Well, that was brutal…

Posted on October 18, 2017 by Clint

I’ve been accused at times of being cruel and unusual in the fates I inflict upon the characters in this Weird New West of Zombie Ranch, and not without cause. But oh, I’m still working the bunny slopes in comparison to stuff like Game of Thrones, right?

Or for that matter, I recently finished the main story of Fallout 4 — and it is gut-wrenching. The scuttlebutt I always heard was that the story was weak or poorly done, and perhaps that’s true insofar as it’s easy to lose track of your quest for your kidnapped son in favor of building and tweaking settlements or any number of umpteen other options available to you. This is the curse of the open world game, I suppose, where pacing and motivations can die an unmourned death unless you deliberately keep a laser focus on the primary quest line. Even then, though, refusing to get sidetracked by side content could end up leaving you woefully unprepared and unable to progress just because everything’s hitting you too hard. The proverbial Beef Gate. In fact I believe some games–maybe even including Fallout 4–go so far as to put missions into the main line where the goal is just “Reach Level 30.” I’m not 100% sure it was Fallout that did it since I had left off any kind of real progression for several months and so if that happened it was at least several months ago.

But anyhow–whoof–I finally got on to what I suppose would be Act 3 of the game’s arc and it’s pretty devastating if you’re the kind of person who likes to buddy up to various factions. I will refrain from spoilers since it’s more than possible there are other Johnny-come-latelies like Yours Truly who either haven’t started the game yet or possibly have just had it on the back burner while life or other games took priority. Let’s just say that Fallout 4 is a Post-Apocalypse game that no matter what route you choose will end in a more-or-less appropriately apocalyptic fashion, with nothing that could truly be called a “clean” victory. You may feel a bit cheated at times, like the game is forcing you down certain paths with no option but desolation, but I can’t deny that such darkness fits the genre.

On the plus side, if anyone remembers that I had declared I made a FalloutRosa as my player character… I revisited her looks and, after much tweaking, morphed it to something that isn’t perfect but I’m fairly happy with. Dawn agreed that it at least has something of a proper Latina visage, which feels good after all my blogs of the past few weeks on the subject of character appearance.

Just for kicks, here’s a side-by-side of Fallout 4‘s default female look and my Rosa Mark II:

Not too shabby for a non-artist, right?

Okay if I’m wrong don’t say it. It worked well enough to let my brain imagine the rest.

2 thoughts on “Well, that was brutal…”

  1. Denita TwoDragons

    Long post here, because you just mentioned one of my gave games and franchises:

    Despite the fact that I freaking love the game, I have some bones of contention with FO4. Chief among them is that there was absolutely no option to have all four factions willing to come together and forge a potential peace treaty. Every one of them was lunatic to the point of caricature (or in the case of what would probably be considered the truly “good” faction, far too weak and unorganized — and obsessed with settlements, ahem — to blaze a potential trail toward real harmony). I can see that for a couple of them, but for all? To say the least of the Horatio Hornblower in his airship, whose “accomplishments” in the space of ten years is just a *smidge* suspect seeing as he is only 20-21 by the time the events of 4 come out. (He’s in 3 as a dweeby gawky 10 year old with a crush on Lyons’ daughter.) No amount of storytelling can convince me that the bearded, battle-scarred, hard-faced, angry dude in what appears to be at least his 30’s, is actually a guy who only just reached drinking age; no matter what legacy his last name might confer lore-wise.
    I went with the Brotherhood because I loved them in 3. I was very disappointed in the radical change between 3 and 4, and even more disheartened by the plot twist in that story arc and how it was “resolved”. (If you’ve played it, you know which one…) Cut dialogue shows they had a third potential ending that, IMHO, would have been a heck of a lot better than the two that they stuck with.
    That being said, I loved the voice acting and the real grittiness of the world. The location truly felt like alternate-history Boston, with recognizable landmarks. And of course, Nick Valentine stole the show. He’s one of the most loveable characters in the entire game (Curie being one of the others, LOL) and I’d love it if there was a spin-off game centered entirely around him.
    Anyways, that’s my 2 cents…plus change…didn’t expect it to get this long but I don’t get much discuss it with others. Hope you don’t mind!

  2. Clint

    Hey, you read my spiel, least I can do is read yours. 😀

    I wasn’t all that much into Nick or Curie, but I got a kick out of the snot-nosed cave brat of FO3 reappearing as a grown man.

    As for the endings, well, they’re all brutal in their way but at least it wasn’t the WTF ending FO3 was. I had FAWKES. RIGHT THERE. HE IS IMMUNE TO RADIATION YOU DAMN GAME.

    *sigh*

    But part of me wonders if the brutal endings are a reaction of the designers to having to steadily tone down or phase out a lot of the darker post-apoc aspects present (or potentially achievable) in the previous games in the series, at the behest of Bethesda and the various ratings boards. You can’t kill a child or even show a child dying anymore, for example, so instead we’ll just nuke an entire section of town where children were recently seen…

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