Saturday Morning Gaming: Fallout :London
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Back in 2002, Neverwinter Nights was released and it was the D&D game that we had been dreaming about playing since the first Gold Box of Pool of Radiance. The rules worked and, get this, the story was pretty darn good. You had this epic campaign where you had to end a plague, destroy a cult, and there were approximately one bajillion sidequests (and if you did all of the sidequests, your level would be in the high teens at the end of the game and, seriously, that’s some overpowered stuff right there. I played a monk and, seriously, a level 16 monk is *NUTS*.
I digress. Anyway, the most important thing that the game did was it provided a dev’s toolkit to the players out there and, within a year or two, there were modules that were *BETTER THAN THE ORIGINAL GAME*. The Aelund Saga! Dreamcatcher! Man, those were the days. Seriously, if you had access to the modules, Neverwinter Nights was a desert island game.
But I’m not here to talk about Neverwinter Nights. I’m here to talk about Fallout: London.
Fallout: London is a mod for Fallout 4. You have to have Fallout 4 Game of the Year Edition *OR* Fallout 4 (and all of the DLC) installed on your system (and it’s most helpful to have the versions purchased either from Steam or from GoG.com (GoG’s version is 60% off right now, fwiw)).
Now, the mod pretty much takes over your Fallout 4 install. Like, you have to pick between playing Fallout 4 and Fallout: London. If you install Fallout: London, you will need to do a full uninstall of Fallout 4 and reinstall it if you ever want to play the original again. (Additionally, the game was optimized for an older version of Fallout 4, like the version from last year, and the recent updates of Fallout 4 have broken the mod so you have to install an old version of Fallout 4 and disable updates and cloud saves and only then will the game have a chance at working.)
That said, if you are comfortable with knowing that you’ll have to do a reinstall, you’re now prepared to experience something similar to New Vegas when it released… that is to say, an absolutely *AMAZING* game that will crash every 15 minutes.
The complaints all seem to take the form of “holy cow, the first hour of the game was amazing and then I went outside and now the game is unplayable”.
Which kinda stinks.
But, as far as I can tell from here, this is the game that we have been hoping for since playing Fallout 4 the first time.
(Though I’m going to wait a bit to see if they can get it to “it crashes every hour!” instead of “it crashes every fifteen minutes!”)
So… what are you playing?
(Featured image is a grab of some of the promotional art for the game. Screenshot taken by the author.)
For me, the big gaming news of the week was the gameplay reveal for Civilization 7. There’s a lot to like here (navigable rivers, a smarter alternative to endless barbarian hordes, Gwendoline Christie as the narrator). I’m not as sold on the new ages system, and that you now change civilization each age. I didn’t think it worked in Humankind, though it looks like they’re trying something a bit different with it here, so I’m willing to see how it works out.Report
I just saw the ad and was about to comment about it!Report
“Now, the mod pretty much takes over your Fallout 4 install. Like, you have to pick between playing Fallout 4 and Fallout: London. If you install Fallout: London, you will need to do a full uninstall of Fallout 4 and reinstall it if you ever want to play the original again. (Additionally, the game was optimized for an older version of Fallout 4, like the version from last year, and the recent updates of Fallout 4 have broken the mod so you have to install an old version of Fallout 4 and disable updates and cloud saves and only then will the game have a chance at working.)
That said, if you are comfortable with knowing that you’ll have to do a reinstall, you’re now prepared to experience something similar to New Vegas when it released… that is to say, an absolutely *AMAZING* game that will crash every 15 minutes.”
Pass. Screw that.Report
Yeah, I can see how that makes it a tough sell… but here’s a sweetener:
You can tweet to Todd Howard about how much you love Fallout: London and how it’s the best Fallout since New Vegas.Report
“The rules worked and, get this, the story was pretty darn good.”
I was not a huge fan of the story. I don’t even remember if I finished the game or not. I just remember each chapter felt like a repeat of the same thing: Go to a hub. Visit 3 locations connected to the hub and get 3 McGuffins. End chapter boss fight. Go to the next hub and repeat.
The expansions were cool, and I did have fun with a lot of the other modules. I also spent a lot of time on Narfell, an RP multiplayer server.
I’m still playing Diablo IV. I think my character is around level 68, which is the highest I have reached. I might actually unlock the final difficulty tier this time. I will probably play for another week or two, then I will dive back into Elden Ring.Report
I remember that I finished it and that it felt good when I did.
Yeah, the eternal problem is that there are only but so many kinds of quests. A table-top game might be good at the whole bait and switch and you learn that your delivery quest that you thought was also a race quest is now a survive quest (to be followed by an assassinate quest).
Video games make it worse because of the limitations of the medium make it so that it’s harder to do the bait and switch and you have to make it explicit when it changes.
And, yeah, the hub, get three McGuffins thing is part of that. I don’t know that there’s a way around it… you need to focus on the monologues the different characters give before the final destroy/assassinate quest and you can change how the player feels about yet another basic “go to the place and kill the guy” quest.Report
I’m sure I’ll give Fallout: London a shot eventually. But right now I feel burned out on open world RPG style games. I really enjoy them, but there’s just so much to do they often eventually end up feeling like a chore.
I’ve been playing much shorter games from my backlog with interesting stories that leave me wanting more:
Hypnospace Outlaw
The Case of the Golden Idol
Return of the Obra Dinn
Her Story
Eternal Threads
Paradise Killer
The Forgotten CityReport
Obra Dinn… Man.
That’s one of the most… I’ve never played anything like it. It’s a rare game that makes me say “I wish I could forget everything and play this one again.”
The creator of the game made a game called Mars After Midnight and it’s for the playdate handheld. Remember the yellow box with a crank? Yeah. That.
Sigh.
Someone needs to give him some drugs of some sort (mushrooms?) and tell him to make Obra Dinn II.Report