Fallout 4 is great actually: Cut Content

I thought it might be interesting to see what I cut out from the final draft of the script. All of this was recorded, but I removed it from the final video, either for time, redundancy, or because it just didn't flow. There was also an even longer Institute diatribe that I cut before recording, but that was genuinely 3 pages of tin-foil hat ranting, but I managed to distill it into the paragraph below.

I've underlined the parts I cut:

But why is Fallout 4 my favorite Fallout game? I don't fully know. There's something ineffable about Fallout 4 for me, and if I ever unironically use the phrase Bethesda Magic, I want you to shoot me in the face with a gun, but there’s something about this game I can't put my finger on. Maybe it’s the characters. Maybe it’s the setting. Maybe I just like the New England vibes. 

I fully recognize the game's flaws. The weak villain for one. But also, Fallout 4 really needed a 4th act. The post-game is another missed opportunity that just doesn’t feel satisfying. There’s the quest where you get to assassinate the mayor, but there’s fuck all else. I just excavated a new radioactive crater in the middle of the city and scattered hundreds of mad scientists around the Commonwealth. This decision should have some blow-back, some response, some… fallout.

Fallout 4 is a collection of great ideas that don’t interact with each other in a meaningful way. It's disjointed and lends the game an almost improvisational quality. It doesn’t elevate itself above its tropes and results in a product that isn’t greater than the sum of its parts. If you’re the kind of person who likes looking at the trees through the forest, you'll appreciate this game more than most. 

I guess there is something to be said for subtlety. As good as the story of New Vegas is, it’s about as subtle as a brick through your window. Characters will just tell you their life story and moral philosophy on demand like they were queuing up for a fucking TED talk. Fallout 4 makes you work a little bit harder for it. But when you do start putting in the effort and learning about how characters are connected in the lore, you’ll go, “oh wouldn’t it be cool if…” and you start seeing all the missed opportunities. Fallout 4 really is a game of missed opportunities. Like going to the Institute and learning that McDonough actually is a Synth. Wouldn’t it be cool to tell Piper and see her reaction? Yeah. It would have. Speaking of these fucking nerds. 

The Institute itself is a pastiche of 1970s movie villains like in Logan’s Run, THX 1138, Zardoz, and the progenitor of the entire Fallout franchise, A Boy and His Dog. But in their drive to copy the aesthetics, they missed some of the major themes, the biggest one being all the weird sex shit. Honestly, that would have made a lot more sense why they were making these things look as human as possible. But as a villain they just feel so bygone. I mean, evil nerds, really? You really couldn’t make any of these movies today either because weed is just too good now. 1970s weed was just shitty enough that you could still put in a day's work while smoking it. It wasn't until Hollywood stopped blowing smoke, and started smoking blow that movies started to make sense again. Now weed is too strong and those days are long gone. Bethesda is trying to engage with a world that doesn't exist anymore. 

But let’s talk about the Minutemen, because they’re probably the biggest missed opportunity in the entire game. They’re the polar opposite of the Institute. Whereas the Institute is isolationist, centralized, and possesses advanced technology, the Minutemen are expansionist, decentralized, and somehow have worse guns and armor than what I just find lying around. But the story never really challenges the Minutemen's narrative of being the rightful inheritors of the Commonwealth. The closest you come is the Battle of Bunker Hill where a proudly independent settlement decides to fall in line with them after getting spit-roasted in a three-way rat-fuck.

Let’s talk about New Vegas, because Fallout 4 is a response to New Vegas. In Fallout 3, you could blow through the main story without even really absorbing it. New Vegas used factional conflict to create branching outcomes that players had to actively choose by prioritizing the questlines of whatever faction they were supporting. Fallout 4 has similar quests where you have to choose which faction you’re going to support. But... the entirety of New Vegas, every quest, every character and interaction was built around the main story of conflict between the Legion, NCR, and House. I can’t think of a quest that doesn’t in some way inform the player's view of that conflict and those factions. You’re constantly being told the philosophies of the different factions, you’re constantly given internal and external perspectives on them. You see the outcomes of institutional decisions they’ve made. Everything dances around the maypole that is the Battle of Hoover Dam. 

I’m not sure I could even tell you what most of these factions actually do here. I can guess what they’re about, but it’s rare you see the literal impact they have on the world. Well, actually there is one faction that will happily tell you literally everything about themselves, and of course it’s supposed to be the secret one. The Railroad is about synth liberation. Full stop. They’re not interested in local politics. They’re not out to build a better wasteland. They’re just here to free the synths. And you know what, that’s fine. But you know what else? This is supposed to be a major faction. What happens at the end of the game when all the synths are freed, Desdemona?

At least they’re better than the Brotherhood of Steel, the favorite faction of people with no media literacy. At least they come out of the game with the most complete questline, which is fucking impressive considering how much of the Brotherhood questline got cut.

I will also say that playing without mods again feels like drag racing on a fucking pennyfarthing. That’s why when the fanboys say modders will fix Starfield with a straight face, I fucking believe them. Without mods it feels so incomplete. I can't think of another business that’s benefited as much from free labor since the fucking plantation economy. I guess it's nice that the modders like doing it, but when I pay $60 for a video game I don't like it to be with the understanding that I’ll have to download 20 nudity mods later because Jimmy the Pervert is patching in the rest of the story. 

Overall, Fallout 4 isn’t a bad game, or even a bad Fallout game. All the pieces for a really great and poignant game are here. They just didn’t fucking finish it! But maybe I’m giving Bethesda too much credit. After all, it would be disingenuous to suggest this isn’t the game they wanted to make. And it’s unfair of me to pretend Fallout 4 is the game I imagine it to be. I just wish they would take that last step of curiosity to ask why the fuck any of these people are here!

Let me know if you're actually interesting in seeing this kind of behind-the-scenes stuff.