Let's play the world's greatest fallout game again!
No it's not New Vegas, I'm talking about Fallout 2, the first best fallout game. No I'm not an elitist, hear me out, it's actually a good game on its own, old but good.
And yes I'm playing it again, because it's good and I just got to the meat of it.
Last time I posted about Fallout I made extensive use of the Time Machine (read: save and load game) because, like usual, I ended up putting myself in situations were I would be completely wrecked by the machine.
Last post ended up with me trying to move on to "easier" places, so that I wouldn't die so often because that gets grating after a while of doing nothing but that.
Of course, immediately after saying that I get ambushed by seven billion hostile NPCs and end up dying repeatedly. Apparently this game's random encounters depend on the speed of your PC's processor? I heard something like that once, so I suppose that's why I sometimes get 5 encounters back to back.
Sometimes I get completely screwed over and sometimes I get no encounters. Other times though, I get lucky and have at least a small fighting chance, like right now:
This man's name is Kaga, an addition from the Restoration Mod I installed, the guy pops up every now and then to give you a bad time because he's jelly you've been chosen as the hero of your tribal village.
Usually he comes over with enough people and firepower equal to your level. This time we have a chance (kinda) because I have enough goons human shields friends on my side to get rid of his own friends.
Normally I try to avoid most combat encounters, because of how difficult they can get, but whenever Kaga appears I try to beat the guy because at least his goons drop useful stuff. You can even try and kill the guy so that he doesn't appear again, which is technically not supposed to happen because he runs away once he's near death.
Once his friends are all dead, and he begins to bleed, Kaga runs away to fight you another day.
Once Kaga's ass has been kicked I can loot the stuff from his friend's corpses. You could also do it while fighting him but that takes away your AP and without enough AP you can't shoot or do anything, so that's a bad idea.
I'm glad I fought these people because one of these fine gentlemen/women has a combat shotgun on their person.
Combat shotguns are like shotguns, but shotgunnier.
...They can shoot in "burst" mode which is like shooting several times in one single action. Since this is a shotgun, and they're incredibly powerful in short-range I don't really need to tell you how broken that is.
And because I'm a little selfish gremlin I decided to keep it for myself instead of giving it to Cassidy, the resident old man with a shotgun, don't feel bad for him because I'll give it to him once I get a better weapon I find another Shotgun.
Obtaining the combat shotgun made me bolder, and despite the fact that I just said "let's go to an easier place because this is giving me ouchies" I made a complete 360 and decided to go to a place where I would get shot a lot, confident that Bessie would make mincemeat of anyone who stood on my way.
Also, I named my shotgun Bessie. No it's not weird, shut up.
So I made my way to Vault 15, which is marked on my map because I've probably talked about it with someone else, I don't know man it's been too long since I last played this.
Turns out that place isn't just a Vault, it's a town with people in it! As soon as you enter you get a quest. It's your standard "my daughter has gone missing" quest, which means that it's the perfect opportunity to test Bessie's strength. Because I'll end up shooting a lot of people.
Turns out shotguns are also effective at long range, who would have thought?
This battle provided me with yet another great find, a sniper rifle, which covers my need for long range weaponry in cases like: "I don't want to get myself shot by that turret way over there" or "I wanna see if I can get a bullet inside his eye from this far away"
Now, if only my companions would stop running towards the things I try to snipe...
So! The quest. The situation is a little more deep than just "my daughter was kidnapped!", there's some people who want to turn the vault next to the town as a base of operations to do bad stuff and since my character is a good person we're going to go stop them!
...Once I get some more levels.
So I go to the NCR! a town that stands for New California Republic, because I need a job, and New California Republic sounds like a place where you can get a job when you're desperate.
I also went here because I remembered something from my munchkining days, there's a guy here that can increase your character's luck. Through extensive use of the time machine (read: save scumming saving and loading) you can end up getting up to a whooping +2 to luck! Which is important, because the more luck you have the less likely that your shotgun will explode in your hands and cripple you.
To increase your luck you just have to join a cult, this block me from completing some quests later on in a different town but by the time I end at that place I'll just shoot my fellow cultists and force them to kick me out.
I got lucky and managed to get a +2 with my first try and because my normal luck was at 4 I now have a total of 6, that should let me score more criticals...
Before...
...And after.
I did end up getting a job after that, a nice lady offered me a spot on the "New California Rangers" if I managed to kill some slavers that set shop right outside of town.
...You'd think that those NCR guys who are so against slavery would actually do something about the slavers living right out of their base of operations.
I did some research and it turns out that the guys at their front door are actually exploiting a loop hole in NCR laws, because they're technically not in NCR territory... they're at the door.
Also it appears that they're not truly slavers, they're more like slaver babysitters who look out for your slaves when you're hanging around in NCR town having a good time.
They're still getting shot though.
Jesus that's a lot of corpses.
The next part of the job involves freeing the slavers, which is a little bit complicated because the computers that open the doors are too complex for my stupid tribal brain to understand, so I have to mash buttons randomly with the palms of my hands until I manage to miraculously open the gates.
I then have to do that four more times.
Why are computor so hard?
After breaking every single key in those keyboards I get accepted into the rangers. They even give me a pin and everything! I feel so official now.
It's not that I don't appreciate the pin but can I get something else? Like a gun? A big one please.
I also got an Assault Rifle from the slavers, which I didn't sell because reasons.
After getting my Ranger Pin and nothing else I promptly mentioned to my new boss that they sucked and went back to Vault 15, where I headed towards the actual Vault part of Vault 15 in order to deal with the eviiiil people residing.
Despite this part having the most combat out of all of the other situations in this post, it's actually the most boring out of them all. Probably because everyone tried to rush us after taking their drugs and ended up getting riddled with bullets, it was pretty easy even though they had the advantage of numbers...
There's more bullets in their bodies than bodies...
Normally whenever something good happens to me in this game it's because it's giving me a fake sense of security, in order to strip it away from me as soon as it presents an enemy that qualifies as a "boss".
I'm just waiting for the inevitable downfall that will come, probably as soon as I get deeper into this vault...
...And they just keep coming and getting shot!
Yeah once their big boss comes it's going to be bad times for me...
Come join me next time, when the game finally gets to my inevitable downfall and I have to complain about it and go somewhere else because I can't complete the quest in one go.