I need to find my son, but I have to help these strangers first.

[jasonorme666]

[Possible Spoilers]

I like Fallout 4, I really do, but that doesn't mean I'm not puzzled by it's lack of direction.
There is a sense of urgency, desperation and a fish out of water feeling up until the point you bump into Preston.
Once you have murdered 20-30 raiders and a deathclaw with a chain-gun whilst wearing power armor for some guy you just met, the games direction really breaks at this point for me.

As someone who tried to play the game "realistically" I said NO to quests (even though I was still given them anyway) and focused (as I believe any desperate parent would) to find my infant son.

By the time I had reached the glowing sea I realized that this wasn't the intended method of playing as I was under-leveled and under-equipped.
I felt at this point it was a good idea to seek help from other's, and made finding fusion cores my quest.
My in game brain thought, oh, the brotherhood of steel, I bet if I got in with those I could get some fusion cores. But it was just people asking too much of a guy searching for his son, and sent me off in a direction that any of the quests I refused to accept would have.

It was 80 hours in that I discovered that Fallout 4 had already planned how I should play.
I was meant to play as a nice guy who helps everyone for no reason, who kill's, lock-picks and hacks everything. Who spends a disturbingly amount of time building furniture just to make complete strangers feel comfy, and cleaning mess up (because it would appear that world was frozen for 200+ years and not just me).

So I started a new game, and decided to play it the way I had felt the developers expected of me. I killed everything and helped everyone, even if it meant trekking half way across the map.
I completed the main quests as and when I wasn't distracted by something else, but all this resulted in was a lack of depth and emotion for my son and the whole situation.
For the next 150+ gaming hours I was essentially some kind of God, destroying all in my way.

I don't know, maybe it's just me, it's hard to like the character Fallout 4 wants me to be when he/she cares so little for their kidnapped child.

Mod's like "Live Another Life" can't come soon enough so I don't have to be the fickle minded ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ I'm forced to play as.

[Yhwach]

I don't know, maybe it's just me, it's hard to like the character Fallout 4 wants me to be when he/she cares so little for their kidnapped child.
-> Almost the entire game, they were trying to find out where their son was, until the leading climax where they do.

What happens here, is you're the one controlling your character, you don't HAVE to find your son at all, or even do any of the main story besides the bit where you're a bit forced to.
You're the protagonist, so finding your son is optional, but the actual NPC, if you don't find this ludicrious, actually cares about finding their son but you're the one that's stopping them if you don't do the main quest.

[jasonorme666]

Originally posted by Scarecrow:

I don't know, maybe it's just me, it's hard to like the character Fallout 4 wants me to be when he/she cares so little for their kidnapped child.
-> Almost the entire game, they were trying to find out where their son was, until the leading climax where they do.

What happens here, is you're the one controlling your character, you don't HAVE to find your son at all, or even do any of the main story besides the bit where you're a bit forced to.
You're the protagonist, so finding your son is optional, but the actual NPC, if you don't find this ludicrious, actually cares about finding their son but you're the one that's stopping them if you don't do the main quest.

I think you are missing my point.
Even when I was trying to find my son and avoiding distraction, I was never given the option to ask people if they had seen my son.

[THAC0]

Originally posted by jasonorme666:

[Possible Spoilers]

I like Fallout 4, I really do, but that doesn't mean I'm not puzzled by it's lack of direction.
There is a sense of urgency, desperation and a fish out of water feeling up until the point you bump into Preston.
Once you have murdered 20-30 raiders and a deathclaw with a chain-gun whilst wearing power armor for some guy you just met, the games direction really breaks at this point for me.

As someone who tried to play the game "realistically" I said NO to quests (even though I was still given them anyway) and focused (as I believe any desperate parent would) to find my infant son.

By the time I had reached the glowing sea I realized that this wasn't the intended method of playing as I was under-leveled and under-equipped.
I felt at this point it was a good idea to seek help from other's, and made finding fusion cores my quest.
My in game brain thought, oh, the brotherhood of steel, I bet if I got in with those I could get some fusion cores. But it was just people asking too much of a guy searching for his son, and sent me off in a direction that any of the quests I refused to accept would have.

It was 80 hours in that I discovered that Fallout 4 had already planned how I should play.
I was meant to play as a nice guy who helps everyone for no reason, who kill's, lock-picks and hacks everything. Who spends a disturbingly amount of time building furniture just to make complete strangers feel comfy, and cleaning mess up (because it would appear that world was frozen for 200+ years and not just me).

So I started a new game, and decided to play it the way I had felt the developers expected of me. I killed everything and helped everyone, even if it meant trekking half way across the map.
I completed the main quests as and when I wasn't distracted by something else, but all this resulted in was a lack of depth and emotion for my son and the whole situation.
For the next 150+ gaming hours I was essentially some kind of God, destroying all in my way.

I don't know, maybe it's just me, it's hard to like the character Fallout 4 wants me to be when he/she cares so little for their kidnapped child.

Mod's like "Live Another Life" can't come soon enough so I don't have to be the fickle minded ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ I'm forced to play as.

My Arguement to this is ... did you play fallout 3? or say Fallout 2 or such? Only Fallout 1 / Tactics (Tactics is ... somewhat cannon its a mixture thing some of the things has been stated as cannon some has not) Forced you in a way / Made you think of the main mission to a great deal,
Fallout 2 did it for a wee Bit but once you found the Geck and returned to the village it didnt matter take your time in the world who cares about your Village honestly

Again one of these posts/Arguements from people who To me never played the past Fallout games.

[Mumboejumboh]

Originally posted by jasonorme666:

I think you are missing my point.
Even when I was trying to find my son and avoiding distration I was never given the option to ask people if they had seen my son.

You're not really going to get anywhere by going up to random people in the wasteland if they've seen an infant.

The flow of the story makes sense. You head back to your home once you leave the vault, you find Codsworth. Codsworth suggests searching around for your son, then suggests you head to Concord. Reaching Concord, you find Preston doing battle with raiders. Preston asks for your help and (admittedly forcibly for the sake of the story) you help. Things kick off with a bit of a bang by giving you power armor, a minigun, and then squaring you off against a deathclaw. Personally I felt that was pretty great way to kick things off in the wasteland...though you're more than welcome to your own feelings about it.

Saving Preston and company gives you time to actually ask the first group of (sensible) people you encounter after entering the wasteland. You get directed to Diamond City as the most likely place to get answers.

The flow of those events is simple, rather concise, and directly guides you to where you should be going. Asking random passers-by if they've seen your son that was stolen out of your cryo storage vault is horribly unlikely to lead to answers...which is why the game winds up pointing you towards a specialist in missing persons.

[Thatdude]

They really fxxked up on this series' most iconic part: freedom and choice, no matter what you do, you have to follow the "instruction"

[Yhwach]

Originally posted by jasonorme666:

Originally posted by Scarecrow:

I don't know, maybe it's just me, it's hard to like the character Fallout 4 wants me to be when he/she cares so little for their kidnapped child.
-> Almost the entire game, they were trying to find out where their son was, until the leading climax where they do.

What happens here, is you're the one controlling your character, you don't HAVE to find your son at all, or even do any of the main story besides the bit where you're a bit forced to.
You're the protagonist, so finding your son is optional, but the actual NPC, if you don't find this ludicrious, actually cares about finding their son but you're the one that's stopping them if you don't do the main quest.

I think you are missing my point.
Even when I was trying to find my son and avoiding distraction, I was never given the option to ask people if they had seen my son.

Regardless, the actual amount of options in this game is minimal when it comes to that subkect.

[PocketYoda]

Say your Son is kidnapped and when you exit cryo your world is a wasteland, how would you go about finding your son?

Would you head off looking solo in a straight line and most likely death or would you interact with the populance and hopefully get help and an idea on where he could be?

[Yhwach]

Originally posted by DanteYoda:

Say your Son is kidnapped and when you exit cryo your world is a wasteland, how would you go about finding your son?

Would you head off looking solo in a straight line and most likely death or would you interact with the populance and hopefully get help and an idea on where he could be?

You always could, but in this game there isn't a whole lot of people you could go out and ask.

[jasonorme666]

Originally posted by THAC0:

Originally posted by jasonorme666:

[Possible Spoilers]

I like Fallout 4, I really do, but that doesn't mean I'm not puzzled by it's lack of direction.
There is a sense of urgency, desperation and a fish out of water feeling up until the point you bump into Preston.
Once you have murdered 20-30 raiders and a deathclaw with a chain-gun whilst wearing power armor for some guy you just met, the games direction really breaks at this point for me.

As someone who tried to play the game "realistically" I said NO to quests (even though I was still given them anyway) and focused (as I believe any desperate parent would) to find my infant son.

By the time I had reached the glowing sea I realized that this wasn't the intended method of playing as I was under-leveled and under-equipped.
I felt at this point it was a good idea to seek help from other's, and made finding fusion cores my quest.
My in game brain thought, oh, the brotherhood of steel, I bet if I got in with those I could get some fusion cores. But it was just people asking too much of a guy searching for his son, and sent me off in a direction that any of the quests I refused to accept would have.

It was 80 hours in that I discovered that Fallout 4 had already planned how I should play.
I was meant to play as a nice guy who helps everyone for no reason, who kill's, lock-picks and hacks everything. Who spends a disturbingly amount of time building furniture just to make complete strangers feel comfy, and cleaning mess up (because it would appear that world was frozen for 200+ years and not just me).

So I started a new game, and decided to play it the way I had felt the developers expected of me. I killed everything and helped everyone, even if it meant trekking half way across the map.
I completed the main quests as and when I wasn't distracted by something else, but all this resulted in was a lack of depth and emotion for my son and the whole situation.
For the next 150+ gaming hours I was essentially some kind of God, destroying all in my way.

I don't know, maybe it's just me, it's hard to like the character Fallout 4 wants me to be when he/she cares so little for their kidnapped child.

Mod's like "Live Another Life" can't come soon enough so I don't have to be the fickle minded ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ I'm forced to play as.

My Arguement to this is ... did you play fallout 3? or say Fallout 2 or such? Only Fallout 1 / Tactics (Tactics is ... somewhat cannon its a mixture thing some of the things has been stated as cannon some has not) Forced you in a way / Made you think of the main mission to a great deal,
Fallout 2 did it for a wee Bit but once you found the Geck and returned to the village it didnt matter take your time in the world who cares about your Village honestly

Again one of these posts/Arguements from people who To me never played the past Fallout games.

Yes, I've played all of those games apart from tactics.. in fact, I played Fallout 1 again after completing Fallout 4.

I can totally see where you are coming from, but I'd compare Fallout 1 more to New Vegas, you are given a objective and thrown into the world.

Maybe Fallout 4 did too well of a job at the pre-war narrative that when years had passed it really did feel like minutes, so the sense of urgency very much still exists.
I feel finding out how much time had passed and having no hope of ever seeing your child again would have worked much better.. it certainly would have been a nice surprise.

[jasonorme666]

Originally posted by DanteYoda:

Say your Son is kidnapped and when you exit cryo your world is a wasteland, how would you go about finding your son?

Would you head off looking solo in a straight line and most likely death or would you interact with the populance and hopefully get help and an idea on where he could be?

Exactly, you would ask everyone, you would go outpost to outpost just hoping to find people to ask.

Maybe I'm just one of those people who love games like Shenmue more than Black Ops.

[H.E.]

I would agree except it's kinda implied the protaganist is clueless in where to go, I would like an option to keep asking where is the infant which will lead to a false quest i.e someone else's baby etc.

It is weird that he\she keeps expecting the baby stil being a baby considering he\she doesn't know when he was woken up and refreezed. Even though our character is supposed to have woken up 200 years later, there doesn't seem to be more shock about the state the world is in.

Like with so much effort to make them voiced there wasn't much consideration in writing surprise at the strange and horrifying creatures you would encounter.

[Big Boom Boom]

And the problem with this is? It's always about dilly dallying in an open world game.

Take example of The Witcher 3. Geralt took 3 games to actually find Yennefer. 3 freaking games, over the span of eight real life years. Because he was too busy banging whoever else coming his way. And you guess why Yennefer was so pissy when she finally found him (oh yes, he didn't find her, she found him)?
He also took his sweet time trying to find Ciri, his daughter by fate. Instead of finding her, no let's bang her teacher first. Oh there's a Gwent tournament going on, let's give no flying ♥♥♥♥ about finding your daughter. Ooh there's a smuggler cache... and the list go on.

[jasonorme666]

Originally posted by Mumboejumboh:

Originally posted by jasonorme666:

I think you are missing my point.
Even when I was trying to find my son and avoiding distration I was never given the option to ask people if they had seen my son.

You're not really going to get anywhere by going up to random people in the wasteland if they've seen an infant.

The flow of the story makes sense. You head back to your home once you leave the vault, you find Codsworth. Codsworth suggests searching around for your son, then suggests you head to Concord. Reaching Concord, you find Preston doing battle with raiders. Preston asks for your help and (admittedly forcibly for the sake of the story) you help. Things kick off with a bit of a bang by giving you power armor, a minigun, and then squaring you off against a deathclaw. Personally I felt that was pretty great way to kick things off in the wasteland...though you're more than welcome to your own feelings about it.

Saving Preston and company gives you time to actually ask the first group of (sensible) people you encounter after entering the wasteland. You get directed to Diamond City as the most likely place to get answers.

The flow of those events is simple, rather concise, and directly guides you to where you should be going. Asking random passers-by if they've seen your son that was stolen out of your cryo storage vault is horribly unlikely to lead to answers...which is why the game winds up pointing you towards a specialist in missing persons.

Yes, but like many other gamers, I don't want to have my hand held.

[PocketYoda]

Originally posted by Scarecrow:

Originally posted by DanteYoda:

Say your Son is kidnapped and when you exit cryo your world is a wasteland, how would you go about finding your son?

Would you head off looking solo in a straight line and most likely death or would you interact with the populance and hopefully get help and an idea on where he could be?

You always could, but in this game there isn't a whole lot of people you could go out and ask.

So you you help a few people get some friends then try to find your son over time, hell the way the game starts the son could already be long dead..

Originally posted by jasonorme666:

Originally posted by DanteYoda:

Say your Son is kidnapped and when you exit cryo your world is a wasteland, how would you go about finding your son?

Would you head off looking solo in a straight line and most likely death or would you interact with the populance and hopefully get help and an idea on where he could be?

Exactly, you would ask everyone, you would go outpost to outpost just hoping to find people to ask.

Maybe I'm just one of those people who love games like Shenmue more than Black Ops.

99% of those outposts would kill you on the spot, getting backup means the ones that don't may actually be helpful..

Originally posted by jasonorme666:

Originally posted by Mumboejumboh:

You're not really going to get anywhere by going up to random people in the wasteland if they've seen an infant.

The flow of the story makes sense. You head back to your home once you leave the vault, you find Codsworth. Codsworth suggests searching around for your son, then suggests you head to Concord. Reaching Concord, you find Preston doing battle with raiders. Preston asks for your help and (admittedly forcibly for the sake of the story) you help. Things kick off with a bit of a bang by giving you power armor, a minigun, and then squaring you off against a deathclaw. Personally I felt that was pretty great way to kick things off in the wasteland...though you're more than welcome to your own feelings about it.

Saving Preston and company gives you time to actually ask the first group of (sensible) people you encounter after entering the wasteland. You get directed to Diamond City as the most likely place to get answers.

The flow of those events is simple, rather concise, and directly guides you to where you should be going. Asking random passers-by if they've seen your son that was stolen out of your cryo storage vault is horribly unlikely to lead to answers...which is why the game winds up pointing you towards a specialist in missing persons.

Yes, but like many other gamers, I don't want to have my hand held.

I preferred the hand holding over games like Morrowind and Fallout 3 where i wondered off and died then uninstalled

[Yhwach]

Originally posted by DanteYoda:

Originally posted by Scarecrow:

You always could, but in this game there isn't a whole lot of people you could go out and ask.

So you you help a few people get some friends then try to find your son over time, hell the way the game starts the son could already be long dead..

And as far as your character knows, time really hasn't gone by at all.