Fallout 4 - spoiler version Options

[Destri Melarg]

Congrats on beating the game, hazmick! I assume 5 days playing wasn't just the MQ but the BoS quest line and some side quests/exploring as well? I've got 25hrs in and I've only just met Nick Valentine!

Thanks Yeah most of my time was spent exploring and settlement building. The settlement stuff is so addictive and I just get absorbed in it for hours.

Fallout 4: The Wasteland Settlement Simulator

[Winter Wolf]

Congrats Hazmick!

I am around 65 hours in and have completed nothing! A Beth game is for me to just roam and roam, slowly visiting each major location and finding some of the minor ones too. I only do quests when my quest log starts to build up. The MQ will slowly take me a year to complete.

Oh, and also having fun playing around with Destri's settlement simulator™.

[Winter Wolf]

Okay, I have grabbed some screen pics from my Xbox One.

The Vertibird that crashed on me.

Point Lookout or Silent Hill?

Dogmeat going for a swim

And speaking of crashing I have come across two downed passenger aircraft in the Boston wasteland. It is so neat to think about all the circumstantial things that would be impacted by the bomb and a nice addition by Beth.

[mALX]

Okay, I have grabbed some screen pics from my Xbox One.

The Vertibird that crashed on me.

Point Lookout or Silent Hill?

Dogmeat going for a swim

And speaking of crashing I have come across two downed passenger aircraft in the Boston wasteland. It is so neat to think about all the circumstantial things that would be impacted by the bomb and a nice addition by Beth.

These pictures are spectacular! I'm tickled that you got the one of the helicopter that crashed on you! But the graphics are so amazing in your screens; holy cow! I think my favorite is Dogmeat swimming, D'aaaaaw !!!!

[Acadian]

Wolf, those are great shots - especially the doggie one. Thanks for sharing!

[mirocu]

The Vertibird that crashed on me.

Nice pics, but what is the red stuff on your health bar?


The second pic really has that Silent Hill atmosphere.

[Lopov]

Really great pics, Winter Wolf.

Did you crash the Vertibird or how did it crash?

Do NPCs show up on the compass because I don't see a marker for the approaching NPC.

Nice to see Dogmeat going for a swim, though the last pic shows a ruined and flooded house, there's certain warmth to it as well.

[hazmick]

Okay, I have grabbed some screen pics from my Xbox One.

The Vertibird that crashed on me.

Point Lookout or Silent Hill?

Dogmeat going for a swim

And speaking of crashing I have come across two downed passenger aircraft in the Boston wasteland. It is so neat to think about all the circumstantial things that would be impacted by the bomb and a nice addition by Beth.

Ah the infamous Vertibird! That foggy picture looks great too, really spooky.

With regards to crashing, there's a holotape near the downed Vertibird and power armor in Concord that talks about it. Mentions the impact of the EMP part of nuclear weapons. Really gives it more depth.

[SubRosa]

Okay, I have grabbed some screen pics from my Xbox One.

The Vertibird that crashed on me.

Point Lookout or Silent Hill?

Dogmeat going for a swim

And speaking of crashing I have come across two downed passenger aircraft in the Boston wasteland. It is so neat to think about all the circumstantial things that would be impacted by the bomb and a nice addition by Beth.

That first pic makes me think: "time to get out the marshmellows!"

Wow, that fog goes look like Silent Hill. I hope there aren't any triangle-headed monsters with 10 foot swords around there!

I hope Dogmeat doesn't turn the water yellow!

[Winter Wolf]

mALX- Thanks! I was lucky that I hit the save in the moments after that bloody thing landed on me. So it was simple to load it back up and grab the pic. Glad you enjoyed the quality!!

Acadian- I have spent years following the visual journey of Buffy and her ever changing clothing attire. I am just happy to return the visual favor!

Mirocu- The red part of the health bar represents radiation. Beth have changed it for this game. Now what happens is that as you acquire radiation your health maximum decreases. So if you use a stimpak your health can now only reach the part where the red bar is. Radaway will make the red bar disappear.

Lopov- The Vertibirds in this game are shot down all the time by the enemies in the game. In this case I was watching a battle between Muties and the BOS. The Vertibird spun in a huge circle and then crashed straight on top of me. I lost 85% of my health. Lol.

Not sure about NPC's I must have a check on that. Enemies certainly do.

Hazmick- Thanks for your help in taking screenpics. Me and Microsoft never seem to see things eye to eye so I always seem to need somebody's help to use their tech!

SubRosa- Marshmellows, Triangle head & yellow water. Your observations are always spot on!

**

I have taken some more pics but will post them over in the Screen thread in the next few days. There are no spoilers, just a look at the game for those yet to buy.

This post has been edited by Winter Wolf: Nov 26 2015, 07:26 AM

[mirocu]

Mirocu- The red part of the health bar represents radiation. Beth have changed it for this game. Now what happens is that as you acquire radiation your health maximum decreases. So if you use a stimpak your health can now only reach the part where the red bar is. Radaway will make the red bar disappear.

Aah, interesting. Actually a change I like, imagine that?

[mALX]

Nice pics, but what is the red stuff on your health bar?

I think that is his rads stat.

[hazmick]

So Alice wants to help people by building up settlements, but you need to be a member of the Minutemen to get lots of the quests to clear and build in new areas.

Alice wouldn't mind joining them if she could just be a regular person, but oh no you have to be their leader straight off the bat. Then when you say 'no' to the offer, the dialogue makes you sound like a b...bad person.

She might go head with it in the future, but for now Alice has to find her own adventures. (She really misses the Minutemen radio station you unlock later on. It's got great music.)

[SubRosa]

I love Alice's armor!

[hazmick]

I love Alice's armor!

That's the Combat Armor, with a Gunner Harness outfit underneath. The armor's looking a bit mismatched with all the different colours going on, but once Alice finds a workbench she can upgrade some of it to match.

The Gunners are tough enemies, but we like their outfits. Lots of military greens and browns. My favourite.

[Winter Wolf]

I like the face and makeup that you have done on Alice. Wow, that is so neat. Clean and flawless.

[mALX]

So Alice wants to help people by building up settlements, but you need to be a member of the Minutemen to get lots of the quests to clear and build in new areas.

Alice wouldn't mind joining them if she could just be a regular person, but oh no you have to be their leader straight off the bat. Then when you say 'no' to the offer, the dialogue makes you sound like a b...bad person.

She might go head with it in the future, but for now Alice has to find her own adventures. (She really misses the Minutemen radio station you unlock later on. It's got great music.)

Oooh, Alice is Awesome! It really bugs me when they put something in the game everyone should be able to do, and then tie it in to a questline so you can't do it without following that questline through - but then to HAVE to be polite and nice too? Grrrr!

[Kiln]

The changes from Fallout 3 are mostly good. I've dumped probably 50 hours into it so far and still have plenty to explore. Seems kind of light on missions though to be honest. I just haven't ran into enough random missions that aren't "bring me two bags of fertilizer" type fetch quests to feel satisfied with the scope of the game strictly from a questing perspective.

Environments and buildings however are very nice and makes it fun to just explore. Wandering around for hours usually nets you something useful, especially toward the beginning of the game, provided you're careful. Combat improvements are also welcome and make the game easier to play as a shooter. VATS is also better because it doesn't create a safe spot on the fly where you can just scope out your opponents in a risk free environment.

I feel like one of the best things in the game is the settlement system, building your own fortress is pretty satisfying and will suck up as many hours as an entire campaign of most games by itself. The system could work better, like allowing you to turn off "snap to" other objects, which gets annoying sometimes because it won't allow you to build walls at slightly off angles. The game also won't let you place things like junk walls close enough together because of the collision boxes extending past the actual objects so your walls have gaps that can't really be sealed in a way that looks secure. You also can't place doors on existing buildings, such as your house in Sanctuary. Overall though, it is a welcome mechanic but it lacks polish and is sometimes glitchy.

The main factions tend to be pretty entertaining to work with. I have to say that the missions they send you on all vary and keep things interesting but I feel like there should be more going on. There are only a handful of quests for each faction (from what I've seen so far) that don't directly advance the main story. As I said though, the ones that are there are pretty well done.

I also like that your followers interact with people from other settlements in various ways and have their own opinions about things you do and places you go. Often a follower will add useful insight about your environments "where there's sunken buildings, there's mirelurks" and similar comments that have at times actually put me on alert and helped me not get killed.

Now what did I dislike? No hardcore. Most fans agreed that New Vegas, while flawed, added something good when it came to having an optional mode where you needed to eat, drink, and sleep to live. Many fans were hoping Beth would follow suit with a hardcore mode in FO4.

The weapons, while loaded with possible mods, are mostly the same. Some things like converting a .308 rifle to .50 caliber don't really work realistically. For instance the .308's better receivers for the base caliber do more damage than the .50 caliber conversion, which frankly, is retarded. On no planet do the ballistics even come close to the .308 being even nearly as powerful as the 50 BMG, which I'm assuming is the intended caliber.

This is especially annoying because caliber conversions are among the last mods unlocked and they're almost useless aside from switching to a different ammo type. I also wish you could change the finish color on weapons and non power armor. Painting that tetanus trap of a pipe rifle would be among my first priority, especially since I imagine there aren't many vaccinations in the wasteland.

Skills and attributes. They're gone. Sort of. Instead the entire system has become the SPECIAL system. At the top are the attributes and below is a list of perks that you need to have the correct number of points into the basic "attribute" to unlock. Problem is that you get one point per level to spend on either a new perk or an attribute point. So if you aren't careful when setting your base attributes at the start of the game, you'll waste 5-6 levels just improving your base attributes to get to the useful abilities. It's alright but this system most likely was simplified to give more mass appeal and catering to mainstream gamers.

Dialogue is a mixed bag. The voicework is pretty excellent and does add emotion to an otherwise slightly flat gameplay mechanic. Problem? It suffers from a simplified Mass Effect style conversation wheel where you don't ever really know what you're about to say. Sometimes the sarcastic remark is witty and harmless, which doesn't upset people and sometimes keeps you out of a fight. Sometimes the sarcastic comment will get you shot in the face by a half dozen well armed guys. You never have complete control and you roll the dice on what you're about to say unless you pick the generic "nice guy" response every time. Then there's the problem that often, asking for more info robs you of actually responding to the question by advancing to the next set of dialogue choices.

Overall the game has been very fun, as is obvious by the number of hours I've logged. It does have a whole bag of flaws though and I went in with a rabid fanboy attitude to this game and while it is very good, I was let down in some ways.

[hazmick]

I figured out today that if you have a food & drink stall in your settlement, your residents (minus those on guard duty) will all gather around it at the end of the day.

I had a spare area of flat land available so I built a bar/comfortable seating area with the food & drink stall in the middle. Now, at around 8PM every day, Alice's settlers all come and sit around in the pub for a while.

The only issue is that the food & drink stall is slightly taller than the walls, so I can't put a roof over it. I hope the barman doesn't mind standing in the rain.

[mALX]

I figured out today that if you have a food & drink stall in your settlement, your residents (minus those on guard duty) will all gather around it at the end of the day.

I had a spare area of flat land available so I built a bar/comfortable seating area with the food & drink stall in the middle. Now, at around 8PM every day, Alice's settlers all come and sit around in the pub for a while.

The only issue is that the food & drink stall is slightly taller than the walls, so I can't put a roof over it. I hope the barman doesn't mind standing in the rain.

That is awesome! (except not being able to put a roof over it; I wonder if it is prefab why they made it like that? )