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About this mod
Your favorite ghoul bodyguard from the Capital Wasteland has finally returned. Charon levels alongside the player, sneaks like a master, and brings his own shotgun and personal radio. Although he comes unvoiced by default, after following some simple instructions, you can restore those raspy tones we all know and love.
- Requirements
- Permissions and credits
- Changelogs
Charon Heads North
Fallout 4 has some great companions, but it doesn't have the BEST companion. When the sun has set, no candle can replace it. Until now. You can find Charon in Sanctuary Hills, in a cellar behind one of the houses near Codsworth. If you find yourself perplexed as to how to recruit him, try looking around the cellar for clues. His current employer has left him in quite the awkward situation.
Player dialogue is unvoiced. Sorry. I'm not going to do all the extra work when I don't even use the player voice myself, just to limit my available dialogue options even further. I'm already working with a limited selection for Charon.
Charon can work resources in a settlement and be sent on caravans. He's built into the vanilla follower system, so you can't have him and another companion along at the same time. He seems to work alright with mods like AmazingFollowerTweaks, but I can't help you if you start using other mods to mess with his head. He can't be romanced - yet.
This mod requires the Extended Dialogue Interface, for a few conversations in 1.0 and for the quest I plan to eventually include.
UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES WILL I PROVIDE VOICE FILES FROM FALLOUT 3.
Tempting though it is, I'm not breaking the law so your Charon can talk.
Voicing Charon
The steps involved may seem daunting at first. But listen closely: if you follow the directions exactly, there is ZERO chance of you breaking either your Fallout 3 or Fallout 4 installations, messing up other voices, etc. Everything involved takes place in external folders. The worst case scenario is that Charon is unvoiced, and you just have to try again or come ask for help. The process is relatively simple, just tedious. As of 1.1, there are 93 lines you need to take from Fallout 3. This covers the recruitment scene, combat lines, favor dialogue (when you ask a follower to pick up an item, etc.), and a few other tidbits.
1. Install the Lazy Voice Finder: https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/24309
This lets us painlessly take voice files from Fallout 3 without messing about with archive extraction or audio conversion tools.
2. Launch LazyVoiceFinder. Go to Options, then General Settings, then highlight Fallout 3. Make sure the Install folder is pointing to your Fallout 3 installation, where your Fallout3.exe is located. For me, this is "C:\SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\Fallout 3 goty". Make sure that under "Base Game BSAs (Fallout3.ESM) you see Fallout - MenuVoices.bsa and Fallout - Voices*.bsa
3. Set your Game Mode to Fallout 3. Click file, click open, and select only the Fallout3.esm before clicking OK. It may take a minute to load.
4. Click the little arrow next to "Voice Type" and scroll down the menu until you find "malegenericghoul". Check the little box next to it and click OK. This is the voice type that all of Charon's lines fall under.
5. In Mod Organizer 2, open this mod's archive in Explorer. Go to Sound/Voice/Charon.esp/CharonVoice. This is where we'll put the converted voice files. I've already provided the Lip Files that you'll need to get Charon's mouth to actually move with the words.
If you're using another mod manager, simply open the archive before installing and follow the same steps, and then install the mod after you're done.
6. Open the "Charon Transcription Guide" I provide in the Docs/Readme section. Here is an example of what you'll see:
0000A8A1_1 = Duck!= genericadult_fireexplosive_00022aa3_1
The first item is the .wav file name that my mod will search for in order to give Charon a voice. The second item is what Charon actually says in the line. The third item is the Fallout 3 .ogg voice file name.
7. I will use the "Duck!" line as an example of what to do. First, use the LazyVoiceFinder search to find the line in question. By default, you search by the actual dialogue (what Charon says: Duck!), so simply type in "Duck!" and the file you want will come up. If you want to search by the file name (genericadult_fireexplosive_00022aa3_1), then click on the little piece of paper to the left of the search field to change your search target to "File Name."
Right click on the "Duck!" line that has come up and select "Copy Voice File as WAV Format." Paste the line into my mod's CharonVoice folder, and then rename it to the corresponding .wav file name. That means we'll rename "genericadult_fireexplosive_00022aa3_1.wav" to 0000A8A1_1.wav. There should be an existing lip file with the same name that matches up to it.
8. Repeat this process for all the lines.
9. Tada! You're done. Good job. Charon has a voice once again! If you come across any lines that still seem to lack sound or lip files, please let me know. I may have missed some in the transcription process.
Conversations
If you talk to Charon in a safe place, like a bar or a house, you can ask him to talk about more personal subjects. For now there are four conversations. One is available by default, and the other three unlock depending on your main quest progress and which factions you've joined or encountered. You can ask him what he thinks of the Brotherhood after they arrive in the Commonwealth, for example. These conversations are unvoiced for the moment, but I'll include instructions for them in the eventual update containing Charon's quest. I'll unfortunately have to rework them, as they include some spliced lines.
Combat, Sandboxing, and Sneak
Charon is an adept warrior of the wastes, and will level up alongside you on your journey. His included vanilla combat shotgun utilizes companion ammo, so you'll never need to provide him shells. For all other weapons, you'll need to stock him up. I've found that his shotgun is ineffective against long-range opponents, so you may want to give him a rifle. He will utilize grenades and molotovs if you give any to him, but be careful to stay out of the blast zone. Charon will give you a warning when he throws an explosive into battle. I've tried to prune the annoying vanilla sandboxing as best I could. Charon will follow closer than the vanilla companions, and when he relaxes he will do so in a much closer range. If you have your weapon drawn, he won't relax at all.
Charon has four ranks of the sneak perk and won't affect your stealth meter. If either of you are attacked or noticed while sneaking, however, he will immediately launch into action.
Unlike some vanilla companions, Charon will always side with you if you accidently (or intentionally) attack the people in your settlements. Those useless sheep are nothing to him.
If you attack Charon while he's not your companion, he WILL try to kill you. Physical violence on your part invalidates the terms of the contract.
You may find Charon to be too powerful. That's because being powerful is his job. There's no way he would have survived this long if he wasn't supremely capable. Try playing in Survival Mode, where no companion can save you from death, or reduce his damage using the console.
Radio
Charon comes with a personal radio that you can use to teleport him to your location, no matter the distance. This means he can follow you into the Institute. If this breaks your immersion, just don't use the radio while you're in there. With great power comes great responsibility. You can hotkey this radio to any key for quick tactical maneuvers or for emergency "help me Charon I'm dying" situations. Also, it's useful in case Charon just wanders off and gets lost. Because Fallout 4. If you lose the radio, open the console and type in:
help "Charon's Radio" 4
additem. [Charon's Radio ID] 1
Affinity?
Charon doesn't care what his employer does or who his employer kills. He's utterly loyal, and will never complain or pester you with his petty likes and dislikes. When I add a romantic path, you will not be able to seduce this ghoul by picking locks, putting on power armor, or getting high. Nor is an affinity system in my future plans. But Charon DOES have a moral compass, and he will take note of your most heinous actions. For now, he'll stay quiet about what he thinks about your crimes. If you choose to complete his future quest, things may change. Just keep in mind, if you would, what happened to Ahzrukhal. Future Plans
I actually have around 258 lines for Charon at the moment, but I wanted this first release to be simpler. My big update will include over 150 additional combat and idle lines and counting. Add tactics system.
Add conversations with Dogmeat and MacCready.
Add quest, "Happiness is a Warm Gun."
Add additional conversations for joining the Minutemen, joining the Institute, and completing the main quest.
Add romance path.
Add companion switch dismissal conversations.
Fix Power Armor annoyance.
Known Issues
If you ask Charon to get into Power Armor, the only way to get him out again is to pickpocket the Fusion Core when he's not your companion, or to use a mod like AmazingFollowerTweaks to order him to leave the armor. I tried for hours to figure out the vanilla dialogue options that let you order companions out of armor, to no avail. Something in the scripting seems to break when I move the mod to MO2. Hopefully I'll fix this soon. A couple of lines in his recruitment scene reference having to go do something. This "something" was supposed to be killing Ahzrukhal, and his dismissal line references Underworld. Since I couldn't splice the lines like I intended to, this is just how it has to be. Consider these lines a byproduct of his tortured mind.
If you dismiss Charon without sending him to a settlement, the message will read "Charon is going to the Third Rail." This is false. Don't go to the Third Rail. Charon won't be there. He's instead returned to the Sanctuary Root Cellar. The cellar wasn't on the list of available homes, for some asinine reason, and editing the message requires scripting beyond my capabilities. I suggest sending him to a settlement if this annoys you. Maybe Red Rocket, so he can look after lonely Dogmeat.
He can't lockpick or hack. Charon says in Fallout 3 that he's "nobody's errand boy", but really I just haven't figured it out yet. He's more the shooty type, anyway. This isn't really an issue, since I wouldn't think of Charon as someone who could lockpick or hack in the first place, but just in case anybody was wondering.
Credit and Inspirations
To create Charon's Radio, I took a look under the hood of llamaRCA's phenomenal Heather Casdin companion. All my absmyal scripting work is my own, but I'd have never figured it out without looking at how llama pulled it off. I couldn't have got this far without the help of Seddon4494's YouTube tutorials. In the undocumented hellscape that is working with the Creation Kit, his videos are the lights in the darkness.
I based my face slider choices off of the Charon face in Companions of Fallout 3 and New Vegas - Presets.
Complementary Mods
Fallout 4 Capital Wasteland Classic Metal Armor - This gives Charon a nice little taste of home, until someone comes out with a version of Fallout 3's leather armor. Fallout 3 Feral Ghouls Replacer - To save Charon from wondering why all the ghouls changed to weird slender rag monsters when he crossed the border. His sanity is fragile as it is!
Fallout 3 Vault Suit - In case you're roleplaying as the Lone Wanderer, come to rescue Charon from the clutches of the Commonwealth. Or if you just loathe the vanilla spandex suits as much as I do.
Heather Casdin - Heather uses her own companion system, so she can follow you alongside Charon. I found in my testing that they play off each other nicely. She's passionate and fierce, while Charon is more quiet and intense. Plus, they both have radios. What's not to love?
Everybody's Best Friend - Charon, Heather, AND Dogmeat? Oh, man. What a party.