Fallout 4 — Boston Makes Me Feel Good

[Henroid]

So overall, I'm not that well-versed in the specifics of the Fallout series. Never touched part 2 (I think I own it on Steam), and part 1 I couldn't really get into because it's so archaic to control. But over all these years, a lot of die-hard fans of the series (either people I know or just things I read across the net) have talked about how awesome the Brotherhood of Steel is. With the caveat to ignore the Brotherhood in FO3 because apparently it wasn't written right or is some weird branch.

 

So Fallout: New Vegas is my first time seeing the Brotherhood as intended, I guess. And uh... I'm not exactly seeing the awesome? They're close-minded extremists, which would be a turn-off enough, but they have a hard-on for weapons and don't like anyone else having weapons. They're basically fanatic-Christian-Americans in this setting. They're really just awful. So now I need to double check with people I know about what they mean by 'awesome.' As in, do they actually idolize the Brotherhood, or do they admire them as adversaries? Because the latter would be fine.

 

Ever since I picked up Veronica I'd been leaning toward helping the Brotherhood because she is pretty great. Then things didn't go right. Both for her and for my outside view as the player. Pretty sure I'm gonna blow that fucking bunker up.

 

As an aside the Brotherhood branch in FO3 is way, way cooler.

[Gaizokubanou]

So overall, I'm not that well-versed in the specifics of the Fallout series. Never touched part 2 (I think I own it on Steam), and part 1 I couldn't really get into because it's so archaic to control. But over all these years, a lot of die-hard fans of the series (either people I know or just things I read across the net) have talked about how awesome the Brotherhood of Steel is. With the caveat to ignore the Brotherhood in FO3 because apparently it wasn't written right or is some weird branch.

 

So Fallout: New Vegas is my first time seeing the Brotherhood as intended, I guess. And uh... I'm not exactly seeing the awesome? They're close-minded extremists, which would be a turn-off enough, but they have a hard-on for weapons and don't like anyone else having weapons. They're basically fanatic-Christian-Americans in this setting. They're really just awful. So now I need to double check with people I know about what they mean by 'awesome.' As in, do they actually idolize the Brotherhood, or do they admire them as adversaries? Because the latter would be fine.

 

Ever since I picked up Veronica I'd been leaning toward helping the Brotherhood because she is pretty great. Then things didn't go right. Both for her and for my outside view as the player. Pretty sure I'm gonna blow that fucking bunker up.

 

As an aside the Brotherhood branch in FO3 is way, way cooler.

 

Probably awesome as in 'metal', as in just amorally powerful and taking names.

 

In ethical context yes lot of those entities would be horrible.  So they probably mean they are fan as a fictional entity that does lot of metal 'stuff'.  Like lot of villians that have fanfare have this 'badass' appeal, if that makes sense?

 

Kinda like how new Mad Max created lot of fanfare for the Immortan Jones' toxic patriarchical culture.  Lot of those fans probably have enough sense to say no to the whole sex slave part, but the whole chrome + witness culture seems 'metal'.  Or in Gundam, Zeons get crazy fanfare despite them being pretty close to Nazi Germany minus specific ethnic genocides (they just do general mass killiing).

[Henroid]

Ugh, another day, another discovery of a mod being total fucking garbage about communicating what it does.

 

I picked up a mod for New Vegas called "Caesar's New Regime." At face value, everything it does is aesthetic / immersive, giving new armors and classes to the Legion. Alright, that's fine. My encounters with the Legion had been scarce in the game, so the one all-out fight I attempted (and lost) was when you first meet the Legion in Nipton or whatever that town is called. Now, I figured they were super strong because it was an important character and his handful of guys, meant to be a storyline "don't fuck with us" sort of thing.

 

Turns out my impression was wrong; I'm at a point in the game where the Legion is sending random assassin squads after me, and they have been impossible to fight. Something didn't seem right. I went checking over the mod's documentation and found nothing. I went to check the Nexus and... oh, there it is. A vague line that says it makes the Legion harder to fight, substantially.

 

Problem is my save is fucked because even after uninstalling the mod (every last file) the latest assassin squad is already spawned in, and while some of them have their gear gone and are reasonable to fight, there's one among the group that has a billion HP and gun skill, so his sniper shots are wrecking me and my companion. He survived TWO cars exploding.

 

Edit - I like the original Legion design better anyway. They look like LARPers that have gone insane.

[Vasari]

So overall, I'm not that well-versed in the specifics of the Fallout series. Never touched part 2 (I think I own it on Steam), and part 1 I couldn't really get into because it's so archaic to control. But over all these years, a lot of die-hard fans of the series (either people I know or just things I read across the net) have talked about how awesome the Brotherhood of Steel is. With the caveat to ignore the Brotherhood in FO3 because apparently it wasn't written right or is some weird branch.

 

So Fallout: New Vegas is my first time seeing the Brotherhood as intended, I guess. And uh... I'm not exactly seeing the awesome? They're close-minded extremists, which would be a turn-off enough, but they have a hard-on for weapons and don't like anyone else having weapons. They're basically fanatic-Christian-Americans in this setting. They're really just awful. So now I need to double check with people I know about what they mean by 'awesome.' As in, do they actually idolize the Brotherhood, or do they admire them as adversaries? Because the latter would be fine.

 

Ever since I picked up Veronica I'd been leaning toward helping the Brotherhood because she is pretty great. Then things didn't go right. Both for her and for my outside view as the player. Pretty sure I'm gonna blow that fucking bunker up.

 

As an aside the Brotherhood branch in FO3 is way, way cooler.

 

You're right about how awful the Brotherhood in New Vegas is, but that's intentional. They've always been focused on hoarding technology and keeping it from the masses, but in Fallout 1 that approach made alot of sense since every settlement was a corrupt shantytown usually run by some sort of mafia. In New Vegas they've doubled down on their isolationism and hoarding of technology because they're becoming irrelevant. There are actual governments and organised societies who are using technology to reestablish civilisation, and what's more they're able to match the Brotherhood in military strength. By the time you meet them in the Mojave they've run off to their little bunker to moan about how the NCR stole their power plant.

 

What bothers people about the FO3 Brotherhood is that all that ideology was dropped in favour of "We're super nice and we're going to help everyone". A faction of good guys with cool laser guns who always save the day makes sense in GI Joe but it feels silly in Fallout where everybody normally has self-interest at heart.

[Henroid]

Ugh, so despite uninstalling that mod - every last file gone - SOMETHING was changed permanently about my game install. Legion-aligned units still have impossibly high HP and weapon skills and I've just about had it. This is my third time running through the game's opening portions leading up to the Strip (the first two times I played far beyond that) and if I have to reinstall I might just be done and bored with the whole game.

 

There's no way in a vanilla install that the Legion units are supposed to be this strong. Taking shotgun blast after shotgun blast to the head, point blank, for a minute shouldn't result in a guy having more than half HP. If I can even live that long.

[Jutranjo]

Just open the console ~, click legion man, type "kill", done. 

[Henroid]

I'm embarrassed right now btw because I found out that yes, the Legion IS that durable and it's because their armor has incredible rates of DT, damage threshold. So, fuck. I feel so silly.

 

Oh well. Time to load up on magnum grade armor for my shotgun and armor piercing for my varmint rifle.

[Jutranjo]

I found it silly that the best gun that I've found in my last playthrough (12mm machine gun) came off a legion assassin squad and I was glad when they show showed up. It meant I could repair the gun again!

[Dewar]

I'm embarrassed right now btw because I found out that yes, the Legion IS that durable and it's because their armor has incredible rates of DT, damage threshold. So, fuck. I feel so silly.

 

Oh well. Time to load up on magnum grade armor for my shotgun and armor piercing for my varmint rifle.

 

I was using mostly energy weapons by the point in the game that the Legion really came after me, but I don't recall them being that hard.

[Henroid]

I was using mostly energy weapons by the point in the game that the Legion really came after me, but I don't recall them being that hard.

I was ransac- prospecting the houses in the first town you meet the Legion in (if you follow the main quest right away) and stumbled across a garbage laser pistol, and then had to fight a robot that was guarding someone's home. I had zero skill investment in energy weapons, but hot damn that pistol melted the hell out of the robot. So I'm thinking that energy weapons are truly something not to fuck with in this game.

[Dewar]

Bad skills in a weapon are somewhat mitigated if you don't use VATS (which I didn't because of how easy it made Fallout 3.) I also went all in on Energy weapons from the start, deciding I'd just sneak my way around until I could find one, but then found one within an hour or two of starting.

[Henroid]

Aye I never use VATS.

 

I actually kinda wish energy weapons were more scarce in these games. It would make the Brotherhood of Steel's angle more threatening and meaningful. Plus, they're so goddamn powerful in the first place.

[Henroid]

Well, I guess I was rushing to the end of the game without really putting much thought into it. By level 20 I maxed Speech and was nearing maxing a couple other things. And my Companions were NOT insignificant. I kinda just wanted to see where an allegiance with House would lead. His story and missions start out intriguing enough, but by the end they felt like routine errands and the pay-off wasn't as significant as I thought. Turns out it was just a rich business dude being a rich business dude who lured me in with sweet talk about helping "all of mankind." I wanted something more... tangible. Immediate.

 

I did like the way they rolled out the ending, giving you the low-down on every group you encountered. There was a bit of inconsistency here and there, nothing major. I did like that my quick drive-by of the Fiends actually yielded an end-note, without having any associated missions to speak of. But hey, those guys were dicks.

 

I'll end up doing another playthrough soon enough, this time a little more... immersive. I was trying to pull it off for my first-run of the game but in the end my fears regarding learning how things work caused me to take advantage of the game being a program with scripting issues here and there. Definitely gonna side with the NCR. And gotta reconcile when and how to turn on House. I ended up not using my Suite as often as I thought I would. Stored a lot of stuff but ended up not using a ton of it. Hmm.

[Dewar]

I followed the House path until he wanted me to destroy the Brotherhood. I was tagging along with the Brotherhood companion for a good chunk of the game and that wasn't going to fly. I was surprised that the game handled my sudden change of course fairly well, but I still don't remember the end that well. It felt like mangled mess.

[Henroid]

This game, more than any, has a lot of writing to support the various paths and the player jumping between them at any given point. It's not perfect, far from it, and some of it is clumsily handled, but it's a pretty remarkable feat for a game to have achieved. It shows that it can be done, certainly, but it's a matter of how much effort it takes vs. cost. There's so many different factions and people that influence the ending.

[mikemariano]

I followed the House path until he wanted me to destroy the Brotherhood.

 

Me too!  The game really made me uncomfortable and I didn't know if I wanted to continue playing (detail in the New Vegas thread).

[Bjorn]

I'm embarrassed right now btw because I found out that yes, the Legion IS that durable and it's because their armor has incredible rates of DT, damage threshold. So, fuck. I feel so silly.

 

Oh well. Time to load up on magnum grade armor for my shotgun and armor piercing for my varmint rifle.

 

This thread and Shelter finally got me to try New Vegas, and I hit the point with the assassins tonight.  The fucking destroyed me the first time, because one of them was next to invulnerable like you were describing.  But I did happen to have a chainsaw, which I was saving because of durability concerns (pure melee character).  I reloaded and switched to it and just cut ribbons through them.  A weapon that completely ignores DT/DR is kinda crazy.  Speaking of that kind of weapon...

 

I found it silly that the best gun that I've found in my last playthrough (12mm machine gun) came off a legion assassin squad and I was glad when they show showed up. It meant I could repair the gun again!

 

The first squad dropped a Thermic Lance, which kills things even faster than my chainsaw.  Now I get really excited when each squad shows up, because they are the only ones I've seen so far with one.   I feel like I broke the game, it's so much more powerful than every other weapon.  But I didn't do anything out of order, hadn't even really peeled off to explore the wastes on my own yet.

 

 

 

I had put off playing New Vegas for years because 3 left such a poor impression on me, but I'm really digging NV.  It feels like a more complete world, characters and factions feel like they have some more believable motivations.  I'm also playing on PC instead of 360, which let me eliminate two of my bigger irritations.  I used the console command to increase my speed by 35 percent, because the base speed feels too slow.  That's made exploring much more pleasant.  And then I used it again to increase my carry weight to 1000.  Dark Souls has really ruined me on ever being willing to put up with a carry weight system again.  Do encumbrance based on the equipment being USED, and then just let me magically carry a billion things on me.  Because going back to sell or store stuff every 20 minutes is not fucking fun or interesting.  Plus I'm on Hardcore mode, and refusing to use Stims, so all my healing comes from food.  The crafting/cooking system seems pretty cool, but the sheer variety of stuff you can make means you can't possibly carry it all on you, so you've got to constantly run stuff back to storage. 

[Jutranjo]

Have you found the courier mail boxes yet? I dunno where all of them are but one is in Primm, one in Novac and one in Freeside, probably others as well. You can use any of them to send any items to any of the other ones and the items will wait there for you. It gives you a pop up that'll list all of them, might be more than 3 but no more than 5 I think. Maybe Goodsprings has one?

[Bjorn]

Yeah, I had found those and figured they could be used for storage, but the biggest reason I was frustrated with carry weight was crafting.  I really couldn't justify keeping anything on me except my meat for cooking, so whenever I want to cook more complicated recipes, I'd have to go to a campfire, see what I needed, go to my storage, pick those things up, go back to campfire and make it.  It's just really needlessly wasted time.  I didn't crank up my carry weight until the last couple of hours I played last night, but once I increased it, I found just wandering around the wastelands exploring to be soooo much more enjoyable. 

[Jutranjo]

I used the jsawyer mod that makes stimpacks have weight and reduces everyone's HP and your carry weight. I ended up using 3 perks for carrying more stuff perks.

[Bjorn]

If I ever do a second playthrough, one that doesn't have any interest in crafting and uses Stims, that would be something interesting to try.  It would make carry weight have some meaning, rather than be an annoyance.  As it stands, with a 7 str (which will eventually be raised to at least 9), I have no problems carrying my armor, 3 weapons and a fuckton of food.

 

Optimally, what I would like to see in a game like this is carry weight include: All your equipment (including any hot swappable weapons), ammo for your equipped guns, plus like 5 slots for consumables, all of which have weight. 

[feelthedarkness]

Me too!  The game really made me uncomfortable and I didn't know if I wanted to continue playing (detail in the New Vegas thread).

 

Yeah, There is an effective bummer around the point where you meet house, because there is no nice way to get out of it, where you just oppose the Legion or Legion and House. I went NO GODS NO MASTERS, and was kind of capable of rationalizing the attack on the Hoover dam, until I had to put down the old timers squad, and then felt bad. I think if I had to let any other faction go, it would be the BoS because they're terrible to Veronica and Christine (and sort of in general). 

[Ninety-Three]

If I ever do a second playthrough, one that doesn't have any interest in crafting and uses Stims, that would be something interesting to try.  It would make carry weight have some meaning, rather than be an annoyance.

 

I always play ~3 str characters and I still see carry weight as... not even an annoyance, it's basically just a profit factor, a "You are allowed to carry this much loot out of each dungeon you visit" restriction. How are you folks playing that carrying capacity affects more than just how much random loot you carry to vendors?

[Dewar]

Basically, it creates a ratio of value to weight that under which I won't bother picking up an item anymore. It starts fairly low, and raises throughout the game as my personal bank gets bigger. I think I ended up over 100 caps/lb by the time I finished NV.

[Bjorn]

I always play ~3 str characters and I still see carry weight as... not even an annoyance, it's basically just a profit factor, a "You are allowed to carry this much loot out of each dungeon you visit" restriction. How are you folks playing that carrying capacity affects more than just how much random loot you carry to vendors?

 

My annoyance is entirely a crafting issue, where the time to manage my inventory to really dig into crafting is just too much.  If crafting supplies had no weight, it wouldn't be an issue.  Which, since the vast majority of crafting supplies have a value of less than 5 caps per pound, it's not like they represent a significant profit center.  Though in increasing my capacity, I did find some warnings to not go to crazy with it, as too much stuff on you at once can end up causing some pretty bad bugs (mostly corrupted saves or lockups).

 

 

I'm generally surprised at just how much I'm enjoying this now.  I'm even getting the urge to make another character, which is always the sign that a system has really got its hooks into me.  I'd be curious to mess around with a very low Int character to see how that changes dialogue, since Obsidian brought back that feature from 1/2.  And I want to try have Wild Wasteland turned on to see how that plays out, since I didn't realize what it did when I first started.