Fallout NV Day#14: Buggin’ Out

I’m afraid I’m done now with Fallout. It’s a good game, but I hit a frustrating point with my companion that really started to grate on me and then I finally saw the extent to which bugs can screw up this game. It’s one of the typical horror stories: two hours of play basically lost because I was near the end of a quest and I hadn’t done anything but autosave when an irreversible bug happened. I still like Fallout a lot and I may very well come back to it, but I’m on to other games now. Spoilers within.

I’m finally done with my crazy real-world travel and can play again, so here goes. I leave the Brotherhood of Steel bunker and then fast travel to the air force base to complete the bomber quest. When I get there, I tell Loyal that the bomber is up. In the conversation, I activate a random intelligence answer to find out robots are going to take the bomber apart in order to carry it, and then they are going to bomb somewhere else as a distraction while they bring it back. I leave Loyal and tell Pearl I got the bomber. She vows to help me with anything and agrees to help in the fight for the Hoover Dam. Success in that quest — the next step is to tell the NCR that the Boomers are on our side. I then fast travel to McCarren, thinking that the contact I need to tell this is there. I try to find ambassador and talk to some soldiers, but then I realize that he’s actually on the Strip. I head there and decide to get some sleep in my room first. I start to head back outside, but only after discovering a set of safes in the lobby of the casino and raiding them for a TON of pre-war money. I then go to Ambassador Crocker and give him the good news. He’s pleased and he has a new mission here on the Strip – he wants to do something to protect NCR people from the Kings. There’s a guy named Pacer who is largely responsible. We could kill him or appeal to King to stop Pacer. I agree to try diplomacy and talking to the King. Mission established, I take a second to rob Crocker blind in caravan and head out.

My next stop is  to the yes man robot to tell it that the Boomers are cool. I go back downstairs. Now that my Speech is 100%, it’s time to try talking to Benny again. I save first and then speech him into going up to a room with me and no bodyguards to talk next steps. We cut to his penthouse and talk to Benny. He wants me to help him have the Chairmen (his gang) take over the Strip. I’m evasive on helping him, and he won’t give me the chip. I let him talk until he’s finished. Then I literally blow his head off and just take the chip back. It’s quite satisfying that the game let me do that; revenge against the fucker that shot me at the beginning of the game feel very right. That ends the Ring-a-Ding-Ding quest and I level up. It’s another general stat raise, and I take the Better Criticals perk for sure. I leave the casino and tell Swank (the other Chairman guy I know) that Benny’s dead and he’s happy because he’s now in charge. I exit the casino and some Legion spy runs up to me to talk. He tells me my crimes against the Legion are forgiven and Caesar wants to talk to me. I get a mark to pass safely through Legion lands. Okay…I mean, I’ve been massacring these guys every chance I get, but sure I’ll talk.

Anyway, it’s time to get back to the mission. I go to Freeside to talk to the King. He won’t curb the violence until he likes me more.  He has this weird cyborg dog and he tells me that there’s a woman at the old mormon fort that could help the dog, but he can’t convince her to do it. Eh, let’s try to help him out. I go to the Mormon fort first and see the Kings who were beat up. Between the two of them,  they reveal  that a lieutenant was responsible for the beating. That makes me think it’s the NCR, so that’s not getting beyond me. The NCR are my allies, and the Kings are a gang. I talk to a researcher who is trying to make new medicines before all the hospitals are looted. He tells me Caesar used to be a Follower who went bad trying to recreate the old world.  And here the game FREEZES. Sight. I repeat the fort up to where I was. I then talk to Julie Farkes, who is the follower in charge. She needs supplies and I agree to try to convince a merchant to give her some. She further says that this  is the regional HQ for the Followers. When I ask her about the dog, she says there’s nothing that they can do here to help it, but that there’s a doctor in Jacobstown (?) who can help Rex. Ok, I’m done here.

I’m ready to continue on with the ally research for the yes man robot. I decide to find the Great Khans first since everyone else is in the Strip. I head west toward the Great Khan marker on my map. There are lots of fiends in the ruins to the west of the Strip, and I die fighting some fiend boss with a flamethrower. I respawn at the Mormon Fort. This time, I try going south from vault 22 to the Great Khan location. I wander around and into some giant bugs. In the fight with them, Veronica dies from poison again. I hate that cheap shit, and I reload. Those mountains around Vault 22 are too hard to travel, so I choose to go west again. Wait, where is my armor? I don’t seem to have any armor equipped. I reload, don my armor (wtf?), and go west again. Veronica keeps dying in these fights and I don’t understand why she’s not healing herself. Another reload. I wander out again, and this time there’s an enemy insect out here that won’t die despite tons of damage that kills us. Goddamn it, today is a buggy game. The next time I try coming up from south this time. I die again from the stupid moth bugs. I respawn, try that direction, and die yet again fighting.   Man, I HATE these things. I DONT KNOW WHAT THE FUCK I AM SUPPOSED TO DO WITH THEM.

Fuck the Great Khans. I’ll do the quests in the Strip first instead. I go to a store in Freeside first. They tell me they don’t have the resources to help the Followers themselves, but that the Wrangler could help the Followers. I then go to the Ultra-Luxe to talk to the White Hands. I give up my weapons at the door, and then talk to Gunderson at the bar. His son is missing and he wants help finding him, which I agree to give. I next talk to Mortimer, a staff member. He explains that the White Glove only recently made themselves known. I poke to see if they have any work, but apparently I don’t have the stomach for their work. (They weren’t always so refined.) Oh they used to be cannibals. I go talk to another member of the society to find out more, because there is no way they are not still cannibals right now. I try to lie that I’m a cannibal too to tease her out but it doesn’t work. I do learn that guy’s wife from Novac disappeared here too. You can smell the cannibalism going on. I also find out there’s a detective investigating the disappearances in the hotel. After finding out where the detective is staying from Mortimer, I go to the detective’s room. I open the door to the room and find the detective is dead. I’m then immediately attacked by White Gloves with canes. I have to kill them bare handed since the guy at the door has all of my weapons. It takes a couple of tries because MY FUCKING COMPANION WON’T HEAL HERSELF. Once those White Hands are dead, I go back and search the room. There’s a matchbook on the body that mentions a meeting at the steam room at 4pm. I head back to the main part of the casino, and now all of a sudden everyone is attacking us. I have literally no idea why — these people did not see me fight the White Hands by the detective’s room. I die when the whole room gangs up on us.

I reload in the detective’s office after I die. I go to the steam room and wait. Chauncy shows up looking for the detective. I make it clear that I’m on the detective side. Surprise – Mortimer is eating people in the hotel. What a shock. Anyway, the White Gloves  have Ted.  Chauncy doesn’t want me to tell the dad because he might raze the hotel and strip in revenge. I have to quietly break Ted out — that’s the next mission. Once I accept, an NPC assassin shows up and kills Chauncy, but we kill him and I get a pistol. The trick now is that I have to slip back to where Ted is and get him out without anyone noticing. I first talk to Marjorie about becoming honorary member and to get access to the backstage stuff, but she won’t help me because my name on the Strip isn’t big enough yet. I then sneak into the back. I pass a bunch of White Glove enemies, but I keep my Stealth Boy on to stay out of sight. I come into the kitchen with the cannibal shelf and painfully slowly kill him. I find Ted locked in a pantry. I free him and convince him to come with me. We then sneak out back the the casino floor. As soon as we get there, we get into a fight with hotel staff. We win, but then the game makes a dramatic downhill turn.  The short answer is that Ted now won’t follow me for some reason. He’s froze in place and I can’t move him. I trying pushing – no avail. I leave the area and come back, nothing. And of course, I haven’t saved since I got to the casino, that’s at least two hours of play I would have to repeat. FUCK YOU GAME! Come on, some simple bugs I can take, but something this huge is not acceptable.

You know what  – that may end the game for me. I have certainly seen enough of Fallout. It was fun, but this bug really really hurt. I may come back to it, but for now, get ready for some new stuff.