I appreciate the additions, but i disagree with this level of praise. The top 2 options all progress the dialog tree, one nice guy one asshole, and the rest are more information flavor text with the last one being a cancel/refuse (who ever uses this). It's not that far from F4 at all. Of the 2 dozen skill checks I've passed/popped meds to pass, most ore another line of flavor text then back to the tree. 2 at least provided a slight way to adjust a quest with a passcode.
F4s main story may have been boring, but some sidequests and especially Far Harbour and nuka world had great writing and characters. I have yet to see anything of that level here.
I wish I played those sidequests because F4 just felt like a never ending feeling of malaise of "I just don't care" here, I feel invested in my choices, it allows me to feel the RP part of RPG which just wasn't there at all in 4 imo. I've chuckled more at dialogue more here than my entire playtime in Fallout 4 which never really allowed your player character to express anything other than a one note concern for their son. For example these funny dialogue choices that prompted me to post in the first place would
never happen with F4's bore of a character:
Bandit leader: You the one with the password? What the hell are you doing here?
Me: I want to join your crew
Bandit leader: and I want a diamond studded vertibird, so I guess we're both left with nothing, explain to me why you should get yours?
Strength Option: I'm strong, I make a circus strongman look like a kindergartner.
Intelligence option: Napoleon, Genghis Kahn, George Washington? Morons. You are looking at a tactical genius.
Alternatively on a "good" new character unable to pass skill checks.
Bandit leader: You the one with the password what the hell are you doing here?
Me: I want you to leave ____ alone
Bandit Leader: And why would I do that?
Me: Because, uh I'm Crane...and I know where the treasure is!
Bandit Leader: So where is the treasure then "crane?"
Me:(unable to meet skillchecks) Uh, maybe...maybe the real treasure is
friendship and the friends you've made along the way.
Just this one interaction
alone, you'd never get choices with this much personality and variance coming from your player character in vanilla FO4 which one was limited to only 4 choices most of the time and the vast majority of these choices were the same worded differently (which becomes really apparent if you had the mod where dialogue choices show the text in full allowing you to compare them) and then even in scenarios where the dialogue
is substantially different, your VA delivers the line in the same one note tone that he delivers
all dialogue with.
I have heard from far too many people that Far Harbour is quality so I don't doubt that they stepped their game up , but vanilla F4's characters and writing was really, really offensively lackluster to me so I just wasn't interested by that point.
Even if the illusion of choice is still there, It does at least give me a blank slate that allow's me some agency in who my character is, versus 4 where that choice was already made for me and every single time you talk to anyone just reinforced how little control you have over who your character really is. Fallout 4's character would never end a conversation with a bandit with "...Nah, I'd rather wear your skull as a hat" because the spectrum of who that character can be is incredibly small and limiting.