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*
Legendary enemies - that will get your heart pumping the first time you engege what appears to be a couple of run-of-the-mill Super Mutants, and you VATS one and see he's - oh LEGENDARY SUPERMUTANT REAVER or some shit, with the requisite skull (meaning you should come back later). Very well - I said. I'll take him on, I said. Well, once Legendary enemies are close to dying they MUTATE INTO A BIGGER MOFO WITH FULL HEALTH. Gotta give it to Fallout to get those fell out of my chair moments. Don't even get me started on the SUICIDAL SUPERMUTANTS I mentioned in the previous post.
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
the "Institute" (MIT) took the kid. Oh, and they can teleport.
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.
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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.
