Setting Danse free

Sometimes we just err in our judgement, I know I do... on occasion.  One of those times was when I decided to buy Fallout 4 for my Xbox One rather then buy the game for PC.  For those who don't know, there is a big difference.  Games look a lot better on PC's because they're written on PC's.  Also, and this is very important, some game studios, like Bethesda, allow you to modify (mod) the content of their games, and for that you need to own a PC version of that game.  For Bethesda, this  approach has been quite beneficial.  In 2012 they put out a game called Skyrim which is still in the top 10 games being played on Steam, mostly because of all the mods that were done.  You want your characters to be soaking up time in a hot tub, sipping wine and snacking on cheese?  Well, that's one of the mods for Skyrim.

In Fallout 4 there is a companion named Danse who will stay in his power armor the whole game... unless you mod him out of it.  After a quest called Mass Fusion he becomes about as useful as a storage shed... unless you mod him into action.  And because Danse is a very popular companion, I suspect Bethesda did this on purpose.  They're sitting back and letting the games modify Danse.  Oh, and if the mod is good enough, they will actually incorporate it into the game or, as in Gary's mod, becomes so important it runs as a stand alone game.

Anyway, since I bought a console version of Fallout 4 rather then a PC, modding is out of the question for me.... for the time being.  Eventually, when the price drops in a couple of months, I'll buy the PC version and set Danse free.  The gif below gives you an idea of what that will be like.

I'll bet you never thought video games could be so... interesting.

Dansing around a problem

I like to play video games, a lot, and right now I'm playing my way through Fallout 4 which takes place in Massachusetts 200 years after the great nuclear war of 2077.  When writing a game, the writers use a spreadsheet similar to this:

The story line shifts and changes as the main character goes on different quests and meets different characters, some of whom can be come his companion.  Now companions enhance the main characters abilities to do a lot of things:  some companions make it easier to find food, some to pick locks, and others may help with your fighting abilities.  Believe it or not, you can even romance some of them.  Mass Effect 3 was the first game in which there was same sex romance, how about that.

Anyway, I don't play games the way writers write them, sequentially.  I move around the map in a very nonconformist way.  As a result I didn't get to the Cambridge Police Station until rather late in the game, which means I didn't meet up with Paladin Danse until recently, and it turns out he's a good companion.  He even dresses up well.

Paladin Danse

And, unfortunately, I'm now involved in a quest in which his survival is at stake, and even though I make the game as individual as I can, I'm still forced to follow the path the writers laid out.  So now I'm Dansing through my few remaining choices just to keep him alive.  I may just have to dump my last 4 hours of game play in order to get to his personal quest sooner.