mission you’ll receive from the
Committee—area control battles can
get much, much bigger.
Case in point, a while later I get
another notification for an area
control mission. This time the bad
guys are heavily armed and armored
Gunners, and there are scores of
them. Luckily, I’m not alone. On the
Missions Committee holotape, you
can choose to align with a faction (or
remain solo as a freelancer). I’ve
registered as an ally of the
Minutemen, so I’ve got some backup.
Over a dozen Minutemen swarm
on my location, and the landscape
erupts into a massive firefight as my
allies and I clash with the Gunners.
It’s genuinely surprising—when I
think of Fallout 4, I generally don’t
think of huge battles between large
groups. It’s usually just me, maybe
with a sole companion or a few
settlers. It makes for an intense fight.
Capturing an area doesn’t mean
it’s forever safe from your enemies.
When you and your allies have
cleared out a location and taken a
flag, it will remain under your
control, and your allied faction will
continue to spawn. But there’s a
chance that later on an enemy faction
will attempt to regain control, so you
may be called back to fight them
again. It’s a nice touch, and helps give
Fallout 4 a sense of a dynamic,
ongoing struggle, which is fun.
In addition to these control point
style missions, you can opt in for
rescue missions. While I’m running
back to my settlement, I get a
notification that a group of slavers are
transporting a prisoner nearby. They
are, in fact, beating the hell out of
that prisoner, which gives me extra
motivation to kill them quickly and
free the captive. I fail my first rescue
mission—they kill their prisoner—but
on my second rescue mission I
manage to bring down the slavers
and save the person they’ve captured.
Then there are artillery
destruction missions. An enemy
faction has dragged a massive cannon
out into the Commonwealth, and
they’re bombing the hell out of a
target, something the Committee is
none too happy about.
Your mission, should you choose
to accept it, is to either destroy the
massive gun or kill the artillery
crew—but since you’re headed into
the wasteland you might as well do
both, right? Artillery crews are tough,
and can take a pounding, but battling
them is fun with the massive cannon
periodically blasting into the air to
remind you what you’re fighting for.Blowing up the giant cannon is
satisfying, too, especially after a long
and brutal fight with its operators.ON DEFENSE
There are also defense missions, in
which the Committee basically needs
to use you as bait for some of their
enemies. These are fun because you
don’t need to kill all the bad guys.
They’ll swarm your location, looking
for you, but to complete the mission
you can also just escape safely
without so much as firing a shot. It’s
up to you how to handle it.
Best of all, there are assassination
missions. The Committee has
decided they need one particular
scumbag in the Commonwealth dead,
and they’re calling on you to do their
dirty work. This is a good chance to
use a bit of stealth and approach
carefully from a distance, because not
only is this target typically verytough, they’re also not alone. In the
elimination missions I’ve completed,
my targets have always been
surrounded by raider bodyguards or
other tough packs of goons. You don’t
need to bring all the protectors down,
just your assigned target, but that’s
easier said than done. I’ve always
wound up in a full-on war, and had to
wipe everyone out. It’s a welcome
distraction from my junk collecting,
and sometimes your target will drop
some high-end legendary loot. Bonus!
Missions from the Committee can
take place just about anywhere you
happen to be wandering. I’ve had
them happen while I was on the
furthest reaches of the map, as well
as when I was puttering around one
of my settlements. One time I got a
call to take out an assassination
target, and he was so close to my base
that even my settlers got to pitch in
to help. I appreciate when a bad guy
makes my job easy by spawning close
to my bedroom.
The Missions Committee mod is
also customizable. You can opt in or
out of any mission by clicking them
on the list on your Pip-Boy. Don’t
enjoy area control? You don’t have to
do them. Restrict yourself to rescue
missions or target elimination
missions, or opt in to everything and
see what you get. You can also tweak
mission timers, which will probably
take some tinkering. Receive mission
alerts too often, and you might get
annoyed by the interruptions, but if
you don’t get missions often enough,
you’ll forget you even have the mod.
Once you find the right balance, the
mod feels great. Like I say, it feels like
the Bat Signal summoning you for a
dangerous task only you can handle.
And there don’t seem to be any
punishments for failing or
disregarding a mission, except for a
notification.
The factions you align with can be
any that appear in the game, but if
you’re keen to create your own
custom faction, you can do it fairly
easily using the Creation Kit. (There
are instructions on the Missions
Committee mod page at Nexus
Mods.) If you’re using the game’s
factions, be aware that you should
only side with a faction that you have
a good or neutral relationship with.
If you choose a faction that
doesn’t like you, well... let’s just say
you don’t want to call in backup if the
people arriving to help are much
more interested in killing you as
killing your enemies.MAJOR MODS, ANALYZED
MOD SPOTLIGHT
MISSIONS FROM
THE COMMITTEE
CAN TAKE PLACE JUST
ABOUT ANYWHERE YOU
HAPPEN TO BEALLY OOPS Which faction should you ally with?
MINUTEMEN
Yes, they have cool hats,
but Garvey’s settlement
fetish is vexing.THE BROTHERHOOD
OF STEEL
Pros: Power armor. Cons:
Paladin Danse. He’s a drip.THE PACK
They’re raiders, so they’re
pretty gross. On the plus
side, no moral compass!THE INSTITUTE
Robots are cool, and their
HQ is the only clean place
in the Commonwealth.