Continuing a perma-death Fallout 4 diary, in which I begin with absolutely nothing other than a plan to to voyage around only the outermost periphery of the world.>

Eastward ho, then. I crawl along the edge of the Fallout 4 [official site] world, some unknown force preventing me from heading any further North, but despite this strangeness it’s quite pleasant. It’s not obvious from here that the apocalypse ever happened. Here, it’s just quiet woodland. No leaves, admittedly, but it could be Autumn. A November ramble through the outer wilds of New England. No guns, no radiation, no factional warfare, no stuffing backpacks with old tableware and electronics. Just me, my bare-ass and the land.

… [visit site to read more]

Continuing a perma-death Fallout 4 diary, in which I begin with absolutely nothing other than a plan to to voyage around only the outermost periphery of the world.>

Eastward ho, then. I crawl along the edge of the Fallout 4 [official site] world, some unknown force preventing me from heading any further North, but despite this strangeness it’s quite pleasant. It’s not obvious from here that the apocalypse ever happened. Here, it’s just quiet woodland. No leaves, admittedly, but it could be Autumn. A November ramble through the outer wilds of New England. No guns, no radiation, no factional warfare, no stuffing backpacks with old tableware and electronics. Just me, my bare-ass and the land.

… [visit site to read more]

I’ve been steering clear of Fallout 4 [official site] chat because I fear I’ve already ruined too much of its magic and mystery by having to read so much about it for work, so this one passed me by at first: a nasty bug seems to be crashing the game for everyone in a certain area at times. Spoilers will follow, but right here I’ll be plain: be warned that you’ll likely crash if you wander into Monsignor Plaza (having not played yet, that means nothing to me). If you have business there, you may be able to get around it.

… [visit site to read more]

Since the dawn of RPGs, two things have remained constant: heroes require armour, and players will always want to find out what happens if they strip it all off and run around. Some would call it a secret test of a game’s devotion to world simulation – that if characters react, it says good things about the developers’ devotion to detail. Others just think it’s really funny. (To be clear, it’s very rarely even close to sexy.)

This week then, a random sample will answer the question the world has been waiting to realise it should have asked – objectively speaking, which RPG is the best? Specifically, if they all forgot their PE kits and had to go quest in their pants.

… [visit site to read more]

Beginning a new diary series, which will end upon my character’s first death.>

I have already played through Fallout 4 [official site]’s campaign, which led me through a great many places in the central area of its large Massachusetts map, but only a handful on its periphery. There is so much more still to see, but I’m increasingly finding that my level 30 character suffers from usual Bethesda game curse of premature godliness, and fear that further exploration would simply mean routine clean-up. So, time to start anew, and add fresh spanners into otherwise over-familiar works. … [visit site to read more]

Nice man John is playing Fallout 4 [official site] as a bad man intent on killing everyone he meets. Warning: there’ll be spoilers for the very intro to the game, character names, locations and maybe more!>

… [visit site to read more]

Alec’s already run his own review of Fallout 4 [official site], based on 50 predominantly campaign-inclined hours in post-nuclear New England, but now Bethesda’s latest is out John and Adam have been taking a more leisurely look at it too. Have they found convincing life in the wasteland? Do they agree that writing and characterisation is much improved? Or that the relentless focus on combat keeps it just short of rad status? Is the Witcher 3 still 2015’s RPG king after this? And why do they think a game which is prompting rather a lot of griping about bugs and graphics and meatheadedness has scored so many 9s and 10s from other critics? Time to set the post-world to rights…>

There are no plot spoilers below, bar a passing reference to what happens in the introductory 15 minutes.

… [visit site to read more]

There are things I only worked out how to do in Fallout 4 [official site] after hours and hours of play, so I thought I’d spare the rest of you from similar confusion. From fuss-free shopping to streamline construction and power armour management, and of course figuring out how to run those blasted settlements, here are a few must-know pieces of hard-earned wisdom. Some apply to total greenhorns, some might surprise even people fairly deep into the game – and I’ll add to them as more occur.

I can’t quite decide if the game just got itself into a bit of a muddle when it comes to explaining its many, many less than obvious systems or if it truly has a sink or swim philosophy, figuring that it’s far more satisfying for players to work everything out for themselves. I suspect the former, to be honest, given its many other glitches and that most of the features it fails to document are down to user interface obfuscation (and a complete absence of relevant tutorial) rather than delightful things one might stumble across through experimentation. (Although I include a couple of those too).

… [visit site to read more]

Note: some spoilers for the appearance and behaviour of a relatively early companion NPC follow, as do references to one of the world’s central and ongoing conflicts. None of the ‘main’ plot events are spoiled, however.>

There are many familiar archetypes when it comes to roleplaying companions. The snarky jokester one. The sexy-but-secretly-sad one. The cute or comic appearance but incongruously murderous one. The noble truth-seeking one. The rogueish but with a heart of gold one. The chosen one. The totally outlandish one. The guilty one. The grumpy one. The happy one. The sneezy one. We know ‘em all, we’ve liked many and hated some, loved a few, rolled our eyes at the obviousness of more still.

Nick, one of Fallout 4 [official site]’s optional companions, could easily fit into one or more of those categories, but I feel he has a more defining trait, and one which I don’t believe any other RPG party member has managed to the same extent: kindness.

… [visit site to read more]

Nuclear apocalypses generally aren’t a very good thing, but while they’re capable of wiping out much of life, they really don’t have the capability of destroying colour. However, so entrenched in us is the idea that apocalyptic wastelands are in sepia tone that the colour scheme is a shorthand for communicating the devastation. But blimey, it’s a murky place to be. Thankfully, ubergenius Razed of Nexus Mods has already put together a mod using ReShade and SweetFX Preset that sees Fallout 4 [official site] sensibly brightened up a little. And it’s very easy to add to your game.

… [visit site to read more]