Here’s why:
The story. It's a first person RPG (yes, you can play it as 3rd person if you so choose but the character animation sucks so why would you?). You are born in an underground fallout shelter, called Vault 101, in post-apocalyptic Washington DC. You are raised there until you reach the age of 16, when you father mysteriously leaves the vault and you have the option of going after him or staying in the vault and being killed by the overseer (the angry vault dictator). You leave. And suddenly, voila, the game is open world; you are free to do whatever you want. There are tons of side quests, places to explore and people to kill but all of those things are fun and what makes the game great and I’m here to talk about what made it shit (psst…the answer is the story).
So you are wandering from place to place looking for your father. Along the way you learn that he was working on some water purification project that'll bring clean (non-radiated) water to anyone and everyone. You eventually find him trapped in another vault somewhere. This was the best mission in the game. It’s much like a tiny Matrix. You sit down in a relaxation recliner and you are suddenly in some twisted world of the vault overseer’s creation. No one else in the experiment has any idea what's going on, they are just living blissfully in a Pleasantville type town. In order to get yourself and your father released you need to complete the demonic requests of the overseer. They include such activities as make little bobby cry, break up the marriage of these two people, murder everyone in the town with a butchers knife, ya know...that sort of thing.
Anyway, after this mission it's all down hill. You get your father out of the simulation and join him in his mission to save the world...or at least clean some water. You go back to his project site, help him flip a few switches and plug a few fuses in. Come back to the control room and he's being harassed by the enclave, a group that is apparently evil...I guess.
And here I recognized a problem that I thought I could look past. No one in this game is developed…at all. When I rescue my dad in the game I feel like I’m meeting him for the first time. I’ve got no real history with him…when it boils down to it I don’t really give a shit if he gets rescued or dies…
In the case of the enclave, all you know about them is they are the self proclaimed post-apocalyptic government. Some people in the wasteland love and seem to trust them. Others seem to hate and distrust them. But you never see first hand or aftermath of terrible things that would make you hate them yourself. You never are given tangible examples of why they are this terrible organization you are all of a sudden supposed to believe they are.
Anyway, your father kills himself in order to avoid handing over the initialization codes for the purification system. At which point I realized what most likely leads me to the complete absence of any attachment to the characters. No cut scenes. During your father’s final moments, if you aren't close enough to the action, you can’t even overhear the conversation. You aren't forced to watch it happen; you could completely miss it if you're in the wrong place at the wrong time. This is the most driving event in the story and it had no dramatic impact on me as a gamer who'd invested probably 15+ hours building my character into what he was. Why? Because it's portrayed in the same manner the rest of the game is. Nothing is different. I may as well have been walking past two random NPCs in a random city. The same dramatic techniques are employed for this crucial scene as they were at any given point. Now I understand that some games over do it, and by no means am I requesting two 90 minutes cut scenes (I shudder at the thought), but when the most critical scenes in the game are no more dramatic than random encounters...fuck it. So your dad dies, you run away. You need to finish the project for him. While I'm summarizing it like this it sounds a lot better than it was. It sounds succinct, like a story you could care about. While playing it though about 10 minutes after my dad had died, I had forgotten about it. None of the events left an impact. It’s a storyline full of, “oo, that’s neat” instead of “Holy Shit” or “Oh My God” moments. It is the direct opposite of epic. I was finishing the project because the game said "Now you have to finish the project". But anyway, there are like 2 more missions after your dad dies and then the game is over. And when it ends you feel the same way again, "this is lame…wait, that's it?", because there is no fucking emotion behind it because there are no dramatic techniques used anywhere…ever.
The story. It's a first person RPG (yes, you can play it as 3rd person if you so choose but the character animation sucks so why would you?). You are born in an underground fallout shelter, called Vault 101, in post-apocalyptic Washington DC. You are raised there until you reach the age of 16, when you father mysteriously leaves the vault and you have the option of going after him or staying in the vault and being killed by the overseer (the angry vault dictator). You leave. And suddenly, voila, the game is open world; you are free to do whatever you want. There are tons of side quests, places to explore and people to kill but all of those things are fun and what makes the game great and I’m here to talk about what made it shit (psst…the answer is the story).
So you are wandering from place to place looking for your father. Along the way you learn that he was working on some water purification project that'll bring clean (non-radiated) water to anyone and everyone. You eventually find him trapped in another vault somewhere. This was the best mission in the game. It’s much like a tiny Matrix. You sit down in a relaxation recliner and you are suddenly in some twisted world of the vault overseer’s creation. No one else in the experiment has any idea what's going on, they are just living blissfully in a Pleasantville type town. In order to get yourself and your father released you need to complete the demonic requests of the overseer. They include such activities as make little bobby cry, break up the marriage of these two people, murder everyone in the town with a butchers knife, ya know...that sort of thing.
Anyway, after this mission it's all down hill. You get your father out of the simulation and join him in his mission to save the world...or at least clean some water. You go back to his project site, help him flip a few switches and plug a few fuses in. Come back to the control room and he's being harassed by the enclave, a group that is apparently evil...I guess.
And here I recognized a problem that I thought I could look past. No one in this game is developed…at all. When I rescue my dad in the game I feel like I’m meeting him for the first time. I’ve got no real history with him…when it boils down to it I don’t really give a shit if he gets rescued or dies…
In the case of the enclave, all you know about them is they are the self proclaimed post-apocalyptic government. Some people in the wasteland love and seem to trust them. Others seem to hate and distrust them. But you never see first hand or aftermath of terrible things that would make you hate them yourself. You never are given tangible examples of why they are this terrible organization you are all of a sudden supposed to believe they are.
Anyway, your father kills himself in order to avoid handing over the initialization codes for the purification system. At which point I realized what most likely leads me to the complete absence of any attachment to the characters. No cut scenes. During your father’s final moments, if you aren't close enough to the action, you can’t even overhear the conversation. You aren't forced to watch it happen; you could completely miss it if you're in the wrong place at the wrong time. This is the most driving event in the story and it had no dramatic impact on me as a gamer who'd invested probably 15+ hours building my character into what he was. Why? Because it's portrayed in the same manner the rest of the game is. Nothing is different. I may as well have been walking past two random NPCs in a random city. The same dramatic techniques are employed for this crucial scene as they were at any given point. Now I understand that some games over do it, and by no means am I requesting two 90 minutes cut scenes (I shudder at the thought), but when the most critical scenes in the game are no more dramatic than random encounters...fuck it. So your dad dies, you run away. You need to finish the project for him. While I'm summarizing it like this it sounds a lot better than it was. It sounds succinct, like a story you could care about. While playing it though about 10 minutes after my dad had died, I had forgotten about it. None of the events left an impact. It’s a storyline full of, “oo, that’s neat” instead of “Holy Shit” or “Oh My God” moments. It is the direct opposite of epic. I was finishing the project because the game said "Now you have to finish the project". But anyway, there are like 2 more missions after your dad dies and then the game is over. And when it ends you feel the same way again, "this is lame…wait, that's it?", because there is no fucking emotion behind it because there are no dramatic techniques used anywhere…ever.
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