#fixing fallout 4

[yangxiaolongstan]

absolutely insane to me how many people get upset when I criticize the writing of the Minutemen for not engaging with the central question of Fallout 4's narrative. I say "the Minutemen really shouldn't be a main faction because they have no stake in the question of synth personhood and synth rights." and six people immediately jump up and say "of course they don't! they judge on a case by case basis!" as if that's 1: not a batshit insane thing to say "only the good ones are people" wtf I really really hope you don't take that approach to real marginalized groups. and 2: not an answer to the question of synth rights. it's just kicking the can from a doylist reading to a watsonian. it doesn't actually make them well written.

[vault81]

I've finished my Fallout OC Character Sheet! this is my first time making something like this, but I like how it turned out!

PSD below cut!

Compressed Version!

[sleights-of-hand]

✍Preston Garvey?

Redeeming aspects of Fallout 4 are this guy, and the retcon of 'cats extinct in Fallout'.

[somethingaboutmint]

My biggest plothole hangup with fallout 4 is kellog and how shitty he was done so the theory i propose: they should have just made kellog a synth lol? Like think about it:

1.) Eliminates the factor of "how the fuck did kellog live so long and not age?". Ingame shaun basically goes "institute technology we retired cuz (bullshit reason)" which is so dumb cuz its technology THAT STOPS YOU FROM AGING. But if it wasnt a real kellog but a synth recreation it would be like a cool "ooooh shit" twist moment as soon as you pick up the synth piece. Like thats not the real kellog they just made him again. Cloned him if you will.

2.) Good way to introduce the synths into the story. Theres so many places you'll see them beforehand but having kellog be the big "oh shit" moment for those who just speed through the plot would have rocked.

3.) The inherent tragedy of it. Idk i cant relate to kellog ingame cuz the memories quest utterly fails for me. Oh wow he lost his wife and child hes just like me fr- like fuck OFFFFF that happened to me too and i didnt go around killing innocent people. BOZO. But if he was a synth its a realization of like. This guy didnt do that. This is someone who fully believed he did and shared those memories but its like he didnt do it. Hes a victim of the institute just as much as you are. He legit doesnt know better. The implication of "if he found out he was a synth of a person long dead and his memories weren't real could he have gotten better" will always hang over your head.

4.) Paints institute in a more evil fucked up light . Asking shaun "what do you MEAN you recreated the guy that kidnapped you and brutally killed your other parent." And shaun just goes "well he was a good agent idk i admire the usefulness." Its like that collateral damage line but goes hard. Even better if he truly doesnt get why you're mad about it and at some point you see kellog again im the institute and are like WTF and shauns like oh we just made him again. If it makes you feel better you could kill him again too. We can make as many as you want. Like would that not be metal but also kinda horrifying

[nukastorm]

How we rockin w the gage wip y'all

[geodebiome]

made an image and a half, also, gave him the jadon 3 pisas vicariously. i cant afford em

[magickpancakes]

yall know how i said i was gonna draw more and it was gonna be so cool? well uh, i cant draw robots too well and ig that caught up to me lmao. enjoy how stupid some of these things look :P

[taffingtons]

december arrives in the commonwealth.

featured mods // winter redone + seasons change + splash of pine trees + xxray's winter tree addon + true grass + true grass winter retexture + vivid waters + waterworld + REACTOR ENB + NAC X

[yangxiaolongstan]

Preston Garvey, probably gonna catch flak for this, but I love Preston. at least as a character. I do think he should be the Minutemen's general instead of you, but that's more a critique of the Minutemen as a whole than Preston himself

25% affinity! his conversation here is good. we get some good backstory for him, idolizing the Minutemen as a kid and eventually joining up. what's the difference between the exposition I've complained about and this backstory I like? fuck you, that's what. I like his disdain for the old Minutemen and how they fell apart. if I were writing it, as I said, he'd be the general and this conversation would be setting up his own uncertainty and worry about living up to what the Minutemen should be.

and 50%! this conversation is alright. it clashes with my version of Preston. I would have Preston open up to you about how the Gunners systematically disassembled the Minutemen, constantly harassing their patrols, attacking their settlements, destroying supply lines, etc. he should tell you he's worried that no matter what, as long as the Gunners are around, the Minutemen are doomed. and that in order to do better than prior generals he wants your help to get rid of them. this starts his quest, where you go through each of the major Gunner groups in the Commonwealth until you kill Clint in Quincy, finally avenging the Minutemen and ensuring their ability to protect the Commonwealth.

ok 75%! this conversation is pretty meh. doesn't differentiate itself very well tbh. Preston is getting pretty one note. I do like that it's romantically charged from the start. I think I would have him thank you for your help getting rid of the Gunners and maybe comment on a specific quest you've done with him, that might not be practical though.

100%! hell yeah! Preston being suicidal in this conversation is interesting. I honestly hadn't expected that. although I kinda wish there had been more play with that before this point. it's a little weird that he mentions ending it if you had just taken off after killing the raiders, since obviously that's what you do if you don't have Preston as a companion and he's fine. the romance line is a little limp. and then the conversation is just kinda over. but that's fine.

and with that Preston is finally done! Hancock will be next, and then I think Danse and the Brotherhood questline

original fixing companions post

Piper

Codsworth

MacCready

Nick

Strong

[slocumjoe]

in other news, is there any romance quite as frustrating and stupid as danse x sole, when you look at it from. Any other companions point of view.

Preston Garvey has his whole world chewed up and spat out at his feet. Everyone he knew and loved is dead. Maybe he had a best friend, a lover, a brother or sister in the Minutemen. Maybe they were a civilian in Quincy. It doesn't matter anymore. This guy who's given you this second chance, you go with him to try and redeem yourself.

You are Preston Garvey, the last original Minuteman. You are tired, down in your bones, but you follow this stranger in a strange land across what you call home. While you're both picking through the ruins of Lexington, finding the corpses of the last of your friends, their pipboy gets a signal. A call for help.

You go to Cambridge. You help a dude in power armor gun down some ferals. As you reload your musket, dust yourself off, you look up as the big guy starts talking to your pal. And you can hear the white noise behind their eyes. You blink as they agree without question or hesistancy to do anything this dude needs. They're pretty nice, they're a good person, but usually you're not worried about if they're using their brain or not. Now, you're kinda worried. So you follow your buddy and Paladin Danse (What kind of name...) to some space station or whatever, watch them cook the man alive after some button mashing gone wrong, and then he can barely offer them a place in the Brotherhood before they're verbally signing their life away.

You are Preston Garvey. Your General has joined another, foreign army because this one guy, who had the charisma of a bag of corn nuts, asked. You are Preston Garvey. You are tired. Your general is now wearing a rival army's uniform because it makes that one guy happy. You want a nap so fucking bad.

You are Nick Valentine. You are a synth. You just helped this dude find out their baby is in the Institute. You walk out some security doors and see this big, hulking shadow in the sky, smothering the land from the sun. It bellows out that it comes in peace, heralded by armed air support, spotlights glowering down. You smell war and you don't even have a nose. As you stand there, in the wind, covered in blood and oil from the synths you've helped kill, you watch as your...client? You watch the dweller turn on their pipboy, mark Cambridge on their map, and make their way to the road.

You follow, of course. You follow, stupid sentimental bot you are, to thr Brotherhood of Steel. The dweller is vibrating to get on the death blimp. The guy offering the ride, Danse, is both sizing you up like you're a hot meal and like he wonders if you're actually a synth, because how the fuck would the dweller think bringing you here was a good idea? You shrug at him. You don't know either. You get on the vertibird. You get on the blimp. The dweller bats their eyes at Danse as he stomps down a catwalk, and they snap back to their normal selves once they talk to Kells. They balk and turn green and scoff out in the hall as you both listen to Maxoson's speech. They wonder how dumb a man could be as you venture deeper into the bowels of the beastly aircraft. People sneer at you. You are in danger. You stay very close to the dweller. You both find Danse again. He asks what they think. They don't say what they were just saying. He believes in himself, he sounds like he cares, he seems to truly trust in this army and it's cause. Not "what a load of horseshit." Danse beams with pride and they drink it in like clean water.

You are Nick Valentine. You wish you could drink.

[the-simp-show]

PALADIN DANSE PLEASPELELALPSE PELAPLSPELSLSS

Today's simp target is paladin danse from Fallout 4

Sorry babe, the armor says on in the bedroom

[rad-roche]

i figure being unable to sleep has left nick's timekeeping skills pretty bad

[neuroticreno]

FALLOUT REQUESTSSSS re-upload edition..

[therizinotfuckingthere]

I made a terraria resource pack that replaces the lava lake painting with a painting of yes man :] Steam workshop link

[until-the-brahmin-come-home]

the Institute have a devastating lack of swag for being mad scientists and i feel like they could've gotten away with it if they were batshit weird suburbanite type people instead but the vaults are already doing that so maybe not. i think any attempted rewrite of 4 just has to try and make them Weirder because they just aren't very interesting as-is. for fuck's sake, they're making gorillas for no apparent reason and even that isn't done in an interesting way. anyway here's some suggestions:

ivory tower academics who spend all of their time litigating the most specific shit known to man, absolutely removed from the real world, if you suggest to them "hey what about using some of this botany knowledge to feed the surface" they'll look at you like you grew a second head (this is prolly closest to canon but like, lean into it more). rivalries that span decades and occasionally turn the halls into warzones

Aperture/Black Mesa/Big MT style buffoonery, just absolutely buckwild experiments for no apparent purpose. everyone's got a specialty that is decades removed from current understandings of the field. one dude is utterly dedicated to designing the perfect pair of mittens and has no interest in anything else.

Hive Mind type shit. Between cybernetics and synths everyone is a cog in the machine who has an exact role they follow to a t (or else face consequences). if you really wanna make me happy throw in some low-level psyker shit so everyone's always connected. actually i like this one a lot i might use it myself

uhhhhh tesla style techbro clownery. look at my cool new piece of technology that only works under the most specific of conditions. you bring one of their laser weapons to the surface and it immediately disintegrates upon exposure to sunlight.

idk i'm running out of steam anyone else got any ideas

[typosandtea]

Falloutober 2023 Day 10 (late): Terminal

Non-animated below cut

Edit: figured out how to make the gif file-size small enough for tumblr, and replaced the video version with a gif