I’m on the fence about crafting systems in games. I like to be able to craft certain things, but I often just get tired by it and end up ignoring it all together. Usually, I hold out on crafting until the end of games, when I have all the awesome components and can create the best stuff that’s finally better than anything being dropped by enemies. Base management, on the other hand, becomes a bit of an obsession for me. No matter your interest in crafting, Fallout 4 should still be fun for you.
Bethesda’s Pete Hines explained that if you’re not a fan of post-apocalyptic urban management or weapon building, you can totally leave it out in Fallout 4.
It’s a completely optional, freeform thing that you can do, if that’s what you want to do. If you don’t care about that and you just want to play quests and play side quests, and finish the main quest and that sort of thing then you can just ignore all of this [crafting]. Or do as much or as little as you want.
That said, if you do build a town, merchants might arrive and set up shop in your camp. So there is a benefit to doing so, but Hines is clear that this isn’t required to play the game – you can get loot from other people or buy things from merchants and just play through the game. Crafting is designed to be enjoyable, but not a requirement:
You can [play] it and never even notice that feature is there if you want to, but once you figure it out, it’s like, ‘okay, this is pretty cool. Now I want to do more.
Knowing my preferred gameplay styling, I’d probably end up doing far too much base building (although I can’t really imagine caring about the furniture I craft) and just about no weapon crafting. Still, it’s always nice to see features included in games that aren’t strictly required for the game’s completion. Too often, something is presented as optional, but later missions reveal that you should have been doing it all along in order to actually complete the game.
Last Updated: August 14, 2015
Captain JJ Fantasticus
August 14, 2015 at 08:04
I really like this idea behind Fallout, but in the end it’s still an exploration game to me. If I wanted a pure survival and crafting game I’d play one of the many great ones on Steam.
Either way, I cannot wait for this game. One of the few pre-orders I’ve made in my life (one of three I think). It’s going to be epic.
Kromas,powered by windows 10.
August 14, 2015 at 08:22
Same. I have ARK for building right now. I just wanna hunt down deathclaws and get myself power armour!
Captain JJ Fantasticus
August 14, 2015 at 08:23
I’ve got ARK too. Only spent a short amount of time on it though, since I’m waiting for two of my friends to get it too. So we’re playing The Forest until then, which is also brilliant. Beasts of Prey was fun until ARK arrived.
Kromas,powered by windows 10.
August 14, 2015 at 08:25
The Forest got boring really fast for some reason and it got horrible when they switched from CryEngine to unity Engine. I stayed away from Beasts after I got burned by the stomping lands though. 7 Days to die is still my complete package building game though. It is just not as pretty and as Dinosaury as ARK. 🙂
Captain JJ Fantasticus
August 14, 2015 at 08:29
7 Days is excellent. I’ve spent so many many hours on that. But with the new updates they messed up the mining (don’t know if they’ve fixed it again). I think Beasts is probably not going to make the year, now that ARK is out.
I get what you mean by The Forest. They’ve added a lot of great things recently, but once you’ve learned how to get a base up and going, then you’ve pretty much aced it. It needs leveling and unlocks like ARK has to keep it interesting.
Kromas,powered by windows 10.
August 14, 2015 at 08:31
We killed Broodmother on monday. 5 odd hours of cave diving for the artifacts and 2 whole minutes of T-Wrexing the boss. Much Dissapoint.
Captain JJ Fantasticus
August 14, 2015 at 08:34
Haha. Wow, that’s bad.
The “special” monsters in ARK don’t intrigue me at all. I’m there for the dinos. That’s still where Stomping Lands trumps it. It was a dinosaur survival game. All the sci-fi elements in ARK feels like it’s trying just a bit too hard. But I know no one else really feels that way about it.
Kromas,powered by windows 10.
August 14, 2015 at 08:37
The special monsters are just a fun distraction when you spent a whole weekend building/taming dinos. And you at least have to do it once. Also there is just Broodmother although the dragon and king kong will arrive some time in the near future. Also they added “Alpha” Rexes Carnos and Raptors. Those bad boys can do some major damage and they are everywhere!
Captain JJ Fantasticus
August 14, 2015 at 08:44
The Alpha dinos sound bloody awesome. I might try one of the monsters maybe, but I don’t really like the idea of those being in there. I know that sounds stupid, but I just liked the raw…Lost World (1920s version, not the Spielberg kak) feeling that Stomping Lands had.
I haven’t even tamed my first dino yet, actually, but I’m eyeing a Stegosaurus in my near future.
Kromas,powered by windows 10.
August 14, 2015 at 09:04
Don’t!
Depending on servers a Stego might take 5 hours to tame. My server is at 5 times taming speed and even then a Stego is quite a job without kibble. Try a meat eater first they tame a small bit faster.
Captain JJ Fantasticus
August 14, 2015 at 09:21
Interesting. I’ve still only played offline so far, will start my own server once my group of friends all have the game. But I’ll take your advice on this and start with a meat eater.
Matthew Holliday
August 14, 2015 at 10:40
a stego is a bit ambitious for a first time tame.
a trike is probably the better bet.
also think trikes are better gatherers than stegos, stego movement speed and stamina is horrendous, trikes may not have the same gathering aoe, but their stamina and movement speed makes them much less frustrating.
i think a herbivore is better to start with than a carnivore, berries are a much more convenient source of food and something that gathers narcos is always a great place to start. a gatherer dino is always first on my list.
Captain JJ Fantasticus
August 14, 2015 at 08:52
I see ARK is on 20% sale now, actually.
Matthew Holliday
August 14, 2015 at 10:33
broodmothers next on my list aswell.
its just the two of us in our tribe though, so cave diving and base building is slow going.
our rexes were pretty underlevelled though, had a alpha carno drop into our base yesterday and it killed one of the rexxes =/
broodmother is a bit of a gimp though, set up a few turrets and just kite the broodmother around and kill the spider spawns untill its dead…
Matthew Holliday
August 14, 2015 at 10:30
aye, 300 hours into ark and still havent finished building my base in ark.
at that point where its become a bit too much of a grind though.
Alien Emperor Trevor
August 14, 2015 at 08:22
That’s a very… wait for it… wait… almost there… CRAFTY way of going about it!
Captain JJ Fantasticus
August 14, 2015 at 08:22
Oh wow. Is it Monday already? ;P
Kromas,powered by windows 10.
August 14, 2015 at 08:23
War(craft) …. War(craft) never changes.
Dutch Matrix
August 14, 2015 at 08:31
Craft all the weapons! Carry all the materials! Overburden all of the Player! Player spends hours walking to nearest city! Gooooooo Crafting! Ra-Ra-Ra!
CypherGate
August 14, 2015 at 09:24
dont forget to manage your bag cause you would be carrying SO many materials for one item!
Nikola
August 14, 2015 at 08:41
I must say I really like this idea having like your own base and crafting your own town, such a cool feature!
CypherGate
August 14, 2015 at 09:07
I always enjoyed the idea of crafting systems, but it becomes this horribly tedious kind of ‘work’ that doesn’t feel much fun. Like for example: collect 35 Talons of despair and 45 Debonite rocks (which are rare) and then ten of 20 each and other materials only to end up creating one piece of armour. Then its back to the collecting of materials and then 4 days later you have your full armour. Then its time to craft weapons and it starts again. I just find doing the collecting tedious and not much fun. Feels like work.
Matthew Holliday
August 14, 2015 at 10:28
im the opposite with crafting, i dont finish the game untill ive completely maxxed out my base and character options
if the crafting system is any good, il probably spend more time on that, than the rest of the game.
Aaron Lucas
August 14, 2015 at 14:00
Aren’t you supposed to be a Lone WANDERER in these games, not a Lone Settler Downer? That said, I love crafting weapons and armor, Just won’t be touching the base building.
Gareth L (That eXCheez Guy)
August 14, 2015 at 17:07
Fallout. A post-apocalyptic role-playi- WTF is this?!