Thoughts: Fallout 4

Fallout 4 vanilla

After almost two hundred hours (active playing time was about: 0,75*190h=142,5h) I put the latest Fallout on the dock. I'd continue with the DLCs whenever there was something and after I had taken a break in general. I did manage to see all the endings and to open all but one ("Benevolent Leader", that required at least Charisma 6 + 2 perks) of the fifty achievements of the base game. To get that I'd need to level up six times, but we'll see if I ever feel like that.

In case someone reads this and is afraid of spoilers, I'm already warning. I'm going to ramble on based on my playthrough experiences. I'm also sorry in advance if this is a bit of a strage read, but I typed this up later afterwards, not live.

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War. You all know how it goes, right?

Fallout 4

It's been a bit over a week I've spent with Fallout 4 and I've got my play time counter up to 26h, as I'm writing on a Thursday afternoon. And I started last week's Tuesday. Funnily enough at work most of the corridor-chats have been about Fallout and what we've done there. I wonder, why?

Rather unusually I didn't spend much time working on my character's face. First I thought I'd again try to do something more or less like myself, but then I started playing around and ended up somewhere else. So I got a graying slightly round-bellied rock-haired dude.

The SPECIAL points allocation was a bit different now, as they all started at 1 and there were fewer points available. I first set them all to three, except Charisma that I always keep at 1. Then I gave him some muscles, brains and a bit of catlike agility and luck to help him out. In numbers, as you can see in pic 1, I set them: S:5 P:3 E:3 C:1 I:6 A:5 L:5.

Into the new world

There wasn't anything new or interesting to say about the beginning: I started the game and left the Vault. As I was ogling at the pic 2's gate opening I remembered the same moment in Fallout 3. I thought if we'll be snickering at this scene as old-fashioned and low-detailed just the same way in less than ten years?

Because I really didn't have much choice (or I didn't feel like fooling around yet) I followed the storyline obediently. At least I replaced the vault jumpsuit with chinos and a t-shirt for a bit less dorky look. Anyway, I didn't take pics of the first quest, as everyone who wants to see it has seen it either by themselves or in the 'net.

As expected I ended immediately in front of the Museum of Freedom to murder some random Raiders. From the roof I found a crashed (well-preserved) Vertibird, an unpowered Power Armor and a minigun just waiting for myself. Of course the power cell had to be fetched from a service tunnel (there was one in the Museum's basement but I only found it accidentally two evenings ago). The Power Armor was awesome but ate its power core like a pig, so after the first mandatory fight and a quick test I just parked it away and didn't dare use it.

There was plenty to fix in the Power Armor and apparently you could modify it, as long as you unlocked the necessary modding perks first. The fun thing was that walking in that suit looked and souded as heavy as it should be. The stomping thudded, the HUD was different and even my character's chatting was as if from a loudspeaker. Small details, but they added quite a bit of mood for me.

As I said, being paranoid with the rapidly emptying power cell I parked my PA as you can see in the pic above and haven't touched it since. I guess I'll have to face my hoarder and start running around, whenever a mission requires that. But so far I've survived more or less nicely without.

In the neighbourhood

After spending two evenings on adjusting the Settlement I finally started walking beyond Concorde. In the very first corner of the street I met a wandering trader with her Brahmin and they came by Sanctuary every once in a while in the following days.

Whatever that place was supposed to be, I guess a roadside diner. While walking carelessly that way I heard some bragging around and of course I had to add my spoon in the soup. Feeling powerful or believing in my "they can't get that mad that easily" delusion I replied sarcastically to the punks and of course they started shooting at me straight away.

After a couple reloads I got them slaughtered and their corpses emptied of valuables and nonvaluables. At least the diner's lady with her junkie son offered a discount. That was better than nothing, I guess.

At this point I spent a moment looking more at the perks I'd want. The good old classic, Bloody Mess was there, of course. This time you'd get perks solely based on your SPECIAL attrs, some perks had just that one level but some had from a couple to something like five, with always increasing requirements and bonuses. Pleasantly you could still check what the later levels of any perks offer, even if you couldn't even dream of getting them yet. Oh and you could use those points in increasing the SPECIALs instead, if you felt like it.

For some sick reason I was extremely amused by the fourth and therefore highest level Bloody Mess: you hit someone so hard that they explode and whoever stands close to them may also blow up! Perfect! Still, I decided to leave all that messy amusingness for much later and I spent my points on something that was more urgently needed.

On that trip my adventures ended when I noticed a green thunderstorm in the distance. Not that rain scared me but the radioactive lightning bolts made me run like a rabbit and far, far away.

Cling, clang, tap tap tap

After my quickly terminated exploratory trip I marched back to Sanctuary, where I started tinkering a bit. My original house that I built out of prefab pieces for the demanding settlers was torn and scrapped immediately and I started all over. First I laid the floors the way I wanted and then enjoyed the ẃalls snapping on nicely to them. These walls looked better (they were less broken and more varied) and all in all building more storeys was handier.

Somehow I managed to spend a few good evenings working on this one building. Yes, this kind of stuff really appealed to a Minecraft and Factorio fan like myself. I could build generators, pull cables and who knows what else in the future. It's a crying shame that the UI is not as good as it could and should be, but I managed to build something anyway.

My three wind-powered purifiers made me plenty of free clean water

It has to be awesome to sit in the exhaust and chat away

The guard tower was in a wonderful place but none of those idiots managed to find their way there, even with handholding

Walling the work camp

We had talked about the Settlements at work quite a bit, as I mentioned before. Among other things we had thought that the only way to make sure that a Settlement would be somehow safer and easier to defend was to wall it in and have only one entrance. And of course there'd be an unhealthy amount of turrets and other neat things at the entrance.

I started my walling by first building a big gate at the edge of the bridge and then added walls towards the more dangeours-feeling direction. On the pillars of the bridge I build two of the advanced machine gun turrets to add some of the much-needed flair.

At this point I didn't feel like working more on the wall, as my entrance wasn't as awesome as I had wanted it to be and I didn't want to redo much. Not that setting those walls on a non-snapping ground was fun or anything, so I didn't feel like doing that for many hours on end.

Randomly it occurred to me that now I could offer some Jet to a weird settler, a junkie-granny, in case she'd tell me something amusing at least. Nope, it wasn't anything special. Next she wanted a special chair of her own, the normal chairs weren't good for her behind. I built her chair and she started whining for Mentats. I thought that she'd sit there and wait until I felt like dealing anything, then I built a cube for her out of picket fences so she wouldn't start ruining other people's doings while being high on Jet.

Tuning

Even though my Int was halfway to the max, a coworker of mine who plays with an I:1 idiot recommended the Idiot savant perk heartily. It'd give 3x (and later 5x) XP randomly, more often the stupider the character was. I took it upon me to bump it up to at least the multiplier five, as every extra point was better than no extra points.

Then I finally started playing with the workbenches. First I modded the guns I mostly used as much as I at that point could. The handguns (10mm pistol and pipe revolver rifle) I changed to be as damage-dealing as I knew to make and then I turned my greedy gaze at my favourites, the close combat tools. I had been using a telescope baton so far, but now I noticed that I had somehow gotten into possession of a few sets of brass knuckles. Oh they joy and happiness, as I saw the option to modify them into spiked knuckles! I mean, spiked knuckles were my absolute favourites in Fallout 2 whenever Power Fists weren't available.

With light, roomy pockets and fresh-feeling toys I headed towards west, to complete a quest given by a Minuteman - or the quest given by a man from the neighbouring farm, whichever was quicker to solve. On my way I beat a bunch of stray dogs into pulp and snacks, as well as a couple of fellow Scavengers. I did approach them nicely, without any weapons held out or anything, but as soon as I got to a chatting distance they started screaming "I was here first!" and raised hell.

I proceeded at a normal pace towards a gigantic radio antenna. On the bunker's back yard there was a small fight going on between raiders and bloatflies. I decided to let them beat each other up first and then I'd just clean the rest up. Why tire myself in vain?

The bunker's basement almost ended up being a tough spot, as there were five maniacs in one room. Luckily those idiots left that room one by one so I had the time to beat each into a bloody pulp before the next one was out of the door. While beating the fourth one up in VATS (that was a panic-maintaining change, by the way, that it doesn't pause the game anymore but just slows it down) that there were sick amounts of projectiles flying through the doorway. After finishing this dude I peeked cautiosly into the next room I saw that the last one was posing with a damn minigun. Being a smart fellow I sent my stupid dog in first and while they were locked I ran in safely with my fists up.

After I had roamed around those corners and cleaned places up I went to empty my overloaded pockets in Sanctuary and headed Southwest. Pretty quickly I found the remains of a transport company's depot and the first calmly encountered Feral ghouls. Now you could shoot their limbs off like the zombies in Left 4 Dead! Shooting the arms off wasn't that exciting, but legless monsters were much easier for crowd control - and much more amusing. In small amounts, that is.

As I kept moving on more or less in the same direction I was surprised by rain. Having the weather change was very pleasant, especially as not all the rain was acid rain. Crossing a bridge I encountered some neutral Settlers. I don't know where they were going but I'm certain that they didn't end up in any of the settlements under my command.

Running headlong into problems

Somehow, after a bunch of wrong turns, I ended up in front of a police station saving a grumpy Brotherhood of Steel guy from a tidal wave of Feral ghouls. It took a few good tries before I solved the last half-dozed with a pair of well-aimed grenades. Knight Danse wasn't too friendly, but at least he was more polite than his comrade in arms. And of course he needed some help, what else?

I decided to leave these bums waiting for a moment when I felt like helping them out with their silly problems. First I took care of a Raider problem for another settlement I had encountered, in hopes of them turning more acceptive towards me. On my way I also slaughtered a gangful of Gunners from a half-collapsed highway (maybe in vain, as they had nothing to do with my quest). As I was looking at the first of them through my newly discovered sniper rifle I noticed that at long last you could hold your breath while aiming!

20% for leg dismembmerment? Yes, please!

20+h and that's all I've had the time to even pass by

Now I went to take uncle Danse with me to check out the ArcJet factory, that I had already visited without laser weapons and escaped pretty rapidly. I thought that if he's not useful for anything else, he'd at least distract and draw fire leaving me in relative peace.

Look who's talking, Sulik's soulmate...

You can imagine how I was surprised when in a room we were attacked with Terminator prototypes! I had known to expect them, thanks to a loading screen babbling about Synths, but I really didn't expect to encounter them this early on.

Of course in the middle of the ArcJet cleanup I got a notification of some serfs... I mean farmers under my protection being under attack. I left Danse wherever he happened to be and fast-traveled to Abernathy Farm to cut the raiders to ribbons. Being lazy I had never dragged my materials from one Settlement to another so I never had the resources to build any turrets here. Now I happened to be carrying a healthy load of crap so I built five and put around the top of the roof. This way they provided Security > Water + Food which should keep the attacks either completely away or less likely to happen.

That being done I returned to the factory, finished up the quest and joined the Brotherhood of Steel. As this was done yesterday evening, that's as far as I've got so far and it's not much. Maybe I'll return to the Settlement adjustment this evening or maybe I'll beg for extra quests from whoever is willing to give me any tasks. Right now I don't want to go any further with the BoS quests, as I was thanked by random Synth encounters twice on that few hundred meter long trip along the river between the ArcJet and the police station...

Returning to New Vegas

A new playthrough

DLC packs and mods

This spring I received a couple of DLC packets to F:NV and I then proceeded to invest into the rest of them, for the sake of completeness. As I was waiting for Steam to install the game, I went and took a look at the mods available. There were tons of things, but I decided to go with the following pile:

First and foremost MedX -> morphine (the australians can get anxious with real names, I am not going to end up being a morphinist because of Fallout (or a smoker because of F1 ads)), FOOK (a trillion fixes etc), Fellout (removes the yellowish filter), More Perks, Automated Perks (you get perks based on your skills and levels, to compensate the loss of some perks it comes with a pile of new ones), Classic Fallout Weapons Pack (because I had to get a Pancor Jackhammer) and a Mauser pistol to replace a boring vanilla gun.

Being faithful to my playstyle I picked up unarmed, melee and sneak as my tag skills. Playing a Ninja is always fun, until someone starts minigunning or bazookaing me over a plain, coverless field with a good distance between us... but that's a problem much later on. On the SPECIAL side of things I boosted Strenght and especially Luck while dumping all that useless Charisma away. As I was trying to get to a nice Fallout 2 mood, I picked up the Wild Wasteland perk now, as I hadn't bothered to "waste" a slot the first time I played NV.

Someone really doesn't know you should't give lip to everybody...

Grinder

To build up my character I played the vanilla content pretty much Legionally, until I had dragged my charismaless but lucky ugly sob to level 16 and I dared to proceed to the new content. But while I was working on that I did random tasks, mostly improving on things I did "wrong" before, like weaponizing the Helios station instead of the useless energy redistribution. That's something that the NCR clowns didn't really appreciate and when I killed them all (they attacked me, it was self defence!) my companion Boone started whining a lot. I really didn't like his attitude, so I decided that I'd sell him a slave to the Legion as soon as I could.

No, I didn't, because it was not doable! Heresy and iconoclasy, that's what this is. During my wanderings I found out, accidentally, that my cocannibal Mortimer from the White Glove Society would gladly take my whiny companion for a fancy meal and I was more than happy to oblige. Bwahahahahaha. Baldies don't get to tell me what to do or not to do.

Old World Blues

The first DLC I approached was the crater of the mad scientists and it was insane. Everything was done so over the top that I was very, very amused.

For the first few encounters I had heavy difficulties (especially with the lobotomites), for I couldn't really cripple them at all and they withstood my small arms fire insanely well. After I had beaten a good baker's dozen of them with my trusty Sledgehammer I had found a pile of Protonic Axes. They ended up being one decent one and when I tried it, out of curiosity, on my enemies, they just fell like grain in the autumn. My Melee and Unarmed skills were already almost gapped at this point, but the more peaceful skills like Speech were pretty much in the drain, as I hadn't (or even couldn't) have pumped them one bit.

So the vast majority of Speech-, Barter- or Science -based skillchecks failed miserably, no matter how many packets of Mentats I stuffed into my face (I still didn't get addicted, lucky me!). Nicely enough some of the key discussions were completeable by other skills, so I didn't have to slaughter every single named character in the Big Mt area.

Mmmmm... Mentats...

Dead Money

Next up in my adventures was teh abandoned BoS bunker and there I was rewarded by unconciousness. Whoever goes to search for the treasure of Sierra Madre will find out that all his/her things are robbed, which is something I've always loathed as a damn cheap trick. To compensate you've just been given a bomb collar that blows up if you get too close to a radio or if one of your team dies. Sigh.

To make things even more wonderful, the village was full of immortal Trappers. I was really confused by the advertised immortality, until after many a gaming session one was only knocked out for a short while and at around halfway down the story a computer revealed to me that "you have to cripple them to kill them". That explains a lot, as I had always punched them so hard that a limb or a head always fell off on the first strike. Those damn holograms were much more problematic...

In the Sierra Madre Casino I blew the bank in the Blackjack table (thanks, lucky numbers) and spent my credits in those vending machines to buy Stimpaks, Mentats and other necessities. Before I left to the main map, I wasted all the credits and then wondered why I had ~1400 Stimpaks and ~100 Weapon Repair Kits and couldn't really walk anymore. Whoops. At leat the bunker was a handy place to stash all the stuff I couldn't practically carry with me.

This story was pretty straightforward and nothing too awesome, but it was worth playing through anyway. Of all the junk I picked up on the way the absolute best was the insanely genial Bear Trap Fists, which are even more awesome than Power Fists. That's saying something, right?

Lonesome Road

For my third extra adventure I went to the Canyon Wrecakge, because it was nearby and I had already discovered the location. The nuclear silo -filled area was littered with radioactive warheads (twenty in total) and you had to go around blowing them up with a laser detonator. Funnily the fallout didn't bother for more than a few seconds and nothing else but random junk (and those few still living enemies) were affected by the nuclear blast.

At the mid-point of the map I apparently launched an ICBM to the next village and the game warned that "you can proceed to x, if you dare to enter a nuclear warhead ground zero" (or something), when I had blown up eight warheads in the last hour and pretty much danced around them meanwhile...

"Sincerely yours, Michael Bay"

Here I encountered my first Deathclaws and I was slightly concerned about them. Then I killed the first one with a single power hit in VATS with the Proton Inversal Axe. Let's see what happens on the main map when I go and bully the really big ones. I'm eager to find out!

Just before I went for the final fight I checked out the Courier's Mile and that was a place that consumed RadX and RadAway. A handful of the first type and a good hundred of the latter one. Luckily enough the powered fists of a melee master took care of all the Deathclaws and those Marked Men with ease. Why did I got there at this point? Just in case that after the end fight I either a) couldn't go anywhere or b) couldn't go to certain places.

Somehow I managed to talk Ulysses down instead of beathing him to pulp with my Power Fist. I guess I just tried, out of curiousity, if I could do that with my laughably low Speech skills - and succeeded accidentally, thanks to my "search every millimeter and read everything you see" approach. That and non-speech skill checks, of course. Rather unsurprisingly I then reaimed the missiles to strike NCR alone and as my reward I got to see a beautiful mushroom cloud in the horizon. I guess that the NCR folks can't really get angrier at me, as I was vilified before I started with the first DLC packet.

Honest Hearts

To finish up the new adventures I marched into the Happy Trails Expedition's cave and after listening to a bit of scary stories (you can't leave soon) I joined the caravan heading to Zion. The canyon was surprisingly void of life, after the mandatory initial ambush. After that I just went around the map in an orderly fashion to unlock all the locations. Every once in a while a small fight with a savage or two (sometimes they were fighting each other or some animals), random Yao Guais, dog things or Geckos. Still, most of the time I was all alone.

Pretty early on I found a cave where Joshua Graham was hiding. I left him in peace at this point (he was red in my HUD and I didn't want to kill him before a chat) and proceeded to other places. I also didn't want to start the adventure by potentially closing maybe even big options in the story, before I had completed a single quest in the area.

Halfway done with the map - I was zigzagging from Southeast to Northnorthwest, towards a northeast location as my first quest target. I was pretty much amazed when rain surprised my while I was crawling through a canyon. Rain. Amazing.

When I was done with the map I found a map of the region from a clay pot and my next quest was to get the hell out of Zion. Everyone I had met was mad at me and therefore dead pretty soon after that. I was really, really confused and checked the wiki for a clue of what goes on. The explanation was simple: I had killed very early on a named character and that led to "Chaos in Zion" quest. What could I do if the savage attacked me without provocation? I guess I have to try this packet again later on, as this left a pretty stupid taste in my mouth.

Gun Runner's Arsenal

Guns. Ammotypes. Weapon mods. Challenges. More of these.
Well, you find guns and ammo everywhere and complete the challenges while killing people with different weapons. I really can't say much about the guns in GRA as I had already added more guns with the mod pack. All I can say is that I didn't get bored with the encountered hardware unlike in vanilla F3/NV ("yay, my hundred and seventy sixth cowboy repater") and I guess that was one of the points for this set. For some reason the weapon mods were really under a rock, or they just aren't spawned randomly and you ought to buy them instead.

Back to the vanilla content

With all the extra stories completed more or less satisfactorily I kept on unlocking map locs with my level 44 ugly man. During my adventures I had even found a couple of Jackhammers and was a *happy camper*.

In general, I was just running counterclockwise though the map starting from the Happy Trails Caravan's cave and smashed everyone in my way to pieces. Few people liked me on the west side, so I was just defending myself... Just to prove naysayers wrong I was friendly and helpful in Jacobstown, as the Supermutants were friendly towards me. Pretty soon I found myself next to the Quarry Junction and its gigantic Deathclaws. There were many of those bastards. I guess it says something about the 100% Melee skill that I Rippered four adult Deathclaws to bits without losing even 50% of my health - with a light armor. The baby deathclaws fell quickly to my AP-loaded minigun. Just a few seconds later the scary crazied Deathclaw Mother was cut into pieces by a couple of short, controlled bursts.

Brass knuckles vs Blind Deathclaws

To keep things fresh I helped the guy occupying the Vault 19's Overseer's office and only blew up the sulphur caves. Then I suggested him to join the Great Khans. That I did mostly because they are the henchmen of the Legion.

Slowly, while opening map locations, I approached the NCR camp in the ruins next to Primm and the target of my nuclear strike next to the Mojave Outpost. I sneak-rippered a handful of the guards and continued towards the toll station. All the NCRians were mad at me, so I had to approach sneakily. After a few minutes of sneaking I just jumped up and rippered everyone I met into pieces., before hiding again. At this point, when I could attack ten armed soldiers with just brass knuckles or a chainsaw and end the fight with mere scratches, I thought that maybe my character's a bit too good. Even though there's no cheating, an old quote ("I just shoot down everyone and never die, trallalallalaaa") from an anti-cheating column by Nnirvi kept creeping to my mind.

Long 15 was pretty much boring. There were a few irradiated soldiers with and without Power Armor. Pocketfuls of ammo some armor and a few guns were what I left with. The experience was pretty much like Courier's Mile, meh.

In the name of Caesar

When I had opened just about all of the visitable locations on the map and completed a random amount of side quests, I found myself on level 50. Then I decided that I'm not going to go for a 100% available quest completion rate, especially as I wouldn't gain much anymore and I had seen most of them already in my earlier playthroughs. Therefore I put all my resources for Caesar's use.

Just for the fun of it I obeyed Caesar and blew up the bunker of my BoS brothers, I mean, they had already trained me to use Power Armor - and unknowingly some spare armor as well. After that I cured Caesar's brain cancer and was sent to assassinate the president of NCR. The latter I took care of pretty lazily: I sneaked next to the platform and as soon as he was a couple of meters away, I activated my last Stealth Boy, shot him in the forehead with my trusty Jackhammer and sneaked further away in the ensuing chaos. From a healthier distance I then wiped out everyone who happened to be hanging around anymore. Maybe that wasn't as elegant a solution as a bomb hidden inside a Vertibird, but with the chaos it was pretty amusing anyway.

Conquering the dam was effortless at this point. All the opposition turned into red goo after I showed my minigun with AP-round at them, as long as I had those rounds. Maybe I should've learned how to make them myself. I guess I was just too lazy to do that sort of tinkering anymore.

If there's something I have to complain about, is the insane limitation that sets in if you work with and for the Legion. Much more than half the map is hostile, you can't recruit companions (or those you have leave) and a very respectable pile of quests (XP and loot) is denied and not that much is available from the other point of view to compensate. If you march in the ranks of NCR, you get so much more to do without even all the civilians bitching at you (or shooting at you as soon as they see the whites of your eyes). Bleh.

Just when I had this post finished, I got a piece of exciting news. Wasteland 2 will be out on the 19th. Wupii!