To nobody’s great surprise, I started over again in Fallout 4, this time to avoid Preston and his gang almost entirely (I rudely went and picked up the laser musket when he told me to, and then just left, but you have to go into Concord to unlock Codsworth as a companion and I wasn’t sure how far you had to go).
It’s kind of nice to not have the cranky gang hanging out in Sanctuary this time, though I still did set up my main base in the Red Rocket anyway.
I’m level 41 or so now and have seen quite a few things I never managed to get to in my other games. I got to the Institute for once, but they have so far utterly failed to convince me they’re doing anything good, so I haven’t joined them, just left them hanging for now (I kind of want to kill them all, especially my sociopathic son, but it seems like it’d be a bad idea before I know more).
Also, kind of strange to run into synths murdering whole settlements and raider bases and everything, INCLUDING CATS, and not be attacked by them. It makes my brain complain.
I left the Brotherhood hanging too because they’re acting a bit too fascist to be comfortable with, and they’re also just arrogant, but I’d never seen them enter the Commonwealth before in my other games. I didn’t even know it happened, aside from some vague comments about an airship from people in Diamond City, but I never saw the thing.
Turns out that if you leave a certain quest location at the ground floor, instead of the roof access, that whole scene where they fly over never happens. And I never saw them attack anything either after leaving that quest location in my other games. Now I see their Vertibirds getting shot down left and right.
Bit weird (and something I would have expected to have been fixed by the unofficial patch). So far they’re mostly just a source of T60 power armor (from the dead ones spread around the downed Vertibirds), but I already have a set of X-01, so…
I joined the Railroad, who I hadn’t encountered in my other games either (not anyone still alive, at least), but I must say the decision was mostly based on stuff I’d glimpsed in the wiki, because they are really not very good at explaining what they actually do until after you’ve joined them.
First time I’ve tried Piper as a companion (I got Cait first as always, and did her quest). She’s rather pleasant. Also pretty good with a sniper-ish laser rifle, to my surprise (Cait seems to be better with autos).
I turned Curie into a huge Sentry bot, but sadly did it right before a stage in her quest, so I don’t think I’ll actually see how it works. If it does at all; she has major problems navigating. It just makes her too large to fit most indoor places, which is kind of sad. I had planned to turn Codsworth into one too.
Mr. Handy thrusters are probably generally the best for robotic companions (I’ve tried Assaultron legs on Ada, but she gets too fast for her AI and keeps running into me and off ledges and such. Though, to be fair, Piper is pretty good at falling off stuff too even without special legs. I hear a lot of splashes behind me when we’re near water…).
[Edit: boo. The game just turned Curie into the normal robot and removed all the, rather expensive, sentry parts. Granted, there wouldn’t have been much use for them since it was right before a certain change, but still, I want a refund.
So far Curie seems like a massively missed opportunity; she’s just the same vaguely annoying personality and there’s been no comments about the change or anything. Maybe it gets better once her affinity goes up, but it feels like a character arc like that could be very interesting and I suspect it isn’t at all).]
So that’s 473 hours spent on this game in a row, and I don’t feel I’m getting tired of it yet (despite seeing the early stuff so many times due to all my restarts).
