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Author Topic: Fallout 4 - BBBs Playthrough  (Read 12717 times)

Offline bigbaldben

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Fallout 4 - BBBs Playthrough
« on: November 11, 2015, 02:43:47 PM »
By popular demand (that demand being one person), I'll jot down my gameplay notes in this thread for your amusement.  I will try hard not to spoil anything, but *SPOILER ALERT* in case I get sloppy.  Also, don't click on the spoiler button unless you want some spoiler details!!!

You might have read my "hour one" impressions in the Fallout 4 thread.  I'll post it here for convenience:

Quote
I played this for about an hour or so thus morning before work.  I am not a graphics guy, for some reason.  Being able to tell the difference between Xbox and PS is always a game of spot the differences for me. But these graphics are amazing!  Really nice quality and detail and textures.

Mind you, this was all pre-war and then in vault 111.  So I wonder if it will carry through to the dystopian future.

It's weird having your character SAY stuff, but I like the Mass Effect like dialogue system.  So far, am not a fan of characters not locking into place when you start a dialogue. Hard to know which NPCs are important without it. More realistic though I suppose... we'll see.

As I saved, the Vault door was in the process of opening.  Excited to get put there!

I left the vault and decided to do as suggested and head back to my ruined home.  My Mister Handy was there and it was my first experience with the new dialogue system in the Wasteland.  It's still a little annoying - it does what I call a "soft lock" on the NPC that you can exit by moving hard in any direction.

The destroyed Commonwealth looks great!  Textures are fantastic. Again, I'm no graphics afficianado, so I can't tell you pixel counts or shaders or whatever, but it looks great to me.

My Mister Handy directed me to where some other people might be, so of course, they were there.  And of course they had a crisis that for some reason they couldn't solve and wanted me to.  I did, because of what I was going to be able to do in the mission - get some pretty hardcore tech right away!  However, that tech comes at a price of having to battle an enemy WAY OPd - had my pulse racing, so that was cool.

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Problem was I didn't get to keep the tech for very long.  Anyway, the people were going to a certain place to form a settlement.  So I walked shotgun - we fought some radroaches and insects and mole rats - I don't remember mole rats digging underground and attacking you from underneath(!), so that was new and annoying.

(click to show/hide)

One of my new friends is an old lady who has visions as a convenient way to move the plot along, luckily for me, and put me on the path to the next objective.

The quests are starting to accumulate.  I've gone into one or two areas where I was immediately destroyed - the fat man nuke with no warning was the most annoying by far - but for the most part I feel free to roam.  It is intense, though, exploring - I had forgotten about that.

I seem to recall in Fallout 3 or maybe Skyrim that you could attempt any lock whatever your skill and attempt any computer hack as well.  Maybe I'm remembering that wrong, but I was annoyed several times at finding safes and security computers I wasn't even allowed to attempt.

Crafting system is HUGE.  You can modify your weapons and that can make a huge difference in saving your ass or just spraying the wasteland with bullets.  Not only that, but when I went to check up on the group of people that I had helped relocate earlier, I got into the Settlement aspect.  I have to say I was concerned, but no longer.  It is quite relaxing to build buildings and fences and plant crops and stuff after being tenses up walking through the wasteland.  And I collected enough junk that I could pretty much make most of the things I wanted to right away.

The map doesn't seem overly large to me, but then again I haven't explored it all, obviously.

After the 20th time I died in a feral ghoul attack, I moved from the hardest difficulty to the next hardest (extreme to very hard, I think).  On the level I'm playing, ammo is still scarce and enemies are bullet sponges.  If I get impatient, I may move down to hard.






Feel free to post any questions here and I'll do my best to answer them whenever I come up for air!  :D

Offline Myroria

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Re: Fallout 4 - BBBs Playthrough
« Reply #1 on: November 11, 2015, 03:18:44 PM »
Do people have Bawstin accents? How bad are they?
"I assure you -- I will be quite content to be a mere mortal again, dedicated to my own amusements."

Offline St Oz

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Re: Fallout 4 - BBBs Playthrough
« Reply #2 on: November 11, 2015, 08:11:54 PM »
one of the paladins for the brotherhood of steel sounds like george clooney, but it's not george clooney

other than that the accents haven't been very bawstin yet

Offline bigbaldben

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Re: Fallout 4 - BBBs Playthrough
« Reply #3 on: November 11, 2015, 08:26:30 PM »
one of the paladins for the brotherhood of steel sounds like george clooney, but it's not george clooney

other than that the accents haven't been very bawstin yet

I think I just hit that part myself.  Did you join the Brotherhood?

Bigbaldben is back in the wasteland:



A little unhappy they named him Dogmeat in keeping with Fallout lore, I would have liked something different.  He's a kick ass companion so far.



The settlement is getting larger and I've cleared some raiders out of an old factory and helped the Brotherhood Of Steel on a fetch quest, and got an offer to join.  I pretty much accept any association until the late game makes me choose one or the other.

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I'm having a little trouble finding glue and copper for my weapons mods and for powering up the settlement.

Difficulty seems pretty good lately - nice balance.  Oh, and the famous Fallout mini-stories are all over the place.  Loving it.

Offline bigbaldben

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Re: Fallout 4 - BBBs Playthrough
« Reply #4 on: November 12, 2015, 10:10:34 PM »


I like the real life locations even if they are all dystopian and stuff.  Fenway Park is awesome, very nicely done.

Still no major bugs!  I thought I was going to have to reboot on an elevator ride that took far too long, but it opened up and yay, here we are.

I'm about Super Mutant level now - there is one particularly painful type called a Super Mutant Suicider -- description in the spoiler:
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THAT is a more than a little pulse pounding.  Legendary bosses are pretty cool, gets the blood pumping a bit, and they have dropped some of the nicest stuff in the game.  I hear they are not nearly as frequent on the easier levels.

As for the story, in case you didn't know from reading reviews but here it is just in case.

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I have gone stretches where I have not engaged the main story line.  Been building up the settlement, run side missions, etc.  Leveling up with the perks is too much fun.

Companions are cool.  The reporter is fun.  Strong (below) is essentially the Hulk (not nearly as interesting a character as Fawkes was), Dogmeat is Dogmeat and your robot butler from two hundred years ago can tag along also.




Couple of gripes.  The settlement building is getting annoying in the way that you can only build trash.  Maybe you can build better stuff later, but I am hesitant to put more effort into something that doesn't improve.

I've only run into one morality choice.  This far into the game, I should be making decisions that impact the world.  This one did, but barely.  Perhaps that will change as I get further into the main story.

As I was wandering around, I was wondering why they don't have any really nice places?  Like a town or city that looks like one does today.  We still have trees and tools and shit, we should be able to make nice things again.  It's been 200 freaking years!

Offline bigbaldben

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Re: Fallout 4 - BBBs Playthrough
« Reply #5 on: November 14, 2015, 09:27:57 PM »
Gah, brained soaked with Fallout goodness.

They've done a great job, in my opinion, with pacing - even for those of us who like to sneak through areas with Glowing Green Deathclaws just to see them and live to tell the tale.

*Minor spoilers about types of enemies*
(click to show/hide)

I just hit level 25, and if it is analogous to Skyrim or New Vegas, that should be about halfway I think?  Doesn't seem like it.  All the further I've learned from the plot is that
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Heh, I finally figured out how to equip stuff on your companions, like hats and stuff.  I must have wasted a half hour matching each personality to a type of hat. 

I decided to work on Piper (a reporter) with my excellent charisma and fairly easily got our relationship to the "highest point."  Before you get excited (like I was) - no sex scene.  Dammit.  You do get to sleep with your "mate..." but it is not what you think.

Balancing relationships are hard.  Strong, my supermutant buddy - hates it when I put on a suit of power armor.  Detective Valentine likes it when I hack computers.  Standard.  But I haven't yet taken Strong to the Brotherhood of Steel HQ with me, even though I've been made a Knight.  I am .... concerned.

-----

Clearly, love this game.  Again, no crashes.  NOT EVEN ONE.  A couple elevators took a while to get up or down but they inevitably opened.  By far the best experience near to release date I've ever had with Fallout.

Now, there are some problems.  None are dealbreakers for me, but people are funny about what they'll put up with and what they won't, so I'll give you my 10 cents here:

1. Too many settlements.  I mean, I freaking love building stuff and growing settlements and making it self-sufficient and monitoring safety and happiness.  It's what I love about Bethesda games - after a mass murdering spree to get a silver dollar or something, you can go home and unwind by figuring out the best way to run power lines.  I hope I am getting close, but this is a lot of freaking things to worry about.  Skyrim's Hearthfire gave you, I think three houses.  That was plenty, and at want point, I hauled everything to the one house.  Maybe late game additions with help this be as fun as it can be.

2. Too many settlements.  What I mean is there are too many places you can send your companion when you ditch 'em.  Any of your settlements!  Except you should probably write down where you send them.  The game doesn't help you with that at all.  I swore I left Dogmeat at the Red Rocket, but when I get there, there's no one.

3.  Too many settlers.  You can assign settlers to tasks, but you'd better remember what gets assigned to whom, because the game don't tell ya.  You can't even name them - they area mostly just "Settler."

4. Again, it looks great, but in 200 years, do we just lose the ability to be clean?  Trash all over the place, skeletons, etc., sure - it's the wasteland.  But in the settlements and highly populated areas?  I really liked that New Vegas had an area that was still nice  and shiny (and cannibals, but you can't have it all I guess."

5.  I've only come across two other vaults besides my own.  I hope there is more.

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That's my report.  Feel free to weigh in with any questions.