Fallout 4

As much as I want to know more about the Fallout world beyond the United States, I feel like it wouldn't really be Fallout if a game were set anywhere else. Not that I wouldn't mind a game like that.

Of course, given that the United States managed to annex Canada according to Fallout lore, you could probably set a game somewhere in that area while still having it be technically in the U.S.

Edited by astrokitty on Mar 7th 2019 at 3:31:49 PM

It'd be a fantastic place to put some un-numbered spinoffs.

Tim Horton! In the usual Fallout Tradition, misremembered as "Tin Motor". They're now famous for rampant protectron clerks.

Personally, I view the Fallout series as being about America in a lot of ways, so I don't really mind the focus on it. I do, however, think that Canada and China would potentially be interesting places.

I have a bit of an issue. I'm playing on a monster of a PC and even downtown, my fps almost never drops below 40.

However, whenever I go to Cliff's Edge Hotel in Far Harbor, the moment I enter combat of any kind anywhere under the roof or in the hotel's interior, my framerate drops to 7 fps. The game becomes unplayable, but my fps jumps right back up to a good 50 the moment I step back outside.

I'm playing Far Harbor again, and it just blows me away how good it is. The map is manageably small, so it's not such a chore to do quests for people. The factions are excellent as well. Genuine moral ambiguity! The crazy fanatic cultists were not the original perpetrators of the violence! The down-to-earth folks of Far Harbor were! Acadia is a bizarre fusion of the Railroad AND the Institute! DiMa does atrocities and commits the exact same type of sins that the Institute does!

To get the Golden Ending you have to keep not one but two Murder And Replace plots under wraps! Is it okay to make that call? Is it hypocrisy to do this, especially after you've blown the Institute to hell to stop this thing? Is it disturbing that DiMa is so much more receptive to this plot the second time around?

Far Harbor does such a good job of capturing the theme that the main plotline kinda dropped.

Maybe Bethesda should think about making smaller games....

The various new monsters were also pretty cool!

YES I loved the fog monsters.

and the density of wildlife.

This just happened to me: a Legendary Radscorpion spawned on a hill overlooking a Super Mutant-controlled town. So I fight this thing, and I'm doing good, but it's so dark I can barely see without my Pip-Boy light on, and it burrows back into the ground. I'm running on Mirelurk Queen Steak and a Deathclaw Omelette, ready for a fight to the death.

The radscorpion tunnels back out and is nowhere to be seen. I follow the compass and... right above me, the scorpion lands inside of a tree branch then slams into the ground. I have 2 seconds to think "oh god" before it pancakes into the ground and dies.

The funniest 22 experience points I have ever earned in this game. By far.

Moral ambiguity? Helping settlements no matter the cost?

It's about being willing to drop the search for your missing son at the slightest excuse to go romping around on an unrelated quest, then being willing to give up that quest at a moment's notice to fast travel back to Sanctuary and watch your sentry turrets shred three Raiders, one of whom was trying to conquer a settlement with a pool cue, because if you weren't there to see it happen the defense would have failed.

Also, Bethesda, if you're going to make a climax of your main quest involve defending a fortress from waves of enemy attackers, please make sure that quest advances properly so that the enemy sends more than a dozen soldiers. Apparently all my Mk VII sentry turrets were so effective at crushing the first wave that the Institute aborted the attack, leaving the "defend Castle" objective stuck at 0% and the garrison standing around on the walls, waiting for something to do.

Once you find out your son is the institute that really does free you up to dick around tho

This, too, just happened: I'm at Hubris Comics planning to wipe out Ghouls. I find the Silver Shroud costume for the fiftieth time. No big deal. Ghouls rush me right at the door and I accidentally pick up a baseball bat. Blegh. Too slow, not enough melee perks to make it worthwhile.

This thing does 195++ damage. I read this just as I drop it out of my inventory.

So I pick it back up assuming this to be a glitch, take photos, and sprint to the nearest Fallout 4 forums to talk about this amazing legendary find.

Turns out I'd eaten a Yao Guai Roast that fortified melee damage by a f-ck-ton. Even my Combat Knife was doling out 135 damage.

Holy sh-t I need to find more Yao Guai's. I kept trying to think of how to make this "realistic" build with a knife on my PC at all times viable. Like, the knife/bat are just worthless if you're not investing in Strength/Melee perks.

I just...

There's so many enemies in this game that can chew your face off

why on earth would a sensible person decide "hey let's melee them!"

When your body is a temple and your mind a killing machine you don't let the bad guys off easy with a bullet to the head. They need to catch those hands of yours.

It's quite easy to envision yourself being a Wasteland Monk who can tear through muties like copy paper. It's challenging, invigorating even to strip away the game's gunplay and restrict yourself to melee.

That said, I'm not actually on a melee build. I just like having the knife around in case I run out of bullets which... so far has not happened thanks to Scrounger and Rifleman.

Edited by Soble on Mar 15th 2019 at 6:40:08 AM

Wow. All I did was stick a bayonet on my combat rifle and packed an emergency shotty. I have krdhvmha??'s tooth for all other comers

My line of thinking is "well, if I have a gun, when and why am I ever going to need a bayonet on said gun when I'm fighting hordes of ghouls, giant scorpions, and things that stomp said scorpions. In what post-apocalyptic scenario is a bayonet useful?"

Even if we take that out of post-apocalyptia (whaaaao) I'm pretty sure bayonets were phased out of modern infantry for a reason. Anybody with military know-how please correct me.

The heck is that?

We still issue and train with bayonets.

Sometimes you just gotta stab a dude.

Though to be fair, we haven't made a dedicated bayonet in many years and what we actually do now is have every rifle come with a little mounting lug that you attach your standard combat knife to instead.

Edited by LeGarcon on Mar 16th 2019 at 2:23:51 PM

^^ Kremvh's Tooth

I actually never got it, but I figured it was a Call-Back to the Lovecraft-ish stuff from Fallout 3. The Dunwich Building, the Kriveknih from Point Lookout, and so on.

Fair enough. To be less hypocritical I should add, "the reason melee weapons make sense to me are because I/others like it that way, and the logic behind it purely coincidental."

I went to help Travis (while ignoring the drective that could help Vault Dad find his son or whatever, and shortly after helping the settlement full of flamethrower-armed robots deal with a pack of Gunners) with his bar fight.

I throw a VATS punch at this one dude, and oh my god the Mysterious Stranger shows up and pops him in the back. There I am thinking I was about to get attacked for killing a dude. Fortunately it's scripted so the bullet wound just makes the guy collapse. Then I think the quest has glitched and I have to punch the other guy to make the fight resume. Thankfully he manages to start fighting buuuuuut then Piper, lovely Piper, light of my life, fire of my loins.

This crazy b-word pulls out a 10-mm pistol and drops him after emptying an entire clip into this guy.

Jesus. Christ.

Edited by Soble on Mar 16th 2019 at 12:32:53 PM

Yao Guai Roast isn't supposed to give you that much melee damage. Its a long standing bug on the same level as the unpatched Killshot perk from early in the game's life.

So I'm invading the Institute for the nth time with the Minutemen, blowing through waves of scrub Synths with an explosive automatic laser rifle, when I encounter one of their elite defense units carrying a legendary weapon. He stands out not for his body armor, but because, in a firefight with red and blue lasers cris-crossing through the air, this warrior is rushing at me with a weapon the Institute would only employ in this, their most desperate hour.

It's a Mighty Board. A splintering wooden plank with +25% damage. Just wood, no nails or blades or anything.

And as always it's disconcerting to have Preston and the other blueshirts talking about sparing the Institute civilians, then watching them chase after and gun down all the unarmed nameless scientists we encounter along the way. Somehow I doubt that little issue got addressed in the patch I'm still refusing to download.

Piper be crazy. During the postvictory hostage situation at Diamond City, she helps me gun down the bad guy, but somehow the hostage got flagged as a hostile in the process. So even though said hostage is cowering in the corner, Piper gets out the Incendiary 10mm SMG I made her and, while morosely talking about what just happened, coldly cuts down the woman she just helped me save.

My Piper had a minigun for that same encounter

Huh, got the "Benevolent Leader" cheevo unexpectedly while romping around east of Diamond City. Apparently Sim Settlements was in my favor when it came to randomly determining which happiness-boosting buildings to construct in Country Crossing. And somehow I wasn't locked out of getting achievements even when not using a fully up-to-date Fallout 4. Maybe it was the "enable achievements with mods" mod.

Currently trying to figure out what to do with Shaun. He's stuck at the Castle, and I can't send him to a proper home in Sanctuary because it's apparently full, but not full enough that I can't retire Cait there to run a rec room. You'd think Shaun wouldn't count as a Settler because he can't actually do anything, but that's hardly the worst of the game's design problems.

Hermit crabs are underappreciated. I hope they show up again in Fallout 5

Some thoughts after blowing up the Institute for the whateverth time:

This was my most side-changing, convoluted playthrough since I went for the "golden ending" of sparing Danse but beating the game with the Minutemen allied with the Railroad. I revived the Minutemen, joined the Brotherhood, rescued Paladin Brandis, lost interest until the Prydwen appeared, took a fort for them, met Curie and subsequently joined the Railroad, set up Mercer Safehouse and helped Glory clear a subway, infiltrated the Institute for the Railroad, cleared Libertalia for the Institute, checked in with the Brotherhood, recovered Dr. Li for them, warned the Railroad about the Institute attack on Bunker Hill, admitted to Father that I freed the Synths so that he kicked me out of the Institute, helped the Brotherhood rebuild Liberty Prime, asked for a copy of the Institute scan data I gave to the Brotherhood so I could give it to the Minutemen^note It's important to do this step before you become enemies with the Brotherhood, otherwise you'll get a quest to get the tape back from Boston Airport when it's gone hostile, got sent to execute my mentor despite me flatly refusing to do so, watched my mentor get executed by a punk in a greatcoat, detonated the skull of a punk in a greatcoat and became enemies with a feudal cult of technophiles, assaulted and destroyed the Institute, and blew up a blimp. And half of that paragraph took place over December 20th to 23rd.

Basically, I did the "golden ending" route up to "Blind Betrayal," then intentionally failed to convince Maxson to spare Danse, just so I could justify killing Maxson and destroying the Brotherhood. Why? Because I'm playing on Survival mode and want Vertibirds to get around in, but want Minutemen to fly them.

Survival mode eats, by the way. Someone seriously needs to check for a gas leak at Bethesda HQ, because they thought it was a good idea to turn off autosaves and manual saving in a game that can crash 1) when you enter a new cell, 2) when you exit a building to reenter a cell, 3) when combat starts, 4) during combat, 5) when transferring loot to a companion, 6) when removing items from a container, and 7) when you're trying to quicksave out of fear of another crash. I got a mod to re-enable manual saves, fast travel and the console in Survival mode just to retain my will to play it, but still got screwed over by the lack of autosaves more times than I want to think about.

The only things I really like about Survival are the lack of enemies appearing on the compass, which makes combat much more tense, and how much easier it is to get lost during your travels and encounter something new even after hundreds of hours of playtime - I never knew about the scavenger shack in the hills on the edge of the map near Abernathy Farm. The mode is novel and challenging over the first few levels, but by the mid to lategame it's just unfun, getting two-shotted by enemies that take half a clip for you to kill, in a game mode where ammo has weight and your carrying capacity has been gimped.

So I just need a mod that turns off compass blips and landmarks, in other words.

Get the backpack from the creation club or a mod. 200 Carry weight at max mods. Also, kneecappers auto weapons are your friend. Ballistic armor too.

In Survival mode, building up settlements is more crucial than ever. Outsource junk collection! Always have a place to sell useless ammo! Always have water and fresh veggies on hand!