Fallout 4

[fragger]

Well, I'm now into the sixth month of a single playthrough of FO4, my longest 'thru yet (that's six months of actual time, not in-game time). That's because I took my time building settlements and Perking myself up before getting involved with any of the factions and opening up the story part of things - I didn't even initiate contact with the Minutemen (in Concord) until I was well over Level 70 and had already completed Nuka-World (where I took the "Open Season" path and removed all the gangs, then got a major settlement started at the Red Rocket). I'd said in an earlier post that I'd like to rock up to the Museum of Freedom sporting that snazzy blue Quantum power armour suit from NW's Galactic Zone and armed to buggery, and that's exactly what I ended up doing The Deathclaw that appears during that little soiree didn't last very long after he popped up out of the opening in the street, due to a "Nuka-Nuke" fat man round, fired from the museum roof, landing on him as soon as he stuck his head up and erasing him in a big blue flash

Even after the best part of a year playing this game - and playing it as often as I can get around to it - I'm still discovering new people and places. Earlier today I found a Trader named Opal whom I'd never known existed. She was tucked away in a nondescript part of Boston, down a narrow laneway then up an external fire escape staircase (near 35 Court). I've been blissfully unaware of her existence all this time... I've gotten to know the map pretty well now, but it can still surprise me. After well over 2,000 hours of gaming time, I find it impressive that so much can be hidden away in the game world that I'm still finding things, especially considering that the play area is not what you'd call gigantic. Big, but not gigantic.

There are still weapons I haven't tried yet, drugs I haven't tried yet, modifications I haven't tried yet, recipes I haven't tried yet, Perks I haven't adopted yet... Players are certainly spoiled for choice in this game. I'm also still finding creative ways to build stuff in settlements and to combine components from different building sets to get some quite unique-looking structures. I've found that I can often "trick" Workshop mode into letting me put things where normally it wouldn't simply by placing things in a particular order, i.e. having certain components in place first that subsequent components can then snap to, which in the right circumstances can "override" the Workshop's placement restrictions. Sometimes I have to place temporary components to get the components I want to snap to them, then scrap or reuse the temporary ones afterwards. There are all sorts of ways and means.

I'm still enjoying this game enormously. I'd even go so far as to say that it's my favourite first-person game of all time, beating out anything in the Far Cry franchise, including #2

* * * * *

This was an interesting turn of events: Traipsing around near Egret Tours, I ran into Darla, Skinny Malone's bat-wielding tough-girl ex (she became his ex after my encounter with him).

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Earlier, when Nick Valentine and I confronted Malone and Darla (plus a goon or two) on the way out of Vault 114, I'd used the speech check option earlier supplied by Mama Murphy during one of her visions - something like, "Remember the Quarry and Lilly June on the rocks", which prompted Malone to give Nick and I a count of ten to get out of his sight and make a peaceful exit. Now I've read where, after choosing this option, the player may run into Malone out and about later in the game (where he'll bitch about his own men giving him the heave-ho as a result of the above speech check prompting him to give the player and Nick an out, whereupon his men, and Darla, decided that he'd become soft), but I'd never heard about Darla being encounterable later. But here she was, in the wilds near Egret, still clad in her dress, heels and attitude. When questioned, she said something about "going home to my parents", then wandered off. I watched her for a while and she seemed to just wander aimlessly in the woods, but later when I returned to the area, she'd disappeared. Gone back to Mum and Dad, I presume.

[Dweller_Benthos]

Interesting about Darla, I'm pretty sure I used the Mama Murphy code as well, never saw any of them again.

It is an advantage playing the game after the release like this, you have all the stuff to choose from to build with from all the DLC, there were a few things I would have done differently with all those parts if I'd had them from the beginning. As it is, the only thing I did do was tear down one building and make a new one with the new parts from the vault expansion. The stuff from the others I barely used as I wasn't doing a lot of building by the time those came out.

[Art Blade]

I know Opal, I think I found her when I was coming down from nearby roofs.

[fragger]

I was lucky, D_B - lucky to have a mate like Art who gifted me the entire season pass So I've never known the game without all the extras. But I've thought about what the game would be like without the DLCs and I imagine that they have boosted the game quite substantially. I enjoy Nuka-World and Far Harbor and I like that they're both so totally different from one another in environments, people and story, and both are in turn completely different from the Commonwealth. There's more to Far Harbor than I thought, and even after two playthroughs I'm still discovering stuff there (I totally missed Horizon Flight 1207 with Erickson the dog-owning Super Mutant on both prior 'thrus).

Speaking of FH, here's a settlement I built around Longfellow's Cabin on his little island (the cabin itself can be seen front centre)

Looking out to sea.

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Looking over the settlement towards Far Harbor and the main island, on a rare, fairly clear day.

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It even has a sun deck - not that you get much sun up there...

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Longfellow's has a fairly big build area but I wanted to keep everything inside the pre-existing Fog Condensers, so I essentially built up instead of out This is one of my favourite settlements so far. It was one of those instances where everything I built not only just happened to fit nicely among the existing structures, but I was able to incorporate those structures (the wooden walkways, the cabin and the Workbench shed behind it) into the overall layout. It works really well.

[Dweller_Benthos]

Nice, Fragger, I did a little at Longfellow's and some at the farm, I forget the name, and a little at the lumber yard and national park entrance. But mostly just enough to finish quests, as the building bug had long left me by the time those DLCs came out.

As for the weather, I used firework rockets a lot in Far Harbor, to clear the weather, though if you fast traveled the effect wore off fast. Did the same in the main game to clear the rain that sometimes would fall for days.

[Art Blade]

yep, nice one, fragger I never spent much time in FH, I was glad to be back in the wastelands.

[fragger]

I found Skinny Malone. I went back into Park Street Station/Vault 114 to sweep for any good scavenge I might have missed, and ran into Malone and two Triggermen at the entrance to the Vault. I didn't get to talk to Malone because they all opened up on me as soon as they saw me, so I had to bump him off.

I never knew you could establish a settlement right inside the Bunker Hill compound - in fact I don't think I ever noticed the Workbench there. I don't know weather it's after doing Deb's mission or after the three-way battle that takes place there involving the three escaped synths, but I happened to run into Kessler after I'd done both and engaged her in conversation. She said that henceforth I could use the Workbench inside the compound. All the junk items lying about the place lost their "steal" status and became freely nickable, and I could go around scrapping stuff. Don't have to build anything as everything the six permanent inhabitants need already exists, except defenses. There was also a cool 1,800 caps waiting for me inside the Workbench.

You learn something new every day

[Art Blade]

I knew about that settlement but indeed, except defences, I never did much there. I did, however, scrap some stuff that I found ugly, like walled-up doors and windows if memory serves correctly, and to do that I was using a mod that allowed to scrap anything.

I am glad that you're still having a blast playing it, mate If I hadn't come across other games like KCD, Hitman (Sniper Assassin) and now again GTA online thanks to a massive nightclub DLC that changes a lot how the game can be played, I would still be playing FO4. However, I already played the dickens out of it, it's not as if I had stopped somewhere in the middle

[Dweller_Benthos]

Yeah I didn't do much at Bunker Hill aside from defense, either, plus a couple artillery stations to be able to cover the center of the city, but I hardly used them. I think I used the scrap anything and place anywhere mods to do some stuff since the restrictions on what and where you could build there were a little tight if you ask me.

[Art Blade]

indeed. Not much room for spacious creativity there. I didn't want to risk the "place anywhere" because I was already using the glitch for unlimited amounts of items, you know, that progress bar of the w0#k bench set to zero. That sometimes freaked the game out a little, over at Sanctuary.

[Dweller_Benthos]

Yeah the problem with increasing your build limit like that was that the game just can't handle it, which is why there was a build limit to begin with. I ended up removing a lot of stuff just to get rid of the lag when approaching Sanctuary or the long load time fast travelling there. On a PC you can get away with it for a while, but the consoles are where it's really limited and that's what they set the build limit for, the lowest common denominator.

[mandru]

fragger that's a cool build (nice pics) at the Far Harbor Longfellow's settlement. 

Your builds are always impressive in their forethought, effort, and elegance even when created utilizing rustic materials.

I've always wanted to have a sundeck on the roof of one of my complexes.  But with my slap dash builds I end up with so many power pylons sticking out of the roofs and wires strung everywhere that letting settlers anywhere near all that is aesthetically unfeasible.  As if my builds had any measure of aesthetics. 


Win10 is still buggered up on my PC so I'm limited to what I can access using Ubuntu.  I need to figure out how to boot up Win10 in safe mode to see if I can grab off to a thumb drive all of my FO game notes' (magazine + bobble-heads locations and other personal musings etc...) text docs as well as JPEG images I've stacked up in files on my PC's desktop.

Once I get done procrastinating and do that I can haul my rig into the shop and cannibalize its still useful bits for a new build and a current CPU and motherboard.  Adding second GTX1080 Ti running in SLI might be fun. 

I'm seriously Jonesing over lack of game time. 

[fragger]

Thanks for the nice words mandru The builds are like labours of love for me. I'm a frustrated architect from way back, and making buildings in FO4 helps to get it out of my system Although it's far more likely that I'm just going through a second childhood, playing with a computerized version of the Lego that I loved as a kid (who am I kidding - I haven't entirely gotten out of first childhood yet ) The difference is that now I get to run around and play inside the things I build, something that would have been impossible without an insane amount of Lego blocks and profoundly indulgent parents...

Sorry to hear about your ongoing PC woes. I really hope you can get back into gaming soon mate, both for your sake and for ours - because I for one miss your entertaining insights and observations. It just isn't the same without you

[Art Blade]

well said, on all accounts

[LowPolyOWG]

On a PC you can get away with it for a while, but the consoles are where it's really limited and that's what they set the build limit for, the lowest common denominator.

Both that and the fact Bethesda is using an engine they never seem to fix...