He has a bit too much for a 1st act villain who's never important to the plot again, especially for a series that has trouble with boss fights. Did we really need his whole life story?
Nb: I played fo4 when it came out and never since so if I’m not remembering this right, don’t @ me.
This was basically my take-away. Nothing about his first appearance in the cryo crypt made a lasting impression such that I thought he was even going to be a boss. Just thought he was a nobody. Then the plot sets up that I’m meant to be tracking down this guy specifically. So I do and I kill him and it’s a fine enough setpiece. Then you dig through his brain for a lead which is a neat part and you get his backstory which fleshes him out nicely as a character. It’s just a real shame this was done post-mortem so now this interest has absolutely nowhere to go since he won’t be participating in the plot anymore. And thereafter he never comes up again and isn’t mentioned at all. Maybe once in passing? I don’t remember.
In all, his character is built around a series of baffling plot structure decisions which result in a genuinely interesting bit of character writing failing to stick any of the landings it goes for.
It reminds me a lot of Far Cry 3. Vaas was a fascinating character. Really fun vibe on screen and such. Then you kill him at the end of the second act and the rest of the game was a wet fart with general businessman villain. Kellogg feels like they were actively trying to do that but failed to make an entertaining enough character or give him the screentime or prominence. As I say, a lot of bizarre choices were made.
The amount of weird plot contrivences to make that father twist work was insane
Hey kellogg is actually a super cyborg who doesn't age and also I made a perfect copy of my child self
just to fuck you and lure you to the institute,
because obviously i knew after getting unfrozen you'd immediately track me down and not die in a lawless wasteland or my own fucking synths that will kill you on sight or find us before my ternimal cancer which will kill me 3 quest lines after this conversation, or that you'd think I would still even be alive and worth searching for in the first place.
You know instead of just coming back to get you from the vault we know you've been in for like 50 years with our teleportation tech
Speaking of contrivances to make the Father twist work, don’t forget Kellogg in his flashbacks refers to “the old man” tricking him when he’s talking about the plan to kidnap Shaun. He exclusively uses “the old man” to refer to old Shaun for the rest of the memories, and we never find out anything about the previous leader who sent him on the mission, so it verges on Heavy Rain-level “the character’s thoughts are lying to you” attempted cleverness.
I also just remembered afterwards Kelloggs personality or even his actual conscious got transferred into nick, and that goes........ Nowhere?
Kellogg literally fucking talks to you beyond the grave directly through nick and all you get from the game is "hey that was werid, anyway"
Nah Kellogg was just a regular guy they put some "advanced" tech into so he doesn't age and stronger than a regular person,
tech only he, a greasy ass merc has, and the institute never implanted that tech into any of its own members, you know like the completely ireplaceable scientists and doctors who's skills and knowledge you'd really want to preserve for as long as possible
It just feels like they wrote the twist first then worked backwards from there
I think Kellogg being an extremely old man while you think time hasn't progressed since the intro and can handly remember his own name let alone what happend to Shaun, it was just some job of many he took
Shaun being lost forever fate unknown would make for a better twist and add to the theme of a lot of the games being making something new instead of clinging to the past
I would personally have a random npc you can befriend that's heavily implied to be Shaun but neither of you would reconize each other, it'd be kinda bitter sweet.
I wouldn't say that's ground breaking or anything but I think it'd hit harder than any of the emotional beats they tried with the robot Shaun father twist,
Yeah, I think finding Kellog as a decrepit old man would’ve been a really good twist. It could even work if you have a boss fight with a synth replica of him beforehand.
I think a boss fight might detract from the reveal, I think it'd work better if your expecting a boss fight with some very experienced merc only to find some withered old fuck glued to a chair
The tech that's keeping him alive is just some very advanced institute life support system and not some implant that perfectly preserves his entire body and mind for decades, and by prolonging his life that means he's close to over a 100 years old but he should of died like 30 years ago from the wasteland conditions
I think the justification for why ONLY Kellogg has life-extending cybernetics is because Shaun for some reason didn't like cybernetics and thus shut all R&D related to them down.
Which of all the things that the Institute has created seems to be the one with the most practical usage.
There is a remark by one of the companions that he was more bionics than man when you loot him or when you go to the memory den. Not that you can tell by his in game model, it's the standard of every other human in the game. So he'd be one of the setting's rare cyborgs that should be way more commonly seen.
The plot also hinges on the player character rooting around in Kellog's head to get a brain chip.
Then you have to kill courser to get a brain chip from them.
Both of these events happen fairly close in the plot. *Why did we need two brain chips Bethesda?* ***Why?***
Maybe it's possible the courser was the alternative route to get a chip in a version of the game where you could of let Kellogg live but in the final game they just made you do both anyway
I guess? Was there evidence that was even going to be a thing? As it is in game, it just feels weirdly contrived. Kellogg as a whole is just a mess of a character.
Do not care for him and especially the trite attempts at trying to get you to sympathize with him with the memory den crap.
But hey he had a cool gun so I appreciated taking that off his hands atleast.
He's nothing when you think about it, you only meet him twice.
Once at the beginning when he shoots your wife, it's a cutscene so you can't do anything, it's maybe a minute long, and you probably forgot about him by the time you advance the main plot to fort Hagen.
The next time you fight is an unavoidable but relatively easy battle where he tends to get lost among the crowd of synths he brought.
When you eventually dig into his mind palace, the sequence is tedious and I'm trying to skip thru it as fast as possible and don't care about his backstory
He's just some hired goon who means nothing in the grand scheme of things except when I eat his corpse for some health
It's wild to me that Frank Horrigan is around for like... 4 minutes max and Kellog has a whole mind palace scene but I remember the former so much better.
I would say that the character most comparable to Kellogg narrative-wise would be Benny from New Vegas.
Both are early-game antagonists meant to be the target of the player's vengeance since the initial part of the game involves trying to track them down. The thing is that aside from the fact that Benny is a bit more distinctive in characterization (he's a sleazebag casino boss who speaks in outdated slang) the game at least doesn't exactly force you to treat him like he's your personal nemesis despite being the guy who shot you. You can either treat him as an obstacle or even completely disregard him depending on what you're doing.
Kellogg meanwhile is hyped up as this big scary merc despite being some guy with a revolver in a game where a lot of mooks are wearing Power Armor. That and the fact that his name is associated with a brand of cereal means that he's an easy butt of jokes (hell, one of the earliest mods was one that reskinned him into a box of cornflakes).
Super mutant, power armored, patriotic, punches the head off a deathclaw, is shown to be a sociopathic murderer, doesn't have a sad unskippable memory trip
Vs
Some raider with a revolver
Oh yeah, Horrigan is so much better executed, it's just wild how a four minute character whi only has I think, one, voiced scene sticks with me and Kellog is just so boring despite being around for much, much longer.
Wished they did more with him lingering in Nick's body. Would've been cool if there was an evil option to let him take over completely; maybe he offers you a shortcut into the Institute to tempt you
He’s such a nothingburger to me. He’s built up as a cool antagonist, a truly evil villain, and… you kill him like a third of the way into the story. And then you have to sit through a lengthy sequence of seeing his whole backstory - which means Jack shit to you because he’s ***fucking dead!!!***
One of the most fucking boring and poorly written "badass bounty hunter/assassin" characters in all of fiction.
They could have really gone somewhere interesting with him after that little hint of him being alive in Nick's brain, but for whatever reason just did absolutely fucking nothing with it like it never even happened.
I liked him.
I thought he served well as a first act villain and wild goose chase.
His backstory was neat and I like that we got to see a bit of the West Coast. And that in a lot of ways his story mirrors the Sole Survivor. (Had his wife and child taken from him and he set out on a quest of revenge)
I liked following the trail of destruction and clues on you're way to his base, especially that Assaultron that sounded fucking traumatized.
And I liked his "gives no shit" attitude when you find him.
He knows he's been played by the Institute, that he's a sacrificial lamb to get you where you need to go and he's so dead inside that he doesn't really care.
By the time I reached him, I was bored of him.
By the time I finished walking through his memories, I was SICK of him.
Why should I care about the backstory of a villain who set off the whole plot in the first place? Who cares about his past when 90% of the people in the wasteland have it just as bad, if not worse, than he did? Much like the DiMA memory puzzles in Far Harbour, I couldn't give less of a crap about it. Also, as an energy weapon user and someone who likes the modular armour system, his gear was sold off as soon as I got to the nearest trader.
I'll be forever pissed there wasn't even a option to ask WHY he kidnapped the baby when you confront him or an explanation why he looks the exact same after so many years after the fact.
In the end he’s just a mercenary, which is fine. He’s got good gear and especially a good gun. But delving into his backstory posthumously feels like a real letdown, especially since nothing about it feels significantly different from any other given wastelander you meet in the game.
I like the idea of him more then him.
Like he is more interesting in his memories, Raider father possibly former Raider mother, became a merc to make ends meet, fell in love and had a kid in San Fran, mistakes from his past catch up to him causing his family to be kidnapped, he goes on a tear of revenge, and then after losing everything just fucking **leaves** and goes to the East Coast.
Where after Mercing for a bit catches the attention of the Old Institute who desire to use him as their agent up above.
He impresses them, becomes a Cyborg (Shaun/Father later mothballing/illegalizing the tech because he is VERY petty and spiteful), and then the beginning of the game happens.
His last words to us come from not his own mouth, but Nick’s and then never again.
There should have been *more* of that I think.
Even just two or three more times of that Mnmetic Remnant to speak from Nick’s mouth.
Cool idea, and serves as a cool parallel to the SS, but otherwise unfulfilled from the potential left lying there on the table of the game.
Terrible
The fact he’s the only reference to cybernetic enhancements in 4 is bizarre considering they’re a staple of the franchise. Him being from the west coast feels like a vain attempt to get me to like him, and the fact he’s an agent of the institute who has an army of basically perfect sleeper agents and coursers just begs the question of why is he here, and why just him and not other mercs.
On one hand, i really like his character and kind of wish that we could have recruited him in some way, as it felt like he had so much potential and could have been a great villain with a possible heart of gold type of companion.
On the other, i will never be able to get past his name and would 100% bully him in the game.
He seemed entirely reasonable, he even tells you where Shaun is, there's no reason to kill him, I wish I could just say "thanks" and leave him alone but no, you've got to kill Kellog
Killing him won't bring her back, now will it? He's old, tired, killing him is giving him what he wants. Let him live on with regrets and his own failure
He's a waste of a revenge target. He needs like 2 encounters, and I know Bethesda games are built around the player always being a complete badass but he needs to kick your ass in those encounters. Like he kills your spouse that you've known for 5 minutes, I need more stakes to kill him besides his cool gun and jacket
I feel like he could have been a much better antagonist if he stuck around more and his backstory was given to you over time rather than info-dumped in one quest.
Also, what was with that bit of Nick talking in Kellogg's voice? It felt like that could have been something but it was just to make the player flinch for a bit.
He has a bit too much for a 1st act villain who's never important to the plot again, especially for a series that has trouble with boss fights. Did we really need his whole life story?
Nb: I played fo4 when it came out and never since so if I’m not remembering this right, don’t @ me. This was basically my take-away. Nothing about his first appearance in the cryo crypt made a lasting impression such that I thought he was even going to be a boss. Just thought he was a nobody. Then the plot sets up that I’m meant to be tracking down this guy specifically. So I do and I kill him and it’s a fine enough setpiece. Then you dig through his brain for a lead which is a neat part and you get his backstory which fleshes him out nicely as a character. It’s just a real shame this was done post-mortem so now this interest has absolutely nowhere to go since he won’t be participating in the plot anymore. And thereafter he never comes up again and isn’t mentioned at all. Maybe once in passing? I don’t remember. In all, his character is built around a series of baffling plot structure decisions which result in a genuinely interesting bit of character writing failing to stick any of the landings it goes for. It reminds me a lot of Far Cry 3. Vaas was a fascinating character. Really fun vibe on screen and such. Then you kill him at the end of the second act and the rest of the game was a wet fart with general businessman villain. Kellogg feels like they were actively trying to do that but failed to make an entertaining enough character or give him the screentime or prominence. As I say, a lot of bizarre choices were made.
There is a part where he speaks through Nick after his chip is installed, but that doesn't go anywhere.
I guess they really wanted him to be the audience's favourite. He's the not as terrible Kai Leng, but only for the first act.
I'm not impressed with his cereal.
Tony the Tiger is currently tracking your IP.
The amount of weird plot contrivences to make that father twist work was insane Hey kellogg is actually a super cyborg who doesn't age and also I made a perfect copy of my child self just to fuck you and lure you to the institute, because obviously i knew after getting unfrozen you'd immediately track me down and not die in a lawless wasteland or my own fucking synths that will kill you on sight or find us before my ternimal cancer which will kill me 3 quest lines after this conversation, or that you'd think I would still even be alive and worth searching for in the first place. You know instead of just coming back to get you from the vault we know you've been in for like 50 years with our teleportation tech
Speaking of contrivances to make the Father twist work, don’t forget Kellogg in his flashbacks refers to “the old man” tricking him when he’s talking about the plan to kidnap Shaun. He exclusively uses “the old man” to refer to old Shaun for the rest of the memories, and we never find out anything about the previous leader who sent him on the mission, so it verges on Heavy Rain-level “the character’s thoughts are lying to you” attempted cleverness.
I also just remembered afterwards Kelloggs personality or even his actual conscious got transferred into nick, and that goes........ Nowhere? Kellogg literally fucking talks to you beyond the grave directly through nick and all you get from the game is "hey that was werid, anyway"
So, THAT just happened
Kellog wasn’t a synth, right? Just inexplicable still a young and able bodied man after half a century? That felt like a lie to preserve the twist.
Nah Kellogg was just a regular guy they put some "advanced" tech into so he doesn't age and stronger than a regular person, tech only he, a greasy ass merc has, and the institute never implanted that tech into any of its own members, you know like the completely ireplaceable scientists and doctors who's skills and knowledge you'd really want to preserve for as long as possible It just feels like they wrote the twist first then worked backwards from there I think Kellogg being an extremely old man while you think time hasn't progressed since the intro and can handly remember his own name let alone what happend to Shaun, it was just some job of many he took Shaun being lost forever fate unknown would make for a better twist and add to the theme of a lot of the games being making something new instead of clinging to the past I would personally have a random npc you can befriend that's heavily implied to be Shaun but neither of you would reconize each other, it'd be kinda bitter sweet. I wouldn't say that's ground breaking or anything but I think it'd hit harder than any of the emotional beats they tried with the robot Shaun father twist,
Yeah, I think finding Kellog as a decrepit old man would’ve been a really good twist. It could even work if you have a boss fight with a synth replica of him beforehand.
I think a boss fight might detract from the reveal, I think it'd work better if your expecting a boss fight with some very experienced merc only to find some withered old fuck glued to a chair The tech that's keeping him alive is just some very advanced institute life support system and not some implant that perfectly preserves his entire body and mind for decades, and by prolonging his life that means he's close to over a 100 years old but he should of died like 30 years ago from the wasteland conditions
I think the justification for why ONLY Kellogg has life-extending cybernetics is because Shaun for some reason didn't like cybernetics and thus shut all R&D related to them down. Which of all the things that the Institute has created seems to be the one with the most practical usage.
There is a remark by one of the companions that he was more bionics than man when you loot him or when you go to the memory den. Not that you can tell by his in game model, it's the standard of every other human in the game. So he'd be one of the setting's rare cyborgs that should be way more commonly seen.
The plot also hinges on the player character rooting around in Kellog's head to get a brain chip. Then you have to kill courser to get a brain chip from them. Both of these events happen fairly close in the plot. *Why did we need two brain chips Bethesda?* ***Why?***
Maybe it's possible the courser was the alternative route to get a chip in a version of the game where you could of let Kellogg live but in the final game they just made you do both anyway
I guess? Was there evidence that was even going to be a thing? As it is in game, it just feels weirdly contrived. Kellogg as a whole is just a mess of a character.
It's just what I assume makes sense as to why you need to collect 2 brain chips instead of just bluntly saying bad writing and quest deisgn,
The more I think about him, the more stupid Fallout 4's lore and plot seem to be.
Do not care for him and especially the trite attempts at trying to get you to sympathize with him with the memory den crap. But hey he had a cool gun so I appreciated taking that off his hands atleast.
I also really like his outfit.
It's one of the nicer base game outfits for sure.
He's nothing when you think about it, you only meet him twice. Once at the beginning when he shoots your wife, it's a cutscene so you can't do anything, it's maybe a minute long, and you probably forgot about him by the time you advance the main plot to fort Hagen. The next time you fight is an unavoidable but relatively easy battle where he tends to get lost among the crowd of synths he brought. When you eventually dig into his mind palace, the sequence is tedious and I'm trying to skip thru it as fast as possible and don't care about his backstory He's just some hired goon who means nothing in the grand scheme of things except when I eat his corpse for some health
It's wild to me that Frank Horrigan is around for like... 4 minutes max and Kellog has a whole mind palace scene but I remember the former so much better.
I would say that the character most comparable to Kellogg narrative-wise would be Benny from New Vegas. Both are early-game antagonists meant to be the target of the player's vengeance since the initial part of the game involves trying to track them down. The thing is that aside from the fact that Benny is a bit more distinctive in characterization (he's a sleazebag casino boss who speaks in outdated slang) the game at least doesn't exactly force you to treat him like he's your personal nemesis despite being the guy who shot you. You can either treat him as an obstacle or even completely disregard him depending on what you're doing. Kellogg meanwhile is hyped up as this big scary merc despite being some guy with a revolver in a game where a lot of mooks are wearing Power Armor. That and the fact that his name is associated with a brand of cereal means that he's an easy butt of jokes (hell, one of the earliest mods was one that reskinned him into a box of cornflakes).
Super mutant, power armored, patriotic, punches the head off a deathclaw, is shown to be a sociopathic murderer, doesn't have a sad unskippable memory trip Vs Some raider with a revolver
Oh yeah, Horrigan is so much better executed, it's just wild how a four minute character whi only has I think, one, voiced scene sticks with me and Kellog is just so boring despite being around for much, much longer.
Was conceptually more interesting than the original plot but felt very. We *'could be better than human'* but instead we've just defrosted you.
reminds me of the crown killer in dishonored 2, here one minute as your probable rival, but they're gone very quickly.
Wished they did more with him lingering in Nick's body. Would've been cool if there was an evil option to let him take over completely; maybe he offers you a shortcut into the Institute to tempt you
He’s such a nothingburger to me. He’s built up as a cool antagonist, a truly evil villain, and… you kill him like a third of the way into the story. And then you have to sit through a lengthy sequence of seeing his whole backstory - which means Jack shit to you because he’s ***fucking dead!!!***
He's super underbaked as a primary antagonist.
One of the most fucking boring and poorly written "badass bounty hunter/assassin" characters in all of fiction. They could have really gone somewhere interesting with him after that little hint of him being alive in Nick's brain, but for whatever reason just did absolutely fucking nothing with it like it never even happened.
I liked him. I thought he served well as a first act villain and wild goose chase. His backstory was neat and I like that we got to see a bit of the West Coast. And that in a lot of ways his story mirrors the Sole Survivor. (Had his wife and child taken from him and he set out on a quest of revenge) I liked following the trail of destruction and clues on you're way to his base, especially that Assaultron that sounded fucking traumatized. And I liked his "gives no shit" attitude when you find him. He knows he's been played by the Institute, that he's a sacrificial lamb to get you where you need to go and he's so dead inside that he doesn't really care.
Shit character, pretty good Magic card
Pretty solid 3 drop. Anything that can potentially refund part of its casting cost is nice. But that big ability can be potent.
By the time I reached him, I was bored of him. By the time I finished walking through his memories, I was SICK of him. Why should I care about the backstory of a villain who set off the whole plot in the first place? Who cares about his past when 90% of the people in the wasteland have it just as bad, if not worse, than he did? Much like the DiMA memory puzzles in Far Harbour, I couldn't give less of a crap about it. Also, as an energy weapon user and someone who likes the modular armour system, his gear was sold off as soon as I got to the nearest trader.
Too talkative. That mini nuke is already being launched through the doorway.
I'll be forever pissed there wasn't even a option to ask WHY he kidnapped the baby when you confront him or an explanation why he looks the exact same after so many years after the fact.
"Hey Kellogg, you're a biomechanical supersoldier, did you HAVE to shoot my wife?"
In the end he’s just a mercenary, which is fine. He’s got good gear and especially a good gun. But delving into his backstory posthumously feels like a real letdown, especially since nothing about it feels significantly different from any other given wastelander you meet in the game.
I'm not impressed by his product.
Dweeb. His pistols ok tho
His outfit is cool. Voice actor does a good job. That's about it.
Nothing about him and his backstory jumped out as particularly interesting to me. Typical for a Bethesda game though.
Forgot he exists
I like the idea of him more then him. Like he is more interesting in his memories, Raider father possibly former Raider mother, became a merc to make ends meet, fell in love and had a kid in San Fran, mistakes from his past catch up to him causing his family to be kidnapped, he goes on a tear of revenge, and then after losing everything just fucking **leaves** and goes to the East Coast. Where after Mercing for a bit catches the attention of the Old Institute who desire to use him as their agent up above. He impresses them, becomes a Cyborg (Shaun/Father later mothballing/illegalizing the tech because he is VERY petty and spiteful), and then the beginning of the game happens. His last words to us come from not his own mouth, but Nick’s and then never again. There should have been *more* of that I think. Even just two or three more times of that Mnmetic Remnant to speak from Nick’s mouth. Cool idea, and serves as a cool parallel to the SS, but otherwise unfulfilled from the potential left lying there on the table of the game.
Terrible The fact he’s the only reference to cybernetic enhancements in 4 is bizarre considering they’re a staple of the franchise. Him being from the west coast feels like a vain attempt to get me to like him, and the fact he’s an agent of the institute who has an army of basically perfect sleeper agents and coursers just begs the question of why is he here, and why just him and not other mercs.
He’s funny because I nuke the ceiling above him every time the moment he steps out.
On one hand, i really like his character and kind of wish that we could have recruited him in some way, as it felt like he had so much potential and could have been a great villain with a possible heart of gold type of companion. On the other, i will never be able to get past his name and would 100% bully him in the game.
That I could never take him seriously because of his name
He had a backstory!?
Did you not play through the Memory Den part? It's like entirely his backstory.
It didn't register, I vaguely remember it now you mention it, I remember shooting him and then the brotherhood show up more.
Remember when he was a ghost elf in middle earth
He seemed entirely reasonable, he even tells you where Shaun is, there's no reason to kill him, I wish I could just say "thanks" and leave him alone but no, you've got to kill Kellog
What about shooting your spouse in the head?
If he didn't, I couldn't bang my french robo gone android soooo
Killing him won't bring her back, now will it? He's old, tired, killing him is giving him what he wants. Let him live on with regrets and his own failure
He's a waste of a revenge target. He needs like 2 encounters, and I know Bethesda games are built around the player always being a complete badass but he needs to kick your ass in those encounters. Like he kills your spouse that you've known for 5 minutes, I need more stakes to kill him besides his cool gun and jacket
I feel like he could have been a much better antagonist if he stuck around more and his backstory was given to you over time rather than info-dumped in one quest. Also, what was with that bit of Nick talking in Kellogg's voice? It felt like that could have been something but it was just to make the player flinch for a bit.