When I first started playing F04 and got to Concord, I didn’t realize the guy firing from the balcony was not just another raider, so I was shooting at him as well as the raiders. When I later met the Minutemen inside the Museum of Freedom, I experienced a weird glitch of Preston Garvey trying to fight me to the death, interspersed with cut scenes of him trying to convince me to join the Minutemen. You wanna kill me or recruit me? Make up yer damn mind 
Last time I played Fallout 4, I did the Minuteman quests and the Nuka-World quests which resulted in an odd conversation with Preston Garvey:
“You’re the best general the Minutemen have ever had and I’d be proud to help you against the Institute. And also I hate you and I never want to speak with you again.”
Ha, I don’t think that’s even a glitch, just Preston being a passive-aggressive a-hole. Did you introduce Nuka-World raiders into the settlements? I heard that really pisses Preston off.
I only did about half or less of the Nuka-World quests, because playing as a bad guy just felt kinda icky. So far Preston is still copacetic with me. Too copacetic in fact-- he keeps wanting to tell me his feelings and shit. Every time I run into him these days, he says “is this a good time to have that talk I wanted?” and I run away. I should go back and finish the Nuka-World quests, if for no other reason than to anger Preston enough that he doesn’t want to speak with me ever again 
I met Preston at the required early part of the game and never visited or spoke with him again. I associated him with the construction/building part of the game, which I wanted zero to do with. I even used codes to build the one device they made me build at one point in the game.
Uh, the building of settlements and stuff. That’s kind of boring, isn’t it? I mean, I guess it would be fun as its own game, but I’m playing Fallout. I want to wander the wasteland and do quests and stuff. You know, the things from the previous four games in the series.
Yeah, you were smart. I didn’t mind the settlement-building so much, myself-- to a point. My latent OCD hoarder tendencies enjoyed the scavenger-hunting part, collecting raw materials to help build the settlement resources. But Preston’s constant “hey, got another settlement for you to build” got really tedious.
And when I’d go on quests with Preston and pick up stuff, a-hole Preston would be all “why are you picking up all that useless crap?” Uh, I’m doing it for your stoopid settlements, moron. I quickly stopped taking him on quests.
And then, once the settlements are built, the constant “Settlement [ABC] is under attack and needs defending!” messages when I was in the middle of another, interesting quest were frustrating as hell. Can’t any other freakin’ Minutemen take care of it? Hell, at one point Preston or some other Minuteman gave me some flares and said “if you’re ever under attack, or defending a settlement, just shoot off a flare and we’ll come to help”. Welp, I tried it once, and got the message “No Minutemen are available at this time.” Frickin’ useless.
Three pieces of advice:
- We do have a dedicated Fallout 4 thread if needed (no snark, just if you want more info).
- IF (big if) you want to work with Preston Garvey storylines AND do Nuka-World, the easiest option is to completely bypass Concord (where you meet him) and run down to Diamond City. You can do almost all the story, meet most of the other factions, level up, do Nuka-world, and then come back and do Preston’s storyline without making him perma-hostile (although he’s generally require you to kill the Raiders in the Commonwealth if you’ve settled any, and the leaders back in Nuka World ). In the meantime though, nothing prevents you from fully setting up and populating the original settlement even without the Minuteman assistance.
- While there are mods that make the settlements less “attractive” to attacks, the settlers less “squishy”, and the defenses more robust, AND even reduce the micromanaging aspects, I fully agree that settlements are at best too much of a good thing. My honest opinion was that it would have felt better and been more unique if you got the first settlement (Sanctuary Hills) and only got one other in the base game based on actual choices - plus one or two more based on the DLC.
So for example, you get Sanctuary hills pretty much as your intro base. If you progress the storyline, you unlock the Castle, which makes it both more meaningful, and it’s one of the only ones that comes with unique settlement objects. Then per the DLC, you get Vault 88 (the whole point of the DLC), Far Harbor’s Old Longfellow’s Cabin, the Nuka World Red Rocket. But in more complete playthroughs of F4 I’ve had 30-40 settlements, and that was absolutely a chore and less impactful.
My Fallout 4 playthrough kinda petered out so I started playing Red Dead Redemption 2 yesterday. Have owned it for many years and never played it. Fired it up once or twice over the years just to see that it would run on my machine.
Graphics are still impressive. It’s beautiful to just ride around and look at the scenery.
The beginning chapter is mostly on rails, which I see a lot of complaints about, but it’s primarily just an introduction to the characters and a tutorial level, so I’m fine with that.
Once the actual free-roaming begins, the gameplay is clearly built on the Grand Theft Auto model, but I wouldn’t exactly describe it as “GTA on horses” like I’ve heard. I appreciate that there are actual long-term consequences for senseless murder and general assholery. I’m trying to not murder anyone outside of missions. And I’m saving up for a fancy new hat!
Not going to do a play-by-play as I go, but I might check in with thoughts from time to time.
I’ve heard people keep saves after chapter 1 so they can start there. I assure you, the main game is much more open and a lot more enjoyable.
Hey, you should of a play by play of it. I played it a few years and would like to hear your thoughts. It’s really fun.
I managed to make my way through the tutorial section, but I found all of the micro-management to be a big turn-off. I have to remember to feed my horse, for Pete’s sake??
Maybe I’ll go back to it again some day, but I haven’t felt the urge in the past year or more.
Not to me. I spent hours and hours building my settlements. Possibly my favorite part of the game. I’d love a Fallout game that made settlement building the core game loop, like a post apocalyptic Valheim.
I did a bunch of base building the first time I played. When I did a second playthrough years later I said I wouldn’t waste time on it.
Anyway, predictably, I spent a lot of time on it in the second playthrough. I didn’t obsessively collect suits of power armor for a garage like the first time. I think instead I made a museum of various cool outfits I picked up along the way.
Here’s one thought: there are a lot of characters. I’m 10% in according to my save game and I’m still not entirely sure who everyone is. It took me until halfway through the first chapter to even know my own name. Someone kept yelling for “Arthur” and I’m like, “Dammit Arthur, get over there!” 
That’s not a terrible description of Seven Days to Die, which is almost out of early access.
Speaking of coming out of early access, Survival: Fountain of Youth just released 1.0 last week. I picked it up a couple weeks ago on sale but haven’t tried it yet.
I’m pretty sure it’s a second tier survival game, but it does look interesting. Reviews liken it to Green Hell but without enemies other than regular animals. Pretty much just straight survival.
I played that for nine minutes in 2015.
Probably, it’s changed a lot since I last tried it.
I had a blast playing it for awhile. You can get by with a teeny tiny base, except for one night a week when you want something well-designed, at which point you really need to have paid attention to your defenses. Whether it’s worth playing now, or waiting until its full release in a month or so, I dunno; I’ll probably pick it back up on 1.0.
I’m in Chapter 3 of RDR2, the gang is living in that old plantation house in the south. I’ve paused on story missions for now, I think I’m near the end of this chapter, there’s only one yellow Hosea mission in the map right now. I’ve just been going on long hunting trips and exploring the map for a while. I got a black Arabian horse and I want all that cool stuff the Trapper sells.
All this hunting is making me see IRL wildlife differently. If I see a squirrel in the yard I want to reach for my binoculars and check its pelt quality.
Ha, I’m still on a Fallout 4 Replay, and the other day on a walk I saw a metal stairway running along the outside of a building to a 2nd floor doorway, kind of like the hundreds of fire escape stairs you find in FO4. I thought, once I get past the raiders that are surely up there, I bet there’s some good loot to plunder! Unfortunately, I had left my power armor at home, and I didn’t even have a 10MM on me.
I’m constantly aware of the mirelurks that surely infest the drainage ditches and ponds near my house
I downloaded Wildermyth on Steam for a day. It kept me entertained. It’s a pretty standard turn-based party RPG so far, not a ton of customization but some interesting twists on skills (the wizard doesn’t deal direct elemental damage but instead can manipulate objects in the environment, like exploding a box at an enemy or lighting a lamp and using the fire.) The gimmick of the game, I guess, is that you follow the entire life span of your hero, and then they go into a book of myths, and then …? Not clear.
So I don’t yet see what makes this game so special.
At any rate, I won’t find out any time soon. This season of Diablo 4 doesn’t suck so me and my husband have been playing every night for the first time since launch. We are level 86 and still having fun. Only time will tell how long this lasts and if other seasons will be as good. There’s a lot of broken trust and still some outstanding issues that are like, “Why?” I’m not a game developer and even I can see that some of the choices they made are just bad. Like did you bother talking to Diablo fans before you made this game? No you did not.
But they seem to be learning.
So for right now that’s our activity of choice.