More Bombcast videos man... I absolutely love your Bombcast animations. Anyway, dig the new video man! And yeah... I'm kind of relieved by the lack of karma system. For whatever reason the karma system always gave me anxiety.

I have mixed feelings about the lack of a karma system. On the one hand, for this game, I'm fine with them taking it out. Bethesda never did anything with Karma beyond how companions reacted to you and it was mostly just Achievement bait. If they aren't going to do something interesting with it, then it's probably better just to drop it. Game already has enough systems as it is.

On a larger level, I'm bummed they took it out. In ye olde Fallout games, it actually had an effect. Depending on you reputation, it affected prices, certain NPCs wouldn't talk with you, and if you were evil enough, you would have random encounters with bounty hunters. Plus, you could get reputation specific perks that had an tangible effect on your character. Plus, you got a funny Dudley Do-Right/Snidely Whiplash Vault Guy picture depending on your rep.

I think the game is worse off. People react the same way no matter what I seem to say:

"Bill's a real saint, we should find him!" "Yeah, he was last seen at X, we don't have much time!"

"Bill's a real ghoul fucker!" "Don't say that about bill! He's at X, we don't have much time!"

And when they don't, they just shut you down entirely (cool!), but offer no alternatives for that content (boo!). The game is inflexible; there's no Dark Brotherhood to offer you recruitment (and stuff to do as a murderer), just a selection of disposable characters and immortal main quest givers.

Tales of my misdeeds don't spread; you can wipe out Bunker Hill but Diamond City won't give two shits, despite the fact that they're only half a mile away. I'm treated with suspicion regardless of how saintly I am; people just act in one way independent of your actions, and it's a shame. The Commonwealth feels like it would be more intimate and connected than a place like New Vegas, where word would travel fast. Instead, it feels like it doesn't travel at all. Compared to NV and the hit squads that'd come after you once you pissed a certain faction off enough, that feels like a step back.

gosh those GB ones were so brilliant.

"ROLLER COASTER DOLLARS"

Yeah, karma and conversation in the new game bloooooows. The addition of the voiced protagonist, and all the changes that came with it, ruined a huge chunk of the game.

The fact that the guy doesn't ask obvious questions is almost intolerable.

Return of the Saint! Great vid, haven't played FO4 yet (I am poor) so no comments on whether the new system is better or whatever. It's kind of just great to watch those bombcast animated videos again as well.

@bananasfoster: Yup. There is a good way (Deus Ex games) and a bad way (Bioware games) to handle systems like that and Bethesda went with the bad way. For the life of me I can't understand why they changed that from the classic Fallout style. Same with the SPECIAL and perk systems, too. It makes no sense. It's barely a Fallout game now!

Just wanted to say that I freakin love your animation style

Have always loved your videos. Good work, as usual.

And I actually didn't even realize the karma mechanic was gone until I watched your video. Did it even do anything other than unlock certain perks? I don't miss it at all.

In Fallout 3, I killed the ghoul guy after he led the raid on Tenpenny Tower and murdered everyone inside and the game gave me negative karma for it. That system was dumb and I'm glad it's gone.

good shit man, got my sub! really enjoyed the salon one, and uh, all the other ones. keep it up!

Might work on my own GB animated video, as long as you don't think id be cramping your style

My problem isn't as much with the lack of karma, it's that they took out the karma and also made it basically impossible for you to play as an evil dude, unless you play the kind of evil dude who just kills everyone in the game. There's no real faction for you to side with if you're evil (like the Caesar's Legion was there for you), and even for individual quests it's impossible for you to be evil. Compared to blowing up/not blowing up megaton/helping Goodsprings or the Powder Gangers, in this game you have to save the minutemen from the raiders, if you meet the brotherhood or the railroad your only options are to help them or not do their quests. It's disappointing because Fallout has always had a lot of choices within quests for how to play your characters, whereas this one you can either be the good guy, do it but for money, or not do the quests at all. Not having a karma system is fine or even interesting, because then you can role-play why your character did certain things, but it sucks when you don't have a choice in what you're doing at all so Bethesda's removal of karma seems more because they just wanted you to play a hero no matter what instead of being able to choose what your character's motivations/alignment are.

Such a great if disturbing style. I like to think you captured jeff's true form.

Great as always Saint, good to see you back. Looking forward to your next GB video.

Karma has always been a silly thing and games trying hard to utilize it was never a good thing for me.

I'm having much more fun figuring out my character for myself in Fallout 4.

I pretty much started out in FO4 by running down some road, mugging and killing Trash-can Carla(?), and her over-packed Brahmin, figuring it'd be a fun thing to do. Then, to my surprise, no binary game logic judged my action. It was just me, alone in the rainstorm, standing over the corpses of this woman and her sad two-headed cow, considering my actions. And I felt kind of bad all on my own which is way more than a "karma system" ever did. I've had a few moments like this in the game and it's actually one of my favorite things.

I even went back, 50+ hours later, and put down some mutated flowers where I killed her. I tried putting down a teddy bear too, for her Brahmin that I murdered, really trying to say I was sorry. Sadly Dogmeat tore that thing to shreds and we both had a laugh.

its about fucking time you turtle.

I never liked karma in the previous games. If I want to sneakily steal something without somebody knowing, I shouldn't feel like I'm being penalized. Obviously if I get caught, or if I do something evil that everyone can see or learn about, than that's a different story.

I think it's that allure of chasing down those FPS players. You CAN'T spec badly in Fallout 4. I mean, I would think my spec is bad (I put points in nothing but rifles, ladykiller, awareness, and stealth) but at level 25 I basically broke the game by being too overpowered. My sneak skill is so high that I USUALLY catch badguys unaware or asleep and I use a certain quest-given-knife to strike at badguys so quickly that they can't retaliate. I literally kill Deathclaws by rushing them down and stabbing them in the face. I have no points in melee. I had no idea I would be using it. I just did it because it saves ammo and then found out that it's a strategy that is basically impossible to defend against.

@lackingsaint

I shared this around the studio as we are really into fallout as of late. We had ourselves a chuckle, thanks mate!

I like that there are no longer stupid achievments tied to karma. I always hated I had every achievement in 3 except the stupid karma ones since I didn't feel like having play the game 3 times or have to game the system with save files so I'd hit the required levels as good/neutral/bad since doing that was no fun.

I LOVE How disgusting Jeff gets in these animations its like you drew his dark soul.

The Karma system in Fallout 3 and New Vegas was pretty terrible. In New Vegas you could murder a whole society of raiders and get good karma for it, but then get penalized with bad karma for stealing their stuff after they were dead. So dumb.

If you blow up Megaton in Fallout 3 you certainly deserve a bad reputation among the general populace, but the whole part where the game is judging your every action and rating your inner morality was super unnecessary.

The Karma system seems to manifest in the companions, can't get away with anything without Nick giving me shit.

I've never been a fan of good and evil meters in any game, whether it be Fallout, Infamous, Mass Effect, Fable or any other game. Decisions should be interesting because of the choice you have to make and the potential consequences. When morality points come into play, decisions become less about the choice and more about which type of points you're after. It's a needless gamification of decision making that de-emphasizes the choices in favor arbitrary game mechanics.

I think the removal of the karma system is a step in the right direction, ultimately undermined by the fact they reduced the dialogue options to "nice guy", "asshole", or "sarcastic". It's almost like they combined the two systems.

As a side note, I really hope developers stop it with those stupid "____ will remember that" prompts. I have an irrational hatred of them.

@lackingsaint Awesome as always.

I'm completely indifferent to the Karma system. I don't recall ever having a memorable moment as a result of it.

Technically, Karma isn't completely gone. It has just been passed off to your companions, deepened a bit through them, and they now give you buffs based on whether you've become friendly through them. It's an interesting way to move the system over, but I do kind of miss the way the old system was.

I haven't played Fallout 4 yet but do they keep faction rep? That was a much better system than the karma system. It was used in 2 & New Vegas to good effect. I hope it's still in there casue the new conversation system is a bit of a bummer.

@jakob187: I definitely prefer the "companions as karma system" idea. Just utilised very strangely in Fallout 4, when you have "Piper likes you... because you pick locks a lot" or "Codsworth admires you... because you upgraded your weapon". Strong disliked me putting on Power Armor far more than me recruiting an actual Brotherhood of Steel Paladin to join me.

That's because Strong is the best companion. He's meat and potatoes, man. He doesn't want none of the fancy bullshit? Power armor? Fuck that. Lockpicking? More like "lock-dicking around and not punching fools." Hacking computers? He's rather be hacking faces off.

Strong is da realest. Strong DGAF. Strong wants to punch shit. I like Strong. He's fucking awesome. He also gives me a 20% melee damage boost. Strong gets me. He understands how to survive in the Wasteland: punching shit to death.

How do you get Strong to like you, anyhow? It seems like everything I do annoys him.

@lackingsaint: You have to beat the shit out of things, stop lockpicking and hacking, and he doesn't like power armor. Beyond that, eat corpses, kill innocents, and be generous in your dialogue choices.