Transcript

[00:00:01] Speaker A: Hello and welcome back to the Gaming Backlog Book Club reminder. As usual, we do go into spoilers, so if you want to avoid that, start another episode, play along and come back to this one once you’re caught up. So as I went through this play session, I realized I’ve been going about my leveling all wrong for whatever reason. For the longest time. I saw all of the top row special stats as essential instead of trying to set up a specified build.

There are some stats of course, that do indeed seem essential no matter what build you’re going for. Kind of like intelligence for the faster experience gain and leveling and things like more health and at least getting to the advanced lock picking, which is super helpful because there are so many, so many of those around, but so many others might not be as important. I ended up at this point to actually just lean heavily into a Vats build since that is how I’ve been playing partially anyway.

Many of those stats farther down the vats tree both increase the refill of the AP bar at the speed you get to criticals, critical shots and how much damage they do, and the accuracy of Vats shot. The worst part for me though is that so many of those VAT specific powers almost all fall under the luck branch, which is by far the one top row special skill that I have put the least points into. When I had this build revelation, I was only at Luck 3.

I only had three stars in Luck, so that’s because my anything goes strategy from before luck didn’t seem important to me at all. Oh well, I guess it’s time to be more intentional from here on out as we enter the end game.

I don’t know if you’ve actually gone down any of these routes. Are you trying to sort of pump into everything still?

[00:01:38] Speaker B: No. So I’ve. Yeah, so I’ve started to go down more the routes so I know I have strength fully done. Is it which one? For all the xp, is it intelligence?

[00:01:51] Speaker A: Yep, you’ve got intelligence. I think you mentioned that. Yeah.

[00:01:54] Speaker B: And I think I have endurance.

I think I have those three full.

Like full and then luck. I think I’m still at three on luck, maybe four and I don’t even touch that.

[00:02:06] Speaker A: Have you continued to lean more into melee build?

[00:02:09] Speaker B: Oh yes. So yeah. So my most recent ones I have upgraded my damage with melee weapons from like three stars. So I’m up to like the deal. 60% dam extra damage with melee and with the chance of like limb damage and knocking weapons out of hands.

[00:02:28] Speaker A: So that’s cool. I know you’ve always used your. Are you still using the sword? I’m assuming, yeah.

[00:02:35] Speaker B: It does like 95 damage for me. The sword. Oh that’s its damage thing is 95. It’s one of my highest. Yeah.

[00:02:41] Speaker A: So are you still using it primarily for ghouls and other creatures or are you using it again? I’m using for everybody power armor and death claws and everything.

[00:02:50] Speaker B: Everybody. It’s been. But with this boost now it’s definitely been better like since I take out Summon one hit Summon two hits.

[00:02:58] Speaker A: Wow.

Solid. Like everyone.

[00:03:02] Speaker B: Yeah, bigger. Yeah bigger enemies take a few hits more. I don’t use it as much on the robots because I use the plasma rifle because that is way more effective. I’ve noticed like the plasma.

[00:03:16] Speaker A: Or the fusion goes through armor. I found out.

[00:03:18] Speaker B: Yeah it’s a plasma or the fusion ones, whatever. Those rifles like do a lot more damage to the robots. So I do those.

But yeah, I’ve definitely put a lot more into that. I’ve also put one into. I’m now, I can now unlock master locks.

So I got up to master.

[00:03:35] Speaker A: No master hacking or locks.

[00:03:38] Speaker B: Is it master? I think it goes master then expert. Was it expert then I believe I forgot.

[00:03:44] Speaker A: Yeah, I believe the same. Yeah.

[00:03:46] Speaker B: So yeah, so I did the one above advanced. Yeah. For just locks. Not for. I haven’t done like I don’t like that. I mean I like and I don’t like that I have like master for locks but like not for like terminals and some other things like those.

[00:04:01] Speaker A: It’s a, it’s a hacking skill instead of.

[00:04:03] Speaker B: Yeah, that’s the hacking skill which I have.

[00:04:05] Speaker A: You know it’s the same concept. You’re getting access to something that you don’t have access to. But you know, I guess why one’s more computer whiz and the others being.

[00:04:13] Speaker B: A locksmith and then you gotta, I, I, I realized like early on I messed up and put like some two points that could have been quite crucial for me into doing melee damage. Extra melee damage but with fists, not the weapons.

[00:04:29] Speaker A: That’s right.

[00:04:29] Speaker B: So I should have put those. So if I had like you gotta sometimes read them carefully. Like there’s.

[00:04:34] Speaker A: Yeah.

[00:04:34] Speaker B: And they’re all over the place. Like I found I put one into just now actually I think my latest one I put into doing an extra 20% damage with non automatic rifles since that’s a lot of what I use like gun wise.

[00:04:48] Speaker A: Yeah.

So yeah. I did also realize and I’ve kind of. I don’t know if I looked for it that hard. But I didn’t see it really obviously or prominently and maybe you know. But if anyone on Discord or anyone listening knows, let us know on Discord how to respec your skill point because I would love to just like wipe out my whole line and readjust to make a true build at this point. Should have realized that a long time ago, but here we are.

[00:05:13] Speaker B: Yeah, I. So I have a feeling you’re not able to because there have been multiple times where I’ve like taking them off. Like you can move them off and back but it doesn’t like at you reset it or something which would have been nice, but.

[00:05:26] Speaker A: Oh well.

[00:05:29] Speaker B: I’m doing well with the build I have so far.

[00:05:31] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, I’m just going into slow mo vats mode. So slowly pumping.

[00:05:36] Speaker B: I have my. My charisma is at like 7 or 8 now. So a lot of the conversations I have are actually starting to go through.

[00:05:42] Speaker A: I did max it, I think last week. It was. It’s totally worth it just because you can actually convince people of things and barter for more. But that’s not as. As prominent but still useful.

Well, so we went into our primary quest. This time the molecular level.

I don’t know if you all just wanted to stop, but I checked in at the Memory Den because the doctor at the previous chip from Kellogg and so she was able to say basically, I don’t know how to analyze a courser chip, but I know who does and sends you to the railroad hq.

Did you go through that process or just go straight there? I think the quest worker said just go to railroad.

[00:06:26] Speaker B: I think. I think I just went straight to the railroad.

[00:06:28] Speaker A: Yeah. And that’s where Tinker Tom tells you basically the materials you need to build the teleportation platform.

[00:06:36] Speaker B: This is so funny. He’s like.

He’s like on his computer typing away.

This is so cool.

[00:06:43] Speaker A: Oh, wow.

Pretty goofy that guy. But he’s just a typical sort of geek computer geek that really ready to hack through everything.

So he really enjoyed that hacking process. It’s like the toughest challenge yet.

And at this point you at least make your preliminary decision on which faction to join up with to basically help you build this teleportation device because you can’t do it by yourself.

I went down the route of siding with the railroad.

Something about between being locked out of progressing with the brotherhood due to my multiple quest bugs that I ran into last time.

And also having recently watched season two of Andor for the first time a few months ago. I guess that rebellious spirit of the railroad hit a chord with me and felt like helping them in their underground society out a little bit.

[00:07:38] Speaker B: Nice.

[00:07:39] Speaker A: And I mean, you ended up joining who for the time being?

[00:07:44] Speaker B: I joined the Minutemen.

That was. Yeah, I started.

Yeah, started with the Minutemen.

[00:07:52] Speaker A: So who on their side was helping you build out this platform to teleportation?

[00:07:56] Speaker B: Sturgis.

Sturgis was helping me.

[00:08:00] Speaker A: It seems like there’s one guy in that role for every or one. One person. I don’t know, I haven’t seen the other ones yet.

[00:08:07] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:08:08] Speaker A: To help you build it out. So it turns into basically a bit of a fetch quest built into molecular level.

[00:08:15] Speaker B: Yeah, it does.

[00:08:16] Speaker A: I had.

[00:08:17] Speaker B: I was able to build like two thirds of it.

[00:08:20] Speaker A: Yeah. I actually got through the.

[00:08:22] Speaker B: Without having to do anything.

[00:08:23] Speaker A: The platform itself I was able to do immediately without needing to do anything. And the second round of materials, which is like one of each, which was, I don’t know, more advanced type things I had. I also had two out of the three pieces and had to go into some.

Was it kind of science?

[00:08:42] Speaker B: Yeah, I had to find a thing. I had to find a circuit board is what I was short on for the last thing, which I think was the control panel.

So I was able to build like the platform, the long. The tower where all the. Like the Tesla the power comes out of and then the relay tower. So actually three fourths. I was able to build that. All three of those instantly. And then the control panel, I needed one more. Yeah, I think it was circuit board or something. So I got it.

[00:09:11] Speaker A: Yeah. And you know, throughout this portion of the quest, you have to use the workshop. And I’ll say as it happened again here, it had happened before and I think some side quests for me, but it happened here. The settlement building and materials gathering just isn’t something I’m interested in at all.

So I don’t love being required to do it to continue the main quest.

I suppose it wasn’t too much of a bother. Just a minor gripe on my end, but I kind of just felt like I was wasting my time. Obviously all these mechanics were built into the game. I can see why they want to include it, but it’s just not for me.

[00:09:46] Speaker B: Yeah, same. I mean, it’s just me doing like I do, the minimal of what I have to do.

[00:09:50] Speaker A: Yeah, just. Just at least. At least they pointed out where to find the materials for the more advanced things. So you didn’t just wander around endlessly looking for it. So that. That’s Helpful, because that would have been much worse.

And I guess silver lining. Through the time that I spent fetch questing at this point, I was had Deacon as a companion. So I was able to get Deacon’s affinity to the first hey, can we chat Conversation to the point where he divulged more info. It turns out Deacon is a synth who had his memories adjusted, so he just became the lovable weirdo he is. Naturally, as a synth, probably a bit easier to do that whole face swap thing he mentioned earlier.

[00:10:31] Speaker B: I was going to say now it’s more sense.

[00:10:34] Speaker A: Yeah, it’s. It’s probably better as a robot than, you know, constant plastic surgery as a human, that’s for sure.

[00:10:40] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, that makes more sense now.

[00:10:47] Speaker A: And you know, at the time, right before stepping onto the platform, basically, I’m curious if you did this too. Knowing I was going into the Institute and this teleportation platform and expecting a firefight, I suited up with power armor to go to the Institute and then didn’t end up using it for super long and wasted almost a full fusion corps because you don’t really fight once you get there. Anyway, I picked up right before I get launched because I’m working with the railroad. Right before getting sent to the teleporter, Desdemona, the leader of the railroad gives assigned me a quest called Underground Undercover, where she asks you to upload a holotape into the system at the Institute so that one of their unknown agents there named Patriot can see it and make contact with you. Patriot in the past has helped liberate many since.

So he sounds like a good person to talk to if you want to leave the Institute too. He’s helped free them. They don’t. No one at the railroad knows who he is. So it’s kind of an interesting setup. Like it’s just a rogue guy that’s just doing this on his own. And then the people in the railroad are catching the.

The outside end of.

[00:11:59] Speaker B: The.

[00:12:00] Speaker A: How. Where did you set up your teleportation platform.

[00:12:05] Speaker B: In Sanctuary.

Just found like a field.

[00:12:09] Speaker A: Like a.

[00:12:10] Speaker B: More of an open backyard field area and just set it all up there. It looked so nice with like six generators and a whole bunch of wires going everywhere.

[00:12:18] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, they’re all over the place. Yeah, I had six generators too. And then you had to wire them all together.

[00:12:24] Speaker B: Yeah, and launch. The wiring part sometimes still confuses me.

[00:12:28] Speaker A: But yeah, it’s a little weird because I set one wire or two wires to each piece of the thing and then it didn’t turn on and I was like, oh, okay, I guess you can probably wire them together. And tried it and it worked. And it was like, well, another case for a tutorial might have helped.

[00:12:45] Speaker B: Yeah, a little bit.

[00:12:47] Speaker A: Anyway, we figured it out.

[00:12:49] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:12:49] Speaker A: So, yeah, we get. You go, you say hit the switch and you end up on your way to the Institute. And basically you end up on. In a teleportation room, it looks like where their machine is there. And at this point I will say second spoiler alert. So I know we mentioned molecular level was kind of the base minimum for this week. We will. We haven’t gotten either of us to the nuclear. The quest that says nuclear in it, but we’ve both advanced a little bit in some of the additional quests in our preferred routes from this point. So if you haven’t, if you finish the molecular level but haven’t done anything inside the Institute, pause this episode, continue playing and, and, and come back when you, when you’ve. I’d pause the nuclear, then reach the nuclear quest because there’s a lot of spoilers coming out.

[00:13:39] Speaker B: Spoilers? Yeah, some heavy spoilers coming and in.

[00:13:42] Speaker A: Including in about, you know, 10 seconds, I would say.

[00:13:45] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:13:47] Speaker A: So I’ll give, I’ll give a timer and then we’ll jump in.

[00:13:51] Speaker B: Actually, here I’ll talk about. So you said you, you said that you. They asked to do a holotape. I did the same thing with the Minutemen. They gave me a holotape, it’s called the network scanner. And they asked me to just plug it in so into anything. And like the first one, once you get into the Institute, I just plugged it in. Then it like downloaded all this data and then I gave it, once I got out again, back to Sturgis is what I did. That was what it was for me.

So it’s just like, just so we can have all the data on what they’re doing in there, what we know.

[00:14:24] Speaker A: Yeah. Okay, interesting. So you’re gathering data and I’m. I’m sending a message once I get there for the railroad. So. All right, we will continue that in just a second. So spoiler alert comes back and we’re going to go 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.

So one of the first things you see when you get out of your elevator is you walk down some hallways and you see, you know, 10 year old boy Sean, like you saw in the memories from Kellogg’s head, is basically trapped in a little room.

And then he gets frozen or paused and father walks into the room. And it turns out I Was right. And Sean is father.

[00:15:03] Speaker B: Uh huh.

[00:15:04] Speaker A: Who is the current director of the institute and he’s 60 years old.

[00:15:08] Speaker B: Father is your son.

[00:15:10] Speaker A: Your father, the father, Your father’s father.

Yeah. And yet still you are treated just like some random guy that came in here. Yes, you have some reputation and some extra leeway that you wouldn’t typically get if you’re just a random person. But.

But still not a great position to be in.

And you know, while. While I think it totally fits here, this whole revelation, I suppose I was able to predict this. So because it’s a trope number one, for this type of story and two, it’s probably a trope because it’s one of the most logical ways to make a story about a family member. In this case us being frozen in time and taking that story beat and turning it into something compelling. I think I’ve seen it happen elsewhere and it fits. It makes sense. I enjoyed it actually. Even though I kind of knew it was coming anyway.

[00:15:56] Speaker B: I did. Yeah, I did too. There was something. I forgot what he said. He says something along the lines of just before it. And I was sitting there on the sofa.

I was sitting there on the sofa with my wife and she was just like, she was just crocheting and I was like playing. And he says something and then out loud I just say, oh, this son of a bitch is my son, isn’t he? And then he says, oh, I’m actually Sean. I was like, I knew it.

[00:16:20] Speaker A: I got it.

[00:16:21] Speaker B: Right.

[00:16:21] Speaker A: Yep.

So it’s gotta be like that.

[00:16:28] Speaker B: Yeah, it was funny, but it was cool. That was a good. It’s a big, big twist. It was a pretty big twist.

[00:16:33] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

And I mean, I guess since he.

[00:16:37] Speaker B: Was more of a twist to me, that he was 60 years old.

[00:16:40] Speaker A: Yeah, I was expecting like he’d be your age or a teenager or maybe a little bit older than you, but. But 60. I mean, I think your player character is probably.

[00:16:50] Speaker B: He’s more in his 30s. I think the player character is in his 30s.

[00:16:54] Speaker A: I suppose, you know, thinking back to the character creator, if you wanted to, you could have made a, you know, 80 year old looking character if you want to. So I guess that’s tr.

But the voice is kind of throws it off. Anyway, since Sean was a baby when it all happened, his kidnapping and all that, he’s totally emotionally detached from it all and doesn’t care at all about anything about your spouse being killed, his mom being killed. He’s just like, well, it’s just kind of what had to happen, you know, now that he’s the leader of this organization and he invites you to help out with the research that they’re doing. He is fairly convincing, though. You know, for a couple seconds, I was thinking about signing up to be with Sean. You know, he is the son, after all. But he’s older than you. And no matter how much it sucks, I decided that the chances of having a normal, ish, good relationship with Sean were pretty low.

And it all seemed pretty creepy, too. So I went forward with the railroad’s plans.

[00:17:51] Speaker B: Nice. Yeah. Yeah, there were times where, yeah, they try and convince you.

So you talk to him, and then you get the quest, like, institutionalized, which is just basically talking to other directors in there, and they all try to convince you to join the railroad. But I always just kept doing, like, the I said triangle, where it’s more of just like a bunch of questions.

And I never give the instant like, oh, yes or no, or yeah.

[00:18:19] Speaker A: I just kept saying maybe to keep them on the good side. I am undercover, after all.

So. Yeah, I mean, I agree. I did the same thing, and I just kind of, like, brushed off the conversation, said, I’ll think about it, and moved on. And then you get kind of free reign of the Institute itself. And funny enough, I just went upstairs from that place, and the first computer terminal I found was actually Father’s terminal.

And while I could have searched around for another one, I figured it would be ironic if the start of the downfall of the Institute came from its director’s own machine.

So I uploaded the railroad’s message to the Patriot there, received an immediate reply, and then popped the holotape out and went on. Went and found the guy. He brought me to the maintenance synth who was just mopping something up, and he basically tells you that 13 other synths also wanted to escape.

And so I received a quest request from Liam. Liam is this is the Patriot. To track down a pre war administrator username and password from CIT Labs, which is where the Institute was built, underground, this building. So, yeah, I mean, basically you get the quest to go back outside, grab an admin and username and password, because their computer systems haven’t been updated in so long, even though it’s been 200 years.

But in order to leave, you have to go finish institutionalize the quest, talk to the directors, and get.

What was it? The courser chip to give you the teleportation access.

Yes.

You know, at this point, I was kind of just wandering around, and as I usually do in any of these buildings, I Just, oh, there’s a. There’s the quest marker. I’m going to go the other way and see what happens.

So when I was going around meeting all the institute’s department heads in the bioscience lab, I think that’s what it was called.

I didn’t go straight to the waypoint marker, wandered off down their hallways. I was lock picking doors here and there and stumbled upon the entrance to the fev labs. Did you go in there?

[00:20:23] Speaker B: Yeah, I did. I did the same exact thing as you. I just kept.

[00:20:26] Speaker A: Okay, yeah, I was just like, why are these doors.

Why are these doors pickable and not just picking or. Yeah, and they look like a kind of. Once you get inside, you know, it does the whole load screen and you’re in a different place.

It looks like a dark, derelict vault, to be honest, in many ways. With security turrets that shot lasers that did a lot of damage because they go through power armor and do damage to the power armor at the same time. And then you run into an Assaultron in there who is very aggressive.

[00:20:58] Speaker B: Yes.

[00:20:59] Speaker A: He just, he’s punching at you. He opens his face up and starts shooting a laser beam at you. So that was a. That was an interesting fight there. And you know, there were also rooms that looked kind of like observation cells or really tiny rooms in a mental hospital. There was a super mutant corpse next to a cat corpse and a lot of cat meat around.

[00:21:18] Speaker B: Yeah, there was a lot of.

[00:21:19] Speaker A: I guess that’s what super mutants eat. Yeah. I’m sure you weren’t shielding your cat’s eyes at that point. Right.

[00:21:25] Speaker B: With owning my three cats, I was like, oh, that’s unfortunate.

[00:21:30] Speaker A: Don’t look. Yeah.

And when you get to the end, you find a holotape with Virgil’s final note there about how he disagreed with the testing.

So I presume at this point that Virgil either made himself a super mutant to be strong enough to escape or something else happened. And yes, he ends up telling you the same, but you find his serum nearby in the same room. And once I was about to leave, I ended up bringing him, bringing it back to him. And when you bring it back to him in the glowing sea. Yes, he said he did infect himself purposefully and he’s really glad to have the serum now because he regrets it. He doesn’t know how long it’ll take, but he said to check back in a few days or a week. So I’m going, just gonna go back eventually and see if he’s a human again.

Did you drop off the serum too.

[00:22:19] Speaker B: Yeah, I’ve dropped and I went back.

[00:22:22] Speaker A: How’d you make a week pass so fast?

That much playing, I guess.

[00:22:26] Speaker B: I guess. Yeah, I did some other stuff. I don’t know. I don’t really know if it knows what a week and stuff is, so it just kind of. It probably wasn’t that much time.

[00:22:33] Speaker A: Okay, well, wait on us. Is it worth it to go back or what happens from there?

[00:22:38] Speaker B: Yeah, it’s worth it to go back. That’s worth it to just go back.

[00:22:41] Speaker A: You’re not gonna tell me? I can wait, I guess. Yeah.

[00:22:43] Speaker B: Do you want. I can tell you. Do you want to know? Yeah. He’s human. Yes.

[00:22:47] Speaker A: Okay.

[00:22:47] Speaker B: He turns back human, but that’s the human. But yeah, he’s. He’s like, I’m human. Like he’s turned human, but he’s like, I’m still like cautious. He’s like, I don’t know what other side effects might happen.

So. But then basically, then this is like, oh, you now have free access to everything in my lab.

So.

Yeah, that was kind of cool.

[00:23:08] Speaker A: What a stand up guy.

[00:23:09] Speaker B: Yeah. I then just left.

[00:23:11] Speaker A: It is too bad for him though that he’s in his lab in a cave in the glowing sea now and has to find a way out of it.

[00:23:17] Speaker B: Yeah. As a human now, probably. Really.

[00:23:21] Speaker A: I wonder if you can gift him a hazmat suit. Might be useful.

So I’m assuming that gives you access to like the workbenches and all that kind of thing in there.

[00:23:31] Speaker B: Yeah, there are a few in there in his.

[00:23:33] Speaker A: Yeah.

[00:23:33] Speaker B: In his area. I didn’t use any. I just, after I talked to him, just walked out. But yeah, yeah, it gives you access to all this stuff and then like all the stuff now of his that’s in there doesn’t say like steel or anything anymore. Like you could pick stuff up.

[00:23:44] Speaker A: Oh, you can just pick it up. Nice. Yeah.

[00:23:47] Speaker B: Good.

[00:23:47] Speaker A: The other thing that I think was kind of interesting is that. So the Institute, the music. The ambient music in the Institute reminded me really heavily of the music in some parts of the Citadel in Mass Effect 1, which is kind of funny since it’s the only sterile space station esque locale in Fallout 4 so far. So it kind of very much parallels sci fi music trope. But hey, it’s. It’s pleasant. It makes you just kind of want to lounge around in the Institute and not fight anything in radiation for a while.

[00:24:16] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:24:19] Speaker A: And so let’s see, at this point, I did a couple of side quests, but did you want to walk through A couple of your other things that happened.

[00:24:27] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, I did a few more here in the Institute, so I don’t know.

Yeah, again, what you did. So I ended up talking to all the directors.

Who is it?

[00:24:37] Speaker A: Someone.

[00:24:40] Speaker B: Is it back to Father or someone says, like, oh, hey, we need you to get this Synth who’s kind of gone rogue, link Gabriel, and we need you meet this Corsair here at this point, and then go basically reset him and bring him back or whatever you.

[00:25:02] Speaker A: Say, some kind of message to them. Deacon actually said that if anything goes wrong with me, say my. Whatever the thing is called, to reset him. So. Yeah, so that’s the thing you can do with any Synth, apparently.

[00:25:13] Speaker B: Yeah. So you go back, you go to this place called Libertalia, which wasn’t it. Was it Libertalia or Libertania when it was Uncharted 4?

[00:25:23] Speaker A: I believe it was Libertalia as well.

[00:25:25] Speaker B: I think it was Libertalia, wasn’t it, with the pirate kings?

[00:25:28] Speaker A: Yeah.

[00:25:29] Speaker B: Or whatever. Yeah. So when I, like, heard that and saw that, I was like, okay.

And then I was trying to remember, I was like, wait, which came out first?

Charted 4 or this?

They were very close.

[00:25:43] Speaker A: Uncharted 4 was a PS4 only game.

[00:25:48] Speaker B: I think it might have been. I think. I think Uncharted 4 might have come out a year after.

[00:25:53] Speaker A: Yeah, I think so too, because I think it was.

[00:25:56] Speaker B: Yeah, but you. Basically, it’s Libertalia. It’s a whole bunch of ships everywhere and, like their main hideout.

[00:26:04] Speaker A: It’s all range. In Fallout. It is, yeah.

[00:26:06] Speaker B: In Fallout, it’s all like ships.

[00:26:08] Speaker A: Okay, so it’s literally the same pirate.

[00:26:10] Speaker B: But it’s like sunken. Sunken ships. Sunken ships and like planks of wood.

Like a little seaside.

[00:26:15] Speaker A: Like, little.

[00:26:17] Speaker B: So you’re walking on all this and you gotta be careful because if you fall in the water, you fall, like, deep into the ocean and you can’t really walk out. I fell down once. Luckily, I had just saved it before, so I had to reload because even.

[00:26:30] Speaker A: If you turn the light on, you couldn’t even see anything.

[00:26:32] Speaker B: And I was like, I don’t know.

[00:26:33] Speaker A: Which way I’m walking.

[00:26:33] Speaker B: And there are rads and it’s just going up and up. And I was like.

So I just reloaded.

So I have to be careful not to fall off.

But you go through and then at one point you actually do go off into the water. But it’s like a path that’s underwater to get into the main area.

Like the main ship where most of the. Where this Gabriel the synth is hiding. He’s the leader of this group. So you get up to him and I killed. I think I. I didn’t end up, like, I started fighting him. He started to fight me. Like, I tried to talk to him, and then he just starts to fight you. And then the Corsair says, like, the code, and he just shuts down. And then I killed all the other raiders around him. And then the Corsair just vanishes back to the institute with him.

And so that was that. And so then I go back to the institute after that, and then somebody. They go back to the Institute, and then they do, like, a.

Someone asked me about helping reset these other synths that are at Bunker Hill that need to be done. Meet this Corsair over here, go to Bunker Hill and not either. And reset them. But before I did that, it says on the mission, it gives you the option of optional. Inform the railroad, inform the Brotherhood. So I was like, okay. I was like, I’ll just do the optional. Because it’s like. It’s just informing them I’m part of the Minutemen, but I’m informing them, saying, like, hey, we’re going here.

The institute’s gonna be here at this time with people and synths. Like, attack if you want, basically.

[00:28:13] Speaker A: Right?

[00:28:14] Speaker B: So I go to the railroad and tell them, and Desdemona is just like.

She’s like, okay, thank you. Then she’s like, you’re still part of the Minutemen. I was like, yeah. She’s like, those guys don’t even like the synths and blah, blah, blah. Like, why don’t you join us? And I was like, no, I don’t want to join you. I’m part of the Minute Man.

[00:28:30] Speaker A: Rude.

[00:28:31] Speaker B: And, like, after accessing, like, all options, like, that was almost the only option left, but I was able to just say no, and I just walked out. But it didn’t give me a check mark for saying. For saying that. I informed them.

[00:28:42] Speaker A: Inform.

[00:28:43] Speaker B: Okay. Yeah. So I. To. To, like, actually get that done, I guess you have to say yes to joining the railroad. So I was like, oh. I was like, that’s weird. So I was like, no. So then I went to the Brotherhood, and I told the. Not the office here. The Elder. Elder Maxson.

I was like, oh, hey, this is happening.

And, like, me and him were just having, like, a conversation back and forth. Because then he was like, since you’re, like, a knight and part of the Brotherhood, I also have, like, I need you to do this and this. Like, these are your Orders. I was like, okay. And then it basically, it gave me the check mark for optional informed Brotherhood. And basically, without me actually saying that, like, yes, I’ll join the Brotherhood, it basically changed my allegiance from the Minutemen to the Brotherhood.

And I didn’t realize it.

[00:29:29] Speaker A: What? Because.

And you’re, like, locked in.

[00:29:33] Speaker B: Yeah, so it locks me in.

Because then he says, oh, hey, can you go to the Minutemen and get the network scanner that you gave to them? And I was like, wait, what? Why am I doing that? And then that’s when it hit me. Like, okay, I guess I’m now sided with the Brotherhood for this. I was like. I thought it was just, like, informing them. Not, like, it was actually gonna change, but.

[00:29:58] Speaker A: Oh, well. So congratulations, you joined a cult.

[00:30:01] Speaker B: Yeah, so now I’m part of the Brotherhood. I went to Bunker Hill, and instead of resetting the sins, you also have the option to free them.

So I hit reset on one of them, and then I realized I could actually free them, and I freed the rest of them. And the Corsair turns on you.

And so I had to kill him.

That was not my fight. He was not as hard as the.

[00:30:26] Speaker A: Other one that we fought earlier.

[00:30:27] Speaker B: So I fought and killed him. But when you’re at Bunker Hill, dude, it’s freaking nuts. There’s, like, four. Four or five different factions. Everybody’s fighting each other. Like, the Brotherhood’s there with a whole bunch of power armor and ships. And then, like, the Minutemen were there, and then the railroad was there because it was like, Monkey Hill was actually, like, a railroad place. And so everyone’s fighting, but no one hits you except for the synths that are, like, some of them inside.

No one else shoots you, though, so you can kind of just like, walk in and walk through and grab them all. Like, only, like, two people, like, shot me. Shot at me.

[00:31:06] Speaker A: Oh, wow.

[00:31:07] Speaker B: They’re all just, like, fighting each other.

So I was like, okay.

But then I did that. I freed.

So when I freed them and then says, go speak to Father, and, like, he’s on top of the rooftop of the.

Whatever it is. It’s not the Institute, but it’s sort of the area where it’s around. It’s one of the buildings. He was on a rooftop, and he asked like, hey, what happened there at Bunker Hill?

[00:31:34] Speaker A: And I was like, father was outside?

[00:31:36] Speaker B: Geez, yeah, he was outside.

[00:31:37] Speaker A: I didn’t realize he would ever leave the building. Leaves the Underground. Okay, okay, good for him.

[00:31:41] Speaker B: He’s like, what happened there? I was like, I don’t Know, I was like, just went in there. But they were freed to go.

[00:31:48] Speaker A: Just.

[00:31:48] Speaker B: It went sideways. I.

And that was like, kind of what I said. So he’s like, okay. He kind of just says, like, okay. And then you go back to the institution and I don’t know. So this is. This is a spoiler coming up. This. Then at this point, another spoiler.

You go and you talk to. He wants you to come and see all of him, like, at this director meeting.

So you go into the meeting.

[00:32:14] Speaker A: All of him. What does that mean?

[00:32:16] Speaker B: Not all of him. All of them. Sorry. All of them. Like all the directors, everybody you had met already and then a couple others.

So you go into this meeting.

This was called Mankind Redefined was the mission. And I thought all these were main quests. Like, I didn’t know these were potentially side quests for the institute. Like, I just was going through.

[00:32:38] Speaker A: It could be both.

[00:32:40] Speaker B: Yeah, I don’t know. But he talks to you and says, hey, so someone is going to have to lead this institute here. And kind of says, like, basically, he wants you to lead the institute at some point because he’s dying of cancer.

[00:32:54] Speaker A: So, okay, so you’re going to see, you’re going to seek seed your own son who’s 60 years old. And that’s like the most backwards, unusual.

[00:33:05] Speaker B: Some of the other people in there are like, are you sure about this? And blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But yeah, so he has like a aggressive form of cancer, he says, and he’s going to be dying sooner than later.

Yeah, so that was a spoiler. All right, people.

So you do all that and you’re like, again, I didn’t even say. I don’t say, like, exactly yes to these things. I answer, like, with questions mainly and then with the maybe.

[00:33:28] Speaker A: Yeah, some of the. Sometimes those progress. The quest anyway, for the conversation.

[00:33:33] Speaker B: So then it gave me this quest called mass fusion, where basically it says.

[00:33:38] Speaker A: Which is one that I’m on as well.

[00:33:40] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. You take either side with the institute and go with the lady in the institute who says it. She’s like, I’m coming with you. Even though. Even though multiple times you can say, like, why? I could do it myself. She’s like, no, I don’t trust you to handle this thing. What is it called?

The beryllium agitator.

[00:34:00] Speaker A: Is she the lady from the advanced systems department?

[00:34:03] Speaker B: No, no, that was another one. She’s part of the brotherhood.

[00:34:07] Speaker A: Okay, okay.

[00:34:08] Speaker B: Spoiler. Yes, she’s part of that. I found out as a side mission.

[00:34:12] Speaker A: I don’t know That I would find that out.

[00:34:14] Speaker B: Yeah, so. Yeah, you wouldn’t. I found that as a side mission.

Talking to the Elder, he was like, oh, yeah, we had someone on the inside, Dr. Lee. I was like, oh.

[00:34:24] Speaker A: Okay.

[00:34:24] Speaker B: So I talked to her and basically convinced her to rejoin the Brotherhood.

But then with mass fusion, you can take this lady. I forgot her name.

[00:34:34] Speaker A: Amy.

[00:34:35] Speaker B: I don’t know, but you can take her. Or it says optional, inform the Brotherhood. So I was like, okay. So I went and informed the Brotherhood, and then instead it says, I go with.

What’s her name? It’s another Paladin. It’s one of the Paladins, or no Prospect or something. So I go with her to where? To mass fusion, basically.

But I’ll just basically say, like, I get to mass fusion. It’s cool with the Brotherhood of Steel, because you fly in with the. With a Vertibird and you’re able to shoot down on the rooftop on the synths at mass fusion, which was kind of cool.

[00:35:12] Speaker A: Okay, that’s not at all how mass fusion is going for me. But I. Yeah, well, that’s.

[00:35:18] Speaker B: Because of mass fusion. I sided with the Brotherhood. It basically told me when I got on that Vertibird, it said, if you pick this option, you are barred from the Institute. Like, it ends your relationship with the Institute.

And again, like. And so what I did and is I then fast traveled back to the Institute just to see. And if you do the Institute one, it says, like, to get onto a platform. It says if you want to continue this with this one, with bringing this lady, it’ll bar you. You’ll. You’ll ruin your reputation with the Brotherhood of Steel.

So it’s basically like, pick one. So I sided with the Brotherhood, and then I got instantly, I got a quest. I got a quest quest that instantly popped up and then got a check mark for done called banned from the Institute.

[00:36:04] Speaker A: Okay, so I guess you’re not going back.

[00:36:06] Speaker B: So, yeah. And then I. I did a little bit more, but you’re not there yet, so I don’t want to talk about it. It is fun. It’s cool. But I’m curious on what, for you, it’ll be like with the railroad. So, like, as I said, for me, I go, I went with this lady here to mass fusion. I went through it. It’s cool flying on the Vertibird, like landing on the rooftop, but like shooting down at the synths with the Gatling gun off the Vertibird and then landing on there.

And then, yeah, you just go to get the beryllium agitator. But I won’t say anything else really about it.

[00:36:39] Speaker A: Yeah. All right. We can save it next time.

[00:36:41] Speaker B: Yeah. And those were.

Those were, as. I thought, maybe main quest.

It sort of was.

[00:36:47] Speaker A: I mean, it sounds like. It sounds like they are, because that’s advancing the brotherhoods.

[00:36:50] Speaker B: Yeah, it’s advancing story. So. But yeah, so that was that. So that was my.

My part of it. It was fun.

[00:36:58] Speaker A: Okay.

[00:36:59] Speaker B: It was a lot longer than I thought it was. I kept, like, looking like, when is this the nuclear or something like mission gonna pop up?

[00:37:06] Speaker A: Well, it’ll pop up in the next time. Yeah.

Yeah. So, I mean, I got. Right. I got this request from Liam the Patriot to find admin login details, and so I was sent back out. Basically, they just said, okay, well, you’re working with the Railroad. I’m glad that they’re picking up the sims that I set free and helping them out, but we need this info. The Railroad probably knows where you can find it, so he sends me back to the Railroad and you go. And I basically just go straight back to hq. You get. You talk to Pam, who’s the basically encyclopedic Android robot in one of the rooms there, and you get the location for the admin details that you need to deliver to Liam. That’s what supposedly you’re going to find there. Before I.

I went. Before I went off to this Cambridge Polymer Labs, which is where I was sent. I did, you know, didn’t quite want to hang up the power armor for the week, and so I moved on to, you know, next time I’ll finish the main story, but I wanted to go wrap up Nick Valentine’s companion quest, which I think I explained last time. Right. You have to find the 10 holotapes to find, you know, original Nick Valentine’s.

I completed that investigating. Did you? Okay, yeah.

[00:38:18] Speaker B: So I completed that as well. But, yeah, you talk about it. Yeah, I did complete that, though, this.

[00:38:22] Speaker A: Time around, you know, it’s really just a Fetch quest. There’s 10 holotapes. It requires a little more than.

Or not much more than visiting the, you know, nine other. Because he gives you one at the beginning, the nine other police stations of the Commonwealth and fighting off whoever happens to be camped out nearby.

I, once I got them all, went back to the Minutemen castle because that’s where I sent Nick most recently when I picked up someone else as a companion. And then I remembered I had tuned into Minutemen radio at some point previously, and someone had called out for me to go back to the castle to chat. You probably did this too.

So I got back to the castle. This other quest distracted me momentarily from chatting with Nick. So I put him off for a second and just held onto his tapes. Went off with this woman who just basically insults you and says that you’re unworthy of the Minutemen general role. And we get went off to go gain access to the armory through the tunnels of the castle, which at this point it was super confusing for a while. And you finally realize you have to use the damn settlement building menu to remove some rubble and get into the tunnels.

Once you’re inside, you know you. There’s some mines there, there’s a bit of radiation, and you have to fight this giant haywire security bot named Sarge, who was strong as hell, fast as hell, and kept destroying me. So I finally ended up beating him by setting out about 20 frag mines in a tunnel, catching his attention and then running the other way. And he then. It just took a couple of pops to finally finish him off. But he was just. I think he killed me maybe five, ten times by just swiping at me and I got annoyed. So I catched another plan.

But once you get past there, right, the armory itself was loaded with ammo. You get the old Minutemen general’s clothes and hat, which I’m now using because it’s a bit of an upgrade on the silver Shroud clothes. That’s.

[00:40:20] Speaker B: Yep, that’s the one I’m using right now.

[00:40:22] Speaker A: The Minutemen hat sure looks funny when it clips through the helmet of the power Armor, though.

[00:40:28] Speaker B: Oh, I’m not wearing it like that. I have a different.

[00:40:30] Speaker A: No, I’m wearing the hat. It looks funny. Anyway. Okay, after clearing that quest, you give the tapes to Nick.

He deciphers Winters code, which gives you the keypad entrance to his hideout, which is inside another building. And so you get there, you finally go through like a bunch of raiders or whoever, gunners, whoever was in the area. And then you talk to this guy Winters, who’s super snarky and kind of an asshole, but he killed original Nick Valentine’s wife, so that’s why we’re here. And Nick gets his revenge. You know it. It’s funny how a lot of these conversations are just. You’re just standing there talking to someone out in the open, and then the conversation takes a turn for the worse. And immediately everyone pulls guns out and starts shooting point blank without killing anyone. But. So they all did that. And then I happened to have, at some point, I picked up this silenced pistol Called the Deliverer and I just one shot killed him in the head from point blank, which was hilarious because his head exploded.

Anyway, Nick gets his revenge, so I’m glad about that. And then you go outside, he says he doesn’t know what to do now. And because that was been his mission for basically the entire time he’s existed and he just needs to cool off. And you know, doing this quest for Nick raises his affinity level quite high, but it doesn’t automatically max out, which I was a little confused by because he just went through a lot to figure this out.

But when you finally do max it out, you get Nick’s perk, which lets you have one extra attempt when hacking computers before the computer locks you out and shortens the cooldown time before you can try again.

[00:42:02] Speaker B: Oh, okay.

[00:42:03] Speaker A: So, yeah, now I am all for helping out Nick, but it was at this point at the end of a very, very long fetch quest and dungeon to clear out, that I wish the quests and the companions and the companion quest gave you any idea whatsoever of what your rewards would be by finishing them or maxing them out. Because that’s a terrible perk to go through all that for.

[00:42:26] Speaker B: Yeah, I know, yeah, yeah. It’s not the best I can use on those terminals. Get it within the tries that you get normally.

[00:42:34] Speaker A: I mean, when you’ve got three attempts, was it four attempts by default plus only a 10 second refresh counter? Yeah, it’s not going through all this for a perk that makes it slightly faster is totally worthless. So Nick, you’re a good guy, but your perk is worthless. Anyway, that was that. I also went to the Museum of Witchcraft. Have you done that? Yeah, we talked about it last time.

[00:42:58] Speaker B: No, that was on mine right now to talk about. But yeah, okay.

[00:43:03] Speaker A: Okay, so I haven’t finished it, but yes, you go to the Museum of Witchcraft. You, the front door is locked and you find a hatch into the basement.

There’s a great. I thought this was great. They had a really good no consequences jump scare of basically just some just mannequin statues in the basement. And you know, there was like a really sharp music drop when you turn and see them. So they like force try to jump scare you. That was good.

Set the tone for this witch museum.

And then you know, from the second you go into the basement right before you even see that, you hear something pounding around upstairs. So I was expecting some kind of beast, obviously, or maybe someone in power armor. Munich was kind of growling. So maybe not that, but I was definitely not prepared for what I found.

And you get up there, and it’s a savage deathclaw.

I don’t know how you fared. You’re a much higher level than I am. But he hit me one time through the hole in the wall and almost killed me. So I ran. Ran out of that building like Scooby Doo, went back to Diamond City, grabbed my power armor again that I literally just dropped off because I was like, I don’t need this for a while.

And I took the power over back to fight this savage deathclaw. And that didn’t work either. It just delayed the inevitable. He still killed me in, like, six swipes through the power armor Headbutt. And so I decided, yeah, I’m just gonna wait and level up a bit more before I come back and finish it off. Okay.

But it was still that. That was a tense, tense moment, and I am glad that it exists. And I actually. I looked out out of curiosity. It is Salem on the map as well.

[00:44:44] Speaker B: It is. It says when you get there, it says, like, Salem, and it gives you some extra xp, which is.

[00:44:48] Speaker A: Yeah, cool.

[00:44:51] Speaker B: Yeah, I beat him, but I had to, like. I threw, like, a few grenades. I kind of ran around circles on that top part, like, throw.

[00:44:58] Speaker A: It’s just a small, enclosed space, so it’s kind of tricky.

[00:45:03] Speaker B: Shot. Trying to use every single weapon I had to figure out what might do the most damage. It took a little bit.

I did, like, stim myself a lot to try and keep myself alive, but I did get it done. Yeah, that was. It was cool, though, to kind of go to the witchcraft museum, right?

[00:45:19] Speaker A: Yeah, it was fun. And when I came back with my power armor after the first attempt, for whatever reason, the. What’s it called? The. You know, I don’t know if you’ve run into any of these radiation storms that pass through the world, but I came back and it was just. Everything was glowing green with a creepy tree in the background and the museum itself, and it really set that tone.

That was a master class of cinematography right there. So I took a screenshot. Yeah, it was fun.

[00:45:49] Speaker B: Yeah, I’ve had that a few times where I’ve just fast traveled, and then all of a sudden, I’m in a little radiation storm.

[00:45:55] Speaker A: But. So, yeah, so at that point, I decided, okay, I’ll check this off for next time. I went into this Cambridge Polymer Labs to save and quit, and I was greeted by a Mr. Handy name Molly, who interviewed me and gave me a job.

So I am now a sales coordinator at Cambridge Polymer Labs because of the way that I answered the question by saying you need me instead of some of the other options. So I think there are other jobs you can get there too. Anyway, I’ll see what my new job entails next time and continue on at this point. This is part of the way through the mass fusion quest for me on the railroad side, so I need to go through this and then continue on and then I think go back and provide the admin and password information to Liam.

So we’ll see what happens.

[00:46:44] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, yeah, I’m excited to see what you’re yeah. Because obviously, as I just said, I just did told you what like all the brotherhood was parts were like. So it’s intrigued to see what it’s like as the railroad.

[00:46:55] Speaker A: We’ve definitely so far, it appears like we’re going through very different circumstances to get to to the item here.

[00:47:02] Speaker B: It seems like it.

[00:47:04] Speaker A: And for next time, our goal is to play and complete the main story quest and definitely go through the quest that has the word nuclear in it. It varies depending on what you’re siding with and do any residual cleanup, main story quests or side quests that are required and basically just get to the point where you roll the game’s credits.

So once you see the credits and as much side questing as you want, save and quit and hang on for next time. Because we are indeed going to play some of the Fallout 4 expansions.

Just don’t start DLC yet this week and we’ll be jumping straight into Far harbor next time.

[00:47:41] Speaker B: Yep, we will. Yeah. Looking forward to getting to the end of the game here. The story’s kind of jumped up a little bit and I’m. I’m excited to see how this ends. So yeah, so we’ll talk about how it ends next time. So thank you everyone for listening.

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 Spotify, Apple Podcasts, iHeartRadio, Pandora, Amazon Music or Pocketcasts, as well as our Discord and Instagram account under the same name.

[00:48:14] Speaker A: Thanks.