Fallout 4’s Far Harbor DLC is spelled incorrectly, it should be Harbour but it is an add-on for the game that takes the player to a completely new area with new factions and a new story.

The story starts with a radio signal from the Valentines Detective Agency telling you to report in. Then you get sent out to someone’s house where they tell you that their daughter is missing and it’s your job to investigate, you then get on a boat and go to Far Harbor (which was similar to how Fallout 3’s Point Lookout DLC started). The story went on to introduce three factions: Far Harbor who were a collection of fearful people fighting for survival, Synths of Arcadia who wanted the freedom to be left alone and The Children of Atom who are a zealous religious group that the players would have met in the main game as radiation wielding maniacs. It is also possible to report back to the factions from the main game.

An interesting question is raised in this DLC of whether the player character is a Synth or a Human because the player knows nothing of life before the game starts of before waking from cryo-containment in the vault which adds a new spin on the artificial intelligence slaves or people argument from the main game.

Fairly early on you meet some of the new monsters on the island in a fast paced, dramatic start made more interesting by gloomy weather conditions. The monsters are some of the more dangerous enemies in the DLC and their power in combat makes it clear why the islanders fear the fog that they dwell in. I went to Far Harbor at level 31 and struggled with the monsters but the raiders that I fought (known as Trappers) were as challenging as the main game people.

There was one mission which had you drink something and follow someone in a drugged-like state which was very similar to something that happened in Fallout 3’s Point lookout DLC.

Dima (leader of Synths of Arcadia) and the ideas surrounding him were very well thought out and well presented. Is using artificial intelligence equal to slavery? Is murdering someone fine if it’s for the right reasons? Do we really know who we are or even what motivates us? He is a very well made character that sees the possibility of equality even when his friends refuse to trust anybody.

The main game had a lot of its missions as shooting things with little understanding of why but Far Harbor introduced a few new types of missions like a cube construction puzzle game about getting creatures to the finish while robots shoot at them, this was a thought based mission which required more than guns and bullets providing a refreshing change in the game (If the developers turned this into a full game with a hundred puzzles I’d buy it for the right price). There was an actual murder investigation to be done and other bits of fun that made up for some of the things the main game lacked. You could also be totally evil and set the monsters on the town of Far Harbor and watch the people get torn to shreds, this is good because it gave proper options to the game and not everything felt the same.

Dialogue in the main game changed at one point, referencing the fact that you’d met The Children of Atom near Far Harbor while talking to The Children of Atom in the Glowing Sea. This was a small detail but absolutely wonderful that it was included. If you keep Nick Valentine with you while on Far Harbor you can get some interesting new dialogue out of him too. If you don’t want Nick then you could swap him for the new companion Old Longfellow that this DLC added to the game.

The construction mode that was a bit invasive in the main game hardly made an appearance on Far Harbor having few totally optional instances of when it could be used. A few items were added to the construction mode though so it wasn’t totally forgotten about.

New weapons were also added with this DLC, the first one that I found was the Radium Rifle which I found before I’d even started Far Harbor. This was good because if I wanted my character not to go there for whatever reason I could still obtain the weapons if I was lucky enough to find them.

Far Harbor makes up for a lot of the base game’s faults and adds more things in. The only downside to this DLC was that I sometimes forgot it was Far Harbor because it felt so much like Point Lookout. I prefer it when they do something original but if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

 

The art that I’m using as the featured image was found on the marketplace section of the Xbox website. It shows a boat on the rough seas going towards a settlement on foggy land. The fog, the sea and the settlement are all important in this DLC so the picture is actually showing a lot. Good picture in my opinion.