Fallout 4, already one of the largest, most content filled games on the market today, has released its first two DLC in the last month. You might wonder, as I often do with games this huge, what’s the point of more content? You’re unlikely to see everything the base game has to offer, so why go out and shell out more money for more stuff to do? Truth is, in many games, the math doesn’t really add up.
You’re probably expecting me to say something like “But Fallout 4 is different”, but for the most part it’s not. You most likely really don’t need more content for Fallout 4. The two DLCs are pretty cheap, with Automatron costing $10 and Wasteland Workshop $5, and of course they are included in the season pass if you bought that. But if you paid the game $59.99, then Automatron would need to offer at least a sixth of the size/content of the base game for it to be good value for money. And, well, while it isn’t a short DLC (at least not in my opinion), it’s obviously not THAT long. That said, Bethesda did something incredibly smart here: both DLCs have long lasting impacts on your game. Automatron, for example, gives you the ability to build robot companions to accompany you. And it’s absolutely fantastic.
The amount of robot building options at your disposal is staggering, even at first. But then you find more parts, and more, and even more, and the list of available parts just keeps growing. To be able to craft the best of them you’ll need advanced crafting skills, of course. You can also modify Codsworth, one of the original robot companions. I’ve spent a lot of time weighing the pros and cons of robot parts, and I know I’ll be spending even more. I liked building my robot (in my case, Ada) so darn much, it replaced my dog as my main companion. Yes, that is true, and for anybody who knows me this might just blow their minds right out of their heads.
Sure, there are a lot of other companions in Fallout 4 that you can bring with you. No, you really don’t need extra companions. But the DLC also offers a nice questline, based around trying to stop roaming robots from murdering people. You quickly find out that these murder machines are masterminded by “The Mechanist”, and it is up to you to find that person, and put a stop to their dastardly deeds. It offers a few new locations to visit and explore, and the last one is quite vast. It also has the most epic boss battle I’ve encountered yet in Fallout 4, and it was surprisingly hard, even on normal difficulty. It took me by surprise since the rest of the game tends to be on the easy side, so much so that I often bump up the difficulty to hard. And yet, I died at least 10 times during that one big battle on normal. Intense.
The general consensus on the internet is that the storyline is on the short side, but I don’t really agree with that. I did have to do some walking since I hadn’t discovered some of the required locations, and in some cases, my closest discovered location was quite ways away from my new objective. At one point, I even had to craft a specific robot to advance the storyline, and I was lacking the required components. These two things certainly padded the DLC for me. Still, I found its length satisfying, I found a TON of legendary weapons and armor, and, of course, spent a ton of time robot crafting. It also gives you robot hunting quests once you’ve completed the storyline, and those robots tend to be legendary, and thus drop some sweet loot. Is this a must buy? In a game that is already overflowing with content, of course not. However it is a very, very solid piece of DLC, one that I think is worth $10.
So, what about Wasteland Workshop? Well, as the name suggests, it adds a ton of options to the base building aspect of the game. The workshop was never my cup of tea, and adding more stuff to it didn’t suddenly turn me into a fan. You can do nifty things now though; you can build arenas to which you can assign captured monsters (since now you can build cages to capture beasties), or even settlers, and let them duke it out to the death. As you can see in the video linked below, this can get quite funny when settlers start body slamming each other. You can build gigantic arenas, with trapped floors and the like, and really let your creativity run wild. If you liked building things before, this will just give you even more options and is absolutely worth it for you. As mentioned previously, it’s only $5, which is pretty cheap for a DLC that allows you to make literal fortresses out of every town. I just wish the interface was better, it’s a pain in the butt with the controller.
Overall, I’m pretty impressed with the first two Fallout 4 DLC. Even if Wasteland Workshop isn’t for me, it’s still a lot of new base building options for a pretty low price. And Automatron is just plain awesome. Highly recommended!