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Hooboy I completely forgot how bad Fallout 3 was with how it deals with queer characters, but I guess that's just one more item on the list of ways New Vegas puts this game to shame.
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Oct 9, 2019 12:01
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Blasmeister posted:You'd have thought if it was that easy then someone might have done something about it in the 200 years since the bombs fell, right? Alas, this is Fallout 3 and everything is still covered in debris and nothing can be done without the main character's help Considering that there were frag grenades inside a mailbox in the nearby abandoned town, alongside an incredibly easily picked safe that is mostly in the open, it is clear that the background radiation has fried all of the logic and long term planning from every single person's brain out in the Capital Wasteland. Then again, that expedition from the Vault some number of years ago also seemed to have passed by said town and didn't find any of those things, sooo... 
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Oct 9, 2019 12:04
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amigolupus posted:I'm hoping that saying it requires 25 Explosives means this sidequest would be more involved than that? Because if all you need to disarm this nuclear bomb is 25 Explosives then
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Oct 9, 2019 12:14
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This is the Fallout universe though, so you know that nuke would have been fitted with all the anti-tampering devices a paranoid military-industrial complex could profit from installing in it.
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Oct 9, 2019 12:45
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amigolupus posted:I'm a little confused, why did Beth even collect 10 bottle caps right off the bat? You see, they weren't nailed down.
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Oct 9, 2019 12:45
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Blasmeister posted:You'd have thought if it was that easy then someone might have done something about it in the 200 years since the bombs fell, right? Alas, this is Fallout 3 and everything is still covered in debris and nothing can be done without the main character's help Well yeah, especially since the last vacuum cleaner in the world got lost, and brooms are lostech.
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Oct 9, 2019 12:47
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It wasn't lost, it was securely stored in a mailbox for safekeeping!
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Oct 9, 2019 12:57
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NGDBSS posted:Honestly something in the "not so hard" range sounds about right. Nuclear explosives have to be very carefully designed to deliberately explode in the first place. If you gently caress something up hard enough then you might get a prompt criticality, but that tends to put itself out after seconds to minutes and in any case almost requires you to be negligent. The result wouldn't even be your stereotypical mushroom cloud but rather a blue flash and a feeling of heat. Additionally, nuclear explosives are designed to be extremely hard to detonate accidentally. This is why the US has had 32 recognized Broken Arrow incidents (minor fuckups) but zero Nucflash incidents (major fuckups that would threaten nuclear war). A lot of those Broken Arrows were only not-exploding because of sheer luck rather than good design, actual safety-minded nuclear weapons design didn't happen for a long loving time, even studies of how to make "safe" nuclear weapons took decades, after which point the US military refused to retrofit most of their older weapons and threw a hissyfit about needing to buy only safe new weapons, which further delayed matters. Anticheese posted:Well yeah, especially since the last vacuum cleaner in the world got lost, and brooms are lostech. I think the timeline is what makes it most offensive, it takes place almost a hundred years after FO1, a setting in which many people aren't living in blasted ruins, but have built new adobe structures or better, and in some cases figured out the ancient lostech of paving streets. Hell, even the people who do live in ruined buildings have cleaned up the floors and generally patched the holes in the walls unless they're bandits and wasted drug addicts. Meanwhile in FO3 and onwards everything is made of corrugated metal and old street signs.
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Oct 9, 2019 13:10
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Well, would YOU think to look in the random mailbox a short walk from your atom-bomb-worshipping scraptown 200 years after the bombs fell?
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Oct 9, 2019 13:10
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PurpleXVI posted:I think the timeline is what makes it most offensive, it takes place almost a hundred years after FO1, a setting in which many people aren't living in blasted ruins, but have built new adobe structures or better, and in some cases figured out the ancient lostech of paving streets. Hell, even the people who do live in ruined buildings have cleaned up the floors and generally patched the holes in the walls unless they're bandits and wasted drug addicts. Meanwhile in FO3 and onwards everything is made of corrugated metal and old street signs. As for FO3, I just assumed that human life in the US Eastern urban belt was basically eradicated in the nuclear exchange, and what remained was essentially forced into nomadic hunter-gatherer life. Until the population grew enough again for something resembling society to form. Much like happened to the indigenous Americans after contact with the Europeans. And that this only happened recently. As for NV I just assumed it was asset reuse.
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Oct 9, 2019 15:12
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To be fair, nothing says the stuff has to have been in there since before the war. Might have just been some wasteland adventurer stashed them there relatively recently and then never came back for it because they got killed by mutants or whatever. Something something suspension of disbelief 
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Oct 9, 2019 15:13
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200 is just a number. Years are just a unit.
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Oct 9, 2019 17:06
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Dance Officer posted:As for FO3, I just assumed that human life in the US Eastern urban belt was basically eradicated in the nuclear exchange, and what remained was essentially forced into nomadic hunter-gatherer life. Until the population grew enough again for something resembling society to form. Much like happened to the indigenous Americans after contact with the Europeans. And that this only happened recently. That's no excuse for why people still live on heaping piles of trash, I'm pretty sure there are sometimes even skeletons in their homes. Cleaning up is a basic human function, and something every society does, no matter how strained.
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Oct 9, 2019 17:15
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Subscribed immediately. FO3 is one of those universes that just falls apart after just thinking about it for a little bit. So it'll be fun seeing OFS just dismantle it completely 
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Oct 9, 2019 17:29
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steinrokkan posted:That's no excuse for why people still live on heaping piles of trash, I'm pretty sure there are sometimes even skeletons in their homes. Cleaning up is a basic human function, and something every society does, no matter how strained. That was the most frustrating part about Fallout 4 for me. The base building stuff should have been so cool but there were just arbitrary things you couldn't clean up or fix, and everything you could add to your base was the same broken poo poo everywhere else. Let me spend the extra resources for a nice pool table for my common area or something rather than one covered in dirt, goddamn!
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Oct 9, 2019 17:30
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Post apocalypse everyone's really into the grungy survivor A E S T H E T I C. They all look like paupers but really they're just huge hipsters.
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Oct 9, 2019 17:36
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The Wasteland was actually all nice and cleaned up but then they threw this massive kegger last weekend.
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Oct 9, 2019 17:39
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Azza Bamboo posted:Post apocalypse everyone's really into the grungy survivor A E S T H E T I C. They all look like paupers but really they're just huge hipsters. One global thermonuclear war was not enough.
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Oct 9, 2019 17:45
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CascadeBeta posted:That was the most frustrating part about Fallout 4 for me. The base building stuff should have been so cool but there were just arbitrary things you couldn't clean up or fix, and everything you could add to your base was the same broken poo poo everywhere else. Let me spend the extra resources for a nice pool table for my common area or something rather than one covered in dirt, goddamn! I hated base building in FO4 until I slapped a crapton of mods onto it. I swear fully half the mods I used were for building bases, allowing for massive base assaults, and turning my defenders into proper pretty princesses.
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Oct 9, 2019 18:25
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Even if it's kind of silly I like the radiation sidequest in this game, as it teaches the player that radiation in this game isn't something you have to be completely terrified of at all times and so encourages you to poke around irradiated areas later in the game.
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Oct 9, 2019 19:27
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Oh absolutely. Moira's entire questline is pretty great and the reason I don't understand why people play rear end in a top hat characters in this game.
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Oct 9, 2019 19:57
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SSNeoman posted:Oh absolutely. Moira's entire questline is pretty great and the reason I don't understand why people play rear end in a top hat characters in this game. Agreed, Moira's questline is probably one of the best-written parts of FO3, if not the best-written part.
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Oct 9, 2019 21:39
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CascadeBeta posted:That was the most frustrating part about Fallout 4 for me. The base building stuff should have been so cool but there were just arbitrary things you couldn't clean up or fix, and everything you could add to your base was the same broken poo poo everywhere else. Let me spend the extra resources for a nice pool table for my common area or something rather than one covered in dirt, goddamn! Base building in FO4 should have had the option to do overhead building view in the base game as well as the ability to turn off random base attacks or whatever
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Oct 9, 2019 22:04
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DariusLikewise posted:Base building in FO4 should have had the option to do overhead building view in the base game as well as the ability to turn off random base attacks or whatever Random base attacks would have been cool if it was not random. It should start random just for flavor, but the end result of any conflict is either A) The settlement was completely overrun by raiders (because you didn't handle poo poo personally/fortify enough) and if you want it back, you have to clear it out again. B) The raiders were repelled, but you took losses and need to reinforce your walls and turrets or C) You beat the raiders so badly that there are no survivors on that side. Your settlement is now officially "unfuckwithable". If you don't care about the settlements, let them fall to the raiders and mutants and assorted other hostiles. If you really give a poo poo about them, build them up so invasions literally stop. It would add a level of immersion to see that what you've done actually has an effect. Better than getting called about a settlement on the other side of the map being attacked only to see that your turrets have killed everything except some mutant dog out of range.
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Oct 9, 2019 22:40
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PurpleXVI posted:Agreed, Moira's questline is probably one of the best-written parts of FO3, if not the best-written part. An admittedly low bar.
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Oct 9, 2019 22:59
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Oct 10, 2019 16:59
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And this is how we got gold in 7 pages 
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Oct 10, 2019 17:31
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PurpleXVI posted:Agreed, Moira's questline is probably one of the best-written parts of FO3, if not the best-written part. Moira's about the only character I remember in the game without prompting and the only character I remember fondly.
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Oct 11, 2019 02:21
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I think I spent hours going everywhere on the Pipboy marked as a "settlement" only to discover they sucked, every single time, without exception. I think this was the game with "Arefu" that was all of three bombed-out trailers on a broken bridge with one guy saying "Welcome to Arefu!" and his dogs who freaked out when I nudged him off the edge.
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Oct 11, 2019 05:39
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...what did you think the dogs would do?
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Oct 11, 2019 13:34
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Kaboom Dragoon posted:Moira's about the only character I remember in the game without prompting and the only character I remember fondly. I'm pretty much the same, although I do also remember the radio announcer. THREE DAWG AWF AWF AOOOOOO was kind of funny the first time I heard it, but after a while...
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Oct 11, 2019 13:50
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Siegkrow posted:...what did you think the dogs would do? Serve as emergency rations?
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Oct 11, 2019 14:55
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GrabbinPeels posted:I'm pretty much the same, although I do also remember the radio announcer. Oh my God I got so tired of that rear end in a top hat. "LOL DID SOMEONE FART IN THE VAULT?" I'm coming for you, jackass. You absolute fucker.
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Oct 11, 2019 19:54
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 oh no! Almost immediately into her journey to the Potomac, Post-Nuclear Beth is beset by a Bloatfly! They're level 1, 15 HP with 0 DR. They launch maggot-filled darts for 5 damage each. They aren't dangerous, but they do flitter around so they're hard to shoot.  And now a Vicious Dog! Level 3, 60 HP with 0 DR. They bite for 12 damage a pop. They have a rather high 8 perception, making them good at finding Post-Nuclear Beth. Unlike a lot of creatures in the wastes, dogs remain relatively unchanged by 200 years of radiation.  60 HP is enough they survive 4 straight headshots. This either speaks to their endurance or to Beth's incredible lack of technique.  And now something is setting her on fire?!  Oh, oh no, I've gone so far off-course I'm getting slaughtered by fire ants. poo poo.  Better restart this journey and try a different route.  And immediately Beth is assailed by a Mole Rat. Level 30, 40 HP with 0 DR. They have a melee bite attack that deals 15 damage base. They are aggressive and foolhardy; a mole rat that sees an enemy - defined as anything that isn't a mole rat - will immediately begin attacking and will never, ever relent. A lot of creatures are aggressive and foolhardy.  And look, it's a random encounter! Sam Warrick is part of the type-B random encounter "Going Camping" wherein he kills an unnamed generic wastelander and then turns to fight anyone else not of his faction, which is "FFEU53SniperFaction," which consists of the following NPCs:
Sam Warrick is presently level 4, his minimum as tied to the PC's level. His SPECIAL is 6/5/5/4/3/6/4. He has 85 HP and a damage resistance of 16. He's armed with a loving Sniper Rifle with a Small Guns skill of 44. The Sniper Rifle's high base damage and massive critical hit rate bonus make Sam Warrick extremely dangerous for a fresh-faced babby like Post-Nuclear Beth.  And more Mole Rats descend! Yeah I think that qualifies as "crippled"  In fact an entire pack appears, largely defeating Sam Warrick for me.  Shh, cows are refueling.  Raiders are too varied in stats and stats to really nail down. By the sawed-off shotgun this is probably a rank 2 gun-usin' Raider, which puts him at level 4, a SPECIAL of 6/5/4/3/3/7/5, 55 HP, and variable damage resistance based on the type and condition of his armor.  There's a dead wastelander nearby with a bomb! It takes a massive 75 Explosives to disarm, thrice that of a nuke! This would be type B random encounter "The Human Bomb" where there would be a lot more to it but most of the people involved are dead already.  Ah well, at least we get the fireworks show. Random encounters appear at fixed locations that pull from a list of possibilities. I've ran across two type-B slots in these outdoors cells, which are randomly determined when the cell is first loaded. They're called type-B because they're not type-A, the other type.  Dead guy doesn't have much on him anymore.  Hm, what's this?  Ah, chunks flew really far, huh?  Ah, a group of gentlemen who aren't trying to kill me.  A spot on the far north, huh? Sounds neat.    Type-A random encounter "Oasis Raiders". They won't leave this area and go north to Oasis, by the way. They just linger about here.  Unfortunately this route passes by a rather fortified position. A position with at least one missile launcher.  See? There's the missile.  Beth does not take being destroyed by explosions very well. Third option:  Take a dive in the Potomac River!  A friendly scavenger just chilling on a dock. Scavengers sell random things from weapons to junk, and can fix gear a little. Beth can double-cross and murder scavengers to steal their entire inventory, but that's mean. And this one has nothing worth the hassle.  The waters of the river are also radioactive. Oh well. Let's take a dip anyway! Allan Gray- Swing Doors performed by Charles Brull Dance Orchestra  Oh? Now this is an interesting location.  >Can I come in? "Negative. No Super Mutants, civilians or traveling salesmen allowed. No Super Mutants, civilians, or traveling salesmen allowed." Dang. We don't get to hang out with dudes in power armor in the old Pentagon.  A bit south of that is the starting point for the DLC pack Point Lookout. I just hop in the river and swim on by.  That O2 indicator at the top shows how long Beth can hold her breath before she starts to drown. Each little tickmark disappears one after the other until they're all gone then HP rapidly empties.  Another important location, but that's for later in the main story.  Being able to discover it from this far out does mean Beth can just fast-travel there and end up a lot closer to her goal. Each discovered location is also worth 10 EXP, which helps a bit in getting through the low levels.  Ah, that battleship in the distance, that's Beth's goal.  Beth's been shot a lot on this trip, but she can just drink the radioactive river water. Sure she's getting more and more poisoned by it, but that's fine, Moira wants to see how it works anyway. Who's doing all the shooting, anyway?  Ah. A Super Mutant, a human mutated through exposed contact to high concentrations of the Forced Evolutionary Virus, though Beth doesn't quite know that and never will. In fact, I don't think anyone in Fallout 3 really does. This basic dork is level 6, with 100 HP and 0 DR. It's a lot to cut through, but the mail-order grenades are pretty much for this.  Hunting Rifles are rather nice guns. 25 damage a shot, though their bolt-action reload means they have a low rate of fire. They zoom a lot further than most guns (despite the lack of sights or scope on the model) and have a low spread of 0.3. They're cheap and common so keeping one in shape is easy.  Ah, finally, Beth's destination Rivet City, built out of a battleship.   (this bridge, it stays extended for the rest of linear time)  >I'm looking for my father. "And who might your father be? If he lives on this boat, I know him." >I'm sure you don't know him. He's lived in a Vault his whole life. "Oh yeah? And I'm a fairy princess. You keep up this smart-rear end attitude, and you're gonna wind up floating face-down in the river." >He's disappeared, and I'm just trying to find him. That's all. "All right, all right. You can go on in. If I hear about any trouble, you're gonna wind up in the river. You get me?" Harkness always lets you in no matter what you say.  Rivet City has one of the better selection of shops in the Capital Wasteland, but, I don't have the time for that.  Rivet City has incredibly reliable and comprehensive signage. I love it.  In the Science Lab, the Lab with Science, there's an argument over some sort of advanced robot.  There's also Doctor Madison Li, but if we talk to her, we skip the entirety of Following in His Footsteps because the main quest directs us to her after a while.  Goddammit Dr. Zimmer! It's right there! Might as well talk to the old man while we're here. He's voiced by Paul Eiding, as is every old man, which is why they all sound the same. "Are you by any chance... for hire?" >That depends. What exactly are we talking about, here? "To the point. I like that. Well, as it turns out, I've misplaced some very sensitive "property."" >Missing property? What kind of property?  Beth is smarter than Dr. Zimmer by one point by the way. "All you know of robots are those buckets of bolts those Mr. Handshakers and whatnot. Well... that's not ALL a robot can be."  "And... occasionally they get confused and wander off." >Sounds like slavery to me. You sure they don't "wander off" on purpose? "Nonsense! This is a machine we're talking about. Can you enslave a generator, or a water purifier? Of course not. The same principle applies. But let's get back to your mission. You are to find this missing android. I've tracked him to somewhere here in the Capital Wasteland. He must have done something drastic, like facial surgery and a mind wipe, or else I would have found him by now. It will be no easy task. He may not even realize he's an android. Don't upset him by talking with him. Just come get me immediately. I'll handle it." >Sure. I'll look into finding your android for you. "Excellent. Locate my android, and you won't be disappointed. Here, listen to this message he sent me. He's mocking me. I swear I'll make him pay for that." >I need to know more about what I'm dealing with. What is an android exactly?  Third named quest, I leave this one on the table for a bit. "Androids have fake skin, and blood, and are programmed to simulate human behavior, like breathing. They can even eat and digest food realistically." >If this android "wandered" off, why would he want a new mind and face? "Maybe.... MAYBE he didn't exactly wander off. Maybe he fled. Escaped captivity, as it were, if he began to misinterpret his "situation." It's possible my android sought to forget his previous life. Wipe away all memory, all guilt. Trick himself into believing he really IS human. So no, he may not be just an ordinary robot, but he's certainly not human, no matter how badly he wishes it so. I made him. I want him. End of story." >Why would an android feel guilt? Come on, Zimmer, what aren't you telling me? "By God, you're as annoying as you are clever. Very well. I'll tell you what you want to know, if it helps you locate my property."  "It's one of the side effects of having such an advanced A.I. Machines start to think for themselves. Fool themselves into believing they have rights. And so... this particular android may have believed he'd done something... wrong. Immoral. And wanted to forget those deeds. Satisfied now?" >Okay, so if others have escaped... why are you coming after this one? "This particular android... Designation A3-21, is... different. Special. The most advanced synthetic humanoid I've ever developed. The others, like my escort Armitage there, are all older models. Easily replicated. Ah, but A3-21... it would take years to recreate him! So you see, this android MUST be located. At all costs. The others are all... acceptable losses. But A3-21, he is... irreplaceable." >So tell me about the Commonwealth.  "But... the Institute's affairs are none of your concern. Your undeveloped mind couldn’t even begin to comprehend what we’ve accomplished" The Commonwealth is the setting of Fallout 4, and the Institute a major faction in it. >I have to go now. "Of course you do." Nearly every NPC interaction ends with picking the "I'm done talking" option with the NPC saying "I agree to cease talking" line. Dr. Zimmer has all of 20 HP, but he's Essential so I can't paste him. He is objectively evil.  Anyway, back to this baby on a table in the Science Lab.  Beth had only 9 intelligence because I could reach this at level 2 and hit a full 10. Beth and her infinite galaxy brain will now get the full 20 skill points every level, and the one lost at level 2 is made up for by having an extra SPECIAL point elsewhere. These bobbleheads can't break the 10 cap, nothing can. Mentats are useless, mere drugs cannot enhance Beth's incredible mind. The rare INT-boost gear also bounces off helplessly. So what does the smartest girl in the Wasteland do? Fail to get into local politics then flee to the north in shame, duh.
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Oct 11, 2019 19:54
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Ah okay. I get the gag now. Sheep's going way off the reservation since Super Mutants are real rough to deal with at this point of the game.
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Oct 11, 2019 20:05
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It's cool that one side quest ends up being a preview for the setting and events of Fallout 4. It'll also be cool to watch you put all those delicious skill points to work.
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Oct 11, 2019 20:16
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So, because I'm a dumbass most of the time, OFS just ran from Megaton to Rivet City for the bobblehead and one sidequest, and not to do a massive (possibly game breaking?) sequence break in the story?
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Oct 11, 2019 21:22
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Mother Fucker 7 years clean of Fallout 3. Now you post this and I gotta reinstall and mod it with fwe. Or ttw. I HAD 300 HOURS ON MY VERY FIRST SAVE FILE FOR FUCKS SAKE and I played it like 4 more times (although significantly more efficiently) (Mind you, this still pales in comparison with my New Vegas playtime)
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Oct 11, 2019 21:30
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Randalor posted:So, because I'm a dumbass most of the time, OFS just ran from Megaton to Rivet City for the bobblehead and one sidequest, and not to do a massive (possibly game breaking?) sequence break in the story? Actually entirely for the bobblehead. I don't even do the sidequest yet.
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Oct 11, 2019 21:48
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I played a lot of this back in the day. The Capital Wasteland is a fun place to aimlessly wander around, stoned off your rear end. As bad as the actual writing is I always enjoyed the environmental storytelling. Never did get into NV, by the time it came out I had moved on, and from what I did play the Mojave is just a less interesting place to just dick about in, even if it's a better game overall. I'm very interested in what OFS is going to do to it. And, for the needlessly optimal (goons) it's possible to max out every stat with a starting intelligence of 5, if you have the dlc (I think 4 with some finagling but my spreadsheet says 4.2 and I'm not going to dig into why), no bobblehead (for reasons), and without the perk that gives +2 skill points on level up. This let's you get every perk that offers a meaningful benefit (though you have to chose between a couple of the less impactful ones as there just aren't enough levels). It also involves finding every skill book in the game.
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Oct 11, 2019 21:54
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