
Fallout 4 Fridays: Part Three — Always Have an Escape Plan
Switching platforms, Radiant A.I., and hidden dungeons
Welcome to Fallout 4 Fridays. (Part Zero, Part One, Part Two)
Ahem. So this is Megan. The secret plan was for her to take over this grand adventure seamlessly from Lisa, the protagonist we’ve followed so far. She would saunter right into Diamond City and we’d have a big ol’ talk about how it’s one of Bethesda’s most impressive locations.
For reasons I’m about to explain, that didn’t pan out.

Megan is a character I made in the PC version of Fallout 4 when I was working on the early parts of this series and trying to decide what version I would play.
I figured out what type of character I wanted to play in Megan, and then I cloned her as Lisa when I switched over to PS4. That way, Megan could still live on as a backup character in case I had a last-minute change of heart.
It’s always good to have a backup plan.
Early this week, I decided to switch to the PC version of the game. It’s about 1000 times easier (roughly) to take screenshots inside a Steam game compared to a PS4 game.
On the PlayStation 4, you have to press the share button, and then you have to press the triangle button to save a screen. It all takes a while and it’s sluggish to say the least.
And while you’re doing that, the game is usually still running in the background.
Some games get around this by implementing photo modes, but Fallout 4 has no such thing.
Getting at those files is annoying and slow as well. You have to put a USB stick into the PS4, open a special menu, and copy them over to the stick manually.
On Steam, I can just press F12 and BAM instant screenshot right on the hard drive, ready for transfer to the cloud storage device or Medium article of my choosing.
In 2013, the dedicated sharing functionality of the PS4 was incredibly impressive. It was the first console on the market to have full support for video streaming and screenshots built right in, with a dedicated button even. Something that Microsoft had to have in the Xbox One to stay competitive.
But this functionality has barely advanced in the intervening four years. The interface is nearly as clunky and awkward as it was at the launch of the system.
And it’s a true shame.
“Alex, you still haven’t explained why Megan didn’t make it to Diamond City yet.”
You’re absolutely right! I thought I’d have plenty of time to catch her up…but then I spent most of the last week down the my favorite rabbit hole of audio gear, evaluating different PC surround sound headsets. A fun side quest to be sure, but I should have done more gaming and less listening.
Right. Enough of that. Let’s get on with it!

Radiant AI — Bethesda’s true engine masterstroke
Megan had a lot of catching up to do. I resumed her adventure right outside the vault. I fought through the first dungeon. I fought the Deathclaw. I saved the Minutemen. I stowed my power armor at the Red Rocket station.
I sprinted through all the content I had seen only a short time ago, but I loved every second of it.
Why?
Because, this all went quite differently in moment-to-moment play than it did during these same adventures on PS4, thanks to Bethesda’s tremendously under-appreciated A.I. system.
Bethesda’s engine takes a lot of flak. I think I’ve written this sentence in every article I’ve created about one of their games.
Yes, it’s buggy.
But at its core rests an A.I. system that first appeared in Oblivion called Radiant A.I.
And it’s brilliant in its design.

Basically, every NPC (non-player character) in the game is governed by a schedule of behaviors, rather than specifically-designed actions. It’s sort of like the gambit system in Final Fantasy XII, but instead of the player programming their party members, Bethesda sets up behaviors for all the NPCs and then lets the magic happen.
In other games, like The Witcher 3 or the Mass Effect series, townspeople are usually rooted to one spot for the most of the game, and enemies are confined to specific areas and encounters.
Clever design can still make this fun.
But Bethesda blows traditional gaming AI concepts out to the nth degree, and gives the NPCs almost as much behavioral freedom as the player has.
In Fallout 4, NPC behaviors are limited only by the imagination shown by the designers in creating their schedules. They can sleep during certain times of the day. They can interact with other NPCs. They can run shops. They can try to pick up your stuff. They can hunt animals at night. They can get lost in the wilderness. They can decide they hate you based on how you act.
This level of behavioral complexity and interaction also makes combat very exciting.
When you first walk up to Concord, some bandits are engaging the Minutemen, who are holed up in an old museum.
If the bandits don’t see you, they’ll continue their dynamic fight. They’ll all try to gain an edge on each other based on their skill points and their behaviors.
So you could just wait it out.

Of course, I always begin firing on them immediately.
This makes the bandits freak out. Some of them try to take cover. Some might try running at me, and switch to a melee weapon. If I injure one of them, they might start crawling away and try to use a healing item.
All of this is truly dynamic, and governed only by their scheduled Radiant AI behaviors, skills, and inventory. Some scripting is at play to set up these encounters at times, but the dynamism in the way things play out is really fun.
It’s almost like the characters have a personality.
One of the most impressive things about the original Doom is that you can sometimes get the monsters to fight each other, and Radiant A.I. exhibits similar fascinating and unexpected behaviors all of the time.
When I finally get to Diamond City next week, I’ll be talking about Radiant A.I. a bit more, and how it makes that city feel more alive than most other video game locations.

Secret dungeons
I mentioned in Part One that everything in Fallout 4’s narrative feels carefully designed to push you towards the next objective.
But this doesn’t mean that exploration goes without reward.
In fact, while playing as Megan, I found a slightly hidden area for the first time that I had never encountered before.
As I was escorting the surviving Minutemen past the total destruction I had wrought while fighting the Deathclaw, I noticed that the random hole the monster pops out of was actually a doorway to an underground area!
So once they were safe in Sanctuary, I went back.
Sure enough, there’s a whole place down there! In fact, Concord has a sewer system that’s available for exploration. And it’s really nicely detailed too, with some fun combat against other things like Mirelurks, and a bunch of evidence that the Deathclaw had been living down there, and not just waiting to pop up and get me when the script called for it.
I love these little touches.

So that’s it for this week. I apologize for those among you who have been dedicated to the story so far that I didn’t get to Diamond City yet, and that I cut Lisa’s story short. But I’m playing Megan in the exact same way, more or less, and the platform switch will make this series easier to produce than ever before.
Please click the heart if you liked this! And please read absolutely everything on Super Jump before next week’s installment!

This article was written by Super Jump contributor, Alex Rowe. Please check out his work and follow him on Medium.


