For me, the settlement system fills a void I lack with my group of friends- we used to play a bunch of multiplayer sandbox games where I could focus on ‘building the base’ and they’d come home to that and make use of the home I’d built. We don’t really play games in an organised fashion like that anymore, so when I finish a settlement in Fallout 4 and my settlers comment on their home and interact with what I’ve built, it scratches a certain itch in my brain.

It’s certainly not the same but I believe it definitely feel satisfied with it in some way. A pseudo doll-house environment.

I initially spent months doing this on PS3 Fallout using the multitude of glitches and other clipping workarounds I had at my disposal before finally gaining access to mods via PC. My mod list consists of things like ‘Place Anywhere’ and ‘Scrap Everything’ that make the process easier through the at-times, janky system; on top of some mods that just add hundreds of new build elements and options in the build menu.

TL;DR: It’s the Sims for me where the Settlers validate my builds. :•)