#youre s.p.e.c.i.a.l!

[sistersorrow]

I will (try very hard to pretend to) forgive Bethesda's many sins if the next Fallout game has a faction which is just the local representatives of the IRS.

Not some larpers who found an IRS office and revived it.

Not some weird cult based on the mythologised importance of tax collection (though that could be fun too).

The actual Internal Revenue Service, who survived the bombs and never stopped collecting taxes because that's something the IRL IRS is actually planning for.

[ariesmortis]

Okay I've been gone for a min but I'm back with something S.P.E.C.I.A.L ;]

TADA!!!! A full list of fallout outfits to give to your very own courier, lone wanderer, or sole survivor!! 30 outfits from Fallout New Vegas, Fallout 3, and Fallout 4, including some outfits from their respective DLCs!

Feel free to mix up the outfit a little or generbend it however you please, and PLEASE TAG ME IN THE ART YOU DO AND USE THE TAG #ARIESMORTIS30FALLOUTOUTFITS

I wanna see all of your beautiful characters dolled up and with their favorite companions or NPCs!!!

Have fun~ 💖

[thestalkerbunny]

I had a dream last night and it was so fantastic, I'm gonna fucking share it and eventually draw and expand on it-but this is basis of it.

They finally made Fallout 5.

TLDR: Where the actual First Nation's People went, history threatening to repeat itself, finally the non-romancable npc is that way for a GOOD REASON.

It actually takes place in the middle of America; and it's established when the bombs dropped-it was mostly on major cities near the coastal areas-such as Las Vegas,Boston,Washington Dc, etc. etc.-but with the radius, there is a part of the US that recieved the least amount of radiation.

(A poorly made map by your truely, probably not all accurate where bombs dropped but like. The darker places is all the places I'm pretty sure we've been. Probably wrong but I don't care to look up for accuracy.)

And it's this odd massive strip of land right down the middle. It's not COMPLETELY devoid of radiation-but it's a small part of the whole of USA that received the LEAST amount of it and over time was able to recover successfully, similar to Chernobyl years after the Nuclear Meltdown. Still toxic levels of radiation if you do things like upset the dirt or go in too deep-but otherwise harmless to explore and live in if you're tolerant to those levels of radiation. And in Fallout where RadAway is a helpful common place medication tool-it could potentially be a paradise. The wild life is actually very plentiful and you can honestly spot a lot of normal looking wildlife like normal looking deer and occasionally-a one headed cow. But it's still vast and ominously empty at the same time. Like wandering through thick forests and open plains and prairies with nothing around for miles.

But it was the answer to where the actual Native Americans were in Fallout-they're in this place that everyone in the game referred to as The Holy Strip. A lot of the settlements and cities are a part of the First Nation and one of them I specifically remember was the biggest city called Cherokee City-and it had a collage where for caps or certain items you could move around a point of your S.P.E.C.I.A.L stats if you felt it like it's better used in a different spot-and it was flavored as that's where all the academics flocked to share survivalist knowledge so when people venture out into the Wastes they'd at least have a basic grasp on things. And for the most part, all the cities in The Holy Strip got along-there was a sort of system where each city had an elected person on a council and everything was voted on before major choices were made, etc. etc. all in all the most high functioning areas in Fallout at least in that sense. There's of course tiffs and occasional spats-but other than that-not a whole lot of blood is shed.

And of course there were other factions outside of The Holy Strip who wanted the area for themselves; rather they wanted to affirm governance over the entire area (We know what this is an allegory for, Government trying to run off Native peoples.) And the game gives you the option to either side with the outside Factions-each with their own reason for wanting control of The Holy Strip or siding with The Holy Strip and the people who were there from the start and helped that area STAY as nice as it could be in an irradiated hellscape. And it's not just the theme of 'War never changes' but also the theme of 'History always threatens to repeat itself.' and you have to decide which part of this repeat of history you want to be on.

And there were like....4 Specifical companions I recalled.

One was a woman named Angora and she was a porn actress-and in some of dialogue, it's insinuated she's from New Vegas or that area because in her idle mode she'll tell raunchy jokes-specifically 'Did you hear about the mailman with a bullet in their skull?' Her specific quest is to destroy the holotapes of shoot that had gone wrong and turned into an assault and the footage still was spread out in the public. And the destruction of these holotapes is her reclaiming agency over herself.

Another was a Vietnamese woman named Jun who was a botonist looking for the national seed depository in Colorado that happens to fall within the area of the Holy Strip-she's got the pass key to get in there and she wants to use this time since The Holy Strip has shown such successful progress and good soil ph levels-to start cultivating and distributing seeds to the settlements so more food can be grown. Her idle animation if you leave her alone long enough, she'll start planting saplings and if you come back to the same area she plants in later in the game, you'll see them growing slowly.

There was another one-who was like I feel like....a teen girl? Put her at 18? 19 Maybe. A short girl who kinda reminded me of the girl from Atlantis the Lost Empire. She's a tech mechanic and builds guns, improves them, repairs broken things and she's looking for her younger brother whom she got separated from. I think her name was either Delilah or Tuesday. I don't remember clearly. She was a fan favorite for actually normal reasons cause she had such a teen energy to her to say out of fucking pocket shit all the time and sasses you constantly-but in like a fun way.

The final one I remember is a Ghoul you meet at one of the First Nation Settlements. I don't remember his name-but he is of the First Nation and sort of nomadic lifestyle drifting between cities and settlements, helping people where he can when he can. While the Holy Strip is nice-there still is a level of ghoul discrimination and he just preferred being on his own. But when he becomes your companion you learn that he makes a lot of jokes about the 'Native American Wisdom.' One being

"How did you know I was from a Vault?"

"I heard it on the wind....I heard it from the birds....I felt it in the sunlight on my face.....Also you've got the word VAULT 29 Plastered on the back of your stupid blue jumpsuit."

He also liked Romance paperbacks. You meet him during an escort quest he's doing, helping a pregnant woman get to one of the vaults (that apparently she was born at? And she wanted her kid to be born there too.)

And there was new romancable companion functions-where you could gift them items they liked (like Romance books for the ghoul, Seeds for the Botonist, etc.) that would not only boost their affection for you, but give you a temp boost during a fight. ( the 18 year old is the non-romancable option in the game. For once a Non Romancable NPC that makes SENSE.)

And for the most part it was well received? There was still people who bitched a lot about it, complaining they 'needed like 50 million mods to make it acceptable' and people complaining about the ghoul being 'such a sterotype' where most of what he did was ironic and prodding fun at the trope similar to Raul wearing the spirit halloween costume as a joke for his sister. Then there were the freaks who were mad they couldn't romance the 18 year old.

But pobody's nerfect ya know. All in all I now have a game I cannot play.

[rebelangelsims]

Sweet child of mine, You're S.P.E.C.I.A.L Nobody's on your level This freedom trail you're walking is A long road to your apocalypse (Welcome to my apocalypse)

[inverswayart]

The Fallout OC Seven Day S.P.E.C.I.A.L.

Now that I realized that no one can actually stop me, I'm gonna talk about my ocs again! And i found this challenge? ask list? and i liked it so enjoy the ride, i guess

Day 1 - Strength

Sinclair

6 - Barrel Chested  >> 8 - Circus Strongman | Strong Back, Heave, Ho!

How physically strong is your OC? Sinclair wasn’t a wimp to begin with - he did plenty of blue collar work before becoming an engineer and had some muscle to show for it. Then, soon after he embarked on a journey to get Benny and return the Platinum Chip, he decided to not go through the sacked Nipton and just go around - and got kidnapped by the Think Tank. After two weeks of dealing with them and returning his stolen organs Sinclair found that his spine got infused with some of the tech used to replace it - and it gave him some additional core strength. So in the end he is surprisingly strong for his not-that-buff frame.  

How good are they in melee or hand to hand combat? Sinclair is perfectly able to dish out some nasty punches and kicks, but he’ll lose against anyone with actual martial knowledge - Sinclair’s skill comes mostly from hectic brawls and having to stab and dismember ghost people at Sierra Madre as fast as possible.

Do they just punch things or are they trained in martial arts? Definitely the former - Sinclair never had much interest in learning martial arts, and even though he skimmed through a couple of manuals later in his life he never got far with it. When he has to fight in melee, he mostly tries to knock the opponent out and then finish them off from a safer distance.

Can they carry very heavy guns around easily or carry loads of supplies, or are they not that strong? He is absolutely that strong - he casually carries almost 300 lbs of stuff around (and some more if he had a couple of beers). It goes well with his tendency to over-pack - he probably has at least twice as many supplies and ammo than he would actually need at any given moment. 

Innocence

3 - Doughy Baby | Pack Rat, Weapon Handling

How physically strong is your OC? Ino is a walking definition of “noodle arms”. She has trouble wearing heavy armor and carrying more than a couple guns on her. Of course, she got a tiny bit of muscle built after having to run errands across the whole Mojave, but it still doesn’t help her that much.

How good are they in melee or hand to hand combat? Terrible! Being locked into melee is one of her many nightmares, and so Ino does her best to avoid it. Her inability to fight without guns has made her forced visit to Legion’s Fort even more terrifying than it already was - being surrounded by shitton of brutes with powerfists constantly reminded her of how screwed she was.

Do they just punch things or are they trained in martial arts? While she can’t use it effectively, Ino does know a couple of legitimate moves - like the counter that Veronica taught her or takedown from ranger Andy.

Can they carry very heavy guns around easily or carry loads of supplies, or are they not that strong? Ino’s not that strong and she knows it - and so she takes packing very seriously and always takes only the bare essentials - with the reasoning that it’ll be easier to find/buy something on the road and move faster rather than exhaust herself by carrying all the extra stuff, moving slowly and still having to buy some more supplies when it runs out early.

[pathoscleaved]

𝐅𝐀𝐋𝐋𝐎𝐔𝐓

Dr. Albert Wesker, codename Ouroboros, is a scientist within the Enclave. Having been born into a eugenics program called Project W, he was experimented upon by the Enclave to become the perfect killing machine. He served in the battle of Anchorage, and was even famous, Pre-Wasteland, for his exceptional contributions to the technology surrounding stimpacks. He went into Vault 76 as one of the brightest and best, being placed in the Vault as a sleeper agent.

After he got out of the Vault, he went to the Enclave bunker, regained his Chief Scientist access, and then dug into files to find out why he seemed to not age, or why harsh radiation didn't effect him . . .

Finding out that he was the result of Project W, and that his life was never his own, Albert fell into a deep depression, and angry that those who had set him up for failure died during the end of the war, wandered aimlessly, a gun-for-hire that aims to amass a fortune and control his part of the Wasteland. If you've got caps, alcohol, or chems, Albert will work for you.

S.P.E.C.I.A.L.

They are so high because Wesker runs low health or something called a bloodied build, which enables him to have higher stats but barely any health. He's basically a mutated glass cannon.

PERKS ( to be updated )

The main ones that apply to threads are Bloody Mess, Class Freak, Starched Genes, Aquaboy, Professional Drinker, and Chem Resistant.

MUTATIONS

Wesker received all mutations from the Enclave, and is always in the process of getting further mutated because of his interaction with the Enclave's Uroboros.

CHEMS

Albert also takes chems to assist in his prowling of the Wasteland. He will take anything.

ALCOHOL

Wesk, to cope with finding out the truth of the Wesker Project within the Enclave, drinks. He primarily drinks Nuka Cola Dark. (He cannot get addicted.)

For those who write in other Fallout games, Wesker will still be walking around at the time of your game: he's basically like a ghoul, but due to the Enclave's experimentations.

HEADCANONS

[spooky-donut-ghost-house]

I'd like to hear more about your Courier!Lucy 👁️👁️👁️ I'm a sucker for couriers.

YIPPEEE

I explained her backstory over here

So will discuss more about her skills and factions and such

As I stated she isn't fond of The NCR so she wouldn't help them with taking The Dam unless that was her only choice she isn't fond of House either and she loathes The Legion so she works towards The Mojave's Independence with the help of Yes Man

Her primary skills I imagine would be Repair, Speech and Guns however she isn't much of a confrontational person and views talking her way out of a situation is more ideal

Her S.P.E.C.I.A.L stats I imagine are 4 Strength, 7 Perception, 6 Endurance, 5 Charisma, 6 Intelligence, 5 Agility and 7 Luck going off of her stats in Fallout Shelter

She has most of the companions with her with the exception of Boone because he's Boone but she does help him with finding who sold Carla she's best friends with Veronica maybe even girlfriends along with Christine perhaps hehe and Raul and Lily are her grandparents her and Arcade buttheads sometimes but they're like siblings and she likes Cass and ED-E and Rex are her babies as are Lonesome Road!ED-E and Roxie

Speaking of the DLC's

Dead Money I imagine is absolute hell for her but hey she meets Christine so it's a win in her book and she brings back tech from The Madre too she helps Dog and God become one and helps Christine out as well but kills Dean and Elijah this is one of the few times she views killing as a viable option

Honest Hearts she helps Joshua fight The White Legs but has Joshua spare SUW and ends up killing Joshua and sending Daniel back to New Canaan with a message "Leave the tribes of Zion alone or I will finish what The White Legs couldn't."

Old World Blues I imagine is also hell but hey she gets a new puppy and new AI friends but she does kill Mobius and The Think Tank

As for Lonesome Road well as much as she hates The NCR she can't bring herself to nuke them as there's a lot of innocent civilians in The NCR plus destroying The Long-15 would be bad for The Mojave the same however cannot be said for Dry Wells as she nukes that place to high hell weakening The Legion further

I imagine she deals with The Omertas by assisting Cachino but then kills him after Sal and Nero are dead because Cachino is an awful person and I imagine she replaces him with someone not awful however Idk who that'd be yet and deals with Mortimer as well as helping that rancher by eliminating Heck Gunderson as I said she doesn't like killing but she kinda let her emotions get the better of her when given the choice of killing Heck

Other factions she works with are The Khans, The Followers and The Kings

[dearest-painter]

If you don't mind... can I request another one-shot? This takes place during lunch. When RST! Reader is eating with Spider teens(+ Gayatri) and other spider people while feeding some homemade food to Athena and Lilth, ___(choose anyone) see RST! Reader's back shark teeth and asked about it.

(If you forgot about RST! Reader's back shark teeth, they got their back shark teeth from eating questionable food in some RST scenarios and it involved forced? cannibalism, which I mentioned in some posts that I sent to you.)

TW/CW:Yandere behavior, unhealthy behavior, unhealthy relationship, abusive relationship, implications of forced cannibalism, abusive behavior, Reader might as well be a damn shark, they have two rows of teeth in their mouth aka the front row and the back row, tell me if I need to add anything

Summary:we all have some unique qualities to us that make us well US! While others may have two different color eyes, tooth gap, different skin types, or different hair types you have shark teeth aka having two rows of teeth! Now aren’t you S.P.E.C.I.A.L!

Athena and Lilith were eating some food you made as you, Hobie, Pavitr, his girlfriend Gayatri, Miles, and Gwen were eating. You and Pavitr were doing tic-tac-toe for fun as this is what you two do often which Gayatri was recording as she found it cute. “HAHA! Won again fucker!” “DAMN IT!” Hobie laughed as you won once again while Pavitr faked sulked to Gayatri who was cheering him up while chuckling.

Hobie saw something that he didn’t realize earlier you had two rows of teeth. “Shark teeth?” You stopped and looked at Hobie a bit confused until you realized he was talking about your teeth. “Oh yeah, I have two rows of teeth that was forced to eat some..not so pleasant things” “Ah” “That’s so cool!” Gayatri was very impressed when you showed your other teeth, she was so amazed by this!!

[popeplaceholder]

Conan O'Brien Build Fallout New Vegas

(Quick Disclaimer, this was made as a joke and not for practical viability. Some perks are for practicality but the bit was prioritized)

Have you ever wanted to roleplay as latenight talkshow host Conan O'Brien? Well this is your lucky day!

S.P.E.C.I.A.L.

Strength: 5

Perception: 5

Endurance: 3

Charisma: 6

Intelligence: 8

Agility: 7

Luck: 6

Tagged Skills:

Guns, Survival, Lockpick(for the weapon "Lucky") or Science

The high intelligence was chosen because Conan is very intelligent and a Harvard graduate, and for perks later on. The low endurance is a reference to Conan's jokes about his disproportionate physique, this is also why agility is high because the jokes about his long legs. Luck was chosen for perks, and the extra point was put into charisma because he was a talk show host.

Perks:

Level 0: Small Frame, Good Natured

Level 2, 4, 6: Swift Learner (Inteligence 4)

Level 8: Educated (Inteligence 4)

Level 10: Rapid Reload (Agility 5, Guns 30)

Level 12: Travel Light (Survivial 45)

Level 14: Fortune Finder (Luck 5)

Level 16: Nerd Rage (Inteligence 5, science 50)

Level 18: Math Wrath (Science 70)

Level 20: Cannibal

Level 22: Ghastly Scavenger

Unlike for the perk Skilled, Conan O'Brien is very experienced and learns new things. So you need all 3 ranks of swift learner, and educated. Nerd rage and math wrath were chosen because he is intelligent, pistols were chosen because of this archer sketch he did, travel light because he will only wear suits. Cannibal perks because I think it's funny. Fortune finder because he is rich. All perks are base game.

Apperal:

Dirty Pre-War Businesswear

Formal Wear

President Kimball’s Suit

Dean Domino’s Suit (Dead Money)

Weapons:

Maria (9mm round)

That Gun (Guns 50) (5.56mm round)

Lucky (You need lockpick 75 to get it) (.357 Magnum round)

A Light Shining in Darkness (DLC Honest Hearts) (.45 auto)

Companions:

Veronica, because she's like Sona

[arsene-ee]

I’d really like to hear about your Lone Wanderer if you’re up for it. 🙂

OMGGGG YESSSS

THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR ASKING <3 (fyi she is very self insert bc I want james to be my dad too T-T) Sorry if this is all over the place my brain just goes nyooooooom

So basically her name is Briar, I'm still not sure about her last name, I don't wanna give her a weird last name but I also don't want to give her a basic american last name (I'm not from the states so i have no idea what a good last name would be)

She is a work in progress character, I may have been playing fallout 3 since may but I just kept repeating the beginning lol so I didn't have a lot of character development for her until recently.

I gave her the same s.p.e.c.i.a.l. as james bc I thought it would be adorable outside the vault so

s-5 p-8 e-4 c-7 i-9 a-4 l-3

but recently I have been thinking about lowering intelligence and perception and raising charisma and luck, because I think that would be funny.

in every playthrough I do with her she gets the child at heart perk, so yeah she's a child at heart. her favourite settlement is actually Little Lamplight because 1: it looks cool af and 2: she likes teasing Mayor Maccready.

she's bisexual, but she never was in a relationship before or really felt anything towards her fellow vault inhabitants or anyone she met outside, how she discovered it shall remain a secret to us all (it were the gronak the barbarian comics)

she doesn't have any companions because they are very annoying when it comes to sneaking around (looking at you dogmeat and star paladdin cross)

she her favorite colour is pink.

She carries the teddy (the one from the toy box in "Baby Steps") around with her everywhere, as well as a bible which once belonged to Catherine and then belonged to James until finally she took it with her into the wasteland, although she herself is agnostic it means a lot to her.

I would love to be self indulgent and give her a phobia of dogs but i'm still unsure about it, and it would add a lot to her character because the wasteland is a scary place with actual monsters and her biggest fear being dogs would be interesting to say the least.

She definitely takes like 100% after james lookswise, well structure wise some of her facial features come from catherine but for the most part she's just james' mini me.

her birthday is the Lone Wander's canon birthday 13th of July 2258.

she is very high Karma (i legit cannot be mean to NPCs, I was so upset when I got low Karma for helping that one guy impress Sienna Pretovia)

she wears Jonas' glasses, she doesn't need glasses, but it's a sentimental thing...as well as a fashion statement.

speaking of jonas, he and her were up to mischief quite a lot, he was like an older brother/cousin to her and everytime she got into a fight with Butch she hoped it was jonas that would treat her because she loves to trash talk her classmates (and the overseer) and he tolerates it. (I LOVE JONAS SO DAMN MUCH!!!!!!!)

she scored clinical test subject on her G.O.A.T., which, in my understanding, is really cynical because it would force her dad to experiment on her (I have no idea what a clinical test subject actually does), she wanted to be a pip-boy programmer, she always thought Stanley's work and talk was interesting, she was really dissapointed with her result (honestly I'm pretty sure the results of the G.O.A.T. are actually predetermined by the overseer but that's just my opinion)

she ends up sacraficing herself for project purity, not because she doesn't like the botherhood of steel or something (actually she thinks they are sus but that's not important rn) and she also doesn't want someone else to sacrafice themself for it...her family started it so her family should end it to, that's kind of her way of thinking about it.

this sacrafice is also kind part of my idea of implementing her into fallout 4 (idc about nv tbh), thank you dr. li for becoming part of the institute, I mean Madision must feel horrible first two of her closest confidants die and then their daughter sacrafices herself for their life's (???) work, that must have left her with severe survivor's guilt so her creating a synth version of briar could be kinda her way to cope I guess, but I'm still not sure about this one lol (i just want my girl to interact with the now older maccready because i think that would be funny)

Like I said she's still a work in Progress character. ALSO ALSO I WANNA HEAR ABOUT YOUR LONE WANDERER TOO!!!

[sniperdadmaccready]

reblog this with what you think your irl S.P.E.C.I.A.L. stats are in the tags

[kenjirose]

Rate the fallout companions from your favorite to least favorite

1: Nick Valentine

- He is the only one that seems genuinely interested and devoted to helping you on your journey and find what you’re looking for, Shaun.

- I respect that he prides himself on a sense of serving justice, his story is good and it was genuinely very interesting for me.

- Terminal Hacking is a life saver AUGH thank you Val.

- His voice… His sarcasm…

2: Dogmeat

- Doesn’t talk.

- Never hates you, you can do anything around them.

- You can dress Dogmeat up in collars, bandanas, canine armor, headgear and more.

- Dogmeat will also play with a teddy bear if you give it to him- what a dope guy.

- Is a dog.

3: Codsworth

- Bro is loyal to you even after 200 years. This robot is my real son, he calls me mum. Fuck you Shaun.

4: Curie

- She is literally my wife.

- I adore her voice and accent.

- Supplies me stimpacks which is epic.

5: John Hancock

- Gives me Jack Sparrow vibes. He’s a big smart ass while simultaneously being high asf all the time and it greatly amuses me

- He’s also a big flirt. What a loveable douchebag!

6: Preston Garvey

- Rose why is Preston of all people so high? Yeah, “a new settlement needs your help” can be annoying sometimes, but I personally really like the minutemen quests.

- He just wants to help everyone and with everything and he’s willing to admit that he isn’t strong enough to do it on his own. That makes him the strongest character in my eyes, sure he’s weak in combat but that’s a trait that really speaks to me.

- He knows he isn’t a hero and he’s willing to admit that. But he still strives to be that perfect person, even if it’s far from reach.

- Bonding with him hits hard, I don’t romance him but I love having him as a very close friend. Especially when he opens up to you about how he contemplated suicide. To keep going when you’ve gotten down that low with yourself is also really strong.

- In short I know it’s not a popular opinion, but I love Preston.

7: Paladin Danse

- Best fighter IMO.

- I really like his story esp with helping him improve his view points on the Commonwealth and Synths, as well as himself who ofc, happens to be a Synth.

- Even if he never stops being ENTIRELY racist, even to his own kind.

- He’s very pretty for a boy.

8: MacCready

- Best companion if I wanna be a sarcastic menace.

- Also if I want to get up to some mischief, like stealing and shit.

- His sarcastic dialogue is the best he’s very funny and I love that he plays off of whatever you say.

- Gives me ammo randomly THANK YOU.

- Also his perk is like broken, it’s fucking awesome.

9: Piper

- Super sweet and nice.

- Gives me snacks.

10: Deacon

- Lowkey a meme.

- Fucking hilarious.

11: X6-88

- Highest S.P.E.C.I.A.L. Perks by far.

- He’s cool to look at and his dialogue is fun.

12: Cait

- Doesn’t mind if I act like a dick or take chems.

- Honestly if I had to kin anyone.. she’s most like me I think.

13: Ada

- Doesn’t care whatever you do I’m sure.

- Can be upgraded into a weapon of destruction.

- Eh overall though, no good story.

14: Old Longfellow

- He’s alright. Has a very sad story with his wife.

- Legit an alcoholic.

15: Strong

- Stop hating everything I do bro.

16: Porter Gage

- Annoying asf I hate this guy.

[everygame]

Fallout 4

Developed/Published by: Bethesda Game Studios / Bethesda Softworks Released: 11/10/2015 Completed: 24/05/2024 Completion: Completed the game by following the Railroad path until the end, when I noticed doing the final mission for the Institute would be slightly quicker.

Like many people, off the back of the perfectly cromulent Fallout TV show I though to myself, “gosh, I sure would enjoy some more Fallout right about now” and having completed the series up to New Vegas, I thought, “well, how bad can Fallout 4 be?”

Very bad.

Fallout 4 is an empty vessel. It takes all the signifiers of the series (post-apocalypse! S.P.E.C.I.A.L.! V.A.T.S.! Factions!) and then does… nothing with them. It does nothing with them in style though, with a framing narrative that works so immediately poorly that I have to imagine that it was forced upon the team by an executive, because as we know, the only American executive to ever be right about anything is Howard Phillips.

In Fallout 4, you play a mother or father who, after being frozen in a vault, awakens to discover your partner getting literally fridged and your baby boy being stolen. Finally able to escape your own freezer pod, you head out into the wasteland to seek your lost child.

Now, this is a set-up that requires some urgency, I would say. If I was a father–and I was playing one–I’d be pretty damn fucking determined to find my kid as immediately as possible. It would, let’s say, be a lot more urgent than getting my revenge as in Fallout: New Vegas.

In fact, I’d probably expect that the game would really thread the narrative strongly at the beginning. New Vegas, memorably, beautifully shapes the world into an initial binary decision–get to New Vegas immediately through an impossibly dangerous route, or take the long way round by necessity, but learn a lot on the way.

Fallout 4 does not do this. It dumps you into a wide-open map and then essentially the first quest you are going to happen upon will lead you into a chain where you start doing what the game is really about: building settlements.

*groan*

Before I continue: I understand the first thing you are going to say, which is “well if you’re determined to roleplay a desperate father, just head straight to the next place they tell you to go!”

It’s not unfair, but I want to express: the game does not want you to do this. It simply does not want you to move the main story forward quickly. “Thou shalt get distracted by bullshit every god-damned time” is a very funny thing for The Ghoul in the Fallout show to say (and to be fair, he does seem to have spent several hundred years on side quests rather than finding his family) but it’s not actually how a player is supposed to feel.

I have complained about settlement building before. It’s frustrating in No Man’s Sky, and it’s actually a bigger ballache here, as the game is unbelievably specific about where you can place objects, but also completely unintelligent about it, meaning that if you, let’s say, wish to place a fence around a settlement (as you would) half the time it won’t let you place the piece where you want it, and then if you can place it it completely ignores elevation, so you’ll end up either stuck with a fence that’s too low to continue at points, or that’s floating absurdly in the air.

(The fix to this, insanely, is to play a weird game where you place fences, then posts, then delete the fences, then replace the posts to get the elevation right, then replace the fences. It takes forever.)

(And it turns out fences don't matter anyway, because if your settlements get attacked, enemy spawn points are often in the middle of your settlements, rendering any realistic defenses moot.)

I spent far too long on fucking around with this trying to make it fun but it’s not, so eventually I gave up on that aspect of the game completely except when the main story forced me to, which was, frankly, more than I would like.

And to get on to that main story. This main story makes me question: Do Bethesda even like Fallout? Now, Fallout has its share of unbelievably goofy, easily arguably inconsistent world-building. Super Mutants, Hubologists, even the Enclave is a bit silly. But almost the entire story of this game relates to a super-powered science community making literal replicants. Also Terminators.

I guess I kind of get it as just adding to the pop-culture post-apocalypse mish-mash, but the science behind creating robots that like… bleed and shit just seems so far from tube TVs and nuclear-powered cars, and while you play it feels like it steps away from the hard-scrabble survival context of Fallout enough that you just don’t really feel like that’s what you’re playing at all. 

Being as charitable as I can muster, it’s possible it could have worked if it didn’t completely subsume the narrative of a father just trying to get his kid back. Now, admittedly, my hero seemed quite happy to fuck about doing literally anything else, but there comes a particular point in the story where it becomes aggressively clear that they don’t have a meaningful way to conclude that story, and it honestly becomes rather nonsensical as you end up either helping or subjugating a new robot race. They actually lampshade it at one point, as you might walk past a character that says something like "if we're creating the future of the human race, why are we building human-like robots? What does that achieve???"

They never explain it, and any and all emotional stakes you might hope for from the setup are completely blown apart to drive towards a “pick a faction!” ending, and the worst thing of all is that nothing you do actually matters anyway.

You know how in Fallout the best thing is when you finish it and you get to see how you changed the wasteland? You’re like “oh cool, those two characters settled down together” or “amazing… that character got over their trauma… by becoming an evil warlord” or whatever. Not here! Here you get an insanely generic video that barely changes between the factions and nothing else.

This aligns with the fact that a huge amount of quests in the game are “ambient” quests, which means that they’re just generic busy work for one faction or another, and with the settlement building, the entire game smells like a dry run for Bethesda’s later Fallout 76 as a proving ground to see how much an audience can put up with not very much bespoke content. I have to admit I was suckered by this, assuming that if I just kept placing maguffins for a certain character the quest-line would end and something cool would happen, but then I worked out that it would just go on forever and literally every quest in the game was just going to be “go to a generic location, kill everyone/kill someone specific/place an object” and once you see behind the curtain, there’s no going back.

In fact, in Fallout 4 there are almost no meaningful decisions to be made at all. It’s possible I missed some incredible bespoke quests, but the most exciting ones I fell into (for example, an entire quest-line pretending to be a silver-age radio hero that meant I spent the rest of the game looking like the fucking Shadow because no other armour turned out to be better) don’t even have any moral dimension; maybe it was the move to the Mass Effect-style dialogue system, but the only thing it ever seems to affect is how much a companion likes you, so you just do whatever you know they like. So I went from a saint to an arsehole about halfway through the game and it didn’t make a lick of difference.

And speaking of those mechanics, they’re broken anyway. The game lets you save anywhere (good) but also makes all skill checks rolls (rather than previously, which were strict stat checks) so your stats barely matter unless you’re a fucking saint (don’t pretend that you are.) 

Sure, sometimes character A ends up dead or character B hates you, but it feels arbitrary.  Ultimately in Fallout 4 there’s really just no role-playing. The game is actually just a grind, with some choice in which grind you want: do you want to grind flavourless missions to level up, or do you want to grind thanklessly building settlements?

I didn’t want to do either of those things. I wanted to play a Fallout.

Will I ever play it again? I put far too much time into this, and I didn’t touch any of the DLC apart from one featuring a vault which I did more-or-less by accident. Maybe the DLC is chock-a-block with the characterful narratives that are lacking from the main game. If they are: that makes me even more annoyed, and I’m not going to fucking play them anyway.

Final Thought: This article originally featured a 1000+ word lamentation about the lack of actually useful game criticism because I find it breathtaking that if you look for even contemporary reviews of this game they say nothing useful about it and how it fails to live up to any of the values of the Fallout franchise, just being generic product review shill shit, and by this point in 2024 anyway all you’re ever going to find online about the game is guides, endless guides. By 2025 it’ll just all be AI summaries of the guides that aren’t even correct.

Anyway, at least you’re now one of the chosen few who get to know Fallout 4 is a load of shite without having to actually play it. Unless you have already, in which case: I’m sorry.

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[bendysinitiation]

pspspsps you should really check out the fallout 4 s.p.e.c.i.a.l video series :D it'll fit into your playlist just fine! Only 15 or so minutes in total

Oh yea I’ve seen some of it a long time ago! I think I remember how they translated the monsters into that style being very interesting. I’ll definitely check it out again.

Wait how dare you call me like a cat /j

[breeding-puppie]

You're very welcome! I hope you have a GREAT time playing Fallout 4. I recommend using the Fallout Wiki for extra help. ALSO ALSO ALSO!! There's no soft level cap in Fallout 4 but there is a hard cap at 65,535 but you'll learn all skills and max out all stars waaaaayyyy before that. In like the level 270s. I recommend increasing your S.P.E.C.I.A.L. stats for a bit and throw in some other perks like life giver and the damage resistance perks and eventually strong back. Increases health, damage resistance and carry weight respectively ☺️. Any other questions you have you may feel free to message me whenever you wish to do so. If you wish to do so. I'm kinda jealous haha. Playing Fallout 4 my first time I had no idea what *I* was doing but I had fun!

Pro tips! Save your fusion cores until you can get the nuclear physicist perk which requires you to max out your intelligence and max out your SPECIAL stats before you get the SPECIAL stat bobbleheads. They have a Max level up cap of 10 but you can increase them beyond that 😀😊❤️

It's definitely been a blast (pun intended)!! I love learning all the lore and finding new weird stuff as I explore