I'm playing Fallout 4 for the first time and the writing/storytelling in Bethesda games are just weird man

[MegaSackman]

I quit Starfield once I was presented with the most intriguing dilema only the have the game solve it for me.

A spaceship from another era arrives at the planet they were designated to live, but they found that other people are already living there. They don't want to share the planet because they believe it'd end up in war eventually, they also don't want their help because they wouldn't be able to pay back, and they don't have the resources or strength to look for another planet so, they encourage you to solve the matter for then by asking the residents to leave, or that they allow them to stay while acknowledging it is their planet and they are in charge.

The locals want to basically slave them but you can decide to upgrade their spaceship with the technology to scan and look for another planet. When you tell their captain this she thanks you and prepares to leave, despite previously having told you that it was unacceptable.

I played a few more missions and quit. I had a good time but I had enough.

 

[Antoo]

Did you not listen to/read the dialogue?

He'd agree to stop talking to the wife because he already has plans to flee the city and restart his life, but he needs money to do so. He's basically using you for his own gain. Alternatively, you can just kill him.

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I did read the dialogue. I don't know why my character would ask "is that all?" followed by him prompting me to help him on a murder spree. Where did he get the impression I was a mercenary? I carried out the mission completely peacefully with no violence up to that point. Weirdly enough, you can also ask the husband to join you on the mission and there's no dialogue between the bartender and the husband working together despite the previous animosity. Also, when you do get the loot from stopping the drug deal, he just says he doesn't need it anymore because it's too much heat!

Everything is treated in such a flippant manner it's hard to grasp whatever the fuck is even going on. I'm not saying you can't connect disparate plot threads together, but the way they do it makes it feel like nothing adds up. How did we go from point A to E? Maybe the open-ended nature of this quest meant I made choices that didn't allow me to see the quest in the best light idk.

 

[AnimeJesus]

I enjoyed the writing and overall story in Fallout 4, it's just that the jank and stiff characters can sometimes pull you out of the performances.

I really don't get the story and writing criticism the game gets.

 

[HanzSnubSnub]

The best Bethesda Game Studios story is in the Fallout tv show. Oblivion, Skyrim, and Fallout 3/4 writing ranges from decent to terrible, but the show actually manages to tell a good story without making you feel like an alien. It feels less cookie cutter and doesn't shy away from adult themes.

 

[TheRuralJuror]

you would really like Fallout New Vegas

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Hell, doing a tale of two wastelands run now and even 3 seems better in that regard (not that I dislike 4). Vegas is still the GOAT though.

 

[Persephone]

The main story could have been interesting if they'd had a better idea for the synths than "evil scientists are making robots indistinguishable from humans and using them to mop the floors of their underground base". Like, why? Why go through all that trouble to turn them into slave janitors? Also they shouldn't have chickened out on the "Sole Survivor is a synth" twist they teased. Anyway Nick Valentine you deserved a better game babe xx

 

[Imran]

Halfway through the quest, you confront the bartender to stop what he's doing, and the bartender agrees only to then offer me a job to hijack a drug deal. WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH ANYTHING THAT HAPPENED BEFOREHAND? This game is just doing random shit without any internal logic.

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I think I've sort of made peace with the fact that BGS titles are basically just treadmills to keep you moving to something. It doesn't matter what it is, it doesn't matter if the connective tissue makes sense, their overriding mantra and mentality is the player never goes somewhere without purposes being thrown at them.

And by made peace with, I mean I mostly just don't play them anymore.

 

[Deleted member 16101]

I am so with you on this right now. I don't really play Fallout games.

I watched the show and bought the hype. I purchased them all. I tried F76 first and that was just not good. Maybe it's because I thought it was an online rpg but it felt like more of a survival hybrid game.

Then Fallout 4. I liked it better than F76 but after a good bit of time I think I'm ready to shelve it. It is just not fun either. I have the others but these first two were simply not good. If the objective was to convert a show watcher into buying the series then they succeeded but it has not gone at all as expected after liking the show a lot.

 

[HStallion]

Lovecraft's writing isn't that great and the original Fallout games aren't that well written either so that makes sense

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I think the point is that Lovecraft did all the heavy lifting establishing everything and Derleth regurgitated without adding anything interesting or taking things down weird tangents.

 

[Scottoest]

God. Somehow I never thought about it, but you're right. With the exception of "HAVE YOU SEEN MY SON", the dialogue in FO4 is almost exclusively the player character reacting to things other people say instead of taking any initiative and asking questions.

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Part of the reason I hate the main story quest, is because you never get to actually meaningfully challenge the stupid bullshit between the factions. They're just gonna do their dumb shit, and you're either in or you're out.

 

[Hystzen]

Cyberpunk really eviscerates them.

It has its issues, but you can tell there's a throughline there. There's a real drive to the story, other than "you need to catch up with the person ahead of you". The whole game muses on the concept of death - its inevitability, how you deal with that inevitably, and how you give your life meaning.

It's explicit in the main story, but it also bleeds into the majority of the side quests, too, exploring the subject from different angles and perspectives. It really makes it a cohesive work.

Sure, there's some "here's a building with a note by the door that says 'we're testing the monster tomorrow' and then seventeen further notes that detail how the monster killed everyone" stuff, but it's usually better integrated than "someone had a fun idea for a themed area".

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It also deals with the theme of identity and what makes a personality. When it launched I had a rough time with the story due to my nana having dementia and the whole concept of losing your personality and self really hit me hard. It still does to this day the writing in Cyberpunk is pretty incredible and emotional at times. The whole side quest with new mayor hits the theme of identity and thoughts in a huge way and can you even trust your own thoughts and ideals as them being your own

 

[BarryFishFinger]

I love the exploration in fallout 4, there is always something to stumble across, the world looks good and is stuffed to the gills with interesting little dioramas and encounters.

But of course, the writing is bad and the story is poorly done. Mostly because the way dialogue is handled means the response options often don't make sense contextually and you never quite.know what your character is going to say for each choice; and also because the main story is too urgent a quest for a game about getting distracted. "MY SON" but hold on whilst I spent an in-game week building a base.

And I'm not sure whether other RPGs would be able to improve on the reactivity of the world, but for example I just got into Vault 81 and murdered someone for being rude to me - I chopped their head off in the night, in their room and come morning the wife and daughter are sitting quite merrily next to the headless corpse having breakfast and no one notices or cares.

 

[JT_77]

I think storytelling in Bethesda games has never been the reason people enjoy them. I don't expect storytelling to change with ES6 - nor do I care that much if it doesn't.

 

[hydruxo]

There's some good stuff in FO4 though. Silver Shroud quest is awesome.

 

[danm999]

Yeah I think it's telling Fallout 4 and Fallout 76 are the two most recent games, but the TV show almost exclusively pulls its story, setting and characters from Fallout 1, Fallout 2 and Fallout New Vegas.

Maybe that will change in future seasons but it really sticks out they used the older games not made by Bethesda.

 

[Fat4all]

bethesda likes lore more than they like cohesive or consistent storytelling

but also sometimes they get the lore wrong, so whatever

 

[skeezx]

by now it's kind of a feature for me how Bethesda games' characters are written so "'oh by golly!" In spite of whatever F'd up shit is going on

 

[7thFloor]

I think the point is that Lovecraft did all the heavy lifting establishing everything and Derleth regurgitated without adding anything interesting or taking things down weird tangents.

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I mean yeah that's more or less accurate, I like Bethesda games despite their writing and never for it. At least they've done a pretty good job capturing the old games visually, that goes a long way for me.

 

[Mechaplum]

Actually yes the writing seems like it was written by a dialogue generator, not even AI.

 

[goroadachi]

I struggle to think of an AAA developer with worse writing chops than BGS

 

[Jhey Cyphre]

The way most people seem to play Bethesda games is to just ignore the main story for as long as possible. I don't think I've ever heard anyone say anything positive about any of them. I don't get why they just don't lean into the emergent gameplay.

Fallout 4 feels like it really wanted to do this but at the end of the day tradition demanded that they shove in a stupid story nobody seems to like. One of my favorite F4 mods is one that just lets you spawn into the wasteland at a random location and attempts to cut any reference to the story about you being a parent looking for their child. So much of the game still works and even with all the dialogue edits.

 

[ThatOneGuy831]

Fallout 4 has grown on me over the years, but the one constant with the game is I ignore anything related to the main quest because its just awful all the way around. The side quests and companions can range from good to great, but anything related the the MQ is just not worth wasting time on

 

[ParanormalFupa]

Voiced protagonist took up too much of the dialogue budget. They didn't want to do it and it resulted in a lot less character and story work elsewhere.

 

[meenseen84]

I actually find games like Fallout 4 or Starfield enjoyable. When I play a game like Outer Worlds by obsidian which is know for the writing, I find myself so annoyed by how long the dialogue is. Halfway through the game I just skipped it. Bethesda gets the length right.

 

[bes.gen]

kind of incredible how they consistently sucked at this tiny detail for decades, that just happens to be a must to build a great rpg

 

[bunbun777]

Cait is the best. I normally play on the good side but that bad girl has opened my eyes. Steal something, show off my master picking skills, insult someone, kill someone.... Cait liked that. 👍 We've taken it to the next level, gave her my dead husband's ring, she gives me that sweet rest buff. And she's really helped me curb my hoarding as well as limited my terminal time. Life's just more exciting with her.

 

[TrafficCoen]

A theory I've had for a while is that some of the deficiencies in storytelling of BGS developed games can be partly put down to them valuing the player's freedom of choice above anything else when it comes to tackling the game's content.

All of their games, after a brief intro/tutorial to set things in motion, very much spit you out into the world and say "go where you want to go".

To this end, BGS are terrified of locking players out of quests/content through the players actions - FO4's faction's were implemented to tie closely into the main quest and in such a way that you can juggle loyalties for quite a while. BGS are worried about the player's actions having real weight or consequence as it might block off quests/other content, and impede on that "player freedom first" mantra.

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This is it 100%. Someone (maybe Todd) at Bethesda believes that taking content away from a player as a consequence of their actions is bad game design.

Case in point, I'm playing 4 currently (as part of my all series replay, well all except BoS) and meet the railroad. The railroad leader asks me about Synths and I went "yada yada Synths are machines" expecting them to become hostile. Nope. Deacon jumps in and goes "Actually leader, he doesn't mean that and would love to help us" and I get their next quest anyway. So I decided to purposely fail that quest.

First step, meet up with Deacon somewhere else. I find him, then start blasting him. He can't die, he'll go down but get back up. If I shoot him like a minute straight he aggros then stops after 30 seconds and doesn't acknowledge anything. Ok, can't fuck it up that way. Next quest step is meet up with another Railroad member and confirm my identity with a code phrase. I find him and he's unkillable too. Deacon says to me, 3 steps away from the undercover agent, "Whatever he asks you say,Mine is in the shop". OK, I start the conversation and purposely say one of the 3 wrong answers. Does this work? No, because Deacon will jump in and say "He means to say "Mines in the Shop" if you don't do the right option because the truth is this entire quest has no choices to be made by a player, no way to fail it and is just an excuse for a load of synth shooting

 

[moustascheman]

BGS and sophomoric dialogue go together like peanut butter and jelly. The intensity and drama of the first dragon I fought in Skyrim was undermined for me when the guard NPC started yelling "Slay it! Slay the dragon!" Like yeah no shit, why not yell something useful like trying to aim for a weak point or at least some kind of battle cry? And then afterward he says something along the lines of "this is the first time a dragon has appeared in Tamriel in like, ever." which is the kind of sentence structure I imagine would come straight from a middle-schooler's diary. I don't expect shakespeare or anything, but I get a bit miffed when my fantasy game that is trying very hard to immerse me in its world has thoroughly un-immersive and grating dialogue.

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This is kinda of a weird complaint to make. This is the actual quote you're talking about with its context.

Whiterun Guard: "Dragonborn? What are you talking about?"

Whiterun Guard 2: "That's right! My grandfather used to tell stories about the Dragonborn. Those born with the Dragon Blood in 'em. Like old Tiber Septim himself."

Whiterun Guard: "I never heard of Tiber Septim killing any dragons."

Whiterun Guard 3: "There weren't any dragons then, idiot. They're just coming back now for the first time in... forever. But the old tales tell of the Dragonborn who could kill dragons and steal their power. You must be one!"

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I don't see anything particularly wrong with this quote TBH. It's perfectly fine for three generic unnamed nord guards to be talking like that. Given the context it certainly seems fine and is not unimmersive at all.

 

[D O T]

Try fallout new vegas instead op

 

[SnakeEater]

Horizon's writing is actually good. With FW they improved sidequests too, where you totally feel engaged with minor characters and their backstory. It's better than any BGS game in my opinion. Also, first Horizon game and Fallout New Vegas share the same lead writer, tho New Vegas is the GOAT.

 

[SirFritz]

My main problem with fallout 4 was how much of a retread of fallout 3 it felt. Like you're searching for a lost sibling just like in 3. And the BoS ending feels extremely similar to the ending of 3 with that same robot like they just remade that instead of coming up with something new.

 

[Bugface]

Pretty much. Nick Valentine deserves to be in a better game.

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You're so right for this. There's a really funny mod that puts him in New Vegas that has him inexplicably make you hunt down giant fire breathing salamanders before he'll pal around with you.

 

[writhingcorpse897]

Could be my nostalgia but I don't remember Fo3's writing being that bad.

 

[Gavalanche]

Starfield has the greatest character interaction ever.

I need a keycard to get into this area.

Me to guard: give me your keycard
Guard: I am not giving you this keycard piss off.
Me: aww come on
Guard:oh okay don't tell anyone

Obviously paraphrasing, but I laughed for ages. That reminded me of so many of the interactions in Fallout 4.

 

[CloseTalker]

I truly believe If Fallout 4 was the first Bethesda game to ever release it would have come and gone with little fanfare, the studio has been riding on its legacy for awhile

 

[Fat4all]

Could be my nostalgia but I don't remember Fo3's writing being that bad.

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it was pretty bland, but the ending was especially bad, you could feel the script having to write around you not being given a choice to do anything

also fallout 3 had a few gems when it came to side quests, but a lot of them were largely forgettable

fallout 4 improved over 3 with side character writing and with more focus on unique side quests

 

[TimotheusNL]

I feel Bethesda has largely been making the same game over and over for decades now.

They used to be pioneers of the open world RPG but I feel they are so stuck in their ways that the industry completely passed them by. Their writing, characters, worldbuilding and quest design are very 'last-gen' and they can't seem to improve substantially.

Shame, because it doesn't inspire confidence in the next Elder Scrolls.

 

[Kiyamet]

I'm actually trying to think of any characters with deep stories from the Fallout games I've played(3, 4, 76, NV) and I can't. The only one is a mod companion character in 4 that I imagine is too sexualized for a lot of people to even try.

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How dare you disrespect Joshua Graham like that.

 

[kamineko]

the late game hits so hard

father, I am disappointed in yoooooo... hurk

 

[Astral]

I think I liked Piper.

 

[CloudWolf]

I think Fallout 4's writing is some of the worst writing in any videogame. It's truly baffling how inept it is.

 

[Spoit]

Could be my nostalgia but I don't remember Fo3's writing being that bad.

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The ending is probably the worst of it, but I'm still baffled at how they thought little lamplight made enough sense to put it on the crit path

 

[CloudWolf]

Could be my nostalgia but I don't remember Fo3's writing being that bad.

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Fallout 3's writing isn't as bad as Fallout 4's (or Skyrim's), but it still has some very weird stuff.

The main, infamous one, being of course the fact that the ending requires you to fill in a code in an irradiated chamber that will kill you. And that if you ask your Super Mutant companion to do it instead because they will survive it, they go "No". And then when they "fixed" this with a DLC they decided to shame the player for this choice in the new ending. As if asking someone for who it's completely safe to go into an irradiated chamber to do it so that nobody dies is such an immoral thing to do.

The other example of bad writing in Fallout 3 that always sticks out to me is Megaton and how Bethesda thinks blowing up a whole city of people for fun or not is some sort of heavy moral conundrum.

I'm actually trying to think of any characters with deep stories from the Fallout games I've played(3, 4, 76, NV) and I can't. The only one is a mod companion character in 4 that I imagine is too sexualized for a lot of people to even try.

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Joshua Graham? Veronica? Boone? Ulysses?Hell, even ED-E the robot in New Vegas turns out to have a pretty deep story.

 

[Fat4all]

the late game hits so hard

father, I am disappointed in yoooooo... hurk

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View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0woAI184sYM

 

[Vic20]

they writing as a utility to get you to the next radiant quest/ dungeon.

 

[Makeno]

Starfield really shines a light on this. Once you get to the weird cowboy planet you can essentially stop the bank robbery by saying "please stop m8" and they hand themselves in. I really struggle to care what anyone has to say about anything in their games which was palatable the first time I played a little bit through Fallout 4, but after playing 40ish hours of Skyrim and same amount for Starfield I legit can't get back into FO4 with the next gen patch.

I'd happily play Cyberpunk again though.

 

[HMS_Pinafore]

The other example of bad writing in Fallout 3 that always sticks out to me is Megaton and how Bethesda thinks blowing up a whole city of people for fun or not is some sort of heavy moral conundrum.

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This never happens. The game never frames it as a morally conflicting question. You get a shit ton of negative karma for setting off the bomb, versus a lot of positive karma for defusing it.

And New Vegas basically starts the same way. Do you help the people of Goodsprings, or do you murder everyone in town with some escaped prisoners.

Fallout 3 and 4 have some really dumb writing, but we don't have to make up things to get mad over.

 

[Corsick]

Bethesda basically hasn't evolved since Skyrim and is stuck in a time loop where the only thing that demonstrably improves are the visuals. It's one of those older prestige developers that's really fallen off for me personally. If you love fallout 4 and Starfield though you'll be happy. If not, good luck seeing meaningful change while Todd is there.

 

[CloudWolf]

This never happens. The game never frames it as a morally conflicting question. You get a shit ton of negative karma for setting off the bomb, versus a lot of positive karma for defusing it.

And New Vegas basically starts the same way. Do you help the people of Goodsprings, or do you murder everyone in town with some escaped prisoners.

Fallout 3 and 4 have some really dumb writing, but we don't have to make up things to get mad over.

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Maybe conundrum was the wrong word, but Fallout 3 does act like it's some sort of meaningful choice, when it isn't. There's no real thought behind it, it's literally just "Are you a normal person?" or "Are you a psychopath for no reason".

The Goodsprings choice you mention has way more depth behind it since the Powder Gangers are actually characters with some depth rather than cackling villains that ask some stranger to do their bidding.

the late game hits so hard

father, I am disappointed in yoooooo... hurk

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I'm still so mad over the fact that the game treats The Institute like it's the evil choice when it has no reason to be except the game just tells you it is.

 

[pants]

I put 400 hours into that game and all my memories were of scrounging of materials, exploring, and basebuilding. I remember next to nothing of the dialogue. I was also much less critical about writing and wasnt engaged over the story overall (Far Harbor being the exception) since I had a belligerant dislike for the eastcoast storyline that now I feel vindicated about in the advent of the Amazon series. I feel like I should revisit the game with fresh eyes just to see how different the writing truly is for a Fallout game, especially since Im in the last quarter of my revisit of New Vegas, the messy but best written game in the series.

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I also legitimately don't remember the story, beyond key locations, characters, and searching for the institute.

(Lots of people are actually synths, non synths are mad, the Institute doesn't much care?)

I still can't get over how littlelamplight was supposed to work, 200 years after the bombs fell

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Ugh I had genuinely suppressed this, but you brought it back.