TL;DR – After playing through half of Fallout 4’s DLC for last week’s review, I’m going to wrap up the last of Bethesda’s official content by taking a look at the Nuka World, Vault-Tec Workshop Pack and Wasteland Workshop Pack DLCs. Generally speaking I’ve saved the worst til last, which doesn’t mean these are all terrible but does mean that this review will probably be more negative than my other dives into Fallout 4. Nuka World is essentially a big bag of wasted potential, which does have a bunch of interesting ideas but fails to make them stick throughout it’s admittedly decent length. Then the two Workshop packs are cool but not really worth being concerned about if you don’t have them, as they’re a short quest chain and just a bunch of new buildable items respectively.
Quick Note: Both Nuka World and the Vault-Tec Workshop Pack automatically activate at level 30 and level 20 respectively, or they can be triggered manually by heading to the Nuka World transit centre and Quincy Quarry respectively.
Apologies to anyone reading this blog who is getting bored of Fallout 4 and/or Bethesda, but after taking a look at both Fallout 4 and half of the DLC’s available I thought it would be a good idea to just wrap up everything before moving on. As a consequence I’m going to take a look at the large Nuka World pack which consists of a whole new zone, multiple new enemy types, a bunch of new items and the interesting (at least in theory) ability to construct raider settlements and to take-over normal settlements. Alongside this hefty quasi-expansion, I’m also going to delve into the Vault-Tec Workshop Pack which gives you a modest quest chain and the ability to construct a bunch of new, shiny pre-war settlement items and even construct your own vault (kinda). Finally there’s the Wasteland Workshop Pack which lets you “recruit” most of the wildlife in the game, tame them (kinda) and even kidnap raiders, gunners and super-mutants so that you can force them to fight against each other, wildlife and possibly even your own settlers in arenas you’ve built. It’s an eclectic assortment to be sure, as while almost every other DLC has been about building up your settlements, the Nuka World expansion is essentially about enslaving them and making a heel turn from Wasteland saviour to Wasteland Wrecker. Before taking a closer look at what is without a doubt the most substantial piece of content left though, I’m going to take a quick peek at the Vault-Tec Workshop Pack which is broadly equivalent to the Automatron pack I took a look at last time.
For some bizarre reason, Bethesda seems to think you won’t be able to handle the sheer excitement of the Vault-Tec pack until you’re level 20 or have accidentally stumbled across Vault 88 by clearing out the Quincy Quarry, a highly radioactive raider camp located just south from Jamaica plain which is itself riddled with ghouls. I can only assume this is due to the Vault’s location, as the fights within it are relatively tame and largely optional for wrapping up most of the quest chain and by extension unlocking all of the lovely little workshop items you get. Another weird choice with this DLC is that you can gain 4 unique workshop items, but you can only build each of them once and after that you’re out of luck – so transporting your bespoke objects to another settlement isn’t possible. I’m not sure why Bethesda went through the effort of making the quest chain revolve around building and testing these unique items, only for the game to then go “ah well, that’s them done with” but I digress. What you do get in this pack is a new Workshop location which is contained within Vault 88 and is exceedingly large. At the start of the quest chain, you’ll need to fight through some raiders and feral ghouls to save the Overseer, before being tasked with two parallel objectives. The first is to activate the other 4 workbenches which are buried away within the labyrinthine complex, a task which requires you to find multiple MacGuffins control decks so that you can bring them all online – then clearing away the rubble so that each workbench is interconnected and therefore the settlement can be one continuous area. At the same time you also need to construct various test items within the vault, which includes fighting your way through a bunch of drugged up gunners at one point. Once you’ve built the four pre-requisite testing items and conducted some experiments on the exceptionally eager and slow of thought Clem (one of the new settlers), the DLC wraps up.
And I’m not trying to sell the Vault-Tec DLC short, as the new settlement options are genuinely pretty impressive and let you construct almost every aspect of a vault in any location with some nice use of the snap-fitting settlement system. Unfortunately outside of this and some new decorative items, alongside one or two useful settlement items (such as a barber chair and cosmetic surgery chair that let you adjust your character’s appearance without using the in-game console commands) there isn’t much here. The main quest is a breeze for those who actually took their time on the run-up to the recommended level, as you’ll have a settlement by then with a bunch of resources in it (I assume) and as such having one of the settlers create a supply route makes the whole thing a very short affair. As for the experiments, well they always follow the same basic pattern. You build something new, you connect it to a terminal, you choose 1 of 3 research parameters from the terminal, Clem gives some funny dialogue and you move on to building the next thing. The R&D notes describing each bit of research are mildly amusing thanks to Ted the inadvertent test control who basically isn’t doing any weird research at all, but the choices don’t seem to actually matter that much. Basically when you are testing a new item, these 3 different R&D parameters determine how that item will impact any settlers when they’re built, but generally the items aren’t hugely useful. You get a slot machine for some extra happiness, a power generating exercise bike and a soda stand. The slot machine is kinda useful for bumping up settlement happiness, but this mechanic generally isn’t an issue so long as settlements have food/water/turrets which you’re going to do anyway. Then the exercise bike is basically useless as it either generates less than a single generator or has a chance to explode. Finally the soda stand can be configured to make settlers less hungry, but once you’ve got one settlement producing food this resource takes care of itself and so any benefit is fairly marginal. With that all being said, there is a chance to cause the Overseer to get pissy and rage-quit if you always choose the “nice” option, and there’s a chance that the settlers will get sniffy if you choose the less ethical ones, but basically it doesn’t matter as both the Overseer and the settlers are inherently disposable. You do get a unique vault suit if you manage to not alienate the Overseer, but honestly who cares? It’s not a great piece of armour anyway. As for the other parts of the quest chain, well you shoot up some gunners and have to fight some radioactive fauna to clear out the entirety of the Vault including a Mirelurk Queen. Otherwise it’s a pretty short if modestly entertaining piece of DLC that is the definition of nice to have, but not essential.
Moving on from the Vault-Tec Workshop pack, I decided to grab the bull by the horns and actually play the main DLC that anyone cares about – namely Nuka World(!) Unlike the other two packs this one is an actual, honest-to-God entirely new area which features multiple quest chains and a generous amount of content. The crux of this DLC is that the official theme park of the ever so popular Nuka Cola beverage has been taken over by three competing raider gangs, and it’s up to you to either whip them into shape and become a new sort of Raider boss or just genocide all of those filthy drugged up scum. Obviously if you choose the latter option, you get a pretty exciting and longggg gun fight against myriad enemies before being able to explore the theme park and unlock some new Nuka Cola recipes. If everyone else who actually wants to get their money’s worth though, the DLC starts with you bumbling through a gauntlet of turrets and traps, before defeating the former Overboss of the theme park in a duel which results in you becoming the new overboss. Once you’ve been designated the king (or queen) of the raiders, you start a series of quests to clear out the rest of the park which has been left to rot and determine which raider faction (if any) you prefer. You see while the gangs are all “loyal” to you, they were also all “loyal” to the last Overboss and as a consequence this DLC is mainly about having a jolly good time shooting a bunch of stuff in the theme park and managing these three gangs so that they don’t betray you. The two goals are largely in-sync with each other, as once you’ve cleared up a section of the park from it’s hideously mutated wildlife and/or maliciously poor programmed robots you can assign it to one of the three factions. These factions being comprised of your standard “in it for the cash” raiders (the Operators) who are morally bankrupt and trying to make up for it with cold hard caps, the Darwinian survival of the fittest group called The Pack and finally the psychotic “murder and torture are fun” group called the Disciples. Each faction basically says “favour my guys or we’re gonna hate u” and so if you don’t divide the 5 areas semi-equally then they’re going to cause trouble for you. At least in theory…
You see no matter how you divvy up the zones one group is always going to rebel against you, because there are 5 parks and 3 groups so one group always gets the short end of the stick and will then retreat to the power plant to start shooting at you. You then go there and gun them all down, before getting some mediocre perks from the 2 gangs you didn’t alienate. The other main part of the DLC is that you’re able to setup raider camps, which are like normal settlements except edgier and require you to either shoot all of the existing monsters/inhabitants or pass charisma checks to “persuade” the human settlers to leave. Once this has been done your new totally different raider settlement will begin giving you some cash every now and then, but the amount you earn is pretty minimal and these camps require more setup time as you both need to liberate the settlement and bully nearby non-raider settlements into giving you food. You might be thinking that at least these guys would be good at defending themselves, but nope the raider camps only spawn basic raiders while the enemies are level scaled so they get rinsed half the time anyway. The only “benefit” is that they automatically recruit new members without requiring a radio beacon, but this also means that they tend to grow constantly unless there is a critical shortage of food/water/defence. To give Bethesda some credit, these new camps provide a lot of settlement customisation options and the passive income stream is nice, plus you will encounter various raiders, slavers and the like wandering around the map to a much larger extent than you normally see Minutemen patrols. Speaking of the Minutemen, if you setup one wafer thin camp then Preston Garvey will permanently hate you forever while still being immortal so he will wander around his designated settlement being pissy at you. You’ll also occasionally have to gun down the Minutemen who show up to defend a settlement, which is particularly funny when they decide to show up to defend a settlement held by another group of raiders. If for whatever reason you get bored of role-playing as the Overboss, then you’re free to make every raider hate you forever by shooting some of them at which point you basically get locked out of the rest of the raider content. Preston will still hate you even if you do this though, so if for whatever reason you’re a hardcore Garvey simp then you need to either reset his faction allegiance or use a mod. Or you can just leave him stranded in Concord forever, then recruit him once you’re done with all your raider business.
Nuka World is therefore a fun little diversion, albeit one that’s relatively short on new content. You’ve got a spin on the classic settlement formula but it really doesn’t change very much at all, and while the prospect of being the big bad raider boss is fun for roleplayers I suspect everyone else will find it pretty shallow. You don’t get much in the way of benefits from doing it, and while the 3 raider factions are a cool concept, all of them basically treat you as an errand boy and none of them really do anything – even once you’ve given them multiple areas of the park and raider camps in the commonwealth. The DLC does have a bunch of new enemy types, but once you’ve cleared through the various parks you’ve basically genocided almost all of them for good with the exception of some of the irradiated fauna such as the blood worms and tiny mutant ants. You can craft some new varieties of Nuka Cola, but these require old types of Nuka Cola and are fairly heavy for healing items. There are also some smaller side quests like collecting the rare caps to meet the founder of Nuka Cola, exploring a haunted house riddled with traps and helping a bunch of cultists liberate a UFO theme park ride, but most of these are fairly short and the rest of the extra content is largely a scavenger hunt (like collecting the medallions). While I still think Nuka World as a part of Fallout 4 hits the same standard as the base game, it isn’t as exciting or as interesting to explore as Far Harbour and the RPG mechanics are near non-existent. It’s only really worthwhile for those who are bored of exploring the repetitive quests from the main game or who want to roleplay as a dickhead. Alternatively you can also skip most of the raider quests by just genociding all of the raiders, which is the “good” ending and leads to a pretty intense couple of gun fights as you liberate the park. Beware that this will permanently lock you out of setting up raider camps and doing any other raider missions however.
Last and certainly least, there’s the Wasteland Workshop DLC which is filled with some cool ideas but utterly falls short at being of any interest to anyone. This pack is a smorgasbord of content that people probably wanted, but which couldn’t justifiably be included elsewhere. The big attractions are the cages which are used for catching wildlife & raiders, alongside the ability to create arenas and assign your captured animals and settlers to teams which will fight each other to the death. Alongside these additions there is a bunch of random stuff like a better power generator, a better water pump, some new traps, some new concrete construction materials, some decorations and a bunch of light-boxes which are mainly used as screenshot bait for constructing garish displays. Most of these are nice to have, such as powered doors, more lights, the ability to mount a death-claws head on a wall but none of it is really essential. Perhaps the biggest criticism that can be made of this DLC is the fact that it blends so easily into the base game that you can hardly notice what it added, as a new and slightly better water pump isn’t really enough to get your pulse racing. As a consequence I’ll just say that all the little things are good and move on to the two BIG features, namely the arena teams and the captured creatures.
First things first, the various creature cages are kind of a pain as most of them need specific types of animal meat that you probably don’t have. Mainly because storing meat in the workshop will cause your settlers to eat it, the lazy greedy bastards, and secondly because any meat you gathered you probably cooked for the easy XP and because it made it much more useful. As such you’ll need to stock up on various critter chunks such as Softshell Mirelurk meat, Mutant Hound meat, Yao Guai meat and so on. Then to prevent the wildlife from attacking you and/or your settlers, you need to construct a “Beta Wave Emitter” which requires you to have taken the Wasteland Whisperer perk (which itself requires a Charisma of 9). Then even once you’ve done all this the animals will still attack each other if for example you have a Death-claw and a Yao Guai in the same settlement. These ferocious animals do provide a defence boost, but they will also cause other animals from that species to attack your camp which is a pain in the ass to deal with. So if you want a pet death-claw, you now have to deal with frequent death-claw attacks on your settlers. The raiders, gunners and super mutants you can trap are also always permanently hostile so… yay? Fortunately you can assign all of them to the ARENA by building the two ARENA contestant structures and assigning them in the Workshop, while they try to attack you. Then as soon as they see anyone from the other ARENA team, they will start fighting them, which is a problem if you want to do a team battle. You can construct a bunch of stuff in the way to block the line of sight, but honestly it’s a lot of trouble to watch a bunch of NPCs attack each other, especially as cages take multiple days to catch anything and you must be away from the settlement for them to work. As such both the arena and the cages are cool ideas that don’t really work very well, because the captive creatures aren’t worth the trouble – it’s not like you get a companion animal out of it – and the arena requires a bunch of construction and planning for a brief and expensive diversion. So I’d give the Wasteland Workshop pack a big fat “they tried” out of 10.
In summary then, this batch of DLC features a bunch of content I can only recommend for people who really care about settlements. The Wasteland Workshop pack is solely dedicated to new things to build, while the Vault-Tec pack has a handful of bland quests and only really comes alive when you’re building stuff at settlements. Finally there’s the Nuka World pack which does add a bunch of content, but outside of exploring the new zone and killing a ton of new enemies, the quests are pretty basic and again a lot of the new mechanics revolve around… settlements! Perhaps unsurprisingly I consider Nuka World to be the best one here as it does provide plenty of new areas to explore and a handful of interesting combat encounters, but otherwise this batch is slim pickings. Obviously if you want to roleplay as a bad character then Nuka World is nearly essential, but for good characters you get one massive gun-fight against all of the raider gangs are a bunch of smaller gun-fights against all of the new Nuka World creatures. Which essentially means that if you spent a lot of time fiddling with settlements before doing the Nuka World questline you’ve got the awkward choice of either missing out on most of the Nuka World content or invalidating all of your previous hard work. Overall I’d say that Nuka World is worth a playthrough as the new areas are kinda cool, whilst the other two packs are largely inconsequential and can be safely ignored even if they are somewhat useful for those who are interested in the settlement building part of the game. Do with this knowledge, what you will