“We will all go together when we go,” sang the satirist Tom Lehrer of the nuclear arms race. “What a comforting fact that is to know.” But how wrong he was: Bethesda’s Fallout 4 gives us a post-apocalypse jam packed with survivors, mutations, and all sorts of opportunities for the entrepreneurial survivor.
Much of the appeal of a Bethesda game lies in creating your own adventure in the enormous spaces they provide, but Fallout 4’s many depths are poorly served by the tutorials – even central mechanics are explained with cursory text windows, soon forgotten, or sometimes never touched on at all.
Consequently, some of this world’s real magic can only be found by poking around. Here are some tips about where to look, starring our own character – who, entirely coincidentally, bears a passing resemblance to Jeremy Corbyn.
1. SettlementsFallout 4 Dog Location
There’s a lot of fun in Fallout 4’s Settlements, and if you want to unlock them as quickly as possible, follow the Minutemen questline that starts in the game’s early stages. The first time you meet them everything ends up back at Sanctuary, which is a fine starting point – and even better when you find this hidden basement containing three gold bars and other lovely loot.
Two things are badly explained. The first is that you connect up your power supply by opening the workshop menu and looking for the “connect wire” prompt at the bottom of the screen: laugh all you want but this frustrated me for ages. The second is that once you’ve set up crops or trading stations, you need to assign settlers – also done using the workshop menu. Build a fetching bell like this to pull them all together easily.
This is key to supply lines, which I unlocked and then failed to use for about 10 hours. The upgrade description reads like it works automatically, but you have to assign a settler to cover specific routes – again, through the workshop menu once the option’s available. Some of this is lack of explanation, some is just bad interface design.
2. Massive Damage!
The size of your gun matters, but also incredibly important in Fallout 4 is what your enemy’s resistant to. It’s easy to ignore this but simple to check with the early ‘Awareness’ upgrade for your Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting Systems (VATs) – which shows symbols for the damage types alongside a defence value from low to high. Focusing on using the right weapon scores faster kills and saves wasted ammunition: it’s a critical skill.
3. Hide!
At the top of the bad-explanation list goes the utility of the basic crouch. When you crouch an icon reading [hidden] will appear, indicating your character’s entered stealth mode – and Bethesda’s enemy AI is idiotic, so it’s much easier to hide in plain sight than you’d think. On top of this, if you’re spotted, crouch behind cover and your character will actually take cover – and can lean out at the edges to aim.
4. The Lone-ish Wanderer
One of the biggest problems with Fallout 4 is the limited weight of items your character can carry. There are various workarounds for this (try cooking meat from the cow-like creatures, Brahmin) but by far the best is a trick built into the Lone Wanderer perk. This increases the damage your character can take and the maximum they can carry – as long as you don’t have a companion.
But! Right now, Dogmeat doesn’t count: you can take Lone Wanderer and toddle off with man’s best friend – both keeping the various perk bonuses intact and having a companion to store stuff with. If you’re just going out loot-hunting, there’s no more efficient setup. However, this is almost definitely a bug and is likely to be patched soon.
5. Here Boy
Fairly simple tip, but I wish I’d known this sooner. You can easily lose track of Dogmeat and, unlike other companions, he doesn’t come running to the bell. Always make sure to send Dogmeat to your main settlement and build a dog house for him – then whenever you need to find him, that’s where he’ll be. Makes sense I suppose.
6. Magic Jaws
One final tip for this most noble of animals. On leaving Vault 111 at the start of the game you may have been taunted by the Cryolater, an insanely good gun held behind unbreakable glass with a master lock. To get inside, you will need to become an excellent lockpicker – meaning many hours of play stand between you and the weapon.
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No such rules apply to our four-legged friend, however. You meet Dogmeat shortly after leaving Vault 111 and, if you return, can bag the Cryolater. First get Dogmeat to stand in its vicinity, then instruct him to search for items, making sure you’ve cleared everything else lootable. Et voila, the gun warps from the case to this magnificent beast’s jaws – and if you trade items, he’s even stored the ammo too. Good boy!
7. Mod smartFallout 4 How To Rename Dog Meat No Mods
The Gun Nut perk is an essential early pickup, because with this (and later ammo-specific perks like Science!) you can turn a standard base weapon into something like the above. But a key, unexplained thing with weapon modifications is to strip the good ones from guns you don’t want – by replacing them with a lower-tier mod. If you just scrap or sell weapons, the mods go too, but if you strip them you can acquire and use mods you can’t yet create yourself.
8. Personalisation
Renaming your favourite guns can be done at any weapons bench, and allows you to further inhabit that roleplaying experience. On another note, if you want to give your power armour a natty flame look then head straight east from Vault 111 to the Robotics Disposal Ground, where there are a few nice surprises.
9. Colour co-ordination
Notice my Pip-Boy’s attractive white hue? From the game’s pause menu – not the Pip-Boy menu – choose “Display” and you can alter the colour of both the game’s heads-up display and the Pip-Boy interface. One of the best things about this is that the Pip-Boy’s built-in torch reflects your choice – and using white light makes it, to my eyes, much more useful in dark areas.
10. Hangover fuel
All the crafting elements of Fallout 4 can be a pain, but cooking provides all sorts of useful side-effects to replace expensive drugs and medications. Comrade Corbyn is fond, in particular, of drinking some vodka before a big fight – which means he’s always on the verge of alcoholism. But cook up a Radscorpion omelette and bingo, addiction cured, and we can start on the whiskey. Head to the radioactive desert that sprawls across the south-east of the map to get more ingredients than you can handle.
11. You can go back … if you want
Fallout 4’s world is huge but, if you want to re-visit a cleared location with everything re-spawned – from enemies to random loot – the same 30-day rule applies as did in Skyrim. Sit on a piece of furniture anywhere and you can ‘Wait’ for a set time to trigger this respawn manually, the only downside being you have to wait in 24 hour blocks. I’m not saying this is fun or even practical. But if you want to rinse an especially rich building again or replay an especially good fight, this is how.
12. Turn it off then on again
One of Fallout 4’s more serious issues is that you can sometimes end up in a situation like this – where the game has spawned a brahmin inside the house that’s trying to get outside and blocking my only exit. Most glitches aren’t nearly as bad but, if this happens, the classic IT solution applies: just saving and reloading respawns everything and should get your wasteland domination back on track.
That’s it from us (and from Corbyn). But if you have any Fallout 4 tips to share with fellow wasteland wanderers, please add them in the comments section!
Dogmeat is a recurring dog non-player character (NPC) in the Fallout series of post-apocalyptic themed role-playing video games. Dogmeat was introduced as an optional companion to the player character in the original Fallout (1997), and has made cameo appearances in the sequel Fallout 2 (1998) and in some other video games. Other, different Dogmeats are featured in the same role in Fallout 3 (2008) and Fallout 4 (2015). All incarnations of the character were well received, becoming widely regarded as one of the best remembered features in the series, as well as one of the most popular sidekick type characters in video gaming overall.
Appearances[edit]
In the original Fallout by Black Isle Studios and Interplay Entertainment, the protagonistplayer character, the Vault Dweller, first encounters the feral Dogmeat in Junktown. Dogmeat's former owner (an unnamed man closely resembling Max Rockatansky) died at the hands of thugs hired by a local gangster named Gizmo. If the player character feeds Dogmeat or is wearing a leather jacket, Dogmeat will follow them and fight in their defense. According to the series' canon, Dogmeat was adopted by the Vault Dweller on 30 December 2161, and killed by a force field barrier during the Vault Dweller's assault on the Master's Military Base on 20 April 2162.[1][2][3] Dogmeat was supposed to appear in the canceled film adaptation of the game as well.[4]
In Fallout 2, Dogmeat makes a non-canonical appearance in an Easter egg type special encounter 'Café of Broken Dreams'.[3][5] During the encounter, Dogmeat can be picked up by the player character, the Chosen One, if the player approaches him wearing Vault 13 jumpsuit (or the Bridgekeeper's robes, due to a bug in the game). If the player chooses to kill Dogmeat, a man named Mel (in a reference to Mel Gibson, the actor who played Mad Max in the film) will appear and try to avenge him.[6] Dogmeat has made uncredited cameo appearances outside of the Fallout universe in Troika Games' 2001 Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura (created by Fallout designer Tim Cain) and in 2004 The Bard's Tale by inXile Entertainment (headed by Fallout producer Brian Fargo). However, there were no plans to bring back Dogmeat for the original third Fallout game project by Black Isle Studios, the canceled Van Buren.[6]
An entirely different[3] dog named Dogmeat appears in Fallout 3 by Bethesda Softworks, which begins in the year 2277. His master, a scavenger, was killed by a band of raiders in the scrapyard where the dog is to be found. Dogmeat can be recruited by Fallout 3's player character, the Lone Wanderer. The dog can find objects of value across the landscape and bring them to the player.[7]Fallout 3 expansion set Broken Steel optionally (enabled by choosing the 'perk' bonus 'Puppies!' after reaching 22nd experience level) allows a killed Dogmeat to be replaced by a new one (with twice as many hit points, that is a starting value of 1,000 instead of 500) whenever he dies during the game.[8] A fanmade mod which provides an armor for Dogmeat was compared by Destructoid to the infamous[9] horse armor paid DLC from Bethesda's The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, 'except free and functional'.[10] Another mod adds Dogmeat to Fallout: New Vegas.[11]
A new version of Dogmeat appears in Fallout 4. Fallout 4′s Dogmeat is a German Shepherd, and cannot die.[12]
Character design[edit]
For Fallout 3, Dogmeat was modeled to be of a Blue Heeler breed (pictured) to resemble the dog of Mad Max from the film Mad Max 2
Dogmeat was inspired by the unnamed dog of Max Rockatansky (Mad Max) from the 1981 post-apocalyptic film Mad Max 2. His initial name had been 'Dogshit' and his ultimate name was derived from the opening scene of the 1975 post-apocalyptic film A Boy and His Dog, in which the main character Vic calls his dog Blood 'Dogmeat'.[6] According to Fallout producer, lead programmer and designer Tim Cain, 'Leonard Boyarsky, the [game's] art director ... had that movie running continuously in his office, and I think he remarked on several occasions that having a dog in the game would be really cool. [It's] why we wanted a dog in the first place.'[6]Fallout programmer and designer Jesse Heinig was credited by Cain as probably 'one person to thank for Dogmeat.'[6] Heinig himself said: 'My understanding is that [Fallout designer] Scott Bennie settled on the name 'Dogmeat' for the character, and it's likely that he did pick that from the story in question.'[6]
In 2009, Fallout designer Chris Taylor said they 'never expected that Dogmeat would become such a popular character.' Taylor said: 'I always intended that the various NPCs that joined up with the player would come to a violent end. I was shocked when I heard of all the work people went through to keep Dogmeat alive to the end – especially the hell that they went through with the force fields in the Military Base.'[6] According to Fallout 2 and Fallout: New Vegas designer Chris Avellone, Dogmeat is 'arguably the most successful NPC companion ever' for several reasons: 'One, he doesn't talk, so the players can project a personality on to him. Two, he's effective in combat ... and three, he's a dog that stays with you through thick-and-thin. I don't think there's a deeper 'awww' sentiment than people have in their hearts for their pets.'[6]
Reception[edit]
Everyone knows that a dog is a man's best friend. Never is this truer than in a post-apocalyptic nuclear world.
–Tom Hoggins, The Telegraph[13]
Kotaku's Owen Good called Dogmeat 'one of the franchise's most iconic characters' as well as its 'one of the most [e]motionally fulfilling features.'[14] The book Level Up!: The Guide to Great Video Game Design by Scott Rogers used him as an example while discussing how the 'party members don't need to be human'.[15] In 2008, UGO Team stated this 'undisputed champion of Fallout characters' is not 'only our favorite Fallout character, he's also one of gaming's greatest dogs.'[3] That same year, Joe Martin of Bit-tech ranked Dogmeat as the sixth top PC game NPC of all time, commenting: 'There are a lot of computer game characters we like and a few we’d even go so far as to say we love. Dogmeat though, despite being a definite tabula rasa, sits in a different category altogether and is the only computer game character that we’d reload and repeat significant portions of a game for, just so he could stand a better chance of survival.'[16] In 2009, Michael Fiegel of The Escapist called Dogmeat possibly the most beloved character of the Fallout universe, writing that 'in an uncaring wasteland ... Dogmeat is a moral compass: Though your needle might swing towards good or evil, his center always holds strong provided you protect him.'[6] Steve and Larson of ScrewAttack ranked Dogmeat as the tenth best gaming pet in 2011.[17] Dogmeat was included in numerous lists of best video game dogs, including by Lisa Foiles of The Escapist in 2010,[18] Michael Perry of PlayStation Official Magazine in 2012,[19] Gergo Vas of Kotaku in 2013,[20] and Benjamin Abbott of Metro, Brian Taylor of Paste, and the staff of Bild in 2014.[21][22][23] Ryan McCaffrey of IGN chose Dogmeat as the top feature he wished to return in Fallout 4.[24]
Dogmeat was also acclaimed by numerous publications as one of the best sidekick type characters in video games. He was included on GameSpot's list of the top ten video game sidekicks in 2000, chosen for his loyalty to his master in spite of his 'propensity to get himself into trouble, his inability to perform any tricks, and his refusal to listen to directions' in the original game.[25] This 'loyal companion' was also chosen by GameSpot to be one of the 64 characters to compete in the 2008 poll for the title of 'All-Time Greatest Game Sidekick'.[26] In 2004, Dogmeat placed as second on GameSpy's Dave Kosak's list of the best video game sidekicks, also because of his extreme faithfulness to the player's character.[27] In 2008, The Telegraph featured him as one of top ten greatest sidekicks in gaming history.[13] In 2011, Maximum PC included Dogmeat among the 25 of gaming's greatest sidekicks, commenting that 'though his look, his breed, and his stats have varied [through the series], Dogmeat has the loyalty and heart of a champion.'[28]
River, the dog who portrayed Dogmeat in Fallout 4 was awarded 'Top Video Game Dog of 2015' at The CW's World Dog Awards.[29]
See also[edit]References[edit]
External links[edit]
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