In post 24, Ythan wrote:Plasma is cooler than lasers there I said it.
I will agree that the green bolts are a lot more satisfying to see flying towards enemies than the piddly lights most laser weapons have. The melting effect is also rather more visceral than when lasers turn enemies to dust, although both are a bit annoying when it comes to looting. Still, not as bad as in the first two games, where certain death animations meant that the inventory would just drop to the ground and you had to pick each item up individually, which was difficult even at the highest brightness levels and meant that some useful item might be hiding behind an utterly useless one that was too heavy and made you unable to pick other items, so you had to move a bit, drop it, and go back to sifting through the loot. Actually, one time, I somehow managed to pick up an entire library shelf in Fallout 1. No idea how it happened, but then I just went to a bedroom and set it down right on the bed. It was weird, especially in isometric.
Mechanically, most plasma weapons in New Vegas shoot very slow projectiles and that can be annoying, but there is one rifle we will get to that shoots plasma shots twice as fast as regular plasma rifles, all but eliminating this problem. Unfortunately for plasma fans, there is an even better rifle that is technically laser, which I will end up using more, because it's just so much better (with only three areas in which it's worse than said plasma rifle, but none of them will matter by then).
At this point in the story, Kelsey is using a silenced pistol (10mm or .22) for stealth kills, the silenced and scoped varmint rifle for stealth kills at a great distance, the incinerator for large groups, or enemies that are hard to properly aim at, so explosive fireballs will have to do, the broad machete for melee stuff (rarely needed, but sometimes a scorpion glitches into the ground and can't be shot), and the service rifle or hyperbreeder pistol for other situations. The only ones of these we will keep using until the end are the silenced pistols. The rest will get replaced by more powerful stuff.
Oh, god. That's hard to answer. They're both so great to listen to and they both play Big Iron, which is basically about 75% of what determines if a station is good. I guess Mr. New Vegas has the edge because 1) he's available throughout the wasteland, 2) he has a lot more fun stuff to say, and 3) he doesn't stop halfway through the game. :þ
The trek along the 95 was mostly uneventful, with only a small band of raiders, a few giant ants, and an itinerant man with a guitar making camp by a billboard. He explained that he was looking for his father who had abandoned their family, to either talk to him or punch him (he seemed uncertain on which he would prefer). Eventually, Kelsey made it to the intersection with the 93, where about half a dozen people seemed to have settled at least semi-permanently. A father and daughter had determined that, with the I-15 being closed, there would be a lot more people coming from and going to the NCR along the 95. With the 93 going east to Hoover dam, this area was ideally situated for getting all the significant traffic of New Vegas, so they set up a kitchen, bar, and shop, calling this the 188 Trading Post, indicating that at least addition was not lost when the nukes fell. An NCR arms merchant and a trader for the Gun Runners company also saw the opportunities in this area and came along as well. A child with a strange metal and leather head ornament was sitting near a strange collection of junk, and a young pretty woman in a brown robe was having a meal near the bar. After trading more junk for useful stuff, Kelsey had a quick chat with the child, who seemed to believe he could hear other peoples' thoughts when he took off his headgear. He said that his junk collection contained the thoughts of people who made the items, so he collected them to hear the thoughts they had when creating the items. This didn't make sense to Kelsey, since some of the items were clearly of pre-war construction and made in automated factories, without a single human even touching them (let alone making them) before they were brought to a store to sell. This notion of "thought" going into the creation of goods was in contrast to the realities of capitalism and automation. The child offered to sell Kelsey some thoughts about her, or the surrounding area, or "everywhere", by taking off his headgear (or "medicine" as he called it), but it sounded too much like fortune telling, so she politely declined and went back to the bar area.
She thought that some privacy might be called for, so she told Boone they would part ways. He said he would be in Novac and left, and Kelsey turned her attention to the pretty lady in the robe. She had a great sense of humour and greeted Kelsey with "No offense, but you look like you've traveled a long way down some bad roads. Where'd you come from?". Hearing the reply "The grave", she managed to suppress her shock and continued with "Huh. Well, in that case I take it back. You look pretty good, given the circumstances. Well, welcome, then. I'm Veronica. I live in a hole in the ground". The hole turned out to be a bunker, which she said she left to buy some supplies for her family. She told Kelsey that she had a run-in with the Brotherhood of Steel and asked her if she knew anything about them. Kelsey mentioned their obsession with advanced technology, given that this was really their defining flaw, to which Veronica said she couldn't afford anything like that. They had a pleasant chat and then Veronica asked where Kelsey was headed. "Going to see an old friend" she responded darkly, to which Veronica said "This is quite a journey you're going on, then. Must be an interesting relationship to have brought you all this way." and asked to come along. When Kelsey questioned her about her reasons, Veronica said she wanted to see more of the wasteland and if she could learn more about how the different groups survive in it. Kelsey, delighted to have a pretty face and a sharp wit along, immediately agreed, to Veronica's delight. Veronica then revealed that she had been a little dishonest earlier and that she was, in fact, a member of the Brotherhood of Steel. Kelsey was slightly annoyed at the lack of forthrightness but knew that the Brotherhood didn't have many friends in the wasteland, so she could understand why Veronica might not want to advertise her allegiances. They spent some more time talking about Veronica, her old mentor and previous Elder of the local Brotherhood chapter (a man named Father Elijah), her ex-girlfriend who had left the Brotherhood (a woman named Christine Royce), her hopes and aspirations (to wear a pretty dress), and her immediate goals in the wasteland (to explore it and learn more). She said she was good at punching and could help take devices apart and put them together.
With the meal and chat completed, Kelsey and Veronica collected their stuff and started walking along the 95 due east to Boulder City, following Benny's tracks, with ED-E beeping happily along. The walk was uneventful until they got to the ruins of Boulder City, marked with a memorial stone. It listed over a hundred names of NCR troopers who had died in the first battle with the Legion at Hoover Dam. Kelsey spotted an NCR officer nearby and approached him, but he informed her that they had an active stand-off with some Great Khans who had taken two NCR soldiers hostage and were holding them in a couple of buildings in the south part of the town. Kelsey knew she had caught up with her attackers and offered to help negotiate the release in return for letting the Khans leave. The lieutenant in charge had heard of Kelsey and decided to trust her, so she was allowed in. She made her way to the Khan hideout and went in. Thankfully, the Khans had enough presence of mind to realise she wasn't acting hostile, so they let her through without trouble. Their leader, Jessup, was flabbergasted that someone could survive getting shot through the head twice. Given the Khans' respect for strength and toughness, perhaps this helped calm him down enough to ask Kelsey what her intentions and those of the NCR were. Kelsey said that if he released the hostages, she would smooth things over with the NCR and the Khans could walk out in peace. The alternative was dying either to NCR bullets or starvation, so he agreed. Unfortunately, the NCR officer in charge had received orders to go in, guns blazing and hope that the hostages would survive. Given the stupidity of this plan, and the fact that she had already secured an agreement that included the release of the hostages, she berated him for even considering following this order. The officer saw that Kelsey was right and said he'd let the Khans go. With the stand-off ended, Kelsey went back to Jessup, to tell him the good news. He thanked her and also gave some more information on Benny. He had betrayed the Khans, refusing to pay what he promised them, and abandoned them to return to New Vegas. Apparently, he was the manager of one of the casinos, called The Tops. He also gave her Benny's cigarette lighter, and asked her to shove it up his ass when she found him, before leading the Khans on their long walk back to the rest of their tribe.
The kid with the headgear is called the Forecaster and his headgear is a psychic nullifier (a useful item in the last part of the first Fallout game). The thoughts he sells are basically subtly hinting at the plot. While I decided not to include them above, I will mention one part. If you ask him to think about "Here", he says some cryptic nonsense about the trading post and then "With regret comes a girl... smiling sad, brown robe, name Veronica, half here. Wraps her and her heart up like a pack, in the pack, a key, some say. Forecast: Cloudy, with a chance of friendship".
The NCR-Khan stand-off at Boulder City can be completed in a few different ways. You can go in guns blazing and killing all the Khans, you can sneak in and free the hostages, so the NCR troops start killing the Khans, you can bribe the NCR to let the Khans go, you can go in and kill the NCR troops instead so the Khans can go, or you can do as Kelsey did, and use speech to get everyone to collectively calm themselves and leave. This last option gives a large reputation boost with both the NCR and the Khans. Obsidian's philosophy on roleplaying is that there should be as many different solutions to problems that one would reasonably consider as possible, and this mentality shows up in a lot of New Vegas quests. Rather than the usual choices of "be the good guy" and "be the bad guy", you are instead asked to decide what course of action makes sense to you and what your character can actually pull off, given the development of their skills. Sure, there's a karma mechanic, but it's almost an afterthought, or if you prefer a holdover from the previous games.
And now let's talk about Veronica Santangelo, the naive young girl from California with stars in her eyes and a pneumatic gauntlet on her hand, as she describes herself. She's great. She's great at punching, she has a great sense of humour, she punches things dead, she wants a dress, she gleefully punches every enemy in sight, she pines for her lost love, she enjoys punching things, she misses her mentor and how he taught her things other than punching, she questions authority and wants to change the Brotherhood, she punches anything that would cause you harm, she wants the Brotherhood to have more compassion for the rest of humanity, she's almost always upbeat (particularly when punching things), and she loves running up to enemies and punching them really hard. Usually they die in one punch, especially once you get her a better gauntlet to punch with. Also, she's one of only two companions who understands sneaking and keeps quiet when you crouch, the other one being Boone. Even ED-E beeps when you crouch and all the other humanoid companions have quips for when you sneak. One would expect at least [redacted] to keep quiet when sneaking, but nope. Although that's more understandable what with the [redacted] and [redacted]. Anyway, back to Veronica, the companion perk she gives us is probably the most useless one in the base game. Basically, she can act as a workbench, allowing you to craft items as you would at one of those. This is doubly unnecessary because if you have the Lonesome Road DLC, ED-E can act as both a workbench and a reloading bench (allowing you to break down and craft ammunition, as well). This itself is unnecessary (as is Veronica's perk), because the wasteland is full of workbenches and reloading benches that are very easily usable and don't require you to go through a radial menu to click for dialogue, then pick the dialogue option to get to the workbench menu every time. And since you exit the workbench menu whenever you craft an item, if you want to do more than one thing at a bench, you might as well just find a physical bench which, again, are everywhere. Honestly, it was an interesting notion, but it didn't really help in KotOR II, and it doesn't really help here. But that's OK, because we're taking Veronica along, not for her item crafting, but for her funny comments and her punching. As I mentioned, you can only have one humanoid companion with you at a time (excluding glitches), which is why I sent Boone back to Novac. We'll pick him up again, when we're about to do some stuff that I want him along for. In general, I'll be using other companions only when doing their own sidequests. For the endgame, I'll be taking Boone along, but for the majority of the game, we'll be sticking with ED-E and Veronica. Note that in higher difficulties, you might want to give her an energy weapon and tell her to go ranged (which makes her sad, you punch-hating monster), at least when going up against really strong enemies, like deathclaws. Also, I barely scratched the surface with her dialogue here. It really is a delight and I advise you to find more of it, because she's pretty great. If someone intends to play the game and stream it to the discord, that'd be cool and they could mention it here and also take the time to showcase a bunch of stuff I'm skipping (hint, hint).
Anyway, now we found the Khans, and we know that Benny is in charge of a casino so he's definitely in the Strip. Time to basically ignore him for tens of hours and go sidequesting like crazy (to the immense aggravation of a good friend of mine), because that's just how I enjoy playing this game.
In post 30, Mitillos wrote:Obsidian's philosophy on roleplaying is that there should be as many different solutions to problems that one would reasonably consider as possible, and this mentality shows up in a lot of New Vegas quests.
Of the things that they do better than Bethesda this is the most important. The quest structure of New Vegas is fantastic while Bethesda continues to rely on railroading and essential characters because idk they think players need their hands held.
Let's see some examples of how the various Fallout games deal with the concept of deciding the fate of a town:
Fallout: Junktown. Killian, the mayor who also has a general store is a bit authoritarian when it comes to justice. Nevertheless, the townsfolk generally approve of him and his stance on crime. One person who doesn't like it is Gizmo, who owns the local casino and does some illegal deals with the Hub. He wants Killian dead and has sent several assassins over the years, with the most recent one making the attempt in the player character's presence. Killian knows Gizmo sent the killer, but has no evidence of this (Gizmo has been careful to keep his hands clean every time), so he asks you to get the evidence. When you go to Gizmo, you can get him to hire you to try killing Killian. You either get the evidence and kill Gizmo when he resists arrest, or kill Killian (and possibly the Junktown law enforcement officers). Accordingly, Junktown either ends up having no crime so it becomes a safe and fair place, or it becomes more prosperous, with Gizmo making even more money than before.
Things you have to do: Talk with people, selecting appropriate dialog based on how well you yourself understand human interaction. Combat with either Gizmo or Killian.
Fallout 2: This game is all about you deciding the fate of the various towns you visit. Fallout 1 was this too, but to a lesser degree. But to take just one example: Gecko. It's a ghoul town near Vault City, and it has a semi-functional nuclear plant. The plant is spilling radioactive coolant in the water, which, while not a problem for ghouls, is causing illness in Vault City (a place full of elitist shitheads), so the leader of Vault City asks you to deal with the radiation. Alternatively, the leader of the ghouls believes this will cause Vault City to attack them, so he also asks you to deal with the problem. Just to punctuate that the ghoul leader is right, the head of the Vault City guard asks you to scout the area surrounding Gecko, but doesn't tell you why. Here's what you can do:
0) Ignore the quest entirely. Vault City attacks and destroys Gecko, believing that the ghouls are the reason for the radiation.
1) Destroy the plant (or con a technician into doing it for you). The reactor has a meltdown, Gecko is destroyed.
2) Fix the plant. This will require obtaining a missing part, then either programming a robot to install it, or convincing a technician to do it, instead. Vault City and Gecko form an uneasy truce.
3) Fix the plant and then optimise it to produce more power by using Vault City technology and data to improve its production. Vault City attacks and enslaves Gecko, to take control of the power plant. (I told you they were shitheads.)
4) Fix the plant, optimise it, and then get a holodisk with economic data showing how an alliance would benefit Vault City more, and deliver it to Vault City. Vault City and Gecko form an alliance.
Things you have to do: Talk to a bunch of people (I think half a dozen), get them to give you items that will solve the issue, use your character's skills to fix and optimise the plant, and, importantly, pay attention to people and their behaviour and outlook, so you can tell who is or isn't a shithead.
Fallout 3: Megaton. An asshole on a tower considers the town an eyesore in the horizon, so he wants you to blow up the nuke it's built around. A guy in the town wants you to disarm the bomb, instead. You either disarm the bomb with an easy explosives check and tell the guy you did, or you rig it with a fusion charge and go to the tower and blow it up. Megaton ends up either destroyed or not.
Things you have to do: Pretty much exactly what I listed above.
Fallout New Vegas: Goodsprings. You can either help the townsfolk defend themselves from the powder ganger attack, or help the powder gangers attack the town. The fate of the town will also depend on whom you side with overall, in the game.
Things you have to do: Talk to people and convince them to help one side or the other. Specifically, if you side with Goodsprings, you can use your skills to convince Trudy, Chet, Easy Pete, and Doc Mitchell to help out. If you side with the powder gangers, you can convince Chet and Doc Mitchell (by lying to him) to help out. In both cases, you can also kill key people in advance, to make the fight easier. Kelsey killed Cobb in advance, as I mentioned earlier. In my evil playthrough, I actually killed every single human in Goodsprings before the attack. The only ones left were Victor and the bighorners.
Also note that I'm only giving overviews here, except in the case of Fallout 3. There, I described the quest pretty much in its entirety. This is a nonsense moral choice. In Fallout 1, maybe you believe that a mafia-type boss is better than an authoritarian who is tough on all crime. In Fallout 2, maybe you don't care about the ghouls, or maybe you think Vault City is shit, or maybe you just form some opinion about each group, and you can decide what you think is the right thing for you to do. In New Vegas, you might believe that the powder gangers are stronger and fighting them is not a great idea, or maybe you want to get their help later, or you think that the people of Goodsprings should be protected from this attack, or whatever. In Fallout 3, you can either blow up a town, or not. There's no real thought behind it, it's just "do you want maximum negative karma so you can have that from the start for your evil playthrough, or are you roleplaying as someone who isn't completely insane?"
Also there are so many loveable ghouls I can't imagine a player who actually buys into anti ghoul bigotry. But then again I do live in real life so maybe I can if I try.
In post 32, Mitillos wrote:There's no real thought behind it, it's just "do you want maximum negative karma so you can have that from the start for your evil playthrough
Trying to be evil in Fallout 3 is actually super disappointing and what really makes these shortcomings obvious I think. I guess that's exactly what you're saying but to elaborate more you can be a good guy and side with the Brotherhood or be a bad guy and side with the Brotherhood until you make a different menu selection at the end of the quest line. All the factions in New Vegas feel very different and I like that they respect me enough to let me decide which ones are my enemies on a game to game basis.
You heard correctly about Junktown. Originally, Junktown would remain small under Killian, because people would steer clear of the guy who sent people to the gallows too easily, while Gizmo would make the town prosperous and safe, if only to protect his own wealth and comfort. And there's a deep question of morality, there: can future prosperity justify a murder and a whole lot of other crime, in the here and now? My answer is "no", because ultimately, the potential for prosperity was always with the city. If the townsfolk aren't willing to oust an authoritarian and work on improving their community, why should they be given the improvements through the immoral acts of others? Not to soapbox too much, but one can also expand this to questioning the prosperity of the western world, which prospers from the past and present exploitation of the global south.
Ghouls are great, but also fairly ugly, partly due to facial asymmetry. This is one of the many reasons there's in-game bigotry. As to why a player might dislike them, sure that's more iffy, but here's one way it can happen: You play Fallout 1, go to Necropolis, find Seth, he's an unbelievable dick to you, so you start shooting ghouls on sight. Then you go to Fallout 2, find Vault City, and maybe you're a bit of an entitled shithead like they are, and you like the idea of a gated community with special privileges, surrounded by a bunch of second-class non-citizens, or, let's face it, slaves, so you take a liking to Vault City. Then the leader of Vault City tells you the ghouls are responsible for the radiation, so you go and kill them. Looking at real life, it's not that far-fetched.
As for the factions, that's exactly it. You do your thing, and the various major and minor factions make up their mind about you based on your actions. And if you do too much stuff the major factions dislike, they might even attack you on sight, making it impossible to side with them, because you pissed them off too much. You are not just a passive observer of a fight that basically is being acted out for your viewing benefit.
Spoiler: (Massive Spoiler)
The fight for the Hoover dam is coming and you are in part responsible both for seeing it through and deciding the outcome.
Also, New Vegas understands that not every game has to be about the brotherhood being the good guys, the enclave being the bad guys, and the supermutants being angry orcs with more battlelust than brains. The brotherhood were never really the good guys. The enclave is destroyed. The supermutants always had nuance. Bethesda sucks at understanding the world of Fallout and sucks extra hard at complex storytelling. These are the truths of Fallout New Vegas.
Mutant ending means that the Master basically takes over all of the west coast. We know that by the end of Fallout 1, he takes control of everything in southern California, expanding out from LA and eliminating the Followers of the Apocalypse. The NCR is never formed and its entirety will eventually become part of the Unity. The Hub and Necropolis are also overrun with supermutants. The BoS attempts to hold out, but it is eventually destroyed too. The Mariposa military base remains under the control of the supermutants, and is used to make more and more of them, getting fresh people with every vault opened and with every new community subjugated by the Master's army. This is at 2161.
Using the same resources as the NCR did, but in a more efficient and single-minded way, he expands north and east. In the east, he overruns Arizona. The tribes there are taken easily, having little in the way of defenses against the onslaught. To the north, the Master finds the Shi in San Francisco. They have a fairly small fighting force, that cannot withstand the supermutant assault, despite their advanced weaponry (after all, the supermutants have gatling lasers and plasma rifles too). The Master gains substantial technological advancements from the Shi and continues expanding north. New Reno is easy pickings due to superior firepower, and provides a substantial boost to supermutant numbers. Redding, Vault City, the Den, Klamath, all fall almost casually to the Master. Considering the rate of expansion the Master showed once he had his initial foothold, this takes a couple of decades, at most.
At this point, the Master controls the Mariposa facility, San Francisco, and Navarro. Camp Navarro is not established by the Enclave. The PMV Valdez is never disabled by the Enclave in San Francisco. The Enclave never finds the FEV materials and research in Mariposa. Even if they try to do these things, the supermutants are there, and the Enclave has lost its technological advantage. They lose to superior numbers. The master takes the fight to the oil rig and eliminates, absorbs, or mutates every member of the Enclave.
The Master spreads his Unity outwards. Nevada falls, but I won't elaborate due to spoilers. Utah falls, similar to Arizona. The Master prevents the events of Fallout 2 and New Vegas from taking place and possibly Fallout 3 and 4 as well. His army is long-lived, so their sterility is irrelevant to the question of success.
Basically, the Master has an almost 80 year head start on the Enclave and only one goal: assimilation. Defeating him in Fallout 1, either by convincing him his plan won't work the way he thinks it will, or by blowing him up with a nuke, or by killing him in direct combat, is the only way to save what remains of the world. He intends to take over and, once he has reached a certain threshold of power, resources, and area under his control, he will be unstoppable in the post-nuclear world, where most people are in tribes, too far away and mistrustful of each other.
As Kelsey was about to leave Boulder City, a familiar monitor showed up, wheeling along towards her. Victor had once again managed to somehow be on the same route as Kelsey, despite the fact she had deviated quite a bit from the route to New Vegas. Seemingly oblivious to this, Victor once again tried to direct Kelsey towards New Vegas, by suggesting that this was probably where Benny had gone to. Kelsey decided to wait and see what would happen if she let Victor wait for her in Vegas for a while, so, once he started towards the tall tower to the west, instead of following him, Kelsey went east, towards the dam. She wasn't particularly interested in it, but she figured ED-E would enjoy the sights. Also, when she got to the visitor centre, she saw another snowglobe, like the one she had found at the cemetery. When nobody was looking, she swiped it from the receptionist's desk and left, making her way west, in a more or less rambling pattern, to see more of the Mojave.
Alas, the wasteland did not hold any significant points of interest, and she inexorably made her way towards the tower jutting out from the Strip. Northwest of the 188, she found the Grub n' Gulp rest stop, another attempt to capitalise on the inaccessibility of the I-15. It didn't seem to be doing quite as well as the 188, so Kelsey moved on due north. Soon, she found herself at the Aerotech Office Park. Pre-war corporate offices were mostly in ruins, but the NCR had fortified them and made a refugee camp out of what remained more or less intact. Kelsey decided to make a short stop. Here she met Bert Gunnarsson (a ghoul doctor, doing his best to help the refugees and destitute in the camp), Frank Weathers (a farmer from Junktown in the NCR), and Captain Parker (the NCR officer in charge of the camp). Both Frank and Parker had work for Kelsey. Parker mentioned some refugees going missing from the camp, without signs of struggle. He had heard a rumour that they were taken by some Westside scavengers and asked Kelsey to look into it discreetly. Frank had brought his family to Vegas, hoping to make his fortune gambling. Predictably, this did not work out, so they were forced to return to the NCR. Unfortunately for them, a Legion patrol attacked them near Searchlight to the south, and took Frank's wife and children while he hid from them. He begged Kelsey to save them from a life of slavery. She agreed to take on both tasks and left due north, once more.
Eventually, Kelsey arrived at the New Vegas medical clinic. Doctor Usanagi of the Followers of the Apocalypse was in charge and she offered medical services for a reasonable fee. She explained that the Followers believed that the technology for basic necessities (like food, water, and medicine) should be shared, not hoarded. When hearing this, Veronica twitched slightly. It was unclear if she was upset at the implication against the Brotherhood or if her reaction was due to her agreement with Follower philosophy. Of more interest to Kelsey was the fact that Dr. Usanagi offered to install various implants which could augment Kelsey's abilities. After giving almost all her money and being under the knife for a total of 27 hours, Kelsey had every single implant the doctor could offer. She felt stronger, tougher, smarter, healthier, and even luckier than before. Unfortunately, she also felt a lot poorer than she'd been since she left Goodsprings, so she needed more immediate work. Luckily, next to the clinic were the headquarters of the New Vegas branch of the Crimson Caravan company, that Cassidy had suggested might have some work for Kelsey. Alice McLafferty, the manager, said she needed someone to deliver an invoice to Camp McCarran for her. This was on the other side of Vegas, so not exactly helpful to Kelsey in terms of her current money woes, but she took the job anyway. She also bought two books from a trader named Blake: "Tiny, Tiny Babies: All You Need to Know About Pediatric Medicine" and "Stress and the Modern Refugee: A Primer". She was hoping they might contain medical information she didn't already have, but unfortunately, they did not. She didn't mind, though. She'd find someone who needed these books, eventually. It was quite obvious that medical knowledge was one of the most important things in the wasteland and Kelsey also believed it should be shared with everyone. And with that, Kelsey, Veronica and ED-E entered Freeside, the poor shanty surrounding the gated community of New Vegas.
In terms of distance traveled, this was probably the longest update so far. There are a lot of locations on the way from the dam to New Vegas but I'm ignoring them, either because they have nothing of real interest, or because we'll be dealing with them later. We also picked up a quest that will take us all the way to the southeast corner of the map, far to the east of Nipton. We could have easily dealt with those quests then, but I wanted to talk to Frank, since it makes more sense to learn of his family and go looking, rather than just randomly go looking in Legion territory. As for the missing refugees and Westside, that's (obviously) on the west side of New Vegas, just like Freeside is on the north. Both of these areas are remarkably undeveloped and poor, because... well, we'll get to that when we meet a certain person.
The implants cost 48,000 caps. This is basically why I've only been buying the bare minimum. I wanted to have as much cash as possible for this. There are nine implants here, and you can get as many as you have points in endurance. One of the implants improves endurance (in fact, there is an implant for each of our seven primary stats), but that doesn't increase the number of implants you can take. This, incidentally, is why it might not be a great idea to start with any stat at 10. If you do, you can't get the corresponding implant, which only costs money and a bit of time (both of which are available in huge amounts), rather than stat points which are more limited. The remaining two implants increase damage threshold (damage blocked) and let you regenerate health over time, respectively.
As for the books, they are for a later quest. In fact, there are three ways to do it, so we don't need the books, but I like the idea of giving the books to a doctor who needs them, rather than just telling him stuff in a quick lesson. Realistically speaking, he might forget what we told them. The book will be there to read, at will.
At any rate, we are finally in New Vegas, though not the Strip. Soon, we shall meet the various colourful characters of the lovely area of Freeside. By the way, if anyone else is reading and has comments, feel free to post. Don't just force Ythan to be the only one making the effort!
A slum, right next to the immaculate Vegas Strip. A sight familiar to most pre-war urban areas; indeed any place with wealth disparity. Robert House, the enigmatic owner of the Strip made sure to keep his area clean and well-patrolled, but he had absolutely no interest in Freeside and Westside. He possibly even considered their existence a good thing, as it would allow the visitors to New Vegas to see how much better the Strip was in comparison to not only the rest of the Mojave, but the immediate areas that he was not managing as well. As for herself, Kelsey liked Freeside (and even Westside) more than the Strip. They lacked the wealth, but they also lacked the pretense, the scheming, and the snobbishness of the Strip. She knew that the Followers of the Apocalypse had been using the old mormon fort in Freeside as a camp for the destitute and those in need of medical help. Kelsey and Veronica liked this, so they decided to pay the fort a visit and see if they could help out in any way.
The administrator was a woman with the most solid-looking mohawk, who introduced herself as Julie Farkas. She could probably help a lot more people than she currently was, if she spent less on hair gel for keeping that thing so spiky. She had a work area and bedroom in the corner of the fort, where Kelsey found another snowglobe. Clearly Julie and the rest of the Followers were overworked, because when asked if she needed any help, she was overjoyed and said there was always something needing to be done. First, Julie asked Kelsey if she could spare any medication, as their stocks were low. They needed Med-X (a powerful morphine-like painkiller), Rad-Away (a chemical that removed radiation from the body), and Fixer (medication for curing addiction). Luckily, Kelsey could easily spare 10 of each, having hoarded them in her travels, for just such an eventuality. This was more than enough to help the Followers with their immediate stock issues. Kelsey pointed out that what the Followers needed was a steady supply. Julie said that unfortunately the Followers had had no luck in that regard with any of the merchants, so she asked Kelsey if she could try finding them a supplier. She also asked Kelsey to find and help cure two men, Bill Ronte and Jacob Hoff, of their addiction to chems. They had been working for the Followers as a machinist and a chemist respectively, when they got hooked on some street drugs. Kelsey agreed to help, seeing that the Followers were the best group to help, for the benefit of everyone in Vegas.
Next, Kelsey introduced herself to a glum-looking researcher who was keeping away from everyone else. He said his name was Arcade Gannon and he seemed to be very apprehensive of both ED-E and Veronica. It soon transpired that, while he shared the rest of the Followers' goals, he didn't have their optimism. He tried in vain to hide this behind a carefully constructed acerbic verbosity, but nobody was in any way fooled by it. When asked personal questions, he would joke about deflecting them to obfuscate his past association with a fascist paramilitary organisation. Rather sad, really. Kelsey decided that he'd feel better getting away from his fruitless research, and helping the people of the Mojave in a more direct manner, for a while. He took some convincing, but eventually he agreed, so Kelsey told Veronica they'd hook up again later at the 188 and had Arcade replace her.
With ED-E bobbing happily along and Arcade flinching every time the eyebot changed floating height, Kelsey moved further into Freeside. In the alleys, a very hungry-looking child was chasing a large rat. Kelsey took out her machete and deftly chopped the rat's head. The child, happy to finally get some meat, thanked her and carried the corpse off. Further ahead, a man waved Kelsey over to a dead-end. He showed her a corpse by some dumpsters and explained that he had died because he too had been gullible enough to fall for this trick. Sadly for him, Kelsey and ED-E had more than enough firepower to lazily destroy him and his two friends waiting to ambush anyone unfortunate enough to wander here. Finally, Kelsey found Jacob. He was sitting in a ruined building, looking at the pretty colours that his most recent hit. He said that he regularly bought drugs from a guy named Dixon. Luckily, Dixon was right across the street, so Kelsey decided to have a chat with him about his drug pushing. Seeing him, she could tell that he was a heavy user himself, but it was clear that the drugs he sold to others was of lesser quality. He admitted as much, saying that because Jacob and Bill were from the NCR, he didn't care what happened to them. Kelsey threatened to spread a rumour that the NCR was supplying Dixon with drugs to keep the people of Freeside docile. Knowing that the people of Freeside were very unhappy with the influx of people from the NCR, he was terrified at the prospect and agreed to stop selling to Jacob and Bill. Kelsey returned to Jacob, who was devastated to hear this. He asked Kelsey for enough doses of Fixer to get him through the week, but she suggested a mixture of Fixer, Psycho, and Buffout would help with his withdrawal long enough for the Followers to help him the rest of the way. He really was a brilliant chemist, and realised immediately that Kelsey's idea would work, so he agreed to go back to the fort. And with that, Kelsey moved on to the next part of Freeside, determined to do more good.
And we are now inside Vegas. Just not the Strip, yet. The Followers of the Apocalypse were introduced in the first Fallout game. They started as a tribe from Dayglow (formerly San Diego) that managed to spread to the Boneyard (formerly Los Angeles), where they decided that humanity needed to work together towards a better future. Despite their name and insignia (an encircled cross with fleur-de-lis endpoints) they are not religious or cultish. They are secular, they are pacifists (almost naively so), they believe in knowledge for its own sake, and they believe that the benefits of this knowledge should be shared with all of humanity. Basically, they are the most lefty and progressive faction in the Fallout world. They do not like the colonial imperialism of the NCR, and they dislike House's feudal imperialism and the Legion's fascist imperialism even more. From conversation with Arcade, we can even learn that Caesar was with the Followers in the NCR, before deciding that he had a better way to run things. Kelsey will be joining them as soon as she can. Because she also made a donation to their clinic, she will be able to join the Followers once Julie's quests are done. There are, in fact, a number of further opportunities to build reputation with them, and I will try to do all of them, because the Followers are the only good faction.
Arcade is our next follower. I want him around right now, because we're going to do a couple of things that will be relevant to him, but like with most followers, I will only keep him around for what is basically his own sidequest. No hate for the guy, he's great (especially if you give him a powerful energy weapon, which I will), but I like Veronica and Boone even more. Come to think of it, all the allies you get are great. Kinda makes me pine for the original games, where you could have a small army with you and the game engine didn't go out of whack from it. Anyway, Arcade. He can be persuaded to join through a speech check, or if you're already at the highest reputation with the Followers, or if your intelligence is very low (he feels sorry for you), or if you flirt with him (guys only, so Kelsey can't do that). Just like Boone, Arcade won't join you if you've got a good reputation with the Legion, because he isn't into fascism, slavery, and all the other disgusting stuff the Legion is known for.
Dixon is an asshole, but his sentiments are widespread in Vegas and the Mojave. People don't like the NCR for throwing its weight (both military and economic) around, they don't like the NCR people who have come over to Vegas (calling them squatters, at best), and they don't like the fact that the NCR has made deals with House and is getting preferential treatment over them. And while they will lash out at possibly the wrong targets, harming innocents like Bill and Jacob who were only trying to help (Dixon calls them eggheads, saying they make things more confusing), the people of Freeside and Westside have a point. The NCR is not good. Just as the Legion is trying to rebuild the world in the image of a misunderstood and idealised Rome, the NCR is trying to rebuild the world in the image of a misunderstood and idealised America. And, already, a mere century and a bit after being founded, the NCR is already as deeply mired in the same social, political, and economic problems as America has been for decades in our world. Political corruption, a scramble for resources, excessive militarism, huge wealth inequalities, NCR is already showing the symptoms of the failed system it attempts to emulate. The people of the Mojave understand this, and they want neither the NCR nor the Legion to be in charge. This may seem to only leave Robert House as the remaining option, but he is not a better leader than the others, and the people who live outside the Strip are well aware of this. His ideal Vegas is also based on the economics of capitalism, but without the idealised notion of a republican democracy somehow being a fetter to its excesses. No, to House, the excesses are part of the goal. He is, in a way, the more Randian side of American worldviews, despising democracy and blaming it for the nuclear war. While his goals and methods makes him a better choice than the Legion, they also make him worse than the NCR.
So, how should the player character proceed with this game, once it becomes clear that we have to select one of these powers to put in charge? Kelsey, having learned a little about each side, has already decided that the NCR is the lesser of three evils, so that will be her answer.
Last edited by Mitillos on Mon Oct 10, 2022 12:38 am, edited 2 times in total.
A fourth option might be nice. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be another faction with the power to keep Vegas, though, so Kelsey doesn't really have a fourth option. Arcade said something about leaving Vegas independent, but he's just being idealistic, because that's obviously not going to work. Even if the Legion and NCR are pushed back, Mr. House isn't going to give his wealth up. And if he were somehow eliminated too, the various raider gangs would just attack Vegas and make things even worse. Kelsey doesn't like this, but she is pragmatic, so she's going with the solution she finds more palatable than the rest: the NCR.
I think you only lose teammates if they die (in hardcore mode or [redacted]) or if you go legion. Boone and Arcade want nothing to do with you if you're siding with the legion.
As for Boone being pleased, oh we are getting to that. A very long time from now, but it's going to happen.
Boone won't join you (or threaten to leave) if you're anti-NCR, but he will also do that if you have a positive reputation with the legion. Of course, if you have him along, it's somewhat difficult to get a positive reputation with the legion, because he shoots them on sight. And they are also hostile to you regardless of what you've done, if Boone's there.
