Survival Mode Time!
Background: I played Fallout 4 soon after it came out, beating the main quest line on normal mode to experience the story. Then I went back and restarted on Survival difficulty and explored, eventually getting bored wandering around in X-01 power armour one-shotting Deathclaws whilst ticking off quests like they're a to-do list. I put it down and walked away, leaving the icon on my desktop buried under an endless series of newer shinies.
Cue coming back to discover Survival mode has had a revamp and a significant increase in difficulty. So, time to tuck in and try it out!
My Lone Wanderer is a female Chinese American named Pei Ling, a smart, independent woman who refuses to let the wasteland consume her. Her core beliefs are that society requires rule of law to function, that rule of law requires threat of force to be effective, and that sacrifice for the greater good is a necessary evil.
Her SPECIAL starting stats are 4/4/4/3/6/4/3. She's smart enough to have earned herself a major in law and a minor in bioscience, but her racial background left her an outcast in a country where anyone with an Asian face is branded a communist. She's an unashamed geek at heart, and buying her very own Mr Handy robot comes in right behind graduating university, getting married and having a child as one of the highlights of her life.
That's enough character background, now it's time to kill stuff!
Run to Vault, get frozen, watch Kellogg do nasty stuff, get unfrozen, squash some Radroaches with a security baton and I'm out!
First stop: Home. I get lucky even with a 3 Charisma and nail the check with Codsworth to find out he's a depressed kitchen appliance. I let him do his thing clearing Sanctuary of pests, then loot them for meat and activate the workshop. I clean out Sanctuary of trash, read a kid's book and become more Intelligent somehow. I squeak in Level 2 by constructing the basics of a bed and water pump, decide I'm gonna need to defend myself if I'm going to have any chance surviving in the new Commonwealth, and pick up Gun Nut 1.
I upgrade my 10mm pistol and a pipe rifle, but now I'm low on materials, especially adhesive. Time to go explore!
I go south, getting a mild dose of radiation and spending a few bullets to earn myself some Bloodbug probosces and an army helmet. I stop at the Ranger Cabin to catch a short nap and cook up some fresh Bloatfly chow, then face my first true challenge: a camp to the west containing four raiders and their attack dog.
I quickly learn the difference between the old Survival version and the new one. Trying to charge up and explode their heads in VATS at point blank range just doesn't cut it. I'm a weak, frail human being that dies if you shoot them with bullets instead of making mildly constipated grunting noises. Molotov cocktails are weapons of instant, burning death. If I want to live longer than a few seconds in combat I'm going to need to drastically change my playstyle.
In previous versions I typically went with a Commando focused build that walks around spraying anything red with a bullet hose. Today, I do something I have rarely if ever done before: I actually try to aim my gun.
Squinting down the basic sights of my 10mm, I see the faintest silhouette of a raider up by the ridgeline. I track him, wait for him to stop moving, and gently squeeze the trigger.
Cha-ching! I'm not the only one who's mortal, b&+@#es!
A short game of shoot-and-scoot later and I'm looting their bloody corpses, happy to discover a full set of leather armour amongst the gore. I wipe off the entrails and suit up, feeling like a kid on Christmas Day. I cook and eat their dog in celebration.
By now I'm hauling about as much as I can handle, so I swing back home and drop off everything but the essentials. I've hit level 3, investing into Armorer to pimp out my new leathers, rest up and go for a short hunting trip to bag me some Radstag and use their hide to upgrade my equipment. I'm a regular Bear Grylls, yo.
Next on the list is the inevitable trip southeast to Red Rocket Truck Stop. You're a mutt, Dogmeat, but I'll take you and get you to drag my crap around until I recruit someone—anyone—better.
Something strange happens, or rather fails to happen. I don't get ambushed by mole rats. Paranoid and slightly disappointed that my dinner plans are spoiled, I go pillage their rear hole instead. Inside, aside from the standard fusion core from the mole rat den, I score one more nice find: a glow sighted hair trigger pipe rifle with a large magazine and marksman's stock. I swap out the hair trigger for my own pipe rifle's powerful receiver, slap a long ported barrel on it with the last of my adhesive back at the workstation, and retire my 10mm since I've used all but about two clips worth of the 150 rounds of ammo I started with.
A long rest and a breakfast of day-old reheated molerat and I'm off to clear around my second base. I clip the Bloodbugs off a Brahmin corpse to practice getting my sights on my new weapon and then swing north, grabbing a .44 handcannon and a whopping 5 rounds of ammo for it. My security baton gets some action bashing in a few Molerat skulls, then I sneak up on a small camp of raiders and get Dirty Harry and his five friends out. I've got a full crit meter and I figure there's no better way to get this party started.
It's loud, messy and gloriously overkill. I'm pretty sure there's too many eyeballs in that red goop on the ground, but I figure the raider must have had some spares. Their junk goes on Dogmeat, their ammo goes in my pack and their dog goes in my belly. Take-out, wasteland style.
I dump the .44 since it's a paperweight without more ammo, then stop for a short rest in an abandoned house close enough to Concord to enjoy the aroma of rotting Brahmin. I then inch into Concord proper to sniff around. Smells like Preston; I think I prefer the Brahmin. My pipe rifle clears the front of the museum, but I skip going inside because, meh, I'm sure they'll be fine.
I do a few hauls of loot back to Red Rocket, clearing most of Concord and the sub-areas besides the underground tunnels. Behind the museum there's a campsite where I spot a Yao Guai feasting on the remains of a pair of scavengers. I hum the Circle of Life from the Lion King as I snipe it from a nearby building, cook it and eat it.
Finally I sigh, roll my eyes and shrug my shoulders, dumping all but the essentials in preparation for a trip to the museum. Headshots for the two on the upper balcony, a half dozen in the chest of the one that charges me with a pool cue while the museum exhibit natters on about lobster-backed jackanapes. I've lucked into a pair of frag grenades during my looting spree of Concord which make short work of the two raiders in the mural room and the pair outside the door to Preston. I endure his exposition and present the fusion core I liberated earlier. Now comes the tricky bit.
Up to the roof and I inch forward in my ever-so-stealthy T-45 suit. I stash the minigun in favour of drawing my old reliable pipe rifle, nailing the raider across the street with a sneak attack to the face. There's no way in hell I'm going down to street level, power armour or not. Instead I cower like a frightened little girl behind the wall, popping up every second to take another shot at the raider lemmings. Finally the main event arrives, finishes off the remainder of the mooks and realises it can't fly. The Deathclaw tries to dodge, weave and make disparaging remarks about my parentage, but I just calmly give it a few hundred new .38 sized orifices until it dies.
Then I cook and eat it.
By now I'm level 10, picking up Gun Nut, Armorer, Chemist, Locksmith, Hacker, Rifleman, Sneak, Science! and Rifleman 2. I walk Preston and his posse back to Sanctuary, sort them out for glue production and scavenging, then get Tenpines Bluff from Preston marked on my map. I park my T-45 at Sanctuary for now, since I've only scavenged one and a half power cores for it and don't want to blow them on walking my ass halfway across the map. I make a few extra trips back to Concord and loot the place bare, raider corpses included.
This seems like a good point to break the narrative, and I'll conclude by saying that the difference the new Survival mode makes to my playstyle is really fun. I've continued this game further than I've written, with lots of funny emergent stories coming out of my adventures. Hopefully I'll get the chance to write them down too, but for now I'm having a blast taking the scenic route and cursing my stupidity when I get my ass handed to me as punishment.
Author
Topic: Fallout 4: It Just Works (Read 831989 times)