FO4 Screenshots and Characters

Grim Wolf Reshade - Final Version

More lovely shots. The graphics are puzzling to me - in some cases the lighting looks really good, but in other areas it looks really basic.

I believe his pics are from heavily modded visuals so basically depends on mods.
Did you notice the absence of 11 (ugly) sidekicks?

Originally Posted by Ripper
More lovely shots. The graphics are puzzling to me - in some cases the lighting looks really good, but in other areas it looks really basic.

Thanks! Graphics come from a ReShade preset I made. ReShade is just a tool that adds post-processing graphic enhancements to the screen. There are many things it can do - depth of field, ambient occlusion, film grain, increase/decrease things like saturation, contrast, gamma, bloom, tone mapping, and tons more.

None of which actually affects the game itself (although it can affect the game indirectly in the sense of making things darker or brighter and FPS cost for example) - its purely visual.

How the lighting looks really depends on the effects I am using at the time (i.e. does the depth of field have an increased brightness value for the bokeh effect or blurred area; is the bloom active making things brighter or more hazy; is AO turned on thus making things a big darker due to the artifical shadow effect of AO). Also of course the weather, location, light sources, etc.

Most shots are just hit print screen after I remove the GUI. Others I get a bit more elaborate and use the console to freeze the scene and change the FOV so I can zoom in on something.

As Joxer stated I also have some mods but those are just texture mods (have about 22 at the moment). The only non-texture mod I have is for darker nights.

General Wolf Steelson of the Minutemen

Wolf, after a heated discussion with Piper, has realized that the Institute only cares about the Institute and nothing else. What good is the best hope for humanity … if that hope has no actual humanity left within it? Thus Wolf has sided with the Minutemen while keeping communications open with the other factions.

I did something I normally never do in a game - I loaded a save and followed two paths at a turning point. For me the story was so good, and the decisions so hard, that for peace of mind I had to get a better feel for things. The game does not allow you ask any question you want of the two sides - so I needed the most informed answer I could. I am pretending that the path he did not take was a psycho induced vision of the future … just like Mama Murphy used to have.

I feel pretty good about my choice and can rest easy now

A few parting shots for now.

Heres a few teddy bears that I haven't seen on here yet.

Originally Posted by Toff
Heres a few teddy bears that I haven't seen on here yet.

Oh cool - I hadn't seen three of them in-game or on Nexus. The one on the operating table is the only one I have seen.

Note on images: I just wanted to write a story so the images are just random and have nothing to do with the story directly. Most are new but a few are older ones. The new shots are taken with a new preset I am working on that combines ReShade and ENB. It is called "The Institute - Advanced Systems Design (ASD)"

For some reason I have developed a passion for swing music since playing FO4 and often listen to it in the background. Here is a great 4 hour collection.



-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Wolf Steelson – The Awakening

Wolf stirred, his mind a haze, as he drifted in and out of consciousness. He wanted to sleep but the alarms going off kept bringing him back to reality. Finally his military background took over and he shut down his emotions and acted on instinct and training. Once he felt he was safe he could evaluate his situation.



…

A few hours later Wolf found himself resting in one of the more secure vault chambers he had found. Looked like the private quarters of the Vault Supervisor. He had learned some very disturbing things about what the vault had been doing to its residents – like carrying out cryogenic experiments on all the survivors from his home town of Sanctuary.

It all felt vaguely familiar though. He had had visions of this; dream like glimpses of the future that he often only remembered until it was too late to do anything about them. Not that he could have done anything to prevent the Great War. It had been those visions that had gotten him kicked out of the army.

Wolf had always had some form of second sight but it had been mostly dormant until his teenage years and even then only kicked in under extreme stress. He suspected it had to do with the gamma radiation he had been exposed to as an unborn child. His parents had both been cold and distant scientists in the military. Always working on top secret research.



Course he didn’t know any of this until he had been old enough to read his mother’s journal. He had been an unexpected, and unwanted, child that his father wanted aborted. Said they couldn’t afford the time away from their research to raise a kid. His mother, however, didn’t want to take the risk of an abortion so late into pregnancy. Besides she thought having a kid bring back those fond memories of when she was a child and played with the family dog. The military would gladly provide a nanny and day care for their top scientists. They could then focus on the research and just visit with child when they had some recreational time.

Except things seldom go as planned. One of their experiments involving the splitting of gamma rays exploded. His father was killed instantly. His mother escaped but only after heavy exposure to split-gamma radiation rays, her eight month unborn child included. She had died during child birth. Her last journal entry had been a long list of experiments she wanted to carry out on the child to see what effect the radiation might have had on him.



The years had flown by. Wolf had been raised by a Mr. Handy in the military. Scientists poked and prodded but the only mutations they had found was his unique ability to survive for very long times underwater without air. Something in his blood let him extract oxygen from the water while also protecting him from radiated liquids. There was a lot of talk about trying to replicate the “explosion” that had taken his parents but most of their work had been destroyed in the explosion. Eventually they gave up on the idea.

When Wolf started having his visions he had not told anyone, afraid all the experiments and tests would start all over again. Instead he had volunteered to join the power armor infantry as a way to get out on the field and away from the scientists.
Except the stress of war and combat increased the rate that he was having visions. He spent many sleepless nights having nightmares of a nuclear holocaust. He would experience life through the eyes of other people back and forth through time. Now and then he caught glimpses of himself in that future but he could never remember the details that well; just a few key things that meant nothing to him at the time.

Finally his visions started happening while awake. When one occurred during a critical military operation he was put under examination. The doctors said it was emotional trauma and that his lack of sleep and mental imbalance was causing hallucinations. He was honorably discharged for medical reasons.



That was when he had met Steve and Nora. They were his neighbors in Sanctuary. It was one of those sleepy, peaceful little towns just outside of Concord New Hampshire. More of a community center, isolated from the rest of the world and its wars. Steve had just left the military and Nora was a lawyer. They had just had a son, Shaun was the name if Wolf recalled correctly, and were trying to get their lives back together.

Wolf found them pleasant enough but when they had asked him to baby sit one time had had to politely refuse. What did he know about taking care of an infant? He was a bachelor and happy to live alone. About the only thing he wanted was a dog, something he had never been able to do in the military. Besides the kid unsettled him greatly. He had only held the child once and it had caused him to break out in a cold sweat. Then he was hit by one of the strongest visions he had ever had and almost dropped the child. He had fled the house, claiming to be sick, and laid down.

There was something about that kid. It reminded him of what he thought his parents might have been like. Cold, distant, almost robot like. There was an ominous weight of destiny over that child. He didn’t know what or how but his gut told him that he was better off having nothing to do Steve and Nora’s child.



Then it happened. The Great War. Just like his dreams and visions had warned him. Course those memories only became clearer once it was too late. He recalled walking into Vault 111 shivering in fear. Steve, Nora, and their child Shaun kept encouraging him alone, telling him everything would be alright. They were safe now. Yet when Wolf looked at them all he saw was a grinning skull hanging over them. He was moaning when one of the vault technicians put him into his decontamination chamber, too distraught to realize what was happening.

He recalled feeling bad for Nora. She was holding her baby and trying to waive at Steve, only they had put him in the chamber right next to his so she could see him. He tried to smile back but suddenly felt very sleepy and cold.

…

Wolf cocked his head, had he heard something in the hall? Moving slowly he took the vault laser gun he had found and looked out into the corridor. Yes! One of those giant mutated cockroaches was flying around. Taking careful aim he fried the bastard good! He sat back down. It was still too much. Taking a sip from some water he had found he went back to his memories, trying to figure out what to do next.

…



He had no memories for the longest time. But then something woke him. He was still trapped in his chamber but no longer frozen. He shivered though and not from the residual cold. He knew what was coming. He had seen it.

It played out in slow motion like some old B movie from the late 1950’s. He watched as Nora was shot and Shaun was taken away. Yet something new came into his memories. A man approached and looked at him. He would never forget his words.

”You’re a lucky man Steve even if you don’t appreciate it now. I advised against letting you live. You’re a loose end. But I was ordered not to. They said you were meant to be the back-up. Got that Steve? You’re back-up.”

The guy must have thought he was funny as he started laughing. Then the cold returned and with it sleep. Only now it was sleep filled with visions. His brain might have been in stasis but the second sight acted on another level.

Wolf found himself living out another life. A dream of what might have been had he actually been Steve. He saw what the world was … no had become. A post-apocalyptic world filled with desolation, mutants, ghouls, and its human survivors.

…



The alarms were sounding again. Wolf woke from his memories and dreams and checked the hallway. All clear. Moving quickly, now that rest and water had partially restored his energy, he found his way to the vault exit.

As he rode the elevator to the surface he wondered what he would find. Would it match his dreams? How true were his visions? The past had shown him that sometimes it was hard to separate regular dreams from those influenced by the second sight.

Only one thing was he certain of. Whomever “they” were they had screwed up. A classic case of mistaken identity. They thought he was Steve. They had killed the wrong man. Maybe he could use that to his advantage somehow. Perhaps go along with it should he ever meet those people. It might save his life if they thought he had value as a backup.



-------------------------------------------

NOTES: I played Wolf Steelson through the game once already. It was more of a trial run. I wanted to get my feet wet and see how the game played. But I got sucked into the story and the next thing I knew the game was over.

Well I loved the story but did not like the whole kid thing. It went against this style of game IMO. Open world, free form, exploring, take your time and see things. The kid meant, as a good parent (which you are – the opening of the game and dialogue shows clearly you are meant to be a devoted and loving parent), you should focus everything on saving him – not spending time exploring the world.

So I wanted to play again and this time experience all the content instead of following through the main story. But I like Wolf and wanted to replay him – with a bit more focus on agility so I could use both melee and guns. I gave up some charisma to do this (and don’t really need it now since I already saw what it could do) and Wolf uses sword and gun. He also is not anti-technology, he will use it whenever he needs to. But he is against its abuse and tends to have a strong dislike of scientists types – especially those who have lost their sense of ethics and morality and see people as only research subjects.

This story explains the first play through as a vision, a dream/nightmare that he has had while frozen in the vault. His second sight explains why he knows about many things about this new world even if he doesn’t know what all his own choices might lead to.

Also explains why he doesn’t care at all about finding Shaun, in fact he wants to put it off as he has a bad feeling about what will happen if he finds him. Eventually he will, if only out of some vague need to put Steve and Nora’s memory to rest, but he sure isn’t in a rush to do it. He isn’t who many seem to think he is though. To be on the safe side he is going to pretend to be Steve and Shaun’s father– his dreams have told him that the ones who took Shaun have eyes and ears everywhere. If they think he is Steve they might put some value on his life as their back-up … which Wolf could use to his advantage.

A few more randoms:

BETA version of my ReShade and ENB. Slowly moving things off ReShade into ENB as they get developed.

Looks good wolfgrimdark as I can never get my ENB settings correct.

Do you have any tips, or suggestions?

ENB progress looks good. Is ENB capable of fixing or ameliorating the plastic wet look Beth has given us?

I'm looking forward to replaying this game in a year's time with the DLCs, a gameplay overhaul, a comprehensive texture pack, and an ENB. The game has a lot of potential but it's outright frustrating the console interface has pigeon-holed the dialogue options into such a sad state.

Do you get slowdowns on your Titan w/ ENB enabled while in the midst of the city? I'm wondering how Gamebryo 5.0 has matured in terms of processor threads; ie., are your slowdowns (if any) due to gpu or cpu? Bethesda stuff has traditionally been cpu-bound, but maybe that's changed now with focusing on "next-gen" consoles.

Originally Posted by Couchpotato
Looks good wolfgrimdark as I can never get my ENB settings correct.

Do you have any tips, or suggestions?

Are you using ENB or ReShade for FO4? ENB is still under heavy development. I am slowly porting things over as I find time and Boris releases updates.

I can make some recommendations but would need to know which you are using and if there are any specifics - like memory settings or visuals? Tapioks has a great set of short videos that shows all the different effects and what they do. Along with some information on how to use things. Both for Skyrim and Fallout 4.

https://www.youtube.com/c/tapioks

Anyhow let me know if you have any specific questions. Not an expert but been using them for a while so may be able to help somewhat.

Originally Posted by Drithius
ENB progress looks good. Is ENB capable of fixing or ameliorating the plastic wet look Beth has given us?

I'm looking forward to replaying this game in a year's time with the DLCs, a gameplay overhaul, a comprehensive texture pack, and an ENB. The game has a lot of potential but it's outright frustrating the console interface has pigeon-holed the dialogue options into such a sad state.

Do you get slowdowns on your Titan w/ ENB enabled while in the midst of the city? I'm wondering how Gamebryo 5.0 has matured in terms of processor threads; ie., are your slowdowns (if any) due to gpu or cpu? Bethesda stuff has traditionally been cpu-bound, but maybe that's changed now with focusing on "next-gen" consoles.

In regards to FO4 I would say no not yet. May be able to help a little but I think you will need a combination of NIF work and ENB settings for sub-surface scattering. Just a guess as I am not a texture expert but I know from Skyrim experience that you can completely overhaul the look of skin using either texture/NIFs or ENB or both. My characters skin changes from one ENB to the next - but ENB also reacts to the settings used when making the textures.

The character skin in FO4 does have a weird flat look to it - like the mannequins only colored like flesh. Will be glad when that gets improved. The females already have big progress in this though - check out CBBE.

I do not get noticeable slow downs at all so never had that problem. Whether it is my PC or my settings not sure although I am sure the PC and the Titan both help. I know Godrays can be a killer and that there is a shadow draw issue in parts of the city. There is a tool to help adjust shadow INI settings on the fly while playing though - and that will really even out the FPS up and downs. You can even set a optimal FPS rate and it will adjust shadows (lowering quality) to stay above that point (or increasing quality if above).

Boris has stated most of the slow downs are CPU related if I recall correctly. He bitches constantly about the engine for both Skyrim and FO4 although I think he is more disgusted with what they did in FO4 then Skyrim. While FO4 is an improvement how they improved things I guess was done very sloppy in his opinion.

Still I happen to really like the lighting and think the game looks great - it sure looks nice in my game world. It is the textures that suck overall. Some are good but so many just look horrible. Still probably not easy to texture a destroyed city. That is a lot of objects and rubble.

I do get some slow down in congested (busy - many objects) areas but nothing drastic that kills game play as long as I do not have HBAO enabled from ReShade. That is the only true killer I see and that isn't even part of the game so don't think that counts.

Yeah, I plan on upgrading my video card maybe midyear in 2016; my primary [technical] worry with regard to Fallout 4 is that it is yet again CPU bound due to single-threaded programming and that any such upgrade would accomplish little. Even with New Vegas, my overclocked 4770k would frequently get maxed out (or rather, one core would) once the game was modded.

I use shadowboost, ya Nice little app; good to see it functions properly with ENB.

Shoot, you have now made me want to buy it. Thank you for all the great info, which I'll squirrel away until I get a chance to get to it

Well my new laptop can handle most everything on the highest settings, though I do get some very rare slowups down to 20 fps. So I think I will hold off on and graphics enhancements that can drain FPS further.

Couple of randoms

Few more shots



















Real life Dogmeat

One close up I really liked - taking at Diamond City while it was raining and Wolf was at the noodle stand. No special tweaks - just my preset and a close-up FOV of 30.