Fallout 4 – Page 6

Be Nice to the People

November 20, 2015 by Belghast

Bad Luck

Be Nice to the People — This looks totally legit right?

Traditionally I do this Friday thing where I talk about one of the many “MMOs Worth Playing” but honestly…. today I am just not feeling it. I am feeling more annoyed and frustrated about MMOs than I am feeling the love right now, and in this current mindset it is probably best that I simply don’t talk about a game. The purpose of the column is to highlight a game and talk about the things I love about it, in the hopes that it might nudge people into giving it a try. In order to really do that I have to be feeling happy and enjoying the world around me… and right now I am kinda grumpy. Granted I am grumpy over a stupid reason. Right now I feel like I am one of a handful of people who didn’t get into the Overwatch beta weekend. I am largely annoyed by this, because I am in fact one of the people who went ahead and pre-ordered the game knowing eventually that I would want to play it. You would think… that if you have a bit single weekend only stress test that you might want to include the people who are already signed up to spend money on your game.

Maybe that is screwed up in my logic, but it seems to me that they should have pulled from the pool of sign ups first for this one in particular. I am not saying that about the normal always on Beta process… that one is completely luck of the draw. This one however… when you are testing a game for a short period of time… it might be cool to thank the folks who have already pressed that button and said “Yes, I want your game”. Frustrations aside, I am hoping all of my friends who are going to be playing it this weekend will enjoy themselves and have lots of things to talk about. Honestly this test will give me a better feeling of how I am going to like the game, since a lot of the AggroChat folks seemed to have gotten in. This is the hardest part about Betas is standing on the outside watching your friends have fun… and then trying really damned hard to be happy for them… and not sad that you got left out.

People Behind The Thing

It's okay to be sad/frustrated/upset with a thing, but never okay to attack the human being who's job is to represent that thing

— Frosty Belghast (@belghast) November 19, 2015

So even though I am frustrated, I am directing my frustrations at an entity… the game Overwatch and or the company Blizzard behind it. I realize that that company is made up of people, and it has to be super tiring to hear people raging at them constantly. I realize over the years I have said some pretty caustic and even pyroclastic things about video games and or the companies behind them. At no point however did I aim that criticism at the people themselves. I never joined the chorus of “I Hate Ghostcrawler” nor will I join any other personally targeted witch hunt in the future. I can dislike a thing… but still have the utmost respect for the people for whom it is their job. Much of this week has felt like I have been attempting to give lessons in how to treat people with simple human dignity… and yesterday continued that trend. These companies have people working there, that go to work every single day hoping to do something cool… and often times get met with this constant wall of negativity. It is no wonder when someone reads one too many “fuck you” posts targeted at them that occasionally community staff snaps. Ultimately how good of a job, and how much satisfaction in it… would you have if someone stood over your desk heckling you the entire day?

Now you can take the path of “they willfully accepted the job”, but that too is utter bullshit. They probably took the job for the same reason that any one of us who are gaming addicts would jump at the chance to do the same thing. The folks that work at games companies do so because they love games with every fiber of their being, so much so that they are willing to sacrifice basic things like stability, and normal working hours… for the chance of being part of something they at least once felt was awesome. So if this week I happen to be complaining about Overwatch… I know that behind the scenes there is a crew of people who are working insane hours right now, and trying their damnedest to please as many people as they can… while at the same time desperately fighting to roll out the best possible product that they can make. I’ve been lucky to know enough people that work at enough companies to know that all of these fine people are grinding themselves into the ground all in the hopes of making each of us happy. So the next time you level an attack at a thing… please make sure it is targeted at the thing… and not the voice of the person hanging out in front of it for whom it is their job to represent said thing. I most definitely don’t believe that games should be above criticism… but I do believe that we shouldn’t be targeting our bile at a human being.

Hoping For a Great Friday

My hope is that I can go into this Friday and not see anything else that makes me sad about humanity. For those of you in the Overwatch beta weekend… have a blast, take lots of screenshots, record lots of video… because I expect some really amazing content as a result. For those of us watching from the sidelines… there are dozens of other things we should be doing. I personally am now 55 hours into Fallout 4… and have yet to make it to Diamond City. I’m also in a strange place when it comes to Final Fantasy XIV where I am logging in each day to do Beast Tribe dailies, but not finding much drive to do anything else. I am in that strange place where I took a long enough break from the game to where I am completely out of touch with what I was doing before I left, but have not been away long enough to make me super nostalgic enough to dive back in with vigor. I am also still fighting the urge to play World of Warcraft, and I am scared that sooner or later I will be giving into it… if for no reason other than to get it out of my system again. I am in a place where I want into the Legion beta more than any other beta in a long while, mostly because I hope beyond hope that Deathknights are fun again. The fact that I had to switch back to my warrior during Warlords honestly was a bit of bummer, and I would love to be a Worgen DK once more. Anyways… that was a long “outro” but hopefully you have a great weekend, and stay safe and happy and warm.

AggroChat #83 – After the Bomb

May 21, 2019November 15, 2015 by AggroChat

We talk about raiding, and get nostalgic about point and click adventure games. Additionally there has been one game that all of us have been playing this week… and even though it is the game of the month there is no way we could stop from talking about it as well. That’s right we start digging into Fallout 4 and all of the different ways we have been playing it. We are keeping it largely spoiler free and talking more about the mechanics and exploration of the game.

Subjects we talked about…

Wildstar Raiding
General MMO Raiding
Wildstar Runes
Time Travelling Games
EvoLand
Day of the Tentacle
Point and Click Adventure Games
Sam and Max
Full Throttle
King’s Quest
Quest for Glory
Grim Fandango
Fallout
Baldur’s Gate
Fallout 4

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Joys of Exploration

November 12, 2015 by Belghast

Hole in the Bedroom

Yesterday was a strange day, largely because it felt like I was having to be part of something that I had no control over. Wednesday was of course Veterans Day, and as is usually the case I get it off work. Which I immediately thought would be amazing… since I had Fallout 4 to keep me company. The problem being that they did not in fact install the door in the bedroom Saturday like we thought they would. As a result they needed a new target date, and since I was going to be home anyways… we ended up with Wednesday. So I spent most of the day trying to play Fallout 4, without allowing myself to get too engaged in the game play as to miss the extremely subtle knocks that they needed my help with something. The problem is… when there is constant hammering… it is impossible to get a knock from just more hammering. We gave them my text for this reason… or at least for the reason of contacting me directly, but alas that didn’t actually do much.

The scariest moment of the day was when I went down to check on progress and there was a huge gaping hole in the side of our house. It looked like they had to take a lot more than they originally planned and I am sitting there trying to sort out how it is all going to go back together. However by evening they had a door installed and we had moved all of our stuff back in place around it. The awesome thing is it works beautifully and we had this cabinet next to the door that we were concerned might impede it. However it seems to swing open just fine with the cabinet in place, which means… we are going to now have to do something major to our back yard to also make it more inhabitable. I have a feeling that my wife at least is going to want to build some sort of a proper patio just outside the bedroom for sipping coffee in her rocking chair or similar activities. We are hoping there will be enough of a gap between them finishing their project and the waste company picking up the dumpster that we can maybe throw a bunch of crap away from the back yard. At the very least I can almost see the end in this project in sight… and maybe just maybe there will be a point on the near horizon where I can park in my own damned driveway.

Meandering

According to Steam I am now 18 hours into the game… and at this point I have done next to nothing. My quest driven friends are talking about this thing they did or that thing they did… but me… I am building a town. I’ve always played Fallout with a base builder mentality even though it was never really terribly supported. Being the horrific pack rat that I am, I largely played in a pretty predictable manner. I would roam around the wastes until something caught my eye, and then go explore it. During the course of exploring it… I would end up filling up my own inventory and that of my companion… in this case Dogmeat. Then I would fast travel back to base… dump the items I found into a series of containers that I used for sorting such things, rest up if I was low on hit points… and then venture out again. For the Walking Dead fans… I play the game much like Morgan was living his life… making sure to clear everything before moving on. There is a sense of accomplishment at knowing that you took down every raider in a camp, or got every drop of good out of a complex you just explored.

What makes this all so much better this time around is that for the very first time… it feels like I am making the wasteland a better place. In the past becoming the “Savior of the Wasteland” largely involved killing everyone that did not believe like you did. Which I am sure helped the fledgling towns, but it didn’t feel like I was doing more than being a gun for hire. This time around I can build up settlements, and recruit new settlers giving them a nice place to live and the safety of decent protections. I feel like town by town I am actually fixing the problems that were there, and setting up a better way of life as I blaze through the map. “Blaze” might be the wrong word… because realistically at this point I have seen next to nothing. I am largely just fiddling in the same corner of the map that I started in. There are still a bunch of things that I have quite yet to figure out… like how magazines and bobbleheads work this time. So far I have found a single bobblehead, and a handful of magazines. I am also not 100% sure how much I like the talent system which seems a bit more arcane than simply slotting points in skills. Regardless… I am hooked beyond reason and look forward to little else than coming back home tonight after work and exploring some more. This game so far… is exactly what I hoped it would be and more.

Fallout First Impressions

November 11, 2015 by Belghast

Non-Spoiler First Thoughts

War Never Changes…. and neither does Fallout, and that is a statement I mean in the best possible way. When a sequel to a beloved franchise is released, you never quite know if you are going to get absolute greatness like Skyrim… or if you are going to be stuck with a Master of Orion 3. For those who loved MOO3 I apologize… but that game was horrible and broke from far too many of the tenets of the original franchise. Fallout 4 however… keeps all of the best features from Fallout 3 and New Vegas… and applies a next generation coat of paint and features to it. If you have been an aficionado of Bethesda games for very long you will notice that several of the really nice features of Skyrim have been implemented into this engine. Everything from the loading screen item previews… to the ability to favorite weapons and swap between them quickly in combat… are direct lineage to Skyrim. What you also get is some genuine evolution of the engine, in the form of just how content dense the world is and how much of it can be fiddled with.

At this point according to Steam I am roughly four hours into the game, and I have to say… that was the fastest four hours of my life. I mentioned yesterday that I did not stay up Tuesday night to play the game, but instead had to wait until after work yesterday. Additionally we have contractors coming to the house to put a door in our bedroom today… so we had to do a lightning round of cleaning before I finally got to sit down and play with my precious. From the moment I set down… every time I was aware that time had passed… it was an hour and not fifteen minutes like I had thought. Most of that time was spent not actively doing any quests or following the story line really. The first handful of events happen to play out in a pretty organic fashion, and I apparently followed the story line to a point… without really meaning to. I remember watching the demo footage from E3, and I have for the most part made it through the sequence that they showed… which happens pretty early in the game. It gives you a neatly framed vignette that allows you to understand some of the forces in the world that you are contending with.

Packrat Friendly

For me at least the best part of this game is that they have taken things to essentially their logical conclusions. If you are living in a world with limited resources, then essentially everything you come across could be useful. In the past I was a horrible packrat and constantly on the brink over being overburdened. Why was I carrying fifty coffee mugs…. who knew… but I might need them someday. Those tendencies are absolutely paid off in full in this game because quite literally every piece of crap you find in the world is useful either to modify your weapons and armor… or to construct things for the new base building side game. Pretty early on, you end up in the neighborhood you once lived in. This then becomes your base of operations allowing you to scrap materials there, and build new structures. As you venture out into the world you find survivors that you can invite back to your little sanctuary, and in a fashion very reminiscent to State of Decay you have to watch after their well being and their defenses. I am assuming as your settlement gets bigger you will become the target of raiders and the like trying to take your hard earned resources.

The other big noticeable change in this game is that everything seems more dangerous. Radiation is a real problem this time, because instead of causing you to lose health over time… it reduces your maximum health pool. All of the old baddies are also more deadly… Bloat Flies move more erratically, Mole Rats can burrow under ground and pop up when you least expect them…. and move insanely fast… and there are new dangerous like giant mutated mosquitoes. All of this and more I have encountered within a short radius of where you actually start the game. Everything I am talking about is within visual distance of the Vault 111 entrance. Essentially this is a game that is going to eat every waking moment for a long while… because right now I feel like I have not even begun to unwrap the wrapping of the game… let alone actually dip below the surface. The big takeaway is that it is the Fallout game play that you either love or hate… with more advanced systems and more fluidity of character movement and actions. Everything “feels better” and I know this largely because I played quite a bit of New Vegas Tuesday night as a sort of placebo for Fallout 4 while waiting on it to unlock. The changes are extremely noticeable, even from the level the engine was at during Skyrim. I’m now going to shut up about my impressions… and launch the game and lose myself in it again.