Okay, I know I just posted about how I can’t talk specifics about Fallout 3, but what the hell. I want to share a small story about it. No major spoilers herein — this wasn’t part of a quest — though I will need to explain the mechanics of being a slave trader and how it all works, which is spoilerish, I guess. So, if you want to keep that part of the game fresh for you, skip this post.
I joined the slavers in an area called Paradise Falls. It’s a town with a clinic, a store, beds to sleep in, and, of course, a pen full of captives. A regular home away from home. Slaves have collars around their necks that explode if they try to escape: see The Running Man. You’re given a few specific targets that the slavers would like you to capture, but you can also capture random NPCs here and there, too, as sort of a side business.
To capture slaves of your own, you’re given the Mesmetron, or Mezzer, an energy weapon you can use to stun people. A blast from it and your target will stand in place, woozy and confused, giving you some options as to what to do with them. They’ll let you go through their pockets, so you can clean out their inventory if you want, and they’ll let you put one of the collars on them if you choose to. At that point, you can instruct them to run to Paradise Falls before their collar explodes. And off they’ll go, humping it across the landscape, making a beeline for Paradise Falls. The next time you visit the town, you’ll get paid (if your slave made it there alive — they often don’t) and can acquire a new collar for your next victim.
So, I was out doing this with some success. You can’t mezz everyone — try to stick to generic, unnamed NPCs, like raiders or regulators and the like — and it’s a good (though time consuming) practice to follow them back to Paradise Falls once you’ve collared them to make sure they make it in one piece. It’s a dangerous place, this wasteland.
At one point in my travels, I came upon a Scavenger, sort of a lone roaming type that you can barter with. He was in a ruined building trying to get a hovering, malfunctioning robot to work, but having no success. I went and talked to him, and he asked for my help in exchange for some power cells. I’m not the helpful type, but he seemed so happy to see me. He was an old, dirty, weathered, amazingly cheerful fellow. When I tried to extort him for more pay, he apologized and said he didn’t have anything else to give me, but that he’d really appreciate my help.
He was just such a nice, pleasant guy. So, I fiddled around inside the robot and got it to work. He thanked me profusely, paid my what he promised, and off they slowly went. I don’t generally mess with Scavengers or tradesmen — they’re good to have wandering the world in case you need to buy ammo or food or unload a few items… but I’m a slaver now, and it’s hard not to look upon a lone traveler as a potential paycheck.
What can I say? I mezzed him, feeling a little bad about it. I looked through his inventory but he was telling the truth: he really didn’t have anything worthwhile. I snapped the collar on him, and gave him the usual talk: get thee to Paradise Falls before your head explodes.
He said something then, in a high-pitched, bewildered voice, something no one else I’d mezzed and collared had said to me so far. Something I really wasn’t expecting:
“Where’s Paradise Falls?”
Then he ran off in the absolute wrong direction, his new robot trailing him.
It was hilarious and tragic and surprising and rather brilliant — an NPC deliberately not given complete world knowledge by his designers — and I, literally, put my hand over my face. A new low for my character that’s done a lot of unpleasant things to a lot of people who perhaps did not quite deserve it. Bad enough for this incredibly nice fellow to have a collar put on him, even worse that he has no idea where to go so it doesn’t pop his head like a grape.
I haven’t been back to Paradise Falls since. I’m kind of avoiding it. I’m going to feel extra guilty if he didn’t make it. Hell, I’m going to feel extra guilty if he did make it. I’m sitting here, right now, feeling bad about (though still amused by) the whole incident.
45 responses so far ↓
1 ZomBuster // Nov 3, 2008 at 11:58 am
Slavery is awesome
The best part was were I saved this chick from the super mutants, just to enslave here
2 Sam // Nov 3, 2008 at 12:00 pm
You evil bastard!
I generally do what’s best for me and my karma is “Very Good”. The thing is that the game really gets to me at points, or it’s easier to be good. Meh, I got a more powerful laser rifle for being good.
Oh and if you are very good talon mercs hunt you, who’s hunting you?
3 Gemmy // Nov 3, 2008 at 12:01 pm
Hahahahah! That’s awesome!
4 Christopher // Nov 3, 2008 at 12:03 pm
The guys hunting me call themselves Regulators. They were like “Did you really think you could do all these evil things and nobody would notice?” And I was like, “Well, yeah, I kinda did.” But it’s pretty neat that you really can’t.
5 Alex // Nov 3, 2008 at 12:05 pm
And this is why I love Fallout - little touches like this that just make the game sheer FUN to play sometimes
I met a super mutant that was civilised.
That was an odd experiance.
6 greeneggsnsam // Nov 3, 2008 at 12:12 pm
Please do more of these posts about Fallout 3, I’m really enjoying them!
7 Pretty Important Guy // Nov 3, 2008 at 12:19 pm
You bastard, Chris. I’m a bit of an asshole but at least I’m not a slaver. My karma’s hovering around neutral, sometimes I even end up being recognized as good, which is generally when I go on a killing spree. I got to revisit vault 101 the other day, and I convinced the overseer to let everyone come and go as they please. He agreed and also resigned leadership of the vault to his daughter. Amata decided her first action as leader was for me to leave, what a bitch. I just convinced her father without violence to hand over the vault and she has the nerve to kick me out? I got revenge by killing her father and several random guards.
8 Cyrano // Nov 3, 2008 at 12:53 pm
Nice.
9 Suraj // Nov 3, 2008 at 1:08 pm
If you don’t mind me asking, where _is_ Paradise Falls? I would like to pay a visit there :D I find the mercs waiting outside railway stations tiresome as you can’t avoid them there.
10 jzimbert // Nov 3, 2008 at 1:23 pm
Hopefully, if he did make it, he’ll be all “Hi cutie-pie! You know, one of us is in DEEP trouble.”
11 spuzman00 // Nov 3, 2008 at 1:42 pm
My view is from almost the complete opposite of the spectrum- I have something like “savior” level karma, because I usually try to help out anyone I come across (and benefit greatly from it). However, it feels like being good is rewarded quite greatly; the radio jockey constantly talks about my latest exploits and fully supports, and I’m prone to people walking up and handing me food whenever I’m in Megaton (where my house is). In addition, people seem to regard me very highly and are inclined to agree with me on any subject (a high Speech level doesn’t hurt). I also have encountered bounty hunters sent by Tenpenny himself to kill me because I do not “live up to his standards.” It seems that Bethesda have really thought this through- rewarding players in many ways for being both good and evil.
12 HyperKUltra // Nov 3, 2008 at 2:12 pm
XD
13 Dorian Cornelius Jasper // Nov 3, 2008 at 2:30 pm
I, too, aim for the savior-level karma. The world’s in such poor shape, I do what I can to help out the people who’re just trying to get by.
That doesn’t stop me from occasionally swiping valuables and equipment or from engaging in a little petty post-apocalyptic criminality every now and then.
I think of myself as a “Robin Hood.” I steal from the rich, and the powerful, and the annoying, and also from people who have stuff I’d like but wouldn’t want to kill them for it. And I pay the Wastes back by paying it forward.
I’m the most prolific thief and sneakiest criminal in the Capitol Wasteland and yet I’m also the last, best hope for humanity.
…
Actually, that’s also how I did things in Oblivion. I guess I like being a sneaky, quick-fingered do-gooder. Also, sneak attacks are fun.
14 Chuck // Nov 3, 2008 at 2:37 pm
Well I think it might me random when that happens. Cause one of the quest people to become a slaver didn’t know the way. So I killed him and reloaded the save where he left without incident. Although I found out that was pointless. When I got back, I had thought it as weird that it had me only pick up 2 people, so I found out I had already killed half the people on the list before even finding Paradise Falls. Easy quest made easier.
15 Jumbo // Nov 3, 2008 at 2:38 pm
Aw, that’s so sad :(
16 Alexander // Nov 3, 2008 at 2:51 pm
My guy is so nice, some woman in Megaton keeps coming up to me and giving me stuff.
17 Ragepyro // Nov 3, 2008 at 2:53 pm
I’ve played through the game once, rushing through the main story just to see the end, I honestly regret it. Now so that I can repent per-se, i’m going through the game as a purely good character. I may have stolen Lucas’ house key to get his bobblehead on his desk (I needed the strength boost) but other than that, i’m a lab abiding citizen. I’ve almost finished helping moira with her book too.
18 Crane // Nov 3, 2008 at 3:27 pm
I’m a “Paladin” appearantly.
Which is odd, because I steal everything that isn’t nailed down.
The oddest thing about the Karma system I’ve found though, was when I killed a group of psychotic cannibal serial killers, IN SELF DEFENCE, then lost karma for looting their homes.
Oh, and for those of you who haven’t found it yet, keep an eye out for the Dunwich Building.
And bring a Railway Rifle.
19 bbot // Nov 3, 2008 at 3:32 pm
As usual with these one-dimensional good/bad RPGs, I long for greater depth.
Being good should be an absolute pain in the ass. You’ll have to endure fetch quests, give away belongings, and stick to the letter of the law like the world’s most anal bureaucrat. Being “saintly” shouldn’t be a matter of just helping people out now and again, but sacrifice, dedicating your life in the service of the less fortunate.
The same goes for evil. See that playground full of children? Well, you better be prepared to torture every single one of them to death over the next four hours, to delight in their screams of agon, and greedily drink the blood flowing from their mangled bodies. You wanted to be evil, asshole? We’ll, you’re going to have to be evil.
And if that isn’t enough, let’s get some more delightful ambiguity in the mix. Maybe your shadowy overseers are just using you for their own interests, rather than to further the cause of Good or Evil.
Is your mob boss really evil, or is he a plant of the Law, using the raging psychopath that just clawed his way out of Vault 101 to wipe out other slavers, and, eventually, his own gang?
Same thing with a Good character, only when he discovers that the leader of the Steel Brotherhood is actually the biggest drug dealer in the Wastes exterminating the competition, both choices result in a hit to your karma. Cripple the Steel Brotherhood, or let a criminal go free? Which is worse, do-gooder?
@Crane: I was only level 8 when I cleaned out the Dunwich building. Did I miss something extraordinary?
20 Crane // Nov 3, 2008 at 3:50 pm
Assuming you did both the Virulent Caverns and the Forsaken Dunwich Ruins as well as the main building then no, not really.
I just liked the atmosphere and the scattered audio-diaries myself.
21 usualroutine // Nov 3, 2008 at 3:59 pm
Wow. I’ve hardly spent any time in that area of the game; I generally stick to civilization (read: Megaton and GNR)
22 Bret // Nov 3, 2008 at 4:09 pm
Wow Bbot, that is the worst concept for an in game morality system ever.
It’s all the things that suck about morality in life, but without any real compensatory benefit, or even the feeling of “doing the right thing.”
23 Itrade // Nov 3, 2008 at 5:49 pm
@13
Haha, that’s how I played Oblivion, too, except that nobody was really safe from my thieving hands. I was a kind of kleptomaniac do-gooder. I actually completed all the quests in the game, even the ones that don’t appear in your journal, except for a few master training quests. I also robbed every house I came across and pickpocketed everyone I met until very late into the game, when I was too rich to bother with that kind of thing anymore. I think it was actually my goal at one time to rob every single castle in Cyrodiil.
I think that’s how I’m going to play Fallout 3, too. Once I can afford to buy it, I’ll start on the good path, but steal a lot.
24 Mobba // Nov 3, 2008 at 6:52 pm
I’m just going by the characters personalities, if they are a character I like I’ll help them out, if they are being an ass, I’ll clean them out.
25 Tannim Murphy // Nov 3, 2008 at 7:20 pm
Man, that is hilarious. You should check up on him to make sure of his fate; I know I’d love at least a brief update. Thanks for the great posts on Fallout 3, I can’t wait to play it!
26 bbot // Nov 3, 2008 at 7:23 pm
@bret
Perhaps the hyperbole obscured my meaning.
What I want is a game that doesn’t immediately declare me a saint just for giving a guy some water and saving some orphans. That makes me a good guy, but not a saint.
What I’m saying is that being a saint should require hard work and sacrifice. You can still be a good guy, (a mere cardinal, perhaps) but being fairly nice, like @2, @11 and @13 shouldn’t immediately slam you to the far right of the evil/good scale.
The other, more mild complaint buried in my mountain of word is that there aren’t any morally complex side quests. Giving a guy water= good, shooting him= bad, sure, that’s cool, but it never gets any deeper. It’s always a trinary good/neutral/evil choice, which is lame. Give me complexity, and if you console gaming plebes can’t handle it, then you can just skip that quest.
The third complaint, which has just occurred to me, and is thus more of a zeroth complaint; concerned the way moral deeds act upon the morality score. You can save babies all day long, and only occasionally eat them, and the game will deem you “pretty good”.
Bullshit. Eating babies makes you a dirtbag motherfucker, and that should be irredeemable. Implementing this in-game would be mildly tricky, requiring more of a morality ratchet than a morality scale. A mildly evil act could bar you from ever reaching the heights of Good, and progressively more evil acts will bar you from progressively lower Good ranks.
Steal a cap, you’ll never be a saint. Steal a million caps, and you’ll never be a paladin. Kill a baby, and you’ll never achieve any good ranks, no matter how many other babies you save, and then refrain from eating.
27 Rendar // Nov 3, 2008 at 7:30 pm
Raiders are annoyin so I prey upon the ones around Paradise Falls, why not make 250 caps on each of them?
28 Pwnzerfaust // Nov 3, 2008 at 7:38 pm
I’m what D&D players might call a Chaotic Good, unwaveringly adhering to the side of justice. Whether that justice be administered from the mouth of a jury or of a .12 gauge, however, tends to vary.
But yeah, I really love this game. I happened to walk by when a little girl was entering her family’s apartment, so I decided to check the place out. I’d love to share the details, but I’m a little short on time, so I’ll have to cut it short. Let’s just say that I was treated to an entire pre-bedtime ritual; the girl’s mom told her to wash up before sleeping, the the dad offered to tell her a story of the time “when people could drink from rivers,” and both parents kissed her goodnight. It was one of the most intimately touching moments I’ve seen in a video game for a long time, and these were just the interactions of an unassuming family that most players will probably never see.
I love this game. So very much.
29 Scavenger // Nov 3, 2008 at 7:41 pm
Douche. :(
30 mew4ever23 // Nov 3, 2008 at 10:21 pm
I will say this: I am against slavery. That said, i found this incredibly amusing. The designers purposly not giving a slavable NPC the whole world map… Genius!
31 Jackrabbit // Nov 3, 2008 at 10:46 pm
If I didn’t know where paradise falls was I would just stick near the slaver and kill him when my head goes off. You are a wee bit of an asshole to have done that to that nice old man but to be fair I just got fallout 1 and (cause if I can’t play the third one I’ll at least play the first 2) and since I discovered an alien plane crash (complete with ET skeleton and Elvis portrait) and took there gun I have been running around, gleefully disintegrating random passersby.
32 Nibwoddle // Nov 4, 2008 at 12:41 am
I now want this game.
33 Killa-Ewok // Nov 4, 2008 at 5:19 am
@32
God damn it, I want it too!
34 Killa-Ewok // Nov 4, 2008 at 8:32 am
And also we seriously need a post about whether the Scavenger was in Paradise Falls.
35 Smurfy // Nov 4, 2008 at 9:21 am
@19 All children are invincible in Fallout 3. I really wanted to storm Little Lamplight when the mayor wouldn’t let me in, but my mini nukes were completely ineffective.
36 Kowl Slaw // Nov 4, 2008 at 9:30 am
You are an evil, evil villain Chris. And for that, I respect you :D
37 Dorian Cornelius Jasper // Nov 4, 2008 at 11:11 am
@19 and 26, same fellow:
On the one hand I can get what you’re saying, on the other the post-apocalyptic world of Fallout has always been pretty kind as far as the moral compass rating went. At least when determining who’s a nice guy or not.
It’s not that different in F3, either. Destroying Megaton only takes away about 1000 Karma points, enough to turn a very good guy into a neutral guy.
And besides, in the harsh Capital wasteland where people have to be bastards just to survive, a little bit of petty self-interest isn’t considered too damning.
Note that the Karma system proper doesn’t refer to “saints” in its spectrum of good to evil, though one character IC will do so on the Radio if you’re at the right level (19) to hear him describe you by your “karma title.” But real-life saints probably had their faults too. You’ll just never get a faithful man to admit it.
Your idea for moral ambiguity in quests isn’t a bad one (and it’s been done in The Witcher) and would have suited a bleak setting like Fallout, though making the head of the Brotherhood of Steel a drug dealer would be very distracting, theme-wise, from the main quest line where the Brotherhood plays a prominent part. And killing Elder Lyons over a drug cartel would’ve been awkward considering the part he plays there. Even though your idea was sound in principle, the devs wouldn’t have much to gain in comparison to the work involved with implementing that particular quest.
It think you’re a bit too strict on considering morals in Fallout, if you think my Robin Hood character is only “fairly nice.” She’s never harmed anyone who didn’t deserve a bullet, she’s always gone the long way around to help people even if she didn’t need to, and she’s been shot far too many times for her trouble. Heck, she’s practically girl scout polite and always kind to those who’ve done her no wrong, which usually means she’s going to get shot, blown to bits, and ripped to shreds just to help those perfect strangers when they inevitably need her to help them. [Thank goodness for Stimpaks.]
In a real life post-apocalypse situation, she would be considered a heroic inspiration for all, a shining beacon of hope in a desolate wasteland. “Fairly nice” ignores a lot of the real sacrifices someone like her would have to make in order to make a difference.
And she will make the ultimate sacrifice to save the Wasteland. It’s not “might,” it’s “will.”
It’s easy to take moral standards to an achingly severe extreme when you live in a place where you don’t have to fight to survive, where society hasn’t crumbled to the point where human instinct and the raw metrics of power are laid bare. Yes, moral ambiguity like the sort seen in Witcher or in the Renegade path for Mass Effect (the Renegade is still a good guy by most standards, but for him the ends justify the means) would have been preferable if Bethesda had done it.
But “fairly good” my ass. She may have flaws, no human doesn’t, but she’s a martyr and savior in the making. I say so in these terms because I’m assuming enough people here haven’t gotten far enough in the game to understand the implications.
38 DoctorDisaster // Nov 4, 2008 at 1:31 pm
I’m not sure you guys are playing with the same morality system I am. Those cannibal serial killers 18 referred to, for instance, have a lot of ambiguity in their quest. I solved it with a fair enough result, then did a little extra legwork to get what I considered the best of all possible conclusions, and the situation still isn’t entirely to my liking.
Not to mention that while the karma piles up, a major quest reward seems to be the opportunity to seamlessly integrate into the band of bloodsucking fiends myself.
I guess I see the actual story results of my actions as more illuminating than the karma bar. Karma seems to me like a measure of the way others view you, rather than your actual morality.
39 Dorian Cornelius Jasper // Nov 4, 2008 at 4:26 pm
The quest dealing with the Ghouls and Tenpenny tower is also rather morally ambiguous, if you’ve seen the aftermath. It’s not pleasant in the Wasteland, not at all.
40 VD // Nov 5, 2008 at 10:30 am
slightly off topic….
In FO1 and 2, you could be an evil bastard and also get bounty hunters after you. Fo1 and 2 let you kill children though, and if you did you got the “Childkiller” perk that basically made everyone hate you.
Thanks for the slavery tips though– I was about to give up on slaving people when I went and tried to slave that junkie in Rivet City and all he did was knife me. I’ll start slaving all those regulators from now on :)
41 RC-1290'Dreadnought' // Nov 5, 2008 at 1:31 pm
Hahahahaha!
[Edit]
Hahahahahahaha!
[Second Edit]
Brilliant. Funny stuff. I should buy that game some day. They should add your adventure stories as a bonus feature. “Chris’ commentaries on Fallout three”.
42 Bearfoot // Nov 7, 2008 at 1:40 pm
Hey Bbot?
If you can program a morality system like the one you discussed feel free to apply for a job with any number of game companies.
Yes, “Real” Morality is much more diffcult than that but it’d take a sci-fi supercomputer to do it properly.
It would be cool, don’t get me wrong.. :D
I mean one of my own complaints about fallout 3 was that looting an empty aparently abandoned building was an evil act.
And then shooting certain NPCs in unprovoked attacks was good because they were evil. Even though I didn’t know.
Huhwhut?
43 becky // Nov 10, 2008 at 11:37 am
fuck ani 1 who thought slavery was awsome or good in any way black people are just as good as whites in fact blackare even better!
what is dis a whit people syt or what
44 Actsub // Nov 11, 2008 at 2:46 pm
Becky, “in fact blackare even better!” is a bit of a contradicting statement when you’re talking about racism and oppression in the past, don’t you think?
Besides, I don’t think the slave on this game was an african american, and pixels don’t have emotions anyway.
Also, I don’t think a game’s going to influence you to go out and enslave a bunch of guys for your cotton field.
Yes, I agree, slavery in the past was horrendous and it’s good that it was put an end to before my lifetime. But this is a game right here. Not 18th century america/britain.
Hilarious work chris; as usual.
45 BeckysDad // Nov 15, 2008 at 5:03 am
Becky you useless little cum rag, get your stupid black arse back into my room so I can molest you some more.
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