Fallout

[Lorkhan]

Two things. First off, Curie is precious.

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Second off, I got into the Institute. I honestly find the Father incredibly off putting, but I almost would feel bad about screwing with their operations, if nothing else because most of the people there don't come off as lunatics like the Brotherhood does. Still not really sure who to side with yet. Kidnapping people to turn them into Super Mutants is a huge mark against them though. Oh, and I helped Virgil out. He seems like a pretty cool guy with something resembling a decent ethic code, and for some reason his exclamation that his hands are ridiculous struck me as funny. But holy shit, Doctor Li. There's another face I didn't anticipate on seeing again. I still miss Sarah though.

[Chuckman]

Have you done her quest yet? I'm trying to get her relationship points up high enough.

[Lorkhan]

I have her quest, but have only just got in the area to actually do it. Planning on doing it soon too, her general enthusiasm is such a nice change from everyone else. Cept Deacon, he's pretty cool himself. I really wish Strong didn't hate everything in the goddamn world though. I love the Approval system we got going on, but drops in it for Lockpicking of all things is overkill.

I'm also doing Valentines quest on the side. Kind of a cool hunt in a way, but one of the locations you need to go to is pretty nasty. Quincy is a disaster area, so I'm going to have to bring one of the better fighters with me for that one. Strong, MacCreedy, or Paladin BUZZ LIGHTYEAR should suffice.

[Chuckman]

I finally have some T51 parts but not a full suit.

[Sicarius VI]

I think I found a full suit by helping defend a checkpoint.

It's pretty odd, when you get those misc objectives there is an extremely good chance you will get pieces of armour.

I have 4 full sets of X-01 now. Do I need 4 sets, of course not!

[Lorkhan]

^^I stumbled across a full set on accident in some old checkpoint. That was a really pleasent surprise, and really helped against the hoard of Super Mutants I stumbled into five seconds later.

And I did more of Curie's quest!

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Not sure if it actually continues or not, but I wasn't expecting to faction character be the one donating the body. Which is rather odd, since I only just began dealing with them fairly recently. Kinda cool how that turns out. Anyway, Curie is a sweetheart. Going to miss her as a Miss Nanny, though I can actually give her some decent weapons now. Codsworth is the only Handy I need.

Bit of a side note, but I find myself really impressed how all the seemingly random gangs in the game are all sort of interconnected with one another, or at least how they came about due to a chain of events previous to the start of the game. Usually they all just sort of exist in a vacuum, but seeing how they all acknowledge each other, particularly the Corvega gang, to some small extent really helps the world seem more "alive" as it were.

[Chuckman]

There are some raider logs that tie together to tell a very sad story.

[Lorkhan]

Going to spoiler some Curie stuff just in case.

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So, her Synth body A.I. in combat is...weird. She retains some traits as her Miss Nanny would, in that she will engage hostiles at long range with whatever weapon she can use, but if they get up close, she switches it out completely unlike most other companions and will go for a melee weapon. And, for whatever reason, she'll grab weapons and ammo of her own accord and start using them if she doesn't have any ammo of her own. This is seemingly random, and she's not the only one that did this (I had Valentine pick up a Minigun and start toting it around), but its not too often.

I decided to roll with it and gave her a unique baseball bat. It has a slight chance of sending the target flying, and you hear the roar of a crowd when it triggers. Might give her a super sledge later.

Other then that, I've started to try and develop the rest of my Settlements that aren't the Castle/Sanctuary. Dead Man's Alley is tricky to work with. Its in a fairly small, well, alley, and the amount of room you have to work with makes things more cramped then they already are. I'm actually building vertically for the first time with this one, since I don't think I can get the space I need in order to give everyone beds. I actually think the end result will look pretty cool, since the ground floor has this weird tunnel look going for it.

[Chuckman]

Curie  SPOILER: Show

Curie is bugged and won't use her default laser rifle, so she'll pick up ammo and weapons and use those instead, or resort to her fists. You're better off assigning her a weapon by moving it to her inventory and using the button to force her to equip it. Or give her melee since companions can't die. I have Cait running around with a beserker's Chinese sword right now. I like her voice and personality but the system they have in place to earn her relationship points is pretty shitty, I have to steal or take drugs and when I take drugs I don't get a message saying she liked it. I'll have to try being a snarky ass in dialogue, that works for her too apparently.

Also: If you let Curie go for another character she will NOT go to the settlement you assign to her, she'll run back to Vault 81 no matter what you do. I even tried spawning her in Sanctuary Hills and she won't even hold still to hold a conversation, she breaks the dialogue and starts running back to Vault 81. I hope they fix her in the patch because she's the only companion I really want to use.

Edit: I want to make Deadman's Alley my base of operations.

I really hate the layout of Sanctuary Hills. I wish I could scrap the standing houses the way I could the collapsed ones, since they're full of holes and shit I can't really patch. Next time I get in the game I'm going to expand it by building up another one of the houses with some beds and stuff and get enough settlers to establish a supply line and pretty much leave it alone unless it's attacked.

They need a better warning system for the attacks, too.

Is there more stuff to use to build? I'm sort of annoyed at the lack of variety in walls, etc. Maybe I'm just not creative enough.

[Lorkhan]

Not yet. There are mods out there dealing with that, but so far I've been doing pretty well using the stuff we're given. I've only just started to build stuff like shacks and what not from scratch, but I do think some creative uses for em will go a long way.

I suspect more will be added once DLC's start to roll out.

[Chuckman]

I'd like better control over positioning the pieces or the ability to shape the land a bit. I know it can't be too much since Bethesda's engine would shit itself but I should be able to make buildings clip into the ground externally a bit if they're going to throw slopes and shit at me.

[IronEvangelion]

(I had Valentine pick up a Minigun and start toting it around)

In my Sarah Connor playthrough, Valentine found a flamer on a dead enemy while we were clearing Sagarus Ironworks and absolutely fell in love with it. He uses it so much that I gave him about half my stockpile of flamer fuel since I don't use it anyhow. He really lights up the night now! It was especially fitting when I was doing his companion Quest:

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When we finally cornered that bastard Ed Winters, I had my unique submachine gun trained on him ready to rub him out gangster style as soon as Nick was done talking to him, but as their conversation went on I lowered my weapon and said to myself, "No, Nick needs to do this himself." Then their conversation ended and Nick absolutely barbecued the guy with his flamer! The moment was made even sweeter by a message that said, "Valentine loved that." popping up when Ed died. Almost like Nick was thanking me for letting him handle it.

I like how they gave the companions a lot more depth in FO4 than they had in FO3. I now like Nick Valentine as much as my favorite New Vegas companions. I'll probably try out Preston now since Valentine's quest is over and done with.

[Lorkhan]

^^Yeah, that kind of surprises me. The funny thing is, Beth uses those same assets all over the place, and they do in fact clip into each other/the ground in a manner that makes them look completely organic. Really wish we could do the same.

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^In my playthrough, Nick absoloutely clobbered him with the but of a tommy gun as soon as the conversation ended, and I put a bullet in his brain. Best one-two punch ever.

But yeah, I really do like the companions in this one. Lot of them are pretty cool, even though you got a few like Strong who are kind of one dimensional. Curie, Deacon, and Valentine have been my favorites so far.

[IronEvangelion]

I've decided that Sarah will throw in her lot with the Minutemen from now on. They seem to be the closest thing FO4 has to NV's Independent faction. They also seem to genuinely care about improving the state of the Commonwealth, and have plans for doing so.

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The latter is a big deal for me, as the main reason I preferred Colonel Autumn's Enclave over the BoS in FO3 is because the BoS had absolutely no plans for the Capital Wasteland beyond "kill the super mutants" and "free water for everyone!" Autumn's Enclave separatists actually wanted to use the water purifier to unite the wasteland under a single banner. Sadly his plans were only explained in a single permanently missable letter located in his room inside Raven Rock (accessible during the self-destruct evacuation no less). Unfortunately it's so easy to miss that most people think Autumn wanted go go along with Eden's genocide plan, and that the only reason Autumn rebelled was to become president. Autumn actually rebelled because he thought Eden was nuts, and that the purifier should be used to unify and civilize the wasteland instead of poisoning it to kill the mutants and ghouls.

Also, I found a unique gauss rifle yesterday... and discovered that Bethesda has redesigned the gauss rifle yet again, butchering it this time. What was once a beautiful mass of gleaming, streamlined steel has been turned into a hideous iron brick that needs to be charged up before it can be fired. Most of the mods for it only manage to make it uglier. Bethesda, you have violated and defaced a series icon. Restore this weapon to its former glory at once. If that's too much for you guys to handle, port either a classic gauss rifle or FO3/NV gauss rifle mod to the console versions as soon as you get your mod system working.

[Rosenakahara]

^ The Gauss rifle in Fallout 4 is actually a prototype, essentially its a really shitty older version of the Rifle in NV, you find this out when *spoilers* says it in random dialogue that they are happy that you found some of their older tech to use.

Now onto my own spoilers section:

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So I beat fallout 4, it was a fun ride but all things must come to an end and....I have some issues before I get into the stuff I liked.
First off: the conflict between the Brotherhood and the Institute was so utterly forced it made no god-damn sense to me considering they are BASICALLY THE SAME THING, their goals are so aligned they should have joined forces, you can convince the fucking minutemen to be OK with the institute and they have plenty more reason to hate them, imagine if the minutemen, the insitute and the brotherhood all worked together on the commonwealth, brotherhood has the manpower, institute has the tech and the minutemen have the settlement management, you could bring about real CHANGE! (not that I would because fuck the insitute, bigoted against synths are ya!?)
Its a super missed opportunity and like most of the game feels half written, the story here sucks despite being full of awesome standalone parts (brotherhoods first advance into the commonwealth, the first look at the institute HQ etc.)
Another problem is that despite this game having a lot of shit to do, a lot of it feels very repetitive, doesn't help that there are even more actual repeating quests now.
Also no karma system any-more which sucks

The good stuff though? some (not all just some) of the characters here are pretty nicely written, Piper, Nick, Codsworth to some extent and best girl Curie (main reason I wont join the institute, I demand the right to sleep with robot girls dammit!)
There is more im just tired and cant think, also super missed opportunity that we didn't get to go to space again after you find a crashed alien, that dlc was amazing and i wanted more of it.

[Chuckman]

The Brotherhood in this game are basically Space Marines, that's why that conflict is inevitable.

[Sachi]

I just completed the main quest line as well:

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Personally, I couldn't justify supporting either the Brotherhood or the Institute, and for the same reason; neither of them agree with synths having rights. It's a shame really, because either of those groups are vastly more interesting than the Railroad, and I felt bad betraying Shaun. I just couldn't bring myself to come in conflict with the Railroad since I support their cause and I'd gotten too close to Valentine, Curie, and Deacon (who'd had me fooled for the longest time that he really was a synth). The end seemed rather anti-climactic, but getting to keep the synth version of Shaun was a nice treat.

Now I'm going to explore the rest of the wasteland and gather the collectibles. I'd considered creating a new character, and even got as far as designing him, but decided I'd already invested so much into this profile and any role-playing I wanted to do I can actually do more freely with this character now since the main quest is done. I think I'm going to strip him of most of his belongings and send him to be a hermit someplace with a workshop, and then roam around the area as a scavenger, keeping up a strict "No Fast Travel" challenge, and cranking up the difficulty level. I really wish they carried over the Hardcore Mode from NV, but I'll have to make due with my own restrictions.

[Rosenakahara]

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^the stupid part is: they are designing these synths to be as humanlike as possible, yet then treat them like simple bots and get confused as to why they are acting human-like, plus we are NEVER told why they need synths to be human-like, it makes no god-damn sense and is a massive plothole.

[Chuckman]

I'm going to finish the main quest with my current character and start over, probably. I don't like doing the complete playthrough/jack of all trades things. Once I max out the perks I chose for my build I'll want to start all over again, especially since there's stuff I can't undo (without using the console, but eh)

I think it benefits to pick perks for at best one or two types of weapons. Picking the non-automatic perk for pistols and rifles was dumb considering that there's very few pistols in the game that can't be converted to rifles with a stock.

[Lorkhan]

Also no karma system any-more which sucks

In all fairness, the Karma system didn't really do anything substantial. It was always just sort of...there. Hell, the Regulators and Talon Company was really the only things that were really tied to it, and they were just sorta...bleh. New Vegas with Lonesome Roads tried to give some Karma based perks depending on alignment, but that's about it. Its not something I'm going to miss, since character reactions and faction disposition is more organic.