Journal entry 8: Getting serious

There are some fairly gritty thoughts and themes explored in this particular entry folks.  It's about... 65% shenanigans and funny animals, 35% darker stuff with the darker stuff occurring in the sections with more than 3 paragraphs.  Fair warning!

I think we're reaching the end of this adventure.  As things currently stand, I'm at about 75% map exploration and I've been documenting everything interesting that I've found.  It's been fun though!  And maybe when this is all over I can play the actual main quest and get on with saving the world instead of dealing with trifling personal problems in return for pistols with funny names.

Not that it matters.  The world is already in enough trouble as is and I find it hard to imagine that by trying to save the world, I won't kill many, many more people than I actual save by trying to purify DC's water.  Almost everyone I meet has to die.  Sometimes they don't deserve it but more often than not they do.  If I simply went and colonised an empty vault, chances are I'd actually be doing more good than...

No.  No, I'm an adventurer.  Collateral damage is a justifiable side effect.

I looked through my inventory and noticed the option to repair a grenade with another grenade.  There are two sounds effects I experience when fixing things.  A little tinking noise as if something is being hit with a hammer or a noise of duct tape being pulled off a roll.

So did I hammer a new pin into this grenade or did I tape two grenades together?

I have a super high repair skill now but only the bare minimum of explosives.  Maybe Sir Vaulter thought that this is how grenades work.

I shot you in the face.  What happened to your legs?  If Sir Vaulter went paintballing, would this kind of thing happen?  I'm sure that Bloody Mess causes this kind of thing to happen when I shoot a BB gun.  I shouldn't be allowed to use firearms any more.

HEY YOU GUUUUUUYS

I found a crashed helicopter.

I turned through 360 degrees and it had vanished.

I can only conclude that Team America vehicles are in some way soluble.

Well, this looks like a friendly place!  Happy little cartoon character, what looks like a tourist attraction... I'm sure Sir Vaulter will greatly appreciate the chance to soak up a little pre-war culture.  We may even learn something.

This place was actually really pretty.  Considering the average life of a fairy light bulb, I'm surprised any of them are lit.  It's not like they're still in production.

I still don't get this sign.  Sure, I understand that "Mungo" is a derogatory term for "adult", but is Mungo Land beneath the tunnel?  All the adults get sent to a town near Megaton and the kids know that.  What are they even trying to say, here?

Oh.  You're threatening to blow my head off.

There's so much wrong with that statement.  The kid's gun is as big as he is, for one.  If he even tried to fire it, he'd be blown off his feet.  Since he's a kid, I can't really kill him but heaven knows I'd like to try.

I suppose I could bend him over Sir Vaulter's knee and give him a spanking he'll never forget with Fisto.

These kids get sent away when they get too old.  It's like Never-Never Land but without the immortal flying goblin.  I took him to safety and he wore his hat the whole time.  I hope he didn't introduce himself as Sticky to the residents of Big Town.  That's not how you make friends unless you're in a very specific kind of community.

Sir Vaulter does not get along well with children.

I really wanted to kill half of the children I found here.  I can kill all of my other problems, why should they be different?  You give them special treatment, they'll come to demand it, to expect it.  A few public examples later, they'll be paying me a bit more respect.

I guess they'll all be exiled into a world where they're at constant threat of being dragged off by slavers, giant green men or bandits.

I feel better now.

A group of kids decided to hold a meeting on the mayor's face.  I've never been so interested in a situation before but so, so unwilling to question any of the participants.

I have a dream.  A dream of a world where Biwwy narrates everything.  Every line of text, every description of every item, Biwwy will provide them all.

Waw.  Waw nevew changes.

I have a very strict "no follower" policy because I fear they'll get in my way then blame he for shooting them in their stupid fat heads but I'd recruit Biwwy immediately.

Sticky decided to be a big man.  This was a bad idea but it shut him up for a while.  It wasn't a duel so much as an impotent slap fight.  I was going to watch for a while but eh, neither of them were carrying anything good and I wasn't going to let Sticky steal my exp.

Oh boy, it's one of those quests.

I mean I was plunged into an uncaring world after a life of isolation carrying nothing more than a handgun and a jumpsuit, my dad just died of self-inflicted radiation poisoning in front of me because he wanted to be a martyr, I've had to resolve the constant torture of a small town at the hands of a psychotic little girl/brilliant scientist, I've been irradiated, shot, burned, exploded, poisoned, threatened and hunted by an entire team of mercenaries with never a moment to feel truly safe.

But sure.  No, you people have problems too.  I'm really sympathetic.  Please tell me in depth about how attempts are made on your lives every few days.  You're clearly expecting me to be a part of the problem or a part of the solution.  Let's have a lovely time working out which, because even when I do the right thing, lots of people tend to get hurt very badly indeed.

He's genuinely asking if I plan to rape him in the middle of a heavily populated area?

That's really unpleasant.  Is that happening routinely or is he just overacting in a really insensitive way?  I'm not sure if I appreciate that he thinks I'd even try that.  I've done some pretty lousy things in the name of quests and heroism but there really are limits.

Christ.

Sir Vaulter wishes you'd stop whining about trifling injuries.  It's clearly nothing.  You know what we call seven bullet holes in Megton?  "Tuesday".

This happy little fella appeared in the middle of a populated settlement and stared me down without moving.  Nobody would talk to me while he was around, they were all cowering from it even though it wasn't achieving anything.  Oh well.  It's probably not intelligent and it's full of exp which means that the only criteria it doesn't fulfil for me being absolutely required to kill it is that it hasn't sassed me.

Nice lady.  Very grateful.  If I'm not going to get amazing things for finishing a quest, a really heartfelt "thank you" goes a very long way.  Really, that's absolutely fine by me, no sarcasm at all.

Sure, these people did give me a permanent luck upgrade and a bucket of exp but I really felt good about training them all to use guns, even if it meant promoting a culture of violence in an already violent wasteland.

Speaking of luck, I was made aware of a place where I could obtain a luck upgrade by getting some sunglasses.  Sounded like a good idea so I went ahead and found the shop, stole them and put them on.

The instant I stepped outside of the shop, three talon company mercs and two radscorpions who weren't in the area before appeared out of nowhere immediately outside the door and all opened fire simultaneously.

The instant I killed those guys, a yaoi guai leapt out of nowhere and bit my head.

I really have my doubts about these lucky shades.

I entered the blue hallucination vault.  Normally I'm a little iffy about hallucinations in games because it usually translates as "wacky interface level!" but I was willing to give this one a chance.  Some of the mental effect writing in this game has been very effective.

Insane survivor.  I'm really wondering how long these guys have been living down here.  Are the machines in here still running?  Where's the food coming from?  If they're really insane, if they all believe that they're in a utopia, do they have enough about them to be able to feed themselves?  Is it a kindness to come into a vault and brutally slaughter dozens of people with a chemically induced mental illness?

This was a really dark session.  I don't usually like killing people who don't even know why they're fighting me.  Even if they're perfectly capable of hurting me, it doesn't feel right.

That said, the notes from myself in the midst of the hallucinations were actually really cool.

There's just something really clever about this.  It also goes some way to proving that Sir Vaulter's internal monologue is fairly rational.  Probably more rational than my own, really.

Yeah, you know it baby.

Well.  I've never seen a single feature in a video game which was less appealing than this.  Sure, I stepped on it, what was I supposed to do?  I felt apprehensive and that means that I didn't fall for the trap, I merely chose to participate in a situation which was unlikely to play out to my personal advantage.

You're glazing rat meat with glue?  Well, I eat sausages so I suppose I can't entirely pass judgement but I'm rather amazed that you lived for long enough to be able to write up this journal.  Industrial grade adhesive doesn't usually agree with your tummy but maybe all such substances in the future have to be made edible.  If sleeping pills have to warn you about making you drowsy now, maybe the nuisance lawsuit culture got so bad in the future that this kind of thing is necessary.

The mind boggles at the possibilities.

As a rule of thumb, the moment you start wielding a high explosive yield weapon indoors, nobody wants to be your friend.  Just think about it for a second buddy, I'm only trying to help.  Saving you from yourself, really.

Gosh, desperate times and all that but really, people are drinking milk from these things?  They look more irradiated than anything else in the world, even more so than the giant men literally made by radiation.

Your last few raiding parties failed, I know you realise that as well as I do guys, but these guys are certainly going to get the job done.  That's rational, sure.

I found a dungeon entirely filled with devil bears.  I'd have more pictures of it but there's only so many times you can make frenzied bear preacher jokes or frenzied bear Sloth jokes and that's basically all you're going to get if I take pictures inside of a dungeon where every enemy is programmed to do that all the time.

There was something really wrong with this woman's face.  I wasn't able to get a good picture before she died for reasons that I'm entirely not responsible for (though getting in Sir Vaulter's way is the leading cause of wasteland suicide), but she looked a little unpleasantly like the (BODY HORROR WARNING, FOLKS!) Lady in the Radiator.

Seriously, Eraserhead.  Watch it.

Oh boy, I've been warned about these!  Really, really big super mutants!

I have a dart gun.  He's a melee only monster.

Shouldn't have brought a knife to a fun fight, chunky.

It's time for a fresh perspective on an old feature, "what the fuck, VATS?".  I found that if an enemy ducks into cover while I'm VATS'ing them in the face, I get stuck in VATS forever and am completely unwilling to move.  This gave me a lot of time to ponder the situation.  I noticed that it's pretty clear that Sir Vaulter is aiming down his gun's sights.  This means that he's not looking at his pip boy for advice on where to aim.  This means that the pip boy is directly interfacing with his brain, it absolutely has to be, otherwise it wouldn't affect my HUD at all.

It's clear to me that I've been a cyborg for far longer than I've had the relevant perk.

I got a nuclear warhead launcher.  Somehow, I wasn't too excited.  I can already turn people into gravy without the use of nuclear weapons, it's not like this is going to improve any situation I get into.  If anything, I'm just going to be irresponsible with it once or twice for the purposes of taking a screenshot, lose interest and then store it in my gun cabinet.

Meta!

I think if you install a pool table in your bad guy bar, you shouldn't put one end of it such that it's right up against a chasm.  That's going to make certain shots difficult.

A stripper pole surrounded by milk bottles.  Parties sure do get crazy around these parts, huh?  Real crazy.  I guess it cuts down on the problems of people getting drunk and grabby.  But then, these are raiders.  I'm not sure that you could expect them to behave themselves even if they were sober.

I really think I need to take a shower after writing this one.

Real classy.  Was this place decorated by 13 year olds?

VATS allows you to target people that are currently shooting you in the face with a literal flamethrower.  These is no explaining anything that's going on right here and the thought of even attempting to rationalise anything that's happening in this picture is actually getting me a little upset.  The knowledge that Sir Vaulter's face was entirely impassive throughout this experience is really funny to me, though.  I love that kind of thing dearly.

This man owned a shop.  He also was a raider.  This meant there was no karma loss for murdering him.  He also had a named, special and highly collectable shotgun.  I specialise in small guns, much like shotguns.

Even somebody riding a tricycle through the tunnels of the London Underground would have a longer life expectancy.

I realised that if you kill a person and gain access to their stash, it contains their entire inventory.  I sold all my useless items to this guy before realising that I could have just taken the caps from his safe.  I was then forced to take all my useless junk back from the safe because you don't let that stuff go to waste.  There are starving kids in the wastes that'd be thankful for a dirty bottle of vodka.

Oh dear, looks like a quirky personality is on the horizon!

The lady in this house was addicted to coke.  Soda, not substance.  Since she paid well for more supply, I suppose I'm an enabler and a dealer now.  You'd think that'd incur a karma loss.  You'd be wrong.

Since the nuka cola quantum is irradiated and since even regular cola, cola which isn't specially irradiated, is still pretty radioactive, I'm wondering if it wouldn't have been healthier to just get her hooked on meth instead.  There aren't any toothbrushes in the wasteland so it'll probably do roughly comparable damage to her teeth.

A carefully stacked display of bottles!  I... I can't resist it.  I've remained too strong for too long.  I will no longer be silenced.  It's time to fulfil my destiny.

FUS

RO

Shotgun...

IT'S JUST NOT THE SAME.

The Dunwich Building.  Alright, so here's an unpopular opinion.  I'm just not that into injecting Lovecraft into other settings.

I like Lovecraft.  We need to get that straight right now, I like his work and I like his settings.  I find him difficult to read because the language is a little archaic and also because my copy of the Necronomicon is actually provably cursed and therefore actually reading it is a really stupid idea, but the whole elder god thing is very interesting.  I'm also okay with people writing parodies of Lovecraft, writing filk of Lovecraft and writing personal explorations of the whole mythos.  That's all fine and dandy.  The problem I have is when you take a setting which has nothing to do with Lovecraft and inject some of his work to create a creepy atmosphere.  If you're doing it for referential purposes, that's fine by me.  It's when you take an otherwise normal setting and write something in the same sort of style as a way to add instant horror that it gets up my nose a bit.

The whole purpose of this area was to tell the story of a guy looking for his friend in an office building.  Over time, he gradually loses his mind, turning to a ghoul.  That's fine and all good in universe.  The building belonged to a mining/drilling equipment company called Dunwich.  I'm cool with that, too, it's a little nod to a series and if the guy had lost his mind like all the other ghouls, through radiation poisoning, loss of self and all the rest of it, that'd be alright.  It's also fine that the ghouls were created after the company dug a little too deep under their premises and found a source of strong radiation.

What bothers me is the throwaway reference to Alhazred, the fact that the source of the radiation was a great big spire in the basement covered in skulls and that everyone thinks the Dunwich building is creepy despite the fact that people generally don't find the other buildings in the world creepy even when they're filled with crazed humans, scorpions or worse.

Also, the hallucination mechanic comes out to play again,

I do realise that it's fun to experience a Lovecraft-esque story from the inside.  I'm all for interactive storytelling and finding new ways to explore the medium of storytelling in general.  I'm a roleplayer, I like to take part in the telling and I know that with a good level of immersion or a compelling narrative, you can craft a really effective emotional experience, it's just that this really isn't for me.

If you disagree, good on you, that's entirely your opinion and I know I don't always treat these things with the respect they deserve.

But just to lighten the mood, I got the ninja perk and started stalking the ghouls with a sword that's on fire.  Not only does is constantly emit the sound of a small gas fire, it's very, very bright.  Still stealthy though.

I also found a pair of firm buttocks lying around.  It's not really relevant to much, I was just having a little bit of a hard time with taking the building seriously and had apparently gone looking for nudity.  Not that I'm a necrophile or anything.  I need to be clear about that one.

Ug-Qualtoth and lots of "unintelligible".  No.  No, we need to stop this.  Unless you're going to let me fight a deep old one, we really need to stop this right now.  If you're willing to let me shoot up an elder thing, I'll turn around on the situation.

But no!  It cannot be true!  I could fly if I wanted to!  Like a bird in the sky, I believe I can fly, I can fly!

Hey, look at that!  A unique yao guai caption!

Your grafitti convinces me entirely of the strength of your convictions and the power of your message.  I'm intimidated.

OH, THIS GUY.

I realise that at times, I can exhibit signs of dubious intelligence.  I'm, by my own admission, a little lacking in common sense.  Having said that, I've got a degree in computing and a job in the tech sector so I'd like to think that I'm at least of average intelligence, maybe slightly more if you take the entire population into account.  I don't have a high opinion of myself but I don't have an enormously low one, either.

Because of that, a condescending attitude or direct, baseless insults to my intelligence if not made in jest get entirely up my nose.  This chap doesn't just tick those particular boxes, he personifies them.

So the quest, the entire reason I was even talking to this sack of crap in the first place, was to investigate a group of ghouls who were trying to seek shelter in the tower block apartments of Tenpenny Towers, an exclusive, heavily defended community made up entirely of people who were deemed to be socially or economically worthy of a privileged life.  Many of them were condescending in a manner suggesting that they couldn't be bothered to deal with my lack of class right now but many were also willing to talk to me and seriously consider that the ghouls had a bad situation to deal with and were willing to pay their way.

On speaking to Alistair Tenpenny, he seemed like a fairly jovial chap.  Entirely uncaring about the plight of the common man, admittedly.

Roy Phillips came across as a complete sociopath.  Even when I offered to help him with his problem, he began to rant that I couldn't possibly sympathise with his situation, that he wanted to murder all the residents of the tower and that I really couldn't be expected to understand his situation.  He also, despite being very angry at being discriminated against because of his physical deformities, expressed no anger or remorse at me having killed many other feral ghouls on my way here, regarding them as animals.  There was no option to tell him that maybe he was being denied entry because he was clearly becoming increasingly violent and irrational like many ghouls do before they turn feral.

So my choices here are to assist a wealthy, quite probably evil playboy or to assist a murderous, unreasonable, confrontational, hypocritical bigot.

Helping Roy, even though he inevitably kills the entire tower even if you arrange for a peaceful compromise, is the positive karma option.

I've already discussed how I don't think karma makes sense but the other day I read a decent idea.  It's not karma at all.  It's not a measure of good or evil.  Karma makes more sense if you consider it a measure of public perception.  So if I help the oppressed fight against "the man" and gain an equal footing in society, it doesn't matter that their leader really wants to murder everybody who doesn't look like he does because he feels justified after being denied entry to the yacht club.

Three Dog apparently tells you off publically for helping Tenpenny.  At this point, just this once, I don't care about doing the right thing.  I think it's better if the Roy problem goes away before maybe 15 innocent people get hurt.  Sure, 5 or so innocent people living in squalour will get hurt very badly, but I'm not about to leave the quest unfinished.  I'm not an animal.


In conclusion, lots of serious business occurred during this series of sessions.  Not pictured is lots of being irresponsible with firearms and poking people with the barrel of my gun or waving a flaming sword in front of their eyes to see how realistic the sneak mechanic is.

Thought for the day:

What determines if you die of radiation poisoning or become a ghoul?  Is it down to the concentration of your exposure or is it another one of those FEV answers?  FEV is very much becoming the "a wizard did it" of the Fallout series from my own point of view.  Not that I'm upset about that, it's just that the idea of weaponising it to turn bears into horrible abominations of nature is becoming increasingly attractive.  Centaur Yao Guai.  Just imagine.