Tag: Fallout

Further Thoughts on Fallout

Having binged my entire way though Fallout, I have some further thoughts (spoilers ahead!).

WOW. Like, seriously. WOW.

They’ve done an amazing job. There are only three things that stood out to me as inaccurate, and two of those are fairly accurately explained.

The first is ghouls using a drug to avoid turning feral. To my knowledge there is no mention of this in any other Fallout media. Ghouls are tough, get healed (to some extent) by radiation, can live for centuries, and sometimes go irreversibly insane and turn into mindless, cannibalistic monsters. There seems to be some link between age and going feral, but it’s very vague – some ghouls remain sane for centuries, whole others lose their mind within a few years.

To my mind there’s no reason that ghouls in California couldn’t have stumbled over a pre-war drug that fends off going feral, or even developed such a drug. We know that Dr Barrows in D.C. is looking for treatments for the ghoul condition, there’s surely similar researchers in California. If it’s a comparatively recent development then it wouldn’t have had time to spread to the rest of the wasteland, which would explain why it doesn’t show up in any of the games

The second issue is Maximus getting stuck in his power armour after Thaddeus stole his fusion core. This should be impossible – from the games we know that you can easily get out of power amour even when your last core runs out, and you can move (albeit very slowly) in non-powered power armour.

This is easily explained by the fact that Maximus has never actually been trained! He’s using armour that he stole and has very little idea what he’s doing. There’s probably a release somewhere inside that opens the suit without power, and another one that allows the suit to articulate, but he has no idea where they are, or that they even exist. So when the power goes out, he’s screwed.

The final issue is the big one – the location of Shady Sands. Shady Sands is supposed to lie directly east of Vault 13, which is in the vicinity of Mount Whitney in the Sierra Nevada. It absolutely cannot be over 300km south west in the Angel’s Boneyard. I can’t think of a single way to deal with this – maybe it’ll be explained in Season 2 (we’re gonna get a Season 2, right?) or maybe it’s just something we’ll have to live with.

Anyway, spectacularly well done to everyone involved, and roll on New Vegas!

Initial Thoughts on Fallout

Some thoughts after watching the first two episodes of Amazon’s adaption of Fallout (includes spoilers)…

Spending 20 minutes rotating pictures of wheelbarrows is an oddly Vault-Tec method of accessing the Prime free trial.

Holy guacamole! I thought the trailers looked good, but didn’t dare hope they’d get everything this right!

Ella Purnel is adorable.

The tension in the wedding scene was nail biting.

I LOVE the fact that they’re playing stimpacks straight. Suffered a horrifying, likely fatal injury? Just grab a stimpack and you’re fine!

I’m pretty sure they did a bunch of shooting in Namibia.

They’ve managed to strike the perfect balance between realism and silliness with the violence. It’s ludicrous, but not so much that it takes you out of the story.

Knight Titus was a dick, even by the high dickery standards of the Brotherhood.

Putting all his points into sharpshooting definitely helped with the Yao Guai, but Maximus probably should have spared a few for the Power Armour Training perk.

The brahmin looked so good I didn’t even register them for a second. Cow with two heads? Yeah, that’s just background.

I was furious when the Ghoul killed Dogmeat! But then he fixed him up, so I shall forgive.

Copies of the Wasteland Survival Guide in the shop – perfect!

I am very much looking forward to continuing the series!

Just a Bit of Zurvár

Gur, gur beltàdlet kert ná…
Ròmanár gur pevgetslá koro modá ibiŝan darak pevnánûglá.
Spanolár badmâ pevorklá kâ aknà iskan badrokâ itatâ.
Itlá Dîŝlan idráurn pevorestlá poro admo bárizûurn darakâ.
Garad, gur beltàdlet kert ná.

Gur, gur belt-ayed-let kairt nah.
Roman-ar gur pev-gets-lah, koh-roh moh-dah ibishan darak pev-nan-oo-glah.
Span-olar badmor pevor-klah, kor ack-nay iskan bad-rockor itah-tor.
It-lah Doysh-lan idrah-urn pevor-est-lah, poh-roh ad-moh bah-riz-or-urn dara-kor.
Garad, gur belt-ayad-let kairt nah.

WAR, WAR WILL-CHANGE-ITSELF NO !!
ROMAN-PEOPLE WAR DID-PERFORM TO PLURAL SLAVE MONEY DID-SEIZE.
SPANISH-PEOPLE EMPIRE DID-BUILD BY THEIR DESIRE TREASURE-CONCERNING LAND-CONCERNING.
HITLER GERMANY BROKEN DID-REPAIR CAUSE COUNTRY VERY-POWERFUL MONEY-CONCERNING.
DEPSITE-THIS, WAR WILL-CHANGE-ITSELF NO !!

What Happens in Vegas

Because I’m the sort of person who gets obsessed by stupid wastes of time, I’ve spent far too many hours over the last couple of weeks plotting locations from the computer game Fallout: New Vegas into Google Earth. Not content with simply plotting the easy ones, I’ve been obsessively researching the more obscure places and turned up some interesting information that doesn’t seem to have been posted online previously. So what better place to put it than on my blog?

Gypsum Train Yard: The Gypsum Train Yard appears to be based on the Pabco Gypsum facility to the east of Las Vegas. This so obvious that I’m surprised it doesn’t seem to be recorded anywhere.

Morning Star Cavern: This cave is fairly close to the abandoned Morning Star Gold Mine.

Walking Box Cavern: This cave must have got its name from the nearby Walking Box Ranch.

Samson Rock Crushing Plant: This facility may well be based on the Las Vegas Paving Corp aggregate plant in Arden. It’s southwest of McCarran Airport and adjacent to the railway line, just as in the game.

Some other fun stuff I found. The entrance to Fort McCarran is based on the historic entrance to the airport – located on South Las Vegas Boulevard just south of the Fabulous Las Vegas sign. A bit further west on I-15 is a giant Miller Beer bottle, which might well have influenced the entrance to the Sunset Sasparilla factory. The game states that Freeside is located around the intersection of Freemont Street and Las Vegas Boulevard – what do you find there? A gateway just like the one near the Atomic Wrangler. Jacobstown is not just located on the slopes of Mount Charleston, but is clearly modeled on The Resort on Mount Charleston, even down to the big sign at the entrance.

There’s no doubt plenty of other stuff to be found, but I’m all burnt out on it now 🙂

You got to walk that lonesome road alone…

As one who on a lonesome road doth walk in fear and dread…

In my continuing quest to eventually complete Fallout:New Vegas I started my first add on last night by entering the Divide – the setting for Lonesome Road. My first impressions? Fething hell!

The Divide is sheer, fething madness. I’m not going to post any real spoilers but the environment, the enemies, the whole atmosphere is downright terrifying. That first view when you step through the canyon wreckage – yikes! I’ve actually considered turning tail and heading back to the Mojave – but Corvus Jones (my Courier is named Corvus Jones – deal with it) don’t run! Or at least he hasn’t run yet, and if I’m going to beat the game I’ll have to finish Lonesome Road at some point, so it might as well be now. But jeeze! The Divide is one hell of a creepy place and I’ll be very happy when I’m done with it and can head back to Vegas where the worst thing that can happen is an ambush by deathclaws.

Shudder!

Forciable Detox

My monitor has forsaken me!

Well, my home computer’s monitor has finally crapped out on me.

It’s been dying for a while. The power button hasn’t worked for about six months, and for the last few months it’s been refusing to wake up once it goes into sleep mode. I’ve been dealing with both problems by rigging up a monitor extension lead so I can directly cut and restore power without getting out of my chair, which has been serving to wake it up again. But yesterday morning nothing I did could get an image to appear. Dang.

Apparently the thing that most often goes bye-bye on Viewsonic monitors is the capacitors. These can be replaced, but unless you’re willing to do the work yourself the cost for parts and labour is generally about that of an entirely new monitor. So I guess I have some shopping to do.

On the plus side, this enforced break from using my home computer (I don’t have a spare monitor, so I can’t do squat) will serve as a nice detox from Fallout: New Vegas, which I’ve recently got back into and have been playing way too much. I’m getting seriously tetris-affected – I saw an agave plant in a garden over the weekend and had a sudden urge to harvest it. Not good. Not good at all 🙂

(As long as I don’t start seeing people’s body parts highlighted I should be OK though :))

Over and out.

Notes

Wandering the Mojave

Some notes concerning Fallout: New Vegas

1: The first time I saw a Bighorner my reaction was pretty much the same as 40 seconds into this video.
2: I am most pleased that they’ve made an effort to have Caesar’s Legion speaking with classical pronunciation.
3: Blackrock Radio is hilarious!
4: Most amusing bug – I dropped some armour and it went shooting off across the floor at high speed. If I’d been outside I would have had to chase it across the desert to get it back.
5: Most annoying bug – the Monorail. The bloody monorail. You know what I’m talking about.

What Happens in Vegas

Damn Powder Gangers…

There’ve been no new posts for a while, mainly because I installed Fallout: New Vegas over the weekend and have been playing a fair bit of it (also the hot tap in the bathroom finally completely failed, meaning I have a choice of hot water everywhere, or no hot water at all – a plumber’s coming around tomorrow).

So far the game has failed to grip me in the way that Fallout 3 did. I think this is mainly because there are so many differences and new features that I’m finding it all a bit confusing. But it’s starting to grow on me. For the time being I’m mostly just flailing around Goodsprings, getting a grip on everything. Once I get used to it all I’ll probably start over with a new character.

And what about the famous bugs? So far I’ve only come across three. Sunny Smiles occasionally doing the moonwalk, my gun dropping out of frame once, and some severe image stuttering in combat. I’ve lowered the image settings a bit to try and deal with that last one, so we’ll see how we go.

I’ve had a reprieve from the whole shirts issue as some very geeky ones I ordered from Cafe Press have arrived. I can now proudly masquerade a member of Vault Tec Security, the Brotherhood of Steel or the Brotherhood Outcasts. Excellent!

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