Yeah, I think I came across the same thing. Two people arguing over what to do with a third person. It was okay, and for all I know my choice influenced something later, but it was so bland and transparently a “random game event” that I blanked it out. Skyrim had this stuff too.
I think the way Bethesda handles this stuff is so clumsy that it didn’t register. Like why were these three people standing in the middle of the wasteland having an argument? The dialogue and the characters gave no clue. They weren’t merchants on the way from A to B. They weren’t Minutemen or Diamond City guards on patrol. They were literally random person 1 and 2 yelling at the third person about 100 feet from a Bloatfly infested puddle. It just did not interest me.
I bugged Tom about fast travel earlier in the thread and I definitely understand the complaints about those opposed to it. However, I kind of see it as a design/gameplay preference and not something fundamentally wrong with Fallout 4’s design. Kind of like the planet wheel in the GalCiv III thread…a design decision that divisive.
I am perfectly okay with how fast travel is implemented in the Fallout games. I walk when I want more immersion and substance then use fast travel when I am more objective oriented or short on real-world time. I do now realize how fast travel is baked into the game design on a very fundamental level and I can see how that is off-putting to some. Thematically it also doesn’t bother me since I just employ a suspension of disbelief like I do with every single video game ever created. Is it strange that my character can travel between places without fear of danger? Sure, but I choose to ignore the man behind the curtain here because in Fallout there are a lot of men behind curtains dramatically waving their arms. It would be nice if Bethesda allowed an optional menu toggle to turn on random encounters during fast travel (both negative and positive and even quest related) honoring their inheritance from Fallout 1&2.
I’m not sure if Bethesda will address fast travel in future installments, if there is even a larger desire from the audience for that, or if Bethesda just considers it a set-in-stone part of the franchise. I do feel bad for the players that are bothered by it and I hope Bethesda finds a balanced solution in the future.
I have to call a little BS on the many comparisons to Just Cause 3, GTA V, Spiderman 2, Crackdown, and Saints Row though. Sure locomotion in those games can be a lot of fun but mostly all of those game fall a lot further down the action end of the spectrum than Fallout does. It seems a little disingenuous to compare Fallout to Just Cause 3 when the former is all about the player having a lot of attention to detail rummaging through piles of junk in dusty corners of tiny rooms and the latter is about flying at a breakneck pace over the world shooting fuel depots at random. I realize people are just making theoretical comparisons saying how one franchise solved the fun speedy travel problem but Fallout is fundamentally about slowly walking through one tiny vignette after another picking out the little details. I was just laughing about how much time my character spends staring at desks and furniture while I rummage about their contents. I think Tom even mentioned this in a podcast about why Fallout doesn’t have driveable cars but then settled on the fact that the player would miss so much of the rich minutiae designers have packed into every corner of the world.
So while the presence of fast travel doesn’t bother me here I do accept that it does some players and I lament that it disrupts your experience a little. I cannot even begin to fathom what a balanced solution may be but I don’t think borrowing from action games is the answer. That game already exists–Far Cry 1-Primal–if you want fast action-based exploration with optional fast travel.
-Todd
Much more than fiddling with fast travel, I’d love more world changing/engaging options, like, say, being able to form my own raider band, or becoming a mercenary leader of a group like the Gunners. Hire out to guard settlements and caravans, or raid same. There are very few non-juvenile “bad” options for roleplaying in FO4. If you want to be the equivalent of the Lawful Evil bad guy, not a sociopath but someone with an agenda and few qualms about achieving it, you’re sort of limited. I usually play goody two shoes types but once in a while I want to play the character who takes lip from no one, that sort of thing. You can kinda sort of do that, but you really can’t go as far as you might want. Hell, I can’t even figure out how not to become the leader of the Minutemen; I had quests Preston would not acknowledge as done until I said yes to playing soldier with him. Sheesh.
Admittedly, allowing players to form raider bands or mercenary groups would take a hell of a lot of work, and probably change the game into something entirely different. But it would be cool.
Teiman
3319
I really like Kevin Costner movie “The Postman”. It works both as good sci-fi and has a adventure movie, to me.
You are find a nice hat in a vehicle, where you where hiding, and you adopt a role of mailman, that at first don’t seems like much, but is in essence part of the USA government. That bootstrap the movie.
At some point things where a bit too complicated (for the hero), with many settlements, the patriots creating a network of routes, and the fear of a faction that has declared you dead and your ideas, in many than one way.
Give player a cool vehicle to go fast.
Fast travel sucks. If I have the option to drive, ride, sprint, fly I do it. You never know what you may find.
Sadly, Fallout 4 is one of the games I do use fast travel but only at the end of the night, I park at my ‘base’. I roam on foot, but yea I do wish I had a bicycle or something.
Ultrazen
3321
Fallout series needs a jetpack.
TurinTur
3322
…there is a jetpack mod for the power armor.
Though a mod (I mean, a real usermade mod, not an ingame mod) with much more increased fuel and speed would be needed.
RichVR
3323
I found that teddybear doctor’s office.
Just in case
It’s at the beginning of the underground highway where you have to clear out the ghouls.
In my version Dr. Teddy was holding a bonesaw.
Wombat eloquently expressed my issues with fast travel.
Early on, there should be zero fast travel. You’re fresh out of a vault, you’re literally just thawed out, and you are freakin’ clueless about this not-so brave new world. As you get stronger, know more people, learn the new landscape, etc., your options should increase. Pay a caravan to join it, or serve as a guard, for instance. Eventually, your faction rewards should include various forms of fast travel, as is already done to an extent. By the time you’re pretty much just tooling around like the angel of death, sure, full fast travel would make sense. If you can one-shot alpha Deathclaws, no one is going to mess with you. But when you come out of the vault with a pistol and an ugly blue suit? Not so much.
As he said some of the most exciting parts of the game are when you can’t get there from here.
I was about level 10, headed North East. To the North are a bunch of super mutants, to the East, are a legendary raider and friends, and to the south are Mirelurks and Radscorpins, and more Mutants to the West. I am down to stimpacks, and radiated food for healing, .45 cal ammo is running low. But I couldn’t fast travel home because there were enemies near me. I died four times simply clearing out enough enemies to make it possible to fast travel.
It was a completely immersive experience, I felt like Rick in the better episodes of Walking Dead, I’m really fucked what do I do. My emotional reaction was exactly what I think designers are looking for because, I am genuinely scared. Now the computer gamer in me knows I can go back to save less than an hour ago. But not having the crutch of fast travel, the get out of jail free card changed the game in a positive manner.
The challenge for Bethesda, I think is to implement a fast travel system, that recognize that Fallout world is a dangerous place and getting home can be the most difficult and exciting process. While still being respectful of gamers time and not making them do anything that is particularly tedious. (Inventory management is enough tedium.)
And once again, Teiman wins the thread. Whatever is going on in this post, I endorse it unreservedly!
By the way, for a perfect example of how fast travel robs Bethesda’s game of the very thing they’re trying to create with their evocative worlds: the Glowing Sea. I’m pretty sure I brought this up in my review, but it’s absurd that once you’ve crossed it, you can teleport back and forth at will. You don’t have to worry about the limited visibility, the big nasty deathclaws and radscorpions, or the radiation. Criss cross the Glowing Sea freely without any safeguards against radiation and with whatever naked* follower you want to bring along!
The Glowing Sea should be a feature of the geography, not a once-and-done gimmick. Bethesda shrugged.
-Tom
- I’m talking about the dog, you pervs.
Hey, my dog ain’t nekkid! He has a spiked collar, a spiked muzzle, and dog armor!
I agree 100% about the Glowing Sea. There could be a lot done with that feature. There actually is stuff in that region that’s pretty interesting, but most folks won’t see it because, let’s face it, given the option to pop in and out of the one place you have to go, most folks aren’t going to go through the difficult stuff once they don’t have to. But it does make the “ooh, Glowing Sea, that’s a bad place!” bit seem a bit silly.
On the positive side, there are several Lovecraftian shout outs in the game, which I appreciate a lot.
After Teiman’s post, I am gonna look for Tom Petty as a mayor of a small town near a river.
RichVR
3328
Has anyone found the human skeleton wearing a dog collar in a dog house?
Kadath
3329
PC players: Anyone found a real fix to the game going into stereo mode and being completely shitty audio wise? I see a lot of people posting on the web about this with no real solutions other than to go into control panel, swap to stereo mode and back and restart fallout, which is not working for me.
Any help here is really fing appreciated, thanks!
https://steamcommunity.com/app/377160/discussions/0/496881136907541224/
Gonna try this next:
In Lucifers Hammer, Harry the mailman is the means to knit the new community of survivors together as he replaces his mail with news of local survivors. Although FO4 is 200 years post event, a recognisable “neutral” character that provides a service might be a means of survival in a post-Apocalpyse world, so the mailman analogy is a good one.
Grifman
3331
I find people making a lot of unwarranted assumptions about how people are playing the game. Just because you can use fast travel doesn’t mean you will use it every time or even most of the time. Yes, there is one place you have to go in the Glowing Sea and yes, you can fast travel back there once you’ve been there. But to what point and why would i want to do that after that one quest requirement? To get anywhere further in the Glowing Sea you have to get out and explore - and your assumption is that few people are going to do that. But this game is all about exploring - I really doubt that people buy and play this game to just fast travel everywhere. So if you are going to explore the Glowing Sea, you have to hoof it, get out, face the rads and the monsters. Which is sort of what the game is all about for many people. And for those that aren’t into, then fine, they can fast travel to their hearts content.
I certainly don’t fast travel everywhere I can and from what I’ve read in this thread it sounds like most people here aren’t either. I fast travel when I need to sell/store loot, when I need to pick up a companion, traveling between 2 points I’ve traveled between before or sometimes to get to a new quest. But usually, if I have not traveled between 2 points before, I hoof it so I can actually, you know, play the game.
Tom says they need to do something to make fast travel more interesting or make travel between points that I’ve been to before more interesting so that I don’t need/want to fast travel. But why? To what end? The game has tons of content already, far more than one can probably see in one play through. So what’s to be gained by adding say more content so that I don’t want/need to fast travel? If Bethesda has a budget for a game (and they do), then what should they spend money on - new locations/quests, or creating more content/encounters in areas I’ve already traveled through? I know which one would be most likely more interesting and which one I’d vote for.
You are correct, I am assuming a lot. My assumptions are based on my own experiences, which are that traversing the Glowing Sea was really challenging and pretty much required me to be in power armor (with the character I used at least). I didn’t enjoy the environment, to the extent that because fast travel was there I used it and never went back. Your experience is probably different, and with my other playthroughs I’ll probably explore it more. I still think the logic of the game would make fast travel impossible into or out of the place, but I’m not unhappy I can avoid slogging through it.
tomchick
3333
If only I’d actually explained myself somewhere! :/
-Tom
Timex
3334
This is how I’ve started dressing my companions.
Strollen
3335
You make good points. The amount of content the Bethesda provides makes it interesting to do multiple playthroughs, knowing that each play through you can see different content, so I don’t think they way they implemented fast travel is all bad. I just think a game like Wombat describe where as you character progress your fast travel ability increases would be a better game.
I think part of my frustration is with the whole settlement system. My perfect game would be Civilization meets Fallout New Vegas. FO4 has all the elements to make a perfect game, it has building, elements of a tech tree, and clear objective find Shaun, plus a very well executed RPG. But I want the settlements to do more, and certainly create a safe zone as they expand in size and power to enable fast movement would have been an interesting addition.
The only area where I disagree with you is on the budget. Bethesda has created more than enough content for me, 100+ quests, not including the radiant quests is just plenty. I wish they had fully developed the take back the commonwealth theme and created a more fully immersive environment. Anyway back to playing.
