Video Gaming Role Play Woes

[Rynjin]

Fallout 4 is like Skyrim--it replaces skills with various perks you can get at different levels.

Skyrim still has the skills, so this isn't really a good comparison.

[Vinyadan]

It has to be said, low INT being a bad idea was made pretty obvious from the beginning in Fallout 1, given you could only have conversations in baby talk, making it really difficult to accept quests!

I wish they had had that in Oblivion.

"Let me see your face. You are the one from my dreams".
"Me like banana!"
"Yes, you most definitely are him."

[GloatingSwine]

True, Speech is extremely powerful in classic Fallout.

Now I'm not familiar with Fallout 4 Speech checks, but Speech has always been horribly flawed in Fallout because there's barely any correlation between Charisma and your Speech skill, meaning a 10 Intelligence 2 Charisma Gordon Freeman was nearly always a better diplomat than a 10 Charisma 5 Intelligence character because of more dialogue options available. And the perks that amplified Speech were mostly just percentage increases.

I'd understand it if the point made was that Fallout 4 removed Speech checks completely, but by my estimate Speech has always been "a cool, often slightly lore-expanding way to get a ton of XP for free without having to slog through Fallout combat".

Fallout 4 basically did remove Speech checks. It's just tied to the Charisma stat now, and I think there's one quest in the entire game where it potentially affects the outcome (you can convince a guy to start the combat by shooting at you instead of his hostage).

In basically all other situations it just gives you some extra XP or money. Only one of the perks tied to Charisma affects dialogue.

Fallout 4 in general does not care what you do with its perk tree. The primary effect of it is "what shape bullets do you shoot".