Fallout 4 already failes really hard at story telling a few times in the first 30 minutes

[Nichtswisser]

Fallout 4, the story of me, my wife, and the son of my wife and the milkman... But let's start. The game seems to be trying to do what most mediums of story telling try to do at the beginning, getting the player imotionally invested with the characters, yet does it so poorly that it's astounding.

I mean I had my first MASSIVE wtf moment of immersion breaking disbelieve already in the first 2 minutes of playing. Not many games ever achieved that! I mean the intro into the game wasn't so bad... well at least for roughly a minute, until I went to take a look at "my" son only to find out that my wife must have had an affair with the milkman. Because that tiny black baby in the tiny bed sure as hell wasn't the biological son of my white character!

And don't get me wrong. I don't have anyhing against black people. I would have had the same reaction if I played a black character with a black wife and ended up finding a white baby with blue eye's in the bad. The problem here is that my brain tells me quiet clearly that those 2 parents could never ever have a baby this dark. So this shatters any attempt by the game to tell me this is supposed to be my characters son.

And since getting "his" son back is the main reason the game provides for the actions of the character, basically his whole motivation of doing things, this is really reallly bad!

But let's move on. There is more fail here^^ There is his wife. You know the b.... that had an affair with the milkman^^ The game clearly wants to kind of get the player emotionally attached, yet again failes misserably.

First of all even ignoring that she was clearly unfaithful and had an affair with the milkman, the game does not provide enough time for you to get attached to her to begin with. It's basically:

> here is your wife > oh now she is dead > please have an emotional reaction because they killed your wife. And all in the first 5 minutes of playing!

Most 12 year old fan fiction writers could do a better job of getting people emotionally attached to characters. For a game claiming to be an RPG this is simply not excusable.

Basically after around 20-30 minutes into the game. I was left in the wasteland with the 2 supposed motivations for my character being:

A) Taking revenge for an unfaihful wife I never cared about

and

B) Getting the child of my wife and the local milkman back...


It really is quiet astouding. Because I don't believe a game ever managed to make me feel so completely disconnected from my character and his supposed motivations ever before. And in just under 30 minutes of playtime!

I only played a few hours so far and just touching all the problems I already came across in this short time window with the game would have me write for days^^ So I'll stop here. But by the gods the AI! My dog must be the dumbest creature to ever walk the face of the earth! Comparing him to the dog companion in MGS 5 makes it really hard to believe that both game are from the same year.

[Bard_13]

Ya seems like people are not that emotionally invested in the premise of having a family. For some reason i was more invested in finding my father in fallout 3 than finding spoiler in fallout 4. I think the whole father-child thing so far isnt doing it for me in fallout 4 compared to finding ciri in witcher 3. My opinion of course. I would have been happy if we just had a blank nobody like in New Vegas.

[PlayerNameT]

Did you just write a bunch of paragraphs about a very, very minor bug?

Because i get that black baby is annoying and it's kind of cumbersome that you have to go through character creation again in order to get rid of it but... really?

I mean you either don't care and simply go with it or you get yourself a pale son, really don't see anything you could really complain about here.



And just by the way, ever played another Fallout game? Story is always rather bad.

[Middy]

Yeah. Ignore that stuff. Beeline it through the opening and start making up your own stories.

[Omen UK]

Not reading posts as don't want any more spoilers than necesarry but have to agree, from the beginning of the game till the point you exit Vault 111 seems to be rushed and happens so quickly, in Fallout 3 there was story of how you grew up in the vault, and New Vegas had the whole being shot in the head, courier with a patchy memory thing going on so there was less need for a substantial opening story but this, while I did enjoy it, I felt could have been a little longer, or had a little more story behind it.

[Nichtswisser]

Originally posted by MrSmith:

Did you just write a bunch of paragraphs about a very, very minor bug?

Yes, I figured that is was likely a bug. Still, I wrote this to tell of the experience I had in the first 30 minutes of playing the game and how badly Fallout 4 failed at getting me emotionally attached in any way.

It really was an astouding experience for me so far. And one I'm likely to remember for a long time because of how memorable it was^^

Once I'm farther in I might write another review touching more aspects of the game.

[Ashley]

They literally did nothing with the family. The robot takes care of your child and all your spouse does is tell you you look good and that you do a good job. It was far too short. They should have had some action with the dad in the war. Once the sequence is finished it's followed by a few sequels like the child being born things like that. Honestly it isn't hard to do that and not alot to ask.

[Omen UK]

The hardest thing for me to understand about how it was done was the fact you enter the pod, then you see the guys come, do what they do (no spoilers) , then you're frozen then you're free, there was no back story but yet when you exit the vault there are all these rooms you go through that (seemingly) are there for little more than a plot device for your escape and a way to make that section a little longer than it othewise would have beenm rather than having you just walk out onto the ramp and hit the button to raise the platform up.

[Shahadem]

Originally posted by MrSmith:

Did you just write a bunch of paragraphs about a very, very minor bug?

Because i get that black baby is annoying and it's kind of cumbersome that you have to go through character creation again in order to get rid of it but... really?

I mean you either don't care and simply go with it or you get yourself a pale son, really don't see anything you could really complain about here.



And just by the way, ever played another Fallout game? Story is always rather bad.

Even ignoring the bug, the rest of the OPers post is still valid. The story requires that you are emotionally invested in avenging the death of your husband/wife and saving your son, however the game fails to actually make the play emotionally invested in these motivations.

What should have happened is that you wake up from stasis with your husband/wife and son and spend the next couple of hours running around the irradiated landscape with them, just trying to survive and get your bearings in this familiar yet foreign land. Only after that time should you be accosted by a band of raiders who shoot your husband/wife and then steal your son, leaving you wounded and alone in this world you can't survive in (because children would be a precious resource in a post-apocolyptic world). Of course this would require a completely different ending and story, however the story would be much stronger as the player would actually be invested in it.