I know that everyone has been anxiously awaiting my impressions of Nuka World, but I didn’t want to start it until I was reasonably sure I had reached a proper end-game point.
The thing about Nuka World is that it forces a choice on you that completely changes the Fallout 4 world you’ve built. Well, “force” is not quite the right word, because you can choose to remain your decent, upstanding Minute Man General self, but if you go this way, you’ll miss out on a raft of new privileges and perks. If you go the other way, you lose all the work you’ve put into crafting your settlements and establishing their happiness.
To say that Nuka World is a game-changer is an understatement. Here’s the deal:
Nuka World is a huge amusement park built by the Nuka Cola Corporation. It borrows heavily from Disney but probably also owes some of its ideas to Universal, Knott’s Berry Farm, Six Flags Over Texas, and other mega-parks. I imagine there are also sneaky references to fictional places like Duff Gardens. The land mass is quite large, with acreage devoted to multiple discrete sub-parks, each with its own theme: Dry Rock Gulch, Kiddie Kingdom, the Galactic Zone, etc. Everything you would expect to see is there: huge rides, museums, restaurants, side-show attractions, etc. Of course, it’s all about 200 years old and overgrown with horrible mutated flora. Parts of it are so radio-active that you need a hazmat suit or power armor. Some of the fauna is new (e.g. bloodworms) and some is reskinned (e.g., gatorclaws). Minigames abound, as do interesting side quests. And, of course, if you want Nuka Cola, this is the place to be. Every flavor is available, along with interesting recipes for crafting.
As you’re probably aware, Nuka World has been partially claimed by raider gangs. If you’ve always wondered what it would be like to talk to raiders and form relationships with them, this is your DLC. The main quest introduces you to three factions: the Pack, the Disciples, and the Operators. Each gang has its own ideology. Pack members base their social structure on those of predatory animals, with an “alpha” in charge. They’re also slave traders. The Disciples are grounded wholly in violence, anarchy, and nihilism. The Operators value caps above all else and therefore are more refined than their competitors. Somewhat reminiscent of the Ventrue faction in Vampire: The Masquerade, the Operators are generally well-spoken, shrewd, and as elegant as raiders can reasonably be. The other gangs sit in the dirt and eat raw meat, but the Operators have place settings and napkins. I suspect that if the Sole Survivor never showed up, the natural evolution of Nuka World would eventually select the Operators as its dominant species.
Mags Black and her brother William lead the Operators. (Credit to Jspoelstra on the Fallout Wiki, which reduced this to postage-stamp size.)
Anyway, about the game-changer part:
If you decide to play out the raider story, you’ll end up co-opting, destroying, and enslaving your present settlements. This is inevitable because the raiders are determined to take over the entire Commonwealth. You end up creating new raider settlements, and since raiders don’t like to farm or perform other menial tasks, your “good” settlers become their chattel. As a result, everything about settlement building changes. You have to start over with the building aspect because your ties to the old ways have been broken. Nothing really functions as it once did, so you have to re-learn settlement crafting.
If you decide to kill all the raider bosses, you miss out on some attractive perks and interesting game functionality, but you keep what you’ve built (and Preston still likes you).
In spite of this dilemma, Nuka World is a much better DLC than Far Harbor. The world is full of things to do, people to meet, and lives to end. The loot is considerably improved, and the general amusement factor is much higher in every way. Beware, though: you should be about level 30 before starting. Even then, you’ll probably get your gluteus maximus handed to you.
No Bethesda DLC is worth the retail asking price, but Nuka World is a good sale acquisition.
8/10 bottlecaps
Sounds much more exciting than W3 lately. Right now Geralt is stuck in town performing in plays and chasing down fireroot plants for one of his girlfriends. I suppose I could skip these quests but then I wouldn’t sleep at night……
I’m tempted, but not at $20. I think it might have been $16 on XBL last I looked.
I never built many settlements and I’ve forgotten where most of them are, anyway.
I’ve been playing No Man’s Sky again since the update, but they regenerated the whole universe, nerfed everything, and made resource management more complicated while making their UI worse, so…
I feel guilty and rich at the same time when I remember that I should start Witcher 3 (also Deus Ex: Mankind Divided). Then there’s the rest of Shadow Warrior 2.
I’m sort of surprised by the negative reception of the NMS update. I would have thought Hello Games might actually fix more things and bring the game much closer to their hype.
In Nuka World, I reclaimed all areas of the park and started converting settlements into raider “outposts.” This is more interesting than I imagined. You can go in shooting or you can try to talk/bribe the settlers into leaving. So far, I’ve been able to scare them off by just talking to them. I have clothing that raises my Charisma to 11, and if that doesn’t work, I have Grape Mentats and Smooth Operator (a +Charisma chem manufactured by Lizzie Wyatt of the Operators — not quite as effective as Grape Mentats but far less addictive).
At one point, my contact in Nuka World told me that a rival raider gang was heading toward the Slog (my main outpost), intending to run off my raiders. I got there in time to intercept them and had a little chat with their leader. Without firing a shot, I reduced him to a puddle of demoralized jelly.
Not only is my character the most violent person in the Commonwealth. She can destroy the will of any enemy with just a few words, for she is the Kwisatz Haderach (except she’s a girl).
Footnote: the Operators are relatively mannerly because their leaders, Mags and William Black, come from the upper tiers of Diamond City. If you’ve talked to that social set, you know that they’re wealthier and snootier than the other citizens.
From what I’ve been able to gather, Mags and William got into trouble back in DC over what the Fallout Wiki describes as “an unspecified incident that led to a young woman’s death, as well as a long list of other illegal activities.” This caused Mags’ mother, Evelyn Black, to disown the siblings. Mags seems to have responded with a threat, and so I assume that the Blacks no longer exchange Christmas cards. This is probably not unusual when you have psychopaths in your family.
I started Witcher, stopped to play DX:MD, and now I forgot where I was in the story. There was a griffin, or something. And boobs.
Also: have psychopaths in family; can confirm.
Families . . . nyuk nyuk. Yeah.
Just for variety, I tried taking over Finch Farm with violence. If you do this, some of your raiders are supposed to arrive before you do. You’re supposed to talk to them just outside the settlement and make plans.
Well, the game neglects to tell you that the settlement will immediately be hostile. The raiders got there a little before I did, but my settlers were on such high alert that a fight immediately broke out, which both I and my raiders pretty quickly lost. This is because the settlement defenses were insanely strong. As soon as I was within range (which was surprisingly far), I got hammered by missiles and high-level turrets. I couldn’t run away because every inch of the settlement was covered. All I could do was watch my health deplete at an extremely rapid pace. Plus, nearly all my settlers were armed with end-game weapons, so my feeble raider gang died almost instantly.
“For tis the sport to haue the enginer / Hoist with his owne petar.”
Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 4, line 207