21 July, 2009

Game Journal: Fallout 3

written by Blain Newport on Monday, July 20, 2009

GAME JOURNALS CONTAIN SPOILERS. DEAL WITH IT PINK BOY.

First, a quick recap. My dad ran away from Vault 101. The overseer tried to have me killed, so I returned the favor and set off on my own. I went to Megaton, the town built around a bomb. A man in white (Burke) asked me to detonate the bomb and destroy the town, and when I told the Sheriff, murdered him. Unable to pursue vigilante justice, I tried to get to Minefield to conduct research for Moira, but almost got blown up by raider grenades and diverted to Canterbury Commons, where a superhero battle was in progress. I killed the super villain and went to Minefield, where a crazy old sniper tried to kill me. I completed the mission and went exploring in the south where I found bigots, ghouls, a haunted building, and a Vault full of murderous crazies. Oh, and someone hired mercs to kill me.

It's a rich full life.

And despite how jaded this should have made me, this request still got to me.


Bryan lives in Grayditch, which had been taken over by fire breathing giant ants. Yeah. Normal giant ants weren't bad enough. :P It turns out his next door neighbor was a loopy scientist who was trying to reduce the dangerous ants to their previous size and only succeeded in making them more dangerous.

If I was going to go after fire breathing giant ants, it was time to gear up.


I'd have to thank whoever sicced Talon Company on me. I'd killed six mercs so far. And they have much better armor than raiders. They also carry better guns, so I upgraded from my hunting rifle to an assault rifle.

Of course no equipment could have prepared me for The Naughty Nighty. I was exploring the abandoned subway tunnels, killing ants, and I found the recording from some guy named Grady. He said he'd hidden something important because he was being chased and would likely be killed. He gave directions to a stash which contained a safe. Inside the safe was The Naughty Nighty. As soon as I picked it up, some guy named Lug-Nut tried to bum rush me. Unfortunately for him, I was paranoid about giant ants and had mined the entrance to the stash behind me. I can only assume he was one of the people who killed Grady.

According to the note, I was supposed to take the Nighty to some place called Girdershade, but I didn't have time to sort all that out. I had ants to kill.


I killed all the ants except for the queen. The crazy scientist had asked me not to. I'm not sure why I honored his request. In fact, I'm not even sure I should have left the crazy scientist alive. He didn't seem at all remorseful about killing a boy's father, or killing the family across the street. But as dangerous as he was, he was vaguely well intentioned, which made him an angel compared to Burke and Talon Company.

But Bryan Wilks still had no father, and it wasn't time for me to travel to Rivet City, where he said he had relatives waiting. So I did the next best thing and moved in across the street, in what will henceforth be referred to as The Great Migration.

I mentioned I was a pack rat, right?

That's over a ton and a half of gear that needed moving from my safe in Springvale to the Brandice home in Grayditch. I fast traveled a few times, but quickly realized it would take forever.

So what did I do? I conducted an experiment. I used the Take All command to pick up the remaining ton plus of gear and walked. It was incredibly slow going. I almost got spotted by raiders along the way. And when I finally made it back to Grayditch a raider materialized out of nowhere. I immediately jumped into VATS and shot him, but I failed to kill him. Because he was afraid of more shooting or because he was somehow aware that I was carrying a ton of gear, some of it quite lethal, he ran off. Those last ten meters or so, slowly walking towards the door were very stressful. Would he come back? Would he throw grenades I couldn't possibly dodge? Luckily he kept running long enough for me to duck inside. Unlike other games, bad guys can follow you through loading boundaries, but he didn't, and all was well.

The Great Migration


All was better than well. William Brandice (who had been killed by the giant fire ants) had left me a very nice place to call home. There was a fast travel point right out front. There was a bed and three storage containers upstairs. And there were two additional storage containers downstairs. I organized my gear into armor, armaments, and everything else. And even though I knew it likely wouldn't matter to the game logic, I could feel like I was keeping an eye on Bryan Wilks.

Next Week: Science and Industry

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