Come to think of it, “information kiosk” could be a shout-out to 4’s Tour Bot.
And ISTR a similar comment from a bot in NV, maybe the ammo vendor.
@solost, I went into F76 late, after many of the earlier issues were alleviated, and stopped playing at all a little over a year ago, so my feelings and understandings are based on that window.
NOW there are, but there were none in the initial release. Even so, I feel most of the characters added are somewhat more shallow than I’d expect for a modern game. Still lots of little bits of individuality, but since there are no F4-style companions with unique likes, dislikes, and quest chains, they’re all very much “generic” NPCs.
Several timelines and quest lines exist simultaneously as it were, so you can be doing content from pre-NPC F76, post, etc. In general, quests are single player based, though you can invite friends to do them with you for more firepower (there aren’t differing roles as in a traditional MMORPG), and then there are story beats and events that are fundamentally uncontrolled raid spaz to kill a big bad.
You can’t really create your own adventures, just recruit PC’s to do things with, though you can also do a metric ton of grief-ing if that’s more your style. IIRC, each instance of a world is limited to a pretty small number of players at one time, and it’s determined randomly (though you can invite friends to whatever shard you’re on if there’s space).
For the first, yes, to a degree, but the world is pretty big for a relatively small number of players, but people can be farming where you like to farm, so…
As for the second, some things are sold in relatively small quantities, but the crafting system makes it possible to make most of what you need. And you’re capped on the amount you can sell to vendors every day to make money (IE, you could try to sell 100 units of nuclear material, but all vendors share the same 1200 caps A DAY to pay for them), so …
Lastly, the “best” option is pay-to-win, where you get your own private shard where there’s just you, the NPCs, and the people you invite to play with you, but it’s expensive and overall still worse than playing a single player Bethesda game. Still, for all that, it’s got some very neat stories, questlines, and individual stories interspersed, so it has it’s moments.
[ I bought the game when it was on sale for $7.60 on a promotion ], I would not have been happy if I had paid, say, $30+ at any point. ]
Yes and no.
FO3 (Bethesda) felt like a dead world. The Capital Wasteland didn’t seem like 200 years had passed since the apocalypse. Where did they get their food from, for instance?
FO:NV (Obsidian) felt like a living world. It felt like society had begun to re-establish itself after recovery. There were farms. There were towns.
FO4 (Bethesda) took a lot of inspiration in world building from F:NV. The Commonwealth Wasteland felt alive. But the main problem with FO4 was it essentially removed most of the RPG aspects. The conversation wheel basically didn’t matter because in a typical conversation all choices led to the same outcome. And the quests tended to follow that. Many were just pass or fail. FO3 felt more like an RPG even if the world was dead.
Also, some people didn’t like the change in how character advancement was done. I didn’t mind it, personally.
Thanks PL and @Skywatcher for the FO76 info!
I think I’ll stick to milking nexusmods for the FO4 quest mods all I can for the near future, though. I just downloaded ‘Outcasts and Remnants’ from the maker of ‘Fusion City Rising’ last night, and it’s shaping up to be every bit as fun (and every bit as ‘adult content’) as FCR.
Besides just enjoying the extended gameplay, I really find these mods interesting for the little Easter eggs, idiosyncrasies and general personality these dedicated amateur developers put into them.
Oh, and RE: Fusion City Rising (I missed the edit window):
(Emphasis mine) I got to try the dance gun on a Deathclaw last night-- and it works! Except, instead of obviously dancing, it sort of collapses into a fetal position, twitching. Effective at temporarily rendering it harmless, but I was a little disappointed I didn’t get to see an obviously dancing Deathclaw 
I’ll note that I’ve played and enjoyed ‘Outcasts and Remnants’ (I brought it up upthread in fact) but it is more interesting on an initial playthrough, because it can give you a heavily modified ending. It’s got some fun twists at any point in a playthrough though and interacts interestingly with some vanilla storylines and companions. And yeah, leans towards ‘R’ rated in parts.
Time for another installment of nobody’s favorite gaming thread, wherein I review Fallout 4 quest mods, Boxing Day Edition!
Boon Island
I enjoyed the hell out of Misery Island, which I reviewed previously, and I understood it was part of an ‘Isles of New England’ series— so I went looking for more in the series. ‘Boon Island’ seems to be the only other quest mod in the series I could find. It’s loosely based on a real New England island with a tragic history, as I understand, which is cool. The quest mod itself is kind of underwhelming. No real enemies to speak of other than a couple mirelurks, and one central mystery quest to solve, which is well done but very short- barely a half hour of play. A well- done mod, I just wanted more.
Outcasts and Remnants
From the makers of Fusion City Rising, another fantastic DLC-sized quest mod with lots going on— varied and interesting quests. And just like FCR, very much adult content and not exactly ‘PC’ in some of its content. But very fun. And the story was just as involved as in FCR— there was a whole side quest involving a faction that was trying to reform the Wasteland monetary policy away from caps, ferchrissake. And somehow, it was a hoot! I was sad when I finished the main quest line and triggered the credits, though there are still plenty of, or maybe even infinite, radiant quests left it appears— the kind where you are assigned to go to (X) location, take out (Y) enemies, and retrieve (Z) MacGuffin. Rinse, repeat.
Bethesda should hire the makers of FCR and OaR— ThuggySmurf and their associates. They could have Fallout 5 finished in no time at all!
Since you enjoyed OaR and FCR, I’m going to call back to another I mentioned waaaaay upthread, Fen Sheriffs Department.
https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/68276?tab=description
While it did have buggy moments, the story was good, some very cool visual crafting options, and not too unbalanced compared to many. While dark, and adult themed, it isn’t sexually explicit in the way the others referenced above are. And since it’s been patched this month I’d expect it to work with the current version of the game.
Thanks, that was one of the first quest mods I looked into, based on your recommendation. I don’t remember why I didn’t download it then— I think I got a bit intimidated by what seemed like complicated instructions from the mod maker on what and what not to do, since I was early into my quest mod quest then. But now I’ll make it my next quest mod!
Downloaded and am now enjoying Fen Sheriffs Department-- thanks again for the rec (and re-rec).
At first I thought, jeez, what’s with all the day-glo neon purple coloring? Is the mod creator a Prince fan or something? I finally realized after about 30, 45 minutes of play that that must not be intentional, so I re-read the mod instructions. Sure enough, that’s like a texture placeholder-- I also needed to download a separate texture pack. The mod looks much better now.
Well you did mention the intimidation factor of the install process hindering you the first time! And not like I hadn’t done the same on mods before I made it my motto to read the darn instructions more carefully on new mods to me!
Thank you PL, for recommending (and re-recommending) this quest mod! It’s been a lot of fun.
It has been buggy many times, but I kind of have a theory about that. ‘Fusion City Rising’ and ‘Outcasts and Remnants’, the two DLC-sized quest mods made by ThuggySmurf, despite their size and complexity, ran almost flawlessly, practically devoid of bugs.
Fens Sheriffs Department, on the other hand, has repeatedly had quests that stalled for me. At one point near the start, after the ‘Domus Nostra’ quest where I met everybody at dinner, I needed to get a job from Dr. McClintock to advance the plot, but weirdly, she would not talk to me at all. Not even a standard dismissal line. I thought I might be out of luck. I did several radiant bounty quests to try to advance the plot. No good. Am I relegated to nothing but bounty hunter quests at this point? I finally tried backing up and re-running the looooong Domus Nostra segment, even though my Pip-Boy said I had completed it. Even then it didn’t seem to work right away, but something finally shook loose and I was able to get the next job from Dr. McClintock and advance things. I got used to saving a lot, so when a segment would stall, I would re-load until it worked. Or NPCs who were supposed to be doing stuff would seem to forget what they were doing and I had to talk to them to get them back on track.
But I realized that, even though I thought the quest storylines in FCR and OaR were interesting and complex, my actual dialogue with characters was relatively minimal, and a lot of the story depended on many lines of ‘exposition dump’ on various terminals. FSD, on the other hand, advances the story mainly through cut scenes and dialogue trees with the characters. This really gave the feeling of being fully immersed in the story and bonding with the various characters. I’m not a super experienced or knowledgeable gamer, but I think this is what gamers talk about when they refer to real RPGs-- not just the ability to make clear choices that affect outcomes, but to feel fully immersed in a story.
But, and here’s the ‘theory’ part-- I’m guessing the drawback of taking that approach is that it adds a layer of complexity that makes it much more likely for things to glitch out or stall. ‘The Machine and Her’ has a similar approach of advancing the story mostly with character interaction and dialogue, and was also pretty buggy at times. Anyway, once I got used to how to work around the bugginess of FSD, the storytelling method was well worth it.
Sadly, I think I may have effectively come to the end of the FSD story for me. I got to a point where the mod asked me if I wanted to proceed with the ‘Diamond City Wins’ ending. Which I thought was strange I was offered that ending at all, because I thought the mod adjusted to where I am in the game, and I long ago finished the vanilla game main storyline. I thought, "eh, if I skip the DCW ending that’s probably the end for this mod, other than radint bounty hunter quests’ so I chose the ‘soft DCW’ ending where all non-Minuteman factions are destroyed except for the Railroad, since I had already teamed up with the Railroad to destroy the Institute and the Prydwyn.
So what happens now, I wondered? Does the mod recreate its own versions of the factions I destroyed? It did briefly retcon Hancock back into being the mayor of Goodneighbor for one quest scene, despite the fact I had long ago sent him to Sanctuary after being done with him as a companion (the game only gives the option to send companions to settlements, so I couldn’t send him back to Goodneighbor any more than I could send Piper back to Diamond City).
So I get a quest where I’m to go to the Cambridge area with Dr. Babs McClintock and some of the gang, to do some radar scanning to try to detect the underground Institute. And I thought, this will be interesting, since last I checked, nothing was left but a huge crater after I done blowed up the Institute real good a long time ago. And the crater was still there, no resets. The quest marker, though, was on land next to the crater, and Dr. Babs and company showed up as expected. But they are now repeatedly glitching out. They’re supposed to be scanning the area but keep doing this weird thing where they disappear for a second, reappear several feet in the air, and fall to the ground. And the plot is not advancing. It could be another FSD style glitch, but I think in this case it’s most likely a fundamental continuity conflict. Looks like I may either have to abandon FSD, or back up to a point where I can decline the ‘DCW’ ending and see if anything’s left of the mod story. Oh well, it was fun while it lasted.
Yeah I had wondered how it would adapt to a completed game. Not well it seems. No I don’t have a fix, wish I did. Oh course the internal me with over 1000 hours in the game says: oh well that’ll come up in my next replay. Inner me is why I can’t get things done.
And I suspect your theory has a lot too it. Fourville had some bugs based around quests triggering properly and NPCs not being where they need to be. And so did TMAH as you mentioned. But for that matter so do a lot of NPC vanilla quests. The companion quests especially.
Oh, no, I wasn’t asking if you had a fix for the problem; nor do I think any fix exists, other than the mod creator radically changing or amending the adaptability of the mod. I did just go back to the Nexusmod page and check-- the notes definitely say the mod should adjust to the game status:
What if I’ve destroyed the enemy factions and/or already won the game when I run through your mod? The story will dynamically adjust, skipping over quests that are no longer relevant depending on your savegame status.
Oh well 
And I doubt there will be any further fixes from the mod creator:
What can we expect next from you Munky? Nothing. It’s been a combination of things, including toxic comments regarding voice actors, but the last straw was someone hated this mod enough that they wanted to upload an armor modification to the mod to specifically mock it. I’m done. No more work for hateful people.
What a shame. Sure, the mod has its issues, but this unpaid, amateur mod creator put hours and hours of their blood, sweat and tears into an overall amazingly rich and detailed quest mod, only to be slagged and ridiculed by haters. People can be such assholes.
You have now summed up 60% of P&E thread topics and 99+% of the Pit in one sentence.
But yes, I hear you. Make sure to endorse the mods you love or otherwise support quality free content on the web all!
@ParallelLines, would post in their forum again.
Not quite what I intended, but more sucking up is always appreciated!
Agreed! Their ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to their newsletter 
So, it gets weirder. I decide to see if the Institute scanning quest might still advance against all odds, because why not? Otherwise the mod is pretty much done.
And…it finally does advance! First Dr. Babs wades out into the water-filled crater. Then I get a message ‘The Institute has detected you!’. Several synths show up-- some are wading in the water, not doing much else, while some are a couple dozen feet up in the air, suspended over the water, presumably where the ground would be if I hadn’t already blown up the Institute. The airborne synths are shooting. Babs is working on the scanner equipment, also suspended in mid-air.
I wade into the water to attack the swimming synths. But not even my melee weapons work, so I can’t do anyhting in the water. So I go back on shore and take out the synths one by one with a long-range rifle. The ones in the water only take damage when they pop their heads above water; otherwise I can’t hurt them.
I finally kill all the synths and a message says “see if Dr. McClintock and Crenshaw are OK” which is a little difficult because they are now both underwater and I can’t talk to them. Babs finally pops her head above water and I talk to her, but I have to talk to Crenshaw as well, who is at the bottom of the lake. He finally pops his head up and I am able to talk to him and advance to “escort Dr. McClintock to the next scanning location” which will be difficult since she’s still swimming. But I think I’m done with this weirdness for now…
Well, that’s a stick-to-it-ness that’s impressive!
(an aside, hi-explosives like a nuka grenade are my answers to things stuck in terrain. And it’s so satisfying!)
Yeah, honestly I would do the same, since it’s more likely to cause a cascade of glitches.
But you gave it one heck of a try!
D’oh, I didn’t even think about lobbing grenades! Though, the swimmer synths were pretty far out, maybe out of grenade-throwing range. I could barely hit them with a scoped rifle.
I don’t know how much longer I’m going to continue to attempt to play through this utterly borked scenario, but part of me is enjoying the challenge of trying to think outside the box to get it to work.