Fallout 4 has been out for a few weeks now. Is it a few weeks? It feels like it, but time can go so quickly when you’re wandering the Boston nuclear wasteland, scavenging for adhesive and fending off super-mutants and mole rats.
I’m not going to lie a lot of things in Fallout 4 are very recognisable, VATs, the enemies, even most of the weapons and armour has a certain familiarity to them. However, there was one thing that was different, something I wasn’t prepared for, something I found myself doing.
In earlier Fallout games, I would pick up what I wanted from enemies, usually ammo, weapons, armour and anything that may be of value, the lighter and more valuable the better. All of the other items in the game were little more than background aesthetics as far as I was concerned.
Fallout 4 Settlements
The settlements in Fallout 4 changed all this, now all the other pieces of junk suddenly had a purpose. This junk stopped being nothing more than easy ways to make cash, and were now far more valuable as their parts. Before I knew it, I started to be constantly on the lookout for adhesive, gears, fibreglass and aluminium. I found myself dropping a weapon I wasn’t using so I could pick up several broken desk fans, all for the gears so I could build the defence lasers for my settlements.
Now when I have a few spare minutes I log on and go on scavenging missions. I pick my way through the various abandoned factories and households, looking for anything I can dump into my workshops.
Incidentally, get the local leader perk. That’s my number one bit of Fallout 4 advice, once you can link all your workshops together things get a lot easier.
So, yeah now I have around 7 settlements to look after. Finding resources is now a large part of the game, and it does add a more inclusive feel to the apocalypse. Your settlements are now living breathing and you’re responsible for them. It stops being a game about your survival in the wasteland, and it becomes a bigger thing about the groups of people surviving, communities being built and people living not just surviving. In short, it makes you feel as if you are not only part of something new but pushing it forward one tube of adhesive at a time.
It was completely unexpected. I didn’t even realise I was doing it at first, and I commend Bethesda for adding this community building factor into the game, even if it was purely by accident. There’s still so much in Fallout 4, that if you never built a settlement or picked up a single resource that wasn’t weapons or armour related, you still wouldn’t get bored. I would suggest taking the time, to build a settlement, and fostering it, even if you only do it once it will open up the game for you in ways you probably wouldn’t imagine.
