Everyone has their own roleplaying ‘type’. Some people always want to play mighty warriors. Some people always want to play righteous clerics. Some people always want to spend half of the roleplaying game complaining about the rules while ruining it for everyone else. My type, personally, is that I love playing characters who can talk their ways out of every situation. Mages with high intelligence, bards with high charisma - to me, manipulating and flim-flamming characters is how I want to play every roleplaying game. I don’t care if the party gets treasure, but I do care if I can seduce a dragon into letting us leave without any burns.
And that should be an option! I have loved theFalloutseries since the original game and one of the things I’ve always enjoyed is just how much fighting you may avoid if you’re smart and charming enough. It’s a wasteland, but these are still people who can be reasoned with and bribed. The same goes for the entireBaldur’s Gateseries and Planescape: Torment. Meanwhile,Fallout 4reduced that option to nearly nothing. Rather than being able to convince someone to do something against their best interests, I have the option to reply sincerely or sarcastically - both of which almost always have the same result.
Talking Your Way Out Of Trouble Is The Crux Of Roleplaying
To be fair, Fallout 4 is relatively open in that it’s more focused on shooting and broader story choices. And before you say anything,yes, there are many different types of role-playing games and that it’s a ridiculously hard genre to boil down to a few gameplay elements.Elden Ringis very different fromDisco Elysium, yet both fall under the ‘RPG’ genre. Really, at this point, almost every game uses stats and figures and leveling up and finding new loot, so basically half of the video games that exist at this point are RPGs. Maybe outside ofBalatro, every game is roleplaying.
So I want to be clear when I say that Iwantto talk my walk through every roleplaying game. Not that companiesmustmake them that way. This isn’t a mandate so much as a deeply begging suggestion. And, I’ll be real honest, I’d havelovedit if Elden Ring let me talk it out with the massive cursed tragedies that roam its fields. Just walk up with Charisma shot up as high as possible, sliding up to Rennala, Queen Of The Full Moon, and been like, “Come on. Come onnnnnnn. Can’t we…? Can’t we just skip it?”
Avoiding Fights Can Be More Fun Than Picking Them
Would that be realistic? No. Is there any way to pull that off? Absolutely not. Would that have been the only character I spec’d? 100 percent. Would it be funny? Probably. However, that’s the character I want to play in an RPG. Someone who’s too lazy and cowardly to fight - butfantasticat talking their way out of every situation. Playing asZap Brannigan in Starfieldwas fun, yet it didn’t allow me tocompletelygo bananas. Not plural, at least. Maybe one banana. It’s better than Fallout 4, butStarfieldstill has a pretty straightforward idea of where it wants you to go and how it wants you to do it - even amongst the big choices. Still, playing a charming dummy in any game is absolutely fun.
It’s not that I hate battles in games or that I can’t get good at pew pew. I just think it’s more fun to cajole and gladhand, especially since I’m awful at it in real life. It’s like that old meme of the guy in a bar who starts a fight and then goes, “But I’m just a little guy! You can’t hit me!” I love it. I want to be a coward. I want to be smooth. I want to be able to convince the final boss to just give up without a fight - which will literally always be my favorite option in a game. And - I should add - is a very real option in at least one of the games I’ve named.
We all love to min/max spells and movement points and what boosts to what swords add what fire buffs. And that’s all great. In most roleplaying games, you’re going to need that to survive.Dragon’s Dogma 2isn’t being defeated on good vibes alone. But the moment - thevery instant- I’m afforded the option to talk my way out of a situation, to use sweet talk and cute jokes to take down empires - I swear to God I will. And it would be my Heaven if every roleplaying game let me. They won’t! And some games never could! But we all have our dream of a better world.
Fallout 4
WHERE TO PLAY
In a region known as The Commonwealth, the sole survivor of Vault 111 must search for their missing child. Fallout 4 adds more to the series, including base building and an enhanced armor system, as well as an open world to traverse as you please.
