You'd think he would be torn apart by the giant monstrosity below the ruins of Los Angeles
But the mother deathclaw focused exclusively on me. It managed to kill me two or three times, despite my power armor, but I reloaded until I got a good run of attack rolls and managed to take it out before it even got to me.
From there, I went on to take out the Regulators, who by all rights should have filled Dogmeat with lead.
He rushed ahead of me and my allies faster than any of us could keep up, and the multiple enemies that targeted him would have finished the job, were it not for the weapons given to us by the Gun Runners.
It was, overall, an ugly brawl. Smitty died within the first couple of rounds, and my backup killed the mayor, despite the fact that the death of the mayor's son was the catalyst for this whole revolution in the first place. (Correction: I thought this was really fucked up, so I checked the wiki, and it turned out the mayor was probably killed by the Regulators and I just missed it.)
What eventually did Dogmeat in was a random encounter, far to the north.
There's just something about the AIs aggression routine where the enemies love to go after melee characters. I couldn't kill the Super Mutants fast enough to keep Dogmeat alive. I probably could have reloaded the battle to saved his life, but honestly, I was at a point of no return.
There's no way in hell I'd be able to keep him under control in the Super Mutant Base.
It is possible to pass through those red forcefields. If you do, you take damage. Dogmeat will run through those at the slightest provocation. Furthermore, every other mutant is wielding a rocket launcher, which will splatter Dogmeat even on a weak hit. It's possible to keep him alive, but it's basically trolling the RNG.
The numbers are too stacked against him. So I callously let him die. It kind of bums me out. I'm able to waltz through these guys pretty easily.
But my trusty companion was simply too frail. It aggravates me that the game would give me a cute little pet, but then repeatedly explodes him at every opportunity.
Though I slaughter the various mutants with relative ease, I stumble across one mutant who is not automatically hostile.
However, his reasonableness really only extends to offering me a chance to surrender. I quickly cut him down. Only after he's dead do I find out that he's more than he appears.
The flower makes me feel kind of guilty. Clearly this mutant was a sensitive soul. But my guilt only gets worse when I meet the mutant's girlfriend.
I guess I forgot that super mutants are transformed from regular humans. So it's only natural that this one one retains some memories and relationships from its former life. It actually makes me wonder if all these other mutants I've been killing have also had rich inner lives. I don't really see any reason why not, but if so, then why are they following the person that ripped from them their humanity and forced them into a painful transformation? It's been established that the Master does not restrict his recruitment to volunteers, so I can only imagine that his mutant retains an unusual degree of memory from his previous life.
It makes me uncomfortable enough that I reload the game and allow the mutant to take me to his boss.
It's Lou Tenant, who I've already met before. This time, however, I have power armor and some huge guns, so the contest is a bit more equal.
Lou gets a really long and elaborate death sequence. It's incredibly gross. The way forward is now open. I can penetrate to the heart of the base.
It's not immediately apparent what to do here, because the controls for interacting with computers are kind of obscure. You have to hold down the button to bring up the skill menu and use your Science ability. I think it's the only time in the game you have to do this. There are a couple of of other computers you can mess with, but they don't do a heck of a lot. Not for the first time I wonder what it must have been like playing this game back in 1998, without a guide. Technically, the information was in the manual, but would you even think to look? Not many games have Fallout's charm, but the degree to which it lets you wander without guidance would not be acceptable in a modern game.
Hacking the computer lets me bring up the base's self destruct sequence.
I choose the three-minutes silent alarm, which is probably too cruel, now that I come to think about it. As far as I can tell, there's no way to save the self-aware mutant and his girlfriend, and it would almost certainly not make a difference if there were an alarm, but as it stands, my fantasy that they somehow made it out is utterly implausible.
Senseless deaths aside, it's still a major coup for the forces of good. The vats are utterly destroyed.
And the base is reduced to rubble.
Though I learned the hard way that you need to completely exit the map to escape the explosion. Apparently, being on the surface, even in an area completely untouched by destruction, is still fatal. I'm sure this is probably an engine limitation, but I imagine that it has frustrated more than a couple people over the years.
With this major milestone out of the way, I am within spitting distance of the end of the game. Only one task remains - finding the Master, and destroying him.
This is for Dogmeat, you pieces of shit.
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