How do you tell how many people you have killed?

I don't post very often, but I felt I'd chime in on this thread as it brings up a trend in Bethesda's Main questlines.

I'm not a parent myself either, and I hope I never become one. However, I know what it's like to love something enough to fight off the rest of the world in order to save it. I agree that Fallout 4's main quest (at least up until the point where you reach the Institute), had a stronger drive than Fallout 3, New Vegas, Skyrim, Oblivion...

I do agree to an extent, as I roleplayed this way myself, that it's very hard to want to do anything besides find your son. So yeah, blowing off side missions, factions, etc makes the most sense to a degree. However, something I'd like to point out (which is how I played it).. The sole survivor (at least for men right?) is a war veteran - and for the ladies it wouldn't be hard to say your character thinks tactically. So, you find yourself in this brand new world, there is danger around every single corner. You know next to nothing about, well, anything. It would be stupid not to try to get others to help. Rushing off against the Commonwealth, only out for yourself to find your son. You'd never do it. So it makes a lot of sense to at least help out a few folks so that they can, in return, help you.

Not only that, but I can't believe everyone is so selfish that, even if their child is missing, they would walk past an event such as Concord and ignore the people's cries for help. I mean come on... there's like 5 people trapped in a building being overrun by raiders. You don't have the slightest clue where your child is anyway, you haven't met another human yet.. You're just going to move on and let them be slaughtered by the raiders, especially when you've had combat training and are no stranger to war?

So yeah.. I'll agree that a lot of content makes sense to only be played after the Main quest is over. Which.. not a huge deal, because the game doesn't end and it gives you a reason to keep playing.

However, the point this brings me to, which really bugs me, is the pacing of Bethesda's Main quests. In Oblivion, everything had to be done immediately because the world was going to end. In Fallout 3, it was a little better, but not much. The quests still implied that you needed to do everything as quickly as possible, or else you were going to lose your father's trail and what not. Now when you found him, you did have the choice to decide not to go with him - though it didn't make a ton of sense.. seeing as how he's pretty much the only close person in your life at that point, and the main quest urged you to find him immediately.

Skyrim, same deal. Everything was urgent and needed to be done immediately because the world was going to end. Eh..

New Vegas was sort of a hit and miss for me. Yes, the pacing was good. The story allowed you to take your time, learn the world, see things, do other quests, etc. Pretty well handled. However, for me, the story was.. well boring. Which is why I don't understand when people post about how Obsidian has writers who are so much better than Bethesda. I won't argue on this - they did a much better job at giving you choices that mattered, pacing, stuff like that. But they Main quest itself? If my background is that I'm a courier who gets shot in the head and survives, and my goal is to get revenge... yeah, sounds like an awesome western/cowboy movie. But after that? Like, who cares? Why is some random courier all of a sudden involved in the outcome of the whole world? Because of some chip he/she was carrying? Eh, I mean I see where they were trying to go with it, and maybe it's just me, but the entire driving force of the quest seemed like revenge. Which (if you even chose to take revenge) came much quicker than I had expected. And after that I was like.. ok.. well I don't care about all of this other stuff that's going on. If they would have only changed it so that you had to continue the Main quest in order to kill Benny, and pushed your discovering Benny close to the very end of the questline, then it would have been much, much better.

This brings me to Morrowind. And I hate to be that guy, but I thought Morrowind really did a fantastic job with the pacing and story telling of it's Main quest. Why Bethesda doesn't try to go back to that style is beyond me. If you roleplayed Morrowind your very first mission was literally to go do something else. Go learn the land, go join a faction, rise in the ranks. Get experience. It makes so much sense for this style of game. For a first person shooter? No, not at all - yet they write their Main quests like they belong in a shooter game. Are they good stories? Yeah, sure - at least in my opinion, they are more interesting than say the New Vegas story. But they aren't right for this type of game.

Morrowind's type of pacing and story, combined with New Vegas' choice system is what Bethesda's future games need. Something with a slow-pacing, that allows you to explore the land and build your character, while learning a ton of back story in your travels. And something interesting (such as finding out you are the Nerevarine - or at least, you match the description). Now throw in New Vegas' choice system. Perhaps instead of fulfulling your "destiny", you side with Dagoth Ur, destroy the Tribunal, and banish Azura back to Oblivion? Choices are great, which was the only thing that saved Vegas' story as far as I'm concerned.

So I'm sorry if I derailed the topic a little, just wanted to say my piece. I really enjoyed the way the first half of the Main quest was presented in Fallout 4 and I agree with the OP that they did a good job of giving you a sense of purpose in the game. I'd just like to see some changes made going forward.

PipBoy>Data>Stats>Combat

I think.

for me it took a really bad turn, I was invested in finding my son, I made friends with anyone who could help me find him, and I searched far and wide for clues.
I pictured our reunion several times as I was running through the wasteland hoping to find him, hoping he was okay, wishing that I could hold him and tell him that everything was going to be okay.
I even befriended the brotherhood of steel in order to get a decent suit of powerarmor to get me through the glowing sea, and promising them to help take down the institute in treturn. I thought I was doing the right thing.
once I found my son, it didnt quite work out as I had hoped, and I truly felt betrayed by that fact, it left such a bad taste in my mouth, and I didnt want it to be true, I sided with the institute through the entire main quest hoping that at some point they would tell me it was just an elaborate ruse, that never happened.
instead, I turned into an emotionless killer, doing whatever the person who calls himself my son told me to do in the hopes that at some point I'd earn enough of their trust to actually get my child back.
I actually didnt enjoy playing through it at all, I felt so terrible killing people who helped me find him, but I had to, because its my son. I wasnt there for him at any point where he might have needed me, and because of that, I felt like I had to do all the bad things he asked of me, and when it was finally over, after I killed the last of my friends, I thought "I guess war doesn't change, but I did..."

It really depends. I usually draw the line at what the BOS has in mind. That I can never support and so I will never see the Brotherhood ending. Kind of the same as with Caesar's legion in FNV. Otherwise, it's a lawless society and some things I wouldn't do in real life come easily in a game.

I agree that it leaves a bad taste in your mouth and from then on no matter what you choose you're betraying people who trust you and hurting lots of innocents. Every choice feels like a bad one IMO.

Yeah, it's why I RPG the idea the Railroad got wiped out by the BoS.

It's the only thing which fit my narrative.

My PC doing it didn't work.

Okay, okay. I'll play along for a moment...

So, there I was, no kidding, frozen in a vault, when I wake up and see some creep steal my infant son (also frozen until seconds ago) and murder my spouse (again, JUST thawed out). I go back into the ice cube tray for an unknown time, and then am ejected into the wasteland that is the Commonwealth, 210 years on.

Priority 1: FIND SHAUN
Priority 2: Drop a steamer on the neighbor's lawn, because after 210 years I NEED to take a crap
Priority 3: Cheeseburger
Priority 4: All that other stuff about minutemen and settlers and Corvegas, etc.

Let's pretend that 2 and 3 are taken care of as mundane tasks that we never have to trouble ourselves with. (I average about 1 hour of sleep a day, and have eaten less than a dozen things in the better part of a year in the Commonwealth.)

Preston Garvey can kick rocks. "Want me to pick up this laser thingamabob and fight a bunch of armed strangers? Depends. Have you seen a creepy guy carrying an infant go past here? No? Go [FIND] yourself, then."

And thus begins a search, in a grid-like pattern, across as much of the Commonwealth as is navigable on foot.

Let's say I've killed a few hundred doods by the time I arrive at Diamond City. NOW, we're cookin'. Piper seems someone that might be helpful. Turns me on to Nick, who turns me on to Kellogg, who turns out to be alive and not too different-looking from when we last met.

Kellogg, eh? "So, my son is now TEN?! You stole, give or take, about TEN years of my son's life from me, and ALL the rest of my spouse's life from the both of us? I'm not gonna kill you. No. I'm tyin' you to a tree in the stinkinest, most bloatfly-infested swamp I can find. I'm gonna cut off each of your limbs, stop the bleeding, and stimpak you back to JUST enough health that you can feel ALL the little baby bloatfly maggots crawlin' in your guts. And I'm comin' back every couple days, to make sure that you're still sufferin', for the next ten years AT LEAST. I'm gonna make a Pickman masterpiece out of this. It's you, me, the jacked-up critters of this wasteland, a fistful of chems, and a LOT of bloody knuckles, for a decade or so. That Jigsaw dude in Saw ain't got NUTHIN' on what's about to happen to you."

So, after a couple weeks spent setting up this elaborate and largely unnecessary torture festival, with Codsworth likely assigned to protect Kellogg from everything and everyone that isn't me or the bloatflies, we're moving on.

Guessing I dragged his not-yet-corpse to the Memory Den. Or I could have beat the info out of him. Whichever. As long as he screamed a lot.

Have I mentioned that Kellogg is going to suffer A WHOLE LOT, like BIBLICAL amounts, in my alternate version? Yeah. He is my one-way express ticket to Hell.

So, off to find ol' Virgil. Mother Isolde and her lot are gonna bear a lot of my wrath, because FREAKSHOW.

Virgil's a supermutant? "Sweet. Killed a few of them on the way here. And a deathclaw or two. Y'know. Critters that spent their lives surviving by violence, not hiding in a sterile laboratory, died by my hand. But whatever, bruh. Cool story." Get what I want from him, on the understanding that it's the only way he survives this. Execute his protectron for a demonstration. "Yes. I AM evil. How kind of you to notice."

Onward. Find someone to help me build the doggone thing. Don't care who. Get it done. They're all gonna burn for this anyway, so may as well let them be active participants in their own demise.

Arrive at Institute. Discover that Shaun is actually 60, not 10. Murder-Death-Kill everyone and everything in there. 'Father' is no longer my son. After the 'unfortunate collateral damage' comment, it's clear he's as much machine as any one of his synths, and just as doomed. Take my time, enjoy the rampaging murder boner. Use fire, too. And remember to double Kellogg's next dose (or 500 doses) of pain for lying to me. "Oh, you really didn't know any better? Too bad. You'll suffer for being a tool, then."

Deliver ultimatum to BoS: "You came for the Institute. I handled it without you. Now go away, or share their fate. You have five minutes to be on your way."

Kill everything and everyone. Diamond City. The Castle. The Constitution. Vault 81. Every plant, every critter, every robot, EVERYONE AND EVERYTHING. Except Kellogg, who is now my sole reason to go on living.

Then go find a place to take a crap.

I actually find that an interesting, entertaining, and plausible reaction to events TheRabbi.

My take on the subject?

The Sole Survivor awakens and never really quite recovers from the sense of this is not ****ing happening because as bad as having your spouse murdered and your child taken from you is, there's a lot of other stuff going around. No, I don't mean that you woke up to an alien world. I mean all of your neighbors, family, friends, workplace, and places of worship (sports teams, churches, ecetera) are gone. My Sole Survivor, "Master Jacob" as Codsworth calls him, awakens to a place which he's always about 25% convinced is hell or some kind of epically messed up version of Purgatory because THINGS DO NOT MAKE SENSE. They do not make sense according to any laws of science, morality, or religion.

He is DEEP down the rabbit hole.

Part of this actually keeps him semi-sane as he never quite accepts his wife is dead and he just neatly tucks her back into her cryogenic chamber for revival (despite the brains leaking out the back of her head) and sets himself on a half-fugue-state exploration of the Wasteland. This is partially why the Sole Survivor doesn't ask many questions, tends to answer in "yes or no", and sarcastic responses which don't really make much sense.

He searches the immediate area for Shaun, believing Raiders are responsible at first and more or less dismissing Mother Murphy's drugged-out but well-meaning delusions she's a psychic. He also helps Preston save some lives with the Minutemen because, God dammit, it is something to DO and helping people (also shooting things) helps shake him out of the fact everyone is gone.

Even so, he's not so much searching for Shaun as believing he's dead or eaten by Slavers and looking for either the bullet which is going to kill him or the bullet he's going to put in as many people he can. Whole camps of Raiders have been wiped out as the Sole Survivor hopes one of them has a baby in them or he can maybe-just-maybe get a bit of revenge. Along the way, he meets Piper who is EERIELY similar to his dead wife (default Nora) and inspires him to maybe, just maybe have something approaching a human feeling again. He has similar feelings for Cait but in the exact opposite direction.

Piper reminds him people who still believed life was worth living.

Cait, he goes getting blind-dead-suicidal drunk with, and enjoys having fun time with.

Then he finds out Nick Valentine is still alive despite extensive imprisonment and is stunned when he FINDS the man responsible for his wife's death.

All things disappear.

The actual discussion with Kellog?

ANGRISH.

The Sole Survivor listens just a little bit and then murders the hell out of him and turns his body into red mist. He also becomes involved with the Railroad because, dammit, if helping Synths isn't making him feel good. By this point, he's the General because he's getting just a little bit of his humanity back every time he helps someone but all of that doesn't matter and he goes to the Institute.

Finding Shaun.

The meeting with Shaun sets him almost back to square-one for, "My brain is not properly equipped to process the [censored]-upness of all this."

But Shaun mentions all of the Synths are made from his DNA.

And the boy is the Sole Survivor's grandson.

That, at least, clicks.

The Sole Survivor will save his grandchildren. The Sole Survivor will save the Commonwealth for the women he loves (and the child he built a crib for), the Synths, and the little boy which is Father's poor abused creation. He just has to lie every day to the monster his son has become.

(I also rule that when my SS finds the FEV room, he throws up in a corner)

As a parent myself, I did to feel a degree of "urgency" of finding "my" child in my first play through... but the thought kept popping up of "how much time actually passed since that even happened?" So that diminished the urgency for myself a bit. Though it was pretty easy to guess the story based off the opening sequence of event.

I can see where someone with no children or older children wouldn't have the same emotional response during the events of the main quest.

I don't have a kid and man were my veggies steamed. This was my family and that [censored] punk took them from me. http://i.imgur.com/7eKqOWR.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/QF3Kghh.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/xX3aWed.jpg

I was a lot more driven to pursue the main quest in this game than the other two Beth Fallouts. As others have said, it didn't feel right doing sidequests when my infant son was kidnapped and wife murdered. Once it all was understood I'm now in a heck of a dilemma deciding what to do between the various factions involved. This is definitely harder than the main quest any other game they produced that I've experienced (those from Oblivion on).

I made a white character, so all I got from the intro was confusion. Why was he in that house? Why was that woman acting so familiar towards him? Where was the father of that child?

I guess it was meant to be some sort of racist joke about absentee black fathers, or about stupid white American men, but I really don't think this is funny in any way. And it is certainly not an appropriate way to start a AAA game.

It got even more confusing once the main quest started. My character read the access logs in the vault. Those things have dates on them, documenting who accessed what and when is the whole point of having access logs. Yet "my" character was still searching for an infant. That just does not make any sense.

As a dad... Shaun's an advlt and can make decisions for himself, and chose the life he did. I'm not going to coddle him and support every genocidal cult he wants just because my son's leading it. I'll give him fair warning, perhaps, but if my boy wants to act like an advlt then he has to live with the consequences

Agreed. Did you tell him you were disappointed in him, too?

I chose to hear him out, see what the Institute was about, and see if it's as bad as the surface dwellers say.

Boy'll get a heads up before the whole facility gets razed.

Oh, so you haven't met him on the roof yet

i getcha.

I'm a big fan of the game, and I think some of the complaints of "this game makes it impossible to roleplay" are histrionic. That said, the Main Quest is . . . awkward at best. I am married and old enough to be a grandad but no kids. I am either more of a misanthrope than a lot of you folks, or something cause the whole story line just never 'engaged' me at all. I seem to recall being more engaged by the MQ in Oblivion, and FO3, if not FONV than by this one!

But I guess, to me, none of that matters as far as enjoying the game or assessing its merits as an entertainment product.

For whatever reason, Bethesda seems to feel that they need to include some sort of compelling "main quest" in their open-world, sandbox, first-person, character-driven games. I for one am glad that they do not take this imperative even more seriously; I had a taste of Witcher (I think it was number 2) and couldn't even get past the opening scenes: I could immediately tell that I was going to be following "A story" and deviating from that story would not be permitted much if at all, and I was bored within 5 minutes. I also found the Geralt guy to be loathsome and uninteresting (loathsome and interesting would have been okay, but loathsome and UNinteresting are undoable! )

With these thoughts in mind, I'm pretty satisfied with this "main quest," even though it doesn't engage me much at all. It is interesting and has some mystery to it and some stuff to do in game that allows me to do what I really enjoy: explore, build, plan, fight, win, help 'people,' do good, vanquish evil. Beyond that, it doesn't matter to me if the main quest were finding a missing lug nut for Codsworth (that he desperately needs to repair his induction coils, which he must do if he wants to avoid blowing up from an internal harmonic disarray field) or digging up Floyd Collins bones.

These "main quests" always seem to feel 'awkward' relative to the rest of the game world, but thankfully they are not so cheesy or pushy that you cannot just ignore them, or 'go along' with them long enough to get whatever enjoyment you can out of them. But then that is just me. It is interesting to hear that some of you folks were honestly 'ENGAGED!' by this main quest to the point of it guiding your initial play through of the game. I guess to the extent that that was unpleasant or difficult you have my sympathy.

One other thing with me though: I tend to see through stories and it is pretty rare that a 'surprise' story element surprises me. I was pretty sure as soon as the scenes played in the vault that the "baby" would be no baby after I eventually found him.

Even after reading all the comments, nobody managed to convince me otherwise. The story is either railroading you or it simply takes the backseat. And that's putting it mildly. It would be a good premise for an adventure, but for me it doesn't cut it in an open world RPG.

Now two things. First, I like it that my character actually has a backstory instead of just waking up with a bullet in their head or - to take the Elder Scroll Schtick - being an unnamed prisoner. The child is the problem. If you take that seriously, you have no choice but to rush. If you don't, you're just some scum not gioving a damn. Therefore I also fiind the mother/father dialogues forced on me. They crop up in the weirdest moments, and given the overall reactions of my character, don't fit the picture.

For example, why can't you be evasive? Why would you tell a reporter about your missing child and your personal tragedy? There's no being evasive option. You can dodge the question once or twice, but to get out of that dialogue, you have to drop your pants. Even if you absolutely don't feel like it. And for the life of me, I can't imagine, why my character would do that with a person she just met.

You can be evasive with the reporter. I was for fear that it would tip the institute off.

You're only human. You're one person in a strange new world filled with new social norms and new dangers. You can rush if you feel motivated to rush, or you can realize that what's commonplace for Fallout vets is frighteningly disorienting for a thawed out meat-popsicle. As you can potentially tell Piper in your interview, gotta take things one day at a time.

Even assuming you're rushing to find your son, there are times when you can let the weight catch up with you and slow down. I took the death of Kellog as a great time to take it slow: he's been hinting that my son's been alive for over a decade, so he's alive and safe. Urgency down. Then you learn that you need to go to the Glowing Sea, find a way into the Institute... these things take preparation. You still have finding your son as the ultimate goal, but you lack resources and allies and can take the time to collect them.

Missing child might be traumatic and motivating, but it's not your sole reason for existing.

Not me I felt no pull to go after Shaun as I unlike my character was aware that after my wife murder I was refrozen and when I met Cosworth and realized 210 years went by that Shaun could have been taken over 100 years ago for all I know so I just went around and did whatever and eventually stumbled upon Nick Valentine being held captive and for some damn reason suddenly my character was all like "You have to help me find my son!" I was like "Son of a beech!" Lol As I tried to avoid the main story for a LONG time.

Once you find out from Codsworth how long you have been frozen, any sense of "urgency" is out the window IMO. Your character would have no idea of the time duration between the thawing event with the kidnapping and the eventual full thawing event. It could've been anything less than 209 years, and your kid could be long dead.

You do not have to feel "railroaded" into being either: a. devoted parent, in a rush to rescue their child, nor b. scum bag who doesn't care about their kid.

In the absence of real evidence about the date when you observed Shaun being abducted there is nothing but -hope- on which to base a supposition that he has not already died of old age.

And then you meet Kellogg and he says "He isn't as young as you might think he is" or some such nonsense. Basically as the other guy says up above, you know that the kid is at least 10 years old and has been living in the Commonwealth for most of those years. After 10 years, what difference will you taking a few extra days to get your bearings matter?

Hope is a powerful motivator man. The end of the game aligns that, too.

"I thought I could find my family. Make us whole."