Bethesda games are overrated, shallow and highly corrosive to the roleplaying genre. Let's talk about why.

I'd like to preface this by saying that I have zero doubts Fallout 4 will be a runaway mainstream success, selling 25+ million copies and being an Action RPG staple in the years to come. If you enjoy the Shallow Sandbox Experience first featured in Morrowind and perfected in Oblivion, then you will probably be happy with what Fallout 4 has to offer. I also accept this is the majority of people, so I'm not under any illusion that the silent majority is on my side here.

Also, if you enjoy what Bethesda does, you probably think that the only real criticism that classic Fallout fans have against Bethesda is the change from turn based isometric gameplay to third person action based real time gameplay, which is actually more of a byproduct or a symptom of the problems Bethesda has with Fallout, rather than the cause of them.

To nip that particular argument in the bud, the reason turn based combat and an isometric perspective was so beloved by Fallout fans was because they were mechanisms that best helped to portray Fallout as the PnP campaign simulator in video game form that it was designed to be from the very beginning.

Before Fallout became it's own distinct franchise, it was supposed to be a post-apocalyptic game based on Steve Jackson's PnP ruleset G.U.R.P.S[1]. This game had five key tenets and this is part of what I will focus on when I make statements like “Bethesda will never create a good Fallout game”;

Rule #1: Multiple Decisions. We will always allow for multiple solutions to any obstacle.

Rule #2: No Useless Skills. The skills we allow you to take will have meaning in the game.

Rule #3: Dark humor was good. Slap-stick was not.

Rule #4: Let the player play how he wants to play.

Rule #5: Your actions have repercussions.

After licensing issues prevented the Vault 13 G.U.R.P.S game from eventuating, we got a homebrew system in it's place that became known as S.P.E.C.I.A.L. However, these core design goals still permeate just about every aspect of Fallout's design. That's not to say that the original two Fallout games were able to nail every one of the tenets 100% of the time. For example, there were optimised builds, with some skills not doing a whole lot over the course of the game. But the idea was that each skill had something it could hang it's hat on, even if it wasn't a viable skill to focus on for the whole game. In any case, those 5 tenets together formed a strong framework, and removing key aspects from that framework without considering how it would affect everything else, like Bethesda did, greatly damages the game as a whole.

It should also be noted that the cancelled Black Isle Fallout 3 'Van Buren' project would've featured an adjustible 3D camera and optional real time combat in the vein of Arcanum anyway[2]. It's easier to blame nostalgia driven neckbeards and that's what the gaming community at large has generally put it down to, but it's not the truth at all. Rather than try and take into consideration what makes Fallout good and design around that, they (Bethesda) try to shoehorn their own features and design principles even if it directly contradicts central aspects of the Fallout franchise. This is why Bethesda is incapable of creating a good Fallout game.

"If you play Fallout 3, you know, Liam Neeson is the voice of your dad, and there are some good emotional beats there, but there’s only so much you can do when you’re clicking on a line of dialog and there’s no spoken response. So the emotional depth that we got by having a voiced protagonist has actually [made the story] way more tense than I ever expected." [3]

Emil 'books don't have emotional depth' Pagliarulo

This speaks to a deeply flawed vision that Bethesda continues to push with their version of Fallout. Specifically, they attempt to build a connection between the player and the game by integrating the player's personal story into the main plot and making it the focus of the experience. In Fallout 3, your connection with a "middle aged guy" was put forth as your primary motivation for completing the game's main story. The likes of the radio jockey Three Dog, also emphasise the point. Three Dog is a character who, if listened to on the in-game radio, will extol the player's virtues if morally acceptable decisions are made in quests, or the opposite and condemning you if the player engages in less than scrupulous actions. The player character is at the centre of the gameworld and should take centre stage in the narrative under this design philosophy. Bethesda sees this as 'emotional depth' because when the world looks to you to make a decision, presumably, you'd care more about it. Making conversations cinematic and giving the player character a voice is just another a way to make the player character a stronger presence in the game world.

However, this is in vast contrast to what Fallout has been doing from the very beginning. In Fallout 1 and 2, the player character has a backstory and a story arc, but the protagonist is ultimately used as a window into the world. Fallout is a series about society and human nature, not the player character. The character's personal story arc merely places them in convenient circumstances in which they're able to explore the world and see first hand how their actions can affect it. This is different to what Bethesda does in at least one crucial way. The PC in Black Isle's Fallout games is presented as the agent of change whereas in Bethesda games, the player character is presented as a literal messiah. Simply put, in Black Isle's Fallout, the protagonist's story arc is important because it gives the player an opportunity to explore the world around you through your interactions. In Bethesda's Fallout, the protagonist's story arc is important because the world revolves around your character and progressing with the story allows you to define your character as 'good' or 'bad'.

Black Isle's Fallout gives the player many, many forms of interaction with the gameworld as a way to become immersed in it. The West Coast is dirty, gritty, violent and it can showcase the best or worst of humanity depending on who you run into. You can seduce people, become a Porn Star (with the right stats), become a Heavyweight Boxing Champion (again with the right stats), or a Slaver or help Myron create addictive drugs. You can say and do all sorts of things if you are roleplaying the kind of character who is inclined towards those sorts of activities. And all these actions are optional side content that are structured around your skills and attributes. They tie back into the core mechanics, your character build and ultimately, your roleplaying, rather than being segmented from the rest of the game. These kinds of “down to earth” interactions already weren't part of Fallout 3 but Fallout 4 with it's voiced protagonist compounds the issue.

At a guess, the overwhelming majority of voiced dialog would be tone neutral conversation progression. And since all interactions are cinematic and voiced, there's less room for non-conventional interactions covering controversial subjects. With changes to the skill system, IE, dismantling it completely, special dialog might be divided by simple morality rather than by build. This links back to Rule #1 mentioned above. By offering less ways to interact and navigate through dialog situations, you are offering the player less and less ways to overcome obstacles and challenges in the game. While the game is set in an open world, the quest design becomes more linear. The end result is an experience where the player doesn't feel as connected to the player character. This is because the player character can no longer express themselves through any nuance that relates to their skillsets or non-binary morality. This isn't that much of an issue if the game is filled with well written dialog sequences that allows the player to express a complex range of emotions, motivations and skills. However, this is Bethesda we're talking about.

“One of the things we really tried to avoid is surprising the player with whether they've been good or bad. We wanted to be clear to you that you're making a conscious choice to be one or the other. I've played games where I made a choice and I thought I was being the nice guy, and then it's, "Wait, wait, why is he upset?" We didn't want it to be a surprise. Sometimes it's a surprise in terms of how a person reacts if you are being a jerk, but it's not a surprise as to whether you're good or bad.”[4]

Pete 'I need to be told when I'm a bad boy' Hines

So, in addition to dialog, the lack of character depth for the protagonist becomes all the more apparent when you look at the Karma system from Fallout 3. Karma in Fallout 1 and 2 are minor systems that can be summed up as a "moral reputation". They have specific titles for levels of Karma and consequences that relate mostly to interactions with potential companions. But as a whole, it's not very relevant. Unless you cross certain lines (like killing children), the Wasteland in general isn't going to care about your morality. Why would the people of the Den or the gangsters of New Reno care if you've eaten your vegetables and been a good boy? The people in the game care about the tangibles. And it's this dilemma that provides much of the fodder for the moral quandaries you'll face if you wish to play as a virtuous or selfless character.

The role of morality in a post-apocalyptic Wasteland that's so far removed from what we are familiar with, is absolutely central to how the Fallout games are put together because Fallout deals with how society rebuilds from the brink of destruction. It asks 'how do we rebuild in a way that this will never happen again?' As such, many of the situations you encounter are coloured in shades of grey as opposed to strict black and white. Power struggles by forces in a conflict of ideology[5]5, instead of clearly defined good and evil. Granted, the original two Fallout games had plenty of situations where you choose between an asshole and a non-asshole, as well as featuring many broadly good v evil decision points. But in the ending slides, no significant consideration is given to your morality.

The games don't assume your motivations and judge you for them, it just lets you navigate the setting and push the changes you want onto the gameworld through your choices. Your character is defined by your personal moral code, your narrative choices, your skillset and your physical attributes. That's why moral dilemmas are a staple of Fallout games, it's a game predicated on challenging the player, to see if it's possible to change the human nature that got the world to this point, and show the player the results of their choices. “War never changes”.

Bethesda's Fallout however, turns this concept on it's head. Just about every action you are able to undertake is given a moral value through the Karma system and through characters like Three Dog, and your Father, the game constantly reminds you of your character's morality. Your decisions throughout the game are neatly categorised into 'good' and 'evil'. This is also reinforced through the endings. Unlike the other Fallout games, where huge variance is given based on your decisions in each of the locales, often with overlap or cascading effects, the Fallout 3 endings emphasise the player's morality in each of their decisions. The effect you had on society is secondary to whether the PC was naughty or nice.

By forcing the player into strict moral guidelines that the game hammers in at every opportune moment, the player loses a real connection with the world that they're exploring. It harms any potential nuance that the game could display when it comes to morality and characters. Everything is either 'good' or 'bad. This absolutely destroys the protagonist as a well rounded character, because they're ultimately defined by what the game can allow you to do. In other Fallouts, you can define your character by your skillset, which informs your playstyle, as well as your narrative choices. But in Bethesda's Fallout, your range of potential actions to define yourself is more limited, your interaction with the skill system for roleplaying purposes is much more narrow because it can't fit into the mold of 'good or evil'. The range of actions you can take in the game are boiled down to 'I am good' and 'I am bad'. You are shoehorned into certain character archetypes that are shallow in nature and the game works so hard to define your experience using those archetypes and nothing else.

"That's what we try to create, that sense of going anywhere and doing anything. GTA V does it so well. It puts you in its world and it makes you its director. It says yes to the player a lot, and that's what we try to do. It's just a phenomenal game."[6] - Todd 'don't believe his lies' Howard

Bethesda have long stated that a major goal in their games is that the player should be able to 'go anywhere' and 'do anything'. This central tenet of their design philosophy is at the core of why Bethesda's Fallout is so obsessed with the player character (and moralising him/her). The player is at the centre of the experience, and the player should be in control of their own destiny. As an idea, this isn't necessarily bad. In fact, it fits in nicely with Rule #4 of the Fallout Design Tenets (Let the player play how they want to play) however, Rule #4 and #5 (Rule #5 being your actions have repercussions) work in concert for a roleplaying experience. You should offer the player freedom, but you need to have consequences for their actions too. The problem is that Bethesda chooses to ignore rule #5 as part of the design philosophy they've carried over from Elder Scrolls. 'Nothing should overpower the player, the player should be allowed to do anything they want'. We've seen this manifest in the Elder Scrolls games in the form Quest Compasses, Zero Barriers to Guild Progression and Level Scaling.

Bethesda games are designed to be a sandbox to be played with at will. The settlement building features being advertised as 'optional' content for Fallout 4 seems to support this idea even more. Modular features over an interconnected, reactive roleplaying experience. Nobody wants their RPGs as a 'choiceless' linear experience. The problem is that player freedom and player agency requires proper context. The ruleset, the game mechanics and the laws of the setting for internal consistency have to take precedent. Roleplaying needs to be structured around those things, otherwise you end up playing pretend instead of actually roleplaying. The difference between roleplaying and playing pretend is whether the game acknowledges what you do within the confines of the ruleset and acts accordingly[7]. But it's that reactivity and design which Bethesda has been actively fighting against since Oblivion, because the Bethesda Shallow Sandbox Experience is against inconveniencing players with things like 'internally consistent game logic' or 'mutually exclusive content'. They encourage you to play pretend and call it 'roleplaying choices'. What happens in the end, is a game where the player is a 'tourist' and the internal rules/logic of the setting are more like suggestions. And if the game can't respect itself as a work of fiction and abide by it's own rules, why should you respect it as a work of fiction?

Without the strong foundation of enforced internal consistency (to a reasonable extent) and mutually exclusive or reactive content, whatever choices and freedom you have are actually hollow. And since that is what Bethesda bases their whole games on, then it stands to reason that Bethesda are creating hollow worlds that are only surface level deep. Because they are worlds that don't respect your choices to a necessary level, and they require the player to find meaning and depth of their own accord. That's not to say there isn't a ton of shit to do in Bethesda games. The amount of content in Bethesda games is often staggering. But this is breadth, not depth. Bethesda games simply aren't deep, they're quite shallow. For many, this is a positive. That's fine, it's key to Bethesda's success and wide appeal. But it's better to call a spade a spade, and admit you like spades, than to be deluded into thinking that Bethesda games are deep.

By having a sanitised game world that gates off risk from players and insulates them from the challenges that the setting provides, for the sake of gameplay convenience, Bethesda shows explicitly that they do not care about the core tenets of Fallout. By designing an easily navigable and sterile environment that poses few risks for the player, they can also close off ways in which developers are able to reinforce narrative tones or themes through difficulty and gameplay situations. Something as simple as 'The Glow' from Fallout 1 would not exist in Bethesda's Fallout. Unless the player has the right build and items, it's completely impossible to fully explore the entire location before dying. The player in most cases has to sacrifice blind exploration and focus on what their goals are, constantly going out of their way to manage their radiation levels. Limiting the player using the game mechanics like that is complete anathema to the Bethesda Shallow Sandbox Experience. However by doing so, Black Isle designers are able to hammer home the idea of The Glow as a literal treasure trove of the Old World. It makes you want to explore it. The risk/reward at play makes the player more invested in the location and it's story than any kind of cinematic or high fidelity texture.

“Violence is funny! Lets all just own up to it! Violence done well is fucking hilarious. It’s like Itchy and Scratchy or Jackass – Now that’s funny!” [8] - Todd 'Komedy Klub Kustodian' Howard

I can't exactly disagree, but as funny as childish violence might be, the humour of the Fallout setting is mostly grounded in irony and juxtaposition as a means of telling the player a chilling message about the society they are exploring. This goes back to one of Fallout's central themes. "War never changes". Many people (including Bethesda themselves) have taken that to mean that 'history repeats itself'. However, the main takeaway from the quote isn't about history repeating itself, it's about why history repeats itself. War never changes because people never change. The opening statement of Fallout is an indictment of human nature and informs the player that Fallout is a dark and cynical setting.

It's that cynicism that drives Fallout's dark humour, it's why Fallout has a clean retro 50s future aesthetic, one that evokes optimism and harkens the player back to a golden era on the surface, yet juxtaposes it with the terrible atrocity and violence of Fallout's broken and messed up world. It's a big statement to the player, that humanity is a tainted species and that no one can escape the violence, selfishness and barbarism of human nature. The player character in each of the Fallout games exists to challenge that idea and break it, or confirm it, based on their actions.

“If war doesn't change, men must change, and so must their symbols. Even if it is nothing at all, know what you follow, Courier… …just as I followed you, to the end. Whatever your symbol… …carry it on your back, and wear it proudly when you stand at Hoover Dam.”

Bethesda's Fallout fails to understand this central theme of the series and how the use of humour is important in building it. Their idea of humour lies in using the juxtaposition as a means displaying absurdity. Think of The Superhuman Gambit where a former Mechanic and cheesy comic book villain in an Ant costume fight over a town for no real reason other than Bethesda exclaiming “hah off the wall jokes! We know Fallout!”. Sure, the people in said town are pretty sick of it too, but it's just stupid. To be fair, Fallout 2 shows off a lot of absurd humour too, and it's actually fucking awful at times, but what makes Fallout 3 different is that it's humour isn't baked into the setting with some sort of in-universe logic or purpose.

I unashamedly hate the Hubologists and Shi in Fallout 2, but like the Kings in New Vegas, there's some sort of purpose or tie in for it. On the other hand, Fallout 3's ridiculousness is just plain stupid. I mean, can anyone explain what kind of functioning adult would be okay with Little Lamplight and Big Town in a supposedly serious and dark piece of fiction?

Beyond that, Fallout 3's humour isn't necessary or even a positive addition to the narrative or themes. They don't serve any dramatic, thematic or comedic effect through the use of contrast. Think about the Republic of Dave, or Duvok's party house. They don't really serve a purpose outside of 'lolrandumxD'. This causes issues because a lot of Fallout 3's locales are centered around such 'absurdities', meaning that in effect, what you have is a disjointed game world with self contained communities that are nothing more than cheap, disposable jokes that say and add nothing to the greater narrative or themes of the game. I don't even have to go into further detail as to why Bethesda fails at Rule #3 (dark humour, not slap stick humour) and why it's just bad world-building overall.

“There are no regional dialects, so sense of unified culture or society. And that's really the problem, isn't it? The Capital Wasteland is a mess. You've got all these these little isolationist factions, but there's no unification, no centralized government. As you play the game and listen to President Eden's speeches on the Enclave radio station, you quickly realize that that's sort of his platform – when and if he shows up in the Capital Wasteland, he'll make everything right again. He'll return America to the land of the free and the home of the brave, replete with white picket fences and apple pies.”[9] - Emil 'so close…' Pagliarulo

The main story arcs for the main series of Fallout games (except for 3 funnily enough) all deal specifically with society. The problem of survival in the Wasteland is central and the largest factions that vie for power in the course of the series all claim to have the answer to that problem. Fallout 1 has the Unity, in which The Master saw the future of humankind in (forced) evolution. Super Mutants being "best equipped to deal with the world today". On the other hand, Fallout 2's Enclave operated differently. Seeing themselves as the legitimate successors of the Old World, they found their answer in the total extinction of what they considered mutants. The Brotherhood of Steel meanwhile, saw the dangers that people could do to the world if potent technology was in the wrong hands, deciding to dedicate themselves to preserving technology instead. The NCR saw the answer in Old World American democratic values. That it was possible to create a New America from the ashes of the Old. Caesar's Legion also found the answer in Old World values too, but looked to the Ancient Roman Empire as their solution. A totalitarian, monolithic culture sustained through conquest and slavery.

And in one way or another, you tackle these factions and agree or reject the answer that is presented to you. But many of the side quests follow the same vein of thinking. There are towns, villages and settlements at a fracture point, often because of the greater conflict (but not always). And the PC is in a position to influence the direction of the locale. The player can side with leaders and characters that they most empathise with or agree with ideologically. Or maybe one NPC will offer you money to kill their rival and you take them up on it. That works too. But these locales and these situations don't exist in a vacuum, and your actions in one area or with one character could impact how you deal with others. Reinforcing the idea that Fallout is about society, first and foremost. Unfortunately, Fallout 3 and Bethesda's design mentality in general ensures that there is almost zero cohesion amongst the pockets of civilisation and the small settlements that populate the map. Many of these settlements are given some sort of a theme to distinguish themselves from one another. This is essentially what can be described as a themepark design. The player, acting as a tourist, can visit these themed, segregated locations and interact or spectate the events happening at their leisure, before leaving without consequence.

Outside of Megaton and Rivet, like Emil and Todd say, there really is no sense of society in Fallout 3. There's no thematic or narrative cohesion that connects the locations to a greater whole. Because the quests arcs and endings for each locale stay strictly self contained (if they feature at all), then it's clear that Bethesda did not understand that Fallout is about rebuilding society. This also speaks to Rule #5 (your actions will have repercussions). By ensuring that almost all locales are wholly self contained, they allow the players to act inconsistently. Doing good in one place, and doing evil in another. The simplistic Karma system balances things out and the game doesn't really act at all, thereby exposing Bethesda's approach to morality and their understanding of it, as hollow and shallow as the rest of their storywriting. An extreme example of this would be to blow up Megaton, and donate water to the homeless beggars until your Karma is positive once more, enabling you to access the morally acceptable ending slides. What a farce.

As for another reason why I think Fallout 3's main story is bad and doesn't tackle the core themes of Fallout games: “Filtering through earth removes essentially all of the fallout particles and more of the dissolved radioactive material than does boiling-water distillation… In areas of heavy fallout, about 99% of the radioactivity in water could be removed by filtering it through ordinary earth.”[10]

All that fuss about the water purifier. Fallout 3's story is equivalent to dirt in the most literal way imaginable. I could go on with the instances of Bethesda retconning prior lore, as well as document the simple, basic failures of logic contained within the game itself. From the awfully written lines, to the incredulous quest premises. I could blather on about the mediocre gameplay, the non-existent difficult curve and the bugs upon bugs upon bugs. I could talk about the advertised features of Fallout 4, and why creating your own settlement without significant story integration into the main narrative is something that pushes Fallout further away from 'tight and cohesive open world', and closer to 'shallow sandbox'. But the purpose of this isn't to show why Fallout 3 was a shit game and why Fallout 4 will be the same. Not necessarily, the goal is to demonstrate how Bethesda has shown fundamental failings and misunderstandings at what makes the Fallout setting tick. The 5 rules that were established since before Fallout became Fallout have driven the design of the entire series, none of which are rules that Bethesda truly pays any attention to. In addition, by ignoring the key themes, and core literary devices that Black Isle's Fallout uses to drive home it's message (like challenging gameplay situations and good level design) and allow the player to properly roleplay instead of just playing pretend, Bethesda has demonstrated that they will never get a Fallout game right.

The only reasonable conclusion is that Bethesda's Fallout is shallow and meaningless. They create objectively bad Fallout games. If you like the changes Bethesda has made gameplay and graphics wise, great. But if you are a fan of Fallout, then look beyond the superficialities. It doesn't really matter if a Fallout game is turn based and isometric, or if it's FPS action. The undeniable fact is that Bethesda is fundamentally incapable of creating a good Fallout game.

Fallout 4 will be a very successful game and there's nothing I could ever do to change that, but I hope this reaches the minds and hearts of gamers far and wide, opening them to the idea of viewing Bethesda games with a more critical eye.

I'm fairly confident that I've just expressed a deeply unpopular opinion, but if you're watching this video, then I hope I've made a compelling argument and possibly changed your opinion on the matter as well.

[1]http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Vault_13:_A_GURPS_Post-Nuclear_Adventure

[2]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uuDKrY7eW0

[3]https://archive.is/SOOvN

[4]https://archive.is/IiTZz

[5]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Cp44Pr5b30

[6]https://archive.is/BdaLs

[7]http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/larping-and-crpg-mechanics-discuss.78412/#post-2389938

[8]https://archive.is/g1PIu

[9]https://archive.is/cDK0E