11 July, 2009

Game Journal: Fallout 3

written by Blain Newport on Sunday, July 5, 2009

GAME JOURNALS CONTAIN SPOILERS. DEAL WITH IT PINK BOY.

After some harrowing encounters with grenade using raiders, I headed to Canterbury Commons. Upon arriving, I was greeted with the following scene.



A couple of costumed clowns were playing super hero in the street. The crazy ant lady said "humanity is doomed". The crazy bucket head said "not while I'm here to stop you". Then she sent her ants across the street to get fried by his robots' lasers. Then both of them ran off. I followed her to her lair. I came back and still had time to follow his slow ass robots to his. Then I went in to town and told the mayor I'd be happy to kill the lot when he asked me. Really he just wanted me to stop them from fighting in town, but I take my responsibilities seriously.

Actually, I talked to everyone in town and found out that the crazy ant lady was probably a girl orphaned when her parents were killed by giant ants. I even got a name. So I figured I'd mosey down into her lair, kill a few ants like I did in the elementary school basement, and bring her to her senses. You know what I wasn't expecting?


This.

She had some kind of techno fortress bunker. With landmines! On the plus side, I now know I can disarm landmines, so going out to Minefield is a bit less crazy than it used to be. On the minus side, she had a shotgun tripwire trap I simply had to avoid because I don't have enough skill to disarm it (and take the awesome looking drum loading shotgun). Finally I hit the dead end pictured above. Or at least I thought it was a dead end until I noticed that switch in the wall. Yep. Secret sub-lair. Classic. And when I found her personal chamber (after killing half a dozen or so ants), it was equally classic (if a little ghetto).



Seriously, zoom in on that. It's a wooden chair with a bunch of cinder blocks around it. Okay, by Fallout 3 standards, it's a pretty nice wooden chair, but still. So I talked to her for a bit. I used her real name. Apparently my speech skill is in dire need of improvement because I had 9% chance of bringing her around. You can guess how it went.



Yep. Pretty much like that. She also came at me with a nasty looking chainsaw knife. As I saw her and her horde stumbling over each other in the narrow corridor to get to me, I had a good idea. Chunky Salsa. I hucked a grenade at her. It killed her outright, blowing her left leg off at the knee, leaving only a few dead and wounded minions which I quickly mopped up.



What? I had to at least try it on. I fought my way to the crazy bucket head. He said if I gave him the ant lady's armor as proof, he'd knock it off. I kind of wanted it for myself. It was solid, if silly looking, armor. But I figured I'd be a nice guy and let him have it. I got negative karma for it. What the @(#&!? How is giving this guy some armor an evil act? And even if it turns out to be a problem down the road, how the #*%* was I supposed to know?

The future (by which I mean the karma system in this game) sucks.

Maybe Minefield will be mercifully devoid of life. A meticulous crawl through a field of landmines will be like an island vacation after dealing with the loonies and scum in the Vault, Megaton, and Canterbury.

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