Looks better than expected, if heavily lib-coded and taking place on TERF-Island. Will enjoy bashing fash and gentry alike.
Mod-pilled fan-game enjoyers have something to chew on again!
Edit: Played about an hour, last night. Initial impressions from me are generally positive! There are SPECIAL checks so far, like a 7 strength check to open a jammed door. Melee seems to be favored heavily in the intro as well. There are other checks, like an Int 7 check and a Cha 4 check so far.
For anyone wanting to try Survival, you may want to hold off. Beds are infrequent in the beginning (didn’t find a single bed in my playtime), but the devs said they are going to add more based on player feedback.
Visuals are a bit all over the place, textures seem to be varied in quality. A good texture pack mod and lighting mod would go a long way, the actual environmental design is pretty good so far, especially for a mod project.
All in all, solid experience, and I am very excited! Definitely more fallout-y than The Frontier so far, but I do think some people are going to dog on it for not being AAA quality polish, which isn’t fair at all to the devs.
Edit 2: Large oof, there’s an extremely early quest involving striking workers, but the entire schtick is that both the strike leader and capitalist are scumbags. Seems like you can just kill the Capitalist, but it implies the strike leader is just an opportunist who intentionally lies about what he will pay you. All non-violent solutions lead to a preservation of the status quo, and no added rights for the workers. It’s the epitome of moralism and “both-sides-ism,” it’s the type of quest design that doesn’t realize that even if the scumbag strike boss takes power, the conditions for striking remain! There’s no agency from the workers.
Edit 3: Been continuing through, Survival is brutal and the game is pretty buggy, but I absolutely love a lot of the environments, they have a ton of attention to detail, moreso than Vanilla Fallout 4 so far. The character writing has ups and downs, but having skill checks and other RP related choices makes it a ton of fun so far, hard to put down (unless I just lost 20 minutes of progress on survival, oof).
At this point, Fallout has had so much identity whiplash that I’m more okay with it than I am with Bethesda’s endless recycling of existing factions in new ways without logic. Even the weird fish people we see in the London Trailer are alright by me, New Vegas had Tunnelers and Ghost People, why not another sane mutation?
If it’s fun, unique, and internally consistent, then that’s a step forward from Bethesda. Good Roleplaying, quest design, and writing are all very achievable low bars compared to Bethesda as well, succeeding in at least one of those areas will leave me thrilled.
Basically, I am just excited to see a fresh take for freshness alone, plus it’s a passion project and I love those. I’m easy to please when it comes to fan projects.
