All of these methods work; my wife also got Mr. Claw stuck on something and cheesed him to death. I don’t agree, though, that the encounter is all that unfair. You get power armor, and a minigun. You get raiders and Preston’s bunch who sometimes shoot at the Deathclaw. You get chems, if you have been at all careful about looting stuff. You have a bunch of options, and it’s pretty challenging the first time you do it. It teaches you some good lessons about combat, too.
Unless you’re on survival mode, then I guess it’s kinda crappy.
Grifman
4560
Hangman’s Alley is conveniently located downtown near Diamond City and makes a great central point for accessing the rest of the Commonwealth.
DeepT
4561
I always thought the mini-gun was a terrible weapon. The damage is low and it seems useless against anything with a little bit of damage reduction. Now if you get lucky and get the mini-gun with explosive bullets, then that rocks. I only ever saw it in one game though.
I never use it after the Concord battle. To make it work you really have to take a ton of points in Big Guns, and get a legendary; (there’s a quest in Goodneighbor that can get you one that sets folks on fire at least). Even then, with the spin up and low per-shot damage, and the weight, I find it is simply so far behind the power curve that it isn’t worth it. Now, if they had a regular LMG, like an RPK or a SAW, that might be cool. As it is, the big weapons are either useless or very situational. Hell, even a Fat Man is less effective than a well-placed sniper shot usually.
OTOH, all that 5mm ammo makes for good trade bait. Save it up, pop a grape mentat, and dump it all for one of those really expensive items that some vendors have.
The Nuka-World new weapon, the 7.62mm handmade rifle, is fabulous though. I’ve used it (fully modded) in both automatic (Commando) or semi-auto (Rifleman) versions, and assuming you’re using a solid legendary version, as you should be at that stage, it’s freakin’ amazing. My commando type character has an explosive version, and my sniper is using a two-shot version, suppressed. Nasty indeed, and ammo is only a shopping run away at the market in Nuka-World…or off the corpses of the gangers.
Big Guns sucking is a series-long tradition.
JeffL
4564
So even though I am just starting - got the minutemen back to Sanctuary, cleared out the neighborhood, built some beds, planted a few items (not enough but I’ll be back later - got exploring to do!) and now I’m exploring, cleared a USAF station, meandering east at the moment - I realized something.
I LOVED Skyrim. Played it for a year. One character. Finished all the questlines, the DLC and then spent a lot of time just exploring and being surprised at how many things I discovered even when I thought I’d walked every inch of the map.
Then I played Witcher 3, and suddenly the quests in Skyim seemed like they were written in crayon by elementary school kids doing a school project. The beauty of the world but most of all, the stories and the writing, It was like being a character in both a trilogy of great novels and in a trilogy of amazing movies. And I thought I’d been spoiled for all other open world games.
But I am realizing now that I also can greatly enjoy an open world game that doesn’t have great writing but which gives me a huge world filled with “stuff” and no real stories around any of the stuff. I love running into a building of some kind and seeing what apparently happened to this building and the people in it, and the remnants, and perhaps some bad guys who’ve taken it over. In W3 nothing really happened unless there was this amazing story written around it, even if it was as simple as retrieving an old woman’s frying pan. I loved that.
But there’s a different kind of immersion to be had in a game like Fallout 4 (or Skyrim.) I can be anyone I can imagine, with any set of moral and behavioral rules, and role play that in a huge world filled with things to discover. In W3, you’re a Witcher, Geralt to be specific. With a full set of friends and backstory already written. Again - that’s not bad, W3 is easily one of my top 5 all time games. It’s just different.
And I’m realizing I can also enjoy the heck out of a game that’s much more open. And create the backstories and roles in my mind.
I.e. I thought W3 would ruin me, but I still am really enjoying Fallout 4.
Yes, I feel that’s a good way to approach the differences. The Witcher 3 is undoubtedly the master action RPG for story and character development, but Bethesda’s open world RPGs offer a distinct experience that’s neither “worse” or “better” when taken as a whole. Just different. In Bethesda’s offerings, you’re always you inhabiting a different body and doing whatever strikes your fancy in the sandbox, whereas The Witcher 3 asks players to invest themselves in the character of Geralt and see the experience through his view. Neither approach is inherently superior.
There are aspects of Skyrim and Fallout 4 that don’t directly measure up to the level of quality in The Witcher 3 (the conversations and characters for example) but The Witcher 3 also doesn’t offer players the ability to stack wheels of cheese, steal everything that’s not nailed down, and generally act like an aimless dick to everyone. I know that reads like I’m belittling the Bethesda games, but I’m not. Sometimes I’m in the mood for exactly that kind of play.
DeepT
4566
I liked both games, however, I prefer the Skyrim model better. This is basically because I am playing my own character, not someone else’s.
There are so many little touches that you can miss if you don’t look carefully. I was in The Insane Asylum and I looked down and saw HELP ME written with pieces of chalk. It was really creepy.
Ah. Thought you were referring to the corner shop closest to the museum. That one’s doable too, but you have to keep running out to kite him back when he runs off.
My problem when I first hit that encounter was I didn’t even see the deathclaw emerge and had already expended the minigun on the raiders before I even knew it was there.
Grifman
4569
There are a lot of these little vignettes in Fallout 4 if you take the time to look. There was a police station interrogation room, with a bloody stain on the table, a handcuffed skeletonhand, and a hammer. You know what happened there without a word being said.
JeffL
4570
Yeah, Bethesda does those so well. That’s the difference, in Witcher 3 you would see that, find a note or clue, get a story of how a rogue police officer was kidnapping and killing people, you’d be led to the young wife of a young man who would tell you her story of how the policeman shook them down for money and perhaps her “favors”, you’d go to track him down and find where the rogue policeman was now, and where he was holding the young man, you’d discover a twist like the young man actually paid the police officer to pretend to kidnap him so he could get away from his new bride’s father who insisted he worked in his family business while he really wants to be a bard. etc. etc. etc.
In a Bethesda open world, you just see a police interrogation room, a stain on the table with handcuffs, a hammer and tongs, and perhaps a broken skeleton hand on the table. Perhaps more signs in the building of other such violence. The rest is in your own mind.
I remember in Fallout 3, I think it was, entering an old school building. As I explored it, I ended up in a room with cages in it. And what was clearly butchered children. Signs of other such horrific violence. When I found the raiders in the school who obviously committed the atrocities I put away my long range rifle and my sniper approach and pulled out a shotgun and tried to first cripple every raider I could before killing them. My rage was visceral. There was no story, not part of a quest, just something planted by Bethesda that I found.
I love both approaches. ;)
robc04
4571
I’d agree that Bethesda’s approach could be awesome if the way the world responded to you was more fleshed out. If you could be the character of your choosing and have the people of the world react in a believable way based on you actions, that would be awesome. Sure there may be things to make one faction like you more or less, but the world feels very broad but shallow.
That doesn’t mean exploring Skyrim can’t be rewarding in its own way, but it always feels like a movie set where there is an initial appearance of detail and depth, but then you realize there are just cardboard cutouts where you thought there were people with depth. That said, the actual physical world of Skyrim is incredible.
JeffL
4572
Yeah, I think the reason it works better in some ways in Fallout - I’m not the savior of the world like in Skyrim. I’m just some loner guy wandering the world, No reason everyone in the Fallout world should know who I am.
I loved Skyrim, but let’s face it, you’re practically a god who saved the world. You shouldn’t be able to go anywhere or approach anyone without being treated with awe, especially later in the game,
Bethesda’s level designers and their workflow are world-class. Everyone else there, unfortunately, seems to be just above modder-level quality.
Yeah, I was wondering about this. It would be really interesting to see how they organized it and then more importantly tested it.
I know 7 or 8 years ago I thought horse armor, micro transactions and DLC was The Devil. Now I see games as a service, don’t blink an eye at the new model. And I would be really excited for them to announce an additional DLC for FO4. What a weird world it has become. :)
So, 468 hours and another main quest run finished. This time, I chose the Institute again, as really, it’s the best long-term solution especially if I’m in charge. I just wish the there was actual RPG stuff that would let me shape this the way I want it, but w/e. I’ve done the other options in the past, but none of them really worked well for me either, especially the insistence on leaving a huge radioactive crater in the center of Boston. Not to mention the logical and philosophical problems of the Railroad’s approach, and the crypto-fascism of the BoS.
I do have to say Strong may well have the best lines of any NPC companions.
ShivaX
4576
The Bozar disagrees. But it also didn’t require it’s own separate skill for no good reason.
I tried some Survival but while I appreciate some of the aspects of the increased difficulty, having to constantly manage food and drink sucks, in any game that has it. So I think I’ll ditch that.
I’ve considered it as well but no fast travel would seem to be a recipe for tediousness since getting to the good stuff at all the POI’s would really be an arduous process. A lot of the quests require criss cross map traversal especially the radiant ones. I’ve got a railroad radiant quest that wants me to go to Far Harbor to clear out a safe house and I’ve barely scratched the surface of the game.
