What really kills Fallout 4 "immersion" for me (no spoilers)

[Guest]

When you telling me after 200 years these people have not had a chance to build more than a shanty town I would be scratching my head but when I see a supposedly a 200 year old poster still on the wall thats about communists or whatever I just lose my shit...

 

It makes no sense! Come on! Ok guys. The bombs fell 40 to 50 years ago. That's as far as I will go.

200 years? I must have misheard!

[sen4mi]

Apparently war is not the only thing which never changes???

[Guest]

Come on! With the right level and the right perks you can bring with yourself about 500 Lbs of weight, and still running like a gazelle.

 

[XunAmarox]

For me it's just that the story really sucks. They removed RP from the RPG. It's a totally locked completely linear story. You can't even be good or evil now. Your dialog choices even are only an illusion of a choice. The endings are all basically the same just with different characters in the various factions playing the roles. You're stuck as a set character and can't determine essentially anything about yourself other than how you look. It's worse for the female than for the male as well.

 

You're a mother that just gave birth and you have a law degree. This preludes the possibility of being lesbian, as you'd be bisexual at best. It definitely preludes any kind of fantasy of not being a mother or going through child birth, well alone anything like being a virgin. It's not even clear how you're presumed to have any kind of combat experience whatsoever as you were a stay at home mom with a law degree. Your husband was in the army, that makes sense, but you? You go from suburbia to killing wastelanders, building suits of power armor, constructing settlements, along with weapons and armor modifications, all in the timespan of a few hours. It's just stupid.

 

They did good with the gameplay and the graphics but they severely dropped the ball with the story and roleplay. It's truly awful.

[Gameplayer]

After the Burning of the Library of Alexdrai (sorry if I don't get this deadon here history guys).

 

The Roman Empire went into decline..........

 

What followed is a period known as the Dark Ages.

This involved incurable plagues and people forgot a whole heck of a lot such as.......

 

Sanitation

Aquaducts (yep the ability to move a lot of water around was a huge loss)

Concrete (no shit they knew how to make it)

Steam Power (no shit this was done but uh only so many Engineers knew how...highly guarded secret)

Decent roads....

Ship Building

Navigation

 

That's just some of the really big stuff that was amazing that people just simply didn't know how to do.

 

Now consider this.

 

The people that survived the decline into the Dark Ages didn't have to contend with a Nuclear Winter, Radiation, the Walking Dead, Super Mutant Armies, Raiders, Cannibels, Slavers, Ravenous Beasts the size of automobiles virtually immune to gunfire, insects the size of a dog to as big as a house, the robot army, the Brotherhood of Steel showin up to steal your high tech shiz cause you know you might hurt yourself with that working car.

One thing I didn't read in lore was how the survivors contended with disease....That's a really big hole....Sure war kills a lot of people but the biggest weapon of mass destruction known to man is simply disease.

 

But sure after 200 years in those conditions of course man would turn it all around and you would really be marching out of your vault into a Utopian Society!

 

Though for some reason despite the technological superiority of the Roman Empire and well so much cool tech just sitting around plain as day you know what?

DA lasted 500 frickin years yo and that was for real.

 

So no for me 200 years pass and man is unable to recover that doesn't even phase me......Cause that has literally happened to mankind undeniable fact that the Dark Ages happened.  The real kicker is....This has happened more than once.

[Guest MonsterFish]

Come on, don't turn this into ANOTHER thread about how Fallout 4 is not an RPG anymore. I'm sure Grine was just making a point that in 200 years nobody thought 'Hey, instead of taking hours to find scrap to build our shitty homes, why not just use the empty husks of buildings like everyone ever would think to do in the first place.'

 

Or something along those lines, I'm not really a mind reader.

[sen4mi]

One thing I didn't read in lore was how the survivors contended with disease....That's a really big hole....Sure war kills a lot of people but the biggest weapon of mass destruction known to man is simply disease.

 

I think old age has a much higher death toll?

 

Anyways, people have made all sorts of claims about modern medicine, but lots of people have survived diseases throughout the ages. Also, I do not think a 15 minute managed care visit to a doctor who does not have time to understand your medical history is going to really do all that much for most people. Maybe you get a few percentage points on some statistical charts that way, but I think that the overall benefit must be pretty minor. (You can kind of see this by looking at health demographics on a country-by-country basis.)

 

I do imagine that good nutrition, adequate cleanliness habits, decent exercise, fresh air, clean water, getting enough sleep, and so on probably do a lot to help people fend off diseases?

 

Still, for the wasteland, I suppose maybe radiation killed off a lot of the disease organisms? I think you would have to have something like that to account for ghouls managing to survive? (Either that, or maybe this is just a game? I have heard rumors like that, but I view them with suspicion.)

[Gameplayer]

 

One thing I didn't read in lore was how the survivors contended with disease....That's a really big hole....Sure war kills a lot of people but the biggest weapon of mass destruction known to man is simply disease.

 

 

I do imagine that good nutrition, adequate cleanliness habits, decent exercise, fresh air, clean water, getting enough sleep, and so on probably do a lot to help people fend off diseases?

 

 

 

Well that, wasters don't have enough of that.

 

[RitualClarity]

After the Burning of the Library of Alexdrai (sorry if I don't get this deadon here history guys).

 

The Roman Empire went into decline..........

 

What followed is a period known as the Dark Ages.

This involved incurable plagues and people forgot a whole heck of a lot such as.......

 

Sanitation

Aquaducts (yep the ability to move a lot of water around was a huge loss)

Concrete (no shit they knew how to make it)

Steam Power (no shit this was done but uh only so many Engineers knew how...highly guarded secret)

Decent roads....

Ship Building

Navigation

 

That's just some of the really big stuff that was amazing that people just simply didn't know how to do.

 

Now consider this.

 

The people that survived the decline into the Dark Ages didn't have to contend with a Nuclear Winter, Radiation, the Walking Dead, Super Mutant Armies, Raiders, Cannibels, Slavers, Ravenous Beasts the size of automobiles virtually immune to gunfire, insects the size of a dog to as big as a house, the robot army, the Brotherhood of Steel showin up to steal your high tech shiz cause you know you might hurt yourself with that working car.

One thing I didn't read in lore was how the survivors contended with disease....That's a really big hole....Sure war kills a lot of people but the biggest weapon of mass destruction known to man is simply disease.

 

But sure after 200 years in those conditions of course man would turn it all around and you would really be marching out of your vault into a Utopian Society!

 

Though for some reason despite the technological superiority of the Roman Empire and well so much cool tech just sitting around plain as day you know what?

DA lasted 500 frickin years yo and that was for real.

 

So no for me 200 years pass and man is unable to recover that doesn't even phase me......Cause that has literally happened to mankind undeniable fact that the Dark Ages happened.  The real kicker is....This has happened more than once.

Yes on the concrete. It is actually claimed to be stronger in some areas than what they can make today. They still don't' know how they did it to make it so strong.

 

Don't forget some of the medicine. They used techniques with silver to help keep infection at bay.

 

They had engineering skills that still haven't been replicated today. The dome that was created out of cement. Nobody today will even attempt to create that structure. Pantheon

 

The Pantheon at 142 feet - 43.3 meters inside diameter and height, was the largest dome ever built for about 1700 years and is still the world's largest un-reinforced concrete dome in existence.

 

http://www.rutlandguttersupply.com/blog/2010/09/08/RoofDomes.aspx

 

 

Usable examples of Roman concrete exposed to harsh marine environments have been found to be 2000 years old with little or no wear.. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_concrete

There is even some that state there was a mini naval battles waged in the Colosseum where the Romans piped thousands of gallons of water to flood it for this event.

 

Even now with the advancements we are re-discovering the science that Romans had more than 2000 years ago.

[Guest]

 

   ...Romans...

 

 

 

           ...Romans...

 

...Romans...

 

 

Maybe was for this reason that I always played "Romans" when playing Civilizations, and not because I was born close to Rome.

[Guest]

 

 

   ...Romans...

 

 

 

           ...Romans...

 

...Romans...

 

 

Maybe was for this reason that I always played "Romans" when playing Civilizations, and not because I was born close to Rome.

 

 

Should have played Total War instead. They are way cooler there

Anyway problem is just the disbelief of a 200 year old poster still on the wall after a nuclear holocaust.

 

I just dont get why the 200 years was even necessary? surely 2 or three decades would have been enough?

[Guest]

 

 

...

I just dont get why the 200 years was even necessary? surely 2 or three decades would have been enough?

 

 

The special type of bomb they used was calcifying the posters to the walls, so they are extremely resistant to the weather and they still stay here after 2 centuries.

(And has some sort of preserving agent to canned food, that you can still eat after 2 centuries without dying after the first bite.)

 

And "how cool is 2077?", "Just keep the actual year cool too! Just add 200 years and have 2277!"

No idea. I think it was just a marketing decision about the years. Maybe 200 years are the minimum enough to have "mutations" (they do not happen the day 2.)

 

But it is pretty fun, that if you project the increase in price of magazines, using data from 1980 to 2010, and then continue the projection to 2077 (linear, no variables), then you have the prices for a $3 magazine that become $ 35.

Close to what is in the game.

[Ouroboros226]

Not to make it worse for you lol, but here goes... 

 

What about the gunners? They are supposed to be a mercenary company but has more manpower, equipment and resources to take over the entire commonwealth twice over. How can a private army of mercenaries sustain themselves with mercenary jobs when they outnumber the civillian populace? What stops them from simply taking over everything? 

[Chrisscogg]

What followed is a period known as the Dark Ages.

 

 

If you have a Eurocentric point of view in world history. Europe, even in the classical era, was not the center of the world. China and India were. And, even in the so called "dark ages," Chinese and Indian scientists, engineers, and philosophers were doing shit that Archimedes could only have wet dreams about. In fact, most of modern science is built on philosophies and concepts pioneered in the post-classical era, or the dark ages. So I refute that this argument holds much merit in regards to post nuclear reconstruction. I agree with Grine, in 200 years, the Commonwealth (and the capital wasteland) should containe more then just a handful of shantytowns. Black Isle did it right, on the west coast, in under 100 years, there was a major sovereign nation with rule of law, with major trading networks run by free enterprise corporations. No such structures exist in the areas in which Bethesda has built their Fallout games, for no discernible reason other then to have a post apocalyptic survival asthetic to their games. This is the reason people say that, while Fallout 3/4 are good games, Fallout New Vegas was a better Fallout game. Weither this makes FONV better then F3 or F4 or not is up to you.

 

Anyways, people have made all sorts of claims about modern medicine, but lots of people have survived diseases throughout the ages. Also, I do not think a 15 minute managed care visit to a doctor who does not have time to understand your medical history is going to really do all that much for most people. Maybe you get a few percentage points on some statistical charts that way, but I think that the overall benefit must be pretty minor. (You can kind of see this by looking at health demographics on a country-by-country basis.)

 

I do imagine that good nutrition, adequate cleanliness habits, decent exercise, fresh air, clean water, getting enough sleep, and so on probably do a lot to help people fend off diseases?

 

Still, for the wasteland, I suppose maybe radiation killed off a lot of the disease organisms? I think you would have to have something like that to account for ghouls managing to survive? (Either that, or maybe this is just a game? I have heard rumors like that, but I view them with suspicion.)

 

 

Holy damn! Do you even history? Disease has been the biggest killer in the entirety of human history up until the 20th century, with the advent of modern medicine! More specifically the invention of antibiotics, typically in the form of pinicillin. After antibiotics became common, the human population exploded from a little over 1 billion people in 1918, to over 7 billion people as of 2015. All that has happened in less then a century. It's hard to believe that mortality rates were that high before modern medicine, but it's true.

 

But you may have something with the "it's just a game" angle. As we all know, the nature of the Fallout universe differs from our own. If Fallout's nature was more like the real world's, the biggest killer in the wasteland would be cancer caused by radiation exposure. But it's not. In fact, there's very little reference to cancer, if any, in the Fallout universe. Why? Because the nature of the Fallout universe does not reflect our own. That might explain why there's little foliage after 200 years of relatively unimpeded growth. Real nukes make things barren, but not for 200 years.

 

TL;DR: There should be more foliage and civilization 200 years after nuclear Armageddon. Even by Fallout's rules.

[abeman]

When you telling me after 200 years these people have not had a chance to build more than a shanty town I would be scratching my head but when I see a supposedly a 200 year old poster still on the wall thats about communists or whatever I just lose my shit...

 

It makes no sense! Come on! Ok guys. The bombs fell 40 to 50 years ago. That's as far as I will go.

200 years? I must have misheard!

 

This bugged me too, i made a post about this but i think it was lost on site-chances. I gave it 30-50 years after the war but even that starts to feel too long period.

 

If you look for images from chernobyl, those buildings and items look worse than some in this game and that was "only" 30 years ago. No war or bombs and very few looters i think.

 

One would think that those who survived the war would have burned everything in there to stay warm in winters? And do you see any trees growing

[nIn nIn nIn]

Chernobyl is probably a poor comparison, Hiroshima and Nagasaki are better examples - actual nukes, real fallout from real explosions. Both cities have recovered totally. I'm not talking about the artificial built environment, I'm talking gardens and foliage.

[Kaz Aanh]

It makes no sense! Come on! Ok guys. The bombs fell 40 to 50 years ago. That's as far as I will go.

200 years? I must have misheard!

 

Actually it makes perfect sense.

 

Every few years a Vault Dweller wakes up from his Vault and wrecks shit upon the wasteland, reducing all human progress again to 0.

[cossayos]

 

 

You're a mother that just gave birth and you have a law degree. This preludes the possibility of being lesbian, as you'd be bisexual at best. It definitely preludes any kind of fantasy of not being a mother or going through child birth, well alone anything like being a virgin. It's not even clear how you're presumed to have any kind of combat experience whatsoever as you were a stay at home mom with a law degree. Your husband was in the army, that makes sense, but you? You go from suburbia to killing wastelanders, building suits of power armor, constructing settlements, along with weapons and armor modifications, all in the timespan of a few hours. It's just stupid.

 

 

I guess, it all depends on what limits you're setting yourself. I for one have chosen the don't give a damn part. The only thing bothering me is, that there is no, I don't give a shit option whenever the dialogue about Shaun pops up. Such as, when giving the interview for Piper you're forced into rambling about your lost child. The dialogue wheel doesn't give you an evasive option. You have to rub it into her face.

[XunAmarox]

 

 

 

You're a mother that just gave birth and you have a law degree. This preludes the possibility of being lesbian, as you'd be bisexual at best. It definitely preludes any kind of fantasy of not being a mother or going through child birth, well alone anything like being a virgin. It's not even clear how you're presumed to have any kind of combat experience whatsoever as you were a stay at home mom with a law degree. Your husband was in the army, that makes sense, but you? You go from suburbia to killing wastelanders, building suits of power armor, constructing settlements, along with weapons and armor modifications, all in the timespan of a few hours. It's just stupid.

 

 

I guess, it all depends on what limits you're setting yourself. I for one have chosen the don't give a damn part. The only thing bothering me is, that there is no, I don't give a shit option whenever the dialogue about Shaun pops up. Such as, when giving the interview for Piper you're forced into rambling about your lost child. The dialogue wheel doesn't give you an evasive option. You have to rub it into her face.

 

 

I hate the female protagonist's backstory so I roleplay the game like she was a sleeper agent and Nate and Shaun were just her cover.

[2pac4eva7]

For me it's just that the story really sucks. They removed RP from the RPG. It's a totally locked completely linear story. You can't even be good or evil now. Your dialog choices even are only an illusion of a choice. The endings are all basically the same just with different characters in the various factions playing the roles. You're stuck as a set character and can't determine essentially anything about yourself other than how you look. It's worse for the female than for the male as well.

 

You're a mother that just gave birth and you have a law degree. This preludes the possibility of being lesbian, as you'd be bisexual at best. It definitely preludes any kind of fantasy of not being a mother or going through child birth, well alone anything like being a virgin. It's not even clear how you're presumed to have any kind of combat experience whatsoever as you were a stay at home mom with a law degree. Your husband was in the army, that makes sense, but you? You go from suburbia to killing wastelanders, building suits of power armor, constructing settlements, along with weapons and armor modifications, all in the timespan of a few hours. It's just stupid.

 

They did good with the gameplay and the graphics but they severely dropped the ball with the story and roleplay. It's truly awful.

This, exactly.

[AsariX]

I headcanoned that the posters are laminated/plastified. People in the 50s were very fond of plastics, and tried using them for a lot of things, going as far as claiming that synthetic clothes of that time were superior to clothes made with natural materials. Truth is, those nylon and vinyl clothes were uncomfortable, felt cold, didn't breathe and made you sweaty. Synthetic materials improved a lot the past 60 years, but they're still not ideal. Especially not now that we also have their environmental cost to consider.

But overall, stuff from the 50s that just won't deteriorate does make sense to some degree.

[sen4mi]

Holy damn! Do you even history? Disease has been the biggest killer in the entirety of human history up until the 20th century, with the advent of modern medicine! More specifically the invention of antibiotics, typically in the form of pinicillin. After antibiotics became common, the human population exploded from a little over 1 billion people in 1918, to over 7 billion people as of 2015. All that has happened in less then a century. It's hard to believe that mortality rates were that high before modern medicine, but it's true.

 

That depends, but you are right - especially in cities, diseases killed lots of people. I was thinking recent history too much, and not enough about problems with plagues and famines.

 

But, if we think about recorded history, most people died in childbirth, not from diseases. Though also, there's a lot of guessing and approximating in these numbers. So we are really talking about people's estimates and not direct observations.

 

But anyways, disease, war and cities tended to all go hand in hand, also, for a variety of reasons. And major cities, also would have been where people would have been doing most of the record keeping.

[Chrisscogg]

 

That depends, but you are right - especially in cities, diseases killed lots of people. I was thinking recent history too much, and not enough about problems with plagues and famines.

 

But, if we think about recorded history, most people died in childbirth, not from diseases. Though also, there's a lot of guessing and approximating in these numbers. So we are really talking about people's estimates and not direct observations.

 

But anyways, disease, war and cities tended to all go hand in hand, also, for a variety of reasons. And major cities, also would have been where people would have been doing most of the record keeping.

 

 

Mm... Good point. Ehh... Childbirth, diseases... what's the difference? Jk.

 

Perhaps I'm thinking too much about more recent history. Major cities, and the diseases that came with them, weren't really a thing until after the industrial revolution in the 19th century. Even then, the ridiculous mortality rate could be explained primarily by complications of childbirth. That should not, however, impact the acknowledgement of the large and widespread affect disease had and has on human history.

 

But, I didn't pull those numbers out of my ass. That huge population growth did happen in the 20th century, and modern medicine, and antibiotics specifically, being a major factor (though, by no means, the only) in it.

 

But more to the point of the thread, even if there were widespread epidemics of disease in the Commonwealth, (Which there is no evidence to support such a claim.) there should still be more then just a handful of shantytowns. I would suppose that, in 200 years, even controlling for major setbacks, like an epidemic, the vast majority of either the metropolitan area, or the more rural suburban towns should be inhabited, with at least some form of organized trade organization to provide some rule of law, if not a federation of some sort. Perhaps not a republic, or an empire, but at least a "trade federation" so to speak, should exist by now.

[morvo]

1) restricted conversion choice, you typically get 3 varieties of "sure, I'll help" and one "what?", and on the rare occasions where you get a selection of different responses the NPC's reply is exactly the same for all of them.

 

2) Female lawyer with a base intelligence of 1?

2a) ex-military male with a base STR/Endurance of 1?

2b) when they predefine your characters back-story it makes stat allocation shatter immersion unless you choose to conform to the crappy backstory they gave you.

 

3) "Legendary Enemy has Mutated!" <- it was a fucking robot, son.... a fucking robot.....

 

4) fusion cores remaining at 100% when churning a generator for 210 year, but drain to 0% in 30 mins of running on power armour? whaaaat?

 

5) attempting to sneak in a building with no perks in sneak causing enemies on MULTIPLE FLOORS to be alerted to you....

 

6) Immortal companions, don't worry about suiciders, dogmeat will tank that mini-nuke for you!

 

I'm sure there's more

[sen4mi]

But more to the point of the thread, even if there were widespread epidemics of disease in the Commonwealth, (Which there is no evidence to support such a claim.) there should still be more then just a handful of shantytowns. I would suppose that, in 200 years, even controlling for major setbacks, like an epidemic, the vast majority of either the metropolitan area, or the more rural suburban towns should be inhabited, with at least some form of organized trade organization to provide some rule of law, if not a federation of some sort. Perhaps not a republic, or an empire, but at least a "trade federation" so to speak, should exist by now.

 

 

Mmm you think in interesting ways....

 

Personally, given the almost [but not quite] complete absence of children, let alone breeding humans, and given the combat-induced death rate, I am surprised that the commonwealth has even these few handfuls of shantytowns.

 

But I suppose given combatants spawn/respawn in just a few days, maybe I should not be quite so surprised?

 

(Or, if I really wanted to fix this kind of thing, I would have to get into Bethesda's design studios and transform their artists workflows to have deeper insights into their game data structures - to produce a "closer-to-real-but-still-fun" world, I imagine they would need a number of overlapping "procedural art containing eventful points of interest" beyond their current scope of work. But they've got such a good thing going, I do not know if they could pull something like that off. And increasing their sophistication and volume while maintaining moddability? In a sense they are already working miracles there... anyways... I can sort of see how I would want to do things differently, but there are also so many things I do not understand, and those also would probably be important.)