Fallout 4 - no spoilers, Are the rumors true? Options

[SubRosa]

After playing Elektra for 63 hours, I finally found Diamond City. It turns out I walked almost right past it a few times without even knowing it. There were a few times where if I had walked one more block in another direction I would have been there. But downtown Boston is such a maze, that every city block is like another world. You never know what is behind every alley or side street.

I finally got going on the main quest. I had to use the console though, as one quest just sort of derailed and stopped. I got the first Act of it finished. It turns out that triggers the arrival of the Brotherhood of Steel in force. That was a cool moment, seeing them flying overhead. Elektra looked up and thought: "Things just got a whole lot worse..."

[SubRosa]

I discovered something important with companions. When you dismiss them you then have to choose which of your settlements to send them to. But if you press the Tab key to cancel out of the settlement choice screen, they will instead return to their original home. This is the only way to send Piper back to Publick Occurrences in Diamond City, Valentine back to his detective agency, and so on.

It is because if you cancel out of the send to screen they go back to their last home. If you have already assigned them to a settlement, that becomes their last home. So if you have done that already, you can never send them back to their original home.

[Kane]

Yeah, that irked me when I first played. I'd much rather have them return to actual homes, especially with Pipes, who has a little sister to look after.

[SubRosa]

I made another discovery about Fallout 4. After leaving the vault there is only one place in the game where you can change your face - The Mega Surgery Center in Diamond City. The first doctor who does face changes might die, depending on what you do in a quest. If he does the second doctor will then do the face changes. To find him you have to go inside the Surgery Center. This confused me, as I thought it meant in the basement. But there is a red door next to the open air area. It took me a week to figure out it was a door! I thought it was just a sign painted red. If you go through that door on the ground level, it will take you to the second doctor.

Also, the vanilla face presets only work during character creation and the vault exit. After that you cannot pick from any of the original presets. But you can otherwise change you face. If you are using LooksMenu (and you should be!) then you can still use modded face presets through that.

[hazmick]

If you have the Vault-Tec Workshop dlc you can build a surgery chair for yourself, though it's just as easy to get a mod for it.

The mod I use gives you a ring, which opens the character editor window when you put it on. If you equip the ring on a follower, you can edit them too. I like to use it to remove all the dirt and grime from people's faces - apparently nobody in the wasteland owns a face cloth or washbasin.

[SubRosa]

I created a mod that adds the surgery chair to the player house in Sanctuary Hills. But the ring sounds interesting. Especially since it allows you to change the NPCs faces.

[SubRosa]

My impression is that it is not just you and your family that Vault Tec wanted, but everyone in Vault 111. The staff was supposed to evacuate the vault after six months, but their orders were to never open the cryo tubes. They were supposed to just leave everyone frozen. The tubes themselves could be opened remotely. They don't way where from however. So it seems that the Vault was basically a Pre-War stash of humans. All I can guess was the idea to have the genetic material of people who had never been exposed to the radiation and toxicity of the post war world. But there might be other reasons.

But there must have been some selection process for "better genes" if they were selected for saving. Not just any genes would be worth preserving; traits like intelligence would have to factor in.

They kind of dump a half baked story on your character without a well thought out background. It is one of the things I liked better about Obsidian's New Vegas = extremely well thought out and in depth background stories on the characters.

I have gotten far enough in the main quest to find out why the Institute wanted your son, and why you were "the backup". It turns out I was right on the nose when I guessed that it was all about Pre-War genetic material, that had not been exposed to radiation and/or other toxicities of the Post War world. That is just the Institute's reason for taking the baby though. Why Vault Tec put everyone in cryo tubes remains unanswered.

[SubRosa]

I finished out the Main Quest/Railroad faction questline, and have some observations to share.

Fallout 4 is very different from Bethesda's other games where the Main and Faction quests are concerned. In F4 the Main Quest is truncated. It basically has two Acts, and is solely geared to getting you to to your missing son. As soon as you meet him, the Main Quest ends. Well sort of.

In addition to the MQ there are four major factions that each have their own questline - The Institute, The Railroad, The Brotherhood of Steel, and The Minutemen. But you can only do about a third or a quarter of each before they stop dead. But you can also do radiant quests in addition to the regular quests, which sort of pads them out.

To go farther in the Faction questlines, you have to finish the Main Quest and find your son (and enter the Institute). At that point you can continue the Faction quests. Naturally all are geared somehow toward the Institute. You can do multiple Faction questlines to a certain point. In fact you have to do many of the Institute quests. But there comes a point where you will be forced to side against all the other factions. Possibly even destroy them.

I narrowly escaped this doing the Railroad questline. It has an Institute quest you have to do to retrieve a scientist. If you have joined the Minutemen he is guarded by other Minutemen, and you have to kill them and make them enemies, or kill the Institute guys and make theme enemies. I got lucky because I had not gone any farther than saving Preston and company and taken them to Sanctuary. Because of that the scientist was guarded by mercenary scum, who I could kill to my heart's content without ticking off the Minutemen.

I find I really do not like this approach of joining the Main Quest with the Faction quests. I like playing the other games and ignoring the Main Quest, but instead doing the Mages Guild, or Fighters Guild, etc... You cannot really do this here, as there is very little you can actually do in the faction quests without doing the MQ. I never really cared much for Bethesda's Main Quests. I almost always ignore them entirely. But I usually liked doing faction questlines. Until now, since the faction quests are basically neutered if you do not do the Main Quest with them.

I also don't like the way you are forced into making enemies of the other factions. I was never fond of the way Oblivion or Skyland allowed you to join and become the leader of every single faction. It sounds completely unbelievable to me and totally breaks my immersion. But there is a big difference between allowing you to do every faction questline, and forcing you into only one by destroying all the other factions. Some of these conflicts really do not make any sense either. I mean, why would the Brotherhood care about wiping out the Railroad?

[hazmick]

I'm in the same boat. I only ever do the main quest of a Bethesda game once, and subsequent characters just do faction quests.

In FO4, due to the issues you mentioned, my current version of Alice hasn't touched any factions or gone near the main quest at all. The game tries to push you into it right from the start by giving you a baby, and it feels a little heavy handed in a game that's supposed to be open world. Fortunately I can make my own fun with the settlement building and wandering around the Wasteland.

[TheCheshireKhajiit]

Hellz yeah! Steam put Fallout4 on sale for $29.99. Downloading now. Khajiit will get the season pass later; he'll have for real mods to play with!

This post has been edited by TheCheshireKhajiit: Feb 25 2017, 07:51 AM

[hazmick]

It's even cheaper on CDkeys.

[SubRosa]

Congrats! That is about the same as I paid over Thanksgiving. Now you can fix the game with mods!

[TheCheshireKhajiit]

It's even cheaper on CDkeys.

Khajiit has never heard of CDkeys! Must investigate...

Congrats! That is about the same as I paid over Thanksgiving. Now you can fix the game with mods!

Oh how Khajiit would love to remove most everything about the intro from existence. Afraid there wouldn't be much of a game left if you did that though.

[Kane]

I mean, why would the Brotherhood care about wiping out the Railroad?

That irked me to no end, and I was happy as hell to find a mod that allows a hard speech check to persuade Tuvok from sending you to kill off the RR.

It is kind of lame the way you are forced to choose a side, though.

[SubRosa]

I discovered something a few days ago. There are a number of little low sandbag walls in places, like the Concord main street. Those are normally static. But if you are in power armor, you can smash right through them and destroy them. That was really cool.

[TheCheshireKhajiit]

I discovered something a few days ago. There are a number of little low sandbag walls in places, like the Concord main street. Those are normally static. But if you are in power armor, you can smash right through them and destroy them. That was really cool.

Oh yeah! That startled the hell out of this one the first time he ran over one!

[TheCheshireKhajiit]

Holy crap! If you go off course during the intro, the bomb falls and you die!

[SubRosa]

Holy crap! If you go off course during the intro, the bomb falls and you die!

Isn't that great! I tried that with my second character just to see what would happen.

[TheCheshireKhajiit]

Holy crap! If you go off course during the intro, the bomb falls and you die!

Isn't that great! I tried that with my second character just to see what would happen.

Yep, it would be interesting to see how far you could get in the pre war world.

[SubRosa]

I started Hecate all over again using Start Me Up. I initially started in the Ranger Shack. But then I realized that I should have gone with the start near Diamond City. So far all of my characters have used Sanctuary Hills as a base. I would like to try using Homeplate for a change. So I used the console to COC her near the Mass Pike Tunnel, and she worked her way to Diamond City.

Well she owns Homeplate now. But I ran across something weird. Half the floor inside is covered with wooden boards, half is not. The Workshop will not let me build anything in the half without boards. So how do I fix that? I don't see an option to add in a hardwood floor. The best I can see are some rubber mats.

Edit:
Apparently this is a bug. I did find Rebuilt Home Plate to fix it.

This post has been edited by SubRosa: Mar 13 2017, 11:05 PM