When Freedom Calls Preston Dialogue Bug (silent treatment/I'm glad you're here) Fix (Nuka World Raider)

[Protnore]

PSA: Cut and copied from Reddit:

Hello! PSA for anyone who like me has experienced the infamous dialogue bug where you talk to Preston in Sanctuary after saving him and he says "I am glad you're here" before giving you the silent treatment.

I have 1000 hours on modded Fallout (About 300 odd mods) and personally choose to do the raider playthrough FIRST because I can get the perks and exp (I like to minmax) and then join the minutemen and become a good character for the rest of my playthrough without any of the hate from Preston. I have restarted my playtrhrough anywhere between 40-80 hours because I ran into this bug that blocked me from joining the minutemen and finishing the first quest and based off of my cursory searching on the internet I was unable to find any solution that helped me.

People mentioned doing specific commands to artificially complete the - didn't help continue the story,

people mentioned deleting x raider stuff from, the raider settlements and taking them back before saving Preston - didn't help.

People mentioned doing all sorts of things like continuing to play the game and coming back later, opening pip boy, saving in specific points, literally waiting for him to respond with the next line for 1 IRL hour - I TRIED EVERYTHING to no avail.

BUT! I read 1 comment someone said regarding what in the game files Preston Garvey is doing at that point, and he is scanning specific settlements' settlers in order to assign you a quest (E.G. Tenpines, Oberland, the basic settlements nearby like that) and I realized something. Out of the previous 4-5 attempts of the game where I did this, I actually kicked the settlers out of those areas to replace them as a raider settlement which BROKE Preston at this point in the quest as he didn't know what to assign, he can't tell you to go to X settlement and help them because they are no longer there! So after literally 20 hours of tireless testing I opted to AVOID claiming those basic settlements as raider settlements and then when it came to the end of "When Freedom Calls" where the infamous silent treatment began, HE STARTED TALKING! Please upvote, comment, share to anyone you know that was ever stuck on this glitch so future people doing the playthrough don't get stuck on the same point and can continue with their experience!

[Glitchfinder]

That does make sense. For context, The First Step (which is given as a follow-up to When Freedom Calls) targets an existing unclaimed settlement that is already populated and does not require a specific quest. That means that at least one of these settlements needs to be unowned and populated by normal settlers:

• County Crossing
• Greentop Nursery
• Nordhagen Beach
• Oberland Station
• Somerville Place
• Tenpines Bluff

Notably, Nuka World also edits both The First Step and When Freedom Calls to have Preston refuse to speak with you at this stage, if you've progressed far enough in the Nuka World questline to be at risk and won't continue until (or unless) you clear out all the raiders from Nuka World. However, there are still other ways to accomplish this, such as just going to each of the settlements I've named, attacking them, and then claiming them for yourself after killing the inhabitants. It's definitely something worth looking into, for players who have rendered The First Step impossible to complete.