Fallout 3: The Blogsperiment, Back in the Saddle.
Ok, so the thing about blogging playthroughs of incredibly long RPGs is you have to play said RPG while writing. And when finals, new jobs, and small business ventures all occur in a short amount of time, the game playing goes south. But now school work is long done, settling in has occurred, and now we can resume the umpteen dozen hours of content remaining in Fallout 3 and it’s expansions.
To recap things so far, our heroine, Stabitha, has been venturing through the wastes in search of her father, and murdering hundreds upon hundreds of people in her path. Early on she found herself indentured into the insane servitude of Moira, which was resolved by nuking Moira’s shop (and the city she lived in).
Shortly after Stabitha moved into Tenpenny tower, which didn’t end well as the merchants she had robbed previously took their leave. Fortunately Stabitha was able to persuade a group of ghouls to take up residence in the tower, enabling her to buy an assortment of goodies for for her penthouse.
And allowing the ghouls to murder every other human in the building. Whoops. My bad.
As Stabitha’s quest and murderous rampage continued, she learned the joys of helping others when it directly benefited her. Assisting an insane mechanic to the north resulted in a laser shotgun. Bringing a truce to a settlement of cowards and a pack of goths gone way, way, way too far resulted in a flaming sword built from a gas tank and a lawn mower. And a trip to help some brotherhood outcasts resulted in power armor, a Predator-style stealth suit, and a giant energy-based death cannon. Clearly other people in the wasteland have no idea how to negotiate.
Well, and I keep murdering their faces off.
However, not all has been murdering delights in the wasteland. Since the new expansion a new tier of bad guys has shown up, who seem to be a little…rough.
My first run-in with these guys was on a quest for Lincoln’s Repeater. Stabitha’s managed many a level without much in the way of small guns skill, but a recent trip to a Nuka-Cola plant infested with mirelurks taught me the value of the Kneecapper, which leads one to believe that other guns might be of use. While butchering my way through the history museum I came across a new ghoul. Well, he looked just like the other ghouls, but was called a reaver.
I believe the gameplay went something like this:
“Huh, a new ghoul. Well, I’ll snipe him with my giant death rifle from a distance to be sure.”
VATS. Gunfire. Click.
“Wow, that didn’t seem to hurt him at all.”
VATS exits.
“That dude’s really fast. OH GOD!”
Reload saved game.
Several other attempts were made to dispatch this horrifyingly deadly foe, until I finally had to go to my last resort. You see, while I enjoy the mechanic of building weaponry and explosives in Fallout 3, I rarely make use of the disposable fruits of my labors. Until now. At which point I lure this monstrosity into a stack of 12 bottlecap mines. Nothing is so satisfying and spending a half-dozen game hours scrounging various parts and combining them into a stack of explosives, then setting them all off simultaneously in the face of an absurdly strong opponent.
Now, mild spoilers ahead, but at one point in Operation Anchorage you’re fighting tanks. Large tanks. None of these tanks took nearly as much firepower to destroy as this one ghoul. Forget the crazy energy weapons and stuff, give me control of two or three of these guys and I’ll destroy all opposition.
Anyway, the end result of the new batch of death that the DLC has brought me is that I need some more firepower and some levels before I can take one of these things on without exploding. So we’re going to head to the Pitt. And acquire a giant crazy chainsaw axe.
A few interesting things I’ve noticed about the Pitt. So you have to have to navigate through an incredibly deadly minefield, pass snipers, and rabid mutant dogs to the front gates. At which point the raiders there decide you’re just like all the other slaves present and send you in with them. And don’t seem to mind at all when their slave labor force starts building giant crazy chainsaw axe weapons and planning to murder the populace.
There’s also a short series of arena matches that play just like the Oblivion arena, only with guns and radiation. Nothing too difficult here, and I did acquire a fantastic silenced assault rifle. Then there’s the main quest of the Pitt, which I love. Because no matter how you complete this quest, you are a terrible, terrible person. This stuff is what always made the Fallout games for me. Very rarely is there a completely happy ending. Even when there was in the old games, you’d come to find out that some city or other was annihilated because of you.
I didn’t really get everything out of the Pitt. There’s a lot more equipment to be had from a trade-in quest, but we’ll get back to that. I want to go back to the wastelands and get some questing done.
The current qeust is for 3-dog. Apparently, despite having the resources of the Brotherhood of Steel at hand, he’s missing a transmission dish for his radio station and needs me to go rip one off a space probe in the museum, then go up the Washington monument and duct tape it in place.
Whatever. He’s paying.
No ghouls this time, but I run into a LOT of super mutants. The stealth suit and a high sneak skill means these guys stand no chance one on one. I can literally sneak up about six inches away and blow their heads off with a shotgun. Then repeat. Apparently the mutants never go:
“Hey, where’s Fred? And Joe? And why do I keep hearing screams followed by gunshots and wet splats?”
Everything was going reasonably well until I got to the radar dish room. And was promptly decapitated by a three-barreled laser rifle. Hello, Super Mutant Overlord.
One reload and a pile of mines later, hello, Tri-beam laser rifle. Mm…lasery.
I also managed a couple levels doing all of this, bringing my energy weapons, explosives, small guns, and melee weapon skills to considerable levels. Hopefully all of this will make life a bit easier. We’ll see.
I think I’ll leave the recap and new stuff at that before This turns into a novel. Oh, one last bit, if you won a goody last time, I do have them, but am currently on the Moe schedule of sending stuff out. Message me on XBL or through e-mail with an address and I’ll get that stuff sent out at some point.
Toodles.
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Tags: blogsperiment, fallout 3, Hiatus, New bullshit enemies.
July 13th, 2009 at 10:41 am
Still waiting to play Fallout Co-op with ya Phneri!