Fallout: New Vegas 2017 Soft Touch Modification Guide

To celebrate Fallout‘s 20th anniversary, I figured it would be fun to completely start from scratch and tool the Bethesda Fallout game series for new, fresh playthroughs. Since I have now spent an evening’s worth of catching up on, and customizing, each of the Fallouts, I figured I might as well put my lists out here. In fact, I have actually written an article on Planescape: Torment (hilariously obsolete today, with the new Enhanced Edition out) before, and it’s a ton of fun to share this type of info!

I’m personally a fan of a “soft touch” style of modding, so the purpose here was to create a list of

  1. recently updated,
  2. light, and
  3. simple

modifications that work to make Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas more playable. Modding Bethesda games is pretty fun, as there are so, so many options. If you get too trigger happy, however, it can also be quite frustrating – much like the games themselves!

If you do want to follow this tutorial, either as your setup, or as a basis for adding on more modifications, for the purpose of playing and/or purchasing Fallout: New Vegas, I recommend the Steam Ultimate Edition version. Unlike Fallout 3, New Vegas works quite fine on Steam.

This tutorial operates under the assumption that you are on Windows, have all the DLC, and are running Fallout: New Vegas Ultimate Edition version 1.4.0.525. (more…)

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Fallout 3 GOTY 2017 Soft Touch Modification Guide

To celebrate Fallout‘s 20th anniversary, I figured it would be fun to completely start from scratch and tool the Bethesda Fallout game series for new, fresh playthroughs. Since I have now spent an evening’s worth of catching up on, and customizing, each of the Fallouts, I figured I might as well put my lists out here. In fact, I have actually written an article on Planescape: Torment (hilariously obsolete today, with the new Enhanced Edition out) before, and it’s a ton of fun to share this type of info!

I’m personally a fan of a “soft touch” style of modding, so the purpose here was to create a list of

  1. recently updated,
  2. light, and
  3. simple

modifications that work to make Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas more playable. Modding Bethesda games is pretty fun, as there are so, so many options. If you get too trigger happy, however, it can also be quite frustrating – much like the games themselves!

If you do want to follow this tutorial, either as your setup, or as a basis for adding on more modifications, for the purpose of playing and/or purchasing Fallout 3, I recommend the Fallout 3: Game of the Year Edition on GOG.com – simply because it doesn’t have any of the Steam or GFWL dependencies.

This tutorial operates under the assumption that you are on Windows, have all DLC (i.e., the GOTY edition), and are running Fallout 3 version 1.7.0.1. (more…)

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Dear Esther

Note: A review of the Dear Esther 2012 remake can be read right here!

You find yourself standing on a pier, jutting out from a silent shore with only a small house in sight, a rocky mountain looming behind in the mist. You appear to be on an island, deadly quiet and devoid of life except for a lone seagull fleeing at the sound of your step. Venturing forth into the house you discover an abandoned shack with only boxes lying about, and on the walls a curious set of chalked symbols. Setting off on the path behind the house you make your way up the mountain in an attempt to make sense of this desolate place.

Dear Esther,
the gulls do not land here anymore. I’ve noticed that this year they seem to shun the place. Maybe it’s the depletion of the fishing stock driving them away. Perhaps it’s me.

Dear Esther is an interactive first-person adventure. Based on the Source engine popularised by Half-Life 2, it is a free mod that requires the game to run. Created by British games researcher Dan Pinchbeck under the development moniker thechineseroom, the mod is described as an interactive narrative that “puts traditional game technologies to new use”. Essentially the player has one action available to them, and that is to move around and explore the island. The narrative arrives in the form of the atmospheric visuals and sound, and short spoken fragments of story that are triggered at various spots on your journey. The narrator reads out extracts from a letter addressed to someone called Esther, and relates his attempts to follow in the footsteps of a man arriving to the island before him. Throughout his monologue he alludes to his experiences as well as those of other characters, all seemingly related in some way. The accounts sometimes appear literal but at other times feel more metaphorical and nebulous in their meaning.

. .

(more…)

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