R.Graves
Confirmed Retard
i did like maybe half a playthrough 10 years ago lets try again
out of the gate it doesnt launch properly and forces my mouse away from the taskbar. an even worse red herring than my first playthrough nearly ten years ago when my pipboy disappeared right after picking it up. second launch doesnt work either. thread might be dead in the water. third try is not the charm, i was actually forced to restard my computer this time. starting from a desktop shortcut seems to have finally worked.
Title Screen
forshadowing this entries obsession with tinkering and engineering from the jump the title screens shows off power armor in a workshop and a workbench. music starts off appropriatley melancholy but slowly builds until its oddly herioc. strikes me as out of place.
Opening movie
graphics were really impressive until i realised it was live action lmao. anyways having one of the potential player characters narrate was a wierd move. showing a picture of his wife in the opening is a worse one.i guess any version of nora that isnt that photo is noncanon. heavily leaning into the male MC as conanical in general. the pip boy mk1 being that bulky AND clearly intended to be wrist mounted is really dumb. "woke up from the american dream" is a baller line.
character creation
definitley and improvemnt over the last 2 games but character customization is a meme and a waste of time especially because the movie shows us what nora looked like. im gonna be picking nora with a default face and name because she has better voice acting and frankly looks better.
Prologue
nice small details. mr handy box, notes on the fridge. theres a vault tec poster on the fridge for some reason yet nate seems annoyed at the salesmans presence and nora has the option to act like she's never even heard of it. the lip sync is especially ulgy and distracting. they could've just not bothered and it would've been fine. the family being pre-selected for the vault based on military service is really cool. potentially sinister mistreatment of veterans considering what most of the vaults are. insane the all the information he needed was what the wife's name is. not how big the family was or anything like that. enclave vertibird showing up despite never being put into service. the bombs dropping literally 30 seconds after the vault tec guy showed up at the door is really stupid. guess bureaucracy moves fast in this setting somehow. or guess not because hes not at the vault hes even being rejected while we get in despite not so much as telling him our names. just "infant, adult male, adult female. ok get in" lmao? vault tec staff are 0% rattled by anything thats happening right now. thats wierd. this might be the first game where vault suits look like how they did in old concept art. the voiced protagonist thing is more immersion breaking than it is helping it. nora calmly saying "time for a whole new life" the delivery here is calm and nonchalant. i also didnt ask her to say that literally just be quiet. having video game protagonists comment on random things always just makes them seem wildly low IQ. and it also just highlights when they dont comment on things they should. radroaches crawling on walls is really cool. id assumed the radroaches got in when kellog came in but the door was still closed? if they closed the door on the way out how'd the radroaches get there? this opening went on way too long just to say nothing.
leaving the vault
immediately hitting the player with codsworth makes the opening even more redundant because its essentially all exposition anyway half of which is oddly exposition of thing the player already know TO codsworth. mostly a double waste of time. the conversation with codsworth is a tonal nightmare. our spouse was shot in the face and our child stolen like 10 minutes ago and we're doing this immediately. even ignoring how much emotion he seems to have this is wierd and offputting. i somehow have 8 quests before doing anything. im assuming this is the dlc being integrated as lazily as possible. par for the course for the series. exploring sanctuary isnt particularly fun. its mind numbing nook and cranny checking but thats open world games for you. id probably give it more of a pass if i liked the game up till now. playing the high honey tape forces personality traits onto your supposed blank slate character. they shouldve just went full on defined character for this game at this point damn. given no leads on shaun i wander off i guess. im not having fun yet.
Dogmeat
finding him at "red rocket" truck stop is 100% a dog dick joke. hes louder than all other audio in the game and can open doors for some reason. bethesda seemed to have been really focused on adding more animations than previous games. bending down to pet dogmeat, loading holotapes etc.
Concord
being talked into a giant shootout despite being a lawyer (thanks hi honey) is crazy. its a fun enough set piece i guess and the combat is fun here. dont know who was controlling the lights on the mannaquin room. couldve been motion sensored but theres a lever throwing sound effect played when they come on. the effort put into comabt animations is definetly felt and appreciated. the inability to side with the raiders is disappointing but whatever i guess. we are basically talking about a shooter here. lack of choice and being underwritten is the game's MO from what i remember. how the fuck are these loading screens so fucking long??? i thought SSDs were supposed to eliminate this. anyway further confirmation of prewar vertibirds. lmao. mama murphy predicting the deathclaw with some cliche lines. all of these buidlings are either inaccessible or have nothing in them. been playing a lot of morrowind lately, and in the game if a building was there you could go in. feels like a downgrade. Nora seems to know bottlecaps are money for no reason. the power armor feels good against the low level raiders but once the deathclaw shows up it gets goofy. the thing just eats infinite bullets and shreds through the armor. the minutemen seem to have been to sanctuary before but codsworth didnt mention them. its mama murphy that ultimately gives you the vauguest lead ever with some vision or feeling she had. go to diamond city. trashcan carla's directions to diamond city are literally "just keep going youll see it eventually" after having fully explored concord and having found nothing at all besides some stuff to shoot im still bored. very strange that no one lives here in concord with so many buildings fully intact. onward i guess
Road to diamond city
came across a stand off. failed a speech check. shot some guys. guess it was over a drug payment or someting idk. a payment for jet. muh continuity.
im in lexington i guess now. there's some raiders. feel like i took a wrong turn. the purgatory feeling i always get from bethesda's games is setting in now. found some terminals. apparently the raiders wanted to recreate mama murphy and thats why they were attacking garvey in concord. genuinely interesting story hook i wish they actually told it instead of just using it as set dressing for a couple shooting galleries. this couldve been fleshed out into a good introductory conflict for the game. never found that third named raider in the corvega plant. rip i guess. its not as tho she would've had dialogue beyond some generic combat barks anyway. the view from atop the plant is great and makes you imagine a world full of content and stories. from the looks of things so far ill have to keep imagining. wandered around. an entire church asset recycled. the asset reuse seems more noticable here than in 3 or new vegas. maybe its because everything is so plastic looking idk. im in charleston now running ghouls are still goofy and they just look like puddy men. a bad redesign overall. i still have no clue if im even on the right track the directions were so bad. killed a raider named sparta. wonder why he was named. maybe he has a story on a terminal somewhere. what a terrible way for an rpg to tell its stories. 3 full towns and no new characters, factions, or real content even. fuck this im going back garvey.
Back to sanctuary
the settlement building does "just work". i wish it wasnt so customizable and was a series of straight upgrade paths because placing shit manually and trying to make things look good feels like a chore. im literally just cleaning and doing chores here. what a fun mechanic amirite? anyways the choice of whether or not to support mama murphy's drug addiction for your own benifit is an interesting moral dilemma to present the player with. still they used jet here. muh continuity.the menuing in this game is awkward. forcing me to use the arrow keys and the enter key means i have to constantly take my hand off the mouse which gets annoying after a while. might switch to a controller later. dont have enough food to do sturges quest so i do garveys. end up reporting to someone who doesnt even so much as have a name. very engaging stuff. anyways she sends me to kill raiders who oddly enough do have names. i never found anything else out about them. the fog in this game is thicker than silent hill jesus christ. got some plants and did all the quests to set up sanctuary. shit was tedious. garvey gives some backstory. stuff actually happened before the game started thats crazy. there was some kind of betrayal i guess. garvey acts like he doesnt know we just woke up for some reason. im a general of the minutemen. this idea of building a faction back from actual ground zero is really cool for storytelling potential but unfortunately its just in service of placing stuff down in random towns.
Wandering
encountered a bloodbug. yet another unispired [ANIMAL BUT BIG] design bethesda is so fond of. cool name tho alliteration is always fun. Wandered around and found wayne gorski. ghouled himself prewar yet somehow also has a wasteland survival guide to diamond city. lmao? first synth encounter. one of them bugged out and became almost impossible to hit reguardless of percentage or shooting them at point blank range. yet another large city with no characters or quests in it. 3 more towns with nobody living in them.
out of the gate it doesnt launch properly and forces my mouse away from the taskbar. an even worse red herring than my first playthrough nearly ten years ago when my pipboy disappeared right after picking it up. second launch doesnt work either. thread might be dead in the water. third try is not the charm, i was actually forced to restard my computer this time. starting from a desktop shortcut seems to have finally worked.
Title Screen
forshadowing this entries obsession with tinkering and engineering from the jump the title screens shows off power armor in a workshop and a workbench. music starts off appropriatley melancholy but slowly builds until its oddly herioc. strikes me as out of place.
Opening movie
graphics were really impressive until i realised it was live action lmao. anyways having one of the potential player characters narrate was a wierd move. showing a picture of his wife in the opening is a worse one.i guess any version of nora that isnt that photo is noncanon. heavily leaning into the male MC as conanical in general. the pip boy mk1 being that bulky AND clearly intended to be wrist mounted is really dumb. "woke up from the american dream" is a baller line.
character creation
definitley and improvemnt over the last 2 games but character customization is a meme and a waste of time especially because the movie shows us what nora looked like. im gonna be picking nora with a default face and name because she has better voice acting and frankly looks better.
Prologue
nice small details. mr handy box, notes on the fridge. theres a vault tec poster on the fridge for some reason yet nate seems annoyed at the salesmans presence and nora has the option to act like she's never even heard of it. the lip sync is especially ulgy and distracting. they could've just not bothered and it would've been fine. the family being pre-selected for the vault based on military service is really cool. potentially sinister mistreatment of veterans considering what most of the vaults are. insane the all the information he needed was what the wife's name is. not how big the family was or anything like that. enclave vertibird showing up despite never being put into service. the bombs dropping literally 30 seconds after the vault tec guy showed up at the door is really stupid. guess bureaucracy moves fast in this setting somehow. or guess not because hes not at the vault hes even being rejected while we get in despite not so much as telling him our names. just "infant, adult male, adult female. ok get in" lmao? vault tec staff are 0% rattled by anything thats happening right now. thats wierd. this might be the first game where vault suits look like how they did in old concept art. the voiced protagonist thing is more immersion breaking than it is helping it. nora calmly saying "time for a whole new life" the delivery here is calm and nonchalant. i also didnt ask her to say that literally just be quiet. having video game protagonists comment on random things always just makes them seem wildly low IQ. and it also just highlights when they dont comment on things they should. radroaches crawling on walls is really cool. id assumed the radroaches got in when kellog came in but the door was still closed? if they closed the door on the way out how'd the radroaches get there? this opening went on way too long just to say nothing.
leaving the vault
immediately hitting the player with codsworth makes the opening even more redundant because its essentially all exposition anyway half of which is oddly exposition of thing the player already know TO codsworth. mostly a double waste of time. the conversation with codsworth is a tonal nightmare. our spouse was shot in the face and our child stolen like 10 minutes ago and we're doing this immediately. even ignoring how much emotion he seems to have this is wierd and offputting. i somehow have 8 quests before doing anything. im assuming this is the dlc being integrated as lazily as possible. par for the course for the series. exploring sanctuary isnt particularly fun. its mind numbing nook and cranny checking but thats open world games for you. id probably give it more of a pass if i liked the game up till now. playing the high honey tape forces personality traits onto your supposed blank slate character. they shouldve just went full on defined character for this game at this point damn. given no leads on shaun i wander off i guess. im not having fun yet.
Dogmeat
finding him at "red rocket" truck stop is 100% a dog dick joke. hes louder than all other audio in the game and can open doors for some reason. bethesda seemed to have been really focused on adding more animations than previous games. bending down to pet dogmeat, loading holotapes etc.
Concord
being talked into a giant shootout despite being a lawyer (thanks hi honey) is crazy. its a fun enough set piece i guess and the combat is fun here. dont know who was controlling the lights on the mannaquin room. couldve been motion sensored but theres a lever throwing sound effect played when they come on. the effort put into comabt animations is definetly felt and appreciated. the inability to side with the raiders is disappointing but whatever i guess. we are basically talking about a shooter here. lack of choice and being underwritten is the game's MO from what i remember. how the fuck are these loading screens so fucking long??? i thought SSDs were supposed to eliminate this. anyway further confirmation of prewar vertibirds. lmao. mama murphy predicting the deathclaw with some cliche lines. all of these buidlings are either inaccessible or have nothing in them. been playing a lot of morrowind lately, and in the game if a building was there you could go in. feels like a downgrade. Nora seems to know bottlecaps are money for no reason. the power armor feels good against the low level raiders but once the deathclaw shows up it gets goofy. the thing just eats infinite bullets and shreds through the armor. the minutemen seem to have been to sanctuary before but codsworth didnt mention them. its mama murphy that ultimately gives you the vauguest lead ever with some vision or feeling she had. go to diamond city. trashcan carla's directions to diamond city are literally "just keep going youll see it eventually" after having fully explored concord and having found nothing at all besides some stuff to shoot im still bored. very strange that no one lives here in concord with so many buildings fully intact. onward i guess
Road to diamond city
came across a stand off. failed a speech check. shot some guys. guess it was over a drug payment or someting idk. a payment for jet. muh continuity.
im in lexington i guess now. there's some raiders. feel like i took a wrong turn. the purgatory feeling i always get from bethesda's games is setting in now. found some terminals. apparently the raiders wanted to recreate mama murphy and thats why they were attacking garvey in concord. genuinely interesting story hook i wish they actually told it instead of just using it as set dressing for a couple shooting galleries. this couldve been fleshed out into a good introductory conflict for the game. never found that third named raider in the corvega plant. rip i guess. its not as tho she would've had dialogue beyond some generic combat barks anyway. the view from atop the plant is great and makes you imagine a world full of content and stories. from the looks of things so far ill have to keep imagining. wandered around. an entire church asset recycled. the asset reuse seems more noticable here than in 3 or new vegas. maybe its because everything is so plastic looking idk. im in charleston now running ghouls are still goofy and they just look like puddy men. a bad redesign overall. i still have no clue if im even on the right track the directions were so bad. killed a raider named sparta. wonder why he was named. maybe he has a story on a terminal somewhere. what a terrible way for an rpg to tell its stories. 3 full towns and no new characters, factions, or real content even. fuck this im going back garvey.
Back to sanctuary
the settlement building does "just work". i wish it wasnt so customizable and was a series of straight upgrade paths because placing shit manually and trying to make things look good feels like a chore. im literally just cleaning and doing chores here. what a fun mechanic amirite? anyways the choice of whether or not to support mama murphy's drug addiction for your own benifit is an interesting moral dilemma to present the player with. still they used jet here. muh continuity.the menuing in this game is awkward. forcing me to use the arrow keys and the enter key means i have to constantly take my hand off the mouse which gets annoying after a while. might switch to a controller later. dont have enough food to do sturges quest so i do garveys. end up reporting to someone who doesnt even so much as have a name. very engaging stuff. anyways she sends me to kill raiders who oddly enough do have names. i never found anything else out about them. the fog in this game is thicker than silent hill jesus christ. got some plants and did all the quests to set up sanctuary. shit was tedious. garvey gives some backstory. stuff actually happened before the game started thats crazy. there was some kind of betrayal i guess. garvey acts like he doesnt know we just woke up for some reason. im a general of the minutemen. this idea of building a faction back from actual ground zero is really cool for storytelling potential but unfortunately its just in service of placing stuff down in random towns.
Wandering
encountered a bloodbug. yet another unispired [ANIMAL BUT BIG] design bethesda is so fond of. cool name tho alliteration is always fun. Wandered around and found wayne gorski. ghouled himself prewar yet somehow also has a wasteland survival guide to diamond city. lmao? first synth encounter. one of them bugged out and became almost impossible to hit reguardless of percentage or shooting them at point blank range. yet another large city with no characters or quests in it. 3 more towns with nobody living in them.
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