Still have some things to wrap up before I continue the story, but in regards to the writing, I hate that they've brought back and emphasized one of the worst elements of Fallout 3: people eating 200-year-old food products.

Radiation causing some creatures to mutate instead of killing them? Okay, that's a common trope, easy enough to accept for the sake of a good time. It's a bit of pseudoscience hand-waving that allows us to have fun fantasy elements in a setting.

But radiation preserving food and beverages for hundreds of years? Come on. It's just too much. Yeah, I recall a few items like Nuka Cola in the early games, but Fallout 3 really cranked up the crazy by adding a lot more of these items and some quests about finding them.

And Fallout 4 takes it even further: Groups of raiders are actually fighting over access to stockpiles of these magically preserved goods. So damn stupid... It's like the writers think the nuclear apocalypse happened two months ago instead of 200 years ago.

How about raiders fighting over who gets to extort food from which farms? One gang taking 'protection payments' to fend off another gang? Raiding each other for slaves?

No, we get a subplot about groups of raiders fighting over a stockpile of snack cakes. Freaking 200-year-old snack cakes. Maybe it's supposed to be funny? It's not. And neither are the constant "hur-hur, corporations sure are evil" jokes in every other terminal. I mean, do they even hire any actual writers, or do they just pull this stuff out of their asses?

...Sorry. Just needed to vent. The snack cake thing really irritated me for some reason.

On the plus side, I had a blast taking out the Gunners at Mass Pike Interchange. Wasn't wearing power armor when I went up, and the dog hopped out of the elevator, so he wasn't there to help. Lot of Gunners, and the first assaultron I'd encountered. Got spotted right away. There was most definitely a fire fight. ;)

LOL I got through there twice in sneaky mode at night and never noticed there was an elevator. I'll surely take a ride the way up next time I go in this coner of the map, must be a beautiful point of view from the broken highway :o)

If you took your time and did some exploring this exactly happens in the game. These gang rivalries are happening in the background and don't wait for the Sole Survivor to play it in front of his/her eyes.

Obviously you haven't been keeping up with the thread... :P

I hope you're right, but so far, over the course of many locations, the only raider vs. raider conflict desciribed has been one gang at Beantown Brewery attacking another gang at Federal Ration Stockpile, then using the captured sister of the rival gang leader to extort them for snack cakes.

You don't mean the random faction battles, do you? Those are fun but don't really apply when talking about the writing since there's no story to them. If you later go back to an area where you found one, then you'll see that they're just respawning generic shootouts between random groups.

Just wait until you find the Institute. The writing and scripting are so phenomenally bad that I just quit playing and have no interest in going back.

I mean, I will go back. It's just going to take a few more days to get the sour taste out of my mouth.

[url= Also I keep looking forward to February, with the XCOM and Deus Ex sequels, and probably Disgaea for PC as well. That should be nice. Oh and a little thing called Star Wars which is supposedly coming out fairly soon, I guess? You may have heard of it; seems some of the people around here have, too. ][/url]

Yeah, I thought of Zombieland, too. This kind of thing can work in a zombie movie (I did enjoy Zombieland), but going back to what I said before:

I also don't like finding usable pre-war stimpaks, radaway, rad-x, etc. Before playing the newer games, I recall assuming that these things were being made somewhere in the wastelands, probably at a Vault facility (or maybe by people like Myron in Fallout 2). Maybe that was never the idea, I don't know. Been a long time since I played the originals. *shrugs*

Regardless, suspension of disbelief is somewhat easier concerning drugs. The food thing is just ridiculous.

I've been wondering what's up with those guys. I talked some settlers out of killing a human-looking synth early-on, but since then I've killed dozens of hostile Terminator-looking ones.

I did find and help the Brotherhood of Steel, but I declined to join them. I keep hoping to find and join some Gun Runners, but so far no joy. They'd be a perfect fit for characters with the crafting perks.

If your a raider who doesn't want to do the hard work to grow your food, then yes you have to rely on not so great alternatives. Yes it's scientifically stupid. So what? So is a legendary radroach dropping a leather item or wild dogs to carry anything...
In F4 they clearly didn't emphasized it, quite the contrary: any bigger settlement (besides raiders) are relying on self produced food. This actually is just like Obsidian did in NV, leaving the old food in, but not as main food source.

Why raiding other raiders, when you can just go after settlers and caravans? So much easier and actually happening ingame.

LOL, that's also where/when I just wanted to throw the game through the window but we can't do that with digital-only goods :o)

On my new run, I went there and let my gun speaks (just one bullet and I must say that was quite liberating), it was way more efficient and in line with my character than all the stupid pre-made dialogs............

Yes, that too is incredibly stupid. No argument there.

Pre-war food is a main food source for both raiders and the player. It's the subject of the only raider vs. raider subplot that I've seen in the game so far, in which it's explicitly mentioned as being extremely influential in regards to recruiting gang members.

Also remember that the very first Fallout game featured farming communities (Shady Sands), so Bethesda hasn't done anything revolutionary here. They've slightly backtracked from their own previous idiocy.

Why fight to the death over snack cakes when you can just go after settlers and caravans? Why do real-life gangs fight over turf?

However, you're right in that raiders are supposedly extorting food from Tenpines Bluff and the Abernathy farm. I'll give some credit there. Preston claims (iirc) that raiders are indeed a serious threat in the Commonwealth, but I'm not really seeing that statement reflected much in-game. These two farms, yes, but not much else.

Drumlin Diner keeps getting attacked, but that's a whole other level of stupidity: There's a giant, well-defended, self-sufficient, welcoming community right up the road, but Trudy and her son insist on living in the diner... and worse still, they apparently won't allow the player to build some turrets to defend the place.

The Gunners have a lot of bases, but they don't seem to be doing much of anything with them. My settlements haven't been attacked, or the attacks have been so negligible as to not even be noticeable. Cambridge seems to have been a toll area of some sort, but the BoS took those guys out well before the player arrives.

I'd love to come across something interesting involving the raiders. Maybe a group of raiders establishing themselves as the warrior class in some sort of feudal system with farmers as serfs? Or even just groups like the Great Khans who have an interesting story or culture and produce drugs or some other commodity. Or maybe just some kind of very serious raider threat.

One of the first things you discover after stepping out of the vault, is a cooking station with about 10 times the recipes, as pre-war food available. And they're everywhere. If pre-war food is a main source for you, then because you decided so.

Yes, Shady Sands. That one single occurrence that changes it all.... what about everyone besides Shady Sands in F1 or how was it done in F2? It's too long since I last played but.... not even happening at all?

SPOILERS ahead
The Gunners started as a raider gang, Saugus Ironwork inhabitet by the raider gang that actually defeated the Gunners, Thicket Excavations turning into a raider stronghold once cleared, the secret of Cabot house questline....

Yes it would be great if one could join any faction, including different raider gangs, Gunners, with power struggles and double-crossing included (what Bethesda actually did with the main quest). Hell, I'd love to play as a ghoul in this game, including having to wear facemask / disguise talking to certain people.
Yes it would be even greater, if such actions would cause ripples throughout the world. The problem with a such simulated world is, you risk the waves getting to big. You may end up pulling on one string too much and the whole thing comes crashing down.

It seems to me you're asking for such a level of simulation in Bethesda's world, that I haven't seen done before or at least not within the last 10 years. And don't dare to claim New Vegas....

Fallout 4 is like more about exploring and mass effect like shooter than actual rpg but it is still good game. It reminds me of Skyrim a good deal. Did I want that? Not so much. Still, it's really fun well, when it doesn't stutter. =)
It did come quite sudden so my hype level and expectations were not so high than other people.
I mean I've tried new vegas, some hours, didn't go so far. I played fall 3 though but it was so many years ago that I don't really remember.. but wasn't it basically mostly the same. You cleared some place from super mutants.

Sometimes it feels that you are not a master of yourself when talking. Especially because you don't see in vanilla game what are you going to say and that's pretty assholish thing to do.

I also wanted to be a prostitute, I've heard that you can be in fall 1 and 2. But i got stuck on the door. So I didn't go so far. =)

hmm.. Just rambling again. don't make a big deal out of that.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=566481784

since you always saw little chem labs and chem makers in all the fallouts (dude you had to find sugar bombs to make ultra jet), I always assumed they were made now. However, with how they have things set up in F4, it does make it seem like it's more left over meds from 200 yrs ago. I never thought about it before, but yeah, drugs most definately have half-lives, and there is no way in fuck any of them have lasted 20 yrs let alone 200.

And zombieland was a great movie :) although, I have this weird thing for Woody Harrelson, so I always assume bias.

Some screenshots of F4 if it had been made with isometric view:
http://imgur.com/gallery/ODV3U

Although the game is stylised 1950s style (or whatever it is), it is pretty clear some aspects of the technology 200 years before (the start of the game) are supposed to be ahead of us in some ways. So I don’t see it being a difficult or unwarranted suspension of disbelief to just accept they had vastly superior capacity for producing food that can be stored or drugs that will last huge amounts of time.

This seems even more obvious given the backdrop of potential/likely nuclear war where I can easily imagine vast amounts of resources, of that already superior technology, being used to make all produced food capable of lasting in case of a sudden nuclear war (similar with drugs).

I am not saying it is realistic, I am saying it is believable in the context of the game world which is all that counts.