Tales from the Wasteland

NOTE: May contain spoilers. Well, yes it will.

It all started on my winter vacation in march. I had a week and a half off and wanted to spend it at home, just recharging my batteries. I played some games I had played before, million times over. I complained this to my friend and the dude told me to play Fallout 3. I asked why on earth. One sentence and I was sold: "You can eat corpses while wearing lingerie and a hockey mask." DUDE! THAT'S AWESOME!

So I tried it with my weary old, untrusty laptop. Poor thing screamed like a pig and heated up like a radiator in the winter when I played. Despite my laptop clearly not liking it, I continued playing. I kept getting hit bad and killed over and over. I wasn't very familiar with playing with a mouse and a keyboard, but still the game got me hooked. I might spend a whole Sunday just playing, forgetting the rest of the world.

Since I am a console player the whole laptop gaming was eating part of my fun. So I finally got myself an Xbox and Fallout 3 on it. I spent about 80 hours on my laptop, playing. When I got my Xbox, I decided to start over. My first char was called Trillian (10 points to who gets this book reference) and she was a redhead and pale as.. Well nothing is that pale. For my console char I decided to go for a male char, hispanic male char. I played through the vault and I felt kind of out of my skin. So at the door of Vault 101 I turned it around. Blond-haired chick. I didn't change the name. Later I just started calling her Blondi (50 points who gets where this name comes from) and not just cause her hair is blonde.

I really got sucked into the game world. Never really played anything where you can just wander around all you want doing quests, so that alone got me all hyped up. I must apologize my friends who have had to listen to me starting a conversation like "So, yesterday, in Fallout...", I am just enjoying it so much! People have said Fallout and Fallout 2 are actually better as a whole than Fallout 3, but I have no opinion. This is my first love and I dare not to give it away!

Knowing me it's not hard to guess that my char was completely good, karma never dropping to neutral (except hunting for Xbox achievements). And it wasn't too hard to guess that my char would be most lethal from a distance. Sitting on top of a destroyed building with my Sniper riffle, targetting raiders was the most fun I had on the game. They never knew what hit them!

Those who have played it, know what VATS is, and I used it a lot. Not a good aim anyway at freehand. Once I made an exception. It was an accident really. I was aiming the car behind a raider with my trusty (or not) sniper riffle, freehandedly. Even the raider was so far he didn't show up on the little compas thing. I aimed and aiiimed and aiiimed and finally fired. Blam the raider goes to pieces! Accidental lucky shot. I tried go collecting his gun but couldn't find it. Maybe he wasn't carrying one.

One time I was crossing the land to Tenpenny tower when suddenly I hear a noise, like someone fired a missile launcher at me. Pheeeewwww! BLAST! It lands right next to me. I turn around and see very angry Sentry bot coming at me... It was scary.

Though, not nearly as frightning as the first time I encountered a Deathclaw. I was wandering around, as I did a lot, when I see a creature running at me. I shoot at it and nothing. I panic, try shooting again but he's already on me and with one swing kills me. It scared me so much. As did meeting a Yao Quai a first time, since they are not exactly the prettiest of the creatures. Luckily I made them my friends. Like those little teddy bears. I would have wanted one as my companion.

(This is the spoiler part) But nothing can really beat Dogmeat as a companion. The little pup just does everything. Like kills a behemoth for you. He did. Of course I made it easy for him shooting couple of mini nukes at it, but he got the final mouthful sort to say. The little pup joined me at the Jefferson memorial to punch in the code and turn on the purifier. I decided it would be a suitable ending. Blondi sacrificing herself, turning to Dogmeat and saying "Well, I guess this is it, pal" and him still following her to the room and when Blondi fell down, Dogmeat was panting on her face and in the background Jefferson's statue getting clear inside the purifier... Made chills go down my spine. I was so happy with it ending like that. Perfect!

Of course I had Broken Steel by then so the game wasn't really over then, but man o man, that was still... Ah, made me so happy!

Now after two months of playing Fallout 3 weekly, I feel almost empty... What to do now? I don't wanna start all over again right when I finished it... But it's hard to let go. Maybe I should go try find Fawkes.

I fired Fawkes before the final mission and after it he is not at the Museum or the Citadel where I fired him... So... Where is he? Is he gone? For good? I miss Fawkes.

And I didn't even eat a corpse while wearing a lingerie and a hockey mask!