I would like to put forth the suggestion of adding more moral ambiguity in the outcoming Chapter 3 of the quest mod. I believe most of the Fallout 4 fanbase collectively believe this is an area that was found to be lacking in the base game and it only makes sense for the best mod in Fallout 4 to at least make an attempt to rectify the situation.
There are many ways adding more moral ambiguity could be accomplished by allowing the player to influence for good or ill the direction the future fledgling civilization starts to take but to start I would like to focus on the character of Jake Evans. When I first met Jake, it struck me that his character seemed a little "too nice". I thought perhaps at any moment he was going to show his bad side and while I haven't yet completely finished chapter 2 it seems his only moral grey area is that he started building with ASAMs more to find his daughter than to help people out complete selflessness... which is less of a grey area and more of a super-dad.
What if Jake's wife really left because Jake struck her or even because he got angry and slapped his daughter when he got drunk and felt despondent over the turn his old settlement took for the worse. This is part of what make "The Bloody Baron" quest in Witcher 3 a fan favorite, you have a charismatic and likeable character, who loves his family but is also a wife beater.
Or we could go a different direction... Perhaps in Chapter 3 the Commonwealth is finally preparing for open public elections but Jake responds to the player with "No Slick, I couldn't allow that to happen. Not when you are doing such a good job". Or even turn up the evil a notch... "No Slick, I couldn't allow that happen. Not when you are doing such a good job of preparing for my plans".
Or what if the person elected isn't human and Jake refuses to accept a non-human as leader of the commonwealth due to a tragedy in his childhood revolving around non-humans. Racism and relations with non-humans are a reoccurring theme in Fallout.
What if you and Jake are forced to remove a peaceful independent settlement for the good of a united Commonweath. What if no matter what the player decides, Jake destroys the settlement.
What if Jake executes dangerous but unarmed prisoners instead of building a jail and being forced to spend the resources to hold them for the rest of their lives.
Anyway, these are just some of the ideas that ran through my head that I thought I would share. The point is to foster moral ambiguity into the settlement building system. Because at its core building a civilization out of the post-apocalyptic chaos is classically seen as a clear unambiguously virtuous act. However, civilization building should be messy and the best Fallout quests are usually morally questionable.
There are many ways adding more moral ambiguity could be accomplished by allowing the player to influence for good or ill the direction the future fledgling civilization starts to take but to start I would like to focus on the character of Jake Evans. When I first met Jake, it struck me that his character seemed a little "too nice". I thought perhaps at any moment he was going to show his bad side and while I haven't yet completely finished chapter 2 it seems his only moral grey area is that he started building with ASAMs more to find his daughter than to help people out complete selflessness... which is less of a grey area and more of a super-dad.
What if Jake's wife really left because Jake struck her or even because he got angry and slapped his daughter when he got drunk and felt despondent over the turn his old settlement took for the worse. This is part of what make "The Bloody Baron" quest in Witcher 3 a fan favorite, you have a charismatic and likeable character, who loves his family but is also a wife beater.
Or we could go a different direction... Perhaps in Chapter 3 the Commonwealth is finally preparing for open public elections but Jake responds to the player with "No Slick, I couldn't allow that to happen. Not when you are doing such a good job". Or even turn up the evil a notch... "No Slick, I couldn't allow that happen. Not when you are doing such a good job of preparing for my plans".
Or what if the person elected isn't human and Jake refuses to accept a non-human as leader of the commonwealth due to a tragedy in his childhood revolving around non-humans. Racism and relations with non-humans are a reoccurring theme in Fallout.
What if you and Jake are forced to remove a peaceful independent settlement for the good of a united Commonweath. What if no matter what the player decides, Jake destroys the settlement.
What if Jake executes dangerous but unarmed prisoners instead of building a jail and being forced to spend the resources to hold them for the rest of their lives.
Anyway, these are just some of the ideas that ran through my head that I thought I would share. The point is to foster moral ambiguity into the settlement building system. Because at its core building a civilization out of the post-apocalyptic chaos is classically seen as a clear unambiguously virtuous act. However, civilization building should be messy and the best Fallout quests are usually morally questionable.