Bored of Fallout 4? Think you’ve seen everything the game has to offer? Well think again – if you haven’t already picked up the new Far Harbor DLC then you’re missing a treat.
Unlike the DLCs before it, Far Harbor presents you with a whole new island to explore, a huge area which you can only access by boat. You first head over there as part of a new case back at Valentine’s Detective Agency to find a missing girl, and before long you’re dealing with nuclear fog, huge frogs and a crab with a truck for a shell. It sounds bizarre, yes, but over at Far Harbor the nuclear fallout has really taken its toll. Radiation storms are a common occurrence, creatures are huge, mutated and varied and there are more ghouls and supermutants than you should ever want to gun down. The whole area is dripping in atmosphere, and while it’s not a densely populated area in terms of locations, there’s a huge amount here and you could easily get well over 20 hours of additional play; twice as much as many full priced games by themselves.
The main storyline is a nice lever to get you over to Far Harbor, but it’s not the main attraction. Tracking down the new weapons (including a massive nuclear hammer thing with booster rockets to help you give it a good swing) and new companion is a handy thing to try and do, and if you’re the kind to be building settlements there are a handful of those to get set up as well. There are also three factions fighting between themselves, with the Children of Atom (they’re the nuclear-worshipping nutters you’ll have found in the Glowing Sea in the main game) going up against the slightly more sane humans and fishermen who want to clear the fog, all balanced out by a gathering of synths who’d quite like everyone to chill out and just get along. There’s a fair bit going on, and you’ll probably find your allegiances swinging a little as you complete more quests and talk to more people – it definitely has the potential to change the route you’re heading down if you’re only part way through your main game. Weirdly, despite the fact that this whole slice of Fallout comes from Nick’s agency, you don’t need to take him along. But I’d recommend it, there’s some fantastic back story to pick up and huge amounts to find out about the synths.
Amongst all this are some pretty tricky choices to make to try and keep as much peace as possible. In my own play through I ended up getting a bit pissed off with the Children of Atom (they can get pretty cocky and unlikable) so my decisions took a bit of a dark route through the possible outcomes; when I play it through again (which I certainly will at some point) I might try to be a bit less harsh. But in true Fallout style, you can go about it however you want – you’ll get to enjoy this in whatever way you like.
Generally then, Far Harbor is absolutely worth plugging into your copy of Fallout 4. There are a couple of weird choices made by Bethesda, like the awkward 1st person light-reflecting tower-defense hybrid mini game that demonstrated perfectly how annoying the placement of items can be in the game, and the tiny repetitive nature of some of the tasks, but if you’ve enjoyed Fallout 4 and want more to do then this should already be on your console. If it isn’t, go and change that – it’s a huge, well made and very poignant DLC.
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