LET'S DISCUSS FALLOUT 4 - SPOILERS (OBVIOUSLY)

Near the beginning and middle the story is actually really interesting. You hear about the Institute, and you see their Terminator robots and get into fights with them, and the game starts building up this story about their mysterious motivations that I was really in to. I wanted to know what their end goal with the Synths was, cause I figured it must be something pretty cool.

You meet Virgil and hunt down the Courser, and things are really starting to build up at this point. There's some great atmosphere and foreshadowing going on- although you can sort of see the cracks coming through when Virgil doesn't even seem to know anything about the Institute besides "they're the Institute". So you fight more Raiders (AKA the new Draugr) and get the stupid brain chip thing from the disappointing Courser fight. Woohoo.

Virgil gives you the plans for the Relay device, and you build it in your town, which is a good use of the town building mechanic. I liked it. I was hyped to finally get to the end game, and kind of expecting something like Raven Rock from 3, so I stocked up on ammo and supplies. Warping into the Institute everything seems like it's gonna pay off, with the mysterious "Father" talking to you and cool art design of the area.

Then you meet Father. He likes you, no, he's your son for some reason. I still thought it was going somewhere, so I was into it. Your son is the final boss? Pretty cool, right? Then he asks you to join the Institute.

And here we go. Here's the problem. There's no fucking endgame.

Nothing happens. You join the stupid Institute because the game doesn't really explain anything that's going on anymore, and you get sent to kill... Raiders. So you go do it, and then the game is like "NOW YOU SEE THE INSTITUTE'S TRUE VALUES", like, no, I fucking don't. EXPLAIN IT TO ME. The game proceeds to just be as confusing and vague as it possibly can be for the short remainder of its play time. Why are they building Synths? Genetic Purity? Okay, that's a word they throw around about Shaun, but it doesn't explain why they're sending Synths out to kill people in the Commonwealth. Why did they make a 10 year old Shaun Synth? To fuck with you? To replace Shaun and get you to leave them alone? Obviously not, since Father Shaun tells you he was hoping you found him. As it stands they pretty much made the 10 year old Synth to cover up a plot hole.

Why did they bother extending Kellogg's life for another 60 years? Sure, he was a good mercenary, but wouldn't it have made more sense to replace him with a Synth? If they can extend people's lives, then why are they worried about Father Shaun dying from an illness? (which is convieniently never explained at all other than a shoehorned way to put you in charge of the Institute as it's Guild Leader and hand the player more candy for nothing).

This is the issue. There's nothing going on in the endgame. The game doesn't care what you say, because there's no reason to say anything- side with them, side against them, it doesn't matter because all the guild missions lead to the same place anyways and the same foregone conclusion of "this is really fucking badly written, and super disappointing".

And like, the last mission is just... What? It's nothing. You just get some nuclear material to keep powering the Institute. There's no interesting morality or world affecting choice going on, even though the game acts like the Mass Fusion thing is going somewhere really important. You're basically just out getting the fucking groceries at this point. You have no fucking stake in anything. You're just a player, doing mission checklists because the game told you to. They don't even pretend to give you a reason to care anymore, because they're more concerned with their "No level cap, play forever!" shtick.

I would have liked some more development of the Institute. Give the player a reason to distrust them. Show them being evil, if you're building them up as villains so clearly. Have you make difficult choices about your now adult son, if you're forcing the player into the narrative of a grieving parent and taking away their ability to role-play it at all. Do SOMETHING with the world you created, not just throwing enemy hordes at people so they can grind levels for "fun".

AAA games don't even give a fucking shit about interesting experiences anymore. They give you the most bland, surface level, marketable "fun" stuff like Gun Building and Settling the Wasteland, then don't develop it because they're scared that 10% of the populace won't like the game if it's too in depth. They're scared to put effort and love into their work, or really let their ideas grow and take off, and it shows when the whole thing falls to fucking pieces because of it.

So yeah, I'm not buying And Fallout or Elder Scrolls stuff anymore. After Skyrim and Fallout 4 it's fucking pointless, cause they clearly don't give a shit about making anything good or fulfilling beyond marketing based box features at this point.

Having played male and female characters...Why the frak is everyone you can travel with presumably bisexual?

Sidenote: they seem to have put all of the companion/romance stuff way more "up-front" than in previous Fallout games. I played dozens of hours of New Vegas before finding more than one or two companions, and as far as I can remember in my hundreds of hours of playing previous Fallout titles I have never successfully "relationship'd" anyone. It seems way more "front and center" here, more of a "feature" and less of an obscure, easily-missable easter egg.

Or I guess more accurately, "player-sexual". Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against bisexual people. My girlfriend and my best friend are both bi. And I haven't found every companion yet, I'm sure. Maybe there's someone squirreled away that's actually straight or actually gay or even asexual (besides I assume/hope to God Codsworth).

But it seems really ridiculous to me the game's assumption that everyone you meet is "flexible" based on your actions and your charisma. The attempt seems to be to give the player more options but the result for me is that it confuses things in a way that kills immersion. I am fine with keeping relationships with companions platonic. I don't need this Bioshock romance crap. I am fine with having it as an option for some characters but having that big "Flirt" option pop up with every companion as their story progresses is distracting as fuck. I mean, is Paladin Danse so wooden because he has no idea how to have human emotions anymore underneath all of that bravado and powered armor, or is he just a gay man with a big gay crush on me playing coy? The "Flirt" option certainly muddies the waters a bit.

I decided from the outset that poor dead Nate was the last man that my pre-War lady sniper would ever love, and when I failed the flirt check with Piper I had no idea if her sexual orientation was a factor or if I just didn't have enough points in Charisma.

Having played a little more but still not consummated any relationships with any companions, I am starting to understand that "sexual orientation" is kind of a null concept here.

And I am not sure what is up with the difficulty values for the Charisma check to "flirt" in relation to this. The idea that a guy is going to go gay for another guy (or for that matter that a lesbian is suddenly going to get weak at the knees for a dude) if they're just charismatic enough is actually borderline offensive. That's...not how it fucking works. I ain't gonna fuck a dude, no matter how charismatic he is. The same goes for my lesbian friends.

If Danse was straight or Piper was a lesbian or whatever they would feel more like actual characters or actual people and less like "romance options". (The option to flirt with Nick Valentine hasn't come up yet, and I'm honestly hoping it won't, regardless of my character's gender, because come on people, why would he even have genitals?)

TL;DR some characters should be straight or gay instead of everyone being conveniently bisexual. Characters having actual identities, including SEXUAL identities, would be less damaging to immersion than having everyone "available to romance" all the time, which sure as hell gets in the way of building actual characters when you have to make everyone transparently "player-sexual".