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Also chiming in here as a PC player to say, this is the most stable Bethesda game I've played to date. They usually crash like no tomorrow, but this one.. holy gak! Almost 60 hours in and still no crash or glitch encountered.


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Also, time to show off the personal collection I suppose:





The two crates contain half-spent fusion cores (I hate how the game always takes a full one over a half-spent one! ) and pieces of armour I can't use right now, mainly spare torsos.

Not included is the full suit of X-01 that I leave in the garage downstairs. Yeah, it's pointless, but I kinda like this. Right now I've got a full suit of every armour I've come across to date: T-45, T-60, T-51b, Raider and X-01. Did I miss any?


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Okay, last bit of power armour fappery from me:

The X-01 doesn't have external lights, instead the eyes light up. My brother suggested installing red lights..



GLORIOUS.

How many settlements are there? Every time I add one, there's suddenly another one to add.. feels like it never ends. But I don't want to miss out, I noticed one time I did a fast travel and got a message that one of my new settlement quests failed, I guess they killed the guy they kidnapped. So I had to roll back to an earlier save and go do that one.. so now I'm worried that will happen again if I don't do them right away. Meanwhile I barely touched the main storyline quest, or the brotherhood quests. All I'm doing is starting to new settlements, and then scrapping all their junk.

Also, any idea why happiness suddenly drops? Back at sanctuary I have tons of beds and food and water and defense.. I see happiness go up to around 70%, and then all the sudden I look again and it's like 45. it shoots up then drops again.

 Viktor von Domm wrote:

 2BlackJack1 wrote:
I've been experiencing some crashes on startup, which is really disappointing because I haven't gotten to do much of anything. I'm currently looking for fixes, but not having a whole lot of luck. (Probably should've sucked it up and bought of for my xbone. That was more likely to run it.)

Be sure to update your drivers, especially for amd users...I had that problem too and after updating all works like a charme...

And download the Beta patch by going to the properties tab.


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As for stability...besides having to update my drivers and download a beta patch via steam to get the game to run, the only real problem I had was when I left the game paused for an hour and took a nap. When I certainly back, the frame rate had plummeted from a consistent ~40 fps to less than 5. I had to reboot.

It was probably more an issue of my pc overheating (gakky cpu) than a problem with the game itself.

I was concerned that this would be like any other game of theirs needing about a month before it would stabilize.

The leaving the game on pause and the frame rate dropping... wondering if they are suffering from the usual memory leaks so you have to exit often to get memory back.

Glad it is fun and the crashes are few, may get me off the fence and buy the darn thing.

My only worry is my processor speed is lower than recommended but I have 6 processors: I hope it is programmed to make use of them all.

I have played every Fallout game and pretty much anything like it so "resistance is futile".

 BrookM wrote:

Spoiler:

GLORIOUS.

This is one of the sexiest Fallout 4 things I have seen so far. I'm sold on that power armor. GLORIOUS indeed!

 Psienesis wrote:
Interestingly enough, speaking of "Tacked on", the whole RTS/Community-building thing was present in FO3 as a player-created mod. Buggy as hell and prone to crashing, but you could cut down trees, build walls and other buildings, and recruit random Wastelanders to live in your village.

It would also get randomly attacked by bandits or whatever else was in the area, so you either had to re-recruit after the schmoes got eaten by Deathclaws, or hand out some (lots of) guns.

That's true for a lot of the things they added, just look as stuff like project nevada/FWE.

One question I've been having... are the settlement/repopulation quests the "main" quest line, or is the quest for stolen offspring the main quest?

 Ensis Ferrae wrote:
One question I've been having... are the settlement/repopulation quests the "main" quest line, or is the quest for stolen offspring the main quest?

The stolen offspring is the main one but ... seriously, who gives a flying feth about a missing baby when there's "atomic edition farmville", the hoarding of every piece of crap you set your eyes on because of components, bobbleheads, power armor collections and a whole lot of locations to explore?

Never play Bethesda games for their main quest. You'll have a baaaaad time if you do. *cue Undertale's Megalovania song*

I keep reminding myself that I need to go do the main quest, but then all of the sudden.. JETPACK.

 TheDraconicLord wrote:

 Ensis Ferrae wrote:
One question I've been having... are the settlement/repopulation quests the "main" quest line, or is the quest for stolen offspring the main quest?

The stolen offspring is the main one but ... seriously, who gives a flying feth about a missing baby when there's "atomic edition farmville", the hoarding of every piece of crap you set your eyes on because of components, bobbleheads, power armor collections and a whole lot of locations to explore?

Never play Bethesda games for their main quest. You'll have a baaaaad time if you do. *cue Undertale's Megalovania song*

So is the writing as bad as ever? Well, not really bad, as such but, painfully mediocre?

I haven't come across any writing I thought was bad, but some dialogues do feel incomplete. Many times I felt like there should be more said on a certain topic, but they must have kept the lines shorter to keep costs or disc space lower.

 Co'tor Shas wrote:

 TheDraconicLord wrote:

 Ensis Ferrae wrote:
One question I've been having... are the settlement/repopulation quests the "main" quest line, or is the quest for stolen offspring the main quest?

The stolen offspring is the main one but ... seriously, who gives a flying feth about a missing baby when there's "atomic edition farmville", the hoarding of every piece of crap you set your eyes on because of components, bobbleheads, power armor collections and a whole lot of locations to explore?

Never play Bethesda games for their main quest. You'll have a baaaaad time if you do. *cue Undertale's Megalovania song*

So is the writing as bad as ever? Well, not really bad, as such but, painfully mediocre?

Ok, to me, Bethesda is unable to do a compeling story line and the writting always seems a bit... off.

What I think Bethesda excels is in world building. The stories they tell by not telling.

- When I find a skeleton, outside a public bathroom, with a gas can nearby, gasoline pooled around him and a lighter on his other hand. Inside the bathroom, in a stall, a skeleton of a woman (clothing), right next to an empty baby carriage. All this in a subway filled with feral ghouls.

- A skeleton, a toaster and a fork inside a bathtub (with his skull blown off)

- A skeleton of a woman hugging a soldier, seated inside a church.

- 2 soldier skeleton's inside a "bunker" hugging each other on the floor.

- They even made me feel something for the raiders, fethers who I've always killed with glee, but I read the fight between 2 groups, where one (Tom) kidnapped the sister of the other gang's leader (Red) and started demanding food for her safety. How Red wanted to attack the other gang but was stopped by her followers out of fear for Red's sister. How one raider actually took great risk and sneaked in Tom's gang as a new recruit to look for Red's sister.

- The several messages left behind by the people before, during or shortly after the apocalypse.

I really, really love exploring the world looking for these things, both these "dark" moments and the cute easter eggs like the Teddy Bears.

 TheDraconicLord wrote:


- They even made me feel something for the raiders, fethers who I've always killed with glee, but I read the fight between 2 groups, where one (Tom) kidnapped the sister of the other gang's leader (Red) and started demanding food for her safety. How Red wanted to attack the other gang but was stopped by her followers out of fear for Red's sister. How one raider actually took great risk and sneaked in Tom's gang as a new recruit to look for Red's sister.

You shouldn't call her Red. She "hates that name".

That place, the rationing reserve, was literally the last big location I explored last night.

I explored the other place, where the kidnapped sister was taken, fairly early on on my way to Vault 81 and Diamond City.

I came across a raider burying another one, kneeling besides the open grave, either praying or mourning. He attacked me when he spotted me, but it was still a touching sight to see.

Also, found a complete suit of T51-b armour just now and I'm not even trying to get more suits of power armour. Damn, just damn.

I also got a snazzy outfit that makes me look like a Eurocorp operative from Syndicate.

 Tannhauser42 wrote:
I haven't come across any writing I thought was bad, but some dialogues do feel incomplete. Many times I felt like there should be more said on a certain topic, but they must have kept the lines shorter to keep costs or disc space lower.

I came across my first issue of bad writing.

 TheDraconicLord wrote:

 Ensis Ferrae wrote:
One question I've been having... are the settlement/repopulation quests the "main" quest line, or is the quest for stolen offspring the main quest?

The stolen offspring is the main one but ... seriously, who gives a flying feth about a missing baby when there's "atomic edition farmville", the hoarding of every piece of crap you set your eyes on because of components, bobbleheads, power armor collections and a whole lot of locations to explore?

Never play Bethesda games for their main quest. You'll have a baaaaad time if you do. *cue Undertale's Megalovania song*

This one video sums up the main quest line

The writing of FO4 is pretty good IMO. I completed the romance arc with Piper and that seemed appropriately sweet and intimate. There is a lot of that kind of thing in FO4 (for example, when Zewicky and Edna get married). The Commonwealth seems like a much softer world than the Capital Wasteland. I am working on the Cabot family quests now and although I could guess what was going on, it has really intrigued me. Same with Devil's Due; not a surprise but still a thriller. By contrast, the Pickman quest fell totally flat for me.

@Avatar720

I think you need to keep Desdemona's POV in mind there:When it comes to Bethesda dialog, you have to keep in mind that it serves more to characterize the NPC than it does to characterize you.

Regarding the Main Quest line, are there different versions of it? The wiki makes reference to four different endings depending on which faction you choose to side with. Is it like the Dawnguard vs Volkihar Vampire or Empire vs Stormcloak quest lines in Skyrim, where you have to pick a Faction that opposes the other Faction? That would be a pain in the arse in this case, because you'd be picking one faction, and opposing the other 3.

Railroad.
Minutemen.
Brotherhood of Steel


Can I join and play through the entirety of the Railroad and Minutemen faction quest lines with the same character?

For my first playthrough I'm playing the Wife, and I'm making her a "good" sort of character, helping out communities, saving Synths etc. I intend to do the Brotherhood of Steel on a 2nd playthrough as the Husband, and he's going to be a much more violent, aggressive, sarcastic and general "bad guy" sort of character. IIRC the intro of the game implies that the Husband is an Army Veteran (which would explain why he's trained in the use of Power Armour).

BoS probably won't dig the sarcasm. They are basically zealots.

Brotherhood of Steel is clearly the only option.

Manchu wrote:
The writing of FO4 is pretty good IMO. I completed the romance arc with Piper and that seemed appropriately sweet and intimate. There is a lot of that kind of thing in FO4 (for example, when Zewicky and Edna get married). The Commonwealth seems like a much softer world than the Capital Wasteland. I am working on the Cabot family quests now and although I could guess what was going on, it has really intrigued me. Same with Devil's Due; not a surprise but still a thriller. By contrast, the Pickman quest fell totally flat for me.

@Avatar720

I think you need to keep Desdemona's POV in mind there:

Spoiler:

Sure, you are technically right. There are debates about this even within the Railroad, like how Glory doesn't want to kill Gen 1s and Gen 2s. But for Desdemona, as the leader of this incredibly dangerous venture, she needs tor project very clearly on an ideological level. This is especially true in the context of recruiting you, since you are the Chosen One after all and so skip the usual process (to Carrington's immense annoyance). Desdemona cannot afford to split the atom on the Railroad's crucial issue. You are either in or not. Similarly, she's not willing to move an inch on the issue of the Courser Chip.

When it comes to Bethesda dialog, you have to keep in mind that it serves more to characterize the NPC than it does to characterize you.

 thenoobbomb wrote:
Brotherhood of Steel is clearly the only option.

Affirmative.

I've been enjoying the Brotherhood immensely. You get to murder ghouls, super mutants, irradiated animals, even farmers who don't pay their tithes all while an 8 year old squire is watching and exclaiming how awesome it is to see the wasteland scum purged

That analysis is pretty unfair:Because if that's how the scene went down, then you would have a legitimate example of bad writing.

I'd also take issue with this:

 Avatar 720 wrote:
someone who's cautious but ultimately good

That's kind of the point of the scene.Desdemona is trying to get you to understand that she has no room for lukewarm wellwishers.

 Alex C wrote:
an 8 year old squire is watching and exclaiming how awesome it is to see the wasteland scum purged

Note that squires wear German-style kepis.

Regarding the "Would you risk you life for a Synth?" question...

That depends on the Synth. For Nick Valentine? Definitely. For one of the mindless killing machines terrorizing the Commonwealth? Feth off.

So, basically I'd treat them the same as humans. Are they worth saving? Do they deserve saving?

 Avatar 720 wrote:

 Tannhauser42 wrote:
I haven't come across any writing I thought was bad, but some dialogues do feel incomplete. Many times I felt like there should be more said on a certain topic, but they must have kept the lines shorter to keep costs or disc space lower.

I came across my first issue of bad writing.

Spoiler:

Meeting the Railroad for the first time beneath the church, I'm asked if I'd risk my life to save a synth as if they were a fellow human. When I asked her to elaborate, she just said answer with my gut, and when I said it depends, she said there's no middle ground, and the options that aren't 'Yes' or 'No' end there... OF COURSE THERE'S FETHING MIDDLE GROUND. OF COURSE IT DEPENDS ON THE CIRCUMSTANCES. Am I going to save a human/synth who was ambushed by enemies I can take out? Yes. Am I going to save a human/synth who decided to run suicidally into a pack of super mutants? Am I feth. Human or not, that's just fething stupid, and I'd be no less stupid for trying vainly to keep them alive when they obviously couldn't care less. If there's a 95% chance I'll die trying to pull a human or synth out of range of a car about to explode, I'm going to stand right where I am and watch, because that 5% chance is not enough.

That question is not 'yes' or 'no' and anyone with half a brain could understand that. The option to elaborate should have been a speech check, with a success leading to a rephrased question, something like "If there is a reasonable chance you could save a synth, would you?". Leaving it at a complete absolute forces your character to take a firm 'I like synths' or 'I hate synths' position, despite the question as it stands having nothing to do with synths, and everything to do with "will I die unnecessarily in the attempt?". It leaves a very sour taste in my mouth.

This is exactly what I mean. Beth are great a world-building, but horrible as dialogue, at personal choice. And when they do have a choice it will almost always be binary (vampire vs dawngaurd, release the mutant killing thing in 3 vs don't release it). And the removal of aptitude related dialogue (forced by the dumbing down of the dialogue system into bioware-esque 4 choice shenanigans) compounds the problem even more, not allowing you to use your skills in science, medicine, trade, ect to resolve problems. It's so utterly disappointing. And, again, more restritions in that almost everybody is fething immortal (again). I managed to play this when a friend lent me his gaming laptop, and I am extremely disappointed. IT's an OK shooter, and a good open-world exploration thingy (although I wish they made it more expansive), but a truly disappointing RPG.

And you know the part that annoys me the most? The fact they could have made a great, nay, amazing RPG experience, but chose not too. They have the recorces, they have the experience. They had everything they could have possibly needed, and didn't, because making it like this was cheaper. Because they could pad their fething bottom line more. Or maybe I'm just being overly cynical, but they did have everything they needed.

I'm probably not going to buy 4 at this point, I'll wait until I can get it for $30 or so. It won't change anything about the games to come, but It'll make me feel better at the very least.
(yeesh, that got ranty)

 Co'tor Shas wrote:

*many good points presented in a very nice way*

But, but, but, I just made a Triple Barreled Missile Launcher and named it "Democracy". And once I reach a certain level, I'll be able to make it QUAD barreled. Is there a better RPG experience than this?!

(I kid, I kid )

I.. hate it when I predict the plot twist in jest and it turns out to be true. Damn it.

 TheDraconicLord wrote:

 Co'tor Shas wrote:

*many good points presented in a very nice way*

But, but, but, I just made a Triple Barreled Missile Launcher and named it "Democracy". And once I reach a certain level, I'll be able to make it QUAD barreled. Is there a better RPG experience than this?!

(I kid, I kid )

Nah, you got me there.

Manchu wrote:
That analysis is pretty unfair:

Spoiler:

First of all, you have to learn about the Railroad and what it does to even get to the point of speaking with Desdemona. Either you hear folks talking about them in Diamond City or Dr Amari tells you about them. So the premise of your conversation with Desdemona is, you know what the RR is about and they know that you know that (thanks to Deacon).

It's hard to understand what you actually want from that conversation. Do you want the leader of the RR, when the question is whether she will take the huge risk of inducting you, to hem and haw about the hypothetical circumstances in which it might conceivably be possible to perhaps not risk your life defending a synth?

Because if that's how the scene went down, then you would have a legitimate example of bad writing.

I'd also take issue with this:

 Avatar 720 wrote:
someone who's cautious but ultimately good

That's kind of the point of the scene.

Spoiler:

Getting involved with the RR is a huge risk. The RR is in the risk all/win all business. A synth running from the Coursers cannot rely on somebody who isn't committed. The men and women of the RR cannot rely on such a person, either.

Desdemona is trying to get you to understand that she has no room for lukewarm wellwishers.

I am also pretty disappointed that Bethesda removed skill points and therefore there are no skill-based conversation options. What was the trade-off? Did they think distributing skill points was too intimidating for their wider-than-ever audience? It's really puzzling.

But one thing should be clear: whether a RPG is good does not boil down to whether players have interesting/meaningful choices. JRPGs, for example, take roleplaying to mean that you play the role the writers at Square Enix wrote for you. Bethesda games traditionally don't do this. BioWare games sort of do: make whatever character you want as long as its Commander Shepherd (and you can play nice Shep or mean Shep). Well, Bethesda must think BioWare is doing something right because the Sole Survivor is a Commander Shepherd type PC. You're never going to get a conversation option where your PC is blase about finding Shaun, for example.

In other words, the story is hardcoded into FO4 even more so than it has been in previous Bethesda RPGs. That is a wall you can bang your head against but in doing so you will miss what the game is trying to do as far as showing you Boston and in its inhabitants. Despite going for a more BioWare-inspired PC model, FO4 is very strongly a Bethesda game and so the story is not about Faction X or Conflict Y. It is a story about an ecosystem, in this case post-apoc Boston. When NPCs talk to you, you are primarily learning about them and only secondarily developing your PC.

@Avatar720:

FO4 is a complicated setting, mechanically. You walk into a bar and three NPCs start talking over each other. I'm like, jeez guys let's do this one at a time please. But of course they are not necessarily talking to me or for my benefit; I just want to hear everything. And there is so much. There are bound to be times where a particular player will miss something -- but that doesn't mean it didn't happen or wasn't accounted for by the designers. If you met with Desdemona, there were opportunities previous to that meeting where you could find out more about the RR. That's just a fact. Whether the exposition is enough is a matter of opinion. But it sounds like your complaint comes down to, I missed something because the game has a lot going on. So then the question is, are you complaining that the game has too much going on (not a bad point) or can you acknowledge that you just missed something and that is not the game's fault?

 Avatar 720 wrote:
High-charisma characters grudgingly get accepted if they pass, the rest are told that's not good enough, and a small explanation as to why. That's all it needed.

Agree to disagree.A setting without walls starts to feel like a custom-made amusement park ride.