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Internet Wizard posted:Glad I remembered correctly. I always liked when somebody diversified how the Force can be experienced in an interesting way. Like there was a little bit from the beginning of the Dark Nest trilogy when Jacen went and studied with all sorts of different people to get a more diverse perspective on the Force and that was probably the only good part from the bug orgy series. I remember reading Matthew Woodring Stover - author of the Acts of Caine books, which are pretty good - tried to introduce nuance to the Force in the licensed books he wrote but editorial stomped on the attempt hard
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Feb 14, 2018 06:09
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Wolfsheim posted:Take Nick, but feel free to swap him out for Old Longfellow (the new Far Harbor companion, his cabin is a settlement) when you take a break from the main quest to go roaming the island. Guy makes a great hunting and drinking buddy. He's also probably the easiest companion to get maximum affinity with. You can literally do it by standing in one spot and chugging bourbon until he loves you. But yeah Nick's history with some pieces of Far Harbor is pretty unique among the companions; it does a lot to set the stage. If nothing else take him to talk to DIMA. Really though Old Longfellow is the best companion in the game. Who wouldn't want a salty old fisherman to follow you around and drink absurd amounts of booze with?
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Feb 14, 2018 06:24
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Neurosis posted:I remember reading Matthew Woodring Stover - author of the Acts of Caine books, which are pretty good - tried to introduce nuance to the Force in the licensed books he wrote but editorial stomped on the attempt hard Shatterpoint, Vietnam/Heart of Darkness in Star Wars.
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Feb 14, 2018 06:35
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Mycroft Holmes posted:what do i do about fallout 4 having insane load times? i'm getting really annoyed with how long just fast travel is taking. Disabling V-sync may help a bit. But bear in mind that there's a bug where you end up with infinite load times in the downtown area for some reason. I thought the vsynch issue fixed my game but it didn't, so I've given up in frustration. Eh I was basically done with the game anyway, it was getting too repetitive and the faction ideologies are flawed in really dumb ways. I really hate how all scientists in this game all have the same personality and have no sense of humor, like everytime you make some smart alec comment they're always just like :welp: That's not a hypothsis... It's like some kind of tv tropes style approach to character writing. Scientist == humorless robot. Also, for a group of scientists the Institutes ideology really makes no goddamn sense. Oh we kidnapped your son because we needed him for his genetic purity, the wasteland is missing genetic purity, that's why we have to send out waves of cyborgs. Genetic purity is not a thing. It really undermines the whole sympathetic angle of the institute when you first meet them and they're wholly unreasonable simply because the writers wrote themselves into a corner and required them to stubbornly reject compromise, so they made up a nonsense nonscientific point to rally behind. Bah.
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Feb 14, 2018 12:35
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Zeniel posted:Disabling V-sync may help a bit. But bear in mind that there's a bug where you end up with infinite load times in the downtown area for some reason. I thought the vsynch issue fixed my game but it didn't, so I've given up in frustration. Eh I was basically done with the game anyway, it was getting too repetitive and the faction ideologies are flawed in really dumb ways. The Institute piss me off because their reasoning is so backassward. They want to help further mankind and ensure a future for humanity? Great, that's a great goal. So. how are they achieving this? Well, we want to study life in the Commonwealth, how people live now and farm and what challenges they face and what we can do to overcome those to build a better future. So, what we'll do is this. We'll kidnap ordinary people and torture the info we need out of them. Oh, but people might notice that, so we'll build synthetic replacements for them and swap them. It's ingenious and nobody will be any the wiser and it's so simple. ... Did you ever think of just going out there and you know, just talking to people and asking them for the information maybe. Or getting them involved as willing participants. Or anything really rather than the stupid 'Let's waste all our expertise and resources on building fake humans' route. I really hated that I couldn't tell 'Father' what a fascist, murdering piece of poo poo he was and that was why I was burning the whole thing down.
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Feb 14, 2018 13:35
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The insitute would have made more sense if Father was an AI trying to "perfect" humanity and everyone in the labs was a super smart version of a super mutant and all super mutants on the surface were dumb rejects. Sean could be already dead from time lapse or kept in a suspension tube, thawed out for experiments and driven mad from a lifetime of scifi nightmares.
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Feb 14, 2018 13:47
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The Institute is fascinating. Because every time someone complains about them, I find yet another new angle to dislike them. It's just such a badly conceived, badly developed, and badly written faction, and there are no excuses for that, especially since they've had since 2008 to work on the idea.
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Feb 14, 2018 13:48
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Zeniel posted:Also, for a group of scientists the Institutes ideology really makes no goddamn sense. Oh we kidnapped your son because we needed him for his genetic purity, the wasteland is missing genetic purity, that's why we have to send out waves of cyborgs. Genetic purity is not a thing. That humanity's wider genetic pool post-apocalypse has a bunch of errors and mutations from ambient radiation and only the vault populations have a largely unmutated and not-more-prone-to-problems genome is a plot point in most of the fallout games, though, so it's almost tradition. It was the reason for super mutants being smart vs dumb in FO1, the big driver behind the enclave attack on vault 13 in FO2, the filtering factor in the Enclave's modified FEV virus in FO3. But yeah, it was really dumb in this one. MikeJF fucked around with this message at 15:29 on Feb 14, 2018 |
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Feb 14, 2018 15:26
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marshmallow creep posted:The insitute would have made more sense if Father was an AI trying to "perfect" humanity and everyone in the labs was a super smart version of a super mutant and all super mutants on the surface were dumb rejects. Sean could be already dead from time lapse or kept in a suspension tube, thawed out for experiments and driven mad from a lifetime of scifi nightmares. I wonder if they originally had the Insitute be run by an AI, it would be a fun twist and fairly Fallouty. I kind of think they started the story by basically going "why would anyone side with the institute if they're nuts" and someone else saying "what if you have an emotional attachment to someone there" and the plot as it is grew out of that
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Feb 14, 2018 15:55
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The problem is they already did the "group is actually run by a computer" back in Fallout 3 so people would have complained that they're just rehashing poo poo. It would make more sense with the Institute but I understand why they would want to do something different.
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Feb 14, 2018 16:17
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I'm pretty sure they came up with the high concept bits (Stolen baby! Evil clones!) and everything, EVERYTHING else was retrobuilt around that at the last possible moment, without giving a poo poo if it made any sense. Like it's really clear they're 100% about the 'cool setpeices' and don't ever really worry about how they fit together or consistency in any way.
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Feb 14, 2018 16:38
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MikeJF posted:That humanity's wider genetic pool post-apocalypse has a bunch of errors and mutations from ambient radiation and only the vault populations have a largely unmutated and not-more-prone-to-problems genome is a plot point in most of the fallout games, though, so it's almost tradition. It was the reason for super mutants being smart vs dumb in FO1, the big driver behind the enclave attack on vault 13 in FO2, the filtering factor in the Enclave's modified FEV virus in FO3. But yeah, it was really dumb in this one. Technically, in FO1 it was just the master's theory for why most wastelanders became dumb mutants. If you ask him, The Lieutenant proposes that an accidental release of FEV during the great war might have just partially innoculated the wasteland dwellers against it's effects, leading to complications during the dipping process.
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Feb 14, 2018 16:55
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Fair Bear Maiden posted:The Institute is fascinating. Because every time someone complains about them, I find yet another new angle to dislike them. My main gripe with FO4 was despite taking place along the coast in Boston, being near the ocean has virtually zero impact on the game world. It's basically treated as a convenient natural boundary like mountains are in all the other games. I think the best way to fix the Institute would be to get rid of their underground facility and all the teleportation bullshit and instead make their headquarters something ocean based like an operational cargo ship, or even better, a huge rear end submarine. Then this would give the Institute a better motivation. They would now be a group of scientists that have shunned what is left of humanity and instead just want to be left alone to do science stuff, but since supplies are limited out at sea they are forced to make shore every one and a while and send out their army of synths to "forage" for stuff, including healthy humans in order to replace their own scientists as they grow old and die. They don't feel bad about this since they see it as basically saving the children from a life of misery. Maybe it's just me, but I think the imagery of a bunch of sea weed covered synths walking out of the polluted ocean to raid like ghost pirates would have made them much more interesting boogie men than what we got.  Edit: And then as a bonus, the finale of the game could have involved a proper battle between the Brotherhood's airship and the Institute's super ship/sub. Vakal fucked around with this message at 18:29 on Feb 14, 2018 |
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Feb 14, 2018 18:26
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Vakal posted:My main gripe with FO4 was despite taking place along the coast in Boston, being near the ocean has virtually zero impact on the game world. It's basically treated as a convenient natural boundary like mountains are in all the other games. Basically, literally any goon could have made a better setting and plot than Bethesda just by brainstorming for a few minutes.
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Feb 14, 2018 18:39
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There are theories around that Bethesda did intend to do more with the ocean as there is poo poo laying around out there to see and people have found code for weapons like the speargun and other diving related stuff. Most just assume they couldn't get whatever they had planned to work or it just wasn't enough fun to keep. Wasted opportunity but oh well. Watching the sunrise at the Nahant Oceanological Society or Fort Strong is pretty serene though.
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Feb 14, 2018 18:42
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Psychotic Weasel posted:There are theories around that Bethesda did intend to do more with the ocean as there is poo poo laying around out there to see and people have found code for weapons like the speargun and other diving related stuff. There's a cut quest that's believed to have been set in an underwater vault.
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Feb 14, 2018 18:50
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Fallout 3 is much better anyway
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Feb 14, 2018 18:59
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Far Harbor had a little of that in the quest where you had to dive for the sunken shipping containers with the combat armor pieces. Now that I think of it, it seems like Far Harbor in general was more like the game they wanted to make but were unable to for some reason. It's kind of frustrating to play compared to the main game. It's like going to steakhouse and getting a huge cut of meat that's overcooked and full of gristle, then once you managed to force it down they give you one sliver of perfectly cooked sirloin before kicking you out the door. I'm not sure where Nuka World fits in this analogy though. Perhaps it's the bag of day old donuts in the dumpster of the bakery across the street.
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Feb 14, 2018 19:01
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If the institute was run by an AI it would have just been a repeat of John Henry Eden where you pass one persuade check and he decides to commit suicide and blow up the institute/raven rock.
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Feb 14, 2018 19:09
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You enter the Institute, looking around in awe at all the things not covered in two centuries of dirt and dust, when the door ahead of you suddenly opens. In walks Father as he coyly tries to hide who he really is. But you see right through his act and immediately yell "THIS STATEMENT IS FALSE!" before he can finish his first sentence. Locking all the Institute supercomputers in an infinite loop they can never recover from. They are forever stuck contemplating your statement and never bother anyone in the Commonwealth again as they dedicate more and more processing power to figuring this riddle out. Eventually the nuclear reactors powering the base meltdown as there was no one left to monitor them. When later asked by Arthur Maxson how he defeated such a dangerous for so quickly, the Vault Dweller would only remark on how much he hated newspapers.
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Feb 14, 2018 19:20
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MikeJF posted:That humanity's wider genetic pool post-apocalypse has a bunch of errors and mutations from ambient radiation and only the vault populations have a largely unmutated and not-more-prone-to-problems genome is a plot point in most of the fallout games, though, so it's almost tradition. It was the reason for super mutants being smart vs dumb in FO1, the big driver behind the enclave attack on vault 13 in FO2, the filtering factor in the Enclave's modified FEV virus in FO3. But yeah, it was really dumb in this one. I feel it's a hell of a lot more justified in the previous games, in FO1, sure it's a reasonable justification that I can accept, super mutants are messing around with pre-war FEV stuff, turns out all the extra mutations in the general populations DNA due to the increase exposure to radiation is having adverse affects on their plans so hey lets grab the people whose DNA hasn't been adversely affected, an iffy sort of genetic "purity" but whatever it's justified. And in FO2 they're genetic purity schtick is nonsensical but it's because the Enclave is basically a group of batshit insane remnants of the old world political structure rather than a scientific organisation. The enclave's ideas and schemes makes no sense but then that's the point, they're insane, they're not supposed to make sense. In FO4 however it just really rubs me the wrong way, since when you first finally enter the institute you suddenly think, oh yeah maybe they actually are doing something worthwhile and maybe you can figure out why it is they're doing all the horrible stuff, if they're even doing that at all(honestly the whole body snatcher stuff mostly seemed like fear mongering in the press anyway). But nope it's because out there humanities not genetically pure enough, whatever the gently caress that means, has no bearing on anything and they can't be reasoned with despite being a collection of loving scientists. Also while we're on the subject of factions, why are all the factions some morally grey in their own special ways except of the minute men? Who all just seem to be bastions of goodness? Is it because Bethesda just have a hard-on for historical figures and ignore the whole repeating the mistakes of the past vibe of the whole fallout vibe?
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Feb 14, 2018 19:25
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corn in the bible posted:Fallout 3 is much better anyway Take away nostalgia and it definitely isn't. It's the same game with the same haphazard writing and dumb characters but worse combat.
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Feb 14, 2018 19:38
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Fallout 3 is a much better role playing game than 4. You can actually define your character, get unique dialogue options, and solve problems in different ways. In 4, you can pick a faction and maybe pass some charisma checks in between fighting of mobs of enemies.
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Feb 14, 2018 19:43
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In fallout 4 it has always bothered me that after 200 years Diamond City still looks like BlightTown from Dark Souls. The most prosperous settlement for hundreds of miles and its made out of tape and driftwood and tetanus. You expect me to believe that nobody has figured out how to make bricks or weld or put together a basic house frame after 200 years? They have a water purifier, a printing press and a very skilled and well supplied doctor but their streets are just plywood and sheet metal on top of mud.
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Feb 14, 2018 19:46
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Wolfsheim posted:Take away nostalgia and it definitely isn't. It's the same game with the same haphazard writing and dumb characters but worse combat. It does a handful of thugs better in my opinion. It makes D.C. feel like it actually got bombed to pieces since you can't explore the ruins without using the metro tunnels. It also makes super mutants much more intimidating during the early game, whereas in 4 they are just raiders with slightly more hp. The environments look more fitting to me as well, since it has mostly 20th century Art Deco architecture and much less of the ugly "future world" scifi architecture. The combat still blows rear end though. New Vegas did all of it better, of course.
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Feb 14, 2018 19:55
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the institute is really why STEM degrees should require liberal arts classes and ethics courses.
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Feb 14, 2018 20:03
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I thought math is a liberal art.
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Feb 14, 2018 20:36
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I'm not sure the Institute plot could have been fixed really. IMHO synths flat out don't belong in Fallout. They don't fit the visual/thematic/lore style of the Fallout universe at all. They're robots from some 80's or 90's movie dropped into a world where robots are supposed to be 1950's/60's Lost in Space style. Whoever wrote the script outline had obviously just watched Blade Runner before making GBS threads all over Fallout, the same way they binged Lord of the Rings before making GBS threads on Oblivion and turning the cool jungle Byzantium of Cyrodiil into Middle Earth. I really wish I could have been a fly on the wall when Cain/Avellone/Sawyer & assorted Obsidian guys had a late-night bitchfest about what they really think about Bethesda's 'stewardship' of Fallout. 
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Feb 14, 2018 21:01
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Reality Loser posted:Fallout 3 is a much better role playing game than 4. You can actually define your character, get unique dialogue options, and solve problems in different ways. In 4, you can pick a faction and maybe pass some charisma checks in between fighting of mobs of enemies. Yeah. And it doesn't have the dogshit Skinner box endless leveling perk tree, so it's less dismissive of your time
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Feb 14, 2018 21:10
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Zeniel posted:Also while we're on the subject of factions, why are all the factions some morally grey in their own special ways except of the minute men? Who all just seem to be bastions of goodness? Is it because Bethesda just have a hard-on for historical figures and ignore the whole repeating the mistakes of the past vibe of the whole fallout vibe? The Minutemen weren't all angels. That's why at the start of the game there's exactly one guy still wearing the uniform and his ex-Atom Cat sidekick to even keep the name alive. The people who come back afterward are all relatively true believers. None of the factions really change that much, so the Minutemen don't go beyond that. If they took time out to further develop this optional path about the many ways another settlement needs your help, they could put time into scenarios where you needed to deal with how the Minutemen were treating people or with some of the Libertalia crew or Gunner turncoats wanting another chance.
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Feb 14, 2018 21:20
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Fintilgin posted:I really wish I could have been a fly on the wall when Cain/Avellone/Sawyer & assorted Obsidian guys had a late-night bitchfest about what they really think about Bethesda's 'stewardship' of Fallout. I thought Old World Blues and Lonesome Road were commentary about this. The Old World is dead and gone, nothing that happened matters, people need to strike a new patch. Which segued nicely in to 4's old comic books, uranium fever, baseball towns, MIT, and all the references to america's history.
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Feb 14, 2018 21:25
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The Institute really should have been the main entity of the the Vault-Tec Corporation. Like Vault Prime or something like that. Since we see in the other games that the failure rate of the vaults is like 90%, their plan of restoring humanity to what it was pre-war is pretty much screwed. The synths would make a bit more sense then since after 200 years they have run out of "pure blood" humans like Shaun to carry on their legacy and have decided to create the synths and transfer their consciousness into them in order to live forever. Then all the bodysnatcher poo poo going on in the commonwealth wouldn't be so much a control thing, but more of them trying to develop and perfect the ability to perfectly copy human brains into machines before they do it to themselves.
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Feb 14, 2018 21:27
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All four of the Vegas DLCs deal with letting go of the past in one way or another.
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Feb 14, 2018 21:28
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Glazius posted:The Minutemen weren't all angels. That's why at the start of the game there's exactly one guy still wearing the uniform and his ex-Atom Cat sidekick to even keep the name alive. The people who come back afterward are all relatively true believers. The Minutemen may not have been perfect if you dig a little, but they're so shallow that it doesn't really matter. The most negative stuff you hear about them is "After the last setback, most of them left." You immediately shift into singlehandedly reviving the Minutemen and turning them into the Big Good of the Commonwealth, where nobody really acknowledges the Minutemen's past beyond saying "I thought you guys were gone!" when you show up to help them. If you were to skip doing any Minutemen stuff, they don't really impact the plot any further than being an organization that used to exist and Preston complaining about it a lot.
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Feb 14, 2018 21:29
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Arcsquad12 posted:All four of the Vegas DLCs deal with letting go of the past in one way or another. If it were anyone but Obsidian I'd dismiss the thought of hand, but I have wondered if that was meta-commentary on Fallout itself, yeah.
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Feb 14, 2018 21:42
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Vakal posted:The Institute really should have been the main entity of the the Vault-Tec Corporation. Like Vault Prime or something like that. Or you could have the body snatching be their final goal: nuclear war occurred because of the imperfections of humanity, so humanity no longer deserves control of Earth and should be replaced with more logical and easily controllable beings. Kidnapping people and replacing them with synths is actually a slow burn to a world entirely populated by robots that will be able to stay connected to a central core. There will be no crime or misery because it's simply programmed out of the New Humanity, and everyone can live forever and turn the ashes of Earth into a technological utopia. The Institute in 2287 is run by humans who have had their minds transferred into synth copies of their youthful bodies. Joining the Institute would mean having your own mind transferred into a synth replica giving you stat boosts and immunity to things like addiction and poison, and assisting them in their quest for world domination. Depending on your companions, they'll have different reactions to you joining them (maybe Preston and Piper both refuse and have to be killed to keep them from fighting back, but Hancock agrees to join so he can be put in a young human body again instead of being stuck as a ghoul?). Along with destroying the Brotherhood and Railroad, the endgame could involve openly invading towns (ending with Diamond City) to forcibly stun and kidnap the human residents to replace them with synths. You could even play this into the Memory Den, like having a quest where you need to break in and steal their technology for memory recovery to improve the Institute's brain mapping. If you've got a synth-bodied Hancock with you, you'd get some real interesting reactions out of the people who recognize him.
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Feb 14, 2018 21:44
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The Skeleton King posted:It does a handful of thugs better in my opinion. It makes D.C. feel like it actually got bombed to pieces since you can't explore the ruins without using the metro tunnels. It also makes super mutants much more intimidating during the early game, whereas in 4 they are just raiders with slightly more hp. The environments look more fitting to me as well, since it has mostly 20th century Art Deco architecture and much less of the ugly "future world" scifi architecture. The combat still blows rear end though. I don't know if I've ever heard the lovely subway system that everyone universally hated navigating as a selling point before now. I somewhat agree on super mutants but honestly they stop being a threat in either game by like Level 8 so it's kind of a wash. Fintilgin posted:I'm not sure the Institute plot could have been fixed really. IMHO synths flat out don't belong in Fallout. They don't fit the visual/thematic/lore style of the Fallout universe at all. They're robots from some 80's or 90's movie dropped into a world where robots are supposed to be 1950's/60's Lost in Space style. Whoever wrote the script outline had obviously just watched Blade Runner before making GBS threads all over Fallout, the same way they binged Lord of the Rings before making GBS threads on Oblivion and turning the cool jungle Byzantium of Cyrodiil into Middle Earth. Ehhh, is the Institute really that out of place when Big MT exists? Strip away the cartoonishness of the Think Tank and it's basically the same thing; a collection of scientists living in an underground bunker for so long that they've lost their way and are now just churning out experiments for the sake of it. They both even have crazy blue sci-fi magic teleportation as a significant plot point. I'm also not sure synths are any more absurd or tonally dissonant than invincible hard-light hologram guards, even if Obsidian's writing is a lot better about making you take a ridiculous concept seriously 
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Feb 14, 2018 22:03
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Wolfsheim posted:Ehhh, is the Institute really that out of place when Big MT exists? Strip away the cartoonishness of the Think Tank and it's basically the same thing; a collection of scientists living in an underground bunker for so long that they've lost their way and are now just churning out experiments for the sake of it. They both even have crazy blue sci-fi magic teleportation as a significant plot point. I think the difference there is that Big MT and the Sierra Madre are only in the DLC, and the New Vegas DLCs are a different genre unto themselves. On the other hand, the Institute is front and center part of the main plot and it really sticks out like a sore thumb.
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Feb 14, 2018 22:06
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Wolfsheim posted:I don't know if I've ever heard the lovely subway system that everyone universally hated navigating as a selling point before now. I somewhat agree on super mutants but honestly they stop being a threat in either game by like Level 8 so it's kind of a wash. I'd say Big MT is fine because it's explicitly pulp. Brains in jars, robo-scorpions!, and animate corpses in spacesuits. It's easy to see it painted on the cover of AMAZING STORIES! It's also sort of isolated off in its own little DLC realm as a stand-alone story. Synths and the Institute are Blade Runner/Terminator, as the core of the story, played completely straight and completely stupid. I'll admit I wasn't a big fan of the hard-light holograms... or the bomb collars.... or uh... Dead Money on the whole.
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Feb 14, 2018 22:19
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The weirdest, craziest poo poo in FNV was in the DLCs. The weird, crazy poo poo is front and center in FO4 while what actually feels like Fallout is shoved away into the DLCs. What's worse is the presentation of said insane stuff is absolute dogshit because BethSoft can't write their way out of a wet paper bag. BethSoft/Zenimax really should just publish games and maybe hire outside contractors to make TES/Fallout games. FNV is the best of the three "modern" Fallout games so far, so clearly the model works when your contractors are talented and really get the property.
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Feb 14, 2018 22:19
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