GWJ Conference Call Episode 475

Fallout 4, Rise of The Tomb Raider, Starcraft II: Legacy of The Void, Game Companions, Your Emails and More!

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This week Shawn, Elysium, Julian, Amanda and Allen talk a lot of Fallout 4 and game companions!

To contact us, email [email protected]! Send us your thoughts on the show, pressing issues you want to talk about or whatever else is on your mind.

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Comments

I'm getting the impression that the settlement mechanic in Fallout 4 is like Fallout Shelter on steroids.

00:01:30 Fallout 4
00:30:24 Rise of the Tomb Raider
00:34:30 Starcraft II: Legacy of the Void
00:39:58 Game Companions
00:54:55 Your Emails

A couple other noteworthy game companions for me

- The companion cube (an amazing piece of story telling to get me to actually care)
- The Brothers in the Brothers video game

Glad to hear you're all as obsessed with Fallout 4 as I am.
Rabbit, the little insights into how Fallout 4 captures Boston are fascinting to me. I've never been to the U.S. let alone Boston. But it's always fascinated how games recreate moods/vibes of real spaces, especially for those who have been to the original location, before or after experiencing it in game.
I've played over 30 hours and only JUST met Piper, but I'm pretty hooked on running with Curie at the moment. I think Piper will have to wait a little. I've also maxed out my relationship with Codsworth (gave a nice perk), hopefully I don't get labelled a synth sympathiser...
Anyway, gotta get back to my adhesive farming Corporation. It started small but now I have fully functioning plantations in all seven of my settlements. This game is weird.

Edit: having finished the episode Jonman captured more of what's fascinating about real spaces recreated in games. Great email.

Also, Sanctuary is 2015's Hinterlands.

Rat Boy wrote:

Also, Sanctuary is 2015's Hinterlands.

This is perfect.

Speaking of Inquisition, some of the best companions right there. Dorian, Cassandra, Iron Bull, Varric... I'm sure if I'd spent more time with the others they'd be in the list aswell.

Take a shot every time I say the word "fantastic."

When I think of companions in game, the two most memorable for me are Yorda from Ico and Agro from Shadow of the Colossus. The way these two stradle the line between emotional attachment and game mechanic make me really hopeful that Trico in The Last Guardian will be another awesome character to play with.

Does anyone remember Floyd from Planetfall?

Amoebic wrote:

Take a shot every time I say the word "fantastic."

Hey, there is a good use for all of that leather armor on the baddies. You can take it to an armor crafting station and scrap it to get some leather to use for crafting your own stuff. Same for the metal armor, but that's less useful since you get steel all over the place. I also will collect some of that stuff for use in bartering.

The things I run out of the most are Oil, Dirty Water, and Adhesive. I definitely need to get more mutfruit growing. I have about 6 plants right now. The weird thing is, sometimes it seems like the game is just ignoring certain plants. They never grow any fruit, and sometimes you can't even select them in the workbench menu. Half of my mutfruit plants are having that problem, and most of my razorgrain.

Why on earth, when you have a water purifier in your town, does it not let you bottle up water or use that water to make soup? Sure, it'd make the game too easy, but...

troubleshot wrote:

Glad to hear you're all as obsessed with Fallout 4 as I am.
Rabbit, the little insights into how Fallout 4 captures Boston are fascinting to me. I've never been to the U.S. let alone Boston. But it's always fascinated how games recreate moods/vibes of real spaces, especially for those who have been to the original location, before or after experiencing it in game.
I've played over 30 hours and only JUST met Piper, but I'm pretty hooked on running with Curie at the moment. I think Piper will have to wait a little. I've also maxed out my relationship with Codsworth (gave a nice perk), hopefully I don't get labelled a synth sympathiser...
Anyway, gotta get back to my adhesive farming Corporation. It started small but now I have fully functioning plantations in all seven of my settlements. This game is weird.

Edit: having finished the episode Jonman captured more of what's fascinating about real spaces recreated in games. Great email.

I wouldn't worry about being labelled a synth sympathizer just for codsworth, they have several butler bots in Diamond City. Also, have you met Nick Valentine yet? He's awesome. I maxed Codsworth out, and I'm switching to Nick asap.

Piper's interesting, but I haven't actually dragged her along for anything yet.

I feel like I'm the only person in the world with no interest in playing Fallout 4. Yes, it sounds like it could be fun, since you all talk about it so effusively, but I know I would not enjoy playing it. Oh well, Western RPGs are one of the genres I avoid, which make dealing with the ever growing list of games I want to play / replay much more manageable.

Amoebic wrote:

Take a shot every time I say the word "fantastic."

Itsh pronounshed "fantasht-*hic*"

Jonman wrote:
Amoebic wrote:

Take a shot every time I say the word "fantastic."

Itsh pronounshed "fantasht-*hic*"

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Surprised no one mentioned the companion in Journey. A really different experience, but one of the truly most magical things I've experienced in a game. I think it's the only time thatI have played a game with a human and neither of us broke fiction.

Loved the Fallout talk in this episode, especially how everyone is playing the game differently.

I'm probably closest to The Game King's playstyle (love that Ninja perk!) though I do have some backup techniques for when I can't snipe from outside. I resort to Snake-ing it with silenced pistols, or I pull out a combat rifle and start legging dudes.

Great topic discussion on game companions. For those who thought "this needs moar talk of Skyrim companions", there's this, uh, companion piece that I did awhile back that touches on a number of the things that came up during the discussion:

https://www.gamerswithjobs.com/node/...

Hey, I got a mention in the thread of the week bit! I can't imagine having the time to play an MMO at any point soon, although Rabbit mentioning Destiny is pretty spot-on, since that's the closest thing to an MMO that I've been interested in. If it was on PC I'd probably already be playing it.

That was a great discussion about Fallout too. Now I want to play it just to see how much of a Boston feel I get out of it. I'm sure that the crafting system will play on all my worst hoarding instincts, which already were through the roof on the other Bethesda games I've played. It sounds like it's worth it though. It doesn't sound like anyone on the podcast is bothering to fight off that particular mania and is embracing it instead.

mrtomaytohead wrote:

I feel like I'm the only person in the world with no interest in playing Fallout 4. Yes, it sounds like it could be fun, since you all talk about it so effusively, but I know I would not enjoy playing it. Oh well, Western RPGs are one of the genres I avoid, which make dealing with the ever growing list of games I want to play / replay much more manageable.

Nope, it's not just you, I'm utterly uninterested in Fallout 4 as well. But I'm holding out for The Elder Scrolls 6.

As for favorite companions... Gosh, I don't know where to start. Between the Mass Effect games (Kaidan, Garrus, Thane), the Dragon Age games (Cullen, Varric, Fenris), the KotOR games (Atton, Kreia, Carth), the BioWare games truly have some of the best companions, the more fleshed out.

The companions in Fallout 4 are the best in any Bethesda game. They have a lot of personality and more importantly, they don't die. I reloaded so many times in Skyrim to save Lydia. One time I thought she had survived a battle, but actually she had died and a friendly mage had zombified her. I finally married Lydia and had her stay at home, so she would live.

I found Ellie an odd choice for best companion. As far as the game was concerned, she wasn't there and didn't impact your game in any way unless it was a plot event. She could run through enemies and never alert them. Never set off any traps. Like, you could see her, but she wasn't really there. It struck me as an odd choice and made that game feel very video gamey to me (and lowered it a significant amount of rungs lower than the persistent hype around it).

I guess those could all be reasons for her being a good companion compared to other video game companions?

mrtomaytohead wrote:

I feel like I'm the only person in the world with no interest in playing Fallout 4. Yes, it sounds like it could be fun, since you all talk about it so effusively, but I know I would not enjoy playing it. Oh well, Western RPGs are one of the genres I avoid, which make dealing with the ever growing list of games I want to play / replay much more manageable.

You aren't alone. Bethesda's development catalogue holds no interest to me. I've tried most of their games and none have ever stuck with me. Now their publishing catalogue? That's another story entirely.

Listening to a bunch of gaming podcasts at the moment is a bit of a drag because everyone is going on about Fallout, which sounds like the exact opposite of what I find fun. Oblivion put me off open world games for years, and New Vegas was pretty much just Oblivion with guns, so Fallout 4 is not on the shopping list, ever.

I'd rather hear more about Tomb Raider.

As for game companions, I always liked Elika. She really was a skyhook/quick-load mechanic, but she was so well written, and even the physical interactions between the 'prince' and her read really naturally.

Shawn, I was surprised to hear you take such issue with Lara getting beat on in Rise of the Tomb raider. Then I remembered back to the beginning of the game. They did beat up on her quite a bit at the start, but the punishment drops off significantly after that. I'm probably around 3/4 done with the game now, and it's pretty clear they heard the feedback about her being a constant punching bag from the first game.

Just don't fall in a spike pit. That animation is still gruesome.

Rat Boy wrote:

Also, Sanctuary is 2015's Hinterlands.

I just played Hinterland, and this comment took me a second to parse.

Amoebic wrote:

Take a shot every time I say the word "fantastic."

Did you get a new mic? There's a giant increase in audio fidelity of your participation on the podcast in the last couple week.

I'm new and still learning how to do things. Same mic, less interference. Thanks!

My biggest problem with Fallout 4, besides the terrible dialogue wheel, is that so many systems are poorly communicated to the player. How many people didn't know there was more to the perk chart and that could scroll down? How many people thought you had to go row by row in the perk chart? How many people didn't realize you got scrap automatically from the junk, and could store it in your workbenches? How many people still don't get how the settlement systems work? Did you know you can hold down right click and show off your pipboy like a hand model?

I have really enjoyed sinking my teeth into this game but Bethesda really dropped the ball in making these mechanics discoverable and intuitive.

Just a note that hardware from 2 years ago is still totally OK by Free Geek standards. A lot of their stuff goes into making machines that are attainable for folks who couldn't otherwise afford a new machine, so just about anything made this decade should be more than adequate.