Thread: Fallout 4
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Old 04-18-2017, 01:01 AM   #1129
Tom Guycott
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Quote:
Originally Posted by DAMN iNATOR View Post
The Karma system would need some serious tweaking before I would want it back...there never seemed to be any gray areas, just everything along "Water good, fire bad" logic.
You say that like it is an expressly bad thing.

It did alter how the game played out, though. Especially doing the "unspeakable". People bitch about not being able to kill children because of the politically correct PR backlash a big budget game would get for allowing such a thing to play out. However, it wasn't without consequence in game. Some NPCs wouldn't talk to you. Other kids actively ran away from you. Your Karma took a substancial hit. Most importantly, you permanently got branded with the "Childkiller" perk which wasn't a perk at all... and triggered a nigh unvulnerable bounty hunter and a couple of his comrades to continually stalk your ass until the end of the game or he eventually killed you. As much as it was a black and white thing, it wasn't something to be taken lightly, especially with limited skills due to level cap. You couldn't grow exponentially into a demigod.

New Vegas expounded on Karma well enough: the whole idea about choices you make affecting factions as well as your overall reputation. Powder Gangers like you for siding with them against the town, and as such, they don't attack you in the wild... but you have the reputation of being friendly to them, so anyone not friendly to them views you as hostile. No bearing on folks who don't give a shit about PGs, but alters aspects of your gameplay.

Contrast this with 4's dialogue choices mostly falling to "Say Yes Plainly, Say Maybe which will still come out to Yes, Say No but then you still get railroaded into a Yes, and Say Yes Sarcastically". Not really choosing anything on the whole, and mostly only having an affect on (whatever follower you have with you)'s feelings on the matter being hurt or bolstered by how you responded... and even then, its only slightly more involved than NV's followers.

Not having shades of gray can be fine if handled/written well. Sometimes being overambitious can lead to unnecessary plot holes and dead ends. Yeah, maybe a little more ambiguity here and there would be fine, but it doesn't *need* complications for complications sake. Also, the player doesn't need to be swerved at every turn to the point that you don't know what decision you should make because the writers decided to go all TellTale with choice options (in that there are rarely ever ANY good decisions... especially in Walking Dead or Game of Thrones... anything you pick will screw you over in some way and you're just choosing what improvised lube you're going to have used on you).

Sounds like I'm shitting on 4. I like 4. I like the Fallout universe as a whole, and Bethesda as a whole had taken care with the lore to expand on it without shitting on it. But I also see how far down the road it has departed from the original Interplay RPG roots, and dropping Karma is a BIG part of that departure. Also evolving it into a "crafting survival" is a part of that departure. And downplaying V.A.T.S. in favor of real time iron sighting is a part of that departure. How much of the thing do you take away from that thing to where it stops being that thing it is supposed to be?
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