Radioactive Adventures With Fallout 4 - Part 2

Radioactive Adventures With Fallout 4

Part One

Part 2 - Life or Death Sartorial Choices

So the outside world looks...nice...?

That's a landscape indicating good times ahead...

Unsurprisingly it seems that having a nuclear bomb dropped on it did not do my little town a lot of good. It looks pretty much dead, and all I can hear is wind. Which is pretty disheartening. Luckily, there's a radio on my Pip Boy and miraculously it's still able to pick up some stations, which is indicative of some life somewhere at least. I tune in to the first one and set about carefully exploring this desolate hellscape I used to call home. It doesn't seem so awful with a jaunty 50s soundtrack in the background. In fact it seems damn near cheerful, and the paranoid sense that I am about to be ambushed by crazed mutants at any second lessens the closer I get to the town, where I realise that there is literally no one here but me. Oh, and Codsworth.

YOU RUSTED SON OF A GUN :D

Turns out this endearing hunk of junk has been hanging out at my dilapidated house this whole time, waiting for me and my husband to come back. That's adorable. This floating robot butler is adorable. Also slightly unhinged, as I gather from gently interrogating him about what the diddly happened around here. Information gleaned thus far: it's been roughly 200 years, the geraniums are dead, and it's impossible to polish rust. Oh, also there's a holodeck for me from Nate that he recorded before the whole 'mushroom cloud of death' thing happened. I figure I should probably watch that, seeing as he's tragically passed now. That would be the appropriate thing to do.

"Hi, honey!" my sweet dead husband says from beyond the grave. He goes on to tell me how kind and loving and funny I am, which is lovely, and then he waffles on about how hard it was adjusting to life outside the military but he's glad to have me and Baby Jack and yadda yadda yadda. All very heartwarming. Not very useful. I have learned nothing from this, and time's a-tickin, so I do what any grieving widow would at this point and loot the fuck out of the house.

A veritable treasure trove...

This turns out to be an even more depressing endeavour than I anticipated. Partly because it involves rummaging through the shattered husk of Jack's nursery, but also because the coolest thing I find is a suit and bowler hat, which obviously I change into immediately. It's not exactly an outfit guaranteed to strike fear into my enemies, but it's less dorky than the hazmat suit that the scientists stuffed us into for cryo, so it'll do for now.

Pictured: swag?

As a mark of respect for the dead husband, I take an in-game hour to sit on that mouldy sofa and reflect on our short, but apparently blissfully happy life together. Then, having done that, I decide to get to work. First order of business: grilling the robot butler. He is very upset about Nate being definitely dead (yeah me too Codsworth...) and very insistent that Jack could still be alive maybe, and suggests that someone in Concord might have answers on that. He also warns me that the residents are a bit...rough. I recognise this as video-game speak for 'will fucking murder you on sight' and file that away for future reference. Now it is time to loot the neighbours!

Codsworth speeds off ahead and very helpfully dispatches all the GIANT FUCKING MOSQUITOES that have apparently infested the neighbourhood. So. Radioactive mutant bugs are going to be a theme, then. That's fantastic. At least it's not spiders...
It turns out Codsworth is actually really adept at killing shit considering he's a robot butler. Apparently a buzzsaw and a flamethrower were vital tools for the sentient metal domestic help? Anyway, there's not a lot of bugs left for me to take care of by the time I catch up with him. All the rifling through the neighbours' cupboards slows me down a bit. I find more clothes, bottle caps, various centuries-old foodstuffs, gun ammo (yay!) and just...so many miscellaneous household items. Seriously. So many. I've got cups for friggin' days. Turns out this is all kind of useful, because there's some kind of crafting/engineering station nearby that lets me convert this random junk into things. Furniture. Weapons. Vehicles. I can build a settlement here, if I so choose. That's pretty cool. I look forward to doing that, although evidently I'm gonna need much more stuff. Which I will probably find in Concord...

I tell Codsworth to hang back at the house and wait for me. This robot butler is my only friend in the world right now, I don't want him getting dinged up just yet. So, I head over the bridge out of Sanctuary Hills, and straight away I am greeted by a very good omen indeed.

This welcome party sucks...

Two fresh dead bodies strewn across the path - that's not creepy at all. I inch closer, waiting for something to jump out and get me like it got these suckers, but it seems safe for now, and closer inspection reveals these to be the corpses of two raiders. They don't look like they would have been friendly had they not been deceased, so I quickly scavenge their stuff and move on. Almost immediately I am set upon by a strange furry beast that comes out of nowhere.

OH HAI THERE!

That's right, all I've done is wander around and squish a few bugs and already this game has gifted me with a loyal dog companion. A loyal dog companion who...probably killed those raiders, come to think about it...

I'm gonna call him Sergeant. I hope he likes roach meat.

Sergeant is very eager for me to follow him, and I figure he knows what's going on better than I do, so I dutifully follow him. He leads me right to this place:

Looks...lovely?

This turns out to be a dick move on Sergeant's part because as soon as I move towards it I'm attacked by a horde of giant mutant rats. Molerats? Whatever. They're ugly and mean and they're faster than the bugs. Luckily, Sergeant helps me out and we take them down without sustaining too much damage. I gain more yummy irradiated meat for my stash, and then it's time to look around this place. There is loot galore, not to mention a note mentioning disposing nuclear waste in some caves underneath the shop. Which sounds...safe? But also interesting! I figure that might be worth checking out, so I start searching for wherever the secret entrance to the secret cave is. Sergeant helps me out by very subtly running up to the entrance and barking. Turns out it's a little bit south of the station and I probably would have missed it on my own as I was sticking too close to the building itself. I really like this dog. He makes life easy.

Nothing bad has ever come from crawling into random holes in the ground...

The cave itself is completely infested with molerats. Oh, god, so many... They are dispatched quickly and with minimal panicking, and I look around the place. Predictably, there's a whole ton of nuclear waste lying around. I can also see a chest/safe nestled in front of a particularly big leaky barrel, which I thoughtlessly blunder towards like a trusting baby deer tottering into a lush green meadow. Straight away some kind of scary-looking counter goes off and my health starts dropping, and I realise I may have been overlooking a vital bit of gameplay here. Rads. Still not entirely sure what 'rads' exactly are - I breezed over the game's attempts to teach me back in the facility, but obviously this is a post-nuclear wasteland and radiation might be an important thing to worry about, doofus!!! I'm wandering around without any protection against radiation, because I didn't want to wear the dorky hazmat suit. Idiot!

Begrudgingly, the dapper suit comes off and the hazmat suit goes back on, though I refuse to relinquish the bowler hat. 

Style AND practicality!

I consider it a lesson learned and reward myself with the contents of that safe, although the fact that apparently I can't heal the lost health without a doctor is concerning. Can't afford that kind of slip up again, that's for sure.

By the time I exit the cave, it's dusk, but there's still enough light to see some buildings in the distance. This, I presume, must be Concord.

It looks beautiful...

I am 100% certain that it's zombie-infested and do not want to go there. But, of course, I must...

Eventually...

Radioactive Adventures With Fallout 4 - Part 1

Radioactive Adventures With Fallout 4

Part 1 - Nice Knowing You, Nate!

I want to start this entry by saying that I am an obsessive gamer. By this I mean that when I buy a game, I play it obsessively until it's pried from my withered, gnarled hands and I'm forced by those who love me to acknowledge the outside reality once more. So for those thinking 'wow she's late to the Fallout 4 party', you are correct, I am, and there's a reason for this. That reason is Skyrim. I have literally been playing Skyrim too much for anything else to get a look in until now. I regret nothing.

Anyway, my friends managed to go on about Fallout 4 enough for me to finally buy it, and I'm chronicling my first play-through here so I can pretend that this is a constructive, somewhat-adult use of my time. It should be noted that I've never played a Fallout game before. As mentioned above: too busy playing Skyrim.

Opening cut-scene:

'War never changes...' says a very tired-sounding dude over some flash-back footage of his grandfather fighting in a conflict that literally changed the face of warfare forever. I'm not sure if this grizzled dude is supposed to be me? Anyway, he's from the year 2077, when America has embraced the wonders of nuclear power and this has kept society frozen in some kitschy 1950s aesthetic for some reason. Also there's robots, and that's cool. But unfortunately all is not well in retro-nuclear America. Apparently even though everyone has robot butlers, social unrest still rears its ugly head, and uh-oh! The threat of atomic warfare is on the horizon...

I spent about thirty minutes in the character creation screen, carefully bringing my scrappy post-apocalypse adventurer to life. Meet Jinks:

Life goals or wife goals?

Jinks has seen shit. Jinks lived through stuff you couldn't even cook up in your wildest, most underwear-soiling nightmares. She's ex-military. She's part-cockroach. She's the bastard love child of the Artful Dodger and one of those badass old lady bikers from Mad Max: Fury Road. She's also apparently married to a wholesome young man twenty years her junior who keeps complimenting her on her nose, which is nice...

Anyway, once I'm done crafting my new persona, my nice trophy husband (apparently he is called Nate) demands his primping time too and I'm left to explore our house. I count one baby, one affable robot butler and one tasteful family board game:

Hey kids! Isn't trivialising mass murder fun!

My robot butler invites me to drink some coffee it made and then goes to comfort my screaming child for me. Nate ambles in to the kitchen and stands there looking pretty for a while, and I have to say that this is a very comfortable slice of domestic pie. But alas! Even in an atomic Utopia there is no escape from nuisance callers...

Hi! Can I interest you in some plot advancement?

This salesman is not at all put off by the grizzled face of pain and world-weariness that greets him at the door, and this endears him to me, so I end up being quite receptive towards his spiel about underground nuclear bunkers and the coming end of times. I give him my name and my stats (sank most of my points into intelligence, perception and endurance - we'll see how that pans out) and then he's off again, and I'm left to get back to domestic bliss. Except this is when I notice something that horrifies me to my very core, and brings everything I thought I knew crashing down around me. 

It's a law diploma. 

MY law diploma. 

This game is trying to tell me that Jinks is a mere lawyer?????

LIES!!!

I'm still recovering from this bombshell when it turns out that the news is now on in the background, announcing the dropping of actual atomic bombshells all over the country, and now I've got to run screaming for the hills to get to the bunker that I literally just signed up for. Nate remembers to grab the baby (which is lucky because I forgot he existed) and then we're running along with the rest of the townsfolk towards apparent safety. No one seems to want to respond to my attempts at friendly conversation. They all choose screaming and incoherent gibbering instead, which is fair, I suppose, but I'm still offended.
After a bit of panicked running, the hubby and I have reached what looks like a military compound. The salesman is there getting turned away by guards, which seems pretty dickish of the company he's been so desperately shilling for, but they let me in so I don't really care.
We get directed towards a platform, and it starts taking us underground just as everything goes KA-BOOM, which is very dramatic. Nate reassures me that we're all okay (I mean, that was a lot of radiation that missed us by a nanosecond but fine?) I think he's doing that for his benefit more than mine because I definitely didn't ask, but whatever, it's time to suit up and settle in at our new underground bunker. Except...this apparently involves getting shoved into cryogenic freezing chambers. That seems suspicious? Whelp, no time to question it as I'm getting all frozen, so that's happened now, I guess. Me and my little nuclear (heh) family are officially human popsicles...until I conveniently wake up an undisclosed amount of time later just in time to helplessly watch some mysterious workers kidnap my baby and murder my husband!!!

Literally fridged, my poor sweet Nate...

So I guess that's the big quest, then. But first: escape! Unfortunately I get re-frozen before I can bust out of my pod and dole out some sweet, sweet vengeance on those spouse-killing baby-nappers, and another indeterminate amount of time passes before I'm finally freed. I go over to Nate's pod and loot his body like the respectful widow I am (hopefully his wedding ring is useful) and then it's explorin' time! Attempts to open the other pods and free my neighbours prove fruitless, and apparently they're all dead anyway so my hopes of finding allies so soon are quickly abandoned in favour of scavenging. I pick up coffee cups, clipboards, and other useless items that my hoarding tendencies will not permit me to leave behind, until finally I find a baton. This is conveniently just before I encounter GIANT MUTANT COCKROACHES which apparently I can loot for gross cockroach meat after I've successfully smashed them to pieces. So that's a food source locked down, at least.

Accessing various computer terminals reveals the shady corporate experiment it turns out I unwittingly signed up for, as well as giving me the chance to alleviate some of the stress of witnessing my husband's murder and the nuclear apocalypse by playing videogames.

This is definitely the time to be going for a high score...

Once I've had enough fun playing a game inside my game I go back to looking around. The logs revealed some kind of rebellion happening here while the rest of us popsicles were sleeping, but judging by the skeletons I'm finding, this was a while ago. Or the roaches picked the bodies clean, I don't know. Anyway, eventually I find a gun and ammunition. This is good. These are Jinks' tools. Now the roaches really don't stand a chance.

Soon enough, I'm back at the entrance of the compound, armed and ready to get the fuck out. One of the lab coat-wearing skeletons relinquishes his Pip Boy to me, and once I strap it on I can finally open an inventory, which is a profound relief because the fact that I couldn't until now was really starting to irritate. I have a quick flick through to check that my collection of coffee cups and cockroach meat is as bountiful as expected, and then apparently I'm officially ready for the outside world. So. I hop onto the platform, press the appropriate button, and am gradually reintroduced to the surface. But what, exactly, will I find up there?

I hope those cockroaches weren't babies...

Part Two