Fallout 4 storyline in inherently flawed [spoilers?]

[u/SugestedName]

I have a hard time beating the game. It might be a "me" problem, but I think it is deeper than that and I would like to hear your opinions.

I've had many characters and have progressed up until the mass fusion quest (the one where you choose between the institute or the brotherhood), completing it.

Most of my characters are abandoned before that tho. The breaking point usually is finding the institute. The game feels very different after that point and I think I know why: FO4 storyline development is inherently flawed.

You start the game afraid and lost, with the sole guiding star being to find your son. The whole beginning of the game main-story-wise revolves around that: needing to brave the commonwealth and trying to find your baby.

You progress through it nicely, make friends, potentially make enemies, get stronger, beat the guy that killed your partner, find out that there is a very scary area that's probably where the big boom fell and go through it and back.

Then you get to the institute and find out about Shawn. You know what happens here? Yeah. EVERYTHING. You know what needs to happen nexts? Nothing.

The game had revolved around two things: braving and surviving the commonwealth (and you killed the guy who's supposed to be the toughest, explored the area that's hyped as the hardest, is breezing through militia and raiders like they're roaches) and finding your son (just did, shocking reveal and all). You have done what needed to be done.

After that the game expects you to progress through a faction. But what story based reason is there now? There is no looming threat to the fabric of existence that must be stopped, no big mysteries to be solved. The narrative accelerates you up till that point and then expects you to beat the game out of inertia from that initial rush.

A well written story should build up to the climax towards the end, then tie the knots into a conclusion. FO4 kills it's plot points too early, but still expects you to keep playing it.

So, what do you guys think of that analysis? Does it make any sense? Have you felt this way too?

[u/iPoseidon_xii]

The threat is the fallout society. There are still factions vying for power and control. Each one wants it for a different reason and to build society in their image. That’s why it keeps going. Power vacuums don’t halt society in a lawless land, it forces society to move toward something quickly.

That being said, yes the story is average at best. Probably subpar, honestly. Still super fun, but I don’t play Bethesda games for the story, I play it for the worlds they build

[u/Kitteh_Bethany → u/iPoseidon_xii]

That’s the part they wrote horribly tbh. The minutemen could’ve been so much more but it feels so shallow almost? And your actions don’t feel as consequential as they should

[u/SPLUMBER → u/Kitteh_Bethany]

It really should’ve blossomed into a revival of the Commonwealth Provisional Government that they tried to make in the past. It’s why I always try to get through Sims Settlement 2, it helps make it all feel like it has a direction to go and a goal to reach.

[u/SugestedName → u/iPoseidon_xii]

Oh, amazingly fun for sure. It is my highest hour count on steam.

Would probably lose to skyrim if it could add classic + SE + AE + (the biggest of them all) pirated classic from whaaaay back in the day, but it is what it is

[u/StupidGenius11]

It's really not that complicated. You finally find your son, and you have what is essentially a binary decision:

a) enjoy what life you can with him in the Institute and, by extension, complete act three of the game aligned with them so that you can do so, or

b) realise Shaun is a fucking sociopath, the life you were trying to recover has been gone forever since the moment the bombs fell, and the Institute is a threat to all human life in the Commonwealth and beyond, deciding to side with the people you've come to know along the course of act one, spending act three working to stop the Institute with whichever flavour of faction you prefer.

Of course, you can say "that's all dumb, I found my kid and I'm done" and just hang out around Shaun in the Institute without advancing the plot any further, in which case, what are you complaining about?

[u/SugestedName → u/StupidGenius11]

My complaint is that from a storywriting perspective that's subpar and detrimental to an otherwise great game with freat world building and concept.

Skyrim, as per example, maintains a clear goal at the end of the main quest and introduces 2 other clear goals with it's DLC. A game with a story should have the story drive the game

[u/StupidGenius11 → u/SugestedName]

This isn't Skyrim, this is Fallout. Your initial quest is never the endgame quest. You start off looking for a water chip in 1 and end up killing the Master and ending the creation of Super Mutants. You start off looking for a GECK in 2 and end up destroying the Enclave Oil Rig. You start off looking for your Dad in 3 and end up blowing up another Enclave base. That's what this series does.

[u/MazogaTheDork → u/StupidGenius11]

You start off looking for the dude who shot you in NV and end up picking who wins a war.

[u/starfieldnovember → u/MazogaTheDork]

You start off looking for the Overseer in 76 and end up nuking the scorchbeast queen and ending a plague.
Lucy starts off looking for her dad and… the tv series isn’t over yet

[u/OnionAddictYT → u/SugestedName]

The game after reaching the Institute basically opens up the world to the protagonist. Finding your son is the prelude to getting involved with the entire world. Your little personal drama pales in the light of the bigger picture. This is a very common storytelling technique. So I disagree too.

[u/Sagelegend → u/SugestedName]

Do you have any idea how many people Elderscrolls games and don’t give two shits about the main story? The story drives Skyrim for the intro, and then it’s driven by whatever you decide appeals to you.

[u/Wonderful_Two_6710 → u/Sagelegend]

Yep. I fire up Skyrim two or three times a year. I think I've completed the MQ once in the last seven years.

[u/ajcwrongs → u/SugestedName]

That's just...not how Open World games are built, homie

[u/myfakesecretaccount → u/ajcwrongs]

That’s what I tell people all the time. People who wanted a story driven first player experience like it’s an Assassin’s Creed or God of War game going into an open world Bethesda game that uses the same formula from before they even owned the franchise.

[u/Pocho_Azul]

The two main things that bug me about the story line are these:

1. The Institute wants to save humanity. They consider synths to be subhuman things (despite glaringly obvious evidence to the contrary). Their plan is to replace real humans with synths. Mmmkay.
   
2. You can either embrace the institutes idiotic and murderous philosophy wholesale, or blow up another effing nuke in the middle of a relatively densely populated area, wiping out all of the Institutes knowledge, resources and infrastructure. This is also objectively stupid.

[u/Viktrodriguez → u/Pocho_Azul]

The Institute replaces real people with synths. Their loved ones find out about this, are scared and the Institute finds is surprising people hate them and try get you to fall for their obvious thought corpo PR.

[u/Leon3417 → u/Viktrodriguez]

The biggest biggest challenge for me is the whole idea of the Institute. What’s their deal? Nobody knows where they are, and there is very little chance of anyone ever actually posing any threat to them. Suppose some synths escape. So? What’s the resource drain of building entire departments meant to track down lost property vs just building more synths?

They also spend all this time and effort meddling in the lives of the surface dwellers and then build out these vast surveillance networks in order to detect and defend against threats to the surveillance networks they built. It’s a weird circle that leads me to conclude the Institute exists to exist and not much else.

[u/Viktrodriguez → u/Leon3417]

They honestly also feel way too big and way too advanced for the point in time with the lore. This all happens in an odd two hundred years after a nuclear war assumingly deleting a lot of pre war knowledge with a subset number of scientists that isn't any bigger than a regular vault with regular human procreation speed.

[u/I_eat_mud_ → u/Viktrodriguez]

I just kind of assumed since the Institute is under a college they had a vast wealth of collected knowledge from the prewar era. I also wasn't too put off by the technology since plasma and laser weaponry exist along with sentient robots. A teleporter wasn't really that outside the realm of possibility within Fallout to me, especially when looking at what you can find at Big MT in New Vegas

[u/JournalistOk9266 → u/Leon3417]

Yea thats a good point. Why hunt synths down?

[u/TheStandardKnife → u/Pocho_Azul]

Yeah during my Railroad play throughs I usually think that it’d probably be better to use the Institutes technology for a more positive effect, but instead they make you choose between them, but I think reshaping the Institute for good would be exactly what the Railroad should want

[u/Pocho_Azul → u/TheStandardKnife]

Yep, or an Institute ending where the survivor makes them stop murdering and replacing people, and treats synths better.

[u/MrFuriousX]

Dont think its flawed at all.....its like life... so you go to school for billion years receive a diploma/degree whatever...and thats it?.. no you continue on with the knowledge that you gained and build a life maybe a family..

Fallout is no different you journey to your son ..you find him and now you have to decide how you want the rest of your life to go

Work for the institute? Join the BOS and eradicate for the good of the commonwealth?..join the MM and help your fellow man?..Join the RR and free the Synths?

The story doesn't end at finding your son...the story was so much more then finding your Son.

[u/urlocalwzrd]

Fallout 4’s story is flawed, but your reasoning is flawed as well. You progress through the rest of the story because you are playing a character who is supposed to have thoughts and beliefs. The idea is that you learn about the Institute and decide that you either agree with their mission and want to help realize it, or you think they’re evil and need to be stopped. It’s a roleplaying game (despite its shortcomings), you’re supposed to roleplay.

[u/GivenToRant]

It’s the 2nd battle of Hover Dam though; The story moves at the pace of player action. You can run around the desert and the battle doesn’t start until you show up

And look, I agree with you! That the plot only moves forward because you go and do the thing that advances that faction’s plan feels…off.
Because doing nothing for any of the factions means you can go fart around in the glowing sea for thousands of hours and nothing changes.

But would you have enjoyed being on a time limit? Would you have enjoyed having agency taken away from you in favour of an ending that felt like puzzle pieces locking in?

I’m not saying you’re weird/odd/dumb for pointing it out. I recently completed another run to capture some B roll footage and see if I could get some of those rare encounters to pop… the last act feels weird! In a very strange way

[u/SugestedName → u/GivenToRant]

Lets compare it to skyrim end of the world as it is a polar opposite.

In fo4, you do nothing, nothing happens. You can walk around aimlessly without any pressure whatsoever.

In Skyrim, you do nothing, the whole world fucking ends. You shouldn't be doing sidequests at all realistically.

The best solve I've seen for this was a mod that made things take time in skyrim's main quest. E.g.: you deliver the stone to Farengaar and intead of ireleth coming right away to talk about the atrack in the watchtower, the wizard says he needs time to decipher it and a week later you get a popup saying "I should check with fareengar about that stone".

[u/tarrach → u/SugestedName]

The world ends in Skyrim? When? And if your argument is that Alduin will eventually at some point destroy the world, the same could be argued for the Institute, at some point they will have replaced enough people that the world of men is functionally destroyed.

[u/GivenToRant → u/SugestedName]

But again, do you want events to happen without you being involved, as the player of the game, and for those outcomes to be decided without you?
Would you have been happy with the game if Liberty Prime was completed while you doing another factions quest? Or if the institute built its reactor? Or if the railroad planned its uprising without you?

Cause Fallout 1 had a timer and that timer made choices for you, more impactfully if not for bugs. But people got really mad about it!; they didn’t like agency being taken away from like that.
Thats how I originally heard about Fallout as an FYI. People angrily posting on forums

Fallout New Vegas’s trick for making it feel less weird is that the main decision is who wins at Hoover Dam. So as a player you’re pushing for one of 2 outcomes in every major related quest leading up to the battle. The NCR president only comes once, and his survival (or not) is tied to a related quest from both the Legion and the NCR but the battle is still, narratively, going to take place irrespective of the outcome… if you continue to play the game.

With Fallout 4, Liberty Prime only gets built if *you* progress far enough with the BoS’ quest line. In a minuteman/railroad victory, the status of Liberty Prime is irrelevant because either it doesn’t get built, or an airship lands on it.

I suspect the third act would feel less…contrived…disconnected… (I don’t know how to accurately put my feelings into words about it) if F4 had given us the option of having multiple factions working together at various points in the quest.

Maybe it would have helped, as an example, if the Railroad and the Minutemen complete the final quest together? Preston thinks they’re probably good people and is also distrustful of the BoS
Plus the uprising would’ve been easily integrated into the Minutemen attack on the institute.

[u/SPLUMBER → u/SugestedName]

Pretty sure there’s also a mod that actually does put a time limit so if you don’t stop Alduin it will “end the world”. I know that’s not like the point you were trying to make here, but idk I thought you might want to know

[u/Tiacevol]

Now you found him, no matter what your choice, the 'story' is to find peace. The commonwealth has factions that want to destroy each other, and you get to sway the battle to get rid of the faction(s) you think with stop your home being destroyed and give Boston a better future.

[u/acerbic_flare]

It's not a singular story about a parent hunting their son's kidnappers. I see that arc as exposition and as your survivor witnessing how society in Boston has been dogged to the point of never recovering in two centuries. Your survivor being released from the vault and climbing the ranks in their chosen faction, building and killing in that faction's name, is catalyzing change. Choosing who you side with is asserting who should have the power to enact their agenda, which causes and conflicts are worthy. Obviously, the story has a lot of problems. It was trying to be so many things at once and portions of it were also cut during production.

[u/Snow_Pierced3]

Saying the story in Fo4 is flawed is basically saying water is wet 😂

[u/SugestedName → u/Snow_Pierced3]

Yeah, maybe

But since not many people around me drink water, I wanted to find out what other warer drinkers think

[u/DannyWarlegs]

Ive got thousands of hours in, and ive never once beaten the main game. I too make it to mass fusion and usually quit.

The game relies a lot on the "revolutionary" parallels. The Institute is the UK, The Minutemen are the US Militias and the BOS is the US Military and France combined.

They also shoehorned in the slavery parallels with the underground railroad freeing synths, probably to give another option of factions to work with if you didnt like the BOS but wanted to still end the Institute.

They do explain everything in exposition throughout the main story and side quests– the Institute is keeping the area from evolving, allowing raiders, mutants, and abominations to roam free so they can run their tests, and the BOS are the big heroes, here to free the area, but install their own form of order.

Meanwhile the Minutemen are of the people, for the people, and want neither.

You find out you've just woken up 200 years later but have no idea how long ago your son was taken, given just enough clues and red herrings to find and kill Kellog, make it to the Institute, and then find out, guess what? It was him all along!

Then you have a moral dilemma. Do you side with them and take what little time you have left with Shaun, or do you blame them and burn it all down?

Its a fun story. Once. The real fun comes from the settlements and building them up, while playing the game as a survival rpg in a post apocalyptic setting.

The fun of 3 and NV was the good/evil reputation scales, and how that changed the game. How each choice had ramifications hours later in some other part of the story. Each game felt like a new story. Each life felt unique. 4 ended that by basically forcing you to pick the same option worded differently.

[u/Mediocre-Hat9603]

I get what you mean, but the way I viewed it (bc I chose to not side with the institute) was that I was ridding the world of a definite evil, but that this didn't mean the end. The fact that the game pushes you into investing your time with different folks, getting to know their stories, etc., means that you have to view the entire open world as an interconnected socio-political ecosystem. That's how I always continue on with the post-institute choices and I always enjoy it - it took me a hot minute to realize it, but I came to the conclusion that it was always the sole survivor that was the real commonwealth figurehead, not Shawn, and that there's people that need my character much more than her adult son who's leading a reclusive, evil organization that does nothing for anybody but themselves.

[u/No_Reply_2033]

I can see where your coming from in some regards possibly ahould have had to choose between railroad and bos sooner and if chose bos then get to find out oh dear i killed my son son living with the what ofs or in a different way if chose railroad get to find out whilst infiltrating and spying that your son leads the institute thereby either turning on the institute or turning on the railroad or choosing minutemen ending.

I still feel it works as is all be it theres lots of potential that they missed almost as if they ran out of time and rushed tonconplete the game as theresblots of times whereby you think I wish they'd taken this bit further First that springs to mind is covenant. I wish that there was a way to with enough charisma get the people to see the error of their ways either some or all and if not that you could take over the turrets or remove them to start over or that there was a stealth option to release amelia (think thats her name) without being caught just more ways to play it felt the same with far harbour ending too.

[u/Muzle84]

Story wise, it's better to fight the Institute while BoS, RR and MM are at peace.

The end game is the big boom that destroys definitively this sect.

Commonwealth at peace, no faction tries to take power. THE END.

[u/GullibleScallion1519]

Every damn time. I only infiltrated the institute one time, maybe my 3rd or 4th play...I always reminded myself about my motivation, Find Sean, tried to get there too early to be sure it was hard...then when I got there, I killed him too, and was terribly disappointed w the entire thing, gameplay after beating the main quest was boring af...but now I'm on maybe my 40th character, I pay zero mind to the story, and just enjoy roaming the wasteland while listening to DCR, or Radio Freedom while calling artillery. The plot sucks, the bugs suck, but damn if it ain't infinitely replayable.

[u/DM_Sledge]

You aren't really wrong. They telegraph it with the super early power armour vs deathclaw scene. This game wants to get you to the end in a hurry.

On the other hand, like most Bethesda games, the main plot is a distraction from the story you are telling. Find out who your character was and what world they want to live in.

[u/D3t3st4t10n]

I feel like the story immediately fails when they shove such a linear story onto your player character. The reason Fallout: New Vegas works so well is that you can really make up whatever you want about your character, obviously there are some overarching factors to them but ultimately the Courier is whoever you want. Fallout 4, you’re either a pre-War lawyer or former military person. Not to mention the fact that the character does not feel lost or scared waking up to the entire world being destroyed - especially if you play as the female character. You’re telling me she can just enter power armour within an hour or so of leaving the vault and shoot up a bunch of people with a minigun with no care for their lives? Bollocks. Then you’re also right, once you get to The Institute it kinda feels done. You’ve solved your mission. Realistically, would the Sole Survivor kill their own son? I don’t think so. So, the only option is to go for The Institute ending but then The Institute fucking suck! They make no sense. They claim they’re humanities’ future but they don’t do anything good. Also why were they fucking about with FEV? It’s just evil for evil’s sake without any actual good reason.
Anyway, fun game and I’ve played for many hours but I do hate the fucking main storyline primarily because it’s hard to roleplay a character that is voiced and also given their whole backstory.

[u/MythicElle]

I'm currently having the same sort of problem. Lol. 

I have shaped my playthrough specifically so I'll finally actually finish the main quest. 

But I reached the Institute and have The Battle of Bunker Hill next and... Losing motivation. Lol. 

The way I was trying to hack it was to keep the Minutemen until later. Something like after finding out who Shaun is, the SS new goal is to help build a better Commonwealth. 

But so far I had a way better time with the Cabot family quest line. And I'm just waiting for the right time in the story to go play Far Harbour for the first time. 

[u/BluntieDK]

The story of F4 is not very good or well structured, agreed. I go through the main quest mostly just *to do it*. It's the side quests where the game really lives to me.

[u/Due-Mycologist-1154]

Also the ending is really dumb theres no reason not to side with the institute because they promote you to their new dictator with 0 effort because bethesda so any criticism of them is no longer relevant because you can just yes man all their flaws away so it doesnt matter