Fallout 4

[Art Blade]

I see.

What I had in mind (Danse vs X6-88) didn't pan out.

X6 was still the only settler of starlight when I arrived with my companion Danse. X6 opened fire on him and later on me, too. Danse kept shooting X6 and it turned out that they can't kill one another. Only I can kill X6.

I then dismissed Danse and "sent" him to starlight. X6, a synth and sworn enemy to the Brotherhood, ignored Danse. I didn't know why. I didn't know whether he didn't shoot because Danse was a potential companion or because he got kicked out of the Brotherhood or simply because he was a fellow settler.

And Danse, who still considered synths worth killing, ignored X6. Considering that X6 cannot be my companion anymore, it's more likely that both of them ignore the respectively other one simply because they're fellow settlers.

Which means, I have both of them living there together as settlers who would interfere with my game if they lived elsewhere -- be it because of the hostility towards me regarding X6, or regarding Danse, who both makes a lot of noise with his bloody power armour (hehe, I so agree with you there, D_B  ) and who endangers any settlement he lives in by shooting at passing-by Brotherhood vertibirds and patrols.

I can't cage them up in the arena because they're settlers and need to be kept happy and well-fed and hydrated I could, however, assign them to arena teams and put them in there.. hmm..

[fragger]

Well, I've played for a week or two, and I must confess I'm having a bit of a hard time getting into this one. I don't really know why. Maybe I'm just not much of an RPG kind of guy. Complicated skill trees and branching dialogue choices don't really interest me a lot in first (or third) person games. I prefer action to character interaction I think, and if there's going to be skill trees, I'd rather have a more simplified format a la FC4. I mainly like to just run around and shoot stuff, and save the building, managing and levelling-up activities for strategy games like Civ and XCOM. I do enjoy the exploration aspects of FO4 though. There's lots and lots to discover, and that's probably the aspect of the game I enjoy most.

It's a fantastic game for sure, if it's one's cup of tea. I'm not knocking it by any means. The graphics are terrific, the game world is rich and has been meticulously created (although the largely colourless, devastated environment sort of depresses me a little), there is a wealth of stuff to explore and play with, and if you're into RPG-style games, I can see how you could totally lose yourself in it.

I haven't yet tried to do any building to speak of, and managing settlers and so forth doesn't really appeal to me. It could be because I already play strategy games which are heavy on management and building, so I sometimes like to get into an action-oriented shooter like FC4 for a change of pace. A game like FO4 doesn't really provide that change of pace when it's largely more building and management. Also, when I do play a shooter, I prefer relatively real-world weapons and human enemies as opposed to weird-and-wonderful weapons and mutated freaks.

So far, story-wise, I've rescued those people from Concord and gotten them happily settled in Sanctuary, and set them up satisfactorily there. I've gotten the folks at Abernathy Farm on side by getting them the locket from the tracking station, and done the mish to clear the Raiders out of the old auto plant for the Tenpines crowd. I did much better at that this time around. My vastly improved frame rate helps - the old graphics card wasn't really up to it, whereas I get a constant 60fps with the GTX 1070. It has made a world of difference

But try as I might, I just can't bring myself to like V.A.T.S. In fact, I seem to do much better without it. During the auto plant escapade, I initially took out the external defenders from the nearby elevated freeway, like I did the first time around. Only this time I had a .38 scoped pipe sniper rifle. Using V.A.T.S., I couldn't seem to hit the side of a barn, but aiming manually I was dropping them like flies. Same story once I got inside the plant – I missed enemies when using V.A.T.S. practically every time, but put them down easily with ironsights. V.A.T.S. is good for scanning an area for hard-to-spot baddies, but otherwise I've pretty much given up on it. V.A.T.S. sort of breaks up the action too much for me as well - I find it more of a distraction than an aid.

Anyway, I'll still keep on with the game, but I think that if it hasn't started to grow on me by this point, it probably never will. It all comes down to personal taste, I guess. I'm so appreciative and grateful to Art and BinnZ for their generosity and I feel a bit bad that I can't get into the game more, but I'm not going to lie and say I love it when I really don't. I don't entirely dislike it either – the best I can say is that I'm ambivalent towards it. Thanks for your thoughtfulness guys, I really wish I could say I love it for you

[LowPolyOWG]

Found the FO4 graphics guide from Nvidia's page.

Looks like FO4 can be tweaked extensively Volumetric lighting is definitely a fps killer in the game

[fragger]

Thanks for that, GKID

I just want to add that I hope I didn't sound too harsh on FO4 in my last post. I am enjoying the game, in certain ways. I like doing missions and finding hidden places, and I've found some decent weapons, including a Tommy gun of all things, with the drum-magazine to boot, which is cool in a 1920s gangster-era kind of way, and Danse's special weapon (can't recall the name of it right now), but the settlement and crafting aspects of the game don't do a lot for me. I am having fun with it all the same though, honest

I'm looking forward to trying out the Junk Jet weapon, which I found during Danse's Institute mission

[Dweller_Benthos]

Yeah, there are aspects to it that don't appeal. Some of the stuff I did the minimum to get the quest like some of the settlement management. Some people have every settlement populated with various people, farms, etc. I have a few, mostly I wanted artillery, and for that you need a decent settlement to support it. Then I found the artillery is only so-so as far as a weapon so it wasn't as good as I had imagined.

The thing about the game is you can ignore a lot of the stuff, especially the RPG elements, which made some of the hard core Fallout fans from the old days a bit salty. As for the branching dialog choices, they are all pretty much the same in 99% of the cases. In other words, you can't really screw up a conversation so much that you'll fail a quest. At least as much as I recall, anyway. So don't sweat the dialog and pick whatever option looks amusing. There are some minor differences in answers you can give, where one might just get you to the next quest point, but another might get you a minor reward first like some ammo and then move on to the next quest point.

But if you want to just run-and-gun, then there's a lot of that you can do, too, and just ignore all the quests. I actually did that for a long time, and a lot of the time when I did go to do a quest, I'd already been there and done that, and the quest self-completed.

The setting is also something that can get on you after a while, and is why I stopped playing Fallout games after doing FO3, even though I have New Vegas sitting there. I'm just not in the mood for the post apocalypse right now. Far Cry 5 with it's "normal" setting and enemies will be a breath of fresh air, I think, and after that, maybe next summer when it's nice and green outside, I'll play New Vegas. But not over the winter, no.

[Art Blade]

OK, cool, now I can uninstall NV.

After playing the living daylights out of FO3, I had to take a break, a long, long break, which is why I only started playing FO4 this summer. I got over 1,000 hours into this game and haven't even completed it, you actually got the freedom and don't have to follow any main quest lines. Just do what you want and have fun

[fragger]

I got into the game quite a bit today. I ventured into the Cambridge/Charlestown area and went as far south as the river. It's quite the cityscape around here, I had no idea This is a great game for exploration, I'm getting into that more and more and found lots of cool locations. I cleared out a building full of Super Mutants and their mutts, which gave me access to the high bridge seen in the first picture below (except the stupid dog kept falling off - I'd hear a thud and a whimper, look around and he'd be gone He has an interesting ability to be able to magically get himself back beside me again when I'm not looking though, no matter where he falls to. He's a tough old mongrel). The semi-auto laser rifle Danse gave me - the "Righteous Authority" (I love that name!) - made short w0#k of the Super Mutants.

I am finding V.A.T.S. useful in certain situations, I must admit. I'll probably never be a devoted fan of it, but it does come in handy under the right circumstances. I've collected some reasonably good weapons, including a powerful sniper rifle and a combat shotgun. I've also got a Quick Pipe Pistol with a scope for lower-tier baddies, to make use of the heaps of .38 ammo I'm carrying around, saving the heavy-caliber stuff for the heavy-caliber baddies. Found a Fat Man but I've only got one Mini-nuke for it. Couple of other weapons too, including that drum-fed Tommy gun, which I really like but have to be sparing with the ammo. Still got the other 10mm that I started with, since been modified.

I ran into a Putrid Glowing One in town. Blimey, he was a tough cookie! He got a few good clobbers in and I had to Stimpak up a few times before I finally put him down. I also had a run-in with a couple of variants of Mirelurk (Hunters? They were scorpion-like, not beetle-like, but they weren't Radscorpions) who popped up right outside the door of the Poseiden Turbine NE of town just as I was coming out of it, and one of them was Legendary. Flipping hell, I had to resort to God mode to survive. Legendary features dropped some flash kind of armour vest when he died, which I'm currently wearing (this was after the photos below were taken). Only after defeating the Mirelurks did I notice the metal steps nearby leading up to the roof, so maybe the go should have been to sprint up there and try to take the 'lurks out from above. I might go back to an earlier save and try that - or now that I know where they pop up, try to get them from the roof before I enter the Turbine.

I haven't taken many screenies as yet, I keep forgetting to I have a couple here though:

Here I am with my trusty canine companion. Great view from up here! (I really wish I could rename the dog. I so want to call him Sputnik )
Yep, I'm still in my Vault Tec suit. What the heck, I like how it shows off my figure

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I have added metal armour pieces to my ensemble though. The lady trader at Bunker Hill has some cool Black Ops armour, but it costs a bloody fortune.
I might try to save up for that. I'm not bothering with power armour - at least not at this stage - even though I've acquired about a dozen Fusion Cores for it.

Back at ground level. The lighting and atmospheric effects in this game are superb, I'm really impressed by the look of it.
I like this pistol I found, a "powerful" 10mm with a reflex sight. Note too that I only just discovered that I can change the HUD colours. I like this cyan colour better. Changed the Pip Boy accordingly.

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Now that I'm not bothering too much with settlements and such, just roaming, I'm having a lot more fun with the game Disregard what I said earlier, the game has grown on me some for sure. I just needed to get around a bit more, I guess

[Art Blade]

I'm glad that you're starting to like it, fragger

You're only just getting started while the rest of us already got at least one more FO game in our pockets, which means, there will be a bag full of new things for you to find and learn

For instance, never pay for armour unless you're stinking rich. You'll keep finding crates and other lootable items, including dead bodies, with better armour than your own and then you'll just take and use it

Maybe one or more mods are in order for you. You could rename the dog and you could make still lootable dead bodies glow while your weapon is drawn. Very useful to actually find those bodies with said armour..

[Art Blade]

I'm currently on the final mission, the nuclear option, with the minutemen. I might roll back to before what D_B described, not sure I want that big crater in my city

Oh, before, I had a BoS mission that led me to Far Harbor (training a squire there??) and that made me send all Far Harbor settlers I had to Covenant.

That's where I dispose of settlers, using the arena team option

[Art Blade]

There's now a lot of water where the institute used to be. I like the minutemen ending

I reloaded and played through the Brotherhood of Steel ending, too. I didn't like it -- feels like killing innocents in the name of some fanatics.

Maybe I'll try other endings but right now I'm between starting a new playthrough or simply continuing after the minutemen ending.

[PZ]

 

[fragger]

I had a big day of it yesterday (Sunday), I played all day. Well, not continuously - I also went to the shops, took the dog for a walk and ate the occasional meal

Now that I've gotten out into the larger FO4 world, the game has really taken off for me. I've done a heap of missions for various characters and have racked up a not inconsiderable to-do list of others. I initially made a hash of the mission where you first meet Ada. I wasn't expecting the rescuee to be a robot, so from a distance I was just targeting all the robots I could see, including her, so that finally she was the only one left but she kept coming after me. I couldn't w0#k out why I couldn't kill her - I'd drop her HPs down to zero, but she'd just stop for a minute, then come back to life and start attacking me again. I thought there must have been some kind of special trick to finish her off and even went on the net to find out. Then it clicked, so I restarted from the previous save and made sure I didn't hit her. I've since done her first mission to the General Atomics Factory, now I need to build the Robot Workbench to upgrade her with the newly found thingamajig.

Among other mishes, I've also done Danse's rambling quest to find the lost recon team that ultimately led me to Paladin Brandis holed up in his bunker, and various ones to clear out Raiders for farmers.

I replayed that part with the Mirelurk Hunters outside Poseiden without going into God mode. Indeed, I found I could sprint up the stairs at the side of the building and onto the roof as soon as they popped up. They followed me up there, but on the roof are various pipes and structures which I could climb over but they couldn't, so I found a spot with cover where they couldn't get at me. Then it was just a matter of popping in and out of cover and wearing them down.

I'm determined to get through the game without going God It's frigging tough in places, even in wimp mode, especially the further south one gets, but it's a very rich game for exploration. I'm getting the hang of the various crafting benches and I had a go at building my own residence in Sanctuary. Nothing special, just a two-story place which just fits on one of the pre-existing house slabs (the one down the slope behind the yellow house which already has the crafting benches in it). It took me a while to discover how to make sections turn around before placing them (mouse buttons - d'oh) so I had a few false starts and rebuilds. I couldn't get things to line up with the edges of the slab at first, until I started with a door/wall section right where the slab steps are and worked from there, then it was all a perfect fit. I also had to learn what kinds of wall, floor and roof sections will automatically mate with others. I'll try to remember to take some pics of the joint next time.

I've read here from time to time about how you guys make use of the Starlight Drive-in. Makes sense, it does seem to be the only large flat area of the map. Maybe I'll build myself a mansion there, with the man-cave I lack in reality I've found eight different pool balls so far, including a cue ball. Eight more to go, then I can equip the pool table I want to build in my 'cave.

So yeah, the game did end up grabbing me after all, now that I've realized it's not all far-flung, isolated buildings scattered among ruined tress and rocks. The city of Boston is pretty darned big in fact, with tons of exploring to do in it. I'm looking forward to getting back into the game

[Art Blade]

that sounds good keep having fun, fragger

[fragger]

Had another good day of playing, really getting into it now. I went back to the Super Duper market, and this time I didn't forget to activate the security robot inside first. I had Ada with me as well, so there were two robots guarding my back. Made it a breeze compared to the first time.

Unfortunately, before going into the Sup-Dup I decided to sit on a bench just outside, right out in the open, and wait a few hours for daylight to break. BIG mistake... I didn't realize it when I was sitting down, but even as I was doing so a Raider in a high position was drawing a bead on me with a flipping mini-nuke. So as soon as I got up from the bench, I heard the incoming whine and got blown to smithereens. I reloaded several times, but each time I was unable to lift my bum off the bench and get clear before the bomb landed. I ended up having to reload from the save before that. I then snuck up on the guy, gave him what-for and pinched his Fat Man.

Mental note to self – don't sit around out in the open in future.

Still finding better and better weapons. I found a semi-auto shotgun (bye bye, double-barrel) and a cool .45 semi-auto Combat Rifle, which is neat because it has a fast action, packs a wallop and I'd already accumulated over 700 .45 rounds for it. I'm hanging on to my other double-barrel shottie, a special one which deals double damage against robots. Also got a laser sniper rifle, a rocket launcher, several pistols including a suppressed 10mm one, and a tricked-out .38 Pipe Sniper Rifle with a night-vision scope. Also found a better Tommy gun with a 100-round drum mag, which is great for room-to-room fights. Still got the Righteous Authority and a couple of other energy weapons, which I switch between. I really like the laser fights in the game, they look awesome. Better than Star Wars

Finding out that I could assign weapons to the alphanumeric keys has also made life considerably easier, instead of having to bring up the Pip Boy very time I want to switch weapons. I discovered that by accident, what with the "Q" key being right next to the TAB

I've done a pile of missions. I just completed the entire USS Constitution set, which took me a while. But the ending was worth it, it totally cracked me up

[spoiler text=Screenie time! ]

Off we go, into the wild blue yonder...

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...minus the Captain, who apparently fell overboard. I didn't even notice until I looked at the screenie after I stopped playing,
but you can see Captain Ironsides' robotic bulk in the air below the ship, I guess having fallen right through the hull, or just rolled off the deck.
I don't know whether that was intentional or not.

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Still going... Going... Hey, watch out for that –

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- building. Oh dear.

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The Captain subsequently reported in quite a happy tone that he was now one league closer to the Atlantic and estimated that at this rate,
he would get there in about a hundred years. Funny stuff!

* * * * *

Anyway, here's my humble abode in Sanctuary, complete with porch and kennel for the dog, which he actually makes use of.
It doesn't look like much, but I call it home.

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Ground floor, nothing in here yet.

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Upper floor with a little bit of décor. Once again, not much yet. Been too busy doing missions.

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[/spoiler]
I'm really intrigued by the design of this game. It's just like the way people in the 50s imagined the future would look like, with atomic-powered cars and domestic robots. It's cleverly conceived, with all the art-deco architectural styles and design motifs that were so much in vogue back then and which people at the time had no reason to assume would pass out of fashion. Whenever you see imaginings of the future by artists and some film-makers of that period, their concepts look just like the things you see in the game, with cars that look like rocketships on wheels and Robbie-like robots. It's all a very cool, tongue-in-cheek homage.

[fragger]

Thinking a bit more about the last paragraph in my previous post, I've always found that period curious, particularly where it concerns American culture. On the one hand, there was runaway consumerism with the hope that we were headed towards a bright future, and on the other was an abiding fear of atomic annihilation. I've sometimes wondered if the fear drove the hope - a sense of enjoy the consumerism now, because it might all end in a mushroom cloud tomorrow. I think the FO4 devs actually understand the period quite well.

There was also a slew of movies from the time depicting enormous monsters: Giant ants, giant scorpions, a giant spider, a giant octopus, even a giant preying mantis, and others. In just about every case, the monsters came about as a result of accelerated mutation driven by - well, fallout, from atomic testing or other misuse. I think it was actually the underlying fear of the bomb manifesting itself in movies.

Interesting period.