Fallout Four More

[DJ]

Why hello.

Here is the new Fallout 4 thread I intend on curating, similar to my Mass Effect Threads.

Feel free to add your own stories!

MY STORY SO FAR:

Okay, so we all know the starter plot to Fallout 4, right? If not, super minor spoilers: You’re alive when the war with China starts, and make it into a vault with your wife and kid. At some point, you’re thawed long enough to see your infant son kidnapped and your spouse shot in the head. After that, you wake up at some point in the future, break out, and you’re off.

So, my character has become a slightly insane version of Wasteland Batman.

Driven smad by the events he’s lived through, my character (I’m just going to say “I” from now on despite these choices being made in character as opposed to anything I’d actually do) decided to become a vigilante.

Not just any vigilante. The Silver Shroud, which is a very obvious Green Hornet reference. The game allows for this, even letting you get the original costume and have it periodically buffed as the game goes on so you can wear the costume for the entire game and it’ll be viable.

The idea here is I don’t want anyone to know who I am, necessarily. So this is my adopted alter ego, with the stated goal of making the Wasteland a better place. To this end, I used my adventuring capital to build a safe town that’s become a bustling trade center and one of the safest locations in the wastes.

Also to this end, he has brutally killed over a thousand people and sleeps like a baby at night. In his head, these are problems being removed. Their deaths are necessary for the Wasteland to heal. And there’s a lot of people that need to be killed.

I like to play in this fashion. I give vague, sort of vigilate-ish answers when possible, talking up virtue and the qualities of kindness and blah blah blah, and then when fights break out I into a violence machine that will cold slaughter entire groups of people in the blink of an eye because oh hey I’m also far and away the best gunfighter in the wastes and have no problem blowing heads clean off for fairly minor infractions.

I’m really having a blast here.

Also, reposting my SB1 post because I liked it:

Congratulations guys you get a classic DJ post on this game and I can’t even blame alcohol this time so I’m not even sure what my excuse for this nonsense is anymore.

I should be asleep but here’s pictures anyway. All these are the PS4 version.

First, this was a neat photo op and in some ways I feel encapsulates the game as a whole. If I ever make any more of those Paradigm Collection covers, this will probably be the one for Fallout 4.

Actually, fuck that. This screenshot is fucking amazing.

I am imagining this scenario where I’m in an elevator meeting with an executive, and they’re like "Deej, I need you to get me a single screenshot that will sell this Falling Out 4 game harder and harder the more someone looks at it. Especially to intellectual types who like to overanalyze everything, Kotaku will eat that shit right up. It should present the entire setting without using words, and make it look intriguing and inviting, but also dangerous and mysterious at the same time. Plus the colors should be all nice and pastel, people are sick of alternating puke green and shit green/brown. Everything about this screenshot must gently but urgently eye-whisper to the viewer, ‘You want to know more about this. You want to go on web forums and discuss this game. What the fuck is that blimp in the background? Those guys are weirdly chill about it. What’s going on? I must know!’ You know, shit like that.

Do this and we’ll make you King of Videogames."

And I’m just like “I got you fam.”

In less impressive news I also made a base.

Here’s the very very early, very haphazard stages of my eventual Batcave/Strip Mall. Repurposed an abandoned drive-in ticket booth, used the buttresses as a platform to built a bunch of generators plus a windmill backup, set up a radio beacon, throw up some defenses, and it stayed this way for a while.

Eventually, though, settlers came in, so I had to build a metal shack for them to sleep in. That became way too small very quickly, so I moved them to a pretty massive communal wooden house and redid the shack as a defense post/power station monitor. After that, I added a row of stores and declared it a trading post. It’s starting to come together here.

THERE WAS A PICTURE HERE BUT I’M A NEW USER AND CAN ONLY POST FOUR

ha ha can we fix this please this is going to drive me fucking bananas.

Anyway.

I built some elevated guard posts as an “entrance” and posted some imposing-looking guards. Mutant attacks have been way down, though I wish they wouldn’t shoot at EVERYTHING that wanders into sight. We’re seriously totally full on radstag meat, dudes. Chill.

STILL TO MANY PICTURES LOL

At night it really starts to come together.

Here’s the mostly finished product. A bustling little trading post with all the amenities one could want, plus my super-secret batcave where I can build all kinds of crazy shit buried in a little shed out back.

Just to fucking reiterate: I built that. In a Triple-A budget modern-day Western Shootbangs “RPG lol” CONSOLE game, I built that. Everything you see there. That little blue Minutemen flag hanging behind the wall supports, I had to hang that. Every single electrical wire and conduit strung up around this place. All the chairs (the NPCs use the chairs) beds (ditto), other furniture, all of it was hand placed by me, because I can. It’s like base-building in Morrowind (something I spent hours on) finally made official and given in-game mod support. It’s amazing.

Back when I would play awesome games with kinda shit graphics, like Fallout 2 to pick an entirely unrelated example, what made them work for me was the flexibility to write your own story into the gaps.

The rough pieces of the game could still be knit together with just the right amount of breathing room to allow for your own narrative to form while still being on-model throughout, which is a neat dodge for the kind of BioShock Infinite/Grand Theft Auto/Narrative Says One Thing But I Murdered Six People Just Getting Breakfast This Morning information clash that rips you out of the proceedings and inspires white kids with trust funds to invent words like “ludonarrative dissonance”.

Morrowind did it right as well. The game’s jankiness was turned into a feature instead of a bug. Bethesda never seemed to get it quite right in Oblivion or Fallout 3 or even Skyrim.

That town up there is one of the big ways how they got it right in Fallout 4.

Oblivion:Fallout 3::Morrowind:Fallout 4

(how many people did i just sell on this game, raise your hands)

((i keep track sometimes))

Oh, also: To anyone wondering how I am still able to enjoy videogames at 34 years old, it’s because I play them like you see above

[Iacus]

@DJ

The rough pieces of the game could still be knit together with just the right amount of breathing room to allow for your own narrative to form while still being on-model throughout

I guess the main character of FO4 doesn’t care about their kidnapped son that much!

[talbain]

Wondering how long it will be before Alternate Start mods drop. Might have to wait until the Creation Kit arrives, assuming something like SKSE doesn’t happen first.

Haven’t sworded anyone in a while. May have to get back to swording.

@DJ I think the town building simulator is fine but I would like to see it simply expanded to the whole game, excepting maybe Boston. Already enjoy the mods that let you use more pieces and remove the use limit for towns. Recently mods that allow for level editing in game have become more popular among Skyrim modders (aside from the usual stuff that’s always popular). Creating your own cover to use against enemies sounds rad.

[jsnlv]

Hey @DJ, I boosted your trust level, so unless there’s another image limit, post away!

[DJ]

Hey, thanks!

[DJ]

@Iacus

@DJ

The rough pieces of the game could still be knit together with just the right amount of breathing room to allow for your own narrative to form while still being on-model throughout

I guess the main character of FO4 doesn’t care about their kidnapped son that much!

Well specifically I don’t because I know it’s a MacGuffin. Works in game story because it’s usually not quite clear if your son is even alive, let alone rescuable.

[talbain]

I still think it’s lazy because it makes considerably less sense to go off the “path” of finding your kid until you confirm that the kid is actually dead. It’s genuinely difficult to understand how the person you’re inhabiting would want to do anything else until after that fact (especially since we see signs of affection from them). I find it weirder that they (the people who kidnap your son) are specifically looking for anyone at all, to be quite honest; unless your son secretly has god-like powers or something, which would give me a new thing to laugh about. Because it’s pretty clear that a very long time has passed by the time the kidnapping happens, and as such it seems unlikely there would be a good, clear reason to kidnap a child in a post-apocalyptic future. The costs and dangers of raising a child would be outrageous.

[DJ]

[quote=“talbain, post:7, topic:140, full:true”]Because it’s pretty clear that a very long time has passed by the time the kidnapping happens, and as such it seems unlikely there would be a good, clear reason to kidnap a child in a post-apocalyptic future. The costs and dangers of raising a child would be outrageous.
[/quote]

Well I mean the dumb argument here is “It’s a videogame that doesn’t tell you what to do”. You certainly have the option of racing to find your son, and if you play it that way the game reacts accordingly. If you don’t (and I don’t believe it should force your hand for plot reasons in an RPG), your NPC companions will comment on the fact that you seem to have lost the path a bit. There’s already been a lot of comics about this. “Sir, shouldn’t you be looking for Master Sean?” “WHO THE FUCK IS SEAN”, etc

As for the “why”, that gets brought up a lot, and your character is just as confused as anyone else why they would possibly want to kidnap your child. Like, it doesn’t make sense, and finding out the reason why is the whole point.

I won’t get into spoiler territory, but it does indeed go somewhere. Plot aspects that don’t make much sense are fine as long as the characters don’t have knowledge the player does not.

[talbain]

I’d say it’s more that it makes me recognize just how ridiculous it is. I think it would have been better if the game just didn’t invest in a plot that, in spite of going somewhere, can in no way pay off in a manner that both makes sense and is workable with an in-universe apocalypse without making one of those seem ridiculous. And railroading happens all the time in RPGs and I don’t really have a problem with it when it serves a purpose. I agree that it makes no sense in a Bethesda game but then I was never playing it for the plot or character to begin with. I needed swording time.

[Iacus]

@talbain

I’d say it’s more that it makes me recognize just how ridiculous it is. I think it would have been better if the game just didn’t invest in a plot that, in spite of going somewhere, can in no way pay off in a manner that both makes sense and is workable with an in-universe apocalypse without making one of those seem ridiculous.

Yeah that’s basically my problem with that setup.
I haven’t played the game yet, though, so it’s possible that the plot is addressed better in-game (It would need more than the NPCs nagging you about the main quest for that)

[DJ]

I mean I can’t really explain more without big spoilers, so I guess if you don’t intend to play the game or don’t care about the plot, check out the Wiki summary to get an idea.

[Iacus]

No, I intend to play the game, I’ll just wait for when the all-DLC special edition is on sale or something. It will also give me enough time to finish this playthrough of New Vegas

[talbain]

I still think it’s a fun game and the mods will eventually make it worth it, as is the case with all Bethesda games. Personally hoping for a tropical overhaul mod just like the one I have for Skyrim.

[SONNICK]

actually I am in the same camp as @dj, i also went on to play FO4 my “own” way, instead of rushing off to save my child.
Maybe i kinda missed a clue or already forgot about it, but from my pov, the “hero” (let’s just call him that, makes things easier) cannot be sure that his child is alive, since he has no idea when he got abducted - this could have been 50 minutes, or 50 years - who knows?

Anyway, I decided to get shit sorted out in my hometown first and assembled some furniture to build a “make-believe” homebase, only to realize that nobody would hang out here, so I started exploring (and met someone you care about - a dog). When i got the hang of the whole SimSettlement-thing, i decided to explore TheWorld™, but so far have avoided to go to Diamond City. And up until now, i didn’t think about it this way, but Hero-plot-wise, this would actually even make sense:

Imagine a parent that is unable to face the truth, that his child is gone/missing/dead. After all, your wife is dead, child MIA, you experience the devastation brought forth by a nuclear attack, oh hey, skipped some 100+ years also, cool - would you head straight to town X to find out “yup, you’re fucked, too bad. hey and give me your money or die~~~” or rather search around for yourself, clasping to the believe that as long as you do not head to town X, you might be able to “find” your son, by chance.

(btw: personally, I’d head straight to X if that’d bring certainty. but that’s me, not Hero™.)

[DJ]

There was a great little subplot in Transmetropolitan about folks in the past (Transmet takes place in the far future where body reconstruction is a common occurrence and people can live as nanoclouds, in case you’re unfamiliar) who would have themselves cryogenically frozen so they could be resurrected in the future; turns out this only really begins to happen much when the technology to do so is not only available, but extremely common. As a result, the ressurrectees wind up “too far” in the future. They’re still trying to grasp the idea that they’ve been reconstructed by a machine that was able to recreate their memories from a rotting, frozen chunk of brain tissue, while the rest of the world has been living in a space where having a personal matter constructor in your house is roughly the equivalent to having running water, and nobody has time to explain this brave new world to them.

The ressurrectees don’t deal with this well, and almost all of them go insane. Those that don’t still are mentally not prepared for life, so they tend to wind up homeless.

My Hero™ is in this situation. Lived in 2077, saw the bombs falling, was expecting to live underground for many years with his family. Is instead frozen, forced to witness his wife’s murder and son’s kidnapping, is frozen again for an uncertain amount of time, and is then coughed up into a world that he was supposed to have been long dead in, World War III happening or not.

Having your mind shatter and adopting the mantle of a fictional superhero in order to stamp out injustice while trying to track down who took your family from you seems like a pretty okay response to this. All it took for Bruce Wayne to become Batman was for his parents to get shot in front of him and then fall down a well and have some sky rats fly around for a bit. I’d say Hero™ is taking his lumps pretty well by comparison, as long as you don’t take the body count into the equation.

[talbain]

I say this without knowing what would have happened, but I do know that so far I’ve had very little ability to actually talk about anything with people in the game. Most of them, even the ones I expected I could talk to, were immediately hostile. Is there some kind of internal thing the game does that makes this happen across all characters or did I get caught in a bug? So far the only people who haven’t immediately attacked me are the Brotherhood of Steel people and the Boston City people.

[SONNICK]

@talbain: i’ve experienced something along this line as well - rarely that I get to talk to people i meet in the wilderness, most often I let my buddy .38 do the talking.

idk if that’s me coming over as hostile (running around in power armor surely doesn’t look like i’m all “yup wassup!”, OK. so i reloaded, hopped out of armor, went back, got shot. =/
Although there was one case where a woman was aiming at me and telling me to go away, since this belongs to her (whatever “this” was). I went a step closer and uh, she suddenly started shooting. Meant what she said, yes …
(p.s. those flying sputnik-esque drones seem only to get obnoxious/attack when you’ve drawn a sword/weapon, right? idk what triggered one of them yesterday when playing, but it kept attacking until i machete’d it down. Maybe i should head to diamond city at last …)

@dj: yeah, the reasoning sounds pretty legit, and i kinda find it cool that the game even gives you an outfit to "cosplay" along those lines as well. I think I should take a picture of hero™ so everyone can see what wandering machete-guy looks like.

[jsnlv]

I’ve never been attacked by an Eyebot. I can confirm that some enemies aren’t immediately hostile. There are some gunners around that just want to charge you a toll, and I’ve read that it’s possible for raiders to lose their hostility because they recognized your companion, and they say “I never woulda attacked if I’d known it was you!”

[DJ]

Everyone starts out wary, but not necessarily hostile. But, if you shoot near them or walk up really quickly with your gun drawn, they’re going to be jumpy.

It’s a good idea to keep your gun holstered unless you plan on shooting someone with it. Sometimes, if people seem to be attacking you for no reason, look at them and put your gun away. If they’re not seriously hostile, they’ll do the same (provided you haven’t already shot at them).

By the by, @talbain, I’m going to be streaming this really soon if you want kind of a crash course in how I’m going about it so you can compare notes. I try not to do anything super spoiler-y on the Stream, buuuuuut right now I’m kind of in a plot-sensitive area so you may not want to watch this, dunno.

[talbain]

I mean, so far I’ve only played with melee weapons and I put the melee weapons away whenever I’m not in combat (because for better or worse, holding a melee weapon looks doofy in this game). Oddly though, unlike in Skyrim, I prefer to play this game in first-person rather than third.