Fallout Halloween? its falloween time, and more!

in the Fallout universe, week before Halloween is when Bombs Fell .... but also in the turbulent garbage fire that is 2020 timeline, doing something nerdy & ridiculous was desperately needed
ya local Vault Dweller spent about 2 hours in literal piles of wet leaves on a very damp day to create quality content

come closer treasure hunter, Vault~y has bottlecaps!

Edited November 2, 2020 by Chise

Gonna have to play Fallout 4 again now. 

Come peep that famous New England foliage!

Ahh  yes, but this IS a Halloween Special Quest after all

 

Fun fact - candycorn was purchased specifically for this. Best use of trash candy!
HAPPY HALLOWEEN by Anna, on Flickr

Another fun fact? Weirdly in-canon Fallout appropriate even. The abandoned phone charger cable tied to the tree in the background! Ya can scavenge caps AND materials out here

11 hours ago, Chise said:

Another fun fact? Weirdly in-canon Fallout appropriate even. The abandoned phone charger cable tied to the tree in the background! Ya can scavenge caps AND materials out here

But is the Nuka-Cola radioactive?

10 hours ago, BeyondTime said:

But is the Nuka-Cola radioactive?

heh, you're thinking of Quantum!  .... which unfortunately broke a few weeks ago... while was testing out possible location ;_;

14 minutes ago, Chise said:

heh, you're thinking of Quantum!

What's a few radiation burns on your esophagus if it tastes good, right?

I was think more of how all the Nuka is radioactive from the war.

the basic nuka-cola isnt a rad source in Fallout 3/4 because they've been sealed since manufacturing (Presumably in glass containing lead), Nuka-Cola Quantum, the blue stuff was manufactured with a radioactive pigment and thus gives off rads when you drink it but the buffs are more significant than the base cola. Then there was the Nuka-Cola Clear mentioned in Fallout 3, which was some really spicy stuff and killed off all of the test group if I recall the Nuka-Cola factory data-nodes (Fallout 3) correct.

Personally i've had fallout 4 on my PC for awhile sitting dormant ... probably beacuse I went through most on my PS4 already, and the replay value isnt quite there in my opinion ... Yes, I have issues with how Bethesda treated some of the story aspects in 3/4, especially the super mutants ... I want my Commander Worf Sheriff Marcus back...

Edited November 1, 2020 by finnleo

oooh man, @finnleo don't even get me started! F3 has plenty of fun moments and Quests have diff options. F4 is NOT A FALLOUT GAME! its a very pretty game, but they stripped out everything that made it Fallout - karma, conversation options, Quest choices, ability to roleplay, etc etc etc

when Marcus talked to my lil braindead Courier in NV, I almost cried

speaking of Nuka Clear - one of the Quantums made for a friend has accidentally become that!

Anyhooooo... moar Vault-boy snaps will still be coming in this thread. A local settler was recruited to try and make the most BOSTON photo possible. We started slow with just a Dunkins

3 hours ago, Chise said:

oooh man, @finnleo don't even get me started! F3 has plenty of fun moments and Quests have diff options. F4 is NOT A FALLOUT GAME! its a very pretty game, but they stripped out everything that made it Fallout - karma, conversation options, Quest choices, ability to roleplay, etc etc etc

There were some conversation options at least in the main game, but unfortunately in the end they just meant diddly squat in terms of the big picture ... personally was especially dissapointed since you were sort of hinted at a possible peace between the Railroad and Brotherhood, but oh nooo...

Then out of the ending scenarios I've gone through so far Preston is such a annoying little ... something. When in option A he puts the blame game on you for wiping out one faction, but if that faction comes after the Minutemen in option B, he's first in line to nuke the whole lot... heh.

That something-something harbour expansion I believe had more converstation skill checks to make some things happen overall. but a little too late overall I guess.

But pretty it is ... I remember going all googely-ga when I got to the diamond stadium the first time (at least there was a little extra here to get the Radio DJ hooked up) ... also took some time and tried to explore if there was a law-firm office with a unisex bathroom, but yet, despite all the real-estate, its still lacking that special something from the first two games ... like encountering a Tardis at random in the desert.

But yeah.. even Tactics (or Brotherhood of Steel, depending on where you live) had more ending choises, even if they were mostly decided at the last battle ... I sort of wished the series would return to the scenario where you take controll of the baddies.

well ok.. there are like.. 2 interesting convos happening somewhere, but the biggest offender is you have no informed choice-making options on the dialogue. Replacing it with Yes/No/Sarcasm/Shaaaaaaawn! is not good design, anywhere. Most quests do not give you any choice in NOT TAKING IT, no matter what u chose it still basically goes "oh you'll do it!?? lemme mark it on your map!"
Every quest is basically "go here, kill all the things" It doesn't even matter if ..say.. you clear out a location of enemies before grabbing that final item. The game will just respawn a boatload of 'em immediately! (contrast to say... BigTown/Germantown police station in F3. I've cleared out the SuperMutants before progressing the quest proper and they stayed gone... until in-game clock brings them to attack Big Town itself)

The new map markers were dumb (not everything needs to be Skyrim!) but thru some mental gymnastics I could live with 'em (the Survivor being a local centuries ago means they kinda know whats where... markers showing specific 'shapes' can fit into this. barely), apeing MassEffect's cinematic convos & caricature of a convo wheel was dumb, trying to make it SIMS light but not really but also it dun matter where u built your defenses because enemy spawn point is inside anyway was dumb.... I can do this all day

 

aight, back to Vault-boy Halloween Quest

trash candy! (no worries, cleaned it all up before leaving. Soggy or not, no reason to liter)

whats this? there's even a small chems reward? Score!

Pumpkin-spice chems. Even in the Wastelands tehre's no escaping seasons flavors

3 hours ago, Chise said:

Every quest is basically "go here, kill all the things" It doesn't even matter if ..say.. you clear out a location of enemies before grabbing that final item. The game will just respawn a boatload of 'em immediately!

I think this was one thing you could thank the settlement building feature. Its been awhile since I've played it on my ps4 at that progression level so I might be talking out of my butt, but I believe the main story locations stayed cleared once you've gone through them, like the Corvega plant which is first on the list. The trouble is that the settlements sort intertwine with your voyage, but some of these are optional (although if you want the Minutement ending you needed a certain ammount of settlements with the cannons to trigger that), and because you need constant resources to keep them up and running and also developing they re-spawn those annoying save us events linked to certain locations -- dunno how many times I cleared that hospital near the northern edge of the map .... Unfortunately if you ignore some of these, like at the Ghoul settlement by the pool resort some NPC's can die that have some side quests (The tinkerer in this case, that wants to build that giddiyup buttercup thing).

then there were those other certain locations that respawned stuff by default, just to get caps or whatnot resources for building

The open sided farms were a pain to keep secure, due to the reason you mentioned, though I do recall the starting town, and the city locations with the natural choke-points being relatively easy to keep safe with four turrets at either end... same was with the Vault bulding DLC location (which was hilarious since it showed how some of the vaults were built, in the players case, very cheaply.).. also dunno did this DLC amp up the respawn rate because it was very resource thirsty if I recall correct, especially if you made boo-boo's while building, since scrapping reduced what you got back if I recall correct., also the Automaton DLC brought its own encounters that started at a certain level, which made life rediculously easy since you didnt have to worry about power cores anymore for the power armors.

as a personal flex I did manage to build a museum of sorts in game with six power armors on display, and most of the special unique outfits too (I think I only lacked the nukaworld armor, and outfit since I never got around to that DLC before getting a bit bored), and some of the more unique weapons... (though I still miss Lincolns repeater from FO3)

but yeah ... despite my museum, and a open air ammo-factory with the workshop dlc, the constant save us things got a bit tiresome as you were pinged with them whenver you were getting somewhere elsewhere.

when we last left off - Vault-boy was gettin ready for some pumpkin-spice chems.

BUT THEN, we caught an ancient Munch Squad episode on the airwaves, talking of Dunkins seasonal "Spicy Ghost Pepper" donut

PS: Vault Dweller is still mighty salty they took Apple Cider off menu for tHAT. All these caps to make me forget!

now to ride the train back to civilization

Edited November 5, 2020 by Chise

if anyone needs rest of that photoshoot in their life - the gallery is up https://www.flickr.com/photos/annaneko/albums/72157716674704567

Vault-boy reminds everyone to be prepared & travel safe!

Edited November 14, 2020 by Chise

31 minutes ago, Chise said:

if anyone needs rest of that photoshoot in their life

Looking at that subway map on the wall, I was rekindled with the wondering about how accurately did the game's subway system follow that of the real life setup.

Also those fenced off classic subway cars reminded me that the trains in the game were maybe a bit too futuristic looking compared to the one's in 3.

20 hours ago, finnleo said:

Looking at that subway map on the wall, I was rekindled with the wondering about how accurately did the game's subway system follow that of the real life setup.

Also those fenced off classic subway cars reminded me that the trains in the game were maybe a bit too futuristic looking compared to the one's in 3.

There are only a couple instances in F4 where I cringe at the map. The overall layout is fairly true, but squished (like you know, Fenway & Copley sq Library are NOT only 2 buildings apart) Two or three locations are flipped, which as a local IRL made me get lost in-fiction (like the bank with a great PowerArmor is in wrong direction, and Orpheum Theater IRL is going to the left by the game sends you to the right a couple streets. Stuff like that)

Fun fact about the traincar!! SF & Boston basically used to have them both. in SF they are still running & functional in the touristy area (somewhere on the Pier, cannot recall exact names, been a while....) but in Boston they are hidden away behind a locked fence, which you can only see if you're in that station

In-game Park St station is better equipped than real one!! It has multiple escalators going down!! In reality there's just one narrow escalator, sometimes goin up if it feels like it

8 hours ago, Chise said:

There are only a couple instances in F4 where I cringe at the map. The overall layout is fairly true, but squished

Thats nice to hear, and not surprising about the shrinkage, I think the National mall in F3 was also shrunk a bit, but its been even longer since I took that one out for a spin. But overall could have been a lot worse considering how much artistic liberties they could have taken.

 

8 hours ago, Chise said:

Fun fact about the traincar!! SF & Boston basically used to have them both. in SF they are still running & functional in the touristy area (somewhere on the Pier, cannot recall exact names, been a while....) but in Boston they are hidden away behind a locked fence, which you can only see if you're in that station

In Frisco's case its probably not as surprising, since they had the cable car things as an attraction since the year dot, so the basic enthusiasm for keeping old transportation was probably already there. I also suspect the total dissapearance of the Redcar system in Los Angeles had some part in wanting to keep it going (But what do I know, I wouldnt even know that existed without LA Noire, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, and what not other pop culture pieces set in post WW2 LA). Interestingly enough according to wikipedia those PCC streetcars were used also in LA in places at the tail end of the pacific electric thing.

(am expecting the forum train enthusiasts to come down like an anvil over this, but eh... shall see)

 

8 hours ago, Chise said:

In-game Park St station is better equipped than real one!! It has multiple escalators going down!! In reality there's just one narrow escalator, sometimes goin up if it feels like it

while doing the Kung-Wiki-fu-pedia, it made me go with the theory that they could have worked those in on the 1970's rebuild considering in the fallout universe they might have had more capital to work with at the time ... however now Im curious that are there six lines at the station in game or not ... damnit.

EDIT: okay, loaded up my ps4 F4 (after a 7gig update.. yay) and I apparently totally mis-remembered this with something out of F3 ... only two tracks visible and accessible that I could see at quick glance.

Edited November 15, 2020 by finnleo

oh @finnleo, we could talk Fallout forever! The only time I've been to D.C., literally ended up finding my way around by visualizing F3's map. And it worked wonders!

The fact the entire Fallout aesthetic is basically "what the 50s thought the 70s would look like" really helps set up certain historical blips. Just cut-off real world in the 1950s and go from there! MTA became MBTA in the 60s (this is when the subway lines get colors, let it slide), Scollay Sq was fully demolished & remade in the 60s...

Some of the F4 map~squish parts are quite hilarious.
For example they combine Boston Common (the big green space with a gazebo Band Stand) & Boston Garden (swan boats!) into one park. Just as I was gettin ready to hit the keyboard & complain .... find an in-game diary of a former groundskeeper griping about the parks being combined & drastically cut in size

In similar fashion, Park St station in-game has been made smaller. The outside is only ONE headhouse (in reality its 2 of 'em. Still only one sad escalator tho) Which means you would only see the 2 tracks in the station, and other set of tracks & entire Red Line access being a Vault-Tec Vault absolutely works

Interestingly enough, Goodneighbor/Scollay Square is somehow more accurate in this regard? Memory Den absolutely lines up with "NE Center/Home for Vets" (only is reskinned with a fancier facade of a theater which no longer exists). Old State House is a rare location which is exactly as small as IRL when touring inside
The train station IS underneath Old State House too, and in-game you go into the bar in the basement and it's tiled in blue.... Third Rail is literally built inside a Blue Line t-station! (the map squish again. Scollay Under would have been couple blocks away at Gov Center, OSH station is State St)

 

4 hours ago, Chise said:

The fact the entire Fallout aesthetic is basically "what the 50s thought the 70s would look like" really helps set up certain historical blips.

This is one of the things Im willing to give Bethesda props for, compared to the older games, since the original perspective games as far as I remember did little to incorporate actual locations and their original history into the alternate timeline of events. I think Tactics came closest with Cheyenne mountain being featured as the HQ for the in game Skynet, and one of the mission native tribes celebrating a gas station marque as their deity.

What I sort of ended up lacking in 4, was that because your character was a Boston native (at least if you went female, who went to law school there (hello Ally McBeal)), that there werent any glimpses of the places in before everything went poof, since to your character it isnt as far off in terms of time gone past -- unless -- institution plot devices.

 

4 hours ago, Chise said:

In similar fashion, Park St station in-game has been made smaller. The outside is only ONE headhouse (in reality its 2 of 'em. Still only one sad escalator tho) Which means you would only see the 2 tracks in the station, and other set of tracks & entire Red Line access being a Vault-Tec Vault absolutely works

While reading up on the station in wikipedia I was trying to make heads or tails of the old layout versus the current one versus in game ... my theory would be they took the original cambridge station photograph as reference which would explain why its so small in the game. But building the vault instead of the station expansion was a intersting twist on history.

 

4 hours ago, Chise said:

find an in-game diary of a former groundskeeper griping about the parks being combined & drastically cut in size

I recall reading that piece of information... and wondering, whats this all about, but this does explain that. Again something im willing to give compliments for setting design effort.

 

4 hours ago, Chise said:

Interestingly enough, Goodneighbor/Scollay Square is somehow more accurate in this regard?

 

Looking it up is quite amusing if the wikipedia entry is correct on the inspiration as to the place being renamed to Goodneighbour.

From a production team stand point it might be interesting to hear what the decision factor is in what locations get altered, and what they would try and keep as similar as possible. In F4 there seems to be a lot of correlation between places and history associated with them, so they might have put more effort based in the intrigue levels.

Sort of like how I've heard everything in New Vegas (which I havent played - Shame on me), being a huge big nod to every single gangster and casino movie out there.

An accidentally hilarious yet PERFECT thing F4 pulls is exactly with the female protag. The opening video has a male narrator and keeps doing a very macho male PoV war hero speech and then you play as the housewife!

I can understand from a programming point - the need to map squish and removal of certain locations. Keeping the tour-trap places anyone more like to know ....
But in other cases - you guys already put this place in, why didn't you skin it as well?!?!?! Example? Ohhh hells yeah I got those!

In-game, if you travel south to Quincy Ruins. There is a small church and a cemetery directly across the street from it. In Quincy: this is a real thing. The historic cemetery is named for Hancock (no, not that one. His father) and the church itself holds tombs of both John Adams & John Quincy Adams, and their wives. (and for my absolutely favorite fact about it: the clock-tower is owned by the church. The clock itself & all mechanical upkeep is owned by the City)
The game has absolutely bothered to place these real life locations IN, but then they simply texture the church in same generic style as every other church in the game, and do not bother naming anything. uuuuuuhg, so frustrating!

Another thing that reaaaaaaaally doesn't help F4's case (on top of all the other bazillion issues) is loss of Adam Adamowicz as concept designer. He gave F3 such a fantastic retro look! .... and F4 simply recycles a lot of this without creating anything new to stand on its own. Which would have worked if didn't run into exact same giant head statue in Every Office Building for 3 hours straight, ya know?

 

21 hours ago, finnleo said:

While reading up on the station in wikipedia I was trying to make heads or tails of the old layout versus the current one versus in game ... my theory would be they took the original cambridge station photograph as reference which would explain why its so small in the game. But building the vault instead of the station expansion was a intersting twist on history.

Wanna address this specifically as Wiki by itself might be a bit confusing. The Cambridge station photo is absolutely The Expansion. You're looking at the both tracks that are the Red Line, aka UNDERNEATH the Green Line 'main' station
The color photo on top of that Wiki page (shows Red train) is ... yeah, u can absolutely see the same narrowness happening. This is real, this is that small, this is not in the game at all. That is the Vault-Tec Vault in game

GreenLine is honestly not that much bigger except its like 2 stations squished together
One side is like this (2 tracks going Westbound) then a fence and other side (2 tracks goin Eastbound) exact same general layout width but with a tiny shop & longass entire block underpass walk to Orange line
Infuriatingly only one tiny escalator going up, and it took them how freakin long to build the elevator up to the Commons....

 

 

New Vegas is an absolute delight, please play it on PC if you get the chance. There is A LOT of loose code in there that fan mods have restored

13 hours ago, Chise said:

The opening video has a male narrator and keeps doing a very macho male PoV war hero speech

Well, this was oddly enough the first dissapointment I had with the game, and the overly macho bit sort of is understandable, because the guy was standing in for the hallmark of all past Fallout intros, which was Ron Pearlman (probably one of the few good things about F-76 was making him president for the promos, I think I wept a little when the first intro for that came and "War... War never changes." in his voice).

 

13 hours ago, Chise said:

Wanna address this specifically as Wiki by itself might be a bit confusing.

Yea, im slowly starting to understand the plot with that.. the old layout sketches had me in a loop for a bit, combined with the descriptions of how the layout was in the beginning and first few renovations ... finally I also noted the two bottom level red-line tracks being built earlier than I had initially understood and it all started to make more sense.

 

13 hours ago, Chise said:

The game has absolutely bothered to place these real life locations IN, but then they simply texture the church in same generic style as every other church in the game

 

13 hours ago, Chise said:

and F4 simply recycles a lot of this without creating anything new to stand on its own. Which would have worked if didn't run into exact same giant head statue in Every Office Building for 3 hours straight, ya know?

If I remember correct, it does not even limit itself to just texture sharing, and all churches had the same basic layout (though maybe not the one in salem(?) that had the beastie in the cellar), just different chunks missing from them. It is asset sharing at its worst, which is why I wouldnt really recomend either of the first person fallouts as virtual tourism items, since like you mentioned there's more to places than the tourist traps, like general architecture.

I guess the explanation in the open world bits are having to ruthlessly just share textures to keep loading times at bay, but somehow they just managed to make it look more boring than F3 was. Naturally this is all flipped in the big pretty locations like Diamond city, the brotherhood Zeppelin and the Institute since those have their own closed texture eco-system, but still...  ... Although I recently poked my head back into F4 on PC, and the vistas with graphics set to full from the Corvega plant roof and chimney catwalks are quite something non the less.

The timing of the loss of Adamowicz does came at a rather key point in the early stages of development of F4, and a main concept designer would have been quite a challenge to replace, since according to wikipedia he was the only concept artist for the game. So not having anything new and tangiable to work with could also affect inspiration in general design work down the production chain... and reading the memorial page it seems like the guy was a substantial part of the design team.

13 hours ago, Chise said:

New Vegas is an absolute delight, please play it on PC if you get the chance. There is A LOT of loose code in there that fan mods have restored

I actually did finally buy New Vegas yesterday and have been poking around the first few places... the older F3 user interface has me tripping a bit, but making progress, sort of fun seeing Poseidon Oil gas stations instead of Red Rocket ... although if I wasnt encumbered all the time... damnit for choosing brains over brawn. -- I especially have a soft spot for the song Johnny Guitar, which has been covered over here by two distinctly different artists.

 

 

9 hours ago, finnleo said:

actually did finally buy New Vegas yesterday and have been poking around the first few places... the older F3 user interface has me tripping a bit, but making progress, sort of fun seeing Poseidon Oil gas stations instead of Red Rocket ... although if I wasnt encumbered all the time... damnit for choosing brains over brawn. -- I especially have a soft spot for the song Johnny Guitar, which has been covered over here by two distinctly different artists.

NV's companion wheel is such an improvement over F3!! Also a fun goof to do is "speedrun" straight into Vegas instead of carefully navigating around the map like the game wants you (basically you're either outrunning Deathclaws or radscorpions. This trick only works on high Agility builds)

also also also, and this is a biggie - unlike F3, New Vegas remembers that playing a low Intelligence (basically 3 or less) character is an experience and there are absolutely different dialogues for it!!
My absolutely fav line on being an idiot is "I'm scientistic!"

The only sour note is Sierra Madre DLC. After literal hundreds of hours as a player being conditioned into certain game mechanics... you're suddenly dumped somewhere with different rules. The game both wants you to explore, but also sets up timer deathtraps. I'm used to listening to full dialogue scenes between other characters while crouching outta sight.... oooh ooops, if u let this guy finish his speech he blows up the entire room and you with it, Game Over too bad so sad

24 minutes ago, Chise said:

NV's companion wheel is such an improvement over F3!! Also a fun goof to do is "speedrun" straight into Vegas instead of carefully navigating around the map like the game wants you (basically you're either outrunning Deathclaws or radscorpions. This trick only works on high Agility builds)

also also also, and this is a biggie - unlike F3, New Vegas remembers that playing a low Intelligence (basically 3 or less) character is an experience and there are absolutely different dialogues for it!!
My absolutely fav line on being an idiot is "I'm scientistic!"

The character build quirks arent surprising since new vegas was done by obsidian soft, who are what was left of Black Isle soft, who did F2 ... which was chock full of peculiar options depending on what you had selected for character features. In my typical fashion I just do a boring all rounder female crossplay and going straight for the black widow perk..  did choose the "not for serious induviduals" thing at the start, and immediately found that alternate ending to the fourth indiana jones movie right at the start... which was a giggle.

the way the character build works between F3 and F4 is whats also tripping me up, but slowly getting the hang of it again.

Still pretty early in the game, though I got the set with all the dlc's, so will try and remember to look out for that change... never did any of the F3 specific dlc's so dunno did anchorage and the pitt go wonky compared to the main game also... sort of regretting that I didnt get the alien dlc now.

On 11/16/2020 at 8:26 AM, finnleo said:

New Vegas, being a huge big nod to every single gangster and casino movie out there.

Its been awhile since anything has sent a cold chill down my spine while cringing ... but I did come across a certain weapon achievement in NV called "Ne-ne-nee-nee-NEE-NEE" that gave me the curls if it was related to what I think it was ... which is quite probable considering the weapon. I do also approve of the rehashed Fallout 1/2 tension music ... and the to be martian ghouls...

an interesting bit NV has, that only noticed recently... is almost an anti save-scumming thing. Was working on the casinos achievement (win too much, get banned). Would pick my game table, and start playing. After had maybe 5 or 6 wins would save. If my next was a loss - duuuh! reload the save file!
At which point, the game absolutely hearing this, would have the casino's table dealer get up and walk away.

Personal fav achievement involved getting "Love and Hate" brass knuckles and then punching cazadoors in the face, in that area. Very satisfying payback, after running away from them hours ago, chugging stimpacks & antidotes like they were goin outta style

 

Anyway, my next mini F4 gallery is up. This was a lil Quest did in the summer - https://www.flickr.com/photos/annaneko/albums/72157717056331251