Occasionally, it's nonsensical - you'll lose 'karma' for stealing an item off a desk, for example, but looting the body next to it is just fine.
This might sound stressful, like some kind of taskmaster tallying up everything you do. Having a quantified moral fiber is incredibly relaxing In New Vegas, not only do you have a precise numerical value assigned to your speaking abilities, you've got a sliding scale of your ethical standing - from 'messiah' to 'devil' - plus a scale of how much you are liked or disliked by every important faction in the game world. One of the unique things about computer role-playing games like Fallout is that they give 'soft' social skills the same hyper-quantified treatment as a gun's fire rate or a piece of armor's damage resistance. But it's also made me realize that so far, Fallout 4 is missing one of my favorite video game elements: the social power fantasy.
In a way, it's made me truly appreciate the upgraded graphics and new mechanics. In a stunning lapse of judgment, I decided to spend 70 hours playing Fallout: New Vegas just a few weeks before I started Fallout 4.
