Fallout 3 - 17 minutes part 3

If Fallout 3 were a meal, it would be one of those ridiculous eating challenges from Man Versus Food. The sheer size of the thing forces you to approach it strategically. It forces you to ask yourself "how can I wrangle with this massive beast of a game so as to get the most possible enjoyment out of playing it?"

There are a variety of different approaches, and I can't say that I've ever pursued any one consistently. There's the chicken-with-its-head-cut-off method, where you just run around randomly and do whatever seems like the most urgent and/or convenient thing at any particular moment. I'm guilty of that more than I'd like to admit. Then there's the methodical geographic grid approach, where you go to a location, sweep it thoroughly, and then move on to the next location based on physical proximity. I always tell myself that I'm going to do that, in order to see absolutely everything the game has to offer, but I always space out long before I get the chance. What I do more frequently is the serial hyperfocus approach, where I get a bug up my ass about some particular quest, and then focus on that quest to the exclusion of all other concerns. Often, any given playthrough of the game will incorporate all three strategies.

This time, however, I intend to try something different. What I'm going to do now is beeline for the unknown. Large portions of this game I've already seen, due to the hundreds of hours I've played it on the console. However, with the PC version, I am getting some genuinely new content - the DLC missions. I've always been a bit diffident about digital purchases, and while my Steam addiction has more or less cured me of my reticence, in 2009, I was not nearly so comfortable about the idea (hell, I'm still not thrilled, but what am I going to do, rest contented with the games I already own and the uncountable years of entertainment that they can provide, I think not).

My plan, then, is to go after the DLC as soon as possible. According to a guide I found online, the order I want to do things in is probably

Operation: Anchorage
The Pitt
Mothership Zeta
Finish Main Quest
Broken Steel
Point Lookout

Combined with the inevitable distractions, loot hunts, and bobblehead-centered side-trips, this should take me well beyond 17 minutes* of game time.

That, at least, is the plan going forward. Since my last post, I've been mostly focused on achieving two particular main quest milestones. First, I wanted to restore Galaxy News Radio. Until you go into the DC ruins and fix the transmitting tower, the radio station only has a limited range. That can make the outlying regions feel excessively desolate and isolated (which maybe is a thing you're into, but I personally prefer my post-apocalypse to be a bit cheerier).

But even aside from having noise to keep me company, I genuinely like the game's soundtrack. It's all old-time jazz and rock-and-roll of varying cheesiness and sometimes questionable politics, but the contrast between the up-tempo and "innocent" music and the bleakness of the setting is really quite a striking effect. Plus, some of the songs are genuine classics in their own right, and well worth a listen for no reason other than musical appreciation (though I'm pretty sure "Way Back Home" was pure pap even in its decade of origin).

Restoring the radio station is a pretty fun quest. You get to go to the bombed-out ruins of the National Mall and dig through the Museum of Technology to find a radio receiver dish to replace the one shot down by Super Mutants. While there, you learn some nifty bits of Fallout lore, like the fact that right up until the war, the US was sending nuclear-powered rockets into space. I also learned that the Fallout universe diverged with our own no later than 1969. Where NASA sent the Apollo mission to land on the moon, Fallout's USSA sent the Virgo mission in the same year. Is this an easter egg for the mythologically literate? I don't think so, but perhaps someone more knowledgeable can say for sure.

After fixing the radio, I was then directed towards Rivet City, where my father once lived and worked as a scientist, attempting to purify the waters of the wasteland so everyone could drink without getting irradiated. A noble goal to be sure, though the real reason I went there was to collect the Vault-Tec Bobblehead that raised my Intelligence by a single point. I mean, advancing the plot and reuniting with my missing father is fine and all, but let's not lose sight of our priorities here.

Actually, speaking of the plot, I'm not sure how I feel about James. Like, he's voiced by Liam Neeson, so that automatically makes him cool, but then the more you learn about his life and behavior, the more you realize that he treats everyone around him (including yourself) like shit. At the beginning of the game, he abandons you to the tender mercies of the Overseer, but then, after getting to Rivet City, you learn that this is just part of a pattern.

Nineteen years ago, at around the time you were born, he abandoned Project Purity to move to Vault 101. Without him, the project fell apart, and all the time and resources spent pursuing it was wasted. Frankly, if I were Madison Li and he breezed back in after all that time, I'd punch him in his damned inconsiderate face. His excuse is that he wanted me to be safe after my mother died, but I've seen children in the halls of Rivet City. He could have raised a family while keeping up with his work (and, frankly, if he'd stuck with it and activated Purity 20 years ago, it's likely that all the future trouble I'm going to have with the Enclave could have been averted). Maybe the Overseer was right about him after all.

When I last left off, I'd played the game for about six hours, and I was in the middle of searching the Jefferson Monument for signs of my father. That's probably my favorite part of the game - visiting famous landmarks and having sci-fi action adventure all over them. There's a pretty good quest with the Lincoln memorial too. I think I should also put the White House and the Capitol building on my agenda. I've never actually been to the latter (in either the game or real life) and the only time I visited the former, I didn't have the radiation protection to survive it (in the game - in real life I've never been). But that is far in the future, because those are high level areas. My immediate goal is to get through the memorial. If I remember correctly, what follows is a lull in the main quest. I'll use that to start Operation Anchorage, and from there . . . it's not too good to plan, because this game has a way of knocking you off the rails.

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*Read: 20 hours