The head preacher guy is kind of surly and unhelpful, and there is another character with an animated face who gives also gives me basically nothing, so I don't stay long, but I have a feeling there is a quest associated with this place. I never find out what it was, but that's how things work in these big, complicated games. Sometimes you miss stuff.
The only thing you can do is try and poke your nose into every nook and cranny, in the hopes that random npcs will decide to tell you their problems.
Like so. This guy, Irwin, has had his farm overrun and occupied by raiders. The dickbags. Naturally, he is not averse to soliciting the aid of wandering mercenaries to take out the usurpers with extreme prejudice.
I actually played this mission twice. The first time, I did not block the door, and as a result Dogmeat rushed in and was subsequently targeted by every damned raider in the place. The only way I could stop that from happening is by ensuring I took 100% of the attacks. The thing is, Dogmeat is actually fairly useful as a combatant. He doesn't do a lot of damage, but he attacks so often that he gets a lot of critical hits, which can turn the tide of a battle when they happen at the right time. He also closes the distance to enemies extremely quickly, which is good for a few early hits. But damned if he is not a suicidal little shit. I wish I could control my companions directly, and maybe avoid some of this heartache, but presumably Interplay had their reasons for doing it this way.
The reward for this good deed was pretty good. In addition to looting all the bodies for huge amounts of ammo and easily resalable weapons, I also get a half dozen stimpacks from the various shelves (I'm going to assume they were put there by the raiders after they took over the place) and Irwin gives me his custom weapon - a pistol that has been modified to accept rifle ammunition. It's such a beast of a gun that I wind up using it until level 15, when I can buy the "Tag!" perk and thus get enough ranks in the Energy Weapons skill to make using a plasma rifle viable.
After that, I leave the hub, as it appears that the only remaining quests would have me working for criminals. I decide to head north, to the Raiders camp, and take care of some unfinished business.
And by that, I of course mean I slaughter everyone. In the process, I release some slaves, but is that really justice? Does that word even mean anything in this harsh post-apocalyptic wasteland? I can't say. All I know is that their stuff enriched me considerably, and the only logical place to take my new-found wealth was the Gun Runners compound down in the Boneyard.
Let me first take a moment to say how much I love these little postcards you get when you visit new areas. They're always a fun bit of setting flavor, though I'm not sure they're supposed to be in-setting artifacts (some of them are implausibly sophisticated - there's no way Junktown is organized or old enough to have tourist geegaws and others, like the map of the Brotherhood of Steel bunker are actual state secrets).
Anyway, this map finally establishes the game's geography beyond a shadow of a doubt. The Boneyard is Los Angeles, and from that information you can put the other locations in context. (Necropolis is on the ruins of Bakersfield, for example).
I don't really know what to expect, because this is a location I've avoided in previous playthroughs (there is basically no plot-related reason to come here). What I find is an armed camp.
It looks like a pretty stable and peaceful town. The barbed wire fence surrounding the whole thing gives it a disturbingly militaristic air, but that may well be a sensible precaution in these troubled times.
When I talk to Miles, the chemist, I certainly get the typical rpg-style "help us, oh total stranger, with problems you are probably not qualified to address" spiel. However, I am absolutely positive that "helping to repair the town's hydroponics" will boil down to a fetch quest in the end.
The mayor gives me a more interesting assignment.
Murder for hire! The Blades have apparently been kidnapping and torturing residents of the town for some time, and the mayor wants to put a stop to it. They took his son and returned him impaled on a spike. It is time for some old-fashioned frontier vengeance. Or at least, subcontracting out your frontier vengeance to the heavily armed stranger that has just so happened to pass through your town.
I strike out to the north to assassinate the leader of the Blades and restore peace to the town.
Though, when I finally find her, she tells a different story.
Apparently the Regulators are the ones who killed the Mayor's son, which is a likely story, but she has the video evidence to prove it. Rather than simply rushing into town and revealing the whole sordid truth, I must first go to the Gun Runners and see if I can convince them to supply the rebels with weapons. Sounds legit, but there's just one problem.
DEATHCLAWS! Three of them to be precise. It's an utter deathtrap. In the end, I have to reload a couple of times just to get through without engaging the beasts. What a terrible, terrible place to set up a business.
Then again, I get the feeling they are not fond of visitors. What is your revenue model, people? If a customer could reliably reach your shop, they would have no need of your product.
It's a little wacky, but they seem to be aware of the flaw in their business plan, because they agree to help me if I can just clear out their little deathclaw problem. At this point, that's about as likely as me visiting the moon, so I decide to wander about a bit and see if I can gain some more experience.
The obvious place to start is Necropolis, where I recall they were having something of a super mutant problem.
It appears that I'm too late. I could go on a rampage of revenge, but that would only delay my mission, and clearly this just became a race against time.
I'm going to need some bigger guns . . .
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