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Alternate start

Diane3328

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4
Found one thing that doesnt make sense to me. When you do alternate start. Your shop conversation with jake. Still goes down path of husband and kid but with say preston you are single and looking for someone to tell of kidnapping. Kind of off keil for me.
 
Sim Settlements 2's story is based on the Sole Survivor being the parent of Shaun. It can't possibly account for all the story mods that change the core story of Fallout 4. That being said, a lot of us do use alternate start mods and divorce ourselves from the role Bethesda set out for us, and Sim Settlements 2 as a project is not directly opposed to that. In fact, it's somewhat in favor of it as it focuses on you rebuilding the Commonwealth.

I don't speak for the team at all, but once all the story chapters are finished, alternative takes where Jake and others play along with you not being Shaun's parent might be possible. I don't know if they're considering that at all. Honestly I just ignore that stuff. I don't like the 111 crawl at all, since it's very obviously a training dungeon, and it's a big waste of time. It's fine the first few times through the game, but like the cart and dragon attack part of Skyrim, it's kind of a waste of time when you just want to jump into the game. Worth noting that Skyrim's biggest overhaul mod, Legacy of the Dragonborn, hooks into its biggest alternate start mod and fully supports you not being the Dragonborn if you choose to never pursue that, so maybe when Sim Settlements 2's story is done, something similar will be done.

Let's look at that more closely. If you have Legacy of the Dragonborn and Alternate Start: Live Another Life installed, you can choose to already be the Guild Master of the Explorer's Guild. You don't have to do the five fetch quests required to start the mod's quest line. You also get some cool starting equipment, and on top of all that, you start out doing a dungeon that is in no way a training dungeon, but is also one that is appropriate for a first-level adventurer. So, less hand holding, and more thinking, while being easier on combat. So, how would a similar situation look for Sim Settlements 2? We don't know how many story chapters there will be, or how future chapters will shape our relationship with Jake, so it's hard to say "SS2 should do such-and-such," but an alternate start where, say, you already know Jake, maybe that could be feasible. Or maybe you don't know him at all, and there's a bespoke intro for the player where you start in the far Northwest corner of the map (past 111) and it's explained that you come to the Commonwealth to help settle it, and that's when you meet Jake. And maybe he doesn't even have to change most of his dialogue. Maybe, like MacCready, you left your spouse and child in a faraway place to make a better life for a good reason. And your reasons are your own. That alone would improve Fallout 4, as it would put it more in line with the start of Fallout: New Vegas (you're set in stone as Courier 6 delivering the Platinum Chip, but your reasons for being there are your own).
 
I was hoping that I'd be able to select the rude "it's none of your busines" and that would stop the conversation but it didn't. Too bad, my favorite character was a neighbor in the vault that got switched with Nora. I get through Codsworth's conversation assuming he recoginese me but it's been 200 years and his memory core is wonky.

I have decided to just go with the original story, maybe add a spouse mod where I can talk to Jake before going back to the vault to save Nate. It's a stretch but should work.
Found one thing that doesnt make sense to me. When you do alternate start. Your shop conversation with jake. Still goes down path of husband and kid but with say preston you are single and looking for someone to tell of kidnapping. Kind of off keil for me.I
 
One "alt start" mod I found that (mostly) works well with SS2 is "SKK Synthetic Player", but that only barely tweaks the "main storyline" anyway - effectively only changes enough to make the fan-theory that the player-character really was a Synth all along "canon" in a mostly cohesive way. I say "mostly" because there IS one known hiccup with SS2's questline not acknowledging your "vanilla main quest" progression properly at one point - but Sirick has acknowledged me having found that one and said it'll be tweaked, and it's something you'd have to have gone out of your way to even trigger without a start-mod like that.
 
One "alt start" mod I found that (mostly) works well with SS2 is "SKK Synthetic Player"
Can't find it on the Nexus — do you have the name right?

the fan-theory that the player-character really was a Synth all along "canon"
Mostly proven, between an entry in an Institute database about a new generation of Synths that can use VATS without a Pip-Boy and the fact that the Sole Survivor can do so before acquiring the Pip-Boy after acquiring the pistol in the Overseer's office during the escape. Likely just a programming oversight on Bethesda's part, but also one that has not been patched.

Also... how are you blurring out text? The regular spoiler tag doesn't do that. Teach me your ways so I can post spoilers and have my posts not look like crap.
 
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Can't find it on the Nexus — do you have the name right?
My mistake; it was just called "Synthetic Player", but it's by SKK50.


Also... how are you blurring out text? The regular spoiler tag doesn't do that. Teach me your ways so I can post spoilers and have my posts not look like crap.
There's actually two spoiler tags: ISPOILER which looks like this, and just SPOILER which
instead looks like this
I found them just by the traditional technique: click on random stuff and see what happens.
 
Thanks! And there it is in the overflow menu, inline spoiler (figured it didn't mean Internet, e.g. iMac, iPod, i...Whatever). Didn't see that before. Never using the regular tag again.
 
I was hoping that I'd be able to select the rude "it's none of your busines" and that would stop the conversation
Exactly. That would really be a simple, clean and quite flawless way to go along with the Alternate Start option. Jake could just wash it off with some disarming line, as he usually does. "Woa. Okay, no need to go there at this moment if you don't feel like it. Now, moving on about our little ASAM situation here..." -or something like that; you know, Jake. Like, if that conversational path stopped there and allowed the characters to just move on with the plot, no harm would be done what so ever. Such feature could merit being formally requested for inclusion within an update, perhaps. It may seem like a minor detail, but could do quite a bit, immersion-wise, for Alternate Start players.
 
Sim Settlements was always developed with the base game story in mind, and with Jake paying attention to who the Sole Survivor is and what they're up to. This is due to SS aiming to be fully integrated with the base game, and give the Sole Survivor an actual reason to build settlements instead of just running off to find Shaun. (Hence Jake needing to ask the player those questions, so he knows who you are, where you came from, and what you're doing so he can reference these things later.)

Another factor is the reuse of vanilla lines to try and construct a decent enough narrative that a player can actively engage in. It’s already difficult enough to do this, without removing even more player lines that reference anything to do with the base game “Sole Survivor”’s story .

Plus, I can tell you it's a big enough headache for me to keep track of vanilla and SS plot elements without tossing in alternate start mods into the mix.

However... Once the SS story has wrapped, I think it would be possible for modders to come in and create a patch that removes many of the base story references (and would also need to remove or heavily edit a few future quests) so that the player character could be anyone at all!

But that’s a challenge for someone else!
 
So, has anybody made a mod for this yet?
(for "the player is not the 'sole survivor'" - alternate start?)

Because I just noticed this unavoidable "out-of-character" - thing myself ...
 
There can't be done. The voice acting is done. Jake's actor isn't going to be recording new lines to accommodate alt starts. Seriously. It's been quoted that this will never become reality. Just have to live with it and move on.
 
Just thought how cool it would be to shoot Shaun on the spot. As an infant. My wife hates me, the bombs drop, we both get stuck in a vault for some time, then the Institute (spoilers for main quest if anyone cares)
kidnaps her and she becomes its leader eventually... still hates my guts and only releases me into the wastes after 30 something years to torment me. When I make it to the Institute, she's made a clone of Shaun to comfort herself, or perhaps she got another kid, and doesn't want me there at all, so I'm instantly vilified and have to escape unless she's killed and I somehow take over.
Some psycho route I came up with in a minute but I bet still more enjoyable than vanilla.
 
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