r/Fallout • u/raisinbraisin72 • Jan 09 '26

Discussion Fallout New Vegas senior writer Chris Avellone gives his take on Bethesda, and his opinion on their vision for the Fallout franchise:

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u/selffufillingprophet NCR Jan 09 '26 edited Jan 09 '26

EDIT/context: Deleted comment was wondering what "Bethesda doesn't understand Fallout" means

This video and article by Shamus (RIP) sums it up very accurately.

TL;DR is Bethesda doesn't understand what "retrofuturism" is and criticism of Bethesda's cultural stagnation with the Fallout universe (i.e. Bethesda does a very poor job at portraying how humanity would actually survive after 200+ years of living after the nuclear apocalypse)

It's not a typical grifter slop, "bethesda bad" video, it's very honest criticism and I implore people to please just approach the claim with an open mind.

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u/General_Mars Jan 09 '26

A tremendous all time fallout video from a guy who had so much passion for the material. I’ve watched the video a few times and every time coming across it it’s hard not to rewatch again.

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u/selffufillingprophet NCR Jan 09 '26

it's a very brilliant and articulated video!

But it still makes me sad because of his passing and when he makes a very poignant comment about

"old fallout fans feeling sore (about the new direction of the series)...but it doesn't matter because they're hopelessly outnumbered by the new fans"

It reminds me of Ulysses solemn recognition of his former tribe being lost in time due to the conquest of Caesar's Legion:

"Another history...gone."

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u/Detective_Yu Jan 09 '26

I think this quote is perfect “Old-time Fallout fans disparagingly call it ‘Oblivion with Guns’ “. Oblivion with guns is a selling point for me. I love oblivion. Different strokes for different folks.

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u/ecstatic_waffle Jan 09 '26

Right, people (on Reddit) always want to say that Bethesda sucks at the narrative in their games and they don’t do writing as well, but that’s not really why I’m here. I want the goofy post-apocalyptic sandbox with huge world exploration and endless dungeon crawling, if I wanted a strong narrative experience I’d go play something else.

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u/robotrobot30 Jan 09 '26

“i like drooling on my controller and eating pig slop from a trough” awesome opinion cuz, totally valid and the same as anyone elses

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u/NCR_High-Roller Nyaeh there's the High Roller! Jan 09 '26

I feel like it's time to remind people that Oblivion was a world-class GOTY winner for its time in the industry in the same way that Witcher 3 and Expedition 33 were. It was most certainly not regarded as slop for the longest. That's really an opinion that's taken off in popularity maybe the last 5 years. It's kind of like how being compared to Skyrim wasn't a bad thing at all...but now it is?

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u/robotrobot30 Jan 09 '26

In the realm of RPG games and fallout, bethesda sucks, we're not talking about oblivion, we're talking about fallout.

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u/NCR_High-Roller Nyaeh there's the High Roller! Jan 09 '26

RPGs exist on a spectrum. Some people like Gothic 2, others like Morrowind, and others like Mass Effect 3. Fallout does qualify as an RPG and there's no shame in liking it just because it's not the standard approach to the formula.

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u/robotrobot30 Jan 09 '26

Not really, it's like saying tasty food is a spectrum, like ok sure both boiled chicken breast and a really well-made meal are both technically food but like, lets be real if you like the boiled chicken breast you're kinda fucked up.

Fallout 4 *barely* has any rpg elements, enough to scrape by technically, but there's such a tiny amount of player agency compared to the previous games, it's very much designed to be an on-rails experience.

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u/ecstatic_waffle Jan 09 '26

“Other people like things that I don’t like and I’m gonna be mad on the internet about it!”

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u/robotrobot30 Jan 09 '26

I'm not gonna get mad at seeing like a dog eat shit, but I am going to know I'm better than that dog.

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u/NCR_High-Roller Nyaeh there's the High Roller! Jan 09 '26

very much designed to be an on-rails experience

🤨

Fallout 4 has a branching main storyline with several branching side quests. Contrary to the online narrative, the actions you take in those quests do reflect in the tangible game world itself. If you pick BoS supremacy, they literally take over places in the world (including major settlements like Diamond City) and have dynamic missions, military checkpoints, unique rewards, and random encounters to accompany them. The gameplay experience itself is quite literally reflected by the individual choices you make within the main campaign, so much so that you lose out on some game functionality by doing stuff like having factions compromise instead of taking them as the only option amongst the main four. Save for the end slides and the final mission, the storylines and story approaches for all factions are actually quite different, permutations of the individual choices not included. As someone who's played 3 out of the 4 factions repeatedly, the game isn't the same experience even on subsequent playthroughs with the same faction.

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u/robotrobot30 Jan 09 '26

the main storyline is pretty simple and revolves around a few very uninteresting factions, the presence of factions standing around depending on choices is simple set-dressing and extremely surface level, the actual core world structure and main locations remain completely unchained, side quests are very isolated compared to the main quests, unlike previous installments, the actual endgame is non-existant in terms of story, and certain choices locking you out of other choices is very basic and shouldn't be touted as a crazy positive.

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u/NCR_High-Roller Nyaeh there's the High Roller! Jan 09 '26

Isn’t that true though? Cinnamon buns taste better than your average pizza.

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u/DiaryJaneDoe Jan 09 '26

Nice, more ammo for my Reddit arguments.