I've really been enjoying Fallout 4, but I see the story ending in sight. What's like it that I may next enjoy?

The Game Room
1

So, as I’ve mentioned in a couple other threads, I needed a new computer with decent video capability, got some great recommendations in a thread I started, ended up getting a gaming-level computer about 4 months ago, and just out of curiosity picked up a few games on Steam. Now I seem to have become a gamer in my semi-old, late middle age.

I know F4 is not the most favorite game out of the series to Fallout aficionados, but it’s all I know of the series. It was on a Steam sale for $5 so I grabbed it. And it gradually went from an ok-seeming game I played along with a few others, to having it really grow on me, and have recently been playing it almost exclusively.

What do I like about it so much?

I guess how I like that it seems to be a hybrid between an open world game, a role-playing game and a first-person shooter (I may not get the terms quite right, so forgive me if I don’t). I like the contrast between the heated battles and the world-building with the settlements and related quests. If I get bored helping settlements build up their defenses, I can look for a fight to get into. If I want a break from the fighting, I can build stuff. (that’s basically the tl;dr version; skip ahead to the last paragraph if you don;t want to wade through the rest…)

To contrast that with a pure FPS like the 2016 Doom, which I recently picked up and have played a little bit, it seems like a very slick, well-made game, but all the constant moving and shooting I think I’ll only ever enjoy for short periods of time. I don’t think I’ll ever be playing Doom and suddenly think ‘how’d it get to be 1 am?’ like I often do with F4.

And as someone with latent OCD and hoarding tendencies (kept in check in the real world), I really enjoy the scavenging and scrounging for ammo, weapons, raw materials for building, and other stuff. It’s a mini endorphin hit when, say, I’m low on ammo for my laser guns and I find a cache of fusion cells in a cabinet or on a dead raider. Some of my favorite game play has been when I haven’t been on an actual quest, just roaming around looking for stuff I need, and taking care of bad guys I run across. Once early on in the game when I was low on ammo I found a gold mine of it in and around Fort Hagen, long before I knew the fort would feature in the “Reunion” quest.

I also find the storyline compelling enough, and just the whole quirky vibe of the “Tomorrowland gone bad” alternate reality. Municipal Plutonium Wells, sure. All the little touches of dark humor in the game.

But now I’m so close to finding my ‘son’, which I know is the end of the main storyline, I jumped at a chance to join the Railroad and help them out with side quests, and am putting off the son-finding thing for now. But I’ve come a long way since the days when I would be overwhelmed by feral ghouls. I am a walking tank in my power armor, multiple high-powered weapons and tons of scrounged ammo and stimpaks. Even a glowing or alpha Deathclaw is not much of a challenge anymore. Maybe some day I’ll restart the game from scratch on a more difficult setting. I’d like to replay and join the Brotherhood of Steel-- they look like they have some fun toys to play with.

So, what game recommendations would you guys have, based on my personal gaming prefs? I’ve heard a lot of great things about Skyrim and know it’s also made by Bethesda. I’m a little leery of ‘sword and sorcery’ stuff but I think I’ve heard the Fallout series described as “Skyrim with guns”. I’ve heard that the F3 storyline is better, though it’s a more primitive gaming engine (might not be an issue if it’s an engaging game). Or maybe something similar in terms of actiony and open-worldish, yet different?

2

I’d recommend the following:

Fallout: New Vegas - yeah, it looks less good than FO4, but I liked it quite a bit more than Fallout 4. Very engaging and well-made game. It’s amazing.

Fallout 3 - I also really liked this game. Equal to Fallout 4, if not better.

Skyrim - Yes, it is worth playing. It is fantasy, but you have a lot of freedom how you play. I usually have my left hand do magic and my right hand hold a sword. Lot of fun.

Finding your son isn’t really the end of the storyline. You have more to go.

3

Have you tried Red Dead Redemption?

4

As mentioned, Red Dead Redemption 2 is a good game for ignoring the plot when you wanna do other stuff. The Outer Worlds was a recent sci-fi RPG (in another retro-anachronistic future setting) that did pretty well. Under $20 right now on Steam sale. No settlement building but companions and dialogue and FPS style combat without the Doom-style twitchiness, etc.

5

You may also want to check out Subnautica:

  • First person view
  • scavenging for resources & materials
  • base building, tightly integrated into the game instead of tacked on(Fallout 4)
  • open world exploration, can either be peaceful or OMIGOD WHAT IS THAT!-terrifying depending on how far (and how deep) you want to go.
  • sci-fi setting

Much less emphasis on FPS & RPG elements, however, so I don’t know how much of that is a deal-breaker for you.

6

You still have quite a bit of content left in the main storyline. You won’t be at the end until you decide what to do with him and his friends.

BTW: each faction has its own ending so there is replay value in choosing which faction to support.

7

OP, do you have the add ons? Nuka World, Far Harbor and there’s a crafting/bulding one. Like you, I totally got into Fallout 4, and I also loved the all-add on-included version of Skyrim. So I’ll recommend Skyrim to you.

8

I liked Far Harbor as much as the original game, to be honest.

9

Sounds good; I can see myself playing all of these, eventually. Thanks!

My son recommended the Nuka-World and Far Harbor add-ons to me, said they were fun, so I will probably get these too at some point.

Good to know! I guess maybe I shouldn’t keep poor ol’ Virgil waiting on his serum too much longer then.

I have heard about RDR (1 and 2). It’s from Rockstar Games, like the GTA series, right? I’ll put it on the list.

Sounds intriguing; I’ll definitely check this one out. Thanks!

10

Aside from the Glowing Sea, Far Harbor is where your power armor really comes in handy.

Automatron is pretty good but it’s best when used as a way to create your own robotic settlers and assign them to supply lines.

11

The Far Cry games fall somewhere in between Fallout 4 and Doom on the FPRPG-to-FPS scale. The shooting can get intense, but they have some RPG elements. There’s an experience/leveling system, a skill tree, a fairly sophisticated crafting system, and lots of repetitive gofer missions. The best one is Far Cry 3, which is relatively old and you can pick it up dirt cheap; currently $5.99 on Steam during the LNY sale.

Along similar lines, but less shoot-y and more sword-y, the Assassin’s Creed games. Best ones are probably 2, Black Flag (4), Origins, and Odyssey.

12

Cool, since I have like 34 fusion cores hoarded up, I never leave home without it!

The Railroad HQ NPCs are funny–

“How do you even fit down here in that thing?”

“You’re not going to wear that if we send you on covert missions, are you?”

RE: the Glowing Sea, I found that I could put on a hazmat suit and power armor over that; it seemed to provide more radiation protection than either one alone. I spent quite awhile in the Glowing Sea getting to the Crator of Atom and Virgil’s cave, and I only needed to burn a few radaways.

13

Yeah, this one. (That’s the Mechanist one, right?) The Mechanist one is really useful if you never actually complete the mission. No spoilers, but letting this one keep going on is a great way to score fusion cores!

14

I’ll give a qualified second for Outer Worlds - you get all of the quasi-FPS you’ll like, and there are crafting elements to it, but it’s more of a customization option with fewer ‘levels’ than what you get in F4, and certainly none of the settlement building. Still a fun game, just . . . . smaller? than what you expect, even with the DLC.

Since no one mentioned it, I will - if you are loving F4, do look into the modding scene, such as over at NexusMods. There are quite a few DLC sized content mods, some of which are more Lore friendly than others, but give you huge chunks of other content to play that do not/minimally interact with the main storyline. You can also pick up mods that greatly modify play / add gear (balanced and not) / add new companions.

The latter three are really about finding what you like, or dislike and want to mod away in the base game, but I’ll throw out a few of my favorite story mods -

  1. Fourville - huge story with radiant quests and a spread out series of local and world quests that dive into what people who DIDN’T make it to a Vault in time might have done. It has a ton story bites (some which feel underdeveloped sadly), but it’s less friendly than a lot of vanilla quests. Sometimes you’ll have to figure out what to do / where to go with relatively few hints. And it’s a LOT less linear. Sometimes you think nothing progressing, only to figure out someone you did something for a while ago has something new for you, or it expects you to be at a certain stage in the vanilla storyline. Even so, a great mod with a fun, mostly lore friendly balance.

  2. The Machine and Her - another huge story mod, although somewhat less balanced in the companion it adds (not nearly as unbalanced as some, but can be trained to both pick locks and open terminals). Lore wise, it doesn’t contradict anything, just takes things in a slightly strange (but not outside of the realm of the story at all) direction. You may have many feelz by the end. Minor Spoiler/Warning - this is a L/G/B facing mod, in that it acknowledges the issue and it’s significant to the story, but not the focus of the story.

  3. The Secret of Huntress Manor - requires Far Harbor, one of many Lovecraftian story mods, but one that works surprisingly well. Perhaps a bit more overt than some, but with callbacks to Fallout 3 and tie-ins with 4 regarding Dunwich lore. More would be pretty spoiler-y.

Anyway, expect to get hours out of each of these.

Back to other games, Skyrim with all the DLC is probably closest - you have a robust armor / weapon / chem (sorry, potion) crafting system, lots of unique items to dig around for in little corners of the world, a rich depth of story, and even a ‘home’ settlement that you can build and tinker with. It can even be used like settlements in F4 to be a big money maker to finance your crafting, but without a fraction of the micromanagement.

Lastly, I’ll throw out a possible in the Metro series of games. They’re more a FPS with a veneer of crafting and RPG elements, but pack a pretty interesting story overall. They are also post nuclear war pseudo-survival, so depending on which pieces of F4 call to you the most, they may be a good fit.

15

Cool, will check it out. I did hear that the latest Far Cry, #6, has the voice of Giancarlo Esposito, Gus on Breaking Bad, as the major bad guy. So that series must be doing well (either that or they’re spending too much money on voice acting that should have gone to game development).

This sounds like a fun add-on after I get Nuka-World / Far Harbor. I like the idea of a Lovecraftian story in the F4 setting.

I do like the sound of this game series. Honestly I’m not really into the modding / crafting in F4 that much, I’m really more into the scrounging that the necessary crafting requires, if that makes any sense. For example, I have to repair my T60 power armor after every major battle, which requires steel and aluminum. Steel is a lot easier to find than aluminum, so when I’m in a hospital I’m like “oh boy, look at all the beautiful aluminum surgical trays” while my companion is all “why are you picking up that worthless crap?”. It’s like a treasure hunt. As mentioned, it pings my latent hoarder instincts, but sort of in a good way. So a game with just a veneer of crafting would be good, and I like the post-apocalypse stuff.

16

That’s another reason to have Automatron: in one of the Mechanist’s back rooms is schematics for an Eye Bot Pod – construct this in one of your settlements and you can tell its Eye Bot to look for virtually anything. Ammo, adhesive, aluminum, etc. It’ll set off and, after a while, let you know where you can pick up some of whatever stuff. Even if you’ve already been there and cleaned it out.

17

The vanilla game has an unmarked location near Goodneighbor, the top floor of which contains a full set of X-01 power armor if you find it at an appropriate level. Thing is, it’s guarded by and Assaultron an a Sentrybot so you’ll need to find a way to deal with them.

18

Oh wow, are you talking about Court 35, in Postal Square? If so, that’s crazy, because I was literally playing the game up until 5 minutes ago, when I left Court 35, took a break and saw I had a SDMB message.

I had been on a quest to put a MILA on top of the Commonwealth Bank, which was frustratingly hard to find at night, and I got distracted by some raiders or gunners I went to take out, which led me to Postal Square and Court 35. The roof had some sort of motion sensor alarm, which I only triggered after walking around up there for a bit and not seeing much of value (but again, it was dark). Then the assaultron and a legendary mutating Sentrybot sprang out. I killed the Assaultron, but the Sentrybot killed me, and it was my first actual death in awhile now.

I had been thinking “eh, get back on mission, live to fight another day” especially since I didn’t think there was much of value on the roof, but I should have known there wouldn’t be an Assaultron AND a Sentrybot guarding nothing. Now I must make a plan…possibly involving mine traps? Hmmm…

That seems like a bit of a cheat to me. The journey is as important as the destination, grasshopper.

My son, who is a big gamer and was done with F4 a couple years ago, was looking over my shoulder when I was playing the other day and was amazed at how many fusion cores, bobby pins, ammo, etc. I had collected, and accused me of cheating with console codes. I said, scrounging is in my DNA, buddy. You musta missed getting those genes :smile:

19

Not exactly what you asked for, but Dishonored (2012) and Thief (2014) are two relatively older games that I enjoyed immensely and can be picked up for under $3 apiece right now.

20

Yeah, that’s the one. If you’re at least Level 28 when you reach the top, you’re guaranteed to find a complete X-01 up there.

It’s actually more of a reward. Simply getting to the schematics takes a lot of work; a bit less work if you happen to know how to activate the Mechanist’s alternate entrance and avoid the huge firefight.