It’s early morning when I pop the fusion core back into the power armor and prepare to head out with Piper towards Sunshine Tidings Co-op. As I have made a tradition in the game, I only don my power armor for Minuteman missions (though that may change after interacting with the Brotherhood of Steel). I decide to walk the whole way instead of fast-traveling, especially since I’m with a new companion.

I decide to head cross-country for awhile, skirting around Concord, so I take a turn at the Red Rocket Truck Stop. I spot some fortification around power lines so I decide to check it out. Coming closer, I see brahmin and well-tended crops, a settlement. I lower my gun and approach. Connie Abernathy offers to trade, but she doesn’t have much I need at the moment.

Blake Abernathy is a bit more stern, but warms up when he finds I’m peaceful. He talks about working the land and farming. He speaks about his daughter who stood up to some raiders a while back and was killed for it. I let him know we are rebuilding the Minutemen and he won’t have to stand alone anymore. He mentions the raiders, and his daughter’s locket that they took. Just so happens I already took care of this bunch and have the locket. Overjoyed, he gives me a hundred caps and offers to join up. Another settlement in the bag without even trying. Piper is impressed. I set up some guard posts for them before leaving so they can defend themselves.

On my way to the co-op, I come across a road. My map shows it ends a short distance away, and it is early yet, so I investigate. Some bloatflies attack while I investigate a small shack, but I blow them out of the sky. Signs of previous habitation, but seemingly abandoned. There’s a nearby skeleton next to a toolbox and some irradiated barrels. Maybe the resident? I pick the lock but there’s not much valuable inside other than a gold watch. Piper still likes that I can pick locks.

As I head to where the road ends on my map there is a low rumble. I think I am imagining it at first. Everything else in the environment seems more still and silent. I press on. The sky darkens and visibility is reduced. I walk right into a radiation storm. The sky is a scary, sickly green. My power armor seems to be protecting me, but I worry about Piper so I head back.

I take a small bend in the road and find the Wicket Fleet Lockup, where a lot of shipping trucks are kept. A feral ghoul crawls out from under a truck. I take it down, but with all these trucks it is hard to see if there are more. I spot a protectron unit and head over. I’m still on the fence about protectron strategy. When hacking one, there are numerous options for personality, but most seem somewhat worthless. The subway steward has always seemed promising, but despite the fact that I’m holding on to over 10 subway tokens I find it impossible to present a token in time to avoid combat with the droid. General protection mode means that it might attack you if you start shooting (at least if you’re shooting raiders). Sometimes their patrol paths are helpful, but many times not so much and regardless they are incredibly slow. They do pack a lot of firepower when they do work though.

While the protectron patrols, Piper strikes up a conversation about all the good I’m doing, how she wishes the corrupt officials in Diamond City would do better, and how they won’t even hear out her attempts to communicate the truth. She tells the tale of her family and how her dad was security at her settlement. Her dad was killed by the corrupt settlement captain. She put the truth out there and the town banded together against the raiders the captain was in cahoots with. This is much more effort than Bethesda has put into their previous conversations and NPCs, though it still doesn’t compare to the characterization and progression of relationships in Bioware games like Dragon Age or Mass Effect.

The protectron doesn’t seem to be patrolling very effectively so I shut it down. I’ll fare better on my own. I clear the outside first, then the garage. Finally find another feral ghoul in their. I should have a clear shot as it stands up from under a truck, but of course I miss twice before aborting. I hope they fix how obstructions aren’t always calculated into the percent chance of hitting.

There’s a holotape next to a skeleton labeled Wicked Business. An explosion sounds in the nearby truck as I play it. I’m a bit distracted getting out of the garage before the truck blows up. I have no idea what caused the explosion. Perhaps a misfire while shooting the feral ghoul? The garage is on fire a bit. The tape seems mostly worthless, some conflict between brothers over a business deal and shady partners. I head back inside. The position of the skeletons tells the rest of the story. Two across from each other and signs of blood spatter on the walls behind them. This is yet another example of Bethesda’s storytelling strategy, which focuses not so much on the grand narrative arc or detailed character progression, but rather on small glimpses into daily life mainly communicated through interesting locations in conjunction with written (and now audio) notes. There’s a power armor station in here too, which is good to know.

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The office nearby has some keys, a Grognak The Barbarian comic “Blood on the Harp” and a terminal. The message is just about business operation, but the cargo manifests reveal other locations in the Commonwealth that might be worth exploring.

More bloatflies attack as we head into the main building. Piper calls out the alert before I know for sure where the sound I’m hearing is coming from. But after we take them out something is still around. I proceed cautiously as I loot some more materials for crafting. Piper says “Hmm… What’s that for?” I like her so much more now! She may not realize the value of this stuff, but at least she’s not rudely dismissive of my scavenging like all my other companions. Except Dogmeat. Dogmeat is a solid companion through and through.

I hear a sick slapping noise and a growl. Piper says “Watch your digits Blue!” (Blue is what she calls me, given my blue vault suit I suppose) and I hear some shots. By the time I get over there, she’s already taken care of it. Despite not starting with a gun, she seems pretty handy with it. There are actually several feral ghoul corpses in here. I wonder who killed them. Surely she didn’t do all this damage in the few seconds it took for me to get over there. There’s a corpse with a pistol upstairs. Perhaps some enterprising soul who set up in this place and met their end.

It’s getting towards sunset, so I decide to continue towards the co-op. I’m disappointed I can’t claim this place as a settlement now that I’ve cleared it. It would make a decent outpost. As I head out, a wind is blowing up. Soon, it turns into a full-blown radiation storm. I rush back inside to wait it out and it passes quickly, thankfully. I’m still a bit surprised at how scary these storms are, even when I know they can’t really kill me (I have plenty of radaway on me to remove radiation). It’s one of my favorite environmental effects from any Bethesda game.

The sun is still setting when I reach the lake or river across from the co-op. I skirt around to find a bridge. Some Gunners guard the other side of it, but they don’t appear to be immediately hostile. I approach cautiously without putting my gun away. Perhaps that was the wrong move as they open fire (strangely only after I get close enough to talk). Piper and I kill them without too much trouble, and I feel a bit bad about it. However, I don’t particularly like the Gunners, and if I’m looking to establish a settlement near here it won’t do to have Gunners nearby on the main bridge.

The co-op is a big place, much bigger than the other settlements, and seems rather spread out and established. For some reason it seems vacant apart from a Mr. Handy named Professor Goodfeels, who just flies around saying things like “Far out!” and “Whoah, man…” Entering my first building reveals it is not quite so deserted, as I find two feral ghouls inside. I carefully search the outlying buildings with nothing but my suit’s headlamp, going counter-clockwise.

Soon, some supermutants are attacking from the hill. I wouldn’t have taken any damage except for a supermutant “suicider” who blows himself up. Even though he was pretty far away I still took a good hit, though he blew up his companions in the process. I search the way they came for signs of more, but find only a dead raider in her makeshift camp. I find two more ghouls and the remains of a settler. An alert tells me to build and activate a recruitment beacon. I suppose I can support another large settlement here. There’s also a Wasteland Survival Guide which gives me extra meat from animal kills.

I decide to finish my patrol first. Good thing because I kill a couple of raiders and radroaches. I make my way to the center of town afterwards. It still has electricity, and a working terminal. It’s a Mr. Handy Control Interface. Apparently some guys from the co-op “rescued” the Mr. Handy and programmed him to be like this. I consider the chances of reprogramming. I first set him to return for maintenance, but it seems that means traveling to a separate facility. I don’t really want to lose a good guard for my new settlement, so I change the protocol to guard. Hopefully he doesn’t kill any settlers, but he seems alright with me, if not very talkative other than saying “exterminate” repeatedly in a slightly creepy way.

I want to set up the beacon overnight to get the settlement started, but for some reason I need a generator, even though the place obviously has power. I find the ceramic material I need nearby, but then don’t have enough copper to stretch a wire to the beacon. After searching until nearly dawn, I give up, step out of my power armor, and bed down for the night.