FALLOUT 4

[Mr. Analog]

SURVIVAL MODE UPDATE:

Since I've been thinking about Fallout today it's time for the ever popular Survival Mode update! Learning to balance your character is actually pretty easy, learning to think your way around some of the more demanding parts of the game is pretty hard and or requires a bit of strategic thinking. BEDS are super important, they are the only thing that let you save / respawn, there are plenty of beds scattered throughout the Commonwealth and they come in quite handy when you know you might be either passing into a tougher area or having to face a challenging instance. A few of the more difficult instances actually have beds in them so as you progress through you can save, I mean it's not as "cheaty" as quicksaving but at least it saves you time.

I say a few because some of the hardest parts happen to run through the main questline, traveling through the Glowing Sea to find Virgil offers you no places to save (can't sleep in radiation) there's a lot of high level enemies (radscorpions, deathclaws, stingwings, etc) and / or huge swarms of lower level enemies (ghouls, molerats). It's a long slog in and a long slog out P.S. don't die otherwise you have to re-do it. OK fine. After one failed attempt I did it, onto the NEXT challenge: finding a Courser chip. You have to go to an instanced location called Greentech Genetics which is STUFFED with relatively high level Gunners (a faction of mercs who just love using rocket launchers, molotovs and rapid fire weapons) so playing regularly it's a challenge because you can get a random grenade / missile to the face (which is bad enough) and take a lot of damage IN SURVIVAL MODE a grenade, Molotov or missile WILL kill you in one hit, so you gotta carefully and slowly make your way up the building floor by floor being as efficient and sneaky as possible so you aren't dealing with more than 2 or 3 Gunners at once.

OK fine, I've played my way through this enough that I know what I'm doing. Now the final challenge you have to kill a Courser. Basically combine The Terminator, the Predator and Wesley Snipes together and that's what you have to face.

Did I mention there were NO BEDS in the entire complex? NO? WELL THERE AREN'T. There's a parking garage across the street that has one but its also populated by a weirdo who has strapped nuclear suicide bombs to molerats. The next nearest bed is in a Raider compound which is a pain to clear out as well.

Anyway I had a strategy for fighting this guy, see before he aggros you're supposed to have a conversation with him, instead of starting the convo I crouch and use my pickpocket skills to take away his gun, ammo and Stealth Boys (I did mention Predator, this guy goes invisible so you can't use VATS and then proceeds to hammer you with a rapid fire energy weapon). Anyway I NEARLY got all his hear off him, somehow he started using one Stealth Boy as I was pickpocketing, no big, he's invisible but all he can do is punch me which I can resist.

Except there's a Gunner he pushed over the railing in an earlier scripted event. Now as some of you know Fallout 4 uses a physics engine and even though you can loot any part of a corpse and get all the stuff sometimes their entire corpse falls away and you get their stuff, unless things they are holding don't (like guns) fall with them, and can end up just laying around. This assbutt sees he's losing the fight, retreats and picks up the closest weapon to him, I had taken some damage already but it wasn't projectile damage, but now he has a gun and I'm stuck reloading also I can't target him in VATS which is a problem since I have a lot of skill points invested in beefing up my abilities there being a high Dex character, one-shot two-shot aaaand I'm dead.

About 90 minutes of progress GONE.

To be fair there IS a Fat Man launcher in that room so ... it could have been way worse I guess but still I'd rather die in a big explosion rather than to what I'm pretty sure was a .32 caliber trash gun...



In summary, survival mode is fun outside quest instances. If encounters are scaled to your level it can be a fun challenge. Building bases is way more important than before and you really explore the world (no fast traveling means I've seen things... so many things... that I never saw before)

The instances are killer though and trying to play through the story is detrimental to the actual fun (sometimes) when you beat something tough and it was generally fight you could win eyy 👍

Getting a random missile to the face after crawling around with no save for an hour, not so much eyyy 👎

[Melbosa]

Glad you are still getting lots out of the game!  I really really really with it was Multiplayer Co-op!

[Mr. Analog]

Glad you are still getting lots out of the game!  I really really really with it was Multiplayer Co-op!

I'm getting close to 300 hours, there are still two endings I want to get.

I'm going to TRY and get The Institute faction ending in Survival (god help me)

[Tom]

Glad you are still getting lots out of the game!  I really really really with it was Multiplayer Co-op!

I'm getting close to 300 hours, there are still two endings I want to get.

I'm going to TRY and get The Institute faction ending in Survival (god help me)

Do you have to do a new run to get different endings?

[Melbosa]

Glad you are still getting lots out of the game!  I really really really with it was Multiplayer Co-op!

I'm getting close to 300 hours, there are still two endings I want to get.

I'm going to TRY and get The Institute faction ending in Survival (god help me)

Do you have to do a new run to get different endings?

Its the Faction system that is pretty hard to change in a game once deep in.  You do a lot of questing to build up rep with a faction and some factions don't like others so being part of every faction is not possible... Mr. Analog can clarify but I believe that is the reason you would have to almost do a fresh run to get different conclusions.

[Mr. Analog]

Glad you are still getting lots out of the game!  I really really really with it was Multiplayer Co-op!

I'm getting close to 300 hours, there are still two endings I want to get.

I'm going to TRY and get The Institute faction ending in Survival (god help me)

Do you have to do a new run to get different endings?

Its the Faction system that is pretty hard to change in a game once deep in.  You do a lot of questing to build up rep with a faction and some factions don't like others so being part of every faction is not possible... Mr. Analog can clarify but I believe that is the reason you would have to almost do a fresh run to get different conclusions.

Yes, most of the factions are diametrically opposed so you can't side with one for too long without tipping the balance with another (though this is not the case in the Far Harbor DLC...)

Y'arr Spoilers Ahead!



Rundown on the factions (in the general order you're likely to meet them in game)

The Minutemen:
These guys represent the average Commonwealth wastelander, they were a volunteer army out to protect the people. They grew in size, capability, network of resources and eventually consolidated at Fort Independence (which they renamed The Castle.) Unfortunately for them The Castle was overrun by Mirelurks. With the loss of their leader the group fell into disarray and eventually dwindled into just a few members still fighting for people (one of the first encounters you have in Fallout 4 is at the Museum of Freedom in the city of Concord). These guys are the true neutral party, they just want to provide stability for people in the Commonwealth and are trying to do so by providing protection, recruiting and building better settlements. Functionally this faction teaches you all about settlement building and gives you an unlimited number of quest activities to help build / maintain this network. It is advantageous to get friendly with this faction and to actually build a network of settlements as it gives you more offensive and defensive options (i.e. you're never far from a safe fortified location, if you set up mortar guns you can call in varying amounts of artillery fire around the world to help you with tougher fights). The only faction they outright oppose are the Raider factions introduced with the Nuka World DLC.

The Brotherhood of Steel:
Xenophobic, greedy, militaristic and arrogant. The BoS have been featured in most Fallout games and are the remnants of the US Military who believe that technology was what screwed up the world and paradoxically confiscate it and use it themselves. It should be noted that the BoS faction located in Washington DC was quite different from their originating force on the West coast as they are actively helping people in the Capital Wasteland, in the intervening time between Fallout 3 & 4 this group is an offshoot of the DC BoS and is more in line with the original principals of the organization. They only care about themselves and everything else is either a threat or needs to be outright killed (which includes anything non-human intelligent or otherwise). They were attracted to the Commonwealth region for one reason: The Institute. They know it's stuffed with technology and they want it, badly. As a side effect they begin to dominate the region thanks to their near unlimited resources which includes power armor, energy weapons and vertibirds. This faction is opposed to all others but are actively hostile to the Institute & the Railroad

The Railroad
These guys believe that sentient AI (Synths, robots, computers) have the same rights as humans and work actively to help Institute Synths escape into the wasteland and take on new identities, to the point where their memories are erased and they don't even know they're Synths (a Synth is so close to a human it is virtually impossible to tell them apart without a thorough medical examination). This group is highly secretive and only interested in freeing sentient AI. They don't really care about anything else outside that goal. They have an indifference to the other factions (unless by working with another faction you blow up the Institute)

The Institute
When the Great War of 2077 occurred the Commonwealth Institute of Technology (this alt-universe's version of MIT) took refuge in the underground levels of the campus and began building a high-tech utopia dedicated to furthering science to one day rebuild the world. To this end they began building robots to explore and scavenge the destroyed world above. Over time these robots became more and more sophisticated until they were indistinguishable from humans. Their crowning achievement in Synth technology required undamaged pre-war DNA (which is the catalyst for the Fallout 4 story). Of course wasteland settlers were largely unaware of the Institute, only seeing early synth models scavenging, that was until a man went berserk in a large settlement and after being finally killed was discovered to be a Synth. This compounded with increasing unexplained disappearances lead to widespread paranoia. The Institute has its own vision of the future and sees the Brotherhood of Steel as an unwanted interloper and the Railroad as a misguided nuisance.

Nuka World Raiders
With the Nuka World DLC you can become Overboss of up to 2 of the 3 raider factions within (The Operators, The Disciples and The Pack) and begin setting up raider settlements in the Commonwealth, this puts you at odds with Preston Garvey the leader (or 2nd in command if you become the General) of the Minutemen as the raider factions represent instability in the region.

Far Harbor factions
There are 3 factions within Far Harbor but they don't have any direct impact on the Commonwealth.

TL,DR Summary
Minutemen are opposed to general threats (including raiders)
Brotherhood of Steel are opposed to The Institute & The Railroad
The Railroad are opposed to The Institute & the Brotherhood
The Institute are opposed to the Brotherhood & The Railroad

Endings
There are really only two endings but ... you can extrapolate what they mean based on the ethics of the factions you side with
1. The Nuclear Option
You blow up The Institute, this can be achieved by siding with the Brotherhood of Steel, the Railroad or the Minutemen
2. The Nuclear Family
You side with The Institute

Minutemen Endings: It IS possible to stay friendly with the remaining factions assuming you did not participate in any turning point missions (i.e. you were not directly hostile to any one faction as a result of helping another) you can also destroy either (or both) remaining factions if you so choose

Brotherhood Endings: Getting this far requires destroying both the Institute and the Railroad, you can ally the Minutemen or betray the BoS with the Minutemen (after The Nuclear Option)

Railroad Endings: Like the BoS ending it requires destroying both the Institute and the BoS

Institute Endings: Again you must destroy the main rival factions; the BoS and the Railroad. They can ally with the Minutemen or form a questionable relationship with them (there is an Institute main quest called "Pinned" that tests your allegiance)

Finally
Which faction is "best" for the wasteland is kinda up to you, there's a lot written about each faction and which ones would be more or less good for the region, its mostly up to you as the player to decide which ones make the most sense

The Brotherhood is an easy faction to side with because they have lots of fun toys to play with but their motives are the most evil of all the factions as they are out for themselves only. As one NPC says they are a raider gang with a sense of purpose.

The Railroad can't exist without the Institute, they are freeing sentient AI from slavery but then dumping them in the world without much thought to the ramifications of their actions (in Far Harbor one of the more difficult questions to answer is a result of this)

The Institute is trying to rebuild the world one step at a time but feel that the ends will justify the means. Why are there supermutants in the Commonwealth at all? Why did people go missing? Both answers are connected. Are they the best hope humanity has? Again, you decide.

The Minutemen. You'll note that there are no ways to destroy the Minutemen, other factions can become allies or enemies but of all the factions this is the one you cannot destroy, they represent the average wastelander and their only duty is to protect functioning settlements (be they human, robot or ghoul)



It IS possible to find some balance through allegiance to certain factions but the biggest, most powerful factions usually require you to wipe out at least one rival. From a gameplay perspective there are a lot of benefits to joining various factions from equipment upgrades to technology availability to companions to just ability Perks. If you want to stay relatively neutral get cozy with the Minutemen and don't get directly involved with any other faction (this is the most work and the least fun by the way). This is a little different from New Vegas wherein that game you could find a peaceful resolution that suited all the major factions, the stakes are a little higher here though and as such the various factions are impossible to reconcile.

[Mr. Analog]

Fallout 4 VR dropped today, I haven't heard much about it (not like I'm going to rush out and get a Vive or whatever anyway) but one thing I didn't know is that scopes don't work yet... anybody got any VR games lately?

https://youtu.be/jspdtha3t1k