Players meet him as part of the main quest. Nick Valentine is a great example of the strengths of Fallout 4's follower design.

Starfield should focus on developing a smaller group of companion characters in the style of Fallout 4. RELATED: Starfield Should Take One Big Lesson from Skyrim's Longevity

It isn't the game's well-developed companions, however, that contribute to this inflexibility, but the prescriptive premise of the player character. By Fallout 4, the studio showed that it could develop a game with followers who were integrated into the main quest and had their own backstories and questlines, without compromising the player's roleplaying freedom.įallout 4's breadth of roleplaying opportunities are far more restricted than The Elder Scrolls and even previous Fallout games, with all players starting out as a veteran or lawyer in a heterosexual marriage and with a young son. Starting with Serana in Skyrim's Dawnguard DLC, Bethesda began experimenting with more complicated companions. The level of freedom the game affords to players and its lack of heavily scripted sequences is one of its greatest strengths, giving it great replay value and allowing players to create their own stories in the game's detailed open world.įallout 4, however, showed just how much more interesting the companions in an open-world Bethesda game can be than the ones found in Skyrim's base game. This set of priorities should not be dismissed as poor storytelling. Skyrim's design philosophy massively prioritizes freedom of roleplay and breadth of opportunities, above depth of story or character development. The Elder Scrolls 5's relatively shallow follower system does play a vital part of the gameplay, however. While other RPGs like Mass Effect are famous for their well-developed companions, Skyrim is not.

The opportunity to engage with them as a character, more than a mechanic, dries up quick. Aside from the stock phrases they shout during combat and a handful of unique dialogue options, many of Skyrim's followers ironically become more generic after the player gets to know them. Although many of them are gained as followers after completing a quest or joining a faction, after that, their story essentially ends. There are over forty followers in Skyrim's base game.

How to roleplay in fallout 4