Game Journal: Fallout 3

written by Blain Newport on Saturday, July 18, 2009

GAME JOURNALS CONTAIN SPOILERS. DEAL WITH IT PINK BOY.

Before I left Tenpenny Tower to check out where the ghouls were holing up, I found a recording in the local doctor's office. It had something to do with an android that had achieved sentience and was on the run from its makers. I didn't really know what to make of it. Maybe it was a reference to a character from Fallout 1 or 2.

When I finally did set out into the wasteland, I did my usual. I explored and scavenged. I killed some mole rats. I found an old store where a scavenger had set up shop. The local color was suitably colorful. Then these three guys in black attacked. The raider with the grenades was worse, but dealing with these guys was no picnic. I was using a hunting rifle and wearing leather. They were using shotguns and frickin' lasers and wearing proper body armor. Many stimpacks were used in that fight, lemme tell ya. And when I finally did kill them, here's what I found.



I'm used to stuff trying to kill me in games. But the fact that mercenaries had been contracted to do so made the opposition feel unnervingly organized, not to mention mysterious, since it didn't say who put out the contract.

You can see in the screen shot that my current net worth was 155 caps and sundry equipment. The contract was for 1000 caps. I wondered if there was any way I could collect the bounty myself, but they wanted my head specifically, so that notion was quickly discarded.

When I finally found the entrance to what I guessed would be the ghouls' territory, I was happy to be far from where the mercs would likely be looking for me.



It's pretty, eh? I suppose you could argue the lighting design is a bit fancy for maintenance tunnels, but it's to be expected. Games like to show off their fancy lighting.

Of course, the tunnels weren't unoccupied.

These aren't the ghouls you're looking for. :P

This is the VATS system. Any time you have enough action points, you can pause the game and make aimed shots. Then you get a slow motion sequence where the shots play out. Using VATS puts more wear on your weapon than normal shooting, but if your skill is decent it's also a lot easier to hit stuff and to fire much faster than you can manually. You also reload super fast. And I've noticed I seem to take less or even no damage if I get attacked during slow motion. You may also remember that by hitting the VATS key I was able to lock on to an enemy I couldn't actually see. My percentage to hit wasn't worth wasting any ammo on, but knowing what I was up against and where it was was very helpful.

VATS was added to make the game feel a bit more like the previous Fallout games, which were turn based, strategic combat. I'm not entirely sure the designers intended it to be quite as powerful and versatile as it ended up being.

Short version: I shot a bunch of ghouls until I came to the ghouls that could shoot back. :P


Don't be fooled. He wasn't concerned for my welfare, just surprised. Masters' plan is to get someone to open the basement access to Tenpenny so he and his two companions can let in a swarm of ferals, then mop up the survivors and claim the tower for themselves. I don't approve of bigotry or greed, but I don't reckon them capital crimes, so I declined to be their inside man.



Besides, the ghouls were well provisioned and in a low profile area, with ferals to keep less persistent adventure seekers / raiders away. Tenpenny's Tower seemed like an invitation to raiders, in my opinion. Masters wasn't happy, but he didn't take it personally. I continued exploring.


Exploring is a lonely business.

I found my way to the basement of Tenpenny Towers. It was impossible to open from the outside, which was appropriate, but meant a huge amount of backtracking to get back to a surface entrance.


It was worth it.

Being underground so long, this was a stunning sight. I decided to keep heading out into the wasteland, and see what I could see.

Next time: madness