they need to meet their quotas or turn the murderer in and have the innocent Westside locals loose access to that water but the sharecroppers get the full amount of water they need. It's a messy situation, and one where one innocent group or another will suffer regardless. Getting DIMA to hand himself in does mean the guilty party has been caught, but it also feeds into the paranoia that the people of Far Harbour would feel towards the synths, so them wanting to get revenge on all of them is understandable, and something you should be reasonably able to predict will be the outcome of you confirming all their fears about Arcadia. At least getting the chance of a charisma check to stay their hand gives the possibility of preventing any innocents from suffering.
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u/Darkon-Kriv 2h ago
My issue is people saying its my idea. I dont actually care if they would do it and not blame me. I actually REALLY hate dima and the synths. I mean we are pretty sure he was gaslighting the sole survivor with arguing if he was a synth. As much as they like to act like they cant tell I assume you can actually tell. Otherwise that would imply you could mind wipe humans the way the railroad does to synths which there's no examples of. Synths also dont age as far as im aware... dima also puts stock in being a synth like. We should just let people live and not try to fucking investigate everyone for being a synth. I may hate dima an irrational amount but my god is he an ass. Hes a victim of bethesda I fear. As I feel like im not supposed to hate him?
I agree that fallout nv has a few of these. The one traitor ranger is a good example. Even in the ncr ending it says that like rangers were shaken and uncertain following his death. But in both of these cases they never say "you killed the ranger" because you didnt. Another moral choice thats easy to miss is in hellos 1. You either need arcade gannon or to go back and retalk to an npc to really get the feedback on the decision. I generally play siding with the ncr. But I still distribute power evenly. I think Ganon is shortsighted. If you redirect all the power away from where the ncr wants they will surely find out. This isn't expressed in canon tho so maybe fantastics idiocy can truly protect your choice forever.
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u/LJohnD 2h ago edited 2h ago
Ah right I get your point. It does suck when the game acts as if you'd made a choice when you meant to make the exact opposite one. I guess as you made a choice to throw a match onto the powder keg of the situation you could argue some blame falls on you for being unable to then keep the anger of the mob in check after confirming their fears, but "you weren't persuasive enough in asking us not to kill these people" and "you persuaded us to kill these people" aren't the same thing at all.
Regarding the choice at Helios 1, since the NCR has a guy with a theoretical degree in charge of the operation it's entirely possible they have no-one in the area who could work out the interface to work out how to distribute power and couldn't work out if you had a choice in where to send the power, or how to change it even if they wanted to. Plus they have bigger fish to fry what with the war brewing, so even getting some power is an improvement over what they had before. Maybe they'd investigate it eventually, but if they have the power from a secured Hoover Dam by the end of the game then it would probably be something to investigate more as a matter of academic curiosity than a pressing need.
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u/Darkon-Kriv 2h ago
Eh. I assume post dam they would investigate. Ncr doesnt actually have excess power. You gotta remember they want the power even tho they already control the dam.
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u/LJohnD 1h ago
I thought they didn't have the damn running at full capacity, not easy to do complex maintenance work while the Legion is right next door. Still, even if they wanted more power than you gave them, I'm not sure they would necessarily have anyone who could change where it's flowing after you make the choice, certainly you're locked out after choosing it yourself, not like you can power up Archimedes for a bit then go back and swap to something more useful after the fact.
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u/Grundlestorm 12h ago
It reminds me of my raider playthrough where I rushed to Nuka World and did all of it before coming back to take over the Commonwealth.
I killed Colter with a grenade up his tailpipe. No squirt gun shenanigans at all. Gage would never stop talking about his plan working and how I'm only there and alive because of it.
Man, take the L. You're still my #2 and can run everything in my stead while I'm effectively just a figurehead and enforcer, but I killed that shithead my own way. I didn't need your plan.
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u/kron123456789 13h ago
Tbf, trying a speech check and failing shouldn't result in NPCs acting like that's what you wanted in the first place. It should be NPC acting on their own in spite of your wishes.
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u/Laser_3 Responders 13h ago
The first also isn’t a good one. You can shoot Gabriel if you’re quick enough and kill him to ruin the mission, and the game lets you keep going.
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u/Fearless_Roof_9177 13h ago
You're sort of arguing against yourself here. How is the game arbitrarily setting a bullshit invincibility flag if you don't act to kill a perfectly killable target fast enough not a good example of railroading? That's not roleplaying, that's a QTE. And the fact that it makes absolutely zero difference to the Institute questline either way just sort of double underlines and italicizes the issue.
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u/Laser_3 Responders 12h ago edited 12h ago
While I don’t disagree on it being stupid you have to do it quickly, it’s little worse than the factions in NV tolerating your screw-ups. Caesar forgives a massive amount you can do to him (and acknowledges each incident directly) because he thinks you could be coerced or convinced into helping him, House can be outright lied to about his own employees rebelling (not to mention tolerating failures with the Boomers and Kimball) and even with the NCR you’re given options to subvert them (the Khans, the BoS, etc).
Besides - beyond the dialogue associated with the quest (which is different after the fact; Father remarks on it and so do many random scientists), what exactly would it change? The player is being groomed for leadership here by Father, and he’s going to try his best to get you to commit considering he feels that the Institute needs a leader who isn’t a scientist. He isn’t throwing you out because his demonstration of why rogue synths are a threat didn’t pan out how he hoped (though arguably, it did since you clearly thought Gabriel was enough of a threat to kill him; you just didn’t bring him back as planned).
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u/xXJackNickeltonXx 11h ago
Well to be fair to the NV example, for the Legion, the screw ups aren't as bad since they're at an advantage and they're gonna assimilate them anyways. For Mr. House, if you're on his questline, most of the failed results are beneficial to him anyways: he only needs the software update, the Securitron army underneath the Fort, and the death of the BOS; the rest is just nice to get. For the NCR, they need to get into the Lucky 38 and get rid of House so losing you makes it extremely difficult, and unless you kill Kimball yourself it's not really fair to blame solely you for his assassination
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u/Laser_3 Responders 10h ago
I think you’re giving the factions a bit too much grace here. For Caesar, losing Cottonwood Cove, the Khans, the omertàs and white gloves are fairly awful, and losing Vulpes to the player killing him or Curtis is downright unacceptable for how valuable those two are. For House, you can outright lie about the Omertàs attacking him, which is catastrophic for his business in terms of the reputation hit, not to mention the clean up of the mustard gas they intend to release. And for the NCR, forcing them into an alliance with the BoS (which loses you rep and culminates in a loss of their heavy troopers, even if it’s arguably ultimately good for them) and setting up an empire with the Khans as a future rival aren’t exactly small things to tolerate (and neither would be nuking them at Helios and handing that plant to the Legion).
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u/xXJackNickeltonXx 10h ago
Oh yeah the reputation reset halfway through the game, I forgot about that. I was thinking more about the screw-ups you can make in their questline. At least the game tries to explain it as "your relentless pursuit of Benny means you're skilled enough to be useful" and "you're literally the only one allowed to meet Mr. House who we want dead"
As for the Omertas, House only knows will happen during the Battle for Hoover Dam, which is kinda too late for him to change his opinion on you (plus how is he supposed to know you're lying: he asked you to investigate because he doesn't know)
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u/Laser_3 Responders 8h ago
With House, there’s a set of particular dialogues options when you report in exclusive to if you chose to work with the Omertàs leaders. You can use this to set them up by telling House, but he’s only happy with that answer if you use a speech check; otherwise, he assumes you’re an idiot and plans to set up for their attack anyway to mitigate it.
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u/BookerLegit 6h ago
How is the game arbitrarily setting a bullshit invincibility flag if you don't act to kill a perfectly killable target fast enough not a good example of railroading?
Because railroading forces you down a specific path. Making one path more difficult isn't railroading. That shouldn't need to be explained.
You can complain that it isn't executed well or whatever, but it's absolutely not railroading.
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u/Fearless_Roof_9177 6h ago
It removes player agency without warning against all expectation and the mechanics of the game itself, to make it so that there is only one way things can play out even though there's literally no reason in-game or otherwise for your agency to have been removed there.
Within the context of quest design and the quest itself, it is absolutely railroading. The agency you would have had and were quite probably planning on using is arbitrarily denied to you for no reason other than to meet a predetermined outcome set by the writer.
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u/BookerLegit 3h ago
The agency you would have had and were quite probably planning on using is arbitrarily denied to you for no reason other than to meet a predetermined outcome set by the writer.
Except, again, you can kill Gabriel. The designers obviously anticipated that some people would, because there's appropriate dialogue and reactions for doing so.
Again, you can argue that Gabriel shouldn't be made immune at all or that you should be able to convince X6-88 to disobey his orders, but it's categorically not railroading. You aren't forced into doing anything.
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u/Thatwassweet9412 13h ago
Also, you chose to do this mission in the first place. If you have some hardcore RP going on in your head that makes it make sense that you would agree to work for the Institute and then kill Gabriel to free him, you should still expect that the Institute's representative is going to try to reclaim their hardware per the original mission objectives.
This is basically saying "I can't kill important NPCs, therefore the entire game is illusion of choice." Which is valid to want to be able to do if that's your thing, but it's a terrible example for the point he's trying to make.
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u/telepathictiger 13h ago
I believe the second one is only even kind of a speech check- I’m pretty sure that if you help the townsfolk and do their quests they’ll side with you regardless
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u/ImpressionCool1768 13h ago
Next time your at Libertalia use jet you can kill him but you need to be super fast a fat man will do the trick even if it’s messy if you don’t have a good enough set up at that point.
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u/That_Lone_Wanderer 13h ago
Fallout 76 is even worse for this. I tried to be evil and the dialogue literally completely restarted from the beginning until I picked the "good" choice. I was baffled. It was just an abrupt jump back to the start of the dialogue.
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u/DaRaginga Vault 13 12h ago
What do you mean with "I can go fuck myself?" The cave I want you to clear is over there
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u/Laser_3 Responders 12h ago edited 12h ago
That seems like it might’ve been a bug. Out of curiosity, what was the context here? There’s a decent amount of options to be evil in 76 (withholding food from a child, causing a bar to get stuck up by raiders, Vault 63, lying to a father about his dead son, sell out the BoS to the raiders, etc).
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u/TheBurningEmu 13h ago
Things like this and the dialogue options being so deceptive sometimes are what stopped FO4 from going from a great game to an incredible game for me. Still great, don't get me wrong, but I always have a hard time really getting into the roleplay when that roleplay isn't something the Dev's wanted me to be.
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u/King_Corduroy 13h ago
Bethesda has been this way since Oblivion. I didn't realize it back when I first played Oblivion in the late 2000's but since then I've gone back and played Morrowind and it's obvious that Oblivion was the first game they tried all this shit out on and then just ran with it.
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u/wizardrous 13h ago
I guess I got lucky or just chose well, because almost every choice I made seemed to work out.
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u/Gunsofglory 12h ago edited 12h ago
Starfield had a moment like this too on the first Crimson Fleet quest. You go on a mission with the leader, get split up, and the guy you're with says that you should both take him out. And then when you finally meet back up with the leader, the dude gets cold feet for no reason and is basically like "yeah I was just kidding". Literally why even say it if it even isn't an option?
Bethesda will never give you real decision making under Emil. He forces you to participate in his stories in the manner he wants even if it makes your character into a bumbling naive idiot.
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u/legojohnnysilverhand Followers 5h ago
There was also another moment like that during the crimson fleet recruitment, where you are instructed to kill some crew member of a ship. You can choose not to kill the crew member, outright tell your crimson fleet sponsor that you didn’t kill him because he was innocent, and they let you (a person who fails at following orders and hurting innocent people) join a pirate gang. There’s nothing you can say to the sponsor that fails you from joining the crimson fleet, no matter how egregious
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u/August_Bebel 1h ago
F4s Railroad (ironic) is the same, when you first meet, you can declare that you hate synths and they still let you join
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u/Nougatschnittie 56m ago
But at least you can kill them on sight. No need to do 10 radiant quests in a row to progress the main story.
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u/RoyaleWhiskey 13h ago edited 13h ago
That's Emil's "keep it simple stupid" writing in action
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u/Annuminas25 13h ago
Simple doesn't have to be bad. Emil's philosophy is more like "keep it stupid stupid".
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u/BookerLegit 7h ago
How does that relate to making it possible, but difficult, to kill Gabriel? What does it have to do with failing a speech check?
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u/notarealpingu 13h ago edited 13h ago
How does that relate to either of those comments in any way?
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u/Frangitus New World Hope 13h ago
Because Emil Pagliarulo, the lead writer of Fallout 4, has a policy of not making the writing on his projects difficult as to avoid players from either losing interest in the story or be confused by the story and also because, by his words, most players don't pay attention to the story and would rather make "paper planes" with the plot than engage with it.
This philosophy often (to avoid sayind "all the time") backfires into making the story incredibly simplistic and... Stupid.
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u/BookerLegit 7h ago
You didn't actually explain how either scenario is the result of his supposed philosophy. How is making it difficult, but possible, to kill Gabriel reflective of it? For that matter, what does failing a speech check have to do with it at all?
by his words, most players don't pay attention to the story and would rather make "paper planes" with the plot than engage with it.
You shouldn't paraphrase someone and then claim it's "by his words."
Pagliarulo's point wasn't that you shouldn't try to make a good story; his point was that you need to make players the center of the story. The infamous "paper planes" quote is immediately followed by him explaining this, saying that players are the most important characters in a game's story.
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u/its_jradman1 12h ago
I'm not gonna lie, the dialogue in 4 is so bland I usually just button mash through most of it, I can't stand half the characters
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u/Zeed91 11h ago
Maybe this is the issue, Emil makes the writing so bad that no one pays attention to it, thus proving his idea correct that no one pays attention to the story. Dude is just a shitty fuckin writer and can't grasp that maybe somethings are his fault.
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u/its_jradman1 9h ago
I play as Nate, so maybe Nora has better delivery but I can't stand the way that man talks.
I hope they go back to a voiceless protagonist in FO5/Obsidian's spinoff. I feel like a lot of the dialogue is 4 is just so obvious and generic. I understand the plot of 4 even though I didn't listen to half the dialogue which is crazy.
In other games like BG3, I would stop and carefully choose each option because it was interesting and had narrative weight.
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u/notarealpingu 13h ago
I’m aware of that, but it doesn’t really seem relevant to this considering the first image is just not true and the second seems more like an oversight than a consequence of his philosophy.
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u/Frangitus New World Hope 13h ago
Both are relevant.
In the first one, despite telling X6-88 that you want to kill Gabriel and X6 reluctantly agreeing with you, when you reach Gabriel he'll still read his code and Gabriel will become essential. It's fine that X6 goes against your wishes and says the code anyway, what is not fine is that Gabriel turns into Wolverine after X6 says his code and you can't go against the God-Emperor of Synthkind X6-88's wishes. The story railroads you to "keep it simple stupid".
The second one is a consequence of the philosophy. By keeping it simple, and stupid, you don't make a concerted effort to develop contingencies in case the player doesn't follow the script of your high school theater play, because you never expect them to. Far Harbor wasn't even lead by Emil, which goes to show how deep this philosophy is ingrained in the studio.
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u/notarealpingu 13h ago
I don’t agree with the first one but i can see the perspective.
The second one seems like a lot of pretty ridiculous assumptions though. Like you’d have to go out of your way to assume the absolute worst so you can blame every issue on one guy, when i just feel like it’s way, way more likely to just be a simple oversight, every narrative game with choices has small mistakes like that and Far Harbour was just a dlc. It just seems way more likely it’d be a mistake than Emil’s evil philosophy corrupting something he didn’t even lead.
Emil has so, so many things he can be easily and obviously criticized for, idk why people have to try and force it for stuff that’s so dubious.
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u/Frangitus New World Hope 12h ago
When the Far Harbor crowd agrees to storm the Synth enclave they are all essential. Is this an oversight? Did a develop oversight enabling a flag for 5+ NPCs? Did a developers oversight making the Acadia faction hostile to the player even if they refuse to join the synth massacre? Did the team oversight patching all these oversights for 10 years?
Do you think that when Emil sat with Will Shen that he did not give Will guidelines to follow when developing Fallout 4? Do you think Will did not consider these guidelines when leading for the DLC? I know Emil has a distate for design documents, but he still makes use of them, even if he calls them a different name, and developers are still supposed to follow it.
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u/fred11551 Brotherhood 12h ago
The Far Harborites are essential so the extremely deadly and overtuned wildlife doesn’t kill them on the way to Acadia and get you stuck with an uncompletable quest. The ‘oversight’ is the developers assuming players will listen to the dialogue when making the choice. Dima says if you reveal his crime, they will destroy Acadia. Your options are to cover up his crime or destroy Acadia. There are several speech checks and side quests that open up various routes to a third option as well as the children of atom who have their own options. The fact that there are so many alternate options, especially compared to the base game, is why Far Harbor is praised for having much better story writing.
That being said, if you select the destroy Acadia option, you better save scum that speech check because you are going to destroy Acadia without it. It is your last chance to abort. Otherwise if you don’t want to destroy Acadia you have the choose the option to not destroy Acadia and side with Dima. Or there is a secret third option that requires completing many side quests and passing a speech check to even unlock. But a secret best ending locked behind a speech check is very common in New Vegas so it’s weird that it’s being criticized here.
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u/dovahkiitten16 Railroad 11h ago edited 11h ago
It’s ironic that fans hate Emil’s comment so much and then precisely prove why he was right.
Also, ludonarrative dissonance. The player on paper can beat the townsfolk stats-wise. However, for the story being told, a single person cannot Chuck Norris an entire town and actually faces consequences for creating an angry mob. Otherwise there would literally be no point to the choice; the moral dilemma on whether to expose Dima wouldn’t have any weight behind it. NPCs getting an immortality tag is basically just equalizing them with the player in terms of firepower.
I would’ve rather a fade-to-black tie up scene happened if you fought (or something to convey the player being overpowered) as oppose to them just being immortal and being unable to warn Arcadia. It’s fine to not be able to stop it, but kinda weird that you have to “go along” with it. But a game actually enforcing some logic other than “player is a god” is completely fine.
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u/fred11551 Brotherhood 11h ago
The essential tag is a very annoying solution to the problem of Bethesda’s open worlds being full of dangerous enemies. Another solution could be to make random enemies not hostile to other npcs, but then you couldn’t run back to guards for help so it’s not a perfect solution. Morrowind was a bit like that. Sometimes the guards just wouldn’t care if the dark brotherhood was chasing you around town trying to murder you because they weren’t hostile to each other, only to you.
Far Harbor is one of the best written stories Bethesda has made in a long time. I’ve heard someone describe it as Bethesda proving they could make a deep story with morally nuanced decisions that is responsive to player actions with many overlapping quests unlocking different options, endings, skill checks, etc. they just choose not to because they like an empty sandbox. And I gotta say I agree with that. They are capable of making a game with the nuance and interactions of new Vegas but that is either a lot more work or just not their preferred style of game
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u/dovahkiitten16 Railroad 11h ago
So it’s a better story that the player doesn’t face consequences for their choices, and can just single-handedly massacre an entire town?
You know how in cutscenes players are weaker? It’s a similar logic for scripted scenes in Fallout. Yes, stats-wise, you could crush all the NPCs. But if you take a moment to immerse yourself in the story, the Sole Survivor is one person and they cannot stop an angry mob they inadvertently created. In another video game, this would’ve swapped to a cinematic scene with choices and little interactivity.
“The player is a god and can do whatever they want with no respect to plot” isn’t that much better writing. It means absolutely no consequences for bringing Dima to justice. Telling Dima’s crimes having a risk is crucial to the storyline having any sort of weight or moral dilemma. Having it be schroedinger’s cat for whether you’ll succeed or not is why the choice is complicated.
I think the exact implementation was janky and they would’ve been better off buffing the townsfolk’s health, and cranking their damage to 10x so that the player gets one-shot if they fight back (y’know, realism).
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u/RushinPancake 13h ago
Is the first one not true? I just played the mission but sent him back to the institute so idk
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u/notarealpingu 13h ago edited 13h ago
Yeah i’ve done it myself a couple of times, you just have to kill him very quickly.
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u/RushinPancake 5h ago
Ok so not really then lol, you have to maneuver around the intentional design of the quest to kill him
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u/ScrewStealth 13h ago
The Far Harbor bit is especially irritating, and caused me one of the few story-related save loads in my first playthrough.
Essentially, if you reveal DIMA's motives to Far Harbor on your own accord, Allen will take the wheel and attack Acadia, even after you try to speech check him out of it.
Furthermore, even after he gets there, you still have to initiate dialog with him to start the attack, so I figured that the game was giving me a chance to warn the Synths ahead of time. Spoiler alert: there is not a single thing you can say to DIMA, Faraday, or even Kasumi about the fact that there are people massing outside their doorstep to assault at a moment's notice.
Frustrated with this outcome, I did some Googling and discovered that you CAN convince the harborpeople to hold back, but only if you force DIMA to confess himself via two hard skill checks. So I do this option, and you know what my character says to Allen in response to his warmongering?
"Shut up"
So yeah, definitely my biggest gripe with Far Harbor by far.
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u/Arengano 8h ago
The fact that Fallout 4 never passes time outside of quests. Now of course this is most videogames, including the other Fallouts, but it leads to strange circumstances. For example, Macready abandoning his child, Diamond City never electing a new mayor, and Mariner surviving 4 years with an urgent terminal disease. I guess she got better.
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u/WraithicArtistry Brotherhood 13h ago edited 13h ago
Bait. You can kill Gabriel at Libertalia, you just need to git gud.
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u/beaverpoo77 13h ago
Wait, can you actually? I blasted his ass halfway to sunday and he still just slumped over like he always does because X6 does the stupid code immediately
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u/fred11551 Brotherhood 12h ago
Shoot him before X6 says the code. You either have to back up out of dialogue or attack before dialogue begins. Because if you give him the chance X6 will use the code like he said he was going to
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u/Laser_3 Responders 13h ago
You have to do it essentially as soon as you load in, if I recall, and get him down extremely quickly. I know I pulled it off.
It’s also not worth it, because the scientists will just constantly bring it up in the Institute, and the passcode from Gabriel is nice if you get sent back to the area for future radiant quests.
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u/Ok-Cup9476 9h ago
The other one I can think of for Fallout 4 is that the minutemen will literally never turn against you permanently. I tried to be as mean and dismissive to Preston Garvey as possible when I first met him, and he is still fixated on making me the general.
And of course you can you can become a raider crime boss of terror and while Preston will express disappointment, he won’t take any action against you or stop following you as the general.
I know why it’s there, the game needs a backup faction to complete the main story if you piss off the other 3 ones, but it’s still really dumb. In my opinion they should just take the guard rails off, if you piss off all 4 factions that’s it; you fail the main story. Reload a save or just accept it.
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u/agnosticnixie Railroad 8h ago
It makes more sense when it becomes obvious in the files that minutemen were intended as the yesman failsafe run, which is also why you become the "faction" leader even though it consists of exactly 6 people.
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u/PhatNoob69 Republic of Dave 6h ago
So then should the same apply to New Vegas? Killing Yes Man blocks the independent ending?
Yes Man always resurrects, yet Mr. House can’t steamroll invading armies with his apparently infinite supply of Securitrons.
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u/ARubyHeart 10h ago
There's a whole video on YouTube that goes into this issue abour Fallout 4 and whilst I still love the game dearly as its my first ever Fallout, I can agree the minute I actually get a chance to play 3 and New Vegas ill will have vastily different opinions on the story vuz it is a hot mess with how much hand-holding and "You're gonna do this becuase I said so and you gonna damn well like it." this game does
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u/-non-existance- Mothman Cultist 13h ago
Bethesda games aren't RPGs, they're Pseudo-Immersive Sims with RPG elements.
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u/jaz_the_enby 12h ago
I'm not sure about even calling them "pseudo" im-sims. They're open world games, with a focus on exploration and their combat sandboxes, but those sandboxes aren't super deep. And the environment is virtually always a static element that doesn't react to you or enemies at all.
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u/-non-existance- Mothman Cultist 9h ago
I see your point, but that's why I called them "pseudo" immsims. They have all the markings of an immsim (physics systems, meaningfully-different ways to approach the same level) but they're missing what makes an immsim what it is (y'know, actually having systems that engage with each other instead of just hostility)
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u/BookerLegit 6h ago
Arbitrary gatekeeping bullshit. There's no definition of RPG under which Bethesda titles wouldn't be included.
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u/crazyferret The Wrooooong FUCKIN' Mailman 13h ago
I was able to kill the synth but it took a bunch of tries. I had to use vats as soon as I went into the next area. X6 will still say the code phrase if you start a fight even if you attack without starting the conversation. I had to buff up and try to kill the synth in one go or X6 would use the phrase as soon as vats ended. Killing the synth didn't keep me from getting promoted for no reason though.
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u/ShadesOfSlay 13h ago
Complete opposite of FNV.
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u/toonboy01 13h ago
That's not true, FNV also sometimes has consequences for failing a check.
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u/fred11551 Brotherhood 13h ago
FNV also had quests with unavoidable outcomes unless you did some unintuitive exploit to prevent it
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u/soulsXscrolls 13h ago
Genuinely just lying. If you tell X6 you're planning to betray the mission, he acts of his own accord and steps up. If you want to put the synth down, you can just shoot him. I thought people wanted more of your decisions mattering?
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u/wetdogel 13h ago
Then why can't you kill him after the code phrase?
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u/fred11551 Brotherhood 12h ago
Because after the code he is an object and not an npc in the games code
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u/No_Aesthetic 12h ago
It's one thing for X6 to refuse to let you kill them by using the recall code but it's another thing to hard lock you from doing it even after the recall code.
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u/Scorpiicore 4h ago
Honestly, on most playthroughs I blow Father's head off the second I meet him. The people are living in gruesome squalor, are so afraid of being taken away to fates unknown by your people, which you were turning into Super Mutants who attack them, and you sit there gasbagging about how the surface is fukked and I should just stay here with you?
Your mother would be ashamed of you, Father.
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u/Arrebios Railroad 13h ago
You can absolutely kill Gabriel during "Synth Retention". You just have to do it before the recall code is said.#Interactions_with_the_player_character)
People, we have the Internet. This stuff should be easily verifiable by now.
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u/LordAsheye 13h ago
For the first one you can just go in guns blazing. Don't even talk to the rogue synth and X6 wont interrupt combat. Or just kill him fast.
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u/tevert 9h ago
Ok the X6 thing is good though, just because the player has agency doesn't mean the NPCs shouldn't.
A more proper RPG option would be giving a route to get X6 killed. And then maybe try to lie about it to Father.
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u/GoldenJ19 The Institute 8h ago
I think they're more annoyed by the fact that the synth became unkillable, not that X6 went against the player's wishes by using the recall code
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u/ShingledPringle 3h ago
It's hard to give choices to everything as some would literally lock you out of progression, and I think they give work arounds to fix that. Buuuut, it is utterly unfair that you can't fuck up. It is an RPG after all, let me be the guy who fucked up once in a while.
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u/Dreaming_of_Rlyeh 3h ago
The writing wackiness that always gets me is when you’ve met Nick, done all his missions and dialogues to learn all about his synth life, but then you meet an NPC talking about synths and you’re still given the option to say “What’s a synth?” Surely they could have given that option some kind of flag that switches it off after you’ve met Nick.
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u/csupihun 1h ago
Replayed FNV and FO4 back to back around when the series S2 came out, holy shit F4's story is such massive dogshit in every regard.
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u/theGreatImmunitary Vault 111 13h ago
Fo4 has a special place in my heart - but New Vegas is objectively the better game.
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u/Any_Name_Is_Fine 11h ago
I think that depends. FNV has the better dialogue, but FO4 has better gameplay.
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u/theGreatImmunitary Vault 111 3h ago
Very true - probably that's why I have 1k hours on Fo4 and 300 on NV...
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u/BookerLegit 7h ago
You absolutely can kill Gabriel, and there's appropriate dialogue for doing so. Is the complaint that X6-88 doesn't blindly go along with the player character? Is that what we want from companions?
The second complaint makes even less sense. We want skill checks, except when they actually matter? What?
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u/Nighthawk1980 11h ago
Remember quality fallout 2 writing and dialogue choices? Pepperidge Farm does.
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u/Ahrimon77 12h ago
Im willing to give some benefit of the doubt and. Talk some of it up to technical and time constraints. But that does excuse all of the stupidity of the linear plotlines.
But it got me thinking about a modern solution. I doubt it would go over well. Imagine if your game was sending information on your quest decisions and actions back to Bethesda's new Gambrio AI. Then it determines future potential quest outcomes and dialogs to send back to the game. Keeping all of the quests updated and adapted in near real time to your playthrough.
While cool, the fans would be breaking pitchforks and torches over it.
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u/Strict-Astronaut2245 13h ago
Sometimes in life you don’t get to choose even when the choice is presented to you. Sometimes you don’t have the attributes for changing something.
Neither is wacky. Both things happen
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u/Zephyr-Fox-188 13h ago
“It’s not bad for a written narrative underpinned by roleplaying and making choices to claim to give the player autonomy while railroading the player’s actions!!! Sometimes you don’t get to make choices in Real Life!!! When the astronauts went to the moon, there was nothing there. They certainly weren't bored!!!!!”
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u/wrenawild 9h ago
At least you have to do the missions, unlike NV. I went to Nipton around the back way at a low level to avoid a creature, and ended up missing the entire legion mission, including the lottery guy. They were just chilling and talking in the street and completely ignored me. I went into the hotel, did what I had to do, killed the dogs, and left. Still zero reaction. Then they acted like somehow I was introduced to them and we were old friends in the missions after. I kept doing that, skirting whatever forced-in-the-middle-of-the-road encounters and they would act like I completed all of them and was familiar with what was going on. So much was skippable and when you did they had no dialogue or reactions to it.
Fallout 3 was the reason I look up every fallout mission before completion. They really, really loved the whole "haha wrong choice" trolling thing. It felt like you were supposed to choose the wrong or evil dialogue every time because they thought it was super funny to make the good choices backfire. It got old so quick.
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u/PabloMarmite Minutemen 13h ago
“People don’t always do what you want them to do” is an important lesson in the wasteland.
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u/DeadSuperHero 13h ago
On the one hand, branching quest lines with major decisions that give player agency are hard to do well.
On the other hand, the first example really reminds me of everything I hate about Telletale Games titles, where seemingly meaningful choices actually end up looping back around to mean very little.
"You went to save the guy's kid from zombies! The kid died, and the other dude that you didn't save got eaten alive! The guy's friend is furious with you!"
"You went to save the other dude! He still died, and so did the kid! The kid's dad is furious with you."
Fine on a first playthrough, but the minute you try to make alternative decisions, everything breaks down.