In Fallout New Vegas you’re a courier who’s been shot in the head and you can go find your killer if you want to I guess.

Why does everything have to start in a fucking prison? In Fallout 3 you’re escaping being shot during a riot running out of your ‘home’ in a sealed-off underground vault which you and your family have been detained in indefinitely by the crazed Overseer with the rest of the population who all preform largely menial tasks and guards who work for the Overseer keeping them all in line with no proper escape for the people inside unless the warden-I mean Overseer wills it and everyone has to play by the same rules otherwise the guards will make your life worse and you might get smaller food portions or be socially ostracized, either way the Overseer will make your life hell… In Skyrim you’re escaping from being executed/dragon attack, in Oblivion you’re escaping prison/assassination attempt (both of these openings are very similar in their game play and architectural design despite the location difference and make me wish that more fantasy games could start without your character escaping or being released from a fucking prison like so many of them do).

Your character doesn’t really come in to the world with any direct goals other than self-preservation or personal interests. Your dialogue and choices throughout the game of who to help and who to hinder as well as how you talk to people give you a greater sense of who ‘you ‘ are. In Skyrim, Oblivion, and Fallout 3 and New Vegas, you play as a blank slate. This is a problem that Skyrim doesn’t have, and no other Bethesda RPG that I’ve played seems to have it either. My problem with Fallout 4 is that its trying something new in its narrative design but not trying to change its mechanics to emulate this. In fact its pretty fun vanilla, and has quite a good deal of play time value at least on a single character. I hate Skyrim (not really for any logical reason I just think its fun because a few of my friends and a lot of other people really enjoy it and its funny to see them get so worked up about my opinion, which doesn’t at all make the game any different for them, it only affects me), but Fallout 4 for all its similarities with Skyrim and departures from the ‘original’ first person Fallout games isn’t actually as bad of a game. Now that I have your attention, let me begin by saying that I don’t hate Fallout 4.

Fallout 4 no karma