Fallout Shelter, which was released last year during E3, had a surprising amount of success. As a result, Bethesda has expressed a desire to create more games like it. Speaking to Gamespot, Director Todd Howard said:
“It’s in your pocket, a lot of [the games are] free or easy to try. So every time you’re playing, you’re thinking, ‘We could do one of these, I think we could do something special here.’ So we’re gonna do more.”
Fallout Shelter did so well it temporarily over took Candy Crush Saga as the number one game on the Android and IOS marketplace, and is still making quite a bit of profit to this day. Bethesda is also not the first publisher to have success with mobile spin-offs of major franchises either, with both Tomb Raider Go and Hitman Go making a tidy profit for Square Enix. With these proven successes in the mobile market, it would not surprise me to see more of these spin-offs very soon.
Bethesda revealed today on their official site details on the upcoming expansion packs for Fallout 4. The first DLC, titled “Automatron” arriving at $9.99 USD offers a new story line and the ability to build and repair your own robotic companions just as you would with a set of power armor. Here’s the official description. “The mysterious Mechanist has unleashed a horde of evil robots into the Commonwealth, including the devious Robobrain. Hunt them down and harvest their parts to build and mod your own custom robot companions. Choose from hundreds of mods; mixing limbs, armor, abilities, and weapons like the all-new lightning chain gun. Even customize their paint schemes and choose their voices!”
The second bit of DLC is named “Wasteland Workshop” coming in at a mere $4.99 USD. This DLC adds a slew of new build-able items to your settlement workshop as well as cool new “cages” that allow you to trap everything from raiders to deathclaws. Build your own arena! Here’s the official description. “With the Wasteland Workshop, design and set cages to capture live creatures – from raiders to Deathclaws! Tame them or have them face off in battle, even against your fellow settlers. The Wasteland Workshop also includes a suite of new design options for your settlements like nixie tube lighting, letter kits, taxidermy and more!”
The third and most meaty DLC so far is “Far Harbor” listed at $24.99 USD. A case comes in at the Valentine detective agency and of course your character has to check it out for themselves. The DLC leads you on a quest to find some woman among an island full of synthetics named “Far Harbor” off the coast of Maine. The official description is as thus. “A new case from Valentine’s Detective Agency leads you on a search for a young woman and a secret colony of synths. Travel off the coast of Maine to the mysterious island of Far Harbor, where higher levels of radiation have created a more feral world. Navigate through the growing conflict between the synths, the Children of Atom, and the local townspeople. Will you work towards bringing peace to Far Harbor, and at what cost? Far Harbor features the largest landmass for an add-on that we’ve ever created, filled with new faction quests, settlements, lethal creatures and dungeons. Become more powerful with new, higher-level armor and weapons. The choices are all yours.”
It is of note that the season pass will increase in price from the current $29.99 to $49.99 USD on March 1, 2016. Of course if you have already purchased the season pass for $29.99 nothing changes.
All of it looks very exciting and I certainly hope they offer all the fans have been asking for, which looks like it might be the case.
Where do I start with Underrail?
No, really, where do i start? not just the review, but in the game itself? At first the game seems very streamlined, but I found myself lost even in the initial quest, even if it was largely due to my own mistakes. I first went into the railway system, finding death at every turn, wasting a full five hours before encountering the correct path back, where I started at the elevator, heading back in, to find the Cave system I was intended to explore.
Disappointed by Fallout 4? I cant imagine why, but if you are and your jonesing for something that resembles old school fall out you might want to check out Underrail. The isometric RPG feel extremely similar to early fallout titles, mixed in with the tough and gritty world of Metro 2033. The game has a bit of sordid history first appearing over three years ago and since then appearing and reappearing in and out of early access and the media. Now the game will officially leave early access on December the 18th. The game is currently on steam, and its basically free at $9.99 but there is speculation that the price may go up when full release comes around.
Oh, buddy, I’ve seen some things. I’ve finally gotten through the story content and a majority of the side content that’s presently available and reachable that has been found. I’ve seen references to Cthulu mythology, I’ve battled giants by the handful, I’ve established enough settlements to say I hold command over a small army, I’ve mastered enough of the game to finally understand is actually bugged and what is intended without needing to be told, I’m one of those that now feels confident enough to walk around in aesthetic armor – the Silver Shroud outfit, if you’re wondering – and I think I’ve finally got Fallout 4 underneath my heel.
A modder that goes by the name xxdeathknight72xx has found an unused weapon in Fallout 4’s data and has since released it as a mod on NexusMods. This may be something from an unreleased DLC, or simply something they chose not to include in the final game for whatever reason. The gun is a sweet looking “underwater” weapon that’s basically a harpoon gun in both appearance and function. The mod itself overrides the Railway Rifle, as it is a direct replacement for the time being. I’ll include a video from a YouTube user named Tyrannicon featuring the mod at the bottom of the post right after the mods’ link.
Seems by next week we’ll have our first (much needed) patch for Fallout 4 from Bethesda, which is coming to PC first followed later by Xbox One and Playstation 4 releases.
Our process for updating the game will include releasing a beta patch on Steam, followed by full release on PC, then release on the consoles. This process has worked well for us in the past and allows us to get more fixes out faster. Expect to see more updates, that are smaller and more frequent, than a few big ones. This allows us to make sure each fix is working right, as any change can have unintentional side effects in a game this huge. We expect the first beta patch to be up next week.
Yeah, so, my character’s name is Seth: there’s a bit of a story behind that name and there’s about four I try to inject into just about every self-injection game lead I can but that’s a different story for a different time. I’ll tell you now, memory has not served me well and it did not do my skills with the game justice as I was expecting things to kind of go a certain way and they most certainly don’t.Read More
One of the biggest complaints with Fallout 4, perhaps the only complaint, is the poor optimization for PC. Well the good news is an audacious and well known modder named “Bilago” has released a configuration tool to help things run better on your rig. Most options are self explanatory and let you adjust things like frame cap, Kodix’s FPS boost(which may not work on all PCs), world and first person FOV, and various other standard tweaks. I want to also mention here that if you uncap your framerate it is highly recommended to turn on Vsync for the game in your video card’s control panel(ATI Catalyst/NVidia Control Panel) .
A lot’s happened in a short amount of time. In the first couple of hours I’ve put into the game, introduction included, I’ve already got my first companion, racked up my first set of power armor and used it to take on my first Deathclaw. It seems as though Bethesda is coming up to me and going “you remember this stuff? Yeah? I bet you remember this stuff.” Can’t say that I’m entirely surprised but it’s nice. I’ve already experienced my first set of graphical glitches, mostly people falling and dying on platforms that don’t seem to exist and people sitting and standing on these said magical platforms. It’s to be expected and, if we’re being honest, quite amusing. The game feels and plays, very much, like an improved version of Fallout: New Vegas and you can certainly feel the Skyrim showing in this as the movement and environment certainly shows it.
It’s not exactly the prettiest game and it does have its fair share of visual and audio shortcomings – one of which is a personal pet peeve of mine: I sometimes have a hard time hearing things and I require subtitles and sometimes the subtitles I’ve set are either not appearing at all or they’re stuck – but it’s nothing that takes away from the fun the game has to offer, so far. I’ve done my fair share of wandering and getting into trouble and I gotta say the experience is not far removed from previous entries at all.
Story seems solid, so far. Voice acting has improved quite a bit, too, which is awesome. Music is mostly not present but during some of the story-based moments, it was nice.
My huge concern is this, so far: if I know Bethesda at all, they have this habit of fooling you into what to expect from the challenges out there. Greatest example in my memory is when you faced a Behemoth earlier on in the game in Fallout 3 and I thought to myself “holy hell, if it took myself and that many Brotherhood members to take this down, there can’t be much that’s more difficult in this game to take on alone” when I later found out that there are many other threats much worse than that Behemoth. Deathclaws are a great example of a threat that was incredible alone and in packs they were nigh unstoppable. Every time I even heard one my heartbeat skyrocketed. Within the first little bit of the game I played today I was already paired up with Dogmeat, plopped down into my first set of power armor, and then faced up against a Deathclaw. Now, that was, by no means an easy battle, tension was high and the adrenaline was pumping but the point remains that it only took one try to down the thing and I’ve already got a suit of power armor. Of course, it requires a power supply in order to get going and the suit you get comes to you damaged so you can’t exactly abuse it early on but… still… power armor! I remember not even being able to wear a suit of power armor until late into Fallout 3 due to not having the perk so I could wear it and, at that, I didn’t have a suit, period, until a little bit before I put a point into that perk. I’m just wondering how the difficulty will scale from here: are things going to get bigger, badder, and more dangerous from here, or are Deathclaws still going to be the prominent threat in Boston and are they being nerfed slightly? I guess only time will tell.
Aside from all that business, very typical Fallout business: things haven’t changed that much and, honestly, that’s a very good thing. I’m already glad I picked it up.
Late last year rumors surfaced that the next Fallout game would take place in Boston. News surfacing today through Erik Todd Dellums’s Twitter account (radio DJ “Three Dog” from Fallout 3) it appears that Bethesda could be hiring him back to reprise his role from Fallout 3.
@ETDellums – To all my #Fallout3 and #ThreeDog fans: There may be more of the Dog coming! Fingers crossed!
(@ToastTheRabbit) @ETDellums any details that ya can share or is it a tight lip deal ATM?
(@ETDellums) @ToastTheRabbit How was that for a tease! I was given permission to release that tease, so fingers crossed.
So it looks like Fallout 4is indeed already in the works. We can only hope so. In my opinion Bethesda makes the best RPG’s outside of Bioware and who knows…maybe Fallout 4 will be a launch title for the next Xbox and/or PS4…
