T w e n t y S i d e d
Link (YouTube) |
In this episode we argued if it had been 3 or 4 years since the last time we played Fallout on the show. We were ALL wrong. We covered New Vegas FIVE YEARS AGO.
We’re playing a lot of Fallout 4 around here these days, which is giving me a first-hand look at the radically different ways people approach this game:
My son Issac (14) is not a roleplayer. He plays Fallout 4 because he likes finding legendary items, killing legendary creatures, and collecting suits of power armor. Doesn’t care to mess with mods. (His other two big games are Terraria and Borderlands 2.) He’s only ever made one character (named Issac) who is the default male character. He’s level 68 right now, which I didn’t even know was possible.
My daughter Esther (16) is a roleplayer. She gets getting mods for more customization options. She likes making characters and building houses, like she’s playing a first-person version of the sims where you sometimes need to murder the neighbors.
I continue to play as I always have: Tons of mods, permadeath, and ignore the main quest in favor of collecting comic books. I’m still playing female characters based off the same base save from 2015, since I haven’t worked up the energy to sit through the intro again.
In the episode I said the intro is “perfunctory, but not short”. It’s not long enough or in-depth enough to build a strong attachment to these characters, but it is long enough to get in the way of the fun. And even if the writing had more punch, this engine is terrible at melodrama. The stiff facial expressions. The stilted animations. The awkward pace of conversations where characters either pause too long before delivering their lines, or they talk over each other.
We’ll talk more about this as the series goes on, but this intro is pretty good at showcasing the upcoming problems with the game. I have many nice things to say about Fallout 4, but none of them are related to the main quest.
