#FALLOUT 4 LIVEBLOG: THE GHOST FALLS OUT

[wizardlyghost]

- as i step aboard the HYDRAULIC PLATFORM which will bear my wide-eyed form to the surface, the GAME offers me one last chance from beyond the FOURTH WALL. "please, GHOST," it begs, "please reconsider your S.P.E.C.I.A.L. stats! to face this world with STRENGTH and CHARISMA and ENDURANCE scores as low as yours is an act of madness!"

- i barely even read the NOTIFICATION BOX. "to do otherwise would be an act of cowardice," i say. "the world can only kill me once."

- "that's not actually how videogames work-"

- "shut up."

- "ok."

- so anyway i exited the VAULT and, shockingly, the world had not survived NUCLEAR ARMAGEDDON. i tottered on down the hill, past the TANGLED SKELETONS of people who had died in the BLAST 200 years ago, many of whom i presumably knew personally. i assume the VAULT TECH SALESMAN was among them, but i was unable to distinguish his bones from those of everyone else refused entry to the VAULT. diogenes laughed.

- when i got down to SANCTUARY i found MISTER CODSWORTH the ROBOT BUTLER watering some extremely dead flowers. he tried to put a BRAVE FACE on but pretty much immediately had a FULL BREAKDOWN about being left alone with no purpose to fulfil for two centuries. TODD HOWARD you give me a button combo to give this robot a hug right fucking now.

- notably, he claims that he hasn't seen Anyone in all this time. this possibly means that the ASSHOLES who kidnapped BABY(?) SHAWN didn't come through this way?

- as another side note, this is the first full dialogue sequence of the game that isn't tied to character creation, and i had forgotten that the camera goes third person when my character is talking. those GLASSES i picked up from the OVERSEER's shrivelled corpse? i am now legally barred from ever removing them from CAT's face. it's a Look.

- i elected to explore the VILLAGE alone, remembering enough from last time to know that if i took MISTER CODSWORTH along he would charge directly into battle and i would probably end up accidentally shooting him several times. i used this time to familiarise myself with the WORKBENCH aspect of the game, which i hadn't really used previously. recycling all of the RUINED DEBRIS in the VILLAGE was a weirdly theraputic way to come to terms with the TRAGIC DEATH of HOWARD-TODD.

- i also got my first taste of HACKING in this game. i fucking love these kinds of logic puzzle so much fam. i've got a little physical notebook that i work the answers out on and everything. so far this is my absolute favourite part of the game.

- at some point i realised that i had racked up enough XP to level up. i took my first PERK in MEDIC because cleaning up the VILLAGE reminded me of the rp value of acting like the npcs of this world are real people, and building my character to be able to help them rather than just power levelling as fast as my ammo supplies would allow. in character i guess i just felt like the act of cleaning up the ruins of the world that from my perspective i had only been living in this morning drove it home that if i wasn't going to try to fix things then what in the goddamn else was i gonna do?

- with that deep thought i headed on up the hill to the RED ROCKET TRUCK STOP, which in my mind will forever be called PIZZA PLANET because there will always be a toy story kid buried somewhere in my exhausted soul. on the way there i met the TRUE HERO of FALLOUT 4: DOG THE DOG! he is a GOOD BOY and immediately saved me from a bunch of NAKED MOLE RATS. i pet him on the head and tried to give him a CAN OF DOG FOOD that i had found back in the village. possibly this isn't intended to be a consumable item, as he just solemnly carried it around in his inventory. i guess, like most dogs, he doesn't know how can openers work.

- i explored around the PIZZA PLANET TRUCK STOP and found an underground cave with a bunch of cool shit inside, along with a bunch of NUCLEAR WASTE BARRELS that had been extremely responsibly disposed of by tucking them away dirECTLY UNDERNEATH THE NUCLEAR POWERED FUEL STATION WHAT!?!?!?

- there must be a constant earthquake going on around the ruins of osha hq as everyone who has ever inspected a worksite turns in their grave at once. this shit made ME turn in my grave, and i'm not even THERE yet. as someone who just spent two centuries nonconsensually frozen to death in a world where people get radiation poisoning from their cola this is maybe the worst health and safety violation i have yet seen. at least when VAULT-TECH disregarded human life it was intentional.

- new LAWYERLY OBJECTIVE unlocked: personally resurrect the OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH AND SAFETY ADMINISTRATION.

- anyway after NOPE-ing my way right the fuck back out of that cave i continued following the road towards CONCORD. it was here, in a house on the outskirts, that i made my most important discovery to date - a red bandanna, perfectly suited to be worn by my new best friend, DOG THE DOG. as i tied it around his neck, i heard in the distance the sound of gunfire, and decided that this was the perfect time to call it a night before i got sucked too deep into the action.

[wizardlyghost]

- WHY are there SEVERED HEADS in this FRIDGE????? the thing isn’t even plugged in.

- there is no ”right” way to combine decapitation and basketball, but i feel like y’all have done it extra wrong my dudes. it seems like there was a completely logical atrocity right in plain sight here. come on.

[wizardlyghost]

- oh my god this RAIDER writes poetry.

- what a sensitive lad. i almost hope i didn’t kill him.

- almost.

- asfkrjgshrk.

[wizardlyghost]

right, into the game proper.

- i tried opening up all the other pods just for the hell of it, no dice. surely this can't be why i'm called the "SOLE SURVIVOR".

- apparently i can pick up items before i get my PIP-BOY, but i can't access my INVENTORY or drop anything. hooo, boi, i am gonna Regret making STRENGTH one of my dump stats aren't i.

- a smarter player with these stats would pick up only strictly useful items and come back for the junk later. me, i'm picking up everything that's not nailed down Anyway. idk if crafting works the same as in new vegas but it took me Forever to figure out how to repair items with identical items in that game, so if it's the same system i'm starting with a leg up.

- of course the first weapon i found was a melee weapon. why were the GUARDS given batons if the VAULT-DWELLERS were intended to be comatose the whole time? i'm getting more and more convinced that the ceo of VAULT-TECH was just elon musk with a lord of the flies fixation. luckily it's light enough for me to swing with my STRENGTH=1 NOODLE ARMS though.

- there are Bugs in here.

- on reflection, i may have been unnecessarily mean towards VAULT-TECH's engineering skills. according to the computer terminals VAULT 111 was only supposed to be active for six months. two of those cryopods functioned for 42,000% of their intended lifespan. when VAULT-TECH builds a WILDLY UNETHICAL MAD SCIENCE LAB they build it to last.

- also: yeah, there's no way this wasn't a social experiment within a science experiment, these poor fuckers were locked in for six months with exactly one (1) video game to share between them and no other entertainment. i would have rioted too.

- i'm disappointed that the game won't let you even try to pick locks that are above your skill level. it's exactly the same mechanic as in skyrim and i've had enough experience there to probably pop the "CRYOLATOR" right out of its case even with increased difficulty. let me have the RIDICULOUS ENDGAME WEAPON before i've even set foot outside the VAULT, TODD.

- on the bright side i now have a GUN, and also some EYEGLASSES. presumably the glasses belonged to the OVERSEER of the FUCKED UP SCIENCE LAB VAULT, so it feels kinda icky to be wearing them, but hey, +1 PERCEPTION is nothing to be sneezed at. besides, apparently the guy had exactly my prescription.

     - oh god did i go to sleep with my contact lenses in for two hundred years?!? they must've either dissolved or fully fused to my eyeballs by now.

- according to his final diary entry the OVERSEER tried to stop everyone from leaving after six months because he was afraid that the DEADLY RADIATION would cook them all in seconds. the numerous SKELETONS clustered around the INNER VAULT DOOR would indicate that he was right. irony's a bitch.

- i now have a PIP-BOY! my worrying about early-game encumberment was unwarranted, even with a STRENGTH score of Bad i have a greater inventory size than in new vegas. i can only wear one of my two WEDDING RINGS at a time though which strikes me as bullshit.

time to step out into the light of dawn!

[wizardlyghost]

alright i've finished the intro again. thoughts:

- this VAULT-TECH SALESMAN showing up like ten minutes before the bombs go off is hella sus. possibly this is just because it's a video game but i'm gonna bookmark it as a potential chekov's gun anyway.

- also i didn't notice last time but they locked him out of the vault to die in the explosions. damn that's cold. VAULT-TECH needs to unionise.

- my character (whom i have named CAT in a moment of panicked decision making) is apparently a LAWYER? this seems like maybe the least useful skillset to be taking into a LAWLESS WASTELAND. am i gonna take the fucking BROTHERHOOD OF STEEL to court and phoenix wright them to death? is that a quest that happens?

- i made AGILITY and PERCEPTION my highest scores, with INTELLIGENCE and LUCK close behind. spoiler alert: i am Bad At Video Games, especially anything that requires complicated button combos and precise rhythm, so my playstyle overwhelmingly favours distance, stealth, and racking up those sweet sweet sneak attack criticals. i put one point above minimum into ENDURANCE so that i'm not completely made of damp cardboard, but left CHARISMA and STRENGTH at one point each. ANTISOCIAL ASTHMATIC STICKWOMAN wasn't the character i set out to make, but i'll make it work.

- my DARLING HUSBAND HOWARD-TODD has a folded AMERICAN FLAG in pride of place near the front door. i'm choosing to believe that this is purely because the military technically owns the house and they can kick us out if we aren't patriotic enough (idk how the american military works in 2077 but it seems more than plausible). don't worry boo i know you hate the Man on the inside.

- MISTER CODSWORTH the ROBOT BUTLER came in a box, which is still in the laundry so it must have been very recently. i'm choosing to believe that i put him together myself as DARLING HUSBAND HOWARD-TODD couldn't change a lightbulb to save his life, bless his heart. this also means that MISTER CODSWORTH is less than a week old when everyone he knows disappears for hundreds of years. i am automatically sympathetic to most robots but this guy already has my heart.

- there are only like two dozen people who make it into the VAULT, most of them GUARDS, and the facility seems to be stretching its capacity with just that many. above table i know that this is because this is all a FUCKED UP SCIENCE EXPERIMENT, but how did nobody notice how small the place was? did VAULT-TECH just lie about how deep they were digging the bunker? maybe that's my LAWYERLY OBJECTIVE: prosecute VAULT-TECH for fraud and tax evasion.

- although come to think of it there's a concerning amount of indication that the VAULT has been advertised as some sort of luxury cruise equivalent. "Survive The Apocalypse In Style, With All Your Needs Taken Care Of By Our Fully Qualified Staff". i suppose VAULT-TECH technically didn't deliberately carry class divides into the brave new world - i'm pretty sure i remember that the GUARDS had to cook and clean for themselves - but i somehow don't think it was because the Company was particularly invested in egalitarian values. i say again: VAULT-TECH Needs A Fucking Union.

- i tried getting to the end of the bunker and refusing to get into the POD, but unfortunately nobody tried to capture me after wandering around for a bit. was really hoping for a dramatic struggle but i couldn't even talk to anyone. disappointing.

all in all, a decent start.

[wizardlyghost]

- what the Fuck.

- i sure as hell hope that’s all that was. i Do Not need an assassin’s ghost possessing my friend. fuck no.

- o shit NICK VALENTINE lore drop! completing this mission must have ticked us over into the next tier of friendship.

- ok, so:

     - NICK was tossed in the literal garbage by the INSTITUTE (the fuckers).

    - he has a head full of memories from a pre-war chicago detective (again with the neurotech!).

    - he wandered around the wasteland a bit in the days when SYNTHS were more of a curiosity than a threat,

    - eventually he saved the daughter of the former MAYOR OF DIAMOND CITY, who had been kidnapped by raiders.

          - this is how he did it:

          - he is saying “beep beep beep” with his mouth. you little shit i love you so much.

    - the MAYOR welcomed him into the city as a reward and prevented anyone from kicking him out.

    - that’s fucking terrible. nobody ever tried to patch him up? DIAMOND CITY doesn’t deserve this guy.

- i... ok, i’m gonna need a minute.

- this guy is just a great big existential crisis in a trench coat, isn’t he? he’s been working on it a long time but i can see it.

    - he woke up in the fucking garbage, with nobody to help him reconcile his who with his what, and few to no memories of his recent past. he wandered the wasteland as an oddity without a place, eventually found a home, and then found that his calling was the exact same thing that the guy whose memories he has did. and he made it work! because he had found his place, and his purpose.

    - but i Absolutely can see that this guy is Not Ok. this new level of friendship came after the point where he volunteered to undergo an uprecedented medical procedure and download a murderous mercenary’s decaying brainwaves into his head. because i’ve lost my son, and NICK VALENTINE considers risking his own life, health, and sanity for a kid he has never met to be all in a completely reasonable day’s work.

    - as idealised as self-sacrifice is, that’s not the behaviour of someone who places value on their own life. given his history, i think NICK might still have some kind of insecurity about whether he’s the quote-unquote “real” NICK VALENTINE, whether he has any right to his personality and identity. i feel like he’s throwing himself at every possible chance he has to make the world a better place because he maybe doesn’t think he has value beyond what he can do for other people.

    - i just. i wanna give this guy a hug so bad. he’s the best person in this godforsaken world by a fucking mile.

[wizardlyghost]

oh my god... they killed him... they killed HOWARD-TODD... who could possibly have seen this coming...

anyway, back to the liveblog.

- so after being surprisogenically frozen i wake up x number of years/centuries in the future. a bunch of ASSHOLES open HOWARD-TODD's stasis pod (conveniently located directly opposite mine), take BABY SHAWN, and shoot my POOR DARLING HUSBAND in the head.

- side note: i was correct about BABY SHAWN's name but not its spelling (SEAN). apologies for being irish i guess.

- another side note: it's awfully convenient that these CRYOGENIC STASIS PODS designed to hold people who are dead to the world are equipped with viewing windows. or maybe there was a secondary experiment planned that involved psychologically torturing the occupants with visual stimuli. or maybe it was just for the Aesthetic. it's difficult to tell with VAULT-TECH.

- i also forgot that the ASSHOLE who brutally murderkills HOWARD-TODD directly acknowledges that i a) am alive, b) am conscious, and c) just witnessed everything. he also calls me the "backup", which raises questions. i already assumed they took BABY SHAWN specifically for a reason, but i figured that it was at least partly because he was, y'know, a baby. do the ASSHOLES just want survivors of cryogenesis? in that case why did they (in all senses of the word) waste HOWARD-TODD? do they want something in my genetics? how would they know about my genetics? if they want BABY SHAWN for something that could potentially require a "backup" why wouldn't they make the adults the first guinea pigs and save the baby for the beta test? the plot has just thickened into treacle. if at some point they try to breed me i am going to kill every last one of them.

- anyway, x number of years after they put me back to sleep i wake up again. am i being rescued? no, the VAULT has all but run out of power and the failsafes have been activated.

- gotta say, it was uncharacteristically thoughtful of VAULT-TECH to include a failsafe to save their MUCH-ABUSED TEST SUBJECTS in case of emergency.

- it was, however, completely characteristic of VAULT-TECH that only two of the roughly two dozen pods didn't completely fail to open when said emergency occurred.

- i go over to HOWARD-TODD's corpse and take his wedding ring, promising to find BABY SHAWN (who is possibly no longer a baby, there's no indication of how long i was out). i take care to reseal his pod so that he doesn't attract flies.

- it is the FUTURE. what amazing pinnacles society must surely have reached...

[wizardlyghost]

- ok confession: i played a bit a couple of days ago but didn’t post because of life in general, so this is gonna be a little vague. here’s the highlights though.

- apparently if you try to REVERSE PICKPOCKET a PRESENT into a friendly character’s pocket every other friendly person in town ATTACKS YOU ON SIGHT, no matter how many times you’ve saved their asses. rude.

- yes i forgot that you can just trade items with npcs. fight me.

- MAMA MURPHY didn’t even acknowledge the ANTI-ADDICTION CURE-ALL that i spent ages scouring the wasteland for ingredients to make anyway. i’m feeling a little underappreciated here.

- upgrading my CALEDFWLCH 10 CALIBRE PISTOL levelled up my relationship with CODSWORTH to the point where he TOLERATES me. tf did he feel about me before??? ungrateful bowling ball. i BUILT your ass motherfu- ah hell i sound like my parents. let’s move on.

- there seems to be an entity known as  the MIRELURK QUEEN. here is a reenactment of the moment i discovered this fact:

-gAAAAAAHSONOFABITCHONTOASTSHITSHITBALLSFUCKCUNTMOTHERHELLJESUSHDICKONASTICKAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

- in a noble display of mercy i elected to let it live and went elsewhere immediately.

- i found what seems to be a ROBOT RACETRACK relatively nearby, guarded (staffed?) by RAIDERS and TRIGGERMEN.

- the name TRIGGERMEN seems really familiar but i can’t remember hearing anything specific about them. when i saw the tag pop up i thought that they were maybe an ALLIABLE FACTION, but they pretty much immediately opened fire on my ass when they saw me, so i’m assuming they’re just hostile.

- i managed to hack the ROBOTS (god i love hacking in this game) and stop their seemingly endless race around the track. i can’t seem to find a non-violent program for them that doesn’t just power them down in the middle of the track. they look kinda sad, just standing there deactivated :(. maybe if i find the (possibly late) PROFESSOR GOODFEELS i can reprogram them with a “JUST BE” mode? i’d prefer to free them entirely, but it beats being used as weapons and/or raced like greyhounds.

- joined the BROTHERHOOD OF STEEL. neither of PALADIN DANSE’s friends seems to like me. really not digging the military vibes of this thing but i’ll win them round never fear.

- broke into an ELECTRONICS STORE full of more DEACTIVATED ROBOTS. i spent like half an hour slowly sneaking around the place, paranoid that as soon as they were all between me and the door they were going to come to life and attack me. nerve wracking.

- i did end up getting attacked in the deepest basement, but instead of a ROBOT my assailant was a... LEGENDARY RADROACH? RADROACHES can be legendary?? people are telling stories about RADROACHES that they didn’t immediately kill??? i have so many questions.

- it only took one bullet though, so it wasn’t that legendary. more impressive was how it had a POISONED 10 CALIBRE PISTOL hidden under its carapace. i really wish there was a mechanic for it to have tried to use that on me, the image of a RADROACH WITH A GUN is making me giggle so hard.

- rescued a HOSTAGE, found some more O.S.H.A. VIOLATIONS. hacked a TERMINAL that only gave me 11 password options instead of 12, spent a long time scanning and rescanning the screen convinced that i’d missed one. i think that’s about the scope of what i accomplished. til next time i guess.

[wizardlyghost]

oh Fuck no, Please tell me that is not a CHILD SIZED NUCLEAR BOMB TOY CAR. what the fuck.

[wizardlyghost]

- having completed the MEMORY DEN, i elected to explore GOODNEIGHBOUR a bit more.

- my man TAKAHASHI single-handedly carrying the reputation of DIAMOND CITY.

- picked up a few more sidequests from talking to people. i hope these things don’t have time limits.

- the ELEVATOR DOORS in this HOTEL have all just been left open! looks to me like there’s been an...

- just gonna close that real quick.

- hangon someone just mentioned SANCTUARY HILLS.

- WHAT

- IN

- THE

[wizardlyghost]

it’s kinda difficult to tell here if MR. N. FREDRICKS is the suspect or the bitch-ass accuser, but i hope there’s a pro-union quest coming out of this.

[wizardlyghost]

- ok, with the context of where we are and what happened here, that’s just fucking rude. the GENERAL starved to death in this cellar with nothing to drink but a case of AMONTILLADO???? come on.

- holy shit, the MINUTEMAN GENERAL’S UNIFORM is the most powerful piece of ARMOUR i’ve encountered yet. i get the feeling this is one of the potential endgame sets, like you’re supposed to be able to wear it to dance with the final boss. once i’m done levelling my CHARISMA to lie to ELDER MAXSON (that’s still a thing i’m doing) i’m gonna have to look into getting some points in ARMOURER.

- doesn’t look too bad either, although i think the hat might be a bit much.

- hello, baby. kinda wish i hadn’t spent like an hour renetworking my SETTLEMENTS to build some of those LASER TURRETS, but hey, the more the merrier.

- ARTILLERY? ok, i think that might be a bridge too far. LONG-DISTANCE INDISCRIMINATE ANNIHILATION is not the path i had in mind for the MINUTEMEN.

[wizardlyghost]

- ooh CODSWORTH lore drop! i guess i was right, he does like playing the sims.

- this robot is gonna make me fuckin cry. of course you’re family bud.

- back to jumping around my SETTLEMENTS.

- well that’s something i havn’t seen before.

- if there’s an apartment building right there why am i building shitty death trap shacks for these people????

- ... ok, i have questions here. first of all, how fast can you fuckin write, bud? second, why was your first instinct to write this?? third, a snow cone machine??? fourth, who the fuck dies in that pose you drama queen???? fifth-

[wizardlyghost]

- oh thank god, he doesn’t hate me. let’s bounce, buddy.

- apparently pressing A while someone is speaking skips past the dialogue with a “yeah”, “uh-huh”, etc, but pressing B skips past it with a negative muttering? i think i just accidentally made a comment calling CODSWORTH a stupid robot or something :(

- who the fuck is this guy????

- ok so these guys were hauling luggage for a robot named WELLINGTON. isn’t that MR HANDSY the bartender down in GOODNEIGHBOUR?

- ok i think i was supposed to find this before going inside and follow the trail of bloody chunks to the DEATHCLAW. welp, sorry guys, y’all’re already dead and i don’t wanna join ya. rain check.

[wizardlyghost]

- no.

- i guess this means that SHAUN was raised in the INSTITUTE. i wonder why he was sent up top? the OLD MAN went to a hell of a lot of trouble to get him, and DIAMOND CITY, while safer than most of the COMMONWEALTH, can’t possibly hold a candle to a place nobody can find.

- X6-88, huh? i’m not sure if it would be less or more uncomfortable if the INSTITUTE gave their operatives names as well as numbers.

- that’s... on the one hand, SHAUN’s view of KELLOGG seems to be largely positive, so he probably hasn’t been outright mistreated, at least not by him. on the other hand, there is still something deeply wrong with this picture.

- WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT

[wizardlyghost]

Dogmeat was originally intended to not count against your companion limit so you could have him around as a freebie forever! This is throughly backed up in the code, and there's a very popular and simple mod that fixes it, which I highly recommend even for a vanilla playthrough. It's called Everyone's Best Friend, and can be found on Nexus.

aw yiss, i shall have to check this out, thanks. i think theres some kind of "official" mod "store" for fallout 4 & skyrim on xbox, but i haven't really checked it out yet - i hope it's on there.