Far Harbor may be perpetually gloomy, but it’s big: this expansion presents a whole island’s worth of some of the strongest quest content we’ve seen in Fallout 4

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“ This is the kind of nuanced, impactful decision-making that was in short supply in Fallout 4.

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Much in the same way that Fallout 4’s main quest begins as a simple search for a missing child before blooming into a region-shaping battle, Far Harbor lures you to its island in the course of a missing persons’ investigation taken on by the Valentine Detective Agency (which means you must have gotten far enough to meet Nick Valentine, around level 20) and then introduces you to the far more intriguing and mysterious real reason you’re here. Each of the three factions competing for survival and control of the island – the Far Harbor townspeople, the Children of Atom cultists, and the synth refugees – is well developed, with internal conflicts as well as external, and each has interesting characters that are strongly voice acted. Most notably, synth leader DiMA’s calm but intense performance as he raises some big questions about synths who don’t know they’re synths.In the middle of all of the main quest, Far Harbor takes a surprising detour into a virtual environment that makes use of the settlement-building mechanics to turn Fallout 4 into a puzzle game. The series of puzzle rooms are built around just one simple idea: redirecting lasers to hit targets, not unlike what we’ve seen in the Portal games. Mixing that with Minecraft-like block building created some moderately clever challenges – especially in the last two chambers (which are optional) the difficulty is ramped up significantly. There’s also a Lemmings-like component where after you’ve lasered the path clear you must guide virtual bugs to a goal, but that part is so hard to fail I’m not sure why Bethesda bothered with it.We also get a fairly unremarkable companion in the grizzled fisherman Old Longfellow. He’s introduced as a guide who can lead you through the radioactive fog that blankets the island, though it’s never that radioactive, so it’s never more than a minor annoyance. Longfellow isn’t a key player in the story, but adds some color commentary about the island and its history as you explore, and serves as a barometer for the Far Harbor community’s reaction to your choices.Side quests are in full force here, too. While there are a fair amount of straight-up fetch and kill quests to pad it out, there’s some more imaginative stuff, too. The highlight is a whimsical locked-room murder mystery where the voice actors clearly enjoyed hamming it up (just listen to the intonation whenever your character says, “The murder”).This region also introduces a handful of new weapons and armor, including wicked-looking fish hooks and elaborate Children of Atom armor, but the harpoon gun really steals the show. It’s an extremely powerful but slow-firing projectile weapon that can pin severed heads to the wall, delivering as much punch as a rocket launcher. It’s especially useful against the new hostile wildlife: giant fish monsters, salamanders, and lobsters that would each give a deathclaw or yao gai a run for its money.