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.