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[Rhaknar]

I just got to this today.

And now to find out if you go brotherhood route they're going to basically reuse the fallout 3 ending? lmao

the brotherhood wants you to go in a reactor to die? Can I send Strong in instead? >_>

btw can you still do faction quests after you finish it? I intend to go with Railroad, but I still want to get some levels in me to get some more perks, like the settlement stuff

 

[tuxfool]

the brotherhood wants you to go in a reactor to die? Can I send Strong in instead? >_>

He is clearly talking about Liberty Prime.

 

[Basileus777]

But I blew up the ship with the Railroad. So if I were to join the Railroad AND the Brotherhood it would happen the same way or? Because in my playthrough the Brotherhood already went perma-hostile earlier, when I had to steal that component for the reactor.

You can join all three factions, but once the game forces you to make a choice (the place where the other faction becomes perma-hostile), you end up on the same path as if you only joined one of them. There's no real difference between sticking with the Railway the whole way and joining both and then choosing the Railroad.

 

[squadr0n]

Seriously check out the Witchcraft museum if you havent been yet. make sure to listen to the holotape before going in.

 

[Burt]

Here is one if you side with the institute.

Spoiler

You start just before the bombs drop before the war but thanks to your military background you are chosen to be a part of the vault program. After arriving you are quickly frozen as it turns out thats the test for this vault. Some time later you are partially woken and witness your wife being murdered and you son kidnapped by some bald dude and a person in a hazmat suit. You are refrozen though. You wake up again being released from your pod and find the vault all dead.

From there you wander out and begin exploring the wasteland looking for you son and your spouses killer. You eventually will make it to Diamond City where you will be informed to talk to Nick Valentine about helping you since he is a detective. You should begin hearing about the institute who is famous for kidnapping people and replacing them with synths(lifelike robots).

After saving Nick(who turns out to be a rundown damaged synth) he helps figure ou that the bald guy is probably a bald mere named Kellogg. So you hunt him down and eventually kill him for what he did to you before he dies he confirms that it was the institute that took your son.

Than you use cybernetic parts of his brain to figure out how to get to the institute. At this point you also see your 10 year old son with Kellogg. You learn that the only way is teleportation. You also here about an escaped institute scientist Virgil. You hunt him down in the Glowing Sea, a super irradiated area. He explains to you that you need to kill a courser(a very powerful hunter synth) and build this device in order to get into the institute.

You kill the courser but need someone to read its data and the only group that could possibly do it is the Railroad a group of people helping synths to escape and become there own person. After finding them by following the Freedom trail, you now need to build the device. You can pick any of three factions to help you with this (Minutemen, Railroad or the Brotherhood of Steel).

Whatever you choose you end up teleporting into the institute where you find out that your son is there. But he is also now like sixty years old and the head of the whole thing. Turns out you slept another sixty years after the first wake up. None the less he is very impressed that you made it to him and wants you to join him. If you say yes you can join the institute like I did(Also you can be undercover for the Brotherhood or Minutemen by saying yes) or you can say no and he will ask you to leave regretfully.

So if you join the institute they send you out on some missions to recollect some synths that escaped them and were helped by the railroad. The first one has become a bandit and is killing a lot of people. The next group is just about to escape but you nab them.

You than meet your son on top of CIT where he explains that he was stolen because the institute needed super fresh never irradiated DNA and a prewar frozen baby was prime. Your spouses death was unintended(Kellogg was an asshole). You were kept frozen as backup but your son is actually the one who wakes you up as both an experiment(what would you do?) and because he wanted to meet you.

He invite you to attend a meeting with the board of directors where he informs you that the institute is running out of power and they have a plan to fix that through nuclear power. He also makes you his successor even though you aren't a super scientist since he thinks there are enough of those in the institute. He also reveals that he is going to die of cancer soon.

You head out to collect the final component needed to finish the reactor and fight the Brotherhood making them permanent enemies to do so. After turning on the reactor your son explains that you need to kill the Railroad off since they are a threat to the institute.

After all this your final mission is to take out the Brotherhood and their ship. The method they have you use is to get in turn off the anti-teleport shields and hack Liberty Prime to blow up the ship.

Having completed all of this you meet your son on his deathbed and have a final heart to heart before the game ends as he dies. You get a quick monologue and montage about and than are put right back in the game to continue doing whatever.

The End

TLDR

Spoiler

Your son is alive and is in charge of the scary institute but he is your son so you help him and he dies.

Thanks for this.

 

[Shouta]

Finished. Pretty bland, almost bad main story line. It has all the pieces to be good but they fail to develop them in a way that really forces you think and care about what's going on. In addition, there's so little cross over between the factions in quests that dealing with them in the endings feels fairly forced. Bringing the factions into direct conflict in the actual storyline should have been done to really get the stakes to the right place.

It also feels like a huge missed opportunity for more ambitious gameplay. You have multiple factions that can build bases and defenses in them. Why not have a more active story in regards to territorial control and such that makes full use of their georama/base building stuff? It's stuff like that that would really have been interesting.

 

[Seyavesh]

why is the institute doing anything at all on the surface with anyone beyond grabbing random items/samples they need
like literally all their problems would be solved if they simply stopped fucking with people on the surface and that you can never bring that up ingame is really bizarre. like what do they actually gain from destabilizing the region and pretty much being crazy science! terrorists with their fucked up terminator scheme
am i missing something there, it's really obvious, right? there's no real pressuring factor for them to be committing a mass campaign of terror on the commonwealth besides for shits and giggles and if they weren't doing that they wouldn't have to worry about the surface people fucking with them/knowing about them or fearing them
i don't understand what their goal is in regards to bringing so much trouble down upon themselves if they're an isolationist community that is literally so deep beneath the earth that a nuclear bomb going off inside their facility only creates a small crater in a metropolis

the premise seemed pretty interesting, even after father was introduced but then from there it seems things just kinda spiral out of hand and stop making any kind of sense, especially in regards from a player agency angle

 

[KC Denton]

why is the institute doing anything at all on the surface with anyone beyond grabbing random items/samples they need
like literally all their problems would be solved if they simply stopped fucking with people on the surface and that you can never bring that up ingame is really bizarre. like what do they actually gain from destabilizing the region and pretty much being crazy science! terrorists with their fucked up terminator scheme
am i missing something there, it's really obvious, right? there's no real pressuring factor for them to be committing a mass campaign of terror on the commonwealth besides for shits and giggles and if they weren't doing that they wouldn't have to worry about the surface people fucking with them/knowing about them or fearing them
i don't understand what their goal is in regards to bringing so much trouble down upon themselves if they're an isolationist community that is literally so deep beneath the earth that a nuclear bomb going off inside their facility only creates a small crater in a metropolis

the premise seemed pretty interesting, even after father was introduced but then from there it seems things just kinda spiral out of hand and stop making any kind of sense, especially in regards from a player agency angle

It's so weird. The reason I went with the Institute in my playthrough was because I thought I could be a catalyst for positive change as the upcoming leader (get everyone to stop doing stupid schemes with synths, treat the new gen synths as actual people, hire some of the people from the Railroad, etc.) But ultimately to progress, I had to agree with everything Shaun said, and the times I said no (such as dealing with the Railroad) I got railroaded onto what he wanted.

 

[Visceir]

Was I the only one who shot Father at first sight?

Was curious if the game would let me do it, it definitely did but everything bugged out after that. Sounded like all the synths aggroed but they were all behind a door that the game wouldn't let me open so I was just stuck down there and had to load a previous save.

Would have been cool/interesting if they had coded in some reaction dialogue if you decided to just gun everyone down in a faction...or just the leaders.

 

[skyhaven]

Their writers probably can't cope with the amount of awesome plot going down the drain.
And yes, you can gun him down, plug Proctor's holotape into his terminal and escape.

 

[Fallout Phoenix]

I'll put tags up just in case, ending spoilers

So I finished the game a few hours ago and

Spoiler

during the escape from the Institute before it was blown up there was the Shaun synth. I told him he could come with me and it just occurred to me that I have yet to see him since that discussion. Is he not at Sanctuary if not where is he?

 

[CloudWolf]

Ugh, that side quest in Covenant is the worst.

First off, due to what's probably a bug every house was permanently closed with a Master-level lock, forcing me to have to pickpocket keys to even get into the store.

Secondly, what's up with the progression? I found the caravan with evidence that they were in Covenant, so obviously that opens up some hard questions for the mayor, etc, right? Nope, the only way to continue the quest is to either break into the mayor's house or to follow a very specific dialogue line with one of the characters which, if you choose the wrong questions, causes her to never want to talk to you again. After which you still have to break into the mayor's house.

And finally, this was the first quest where I thought "hey, finally meaningful choice", since the game constantly gives you an option to make a deal and supposedly solve it peacefully. But then the final part of the quest is like "fuck that noise" and your choice boils down to kill these people of kill these other people. And to add insult to injury, both have basically the same result.

 

[Jusoni]

How much main story is left after the institute quest "Mass Fusion" which will make me a permanet enemy to BoS?

 

[Ikuu]

How much main story is left after the institute quest "Mass Fusion" which will make me a permanet enemy to BoS?

Maybe an hour to go.

 

[Seyavesh]

Ugh, that side quest in Covenant is the worst.

First off, due to what's probably a bug every house was permanently closed with a Master-level lock, forcing me to have to pickpocket keys to even get into the store.

Secondly, what's up with the progression? I found the caravan with evidence that they were in Covenant, so obviously that opens up some hard questions for the mayor, etc, right? Nope, the only way to continue the quest is to either break into the mayor's house or to follow a very specific dialogue line with one of the characters which, if you choose the wrong questions, causes her to never want to talk to you again. After which you still have to break into the mayor's house.

And finally, this was the first quest where I thought "hey, finally meaningful choice", since the game constantly gives you an option to make a deal and supposedly solve it peacefully. But then the final part of the quest is like "fuck that noise" and your choice boils down to kill these people of kill these other people. And to add insult to injury, both have basically the same result.

the real shame is that it's literally the only quest in the game that has any unique non-combat aspect to it. like it's my favorite quest simply because of that but knowing that it effectively ends the same regardless of the choices you make...

i guess i just gotta shrug and go 'welp, bethesda design!' but christ it's so depressing that people are okay with this or think that the rpg aspect of the game is totally fine/unchanged

 

[Luq]

People saying there aren't many side quests haven't been playing the same game as I have. I'm about 60 hours in and have just done the starting quests for BoS and the minute men. I've done a few story missions here and there but mostly just been picking up tons of side stuff to do. In the main story I've gone as far as tapping into Kellogs memories and now have to go to the glowing sea.

Just did an awesome side quest where you become a radio drama star called the Silver Shroud and it was so much different than anything that's come before so far. I don't get at all where people say this game doesn't have quests outside of the factions at all. If you beat the game in 17 hours you missed some really great stuff.

Have yet to even see the railroad or institute factions and my quest list is filled with stuff to do. It might not have as many great locations as 3 had but I'm still loving every minute of it. Accept for having to track down stupid materials every so often that I need for upgrades.

There are some fantastic quests/quest locations with a lot of background. No one denies that. Silver Shroud, USS Constitution, Museum of Witchery and giving the egg back to Deathclaw ... it's all great, the problem is - these are just single examples. Most of the game is based on same scheme - go X, kill Y and find Z. The end.

Even if u have 10% of brilliant quests (and fuck me, there are some really fantastic ones) it gets covered with tons of shit that Bethesda has served with F4.

The other thing is the "ending". I went with BOTS route and it was incredibly dissapointing. But - my biggest problem is - wtf happened when I first encountered adult Shaun? There was some messy talk, I've picked the option to "help them" and then suddenly nothing happens and I'm running next to Liberty Prime and blow everything up, then it turns out that my son is dying (wtf, why he didn't say that before?) and there is his synth version that I decline to take with me but then he goes with me anyway since I can talk to him once again and change my decision. I get some high BOTS rank and it allows me to do whaterver I want (thanks I guess?).

It makes no sense at all.

 

[Whaleman]

Was I the only one who shot Father at first sight?

Was curious if the game would let me do it, it definitely did but everything bugged out after that. Sounded like all the synths aggroed but they were all behind a door that the game wouldn't let me open so I was just stuck down there and had to load a previous save.

Would have been cool/interesting if they had coded in some reaction dialogue if you decided to just gun everyone down in a faction...or just the leaders.

I did the same thing and my game didn't bug. You get a quest to escape the institute through the teleporter and everyone in the institute becomes hostile. Before you are about to escape they tell you over the radio he is your son and you are a monster for killing him. Oh and they are totally gonna kill you on sight.

 

[Rhaknar]

posting here aswell

end game quest and companion spoilers!

question about the

Spoiler

Battle of Bunker hill quest. I warned the Railroad about it, and Dez says ill have to kill the Coarser with me along with everyone else. But isnt the coarser that goes with you on Father missions the one you can recruit as a companion. I take it if I warn Railroad about it I cant recruit him?

but if I dont warn them, wont they be pissed? argh

anyone?

 

[Basileus777]

posting here aswell



anyone?

You're going to have to pick a faction soon. You can't side with the railroad and be friends with the Coarser.

 

[Rhaknar]

You're going to have to pick a faction soon. You can't side with the railroad and be friends with the Coarser.

fair enough

 

[Rhaknar]

wait, what happens if you have Danse with you while youre doing the BoS quests and all of a sudden

Spoiler

hes accused of being a synth

? Ill spoiler that even in this thread

I had dogmeat with me unfortunately

edit: dat double post

 

[Noray]

the real shame is that it's literally the only quest in the game that has any unique non-combat aspect to it. like it's my favorite quest simply because of that but knowing that it effectively ends the same regardless of the choices you make...

i guess i just gotta shrug and go 'welp, bethesda design!' but christ it's so depressing that people are okay with this or think that the rpg aspect of the game is totally fine/unchanged

Yeah it sucks. I really enjoyed my time with the game, fucking hell I played 80 hours in a week and am glad it's over because of that, but thinking about it, they changed it from a proper role-playing experience to more of an ARPG. Think about it. You get a quest, go to a place, kill everyone, loot, return to town to manage inventory, rinse and repeat. This is 90% of the quests, and even quests where there is an illusion of choice, they usually go the same anyway. They pay lip service to the older Fallout games by having speech checks and a (horrible) dialogue system but at the end of the day, you're going to be shooting your way out of almost everything, even if you pass speech checks along the way. And the story and factions are so underdeveloped, you don't even have an impact on the story at all. The story railroads you (no pun intended) into playing the overly concerned parent and you can't actually change anything about the Institute, which is fucking bizarre, and the Institute as a whole is the most underdeveloped mess without any sort of clear objective.

Again, I kinda love this game's mechanics and a lot about it, but it is shockingly poorly written even by Bethesda standards. It veers straight into incoherence the deeper in you get. Also, the fact that the core "moral dilemma" at the heart of the game doesn't even get any further than "do you think sentient human-like robots who might as well be humans deserve human rights y/n" is laughable. Like, come on. Especially since I just played SOMA a couple weeks ago, which has more to say about post-humanism in 6 hours than 80 hours of Fallout 4... it's just so, so shallow.

 

[Olengie]

I wish we could be friends with everyone. I would have found it interesting to have the Sole Surivor-led Institute ally with the BoS and see what happens.

 

[Luq]

wait, what happens if you have Danse with you while youre doing the BoS quests and all of a sudden

Spoiler

hes accused of being a synth

? Ill spoiler that even in this thread

I had dogmeat with me unfortunately

edit: dat double post

He leaves you during quest to guard some kind of weapon that you have "secured" for BOS together. You cannot find him afterwards and he shows up only when you

Spoiler

are getting the quest to kill him.

Spoiler

I tried to avoid it but he kills himself anyway even if you refuse to do it yourselft. Dunno how it looks if you are cooperating with other factions, I joined BOS.

 

[Rhaknar]

He leaves you during quest to guard some kind of weapon that you have "secured" for BOS together. You cannot find him afterwards and he shows up only when you

Spoiler

are getting the quest to kill him.

Spoiler

I tried to avoid it but he kills himself anyway even if you refuse to do it yourselft. Dunno how it looks if you are cooperating with other factions, I joined BOS.

he

Spoiler

didnt kill himself for me, I still have him, and I could continue with the BoS (but I wont because the next quest puts my Railroad stuff in a fail state lol)

 

[Drkirby]

Just finished the main story for the Institute. It sort of felt hollow. Big battle, father dies, and... that it. You get a cheap little ending, and dumped back in the game. Ending doesn't even try to say the after math of your actions, or reflect any of your other choices in it. I wasn't even sure it was the proper ending when first seeing it. Sort of a let down.

 

[Pancakes]

Just finished the main story for the Institute. It sort of felt hollow. Big battle, father dies, and... that it. You get a cheap little ending, and dumped back in the game. Ending doesn't even try to say the after math of your actions, or reflect any of your other choices in it. I wasn't even sure it was the proper ending when first seeing it. Sort of a let down.

Just finished the game myself 99 hours and I feel exactly the same way. I was just sitting there thinking, "ok, now what happens to everyone else? Where is the epilogue where I get all the consequences of my choices shown to me?" I was so disappointed that it was a shitty little monologue and then plop right back in the institute. It really kinda soured me on the whole game. Even though it should be about the journey and not the destination especially when Bethesda is involved, I still feel so disappointed. There were a few memorable sidequests but they were just so bland and boring in comparison to New Vegas. There should've been so much more done with factions, settlements, territory control, more dialogue options.

It's kinda sad to be honest. Hopefully DLC will patch this shit up but as of right now I really hated this story.

 

[Basileus777]

Just finished the game myself 99 hours and I feel exactly the same way. I was just sitting there thinking, "ok, now what happens to everyone else? Where is the epilogue where I get all the consequences of my choices shown to me?" I was so disappointed that it was a shitty little monologue and then plop right back in the institute. It really kinda soured me on the whole game. Even though it should be about the journey and not the destination especially when Bethesda is involved, I still feel so disappointed. There were a few memorable sidequests but they were just so bland and boring in comparison to New Vegas. There should've been so much more done with factions, settlements, territory control, more dialogue options.

It's kinda sad to be honest. Hopefully DLC will patch this shit up but as of right now I really hated this story.

I had a similar response, and then realized that the game doesn't have much choice and consequence to show the results of. Beyond the faction stuff, what is there to even show in a slide?

 

[Pancakes]

I had a similar response, and then realized that the game doesn't have much choice and consequence to show the results of. Beyond the faction stuff, what is there to even show in a slide?

You have a point I suppose, maybe the futures of your companions depending on if you did their quests or not (Then again I romanced Cait, Piper, and Curie so that would've been interesting). I really wish they kept voice acting away from this title but I guess the mainstream pressure was just too much and thus they had to limit options and sidequests.

This really just makes me want to start up New Vegas again and wait a year or two for DLC/mods to try and fix this mess.

 

[Whaleman]

Just finished the game myself 99 hours and I feel exactly the same way. I was just sitting there thinking, "ok, now what happens to everyone else? Where is the epilogue where I get all the consequences of my choices shown to me?" I was so disappointed that it was a shitty little monologue and then plop right back in the institute. It really kinda soured me on the whole game. Even though it should be about the journey and not the destination especially when Bethesda is involved, I still feel so disappointed. There were a few memorable sidequests but they were just so bland and boring in comparison to New Vegas. There should've been so much more done with factions, settlements, territory control, more dialogue options.

It's kinda sad to be honest. Hopefully DLC will patch this shit up but as of right now I really hated this story.

I'm pretty sure they did this because a lot people complained about how you couldn't continue the game after the ending of Fallout 3 so they wanted to make an ending where you can continue. The only way to do that is to not fully end the game so no where are they now segments. I'm sure they also have big plans for DLC as you mentioned so they couldn't have and ending where continuing to play after wards didn't make sense.

 

[Luq]

he

Spoiler

didnt kill himself for me, I still have him, and I could continue with the BoS (but I wont because the next quest puts my Railroad stuff in a fail state lol)

Well, maybe that's cuz of your "companion relations"? Mine was neutral all the time (even though ive done tons of things he disliked), but if u are getting along with him well...

Spoiler

It's interesting twist though, will try to "save" him in my second playthrough

 

[Ogimachi]

Amazing dialog choices, C&C...

#1

#2

#3

 

[aravuus]

Same shit with Kellogg when you finally find him. Whatever you choose, it doesn't matter, he says more or less the same exact thing.

The dialogue system is just the worst shit ever

 

[Seyavesh]

Amazing dialog choices, C&C...

see
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Scfv1phAJcw

bethesda cannot write or make rpgs but they are fucking fantastic at making open world action adventure games

 

[hamchan]

Did the Institute ending first and then the Brotherhood ending. That Brotherhood ending sure is more action packed and interesting huh. Mayhe it's because I blew up the Brotherhood airship with the Railroad first, and then took out the Railroad that my Institute ending feels so anti-climactic. Do you take out the Brotherhood last if you don't help the Railroad?

Anyways the Railroad kinda sucked compared to the juggernauts that were the other two faction.

 

[nubbe]

Same shit with Kellogg when you finally find him. Whatever you choose, it doesn't matter, he says more or less the same exact thing.

The dialogue system is just the worst shit ever

Isn't that so with every voice based game?
That's why it is called an illusion of choice

For text based games there is no problem to add volumes of dialog
But voices have a high cost associated with them

 

[PuppetMaster]

I was really bothered about having to kill those 2 little kids when taking down the BoS ship. I felt like a terrorist.

I thought I was joining the good guys when I teamed up with the railroad. But killing those kids on top of having to kill all my friends on that ship felt so wrong. I even went on a mission with one of those squire kids when I was doing BoS side quests. Don't even get me started on the massacre in the institute that happenned next.

And using nukes for the greater good... that is the WHOLE reason that world got fucked up in the first place! I guess... war never changes.


Anyway I really really loved this game until the final act. Basically everything until you meet your dad on the roof top was pure gold.

I went back and played the institue ending. That also was fucked to me. Because I did all the railroad stuff in my previous completion those guys were like friends to me and massacreing them all... especially deacon that I maxed relationship with felt really fucked.

I came to this thread finally to see if there was acutaully a 'good' ending. But from the sound of it, the other endings suck just as hard.

 

[Red Blaster]

this is probably one of the worst written games in recent memory

beyond just horrible, try-hard dialogue there are numerous moments where one simple line could make the logic fit and the game just completely overlooks it (like why the fuck does the protagonist not question presto garvey why he's giving him bottle caps and not money). frankly its irritating how mindbogglingly stupid the writing is.

Isn't that so with every voice based game?
That's why it is called an illusion of choice

For text based games there is no problem to add volumes of dialog
But voices have a high cost associated with them

the witcher games dont seem to have this problem

 

[CloudWolf]

Same shit with Kellogg when you finally find him. Whatever you choose, it doesn't matter, he says more or less the same exact thing.

The dialogue system is just the worst shit ever

I managed to pick a dialogue chain where he repeated himself. Kellogg: "He's fine, a little bit older than you expect, but blah blah blah" <comment by my PC> Kellogg: "He's fine, a little bit olden than you expect, but..."

 

[PuppetMaster]

I liked A LOT of the stories in FO4. I could make a long list of stuff that was quite interesting and memorable.

The institute stuff where you are working undercover for them while still working for father. Covertly meeting with synths who want to be freed.

The whole side quest with that family who is hundreds of years old but they live because this serum from thier father. An interesting twist on the vampire trope.

The Diamond Radio DJ quest line that changes his personality.

Most of the side kick quests or stories were great. I got a kick out of the Deacon one. Because I thought he was a synth but he fooled me. Quest to cure Caits addiction to drugs. Nick the detective and that mobster who intentionally made himself a ghoul.

The mutant guy who escaped from the institute. He turns back into a man if you find his secret lab in the institute.

The Silver Shroud quests.

The robot pirates.

The stolen deatclaw egg thing. Very cool!

I could go on.

 

[Noray]

I could go on.

I think you actually named every single interesting quest in the game! I agree that working undercover in the Institute was neat, but I hated how shallow the Institute itself was.

 

[Luq]

I liked A LOT of the stories in FO4. I could make a long list of stuff that was quite interesting and memorable.

The institute stuff where you are working undercover for them while still working for father. Covertly meeting with synths who want to be freed.

The whole side quest with that family who is hundreds of years old but they live because this serum from thier father. An interesting twist on the vampire trope.

The Diamond Radio DJ quest line that changes his personality.

Most of the side kick quests or stories were great. I got a kick out of the Deacon one. Because I thought he was a synth but he fooled me. Quest to cure Caits addiction to drugs. Nick the detective and that mobster who intentionally made himself a ghoul.

The mutant guy who escaped from the institute. He turns back into a man if you find his secret lab in the institute.

The Silver Shroud quests.

The robot pirates.

The stolen deatclaw egg thing. Very cool!

I could go on.

Yeah, those quests are really incredible. The problem is - once they are done, you are left with bland, repetetive "go there, kill this" missions. You've got sth around 10-15 great quests wich stand for around 15-20% of the game. The rest is simply uninspired and just "meh".

No one denies that there are fantastic stories - there is just not enough of them.

 

[HoopzBarkley]

The Institute stuff was kind of confusing, but everything before that was good. I did felt like an asshole tho when I told

Spoiler

Shaun that he was a disappointment

lol.
Also I don't know if anyone else liked the whole parent searching for their child, I thought it was done alright, it was something different, I do like the blank slate characters too but this didn't bug me as much as I thought it would.

 

[Ogimachi]

I liked A LOT of the stories in FO4. I could make a long list of stuff that was quite interesting and memorable.

The Diamond Radio DJ quest line that changes his personality.

I could go on.

I have yet to play the other ones you mention, but the Confidence Man quest (Diamond City DJ) has absolutely terrible design, specially for a Fallout game.
You can't warn, stop or persuade anyone. No matter what you say, the fight will take place regardless. You can't change the plan, the fight or the odds, and you can't intimidate or persuade the thugs.
Then, no matter what you do, you have to go see Scarlett and Vadim is kidnapped. Regardless of your decisions, Travis will come along and you have to kill the raiders in the brewery to rescue Vadim.

This is worse than the average BioWare quest, there isn't even an illusion of choice. It is quite telling that Vadim himself tells you something like "You want to help Travis, show up after 6, otherwise we'll do it without you."
It's almost like it's breaking the 4th wall there. "Sorry, player, this is what we made and this is what happens, deal with it or fail the quest".

At least in BioWare games you know you're supposed to be the good guy and you're playing a pre-existing character. In the Mass Effect series, you have to be Shepard, "a goddamn hero", but you have the Chaotic/Lawful Good approaches all the time, at least. Here the only option besides being the good guy doing things for charity is to roll a speech check for more caps.
Fallout used to be about the player's own character, and there should always be multiple ways to solve these things. It's so fundamental to the series that it was in the vision statement for Fallout 1, and it's one of the reasons the originals and FNV were so great.

 

[robotrock]

Damn this ending was as unsatisfying as everyone said.

Oh well I guess I'll go load up an older save and try and do the Brotherhood of Steel quests now

 

[hamchan]

The Brotherhood ending is giving me deja vu from FO3. I seem to remember just following a big robot messing stuff up in that too. Also I told my son to go to hell and then shot him, so that was actually really fun.

 

[aravuus]

Isn't that so with every voice based game?
That's why it is called an illusion of choice

For text based games there is no problem to add volumes of dialog
But voices have a high cost associated with them

Like Red Blaster said, TW games seemed fine. Hell, I recall even Mass Effects being far better about this.

I guess my problem is more so with the fact that having any dialogue choices was incredibly unimportant as the conversation always went exactly the same. They can boast about crazy amounts of voiced lines because this conversation alone had 4 variations of "where's shaun", 4 variations of "what the heck is the institute" and 4 variations of "hurgh i'll kill you now."

But yeah, having a voiced protagonist does affect this among other things. One of the reasons why I think it was a terrible, terrible idea to have it.

 

[Not Spaceghost]

Faction / nearing end game spoilers:

Spoiler

So I've managed to basically bring down the wrath of the wasteland against me. After being all gung ho fuck yeah brother hood and taking down the railroad terrorists the remnants started hunting me down furiously. After infiltrating the institute I figured I'd give the brohood the ability to fuck with them by convincing madison li to rebuild liberty prime, but as they needed the power core online, disaster struck. I was being asked to kill Paladin Danse because he was a synth. Danse was my bro, but I tracked him down and he asked me to pull the trigger so I did to honor him but I went right to the institute and betrayed the brotherhood to them, I stole the beryllium agitator and gave it to the institute, angering the brotherhood completely.

Spoiler

Well the more I worked with the institute the more I hated what they actually did and how they operated, the final straw came when they basically asked me to attack the minute men. So in the middle of that mission as I was about to compelete the objective for the institute I turned around and in one single volley of laser beams wiped out the institute agents with me. Now the tables have turned for the 3rd time and it's just me and the minutemen against the rest of the goddamn wasteland.

Spoiler

Every encounter goes from manageable to absolutely insane, I'll be fighting some railroad heavies when suddenly a vertibird appears over the horizon and drops in 2 knights and some other dudes, and then a flash of blue light and synths appear all over the fuckin area. The wasteland really feels like a total warzone, all because I've betrayed essentially everyone except the minutemen.

Spoiler

Now I've just gotta bolster my ranks and I think it's time for the final battle?

 

[ZombieSupaStar]

The ending has to be worse than fallout 3. I didn't think that was possible. And of course coming from new Vegas it's a damn travesty. But really since the story is linear not sure how many things they could have made into ending slides. Basically feels like we are going to get more dlc and this is intermission.

 

[Sou Da]

I liked A LOT of the stories in FO4. I could make a long list of stuff that was quite interesting and memorable.

The institute stuff where you are working undercover for them while still working for father. Covertly meeting with synths who want to be freed.

The whole side quest with that family who is hundreds of years old but they live because this serum from thier father. An interesting twist on the vampire trope.

The Diamond Radio DJ quest line that changes his personality.

Most of the side kick quests or stories were great. I got a kick out of the Deacon one. Because I thought he was a synth but he fooled me. Quest to cure Caits addiction to drugs. Nick the detective and that mobster who intentionally made himself a ghoul.

The mutant guy who escaped from the institute. He turns back into a man if you find his secret lab in the institute.

The Silver Shroud quests.

The robot pirates.

The stolen deatclaw egg thing. Very cool!

I could go on.

How many of those quests force you to kill something?