THANK YOU! Man I Really don't like my player character being voiced. People always say "it's weird having a silent protagonist" but I've never seen it that way, YOU fill in the silence with your voice and response. These games that have the character just talk all the time is such a pet-peeve of mine.
It would be weird having a silent protagonist in a game in which everything about that character is predetermined, like the character of Arthur in RDR2, but there's a lot of confusion about the difference between a predetermined character and a character the player creates from the whole cloth of thier own imagination and it's showing in the RPG genre... big time. Bethesda got innumerable requests for a voiced protagonist in their games. People were saying it seemed "dated" for the player character not to be voiced, but that's because a generation of players had become accustomed to prewritten, voiced protagonists in various other kinds of video games. Needless to say, Bethesda implemented it in Fallout 4 with a ME-style dialogue wheel and one of the first mods ever produced got rid of the dialogue wheel; one of the next silenced the protagonist or tried to. There was a tremendous outcry, etc. I think Bethesda got the short end of the stick on that one. They were doing what they thought their playerbase predominately wanted them to be doing. I don't think there was anything nefarious in the intention, as some say, but it restricted both the writers and players to the point of harming replayability and, even, proper story development. Part of the problem is the sheer volume of specific requests and expectations coming from the playerbase itself. "The squeaky wheel gets the grease" and all that, when the loudest doesn't necessarily represent the wishes of the vast majority.
I think in a true RPG, I don't want a voiced character. Not because I "insert myself" but because a voiced protagonist inherently limits how much variety you can have in dialogue choices. Not only that, but the nuances of voice acting contributes greatly to their characterization, so in any case, the protagonist is going to be limited in what their personality is. Even if the acting is great, this will be a problem. However, in a non-RPG, nine times out of ten I prefer a voiced protagonist. I think it's bizarre when an NPC says something to the protagonist and there is zero response, especially when it's a question or something that should be particularly important. I'll give two examples of games I love: Dishonored and Metro. In the former, Corvo is the royal protector and (secretly) lover of the queen. When she is murdered in front of him while the villain monologues and his daughter is taken captive... why does he have no response? He isn't a blank slate, he has quite a strong relationship with the characters and world around him. In that first game, I don't feel like I'm playing as Corvo, I feel like I'm playing as a floating sword. The sequel sorta corrected this issue. Him and Emily are voiced, but the direction they were given I think overemphasized the low-key attitude to the point where it feels they lack a bit of agency. You don't want to go too far (Forspoken), but if it's so little it almost loops back around to the silent issue. In the Metro games, it's a similar problem where characters will literally ask Artyom questions (like, his wife) and he will straight-up have no response, but THEN the NPC's react as though he did! It's like Dora the Explorer! Super non-immersive in these instances. But yes, in an actual RPG, I prefer a "silent" protagonist.
@@aedof I suspect much is lost in translation between different cultures as has been the case with other forms of media, but Utilitarian is the word for the quest systems of the most celebrated "RPGs" today. The systems themselves literally exist primarily to guide players to locations the developers want players to experience and, predominately, to drop unique items for players to pick up as hilariously demonstrated here: ruclips.net/video/g4RKDGybO0s/видео.html (That particular game is being celebrated for its outstanding artistic direction, combat system, PvP and co-op gameplay, imo.) Western triple A titles are no different and I think the trend toward Skinner box game design, especially, has as much to do with AI experimentation as anything else. The confusion between games that have a Utilitarian narrative and role playing games with true player agency may be ingrained for good.
@@lrinfi Being as this video is about RPG's I'm referring to RPG games specifically. Of course voices can work like in The Witcher or Mass Effect as you're playing a version of a character. But when it comes to RPG's where you can create you're own, for me it just doesn't work. Something Bethesda has always dropped the ball on is how they set up your character. They always give them too much backstory. Fallout 3 I'm always born in the vault, Fallout 4 I'm always born before the war and lived in a settled down American suburb. FNV you were just delivering something and got shot in the head, Pillars you were just traveling with a camp. There's so much there to play with. Outer Worlds you were just on an abandoned ship. I know a lot of people that love games with VO and would find it weird with out it, they just would. But it does suck for people like me, that want to more finely tune what their character is. For me VO just gives too much character to them that I have no control over. It isn't my character anymore. Like in Fallout 4 I wanted to be an Irish immigrant, that lived in a hut. But with the voice and the story of me looking for my son, it's very hard to ignore, especially when dialogue referring to your son is present a lot. But of course it's a balance any dev has to make, I can sit here and list all the things that makes my perfect game, but that may not be the majority interest. So it is what it is, but will try to voice my opinion because I want games made that I like haha.
@@henseltbrumbleburg3752 I know this comment is nearly a year old, but I just got around to modding Fallout 4, and if this is your experience with it and you play on pc, I highly recommend Start Me Up Redux and Silent Protagonist. with SMU, you can choose to have your character be from outside the vault, and it edits dialogue accordingly, down to changing your relationship with Shaun. silent protag does what it says on the tin.
I had to chuckle when you talked about multiple endings. Found myself talking to the screen saying: "Well, yeah. That's you, man! You did that!" Not the only one, of course, but you've been a much larger part of the reason games have multiple endings than you would probably ever give yourself credit for being.
Agreed. If it wasn't for Fallout, a lot of "RPGs" made in the last 30 years would still have single-path, single-ending storylines, with low or zero reactivity. I don't think a lot of people realize how influential Tim Cain's contributions have been to the state of the entire art. On a completely different note, as a random example, the word "Perk" was introduced into gaming through Fallout 1.
Depending on what about those experiences you want more of, Tyranny scratches some of those same itches for me if you don't mind fantasy. It's more party based, but the world is CRAZY reactive to your choices and the story and setting are some of the best I've seen in any game, period. And Tim worked on it, too!
@@LordHengun I really enjoyed Tyranny precisely for the reasons you line out as well, being able to do vastly different playthroughs was amazing. There was a lot of diverging paths.
I like the idea of RPGs with a reactive economy, like looting a store can cause it to go under and will be closed next time you visit. Even though you weren't caught there was still a consequence for being a thief.
while not an RPG, dishonored 2 responds to you robbing the black market stores you can find throughout if you rob too many of them, future ones will be shut down and inaccessible for purchases or robberies
Kenshi comes to mind with a lot of these, although its a very open ended sort of sandbox RPG. No real ending but it’s engaging with all the characters and stories within it.
Also, it handles gender and mysoginie well! Like I hate when a game doesn't have women players will justify it for the worse reasons....Ok...here we have a game with those specific reasons in it, and you can still be women and they can still rock.
@@realbillyb I don't want to tell someone their favorite game wasn't fun, but my "cultural historian" goggles tell me that KOTOR 1 was a hit more as a power fantasy, playing as a Jedi in a playground more free than any that had come before it-- than as a narrative experience-- whereas KOTOR 2 which did not use amnesia, and instead just had a main character who didn't want to talk about her past-- has a story that more stands the test of time
though I'm also selling KOTOR 1 short by saying it had amnesia. KOTOR 1 isn't an amnesiac protagonist, he has plenty of memories, they're just wrong. The interesting part of KOTOR 1 is "If you implanted someone with fake memories would it impact how they played" and it did realize itself interestingly in player choices where, yeah, the first time you play through you want to be good, and then your second time you want to be evil, but also, wait, did learning my character's history impact my decisions of whether to be good or evil? THAT'S very cool.
You made an interesting point in this video about games forcing you to be good/evil. I think it would be interesting to see a video about morality and morality systems in game design!
What I like in an RPG is you ;) for real though only after discovering this channel have I realized you have been an integral part to the games I loved as a kid and still love today as an adult. Thank you for being a solid thread in the vast tapestry of millions of people's lives, such as my own. It's my dream to do even a fraction of the same in my own games
i love this vlog series. Thank you for this. its been fun to watch and get a little "behind the scenes" of some of our fave games, as well as see the passion you have for just gaming in general.
One of my biggest criticisms of Outer Worlds was the reliance on combat to fill exploration time. If I’m gonna be a suave silver tongue devil I don’t wanna have to mass murder nameless raiders. Also the perfect ending that basically says the colony is screwed without the board is total BS. Love you Tim❤❤
In my game I fully brought the board to heel and got a great ending. Maybe their logic is that if you utterly dismantle the entire system of government during a crisis then yeah people are frakked. It makes sense to me. I think for the raiders the idea is that if your charater isn't a fighter, their leadership will let the companions handle the fights or the sneaking around. You can't always negotiate with everyone, especially nutjobs. But I agree that the game was overly reliant on always chaotic evil one dimensional raider nutjobs.
I've heard that criticism quite a lot: that players didn't have a chance just to explore the space between settlements or what have you and enjoy some quiet time, instead being met with combat at every turn. They might have chosen to handle that differently in hindsight, but developers of "open worlds" of one kind or another seem almost to be afraid of their games being called "empty." Go out in the wilderness of the real world, though, and while it's hardly empty, it's also not filled with nothing but predators out to kill you. It's another of those delicate balance that's probably not as easy to get right as it sounds.
That bit about "why wouldn't I watch a movie instead" goes straight to my heart. I enjoy RPGs because it feels like I'm taking part in the story, but having a game be made like that means you almost can't have any kind of real pacing. The good thing about that is, I'm having so much fun being a part of the story that I don't even care about the pacing! Fallout New Vegas did probably the best job with this, because there's a lot of critical path but very little of it is actually required, so the story is pretty much just anything you choose to do. I like a lavishly animated cutscene, but the best videogames ever made that focus on their story would struggle to compete quality-wise with a mid-season episode of Person Of Interest. It's being a part of the experience that makes games great
On voice over: I generally prefer VO to be very sparingly used, basically to set a tone for some important characters. I think it's sadly very underappreciated for the player (or reader) to be given the opportunity to exercise their imagination. I think in general, for me, if I have to in my head build a soundscape, it sticks a lot more.
Yeah I agree, i believe with fallout 1/2 it works quite well because quite frankly the overall graphics of the game although are charming and appealing to me, are quite lacking and the limited items and sprites don't provide individuality. The same sprites get reused but on fallout 1/2 case, it was probably a time/budget/hardware limitation maybe? The talking heads help you immerse yourself more into the game and allow you to directly communicate facing them. But yeah, with a RPG, I agree with what you said :) o
Hey Tim, since you're an avid RPG player, have you ever played any Gothic games? I just adore Gothic 2, it was childhood favorite of mine but sadly flew under the radar and it was overshadowed in 2002 by Morrowind (even tho it's better in my opinion) since it's a German game made by a small studio, it didn't really get a push on US market. By the way, just wanna say how glad I am to have found this channel! You're such a handsome, wholesome and funny guy that's as passionate about games as I am, if not more. Really enjoying these videos, just keep them coming!
I loved how my character didn't have a set background in FO1, only that I was from the Vault. I hated FO3 and FO4 settling me with 'family' members I wanted nothing to do with and could never find my self caring about. FO3 did so much well but I never really felt I had a choice during the main quest. I would have rather joined the Enclave and helped John Henry Eden rebuild. I would have loved to be able to talk him into understanding that the ghouls and mutants, etc. are all still American citizens.
On your trope of amnesia, I found a way it worked in something I read a while ago. To gain power they have to sacrifice their memories the more memories they sacrifice the more power they would get but essentially lose their sense of self in the process so much that eventually they'd lose the reason they sought power in the first place. Always thought that would be a great place to start a story in an RPG.
@@alexfrank5331 and you have a bunch of people that knew you both friends and enemies talking about what you used to be like but from their perspective and have to try and figure out if you should help one side or another with your new found powers.
Fascinating insight. I love linear preset story rpgs (jrpgs usually). But I enjoyed hearing your informed, different perspective. The genre is so vast and there are so many preferences
It's interesting that Disco Elysium goes against almost every single point made in the video (predetermined protagonist name, amnesia, pre-written story with mostly strict progression, weak ending variety), intentionally so for most of these, and is still widely considered one of the best RPGs of recent years
It is a novel blended with rpg really. However, although protagonist has a lot of prewritten story, he's quite flexible in traits, skills, ideas and political views, which makes this game surprisingly repayable. The game world also reacts very well to player choices. Worth noting also, the amnesia is not used to delete players past, but to create natural and immersive (re)discovery of it. So there's probably nuance to the amnesia point.
gotta say my favorite part of outerworlds was doing a playthrough aligned with the corp. Just seeing that there was this entirely different path through the game was pretty awesome, more stuff like that plz.
5:01 Oh, agreed here. Voiced protagonists are great if you are playing a specific character. For example, V in Cyberpunk. No matter what you look like, you’re still V. Or Shepherd in Mass Effect. No matter what you look like, you’re still Shepherd. But any game that allows you to choose, for example, what species you are? What specialties you have? What your background is? Your general personality? There is currently no way to voice characters to reflect that kind of diversity. (Looking at you, Inquisition.) You would have to be able to include so many permutations to reflect character build, background and personality that it would be infeasible. In those cases, silent protagonists are just the best choice. I’ve seen some games do some minimal voicing of like grunts or throwaway lines that you can use to help define your personality in game and that can work, but a fully voiced protagonist generally means you are not playing your character, you’re playing a character somebody else created. Side note - I love the throwaway lines in BG3. Playing as the Dark Urge and having your character just randomly say to themselves “Intestines throb, blood whispers.” Or “Was I sweet once?” It works with the story really well and doesn’t remove your connection to your character because they are literally intrusive thoughts. And they give you multiple options so you can match body types and personality baselines.
I have seen a trend with RPG backgrounds being based on a profession. If at character creation. A player could choose a location of their background. This would grant a character knowledge of famous people, supply sources, locations, trade routes, haunted stories, laws, economy, wildlife, and historical events that happened in a region of the world.
One of the things I look for in RPGs is clearly defined roles or classes. I am not a fan of many of today's RPGs tendency towards making a "universal character" that's good in every situation, or blending the lines between character classes. If I am playing a paladin, I'm okay with being locked out of thief skills or vice versa. I also like it when the game reacts to me differently based on the type of character that I am playing. It seems to me that many RPGs these days are really just adventure game power fantasies. And that's perfectly fine for the people who want that. I'm not throwing shade at people for enjoying what they enjoy. It's just that for me personally, I find that boring.
Tim love these! Would love to see you talk about what you think about the newer fallouts (3 and 4 to be specific) maybe its not your place, but I would love your thoughts on this.
For me in the character creation i like making a team and imagine some roles on the characters and their background and stuff, games like final fantasy 1 and the dark spire do a job really well with that for me and i like to choose my stats when i level up like the fallout and SMT that i can invest whatever i want and having full control of it.
Planescape also goes against some of these. The Nameless One is itself a name and the entire story hinges on amnesia. Except it’s one the best crpgs ever made imo. I will say it’s a good deal more visual novel-y than any of the other infinity games.
Re : Voice over for a main character that you create. For some reason it bothers me if there's no voice over but I can actually see my character interacting in a scene. Felt weird in Dragon Age Origins for example. Everyone talking except you in a scene shown like a movie/theater play. Outer Worlds, New Vegas, Elder Scrolls, etc. don't bother me because I'm seeing the scene through my eyes. Maybe just a quirk of mine :)
I agree. A lot of imerssion comes from you completely controling the character. I even think it is great that Skyrim doesn't even use cutscenes. You are the charactere from the moment the title drops.
Amnesia. That could be a topic for a video. Not really amnesiac characters, but alternatives to that. Like, having a character begin the game as a child, or as he gets to a new place, or even if that (having a character that doesn't know what's going on around him) is needed/desirable.
I do think the VO in FO4 is why my first character was very different to how I normally am. His voice sounds like a suburban dad, my character places rescuing Shaun as top priority because the game kept making my character act like it was the most important thing. My character joined the BoS, he's ex-military and likes their structure and they hate the Insitute. Being pre-war, I imagined the synths would scare the crap out of him. So he wasn't particularly friendly with synths. When I downloaded a mod for an alternative start and that gave me a silent protagonist. My enjoyment went up a lot. Hell, doesn't even need to be that special. My first playthrough of Outer Worlds my character was a gunslinger/Union delegate
Over all I do not want a voiced protagonist in my Bethesda RPGs but for some reason I like it in FO4. It creates a lot of problems but I am just impressed that they went for it. Their ownly other game with VO is Redguard, which is an advanture game an not an RPG, so them just trying it out for a big sandbox RPG with hundreds of lines stood out. I do agree that the voice changes the way you roleplay but I am fine with it if it stays a one time thing.
Yes. Character Creation is the most important aspect of an RPG, in my humble opinion also. I also like a dynamic alignment based on the characters choices. Multiple endings for horror games are great, but it could be nice for an RPG as well.
Planescape Torment doesn't let you to name your character though, for specific reason xD Player VO sucks for me, but sometimes even dialogue options are frustrating. Especially when a character talks about something interesting and all my options are "Shut up, I have to go." I am really interested in these NPC stories sometimes and my character does something I wouldn't do personally and I feel the disconnect. Some other things I dislike in RPGs except my character hurrying and being uninterested are when they only have one option in situations where it is not logical to only do one thing, or timed events like "You only have 1 day or else" I am okay when the timer is long like days or weeks, but especially in various sidequests, having limited time often sucks. I want to talk about things in RPGs and specifically Fallout SO much, but if I did that, I would write a 2 hour speech here in this comment and it would be boring. I would SO love to meet Tim some day and have a chat, but I know it is not possible, I live in central Europe xD
I've noticed a smaller amount of bloodlines videos on this channel than I expected. Curious to hear more on the development process of bloodlines and your thoughts looking bad xx
Player Character VO: it is so jarring when my player character is voiced! There is a newer game out now (I won’t name it) that I had been hotly anticipating for months. Then it dropped, and I was just deflated to learn that not only was the player character a chatter box- he was kind of a jerk. And, maybe a bit stupid. It was really disappointing, and it’s only one of dozens of games I can point to wherein I’m asked to inhabit a character, and a talented, grizzled voice actor is speaking my words out for me. Video games are (for me) firing on all cylinders when they are 2nd person perspective pieces of fiction that don’t have a narrator saying “You then do ______”, but instead just use the camera to show you. I digress. I love these videos, you always get me thinking! Thank you!
I think of i covered the same topic it would be flagged as plagiarism, haha, i feel the same about most of these aspects, which is why Fallout and Elder Scrolls are the top RPGs to me, especially Morrowind. Im sure alot of us are curious how you feel about Morrowind specifically, it seems like it would be your cup of tea, and since you didn't work on it, but have made similar games then alot of us are curious how you feel.
I totally agree with you on player VO. I get confused anytime people mention the death of the silent protagonist. Like, they're not silent when you have to click on dialogue options just because you have to read it.
4:27 I'm with you Tim. Maybe this is why the Witcher series never clicked with me: I had to "roleplay" through mountains of dialog with a pre-made character that didn't resonate with me.
I do really like when companions in party oriented games dont get along and have strong personalities that dont compromise easily ( unless you do their loyalty quest, i guess lol)
Hey Tim, I'm wondering about your opinion on Japanese RPGS. A lot of them have a pretty different design philosophy from what you've talked about, but there's such a breadth of them that I wonder if there are any that you enjoy. Love the channel!
A lot of them seem to be much more focused on the progression aspect than the branching story or character customization aspect. Things like jobs in some Final Fantasy games allow for a huge number of different combinations, even though you're basically playing the same characters in the same story every time.
Imo they shouldn't even be considered RPGs, especially the newer ones. Someone above me mentioned the job system in some FFs but there's barely any JRPG that does that anymore and not even FF does it, also persona games for example have characters with predetermined backstories and they're basically their own person but for some reason they're silent which is really weird, the only choices you make is with social links and then again they're very limited choices and barely affect anything
I think a lot of fundamentals play an unsung role in an rpg in the way I like. Itemization is very important concerning Arcanum, for example, because with skill points (A VERY important "currency" in Acanum concerning your character) a character can change some items into others by crafting. It's a direct representation of your character to have that item in your inventory. (To be fair other characters you recruit may also craft.)
I don't like set characters personally, would always prefer creating at least the main character. I can work with set characters as long as you have plenty and they really can be what you want them to be, instead of a set role. (Saga Frontier for playstation handled this well. Characters had growth biases but they were negligible and that brutish warrior could still be your best mage in around the same time, as a mage character would)
You mean to say this video was not about your favourite aspects of a rocket propelled grenade? Speaking of RPG's a game thats in early access and i believe you should try is called project zomboid, its extremely immersive but yet has no story and is about to get NPC's. Everything is very dynamic and detailed. Brief background on the small english team, they were (and are) very ambitious and wanted to have so many features, eventually they decided the voxel/sprites would be better suited as 3D assets, they had to take 4 steps (wasting 2-4 years taking things out, putting things back, tweaking etc) back and now have a really great foundation, everything to me is perfect and the mods make it so much better. The big hook of the game is "this is how you died" and when you die you take on the roll of another character in the same world, you can eventually find your old dead self. The character creation is okay now, mods to me made it so much better, and expands the negative traits to inlclude, being a smoker, having broken legs (that can heal) even having schizophrenia (random things appear and sounds change, when panicked this exacerbates the problems). But yeah, thanks for sharing Tim!
I don't have a problem with a voiced protagonist. It does seriously affect how you view and play the game, but I can work with either without any real problem. I've never viewed RPG protagonists as avatars of myself. They either have a personality to begin with (voiced more often than not) or they'll get one of my choosing--and this might be anything, but will often be influenced by the setting. We approach the game from that point going forward. I view this as a continuum and not an either/or sort of thing. I'll work with whatever is given and the journey forward is where the fun is going to be.
Maybe the real consequences in the RPG are the friends we made along the way? Joke aside I like even having companions with endings and goals, and even optional quests that help flesh them out as characters
5:28 i completely agree, its especially egegious in games like Dragon Age 2 and Fallout 4. If im making my own character, i dont wanna hear their voice. A grunt, or a reaction to getting hit/shot, thats fine but other than that its like you said, it takes away so much agency just with the manner the Voice actor speaks, cadence, tone. It takes me right out of the immersion.
I'd absolutely _love_ to hear your overall impressions (NOT a review) of Baldur's Gate 3, just considering what an interesting revival/continuation it is of the style of rpgs you were personally involved in creating! Thank you for opening up your insight in this way!
What I liked most about the FO1 ending was that it had a double condition. Being able to prioritize The Master or Lou and one making the other easier by quests (eg the nuke key Lou holds) and simply by where you get loot/exp for the final push first, is much more interesting than the classic "Here, there he is, the biggest guy in the game. You whack him - you're done 🎉"
One over used story element, along with the "amnesia" one: the "brainwashed" trope. A former ally now has been brainwashed and turns into the antagonist and then somehow you can get them to get some sense into being the good guy again, sorta what they did in the first Avengers movie.
I really like those as well, but I was surprised at how much I enjoyed roleplaying the fixed character Geralt in the Witcher. It's one of these "constraints breed creativity" situations. The fact that I was playing my version of an existing character made me roleplay more than I usually do with freeform characters (who tend to be chaotic good clever ranged people). Was I playing Compassionate Geralt, or the Butcher of Blaviken? There were a surprising number of options that all felt true to the character, but also fully respected my choices. The only time the game resisted me was on my dislike of Yennefer, Geralt would radically change my choices to grovel at her feet, but that was fully justified by the lore (and eventually resolvable).
You're absolutely right about player voice acting. It completely takes me out of the role-playing part of the game. I can no longer be me or be the character that *I* came up with. So glad Bethesda opted out of it for Starfield.
I think there might be a problem about progression when it's not playstyle/acting gaining you some useful perks, but perks forcing you to have a certain playstyle/acting.
My definition for a Role Playing Game is pretty easy but so many RPGs don't qualify. Choices and consequences(world reactivity) in all three pillars: Character behavior(dialogue choices AND actions) Combat(this is how i build, customize and equip my character) Story(branching events that i can significantly affect) This is the absolute minimum for an RPG and the more the world reacts to my choices the better i like it. If a game only has 2 out of 3 it's a '-genre- with RPG elements' and if it has all three it's an RPG.
Not surprisingly I agree with most of your points - not surprising as your RPGs shaped my tastes :-). Two points I wouldn’t sign myself under: 1) naming the protagonist. Frankly, I am just bad at it. I find it very difficult to get a feel for what would be an appropriate name for a character when I start a new RPG. I always appreciate some kind of build-in random generator, so I can keep rerolling until it feels right 2) creating my character - somewhat. I generally want it, but Planescape and Disco Elysium stand as examples of what I would consider great RPGs that don’t have that - not on start at least. I suppose though, that those are two of the very few examples that do the “amnesiac” trope well. I might be assigned the character, but he is still mine to define and shape. I do enjoy a good character generator though.
Wow I discovered your channel a few days ago and I absolutely love it. I played Fallout 1 such a long time ago, I was a teenager and it must have been one of my first RPG on computer alongside Baldur's Gate 1. It was such an amazing game, I still remember it and, sometimes, play it again. I never knew who was lead design on that game but I am glad I do now ! I watched some of your videos so far and the one about design pillars was so enlightening ! I feel a lot of people in the business today could get inspired by this type of guidelines. I wonder if you would recommend some YT chanels or blogs held by game designers to follow/read ? For now I only follow you and Josh Sawyer (Pillars, amazing game)
I think an interesting discussion in RPGs is authorship of the player character. You (and I, and most CRPG fans) seem to prefer as much player authorship as possible, so that we can decide how our character sounds, what they believe, where they're from, etc. I think, interestingly, fallout has a pretty diverse range of player authorship, bookended by Fallout 1 and Fallout 4. Dragon Age has a similar progression.
I really like it when I have specific role archetypes that are inclusive enough for me to base a character around. Start with fighter, mage, thief. Add niches / roles like assassin, conversationalist / social worker, femme fatale, psycho, engineer / magitek wonderworker, etc.
9:00 Very interesting to hear you say that because that's almost exactly what happens in VTMB. There is so much unnecesary combat at the end of the game, that if you've not specced into combat skills, you'll have a hard time finishing the game. It's one of my favourite RPGs of all time, but the ending was really tough on my first playthrough cause I focused on maxing out my social skills and kind of neglected combat.
@@theobell2002 But they have it quite a lot, especially compared to similiar games? Just look up the amount of random events that can happen in Skyrim because of you done a specific quest or you stole from a NPCs.
Hi Tim! You bringing up consequence to player agency made me think of the Childkiller "perk" in Fallout, and the removal (mostly) of children in the PAL release. Can you talk about your experiences working with censorship and/or publisher mandates, and how (or if) they affected development throughout your career?
This explains so well to everyone why I didn't like Fallout 4, even Fallout 3 had issues, but Fallout 4, it is not an RPG it is a Farcry game in a Fallout setting.
Although it's not really an RPG, Prey 2017 (which I recently completed for the first time) ticks a lot of these boxes. Skill progression (whether or not you choose to use alien powers) is related to the story and changes the way the world reacts to you, there are multiple ways to accomplish the same goal that result in different context, the game can be completed in pretty much any playstyle albeit with varying levels of difficulty and it even has its own version of ending slides. You do play as a pre-defined character with amnesia (and voice over, although you only hear recordings of yourself from the past), but the game never prescribes any personality or belief system to you and it's up to the player to decide the meaning behind their actions.
What I don't like is when a game forces me to make. choice between 2 options, and I feel like I don't like either of these options but I gotta make that choice anyway in order to progress in the game. Especially when that happens too early in the game and I'm not invested in it yet... I kind of feel that Outer Worlds did that and it contributed to me stopping playing quite soon (but I also got busy and for a long time didn't play any games at all so it's not just that). In Dragon Age: Origins I had to early on make a choice I didn't like. In Skyrim there's a choice that I did not like making because both options felt bad, but I could play that game forever, endlessly, progressing my character and doing non-main-story quests and just wander around and explore and so I played that a lot regardless, never moving the main story to the point I would be forced to choose Stormcloaks or Imperials.
I was directed here by another, and for the most part, agree with what you say. The only exception, is in story telling and world. I absolutely hate Alternate Endings and the illusion of 'Choice and Consequence' in RPGs. It has never improved a narrative, more often than not actively making them worse. It's simply not something that's feasible in a system with no constant creative input to react player decisions, and attempts to do so always lead to the creation of a world where the Player has the ONLY narrative agency rather than every actor in the world appearing to have some. It is the most jarring, most inconsequential and most narratively damaging attempt at adding 'Complexity' to a setting that ultimately strips everything of consequence and turns story beats into nothing more than a Player Death and Reload.
I could only assume you mean how some games have entirely different endings predicated on a single choice the player's made, usually at the end, because this seems inapplicable to how games like Fallout handle it. That being a recap and tally of the different choices the player's made and how it affects different locations and characters.
I 100% agree on the one character creation. I cannot get into roleplaying many character, it gets me out of the game. It's also hard enough to create a build for one, creating a balance party of 4 is asking so much to the player right at the start whereas companion you'll find will have prebuilt expectation. I find it very overwhelpming.
the problem with locking perks behind skills is that it may force players to invest in a skill they're not interested in. because that perk could be useful with whatever (combat) skill they prefer and also be the most overpowered thing in the game. new vegas avoided this with some perks since they simply required a certain skill level in either combat skill (for example either x points in energy weapons OR guns), but forced skill investment with others (for example piercing strike was really powerful with both melee and unarmed, but you HAD to heavily invest in unarmed even if you're only interested in melee).
Hi Tim. I'm curious, do you have a preference regarding random vs deterministic skill/attribute checks in dialogues/world interactions in RPGs? ie player 1 has 8 skill in repair DICE ROLL lands on 3, 3+8 = 11, success required 15 therefore player FAILS. Meanwhile, player 2 with 3 skill in repair DICE ROLL 14, 14 + 3 = 17, success requires 15 therefore player SUCCEEDS. vs repair success requires 6, player 1 will always success, player 2 will always fail. No dice rolls. Games you've worked on have used both, I am wondering if your preference shifted or perhaps sometimes it just wasn't your call. Loving these videos, thank you.
Although I generally agree with your point about RPGs being most effective when they evolve around a central character that you create. the Wasteland series has historically proven that you can create an entire party of characters but still have the world function around "you" in a sense. The characters that you create are part of a collective fueled by an ideology and set of guidelines in The Rangers. People react to your group, the world reacts to your group, and your group isn't viewed as the sum of its parts, but as the whole. It's handled remarkably well. But as the creator of the Fallout series, I'm sure that you're more than familiar with Wasteland's design principles.
Interesting. I prefer worlds that don't revolve around the player character, but feel as though they would go on just fine without "you" when you close the game. That's why I found the arrival of the BOS in Fallout 4 sorely misplaced. They obviously wanted for the BOS to make a big, theatrical entrance, but they might have made their entrance (and perhaps not been the BOS at all) a few days after getting the transmitter from Arcjet Systems because the world feels utterly dead and lifeless until there are Minutemen and BOS patrols roving about the game world and things are going on that have nothing whatsoever to do with whatever you happen to be doing at any given time, but since I play most all the side content before tackling the end of the main quest of any game, the game world was utterly lifeless for almost the entirety of my playthrough. I still want to see reactivity to my own character's or party members' actions and impactful choices that change the game world itself for better or worse, but not the kind of "star of the show"...stuff...most video games are going for these days.
Your comment about voice-over made me think of Fallout 4 and how it disappointed me. It's exactly right what you said, and the voice actor for the main character for FO4 just took me out of it!
I mean I really enjoyed witcher, but for a while I was really pissed that I cannot create my own character. Anyhow I agree with this, lot of games are sold as RPG and you cannot make your character, you cannot make choices during your story, sometimes you don't even have choices doing your dialogue. Having said all of that, I have to admit I enjoyed voice acting in Mass Effect and SWTOR.
Does Tim have any videos on JRPGs? Such a different philosophy. Most have predetermined characters except for those with Western influence (like Dark Souls or FF1).
Great shirt. Combining disney world and Nuka-cola to Nuka World was a stroke of genius. The last creative thing done on Fallout (ever?). I hope a spinoff or f5 being great but the way things have gone i dunno. I agree with make 1 character only foe the player. Branching, multiple endings etc. I pretty much agree 100% with the whole video.
I come at games like movies and books, i step into the role of that character, they aren't me. if i were in an RPG, I'd be cowering in the corner scared, not on an adventure. But i respect the other mindset. I generally like characters with a set personality, name, and such, so I do like JRPGs.
The first point about a single custom character is a reason why I can't play Divinity Original Sin 1. I don't mind occasionally controlling companions but I sure have no desire roleplaying as them in a dialogue.
My preferences are completely aligned with yours, but I have a few additions: - I want the game to be handcrafted. I am giving Daggerfall a go right now and I have hard time getting into the game because no quest feels relevant due to the obvious computer generated nature of it.
I don't mind *some* prodecural generation in a game where it's appropriate, i.e. creating the wonderful worlds to explore that is the hallmark of Bethesda games, for example. Modern games, however, rely overmuch on procedural generation, computer-generated quest systems and the like to produce what should be handcrafted content, e.g. character and story exploration and progression, etc. in the game. There are articles galore regarding the experimentations with AI-generated this and that going in the gaming industry today. It's almost like some development companies don't actually want to develop a game; they want computers to do it for them. I don't think that's going to work out too well for them, but they'll probably have to learn that the hard way.
I played Daggerfall last week and yeah, the lack of handcrafted content really kills it. But I was very intrigued by its design philosophy. Having such big cities that you have to ask around for direction. Having such a big wilderness that you have to plan your travels. I really liked that, a lot more in fact than 3 houses cities and 200m "countries" that we get in open worlds now.
@@nebeskisrb7765 I agree with you. I love TES and think Daggerfall is great but it gets boring much faster. Especially because it has a real focus on dungeons and the dungeons are not even that fun.
Say Tim, not sure if you're thinking on remaining in the tabletop/video game design space or gaming in general now that you're making these videos, but what would you think if you had the opportunity, or were offered the opportunity, to make a Fallout 2d20 or regular d20 game for Modiphius on behalf of Bethesda? Jesse Heinig is also there, and possibly other F1 devs may consider involvement if you were to get in touch or remained in touch with them! I think it would be a really nice conclusion and possibly a little "passing the torch" moment from a few of the men and women responsible for the Fallout we began with to the people who make Fallout the massive franchise we know today. It wouldn't have to be anything big, just a small 20-page expansion, or, if you were up for it, a full-on 100+ page quest book. Just thinking out loud!
This is why I had some problems with Fallout 4 at the beginning. I don't like the idea of a Fallout game telling me exactly who I am/was. Especially the part that I had a wife and a kid. I know it's the important part of the plot...it is the plot haha but I just don't like the idea of the game telling me too much. Myself I would never have a wife(gues why) and all the previous Fallouts didn't impose anything like that on me. In the end I started to like Fallout 4. It's still a great game. I just have to make a backflip with my brain to skip that whole family/wife part. On the other hand there are games like Deus Ex Human revolution where it is quite clear what background Adam has (both professionally and personally) and I had zero problems with it. I guess Fallout was always a big sandbox for me where I could create/re-create myself as I imagined myself in that environment.
THANK YOU! Man I Really don't like my player character being voiced. People always say "it's weird having a silent protagonist" but I've never seen it that way, YOU fill in the silence with your voice and response. These games that have the character just talk all the time is such a pet-peeve of mine.
It would be weird having a silent protagonist in a game in which everything about that character is predetermined, like the character of Arthur in RDR2, but there's a lot of confusion about the difference between a predetermined character and a character the player creates from the whole cloth of thier own imagination and it's showing in the RPG genre... big time.
Bethesda got innumerable requests for a voiced protagonist in their games. People were saying it seemed "dated" for the player character not to be voiced, but that's because a generation of players had become accustomed to prewritten, voiced protagonists in various other kinds of video games. Needless to say, Bethesda implemented it in Fallout 4 with a ME-style dialogue wheel and one of the first mods ever produced got rid of the dialogue wheel; one of the next silenced the protagonist or tried to. There was a tremendous outcry, etc.
I think Bethesda got the short end of the stick on that one. They were doing what they thought their playerbase predominately wanted them to be doing. I don't think there was anything nefarious in the intention, as some say, but it restricted both the writers and players to the point of harming replayability and, even, proper story development.
Part of the problem is the sheer volume of specific requests and expectations coming from the playerbase itself. "The squeaky wheel gets the grease" and all that, when the loudest doesn't necessarily represent the wishes of the vast majority.
I think in a true RPG, I don't want a voiced character. Not because I "insert myself" but because a voiced protagonist inherently limits how much variety you can have in dialogue choices. Not only that, but the nuances of voice acting contributes greatly to their characterization, so in any case, the protagonist is going to be limited in what their personality is. Even if the acting is great, this will be a problem.
However, in a non-RPG, nine times out of ten I prefer a voiced protagonist. I think it's bizarre when an NPC says something to the protagonist and there is zero response, especially when it's a question or something that should be particularly important. I'll give two examples of games I love: Dishonored and Metro. In the former, Corvo is the royal protector and (secretly) lover of the queen. When she is murdered in front of him while the villain monologues and his daughter is taken captive... why does he have no response? He isn't a blank slate, he has quite a strong relationship with the characters and world around him. In that first game, I don't feel like I'm playing as Corvo, I feel like I'm playing as a floating sword. The sequel sorta corrected this issue. Him and Emily are voiced, but the direction they were given I think overemphasized the low-key attitude to the point where it feels they lack a bit of agency. You don't want to go too far (Forspoken), but if it's so little it almost loops back around to the silent issue.
In the Metro games, it's a similar problem where characters will literally ask Artyom questions (like, his wife) and he will straight-up have no response, but THEN the NPC's react as though he did! It's like Dora the Explorer! Super non-immersive in these instances. But yes, in an actual RPG, I prefer a "silent" protagonist.
@@aedof I suspect much is lost in translation between different cultures as has been the case with other forms of media, but Utilitarian is the word for the quest systems of the most celebrated "RPGs" today. The systems themselves literally exist primarily to guide players to locations the developers want players to experience and, predominately, to drop unique items for players to pick up as hilariously demonstrated here: ruclips.net/video/g4RKDGybO0s/видео.html (That particular game is being celebrated for its outstanding artistic direction, combat system, PvP and co-op gameplay, imo.) Western triple A titles are no different and I think the trend toward Skinner box game design, especially, has as much to do with AI experimentation as anything else.
The confusion between games that have a Utilitarian narrative and role playing games with true player agency may be ingrained for good.
@@lrinfi Being as this video is about RPG's I'm referring to RPG games specifically.
Of course voices can work like in The Witcher or Mass Effect as you're playing a version of a character. But when it comes to RPG's where you can create you're own, for me it just doesn't work. Something Bethesda has always dropped the ball on is how they set up your character. They always give them too much backstory. Fallout 3 I'm always born in the vault, Fallout 4 I'm always born before the war and lived in a settled down American suburb. FNV you were just delivering something and got shot in the head, Pillars you were just traveling with a camp. There's so much there to play with. Outer Worlds you were just on an abandoned ship.
I know a lot of people that love games with VO and would find it weird with out it, they just would. But it does suck for people like me, that want to more finely tune what their character is. For me VO just gives too much character to them that I have no control over. It isn't my character anymore. Like in Fallout 4 I wanted to be an Irish immigrant, that lived in a hut. But with the voice and the story of me looking for my son, it's very hard to ignore, especially when dialogue referring to your son is present a lot.
But of course it's a balance any dev has to make, I can sit here and list all the things that makes my perfect game, but that may not be the majority interest. So it is what it is, but will try to voice my opinion because I want games made that I like haha.
@@henseltbrumbleburg3752 I know this comment is nearly a year old, but I just got around to modding Fallout 4, and if this is your experience with it and you play on pc, I highly recommend Start Me Up Redux and Silent Protagonist. with SMU, you can choose to have your character be from outside the vault, and it edits dialogue accordingly, down to changing your relationship with Shaun. silent protag does what it says on the tin.
I had to chuckle when you talked about multiple endings. Found myself talking to the screen saying: "Well, yeah. That's you, man! You did that!" Not the only one, of course, but you've been a much larger part of the reason games have multiple endings than you would probably ever give yourself credit for being.
Agreed. If it wasn't for Fallout, a lot of "RPGs" made in the last 30 years would still have single-path, single-ending storylines, with low or zero reactivity.
I don't think a lot of people realize how influential Tim Cain's contributions have been to the state of the entire art.
On a completely different note, as a random example, the word "Perk" was introduced into gaming through Fallout 1.
As someone who got into Fallout 1 and 2 quite recently, I can’t help but want more experiences like them.
New Vegas and Outerworlds might be up your alley if you haven't played them yet.
@@gooseteeth5455 @pedrofromrio645 on the flipside to that, Wasteland 3 if you want a more top down experience
Depending on what about those experiences you want more of, Tyranny scratches some of those same itches for me if you don't mind fantasy. It's more party based, but the world is CRAZY reactive to your choices and the story and setting are some of the best I've seen in any game, period. And Tim worked on it, too!
@@LordHengun I really enjoyed Tyranny precisely for the reasons you line out as well, being able to do vastly different playthroughs was amazing. There was a lot of diverging paths.
Underrail maybe?
I like the idea of RPGs with a reactive economy, like looting a store can cause it to go under and will be closed next time you visit. Even though you weren't caught there was still a consequence for being a thief.
while not an RPG, dishonored 2 responds to you robbing the black market stores you can find throughout
if you rob too many of them, future ones will be shut down and inaccessible for purchases or robberies
Kenshi comes to mind with a lot of these, although its a very open ended sort of sandbox RPG. No real ending but it’s engaging with all the characters and stories within it.
Based kenshi
i picked that up on the summer sale cant wait to play it
@@nurgle-j5n Its a great game and mods expand on it a lot. Just wish it was a bit better optimized
I've been working on the beginnings of a party top down game, it's been a struggle not being a kenshi clone 😂😂
Also, it handles gender and mysoginie well! Like I hate when a game doesn't have women players will justify it for the worse reasons....Ok...here we have a game with those specific reasons in it, and you can still be women and they can still rock.
The part about character VO rings with me a lot :D You pick "I'm good, thanks", and then your character starts insulting the other person... :D
The best two RPGs I've ever played had amnesia. You're right that it's hackey but Disco Elysium and Planescape: Torment are just *too* good.
I agree, they are great games. Now they used that trope, time for a new one.
I think Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic was also great while having a protagonist with amnesia
@@realbillyb I don't want to tell someone their favorite game wasn't fun, but my "cultural historian" goggles tell me that KOTOR 1 was a hit more as a power fantasy, playing as a Jedi in a playground more free than any that had come before it-- than as a narrative experience-- whereas KOTOR 2 which did not use amnesia, and instead just had a main character who didn't want to talk about her past-- has a story that more stands the test of time
though I'm also selling KOTOR 1 short by saying it had amnesia. KOTOR 1 isn't an amnesiac protagonist, he has plenty of memories, they're just wrong. The interesting part of KOTOR 1 is "If you implanted someone with fake memories would it impact how they played" and it did realize itself interestingly in player choices where, yeah, the first time you play through you want to be good, and then your second time you want to be evil, but also, wait, did learning my character's history impact my decisions of whether to be good or evil?
THAT'S very cool.
Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
You made an interesting point in this video about games forcing you to be good/evil. I think it would be interesting to see a video about morality and morality systems in game design!
Gta 6 will have that
What I like in an RPG is you ;)
for real though only after discovering this channel have I realized you have been an integral part to the games I loved as a kid and still love today as an adult. Thank you for being a solid thread in the vast tapestry of millions of people's lives, such as my own. It's my dream to do even a fraction of the same in my own games
something about transitioning from the chaos of silly youtube videos to the calm of the "hi everyone, it's me Tim" is both jarring and soothing lol
the lip smack especially put me at ease.
i love this vlog series. Thank you for this. its been fun to watch and get a little "behind the scenes" of some of our fave games, as well as see the passion you have for just gaming in general.
Fallout 4 would have been so great if this man was at the helm
...and Fallout 3.
One of my biggest criticisms of Outer Worlds was the reliance on combat to fill exploration time. If I’m gonna be a suave silver tongue devil I don’t wanna have to mass murder nameless raiders. Also the perfect ending that basically says the colony is screwed without the board is total BS. Love you Tim❤❤
In my game I fully brought the board to heel and got a great ending. Maybe their logic is that if you utterly dismantle the entire system of government during a crisis then yeah people are frakked. It makes sense to me.
I think for the raiders the idea is that if your charater isn't a fighter, their leadership will let the companions handle the fights or the sneaking around. You can't always negotiate with everyone, especially nutjobs. But I agree that the game was overly reliant on always chaotic evil one dimensional raider nutjobs.
You can be passive and order your companions to do all the killing (leader/captain build), but yeah, still a lot of combat.
I've heard that criticism quite a lot: that players didn't have a chance just to explore the space between settlements or what have you and enjoy some quiet time, instead being met with combat at every turn. They might have chosen to handle that differently in hindsight, but developers of "open worlds" of one kind or another seem almost to be afraid of their games being called "empty." Go out in the wilderness of the real world, though, and while it's hardly empty, it's also not filled with nothing but predators out to kill you. It's another of those delicate balance that's probably not as easy to get right as it sounds.
@@gargamellenoir8460 As you level up, you can pretty much just avoid the Raiders, as they'll ignore you on the whole. Unless you get too close.
@@lrinfi The Outer Worlds isn't open world though.
That bit about "why wouldn't I watch a movie instead" goes straight to my heart. I enjoy RPGs because it feels like I'm taking part in the story, but having a game be made like that means you almost can't have any kind of real pacing. The good thing about that is, I'm having so much fun being a part of the story that I don't even care about the pacing! Fallout New Vegas did probably the best job with this, because there's a lot of critical path but very little of it is actually required, so the story is pretty much just anything you choose to do.
I like a lavishly animated cutscene, but the best videogames ever made that focus on their story would struggle to compete quality-wise with a mid-season episode of Person Of Interest. It's being a part of the experience that makes games great
On voice over: I generally prefer VO to be very sparingly used, basically to set a tone for some important characters. I think it's sadly very underappreciated for the player (or reader) to be given the opportunity to exercise their imagination. I think in general, for me, if I have to in my head build a soundscape, it sticks a lot more.
Yeah I agree, i believe with fallout 1/2 it works quite well because quite frankly the overall graphics of the game although are charming and appealing to me, are quite lacking and the limited items and sprites don't provide individuality. The same sprites get reused but on fallout 1/2 case, it was probably a time/budget/hardware limitation maybe?
The talking heads help you immerse yourself more into the game and allow you to directly communicate facing them. But yeah, with a RPG, I agree with what you said :) o
Hey Tim, since you're an avid RPG player, have you ever played any Gothic games? I just adore Gothic 2, it was childhood favorite of mine but sadly flew under the radar and it was overshadowed in 2002 by Morrowind (even tho it's better in my opinion) since it's a German game made by a small studio, it didn't really get a push on US market.
By the way, just wanna say how glad I am to have found this channel! You're such a handsome, wholesome and funny guy that's as passionate about games as I am, if not more. Really enjoying these videos, just keep them coming!
I loved how my character didn't have a set background in FO1, only that I was from the Vault. I hated FO3 and FO4 settling me with 'family' members I wanted nothing to do with and could never find my self caring about. FO3 did so much well but I never really felt I had a choice during the main quest. I would have rather joined the Enclave and helped John Henry Eden rebuild. I would have loved to be able to talk him into understanding that the ghouls and mutants, etc. are all still American citizens.
or when new vegas made me the lone wandering courier 😢
On your trope of amnesia, I found a way it worked in something I read a while ago. To gain power they have to sacrifice their memories the more memories they sacrifice the more power they would get but essentially lose their sense of self in the process so much that eventually they'd lose the reason they sought power in the first place. Always thought that would be a great place to start a story in an RPG.
Even better if the game unfolds in reverse-chronological order like the movie Memento
@@alexfrank5331 and you have a bunch of people that knew you both friends and enemies talking about what you used to be like but from their perspective and have to try and figure out if you should help one side or another with your new found powers.
Fascinating insight. I love linear preset story rpgs (jrpgs usually). But I enjoyed hearing your informed, different perspective. The genre is so vast and there are so many preferences
It's interesting that Disco Elysium goes against almost every single point made in the video (predetermined protagonist name, amnesia, pre-written story with mostly strict progression, weak ending variety), intentionally so for most of these, and is still widely considered one of the best RPGs of recent years
That IS an interesting point, because Disco Elysium is a very good game.
It is a novel blended with rpg really. However, although protagonist has a lot of prewritten story, he's quite flexible in traits, skills, ideas and political views, which makes this game surprisingly repayable. The game world also reacts very well to player choices. Worth noting also, the amnesia is not used to delete players past, but to create natural and immersive (re)discovery of it. So there's probably nuance to the amnesia point.
So does the Witcher series, albeit for very different reasons.
its more like a text adventure game with graphics than an rpg
@@dextrodemon It offers multiple builds and diverse roleplaying options to fit each of them. It's definitely an RPG.
gotta say my favorite part of outerworlds was doing a playthrough aligned with the corp. Just seeing that there was this entirely different path through the game was pretty awesome, more stuff like that plz.
5:01 Oh, agreed here. Voiced protagonists are great if you are playing a specific character. For example, V in Cyberpunk. No matter what you look like, you’re still V. Or Shepherd in Mass Effect. No matter what you look like, you’re still Shepherd. But any game that allows you to choose, for example, what species you are? What specialties you have? What your background is? Your general personality? There is currently no way to voice characters to reflect that kind of diversity. (Looking at you, Inquisition.) You would have to be able to include so many permutations to reflect character build, background and personality that it would be infeasible. In those cases, silent protagonists are just the best choice. I’ve seen some games do some minimal voicing of like grunts or throwaway lines that you can use to help define your personality in game and that can work, but a fully voiced protagonist generally means you are not playing your character, you’re playing a character somebody else created.
Side note - I love the throwaway lines in BG3. Playing as the Dark Urge and having your character just randomly say to themselves “Intestines throb, blood whispers.” Or “Was I sweet once?” It works with the story really well and doesn’t remove your connection to your character because they are literally intrusive thoughts. And they give you multiple options so you can match body types and personality baselines.
I like choice and open approach to the problems
I have seen a trend with RPG backgrounds being based on a profession. If at character creation. A player could choose a location of their background. This would grant a character knowledge of famous people, supply sources, locations, trade routes, haunted stories, laws, economy, wildlife, and historical events that happened in a region of the world.
So maybe, just maybe, it might perhaps be somewhat fair to summarize it as "RPG design for maximization of player agency"?
Maybe!
Mr Talky gets to recruit people that show up to help against bosses. Mook Master!
One of the things I look for in RPGs is clearly defined roles or classes. I am not a fan of many of today's RPGs tendency towards making a "universal character" that's good in every situation, or blending the lines between character classes. If I am playing a paladin, I'm okay with being locked out of thief skills or vice versa. I also like it when the game reacts to me differently based on the type of character that I am playing.
It seems to me that many RPGs these days are really just adventure game power fantasies. And that's perfectly fine for the people who want that. I'm not throwing shade at people for enjoying what they enjoy. It's just that for me personally, I find that boring.
Tim love these! Would love to see you talk about what you think about the newer fallouts (3 and 4 to be specific) maybe its not your place, but I would love your thoughts on this.
Same
That is technically called the "hand egg model", outside the US, a football is round.
eggs aren't pointy!
@@BlackMasterRoshi you are thinking of chicken eggs, there are plenty of other eggs, many insect eggs are pointy.
@@BlackMasterRoshi american football balls aren't pointy either :D
For me in the character creation i like making a team and imagine some roles on the characters and their background and stuff, games like final fantasy 1 and the dark spire do a job really well with that for me and i like to choose my stats when i level up like the fallout and SMT that i can invest whatever i want and having full control of it.
Planescape also goes against some of these. The Nameless One is itself a name and the entire story hinges on amnesia. Except it’s one the best crpgs ever made imo. I will say it’s a good deal more visual novel-y than any of the other infinity games.
In the future with AI it will be nice for games to be able to fully voice any character name.
Why only the name? You character could be fully voiced with the voice of your dreams.
Re : Voice over for a main character that you create. For some reason it bothers me if there's no voice over but I can actually see my character interacting in a scene. Felt weird in Dragon Age Origins for example. Everyone talking except you in a scene shown like a movie/theater play.
Outer Worlds, New Vegas, Elder Scrolls, etc. don't bother me because I'm seeing the scene through my eyes.
Maybe just a quirk of mine :)
I agree. A lot of imerssion comes from you completely controling the character. I even think it is great that Skyrim doesn't even use cutscenes. You are the charactere from the moment the title drops.
You are supposed to voice the lines in your mind the way YOU imagine your awesome character voicing them.
@@bebo2629So underrated and unappreciated!
Amnesia. That could be a topic for a video. Not really amnesiac characters, but alternatives to that. Like, having a character begin the game as a child, or as he gets to a new place, or even if that (having a character that doesn't know what's going on around him) is needed/desirable.
I do think the VO in FO4 is why my first character was very different to how I normally am.
His voice sounds like a suburban dad, my character places rescuing Shaun as top priority because the game kept making my character act like it was the most important thing.
My character joined the BoS, he's ex-military and likes their structure and they hate the Insitute.
Being pre-war, I imagined the synths would scare the crap out of him. So he wasn't particularly friendly with synths.
When I downloaded a mod for an alternative start and that gave me a silent protagonist. My enjoyment went up a lot.
Hell, doesn't even need to be that special. My first playthrough of Outer Worlds my character was a gunslinger/Union delegate
Over all I do not want a voiced protagonist in my Bethesda RPGs but for some reason I like it in FO4. It creates a lot of problems but I am just impressed that they went for it. Their ownly other game with VO is Redguard, which is an advanture game an not an RPG, so them just trying it out for a big sandbox RPG with hundreds of lines stood out.
I do agree that the voice changes the way you roleplay but I am fine with it if it stays a one time thing.
Yes. Character Creation is the most important aspect of an RPG, in my humble opinion also. I also like a dynamic alignment based on the characters choices. Multiple endings for horror games are great, but it could be nice for an RPG as well.
Really interesting that this mapped exactly onto my preferences and then it hit me - It's because I grew up playing your games!
RPG as a status varies on a spectrum.
Planescape Torment doesn't let you to name your character though, for specific reason xD
Player VO sucks for me, but sometimes even dialogue options are frustrating. Especially when a character talks about something interesting and all my options are "Shut up, I have to go." I am really interested in these NPC stories sometimes and my character does something I wouldn't do personally and I feel the disconnect.
Some other things I dislike in RPGs except my character hurrying and being uninterested are when they only have one option in situations where it is not logical to only do one thing, or timed events like "You only have 1 day or else"
I am okay when the timer is long like days or weeks, but especially in various sidequests, having limited time often sucks.
I want to talk about things in RPGs and specifically Fallout SO much, but if I did that, I would write a 2 hour speech here in this comment and it would be boring. I would SO love to meet Tim some day and have a chat, but I know it is not possible, I live in central Europe xD
I've noticed a smaller amount of bloodlines videos on this channel than I expected. Curious to hear more on the development process of bloodlines and your thoughts looking bad xx
What I like in an RPG: Tim Cain's name in the credits
I couldnt agree with you more about character choice and VO. Really goes to show how far fallout has fallen.
Tim definitely didn’t like fallout 4 😂👌🏻 good man
Player Character VO: it is so jarring when my player character is voiced! There is a newer game out now (I won’t name it) that I had been hotly anticipating for months. Then it dropped, and I was just deflated to learn that not only was the player character a chatter box- he was kind of a jerk. And, maybe a bit stupid.
It was really disappointing, and it’s only one of dozens of games I can point to wherein I’m asked to inhabit a character, and a talented, grizzled voice actor is speaking my words out for me.
Video games are (for me) firing on all cylinders when they are 2nd person perspective pieces of fiction that don’t have a narrator saying “You then do ______”, but instead just use the camera to show you.
I digress. I love these videos, you always get me thinking! Thank you!
I think of i covered the same topic it would be flagged as plagiarism, haha, i feel the same about most of these aspects, which is why Fallout and Elder Scrolls are the top RPGs to me, especially Morrowind. Im sure alot of us are curious how you feel about Morrowind specifically, it seems like it would be your cup of tea, and since you didn't work on it, but have made similar games then alot of us are curious how you feel.
Tim was a particularly narrow point of view pathed through their life experiences. I like that.
I totally agree with you on player VO. I get confused anytime people mention the death of the silent protagonist. Like, they're not silent when you have to click on dialogue options just because you have to read it.
5:00 - Get rekt FO4
- Tim
4:27 I'm with you Tim. Maybe this is why the Witcher series never clicked with me: I had to "roleplay" through mountains of dialog with a pre-made character that didn't resonate with me.
I do really like when companions in party oriented games dont get along and have strong personalities that dont compromise easily ( unless you do their loyalty quest, i guess lol)
I love this insider information alot of advice. But I'd like to hear about your lost decade. Please and thank you.
Hey Tim, I'm wondering about your opinion on Japanese RPGS. A lot of them have a pretty different design philosophy from what you've talked about, but there's such a breadth of them that I wonder if there are any that you enjoy. Love the channel!
A lot of them seem to be much more focused on the progression aspect than the branching story or character customization aspect. Things like jobs in some Final Fantasy games allow for a huge number of different combinations, even though you're basically playing the same characters in the same story every time.
I was just going to ask the same, so I hope he reads this :D
Imo they shouldn't even be considered RPGs, especially the newer ones. Someone above me mentioned the job system in some FFs but there's barely any JRPG that does that anymore and not even FF does it, also persona games for example have characters with predetermined backstories and they're basically their own person but for some reason they're silent which is really weird, the only choices you make is with social links and then again they're very limited choices and barely affect anything
I think a lot of fundamentals play an unsung role in an rpg in the way I like. Itemization is very important concerning Arcanum, for example, because with skill points (A VERY important "currency" in Acanum concerning your character) a character can change some items into others by crafting. It's a direct representation of your character to have that item in your inventory. (To be fair other characters you recruit may also craft.)
I don't like set characters personally, would always prefer creating at least the main character. I can work with set characters as long as you have plenty and they really can be what you want them to be, instead of a set role. (Saga Frontier for playstation handled this well. Characters had growth biases but they were negligible and that brutish warrior could still be your best mage in around the same time, as a mage character would)
You mean to say this video was not about your favourite aspects of a rocket propelled grenade?
Speaking of RPG's a game thats in early access and i believe you should try is called project zomboid, its extremely immersive but yet has no story and is about to get NPC's. Everything is very dynamic and detailed.
Brief background on the small english team, they were (and are) very ambitious and wanted to have so many features, eventually they decided the voxel/sprites would be better suited as 3D assets, they had to take 4 steps (wasting 2-4 years taking things out, putting things back, tweaking etc)
back and now have a really great foundation, everything to me is perfect and the mods make it so much better.
The big hook of the game is "this is how you died" and when you die you take on the roll of another character in the same world, you can eventually find your old dead self.
The character creation is okay now, mods to me made it so much better, and expands the negative traits to inlclude, being a smoker, having broken legs (that can heal) even having schizophrenia (random things appear and sounds change, when panicked this exacerbates the problems).
But yeah, thanks for sharing Tim!
I don't have a problem with a voiced protagonist. It does seriously affect how you view and play the game, but I can work with either without any real problem. I've never viewed RPG protagonists as avatars of myself. They either have a personality to begin with (voiced more often than not) or they'll get one of my choosing--and this might be anything, but will often be influenced by the setting. We approach the game from that point going forward. I view this as a continuum and not an either/or sort of thing. I'll work with whatever is given and the journey forward is where the fun is going to be.
9:09
"Ride´s over, mutie. Time to die." xD
Maybe the real consequences in the RPG are the friends we made along the way?
Joke aside I like even having companions with endings and goals, and even optional quests that help flesh them out as characters
As always another great video, found myself agreeing with a lot of your opinions.
Could you do a detailed talk on how the game art was made for Fallout 1/2. Thanks for the great content!
5:28 i completely agree, its especially egegious in games like Dragon Age 2 and Fallout 4. If im making my own character, i dont wanna hear their voice. A grunt, or a reaction to getting hit/shot, thats fine but other than that its like you said, it takes away so much agency just with the manner the Voice actor speaks, cadence, tone. It takes me right out of the immersion.
Awesome! Thank you!👍
I'd absolutely _love_ to hear your overall impressions (NOT a review) of Baldur's Gate 3, just considering what an interesting revival/continuation it is of the style of rpgs you were personally involved in creating! Thank you for opening up your insight in this way!
What I liked most about the FO1 ending was that it had a double condition. Being able to prioritize The Master or Lou and one making the other easier by quests (eg the nuke key Lou holds) and simply by where you get loot/exp for the final push first, is much more interesting than the classic "Here, there he is, the biggest guy in the game. You whack him - you're done 🎉"
One over used story element, along with the "amnesia" one: the "brainwashed" trope. A former ally now has been brainwashed and turns into the antagonist and then somehow you can get them to get some sense into being the good guy again, sorta what they did in the first Avengers movie.
I really like those as well, but I was surprised at how much I enjoyed roleplaying the fixed character Geralt in the Witcher. It's one of these "constraints breed creativity" situations. The fact that I was playing my version of an existing character made me roleplay more than I usually do with freeform characters (who tend to be chaotic good clever ranged people). Was I playing Compassionate Geralt, or the Butcher of Blaviken? There were a surprising number of options that all felt true to the character, but also fully respected my choices.
The only time the game resisted me was on my dislike of Yennefer, Geralt would radically change my choices to grovel at her feet, but that was fully justified by the lore (and eventually resolvable).
You're absolutely right about player voice acting. It completely takes me out of the role-playing part of the game. I can no longer be me or be the character that *I* came up with. So glad Bethesda opted out of it for Starfield.
I think there might be a problem about progression when it's not playstyle/acting gaining you some useful perks, but perks forcing you to have a certain playstyle/acting.
I think the movie "Dude Where's My Car" if made into a game has the potential to be a phenomenal RPG experience. Discuss...
great video! super insightful commentary with a lot of reasonable points made ^^
My definition for a Role Playing Game is pretty easy but so many RPGs don't qualify.
Choices and consequences(world reactivity) in all three pillars:
Character behavior(dialogue choices AND actions)
Combat(this is how i build, customize and equip my character)
Story(branching events that i can significantly affect)
This is the absolute minimum for an RPG and the more the world reacts to my choices the better i like it.
If a game only has 2 out of 3 it's a '-genre- with RPG elements' and if it has all three it's an RPG.
Not surprisingly I agree with most of your points - not surprising as your RPGs shaped my tastes :-). Two points I wouldn’t sign myself under:
1) naming the protagonist. Frankly, I am just bad at it. I find it very difficult to get a feel for what would be an appropriate name for a character when I start a new RPG. I always appreciate some kind of build-in random generator, so I can keep rerolling until it feels right
2) creating my character - somewhat. I generally want it, but Planescape and Disco Elysium stand as examples of what I would consider great RPGs that don’t have that - not on start at least. I suppose though, that those are two of the very few examples that do the “amnesiac” trope well. I might be assigned the character, but he is still mine to define and shape. I do enjoy a good character generator though.
Wow I discovered your channel a few days ago and I absolutely love it. I played Fallout 1 such a long time ago, I was a teenager and it must have been one of my first RPG on computer alongside Baldur's Gate 1. It was such an amazing game, I still remember it and, sometimes, play it again. I never knew who was lead design on that game but I am glad I do now !
I watched some of your videos so far and the one about design pillars was so enlightening ! I feel a lot of people in the business today could get inspired by this type of guidelines.
I wonder if you would recommend some YT chanels or blogs held by game designers to follow/read ? For now I only follow you and Josh Sawyer (Pillars, amazing game)
Would love your opinion on Baldurs gate 3. It seems to have a lot of your points. Maybe it's better to save it when the full game releases, though.
I think an interesting discussion in RPGs is authorship of the player character. You (and I, and most CRPG fans) seem to prefer as much player authorship as possible, so that we can decide how our character sounds, what they believe, where they're from, etc. I think, interestingly, fallout has a pretty diverse range of player authorship, bookended by Fallout 1 and Fallout 4. Dragon Age has a similar progression.
I really like it when I have specific role archetypes that are inclusive enough for me to base a character around. Start with fighter, mage, thief. Add niches / roles like assassin, conversationalist / social worker, femme fatale, psycho, engineer / magitek wonderworker, etc.
9:00 Very interesting to hear you say that because that's almost exactly what happens in VTMB. There is so much unnecesary combat at the end of the game, that if you've not specced into combat skills, you'll have a hard time finishing the game. It's one of my favourite RPGs of all time, but the ending was really tough on my first playthrough cause I focused on maxing out my social skills and kind of neglected combat.
That’s all they had time for to ship the game.
Reactivity is the most important to me, if I do something that should have consequences but doesn't I'm pulled right out of the world.
Yeah, this is my biggest gripe with Bethesda's RPGs.
@@theobell2002 ...of late. Ditto.
@@theobell2002 stop buying them
seriously, I stopped like 15 years ago, get with it
@@theobell2002 But they have it quite a lot, especially compared to similiar games? Just look up the amount of random events that can happen in Skyrim because of you done a specific quest or you stole from a NPCs.
@@lrinfi But FO4 and Skyrim have this more than most RPG, espcially more than their previous games.
Tim, plz do a top 10 RPGs. (In you opinion of course)
Hi Tim! You bringing up consequence to player agency made me think of the Childkiller "perk" in Fallout, and the removal (mostly) of children in the PAL release. Can you talk about your experiences working with censorship and/or publisher mandates, and how (or if) they affected development throughout your career?
This explains so well to everyone why I didn't like Fallout 4, even Fallout 3 had issues, but Fallout 4, it is not an RPG it is a Farcry game in a Fallout setting.
Although it's not really an RPG, Prey 2017 (which I recently completed for the first time) ticks a lot of these boxes. Skill progression (whether or not you choose to use alien powers) is related to the story and changes the way the world reacts to you, there are multiple ways to accomplish the same goal that result in different context, the game can be completed in pretty much any playstyle albeit with varying levels of difficulty and it even has its own version of ending slides. You do play as a pre-defined character with amnesia (and voice over, although you only hear recordings of yourself from the past), but the game never prescribes any personality or belief system to you and it's up to the player to decide the meaning behind their actions.
What I don't like is when a game forces me to make. choice between 2 options, and I feel like I don't like either of these options but I gotta make that choice anyway in order to progress in the game.
Especially when that happens too early in the game and I'm not invested in it yet...
I kind of feel that Outer Worlds did that and it contributed to me stopping playing quite soon (but I also got busy and for a long time didn't play any games at all so it's not just that). In Dragon Age: Origins I had to early on make a choice I didn't like.
In Skyrim there's a choice that I did not like making because both options felt bad, but I could play that game forever, endlessly, progressing my character and doing non-main-story quests and just wander around and explore and so I played that a lot regardless, never moving the main story to the point I would be forced to choose Stormcloaks or Imperials.
I was directed here by another, and for the most part, agree with what you say.
The only exception, is in story telling and world. I absolutely hate Alternate Endings and the illusion of 'Choice and Consequence' in RPGs. It has never improved a narrative, more often than not actively making them worse. It's simply not something that's feasible in a system with no constant creative input to react player decisions, and attempts to do so always lead to the creation of a world where the Player has the ONLY narrative agency rather than every actor in the world appearing to have some.
It is the most jarring, most inconsequential and most narratively damaging attempt at adding 'Complexity' to a setting that ultimately strips everything of consequence and turns story beats into nothing more than a Player Death and Reload.
I could only assume you mean how some games have entirely different endings predicated on a single choice the player's made, usually at the end, because this seems inapplicable to how games like Fallout handle it. That being a recap and tally of the different choices the player's made and how it affects different locations and characters.
I 100% agree on the one character creation. I cannot get into roleplaying many character, it gets me out of the game. It's also hard enough to create a build for one, creating a balance party of 4 is asking so much to the player right at the start whereas companion you'll find will have prebuilt expectation. I find it very overwhelpming.
Even though there are enjoyable quality rpgs which break these rules, I agree so so much with this. It's like the ideal rpg.
the problem with locking perks behind skills is that it may force players to invest in a skill they're not interested in. because that perk could be useful with whatever (combat) skill they prefer and also be the most overpowered thing in the game. new vegas avoided this with some perks since they simply required a certain skill level in either combat skill (for example either x points in energy weapons OR guns), but forced skill investment with others (for example piercing strike was really powerful with both melee and unarmed, but you HAD to heavily invest in unarmed even if you're only interested in melee).
Hi Tim. I'm curious, do you have a preference regarding random vs deterministic skill/attribute checks in dialogues/world interactions in RPGs?
ie player 1 has 8 skill in repair DICE ROLL lands on 3, 3+8 = 11, success required 15 therefore player FAILS. Meanwhile, player 2 with 3 skill in repair DICE ROLL 14, 14 + 3 = 17, success requires 15 therefore player SUCCEEDS.
vs repair success requires 6, player 1 will always success, player 2 will always fail. No dice rolls.
Games you've worked on have used both, I am wondering if your preference shifted or perhaps sometimes it just wasn't your call.
Loving these videos, thank you.
Although I generally agree with your point about RPGs being most effective when they evolve around a central character that you create. the Wasteland series has historically proven that you can create an entire party of characters but still have the world function around "you" in a sense. The characters that you create are part of a collective fueled by an ideology and set of guidelines in The Rangers. People react to your group, the world reacts to your group, and your group isn't viewed as the sum of its parts, but as the whole. It's handled remarkably well.
But as the creator of the Fallout series, I'm sure that you're more than familiar with Wasteland's design principles.
Interesting. I prefer worlds that don't revolve around the player character, but feel as though they would go on just fine without "you" when you close the game. That's why I found the arrival of the BOS in Fallout 4 sorely misplaced. They obviously wanted for the BOS to make a big, theatrical entrance, but they might have made their entrance (and perhaps not been the BOS at all) a few days after getting the transmitter from Arcjet Systems because the world feels utterly dead and lifeless until there are Minutemen and BOS patrols roving about the game world and things are going on that have nothing whatsoever to do with whatever you happen to be doing at any given time, but since I play most all the side content before tackling the end of the main quest of any game, the game world was utterly lifeless for almost the entirety of my playthrough.
I still want to see reactivity to my own character's or party members' actions and impactful choices that change the game world itself for better or worse, but not the kind of "star of the show"...stuff...most video games are going for these days.
Your comment about voice-over made me think of Fallout 4 and how it disappointed me. It's exactly right what you said, and the voice actor for the main character for FO4 just took me out of it!
I mean I really enjoyed witcher, but for a while I was really pissed that I cannot create my own character. Anyhow I agree with this, lot of games are sold as RPG and you cannot make your character, you cannot make choices during your story, sometimes you don't even have choices doing your dialogue. Having said all of that, I have to admit I enjoyed voice acting in Mass Effect and SWTOR.
Does Tim have any videos on JRPGs? Such a different philosophy. Most have predetermined characters except for those with Western influence (like Dark Souls or FF1).
Great shirt. Combining disney world and Nuka-cola to Nuka World was a stroke of genius. The last creative thing done on Fallout (ever?). I hope a spinoff or f5 being great but the way things have gone i dunno.
I agree with make 1 character only foe the player. Branching, multiple endings etc. I pretty much agree 100% with the whole video.
Tim will you make a video talking about what went wrong with Outer Worlds and it’s lack of soul. What happened?
I explain why I cannot make that video at the start of this one:
ruclips.net/video/mFZSt3TaE7Q/видео.html
@@CainOnGames I’ll check it out, thank you
@@CainOnGamesdoes the reason involve the letters N, D and A? 😊
I come at games like movies and books, i step into the role of that character, they aren't me. if i were in an RPG, I'd be cowering in the corner scared, not on an adventure.
But i respect the other mindset. I generally like characters with a set personality, name, and such, so I do like JRPGs.
Have you played Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous?
The first point about a single custom character is a reason why I can't play Divinity Original Sin 1. I don't mind occasionally controlling companions but I sure have no desire roleplaying as them in a dialogue.
My preferences are completely aligned with yours, but I have a few additions:
- I want the game to be handcrafted. I am giving Daggerfall a go right now and I have hard time getting into the game because no quest feels relevant due to the obvious computer generated nature of it.
I don't mind *some* prodecural generation in a game where it's appropriate, i.e. creating the wonderful worlds to explore that is the hallmark of Bethesda games, for example. Modern games, however, rely overmuch on procedural generation, computer-generated quest systems and the like to produce what should be handcrafted content, e.g. character and story exploration and progression, etc. in the game.
There are articles galore regarding the experimentations with AI-generated this and that going in the gaming industry today. It's almost like some development companies don't actually want to develop a game; they want computers to do it for them. I don't think that's going to work out too well for them, but they'll probably have to learn that the hard way.
I played Daggerfall last week and yeah, the lack of handcrafted content really kills it. But I was very intrigued by its design philosophy. Having such big cities that you have to ask around for direction. Having such a big wilderness that you have to plan your travels. I really liked that, a lot more in fact than 3 houses cities and 200m "countries" that we get in open worlds now.
@@gargamellenoir8460 I agree that it has a charm of its own, but after 2-3 quests I didn't feel like doing anything in the game anymore.
@@nebeskisrb7765 I agree with you. I love TES and think Daggerfall is great but it gets boring much faster. Especially because it has a real focus on dungeons and the dungeons are not even that fun.
I'm naming my next character in my next game "Mr Talky." 😂 9:00
Say Tim, not sure if you're thinking on remaining in the tabletop/video game design space or gaming in general now that you're making these videos, but what would you think if you had the opportunity, or were offered the opportunity, to make a Fallout 2d20 or regular d20 game for Modiphius on behalf of Bethesda? Jesse Heinig is also there, and possibly other F1 devs may consider involvement if you were to get in touch or remained in touch with them!
I think it would be a really nice conclusion and possibly a little "passing the torch" moment from a few of the men and women responsible for the Fallout we began with to the people who make Fallout the massive franchise we know today. It wouldn't have to be anything big, just a small 20-page expansion, or, if you were up for it, a full-on 100+ page quest book. Just thinking out loud!
This is why I had some problems with Fallout 4 at the beginning. I don't like the idea of a Fallout game telling me exactly who I am/was. Especially the part that I had a wife and a kid. I know it's the important part of the plot...it is the plot haha but I just don't like the idea of the game telling me too much. Myself I would never have a wife(gues why) and all the previous Fallouts didn't impose anything like that on me. In the end I started to like Fallout 4. It's still a great game. I just have to make a backflip with my brain to skip that whole family/wife part. On the other hand there are games like Deus Ex Human revolution where it is quite clear what background Adam has (both professionally and personally) and I had zero problems with it. I guess Fallout was always a big sandbox for me where I could create/re-create myself as I imagined myself in that environment.