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About this mod
A "pilot episode" for a Twilight Zone-inspired anthology series, taking the sole survivor on a surreal journey through the memories of an Enclave refugee, from an oil rig off the California coast to the decaying rooftops of downtown Chicago.
- Permissions and credits
Each day, hundreds pass the doors of this unassuming laundromat, oblivious to the secrets hidden in its basement.
But in the forgotten tunnels beneath, there sleeps an impossible train, one which runs not on the logic of science, but the quantum powers of pure possibility.
Please watch your head as you step aboard, and don't forget to say goodbye to your loved ones. For this, dear viewers, is a ride which can only be taken alone. You have just stepped out of the confines of your familiar world, and into the path of a one-way ride on the Endless Hypetrain.
Your final destination: Chicago. Once a shining metropolis, famed for its skyscrapers and luxurious Expo
District, now a fog-shrouded maze of towering wreckage, slowly sinking into the rising waters of the Great Lake.
Atop the tallest of the remaining structures, a long-dormant radio tower has just come back online. But
what mysterious hands guide this resurrection? Remnants of a once mighty government, long rumored to be hiding in these shadows? The militant church which seeks to shape the chaotic wasteland into a land of order?
These questions, and others like them, can only truly be answered by throwing aside caution, and stepping off the platform and onto the Endless Hypetrain.
FAQ
"Are you still planning to work on this and fix bugs?"
- Not really, though I'll try to address any problems which are universal game-breakers as they pop up. Developing this mod wasn't the best experience (between the buggy CK and my less-than-ideal hardware), and I would rather get it off the shelf than sit on it any longer. If it picks up a following, I may return to it, but whether or not it does isn't really up to me.
"I don't see any quest markers. Where do I start the mod?"
- The mod starts in the new basement of the laundromat in Lexington. Apologies for the lack of proper quest markers - I had quite a few script-related problems working on this, and an actual questline was one of the things I had to do without.
"Chicago looks like it might get lonely. Can I bring companions along?"
- I wouldn't recommend it! These areas were laid out with solo players in mind, and you definitely don't want to risk losing your favorite companion in a strange place. As the Sole Survivor is apparently the only person in the wasteland with the ability to jump, there are going to be some spots where only they are able to get around.
"Is this intented to be lore-friendly?"
- Yes and no. Think of it as an alternate dimension within the Fallout universe: a dimension not only of lore and locations, but one of hypothetical canon. The concepts are largely inspired by the discussions I see in the various Fallout lore-cults, but with plentiful crossovers into other regions of pop culture. Whether or not you consider any of this to actually exist in the Fallout universe is up to you and you alone.
"You say this is a pilot episode for an ongoing series. When I expect the next episode?"
- Consider it a pilot which didn't get picked up, but will probably be of some interest to those looking for unconventional quest mods. To be honest, I didn't have the best time making it (largely due to the FO4 Creation Kit being a total mess, and the game it works with being not much better), so I've had to accept that the many other ideas I had for the series are better applied to other independent game pursuits.
"Didn't you post this once before, under a different name?"
- Yes I did, and I immediately ran into trouble for a line in the FAQ hinting that I might, maybe, someday, consider crowdfunding the follow-up episodes. Apparently, the Nexus forbids even considering such an approach (an interesting choice for a site which itself has some fairly questionable paid options), and I was asked to pull the mod only hours after putting it up. This left a sour taste in my mouth, and convinced me to abandon the idea of a series. But for all its flaws, the pilot episode does have some good material in it, and I think it's a bit of a waste to leave it sitting around on my computer, especially considering how few FO4 new lands mods seem to be in existence...
"The black and white makes me feel colorblind. Were you planning to make the whole series like that?"
- Definitely not. I had been wanting to do a black-and-white flavored mod for a long time, and it felt like a good fit for my view of Chicago as a partially submerged, fog-shrouded skeleton of teetering skyscrapers. But there's only so much you can do with a limited palette, and I honestly got pretty tired of that washed-out look during the development. Future episodes were going to use different sorts of color experiments - though now I think if I ever return to modding, I'll probably stick with a more conventional look.
"This episode feels pretty linear. Are you some kind of open-world hating purist?"
- Not remotely. Linear designs made more sense as I was figuring out the various quirks of this (particularly quirky) installment of the Creation Kit. Now that I've more or less learned Bethesda's method for carefully hiding the most versatile kits and pieces, I see a few ways I could have opened this up and allowed some alternate routes, which would have been nice given that the FO4 base game doesn't have a whole lot in the way of stealth-oriented areas with multiple paths.
"Parts of this mod look great, others not so much. And what's the deal with the low-res screenshots?"
- This episode was built entirely on a low end machine, and numerous graphic tweaks were required to even make Fallout 4 playable. As such, there are certainly some effects which definitely won't look as convincing with higher settings. Still, I'd be tremendously grateful for any HD screenshots players want to share - there are definitely some good looking areas in there!
"What were the locations you were considering for future episodes?"
- There's a list of Hypetrain stations found in the mod, each of which I had done a bit of brainstorming for. For reference: Detroit, Toronto, Shady Sands, southern Florida, Flagstaff, Austin, Seattle, Savannah, Washington DC, Portland, Boulder, Montreal, Santa Barbara, and Branson. Some would have offered explanations for often-discussed topics in Fallout lore, while others might have contained references to and reproductions of other game series. Whether or not any of these might happen is pretty up-in-the-air, but it's likely that some of the ideas might make their way into game projects independent from the Fallout series.
"Will you be releasing this for Xbox or Playstation?"
- Definitely not. There's been some unfortunate mishandling of Fallout 4 mod support across all platforms (including PC), but one of the biggest problems is that console gamers don't have access to console commands. There are always going to be players finding new ways to get stuck, and if a game is going to have location mods, it also needs to provide failsafes for dealing with those inevitable entanglements. And it doesn't make much sense for me to develop for consoles if I'm unable to do any playtesting on the platforms themselves - bugfixing on PC alone is tricky enough.
"This one part is too hard! This other part is too easy! I don't have enough ammo! Can you please patch it immediately?"
- Consider this an abandoned project, which has the good fortune of being at least somewhat complete. I don't think I've ever seen a content mod which didn't have at least some rough edges, and any effort I pour into getting this piece as polished and focused as possible is energy that I've determined to be better spent on other game design pursuits. I hope you can enjoy it in spite of the inevitable slightly-broken bits.
"This mod has bugs! Might this cause compatibility issues or save-game problems?"
- It's likely, but there's honestly not much I can do about it. I don't wish to sound like a Bethesda-blamer, but they haven't exactly made this new CK particularly easy to work with. There's no way to fix or even sort the multitude of error reports, and the official documentation is still (after more than a year!) virtually nonexistent. Until they (or, better yet, a third party) come out with a reliable debugging method, most content mods are probably going to be a bit unpredictable. I recommend using an alternate save file for any large mods - just a good practice for PC gaming in general!
But in the forgotten tunnels beneath, there sleeps an impossible train, one which runs not on the logic of science, but the quantum powers of pure possibility.
Please watch your head as you step aboard, and don't forget to say goodbye to your loved ones. For this, dear viewers, is a ride which can only be taken alone. You have just stepped out of the confines of your familiar world, and into the path of a one-way ride on the Endless Hypetrain.
Your final destination: Chicago. Once a shining metropolis, famed for its skyscrapers and luxurious Expo
District, now a fog-shrouded maze of towering wreckage, slowly sinking into the rising waters of the Great Lake.
Atop the tallest of the remaining structures, a long-dormant radio tower has just come back online. But
what mysterious hands guide this resurrection? Remnants of a once mighty government, long rumored to be hiding in these shadows? The militant church which seeks to shape the chaotic wasteland into a land of order?
These questions, and others like them, can only truly be answered by throwing aside caution, and stepping off the platform and onto the Endless Hypetrain.
FAQ
"Are you still planning to work on this and fix bugs?"
- Not really, though I'll try to address any problems which are universal game-breakers as they pop up. Developing this mod wasn't the best experience (between the buggy CK and my less-than-ideal hardware), and I would rather get it off the shelf than sit on it any longer. If it picks up a following, I may return to it, but whether or not it does isn't really up to me.
"I don't see any quest markers. Where do I start the mod?"
- The mod starts in the new basement of the laundromat in Lexington. Apologies for the lack of proper quest markers - I had quite a few script-related problems working on this, and an actual questline was one of the things I had to do without.
"Chicago looks like it might get lonely. Can I bring companions along?"
- I wouldn't recommend it! These areas were laid out with solo players in mind, and you definitely don't want to risk losing your favorite companion in a strange place. As the Sole Survivor is apparently the only person in the wasteland with the ability to jump, there are going to be some spots where only they are able to get around.
"Is this intented to be lore-friendly?"
- Yes and no. Think of it as an alternate dimension within the Fallout universe: a dimension not only of lore and locations, but one of hypothetical canon. The concepts are largely inspired by the discussions I see in the various Fallout lore-cults, but with plentiful crossovers into other regions of pop culture. Whether or not you consider any of this to actually exist in the Fallout universe is up to you and you alone.
"You say this is a pilot episode for an ongoing series. When I expect the next episode?"
- Consider it a pilot which didn't get picked up, but will probably be of some interest to those looking for unconventional quest mods. To be honest, I didn't have the best time making it (largely due to the FO4 Creation Kit being a total mess, and the game it works with being not much better), so I've had to accept that the many other ideas I had for the series are better applied to other independent game pursuits.
"Didn't you post this once before, under a different name?"
- Yes I did, and I immediately ran into trouble for a line in the FAQ hinting that I might, maybe, someday, consider crowdfunding the follow-up episodes. Apparently, the Nexus forbids even considering such an approach (an interesting choice for a site which itself has some fairly questionable paid options), and I was asked to pull the mod only hours after putting it up. This left a sour taste in my mouth, and convinced me to abandon the idea of a series. But for all its flaws, the pilot episode does have some good material in it, and I think it's a bit of a waste to leave it sitting around on my computer, especially considering how few FO4 new lands mods seem to be in existence...
"The black and white makes me feel colorblind. Were you planning to make the whole series like that?"
- Definitely not. I had been wanting to do a black-and-white flavored mod for a long time, and it felt like a good fit for my view of Chicago as a partially submerged, fog-shrouded skeleton of teetering skyscrapers. But there's only so much you can do with a limited palette, and I honestly got pretty tired of that washed-out look during the development. Future episodes were going to use different sorts of color experiments - though now I think if I ever return to modding, I'll probably stick with a more conventional look.
"This episode feels pretty linear. Are you some kind of open-world hating purist?"
- Not remotely. Linear designs made more sense as I was figuring out the various quirks of this (particularly quirky) installment of the Creation Kit. Now that I've more or less learned Bethesda's method for carefully hiding the most versatile kits and pieces, I see a few ways I could have opened this up and allowed some alternate routes, which would have been nice given that the FO4 base game doesn't have a whole lot in the way of stealth-oriented areas with multiple paths.
"Parts of this mod look great, others not so much. And what's the deal with the low-res screenshots?"
- This episode was built entirely on a low end machine, and numerous graphic tweaks were required to even make Fallout 4 playable. As such, there are certainly some effects which definitely won't look as convincing with higher settings. Still, I'd be tremendously grateful for any HD screenshots players want to share - there are definitely some good looking areas in there!
"What were the locations you were considering for future episodes?"
- There's a list of Hypetrain stations found in the mod, each of which I had done a bit of brainstorming for. For reference: Detroit, Toronto, Shady Sands, southern Florida, Flagstaff, Austin, Seattle, Savannah, Washington DC, Portland, Boulder, Montreal, Santa Barbara, and Branson. Some would have offered explanations for often-discussed topics in Fallout lore, while others might have contained references to and reproductions of other game series. Whether or not any of these might happen is pretty up-in-the-air, but it's likely that some of the ideas might make their way into game projects independent from the Fallout series.
"Will you be releasing this for Xbox or Playstation?"
- Definitely not. There's been some unfortunate mishandling of Fallout 4 mod support across all platforms (including PC), but one of the biggest problems is that console gamers don't have access to console commands. There are always going to be players finding new ways to get stuck, and if a game is going to have location mods, it also needs to provide failsafes for dealing with those inevitable entanglements. And it doesn't make much sense for me to develop for consoles if I'm unable to do any playtesting on the platforms themselves - bugfixing on PC alone is tricky enough.
"This one part is too hard! This other part is too easy! I don't have enough ammo! Can you please patch it immediately?"
- Consider this an abandoned project, which has the good fortune of being at least somewhat complete. I don't think I've ever seen a content mod which didn't have at least some rough edges, and any effort I pour into getting this piece as polished and focused as possible is energy that I've determined to be better spent on other game design pursuits. I hope you can enjoy it in spite of the inevitable slightly-broken bits.
"This mod has bugs! Might this cause compatibility issues or save-game problems?"
- It's likely, but there's honestly not much I can do about it. I don't wish to sound like a Bethesda-blamer, but they haven't exactly made this new CK particularly easy to work with. There's no way to fix or even sort the multitude of error reports, and the official documentation is still (after more than a year!) virtually nonexistent. Until they (or, better yet, a third party) come out with a reliable debugging method, most content mods are probably going to be a bit unpredictable. I recommend using an alternate save file for any large mods - just a good practice for PC gaming in general!