Fallout 4: The Ugly - Voiced Protagonist

This topic is one of the defining parts of Fallout 4, and it is the movement from the silent protagonist, in which lines of dialog from the protagonist are chosen by the player for the Player Character (PC) to say, but that have no voice acting for it.  The silent protagonist comes in two varieties: the truly silent protagonist and the unvoiced silent protagonist.  That first type, the protagonist who never actually has a line of dialog is rare in gaming for at least the last 15 years, but it is a well known type of play style.  The Fallout franchise, up to Fallout 4 used the other sort of silent protagonist, which allowed for a variety of dialog options with NPCs so that the player could get to know a bit about them, what their circumstances were and if anything of interest could be revealed by them.  The NPCs are voice acted, the PC is not.  This is a vital part of role playing as no voice acted protagonist can cover the wide array of options and choices for character design and the type of person and personality the player was trying to achieve with their PC.

The Player Character is the avatar of the player in the game world, the one doing the actual activities guided by the player, and by giving a wide set of character design options the voice of the PC has to be one that is imagined by the player.  By choosing lines of dialog that are appropriate to that design and outlook for the PC, the player has a form of freedom in thinking just how the lines are spoken.  By giving a variety of choices of what to say there is also the intention that each PC will say them differently, which means that while certain dialog might yield better results, they may not actually fit with the type of person the PC is and thus yield different results in speech options.

A voice acted character is expected for times when known PCs are the point of a game.  A game out of The Witcher series gives the voice of Geralt of Rivia, while one out of Mass Effect gives a male or female Commander Shepard.  The basic role and situation is already created for the player, and while some cosmetic changes can happen before the game starts and within the game, the voice of the PC is set and all the lines of dialogue fully voiced.  That then requires a system for figuring out how to give the player agency in the world, and that can come out as a result of the different decisions the player makes throughout game play.  With that said you don't get to play anyone else in those franchises.  A game like Bioshock Infinite and its DLCs does offer a single voiced protagonist, but in the DLCs you play the companion who has an interesting set of stories of her own.  Thus you play through the main game as Booker DeWitt and then switch over to Elizabeth for some of the DLC content.  You don't get to play a resident of Columbia, say, just as you can't start out as a peasant in The Witcher series or a different species and job in the Mass Effect franchise.  That voice acted protagonist deal means that the freedom of the player is limited to the choices of the game design team, and if they did a great job then the leeway and types of decisions a player gets to make will then allow for a form of immersion in that PC.  Everyone has a different view of Shepard, Geralt, Booker and Elizabeth, and that is only constrained by how well the design team created a meaningful and in-depth experience for the player.

That single choice at the very start of the design process then starts to constrain and limit what can be done with the depth of the overall story, the world and interactions between the PC and NPCs.  Constraints are in no way a bad thing in game design terms, and can actually require a creative response and better look at the content that will be provided in the game itself.  Voice acting is only one, and a rather minor part, of immersion and allowing a game world to have a sense of internal reality for the player.  Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas both offered a good sense of how the in-game world and situation worked without a voice acted protagonist, and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim by Bethesda Game Studios also didn't need a voice acted protagonist and may have actually found that if they wanted to budget for all the different races that could be played that they wouldn't even be able to make the game if they did so.

For an Open World RPG in which there is not a set background for the PC, then comes a problem of having to create a setting in which voicing the PC becomes a problem due to character types and styles that players will create.  With too much background set, the player must either abide by the decisions the game designers made or decide to chuck them, imagine some different sort of background and then put up with voice acted lines that don't fit their character very well.  By making a story line imminent, that is to say pressing at all times, upon the PC if the route of following what the game designers want the player to do is chucked out the window, then the main story becomes a burden to the player as it will be brought up and nudged at them from various sources including NPCs, quests, and running across locations intended to show something to the player about that main story.  Putting up with that sort of pushing and nudging is an irritation and breaks immersion into the game world as no one will see your character as you have made them but only as the game designers intended for the main story of the game.

Voicing the protagonist and then doing a quick cut to get the main part of the game, means that there is no chance to get a solid grounding in the character type the game designers intend for the player to use.  The choice of male/soldier or female/lawyer isn't even given an hour of game play so that they can go looking for a job, figure out how to tend to their finances and put up with that pesky guy from Vault Tec trying to sign them up for the local Vault.  Why don't we get that?  Too much voice acting work.  If more attention is paid to the start, then the actual game will start to lose some of its structure due to budgetary constraints and timing.  Yet that sort of time would allow players to begin the process of building their character, to get some initial perks that reflect their pre-war lives.  If a voiced protagonist for an Open World game without a set type of protagonist must be done, and the game is broken into an intro/get to know you part and then a transition to the main game, then what is required is actually getting to know some of the life and background of that protagonist before the change-over.

A longer lead-in would allow the player to establish some of what that PC was before the bombs dropped.  Perhaps visiting the local garage to get a perk there, or going to the local range to pick up a perk or two there...fixing some stuff or reprogramming a basic routine into the robot could add in perk points.  Singular, yes, but a foundation and a beginning of a couple of extra points to go with a few they got from their lives before they were married.  Was the male interested in anything before getting drafted?  Did the female try to pursue some necessary training for the slowly decaying society around her while still getting a night school law degree?  Was the equivalent of an ROTC program available?  Were there vocational schools either could attend?  Perhaps part-timing as a model or waiting on tables was something they did to get by?  Anything?  These individuals did have a pre-war life, and were in their late 20's to early 30's, which is a point in which most normal individuals actually have some real life skills behind them and that should be reflected in their perk trees.

It wouldn't take much in the way of story of game assets to do this, save for getting some spruced up buildings in the pre-war era, maybe a short bus ride to go past a few places...but the interactions with anyone would require some plotting out and voicing.  Game mechanics for some perks getting assigned would be relatively easy.  Yet for an hour of time spent in the pre-war era the player could get to know their spouse, their neighborhood and truly realize what a horror was going to happen when the bombs dropped.  That would, of course, force the Far Harbor DLC to not take the coward's way out with the sudden lack of pre-war memories on the part of the protagonist...but that is a plot hole or deceit on the part of the game designers depending on how you look at it.  If the player is supposed to care about their spouse, their neighborhood and have deep and heartfelt reactions about losing them, then that isn't done in a short intro inside a single home and then running past people who are panicking when the alarm comes.  Caring takes time, and the game designers did not allot enough to actually get that across to the player via interactions of the Player Character.

More problematical is the way the game unfolds in the Vault and the ever so smart Institute sending a harsh wasteland operative with a penchant for violence in to lead a team of scientists and medical personnel to do a baby snatching.  The man would lead the security end of things, but not the actual kidnapping part as the medical team would be ready with sedatives to inject the parent holding the child so that the child wouldn't come to any harm.  Then close the chamber, turn on the cryo system and leave.  Murdering all but the Sole Survivor is insane for the Institute as each of the individuals in the Vault represent fresh, uncontaminated pre-war genetic material.  There were children scheduled for cryso sleep as well as young adults.  If the worry is getting flashed by the distant nuclear bomb disturbing genetic material, then the infant was exposed to that as well.  The only reason that would be set aside is if the distance meant that exposure was minor beyond the flash of the light, and that those who got in before the shockwave carrying debris hit was the only worry for fallout contamination.  It's a shame that Bethesda decided on voice acting as it would have been fun and interesting to play someone else from the neighborhood in the Vault.  The opportunities for play in that are large and could change the very nature of the post-war world and its recovery.

Fallout 4: The Bad - Factions

I've introduced the topic of factions and factional games in prior posts, so now it is time to look at factions in Fallout 4.  There are 4 of them, in this go-around: The Minutemen, The Railroad (RR), The Institute and The Brotherhood of Steel (BoS).  Each of them has lore and background story material that can be found relating to them and how they view each other.  Of them the Player Character (PC) can become the leader of two factions: The Minutemen and The Institute.  There is cut content in the game files relating to a quest line that would have either Paladin Danse or the PC end up as Elder of the Brotherhood, but since it was cut the point is moot.  Thus the PC can be a leader of a faction or a leading operative of a faction (BoS and RR), which is garnered by doing some jobs for each faction to gain their favor.  This is not abnormal for the two major series that Bethesda Game Studios has in their stables: The Elder Scrolls and Fallout franchises.

Taking a look at The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, gives a view into how faction leadership turns out to be more of a fancy title rather than an actual job.  Take the quest line that puts the PC in charge of the Mages College of Winterhold, so that at the end of it the PC becomes the Arch-Mage of the College.  Now in this leadership position do you get to, say, set tuition costs?  Or to determine something other than the test the PC had to go through to get into the College in the first place?  Can you set a policy up so that a prospective student must have the Jarl of their Hold's recommendation or at least approval?  How about a maintenance budget, does the Arch-Mage get to, say, repair the walkway to the College which features broken railings and sheer, lethal drops to the icy waters and boulder strewn area where the City of Winterhold used to be?  The answer to all of these, and much more is: NO.  And this same problem comes up Fallout 4 and, to a lesser extent taking the DIY/Yes Man option, in Fallout New Vegas (FNV), and isn't a large Fallout 3 where siding with the BoS is more or less how the script goes.

Perhaps the fine game designers at Bethesda Game Studios have never played a factional game or a transitional RPG/factional game and don't know how to design an actual job system and game mechanics that a PC gets to inherit when getting to be a faction leader.  Back in the old tabletop board gaming era (its a category and paper maps are also in it) there were many factional games that saw the player in the role of the faction leader and having to manage resources, recruitment, high visibility members/leaders within their ranks, and even such stuff as maintaining infrastructure (which begins to border into strategy type games, but there is a major overlap between them).  These games included: Kingmaker, Dune, Down with the King, Pax Brittanica, Outreach and many others.  In the computerized era there are games like Civilization, Sim City, Warcraft I & II, and just about the entire Total War franchise as examples of this category of game.  As a player you have the role of faction leader that is relatively abstract but does put under the player's control the actual mechanisms of making sure the faction has resources, addresses overhead costs and even sets policy on how other factions are treated.

Bethesda Game Studios fails to set up the mechanics for faction leadership in two major areas in FO4.  The first is being able to have multiple decision paths on, well, anything, involving a faction.  By using a voiced protagonist, the time and money that would be necessary to voice all the lines of a faction leader are just out of the question.  Those branching decision paths must also be reflected in the game world, and the only such game mechanic in FO4 is the Provisioner system to link up settlement resources.  That's it, and if you are in charge of The Institute, you don't even need that as The Institute doesn't want any outside 'help', and that is a decision you are stuck with as a faction leader.  The second part, and it is also constrained by the voice acting decision, is implementing policy changes of a faction towards other factions.  In this regard the lack of underlying mechanics for policy means that the underlying antipathy that factions show towards each other leads to the scenario where only two of the four factions survive at the end of the game, with the exception of The Minutemen that can be at relative peace with BoS and RR after removing The Institute so that three can survive.  The Minutemen, being grassroots, can't be removed as a faction, although you can ignore them, not help them and never build them up so they never become a factor in the game.  They still survive in spirit, however, as you can't get rid of the last member of them for game purposes.  In theory it is possible to have the Minutemen as the sole surviving faction by taking out the Institute, BoS and RR.

Yet this state of affairs is one that is part and parcel of the game and makes the current leadership (save Minutemen) seem incredibly brittle and lacking in actual ability to put long-term thinking into play.  There is no opportunity for cooperation between factions, no ability to get a temporary truce to work against a common foe, and no real way to broker a peace.  That is just insane as that is what faction leaders are supposed to do.  They must not only have the short-term goals of their organization at heart, but must view those in their organization as not being expendable like ammunition.  Playing the game may try to impress the heartless cruelty of these factions on the player, but even cruel or evil factions in factional games are willing to make short-term deals if they feel it helps their long-term goals.

At the other end of the policy spectrum is recruitment, training, provisioning, and assigning missions to individuals or groups.  That sort of thing is done through a command structure in most cases, though in small groups using cell based organization, the overhead of secrecy puts in a mandatory distribution of power if any cell in an organization is breached...and those are for games that take some time to figure out how to run something like an insurgency or secret-based group that cannot sacrifice security in the name of more members and usually have along 'getting to know you' period.  Beyond that are the basics: gathering resources (either materials, funds or negotiable goods), maintaining the organization in a physical way for buildings and such, keeping up morale, ensuring safety and security, and generally figuring out who will do well at assigned jobs or missions.

In a faction based game where the player is a leader, a sub-set of these mechanisms will be decided upon by the game designer and built into the game.  In an RPG based game, some of these mechanics are hinted at early on and, upon joining a faction, then getting some minor taste of what a leader goes through becomes an essential part of game play.  Starting at the lowest rungs of an organization and working your way up via missions, means that as the player rises through the ranks they will get more overhead duties to keep track of and people to actually command.  This sort of thing is damned rare in the gaming world, and designing a hybrid that stays true to role playing and offers expanded opportunities for it while being a true faction leader is difficult.  And as the faction leader you would also have to decide the risk factor of each mission and which were the ones only you could address.

At that point you would also have enough personal skills and abilities to address these problems, and be able to choose people you interacted with on the way up if you wanted a specialized group to go with you on the mission.  Perhaps the earliest people who helped you out and went with you when you were low level have stuck by you and are reliable in some command roles.  Or maybe some of the people that would be more generic need a personal field test, and that means going out on a mission with them, not to supervise but to watch how they command others.  All of this and more is a prime role-playing set of opportunities and a way to stifle busy work by delegating it while you are away.  That won't last long, and you will, as the leader, have a maximum time available for the mission or missions, after which you must return as part of the role taken up as leader of a faction.

Instead, of being truly innovative in game design, Bethesda Game Studios failed to take an expansive view of factional game play which is a prime place where the industry sadly needs good examples to show how it is done from an RPG to faction game route.  None of the elements of faction leadership even show up, not even a base budget and how to spend it via a meeting with department heads.  Nor does the player get to make personnel decisions, hire and fire people, and generally be the leader of an organization.  What you DO get are assignments handed to YOU by underlings.  Wait a moment, when these underlings are capable of dealing with them, then all they should be doing is notifying you of the problem and letting you know they are getting a few people together to deal with it and just need your approval.  Faction leaders don't get assignments from underlings, they HAND THEM OUT as a delegation of authority and responsibility to trusted sub-leaders in the faction.  Other problems will filter up to the leader via that route, particularly if the player can assign someone in the public interface type of role, to meet, greet and get to know public leaders, civic leaders and business leaders.  That will depend upon the type of organization, but any that require a modicum of good will amongst the larger population will have this as an actual job to be handed out...one that the player might have actually taken up on their way up the ladder. Those aren't just jobs on the way up: that is a way to familiarize the player with the organization, how it runs, how it works, and why it works that way.  Of course in FO4 only the Minutemen have that sort of public PR deal going on once The Castle is retaken which points out just what the other factions think about the individuals making up the Commonwealth.

Not to intrude much on the lore topic, but it must be brought up with regards to FO4 as the premise for it was set in Fallout 3 and The Pitt DLC for it.  What we knew from that game was that the Commonwealth had an organization known as The Institute that appeared to be in charge or in some superior position inside of it, and that they were high tech and creating humanoid androids.  These humanoid androids (later 'synths', in particular Gen 3 Synths) could demonstrate more than a modicum of free will and seek their liberty.  Even though they were created in a lab, their utilization of human organs, including a newly grown brain augmented with a synth component for organization of thoughts,  and demonstrating that they had a concept of what freedom meant puts them into the 'human' category.  They can't reproduce, don't need a balanced diet and generally handle radiation in a superior way to humans, but beyond that they look, act, talk, think and feel the same as humans do.  The picture this paints of the Commonwealth is that of a rather overbearing organization with an extensive secret police system that sends out skilled individuals or even a department head to track down these rogue creations.  The RR is an underground operation that seeks to free synths, and often mind wipes them and gives them false memories and backgrounds so that they won't accidentally betray themselves to Institute agents.  What we garner from The Pitt DLC is that the Institute also does trade with the outside world as they are cited as having purchase agreements for Pitt materials and goods.  What one of the leaders in the Pitt wants to do is created and do something that even the Institute can't do so as to show their superiority in biotechnology over the Institute: a cure for the Troglodyte Degeneration Contamination.

The actual Institute we get in FO4 does not trade with the outside world and only sends the head of the Synth Retention Bureau, Dr. Zimmer, out on high profile synth retrieval.  Justin Ayo is put in charge as the acting Director of the SRB as the sort of 'spare tire' for when Dr. Zimmer is out.  As an interesting side light, the Institute properly uses the concept of 'acting director' in the case of Justin Ayo but not in the case of Father who ALSO refers to himself as the acting Director of the Institute.  Organizations do not screw up with this sort of thing and 'acting' in the stead of someone who is gone has a limited number of meanings.  First is that the actual person in charge is away and this individual is acting on their behalf.  The second is that the individual is a stop-gap, usually a deputy or assistant, that has been elevated temporarily to the role of Director but that the actual person who will be taking that place has yet to be determined.  While that second in command spot can lead to permanent leadership of an organization, the reason that a senior individual is in that position is that they are put into a dead-end but useful job because they lack certain necessary skills to actually be a long-term director.  But I digress from the main topic of the picture that is painted of The Commonwealth.

What we had gotten from FO3 is that The Commonwealth, in whole or major part, was under the sway or influence of the Institute.  It could be a shadowy organization, yes, but when actual communication and trade of any sort takes place between an organization and the outside world, then some of the shadow begins to get burned away.  They did, for a short time, work with the Commonwealth Provisional Government, but the Institute found the actual idea of governing to be one they couldn't cope with as it involved setting a level playing field on the needs of people on the surface with those of the Institute.  There was some push-back against the move to end the CPG by the Institute as can be found on a couple of holotapes inside it, but the final verdict was written in the deaths of the community and settlement leaders by Institute Synths.  Even with that taking place before FO3, the way individuals speak of the Institute and their connections in FO3 is in the present tense and, while undercover to an extent, known about and having actual contacts with the outside world.  Even with teleportation technology, the types of materials being moved would require getting them within range of that system, which means crossing overland between the Commonwealth to the Capitol Wasteland and The Pitt.

A total sub-surface, secluded and sequestered organization with a top-down dictatorship and disdain for the surface world is what we got and that does not meet up with the expectations set in FO3.  As a faction the Institute has demonstrated that it lacks raw materials, it lacks reliable power and even has to get some power sources from the surface for their own use.  They are so primitive in moving rock that they have resorted to explosives and synths clearing away debris via manual labor with a couple of small front loaders.  Where the rock goes is anyone's guess.  If they were advanced they would have had the workstation system as seen in the Vault Tec DLC, which allows for the removal of preselected and charted areas at a single go and all of that is translated into useful materials stored in the workbench system.  Mind you that was a pre-war system, and should be something the students and faculty at the Commonwealth Institute of Technology knew about.  Of course that was available, you would have a large sub-surface city or Vault extending for miles with an actual, sustainable population.  While not exactly what you would expect from FO3, it would be something much closer to it than what is actually seen.

The surface world of the Commonwealth was portrayed as a place that was under watch of the Institute which used a secret police of androids or synths, as they became known, to keep the surface dwellers under the thumb of the Institute.  That doesn't need to be a police state, mind you, but what we see in FO4 doesn't really get it right, either.  The Mayor of Diamond City being surreptitiously replaced by a Gen 3 Synth doesn't do much for the policy of the Institute, which, by the way, is never clearly stated anywhere.  Basically if the surface world has been written off as just full of people with bad genes, then, as a faction, why even give a damn about it?  Why waste resources that could be better utilized on the infrastructure of the Institute itself?  As a faction the Institute is sadly unable to decide if the surface world is to be ignored, is an omnipresent threat or just a place to pillage and loot at will.  Mostly it is the latter, of course, yet there is some communication and trade with The Pitt, and that is worse off than the Commonwealth is in regards to being contaminated.  What is it with that, anyway?  Just in the realm of overall goals, policy and objectives the Institute isn't all that coherent in FO4.  From FO3 it may be seen as small, but very effective, capable and goal driven organization, with enough security to open itself enough to the outside world to seek resources from it in a non-destructive fashion.  It basically ruled over the Commonwealth directly and indirectly, willing to use open agents and trade with the outside.  That isn't the Institute we got.

As the RR is out to free the synths, you got the idea from FO3 that they are a small organization, which is what we got in FO4.  Kudos on that, at least.  And as it operates like an actual organization set on moving individuals via a network of trusted friends and associates, it also has to deal with being compromised.  The problem of the RR as seen is when the PC is asked if they would risk their life for their fellow man even if that man is a synth?

The counter question you do not get to ask is: would you risk your life for your fellow man even if he was a human?

If the RR is against the slavery of synths, then what about the slavery of humans as seen in Nuka World?  Or Super Mutants rounding up individuals as a food source?  That doesn't cause a single twitch of their moral fiber.  Are a large number of people anti-synth?  Yes.  Yet, if Gen 3 synths are seen as human, the enslavement or consumption of humans should be of equal status since being human is the touchstone.  If you can't be bothered about human slavery or becoming a simple food stuff, then it is hard to see why these individuals would be upset by synth slavery.  Is there a real difference between enslavement of created beings via a machine versus those people captured by force in the wasteland (or submitting to it to care for other slaves)?  Are a number of Raiders sadistic towards synths?  Yes.  They are outweighed by the number that are sadistic towards humans.  Plus if you get rid of the Institute the long-term problem of synth hatred will go down over time as there is no longer a source for those synths.  At that point you are no longer freeing synths, but extracting revenge.  If the RR survives and the Institute goes down, then the RR become vindictive and seeks to be a controlling force in the Commonwealth.

Speaking of its destruction, Imagine leading the Institute and finding out that it has been infiltrated, and now being destroyed right under your nose.  A faction leader would have known that catastrophic failure is possible, and designed an escape system that doesn't rely on huge power consumption and have a back-up area for emergencies in case everything went wrong.  That is something ALL organizations must have on their agenda, particularly those that can and do suffer problems that can cascade to total failure.  Failure is an option, success is not guaranteed.  The RR suffered such catastrophe and recovered.  The Minutemen were able to recover (if you bothered to do so) from total failure and collapse.  Two factions aren't prepared for that: BoS and the Institute.  The former has seen total failure (or at least heard about it) when chapters go silent.  The latter is depending on a quick technological fix to save the Institute from power shortages, and yet those aren't the only problems the place faces in the way of logistics or even viable human gene pool.  If they did, then they would NOT have ordered the deaths of those frozen in Vault 111, but would have sought to bring them into the Institute with uncontaminated genetic material.  While not a long-term solution, it would have offered the Institute a longer lease on life...and the problems of an expanding population...which means growth, the need for more resources, more power...

If the Minutemen and RR can get a hand-waving pass, the BoS can't.  As depicted theirs in an expeditionary force centered around the Prydwen airship.  That airship has a limited capacity for holding troops, vertibirds and, as is found out later, powering itself for the long haul due to the need for specialized coolant.  What we are handed is a force that has limited resources, limited manpower, and while willing to pick up a few new recruits along the way, are basically a self-contained force there to do one, and only one, job: remove the Institute.

Bethesda Game Studios decided to give them infinite supplies of everything, including manpower and vertibirds.  This makes no in-game sense nor any sense for a military force that requires a logistics supply chain.  To be clear, to have a force like the player is shown in-game would require a constant resupply of soldiers, power armor, weapons, generators and vertibirds.  Presumably, since overland caravans can't handle that, the BoS would need to set up supply depots in the wasteland between the Capitol region and the Commonwealth.  Vertibird replacements would be required to be flown in, and the safest route for the last leg of the journey is either at very high altitudes or over the sea.  A supply chain avoiding the hazards of the Glowing Sea, the irradiated landscape where a major bomb cluster fell in and around nuclear power plants and near a military storage depot that held nuclear devices, would be the wiser route as isolated islands could be found for staging men and equipment while then setting up a set of radio comms back to the Capitol district.  Barring that, since the Prydwen comes in from the western portion of the map, near the Nuka World station, they may have decided to set up a supply system going from The Pitt and then north-east through Appalachia and the Adirondacks, and then looping around The Glowing Sea.  In-game this would mean that vertibirds would be seen ferrying supplies in on a daily or multiple times a day basis to keep the expedition resupplied.

Sadly that is lacking.  In the Nuka World DLC there was a grand opportunity to show a major BoS supply depot that was under constant harassment from the Raiders and other sorts there.  That would have given the BoS access to the X-01 Power Armor suits, advanced technology and possibly even trying to get a group together to figure out just what was going on there.  This is a missed opportunity to attempt to paper over a badly implemented set of decisions on game design.  Without that sort of resupply the BoS would have no business expending resources, aircraft and members on the sorts of things that are seen in-game.

Elder Arthur Maxson (it is a title, only, since he is in his early 20s) is supposedly a military genius, though bloodthirsty, it is to be admitted, he is supposed to know the nuts and bolts of keeping a military running.  He inherited a mess after the last member of the Lyons family (the Elder and his daughter who was a Sentinel and took command after he died) died in combat.  Arthur Maxson would need to successfully reunite the Brotherhood Outcasts with the main contingent, ensure that the recruitment of qualified wastelanders continued, and take over the distribution network of Project Purity that the Brotherhood under Elder Lyons had worked to set up.  After that he would need to firm up some sort of production agreement with The Pitt, build an airship from scratch, find a reactor good enough to power the thing, and then, and only then, create a cache of supplies, consumables, spare parts and such to mount the expedition to the Commonwealth.  He is supposed to KNOW logistics as that is a prime requirement of any high-level military leader and a firm requirement of the BoS.  The way he is portrayed with the expenditure of men and equipment makes him look incompetent in the extreme, and no matter how good his field leadership may be, he would not be qualified to be an Elder of the Brotherhood.

Well that is how it would be in an RPG, at least.  An action-based game requires plenty of action, and even action that makes no sense in any way, shape or form is better than lack of it.  So after the BoS arrive you can see enough vertibird crashes that would represent the entire contingent of vertibirds the BoS showed up with in their opening scene after the close of Act I.  This game mechanic, and it is a game mechanic, is made to give the player a sense of urgency or just lots of firefight opportunities.  Militarily these missions, expending such equipment in no way related to the main and primary mission, nor useful in garnering local supplies or securing local production, makes no sense.

Bethesda Game Studios could have made this an important part of the storyline and game mechanic by having the BoS start to show up in force at places like the Corvega Assembly Plant or Saugus Iron Works, and then bring in NPC staff from The Pitt or elsewhere to start getting these sites up and functioning to create new supplies for the BoS operations, locally.  The BoS would have a different agenda in doing so, and be utilizing the Prydwen not just as a source of getting an initial strike group in place, but then have pre-planned, tactical missions that would then allow for local resources and manufacturing to bolster the long-term aims of the BoS.  Why extort crops from local farmers when there is Graygarden available?  It is fully roboticized and would be a prime place for the BoS to set up a supply base, extending and reinforcing the robots used there by deploying a few of its own.  And with that technology under their belts, putting up a greenhouse at the Boston Airport would be child's play.  Suddenly the entire 'feeding the troops' bit gets removed from the radiant quest 'opportunities' and turned into a solid understanding of what it takes to keep the entire BoS campaign going.  Throw in taking over a local mine and the entire raw materials to refined resources to final product production system is complete and the BoS is then relieved of a lot of supply worries and might even open up a recruiting center in the aircraft graveyard section of the airport.  With precisely 4 missions, all of this would then help to give a background to the BoS, demonstrate competent leadership, and add in story elements of the BoS actually NOT extorting crops from locals and maybe even opening a market for exchange to help the BoS in the stuff they can't easily get or make.

At that point the BoS wouldn't be there just to take out the Institute, but to become a functioning part of the Commonwealth with an entirely new Chapter or perhaps even self-sustaining Division as a result.  Why the PC, if they joined the BoS, could even take part in those exact operations which would range from pure combat missions to diplomacy with robots that have rather advanced AI and personalities.  Perhaps even setting up the robot Supervisor Green with its own trading stand or equivalent to act as a secondary shop for the BoS.  By utilizing the overpass at Graygardens, the BoS could create a new vertibird landing area, rather well protected space for creating living room and quarters for troops, and then an entire ground area inside exterior fortifications for training, R&R, feeding, etc.  A multi-story greenhouse with robots running it, a true outpost with externally protected trading area and a well fortified landing zone above it all with look-down, shoot-down capability.  That would be a major part of an RPG storyline for the BoS, and by the time any showdown with them came, the Prydwen would no longer be the sole point of failure for the mission...which it is as presented.

That is it for the major factions, though probably not the last on the topic.

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.