Let's Play Fallout: New Vegas [The Servant]
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[HEADING=1]Chapter XII - Exploring the Steelyard[/HEADING]
We ended last update being captured and enslaved by some raiders in the Pitt. Wasn't really sure how sound our plan was to begin with, I mean just kicking down the raiders door and shooting everyone wasn't much of a problem before. It's not like there's a whole lot of them.
Graphics-wise the Pitt is actually impressive. Lot's of interesting effects all around, and the city itself is quite interesting. (If a bit weird in it's layout.)
I wouldn't say it was quite as impressive as Honest Hearts for New Vegas though, visual-wise, I mean. I didn't know the Gamebryo engine could do something like that.
The slaves live and work in the lower parts of the city, while the raiders live in upper parts. The upper part of the city is pretty much just homes in broken down buildings loosely connected by walkways. You'd think that would be pretty dangerous.
We meet up with this Midea person and she tells us to follow her to her home so we can talk in privacy.
The layout of this whole area is pretty interesting. Level-design wise The Pitt is very much different from the rest of the game. The levels are more vertical than before.
We can get up there... later.
We have a chat with Midea in her house.
"I have a plan for getting you into Ashur's palace, but we need to wait. In the meantime, you're going to have to blend in."
"Whoa, whoa! Slow down! What's going on here?"
Seriously, what was the plan again? Just trust a complete stranger and become a willing slave to a bunch of psychotic raiders?
"I don't know what you saw on the way in, but the guards don't really take kindly to workers just standing around. You're going to need to look busy, or they'll sniff you out pretty quickly. And if they get too close, you don't look like you belong here."
"I didn't come here to work, I came to save you all!"
"Yeah, and right now, this is what you need to do to help us. You're not really going to be much use if the guards figure out who you are and stake you out for the Trogs, are you?"
"I see your point. What do you need me to do?"
"Outside of the mill, there are a bunch of steel ingots just laying around. Every so often, the Foreman puts out a work order to collect them. It's pretty much a death sentence, but they never assign it to anyone. They make us pick who's going to do it. Bastards."
Wait, what? Why would they waste slaves trying to collect the ingots? They could have had a group of armed raiders just sweep the steelyard for ingots. I mean, I guess it makes sense for chaotic stupid raiders but as we find out later, their leader isn't a total idiot.
"Let me guess, the area is full of Super Mutants."
"What in god's name is a Super Mutant? You know what, never mind. Whatever they are, you're wrong. What it is full of are Trogs."
"What the hell is a Trog?"
"They're what most of us hope we never become. The contamination gets to everyone to some degree. For most people, it's some form of cancer. Sometimes harmless, sometimes not. For others, the contamination drives them insane. If it doesn't kill them, it changes them. They become animals - deformed and inhuman. It's not pretty. They're everywhere and they kill on sight."
Fun Fallout Fact: Van Buren, the cancelled Fallout 3, had trogs in it. They were completely different in pretty much every way though. [http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Trog#Van_Buren]
"So, I'm just supposed to strangle them with my bare hands if I meet one?"
"I can't really help you there. Ask around. Maybe check with Marco in the Mill. He's been making some of our tools into weapons. You might even be able to find a gun on one of the dead bosses out in the Steelyard. They- what was that?"
And our conversation gets rudely interrupted by one of the raiders. Asshole.
Midea explains that we are the next person to go out in the Steelyard and get ingots.
The raiders just kind of randomly shoot at the slaves.
This is the steel mill, which is where the majority of the slaves work in. What's interesting about The Pitt, is that they actually have a justification for why there's slaves. They need them for labor. Why are there slavers in the Capital Wasteland?
Because they're assholes.
They're actually producing resouces instead of scavenging them!? Gasp!
Am I still playing Fallout 3?
Wait. Why do I have to get the ingots if they can make more of them?
The animation on barrels filled with molten steel are pretty impressive. This is probably the most dynamic and busy area in the game. The whole DLC is a cut above the rest of the game as far as design goes, but I have one huge problem with it: It's much too short.
It only took me 2-3 hours tops to beat it in my first playthrough, and even though it's a nice area in the game, I don't think the price of it when it came out was justified.
We talk to this Marco guy about getting us a weapon. It's not a huge deal, as you can get a weapon right when you enter the Steelyard, and once you get back, you may already have a huge arsenal of weapons anyway.
"And what are you doing?"
"Making weapons. Lot's of 'em. There's something coming... and soon. So, I take the crap we find out in the yard and some of the tools we use, and I make them into stuff we can fight the bosses with."
Wait, so how did the bosses not notice you making weapons?
"I need a weapon. Can you help me out?"
"Yeah.... you're the one Midea told me about. Wernher sent you, right? I can help you out. Take this. It's called an Auto Axe. Nice, huh? I make 'em out of the old car parts the breakers drag in from the city. Do what you can with it, just be careful around the bosses. Make a wrong move and you're done."
The Auto Axe is an awesome weapon but it's glitchy as hell and Bethesda never patched it. How can we sneak a giant thing like that past the guards anyways?
The is the Foreman of the Steelyard.
He leads outside to the Steelyard. Basically, he wants to collect 10 ingots of steel and bring them back here.
Do you know how heavy ingots are? And he wants us to carry 10 of them back here? I'm probably going to have to make a lot of trips.
We encounter our first trog. They build them up to be kind of scary, but at the most, they're just nuisances in the Steelyard.
Welcome to the Steelyard. It's probably the biggest area in thee entire game not split up loading screens, not counting the open world of course. It expands upwards instead of to the sides, so in order to get all the ingots, you have to go pretty high up.
(No, we will not be getting all 100 ingots. I might do it on the side just to get the Metal Blaster and the other incredibly overpowered items, I'm not showing them in the update.)
Right out the gate we find two ingots and an assault rifle with about 100 ammo for it on the guys body.
One of the slaves tries to talk to one of the trogs, who apparently is his mutated brother. If you don't do anything, the trog kills the slave.
Of course, since we're a good character, we save him.
Like I said, trogs go down pretty easily.
Fire erupts from the pipes, it vaguely looks like the mini-nuke effect in the game.
In this little house, you can find some steel ingots lying around with some medical supplies. The ingots are just in the most nonsensical of places.
The Auto-Axe tears trogs apart, and it functions like a chainsaw...
But in first person, the weapon tends to disappear. It still hurts enemies, but there's nothing there. The Auto-Axe is very much a glitched weapon, and I wonder why Bethesda never patched it.
You get some kind of perk that improves the damage you do with the auto-axe.
Again, the most random places. On top of a bridge like structure, there are like two ingots. Oh by the way, the ingots only weigh 1 pound each. Yeah.
I guess it'd be a pain in the ass to constantly backtrack for them, but it's still kinda silly.
Apparently, when you headshot trogs, only the top of their head explodes instead of the entire thing.
We level up in the middle of all this.
Yes, I always dump points into lockpick. I just have this OCD where every single door in the game must be unlocked.
More ammo is always nice.
Now we start to go upwards. I will probably miss the majority of all of the ingots in the Steelyard, if I wanted to go back and get them later, it'd be a pain the ass.
(I know there's quite a few in the power plant but we'll get to that later.)
We find a dead slave by the name of Wild Bill. He has a unique .32 pistol and some ingots on him. There's a sidequest that we missed with a slave who asks you to find him.
We run into wildmen who get torn apart by our auto axe. Hope you like wildmen and troggs, because that's the only kind of enemy you're going to fight in the Pitt.
VATS auto-axe has kind of an awesome finishing move type thing.
We STILL can go much higher than this.
If you couldn't tell yet, the color scheme in The Pitt is orange and black. It's kind of clashing, but I suppose it's better than brown and green at any rate.
The new Deus Ex game had a orange-ish/yellow and black color scheme, and that looked quite nice.
Yes just stand there grimacing while the auto-axe cuts you up.
She fell off. Sheesh, that's a long fall.
The DLC is ridiculously dark at some points.
You find a trogg near a cache of ingots and medical supplies.
The wildmen are kind of a boring enemy. They aren't really different from regular raiders, so I guess that leaves trogs as the only new enemy of this DLC.
We already have a hunting rifle and a few other strong weapons. I wonder if giving your slaves access to weaponry from the outside isn't a good idea. I mean sure, they might not come back, but it could be an issue.
Especially if one of the slaves is secretly a revolutionary hired from the outside who is part of a plot to remove you from power...
Yes, attacked the heavily armed women with a pool cue. I'm sure this will work out entirely in your favor.
Now we're close to the very top of the area. To our left is a flaming, irradiated pit that will increase your rads by quite a bit if you get close to it.
Why would the wildmen be up here? It isn't like there's a base or anything set up here.
We are a bit more effective in long range combat.
There's a turret here that's a pain in the ass to actually hit.
One of the raiders fell into the pit.
Believe it or not, but we can still go higher.
And on top is like a dozen ingots. It's like Bethesda is throwing the player a bone here.
You can see theskybox ruins of Pittsburgh from up here.
You can go down this big bridge thing...
And at the bottom, is another huge stash of ingots.
Now we can head back.
We get attacked by a trog on the way back to the mill. Of course, it goes down pretty much instantly with the auto-axe.
The Auto-Axe is fucking huge. How could you miss a slave carrying that past you?
Now we get rewarded for all the ingots we got. You get a new item for every 10 ingots or so, they even fucking give you weapons.
Arming your slaves is not a smart idea.
Well, now I guess we go back to Midea. Nothing else really to do...
Wait, what was the point of that again?
Graphics-wise the Pitt is actually impressive. Lot's of interesting effects all around, and the city itself is quite interesting. (If a bit weird in it's layout.)
I wouldn't say it was quite as impressive as Honest Hearts for New Vegas though, visual-wise, I mean. I didn't know the Gamebryo engine could do something like that.
The slaves live and work in the lower parts of the city, while the raiders live in upper parts. The upper part of the city is pretty much just homes in broken down buildings loosely connected by walkways. You'd think that would be pretty dangerous.
We meet up with this Midea person and she tells us to follow her to her home so we can talk in privacy.
The layout of this whole area is pretty interesting. Level-design wise The Pitt is very much different from the rest of the game. The levels are more vertical than before.
We can get up there... later.
We have a chat with Midea in her house.
"I have a plan for getting you into Ashur's palace, but we need to wait. In the meantime, you're going to have to blend in."
"Whoa, whoa! Slow down! What's going on here?"
Seriously, what was the plan again? Just trust a complete stranger and become a willing slave to a bunch of psychotic raiders?
"I don't know what you saw on the way in, but the guards don't really take kindly to workers just standing around. You're going to need to look busy, or they'll sniff you out pretty quickly. And if they get too close, you don't look like you belong here."
"I didn't come here to work, I came to save you all!"
"Yeah, and right now, this is what you need to do to help us. You're not really going to be much use if the guards figure out who you are and stake you out for the Trogs, are you?"
"I see your point. What do you need me to do?"
"Outside of the mill, there are a bunch of steel ingots just laying around. Every so often, the Foreman puts out a work order to collect them. It's pretty much a death sentence, but they never assign it to anyone. They make us pick who's going to do it. Bastards."
Wait, what? Why would they waste slaves trying to collect the ingots? They could have had a group of armed raiders just sweep the steelyard for ingots. I mean, I guess it makes sense for chaotic stupid raiders but as we find out later, their leader isn't a total idiot.
"Let me guess, the area is full of Super Mutants."
"What in god's name is a Super Mutant? You know what, never mind. Whatever they are, you're wrong. What it is full of are Trogs."
"What the hell is a Trog?"
"They're what most of us hope we never become. The contamination gets to everyone to some degree. For most people, it's some form of cancer. Sometimes harmless, sometimes not. For others, the contamination drives them insane. If it doesn't kill them, it changes them. They become animals - deformed and inhuman. It's not pretty. They're everywhere and they kill on sight."
Fun Fallout Fact: Van Buren, the cancelled Fallout 3, had trogs in it. They were completely different in pretty much every way though. [http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Trog#Van_Buren]
"So, I'm just supposed to strangle them with my bare hands if I meet one?"
"I can't really help you there. Ask around. Maybe check with Marco in the Mill. He's been making some of our tools into weapons. You might even be able to find a gun on one of the dead bosses out in the Steelyard. They- what was that?"
And our conversation gets rudely interrupted by one of the raiders. Asshole.
Midea explains that we are the next person to go out in the Steelyard and get ingots.
The raiders just kind of randomly shoot at the slaves.
This is the steel mill, which is where the majority of the slaves work in. What's interesting about The Pitt, is that they actually have a justification for why there's slaves. They need them for labor. Why are there slavers in the Capital Wasteland?
Because they're assholes.
They're actually producing resouces instead of scavenging them!? Gasp!
Am I still playing Fallout 3?
Wait. Why do I have to get the ingots if they can make more of them?
The animation on barrels filled with molten steel are pretty impressive. This is probably the most dynamic and busy area in the game. The whole DLC is a cut above the rest of the game as far as design goes, but I have one huge problem with it: It's much too short.
It only took me 2-3 hours tops to beat it in my first playthrough, and even though it's a nice area in the game, I don't think the price of it when it came out was justified.
We talk to this Marco guy about getting us a weapon. It's not a huge deal, as you can get a weapon right when you enter the Steelyard, and once you get back, you may already have a huge arsenal of weapons anyway.
"And what are you doing?"
"Making weapons. Lot's of 'em. There's something coming... and soon. So, I take the crap we find out in the yard and some of the tools we use, and I make them into stuff we can fight the bosses with."
Wait, so how did the bosses not notice you making weapons?
"I need a weapon. Can you help me out?"
"Yeah.... you're the one Midea told me about. Wernher sent you, right? I can help you out. Take this. It's called an Auto Axe. Nice, huh? I make 'em out of the old car parts the breakers drag in from the city. Do what you can with it, just be careful around the bosses. Make a wrong move and you're done."
The Auto Axe is an awesome weapon but it's glitchy as hell and Bethesda never patched it. How can we sneak a giant thing like that past the guards anyways?
The is the Foreman of the Steelyard.
He leads outside to the Steelyard. Basically, he wants to collect 10 ingots of steel and bring them back here.
Do you know how heavy ingots are? And he wants us to carry 10 of them back here? I'm probably going to have to make a lot of trips.
We encounter our first trog. They build them up to be kind of scary, but at the most, they're just nuisances in the Steelyard.
Welcome to the Steelyard. It's probably the biggest area in thee entire game not split up loading screens, not counting the open world of course. It expands upwards instead of to the sides, so in order to get all the ingots, you have to go pretty high up.
(No, we will not be getting all 100 ingots. I might do it on the side just to get the Metal Blaster and the other incredibly overpowered items, I'm not showing them in the update.)
Right out the gate we find two ingots and an assault rifle with about 100 ammo for it on the guys body.
One of the slaves tries to talk to one of the trogs, who apparently is his mutated brother. If you don't do anything, the trog kills the slave.
Of course, since we're a good character, we save him.
Like I said, trogs go down pretty easily.
Fire erupts from the pipes, it vaguely looks like the mini-nuke effect in the game.
In this little house, you can find some steel ingots lying around with some medical supplies. The ingots are just in the most nonsensical of places.
The Auto-Axe tears trogs apart, and it functions like a chainsaw...
But in first person, the weapon tends to disappear. It still hurts enemies, but there's nothing there. The Auto-Axe is very much a glitched weapon, and I wonder why Bethesda never patched it.
You get some kind of perk that improves the damage you do with the auto-axe.
Again, the most random places. On top of a bridge like structure, there are like two ingots. Oh by the way, the ingots only weigh 1 pound each. Yeah.
I guess it'd be a pain in the ass to constantly backtrack for them, but it's still kinda silly.
Apparently, when you headshot trogs, only the top of their head explodes instead of the entire thing.
We level up in the middle of all this.
Yes, I always dump points into lockpick. I just have this OCD where every single door in the game must be unlocked.
More ammo is always nice.
Now we start to go upwards. I will probably miss the majority of all of the ingots in the Steelyard, if I wanted to go back and get them later, it'd be a pain the ass.
(I know there's quite a few in the power plant but we'll get to that later.)
We find a dead slave by the name of Wild Bill. He has a unique .32 pistol and some ingots on him. There's a sidequest that we missed with a slave who asks you to find him.
We run into wildmen who get torn apart by our auto axe. Hope you like wildmen and troggs, because that's the only kind of enemy you're going to fight in the Pitt.
VATS auto-axe has kind of an awesome finishing move type thing.
We STILL can go much higher than this.
If you couldn't tell yet, the color scheme in The Pitt is orange and black. It's kind of clashing, but I suppose it's better than brown and green at any rate.
The new Deus Ex game had a orange-ish/yellow and black color scheme, and that looked quite nice.
Yes just stand there grimacing while the auto-axe cuts you up.
She fell off. Sheesh, that's a long fall.
The DLC is ridiculously dark at some points.
You find a trogg near a cache of ingots and medical supplies.
The wildmen are kind of a boring enemy. They aren't really different from regular raiders, so I guess that leaves trogs as the only new enemy of this DLC.
We already have a hunting rifle and a few other strong weapons. I wonder if giving your slaves access to weaponry from the outside isn't a good idea. I mean sure, they might not come back, but it could be an issue.
Especially if one of the slaves is secretly a revolutionary hired from the outside who is part of a plot to remove you from power...
Yes, attacked the heavily armed women with a pool cue. I'm sure this will work out entirely in your favor.
Now we're close to the very top of the area. To our left is a flaming, irradiated pit that will increase your rads by quite a bit if you get close to it.
Why would the wildmen be up here? It isn't like there's a base or anything set up here.
We are a bit more effective in long range combat.
There's a turret here that's a pain in the ass to actually hit.
One of the raiders fell into the pit.
Believe it or not, but we can still go higher.
And on top is like a dozen ingots. It's like Bethesda is throwing the player a bone here.
You can see the
You can go down this big bridge thing...
And at the bottom, is another huge stash of ingots.
Now we can head back.
We get attacked by a trog on the way back to the mill. Of course, it goes down pretty much instantly with the auto-axe.
The Auto-Axe is fucking huge. How could you miss a slave carrying that past you?
Now we get rewarded for all the ingots we got. You get a new item for every 10 ingots or so, they even fucking give you weapons.
Arming your slaves is not a smart idea.
Well, now I guess we go back to Midea. Nothing else really to do...
Wait, what was the point of that again?
Fallout related question: What Fallout 3 DLC did you like the least and why?
I never played MZ, so I can say this:AlternatePFG said:
Operation: Anchorage was OK
Point Lookout is one of my favoritest DLCs of all time
Broken Steel is great
But I didn't really like The Pit. I don't know. It just didn't sit right with me.
Hmmm...Trogs remind me of...
Wait a second..yep, there's a reason for it. Trogs remind me of New Vegas' Spore Carriers. It appears there is a reason [http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Spore_carrier#Notes] for that.
Those things freaked the hell out of me when I first encountered them in Vault 22.
Wait a second..yep, there's a reason for it. Trogs remind me of New Vegas' Spore Carriers. It appears there is a reason [http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Spore_carrier#Notes] for that.
Those things freaked the hell out of me when I first encountered them in Vault 22.
According to J. E. Sawyer you can't patch individual aspects that are only featured in the DLC, such as characters and weapons like the Auto-axe. However, if there is a glitch from the vanilla game that is causing problems that can be patched which will then fix the issue in the DLC.AlternatePFG said:
Motherhip Zeta.
It was just...why?
And it isn't the crappiness of it that pissed me off the most, it was the fact that it pretty much made aliens canon in the Fallout universe.
Also Operation: Anchorage was pretty bad, Broken Steel was a bad attempt to fix a massive mistake and the only thing I liked about the Pitt was the level design.
Yeah, I saw some screenshots from Lonesome Road, and one of the enemies looked like another Trog reskin.DustyDrB said:
The spore carriers freaked me out as well. Vault 22 was really interesting the first time I played it, and both Honest Hearts and Old World Blues kind of tie into it's story.
I apologize for the rather short update in advance, I wanted to do things in chunks. This episode is solely dedicated to the arena part of the main quest in the Pitt, so it's pretty short.
Okay, Fallout related question: Who is your favorite character in Fallout 3 and why?
[HEADING=1]Chapter XIII - I Knew This Game was Missing Something...[/HEADING]
Last update, we explored a rather large chunk of the steelyard and brought back like 50 or so steel ingots that we were somehow able to carry in one trip. There's still more to explore in the Steelyard, specifically the power plant, but that's for later.
So now we head back through the mill and talk to Midea.
The whole upper area is only accessible to the raiders. Soon however, we'll be able to get up there.
Something strange happened earlier that I didn't manage to catch in screenshots: A slave attacked a raider with an auto-axe and the raiders just kind of went batshit on some of the slaves and gunned them down. Like I said earlier in the LP, the glitchy nature of the Gamebryo engine makes it hard to tell if something is scripted, random, or just bugged up.
"An arena? Interesting. So, that's part of your plan?"
"It's simple, really. From time to time, Ashur opens up the arena. We call it the Hole. Any slave who wants to can fight against the gladiators."
Really? Seems out of place for this particular area but whatever. I mean, I can't say it's completely unheard in this time period, cause you know, Caesar's Legion and all.
"If you win, you get your freedom. More importantly: you get an audience with Ashur. It's the only way a slave will ever get to talk to him directly. You fight. You win. And when you talk to Ashur, you take the cure."
"Do I have to kill him to get it?"
Normally I wouldn't say this about any generic villain, but Ashur is probably the only interesting and somewhat complex character in this game.
"I wouldn't shed a tear, but no. Wernher has a... distraction planned. We haven't been making these weapons for nothing, you know. But, when you're meeting with Ashur, you'll be close enough to grab the cure. Get it, and bring it to me. Now let's get out there and listen to Ashur's speech. There'll be hell to pay if the guards catch us in here."
You thrive, while the slaves are down here getting eaten by trogs.
This speech that Ashur gives makes him look like a megalomaniac dictator but when you actually talk to him, he makes some decent points.
There's less slaves down in that pit to the left because a raider randomly threw a grenade in there earlier. Weird.
We arena is in the mill. The mill is kind of the hub between the different areas in the DLC, it leads to the steelyard, uptown and the entrance to the city.
Some of the slaves wish you luck.
Of course, all the raiders are pricks to you anyways. We could probably easily wipe them all out, but it'd fuck up the quest progression pretty badly.
I still don't get why they don't see that you're at least somewhat capable of putting up a fight. I mean, you survived the steelyard, which is something most slaves can't say.
"Where do I sign up?"
"You don't sign up. You tell me that you want to fight. I set up a fight. You die, and I repeat it with the next jackass slave who comes in here. Sound good? You want in? C'mon, death's got to be better than your life, am I right?"
"Do I get a weapon?"
"You have what you take in with you."
Isn't it just a little suspicious that your slave goes out into the steelyard and comes back with a ton of weapons?
"I want to fight in the Arena."
"Oh yeah? You sure you're ready to die?"
"Yes. Put me down for a fight."
"Well, all right. I've got one for you right away. Or you can take some time to put your affairs in order. It's up to you. If you're ready, just step on in."
It wouldn't be a Bethesda game without an arena would it? If it wasn't for the Pitt, Fallout 3 would be one of the few of their games not to have one. Not that I have anything wrong with arena's but in Oblivion the arena was rather annoying. The fights went on for much too long and it was rather obnoxious.
Of course, that's what I think of any straight up combat in Oblivion, but the arena is the worst, especially at lower levels.
The Hole is alright though. It goes by really fast.
So the gimmick here, is that they drop down radioactive barrels to give you a contrived, artificial time limit. Thinking about the logic of it just isn't even worth the effort, why would they drop barrels down there just to carry them back up again?
For that matter, why have an arena at all?
These guys go down with one shot of the hunting rifle each.
They have some damn good weapons though. A Chinese Assault Rifle and a Combat Shotgun. That will be useful for the next two fights, but after that, we thankfully get our old stuff back.
Apparently, they have some magical cure all radiation drug they give you after the fights. That brings up more questions now that I think about it.
Yeah, the 8 rads per second will kill you pretty fast. Gives you enough time for loot though.
Now we're fighting some of their guys. Why would they even fight in the arena?
This guy has a deathclaw gauntlet.
Now time for the final round. Get ready for one of the hardest fights in-
Wow, he went down fast. We got a perk for completing the arena as well, gives us some useful rad and damage resistance.
And now Ashur wants to meet with us.
We have to go through Uptown to meet with Ashur. There are multiple ways to get to Uptown, from here we can go through the Mill.
Basically, Uptown is really just some blown open buildings where people live connected by some walkways, it really isn't that impressive. I guess it's still more plausible than Megaton or Rivet City though.
The raiders, being raiders of course, still are assholes.
Christ, this guy doesn't fuck around, does he? Not the bet way to win morale for your slaves if you give them that particular image.
And, we're in. So we just went on the long journey from the Capital Wasteland to the Pitt, willingly became slaves, just to win back our freedom and now we're going to have a chat with the guy responsible for us being slaves in the first place?
I think maybe there could have been a better way to pull of this plan.
So now we head back through the mill and talk to Midea.
The whole upper area is only accessible to the raiders. Soon however, we'll be able to get up there.
Something strange happened earlier that I didn't manage to catch in screenshots: A slave attacked a raider with an auto-axe and the raiders just kind of went batshit on some of the slaves and gunned them down. Like I said earlier in the LP, the glitchy nature of the Gamebryo engine makes it hard to tell if something is scripted, random, or just bugged up.
"An arena? Interesting. So, that's part of your plan?"
"It's simple, really. From time to time, Ashur opens up the arena. We call it the Hole. Any slave who wants to can fight against the gladiators."
Really? Seems out of place for this particular area but whatever. I mean, I can't say it's completely unheard in this time period, cause you know, Caesar's Legion and all.
"If you win, you get your freedom. More importantly: you get an audience with Ashur. It's the only way a slave will ever get to talk to him directly. You fight. You win. And when you talk to Ashur, you take the cure."
"Do I have to kill him to get it?"
Normally I wouldn't say this about any generic villain, but Ashur is probably the only interesting and somewhat complex character in this game.
"I wouldn't shed a tear, but no. Wernher has a... distraction planned. We haven't been making these weapons for nothing, you know. But, when you're meeting with Ashur, you'll be close enough to grab the cure. Get it, and bring it to me. Now let's get out there and listen to Ashur's speech. There'll be hell to pay if the guards catch us in here."
You thrive, while the slaves are down here getting eaten by trogs.
This speech that Ashur gives makes him look like a megalomaniac dictator but when you actually talk to him, he makes some decent points.
There's less slaves down in that pit to the left because a raider randomly threw a grenade in there earlier. Weird.
We arena is in the mill. The mill is kind of the hub between the different areas in the DLC, it leads to the steelyard, uptown and the entrance to the city.
Some of the slaves wish you luck.
Of course, all the raiders are pricks to you anyways. We could probably easily wipe them all out, but it'd fuck up the quest progression pretty badly.
I still don't get why they don't see that you're at least somewhat capable of putting up a fight. I mean, you survived the steelyard, which is something most slaves can't say.
"Where do I sign up?"
"You don't sign up. You tell me that you want to fight. I set up a fight. You die, and I repeat it with the next jackass slave who comes in here. Sound good? You want in? C'mon, death's got to be better than your life, am I right?"
"Do I get a weapon?"
"You have what you take in with you."
Isn't it just a little suspicious that your slave goes out into the steelyard and comes back with a ton of weapons?
"I want to fight in the Arena."
"Oh yeah? You sure you're ready to die?"
"Yes. Put me down for a fight."
"Well, all right. I've got one for you right away. Or you can take some time to put your affairs in order. It's up to you. If you're ready, just step on in."
It wouldn't be a Bethesda game without an arena would it? If it wasn't for the Pitt, Fallout 3 would be one of the few of their games not to have one. Not that I have anything wrong with arena's but in Oblivion the arena was rather annoying. The fights went on for much too long and it was rather obnoxious.
Of course, that's what I think of any straight up combat in Oblivion, but the arena is the worst, especially at lower levels.
The Hole is alright though. It goes by really fast.
So the gimmick here, is that they drop down radioactive barrels to give you a contrived, artificial time limit. Thinking about the logic of it just isn't even worth the effort, why would they drop barrels down there just to carry them back up again?
For that matter, why have an arena at all?
These guys go down with one shot of the hunting rifle each.
They have some damn good weapons though. A Chinese Assault Rifle and a Combat Shotgun. That will be useful for the next two fights, but after that, we thankfully get our old stuff back.
Apparently, they have some magical cure all radiation drug they give you after the fights. That brings up more questions now that I think about it.
Yeah, the 8 rads per second will kill you pretty fast. Gives you enough time for loot though.
Now we're fighting some of their guys. Why would they even fight in the arena?
This guy has a deathclaw gauntlet.
Now time for the final round. Get ready for one of the hardest fights in-
Wow, he went down fast. We got a perk for completing the arena as well, gives us some useful rad and damage resistance.
And now Ashur wants to meet with us.
We have to go through Uptown to meet with Ashur. There are multiple ways to get to Uptown, from here we can go through the Mill.
Basically, Uptown is really just some blown open buildings where people live connected by some walkways, it really isn't that impressive. I guess it's still more plausible than Megaton or Rivet City though.
The raiders, being raiders of course, still are assholes.
Christ, this guy doesn't fuck around, does he? Not the bet way to win morale for your slaves if you give them that particular image.
And, we're in. So we just went on the long journey from the Capital Wasteland to the Pitt, willingly became slaves, just to win back our freedom and now we're going to have a chat with the guy responsible for us being slaves in the first place?
I think maybe there could have been a better way to pull of this plan.
Okay, Fallout related question: Who is your favorite character in Fallout 3 and why?
My answer won't mean much, since I only did the main story quests and didn't explore much. I think the only time I did explore was by accident. I went into some building that leads underground to what looked like a brothel of some sort. There was a merchant at the end who I got an awesome shotgun off of. But I only ended up in this place because it was very close to where my quest marker led. I was just aloof, I guess. So that said, my favorite character was the man behind that whole "dream town" thing. That was a cool part of the game, and the man was just insane. I can't remember his name, though.AlternatePFG said:
Why did you not explore the game? I mean, the main story is really the weakest part of the game, even if it does take you to some interesting locales.DustyDrB said:
Well, to be honest, I don't know why I finished the game at all. Don't mistake me as saying it was a bad game, but there are many aspects of it that sucked the enjoyment out of Fallout 3 for me. Mostly it was that relentless melancholy. It was overbearing.AlternatePFG said:
But that's often how I play open world RPGs. I like to give the main story a good chance to grab me, so I focus on it. And given the way Oblivion was handled, I figured you'd be able to continue to play afterwards. I did this in Fallout: New Vegas as well, but much of the "side quest" stuff ties in to the main story so well that I didn't feel detached from my character's goals if I went off the main track for a bit. Another thing is that if I really like a game, I'll play it again (3 playthroughs of New Vegas so far). I'll do things differently, including exploring more. My fist playthrough of any game tends to be very incomplete. With Fallout 3, I just never wanted to go back to it once I was done with it.
Fair enough, I agree with that. The thing that I liked better about New Vegas was that many of the sidequests had some significance to the main story, while in 3, there really isn't any way you can justify doing almost any of them in-universe (Especially the nuka-cola challenge and such).DustyDrB said:
And yeah, one of my problems with 3 is that the main plot is rather idealistic but the actual world around is just completely depressing and the epitome of a crapsack world, with very little breaks from the meloncholy.
Three DogAlternatePFG said:
I don't really know why. I guess I went on several hikes through the wasteland, and having him constantly praise me must haved rubbed me the right way. Yes, he does give obvious advive. But I kinda like how he adresses his audiance. I kinda do that as well when writing.
EDIT: As for New Vegas? Mmmmmmmmm.....
Benny. Mainly because I like the "Get revenge" mini-plot in RPGs. It's why I enjoyed the Human Noble story from Dragon Age: Origins.
Uhhhhhhh...AlternatePFG said:
*thinks for a while*
..uhhhhhhhh....
...yeah I'll go with Ashur too.
He seemed to be the only smart person in the whole game, someone actually trying to rebuild civilisation. Plus he had nice looking armour.
I'm not a big fan of Bethesda's characters...