"War Never Changes" - And neither do Fallout trophy lists, it seems.
It's been a long time since a Fallout Platinum trophy featured here - The last one was Fallout : New Vegas at Platinum #42 almost 10 years back in July 2012.
That's a long time for things to change, but the Fallout formula has mostly stayed the same in practically every single aspect.
Fallout 4 takes place post-Fallout 3 to the tune of around 10 years, set in a place called the Commonwealth, a post-apocalyptic setting considered to be "retro-futuristic".
The game begins during a period of time just before the Commonwealth is reduced to a post-apocalyptic, danger-inhabited wasteland, where your character is living with their family in a completely harmonious setting. A knock at the door eventually sees you being led into Vault 111 amidst the warnings of an incoming Nuclear bomb, and whilst inside Vault 111, you and your family are sheltered within cryogenic pods.
Shortly after this occurs, your son is kidnapped by an unknown party from within the Vault, and your partner is killed in their attempts to prevent this, but confinement to the cryogenic pods make you helpless to prevent this situation and you suddenly awaken 60 years later after your body is preserved in ice.
Upon awakening from this, the end-goal is clear - To find your son and the reasons behind his kidnap. Naturally, I won't go beyond the basic plot, but you'll be unleashed into an open world full of perils, exploration, companions and differing factions you'll have to make critical decisions with or against - Just to emphasise the continuation of the similarities to previous Fallout games.
The trophy list is large in size, clocking in at 51 trophies in total, including the Platinum trophy, and just like many of the elements within the game, doesn't stray too far from the standard when it comes to trophy requirements in comparison to the previous 2 Fallout games.
That's not to say there isn't anything different, and the things that are different are actually some of the things that end up being more relevant when discussing overall difficulty, but you can still expect to mostly see a very questline-driven, naturally progressive list focused around beating various quests for the different factions you'll encounter and fulfilling metric-based objectives around killing a certain amount of creatures, hacking a certain amount of terminals and picking a certain amount of locks, amongst other examples - but things you've seen accounted for before if you already have experience with Fallout titles.
The "Prepared for the Future" trophy, awarded for Deciding the Fate of the Commonwealth, concludes the story, which is generally a fairly casual experience. Unlike the "Hardcore" run in Fallout : New Vegas, there aren't any trophies dedicated to difficulty here, and despite choosing Hard, I never once felt like I couldn't beat any specific segment of the game. The first encounter with a Mirelurk Queen at the Castle was a little bit hairy, but aside from that, it was all mostly downhill.
No matter which path you choose to take as you go through the story, and which factions you decide to fight with and against, the conclusion will always present you with this trophy. However, there is a particular fork in the road where you'll have to make a save to return to later in order to ensure you take the alternative path to the end of the game. Save game trickery is not a new concept for Fallout games, and has existed in every single one, but it has previously been more complicated than it is here. On this occasion, all you need to do is reach a certain point near the end, make a save to go on and complete the game, unlocking this trophy, and then just reload and take the alternate path to finish up the other quests you were locked out of first time round.
Fallout : New Vegas had 4 separate endings, all of which required the player to go back to a certain point and make a different decision, so Fallout 4 is nowhere near as laborious, with the requirement of only having to go through one other path.
I count exactly 23 trophies which are either related to specific quests within the main storyline, or certain progression-related points where you side with a faction, which is almost half of the entire list, and when you also take into account you'll obtain much more of this list as you go through to pursue the end-game, you should have a largely complete list by the time you conclude the main story.
The rest of the list includes the previously aforementioned metric-based trophies, for hacking a certain number of terminals, picking a certain number of locks and killing a certain number of humans, creatures etc. - All of which should come naturally through the various environments you'll grace as part of the questline. Collectibles also make a return through Bobble-heads and magazines, which may require some recreational exploration, and all of the above are very familiar returning trophy requirements.
However, I did have to take advantage of the DLC in order to reach the required milestones for some of these trophies, as well as the "Legend Of The Wastes" trophy, awarded for reaching Level 50 - That's not to say the content isn't there to achieve it, but it made more sense from an efficiency point of view to use the DLC trophies in order to make progress towards level 50, rather than the side-content away from the trophy list that wouldn't earn me any progression towards trophies. This is the main reason the DLC lists have ended up coming through prior to the Platinum.
The "Benevolent Leader" trophy, awarded for Reaching Maximum Happiness in a Large Settlement, is where the game starts to become a little less straight-forward.
I did mention above that there are elements to this list that focus on some of the new features within Fallout 4, and that they end up being the more relevant aspects to this list when we discuss overall difficulty. This is especially true of the new settlements feature, which graces a Fallout game for the first (and hopefully last) time.
Just briefly, for background purposes, settlement mode allows you to build thriving settlements, recruiting people to live within, work for and protect these communities as you watch them grow and prosper. Think The Sims. Just purely from a personal point of view, I think it's boring and pointless, but unfortunately, some effort is required to indulge in the mode for the sake of the Platinum trophy, so here we are.
The first important thing to note is that the trophy description is actually wrong - You don't need to fulfil this objective within a large settlement, the confusion to which ends up costing me a significant amount of time here. I chose Sanctuary Hills, which is the starting settlement, due to it's size, and the fact I already had it populated with 10 people at 83% happiness, so it seemed logical, at the end of the game, to choose this settlement to work on for this trophy.
There are key aspects of a settlement that need to be fulfilled in order to create happiness growth. Things such as ensuring that there is enough food being grown, the water supply is ample and defensive units are in great enough abundance to provide a safe environment, but the issue with this trophy is, there doesn't seem to be much consistency in what actually works, despite it being quite clear what you need to achieve 100% happiness.
I carried on recruiting new people within Sanctuary Hills, to the point where there were 31 people present, with enough food, water and defensive units to keep them appeased. I was also assigning every settler a job to work on (which is also defined in most guides to increase happiness effectively), and yet, this was fine up to the point where I reached around 94% happiness, and then suddenly started to regress, fluctuating between 89% and 94% without any real logical explanation as to why or how - I didn't change my methodology. Every new settler I recruited was given a job, usually at a clinic, and I also made sure there was enough food, water, beds and defence relative to the amount of settlers present. The fact my progress towards this trophy not only halted, but actually started regressing was something I just couldn't figure out.
I came to a stalemate on this method when I discovered that you can only recruit a maximum number of settlers based on your total Charisma +10, so 31 was my highest available, and I didn't know where to go from there other than to look at other options. By this point, I had spent around an additional 8-10 hours to effectively just go backwards.
It was at this point I discovered you didn't actually need to work on this trophy on a large settlement, much to my frustration at the time, because the trophy is very explicit in it's instruction that you need to fulfil this obligation using a large settlement, which was the reason I stuck with Sanctuary Hills to begin with.
I moved across to a smaller settlement, using a method where you can build dog cages, release the tamed animals into the settlement, build a robot and, apparently, you get 100% happiness instantly because a robot does not require food or water, so this is not factored into the happiness rating.
Sort of, but not quite. I did get to 80% instantly, and this trended upwards at a solid rate of around 3-4% every couple of minutes. It looked like I was onto a winner and then it hit 95% happiness and halted. I had to improvise, and build a clinic to assign the robot to work on that with the understanding from my previous settlement that this could kick the happiness meter back into life, which it did. It took a while to move from 95% up to 100%, as it had stopped increasing by large increments by this point, and every percentage was being earned over a 20 minute period, so it still took a few hours, but it was a relief to finally get there and complete this list.
This seems like alot to mention for a list that practically boils down to 2 trophies, and this was actually a relatively simple adventure right up until the final hurdle. Naturally progressing through the main story questline will net you a large portion of this list, and you'll seldom have to stray from this path to unlock everything else that falls outside the questline.
However, even though settlements aren't tough to understand on paper, the logic surrounding them throws you into a world of trial and error that ended up consuming my time and effort without any reasonable reward aside the final trophy required for Platinum.
Speaking of time, it's hard for me place an estimate on the Platinum trophy alone, mainly down to the fact that I used the DLC in order to pursue other trophies within the main list, including reaching level 50. My save file clocks it around around 120 hours, but with the consideration of all DLC included within this timeframe, it makes it hard to pinpoint a time range for Platinum completion alone. It's possibly somewhere within the 50-60 hour range, though it is also important to note I did often stray away to also complete side content unrelated to trophies along the way, and does also include replaying the final portion of the game for the potentially missable trophies.
Does it do enough to at least sit on par with the previous Fallout games? It's honestly hard to say. It's been so long since I played a Fallout title, I've actually forgotten, so this makes comparisons harder to draw conclusions from. It doesn't have a requirement to complete the game in any variation of "Hardcore" mode like New Vegas did, and overall, there isn't much here that's actually that challenging from a gameplay perspective, but it is lengthy and the trials and tribulations of the settlement feature was the cherry on top. Except the cherry was actually a raw onion, and not a cherry.
Notable Trophies -
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| Prepared for the Future - Decide the Fate of the Commonwealth Benevolent Leader - Reach Maximum Happiness in a Large Settlement |
Hardest Trophy -
Benevolent Leader Reach Maximum Happiness in a Large Settlement
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