Despite the chore of tracking down HoloTapes across Massachusetts, I was far more interested and invested in investigating Nick Valentine's troubled relationship with his memories than in finding Shaun. Take the companion side stories, for example. There’s a ludicrous disconnect between the Vault Dweller’s occasional bursts of emotion and the fact that they just spent six in-game weeks building a giant dong instead of looking for Shaun. There are only a very few conversations where the protagonist's emotion shines through, and for the most part the whole "find my son" quest is lacking the narrative and emotive hooks of other aspects of the game. This is not a problem unique to Fallout 4, of course - welcome to open world video games! - but Bethesda has dropped the ball by failing to make that central story compelling.
In reality, shoot-and-loot, exploring side stories and building a settlement network are far more memorable.
Nominally, the main story of Fallout 4 is a parent's quest to find their child. For one thing, if you choose to play as a woman, a man suffers at the hands of the baddies, which is (sadly) a remarkably rare role reversal of the standard execution.įor another, nobody gives a shit about it - including Fallout 4 itself. This is such a common trope that I can't be bothered getting out of bed to criticise it, but I mention it here because I think the example presented by Fallout 4 is pretty interesting. We don't get to see them as a person - only as something belonging to the protagonist. Sometimes this is successful and other times it is rubbish generally, we don't get enough time to develop any interest in or feelings for the stolen character. Think Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor, where you press a button to stealthily kiss your wife (and this is very cute). Nowadays it's become so tired that most creators make at least a token effort to show us why we ought to care about whoever it is who has been murdered or abducted, by showing the protagonist enjoying an idyllic home life with their loved one before they are violently removed. In the past the player or viewer was expected just to be on board this motivation immediately we're supposed to hate the baddies because the baddies took our thing.
Nominally, the main story of Fallout 4 is a parent’s quest to find their child. There's this thing a lot of video games, movies and other media do where they introduce a character and then take them away, and this becomes the primary motivation for the protagonist's journey. Fallout 4 has some of the best writing and characters of any Bethesda game - outside the main plot.
0 kommentar(er)
