Preston stops following me after retaking the castle

I've just completed the mission to retake the castle for the Minutemen. Preston was my follower before the mission, then left when it started to go to the meeting point.

After completing the mission he returned to Sanctuary and I can no longer speak to him, does anyone know if this is a bug, or there are subsequent quests I must complete to get him to follow me again?

Edit

I've since finished the old guns quest and I spoke to him to collect the reward but couldn't bring up any extra dialog with him.

fallout-4

Best Answer

There's a workaround in the wiki: (WARNING: Wiki is full of spoilers; I've copied the section below and censored spoilers)

Bugs

There is a known bug where after the quest to reclaim the Castle it becomes impossible to get him as a companion. Wait until dealing with [SPOILER] and visit the [Brotherhood of Steel] before completing the quest, so this bug does not affect the Sole Survivor.

This can be fixed on PC by opening the console, selecting Preston Garvey and inputting: removefac 00075d56

I've read somewhere that all this faction code does is block companion capabilities, which makes little sense as the last line of dialogue for him is that he'll always have my back.

Anyway, you have two options (unless you play on PS4/Xbox One, in which case #1 is your only option):

If possible, reload a save right before taking the castle and continue with the main quest, until you "clear" the location Fort Hagen; or
Open the console, click Preston and type the command.

I used the console command and I didn't see any side-effects, even a little further in the main quest. I still highly recommend doing a full save (manual one, not auto/quick) before doing this. You can also restart the game afterwards to ensure the game state is stable. (Though that's really not needed and mostly voodoo on my part)

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How do you get Preston to follow you?

You can actually finish Nuka World all the way through Power Play, finishing the NW main quest line, and then do the Freedom Museum, and sending Preston to Sanctuary. Once he gets there, he won't be hostile, but will talk to you, and you can then do Open Season to get him to trust you.

How do I get Preston to stop giving quests?

After defeating the queen and clearing out the Fort, Preston Garvey may sit on the wall doing nothing with no speech options. Preston may also walk all the way back to Sanctuary and will continuously say "We need to focus on taking the Castle back". This may be solved by sitting on the chair and wait for 24 hours.

Fallout 4: What happens if you have already cleared The Castle before Preston asks you to?

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