Transcript

[00:00:01] Speaker A: Hello and welcome to season seven of the gaming backlog book club. We just wrapped up season six about Silent Hill 2 and boy are we glad to be out of that town. Nothing good happens there. Nothing at all.

[00:00:12] Speaker B: No. That was. That was terrifying. A lot of fun to say the least.

[00:00:16] Speaker A: A terrifying town, you know, despite how scary it is. I venture to call it a masterpiece. Obviously it’s considered that by its fans, but I’m jumping on that train for sure.

[00:00:29] Speaker B: Yes. Same here. Definitely.

[00:00:31] Speaker A: What have you been playing since finishing that a few days ago? Or more specifically, which cozy games were you playing to counteract that complete anxiety of playing Silent Hill 2 Remake?

[00:00:43] Speaker B: To be honest, not too much. I’ve kind of just been sitting with a friend playing some Madden Madden Ultimate Team Online. That’s kind of just been my cozy game, I guess, just playing with a friend with Madden Ultimate Team. And then I played a little bit more of.

A little bit more of Hollow Knight, but not as much as I would like. I haven’t really got to play much of it, to be honest. I’ve kind of just been sitting at night and watching movies.

[00:01:09] Speaker A: Oh yeah, there you go. That’s a good way to decompress. Yeah.

[00:01:13] Speaker B: On another backlog of. Backlog of movies.

So that’s been a big one. I’ve seen quite a few. There Will Be Blood was one I.

[00:01:21] Speaker A: Just watched, which was such a good movie.

[00:01:23] Speaker B: Incredible.

There was just a few funny comedy ones. There’s one called about my dad with Sebastian.

Is it Montescalo?

[00:01:37] Speaker A: Bobby Cannavale, you said? No, no, not Sebastian Marincalo.

[00:01:41] Speaker B: Could be, yeah. Maniscal. Yeah, it was him. And Robert De Niro. Robert De Niro plays that. It’s just a funny like this is like Italian father story. It was pretty funny. It was a funny movie. And then.

Yeah, but that’s kind of just. Instead of playing games, it’s just been movies for me watching.

[00:02:00] Speaker A: Always a sub break. Yeah, I’ve been. So I started watching some anime while I do the dishes. It makes it a little less monotonous and it’s also, you know, 20 minute episodes so it’s a bit easier to just watch one and then move on. But I’ve been watching one called, I just started a couple weeks ago called Monster. It’s a single season but it’s 70 something episodes from the late 90s. But it’s like not at all like your typical anime. It’s like basically a murder thriller mystery thing like with a CIA agent tracking the guy down. It’s like a doctor that tried to do the right thing and got screwed over. So very interesting and not at all about like monsters or pirates or ninjas or whatever the typical thing is. So it makes it more grounded. But I’ve also had the fact that two of my guaranteed game of the years for 2025 coming out within one month while also doing the podcast game. And I think both of these came out right before, right while we’ve been playing Silent Hill 2 Remake.

So Hollow Knight, Silksong, and Ghost of Yotei and I’ve barely scratched the surface of either one just for lack of time, but we’ll eventually get going back into both of them.

[00:03:18] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean for me, obviously Silksong is obviously a sort of sequel, not really sequel to Hollow Knight, but as I said, yeah, I’ve been playing Hollow Knight since I never played that. And then I’ve downloaded Yote because again, that was also for me like a Game of the Year contender, like Day one play. But I’ve downloaded it, but I haven’t had the time just yet to like actually just start it up.

[00:03:41] Speaker A: Yeah, typically both of those would have been a drop every other game and play, but hey, we’re having fun with this thing, so let’s keep going. So this season we will be playing Fallout 4.

Now season two of the Amazon Prime Fallout TV series begins on December 17th, so this seems like a good way to get amped up for it.

We loved the first season and the trailers for this one look just as good.

Season two of the show will take place, at least from what we can tell, primarily in New Vegas after being in Los Angeles most of season one.

We do know that Fallout New Vegas is one of the most beloved games ever, and especially one of the fan favorite Fallout games. And while neither of us have played New Vegas yet, and honestly it’s at the top of my list, at least as far as Fallout goes. And I do own it already, but I only have a Steam deck, not an Xbox or a gaming PC, so the mods that make it more playable than the vanilla version are off the table for me.

And we’re holding out hope for a new Vegas remake or remaster at some point. So Fallout 4’s newish upgrade for PS5 is the best choice for us right now.

[00:04:45] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah it is. Yeah. New Vegas is also, again, yeah, top of another one. Top of the list for me too.

Because just from hearing people who have obviously played all the games and everything that yeah, it’s definitely up there as their one of their tops number one. If not number two. And as said, season two here is now taking place or it looks like it’s going to be going into New Vegas. So it’s going to be.

Yeah, hopefully they do make a remake. Like a full remake. Sort of like Silent Hill 2. They make a remake of that. That’d be great. And that would be. Yeah, yeah, that would definitely go on all backlog.

[00:05:19] Speaker A: And Obsidian has a hell of a good track record and that I know is very much attributed to Fallout New Vegas. Hey, hope we can get to it soon. But for now, Fallout 4 is the answer. Surprisingly, neither of us have ever played a Fallout game before. I’ve always known about it, at least in its 3D era, since Fallout 3, just as I’ve known about all the Elder Scrolls games since Morrowind. And while both series have always piqued my interest, especially with friends singing their praises, for whatever reason, neither series ever jumped to the top of my Play this Now list. And that’s even considering that I absolutely love all the old school vibe of the Fallout world with the retro futuristic stuff, the Vault boy character, the 50s Cold War way of talking in my head. For whatever reason, I always felt like Fallout was like open world Bioshock in many ways, probably mostly because of that old timey stuff. Even though I know they’re not all that similar. But even just that vibe connection didn’t make me play it earlier then. Now I’m super excited to do it anyway.

[00:06:22] Speaker B: Yeah, I’m really excited to get into Fallout 4, as you were saying also. Yeah, with Oblivion, with Obsidian. Morrowind is one. I think they just actually. Did they just come out, I think with a full remake of Morrowind?

[00:06:33] Speaker A: Oblivion was the remake.

[00:06:35] Speaker B: Oh, Oblivion was the remake.

[00:06:36] Speaker A: I think that was a Bethesda game. I don’t know if it was Obsidian.

Yeah. Either way, I know they keep keep going, going back in. So if they dip back into Oblivion, they should dip back into New Vegas.

[00:06:46] Speaker B: Yeah, they should.

Which would be a lot of fun.

[00:06:49] Speaker A: I wouldn’t be surprised if season two about New Vegas is going to inspire them for that.

[00:06:56] Speaker B: I hope so. I don’t know I was gonna say though, with the Elder Scrolls, the Morrowind game. I got that game actually as a gift from a friend way back when it came out on the original Xbox. And I did play a lot of it back then with him, like me and him switched off. It was a. I enjoyed Morrowind.

It’s like one I’ve always just wanted to. If they can’t remember, I don’t think they’ve done remake if they do like go back into it, maybe try it out. But yeah, that was just a fun. That was one of the ones I’ve probably put the most hours. I don’t know if I actually ever fully fully finished it, but I put a good amount of hours into.

[00:07:34] Speaker A: Did you play any of Oblivion or Skyrim?

[00:07:37] Speaker B: No. No. I did watch a friend play a little bit of Oblivion.

Not too much. And then Skyrim. Skyrim. No, I’ve never.

Again, it’s like I’ve seen some people play a little bit, but I’ve never tried it myself. And I don’t know, there’s so much in Skyrim. Like there’s.

[00:07:53] Speaker A: I mean it’s just endless.

[00:07:55] Speaker B: Yeah, it seems endless.

[00:07:56] Speaker A: Not to mention it’s been released on every platform of all time. I’ve. So I’ve never played any Elder Scrolls game.

Friend. I’ve seen a couple friends play both Morrowind and Oblivion when they came out and just saying how good they are. But yeah, I didn’t. Didn’t hit my list. But. But I have played. I played very. Just to try it out because it was so ridiculous and funny. The.

What was it called? Amazon. What was. What’s Amazon’s device called?

Echo or whatever or the other one.

[00:08:24] Speaker B: Luna, the video game Alexa.

[00:08:26] Speaker A: Anyway, I played the Alexa version of. Of skyrim for like 20 minutes just to laugh at what it was. And it was interesting.

Interesting. That’s the only thing I can come up with.

Okay, but I know, I mean we have access to Skyrim through PS5, so through PlayStation Plus.

[00:08:46] Speaker B: They also, I think they came out with a Skyrim VR for PlayStation for PSVR, PSVR2. And I was like, yeah, they just keep coming out with some types of Skyrim.

[00:08:56] Speaker A: I’m more likely at this point to play the Oblivion remake than Skyrim. I think just because of how much I remember hearing everyone love it back when it came out anyway.

Yeah. So for background, if you aren’t yet familiar with the fallout franchise, Fallout 4 was released in 2015. Developed and published by Bethesda, it was released to positive reviews and praise for its open world depth stories, characters, and especially the high quality side quests which supposedly take up the majority of the hours you’ll be putting into the game.

The story Setup of Fallout 4 is that you wake up from cryogenic stasis and see your spouse killed and child kidnapped, and you’re left for dead.

Since you’re the only survivor in your community, you emerge from your underground fallout shelter in the Boston area in the year 2287, which is 210 years after the great war that decimated the world with a nuclear holocaust.

You. You go off from there to try to find your kid and most likely get sidetracked every step of the way. As is pretty much the case in every open world game these days. The gameplay sets you in an open world in a first person shooter format, able to explore the nuclear wasteland to your heart’s content. Sounds like, you know, you go complete quests along the main story path, you can help and join various factions, acquire experience to level up and upgrade your character in RPG ways, gathering and looting all sorts of materials for crafting, building up settlements, and go along your merry way. The FPS combat is pretty standard in real time, but Fallout has the unique. And this is the thing that always caught my attention the most whenever I watch someone play Fallout and I always wanted to try it is the VATS system.

So that stands for the Vault TEC Assisted Targeting system, which allows you to heavily slow or maybe pause time, not sure which, while you’re targeting an enemy. And it pulls up a bunch of accuracy percentages for different parts of the body which you can just select and have it take the shot for you. Which is just such a unique way to engage in gun combat that I. Yeah, it always, always caught my attention.

[00:11:05] Speaker B: Yeah, it’s. That’s always caught mine as well. Yeah, the VATS system is really cool. It’s really unique. It’s something I’m looking forward to trying out here in Fallout 4.

Yeah. As you said, like you get. Yeah, I think it’s just slowing down time. Then you get all the accuracies.

Hopefully you can get like. I don’t know, like. I think.

[00:11:24] Speaker A: I’m sure it’s based on your. I’m sure it’s based on your stat, like your rpg like character stats as.

[00:11:29] Speaker B: Well as your gun, I’m assuming. Yeah. Because obviously with Fallout you get. There’s the other. What is the other acronym for all? Like your. Your strength.

[00:11:37] Speaker A: What is it?

[00:11:38] Speaker B: Agility, luck.

[00:11:40] Speaker A: Something clever, I’m sure.

[00:11:42] Speaker B: Yeah, but obviously, yeah, there’s all those different.

All those different skills or attributes that you can raise and lower to help you get through this apocalyptic world. And again, yeah, like for better.

For better aim, better quality of shots. So it’ll be fun to see with the vet system. And then also, yeah, as you said, like the customization, I think you can customize your guns and quite a lot.

[00:12:10] Speaker A: Yeah.

[00:12:11] Speaker B: With a whole bunch of like different parts and types.

[00:12:13] Speaker A: So it’ll be seen a bit of that too, yeah. I mean, specifically so I don’t know what. I don’t know if they added the. Because the fallout 1 and 2 were isometric.

Kind of click around and do whatever games format. And I think Fallout 3 they switched over to first person shooter. I wonder when. I don’t know if they first added the VAT system in three or in four, but I’m curious when that first was added, how people liked or disliked it. Was it just too weird to be enjoyable or.

I think it’s going to be cool.

[00:12:42] Speaker B: Yeah, I think it’s going to be fun. I think it’s going to be cool too.

[00:12:45] Speaker A: You also have your wrist strap computer, the Pip Boy, which provides your menu and maps and other typical RPG menu options with a wonderfully old school green screen. And you also get a dog sidekick, which is awesome.

[00:13:01] Speaker B: Yes. We get dog meat.

[00:13:03] Speaker A: Dog meat.

Name is dog meat. Yeah.

[00:13:07] Speaker B: I don’t know.

As we both said, we haven’t played any of the Fallout games, but yeah, no, no.

[00:13:13] Speaker A: A fair bit of the Fallout.

[00:13:14] Speaker B: Yeah. Fallout Lore from. I’ve watched. I remember when this game came out and I did watch quite a bit of like some people on Twitch or whatever playing it because I had another friend who was a huge Fallout fan at the time I was really praising. I was like super excited for the game.

And so I was just like watching some other people on Twitch play it and seeing what it was like. I also remember for the.

For when this game came out, they had the pro for promoting it. The song I forgot who it’s by. It’s by Dion Somebody. It was the song the Wanderer and it was just such a catchy song that it made me be like, I’m excited to like watch and see what this game is like and see what the whole world of like Fallout’s like. Because I was like, I know there’s a lot of people that love Fallout and yeah, I want to get into it. But then I just never, never played it. So now it said though. But I knew I know a lot like of the world of Fallout. Like we get. We have dog meat. We’ll have some of the enemies like we have obviously from the show. Like you have the Brotherhood of Steel that’s out there. There’s like enemies, like the ghouls, like feral ghouls, the Deathclaws, which from the trailer for season two, it looks like we’ll see Deathclaws, which is very exciting.

So that’ll be fun to see in the show.

But yeah, there’s just so much with the world, with the Pip boys, with all the lore. Like, it’s just. There’s so much to it and it’s. Yeah, as you said, like, it’s always been something that’s intrigued me and like exciting. I’ve just never gotten into it.

[00:14:41] Speaker A: Right. And yeah, this is a good reason to hop in. I’m really enjoying the TV show and I think just. Yeah. Having the expectation that it’ll be fun. I mean, I know there’s various things related to the series, but. No, this actually sparks. I think both you and I, even together may have played an hour or two of the Fallout 76 demo or open beta back when. Before that released, obviously at release, Fallout 76 had a lot of negativity around it and it was. I remember that it did because it stripped out all of the NPCs and unique characters and the things that people really liked about the game. And it got rid of the VAT system because it’s all live. You can’t pause time when you’re fighting other real people. And so I totally get that. But supposedly I watched actually like a retrospective kind of documentary thing where someone was interviewing people that still play Fallout 76. And it’s been patched a ton and had a lot of expansions that make it fun for people that like online games and they like just build out their own communities. Like there’s a community of cannibals that just. They. All they do in game is like lure people into these weird traps and all of that. And so like there’s a bunch of weird stories going on in there. It seems kind of entertaining. I don’t think I’ll have the time for a constantly online type of game like that. But it sounds. It’s good that they improved on it at least over the years. But yeah, that demo didn’t exactly spark us to buy it or pre order it at the time.

[00:16:13] Speaker B: No, no, it didn’t, no. But as you said, it’s nice to hear that they have continue to like update it and improve it and all that. Like, just like Cyberpunk when it came out. It was.

[00:16:25] Speaker A: Yeah, same.

[00:16:26] Speaker B: Same awful on the start too.

But now they’ve really upgraded it. They’ve done so many updates and everything and now it’s one of the best games. It’s another one I think both of us. We still both haven’t played and yeah, I do want to, but now on my backlog, yeah, now it’s higher than. Since they’ve been working on it and upgraded it and Made it better.

[00:16:45] Speaker A: Yeah. And I mean supposedly I didn’t play Witcher 3 until many years later, but supposedly Witcher 3 released like that too. It just, it sucks that the industry’s in a place that it’s in where games don’t release fully finished in most cases because of corporate money decisions and deadlines.

It sucks for the user.

[00:17:06] Speaker B: But it does. Especially then there’s like day one patches or like within the first week, like this big patches that come.

[00:17:11] Speaker A: And you know, it does help patient gamers and people that have long backlogs though because we can just wait it out until it’s fully finished.

[00:17:20] Speaker B: That is true.

[00:17:21] Speaker A: That’s the silver lining of having too many games in the backlog. So there you go. Outside of all that, is there anything else specifically, you know about Fallout 4 specifically or Fallout as a series going into this, starting this game?

[00:17:35] Speaker B: No, not too much. Just as I said, a lot from, though from the show and all that. The Brotherhood of Steel, obviously with the.

[00:17:41] Speaker A: Whole, you know, the power armor stuff.

[00:17:43] Speaker B: The power armors, which would be. I’m. I’m sure you’re able to get into power armors in this and fight, whatever. Like that’ll be fun. I’m excited to, to try that out.

[00:17:54] Speaker A: Without knowing much more. That sounds like the ideal way to fight a deathclaw.

[00:17:58] Speaker B: Yes, probably.

[00:18:00] Speaker A: And yeah, I mean, same here. I think just between generally keeping up with the video game industry and the TV show and you know, people singing, singing, raving about the.

How much they love Fallout. Like I, I had a co worker who at one point who had a vault boy bobblehead on his desk next to mine for a while. So that sparked some conversations about it and him trying to convince me to play it and all that. But hey, it only took 10 years, but I’m getting to it.

[00:18:27] Speaker B: I know it still shocks me that this game is now 10 years old. Like I didn’t think it came out that long ago, but times fly. Like that’s crazy.

[00:18:38] Speaker A: That’s what happens.

And I mean aside from that, yeah, I’m expecting to see a lot of deformed animals, nasty looking monsters with various levels of intelligence. Right after a nuclear fallout, you’re going to have some weird mutations, probably going to be a whole lot of uncanny valley interactions with NPCs. Because I’m pretty sure your conversations with NPCs are the face to face kind where you select responses, but otherwise those interactions should be really well written for the most part, from what I’ve heard. I think that’s that’s people’s main attraction to Fallout, aside from the game, like the gun gameplay is the NPCs and stories side quest stories are really well done.

And I think we’re both really going to enjoy using the power suits. I’m really especially excited for the VAT system and the Pip boy skill upgrade animations, which I’ve seen a little bit of where that Vault Blake character like does goofy things whenever you buy an upgrade, I think. And I’m hoping the ghouls you run into can be at least half as charming as Walton Goggins version because he’s hilarious in the show.

[00:19:40] Speaker B: He’s. He’s great in the show. And I actually saw recently that his ghoul is coming to Fallout 76.

[00:19:48] Speaker A: Oh yeah, I think I remember.

[00:19:49] Speaker B: So they’re gonna. Yeah, they’re gonna put that. They’ll put him in Fallout 76, which is cool. So again, like they’re still adding stuff to it and upgrading, so that’s kind.

[00:19:57] Speaker A: Of nice to see. Yeah.

Here’s to hoping that Fallout 5 actually happens, I guess.

But hey, take what you can get while you can get it.

[00:20:06] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly.

[00:20:07] Speaker A: I don’t know that the ghouls in the game. Well, except for that version of in 76. I don’t know if the ghouls in the game are anything more than just regular enemies, but hey, one can hope.

I think on my end too, I’ll probably skip over as much of the settlement or base building features as I can, unless they’re required for main story progress. I’ve never enjoyed building a house that you can go look at things that you collect in and then do nothing else except rest or recover.

It’s just not my thing. I’m glad that people enjoy it, but no thanks.

[00:20:41] Speaker B: I. Yeah, I agree. That’ll be something I mainly skip. It’s sort of like for death Stranding where we built like the shelters and it’s like all I did was I just build the shelter and I didn’t want to do much else with it because it’s like, okay, cool, I’ll just use it as a rest place.

[00:20:56] Speaker A: Yeah, I never upgraded anything if it’s.

[00:20:58] Speaker B: Required for this, to build a shelter or whatever house or whatever and then just use it for rest. That’s probably mainly what. I’ll just use it for something I can. I didn’t know. I do know there’s fast travel in this game, so that’ll be a nice feature that’s fast travel to back to hopefully your house or to wherever else I Assume that you visit.

I’m sure you like you have to visit somewhere, probably complete something. Some stuff and then it probably unlocks as a. Yeah. Fast travel destination.

[00:21:27] Speaker A: That makes sense.

[00:21:29] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:21:30] Speaker A: And yeah, I mean we’ve mentioned we both loved the Amazon show, so I’m not going to ask what makes it a game. You want to start up now because we’ve like I usually do because we’ve kind of just been talking about it just now, but is there any final thoughts that you have?

[00:21:43] Speaker B: No, I’m just. I’m excited to.

We’ve been watching the show. We know of some of the world. But I’m excited more to just get in and play and get into the world of Fallout 4 and see.

[00:21:53] Speaker A: Just get lost in the wasteland.

[00:21:55] Speaker B: Yeah. And I also. I like this. That it’s this area like Boston, Massachusetts. Like I like that area in real life and all that. Like it will be fun to see it. I’m curious on if it’s going to be sort of like Bioshock Infinite wise in what way that some of the enemies.

I know some of the enemies like.

[00:22:16] Speaker A: Like Patriot.

[00:22:18] Speaker B: Yeah. Patriotic type enemies. Such as. Like we had the robotic Washington’s and Ben Franklin’s and.

[00:22:24] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.

[00:22:25] Speaker B: Lincoln’s and Bob Shark Infinite. Um. And I’m curious on if we’ll have people like in that. Dressed up like that and all that. We’ll see.

[00:22:34] Speaker A: So.

Interesting. I hadn’t thought of that. Yeah. I’ve only spent four days or so in the Boston area, but enjoyed it well enough. And obviously in school you at least in the US you read up enough or learn enough about that side of the country. So hey, should be cool. I like that area.

[00:22:52] Speaker B: I’ve been to Falkland. Been to Salem.

[00:22:54] Speaker A: Yeah. Been to Salem. Yeah.

[00:22:55] Speaker B: Fun. Fun old area.

[00:22:57] Speaker A: Yeah. I was in Salem a few years ago on hall on Halloween, I think it was. Or like the day before.

Yeah. Interesting.

Yeah. I mean I think my biggest expectation here is I’m probably going to finish it and realize I enjoyed it a lot more than I expected to and then kick myself for not playing it a long time ago.

[00:23:22] Speaker B: I. Yes, I have. There’s a good chance I will have the same realization once we. Once we finish.

[00:23:30] Speaker A: Yeah.

[00:23:31] Speaker B: And that’ll just get me very excited and hopeful for Fallout 5.

[00:23:34] Speaker A: Fallout 5 and. Or new Vegas remake.

[00:23:36] Speaker B: Or new Vegas. Yeah, exactly. Or new Vegas remake.

[00:23:39] Speaker A: Yeah.

[00:23:40] Speaker B: One of the two.

[00:23:42] Speaker A: Excellent. Considering Fallout 4 is a nonlinear open world game and it’s hard to wrangle really defined progress with this type of structure. We’ll be splitting it up its 12 main quests fairly loosely across many weeks, leading right up to the premiere of season two of the Amazon Prime TV series, allowing you to complete as many side quests, faction quests, bits of random exploration, debauchery, and whatever else you come across to your heart’s content, as long as you complete the designated story quest by next time. So we’ll give an update each episode of which main story quest to save and quit after you complete it for next week. Our goal is to play and complete the main story quests called Prologue, out of Time and When Freedom Calls. So once you finish those, save and Quit and hang on for next time.

And before you get started, let us know on Discord what your expectations are for Fallout 4.

We’re curious to hear your thoughts.

[00:24:37] Speaker B: Yeah, we definitely are. So we’re excited to start this journey through Fallout 4, and looking forward to hopefully having all you guys join us as well. So thanks for listening and we will talk to you next.

If you want to follow along and discuss our playthrough of naive games on the Gaming Backlog Book Club Podcast, please give us a follow on your podcast platform of choice, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, iHeartRadio, Pandora, Amazon Music or Pocketcasts, as well as our Discord and Instagram account under the same name. Thanks.