March 1, 2016 9:06 PM EST
Honestly, karma doesn't affect gameplay too much, bu it is good for roleplaying. The main fact about karma is that it doesn't punish you when your karma goes down, you just feel either like "The Great Destroyer" or "Really Bad After Killing That Guy" depending on how you play. I think karma is better off in the base game, having something so simple as DLC is just unreasonable. I don't think Bethesda wants a repeat of Oblivion's Horse Armor, and neither does anyone. The whole "Do We Need It?" question can be answered with one word. No. We don't, but we also don't need V.A.T.S, we never really needed any of the things that make Fallout Fallout. Imagine if V.A.T.S had never been added to Fallout, if combat stayed as it always was, point-shoot-reload until the target dies. Would Fallout be so different? Would the world this game creates be any the lesser for never having seen this feature? Not really. Fallout would have a less creative community (Character Building does some cool stuff with V.A.T.S), but the game as a whole would still be great. But then again, the same can be said about laser weapons, and power armor, and crafting, and all the great perks, like Mysterious Stranger or Party Boy that we all know and love. The question that needs answering is not as much "Is it necessary?", but more, "Is the game better for having it?" I think it is. The advantages that role-play and character building communities get is astounding. Without Karma, and the level of depth it brings, Fallout would be eerily similar to an open-world COD, and I think we can all agree that we're better off without that in the world.