Fallout 4 - Zero Kills/Survival

[Lazybones]

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLcg6Kygx-MfRzt1Kf6oUZTvdocDYtQX-M

A bit of save reloading but the manages to get through the game with zero kills..

A very slow but interesting process... After watching the first two or so I sort of skipped around.

Obviously you shouldn't watch if you plan to play through the game and haven't yet.

[Tom]

I will be watching that. Thanks for posting!

I find I can't stop watching the play throughs, even though I intend on playing it myself

[Mr. Analog]

Y'know I was thinking about this the other day, I created a new character (low int, high str) and wanted to go mostly melee (short story: it's hard) so having a companion with ranged abilities is good... but you find very quickly that with this kind of build you don't have to do much killing yourself, you can let the AI do it for you --- or rather sometimes they go ahead anyway

I thought to myself how hard would it be to do this through the main story mode and well now we have our video hah

I was disappointed by the low INT option, usually in Fallout games if your int is well below 3 you get funny dialog options... not this time. There's so much to this game and I'm not complaining per se (because there ARE a lot of fun dialog options) but they clearly wanted the story to flow in a certain direction... at least until the major factions (and choices) appear.

Spoilers ahead, don't read if you are just getting into the game and/or you are Tom

Spoiler

The game requires you to care about Shawn and your wife/husband, much of the narrative revolves around this. Now if you want to play a raider scumbag only out for herself -you can- but you're going to get these immersion breaking dialog options from time to time (again, with the dialog "circle" you can't see exactly what your character is going to say so you might get tricked into breaking character - FYI there are mods out there now that give you the full dialog options like in Fallout 3) I think going with a voiced protag in this game was maybe a mistake, don't get me wrong it's nice not to have to strain your eyes on a block of text at 3 AM, but obviously there was only so much dialog they could record/write for and this meant boxing in your character somewhat.

Fallout 3 did this a lot more subtly, your dad goes missing from the Vault, this triggers chaos and you end up outside the vault, at this point the game world is yours, you can go in any random ass direction and do anything. The most obvious thing is to try and find your dad, but you don't really have to, in fact if memory serves there are 0 main quests that require you to ask about your dad, as far as you are concerned you are helping purify the water, something you find out that your dad was involved in. Hey if you want to short circuit a bunch of main quests in F3 just stumble your way to Vault 112... and maybe by that time you've discovered Lincoln's head, helped zombies take over a hotel full of rich snobs and learned that eating human flesh is kinda not so bad after all. Obviously this is not how most people play F3 the first time through, they usually stumble through Springvale, find Megaton, help around there for a bit go help Three Dog get the signal boosting dish, go to Rivet City, talk to Madison Li --- all the while looking for your missing dad. You can swoosh through the main quest pretty quick that way (and was criticized for it back when the game first came out, before Broken Steel DLC - which is how the game should have ended but anyway).

In Fallout 4 there are a few events that basically walk you through to get you familiarized with the game mechanics and to get you to the major factions, things that you will bump into on nearly every playthrough.
1. You find Codsworth, it's pretty hard to not find him
2. Dogmeat, again most players will follow the only road out of your blasted suburb and hit the Red Rocket station where you meet Dogmeat
3. Minutemen. The next stop is Concord, the first actual town your run into has a raider attack in progress, if you get close enough to the Museum of Freedom you meet your first faction, the Minutemen. If you hadn't turned on your radio and learnt about Diamond City by now you will have if you talk to a couple characters in this faction
4. As you move south to Diamond City to pick up the trail on your lost son you'll pick up an emergency radio signal, and eventually discover a small group of Brotherhood of Steel, for some reason they are really likely to trust you and after a small battle with ghouls you get your first mission hook which then also introduces you to The Institute (as hostiles)

Now, this was how I went through my first playthrough and you really don't have to do it this way but its very difficult to ignore these carrots, on a second run where I was intentionally picking sarcastic remarks and trying to be a badass I started to see how limiting some of the interactions were. I'm not saying it's a completely "on rails" experience BUT its less open at first than previous games. Once you have gotten to a certain point where the initial hook stories start to matter less I find the game opens up (somewhere between level 20 and 30)

Anyway, these are just some of my thoughts on the major weakness the game has for me:
-Voiced protag
-First 1/3 of the story feels like its on rails

Also of all the names Codsworth can say "Judy" isn't one of them? Okay?

[close]

Take your time with this game, make it your own experience, ENJOY IT. It's not a hard game to play and it really evolves to the way you want to play it but you only get some of these experiences once, watching a playthrough is going to greatly damage that experience.

Put down YouTube and just start playing the game, PLEASE

[Tom]

Lol. I dunno. I don't think it's ruined much watching the youtubes. Especially the guys playing it completely differently from how I'd play.

One guy hates the companions, so pretty much doesn't use them unless the game forces it. He likes doing a lot of stealth, and the companions regularly screw stealth up. Though he doesn't hate Nick Valentine.

[Mr. Analog]

Lol. I dunno. I don't think it's ruined much watching the youtubes. Especially the guys playing it completely differently from how I'd play.

One guy hates the companions, so pretty much doesn't use them unless the game forces it. He likes doing a lot of stealth, and the companions regularly screw stealth up. Though he doesn't hate Nick Valentine.

I find that surprising (or an early patch) I dragged Codsworth with me the whole first runthrough and he was really good at staying down and out of my way (was a stealth / sniper)

But yeah, get stuck in man, it's a hell of a game!

[Tom]

Yeah, it looks like I'll get sucked in. I'm taking partial days for the first three days this week, and probably take thurs/fri off as well. Not 100% sure. I happen to like money. And if I don't work, I don't get money That said, I've banked enough already to not worry too much, especially after the exchange rate. hooo boy.