I have over 150 hours in Fallout 4. I actually like the game despite its issues. I’m not one of these super-pissed Fallout NMA types.
I don’t think it’s controversial to say that Fallout 4’s roleplaying is weak. The quest design and conversations are lame. You can go pretty far into the game without committing to any faction, which allows the weirdness of everyone being buddies with you and letting you use their stuff, while hating each other and literally battling in the open while you’re free to stand around. Once things close up and you have to commit, there’s zero gravitas because the story beats are so clumsy.
There’s as much “role-playing” in FO4 as there was in, say, FarCry 4. The main quest is a piece of garbage that gleefully and forcefully railroads the player into accepting a binary role that ends up with the nonsensical “there can be only one”. There’s no wiggle room… other than to completely ignore the main quest once you get to the “YOU MUST CHOOSE!” moment. At that point, you can flip your middle finger at FO4’s terrible MQ writer, and then go role-play to your heart’s desire.
/loves FO4
I can’t help but agree – but I loved it anyways. That main storyline --and every quest I’ve done in it was moribund at best.
The most fun I had/have playing FA4 is the trudging through ruins --quietly – looking for cooking oil, or aluminum and NEEDING it for some reason (big difference in NOT needing it) when BAM! a three way firefight would start with everyone. I sorta thought the set battles were ok as well (mainly cause I got to use missile launchers on vertibirds).
I actually think the most fun was the first 3-4 weeks of survival mode where I didn’t even realize I could get a perk so that mines wouldn’t go off --and explored everything in inches.
That said --there were a few good story points – I thought a few brotherhood quests were interesting, some of the world stuff was colorful, and overall the gun mechanics and graphical representation of Boston blown to hell was fantastic. Pros and cons, as in every game. I would have been gravely disappointed with vanilla last October – but survival made the gameplay fun. Even when I died. A lot. As in --a LOT.
I saw that Todd Howard recognized the npc-dialogue stuff was weak. I will always give Bethesda a chance, but I would NOT put FA4 above Morrowind or Skyrim --but better than Oblivion. I am torn about FA:NV - but 4 was better than 3 inmhop. Let me finish and if anyone is interested I’ll give a post-mortum. After what will be 500 hours in game. What were you at Bat when you stopped? or did you finish Survival?
You guys are still talking light years beyond where I am now as I still plod along in my parallelish survivalish-mode housewife-turned-survivor character.
[details=This is a bit awkward.] Here we are, standing in a sea of dead raider bodies (all supposed to have been killed by me but instead, due to his meandering way of heading here, were actually killed by a crazy mad scientist NPC who beat us here a long time ago), trying to help recover the crazy mad scientist’s stolen crazy mad scientist serum and defend and/or kill his crazy mad scientist monster/father, and before we can enter the building my present companion chooses this very moment to bring a delicate relationship advancement dialog tree to my attention.
Couldn’t resist messing with context a bit.
And the only beds we’ll be likely to find are inside the sanitarium.
…
Edit: An hour later the dad-fixated scientist creep is still lurking around and…
…despite my best attempts to keep the options open…
…the promised conclusion to the advancement remains…promised.
[/details]
So the new Vault-Tec Workshop DLC is…pretty good. It’s part of the season pass, otherwise it’s $4.99 by itself. Compared to the other two $4.99 DLC focused on settlement junk, this is far and away the best. I’d put it close to Automatron as far as actually being a DLC good enough to stand on its own.
It adds a bunch of Vault-Tec components to the settlement menu, which seem to work a lot better as snap together bits than the normal junkyard themed stuff. Lots of easy to configure blocks that work at right angles. Because everything conforms to the techy Vault-Tec look, nothing looks out of place and long halls of the same block don’t look unnaturally repetitive like the normal settlement stuff. So, if you’re into the settlement side of the game, this is all decent.
There’s also a quest story. You have to blast through a bunch of raiders to get to a new vault, then rescue a trapped pre-war Overseer who then gives you the task of rebuilding the vault and continuing with the experiments she was assigned. It’s okay. It’s less of a story than it is a tutorial on how to use the new stuff.
The DLC also adds a gigantic underground area to explore and fight through. Since this is all supposed to be an area that Vault-Tec was excavating to build a vault before the bombs dropped, it’s much larger than the normal underground tunnels in Fallout 4. Think open, cavernous spaces big enough to build multi-story vault areas.
In survival mode, these new spaces are a real challenge. Lots of radscorpions, molerats, and mirelurks (including a queen) bum-rushing you in the dark.
Overall, I give Vault-Tec Workshop DLC a 3 out of 5.
Wow and that was the first one I was gonna completely blow off! Thanks!
Don’t get me wrong. It’s no Far Harbor. It’s still largely a settlement doodad focused DLC. It’s just the best of that stuff.
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Did Bobbi’s quest tonight - that was hair raising - forgot to make antibiotics, got an infection in there, then couldn’t really leave --then I slept in any sleeping bag and --yes – you guessed it --the infection spread. I was at half my action bar when I was almost drowned in charred ghouls. I made it through thank goodness with a nice legendary assault rifle drop. The assault rifle is a LOT better than it seems if you just let the bullets flow…
I hope Hancock has a nice perk …
I don’t even know what to say about this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8eYWWjONN50
BTW I have never linked anything here --I hope its ok and I did it right.
Well I didn’t mean to put the whole video up --sheesh now I am gonna be in trouble with Tom – I better look over the rules again. Sorry!
You’re good. Discourse allows us to do all sorts of nifty new things, and embedding Youtube videos is one of them.
Whew yeah I wasn’t sure Thanks!
BTW that’s a fan made TV pilot based on the Fallout universe --obviously its --well --it is pretty good, actually. I was gonna say “rough” or “amateur” but you know? I am not sure that’s fair.
BTW Post-apocalyptic stuff is sure awesome. Well --unless it really happens…
What I posted on FB earlier tonight:
That moment when you’ve been playing too much Fallout 4 on the computer and realize humanity’s future will more likely resemble the world posited in the game’s post-apocalyptic setting than the one inhabited by Star Trek writers.
I could probably eat cram – sneak around like some weird rat in the Safeway – maybe even shoot someone if I had to -=- but wow. Post-apocalyptic. It can be depressing as well.
Oghier
4294
When I build settlements, they always include toilets. Because even in apocalyptic hell, you’d want toilets.
Dipped my toes into the Vault 88 quest and some of the new mechanics. Fun, but it was taking me away from the play style and stories I was focusing on, so shall come back. I will say that the initial Overseer encounter was a little … odd.
Weird settlement thing. Supposedly now that I have four settlements going Preston is supposed to start talking about the Castle. Sturges is prompting me to go talk to Preston, hinting at such a thing, but Preston doesn’t seem interested in conversation and won’t take orders. Is there something else I need to do to get him to open up?
I won’t swear to it being true, but I read somewhere that there is a limit of 2 or 3 quests from Preston at once so if you have multiple quests from him maybe he won’t talk about it until you’ve cleared one up? Just a guess though.
Oghier
4297
I had this problem, as well. It turned out to be related to a mod, We Are the Minuteman. Disabling the mod fixed it.
Man, after raising a couple more settlements and building up their resources and defenses in an effort to impress Preston, it turns out the trigger was actually just an old quest I’d picked up and ignored (thanks, Outlandish, for mentioning that). There was no NPC name associated it that I could find, so I totally had to break immersion by searching for a couple of quest names to see who was associated with them. Would have been convenient and more immersive to have Preston periodically mention it.
So I get the Castle quest, and I agree to meet Preston and his guys there. Piper and I decide to road trip it, and on the way we have to make our way through a fierce Vertibird and raider battle. We make it to Preston, but the battle has followed us a bit and is still loud, and before I can say a word to him Preston exclaims something I can’t hear over the distraction and runs off toward the battle, in the opposite direction of the Castle with two Minutemen following.
What the. I take off running, and soon find myself participating in that Vertibird battle with the Minutemen. It’s total chaos, and soon Preston is nowhere to be found. This is the first time, I think to myself, I’ve signed up for a quest and the quest-givers were so distracted by a random encounter like that.
Anyway, I have possession of the Castle now, and I’m loving it. And I seem to have six settlements going. I really only wanted to resettle here and wasn’t too focused on other settlements, but I’m getting the hang of them now.
Is there large gate object? Closest I could find was a garage door that actually appears to be just a wall.
And if I disconnect the broadcast switch behind the radio, will that impact anything? I appreciate that it exists but while building, the repetition gets old.
