Further to yesterday’s topic, there’s a whole lot of SMH going around.  All of a sudden the internet has turned into counter-terrorism expert central.  I’m not an expert, so I won’t even bother with it.  Suffice it to say, that if you have an opinion and it isn’t supported by facts, then you’re that crazy uncle everyone has.  We’re all crazy uncles about something.  Just need to pick which thing.

Also, I really feel bad for the US right now.  Like in that way you feel bad for your friend, whose parents are nutjobs, and then they don’t have a choice to live with them or head out on their own.  Apparently the 30,000 deaths per year from guns are not something worth talking about, or the 1,000 per year killed by police, but something that happened overseas is enough to have emergency action.  It feels like that ol’ Amy and Seth bit on SNL – Really!?!

Factions in Fallout

I haven’t focused much on leveling or questing, so I’m only level 21 and up until the last session, I had only unlocked the Minutemen and Brotherhood of Steel factions.  Well, now I’ve unlocked the Railroad, finally found Diamond City, Goodneighbour and the Institute.  I’ve only complete a single quest for the former mind you.

And that was a weird quest.  Maybe I just ran it incorrectly but there were master and expert terminals/locks everywhere, blocking my way forward.  I’m not sure if I was supposed to ask for help from Deacon or not but since I had already unlocked those skills I went ahead.  The alternative path was to run in guns blazing through a mine field.  I’d be curious as to the alternate path.

From the non-spoiler information I’ve read, 3 of those factions are exclusive past a certain point.  The nuances between each seem interesting.  One is focused on brute strength, another in subterfuge and the last one in moral ambiguity.  I’ll be honest and say that I’m rather interested in the benefits of a given faction, rather than their moral causes.  Too much gamification for me, granted, but it actually shows a poor level of balance.  Reminds me a bit of the Dark/Jedi/grey zone issues SWTOR had for a while.  I’m personally a fan of putting in non-power related rewards for these types of decisions, and instead focus on the story.  I seem to be more comfortable with losing access to content than to statistics – or in FO4’s case, losing both.

I also picked up a pretty crazy gun in Vault 81 I had missed the first time.  It’s sold by a vendor, and I typically skip those folks.  Well, this one is a semi-rifle that fires 2 bullets per scoped shot.  I’ve further modified it so that the base damage is 113.  I need to be level 24 I think to get to the next rank of mods.  Caps out at 233 from what I can see.  The difference in damage is just seems like a massive bug.  I took out a legendary enemy in a single snipe, where normally I’d take 5-8 shots.  I’m looking at the various perks and companion bonuses too, and from what I can tell I should be able to hit somewhere near 5x the sneak damage.  And that’s not counting the VATS bonuses to aiming for headshots from another perk.  It’s surreal, enough to the point where if I can see it, I should be able to take it down in a single shot.  That is a drastic change in play and one I’m thinking of just putting aside in order to restore some challenge.

Also, in a touching piece to the game, I found Edwin’s house and Annika’s locket at Chestnut Hill Reservoir.  There’s zero gameplay impact but the story on the terminal in the house and the nearby lake really makes you stop to think about the types of people in the story.  As much as there are ghouls, mutants, raiders and giant insects… there are people around too.  Just normal people, having normal lives, and then tragedy.  I just stopped for few minutes and let that sink in.  By not applying any game-related content, other than lore, it really applies a different focus and makes you think.  Pretty neat.