Adding ancient eldritch gods into Fallout, with such large and sprawling plot lines was a huge mistake.
People will say, "Yeah but what about the ghost in Fallout 2?" Yes FO2 had one side quest with a ghost. It was a one off, with no huge backstory propping it up, it wasn't constantly revisited. It didn't change the whole vibe of the world. It was one side quest that made you go "Huh that was weird." and was quickly pushed aside.
In comparison, including eldritch horrors in a front and center way, with quests like the Cabot questline being the most egregious. There is also the Dunwich building, the Dunwich mine, the cult and eldritch creature in FO76, and more.
Any one of these, one their own, as a one off isolated thing might be alright. The Dunwich building especially works as a weird unexplained oddity. It is the dose that makes the poison though, and now there is so much Lovecraftian stuff packed into Fallout that it has changed the texture of what Fallout is. The more the Lovecraftian stuff is added, the more of the original "an apocalypse of our own making" 1950s militarist, corporatist setting gets diluted.
My experience in the STALKER games is like this, even though the game has no built in meter for these actions. Sometimes I will see a group that I naturally feel friendly to in a fight. I can join and help, I can actively hinder them (often a "stupid evil" choice if they are against strong enemies who will either fight me or block me from looting), or I can sit back and do nothing.
Doing nothing can be interesting since it can net me decent loot for simply waiting. Makes me feel like Mad Max in the beginning of Road Warrior where he watches the raiders fight but is disinterested in helping.
EVE has fantastic stories, but I'd never want to play it myself. The people who did stuff like the bank scam put in so much time in front of spreadsheets it was like a real job.
I suppose it would be an extreme game design challenge, but I would play more evil characters if I didn't have to play as "stupid evil".
I want to be a manipulative monster who preys on trust. Of course I'm not going to punch the begger in broad daylight in front of everyone. I want chat him up, gain his trust, and give him a drink laced with medical alcohol so I can then steal his pocket change.
Do I look like I know what a got dang is I just want a hotdog of a gribble. You tell me what about accessories and accessory because Alamo propane is like a got dang ladybird I tell you what
Homefront: The Revolution is actually a super fun game. Dare I say...a hidden gem?
It has an atrocious metacritic score for a few reasons. Mainly, some of the enemy AI was broken on release, which is fair, but it's long since been fixed. The other big issue is that it's a sequel to a genuinely bad game and most people didn't bother playing it, and most who did came with the goal of trashing it.
However, this game is fun if you want something kind in the modern Far Cry style vein, but set in urban environments. It run on the Crye Engine and the gunplay is rock solid; the shotgun in this game is fantastic. The guns all have absolutely preposterous alternate fire modes. The assault rifle has its upper swapped out to turn it into landmine launcher.
The story and setting is a complete reset compared to the first game. It isn't just a lazy "Red Dawn but China North Korea". There is an elaborate alternate history backstory going back to the 1950s that sees North Korea take the role of the high tech manufacturing hub for the west, eventually becoming what some in the west in the 1970s feared Japan would become- a powerhouse of tech that was rich and had a grip on all western nations because of it. Then this cyberpunk reimagining of North Korea takes over a poor and downtrodden USA after the U.S. had made so many bad choices that NK could plausibly send "international peacekeepers". Absolutely nuts plot, but so weird and strangely high effort. Also means the bad guys are coded so cyberpunk and have all kinds of drones and stuff.
Took my freshly re-cobbled together computer to local computer guy after an upgrade with hand-me-down parts. He asked what was wrong and I said there was an alarm for the CPU fan, and that I'd torn the case open and hooked a second fan into the CPU fan connection and it also didn't work, and the I plugged the CPU fan into a different connection and got it working, so by elimination I was pretty sure the fans were good and the connection in the motherboard was bad.
He seemed mildly amused/impressed by my spiel. I'm not really a computer person, but swapping out parts to narrow down the source of the problem seemed logically basic.
I ended up chilling with him while he worked on things. He found WinZip on my desktop and let out a "whoa retro." which hurt me deeply.
What's surreal is being in a security line that is so backed up that the TSA on duty decide to tell people to keep their shoes on, and they open up the old fashioned metal detector to supplement the body scanner just to get people through faster.
Straight up confirmation that none of what they do matters.
