Comic for Tuesday, Apr 28, 2020

Commentary

Posted April 28, 2020 at 12:00 am

Even though this is poking fun at the things you do to make NPCs like you in Fable 2, and how long it can sometimes take, that "10% goes up to 10.2%" bit reminds me more of Fallout 4.

In Fallout 4, you can have companions, and they like and dislike different things. Do enough things they like, and you'll progress through dialogue with them, possibly get a quest (I really feel there should have been more companion quests), and, eventually, get a new passive ability if they ever like you enough.

If you're fine with just traveling with them for a while and are prone to making choices they like, this can happen at a fairly natural pace. If you just want them to please like you already, however, and to try to rush it, it's a slow grind. What's more, you can't do too similar things that they like one after the other, or they won't be impressed, so you can't just impress the person who likes stealing by taking everything that isn't nailed down.

I granted, I prefer that to how Fallout New Vegas handled getting access to companion quests. The quests themselves were ultimately better, sure, but you triggered most of them by having your companions around in the right places and/or the right events, and if you didn't know what those places and/or events were, you just didn't get to do their quests, or could reach a point of them no longer being available.

It might be weird that you can make a Fallout 4 companion fall in love with you by picking enough locks over an extended period of time, but at least you didn't have to know to take them to the right place with the right NPC, have the right dialogue with that NPC, and know to ask your companion that new question that's been added to their dialogue options.

But then, at least in New Vegas, you knew you'd get some sort of quest with satisfying character development out of it. Neither game's getting a perfect score from me on this one.

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