Fallout 4: The Bad - Settlements

Fallout's world, and our world come to that, has a pretty clear definition of what a 'settlement' is in terms of what the minimum size of one actually is.  A settlement is 3 or more families that have joined together for mutual support, aid, defense and building a common area for their use.  The reason and rationale for this is simple: to attract trade.  In terms of game play the Fallout franchise reflects this up to Fallout 4.

A single person living alone (or a recent widow/widower) will only get a trade caravan to pass by if something in the way of a service is offered or there is a personal relationship with someone in the caravan.  Even with that, large caravan organizations will tend not to drop by a single person's residence as it is not worth the time and effort.  In general single individuals living alone tend to end up dead on a frequent basis and only if there are defenses (difficult local geography or living in a bunker) will that person survive for a long period of time.  A number of environmental stories are seen by players who wander the wasteland, and the person living alone finally succumbing to the problems of the wasteland is not uncommon.

A family (husband, wife at least, though children are a part of this as well) that lives alone is not a settlement but a homestead.  Homesteading is a time honored concept in the US and individuals staking a claim on a place (be it empty of individuals or having abandoned structures), and make a go of it, usually through farming of one sort or another.  The single family can fare a bit better than the lone individual as duties can be divided amongst individuals and a better safeguarding performed to ensure their safety.  The best places are usually off the beaten path, somewhat isolated by geography and yet offering terrain that can be farmed.  Old residences, shacks, and the like tend to be the structures associated with the single family, so that a divided living space can be achieved.  The single family may be able to situate itself on a trade route so that caravans have a better chance of stopping there, particularly if some supplies (water in particular) can be offered as a service.  If that isn't the case then working with any other individuals or groups locally to offer goods or services will also allow for the single family to make a go of things.  With that said the tale of homesteads where the family has succumbed to the wasteland can offer poignant stories (either through environmental circumstances or written accounts) that tell of what the exact problems were that finally drove them off or killed everyone.  Single families have a tough time of it, and one suspects that infant mortality is rather high in the wasteland.

Two families can have a much better time of things, but are still not up to settlement status.  Co-operative homesteading, being near each other and supporting each other can allow for a mutual defense that shares the load of watching over the area, and can even have night-time guard duty.  As with single families location is important, and as there is a division of labor there is actual free time available to improve the circumstances of the two families, often to the point of trying to find a third  family to settle on nearby land.  Two family situations are metastable, which means they are relatively stable compared to a single family that can be wiped out by a random occurrence, say a Deathclaw wandering into their place, while two families stand a better chance of having such instances reconsider their value as prey and seek an easier target.  Raiders, however, will not be that easily dissuaded as two families can prove to be an attractive target as they have more accumulated wealth than a single family.  Caravans may show up on an infrequent basis, as well, if services or particular goods are offered by the families involved.  Positioning of this cooperative arrangement on or near a trade route helps in this regard, though it will also bring unwanted attention with it.

At three families a proper term of 'settlement' comes into being.  With three or more families, joint defense, helping each other out, and improving the land and buildings allows for a better and more defensible small community that is likely and almost certain to attract trade caravans.  A settlement like Arefu, in Fallout 3, had suffered hard times and is falling from the three family concept and if it loses anyone then the locals worry that they will no longer be able to attract trade as they were driven off their land by a form of Raider.  There is a numerical threshold for trade and being right on the margins and having to move to a much more defensible location means losing land to grow crops, tend cattle and otherwise have goods to offer to a caravan.  Part of the unwanted attention that two families have grows larger with just 3 families, though they should be able to defend their farms and homesteads better than two families, a group of determined Raiders will start to pick off isolated individuals to try and make the entire group fall apart.  Thus there is a minimum amount of shock that three families can take before the system becomes unstable, and that is a metastable condition that varies by number of families, absolute number of individuals, terrain, and trade.

Larger, more permanent establishments can be classified as trading posts, although they will have a grab bag of terms applied to them including town and city.  Trading posts are vital in that multiple trade caravans will tend to stop at them thus ensuring there will be a long-term connection for supplies that cannot be found locally.  With 3 or more families providing some food, local craftsmen may show up able to trade their wares for food and generate revenue by selling goods to not just locals but trade caravans, as well.  With enough individuals a shopkeeping situation can start up, with one individual who knows how to broker deals in put in charge.  With actual liquid funds available the entire settlement can be reinforced, long-term help hired, and defenses erected that deter larger groups and keeps the worst of the wasteland abominations at bay.  There are lots of places like this in the Fallout franchise: Megaton, Diamond City, Goodsprings, and the like are just such places.  A town like Primm in Fallout: New Vegas can be overwhelmed by escaped convicts that force everyone to shelter in a single building as the firepower of all those in the town can be concentrated, but that requires explosives, and being willing to kill off people wantonly to take over the rest of the town.  University Point was wiped out by the Institute in Fallout 4 and that demonstrates a ruthless attack for the information held by an individual in the trading post that saw no value on human life at all.

Up to and even including Fallout 4, the idea of what a settlement is has a well formed basis and established lore that connects to real world realities.  Any nation that has undergone the transition from wilderness to pioneers to homesteaders and then small towns showing up will have this as part of the cultural background, even if it is centuries or more old.  This is how human society operates and it is family oriented.

Non-family settlements do show up in  the Fallout franchise.  The ghoul population of the Underworld, in FO3, has a group of ghouls that don't require a normal diet able to band together in a relatively isolated location where, even though there is an active conflict going on above ground, the two combatants see no real reason to go after the ghouls.  Without a high ground or other point of tactical value, the ghouls can post a minimal surface guard and the rest of the dwellers can live in relative safety.  Anyone adventurous enough to actually find them will also find individuals tending to shops, mostly catering to ghouls but welcoming of a friendly smooth skin there for trade and/or barter.  In FO4 the 'town' of Covenant does some trade but only with those that pass their test to ensure that they are not synths.  The place is a virtual fortress built up with high stone walls, turrets and double doors that can't easily be breached from the outside.  Neither of these are family based, do not feature children and generally have particular and purely local reasons for their establishment.  They are singular establishments created due to circumstances particular to that group, and not easily replicated.  Underworld is a mutual support group, while Covenant is run by a group behind the scenes that enforces order and thought amongst the people there.

Now that the basics of settlements are understood, it is time to examine the 'settlement' system of FO4.  The game mechanic for FO4 to start a player run 'settlement' features putting up a settlement beacon tower, powering it up, and then making sure there is a job for the individual that shows up, as well as sufficient water, food and a bed for them.  The player can then erect defenses, appoint individuals to guard duty, and even set up shops when enough individuals are present.  Very simple.

What is missing?  Families.

As we have seen in actual history and Fallout franchise, the basis for a stable settlement is based not on individuals, but on families.  Families have an internal arrangement in which they band together for mutual love, support and defense, and that is a critical part of creating a culture and maintaining it over time.  Without this there is no culture, no mutual support amongst close individuals, no concept of being able to expand that culture to include others who are like minded and no system of mutual cooperation and agreement amongst families.  Those systems are not developed from top-down, but the bottom-up.  Warlords come and go, and it is the rare one able to establish anything permanent in history.  We do hear their stories, their legends, but when you look for their culture it is usually absent or in a small region that has changed drastically since the times of that warlord.  In FO4 the PC is expected to micro-manage a 'settlement' because there is no mutual system or basis for mutual protection arriving on the scene.  Families don't show up when beacons are erected.  The top-down nature of creating 'settlements' like this is the very same as a warlord forcing individuals to work the land in a place and offering 'protection' to them.  No matter how noble you are as a player, the moment you set up settlements, you are a warlord as you are not building on stable family units to create a society.  You are dictating jobs to individuals, which is telling them what to do, even if it is just setting out crops to tend to, that is still an act of intention on the part of the PC.

There are mods that attempt to address this, to create a framework where individuals will take up jobs set out by the PC, and then build their own residence.  Yet it is the PC who is dictating the number of plots for agriculture, commerce, industry and residences, plus has the ability to collect taxes.  The NPC settlers do not come with a pre-existing skill set, nor do they seek to utilize those skills to the benefit of the community.  The PC can recruit some high level traders, provide them with appropriate trading stalls and such, but that is still a top-down game mechanic.  Even worse is going to an existing family, turning their farm into a 'settlement' and then having a bunch of strangers show up to start tending crops and, eventually, outnumber the family.  Basically, when you do the mini-quest for the family to get use of the workbench, the PC is given total say on the living conditions, circumstances, protection and all else for that site: ownership is handed over lock, stock and barrel.  For doing one small thing, the PC is given absolute control over the family and everything they own.  They become subjects...worse they become serfs and the PC can freely re-assign the family members to break up the family to different 'settlements'.  Isn't that just grand?

The reason why it is set up like this is simple: faster game play.

The downside?  No role playing opportunities beyond the entrance mini-quest.

Role playing is sacrificed for faster game play, which is the opposite of what should be going on.

As bad as the system is, it is a very first step into adding in a factional transition element to role playing, but the ability to integrate it is not provided.  Action, combat and not spending much time doing things with a settlement, beyond being its dictator or warlord, are the priorities for the settlement system.  And as the PC can never permanently curb Raider gangs, the settlements will always be under threat from gangs that keep on showing up at the same places.  For all the destruction the PC can do, actually nuking a large site so that it will never serve as a Raider refuge or base of operations is never one of them.  With so many mini-nukes available, you would think that the demolition of these places would be an option. 

Or, if that isn't an option, how about taking them over to create new 'settlements'?  Not only do you get rid of the Raider gang that took it over, but you take it over, in turn, and make what used to be a difficult place to clear out one that is unapproachable and a virtual death trap for any set of Raiders that comes along.  And if you added in 'settlers' who had skills to actually get some sites to work better, then old industrial or manufacturing sites just might start coming back on line, but then lack raw materials to get them up and running properly.  The reason and rationale for then looking at quarry sites or other raw material sites that Raiders have, especially junk yards, then would come into play.

If settlements are integrated into role playing, then a plethora of options start to come to the forefront that goes outside the given factions.  It would create the ability to lead a new faction that was able and willing to be separated from the others, defend themselves and create new trade routes to interact with other, more permanent communities.  To keep in good stead as the leader of a faction means making sure that the needs of the entire group are addressed, that complaints are fielded and addressed, and that ideas of how to improve the situation of the faction comes from those who are in it.  Settlers then move from serfs or subjects to stakeholders and citizens.  That would allow a DIY situation that could take multiple pathways to accomplish a different set of goals than would be available in the static 'join a faction' game that we currently have as FO4. 

The bright ideas from the DLCs then change this dynamic, as well, since the idea of Dr. Gray who created the robotic hydroponics farm of Graygarden could then be made into a real concept so that the production of food is slowly turned over to robots and the 'settlers' could be freed up to do more creative things or better tend to their own defense.  The Automotron DLC makes that a very real thing as it is, and robot run farms start to become a supply powerhouse for food.  The Contraptions DLC automates the production of goods, which would mean basic necessities could easily be addressed by automated production so that all of the people had access to the purchase of clothing, food, potable water...and purchase is the concept since just giving it away places little value on it.  Serfs are given freebies through the benevolence of the leader; citizens earn their existence through their own work in exchange for goods garnered by the exercise of their liberty to gain income for that exchange. 

Finally the Vault Tec DLC gives underground living a real possibility and might even offer a different way to address the Institute.  Build an underground Vault that connects up to the Institute and start to let the people inside it know that their underground life will not be forever.  Offer those under the thumb of the Institute an option to freely leave.  Father might frown on that, of course, but the guy is only the acting Director of the place.  Make Vault Tec's slogan of 'Better Living Underground' a REALITY that works, that offers jobs, trade, a means to make a living all done through the safety of the Vault and robots able to serve as a second line of defense behind turret systems.  And if the Institute wants to trade for basic power because they aren't smart enough to create nor utilize the very systems that Vault Tec knew how to make, well, that makes them rather dependent upon that Vault or system of Vaults the PC makes.  Vault 88 should be just a taste of new opportunities, and once a basic Vault is set up there then the discovery for new Vault sites should be a part of the game.  How would the Institute react to surface dwellers working in and maintaining a good life underground without all the beauty of the Institute but with a better footing in power, water, food and materials?  In a few months a well designed Vault would outshine the Iinstitute, itself.

And yet, for all that opportunity, the player should also be allowed to find a way to get in the Institute without ever starting a single settlement and without ever building a single piece of large scale equipment via the crafting system for settlements.  The settlement system should offer opportunities and new ways to play, not be an overhead burden and frustration to the player.  A means of finding good managers for these 'settlements' as they grow beyond a couple of families should lead to a self-administering system where the PC is required less and the control of how the place grows put in the hands of the people actually living there.  Thus game play can be minimalist with a few, relatively dry choices to proceed as are in FO4 or it can be rich, diverse and see a new start in the wasteland that truly begins to create a new civilization once more.  The early decisions you make might change the overall outlook of this new society and as you grow into the role by playing it, the changes you make to your decisions will also create friction within that society.

I applaud the settlement system, and don't see it just for what it is, but as one of the largest missed opportunities in the entire franchise.  So little was done with it to create a true role playing game that included actual factional dynamics of resource management that it is a shame to just write it off because of the clunky way it was handled.  This could have been a cornerstone, a building block, for the post-post-apocalypse in the Fallout franchise.  That does seem the way it is heading, and yet, by not executing on FO4 as a role playing environment, the ideas presented seem out of place and not well crafted.  How to change a straight up RPG to one with factional game elements that integrate well into the RPG is something Bethesda Game Studios could have attempted to pull off and be the mark of changing directions for all their RPGs where faction leadership is featured.  To run a faction is not a title, but a job taken on voluntarily as it entails much overhead and yet can be extremely rewarding.  Not just an adventure, but a job with adventure, with very rich role playing opportunities included.  Heck, other faction leaders might actually come to respect and/or fear you over time.  Wouldn't that be fun?  Hard work should garner some rewards, after all.

Fallout 4: The Ugly - Renewable Resources

Renewable Resources?  What in tarnation does that mean?

In modern game parlance this is known as re-spawning.  In a game area that the player goes through, there are general background trackers that indicate to the game engine if the area, lootables and individuals die a permanent death (looted once) or if they re-spawn as entities (usually generic, though some lootables may be specific) if the player returns to the area at a later time.  In addition containers that are not marked permanent will also re-spawn their contents.  In Fallout 4 the player can utilize resources found in areas to create or upgrade armor, weapons and equipment, as well as use it for larger scale building.  All of that is resource intensive and intentionally made that way so that the player does not lightly expend certain resources while crafting.  Additionally the salvage amount for any given item is less than was used to craft it, and some materials (like adhesives) can never be recaptured via salvage.  To satisfy the building needs of just player based equipment means scavenging widely for resources (aluminum, fiberglass, steel, cloth, adhesives, etc.) and then utilizing those materials to make something useful or more useful for game play.

This new game mechanic is one seen in other games, and the concept of gathering resources to make/upgrade items is not an unusual one.  Additionally there is usually some game mechanic involved that allows for the equivalent of mining, forestry, or other means to get a continual, low level supply of materials.  That low level supply can build up over time and be a major factor in the game.  FO4 does not have that as an exact game mechanic, although it is possible to assign a generic Settler (individual attracted to a player developed site) to a task which yields very, very low amounts of salvage material that can be scrapped for raw resources.  From vendors magical shipments of material can be purchased that are a receipt to be redeemed at a workbench: how the materials get there is a total mystery as there is no delivery caravan showing up to drop the stuff off.  It is interesting to think that these vendors have the ability (via some means) to teleport materials from place to place, but since the only groups able to do that are Big Mountain and the Institute, that is unlikely.  Needless to say a torque rod or cogwheel showing up once a week from a Settler working on finding scrap material doesn't go very far.  Thus the player gets that task.

Using materials

To the great credit of the team that designed the game, they  took all the trash that had no obvious use in prior releases and then assigned each piece a scrap recovery value so that the player could begin to get the raw materials to build stuff.  As a game mechanic it is only passable, however, as a number of items (like screws as an example) can be made on the relative cheap with a low-end lathe but that the player is not allowed to actually make and can only be recovered from wasteland scrap.  A lathe is the first machine that can make all the necessary components from properly smelted and hardened metal to create another lathe.  The lathe is the mother of all machines.  Precursors to the lathe that were used in woodworking served much the same purpose and when their gears and such were powered by water wheels, then the lathe could also make all the gears and such necessary to make another lathe.  Basic smelting and casting are necessary to start getting the raw materials for a lathe, but once you have them then what you make is left up to the precision of the machine and the ability of the machinist involved.  In prior installments of the Fallout franchise, robots can be seen amongst  smelting, casting and machining equipment, thus they had the programming to utilize that equipment.  That is the mechanical way to do things, and once you have the design specification for screws of various sizes, types and uses, then it is just a matter of machining the first one, putting that onto a copy lathe that is connected to the first and just replacing the raw material once the copy is finished.  With two lathes the production of screws goes from a few a day to tens or hundreds a day using one lathe to move a stylus or other indicating device over the original and having the other lathe follow that pattern via a direct connection.

Instead of doing a proper workshop set-up (and equipment that would allow for such a set-up is seen on workbenches!), the design team decided on the magical production capability of a background animation while the Player Character worked on crafting a new piece for their person.  When creating a piece for the settlement, the piece shows up in mid air, can be turned around set down and fit into place or snapped to an existing piece set down previously.  How does this get made out of the raw materials in the workbench?  Magic!  Or teleportation, which is matter transmitted from the main workbench in the workshop to wherever the design is needed as specified by the interactions from the player.  I have lots of quibbles with this system, as most of the stuff the player can make looks like junk.

The PC comes from an era of well fitted materials, and for home use the concept of walls and a roof to keep the elements out is a real concept.  And, no, using the argument that the wood found in the wasteland is all scrap doesn't work as the player can also scrap entire trees.  From entire trees you can get boards that are not weathered, not cheap looking and can fit together decently.  Basic drying oils can be applied to get a finish (ex. walnut oil, boiled linseed oil) that might wear down over time, yes, but will give a decent look to interior pieces.  For exterior pieces, perhaps the use of milk based paint with red ocher or other pigments might be a decent solution.  We do see some of those in the Far Harbor DLC build set, so why aren't they known on the mainland where they were historically used in the Fallout timeline?

So, to put these together: the game mechanic for construction, building and working on weapons and armor is unitized, but it makes no damned sense at all.  Where is the forge for heat treating metal?  Is it done magically via a matter manipulation system?  If so then why is it a surprise that actual teleportation exists for biological life forms?  If the red workbench that indicates the unified, master control of a workshop is available in The Commonwealth, was it just a local test market deal?  If so, who made it?  Where did it come from?  And where are the instruction manuals for it that would have allowed the people right after the bombs fell to start scrapping what was around them and build decent shelters and buildings?  Were they delivered AFTER the war?  If so, who did so?

That last question is important since I don't remember seeing the red workbench across the street from the PC's original home before the bombs dropped, so it must have been put there AFTER the bombs fell.  I can say that it wasn't The Institute as there are no records of those workbenches anywhere inside the place and they are still using old fashioned manual blasting and hauling of materials.  Yet Vault Tec (in the DLC) certainly had not only knowledge of such workbenches but deployed them as an extended network system for materials inside what was to be Vault 88's caverns.  Vault Tec had their hands on not just the basic version, seen in settlements, but an advanced version made specifically for them to build this demonstration Vault which was to be a crown jewel for the corporation.  If Vault Tec actually made them, then how and why did they deliver them to sites AFTER the bombs dropped?

The most surprising part is that the PC can just interact with one and it immediately responds to them without having to go through a boot-up phase.  Why, this almost sounds like something Big Mountain would make.  Too bad there weren't any around Big Mountain in its DLC.  Is this a complaint about a simple instance for enabling a game mechanic?  In some ways, yes.  In other ways...this is the sort of question you WOULD ask in an RPG and see if you couldn't find a label on the thing to indicate who made it, what it's model and serial numbers were and maybe even how it works.  How come the PC can use it, but no one else can?  Yes you get access to it from people who live in settlements, but they, apparently, never used the thing to clean up the trash and turn it into raw materials that could actually be put to good use.  And if they were the settlers ones who put in the design schema for floors, walls, etc. then why can't the player adjust those to something that, you know, actually protects people from the elements?

Infinite everything

Now back to the topic of renewable resources.  If you go through an area, a building, what have you, and gather up the resources from it, then all of those resources can respawn in the exact, same locations you found them the first time.  And as the game is open-ended and has no maximum level cap, that means that the opponents also respawn so you can harvest more experience points!  Now if you dare to question where these brand-new resources that were there before and wiped out (or looted) come from the next time you visit, then you may even have the temerity to ask where the enemies come from!  Because all these enemies, particularly of the human sort, appear to have an infinite supply train delivering them to these sites.  Where do they come from?  We don't see children in Raider camps or Gunner sites, so where are these adults coming from on a regular basis?  The wasteland is called that because there just aren't many people out there and a good part of it is barren of life.  There is a limited food budget, and that means there are a limited number of people available to draw on as a pool for all these sites that constantly respawn people.  Creatures I can give a hand-waving pass to, although with apex predators the problem is acute, as well.

I remember taking out Quarry Junction's Deathclaws in Fallout New Vegas (FNV) that had taken over the open pit quarry as their nesting site, and I can tell you that once they were eradicated down to the last Baby Deathclaw, that they did NOT respawn.  And for all the Raiders we see in the Nuka World DLC for FO4, they do not have a viable population nor age distribution to survive and respawn if you take out the adults.  In theory a few stragglers might wander in, but when they see the place up and running and that none of the Raiders they knew are left alive or that the streets are empty of any raiders...well...they may be dumb but they shouldn't be that stupid to stick around because they wouldn't survive to BE adults if they were.  Death comes easily in the wasteland, and idiots don't tend to fare too well. If you take out all of the Raiders inside the Nuka World grounds, then some will continue to respawn outside it, but no more will respawn inside it.There are singular instances where groups can be eradicated from certain sites in FO4 and its DLCs.  There are others that, no matter how thoroughly the enemies are removed, they will just come back in a few days to a week.  Even worse there are a type of quest which will necessitate going back to a place if you haven't cleaned it out recently...or put in a kidnap victim and automagically respawn the enemies there, too.  Making real progress in FO4 is an ultimate effort in futility.

FNV was not perfect in this respect and the area in and around Vault 3 did respawn Raiders who were chem addicts...after the supply line to the place had been cut off and all the easily found chems taken away.  An odd inhaler here and there stuck in the sand will not keep a large group of junkies happy.  Vault 95 in FO4 showed that an abundant supply able to keep everyone hooked for the rest of their (short) natural lives wasn't enough to keep people happy and individuals started hording the stuff which still had unpacked crates to be distributed full of chems ready to use.  The Nuka World Raider gangs are a cut above the normal sort so once a few come straggling back and see that someone or something has taken out everyone they knew, the idea of sticking around goes out the window.  Why?  Their support structure has been eradicated.  A few showing up ONCE in areas outside of the main Nuka World grounds would be fine, but with their leadership gone, their support structure no longer available, then they don't have a real way to operate like they used to operate and that had a high overhead maintenance cost to it.  Instead they are added to the random encounter tables for the main game, and that means they will keep popping up.  Just like Super Mutants.

The problem of demographics and population becomes acute with one group in particular.  This group has a definite maximum number of individuals and a short time frame for getting new individuals which has closed by the start of FO4.  These are Super Mutants, and they are a result of a decade long experiment by the Institute in using Forced Evolutionary Virus on people they kidnapped.  We can see how many chambers were available for exposing these individuals, see the limited space for containing them and then read the last logs on individuals and get a low rate of individuals who survived, weren't summarily killed and just dumped in the wasteland.

A maximum of 20% and more like 8-10% survived in the last batch.  Doing the math of exposure tubes, observation rooms and low success rate, then is put against a growth and maturation time, observation time and disposal time...the most you get from the Institute if all individuals were transformed perfectly is between 12 and 20 per month.  And that is if the transformation happened in a few hours to a day, and the maturation took about as long, and then the observation lasted, at most 2-3 days.  When mortality rate, along with kill-off disposal rate is factored in, then those numbers drop to 2-4 per month.  In year, that is 24-48 Super Mutants being dumped in the wasteland.  In 10 years that is 240-480.  Now lets say the processing and maturation rate was much faster so we can multiply that by 10.  Thus you have a maximum number of Super Mutants ranging between 2,400 to, at tops, 5,000.  And that is if and only if, none have died in the wasteland due to any cause at all from the time individuals were dumped on the surface world and during the few years between the end of the program and the start of FO4.

As seen in FO4 Super Mutants (in theory 'brothers' but they are all sterile and hold no trace of their prior biological gender) not only quarrel and fight each other, but also kill each other when things get out of hand.  Fratricide might only be a few individuals per month, say 5...that then goes to 60 a year and then 600 taken out of the way too optimistic huge total just due to in-fighting over 10 years.  This does not include deaths to any other cause, like starvation.  Small bands of Super Mutants, usually no more than 5 and usually around 3, are seen going out looking for food.  They do pretty well against humans on farms if they can find them.  A bit less well against Raider encampments.  They face a real challenge with Gunners.  And stuff like Radscorpions in groups or Deathclaws can start to cause a real loss of these scavenger Super Mutants.  How many is a pure guess, but the per year total has got to be something a bit higher than the in-fighting total due to the lethality of weapons and equipment that can be found in the wasteland.  Put in the semi-organized conflicts in certain areas and the number of Super Mutants drops heavily from the over-optimistic scenario of 5,000 still around when FO4 starts. 

If you wanted to be extremely over generous then 3,500 is good starting point for the absolute maximum number of Super Mutants left in The Commonwealth at the start of FO4.  Plus we see NO EVIDENCE of Super Mutants from OUTSIDE the region filtering into The Commonwealth so the numbers are not boosted.  In fact a few have left for Far Harbor due to the conditions in The Commonwealth.  Super Mutants are, by and large, homebodies unless they are forced to decamp due to circumstances. Super Mutants can face the radioactive fog of Far Harbor better than humans or even The Children of Atom, they face even nastier wildlife hidden by the fog.  Perhaps as many as 50 or 60 left for Far Harbor, which turns out to be a frying pan into the fire sort of deal.

In retrospect it would be interesting to have a counter that showed just how many Super Mutants were left in The Commonwealth and just watch it tick downwards when the PC wasn't even fighting them.  A reserve can be kept for story telling purposes, of course, and they can't be interacted with safely until the conditions for the story are met.  At some point after that the number will go into single digits if you just sit and wait around.  This means that using Mini-Nukes hand delivered by Super Mutants would be a non-starter: no Super Mutant would just let a brother throw his life away like that no matter how pretty the explosion would be.  Plus accidentally pressing the wrong part might take out a lot of other brothers with the one Super Mutant and that is just plain bad.  Super Mutant Suiciders is just a game idea put in by the developers, and a really bad idea as Super Mutants are loyal to each other and would put an end to such idea pretty quickly.  Again they are dumb, but not stupid.  To get a continual resupply of Super Mutants there MUST be an FEV facility run by someone, somewhere within or on the easily accessible borders of The Commonwealth.  Since they act like those done by the Institute, that would mean the Institute has a separate facility for this that isn't taken out if the Institute is destroyed.  They are the only ones that had the technology, means, capability to run this sort of program, and it can't be that far away due to distances that their teleportation technology can support.

Can the actual number of human inhabitants that can be supported in The Commonwealth be ascertained?  Not easily, no.   Places like Diamond City have their own crops inside the city which are grown by a few people and help to feed the citizens there.  In addition caravans bring in supplies to keep the place going.  Bunker Hill exists more on caravans than locally grown crops, although those are present as well.  Before University Point was killed off by the Institute, it had a community that grew crops, did salvage and used trade to keep itself going, and only the salvage part was problematical due to subsidence of the grounds into the oceans and the ongoing threat of Mirelurks in one of the buildings that had been broken apart and flooded on the lowest level.

Elsewhere, a thriving family farm, like the Abernathy farm near Sanctuary Hills can support a husband, wife, 2 grown daughters and a farm hand, as well as a brahmin as cattle.  That is a large farm, however, and not all of the crops can be actively tended to by the people there.  Plus the Abernathy family does some trading locally and even with Diamond City on an infrequent basis, so the food crops shown when they are found are supplemented by trade.  When they are found one of the daughters had been killed by Raiders, but the absolute number that was sustained included her (and having the crops she tended go untended is a nice touch, too).  Thus a diligent farm can keep 5 adults and one head of cattle fed and supplied.

The problem is that there aren't that many farms in The Commonwealth.  How can 10 adult Raiders be kept fed when one of the best farms can only feed 5 adults?  And by killing off an adult farmer, the food supply drops, meaning that someone is going to starve and that someone isn't a farmer.  Raiders killing farmers means fewer Raiders, not more of them.  The food supply, even supplemented by wild crops, is not enough to sustain the Raider population that is witnessed just on a single visit to every Raider encampment that is seen in The Commonwealth.  Some of the Raider supply does come via extortion of caravans going to Bunker Hill, but when they violate that agreement the management at Bunker Hill is willing to let someone take care of their problem.  The Raiders at Libertalia do try to go after those caravans, but have found out that the small numbers they can send out as scavengers don't fare that well even when they do bring back supplies.

Raiders do extort food from farmers, but that isn't going to go very far, either, given the farmers need to survive, as well.  Tribute from a farm or two won't keep 10 Raiders alive.  The demographics of feudal Europe has an upper crust that is about 1% of the population while feudal Japan has that around 10%.  At best 1 Raider can survive off of tribute from 10 farmers and keep a stable food supply in the bargain.  Even accounting for the small amount of craftsmen and tradesmen in feudal times, the basic idea is that it takes quite a few farmers doing farming by hand (without the ability to harness oxen to plough fields) to keep a small sector of society that is rich or taking tribute going.  Thus to keep 10 Raiders alive requires at least 90 to 100 farmers, or about 20 farms.  Even paring that back to allow for trade and such, the lowest number would be 10 farms with enough adults to actually work the soil.  The mutated crops help, yes, but there you are exchanging fertile acreage for fewer, but very productive crops so as to cut down on storage.

And that still doesn't answer the question: where do all the damned Raiders come from, anyway?

This is and has been a broken game mechanic since at least Fallout 3.  FNV also had it, but tried to limit the respawn areas and respawn rate, and allowed the PC to actually clear some areas permanently of problems.  Of course in a couple of instances what replaced the prior inhabitants proved to be much worse than what was cleared out...but that is the wasteland for you...and those new inhabitants tended to have a different diet and food budget.  Cazadores don't need crops to feed on, and are more than willing to feed on any animal that wanders their way.  That is a more than acceptable game mechanic: opportunistic and quite nasty things that don't require what the prior inhabitants needed can and will move into places.  That is one way the wasteland gets worse, not better, when removing bad actors.  Taking down a low level Raider gang, however, is not the cue for a higher level, better armed gang to show up because they would have easily gotten rid of the lower level one before the player ever got there.  That is a busted game mechanic.  It might make for decent game play, but it makes no damned sense at all.

If praise can be given to Bethesda Game Studios for incorporating ideas starting as mods for FNV to take back and secure wasteland sites from the threats of the wasteland, and for putting all the useless junk populating prior games to good use, then they can also be criticized for the way it is implemented.  Without giving a good background on where all the supplies are coming from and where all the respawned adults are growing up as children, then the game faces a huge problem in being believable as a game setting.  For a game that touts itself as an RPG, it gives in far too much to action/shooter game mechanics and resetting the pins to knock them down again and again and again.  Even the most interesting site gets boring the 3rd or 4th time through it.  By the 8th time it is just clearing out by the numbers, nearly sleepwalking through the battle just to get the damned quest done.  Again. 

No RPG offers this as a 'feature' because RPGs are supposed to present a world that people live in, work in, die in and care about.  And no matter how good the defenses you build for a settlement, and I've had places that are veritable fortresses, it takes only a couple of Raiders to get past all the walls, defenses, traps and whatnot, to kidnap someone and demand a ransom. That isn't defending anyone. Why go through all the trouble putting in stacked defenses that will kill any enemy that dares to show up when the game 'quest' design will just say 'nope, they do this anyway, it doesn't matter how good your defenses are'?  That is your 'reward' for putting in all the time doing that stuff because this is an action game with some RPG elements, not an RPG that has designers asking 'well if you do invest in great defenses, then any group trying to get in will be intimidated by them and see it as not worth the trouble', and then proceed accordingly.  That would mean zones of control around such places that tend to make potential enemies gun shy because they do have some value on their own lives.  Why?  Because they would in an RPG.

Fallout 4: The Bad - Game Mechanics

Let's say that there was no Fallout franchise and the game we knew as Fallout 4 just came out as a new post-apocalypse action RPG.  It would be lauded as new, exciting, innovative and with pretty decent action mechanics and better RPG mechanics than most other action RPG titles.  It would be criticized for bad science, yes, and without having a deep backstory or that its potential as an action game hadn't really been fulfilled.  Yet the theme, setting and general game play would be seen as solid and worthy of at least the prior generation of action games but feature a good first person storyline that wasn't too involving and having an open world with lots to explore.  FO4 has all of that, with so many shooting galleries of different types that it really is astounding just how varied they are, and that at higher levels a player can put the 3rd dimension in to play via use of jet packs on power armor.  The game wouldn't be criticized for skimping on the RPG elements and would even get some praise for putting forward an innovative weapon and armor upgrade system.  Without anything to compare it to, this new game would really have been something and offer a good amount of levity into the dire world it presented.  Great stuff!

All of that is still true, today.

Action game vs RPG game mechanics

Except FO4 is a part of a long running franchise that is based in the RPG world starting from the isometric 2D with party based mechanics (that weren't so good, lets face it), transitioning to a 3D first person or third person view, and having a very complex game with high RPG mechanics as part of it coming out before FO4.  Fallout: New Vegas set a standard for role playing in the franchise, and the developer, Obsidian, was given a short window to put all their ideas to work and, mostly, came out with a real gem of a game.  If fans of the series wished for better combat elements for series it was not at the price of the RPG mechanics being turned into RPG elements.  That difference between mechanics and elements points the difference between the controlling mechanic and the secondary and subsidiary elements to the main game mechanic.  In prior instances RPG mechanics led the way and combat was something to support the decisions made by the player in an RPG setting.


Basically RPG game mechanics were to rule the day and the interplay of the PC with the people and the environment would put combat into the secondary and supporting role in the game.  A great RPG can have crappy combat elements and still be a great RPG.  That takes a lot of time, effort and energy to work out not just the physical landscape but the human inter-relationship landscape, as well. This is not a strong suit of Bethesda Game Studios, and the prior game they worked on, Skyrim, was divided into geographical regions that had their own concerns and any coordination on quests or events between regions took members of the region teams time to figure out how to integrate them into the larger game.  Skyrim substituted a lot of things to do, people to see, and places to go so as to put immersion into play.

Something like this probably happened with FO4, save there was the knowledge that any single quest area might have to tie back into the main quest line at some point.  Wonder why that loot chest or safe didn't have that special item there the first time you cleared out a place, but that one item magically appeared the second time?  REASONS!  Yup, storyline mechanic reasons that make no damned sense at all as a gamer used to playing RPGs.  I'm used to carrying around useless quest items for quests I'll never do or have never found...all part and parcel of gaming in an RPG setting and is called 'inventory management'.  Bethesda wisely puts those at no weight, so that they are just taking up a slot in the inventory but not a something that counts against carry weight.  An Action game requires that an item be immediate, an imminent reward and NOT sit in a PC's inventory unless the direct, attached quest is live (or at least listed in the quest log).  Action based games are imminent games, which means they concentrate on the moment and action for fast gratification and intense game play.  RPG games concentrate on the over-view and interplay of characters with events as discovered by the Player Character.

To serve the action part of action RPG, the RPG element requires a protagonist, and it is best to limit that to one or two (players have got to have some choice, after all), thus you get the couple that starts the game which doesn't last past the hour mark of gaming.  You have less than an hour to form a deep, emotional bond with someone who is an NPC...and run to the Vault as the bombs drop!  And get stuck in a cryo chamber!  And see your spouse killed and infant taken!  Get that bond forming!!!  Then you MUST WANT TO TRACK DOWN YOUR INFANT!!!!

Because you have a deep, emotional bond with that child and your dead spouse.  From less than an hour of game play, most of which is spent not doing or saying very much, and even being a spectator to events for part of it.

Say don't I get a few minutes to an hour to grieve and bury my spouse afterwards?  Nope, just leave that beloved in the cryo chamber as a frozen memorial, a spousicle.  And you are never to think that you might ask for medical help for someone who has been badly wounded and frozen...why, helping someone in those circumstances....well...actually, that might work.  How dare you have an unauthorized emotional understanding of the bond between you and your spouse!  Your baby is missing!

And you do run across a couple of doctors who just might be able to do it...sadly, you don't ever get that option.  Because... REASONS!  The premise of the main plot is never, ever to be QUESTIONED by the player.  Action based gaming demands that you don't do those things because the action is imminent, the play is immediate and you aren't there to think about what the hell is actually going on.  RPGs not only encourage that, but entire storylines can be hidden away until you start to think that you might actually be able to ask those questions and do so.  And then you start to uncover answers...maybe not good answers, true, but actual ones that make some sort of sense.  That can change the entire direction of the story, the game and all of its outcomes.  RPGs with action elements would have that as a feature, in fact.  Action RPGs?  Possible, yes, but if that breaks the flow of the action and requires some thinking by the player that is creative, then why add that in when the game can give the player the imminent reason to build stuff or shoot stuff instead?  None of that trying to have a relationship business or actually put yourself into the role of a grieving parent who has lost their spouse and their child both at the same time and might be able to rescue BOTH OF THEM.  Not allowed because the RPG is in service to the action part of the game, not the other way around.

Now if this were an RPG mechanic in the front seat, the basic premise of being in a Vault and put into cryosleep is actually an excellent one!  You have a rather limited neighborhood, true, but if you gave the player a glimpse of the pre-war world for, say, a week, allowed them to form a relationship at home and/or at work, and met the Vault-Tec representative to sign you up as he/she made the rounds, then you would start to get some investment in the relationships involved.  Who made it to the Vault?  Were you single?  Did you live with a roommate?  Married?  Single with child? Or were you that grouchy elder that barely talked with anyone?  Toss in race, gender and appearance for the player to figure out, maybe put some precious items into a safe, and then the bombs drop, and the PC is rushed into the decontamination chamber and.....you get the emergency wake-up call because the Vault has lost some system integrity and no one is around to fix it.

Did someone figure out how to break in?  Were critters munching down on the cabling or sipping condensate and messing up the place to short out stuff?  Was the all-clear ever received?  Was this Vault-Tec giving you a wake-up call?  Or was there some outside group hacking into the Vault to see what they could find?  Were you the first person to wake up?  Or the last?  Or somewhere in-between and the others in the Vault were staging wake-ups based on skills they needed to survive or expand what they were doing?  Were you going to face the world alone, as part of a group, or as someone just trying to save the lives of other people still stuck in cryosleep but with the system slowly failing?

Damn, that sounds like a great game!  You would get a dice roll on just what, exactly, the reason was that you got called out of cryosleep, or you may have made a decision or two that changed the path of events before entering the Vault which now caused you to be awakened a couple of centuries later.  In fact even if the base idea is played out, what happens if you aren't the couple involved, and, in fact, are just someone who lived in the neighborhood?  You would see one spouse killed, or at least shot and put back into deep freeze and the other spouse might be someone you are be able to figure out how to awaken.

Or do you seek out someone else you knew from before the war inside the Vault.  Were you just a cashier at a store?  Were you a curator at the local museum?  Were you an undercover government agent on a secret mission?  Did you work at the robotics scrapyard?  Or the local Red Rocket?  Who did you meet and know from before the War that you would seek first to help out?  So many possible ways to do even the base story that doesn't involve the frantic search for an infant and just leaving the spouse to deep freeze without a care in the world.  Getting into the motivations of your character would then start to drive what you do next, and then what you do after that....you wouldn't necessarily be the Sole Survivor, but the First Awakened.

That is but one type of example of what could be done with the given scenario by deciding to give the player free agency with a relatively stock setting and saying: 'go for it, you figure it out'.  That would be an RPG.

By changing the genre, the bad begins at the very beginning and all the decisions made to support a voiced protagonist and removing what the player imagines the emotions behind a response actually are.  There is a nice RPG mechanic in FNV that allows for the PC to give information to the player when speaking with an NPC, and that is to indicate that other speech options might work to get information based on stats, skills or other interests (via perks).  This is a form of reading body language that even modern games suck at handing the player, but that can be done via the RPG mechanic of letting the player know when they are close to opening up new dialogue, new information and possibly a new path to take, so that they can back out of the conversation and come back later a bit better prepared for it.  Then the combat and other elements for gaining experience come into play in the supporting role of leveling up to gain the necessary skill points, perks or putting a perk into a single stat point.  The player has layers of decisions to make, and not all of them are obvious ones and may require some thought about the situation, the NPC, the background of the NPC and the scenario you are asking about.  Deep, multiple path speech and decision checks do not, necessarily, yield a yes/no dichotomy and may even give answers that open up new areas of the game to avoid a simple yes/no decision.

In FO4 all decisions are yes/no, with 'Sarcastic' tending to still yield a 'yes' and NPCs do not keep track of your sarcasm enough to be turned off by it.  An example is Nick Valentine where, if you play it straight with him all the way from start to finish of his personal quest, and then, after that is over and done with, you give a sarcastic response to someone regarding Nick or a case, then he will give you a 'there you go again with the sarcasm' even if that is the very first time you ever chose that response around him.  I really like Nick Valentine as an NPC, but if you are going to add that sort of dialogue in for an NPC, then the game designer MUST put in a counter for that character to keep track of your specific type of reactions.  That is outside the like/dislike with modifier part, which in no way substitutes for a Karma system.  If you want to give NPCs depth in their responses and a response can be an indicator that the PC is really a bit too sarcastic, droll or just plain dull, then to keep the immersive quality high that NPC will have some background counter going for that which the PC never gets to see.

An example of where the game lies about a yes/no decision by giving a 'maybe' option is on entering the Institute.  If you choose the 'maybe' or 'I'll think about it' when offered to join the Institute, that usually means in the everyday world: 'I am withholding final judgement until I find out more about this place and its people and may decide it isn't for me.'  Is that how your response is treated?  No.  A 'maybe' is just a 'yes' and you are given the ability to fast travel in/out of the place because they want to gain your 'trust'.  The moment I heard they wanted to put a chip into my Pip-Boy to do this the first time I played the game, I wanted to walk out there and then, but by the time I would have the chance to say 'no' it was already done.  There was no asking 'may I please do this for you?' with a chance to answer not just 'no' but 'hell, no'.  Action game mechanics demand that you have that ability to meet the requirements for that portion of the game and if you decided to withhold judgment, well, the game designers just force that to be 'yes' for you because they know better than you, the player, on what is required for the next portion of the game.  They held your hand for you to force authoritarian views from the Institute down your throat because...yes... REASONS.  Action game play reasons.  You must check all boxes to validate this part of the quest and, so, your choice of withholding decision is removed from you.  Isn't that ever so clever of the game designers?

If you actually wanted no part of the place, then best to shoot the first guy you see before he even has a chance to open his mouth and then get the hell out of there.  Why?  Action combat mechanics rule the roost, RPG is an afterthought.  Shooting as an answer is always acceptable, but withholding your verdict so you can get a lay of the land, talk to some people, figure out just what sort of life is really being led down in the place?  For shame!  You must think you are in an RPG where you get to try to be informed outside of the the leadership...and get to actually interact in a meaningful way with those people NOT in charge.  Not allowed!  And if that sort of thing sounds like a totalitarian organization with constant observation of the population as an on-going thing...well...yeah, that is the idea you get if you are used to RPGs and anyone who had an immediate distaste for the leadership and the way things were done and has actually played RPGs in the past featuring such top-down organizations knows exactly what the signs of them are.  They remove personal choice whenever and wherever possible for 'the greater good' and 'your own safety', because it is a privilege, you see, to have personal freedom and agency removed by your betters.

As a player I had that sort of thing happen too many times, and got incredibly frustrated with the so-called 'leaders' who had one-track minds and only accepted yes/no answers and never bothered to actually take time to explain themselves.  Ditto that for nearly every other person I met in the game.  Are there notable exceptions?  Yes.  Do those few make this into an RPG mechanics based game?  No.  If you agree to help rebuild the Minutemen?  Why you get to be their General because the only one left doesn't seem himself as an organizational leader.  And this person who showed up from the past actually IS that sort of person?  Are you serious?

Well, no, they aren't serious because a leader takes on a larger job, that being chief cook and bottle washer.  A leader ORGANIZES the people around him/her, gives the organization a DIRECTION, and then has to deal with LOGISTICS of the organization and that means managing RESOURCES.  As the 'General' of the Minutemen do you ever get to do anything as mundane as set up an exercise yard or shooting range or arrange for a local supplier for real uniforms?  Nope.  As the Director (or acting Director but that is a different gripe) of the Institute, do you actually get to change POLICY for the Institute?  Organize its people?  How about set up a party for a Directorate that did a good job that quarter?  Decide to stop raiding settlements for technology so that the Institute stops acting like a band of raiders with high tech, and starts being civilized towards other sentient beings, shouldn't the Director have a say in that?  And since it is admitted that everyone in the Institute has been 'contaminated' by the outside, then how about asking the big question: why do we think we are better than people outside the Institute, genetically speaking, of course?  Do you even get to manage the budget for the place?

If the answer to all of those is 'no, you don't', then you are a titular leader with no real power at all.  Why?  Because doing any of that requires faction based game mechanics and switching over to them (or melding them with) action based game mechanics.  Plus having a glossy patina of RPG elements over the whole thing.  If done in the other direction starting as an RPG, the RPG mechanics would allow you to find good (or at least better) people for Directorates (or organizing settlements as the Minutemen), which then allows for interpersonal knowledge that the player has built up during the rest of the game to serve as keys to expanding, reinforcing or solidifying the organization they have been put in charge of.

It is humorous that the one instance where I, as a player, dearly wished for this was when I met up with Barney who was keeping the Mirelurks out of what had become a ghost town.  He was the last militia member there and he ticked off all the jobs he had to do from leader to treasurer to keeping the minutes at meetings.  The man actually KNOWS HOW TO RUN A MILITIA and you can't recruit him as your second-in-command...because...REASONS.  You have the chance to get someone way more competent to start delegating authority to within the Minutemen and you never, ever get a chance to do that.  Hell, if he wanted to set up Salem as a live-fire training ground, where recruits would have to secure the place, learn how to set up guard duties and schedules, make sure everyone got fed....screw The Castle, I'd take Salem as a training ground any day of the week over The Castle.  Barney would have those people whipped into shape in no time because he understands what it means to be a Militia member and still be a civilian.

Who is the best person to lead the Minutemen?  This random person from a couple of centuries ago who has never been in a militia (and a citizen organized militia is not a military, although it does have order, rules and such, they are self-made and usually in service to a government), or a guy who, while a bit deranged by loneliness, actually knows the nuts and bolts of it?  In an RPG you could have started to delegate authority to him, and then, at some point, step down in favor of him or someone he had trained up so that he could get back to being by himself.  He knows how to assign limited jobs to people, unlike Preston Garvey.

With all of that said the combat part of the game is decent for the modern age and incorporates a somewhat primitive cover system, as well as opponents that seek cover.  The AI for opponents could be improved beyond that since there is still the Bum's Rush effect whereby opponents will decide to just leave cover and run at you.  And as the random weapon list for opponents can include things like Missile Launchers with an explosive radius, some of the users of said weapons will use those at point blank range, thus ensuring they kill themselves when they use them and do NOT change over to a closer range or melee weapon, or just resort to bare fists if nothing else is in the inventory.  And for those opponents equipped with a Fat Man Mini-Nuke launcher this sort of behavior means they probably wouldn't have survived a test fire of it.  There is a lot of room for improvement in combat, but it is much better than in prior installments of the franchise.

Companion combat mechanics still suffers from the exact, same problems it had all the way back to the first game in the series:  companions will STILL step in the way of the line of fire of the PC.  There is absolutely no situational awareness of the PC's actions by a companion that is, in theory, friendly and allied to the PC.  Dogmeat will still jump in the direct line of fire at the exact moment you decide to pull the trigger....that happened in Fallout and, I guess, you can call it suicidal continuity but it continues in FO4.  Even worse is when the player is using a scope to sight a distant enemy and it is just then that a companion decides to step in front of PC to block the shot or, even worse, get shot instead.  If a companion had any awareness of the PC actually looking down a scope this would not happen (unless they had a reason to block the shot and would then tell you what it was).  Since the companions are generally immortal in the non-survival mode of the game, the only benefit is that you can't accidentally kill them like in the early days of Fallout.  Now if they would just gain a bit of situational awareness, the requirement of making them immune from death (save in certain circumstances) wouldn't be needed.  And while I might complain of adorable Dogmeat deciding now is the perfect time to stand in front of your Gauss Rifle when you are using a scope, this sort of behavior is observed for all companions.  Dogmeat just does it a bit more frequently.

This sort of thing would be acceptable if combat weren't the default way to solve nearly every damned mission.  As it is the combat is so frequent that the problem becomes obvious very early in game play.  Non-combat missions are few, far between and not that rewarding.  And of the things it is impossible to do in FO4, doing a no-kill run is one of them.  Everything that isn't a companion, trader or guard tends to see you as an enemy and it is the unwritten rule that you will be attacked on sight.  No negotiations, no going to see a leader to discuss things, no wearing a disguise to fool them...nope, not in the vanilla game because that requires role playing and making trade-offs to do some missions with people or groups you don't like to achieve a different sort of ending or get something vital required for another mission.  That wanders into moral areas that are not black and white, not kill or be killed, and requires actually making sure your PC is outfitted with the right skills, abilities and equipment to pull such missions off.  Mind you those can still turn into a blood bath, but the intent is to do the opposite and actually complete the mission without arousing any suspicions at all.

The few times there are any equivalents are not due to role playing mechanics, but doing a simple mission for the target group or just showing up on their doorstep.  Getting Virgil's Serum in the base game requires either easy lockpicking or high level hacking, and a bit of combat or shutting down defenses to do it.  That is inside the Institute and, apparently, for all the great security they have, they don't even notice you doing this.  Turning against the Raider gangs at Nuka World can't be seen as falling in this category since they will accept you up to the moment you kill someone important then all of them will turn on you.  In theory there is some role playing in Nuka World, but if you just kill the guy who lets you in and backtrack all the way back to the station where you entered the place, then you'll find the elevator at the station now works and a killing spree can start turning the entire DLC into a combat mission right at the start and ignoring all the dubious Raider content and perks...perks that truly serve no purpose if you've completed the base game.  And content that has missions that involve tearing down everything you've done if you have done a thorough playthrough of the game.  Yeah, thanks for the 'role playing' opportunity.  Where was that at the START of the damned game?

All of this stuff is on the bad side of something put forward as an RPG in a series known for half-way decent RPG content and solid RPG game mechanics.  Things go a bit off the rails when turning a game into an action oriented game with a limited selection of RPG elements.

Fallout 4: The Good

Bethesda Game Studios made sure that even for melee players that the game made opponents accessible even at distances that made no sense at all.

Many in the community of players wanted better combat mechanics and they got it.

Goal: Achieved!


On the antagonist side of things, there was a vocal part of the Fallout player community that didn't want to see hide nor hair of the Enclave, which had been the major antagonist group in Fallout 2, 3 and a remnant group (that the player could recruit to help) in FNV.  Still the Enclave had its West Coast base destroyed in FO2, it's East Coast base destroyed in FO3, and FO4 being a decade later shouldn't see much if any organized Enclave activity.

These players got their wish and got The Institute, instead.

Goal: Achieved!


Bethesda Game Studios and Bethesda Softworks (the actual company made to own Bethesda Game Studios) did pay attention to what modders were doing with FO3 and FNV.  In particular FNV was seeing entire revamps of the game to the point where the base game wasn't even the main feature, and a new idea was taking its place: resettling the wasteland.  Mods that allowed for boarded over homes to be re-opened, refurbished and then put on the market for settlers appeared, as well as the ability to defend and cultivate these areas against wasteland threats.

FO4 not only featured these exact, same elements, but they became a core part of playing the game.  In particular one faction, the Minutemen, required that you spend most of your time doing this so that the faction could grow larger over time.  This is a theme that starts to change the Fallout franchise as the timeline moves past the post-apocalypse and gets into the post-post-apocalypse or rebuilding phase of humanity.  After 200+ years this is not unreasonable for the game world, as such, which can't remain in the unstable conditions of the post-apocalypse forever.  The New California Republic is expansionist (although we don't know what happened after FNV it is likely they now have a new border), the rise of Caesar's Legion (though likely not to outlast the man) shows that even raiders and bandits can be organized although a new culture wasn't established making them short-lived but on the cusp of something enduring, and the Brotherhood of Steel's East Coast Division had to deal with Project Purity and the opening of the Brotherhood to new members, and reconciling the old Outcasts to bring them back to the fold, meaning that the Brotherhood has a real established base on the East Coast that can mount a major expedition and support it.  This is no longer just the post-apocalypse.

The Institute, no matter what path is chosen for it by the player the organization will continue on its old ways of being insular, doing what it wants, and not giving much of a damn for anyone else.  Culture inside The Institute doesn't change even when leadership does...and that is if it survives FO4.  As 3 out of 4 possible outcomes sees The Institute destroyed, it is unlikely it survives the return of the terror from the past known as the Sole Survivor... a terror it had a hand in creating and forming by the actions The Institute took.  The Sole Survivor, however, remembers the pre-Great War era as a living thing, and knows the process of how things used to work, and where they failed.  To succeed requires a central culture that people understand and accept, and that means building trust between people to  form something coherent.  Of the endings the Minutemen ending features this (more or less), and the various DLC add-ons (particularly Contraptions) now makes the construction of equipment to turn raw materials into items on a production line basis as a feature.  Manufacturing is returning to the wasteland and only stable communities can support them.

In making FO4 Bethesda Game Studios decided to move the time period of the franchise forward and begin experimenting with many aspects of the game.  While much in the way of RPG mechanics were scrapped, building mechanics replaced them.  These could have blended very well to allow the PC to choose different ways to recruit settlers or give new opportunities to even the worst people of the wasteland to lead a better, more productive live and better defend themselves while doing it.  Leadership roles is something that Bethesda Game Studios just can't seem to figure out be it in The Elder Scrolls franchise or FO4.  Leaders have a lot to do, and can't be adventuring all the time...that is the point of being a leader, after all: you can start to DELEGATE tasks to people you recruit, train and equip.

This was on no one's wish list so it wasn't a goal, as such.  But for understanding what it means to be a leader and building game mechanics to move from RPG to factional leadership, Bethesda Game Studios has failed.  But to have the ideas of modders included, well that is an achievement and should point to a good direction for the franchise.  That cannot be overlooked as a good thing.


Speaking of recruiting individuals to your cause...some time must be spent on companions.

In FO3 and Skyrim the majority of companions were just fighting followers with little to no backstory.  Obsidian  understood that companions must have mechanics behind them and have a backstory that they could present to the player over time.  They made that a feature in FNV and even had a couple of companions that could understand the Karma the PC had built up and judge them on it.  You could have a recruitable companion that wouldn't join you because you didn't meet their standards.  Yup!  That was refreshing to see.

Skyrim from the TES franchise, had lackluster companions, except for Serana from the Dawnguard DLC.  The horrors she was put through were something that made me sit up and take notice, and understand just how the Lore played a major part in the lives of everyday people.  Yes you can do the DLC 'both ways', but the redemption of Serana's humanity had a real and deep feeling to it that is rare in RPGs of the modern era.  Hell it was rare in RPGs of the paper, pencil and dice era, and would take an extremely skilled GM to pull it off.  No, this is one of the few characters that Bethesda Game Studios actually took time in looking at and designing, and kudos to them.

The Fallout mod community had members that liked the idea of companions with deep background to the point that they started making up new companions that also had standards that the player had to meet, and a few would even offer side-quest companion missions so that the PC could get to know them better and learn more about them.  What that meant for gameplay is that players who got used to the standard way of doing things in the wasteland would have to change their priorities to take a liked companion into account.  Over time this could have a major impact on game play and what the player would choose to do for the entire game.  A well crafted NPC with good mechanics behind it could sharply change the direction of a PC and give the player new viewpoints on events as seen by an in-game character that they could relate with.

FO4 took that to heart with a few of the companions in the game.  Cait, Nick Valentine, Strong, and CVRIE all had companion based missions that were involved and involving, and often more compelling than the overall main mission of the game.  Finishing these missions felt like a real, personal accomplishment far more satisfying than the main mission of the game: there was a positive influence that could be understood and achieved with great trial and tribulation involved.  The first time I got Cait's mission was with a relatively low level character and it was no cakewalk but did feel as if something real had been achieved for the PC and Cait.  Too bad Bethesda Game Studios didn't follow through on full backgrounds and proclivities for the companions... Paladin Danse, in particular, would follow the Codex for his interpersonal relationships.  Period.  The Brotherhood has strong feelings about these things and woe unto those who violate the Codex.  Thus the idea of all companions swinging both ways and being OK with polyamory...well...work needs to be done on this human relationship deal.

Still this was something that wasn't specifically asked for, but the community did gripe about.

Goal: Not fully achieved, but way better than Skyrim (save Serana from the Dawnguard DLC for Skyrim) and FO3.


These are the general pluses and good things that happened in FO4.  For the minimalist wish list deal, FO4 delivered, often in spades.  The good will bought by a stable game cannot be denied.

The next parts will have to be broken into smaller, more manageable bits.

Doing a 'The Good, The Bad and The Ugly' sort of analysis isn't, perhaps, the best way to review FO4, but what we have seen in the game does break out into those categories and they are not short like The Good.  I may end up expanding on The Good, as well, but that is a topic for another day.

Fallout 4: Action RPG

A look at the Fallout franchise prior to Fallout 4 reveals an RPG base with action/combat mechanics that support it.  Up to Fallout 4 (FO4) the franchise relied on a tried and tested form of RPG system in which all characters have stats (SPECIAL) and skills, which then have unlocks that use a combination of character level, skill level (in percentage) sometimes with a particular stat (Strength, Perception, Endurance, Charisma, Intelligence, Agility, Luck) that would get a perk.  A perk is a bonus attribute that requires the unlock and is chosen by the player.  Prior to FO4 there were a number of perks available at a level up (or every other or third level up) that allowed a player to form a set of attributes particular to their Player Character (PC).  Non-Player Characters (NPC) that were run by the game might have perks, but did have stats and skills appropriate to their level.  To reflect the growing capability of the PC, NPCs would tend to level with the PC's level so that challenges would remain level appropriate.  There are some static NPCs, mostly creatures, monsters and such, but they tended to be minor types of generic creatures.  More impressive ones would rank their level with the PC or be a bit ahead/behind so that they would still remain a threat as the game continued.

The move to an action style game meant that the perks and skills were rolled into a single package of 'perks' for a given stat.  This was first seen in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim in which skills and stats were abandoned and perk trees were implemented for individual skills and ability trees.  What would have been considered 'perks' in this new tree system were still available with levels in the tree.  Some of the magical skills do have multiple branches, though they are specialist by type and may only rejoin other branches with a level 100 in that tree.  Each tree increases as it is used, and if you wish to increase a particular skill, you use it a lot.  FO4 gives a single perk point per level, and has uncapped the character level so it is, in theory, infinite, and thus there is no 'final build' for a PC as there were in prior games in the franchise.  This goes with the concept of there being an infinite amount of enemies in an open world game, which means that areas with enemies in them are only temporarily cleared and when you come back they will have respawned so you can knock them all down again so that there is always experience available to level up a character.

Prior games in the franchise did have this, of course, but only to a moderate extent.  And certain missions, once done and a place was cleared of enemies would remain so.  The idea of the post-apocalypse game, as presented in Fallout, is that the population size is limited due to the limited amount of clean water, clean food, and environmental hazards.  Actually completing a mission, clearing out a major facility or even one just threatening locals, means that it doesn't come back to life and get repopulated every week.  Why?  Not enough people, not enough creatures, and generally the wasteland just isn't supporting life all that well.  When done in moderation, keeping the respawns limited to lower capacity (and thus smaller and lower food budget) enemies means that, yes, the bugs and even ghouls might come back pretty quickly and can be seen as environmental hazards.  Sentient or high calorie intake respawns, however, must be limited as there just isn't enough of anything to support them.  That is a major RPG element in the Fallout franchise: life is hard, death is easy.

An action RPG, however, skimps on RPG mechanics in favor of combat mechanics and immediate gratification leveling or storing the gratification for use tactically, so a skill will increase if you saved up the points and need to spend them on the spot during a mission.  That is a time honored tradition with some genres of RPG all the way back to the paper and pencil era, and the Champions/HERO system, where experience points (XP) were put directly into a characters stats, attributes, skills, powers, etc. meant that XP was low.  You didn't get hundreds of points, but, if you didn't do well, you might get 1 XP, and if you over-succeeded against overwhelming odds you got 3 XP.  Because of the direct nature of the use of XP, it was allowable to burn an XP to dodge a single hit by an opponent or make that one critical dice roll without ever having to make it.  That XP was erased, it had been used, and the PC had dodged death or used it to do something nearly impossible (but within the realm of probability) to overcome and survive.  FO4 doesn't do that, but allows for the on the fly use of a perk point which is garnered at a character level, so that if you really need to press the Science perk up by one, and you are OK on the level restriction to do it, go right ahead.

Speaking of TESV:Skyrim, it exemplifies the move to an action based fantasy RPG, though the melee fighting leaves a lot to be desired...no, I take that back, combat leaves a lot to be desired but for what could be accomplished it isn't awful.  The idea of DIY spells, which are spells with powers and effects that the player designed to fit what their PC needed...well...that went away to a more generic system of spells and types of spells.  Similarly the Big Guns, Small Guns, Melee and Unarmed in FO4 are still there...but spread across multiple trees for some effects or perks.  Mr. Sandman used to be a specialized form of sneak attack used on sleeping individuals and a perk in prior games, while in FO4 it became a perk also applied to silenced ranged weapons used on generic sneak attacks.  The prior use represents a truly specialized attack meant for certain types of character builds, while the latter is one that applies to multiple character builds and you get the bonus of the specialized kill move that once burned a perk at a level.  When your character isn't going to go above level 35 and you get a perk every other level that is a meaningful investment.  For unlimited leveling it becomes another punchcard you will eventually hit along the way.

Thus the idea of 'character builds' is an idea that remains only for a certain region of PC, say below level 60.  After that, no matter what your build is, you will either stick with it and just max out those specialized perk trees and never spend another perk point or you will start to become a generic character just spending points to spend points because all the major things you wanted to do are done for that character 'build'.  I tend to spend in what I think would be interesting...after, say, level 40, as the missions I want to do and like to do all require certain skills and abilities, and I'm not given a plethora of really interesting specialist perks to choose from.  There is no 'Child at Heart' or 'Cherchez La Femme/Confirmed Bachelor' types of perk, both of which unlock dialogue with certain characters (children in the first instance, and lesbian/gay characters in the second).  Those types of perks open up different insights into NPCs and can often open up different opportunities and play styles based on the NPCs that you can interact with through those perks.  If you were doing 'Animal Friend', in which animals (not wasteland abominations) would not just attack you on site, then you had a route to subtract environmental hazards from the wasteland.  Even in a game without many animals, like Fallout: New Vegas, the design team at Obsidian made the choice to include some creatures that we would consider abominations in the 'animal' category.  Going into Nightstalker dens without Animal Friend meant being beset by them at every turn...with it, you walked easily through the den without a scratch.  There are certain scenarios where going with or just behind a Nightstalker pack provides a non-violent way to get items for quests that you would otherwise have to be killing someone to get and thus losing status with their faction.  With it, you got a no status loss way of proceeding (slowly, very slowly) with that quest.  All of that is erased from FO4: no finding unique dialogue and story pathways due to being a Child at Heart, or meeting up with individuals of the same sex to shoot the breeze and talk shop.

Sure there is still 'Animal Friend' available, but I have problems thinking of a single situation in which I actually would use it in FO4: the game isn't designed for the PC to remove a category of threat but only individual instances of it.  Looking down a barrel of a gun and trying to intimidate an animal is humorous, true, but it really isn't all that immersive (save in a Dr. Doolittle sort of way).

So where is the changeover between an RPG with action (even strong action) elements and a shooter style action game with RPG elements?  Simple: voiced protagonist.  A voiced protagonist must have every single line of dialogue voiced and that means multiple takes, re-takes, trying different intonations, maybe responding a bit differently to some NPCs...hours upon hours upon hours of studio time requiring audio specialists often with dialogue editors and script specialists there to make sure that the voicing is done 'just right' for that character.  That voice defines the character, restricts choices and, by limitations of time and money, restricts overall story and script depth.  Every single PC to NPC encounter must be fully voiced on both sides for all parts of the decision tree, thus the decision tree, itself, must be simplified.  An RPG with action elements can afford to have individual actors for NPC do some extra lines as they will only need to do them once.  Want to role-play a polyamorous individual?  Say that just covers both sub-parts of known responses to a silent protagonist.  Want that for male or female in a voiced action RPG?  Well you get generic dialogue fit for either.  But to increase 'immersion' you can talk a mutated abomination into not attacking you!  Isn't that, um, special?

An action RPG that offers lots of sub-stories, side quests, interesting little encounters and environmental encounters that lead you to discover new things about the world you are in can make up for the lack of a strong RPG system.  Storytelling is what an RPG is all about, and the main quest can be so generic as to be boring, yet make up for that in a fascinating world to explore.  Make no mistake about it, a system based on an RPG game mechanic features it, touts it, shows it off and offers the player much agency in where they want to take a character.  Voice that protagonist with an actor and you are stuck with the background presented for that protagonist: no imagination allowed, that is the voice you must hear as so much time, effort and money went into getting it that it must be the central point of the game.  Sure you can make a lot of decisions for that character...just don't go off the tracks laid down for you and forget trying to find interesting side-tracks to different ways of interacting with people and the environment.  That takes people willing to modify the game to give you those choices.

As the sign said over the Complaints Desk:  Yesterday was the LAST DAY for complaints.

So what games influenced me

I'm pretty much an old school gamer, starting in the board wargames of the tabletop era like Panzer Leader, Third Reich, Richtofen's War, Dune, Outreach, Sixth Fleet, Star Fleet Battles, Car Wars and the like.  Those were not the only games, however, with something like Kingmaker thrown into the mix you also get the lesser known Down With The King, and that material got a say in the next large area of gaming which was face-to-face (f2f) Role Playing Games (RPG).  My take on RPGs was thus filtered through the military, strategic, tactical, factional and resource management lenses of board wargames.  Truthfully I went pretty quickly from player to game master or dungeon master (I'll use GM as the shorthand).  This was still in the f2f era, and one of the critical parts of RPGs that I felt was missing was getting a decent background for the setting of an RPG: without a place, without a history, without a reason to be doing what you are doing there is little more to RPGs than moving figures or counters around...and that meant all the players had to have some sort of representation via that means.  I was used to that, of course, but one of the things I learned from strategic level factional games is that hundreds or thousands of individuals could be represented in a generic way, and that what really mattered was the setting, the surrounding, the advantages and disadvantages of terrain (broadly speaking).  A map did well enough for that, and I moved over to the spoken and descriptive format of gaming for RPGS, where people set their relative distances from each other as they moved, and then I described settings that were encountered and ran a phased turn system (lifted from Car Wars and Star Fleet Battles, as well as Champions) which parsed out relative speeds of individuals and when they could take an action.

What this descriptive style required was not depending on generic encounters and generic foes.  For something like Advanced Dungeons and Dragons (AD+D) I looked at the descriptions of creatures, personages and the like, and then played them as NPCs using what Intelligence and other attributes that they had.  Why?  These beings were also part of a dynamic, changing world in which actors took actions, and there were pre-existing relationships between actors that happened before the Player Characters arrived.  The players got limited information based on their background, chosen major role (Fighter, Mage, Cleric, Thief, etc.), where they came from and their limited pre-game life experiences.  If I ran a world with guilds then the guilds, themselves, were established, had a history and had their own set of entrance requirements as well as jobs that might be made available to someone of appropriate experience.  Guilds, by not operating in a vacuum, would sometimes cooperate on mutually productive endeavors, and thus the job to form a party up to do something came into being.  That was the means to implement a scenario (be it self-generated or pre-published) and then begin running it.

In a dynamic game world I did have some particular views on the Player Characters (PC) and that was pretty simple: death is easy and comes for all, living a life is difficult.  If the PCs got advantages, then the environment (broadly speaking) would respond to those.  Players soon realized that if they didn't bother to know the background of the world, handed out in various forms from various individuals, each with their own viewpoints, that they would quickly end up in hot water, dead or in a non-player position via long-term incarceration.  Yes different regions of the same world, even if it was under the same King (ruling council, or whatever) had different, local laws.  Staying within the highest law was often safest, but generally it didn't cover a whole lot, save don't antagonize a list of groups or peoples.  Diving into a dungeon was sometimes the safest place to be if you wanted to escape punishment and offered the reward of experience, goodies, or just mere survival.

Starting out I ran AD+D based campaigns as those were generally well known.  Getting a stable group of players meant being accessible, setting aside blocks of time to play, and then making sure everyone knew if anyone couldn't make it.  Those were days, especially if 2 or more players couldn't be there, when the main game was suspended and the smaller group would be offered the opportunity to do something else.  Car Wars was a good cross-over system as it had some minimal RPG elements (at the time), and served as an entree to a different style of gaming with vehicles, automatic weapons and explosives.  Basically it was a precursor to the Action RPG world, where there were some minimal advances you could gain from vehicular contests and skills that would allow you to drive, shoot, run and do other things just a bit better.

There were some restrictions to the classic RPG systems that were tailored to settings, be it AD+D, Call of Cthulhu or the Champions system in its first generation.  The subsequent generation of systems started to address this via more generic character building, skills, powers, abilities and anything you could think up and describe.  The Generic Universal Role Playing System (GURPS) from Steve Jackson Games would be an end result in that movement, but I was active in the time before that arrived and transitioning from gaming to a real life once it appeared.  I felt the HERO game system which came from the original Champions system actually did a good job of giving those running the game a good mechanic for combat and non-combat activities, and afforded players the opportunity to spend some time designing their characters.  If a player wanted more skill points to spend they could take on negative attributes such as being unlucky or being hunted, the latter of which required defining the hunter (individual, small group, or large group), how active the search was, and the chance of it playing a role in any given scenario.  Thus a world needed to be built up ahead of time and as the GM or guy running the background world that players were in, it was required to have at least passing knowledge of all the groups, individuals you could PO, and all the other fun stuff that comes with everything from a world be it Swords & Sorcery style to advanced retro-futuristic.  That was the part I was decent at doing, to the point where every player started to keep notes on just what they had been told.  It was not unusual after the 4th or 5th play session to see that the notes being transferred to a separate set of pages, with a few players starting to invest in notebooks just to keep track of all the information they had gathered.  With the HERO system that theoretically started out at the character design stage.

By the early '90s I had transitioned out of gaming, though I did spend some time with computer games when they came out, like Fallout and, later, Diablo.  Still, there wasn't much to entice me to computer games, and my work schedule at up my life.  Major life changes in the early 2000's and problems thereafter would then lead me back to gaming, but this time in the computer realm as my personal condition was not so hot and I had no connections left to the old board wargaming or f2f world of gaming.  That is where this blog, which is just personal in nature, starts.  My prior blogging got me through some very, very tough times and got me answers to some questions and led me far afield to further answers to things I didn't even think to ask.  A break from that recovery now requires a restart of it and the best place for this is writing.

Some gaming thoughts.  My thoughts on games I play.  Don't expect any Massive, Multiplayer Online games of any sort to appear.  I don't play those.  Nor any Co-op games.  Basically the single player experience is what is in store.  I know my limits.