Overhaulout Part 4.5: Dish and Dog

By Rutskarn Posted Friday Sep 8, 2017

Filed under: Video Games 43 comments

Let’s say you’re James.

You’ve decided to go back to the wasteland and fix the water purifier, risks be damned, but the transition from Vault sheets to wasteland streets is worse than you could have possibly imagined. Glowing water and feral dogs and scabrous humans leave you a physically and morally exhausted wreck. In the cynical days of adjustment you become certain you’ll never finish your great work, never reunite with your only child. You’ll be preyed on by a string of greedy wasteland pirates and parasites until all your efforts to help the world are forgotten to the dust of time.

And then you stumble onto Galaxy News Radio and everything changes. Here at last you’ve found another genuine altruist in the hellish melee. He welcomes you, a stranger, into his heavily-guarded studio for an interview where you end up asking all the questions. He is thoughtful, savvy, warm, and patient. When you leave, he broadcasts on his radio station:

So if you see James out there, you say hello. Be kind to our new brother, and show him that here on the outside, we always fight the good fight.

Then after a brief and embarrassing episode in a creepy vault you wander back to the station for a visit and an interview—hoping to give his audience a PSA about drinking water and trusting strange computer programs, perhaps—and after cracking a couple Nukas, Three Dog casually mentions:

“By the way, your kid says hello.”

“What?” You’re stupefied. “My child came here…and didn’t even ask where I’d gone?”

“That did come up. Kind of a whiny kid you’ve got, actually. All ‘wah wah, where’s my dad, where’s my dad.’ And I’m like, does the kid need a night light for pete’s sake?”

“Did you say where I’d gone?”

“I sort of did. I mean, I said I knew where you’d gone, and that I’d share that info…in exchange for just, like, a tiny errand.”

“What errand did you…”

“Steal a giant radio dish from super mutant infested territory. So, you know. A desperate teenager from a soft vault upbringing seemed like the ideal person for the job.”

“How?!”

“Okay, you got me. I just didn’t want to have to ask the paladins to do it.” He checks his calendar. “Come to think of it, all this was a couple months ago. If I had to guess, I’d say your kid really sucked at fighting the good fight.”

The world spins. Your forgotten, shallow breaths lap the open mic—a live feed of your pain and suffering to Three Dog’s many, many worshipers. Your only family just died trying to find you, and died for no reason at all–except a desperate need to find and reunite with you.

“Say,” says Three Dog brightly, “you doing anything right now? And do you know where the museum is?”

Three Dog’s quest is supposed to fulfill two purposes:

  1. The obvious practical concern: provide something for the player to do, stretch out the mystery of “where’s dad and what’s he up to?” Not hard stuff.
  2. Introduce the player to one of the wasteland’s good guys, the voice of moral clarity and reason that will serve as colorful Greek chorus for the game’s full length.

And it does a really, really bad job at both of them.

  1. While the quest is certainly “something to do,” and I have no particular bones to pick with the gameplay in a vacuum (I’ll even let the whole “carrying a goddamn satellite dish up your ass” thing slide, because honestly I don’t really care), it doesn’t prolong so much as kill the momentum of the overarching DadQuest. We just don’t get to advance the storyline here. We learn nothing about the games setting or factions or themes fetching the dish, and certainly we don’t investigate our father’s backstory or whereabouts. We’re just rewarded with info we didn’t help to collect after we waste our time with something unrelated. That is, if we don’t make our Speech check that skips the whole quest, in which case this really fails to pad the playtime.
  2. Here’s what we do learn: Three Dog is a grasping hypocritical asshole who will exploit heartbroken homeless teenagers by sending them on borderline suicide missions. You can’t really confront him with this, so the game doesn’t get any points for being morally complex or whatever by turning their self-righteous preacher into a scumbag.

A more ambitious rewrite would replace this quest with something more likeBut ideally less sucky than. the Kellogg trail in Fallout 4. I cannot stress enough that the mystery of your dad’s disappearance cannot be narratively satisfying unless the player has any pertinent facts through which to consider it, and a segment here where we tweeze those out and start pondering what we really know about our dad would really hit the spot. But we’re sticking to the basic structure, so let’s keep the very specific and bafflingly unrelated goal of fixing Three Dog’s stupid radio dish. Oh, and it needs to be skippable by skill check. And ideally, skipping it with a skill check should in some way a more interesting option than, “Meh, skip the quest I guess, whatever.” All this might seem like an ambitious redesign goal. And yet, I find the rewrite pretty simple to sum up:

“You want to know where your dad went? It’s weird—he promised me he’d come back and check in, but he never did. How about I ask listeners if they’ve seen him? If only my radio show had a longer range…”

Player options should now include:

  • Volunteer to fix the radio dish, as it’s clearly the fastest and most surefire way to find your father. If you do this, you’ll come back to find Three Dog’s already collected a reported sighting from someone within the new broadcast range. Next stop, Rivet City!
  • Convince Three Dog to share his uncertain gut feelings. If you pass a Speech check, he’ll speculate that your father’s path lead to the northeast portion of the map. Next stop, the Rivet City area!
  • Say “thanks for nothing” and move on. Sooner or later, the player will stumble onto Rivet City.

That’s already much better, but we can improve further still. Next week, let’s get past the vague allusions to a richer mystery and get in-depth with making James and quests about finding James actually interesting.

 

Footnotes:

[1] But ideally less sucky than.



From The Archives:
 

43 thoughts on “Overhaulout Part 4.5: Dish and Dog

  1. Millstab says:

    In order to change as little as possible, I feel like the radar dish mission could be handled another way:

    Have Three Dog mention that Dad borrowed a radio transponder, so he could hook it up and talk to Three Dog if necessary, and theoretically, if he could boost his gear, he might be able to get the player a rough location to search. (you could include a throwaway line that equipment breaks all the time, hand-waving why Dad hasn’t called Three Dog, or why he left it in Rivet City)

    Three Dog says “Damn it, kid. If only I could get that radio dish, the one mounted on that old landing craft…the paladins were planning to snag it for me, but Super Mutants moved in, and I’m not risking a whole squad getting mauled to scrap and gristle for a hunk of aluminium. I’m sorry, kid, I guess you’ll have to keep looking.”

    The conversation ends, and as you get back control, a new quest marker pops up: “If You Want Something Done Properly…” and a marker is placed at the museum.

    This leaves Three Dog blameless, and helps characterize the Player Character as a Plucky Young Badass who’ll do anything to find their dad- which is a characterization the game already hopes we buy into.

    The agency for doing this is therefore the player character’s “decision” and not something they’re pushed into. It’s a dumb thing to do- but now it’s a brave and desperate decision, not just blind obedience.

    ( I wish more games did this; I found carrying boxes for a peasant cute in AC2, when Ezio volunteers to do it, but chasing pigs in AC3 frustrating, simply because it was a farmer just asking her killmachine landlord to wrestle a hog as a favor)

    1. BlueHorus says:

      I can’t remember if it was in the game already (I think it was) but the ability to just steal the information from his studio would be good as well.

      Maybe a holotape of an interview Three Dog did with James, hidden in a drawer. That’d be a good incentive or quest reward in any eventuality.

    2. They could also make Three Dog really reluctant to send your character out to do the quest–maybe even force you to make a speech check or do some ALTERNATE task to prove that you’re up to the difficulty of retrieving the satellite dish.

  2. ElementalAlchemist says:

    One change you could make, which would also remove the “dish up the ass” problem, is to just have the quest be to repair a cable/connection or just turn some equipment/power back on at a radio tower. Dishes are directional. A radio station uses an omnidirectional antenna, typically a bloody big one to get decent coverage (or if they were using dishes, it would be a shedload of them arrayed around a tower).

    1. Redingold says:

      I think for this quest, we still want to send the player to the Museum of Technology, because that’s a cool environment. We just need to contrive a suitable reason for going there.

      1. KarmaTheAlligator says:

        Then you’re sent to repair the tower and when you get there you notice what’s wrong (or the BoS guarding the place tell you about the problem to save you a trip up the tower) and you’re then told where to find a replacement (at the museum).

    2. Jabrwock says:

      Could change it from a dish to the controller for the dish. 3Dog managed to build his own dish to communicate with a secondary broadcast tower, but can’t get the parts to get the controller to work.

  3. BlueHorus says:

    I really think they whole messed up with the ‘broken dish’ story – one of the good things about leaving the vault the very first time was that radio stations pop up in the HUD, letting you know you can have background music to your adventures.

    BUT, one of them is military music and the other is crackly and barely audible from outside the vault. Which is sad, because the first things when you turn on the station is Three Dog saying ‘Hey, James came to visit! (CRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR)’.
    Which your average player might well like to know, but probably missed or ignored as they cycled through stations like I did.

    Make the quest ‘Enable call-ins and/or two-way communications via some device in the museum’ instead of ‘repair the signal’. This quest is kind of mandatory in the vanilla game, if you want to listen to GNR outside of a small range, which is an extra level of annoyance.

    And if you unlocked more material for the radio (like crank calls and user-call-in sections) by doing the quest, that would rock to. Use a carrot, rather than a stick.

  4. James says:

    Let’s say you're James

    I’m not sure if I can imagine that

    1. KarmaTheAlligator says:

      You’re just going to have to try.

      1. Yoda says:

        Do. Or do not. There is no try.

        1. Dev Null says:

          Yes. The ancient wisdom of the Jedi tells us “Never attempt anything that you aren’t certain you can succeed at.” Homer said it better:

          https://youtu.be/j73cxLiqc2U

          1. Olivier FAURE says:

            That’s not really the spirit of the Yoda quote. It’s more like “Focus on what you need to achieve. Make failure an impossibility in your mind”.

            It’s questionable advice, but the point is, when Luke says “I’ll give it a try”, he’s leaving himself the door open in case he fails. He fully expects to fail, and that’s what he doesn’t make a more serious effort.

            See also: http://lesswrong.com/lw/ui/use_the_try_harder_luke/

  5. I think one of the core problems with this chase story line, and the reason why we learn nothing about Dear Old Dad here from Three Dog, is that there is nothing to learn. The writers have not come up with anything. He runs around the wasteland doing indeterminate things with indeterminate people of an indeterminately science nature. The closest we ever get to nailing that indeterminism down is in Rivet City, but, correct me if my memory is failing me but Dad’s impact on Rivet city is pretty much 1. He was there 2. He did sciency things related to water purification; no further details are relevant in any way to you and 3. He abstractly sort of inspired some people in the process, albeit not enough to actually get them to do anything with that inspiration after he left except allude to it when his kid shows up years later.

    Three Dog, IIRC, has no stories to share about your father, shows no signs of having been influenced in any way by your father (except, again, maybe to the extent of a sterile and vague “inspiration” that produces no actions), and doesn’t really act like he cares much. There’s no former lover in Rivet City somewhat excited to see you, “you really remind me of him”, excited to share stories about what he did for them and what they did together. (And some fun dialog options revolving around being shocked that he’d be involved with anyone but your real mom.) There’s no random place in the wasteland you can stumble on to out of the main story quest that reveals another side of your father, be it good or evil or morally complicated (“let me tell you about the time your father made a deal with some raiders to take out a nest of those vampire cultists and then betrayed and killed all the survivors of the fight”).

    The writers can’t play the “slowly parcel out information” game, because they have no information to slowly parcel out. I’ve become really tired of the “the next person will tell you about your father” -> “well, I don’t really know anything but the next person will tell you about your father” -> repeat ten times -> “attempt to have MASSIVE REVELATIONS that CHANGE EVERYTHING”…. but there was nothing to “change” in the first place! I’ve become sort of sensitive to this; my brain can tell it’s not actually being fed anything and I’ve gotten to the point where this will just make me turn away entirely.

    Similarly, I can’t watch JJ Abram’s TV shows any more. I liked Alias for quite a while. But eventually my brain figured out that there’s no there there. (When I say “my brain”, I mean this is now a subconscious process, not something I’m consciously analyzing.) There’s no grand plan; plot points are being made entirely to “be mysterious” or to “entice the viewer by telling them about how it will all be revealed next week, only to do it again next week”, but there isn’t actually anything to be revealed. Generally the “revelation” turns out to be nonsense in the end, since it really was a last-minute ass pull.

    In the 21st century, if nobody on the Internet has figured out your TV show’s next plot twist, that means your next plot twist is unmotivated nonsense. We get video games in one big package so that’s less relevant, but you can imagine taking someone through on something like Spoiler Warning, stopping the story at a certain point, and asking them about what’s going to happen next. If 75% of the audience is guessing it, you’ve gone too obvious; if 0% is guessing, you’ve gone too stupid.

    (Also, when I say “tell” I really mean “show”, but that takes yet more work and I’m just typing in a comment box here.)

    1. tremor3258 says:

      Also good points – Three Dog is a great opportunity to put a face on James and help establish a baseline for how the Wasteland sees him and the project.

      1. BlueHorus says:

        You don’t even need MASSIVE WORLD-CHANGING REVELATIONS or even plot info here.
        Just stuff that turns James into a character, a person, rather than a macguffin that you chase for a bit.

        ‘Oh yeah, James! Hah, remember that guy? He swore he could make our air filter system work better. One day of him poking around in there and the entire ship started smelling like dead fish. Disgusting.
        Still, one we cleaned out the old mirelurk eggs from that vent it cleared up. Worked better, too, always has – just like he said it would.’

        ‘James? Yeah, he used to drink here while he stayed around. Jeez that guy – kid, if you got your daddy drunk enough back in the day he’d start hitting on anything with tits, no questions asked. Saw him leave with Candice [indicates the ghoul woman sitting in the corner] once. Weird, ‘cos he was nothin’ but business when he was sober.
        Cleaned up his act after he met your mom, thought. Smart doctor like her, I bet she forced him to take a truckload of STI meds before she’d get near him.’

        ‘Man, that guy was an idiot. So up himself. ‘oh, I’m gonna save the wasteland, give everyone clean water’ – how does a guy get that old, in this wasteland, and stay so freakin’ noble? Mark my words kid, he’s dead. Smartest guy I ever met, but also the dumbest in some ways.’

        Etc.

    2. Blackbird71 says:

      Completely agree on the Abrams example. I recall when “Lost” was a few seasons in, there was an interview with Abrams in which he basically admitted that he had no real idea where the plot was going and instead was just making everything up as he went along. That was the point where I realized that the story couldn’t possibly end well, or in anything resembling a satisfying conclusion.

      Any form of entertainment that follows the same path will ultimately be frustrating for those who tend to become invested in plot.

    3. Thomas says:

      This is a great point – something Bioware, CD Projekt and Obsidian all do really well. If you’re seeking a character, _everyone_ has a story about how that character impacted them.

      1. Olivier FAURE says:

        Oh yeah! Like the “chase after your master” plot in Jade Empire.

        You keep meeting peasants and people who tell you “Yes, I saw this old man being escorted by Inquisitors a few days ago. Probably the one you’re looking for”. Also, you meet a woman who worked for him, and gives you hints about his character (not even cryptic or anything; she tells you everything you need to know), and Sagacious Zu, who comments on the apparent incoherence of his actions in Act 1. You also have multiple people commenting on your peculiar fighting style.

        By the time you catch up with your master, you have more than enough information to make sense of the scene that ensues.

  6. Disc says:

    Simple and effective way to fix the dish quest would be just falling back to the weapons cache reward (the location and key to it) you get if you do the quest but have already found Dad. There wasn’t any unique weapons or anything as far as I remember, but it certainly felt more reasonable as a reward. Skipping the blackmail, the writer could keep Three Dog as the one reasonable good guy in the Capital Wasteland while still having a reason for the player to do the quest. Maybe spice up the cache with some half-decent unique item or something, but otherwise, it’d be a fairly solid quest line without too many changes.

  7. noahpocalypse says:

    Minor typo in the middle bullet point at the bottom of the article: Rivet City is in the southeast, not the northeast.

    1. Nimrandir says:

      Thanks for mentioning this; I was about to Google search at work because I couldn’t believe I’d forgotten the map to a game I played less than a year ago.

  8. DwarfWarden says:

    Erm….don’t you mean the southeast portion of the map?

    And for that matter, why does James need to go to GNR anyways? What did he do there? He leaves the Vault and thinks “I need to fix the Water Purifier That’s At The Mouth Of A River And Would Just Dilute Clean Water With Radioactive Water. I worked on this with Madison Li. The Purifier is next to her home, Rivet City. Therefore, I have two options:

    1. Go to Rivet City and see if she still lives there.

    2. Slog through a Super Mutant infested hellhole to meet with a DJ whose radio signal barely hits the edge of his own neighborhood to…..ask if he knows anything?

    And don’t get me started on Three-Dog’s idiotic speech all about the Good Fight. He talks like he’s fighting the propaganda of the Soviet Union but the only propaganda that actually exists is the Enclave signal that’s been on repeat for God-knows-how-long that only one senile man in Megaton takes seriously.

    “The old world thrived on communications. Satellites still exist from before the war and we can use them, so I set up an old-fashioned radio station. Apparently they used to play music so I’ve got the latest 300 year old music to play in-between reporting the news. This is the first step towards rebuilding. Whaddaya mean another genre of music, this is all music that existed pre-war. What’s rock-and-roll?”

    There, I fixed his dialogue.

    1. KarmaTheAlligator says:

      I was wondering the same as you earlier: why did James go to GNR? It’s nowhere near Rivet City, Project Purity (PP) or the Citadel (where he has allies).

      I think the idea is that, somehow, Three Dogs gets info from everywhere in the Wasteland (you know how he always knows what you’ve done as soon as you’ve done it), so he would know where the PP team has gone in the last 18 years.

      On a side note, is Doctor Li from Rivet City, or did she just move there after PP got disbanded 18 years ago? Because if she’s originally from there, yeah, it makes no sense to not go see her immediately. If she’s not, that’s enough reason to go see Omniscient Three Dogs to ask where she is now.

      1. DwarfWarden says:

        She is blatantly FROM Rivet City. During the last leg of the Wasteland Survival Guide/The Replicated Man quests you learn that something like 30-40 years prior Horace Pinkerton basically had his science team ganked from him so they could grow veggies and clean water while he wanted to do other things. So at a minimum James had to have known Madison Li lived in Rivet City, after all your character is 19 and their birth marked the end of Project Purity. Ipso Facto there’s no reason for James to go to GNR, he knows where all the scientists and scientific progress in the Wasteland is made.

        Hell between Rivet City and the Citadel, GNR is pointless.

        What they should have done IMO is have another critical member of the team missing, James goes to GNR to find them, can’t because the dish is down, you fix the dish while he heads to Rivet City to see if Li’s still interested in cleaning water, then you head there in a comical “You just missed him moment” because Three-Dog announced his scouts found Very Important Scientist Number 3 and he’s at some other location. Then at least Three Dog would serve a purpose other than acting cordial after my evil character sold a child into slavery.

  9. Ander says:

    This series got me to play New Vegas. Never touched Fallout before. I was hooked when, after failing to talk my way past a guard, I crouched behind the stationary guard, took his key, and walked in the door next to him. Please…help….I’m a grad student, I don’t have time for this. But I haven’t even started on dlc yet…

    1. galacticplumber says:

      Nothing much I can do for you there, but if you must play one and only one DLC make it old world blues. So goddamned good.

      1. Daemian Lucifer says:

        Ill second this.Its not only the best dlc,but the second best crpg Ive ever played.And you can get it rather early.The suggested level is 15,which is not that far up.Plus,the detour to enter it is not that far away from the beginning.

        1. Ander says:

          Thanks for the recommendation, folks. Will be taken under advisement.
          I think I’m pretty close to that level-wise. I’m currently exploring the multitudinous ways of taking out Benny. Kinda ticked he only has the chip on his person if you kill him (not that I mind killing him).

          p.s. DL, I gotta ask about #1 crpg now.

          1. Daemian Lucifer says:

            Planescape:torment.

            1. BlueHorus says:

              PPPPPFFFFFFTTTTTT!

              Fallout: New Vegas, please!

          2. BlueHorus says:

            MODS!!

            (AAHAAAAHHHH, SAVIOR OF, THE GAME YOU-PLAY!)

            …Seriously, sign up to Nexusmods.com for free (There may well be other sites that other people recommend) and look at the ‘best rated’ section there. It’ll give you a good way to stretch out your playtime with New Vegas, playing user-generated content.
            (it’s worked for me for almost ten years!!!)
            This may or may not be a good thing to say, considering your situation.

            Specific recommendations to:
            -Project Nevada (+Extra Options) that is a basic overhaul for the entire game.
            It’s awesome!
            – The Someguy Series (not my favorite, but still good), an several additional-quest(s) mod(s) that adds to the main game and is also fun.
            It’s good!
            – And Coito Ergo Sum – Another additional extra-quest mod with that fits with the original game CRAZY WELL, but is also 18 years old+ because it’s about running a brothel/porn empire (hence you have to sign up to Nexusmods.com before you’ll be able to access it.)
            It’s awesome!

            But yeah, there’s more mods than you can shake a stick at hosted on numerous sites (Moddb, Nexusmods, etc.)
            Hope you’re playing on PC!

            PS. Old Word Blues is fantastic. PLAY IT.
            …seriously, do you not have the GOTY version by now? All of the DLC are worth your time.
            …Except Lonesome Road. Maybe.

            (DISCLAIMER: Your time may be worth be worth what I think it is. Any approximation is based on the value of my time, which may or may not be worth the same amount.)

            1. Ander says:

              Could have gotten GOTY, but knowing from experience that recent ES is not my style, I was wary of Fallout. I picked NV up on Steam a week-ish ago on this site’s consistent recommendation. It wouldn’t have been much more for dlc, but, grad student. I want to play at least one. Looking to be OWB.
              Playing on PC. Mods occupy a similar place in my mind to fanfic. Sometimes brilliant, usually deeply flawed, never necessary. This is an unfair view, and it’s one I haven’t broken or felt a need to (although I do read the occasional fanfic these days). As for time: my game time is split between review time and fun time (the latter is rapidly becoming “FNV time”). If any game would get me to mod, it’d be this one. Thanks for the recommendations, in any case.

              1. galacticplumber says:

                Have fun with quite possibly the most intentionally surreal thing I’ve seen in a fallout game. Well… Several of them, but you’ll know exactly which I mean when you get to it and EVERYTHING will be glorious.

            2. default_ex says:

              Lonesome Road was bad for much the same reason as Fallout 3. You get strung along that there is some big revelation to be had. Genuinely interesting hints at what that revelation are. Then you get there and it’s just a psychopath, no revelation, just so much insanity you want to shoot the guy to shut him up.

              Honestly with how Lonesome Road’s hints were going, I was painting this picture in my head, especially when it begins to mention the NCR, Canaanites and Shady Sands. It felt like there was going to be some big tie in with Fallout. That the revelation would be the Couriers are more than just post apocalyptic postmen. Was half expecting to hear they were there to try and carry on the Vault Dweller’s legacy. Nope, just a psychopath with an arsenal of nukes on a launchpad.

              1. BlueHorus says:

                Nop, just a psychopath with an arsenal of nukes on a launchpad.

                You forgot the sheer bucketloads of pretentiousness he had. Like, every 20 minutes he’d call you up and just…blather at you for minutes on end, in circles, like the worst kind of philosophy undergraduate. None of it had any point, though it was certainly trying to fool you in that regard.
                (There were even hints and non-clues in the other DLC about this guy and his quest, talking him up.)

                To Fallout 3’s credit, the story was just lazy.
                It’s not like James called you up every now and then to quote Bible verses at you, ramble endlessly about some great plan, and refuse to tell you anything concrete about where he was or what he wanted, even though you were constanly asking him.

                1. Sleeping Dragon says:

                  Did they try to sell Lonesome Road, oh my. Like, they seriously did everything in their power to build Ulysses up both in the main game and every single piece of DLC. It wasn’t even subtle, like some kind of “this character was here” easter egg. The key NPCs will nearly scream at you “You’re a courier? There was That Other Courier, he asked many things that I’m going to be vague and unspecific about. He knew you and he mentioned you in a vague and unspecific ways.” Then in the Lonesome Road Ulysses is, surprisingly, vague and unspecific.

              2. Disc says:

                Then you get there and it's just a psychopath, no revelation, just so much insanity you want to shoot the guy to shut him up.

                That’s kinda the “joke” though. He makes a mountain of a mole hill, since he couldn’t fathom that the Courier delivering the package to the “Old Divide” (the place it was before it all exploded) had nowhere near as much meaning as he thought it did. Que all the drama. All you can figure as a player is that it was just some random delivery your character forgot about. However it’s not impossible to understand where he’s coming from, but that relies on the player finding (and listening to) a bunch of holotapes scattered around the DLC area AND giving a damn about why he’s walking the path that he’s on.

                For whatever it’s worth, his story is kinda tragic, while also making him a hypocrite in light of all the things he accuses you of. I think the last holotape you get from the reward chest also hints that he was fully aware of how fucked up his plan was. Makes you wonder how desperate he must have been to find some resolution with you, the NCR, the Legion, the Mojave and himself.

                1. Sleeping Dragon says:

                  The problem for me is that they’re not selling it that way. I mean, the logs make for an interesting story, particularly since it’s probably the most involved and nuanced look at the Legion from the inside (I will admit I have not played Legion side a whole lot), but the entire supposed mystique between Ulysses and you is just so much hot air. I will readily admit that it’s very difficult to build a good mystery with interesting resolution but this is very much a case of someone mistaking vagueness for profoundness.

          3. trevalyan says:

            At the risk of starting the war I hope to prevent: Undertale.

            Yes, there are many fair criticisms of the game as an RPG, and a certain portion of the fandom might be sufficient reason to sentence Toby Fox to death. It certainly lacks the sheer volume of Torment’s dialogue. However, in terms of sheer economy in storytelling- in deconstructing RPGs themselves- the game certainly deserves all of its accolades. Its humor and kindness may well be unprecedented in the modern RPG arena, and if you care about themes, you’ll find even overlooked details to have deep meaning.

            If you write, and I do, Undertale is the ultimate antidote to Bethesda/ Ubisoft/ Game Of Thrones spectacle over substance. Can’t recommend it enough.

  10. ehlijen says:

    There could really have been something deeper in having to loot the past (a pinnacle of the past’s glory no less, in the form of the moonlander) to get something as basic as a radio station back to working, in a similar vein to how barely anyone grows food and would rather raid supermarkets for prewar food forever.

    But if the game did try to make something out of that theme I missed it.

    1. BlueHorus says:

      Theme!? What is this of which you speak!?

      The writers thought not of which you say!
      They merely suggested that you should walk through the cinematic thing, and thus to the other thing, and from there you shoud be impressed by the further thing!

      Do not try to think about the thing, or the other thing, or any of the other things! Otherwise you might think of the things as having meanings beyond the immediate importance of the thing as presented to you!
      And then all of the importance of the things collapses!!

      TL:DR

      Bethesda don’t do THEMES. They do MOMENTS. Don’t think about the moments too much, or you ruin them.

  11. Blue_Pie_Ninja says:

    It’s weird because I never even got to Galaxy News Radio because I got blown off the bridge across the water by super mutants, landing below it. I then just went around and found the Lincoln memorial and skipped a bunch of quests.

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You can enclose spoilers in <strike> tags like so:
<strike>Darth Vader is Luke's father!</strike>

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Can you imagine having Darth Vader as your <i>father</i>?

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I'm <b>very</b> glad Darth Vader isn't my father.

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I'm reading about <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darth_Vader">Darth Vader</a> on Wikipedia!

You can quote someone like this:
Darth Vader said <blockquote>Luke, I am your father.</blockquote>

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