Is Nukaworld Really That Bad?

I wish the nuka world dlc had a bigger focus on the minutemen as a liberating nuka world alternative, instead of just only having the Minutemen attack raider settlements

My biggest issue is, much like with the Institute, you have no ability to reform or otherwise redirect the various raider gangs, even though you're the "Overboss"...

I thought the whole point of the "overboss" was so that Gage could run Nukaworld without being directly in the crosshairs of the gang leaders. Basically a figurehead.

I wish you could recruit the Ghouls Magician, the robots and the Tarzan guy in open seasons. It would be an interesting way to liberate nukaworld.

What makes this DLC so weird is how badly it can potentially tie in with the main story. You can turn against the institute, BOH, and railroad leaving the minutemen as your “yes man” faction that you can’t turn against. You can make enemies with the 3 factions and with this DLC, you can technically make all 4 vanilla factions your enemy. You can enslave the entire commonwealth, as well as Preston and friends yet when it comes time to take down the institute to beat the game, they’ll act as your friends and basically be like “oh I know you have us enslaved, backstabbed us, and are going against all our ideals, but we’ll help you take down the institute and be your friend”. This issue gets even worse if you start the game, skip the rescue mission with Preston, go through the main game, finish the DLC, then come back to save Preston to ask him to help you defeat the institute. You essentially have no rapport with him besides the fact that you save him, but then you can immediately enslave him and his friends and they’ll still be friendly with you when it comes to finishing the game. I know pretty much no one came upon this scenario naturally on their first installment of the game, but this scenario really shouldn’t be in the game. Maybe they could’ve added a unique dialogue that could’ve been you telling Preston to help you or else, but nope.

My main problem is that the raiders isn't a faction you can complete the main quest with. Why can't I storm the Institute with a raider army just like with the Minute men?

The roll playing issue was my biggest issue with the dlc. It forces me to choose between experiencing the dlc and ruining a build I've put a lot of time into.

I was playing a morally good character during my first playthrough, yet I didn't want to immediately just start blasting all of the raiders the moment I was free to walk around. I "agreed" to help them, but secretly, I was scoping things out with the intent to screw them over in the long run. As I did missions for them and unlocked sections of the theme park, I noticed where I could blindside the raider gangs, had the writing allowed it. You can reprogram robots in one park to follow your command, which seemingly would mean that you could turn them on the the raiders, after you had given one of the tribes the territory. Meanwhile, the irradiated water sprayers can be turned off in the kiddie park, but one could theoretically turn them back on once new residents arrive. Gatorclaws spawn in yet another park, and you can turn off the machines that produce them, seemingly until certain unsavory ne'er-do-wells set up shop there. There were several potential points where you could seemingly betray the raiders in one master stroke, rather than simply engaging all of them in open combat. I was hoping this was the case, until I hit a wall, where literally none of the "traps" I had set up actually could be sprung. If things had progressed as I had intended, I would have considered it one of my favorite sections of the game. Instead, I found that I only had two options, in the end: kill all raiders in a direct slugfest, or engage in directly evil behavior for no real justifiable reason. There was no nuance or subtlety, and I was fairly disappointed.

In Nuka World it should be possible for the player to summon the Brotherhood/Institute/MinuteMan/Railroad to war with the gangs

Though the writing of the main story was pretty illogical, I found the side quests that came out of Nuka World had really good writing; the Bradberton story was pretty compelling, and the quest that came with Kiddie Kingdom was tragic, but there are many paths that you can take with the dialogue. Personally, I enjoyed it, though I did find it frustrating that you have to pillage the commonwealth to complete the story and get unique gang leader perks or keep Gage as a companion. Great video as always!

An interesting note on the story writing aspect of why the raider bosses let you take over is given by of all people Mason. He says he wasn't sure he'd have enough support. The raider bosses are "happy" to have a "Fall Guy" leader that they can blame things on. It maintains the balance between the 3 factions because if any one of them try to take over, they know the other 2 will stomp on them. Granted that makes the betrayal gang weird because they "Know" that they are risking everything. I guess the idea of making themselves independent by taking the power plant was the play.

I always liked Automatron best. It was worth its own price, and the robot customization is something ive wanted in fallout for a few years before.

With the point about the game giving you consequences to your actions, I believe the reason that people are still so unsatisfied is because the consequences aren’t really for your actions, rather the actions the game forces you to take just by trying to play the dlc. I’ve yet to play this dlc for myself, but Bethesda does this sort of thing a lot. They’ll craft a plotline and expect the player to play it a certain way, and do the bare minimum to compensate any alternatives. The Dark Brotherhood in Skyrim is a great example, as that’s another evil plotline. And they expect you to go through with it and be evil, but what if you’re not roleplaying an evil character but you end up starting it anyways, which is entirely possible to happen on accident as the set up for the quest has you killing an objectively evil person. Then your only option is to follow an alternate questline where you kill all the bad guys with little effort or fanfare. It’s the same situation here, though perhaps not as bad as Nuka World has more than like 7 people in it. But regardless, Bethesda has a habit of railroading your play style, and it can make role playing a consistent character incredibly difficult if you’re like most people and want to do everything you can in a single playthrough.

I played it without looking at reviews and I found it pretty bland. The whole map is very cool and all but the missions are repetitive and bland. I find it a shame that they didn't do something more with it.

“So anyway, I stared blasting” “ Open season”

The lack of story content after Open Season really hurts the expansion, IMO. People like me, who don't like to play psychopaths raiders, are left with one option (go murderhobo on the gangs), and afterwards, just... leave. That's all. We can't build a settlement of our own out of the parks, we can't ally with the people we freed, there's just nothing left for us to do there after we see the sights around the park. There's not even any nuance to how we take them out, other than 1. Guns a-blazing, or 2. stealth sniper. We can't infiltrate and bring them down from the inside, we can't lead them into a trap, we can't even turn them against each other, and sit back with a bowl of popcorn. Hell, we, as the general of the Minutemen, Leader of the Institute, or Knight-Sentinel of the Brotherhood, can't even lead an army attack against them. How awesome would that have been, leading a seige against the amusement park?! Everything about this expansion was incredible, and had amazing potential, but the sorry excuse of a story and lack of forethought just kills it.

My biggest gripe with the dlc has to be the aweful integration for the base game. If it were implemented better it could give an 'evil' type of run a better form by letting you run a raider gang of your own without going into the park side of it. Say, let the player with the right stats and perks early on intimidate raider groups into joining, from there the normal managing of raiders can be a part, but make it a better implemented one in the core game. And for the park itself, to have the regular raider option isn't wrong, but they should let you contact preston or whichever faction you're in for back-up (especially if you are a minuteman) abd have the option to reverse the tables ofcthe gangs and conquer nw to liberate it. Sums up to poor implementation and lots of missed opportunities.

This was my favorite DLC, but I'll admit to being not the most neutral. It came out at a pretty turbulent time in my life and being able to come home and get lost in the DLC was a life saver during some dark times where I barely had the energy to do anything else. Plus, I love amusement parks, so exploring a post-apocalyptic one was amazing. I'll definitely admit, the DLC has many, many flaws. But it also has a special, quiet place in my heart that I will treasure forever.

Gotta love the invincible power armor where a go cart wire protects if from fatman shells.

Players: "FO4 has no real way to do a real evil playthrough." Bethesda: "Our Nukaworld DLC will let you be as evil as you want to be." Players: "Yay!!" Bethesda: "By destroying the Commonwealth settlements you've poured dozens of even hundreds of hours into." Players: "Fuck you, Todd."