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Yes, I finally got my mitts on a copy of Fallout 4. And yes, I know this game has been out for over a year, now. Aren’t you supposed to wait awhile for fallout to settle before you chance roaming into it?
I mean really that question applies to both the nuclear event and Bethesda games in general. Bethesda is notorious both for the ambitious scope and sophisticated storylines of their open-world games like the Fallout and Elder Scrolls franchises, and the terribly buggy state those games are inevitably released in.
Don’t believe me? It is known.
Fallout 4 was reported to be no exception, up to and including an “unofficial patch mod” being put together and maintained by fans once the studio itself decided to stop fixing things post-launch, same as happened with Skyrim.
Why is this tolerated? Even rewarded, to the point where the pre-orders of Fallout 4 (not to mention the day one buys) were quite healthy? Well, because of the aforementioned scope and ambition. I’ll lay odds quite a few gamers were just as impressed as I was the first time a dragon randomly attacked a town they were wandering through — not a cutscene, not a scripted event, a true random encounter that nonetheless had the dragon landing on various rooftops and wrecking face while you and the townsfolk and guards tried to fight it off. Or for that matter you could just sneak off and let whatever was going to happen, happen, even if that meant a few people you’d gotten to know were fried corpses next time you came by. It’s one thing for a game to do big setpiece fights under carefully controlled circumstances, but Bethesda took the chains off and it was a glorious experience. In the face of that, I’m willing to forgive a few bugs.
Well, that, and by having patience I get both less bugs and a lower price. Also more mod options — and Bethesda can be credited for being far more supportive of a thriving mod community for its games than other major companies like EA or Ubisoft, who at times seem totally antagonistic to the idea of marshaling the love of their player base to do cool stuff. I guess this is again where Bethesda’s “chaos over order” prioritizing works out. I’ve only barely started the vanilla game so haven’t really felt the notion for too much experimentation, but I did grab a highly recommended one called “True Storms” which seems to be quite stable so far and takes the already impressive weather effects to a next level of immersion. Trying to fight raiders in the midst of a blinding, swirling dust storm, or even just watching rain fall realistically through the holes in a building’s roof, really brings the wasteland to life for me.
Of course the biggest reason I’ve barely started the game so far is the first-time ever built-in feature of Settlements. Yeah, you get to build and manage a post-apocalyptic town. More than one, eventually. If you’re any kind of interested in such features, it’s pure cocaine, and best of all you finally have a use for all the junk lying around as you salvage it for parts. Seeing as the character generation now has a bodyslider feature for the possibility of a more heavy-set protagonist, I was sorely tempted to restart the game with an Uncle Chuck amalgam, but I decided to stick with my original go at making a Rosa. Building generators and such? She’s good with that stuff.
Say, there’s a question. Have any of you out there made any Zombie Ranch characters for a game, on or offline? I have a habit, at least where post-apoc or science fiction settings are concerned. It’s probably fortunate in a sense that we aren’t *too* widely known — occasionally I’ve pondered how much it would suck if you were, say, J.K. Rowling and wanted to play Harry Potter on an MMO, where at best you might be able snag xxHarrrreePotter156xx as a character name. Not that J.K. Rowling is an MMO gamer (that I know of), but then likely also once you get that big a name you don’t have time to play much, or would just as soon be playing some other character than the ones of yours everyone knows and demands.
In the meantime: Fallout 4. Liking it a lot so far! More thoughts probably at some point down the radiation-and-rubble-strewn road.
5 thoughts on “What’s old is nuke again…”
Jonathon
It would be fun to make a Zombie Ranch character, but really, I haven’t gotten a feel for the attitudes, motivations, and backgrounds of any one character. (Subtle hint: I’m really looking forward to more comics and learning more about individual characters!) So at this point, I believe that any character would be the equivalent of a protagonist in the very first CRPGs: perfunctory. Of course they are going to get stuff done, but why?
I’m looking forward to finding out the “why” behind each character. Beyond just the feeding-domesticated-zombies-a-meal-of-body-parts to maintain the ranch. Until I learn more about the characters’ “why”, the game can simply be a do-this-to-get-the-highscore bare-bones game, and it would be good enough to pretend I’m doing it as a Zombie Ranch character. A roleplaying character begs for detailed background information, which in turn begs for more information about your characters. I’m looking forward to that.
SteelRaven
I could see creating a Zombie Ranch community in the early days on Day Z but I think that wonderful experiment has lost allot of the more organic elements that made it unique (how people formed there own groups without any standing class or social structure built into the game)
Clint
Yeesh, I never got the usual email notice that people had been responding to this!
Anyhow, yeah, I can see how people would be reluctant to go into any sort of deep RPG with someone else’s character they still don’t know much about. I forget sometimes that my perspective has a lot more details than I’ve made explicit in the comic. Having dipped a foot into Day Z myself, yeah, it’s one of those where you could get away with just recreating an appearance without worrying about motives. Something like Mass Effect or Fallout, different story…
On that note, I hope it hasn’t been too problematic to enjoying the story. A very important detail regarding Suzie should be revealed next Issue, and I do want to squeeze in character moments for everyone else, just a matter of appropriate timing. Your patience (and continued interest!) is appreciated, Jonathon.
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