Beyond Bollocks Dome final thoughts
+ Deadpan the Ghoul playwright companion is kinda adorable and fun, as is Lenore, the Ghoulified Cat who acts as a sort of... companion's companion really?
+ The Boulder Underground is a really nice Ghoul City and is pretty nicely designed and attractive, though is basically visited for a short while and then left forever, and NEVER brought up again at all.
+ a couple cool looking guns, like the Gauss Compact Rifle and a nice, hightech looking compact 9mm.
Beyond Bollocks Dome final thoughts 2/?
That is the only good points of the mod.
The bad points?
- Abysmal dialogue that's stilted, unrealistic and corny as fuck for the majority of it
- sideplots that come out of nowhere with barely any resolution or explaination
- uninteresting characters with piss all motivation or depth
- MASSIVE amounts of backtracking across the whole length of the area CLEARLY just used to pad out the playtime of this "DLC sized Mod" *cough bullshit cough cough*
Beyond Bollocks Dome final thoughts C/?
- No really, lots of fucking backtracking, I'm not kidding. It's fucking awful and tiresome and I just spammed movetoqt to avoid it before I was even halfway through because holy FUCK. Even if you fast travel to the nearest area, there's still a trek through a BUNCH of load zones, some of which are literally ONE FUCKING TINY ROOM BIG, fucksake. SO much bullshit padding!
Beyond Bollocks Dome final thoughts #/?
- Seltsam Syndrome, the 'major plot point'?? for want of a better word for the entire mod is just Ghoulification combined with a sort of really slow acting Post-Cryonic Syndrome that doesn't require going into cryo stasis, so it's hardly fucking interesting, original, or even all that threatening.
- Supposedly the Boulder Dome itself is full of people sick with it. SO WHERE THE FUCK ARE THEY ALL!?
Beyond Bollocks Dome final thoughts peanut/?
- one of the lead scientists, supposedlyone of the Best and Brightest who is put into this Cty of the Future pre-war, let in a bunch of raiders because they said they were scientists with a cure for Seltsam Syndrome, despite their admittedly Paper Thin Disguises of a tattered, stolen labcoat (seriously his own logs talk about this and make it very clear he was blatantly an idiot and then he blames everyone else, ugh.)
Beyond Bollocks Dome final thoughts aaaaaaghhhgh/?
This presents several plot points.
1: Your character is made immune to it as they have the cure in them apparently. (Oh and there's another character who you meet once right the beginning and have a forced conversation with, then NEVER SEE AGAIN EVER, who is apparently also immune.), but everyone else has to wear these suits to keep themselves alive or be in stasis I guess.
2: If this is the case, why the fuck didn't the raiders immediately die?
Beyond Bollocks Dome final thoughts many/?
3: Like you could have set up for an interesting thing of how the people trying to get in were people who found out about this secret elite vaultdome thing and wanted in, but the elites were like "PSH, no, fuck off, scrubs." and then forced their way in and that caused it to fail, but noooope, it's just dipshits and raiders I guess. Very Fallout 3 writing honestly.
Beyond Bollocks Dome final thoughts too many/?
4: the original "patient 0" is in stasis in the dome and was there before anybody moved into it because her husband wanted to cure her. If you find her logs, turns out some chinese spy supposedly gave her poisoned tea for... unknown fucking reasons I guess. but this is never fucking addressed by anything other than the logs you find.
THIS all leads into SEVERAL OTHER fucking problems I have with the mod...
Beyond Bollocks Dome final thoughts Dear God Help/?
FLAGRANT AND EGREGIOUS RACISM AND SEXISM.
Holy fucking shit so much. From the chinese 'accents' the blatantly american 'Voice actors' put on for the utterly fucking pointless prelude bit that doesn't advance or even set up the story AT ALL and is clearly there just to pad out more hours so as to claim "DLC sized" in the mod description, to every female character being a "cutesy" damsel in distress or an Unfaithful/Bitchy harpy trope... yikes.
Beyond Bollocks Dome final thoughts please end my suffering/?
oh and SPEAKING OF VOICE ACTING, like I know it's a free fuckin' mod but christ alfucking mighty can you at least fucking TRY. GOD.
There's some stupid, bullshit Planet of the Apes ripoff where the Dome's ZAX computer ("Remember that from classic fallout? do you? Do you?? HUH? Look! this mod is a Fallout mod! Remember Fallout!?" - the Mod Author I guess), is ACTUALLY a cybernetic genius chimpanzee.
....because... reasons.
Beyond Bollocks Dome final thoughts please end my suffering/?
once you do this, and I won't bore you with the details of the quest because it is equally painfully obvious padding to the mod and matters fucking nothing in the end, it's never brought up again, ever. just... nope. done. gone, pay no attention any more.
There's a Wizard of Oz holotape, and a Chimpanzee Mating Call holotape next to the ZAX comptuer as well, as a "clever hint" I guess. But it's just fucking groanworthy.
Beyond Bollocks Dome final thoughts 20189213123/?
finally, nothing that happens has any point because in the end whether you side with the murderous NCR or the equally murderous BoS (seriously both sides are painted as murderous assholes out for their own personal profit, just the NCR is more open about it I guess?), everyone in the dome fucking dies, you find out the Mr Freeze ripoff is an android and his real self is elsewhere, you bring him back, he cures his wife, then THEY die too.
Beyond Bollocks Dome final thoughts 20189213123.314123414/?
if your thought was "...please don't tell me that you gotta do another full map length trek to find fuel for the truck", then...
I won't tell you that this is exactly what happens.
Small mercies, you don't gotta do it one can of petrol at a time and all the empty petrol cans you need are already at the body you find the key on. But you can't GET the petrol from the tanker until you go back to the truck with the key. ugh.
Beyond Bollocks Dome final thoughts Finally the End/?
And... that's it. you finally finish and are fucking free of that godawful mess.
... it fuckin' sucks, yo.
oh and the companions just fucking disappear without any ceremony when you get to the truck with NO fucking explaination either. just. gone. forever. fuck it.