Happy New Year!
Jan. 1st, 2023 11:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crossover_chickIt's been a pretty decent start to 2023 -- the Patriots won their latest game; we had a nice lunch with the last of the little mini pigs in blankets and two kinds of pizza; and Dad and I split a slice of my cake with ice cream and chocolate sauce and whipped cream for dessert. XD Om nom nom.
It's also been a reasonably productive day, though I admit to having a slow morning -- still, got the following done:
Tumblr: Didn’t do the traditional dash-and-tags catch-up on Victor Luvs Alice this morning (I was a bit slow to wake up, I must admit), but I did make a point of getting at least the pictures and some starter text drafted for the four posts in this week’s upcoming Chill Save update before my workout! And then, this evening, I spent a good chunk of time updating my “Valice Multiverse” Google Doc with my rules and verses and such, adding a new timeline to the “Cuddlepile” verse, “Running Headlong into the Bullshit” (featuring the nine-person polycule and adding Preston, Piper, and Smiler to that particular variant) and new characters to the “Inevitable High School” verse (teenage Smiler joining those shenanigans) and the “Fallout of Darkness” verse (Preston and Piper – if I’m putting them in “Cuddlepile,” I should DEFINITELY have them in the FO4 verse!). Almost added Smiler to “Londerland Bloodlines” too, but decided to wait a bit and get used to them in “Cuddlepile” and “Inevitable High School” first. Did an update post with all the changes and answered the two asks waiting in my inbox (including the one that I needed Smiler to answer in the first place) and put those all in the queue!
Fallout 4: Did this for an hour right after lunch, and I am pleased to say that I not only accomplished everything I wanted to, I even got an unexpected bonus of a new quest to fiddle around right afterwards! Let me take you through it –
A) Picked up where I’d left off on Friday, with Victor and Nick parked outside the Memory Den – however, as it was 6:30 AM in the morning, I figured that might be a little too early to bother Irma and Amari (the NPCs do have sleep/wake cycles, as exemplified by the Diamond City Marketplace and the fact that after a certain hour, the only shop you can buy from is Diamond City Surplus as Myrna turns the reigns over to Percy the Mr. Handy), so I decided to have Victor do a bit of cooking, as I usually have him do when I’m not sure what else to do with him. As he did it on his portable workbench out in front of the Hotel Rexford, though, this led to a bunch of drifters not only coming up and making conversation, but also using the workbench THROUGH Victor! Rude! This is Victor’s workbench, there’s a cookpot right over there, shoo.
B) Anyway, that killed an in-game hour, bringing us closer to 8 AM and to what I assume would be opening time for the Den. Had Victor pop in there, where Irma and Nick did some friendly flirting before she directed the pair downstairs – I tried having Victor talk to her, just to see if she had unique dialogue referencing the Earlier Incident (Amari does, remembering you as the Vault 111 person), but no dice. Ah well. Went to follow Nick, but then got distracted by a staircase leading UP and had to see where it went – not that surprisingly, there were a pair of bedrooms up there! Not sure whose was whose, but still – nice to see Bethesda did think of where Irma and Amari would sleep.
C) With curiosity sated, Victor and Nick proceeded downward, where Amari greeted them and asked what was up – Victor asked if she could extract memories, with Nick giving her more details about Kellogg when she pointed out the Memory Den normally focused on letting clients relive THEIR OWN memories. She was reluctant, but Victor pleaded for her help and got her to at least take a look at the implant (which apparently was keeping the hunk of brain attached to it fresh with regular chemical infusions, which, ew). She realized that the Institute tech inside looked familiar (apparently they don’t vary their frameworks much) and said that she couldn’t do much without a port, and Nick – as an old Institute synth – instantly said to hook him up. Victor asked if he was sure, but Nick said with a missing kid, it was worth any risks, aw. :) Amari plugged in the implant, but Nick wasn’t able to get anything on his own – the implant was encoding the memories like a hacker might encrypt a computer (as Amari explained when Victor asked how someone would lock away memories). Fortunately, Amari was pretty sure that using Nick and Victor TOGETHER (via linking them up through a pair of memory loungers) would get past the lock – Victor asked what it might be like in there (fragmented and weird, basically), and then consented to hop back into the lounger (after I did a quick save, of course).
D) And with that, it was time for the weird trippy “going through Kellogg’s memories by walking along neurons to specific setpieces” sequence! With one quick reload after I realized that no, you couldn’t just let the “main” memory play and then access the “submemories” (aka watch the cutscene and then click on all the interactive bits) later – fortunately pressing (A) to hear Kellogg talk about what a dumb kid he was, or what happiness actually feels like, pauses the “main” memory so you don’t miss anything. (Also, pretty sure you can’t fall off the neuron path, though it would be kinda funny if you could.) In order, the memories went –
I. Kellogg, as a little kid hearing about the New California Republic getting set up, gets a gun from his mother and is told that he has to take care of himself and that the gun is the only thing that will keep him safe
II. Kellogg in his brief “happy” period with his wife Sarah and their baby daughter Mary, during which time he was doing some light mercenary work and acting as a bodyguard for the Shi (who I believe are in New Vegas? Or the original Fallout games, one or the other)
III. Kellogg marching down a long hallway to kill some people, probably his former employers, after they killed his family in retaliation for some unspecified “fucking around with”
IV. Kellogg working his way east, doing various murders for hire (with the actual memory being him getting hired in a bar by some random wastelanders)
V. Kellogg meeting the Institute after disrupting some of their operations in the Commonwealth with his jobs, and impressing the agent there by killing the three early-model synths she brought with her without breaking a sweat
VI. Kellogg kidnapping Shaun again, which this time confirmed that the Institute ordered that only Victor be refrozen, and Kellogg actually feeling SLIGHTLY sorry for shooting Nora/Victoria, but also feeling like it was better than her having her baby taken and being left alive (I suspect this changes if you’re the female Sole Survivor). Also, sad note – if you look in your Sole Survivor’s cryopod after the shooting, you can see what looks like your character crying. :(
VII. And the important one – Kellogg looking after Shaun during his stay in Diamond City (around the time Piper published “The Synthetic Truth,” according to the radio), only for X6-88 to come in, give him his new orders to find and eliminate Bioscience guy Brian Virgil, and taking Shaun back to the Institute with him, via teleportation! Meaning we finally know how to get into and out of there!
E) And then Victor came out of the memory lounger, and I got to see that he was starving and badly dehydrated. I’d HEARD the tummy rumbles and such, but I hadn’t realized it had gotten THAT bad! Fortunately Amari was willing to wait on the dialogue while Victor hastily had some food and a Nuka-Cola. I kind of like that he woke up like that, though – as I later realized checking the Pip-Boy for the time, this whole thing took ALL DAY, and it took a lot out of him, so naturally he’d be hungry and thirsty! It only makes sense. *nods* Besides, there was already an option in the dialogue to admit you felt awful – apparently Victor literally had a burning headache, which Amari attributed to having been hooked into Nick’s brain. She’d given him a stimpack off-screen to help, which was nice.
F) Anyway, once refreshed, Victor discussed the findings with Dr. Amari, talking about how he’d seen Kellogg’s life and now he didn’t know how to feel about the guy (Amari assuring him that she wasn’t sure there was a “correct” way to feel), and what to do with the information they had about the Institute using teleportation to get in and out. Victor pointed out their best lead now was Virgil, though Amari was skeptical of the guy being in the Glowing Sea, given it’s a radiation deathtrap. Victor pointed out that’s what made it an ideal hiding place – hard to follow him in – and asked for advice on how to beat the radiation (as much Rad-X and Rad-Away as you can eat, and shielded clothing, like power armor or an environment suit). And so “Dangerous Minds” ended with Victor preparing for his next objective – going into the Glowing Sea! Except not really because I have some other sidequests I wanna do first. Also “stealing” some of Amari’s stuff (namely some duct tape and Wonderglue) because the game marked it okay to take. Took me a moment to realize that’s probably because Amari has a RobCo Fun magazine you can pick up as well (Grognak’s game) and it was probably easier for the coders to mark ALL her stuff as safe to take rather than just that one item. Fine by me, I always need adhesive.
G) With goodies in hand, Victor went upstairs to see Nick (who had already been unplugged and sent to rest on a couch), and we got through the creepy “Kellogg speaks through Nick one last time” moment. Victor was willing to accept that Nick was feeling all right when he said, though –
H) Which is a good thing, because Nick then immediately said that the whole thing with scooting through Kellogg’s memories had gotten him thinking about some of the original Nick’s old memories, and asked Victor if he could help him put some of Original!Nick’s demons to rest. AKA, the start of Nick’s special companion quest, “Long Time Coming!” This is Nick asking the sole survivor for their help in tracking down crime boss Eddie Winter, a real scumbag from the pre-War time who did pretty much every crime in the book before turning state’s evidence to avoid prosecution. And then locked himself in a secret bunker and did some weird radiation experiments to become possibly the world’s very first ghoul so he could live forever. Nick knows where the bastard is, but he doesn’t know how to get in – fortunately, he also knows that Eddie was dumb enough to leave hints as to what the bunker’s access code is in some holotapes he recorded, sending messages to certain members of his little crime “family.” Collect the holotapes (and Victor already has two!), and they’ll have their code. Victor was only too happy to help out with the quest (though unfortunately I didn’t have the chance to have him chug some “grape juice” and get the charisma necessary to guarantee passing the check that has Nick mention Jenny, Original!Nick’s girlfriend murdered by Winter), and Nick gave him Original!Nick’s “welcome aboard” holotape (from when he joined the Boston PD from Chicago to help with the “Winter’s End” sting), his own case notes, and the one holotape he himself managed to get from the Cambridge station (featuring Winter berating an underling for letting a cop walk in on a meeting with some other gangsters and threatening the guy’s daughter). So now we’ve got that to work on as well! :D
I) . . .next time, because after I’d listened to the holotapes, I checked Victor’s Pip-Boy and realized it was almost 10 PM. So I had him head back over to the Rexford and rent a room again and get a good night’s sleep (in fact, I let him have an extra hour so he’d be fully rested). Woke up around 7:25 AM on 1/1/2288, and sent him to the gates of Goodneighbor. Next time – well. Time to take care of some lingering sidequests – namely, the USS Constitution (since I have their turbopump bearings and they’re nearby) and the Castle (since that’s also not that far away now and needs to be done so we can “centralize” operations). We’ll get started on those next week!
Writing: More FO4 Playthrough Progression today, of course, getting us through Victor’s deep dive into Kellogg’s consciousness. As per usual, Alice was along for the ride, and even sat by Victor’s lounger and held his hand while he went into Kellogg’s mind, aw. :) I also had Irma react to Victor coming back after his disastrous first attempt to relive a memory (seriously, she too should react to a Sole Survivor who’s done the first optional “Memory Den” quest returning for seemingly a second go-round); incorporated the fact that you see the memories from your own outside perspective in the game despite the fact that you’re supposed to be seeing them through Kellogg’s eyes by having Victor do both (Amari, having noticed him “glitching” himself out of his cryopod at the end of his previous experience, felt that this ability would be perfect for him to relive the memories without losing himself – Victor found it very weird, looking from both perspectives at once); and explained Kellogg speaking through Nick briefly as “Nick’s haunted” (aka, since ghosts are a thing in Bloodlines, I had Kellogg’s ghost hanging onto Nick JUST long enough for him to issue a final pithy comment – fortunately that’s all the juice he had left in him, and Alice waving one of his own limb actuators at him and telling him to “fuck off” as an impromptu banishment ritual helped send him packing too). Oh, and they came out of the Den into a street party because New Year’s and stayed up til midnight as a result to see 2288 in, because honestly, having a shindig to celebrate New Year’s Eve seems on-brand for Goodneighbor. *nods* Otherwise, pretty much like what happened in the game – yes, including poor Victor waking up starving and parched after spending all day in the lounger. XD Sorry, Victor, but I feel it works! You’ll be having fun times with robots again soon, I promise.
YouTube: Caught up on all my Subs stuff and the latest from Jon, so I’m happy there –
A) Started with Call Me Kevin’s video from yesterday, “The road trip game that's randomly generated” – aka The Long Drive! This is a game where you start as a rando with a car in a shack, and you take that car and you go driving, hitting up any structures you see along the way for fuel, parts, and random cannibal people! No, seriously, the game just has this one random cannibal guy that seems to turn up every time you stop at a house. Also slightly-killer bunnies. It’s like the game WANTS to be a horror title but can’t quite manage it. . . Anyway, Kevin’s very first attempt at playing was scuppered by the fact the game randomly generated some rocks INSIDE his house and on top of his car. XD Fortunately, with each subsequent attempt he got farther and farther – taking his second car out at max speed until the engine died and realizing it would take FAR too long to walk back and get the necessary parts; taking everything he could in this third car (a pick-up truck) and getting a pretty good way down the road, only to be foiled by not knowing how to maintain his car; getting all the way to a building with his fourth car, some sort of hatchback, murdering a zombie with it, and taking it (after some SEVERE glitching) along with him as his “son” until he tried to get out, got stuck in the door, and glitched himself into oblivion; and finally managing to take his fifth car through an old bridge, a couple of gas stations, and all the way over to a VERY creepy cemetery house (murdering a couple more zombies along the way), successfully gathering parts and oil and even getting himself a cool hat! And a leg for fighting zombies. XD But sadly, the car ended up running out of fuel in the middle of the night, and our intrepid Kevin wandered off in search of gas, got lost, and was promptly set upon by the slightly-killer bunnies. A sad end to the trip, to be sure. Though at least he got to show us how, whenever you zoomed in on the rear view mirror, his character’s eyes bugged out like one of those stress toys. XD Fun!
B) Then, after supper, it was time for a double dose of GrayStillPlays –
I. “Kids vs Satan Tug of War in GTA 5” – More fun with Alex, as Gray completes a trio of parkour boards based on the winners of three tug-of-war matches Alex set up! First one was Elon Musk’s rocket car versus Professor X’s racer – Musk’s rocket car won in the most ridiculous fashion possible thanks to its boost, and thus Gray had to complete his IQ test board, which involved him using the boost and the car’s ability to instantly reverse direction to make it over a series of appearing-and-disappearing platforms and their various obstacles (namely inconvenient stop sticks and inconvenient boosts in weird places). Second one was Red Superman versus a pair of armored Titans – Supes won handily, and thus Gray had to play Classic But Depowered Superman in a terrible airplane parkour which involved him having to fly sideways through buildings and essentially wall ride around various curving platforms, all while avoiding the supersonic fighter jets and random helicopters Alex had put in his way. And the third one was “Stan” and his Wiener Tanker versus an eleven-year-old on a bike – the kid tried, but Stan won, and thus Gray had to complete a horrible flaming loop-de-loop wall ride featuring multiple wall ribbons, multiple twists, multiple jumps, and a couple of triangles designed to throw him off halfway through. On the plus side, Gray JUST missed the winning circle on his first try at the end (a twist into a wall ribbon into a smaller wall ribbon into a big jump), but then somehow managed to land BACK on the twist and thus try again from there instead of going back to the beginning. :D GrayStillPlays, everyone! Even in failing, sometimes he succeeds!
II. “When pranks cause unlimited pain” – more stupid mobile games with Just a Prank Bro, one of those games where you must fling people across various landscapes until they hit an arbitrary finish line, breaking as many bones as possible along the way for bonus cash so you can upgrade the power, flight and the bonuses you get for crashing into stuff. The theme of this one is prank videos, which include scaring a woman taking selfies by the grand canyon into flying off the side and hitting as many explosive barrels on the way down as possible; pretending to be an alien and getting kicked by a cow across an entire farm; scaring a dude riding a double-decker bus with an airhorn and sending him flying into a SECOND double-decker; and smacking a construction site supervisor in a port-a-potty into various buildings via a backhoe. That last guy’s life sucked the most because Gray also used him to get 100% bone breakage (the trick was to hit him at just over half-power). Ahh, it’s so fun to watch Gray abuse random unfortunate NPCs in these games. XD
C) And finally, we had Jon of Many A True Nerd and a New Year’s return to his regular series – “Fallout: Tale of Two Wastelands - Part 10 - Holding Out For A Hero!” With Wanda having returned to the Capital Wasteland from her New Vegas vacation, changed her Pip-Boy color back to the standard green, and rejiggered her loadout (Pancencia is in the cupboard in Megaton for the moment, awaiting the perfect moment, but That Gun has joined her loadout as a permanent member), she was ready to have some more adventures!
Some more superheroey adventures, that is, by heading to the town of Canterbury Commons (following the caravans from the old escaped slave’s hideout), which was being plagued by a superhero versus supervillain fight! Namely, some young orphaned girl named Tanya whose family was killed by ants had taken over those ants in the guise of the “AntAgonist” (inspired by old Hubris Comics publications) and had taken to occasionally attacking the town with her ants. According to the mayor, Uncle Roe, her attacks weren’t anything to really worry about – the townsfolk did a decent enough job in repelling her, and she was an entertaining blip on their radars – until one of the attacks took out the robot the local mechanic, Scott, built to protect the place. Scott got mad and swore revenge, and ended up taking on the role of the Mechanist and building a small robot army to fight her. Problem is, his robots are WAY more dangerous than her ants ever were, and the fights are now really making things hard for the town (except for this one cute little kid who loves them), to the point where they’re looking for someone to help resolve the problem. And they don’t care how you do it. For example, if you just rock up to the town, spot their “setting the scene” fight going on, whip out a Fat Man, and nuke them both to hell and back (without being killed by any surviving Mr. Gutsys like Jon was the first time he tried it), Uncle Roe will happily just give you a pile of caps for solving the problem before they could even ask for help.
However, that is not the only way to solve their conflict! It’s not even the best way! Jon ran us through a few of the other ways in a few alternate universes – starting with talking to the one cute little kid who loves them to learn the location of the AntAgonizer’s lair (and possibly get your own superhero name based on your SPECIAL stats; Jon got “Awesome-Claw” for Wanda because apparently high Agility counts more for her than Luck), talking to the guy in town who figured out who she is, then going to her lair. There, you can have the option to join with her and kick Mechanist ass – that will immediately start a fight with the Mechanist (who I guess followed you there), and if she wins, you can loot his costume off his corpse and she’ll decide the Commons is no longer worth her time. Alternatively, you can use speech-boosting items to talk her down, and she’ll realize that maybe this isn’t the best use of her time and give you the suit in exchange for letting her go. But, in Jon’s mind, the BEST way to resolve all this is to use comic book history against her –
Which is an option you only get if you end up in the section of the DC Ruins that happens to have the DC branch of Hubris Comics. You are NEVER directed there in the course of the quest, you just have to stumble upon it. And depending on your route, you must slog through a sewer full of ghouls, or take on a flooded metro station full of rather nasty mirelurks to get there. (Though, if you take the mirelurk route, as Jon did, you can find a secret area with a dead wastelander and the weapon he was working on – The Shocker, a special EMP-fitted power fist that allows you to do bonus damage to robots by punching them. Might be useful against a super-hero with loads of bots at his command!) But when you get there – well, turns out there’s all sorts of good stuff there! In specific, there are three things you must check out:
A) The reception desk, which has a terminal with a “Letters To The Editor” section, one of which is from “Obsessed in Oakmont,” which complains about how a certain writer turned the AntAgonizer into a one-note Grognak villain when she was much more complex and could still be redeemed in previous issues by the series’ previous writer – this is the basis of your dialogue options with the AntAgonizer.
B) The Beta Testing room, which has a single working terminal in it with an entire working text adventure game on it, “Reign of Grelock!” It’s mentioned on the reception terminal as something the “Gragnok Fan Club” was testing. It’s very simple, with you having to figure out what to do in the correct order to get what you need (namely, a gemstone that a wizard can turn into a magic shard that a blacksmith can forge into your sword to kill the titular Grelock – also you can clear a chapel of zombies and get some holy water by talking to the priest), but it’s a fun diversion, and Jon feels it was the precursor to the full-on minigames you get in Fallout 4 from the “Robco Fun” magazines.
C) A named boss up in the printing room – Mad Johnny Wes, a dude with a minigun who trapped the place up against the ferals roaming around and will happily turn it against you if you annoy him. Jon thinks he’s a reference to Wes Johnson, who has done many voices for the Fallout series, including Fallout 3 and Fallout 76.
Neat, huh? :D Anyway, get that information off the reception terminal, and you can go back to the AntAgonizer and talk her down by referencing the comics and how the original villain could be worthy of redemption, without having to pass a speech check (which, in Jon’s case, involved wearing Lincoln’s hat and a naughty nightie, so. . .). That’ll get you her costume as well (she also has a special poisoned knife, but you only get that from siding with her and seeing her off, and Jon didn’t think that was worth getting), and technically allow you to get the reward from Uncle Roe because you’ve removed the supervillain from the equation, meaning that the Mechanist won’t be fighting her anymore and causing chaos.
But hey, that leaves the Mechanist side of this plot thread unresolved! Wouldn’t it be better to go see him as well? So that’s what Jon did, heading over to his little lair and using the Shocker to get past the initial robo-brain before sneaking into the main room with a stealth boy and getting up onto the catwalk to first hack his way into shutting off the turrets in one office, then popping a safe to get a special encryption key in another office and using that on the terminal in there to release an EMP to kill all the robots. (Also, fun fact – apparently this entire dungeon is copy-pasted into a section of “Old World Blues” in Fallout: New Vegas, adjusted to fit the aesthetic appropriately of course.) And then he went and talked to the Mechanist, and showed off:
I. the most morally good way to end this whole charade (talk to the Mechanist and let him know the town sees him as a menace; shamed, he gives you his suit and goes into hiding)
II. and the most satisfying way for Wanda to do it (give the Mechanist the AntAgonizer suit so he can destroy it later to celebrate her defeat, get his special laser shotgun – not spectacular, but better than the AntAgonizer knife – and then, as he’s going to leave, murder him to steal his outfit as well). Yeah, well, we all know Wanda is STRICTLY on the side of neutrality, and she DID help both Tanya and a random captive held by super mutants, so. . .
And so the episode ended with Wanda getting the maximum payout for resolving the superhero mess, a new gun, and a new set of armor! The latter of which is apparently important for an Easter Egg in the game that will trigger next episode, as Jon does the OTHER mission in the area. I am eager to see Wanda dress up as a robot hero and do whatever is she’s going to do out there. :D
Workout: Went on the treadmill for a half-hour today, working my way through more of the Call Me Kevin “Rewind 2022” video! Finished the “Nostalgic Games” section today (with a little Octodad: Dadliest Catch and The Sims), and am well into the “The WORST GAMES” section (featuring of course Weed Shop Simulator III and Kevin discovering that you can just run out into the ocean forever; Internet Cafe Simulator II and Kevin discovering Shrek Trump and Camel Prime as he tried to run his business Starbacks; and the one I stopped on, Together BnB, and Kevin discovering terrible tutorials held together with terrible voice acting). We’re within an hour and a half of the end now, w00!
Okay, and that update of my Google Doc for the Valice Multiverse and then setting up the queue took way longer than I thought, so I am off to bed! So much for not destroying my sleep schedule. . .really gonna have to wrench this one back tomorrow night! *sigh* Night all!
It's also been a reasonably productive day, though I admit to having a slow morning -- still, got the following done:
Tumblr: Didn’t do the traditional dash-and-tags catch-up on Victor Luvs Alice this morning (I was a bit slow to wake up, I must admit), but I did make a point of getting at least the pictures and some starter text drafted for the four posts in this week’s upcoming Chill Save update before my workout! And then, this evening, I spent a good chunk of time updating my “Valice Multiverse” Google Doc with my rules and verses and such, adding a new timeline to the “Cuddlepile” verse, “Running Headlong into the Bullshit” (featuring the nine-person polycule and adding Preston, Piper, and Smiler to that particular variant) and new characters to the “Inevitable High School” verse (teenage Smiler joining those shenanigans) and the “Fallout of Darkness” verse (Preston and Piper – if I’m putting them in “Cuddlepile,” I should DEFINITELY have them in the FO4 verse!). Almost added Smiler to “Londerland Bloodlines” too, but decided to wait a bit and get used to them in “Cuddlepile” and “Inevitable High School” first. Did an update post with all the changes and answered the two asks waiting in my inbox (including the one that I needed Smiler to answer in the first place) and put those all in the queue!
Fallout 4: Did this for an hour right after lunch, and I am pleased to say that I not only accomplished everything I wanted to, I even got an unexpected bonus of a new quest to fiddle around right afterwards! Let me take you through it –
A) Picked up where I’d left off on Friday, with Victor and Nick parked outside the Memory Den – however, as it was 6:30 AM in the morning, I figured that might be a little too early to bother Irma and Amari (the NPCs do have sleep/wake cycles, as exemplified by the Diamond City Marketplace and the fact that after a certain hour, the only shop you can buy from is Diamond City Surplus as Myrna turns the reigns over to Percy the Mr. Handy), so I decided to have Victor do a bit of cooking, as I usually have him do when I’m not sure what else to do with him. As he did it on his portable workbench out in front of the Hotel Rexford, though, this led to a bunch of drifters not only coming up and making conversation, but also using the workbench THROUGH Victor! Rude! This is Victor’s workbench, there’s a cookpot right over there, shoo.
B) Anyway, that killed an in-game hour, bringing us closer to 8 AM and to what I assume would be opening time for the Den. Had Victor pop in there, where Irma and Nick did some friendly flirting before she directed the pair downstairs – I tried having Victor talk to her, just to see if she had unique dialogue referencing the Earlier Incident (Amari does, remembering you as the Vault 111 person), but no dice. Ah well. Went to follow Nick, but then got distracted by a staircase leading UP and had to see where it went – not that surprisingly, there were a pair of bedrooms up there! Not sure whose was whose, but still – nice to see Bethesda did think of where Irma and Amari would sleep.
C) With curiosity sated, Victor and Nick proceeded downward, where Amari greeted them and asked what was up – Victor asked if she could extract memories, with Nick giving her more details about Kellogg when she pointed out the Memory Den normally focused on letting clients relive THEIR OWN memories. She was reluctant, but Victor pleaded for her help and got her to at least take a look at the implant (which apparently was keeping the hunk of brain attached to it fresh with regular chemical infusions, which, ew). She realized that the Institute tech inside looked familiar (apparently they don’t vary their frameworks much) and said that she couldn’t do much without a port, and Nick – as an old Institute synth – instantly said to hook him up. Victor asked if he was sure, but Nick said with a missing kid, it was worth any risks, aw. :) Amari plugged in the implant, but Nick wasn’t able to get anything on his own – the implant was encoding the memories like a hacker might encrypt a computer (as Amari explained when Victor asked how someone would lock away memories). Fortunately, Amari was pretty sure that using Nick and Victor TOGETHER (via linking them up through a pair of memory loungers) would get past the lock – Victor asked what it might be like in there (fragmented and weird, basically), and then consented to hop back into the lounger (after I did a quick save, of course).
D) And with that, it was time for the weird trippy “going through Kellogg’s memories by walking along neurons to specific setpieces” sequence! With one quick reload after I realized that no, you couldn’t just let the “main” memory play and then access the “submemories” (aka watch the cutscene and then click on all the interactive bits) later – fortunately pressing (A) to hear Kellogg talk about what a dumb kid he was, or what happiness actually feels like, pauses the “main” memory so you don’t miss anything. (Also, pretty sure you can’t fall off the neuron path, though it would be kinda funny if you could.) In order, the memories went –
I. Kellogg, as a little kid hearing about the New California Republic getting set up, gets a gun from his mother and is told that he has to take care of himself and that the gun is the only thing that will keep him safe
II. Kellogg in his brief “happy” period with his wife Sarah and their baby daughter Mary, during which time he was doing some light mercenary work and acting as a bodyguard for the Shi (who I believe are in New Vegas? Or the original Fallout games, one or the other)
III. Kellogg marching down a long hallway to kill some people, probably his former employers, after they killed his family in retaliation for some unspecified “fucking around with”
IV. Kellogg working his way east, doing various murders for hire (with the actual memory being him getting hired in a bar by some random wastelanders)
V. Kellogg meeting the Institute after disrupting some of their operations in the Commonwealth with his jobs, and impressing the agent there by killing the three early-model synths she brought with her without breaking a sweat
VI. Kellogg kidnapping Shaun again, which this time confirmed that the Institute ordered that only Victor be refrozen, and Kellogg actually feeling SLIGHTLY sorry for shooting Nora/Victoria, but also feeling like it was better than her having her baby taken and being left alive (I suspect this changes if you’re the female Sole Survivor). Also, sad note – if you look in your Sole Survivor’s cryopod after the shooting, you can see what looks like your character crying. :(
VII. And the important one – Kellogg looking after Shaun during his stay in Diamond City (around the time Piper published “The Synthetic Truth,” according to the radio), only for X6-88 to come in, give him his new orders to find and eliminate Bioscience guy Brian Virgil, and taking Shaun back to the Institute with him, via teleportation! Meaning we finally know how to get into and out of there!
E) And then Victor came out of the memory lounger, and I got to see that he was starving and badly dehydrated. I’d HEARD the tummy rumbles and such, but I hadn’t realized it had gotten THAT bad! Fortunately Amari was willing to wait on the dialogue while Victor hastily had some food and a Nuka-Cola. I kind of like that he woke up like that, though – as I later realized checking the Pip-Boy for the time, this whole thing took ALL DAY, and it took a lot out of him, so naturally he’d be hungry and thirsty! It only makes sense. *nods* Besides, there was already an option in the dialogue to admit you felt awful – apparently Victor literally had a burning headache, which Amari attributed to having been hooked into Nick’s brain. She’d given him a stimpack off-screen to help, which was nice.
F) Anyway, once refreshed, Victor discussed the findings with Dr. Amari, talking about how he’d seen Kellogg’s life and now he didn’t know how to feel about the guy (Amari assuring him that she wasn’t sure there was a “correct” way to feel), and what to do with the information they had about the Institute using teleportation to get in and out. Victor pointed out their best lead now was Virgil, though Amari was skeptical of the guy being in the Glowing Sea, given it’s a radiation deathtrap. Victor pointed out that’s what made it an ideal hiding place – hard to follow him in – and asked for advice on how to beat the radiation (as much Rad-X and Rad-Away as you can eat, and shielded clothing, like power armor or an environment suit). And so “Dangerous Minds” ended with Victor preparing for his next objective – going into the Glowing Sea! Except not really because I have some other sidequests I wanna do first. Also “stealing” some of Amari’s stuff (namely some duct tape and Wonderglue) because the game marked it okay to take. Took me a moment to realize that’s probably because Amari has a RobCo Fun magazine you can pick up as well (Grognak’s game) and it was probably easier for the coders to mark ALL her stuff as safe to take rather than just that one item. Fine by me, I always need adhesive.
G) With goodies in hand, Victor went upstairs to see Nick (who had already been unplugged and sent to rest on a couch), and we got through the creepy “Kellogg speaks through Nick one last time” moment. Victor was willing to accept that Nick was feeling all right when he said, though –
H) Which is a good thing, because Nick then immediately said that the whole thing with scooting through Kellogg’s memories had gotten him thinking about some of the original Nick’s old memories, and asked Victor if he could help him put some of Original!Nick’s demons to rest. AKA, the start of Nick’s special companion quest, “Long Time Coming!” This is Nick asking the sole survivor for their help in tracking down crime boss Eddie Winter, a real scumbag from the pre-War time who did pretty much every crime in the book before turning state’s evidence to avoid prosecution. And then locked himself in a secret bunker and did some weird radiation experiments to become possibly the world’s very first ghoul so he could live forever. Nick knows where the bastard is, but he doesn’t know how to get in – fortunately, he also knows that Eddie was dumb enough to leave hints as to what the bunker’s access code is in some holotapes he recorded, sending messages to certain members of his little crime “family.” Collect the holotapes (and Victor already has two!), and they’ll have their code. Victor was only too happy to help out with the quest (though unfortunately I didn’t have the chance to have him chug some “grape juice” and get the charisma necessary to guarantee passing the check that has Nick mention Jenny, Original!Nick’s girlfriend murdered by Winter), and Nick gave him Original!Nick’s “welcome aboard” holotape (from when he joined the Boston PD from Chicago to help with the “Winter’s End” sting), his own case notes, and the one holotape he himself managed to get from the Cambridge station (featuring Winter berating an underling for letting a cop walk in on a meeting with some other gangsters and threatening the guy’s daughter). So now we’ve got that to work on as well! :D
I) . . .next time, because after I’d listened to the holotapes, I checked Victor’s Pip-Boy and realized it was almost 10 PM. So I had him head back over to the Rexford and rent a room again and get a good night’s sleep (in fact, I let him have an extra hour so he’d be fully rested). Woke up around 7:25 AM on 1/1/2288, and sent him to the gates of Goodneighbor. Next time – well. Time to take care of some lingering sidequests – namely, the USS Constitution (since I have their turbopump bearings and they’re nearby) and the Castle (since that’s also not that far away now and needs to be done so we can “centralize” operations). We’ll get started on those next week!
Writing: More FO4 Playthrough Progression today, of course, getting us through Victor’s deep dive into Kellogg’s consciousness. As per usual, Alice was along for the ride, and even sat by Victor’s lounger and held his hand while he went into Kellogg’s mind, aw. :) I also had Irma react to Victor coming back after his disastrous first attempt to relive a memory (seriously, she too should react to a Sole Survivor who’s done the first optional “Memory Den” quest returning for seemingly a second go-round); incorporated the fact that you see the memories from your own outside perspective in the game despite the fact that you’re supposed to be seeing them through Kellogg’s eyes by having Victor do both (Amari, having noticed him “glitching” himself out of his cryopod at the end of his previous experience, felt that this ability would be perfect for him to relive the memories without losing himself – Victor found it very weird, looking from both perspectives at once); and explained Kellogg speaking through Nick briefly as “Nick’s haunted” (aka, since ghosts are a thing in Bloodlines, I had Kellogg’s ghost hanging onto Nick JUST long enough for him to issue a final pithy comment – fortunately that’s all the juice he had left in him, and Alice waving one of his own limb actuators at him and telling him to “fuck off” as an impromptu banishment ritual helped send him packing too). Oh, and they came out of the Den into a street party because New Year’s and stayed up til midnight as a result to see 2288 in, because honestly, having a shindig to celebrate New Year’s Eve seems on-brand for Goodneighbor. *nods* Otherwise, pretty much like what happened in the game – yes, including poor Victor waking up starving and parched after spending all day in the lounger. XD Sorry, Victor, but I feel it works! You’ll be having fun times with robots again soon, I promise.
YouTube: Caught up on all my Subs stuff and the latest from Jon, so I’m happy there –
A) Started with Call Me Kevin’s video from yesterday, “The road trip game that's randomly generated” – aka The Long Drive! This is a game where you start as a rando with a car in a shack, and you take that car and you go driving, hitting up any structures you see along the way for fuel, parts, and random cannibal people! No, seriously, the game just has this one random cannibal guy that seems to turn up every time you stop at a house. Also slightly-killer bunnies. It’s like the game WANTS to be a horror title but can’t quite manage it. . . Anyway, Kevin’s very first attempt at playing was scuppered by the fact the game randomly generated some rocks INSIDE his house and on top of his car. XD Fortunately, with each subsequent attempt he got farther and farther – taking his second car out at max speed until the engine died and realizing it would take FAR too long to walk back and get the necessary parts; taking everything he could in this third car (a pick-up truck) and getting a pretty good way down the road, only to be foiled by not knowing how to maintain his car; getting all the way to a building with his fourth car, some sort of hatchback, murdering a zombie with it, and taking it (after some SEVERE glitching) along with him as his “son” until he tried to get out, got stuck in the door, and glitched himself into oblivion; and finally managing to take his fifth car through an old bridge, a couple of gas stations, and all the way over to a VERY creepy cemetery house (murdering a couple more zombies along the way), successfully gathering parts and oil and even getting himself a cool hat! And a leg for fighting zombies. XD But sadly, the car ended up running out of fuel in the middle of the night, and our intrepid Kevin wandered off in search of gas, got lost, and was promptly set upon by the slightly-killer bunnies. A sad end to the trip, to be sure. Though at least he got to show us how, whenever you zoomed in on the rear view mirror, his character’s eyes bugged out like one of those stress toys. XD Fun!
B) Then, after supper, it was time for a double dose of GrayStillPlays –
I. “Kids vs Satan Tug of War in GTA 5” – More fun with Alex, as Gray completes a trio of parkour boards based on the winners of three tug-of-war matches Alex set up! First one was Elon Musk’s rocket car versus Professor X’s racer – Musk’s rocket car won in the most ridiculous fashion possible thanks to its boost, and thus Gray had to complete his IQ test board, which involved him using the boost and the car’s ability to instantly reverse direction to make it over a series of appearing-and-disappearing platforms and their various obstacles (namely inconvenient stop sticks and inconvenient boosts in weird places). Second one was Red Superman versus a pair of armored Titans – Supes won handily, and thus Gray had to play Classic But Depowered Superman in a terrible airplane parkour which involved him having to fly sideways through buildings and essentially wall ride around various curving platforms, all while avoiding the supersonic fighter jets and random helicopters Alex had put in his way. And the third one was “Stan” and his Wiener Tanker versus an eleven-year-old on a bike – the kid tried, but Stan won, and thus Gray had to complete a horrible flaming loop-de-loop wall ride featuring multiple wall ribbons, multiple twists, multiple jumps, and a couple of triangles designed to throw him off halfway through. On the plus side, Gray JUST missed the winning circle on his first try at the end (a twist into a wall ribbon into a smaller wall ribbon into a big jump), but then somehow managed to land BACK on the twist and thus try again from there instead of going back to the beginning. :D GrayStillPlays, everyone! Even in failing, sometimes he succeeds!
II. “When pranks cause unlimited pain” – more stupid mobile games with Just a Prank Bro, one of those games where you must fling people across various landscapes until they hit an arbitrary finish line, breaking as many bones as possible along the way for bonus cash so you can upgrade the power, flight and the bonuses you get for crashing into stuff. The theme of this one is prank videos, which include scaring a woman taking selfies by the grand canyon into flying off the side and hitting as many explosive barrels on the way down as possible; pretending to be an alien and getting kicked by a cow across an entire farm; scaring a dude riding a double-decker bus with an airhorn and sending him flying into a SECOND double-decker; and smacking a construction site supervisor in a port-a-potty into various buildings via a backhoe. That last guy’s life sucked the most because Gray also used him to get 100% bone breakage (the trick was to hit him at just over half-power). Ahh, it’s so fun to watch Gray abuse random unfortunate NPCs in these games. XD
C) And finally, we had Jon of Many A True Nerd and a New Year’s return to his regular series – “Fallout: Tale of Two Wastelands - Part 10 - Holding Out For A Hero!” With Wanda having returned to the Capital Wasteland from her New Vegas vacation, changed her Pip-Boy color back to the standard green, and rejiggered her loadout (Pancencia is in the cupboard in Megaton for the moment, awaiting the perfect moment, but That Gun has joined her loadout as a permanent member), she was ready to have some more adventures!
Some more superheroey adventures, that is, by heading to the town of Canterbury Commons (following the caravans from the old escaped slave’s hideout), which was being plagued by a superhero versus supervillain fight! Namely, some young orphaned girl named Tanya whose family was killed by ants had taken over those ants in the guise of the “AntAgonist” (inspired by old Hubris Comics publications) and had taken to occasionally attacking the town with her ants. According to the mayor, Uncle Roe, her attacks weren’t anything to really worry about – the townsfolk did a decent enough job in repelling her, and she was an entertaining blip on their radars – until one of the attacks took out the robot the local mechanic, Scott, built to protect the place. Scott got mad and swore revenge, and ended up taking on the role of the Mechanist and building a small robot army to fight her. Problem is, his robots are WAY more dangerous than her ants ever were, and the fights are now really making things hard for the town (except for this one cute little kid who loves them), to the point where they’re looking for someone to help resolve the problem. And they don’t care how you do it. For example, if you just rock up to the town, spot their “setting the scene” fight going on, whip out a Fat Man, and nuke them both to hell and back (without being killed by any surviving Mr. Gutsys like Jon was the first time he tried it), Uncle Roe will happily just give you a pile of caps for solving the problem before they could even ask for help.
However, that is not the only way to solve their conflict! It’s not even the best way! Jon ran us through a few of the other ways in a few alternate universes – starting with talking to the one cute little kid who loves them to learn the location of the AntAgonizer’s lair (and possibly get your own superhero name based on your SPECIAL stats; Jon got “Awesome-Claw” for Wanda because apparently high Agility counts more for her than Luck), talking to the guy in town who figured out who she is, then going to her lair. There, you can have the option to join with her and kick Mechanist ass – that will immediately start a fight with the Mechanist (who I guess followed you there), and if she wins, you can loot his costume off his corpse and she’ll decide the Commons is no longer worth her time. Alternatively, you can use speech-boosting items to talk her down, and she’ll realize that maybe this isn’t the best use of her time and give you the suit in exchange for letting her go. But, in Jon’s mind, the BEST way to resolve all this is to use comic book history against her –
Which is an option you only get if you end up in the section of the DC Ruins that happens to have the DC branch of Hubris Comics. You are NEVER directed there in the course of the quest, you just have to stumble upon it. And depending on your route, you must slog through a sewer full of ghouls, or take on a flooded metro station full of rather nasty mirelurks to get there. (Though, if you take the mirelurk route, as Jon did, you can find a secret area with a dead wastelander and the weapon he was working on – The Shocker, a special EMP-fitted power fist that allows you to do bonus damage to robots by punching them. Might be useful against a super-hero with loads of bots at his command!) But when you get there – well, turns out there’s all sorts of good stuff there! In specific, there are three things you must check out:
A) The reception desk, which has a terminal with a “Letters To The Editor” section, one of which is from “Obsessed in Oakmont,” which complains about how a certain writer turned the AntAgonizer into a one-note Grognak villain when she was much more complex and could still be redeemed in previous issues by the series’ previous writer – this is the basis of your dialogue options with the AntAgonizer.
B) The Beta Testing room, which has a single working terminal in it with an entire working text adventure game on it, “Reign of Grelock!” It’s mentioned on the reception terminal as something the “Gragnok Fan Club” was testing. It’s very simple, with you having to figure out what to do in the correct order to get what you need (namely, a gemstone that a wizard can turn into a magic shard that a blacksmith can forge into your sword to kill the titular Grelock – also you can clear a chapel of zombies and get some holy water by talking to the priest), but it’s a fun diversion, and Jon feels it was the precursor to the full-on minigames you get in Fallout 4 from the “Robco Fun” magazines.
C) A named boss up in the printing room – Mad Johnny Wes, a dude with a minigun who trapped the place up against the ferals roaming around and will happily turn it against you if you annoy him. Jon thinks he’s a reference to Wes Johnson, who has done many voices for the Fallout series, including Fallout 3 and Fallout 76.
Neat, huh? :D Anyway, get that information off the reception terminal, and you can go back to the AntAgonizer and talk her down by referencing the comics and how the original villain could be worthy of redemption, without having to pass a speech check (which, in Jon’s case, involved wearing Lincoln’s hat and a naughty nightie, so. . .). That’ll get you her costume as well (she also has a special poisoned knife, but you only get that from siding with her and seeing her off, and Jon didn’t think that was worth getting), and technically allow you to get the reward from Uncle Roe because you’ve removed the supervillain from the equation, meaning that the Mechanist won’t be fighting her anymore and causing chaos.
But hey, that leaves the Mechanist side of this plot thread unresolved! Wouldn’t it be better to go see him as well? So that’s what Jon did, heading over to his little lair and using the Shocker to get past the initial robo-brain before sneaking into the main room with a stealth boy and getting up onto the catwalk to first hack his way into shutting off the turrets in one office, then popping a safe to get a special encryption key in another office and using that on the terminal in there to release an EMP to kill all the robots. (Also, fun fact – apparently this entire dungeon is copy-pasted into a section of “Old World Blues” in Fallout: New Vegas, adjusted to fit the aesthetic appropriately of course.) And then he went and talked to the Mechanist, and showed off:
I. the most morally good way to end this whole charade (talk to the Mechanist and let him know the town sees him as a menace; shamed, he gives you his suit and goes into hiding)
II. and the most satisfying way for Wanda to do it (give the Mechanist the AntAgonizer suit so he can destroy it later to celebrate her defeat, get his special laser shotgun – not spectacular, but better than the AntAgonizer knife – and then, as he’s going to leave, murder him to steal his outfit as well). Yeah, well, we all know Wanda is STRICTLY on the side of neutrality, and she DID help both Tanya and a random captive held by super mutants, so. . .
And so the episode ended with Wanda getting the maximum payout for resolving the superhero mess, a new gun, and a new set of armor! The latter of which is apparently important for an Easter Egg in the game that will trigger next episode, as Jon does the OTHER mission in the area. I am eager to see Wanda dress up as a robot hero and do whatever is she’s going to do out there. :D
Workout: Went on the treadmill for a half-hour today, working my way through more of the Call Me Kevin “Rewind 2022” video! Finished the “Nostalgic Games” section today (with a little Octodad: Dadliest Catch and The Sims), and am well into the “The WORST GAMES” section (featuring of course Weed Shop Simulator III and Kevin discovering that you can just run out into the ocean forever; Internet Cafe Simulator II and Kevin discovering Shrek Trump and Camel Prime as he tried to run his business Starbacks; and the one I stopped on, Together BnB, and Kevin discovering terrible tutorials held together with terrible voice acting). We’re within an hour and a half of the end now, w00!
Okay, and that update of my Google Doc for the Valice Multiverse and then setting up the queue took way longer than I thought, so I am off to bed! So much for not destroying my sleep schedule. . .really gonna have to wrench this one back tomorrow night! *sigh* Night all!
