There’s something about reviews that have been bothering me for a while. They are, by their nature, very critical. Duh, right? However, there’s a tendency for focusing on the negative and not on the positive or constructive. But that could just be my reviews as I end up reviewing things with a lot of flaws. However, it’s one thing to point out something that isn’t working, it’s a wholly different beast to find something that does.
So while I was playing Fallout 4 and noticing all these things I didn’t like, I started to wonder what I would have done to tune it more to my tastes. Obviously, “make it New Vegas” isn’t a particularly stunning recommendation. And, frankly, I love New Vegas but I want to see new things. I want other narratives to succeed. I’d like to have new favourite games which I incessantly point to as examples of things “done right.”
And, frankly, Fallout 4 isn’t complete garbage. There is enough there that it still captured my imagination. At the end of the day, the creations that stir the most emotion in me aren’t those that are abject failures. If the game is completely irredeemable, it doesn’t stick. It’s a failure. There’s not much more to say. It’s the games that have rough edges but a gleaming core that linger. For it tantalizes with the possibilities of “what could have been.” Had Fallout 4 taken a different route, I can easily imagine it being fantastic.
So, because I don’t have much else of interest to share, I’m going to give some ideas of what I would have done with the story.
But before I do, I should put a disclaimer. I recognize that making games is a complex process. I am able to sit here with the power of hindsight to point out where flaws glared and strengths dulled. I have no idea what the process behind the curtains was. There could have been massive revisions to the story and its direction that we don’t see. It could have very well been way worse. And without knowing what those twists and turns entailed, it’s hard to really place fault anywhere for the end product. Thus, this isn’t a finger wag. This isn’t acrimony over anyone’s work. I’m certain that the people who made this tried their best with what they were given. One wrong decision can snowball into a terrific mess. And who knows what stipulations or demands they had to incorporate from those wholly disconnected from the creative process of the product but still in charge of its financial success.
So this isn’t me calling anyone a bonehead. But in a vacuum, these are the things I would have changed.
Now, it would seem logical to start with the game’s primary shortcoming: it’s factions. The major players meant to drive the action and stir the intrigue were woefully underdeveloped and incorporated. But I’m going to take a different tact. A striking peculiarity in Fallout 4’s design was it’s bizarre world. Taking place in the Greater Boston Area, and focusing its attention on community building, the game had a shocking dearth of actual communities. There’s really only one city and a handful of generic settlements that look like they were made with the settlement building tools. This really concentrated the action in one area but, more than that, it made the world feel very sparse and empty. Considering its regional focus and the importance placed on locations within Boston, it was odd that there was so little actually there.
And it’s even more perplexing considering that Bethesda’s other RPGs all have a decent focus on their cities. I’ve mentioned how Fallout 3 had a bunch of them isolated and disconnected from one another. But their Elder Scrolls games used towns and cities to convey to players the history of the world as well as provide a base of operations for the player as they explored the corresponding region.
Skyrim in particular was exceptionally well crafted. Taking place in the eponymous province, Skyrim was separated into nine territories called Holds. These Holds each had a capital administrative centre, several towns, villages, imperial towers, inns, homes, farmsteads, forts, camps and many other locations. For a game release four years earlier and much smaller than Fallout 4, it completely blows Boston out of the water in terms of world building. Part of Skyrim’s success is its masterful way of drawing players into its living world ripe with history. You can feel the weight of the ages in the moss covered ruins of the peoples that came before. But you can simply get lost walking through the fields of farmers toiling away in the dirt or following imperial patrols along the roads keeping bandits and highwaymen at bay.
Bethesda’s Fallouts, however, always have this weird feeling that the bombs only just dropped despite there being 150 years separation between the apocalypse and their stories. Furthermore, it’s hard to be drawn into the present day turmoil and conflict when there’s no sense of what is at stake in terms of the people and their communities. And it’s almost laughable how Skyrim went from 9 capitals, 8 settlements and 10 villages to 3 cities (Diamond City, the Institute and Goodneighbour), 3 settlements (Covenant, The Slog and Bunker Hill) and a vault (ignoring DLC).
Now, I think it’s clear that this anemic population is partly due to the building mechanic given that most places that would be an interesting settlement were building locations for your settlers instead. And then Covenant and Bunker Hill are pretty indistinguishable from the few populated customizable farms which makes distinguishing the two almost a fool’s errand. But that just makes the comparison between the two even more laughable since I didn’t bother counting up Skyrim’s farms and smaller communities.
Not to mention that player settlements are not and could not ever be a suitable replacement to an actual planned and built community from the developers. You don’t get the unique quests, assets and characters there that you do in a properly handcrafted location. You also lose out on all the environmental storytelling and sense of history if everything is just a sandbox awaiting the player to do all the environmental work. Lastly, it makes it really impossible to give your factions something to struggle over as most of the countryside is empty mud puddles eagerly awaiting your crafting hand.
And it’s not like you couldn’t meld developer and player crafted locations together. The player’s house in Diamond City is a building location. I see no reason that other settlements couldn’t have “open plots” for purchase that the player could have used to stretch their creative building desires within a much larger, living community.
As such, I’m going to outline how I would have expanded the world of Fallout 4, dropping details on history and societies as I go.
Today, I’m going to start with Diamond City.
Diamond City was lauded as the Great Green Jewel in game because it was the largest and most fortified community in Boston. Established within the soaring walls of the baseball stadium Fenway Park, it is remarkable because it is truly the only place that feels like a city. It also establishes what players of the Fallout series expect in a community: a junktown community founded in a strange or interesting location and adapted into something totally different and unique. The pitcher’s mound now houses a large fusion reactor from which the shanty community stretches outward like a maypole connected to dozens of rusted metal mushrooms. I like Diamond City though it’s hard to not even feel the scarcity of world development even in its most populous centre. Part of this is due to the fact that there’s really not much there. The city is just the baseball stadium with only a few generic turrets outside its door and several NPC guards roaming the block.
Given that there is some focus given to its impressive Green Wall, I would have liked to see Diamond City expanded. For one, the Wall should stretch out from the stadium, being built up with the junk of bombed skyscrapers and rusted transports to allow Diamond City to protect the tenements and apartments on its every side. This should be the New Vegas of Fallout 4 with an appropriate sense of scale. The stadium itself should have utilized every possible square inch too. Instead of the bleachers being mostly flat, poorly rendered benches blocked off to the player by invisible walls, they should have been covered in rickety and titling scaffolded homes and walkways. With such limited space, the residents of Diamond City should have built up before expanding out. Furthermore, the concession stands and perimeter hallways should have been choked with shanty homes and shacks. The necessity for expanding the Green Wall beyond the baseball pitch into the city proper should have been one of logistics meant to address the burgeoning population as people came from far and wide for the precious resources offered by the city as well as the protection.
The meagre agriculture and pasture in the diamond’s outer field should stand as an obvious indicator that Diamond City long grew beyond its means of self sufficiency. And while their plumbing provides precious filtered water, parcelled out by water merchants at the few sanctioned water fountains and repurposed restrooms (with Diamond City Security constantly on patrol for illegal tapping of water mains), the city only stands now because it is the central economic hub of the Boston ruins.
And its prominence is ensured by the Diamond City Brahmin.
No, these are not special mutant cows. See, in Fallout, brahmin are the name given to the domesticated mutated bovine which are all that remain of the prewar cattle infected with the devastating Forced Evolutionary Virus (FEV). Though given that brahmin exist in the lore already, the jokes write themselves. Instead, the Diamond City Brahmin are what remains of the incredibly wealthy and influential families who resided for generations in the Boston area and shaped its development and politics before the war. Only five of them remain, the rest having died from the bombs or the end of civilization that followed. Those that remain did so through the grace of their earlier investments and influence affording them an upperhand in surviving the initial apocalypse. They also managed to survive to the present day due to their vast wealth and naturally positioned themselves as the leaders of Diamond City and its local environs. Though the mayor of the city is democratically elected, the results have always fallen to one of these family members. The real politics of the city is the relationship between the five and power brokerage is exchanged amongst them through favours for the coveted leadership.
The five families are:
Kennedy
The Kennedy family prewar were large proponents of education for Boston and the preservation of knowledge. They funded museums, colleges and research institutes. They headed important public school funding programs and ran charities for securing food for school children. The Kennedys also helped to keep Boston medical research at the forefront of development with generous donations to important health initiatives. It was this focus on health that saw the family survive, as they were provided some radiation pills and guidance for a potential nuclear winter that saw them and many of their circle live through those harsh first years. Post the apocalypse, they have continued their medical and research focus. They own the Diamond City Research Centre and are majority stakeholders in the local clinic. However, with the destruction of the old banking institutions, the family had to turn to covert chem production and alcohol distillation and distribution to maintain their lavish lifestyle. Thus, they quietly keep the Dugout Inn supplied with potent drinks and chems while also supplying local raider groups in the Boston area the drugs to keep them compliant. And while some may suspect a connection between the raiders and Kennedys, they can hardly be blamed for the erratic behaviour of stimmed up bandits even if they miraculously avoid Kennedy interests while harassing the rest of the Brahmins’ interests.
Cabot
The Cabot family had nearly fallen from eminence in prewar Boston and thus, the surviving members weren’t even in the city when the bombs fell. While the countryside avoided the worst of the detonations, it was nowhere near safe as mutant creatures and feral ghouls became a daily threat. That plus the lack of food and supplies brought the Cabots back to Diamond City once word got out that people weren’t just surviving but thriving. However, this “temporary exile” lent the Cabots a unique advantage as they had developed numerous connections during their time beyond the city. Pulling on this network, they quickly organized a scavenging and merchant operation. It wasn’t long before they were the primary suppliers and traders within the greater metropolitan area. The Cabots were not shy with flexing their blossoming wealth, turning profits back into the Cabot Outfitters and forcing out competitors. To keep ahead of the scavenging game, the Cabots sunk massive amounts of caps into securing the prosperity of Flotsam Burg and they, in turn, rewarded the Cabots with almost unopposed control of the city’s direction.
Crowninshield
Crowninshield were one of the oldest, wealthiest and long-lasting of the Brahmin families. They maintain that they were key in making Boston the city it was before the bombs even fell. The family’s wealth before it was all destroyed was staggering and they could afford the best shelters and emergency responses even for such trivially unlikely scenarios like total nuclear devastation. And the Crowninshields were no fools. When they emerged from their shelters to see the waste of Boston before them, they knew all their prior influence would hold little in this new world. However, it takes time for people to adjust. And in that time, they leveraged their influence and resources to secure a strong arm that would help them rebuild everything that was lost. Word spread to the strongest mercenaries and the most desperate souls that the Crowninshields would pay handsomely for service and in time the locals came to heavily rely upon the Crowninshields for protection. They are primarily responsible for the maintenance and expansion of the Green Wall as well as the operation of Diamond City security. Common perception is that the enforcers are loyal to the mayor of Diamond City and, so long as the mayor is in accord with the Crowninshields, this perception remains largely true. And with the charges and tolls the Crowninshields charge to anyone passing through their heavily fortified gates, they are never short of caps in ensuring the loyalty of their martial force. Those that truly anger the Crowninshields have a tendency for finding themselves before Diamond City Security for breaking laws they didn’t even know existed. As such, some often joke that there are more Crowninshield “guests” in the city’s cells then there are actual criminals.
Peabody
The Peabodys were always interested in public works. They, in fact, owned Fenway Park before the bombs dropped. As it turned out, the service tunnels beneath the stadium were just as effective as fallout shelters as they were for safeguarding the generators and purifiers from rioters and protesters during the turbulent resource crisis. In old Boston, they were a fairly minor Brahmin family. But as the owners of the fortified heart of post apocalypse Diamond City, they are kings. Naturally, they own Market Pitch and all the tenements within the city, making vast sums of caps so long as Diamond City continues to be the beating heart of the Commonwealth. They were also able to quickly establish the Diamond City Reserve when the settlement was first getting its footing, creating the only post apocalypse bank in the metropolitan area. The Peabodys then turned their quickly amassing cap fortune to investing in startup operations to develop the settlement so it would be the shining beacon which attracted all others to it.
Gardner
The Gardners stand unique amongst the Brahmin for being a “new blood” family who had little influence before the war. They claimed their forebearers came in from Jamaica Plain after the bombs fell, seeking shelter and refuge from the ferals overrunning the distant suburb. Others claim that the Gardners originated up at Corvega. And even more suggest they came from other, nefarious roots. Either way, one thing set the early Gardners immediately apart from new refugees: they had a keen technological aptitude in high demand during those early years following the bombs. They quickly ingratiated themselves amongst the early leaders for being able to bring pre-war tech back to life. This was a life-saver for the Peabodys in managing Diamond City’s water purifiers. Their knowhow allowed the Crowninshields to expand the Green Wall well beyond its initial design. And they came, through various means, to come into ownership of the massive reactor in the center of Market Pitch, allowing Diamond City to glow as bright as it does. However, some question the loyalty of the citizens of Massol to the Gardners as well as the rumours that the family was instrumental in getting that city running.
As the description of the families suggests, Diamond City would be larger and feature more specific locations that could be easy springboards for interesting quests that would provide glimpses for the player into the history of the city. They could help the poor people of Diamond City to setup an illegal water tap into the city’s plumbing so they could get around price gouging water merchants. There could be an investigation into nearby raider groups attacking caravans and a connection between them and the Kennedy’s illegal chem production uncovered. The Crowninshields may hire the player to assist in acquiring difficult materials or clearing out a dangerous area as part of the Green Wall expansion. Maybe even have a quest line dealing with the election of the mayor and the political intrigue amongst the families over that if you so wanted. And that’s just off these short descriptions of the family and city.
