Fallout: Not Really Over

Last time on Athena Plays Fallout, what happened? Now that I’m typing this all out, I don’t remember. Let me go back and take a look.

Oh yeah. Timeline shenanigans aside, we beat the game. Go us! We’ve been sticking together for a while, and I’ve got to say, I’m proud of you. This was a team victory. We all did this together. You know what? This post is just going to be a victory party for us. Let me just close out the game, and we’ll get right to it.

So, we join our heroine in the computer room of Vault 13, where she just finished writing her report of how she saved the lives of every single person living in that Vault. She makes sure not to leave out any of the danger, intrigue, and true heroism she showed. This is going to be taught to children for generations. She needs to make sure they’ve got an accurate picture of it.

The game takes the opportunity to describe the library/computer room for what it is, because it triggers that the first time you visit this room and it assumes we would have explored it some time before now. Unfortunately, there’s never any reason to visit this room except for the fact that it puts you here after you turn in the water chip, so we never had the chance to see it. Seems a little out of place, popping up now. In any case, we head back to the Overseer, to finally end this game and see the credits.

See the Overseer has confirmed it! We saved everyone! Let the adulation commence! Well, this was a fun Let’s Play, we’ll see you next time for… wait, a little concerned?!

It’s the mutants. Remember, we saw like six of them. And that’s all. The Overseer has analyzed the data. That consists of a sample size of six. And determined conclusively that someone or something must be out there manufacturing them at a heretofore unseen rate and that this will be a danger to the world in general and the Vault in particular. We ran into them twice. That… that must be some data analysis skills he has, there.

But oh well. They’re out there. We should probably send someone to the Hub to talk to someone about that. Maybe get some guys together. Big guys. Tough guys. And they can do something about it. In fact, Athena will find a messenger to go get that started. After she’s had a couple mai tais. And a good nap.

No, she’s going to go out there? To take them down single-handedly? And she doesn’t have anything to say about that?

So, to reiterate, last time we were sent out into the wastes, it was to find a replacement part to fix a broken computer system. They didn’t know there’d be a lot of fighting around. For all they knew, I just needed to run down to the local OneStop and pick one up. Now, they’re sending me to destroy an army of genetically enhanced superbeings. Seems to be a little bit of escalation there.

The Overseer himself isn’t too happy about it.

This is one area that the voice acting adds a lot to. It’s one thing to read it, but Overseer Jacoren says it with such honesty and care in his voice, even though he’s asking us to do the deadly impossible, that it really brings out a lot of his character. Later games will bring some retcons that color his character a lot more sinister, but the voice acting really makes it stick that he actually cares about Athena, the people of his Vault, and at his core he’s an honest person saddled with some hard decisions.

Of course, one of those hard decisions is to send Athena right back out to the blasted wastes immediately after she just returned from saving the entire Vault! She didn’t even get any mai tais 😦

So, our job now is to hunt down the Super Mutants and destroy them all. Last time around, they at least gave us clues to start our quest. This time, not so much. Now, we could start by going back to the Necropolis, the last place we saw any of the Super Mutants, and questioning them. But instead, I think it’s a better idea to go to a place that apparently has nothing to do with anything and maybe they eat babies there.

On the way there, we run into molerats. Three times. We shoot them. It’s a good thing we’re out here and not any other Vault dweller. Having to shoot rats once every couple days, I don’t know how anyone else would stand it.

Every single time we slay a rat, we find they’re surrounded by fruit. It looks warped, but they’re still pretty tasty, so Athena pockets them for the next time she needs a late night snack.

Finally, Athena arrives at our destination; the bunker of the Brotherhood of Steel. The Brotherhood of Steel are a mysterious faction. Isolationist. Technology worshippers. Possibly evil twisted cattle mutilators. We only know where they are because one of the merchants let us in on their location, otherwise, they’re rarely seen except when we’re wandering around in alternate timelines and they keep bumping into us in the middle of nowhere and saying we already did what we’re doing now. Nobody knows much about them, but they fill in the gaps with the worst things. They don’t have a good reputation.

But in Athena’s eyes, all her misgivings melt away in the face of that sick, sick power armor they’re wearing. Two Brotherhood of Steel members are out there, only one of whom has a name. Athena chats with the one without one first.

He’s really friendly for an isolationist. Says the Brotherhood are just a collection of individuals who study pre-war technology. Says their sacred sick power armor is indeed totally sick. Also, they don’t sacrifice puppies. Athena had to make sure. If Athena wants to join and get this super sweet power armor, she’ll need to talk to Cabbot, the dude with the name.

Cabbot is decidedly less talkative. Also, that is a mighty nose. Anyways, the gist of what he has to say is that he talked to the leaders of the Brotherhood, and the leaders say that if somebody wants to join, they have to go to the Glow, the ruins of the ‘Ancient Order’ way on the other side of the map, pick up some technology there, and bring it back. And they don’t call it the Glow for nothing. It was ground zero for one of the bombs that kickstarted the apocalypse, and the area is still heavily irradiated for miles across.

The nameless guard on the other side remarks exactly what’s going through Athena’s thoughts. That level of radiation is sure to be certain death.

On the other hand, sick power armor. Athena’s off without even having to think about it.

The closer we get to the Glow, the more blackened and barren the hellscape around it becomes. As I mentioned before, the nuclear missiles that destroyed the world scored a direct hit here, and the effects are felt for miles around. We stop a little bit short, and Athena pops a couple of Rad-X pills she picked up from various places earlier. Just for safety.

We travel for a bit longer. Athena’s pills wear off and she picks up a small bit of radiation poisoning. Eventually, we make it to a big massive crater in the ground. Athena takes a bit more of her anti-radiation medicine. A few doses of Radaway to deal with the radiation poisoning she had, and a bit of Rad-X to protect her from absorbing more. What about Tycho and Dogmeat, you ask?

That reminds me, Tycho was carrying a length of rope we’ve been holding onto for a while. Athena pulls it out of his pants. We’ll be needing it here. After all, the entrance to this place is completely sploded. Athena ties it to a girder poking out of the edge of the hole, and the group descends it together. Yes, even Dogmeat. She climbs down the rope too.

Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to the West-Tek Weapons Research Facility.

Next time: next time.