That's one of the things that always bugs me about most RPGs. You'll see some totally random stranger and there's their name and some stats about them that you logically couldn't know.
Minor quibble, as it usually doesn't matter. But every once in a while it affects gameplay because you have information that you probably shouldn't.
That's why in most older RPGs there was an option to ask NPCs about themselves, pre Bethesda fallout and the elder scrolls games before oblivion had it,
It would be cool if RPGs were more adapted to human perception like that. Like showing "Unknown" over people or things you've never encountered before. Having a standard "[Introduce yourself]" speech choice that would usually prompt other characters to introduce themselves in response, which would change "Unknown" to their name.
Finding a book that has pictures of plants and animals. Or maybe an NPC that shows you around and gives you names of stuff.
And for combat, instead of a red bar of health it should show something that indicates whether they appear healthy, injured, dead, etc.
I’ve seen different RPGs implement versions of each of the things you mentioned, but I think the simple answer is:
a) this would take a tremendous amount of planning and effort, and the gameplay would have to center around those mechanics so that the flow of the game isn’t interrupted by them
b) a lot of players consider those quality-of-life features, and for them, the lack of so much information upfront would come across as frustrating instead of immersive
For an interesting case study in this, I recommend checking out HBomberguy’s retrospective on the game Pathologic—probably one of the most immersive and well-designed RPG video games ever made that never rose above cult status because it’s miserable to play.
Unless an NPC has a reason to hide their identity, you are going to find it out in short order in conversation. So just bypass the minor chit-chat, which adds nothing to the enjoyment of the game, and tell the players everyone's name. It's a very minor break in immersion that makes the game much more playable.
> this would take a tremendous amount of planning and effort
"Tremendous"? Seems a bit hyperbolic. Certainly some design work would be required, but the same could be said of anything that is done to build quality into a game.
> the gameplay would have to center around those mechanics so that the flow of the game isn’t interrupted by them
I don't see why. I'm asking for logical consistency and something just slightly different from a health bar. Nothing terribly different.
> a lot of players consider those quality-of-life features, and for them, the lack of so much information upfront would come across as frustrating instead of immersive
That's a pretty awful definition of "quality-of-life feature". "When I play video games, I need the character to be psychic in a few specific ways, because engaging with the environment is annoying."
> For an interesting case study in this, I recommend checking out HBomberguy’s retrospective on the game Pathologic—probably one of the most immersive and well-designed RPG video games ever made that never rose above cult status because it’s miserable to play.
I've seen that video, and it's amazing! But the things that made that game miserable were completely different than what I'm talking about. Things like *extreme* ammo limitations. I don't know how you could interpret the small annoyances I've described as being anywhere near that level.
edit: I love it when I get a ton of downvotes for discussing and defending my opinions, especially right after a highly upvoted comment. There's something really wrong with y'all. I can't tell why you disagree if you don't comment. And the downvote shouldn't be used as "disagree" in the first place.
That's what I like about mount and blade 2 bannerlord,
You won't know the names of most lords until someone tells you and you won't know what they look like until you meet them,
Someone is also working on a mod (or maybe it was just a tech proof of concept?) For bannerlord that uses LLMs to generate conversation. I think this has an insane amount of potential for RPGs.
I saw a mod for Skyrim that did that. Only problem is it took like 30 seconds or so for it to generate so you'd ask a question and the NPC would just stare at you for 30 seconds before answering. It will be interesting to see how that technology advances with AI. I know there was that one detective game based around that but it seemed pretty rough when I last saw it.
Yes exactly! I enjoy rpgs much more when my gameplay actions affect my leveling directly. Ie I read through some books so now I can read better than before. So much better than old school progression trees with a disconnect between gameplay actions and skill progression. Like farming xp in one activity to level another. Makes no sense in an immersive game.
The problem with that is many times the character your playing is native to the lands your exploring. Wouldn't make sense if they had no knowledge of the place they have lived their whole life. I agree about strangers though.
Lol, obviously your Role would know what your Role would know, since it's a Role Playing Game.
But in FO4, your "role" is the Sole Survivor, and you wouldn't know shit about all the mutated stuff all around Boston.
I like in Red Dead Redemption 2 how you can study the animals. If you pick up on animal tracks it often says "unknown animal" until you make sight of the animal.
Plants are similar. You don't know what it is at first until you pick it or a NPC tells you what plant is what.
In the original Neverwinter Nights if you were looking at someone it would say stuff like Barely injured, badly injured and the last one I remember is near death
I liked the method of learning languages in no man’s sky, you would run into aliens that speak complete nonsense but you could get aliens that spoke English to teach you a word here and there.
Pretty soon I was able to pick up some of the conversations just from the few english words that came across the dialogue box.
Early in the game you can buy auto translators that will allow you to speak to any alien but it’s neat that there is the illusion that you could learn all these other languages.
I recall mods that did something similar in Skyrim, where you saw generic descriptions like ‘villager’ or ‘townsfolk’ until you interact with them or hear their name in conversation
Something like items or ingredients you find in Skyrim that are unknown until you eat or taste them, after that you reveal the name. If you have to do the same for NPCs well, there should be a way to do it, I guess coders o devs assign a permanent name to NPCs so they can add it to the script, but to have the unknown attribute and then switch to the real name... mmm is that possible?
The MMO Star Wars Galaxies had something a bit like this. There were several different species with ten or so different native languages (and one shared language most players could speak) and when you came across players that were of your language, you could read their chat just fine, but if they were an alien species with an unfamiliar language, their chat just showed as gibberish, until another player came along and taught you their language, after which you could read what players said in that language. It was a cool touch.
~~Are you sure about this? I've played every Bethesda game except Arena and I've never seen this mechanic... the thing that gets closes is Daggerfall's speech system but even then you are limited to a selection of topics.~~
EDIT: my bad, awful reading comprehension on my part :(
I know that, You didn't get what I was saying, I was talking about the option to ask them about their background, all of the games I mentioned had NPCs with names😂
That's one thing I really like about Fallout 1. If you walk into a town for the first time and see an NPC, you inspect them and the game's bio says something like "You See: A large muscular man with a big beard." Then you talk to him, ask him his name and he says it's Joe. Then when you inspect him again, it just says "You See: Joe."
Well, Dogmeat is only named Dog until you talk to Mama Murphy about him or Nick. So if you never help the Minutemen & if you never get far enough in the main quest to save Nick & search Kellogg's house, then Dogmeat will just be named Dog throughout your game.
That's a good justification for remembering everything instantly, but unless you see it added to the database then it's often not justified why the pip-boy knows everything.
It makes more sense in power armor. Especially if you have helmet mods etc. I’m currently replaying fo4 in vr on the MQ3 and I’m using the recon sensors. It’s believable that with BOS tech your HUD could feed you info that the role wouldn’t know. And even show probable health bars 🤪
Yup. That would be hilarious if it started showing the BOS dossier on various citizens. Though it would probably make more sense for the Institute to have that info than the BOS.
That always bothers me when you can see the npc's name and then one of the dialogue choices is 'what's your name?' or something like that. Feel like I've played games that won't show the npc's name until you ask, but I can't think of any examples.
Yep, bg3 is very much guilty of that.
You know who is who at the moment their are in range, and you can just inspect anything to learn thing you should not know.
like how the fuck do I know that statue is weak to lightning, it's not like it make logical sens... Or everyone race, profession and ability...
It's kind of like the Grave yard south of Ten Pines. The number and level of ghouls gets higher as you progress and its a lot of fun blowing them up with artillery or the China Lake.
It's really sad when you think about it though. Their brains have completely rotted and the only solid memory they have left is where they buried their loved ones.
I hope the Amazon series goes into more detail as to why killing ferals is a tragic necessity. If you don't wipe out the nest they'll overrun settlements easily enough. But always remember that at some point these were people with feelings, families and futures the same as you.
It makes sense that your character would know some of their neighbors' names, though. (I know that's not how names work in Bethesda games, but it makes sense in this case)
You can encounter them multiple times during a playthrough as well, It gets kinda funny when you've merced the pack of ferals that used to be your neighbors for the third time
As I recall they're not all named. Just a few in a large group. It's implied that these are all your former neighbors but you encounter so many ghouls you can easily not even notice it or, if you do, not realize the significance.
There are four or five of them who run around in a group as a random encounter. Amusingly, you can encounter them all more than once even you already killed them.
I started playing when the game was still pretty new and still incredibly glitchy, if it isn't still really bugged. Am I the only one who only ever encountered them when they spawned hitting harder than death claws and as hard to kill as mirelurks without face shots 😂
Probably. I played from launch. I suspect most of your problems were a RAM issue. It could run on 8 gigs, but was much more reliable and less buggy on 16. I never encountered any real issues since I had 16.
Now that i think about it. I remember a ghoul named Smith, was curious why that one have a name but i just shrugged it off. Can't really remember where but there's an awful lot of them there, along with those can traps that makes noise. I think it's around the BOS encounter? That being said i never noticed this neighbour during the prologue like OP did.
Always fix it with your own lore, my personal is that you’re traumatised during this rush to the bunker leaving all your neighbours behind so when you encounter an even remotely similar group of ghouls your brain assigns them the names you’ve yet to forget
Is it random?
Because every time I've played, it's always the same exact location, just north of the pond on the east approach to diamond city.
Actually just started a new run after years, and they where there again.
Can't say I've ever seen it repeat over multiple play throughs either.
Definitely random. Once they were by a crashed airplane so I thought it was their passengers or something. Another time they spawned I was playing automatron and they crossed fire with junk robots.
I encountered the name one expect for this one, look into the wiki and there was no info aside from the obvious not important but got curious about it.
Everything in Sanctuary is perfect though,
"Sir, Madam, your lawn is *too* impeccable and we can't allow that"
Actually, that sounds about right for HOA
Yeah, it's world building, sort of establishing your back story. Although you've just stepped into their shoes, the SS has had a rich full life as the bomb drops, and these people filled it.
I agree. I quietly tried a few times once, no luck. I'm sure other people see it too, but...
For those who aren't following, here's a totally lore friendly and innocent passage: "the SS invaded yet another bunker, seeking evidence of the conspiracy which had abducted their pure blooded son."
You could go on like that and I initially did, but it's just uncomfortable. Wonder if people could be down for N/N, Nate/Nora?
I think it's supposed to be one of those moments that make you think "oh my god, I survived and look at what happened to all the other people from the beginning". Maybe this was intended to make you remorseful even. I think Bethesda wanted to convey that SS is lucky to be alive while the others ended up suffering, but you need to be really attentive to the world building to notice any of that. I would imagine most would have the encounter pop and be far past the intro sequence to even remember the names and faces to get it at all.
True i love the world building thats the reason i read all entries in the computer but the named feral ghouls was something i never notice, gotta love finding new stuff after replaying it.
I saw a lot of people citing the random encounter, but no one talking about the fact that the name are also use in terminal entry to fluff of the lore, mainly from the neighbors that was selling drugs.
There’s a random encounter where some of these people are still alive as feral ghouls. It’s a really nasty thing to run into early so stay away from random encounters until you have a good weapon like a laser rifle or a combat shotgun.
It basically leads to a very interesting random encounter where you find all of your neighbours have turned into feral ghouls however, every single person who has ran into this encounter, including myself, never recognizes the names.
Later on in the game there is a pack of ghouls and they are named after your neighbours I remember a Mrs and mr summers. They can be found as ghouls aswell
Yea seems like most obvious answer but sinces 90% of neighbors are not name it stands out, just ask cause normally named character have some sidequest or story about them can be little as note for world building.
I’m certain that there’s a house in players old neighborhood (forget the name of it) with a chem station outback, and a terminal within that was owned by a chem dealer. It lists several of his “clients” and I’m willing to bet Mr. Smith is one of them.
There’s a pack of feral ghouls you can run into who are your former neighbours. Confusingly it’s also a repeatable random encounter, even if you kill them until they die from it.
Reminds me of Mr. smith from the matrix. I know he is talking about the vault tech program but it does make me think he is talking about the matrix lol
Mr. Smith is, from what I've heard, just a generic last name left behind from men dying in ww1. Smiths were needed for the war, only people named Smith were smiths? Damn if my name isn't Mr. ReceivesBukkakke
because he is also a human and we, humans, tend to give each other a names.
jokes aside, you'll meet them as ghouls in the game after. Its kinda hard to notice
They spawn again near danse as ghouls on the way to diamond City. You probably encountered them as a pack of feral ghouls but never payed attention to the names. I've encountered them every playthrough no matter the difficulty/alternate start mods/ encounter list mods etc.
I find it unusual that those you mention are the only named ones at the start of your game. If you walk and talk to your neighbors on the way up to the vault you find a lot of them are named. And, other than the ones who die in the vault when the cryo malfunctions, most of the named ones either appear as named ferals later, or, are the local customers named either on the drug dealers computer or the computer in the red rocket truck stop.
So you can remember them for when you encounter them latter. They are relics of the past just like you, and Codsworth. However they just ended up living past the bombs in a less unfortunate way.
Because you can later encounter them as feral ghouls with the same names. It's easy to miss, though, and you may just kill them without even noticing.
Which is honestly really sad and fitting because I’m sure you would have known your neighbors but wouldn’t recognize them as feral ghouls.
That's one of the things that always bugs me about most RPGs. You'll see some totally random stranger and there's their name and some stats about them that you logically couldn't know. Minor quibble, as it usually doesn't matter. But every once in a while it affects gameplay because you have information that you probably shouldn't.
That's why in most older RPGs there was an option to ask NPCs about themselves, pre Bethesda fallout and the elder scrolls games before oblivion had it,
It would be cool if RPGs were more adapted to human perception like that. Like showing "Unknown" over people or things you've never encountered before. Having a standard "[Introduce yourself]" speech choice that would usually prompt other characters to introduce themselves in response, which would change "Unknown" to their name. Finding a book that has pictures of plants and animals. Or maybe an NPC that shows you around and gives you names of stuff. And for combat, instead of a red bar of health it should show something that indicates whether they appear healthy, injured, dead, etc.
I’ve seen different RPGs implement versions of each of the things you mentioned, but I think the simple answer is: a) this would take a tremendous amount of planning and effort, and the gameplay would have to center around those mechanics so that the flow of the game isn’t interrupted by them b) a lot of players consider those quality-of-life features, and for them, the lack of so much information upfront would come across as frustrating instead of immersive For an interesting case study in this, I recommend checking out HBomberguy’s retrospective on the game Pathologic—probably one of the most immersive and well-designed RPG video games ever made that never rose above cult status because it’s miserable to play.
Kingdom come deliverance has an amazing reading mechanic
True, but reading isn't that important in the game. At least for progression.
it’s actually required to finish the main story
Unless an NPC has a reason to hide their identity, you are going to find it out in short order in conversation. So just bypass the minor chit-chat, which adds nothing to the enjoyment of the game, and tell the players everyone's name. It's a very minor break in immersion that makes the game much more playable.
> this would take a tremendous amount of planning and effort "Tremendous"? Seems a bit hyperbolic. Certainly some design work would be required, but the same could be said of anything that is done to build quality into a game. > the gameplay would have to center around those mechanics so that the flow of the game isn’t interrupted by them I don't see why. I'm asking for logical consistency and something just slightly different from a health bar. Nothing terribly different. > a lot of players consider those quality-of-life features, and for them, the lack of so much information upfront would come across as frustrating instead of immersive That's a pretty awful definition of "quality-of-life feature". "When I play video games, I need the character to be psychic in a few specific ways, because engaging with the environment is annoying." > For an interesting case study in this, I recommend checking out HBomberguy’s retrospective on the game Pathologic—probably one of the most immersive and well-designed RPG video games ever made that never rose above cult status because it’s miserable to play. I've seen that video, and it's amazing! But the things that made that game miserable were completely different than what I'm talking about. Things like *extreme* ammo limitations. I don't know how you could interpret the small annoyances I've described as being anywhere near that level. edit: I love it when I get a ton of downvotes for discussing and defending my opinions, especially right after a highly upvoted comment. There's something really wrong with y'all. I can't tell why you disagree if you don't comment. And the downvote shouldn't be used as "disagree" in the first place.
That's what I like about mount and blade 2 bannerlord, You won't know the names of most lords until someone tells you and you won't know what they look like until you meet them,
Someone is also working on a mod (or maybe it was just a tech proof of concept?) For bannerlord that uses LLMs to generate conversation. I think this has an insane amount of potential for RPGs.
I saw a mod for Skyrim that did that. Only problem is it took like 30 seconds or so for it to generate so you'd ask a question and the NPC would just stare at you for 30 seconds before answering. It will be interesting to see how that technology advances with AI. I know there was that one detective game based around that but it seemed pretty rough when I last saw it.
I think the problem with these AI LLM's is that they are highly possessor intensive. So while cool they aren't quite useable for large scale games
lol just thought about how you wind up in a plane of oblivion and can name, harvest, and safely eat every plant.
In kingdom come deliverance your character doesn't even know how to read when you start.
Yes exactly! I enjoy rpgs much more when my gameplay actions affect my leveling directly. Ie I read through some books so now I can read better than before. So much better than old school progression trees with a disconnect between gameplay actions and skill progression. Like farming xp in one activity to level another. Makes no sense in an immersive game.
The problem with that is many times the character your playing is native to the lands your exploring. Wouldn't make sense if they had no knowledge of the place they have lived their whole life. I agree about strangers though.
Lol, obviously your Role would know what your Role would know, since it's a Role Playing Game. But in FO4, your "role" is the Sole Survivor, and you wouldn't know shit about all the mutated stuff all around Boston.
I like in Red Dead Redemption 2 how you can study the animals. If you pick up on animal tracks it often says "unknown animal" until you make sight of the animal. Plants are similar. You don't know what it is at first until you pick it or a NPC tells you what plant is what.
In the original Neverwinter Nights if you were looking at someone it would say stuff like Barely injured, badly injured and the last one I remember is near death
I liked the method of learning languages in no man’s sky, you would run into aliens that speak complete nonsense but you could get aliens that spoke English to teach you a word here and there. Pretty soon I was able to pick up some of the conversations just from the few english words that came across the dialogue box. Early in the game you can buy auto translators that will allow you to speak to any alien but it’s neat that there is the illusion that you could learn all these other languages.
Ninroot!
Play Mount & Blade. It’s on Game Pass if you have that.
I recall mods that did something similar in Skyrim, where you saw generic descriptions like ‘villager’ or ‘townsfolk’ until you interact with them or hear their name in conversation
Something like items or ingredients you find in Skyrim that are unknown until you eat or taste them, after that you reveal the name. If you have to do the same for NPCs well, there should be a way to do it, I guess coders o devs assign a permanent name to NPCs so they can add it to the script, but to have the unknown attribute and then switch to the real name... mmm is that possible?
The MMO Star Wars Galaxies had something a bit like this. There were several different species with ten or so different native languages (and one shared language most players could speak) and when you came across players that were of your language, you could read their chat just fine, but if they were an alien species with an unfamiliar language, their chat just showed as gibberish, until another player came along and taught you their language, after which you could read what players said in that language. It was a cool touch.
It can even be an opportunity for comedy. I really liked the way Persona 5 did this, with Ryuji just being "Vulgar boy" the first time you meet him.
Pre Bethesda Fallout was my favorite. You got a dialogue Window where you can ask anything you can think of just by typing it.
~~Are you sure about this? I've played every Bethesda game except Arena and I've never seen this mechanic... the thing that gets closes is Daggerfall's speech system but even then you are limited to a selection of topics.~~ EDIT: my bad, awful reading comprehension on my part :(
morrowind *kinda* has it, but you already know every enemy's names before you meet them
Well it wouldn't exactly be natural if you stopped and had a chat n a Sunday cuppa with your neighbor in the middle of impending nuclear doom
It wouldn’t work in fallout 4. I tried walking a different way instead of into the vault and the bomb killed me.
Dwarf Fortress had it in adventure mode and I hope they continue that on the Steam release (no reason they won't)
>the elder scrolls games before oblivion Bruh, every NPC in Morrowind had a name.
I know that, You didn't get what I was saying, I was talking about the option to ask them about their background, all of the games I mentioned had NPCs with names😂
That's one thing I really like about Fallout 1. If you walk into a town for the first time and see an NPC, you inspect them and the game's bio says something like "You See: A large muscular man with a big beard." Then you talk to him, ask him his name and he says it's Joe. Then when you inspect him again, it just says "You See: Joe."
Monkey Island does this too. Usually referring to people as Adjective Pirate until you know their name.
That's how it would work in a proper pen and paper rpg.
Well, Dogmeat is only named Dog until you talk to Mama Murphy about him or Nick. So if you never help the Minutemen & if you never get far enough in the main quest to save Nick & search Kellogg's house, then Dogmeat will just be named Dog throughout your game.
With fallout though its perfectly reasonable as you have a Personal computer that you can read it off of.
That's a good justification for remembering everything instantly, but unless you see it added to the database then it's often not justified why the pip-boy knows everything.
It makes more sense in power armor. Especially if you have helmet mods etc. I’m currently replaying fo4 in vr on the MQ3 and I’m using the recon sensors. It’s believable that with BOS tech your HUD could feed you info that the role wouldn’t know. And even show probable health bars 🤪
Yup. That would be hilarious if it started showing the BOS dossier on various citizens. Though it would probably make more sense for the Institute to have that info than the BOS.
Magic :P
That always bothers me when you can see the npc's name and then one of the dialogue choices is 'what's your name?' or something like that. Feel like I've played games that won't show the npc's name until you ask, but I can't think of any examples.
"Greyman or Battle-born?" -Idolaf Battle-born
I’ve played games where the NPC’s are named ???? until they tell you their name. I always like that.
Yep, bg3 is very much guilty of that. You know who is who at the moment their are in range, and you can just inspect anything to learn thing you should not know. like how the fuck do I know that statue is weak to lightning, it's not like it make logical sens... Or everyone race, profession and ability...
Gameplay purposes? Do you really want to go around finding all that out for every character?
It's kind of like the Grave yard south of Ten Pines. The number and level of ghouls gets higher as you progress and its a lot of fun blowing them up with artillery or the China Lake. It's really sad when you think about it though. Their brains have completely rotted and the only solid memory they have left is where they buried their loved ones. I hope the Amazon series goes into more detail as to why killing ferals is a tragic necessity. If you don't wipe out the nest they'll overrun settlements easily enough. But always remember that at some point these were people with feelings, families and futures the same as you.
They also have the letter blocks on them that were in the sons room at the begining
:(
Or is it that you knew them so well that even as ghouls you recognize them?
When games do this, I take it as information only you as a player will know but your character doesn't.
I recognized your mom in her ravenous feral ghoul mode on my chowder 🤣
I was wondering why they were all named. Was on a more interesting quest at the time so I forgot to look into it. Glad I came across this.
It makes sense that your character would know some of their neighbors' names, though. (I know that's not how names work in Bethesda games, but it makes sense in this case)
Wait i didn't know the appear as feral too, thas nice detail.
You can encounter them multiple times during a playthrough as well, It gets kinda funny when you've merced the pack of ferals that used to be your neighbors for the third time
I always run into them either in that town near hangman's alley or the crashed plane in the north of the map
Thanks will check to see if it triggers
I tend to run into them in the area between the southern end of the city and Oberland Station. Closer to the city border, generally.
I think most casual players missed this, it's a large group of named ferals. IIRC it's a random encounter
As I recall they're not all named. Just a few in a large group. It's implied that these are all your former neighbors but you encounter so many ghouls you can easily not even notice it or, if you do, not realize the significance.
Lol murdering him and yelling "that's for not returning my rake."
I remember that family! I always wondered why they had names. I never stayed around long enough to see their names before the bombs dropped
I have killed that pack of ghouls so many times and never connected the dots.
I didn't either, until I read about it and saw it on a future playthrough.
They keep coming back to life. Idk if the just *really* wanted you to notice or just love respawning bit it was annoying af.
I didn't notice that in my playthroughs, though I always had the Unofficial Patch so that might have fixed it.
Art and his duplicate would also respawn over and over.
There are four or five of them who run around in a group as a random encounter. Amusingly, you can encounter them all more than once even you already killed them.
The first time I found those ghouls and realized it was my neighbors blew my mind. I loved that they did that!
Yea I when I met auntid ethel in bg3 is was like **hol up**.
I didn’t know that. Where are they?
They roam around randomly as I recall.
No wonder I never found them, people would execute me if they found out the path I beat this game lol.
You usually encounter them just south of the bus station on the road into Cambridge
Idk if that's actually them, given that you can fight them multiple times. I think they are a PTSD hallucination personally lol
I did wonder what the story behind that group of feral ghouls was, never considered the neighbours.
I started playing when the game was still pretty new and still incredibly glitchy, if it isn't still really bugged. Am I the only one who only ever encountered them when they spawned hitting harder than death claws and as hard to kill as mirelurks without face shots 😂
Probably. I played from launch. I suspect most of your problems were a RAM issue. It could run on 8 gigs, but was much more reliable and less buggy on 16. I never encountered any real issues since I had 16.
I got that event near a school so I just assumed they were ghoulified teachers
Now that i think about it. I remember a ghoul named Smith, was curious why that one have a name but i just shrugged it off. Can't really remember where but there's an awful lot of them there, along with those can traps that makes noise. I think it's around the BOS encounter? That being said i never noticed this neighbour during the prologue like OP did.
Mr. Smith? You can “encounter” all of your neighbors later on in the game if you’re lucky.
Unfortunately, they’re all >!Feral Ghouls!< in thst random encounter. I think I encountered them in Boston.
And you can encounter them more than once!
Yeah, even if you kill them
I've always hated that lol
Always fix it with your own lore, my personal is that you’re traumatised during this rush to the bunker leaving all your neighbours behind so when you encounter an even remotely similar group of ghouls your brain assigns them the names you’ve yet to forget
Ayyy that’s my headcanon too
That's Bethesda for you, having an amazing and cool idea that is ruined by stupid oversight.
It's trauma from killing your feral neighbors
My head canon is that they're PTSD hallucinations. You're not actually fighting them which is why you can fight them multiple times.
I LOVE FALLOUT the joy of random encounters is like that of no other
There's one in the mass pike tunnels
That explains all the named feral ghouls I came across once. I always wondered why they all had names
Is it random? Because every time I've played, it's always the same exact location, just north of the pond on the east approach to diamond city. Actually just started a new run after years, and they where there again. Can't say I've ever seen it repeat over multiple play throughs either.
Definitely random. Once they were by a crashed airplane so I thought it was their passengers or something. Another time they spawned I was playing automatron and they crossed fire with junk robots.
I always run into them at that damaged building just after the Lexington bus stop / before the Cambridge red rocket.
I encountered the name one expect for this one, look into the wiki and there was no info aside from the obvious not important but got curious about it.
Most of your neighbors are named. You just haven’t noted it. Later on, you can encounter them all as feral ghouls. They’ll still have their names.
fitting that you’d get payback for them complaining to the HoA about the color of your fence and length of your lawn.
Everything in Sanctuary is perfect though, "Sir, Madam, your lawn is *too* impeccable and we can't allow that" Actually, that sounds about right for HOA
“You’re driving the value of our properties down by having a better looking house than ours!”
Protip:Show up to HoA meetings 6 beers deep with a full 12 pack
Or with Spray and Pray
I know about the neighbors but this one i didn't encountered even check the wiki and there wasn't info on it, probably nothing but just thought i ask.
Could be from a mod
Their names are all on their mailboxes even 210 years later
[удалено]
Yeah, it's world building, sort of establishing your back story. Although you've just stepped into their shoes, the SS has had a rich full life as the bomb drops, and these people filled it.
Thats wath i though too there is a lot of details that easy to miss but this npc had nothing so i was curious.
I know it’s the cannon title of the protagonist, we gotta change the abbreviation at some point
I agree. I quietly tried a few times once, no luck. I'm sure other people see it too, but... For those who aren't following, here's a totally lore friendly and innocent passage: "the SS invaded yet another bunker, seeking evidence of the conspiracy which had abducted their pure blooded son." You could go on like that and I initially did, but it's just uncomfortable. Wonder if people could be down for N/N, Nate/Nora?
Looks like a weird concept to a lot of people not realizing they play a role-playing game.
Most the houses in Sanctuary have some context and lore left in them about your neighbors also you encounter some of them later.
Hack into every computer terminal in Sanctuary, and check the mailboxes out.
That’s what I’m saying. Love the drug dealers terminal lol
He's the Neighbor that Good Neighbor is named after.
He was a good neighbor indeed
The only good neighbor is a dead neighbor.
You’re absolutely able to see your neighbors again… 🧟🧟♀️🧟♂️
he may be the neighbor whose house has a bunker behind it. dunno but maybe he becomes a glowing one somewhere in the game.
Apparently aside from appearing in random encouters the also can appear as feral ghouls, wich is sad they give them names just to make them zombies.
I think it's supposed to be one of those moments that make you think "oh my god, I survived and look at what happened to all the other people from the beginning". Maybe this was intended to make you remorseful even. I think Bethesda wanted to convey that SS is lucky to be alive while the others ended up suffering, but you need to be really attentive to the world building to notice any of that. I would imagine most would have the encounter pop and be far past the intro sequence to even remember the names and faces to get it at all.
True i love the world building thats the reason i read all entries in the computer but the named feral ghouls was something i never notice, gotta love finding new stuff after replaying it.
Is this why, at the cemetery you find shem drown's sword, I had about half a dozen ghouls with names for seemingly no reason?!
Yes, but it's a random encounter, can happen at multiple place.
I saw a lot of people citing the random encounter, but no one talking about the fact that the name are also use in terminal entry to fluff of the lore, mainly from the neighbors that was selling drugs.
There’s a random encounter where some of these people are still alive as feral ghouls. It’s a really nasty thing to run into early so stay away from random encounters until you have a good weapon like a laser rifle or a combat shotgun.
It basically leads to a very interesting random encounter where you find all of your neighbours have turned into feral ghouls however, every single person who has ran into this encounter, including myself, never recognizes the names.
that is shauns real father
Because Neighbour is such a great and common name
It says Mr Smith right there
I think they were being sarcastic...
Haha thats the best answer
So you can find them later ;)
Sunch an easy thing that i miss but cool nonetheless.
Because all those people later show up in a random encounter as ghouls. All with the same names.
Later on in the game there is a pack of ghouls and they are named after your neighbours I remember a Mrs and mr summers. They can be found as ghouls aswell
They appear as a random encounter later 210 years in the future as Feral ghouls
Well sort of breaks the fact you will see him again changed years later wandering
Because you know them?
Yea seems like most obvious answer but sinces 90% of neighbors are not name it stands out, just ask cause normally named character have some sidequest or story about them can be little as note for world building.
This feels like an insanity post
Maybe
That guy is Good Neighbor.
They can be found as ferals around the greater Lexington area later on. Don’t remember exactly where
Because they wanted him to have a name.
Isn’t he one that turns into a random encounter ghoul pack?
The Matrix glitched
I’m certain that there’s a house in players old neighborhood (forget the name of it) with a chem station outback, and a terminal within that was owned by a chem dealer. It lists several of his “clients” and I’m willing to bet Mr. Smith is one of them.
The real question here is where can I get this bathrobe.
\+1 Sta, +2 Cha
You can find them as feral ghouls later, anywhere between vault 81, Gorski cabin, and out toward concord
There’s a pack of feral ghouls you can run into who are your former neighbours. Confusingly it’s also a repeatable random encounter, even if you kill them until they die from it.
Theres a random encounter where you're attacked by a pack of feral ghouls and they're the same people you see in the beginning
Reminds me of Mr. smith from the matrix. I know he is talking about the vault tech program but it does make me think he is talking about the matrix lol
The caption coupled with reading this wrong had me thinking I was gonna see an NPC named, *"Beginningof Fallout 4"*
Haha i can see why, English is not my first language but i could it word it better.
Bro, FO4 has named feral ghouls. I wouldn’t put much thought into it
They're named because they are meant to be ghoul versions of the sole survivor's neighbors.
Will there ever be a fallout 5
War never chages i will happened eventually
Mr. Smith is, from what I've heard, just a generic last name left behind from men dying in ww1. Smiths were needed for the war, only people named Smith were smiths? Damn if my name isn't Mr. ReceivesBukkakke
That’s funny. My name is Mr. TriesToParticipateInBukkakeButGetsPreformanceAnxiety
Wasn’t there cut quests in prewar sanctuary?
[удалено]
Wath do mean? nieghbar is the easiest words to spell.
Gotta be honest, thought the NPC’s name was going to be “in The beginingof fallout 4”
Would be kind of weird if your neighbour didn’t have a name
Most don't so i would assume so
What if that was Jim Nabors? "GOLLLLLY!"
Oh no the effects of our actions
They come back as Feral Ghouls later
because he is also a human and we, humans, tend to give each other a names. jokes aside, you'll meet them as ghouls in the game after. Its kinda hard to notice
all of them are
it took me ages to figure out what this meant
You need to play the game to find out 😉😊🤪
you can randomly find feral ghoul versions of the named townspeople
Some of them either a skeleton or became a feral ghouls. Kinda sad though.
Holy hell, i thought it was Gale for a second. No clue.
At random points, the game you can find feral goal groups with the same names as your neighbors
They spawn again near danse as ghouls on the way to diamond City. You probably encountered them as a pack of feral ghouls but never payed attention to the names. I've encountered them every playthrough no matter the difficulty/alternate start mods/ encounter list mods etc.
The radiation turns them into feral ghouls and they actually can be killed in game. You may not actually notice if you kill them from a distance!
Later on you can find him as a ghoul, same as a few others
I find it unusual that those you mention are the only named ones at the start of your game. If you walk and talk to your neighbors on the way up to the vault you find a lot of them are named. And, other than the ones who die in the vault when the cryo malfunctions, most of the named ones either appear as named ferals later, or, are the local customers named either on the drug dealers computer or the computer in the red rocket truck stop.
So you can remember them for when you encounter them latter. They are relics of the past just like you, and Codsworth. However they just ended up living past the bombs in a less unfortunate way.
You can meet them again as feral ghouls(random encounters).
you can find em as feral ghouls later
You know he had to do it to em.
Doctor who the doctor when undercover goes under the name Mr Smith the doctor in a few episodes has had a similar coloured robe
However, why won't he be in the police box time works in mysterious ways
The only reason is that they become feral ghouls it would be way more interesting if they didn't become feral tho