Pixels or Death's Patrick Lindsey writes:
"Morality is complicated. Our moral canvasses are painted with all sorts of shades of gray, yet when transposed into videogames what we get is a very simplified black and white version of things. In most games morality takes the form of the classic “good vs evil” dichotomy – paragon/renegade, light side/dark side, etc. The fact is games just aren’t good at capturing the nuances of our moral dilemmas. Oftentimes we can either choose to help someone for the “good” option, or choose not to help, or to personally gain from the situation for the “bad” option."
The artist behind Fallout 4’s Deathclaw reveals just how bad things got back when Bethesda took over the series
People are stupid I get it. No one should feel unsafe,
But I think they need to talk about why they cut so many corners during the development process and why none of their games ever look current. And why they think all of this is okay while they charge full price.
As much as Bethesda deserve criticism, that's not really relevant to the reveal of Fallout 3 in 2007.
The default angle Kotaku always go for is to highlight the worst in gaming.
I would’ve focused on the creative.
Bethesda's post-apocalyptic RPG remains an unabashed classic, more than a decade and a half on from its launch.
For me its the fact that I could put hundreds of hours into it and still find areas I missed in my earlier runs. It was also my first FO and despite what I had to put up with at times such as overall crashs and killing my orginal PS3 with the YLOD it's still my favorite entry to this day.
Tons of reasons
But my silly little one…hunting for unique weapons and armour
Something Fallout 4 just didn’t really have as much because they replaced most of it with randomly generated customised weapons. Even Elder Scrolla doesn't do it as well.
I remember during my first playthrough of Fallout 4 back in 2015 I somehow got an automatic combat rifle that shot explosive rounds by defeating a legendary creature. Unfortunately that was the only playthrough I ever got that weapon. It's a shame because it was absolutely epic!
Sense of exploration. That was why older Bethesda games were so good. They might have had glitches, broken mechanics, meh visuals, etc., but they were some of the best around when it came down to the sense of exploration. You could go wherever you wanted and you would find something cool; it might have been a faction, a weapon, an enemy and much more. And that is what they are lacking now. Skyrim still had a lot of that, but Fallout 4 dropped it by focusing on an interconnected world and more randomly generated rewards. Fallout 76 just kept that trend and added multiplayer, and Starfield went even further in killing it by creating a whole universe with parts completely isolated from each other.
I think the retrospective of Fallout: New Vegas' existence has somewhat diminished the view of Fallout 3 in the eyes of many, but it getting out of the vault in Fallout 3 was, for me, the most remarkable experience I've had in a videogame.
I was 12 when it came out, and I remember I just saw the score it got in Gamemaster magazine (remember those!? 😅), and I just went to the shop and bought it with my pocket money.
Not knowing anything about the game, I thought the whole thing was going to be about growing up in a vault, especially given that I'd spent about 2 hours in it....I literally could.not.believe it when you got out and it was just this wasteland on every direction. Amazing.
Probably because these Bethesda games were hand crafted so that exploration meant something. Unlike Starfield where this sense of exploration is replaced with the illusion of scope and procedurally generated worlds. A player can always appreciate when they wonder into an unforgettable new encounter by accident or stumble across a new questline that becomes their favourite. Just like a player can always tell when they're ploughing through filler on auto pilot, that they'll forget the moment some resource numbers go up and nothing worth remembering occurred.
I mean, in Fallout 3 you could nuke an entire town as a SIDE QUEST. In The Elder Scrolls Oblivion and Skyrim, the Dark Brotherhood questlines were my favourite in any RPGs and you could completely avoid them if you didn't care for them. In The Witcher 3 side quests take you on ridiculously dark and mysterious storylines that are some of the best I've played in RPG history. There's a reason why people still talk about KOTOR to this day. Difference between a developer creating something or just padding a game world with stuff.
There were some side quests that could yld have been developed into an entirely separate game. Some great writing there.
The Fallout Anthology Edition is coming to PC very soon, and is packaged with some very S.P.E.C.I.A.L. bonuses.
It’s an awful downgrade to the last one they did
They included physical disc back then
I would love the classic fallout games on console. Closest I could find was atom rpg, I liked that one a lot
I hate morality systems. Would prefer games to be more subtle with their morality like Heavy Rain.
There are a few times I've had put down the controller for a few moments to decide a moral choice portrayed in a game - saving the rachni comes to mind... but I do think game makers have a hard time mimicing subtle moral choices
Games don't really have morality systems. Just systems that call themselves "morality systems."
Very few games ask players to make moral choices. The first Witcher game being the most notable example of the last decade.
In general, a morality system cannot exist in a game if that morality system is tied to actual gameplay--to work, these systems need to be very subtle (invisible to the player) and need to have actual consequences to the narrative.
Sadly, while the technology is certainly there to accomplish a decent morality system, I doubt any developer is up to the task. There's too much emphasis of the visual aesthetic of games these days, too little on AI and scripting.
It really doesnt have a point because the story stays the same for the most part. You can be "evil" but end up saving the world or whatever.
Damn good article. It does suck how games will have the choice to be obviously good or blatantly evil. Often times having trophies for doing so just so you can go back and try the other route. Moral choices shouldn't be used as a means of replayability or just to see the other ending to the game, it should actually have you questioning yourself as you would in a real life situation.
Granted, I suppose a lot of devs realize that games are also a way to explore thoughts and situations where we normally wouldn't dare to go to, and if given the choice a decent person will almost always choose the more honest or noble option, so nothing is being explored.
In order to bypass this, devs should instead look not toward good or bad, but that special gray area where there isn't a particular desired outcome.