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Right Down To The Wire Sunday
Nov. 13th, 2022 11:48 pmI REALLY have to stop "overbooking" my Sunday nights -- or at least remember that an hour-long Jon video will often need a half-hour write-up for the list. *sigh* The main problem here is, I just could NOT get properly started this morning, so I missed out on some of the stuff I normally would have done before lunch. Here's what I DID get done --
-->Tumblr: Oh, this was the one that suffered – because of my slow start this morning, not only did I not properly catch up on my Victor Luvs Alice dash and tags, I only JUST got all the pictures for my latest Chill Save update sorted and in draft posts. I dunno what happened to me! Can’t start the day with a quick sneaky look at TV Tropes, I suspect. . .at least Valice Multiverse was only one ask reply! But yeah, gotta sort out the text for those posts tomorrow and Tuesday.
-->Fallout 4: Played this early today, very soon after lunch, and made some good progress in Fort Hagen – basically, the two upper floors are clear, and Victor’s parked by the elevator waiting to head down closer to Kellogg! But, if you want more detail –
A) Started with Victor and Nick heading inside and finding themselves on some junk-and-rubble strewn stairs leading up, with a door chained from the other side nearby. They carefully headed up (Victor looting whatever he could), just barely avoiding some notice from some synths. A Protectron friend proved to be on the first landing, so Victor hacked its terminal (Nick offering his assistance, but don’t worry, Nick, I understand the minigame now) and set it roaming as a standard Protectron.
B) Standard Protectron ripped through the majority of synths on the floor, with very little help needed from Victor. :D Victor looted the bodies (including their guns, as I figured I could break them down to help upgrade Righteous Authority later), then went on a looting spree of the surrounding offices, break room area, and other spots. While he got plenty of good stuff (desk fans, military-grade duct tape, military-grade circuit boards), he also set off a Tesla arc trap on the ceiling of the main office area because I didn’t spot a tension trigger on an explosives box in time. *grumbles* He also had to take a bathroom break in the break area, amusingly enough – right by a floor safe that he then cracked.
C) After looting and rearranging his inventory with Nick’s help, Victor found his way into a side room that looked to be some sort of stage, with a turret – Victor exploded that, picked through the remains. . .
And then got asked by Nick if he had a moment to talk! Cue them having their first affinity conversation while Standard Protectron Buddy patrolled around, notably in between them a couple of times. XD This was Nick asking how Victor was holding up (Victor was like “well, I’m here now, so I gotta make it through”) and giving some of his history as a synth in Diamond City (sharing the stories of the Commonwealth Provisional Government massacre, what he learned about the Broken Mask Incident, and his own arrival in the city – while a lot of people suspected he was an Institute spy, the mayor at the time, Roberts, welcomed him in as Nick had saved his daughter from some kidnappers (by pretending he was rigged to explode XD). Nick started as a handyman, but everyone remembered him saving the mayor’s kid, so everyone asked him to look into missing person cases, and that’s how he transitioned to Nick the Detective) before assuring Victor that the Commonwealth could and would one day be his home. Aww. :)
D) And then they moved into the next room and a Legendary Synth Strider ruined the mood. XD Victor chugged a Nuka-Quantum and was able to take him out with a single shot – his buddy and his boss proved to be a little more difficult, but not by much. Victor looted the bodies, getting a Rapid 10mm off the Legendary (fires 25% faster, reloads 15% faster) before taking out an unfriendly turret in the computer room. And then hacked the terminal in the middle, only to realize it controlled the turret. Welp! He picked up more goodies in the room, including in the “victory” chest the FLL3 bearings he needed for Ironsides! :D So we’re almost ready to complete that quest when we’re back in the area. :) Victor also found a door he could unchain that allowed him to loop back to the start of the floor. Going around and making sure it was clear, he headed back into the little “stage” room and did some gun modifications – all the Institute laser guns he’d been picking up and scrapping gave him enough fiber optics to give Righteous Authority the Improved Sniper Barrel (which for some reason makes it hit harder – thing was MADE to be a sniper) and a Recoil Compensating stock, while the .44 got a Bull Barrel and a Reflex Sight, making it a Tactical Powerful .44. And then it was time for bed, at 11:22 PM, in the same spot since it felt the safest.
E) Victor woke up nice and early at 7:22 AM, and I directed him back into the computer room to unlock the mag locks on the security room in there and get all the ammo and such (though it required some additional lock picking – lot of novice-locked items in here! Well, it’s all experience). Then it was back to the stairs to go up to the top floor – Victor killed a turret up there, then took on the synths that appeared in response to the noise – they weren’t too difficult, fortunately. Another turret out, and the floor was basically clear. Victor and Nick did another sweep of the various offices and break rooms – Victor found a cooking pot set up in one of the nicer offices and cooked up a bunch of his food, and a copy of Guns & Bullets magazine (ballistic weapons now 5% stronger!) in the little kitchenette, near the hatch to the roof. So very worth coming up!
F) However, Kellogg is in fact down, not up, so it was back to the floor below to check on how to get to him. The stairs back down only led to the parking garage and that still-chained door, so it looks like the elevator Victor found in the computer room is the only way to Kellogg! And so that’s where I left him – after taking one moment to set up his portable workbench and move all his mods on his old 10mm over to the new Rapid one, and scrap the old one. Sorry, buddy – you served me well in the early game, but if I’m going to have an emergency 10mm in the late game, it’s gonna be one that fires faster. *nods*
And that’s that! Next weekend, we descend further into Fort Hagen! Should be fun. If by “fun” you mean “murdery.” XD
-->Writing: Another FO4 Playthrough Progression day – pretty much identical to the above of “explored the top two floors of Fort Hagen, destroyed all synths and turrets in their path, got Nick’s first affinity talk with some of his history with Diamond City, good some goodies, and did some good gun upgrades,” with only minor tweaks (like Victor doing all of his gun upgrades in one shot instead of two). Easy peasy lemon squeezy!
-->YouTube: I HAVE CAUGHT UP ON MY SUBS. I understand that this will probably last all of one evening, but I have actually done it, and I am pleased. :) Let me take you through it –
A) First up, taking the place of my workout (I’d INTENDED to start it earlier, but then got sucked into watching a bit of the Vikings/Bills game because, well, it was surprisingly exciting), and just so I could get it out of my Subs, we had Call Me Kevin and “I played the MW2 Campaign so you don't have to!” Yes, the two hour (well, one hour forty-eight minutes, but close enough) video from yesterday that I couldn’t get to, but managed to take out today! Basically it was Kevin playing through the entire single-player story campaign of the new Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II release – which, if you didn’t know, is the sequel to the 2019 Modern Warfare, which is a REBOOT of the ORIGINAL Modern Warfare and frankly I have NO idea what’s going on or what is happening because I don’t care about this series unless some YouTuber (generally, well, Kevin) is annoying people in multiplayer. XD But yeah, Kevin played through that campaign, which featured a bunch of soldiers (Brits and Mexicans mainly – I think almost every American in the game is actually evil) trying to track down a specific bald terrorist, save their captured CIA friend when she tried to help them on a mission, learn the hard way that their boss and his special team of goons is evil, and then finally team up as a special rogue team to take down the special team of goons and stop a missile fired from Chicago from hitting DC. Along the way, they wreck a good portion of the fictional city of Las Almas, Mexico (both chasing the terrorist and then capturing a specific drug lord for intel); crawl around a field in ghillie suits (Kevin was very excited as he loves those things); blow up an oil tanker to stop an already-armed missile hitting anything else (let’s never mind the environmental damage); have to do a forced “no gear stealth” mission when they are hit by the inevitable betrayal (Kevin was not happy about that one, as he is not patient enough for stealth); and generally cause some chaos, mostly because an Irishman who isn’t always paying attention to the subtitles or the on-screen tips and doesn’t always know the controls is in control of one of them whenever they’re not in a cutscene. XD Though Kevin did have some cool moments, like figuring out how to give enemies in buildings a VERY bad day by throwing in both tear gas and regular grenades through the vents, or being the immovable object whenever he got a riot shield. And to be honest, those cutscenes were a big reason why he did this entire video, as he was super-impressed by how vivid and lifelike they were. And to be fair, MWII clearly had a budget for animation – it was genuinely very impressive. But still, don’t ask me to explain ANY of this when it comes to plot or anything like that – all I know is that Kevin loves Los Vaqueros leader Alejandro and gets easily confused as to who is a civilian and who isn’t. XD
B) Then, this evening, we had Gray’s upload of the day – “Anything you draw comes to life in Draw Ramp” – Draw Ramp Jumping!, that is! Gray’s mobile pick of the day, which is a game where you have to draw ramps for various vehicles to leap off of to go across various courses and reach the finish area (which was fully destructible, to Gray’s delight). Courses ranged from a junkyard, to a canyon, to a city, to a snowy mountaintop overlooking a lake, vehicles ranged from pickup trucks to motorcycles to jet cycles paired with wingsuits, to A FREAKING TRAIN, and bonuses included upping the money you got from tricks, upping your initial speed, and upping how long your boosts last. Gray of course drew some completely out there ramps (including a loop just because he could), then began experimenting with ways to get the best speed and/or height so he could actually beat some of the harder boards, pouring all his upgrades into money to get more and more cash from completing boards. And then he discovered how a low and long ramp in the junkyard level can lead to you doing ALL the fun tricks and just overshooting the finish line entirely, and suddenly he was just racking up ALL the barrel rolls. Before finally getting all his boosts maxed out and then drawing a ramp that took him to space (aka outside of the drawn map). Surprisingly fun for such a simple game – but then again, that is the Gray way!
C) And finally, it was the weekly episode of Jon of Many A True Nerd: “Fallout: Tale of Two Wastelands - Part 4 - Hit The Underground Running,” AKA Jon and Wanda show the audience a better way to use the infamous metro tunnels in DC! And also show off a few different ways some missions can go down depending on what you do to whom and in which order. To put it in a little more detail –
I. Jon Hates How Bethesda Introduces You To Metro Stations – the reason the metro stations even exist in the game is because when FO3 came out, processing limitations meant that, rather than having a true open map like you have in FO4’s Boston, you had important locations in the DC Ruins existing in their own separate bubbles, and the metro stations and their connecting tunnels were how you traveled between these bubbles. However, the very first metro station you will probably run across, Farragut West, isn’t REALLY a metro station – or, at the very least, it does not connect to any of the others via the main lines. Its main tunnel is completely collapsed, and you have to navigate through to the main metro lines via a separate maintenance tunnel, which drops you out at the spot where the Brotherhood have helpfully painted some directions. Jon feels this is a bad introduction because it doesn’t properly teach anyone how to USE the tunnels. He recommends instead just going along the side of the DC ruins until you find Friendship station, which PROPERLY connects to the metro lines, and study its glowing map, which is entirely accurate and shows which stations connect where. Friendship connects only to one other station due to tunnel collapse, but that other station, Tennerly, is where you are going anyway – follow the signs and the Red Line, and you’ll reach the BOS signs just the same. If you pay attention to what stations are on which lines and which ones are still connected, you’ll always find your way to where you need to go. For example, if you’re doing the quest “The Good Fight” for Three Dog the Galaxy News Radio jockey, which requires you to go to the Museum of Technology to get him a radar dish to boost his signal output, by looking at the map, you will find that it’s associated metro station links up with the station that is in fact RIGHT BY RIVET CITY, which is your next main plot location to find your father. So if you’ve already taken the long way round to Rivet City for whatever reason, you can use its metro station to get to the Museum quicker; if you’ve already made your way to the Museum, you can use ITS metro station to get to Rivet City and avoid walking through raiders and super mutants along the river. Jon hates that Bethesda doesn’t spell out that “reading the signs and looking at the maps will lead you in the right direction as long as you know what stations are in what bubbles” and also that their quest markers in this game generally encourage the long way around even if that’s dangerous. Ah well.\
II. Jon Vs Alternate Universe Jon, AKA How To Screw Up FO3 Missions – being as Jon is dedicated to showing off the most complete playthrough he can of FO3 (even if he’s playing a hack that links it to F:NV and includes some of those mechanics – as he found when he looted some Brotherhood armor off a corpse and found that the NV disguise system was in play), he included a few trips into AU Jon’s save files to show how certain things could go differently if you play the “Following In His Footsteps” mission different ways (with AU Jon being very snarky about being called such XD). Key things shown include:
a. If you complete “Following In His Footsteps” WITHOUT going to Galaxy News Radio to talk to Three Dog (as in AU Jon’s save, by going to Rivet City right away and talking to Dr. Li, who promptly recognizes you as James’s daughter), if you then decide to go to Galaxy News Radio ANYWAY, a BOS patrol that is supposed to spawn when you first approach to help you take care of a whole bunch of super mutants (including a Behemoth!) just – doesn’t. That includes a dead member in the main plaza with a Fat Man, which is kind of key against the Behemoth. Basically, you can do things in the wrong order, but if you backtrack, the game WILL punish you by denying you help against some tough enemies.
b. If you straight up kill Three Dog (because he is killable) without asking him about your dad, “Following In His Footsteps” completes, and you get a new quest called “The Search Continues” that just says, in essence, “welp, you just killed your only actual plot-lead – time to wander the wasteland until you stumble across a different trigger!” You also get a new old lady DJ on the radio, which is kind of amusing.
c. If you talk to Three Dog, he will try to get you to do his quest “The Good Fight” (retrieving that dish) in exchange for information about your dad. You CAN speech check your way past this, though, which will put you on the right path to Rivet City and Dr. Li. However, if you then talk to him AGAIN, he will instead entice you to do “The Good Fight” in exchange for a holotape showing you where a good stash of military weapons are, and how to get into it. This is the option Main Universe Jon went with, because it allows you to do the quest and get some bonus treasure in the bargain, yay.
C) Jon Loves The Museum Of Technology – But it seems that Jon doesn’t actually require bribing to do Three Dog’s mission, as he considers the Museum it takes place in to be one of the best “dungeons” in the game. It’s small, but it packs a lot of fun stuff into it – not only are there just a bunch of cool wrecked exhibits to take in (and a fun little joke with the “Hall of Today” being completely buried in rubble), it supports multiple playstyles – if you’re better with fighting, you can just blast the super mutants inside (especially if you have the Rock-It Launcher like Jon, who has been killing a LOT of people using tin cans – and the ammo stays on the ground after firing, so you can just pick it up and fire it again); if you’re better at stealth, you can sneak past them (and the museum actually has THREE stealth boys on display for you to nick for this purpose); if you’re good with computers, you can also use the automated museum security to get the turrets to kill them. AND it has a secret unmarked quest in the museum information terminals where you have to follow a “breadcrumb trail” set up by a guy named Prime to claim the reward from his last heist with his friend. (Said breadcrumb trail is picking the right number out of a sequence of four on three different terminals; as per the guy’s name, you’re looking for the prime number, so have a list of those handy. Also the reward is in two parts, apparently, but the second part is at a different location – but Jon will show off THAT bit next week.) Add in all the different little rooms you can find, and it’s just a fun little location with lots to recommend it.
D) Burke Is A Lovestruck Creep – And, at the very end of the episode, after promising a treasure hunt next week (to get the cache Three Dog told us about and the other half of the Museum of Technology Unmarked Quest reward), Jon treated us to a dramatic reading of Mr. Burke’s first love letter to Wanda, delivered to a very unimpressed Colin Moriarty at his pub. It is so over the top and flowery, it is ridiculous. The man had ONE seductive interaction with Wanda (who, as I will remind everyone, is canonically 19 – yes, she is technically a consenting adult, and yes, age gaps in relationships are not inherently bad, but it IS a BIT creepy, especially Jon was only interested in getting him to not blow up Megaton) and he is head over fucking heels. And this is only his FIRST letter. We’ll be getting more of them. I can’t wait. XD
Okay, so catching up on YouTube felt good, and I enjoyed FO4, but I really wish I'd done tumblr, or Moose's messages, this morning, because I am running SUPER late now. Hopefully I'm not too tired tomorrow morning! Damn full week of work. . .night all!
-->Tumblr: Oh, this was the one that suffered – because of my slow start this morning, not only did I not properly catch up on my Victor Luvs Alice dash and tags, I only JUST got all the pictures for my latest Chill Save update sorted and in draft posts. I dunno what happened to me! Can’t start the day with a quick sneaky look at TV Tropes, I suspect. . .at least Valice Multiverse was only one ask reply! But yeah, gotta sort out the text for those posts tomorrow and Tuesday.
-->Fallout 4: Played this early today, very soon after lunch, and made some good progress in Fort Hagen – basically, the two upper floors are clear, and Victor’s parked by the elevator waiting to head down closer to Kellogg! But, if you want more detail –
A) Started with Victor and Nick heading inside and finding themselves on some junk-and-rubble strewn stairs leading up, with a door chained from the other side nearby. They carefully headed up (Victor looting whatever he could), just barely avoiding some notice from some synths. A Protectron friend proved to be on the first landing, so Victor hacked its terminal (Nick offering his assistance, but don’t worry, Nick, I understand the minigame now) and set it roaming as a standard Protectron.
B) Standard Protectron ripped through the majority of synths on the floor, with very little help needed from Victor. :D Victor looted the bodies (including their guns, as I figured I could break them down to help upgrade Righteous Authority later), then went on a looting spree of the surrounding offices, break room area, and other spots. While he got plenty of good stuff (desk fans, military-grade duct tape, military-grade circuit boards), he also set off a Tesla arc trap on the ceiling of the main office area because I didn’t spot a tension trigger on an explosives box in time. *grumbles* He also had to take a bathroom break in the break area, amusingly enough – right by a floor safe that he then cracked.
C) After looting and rearranging his inventory with Nick’s help, Victor found his way into a side room that looked to be some sort of stage, with a turret – Victor exploded that, picked through the remains. . .
And then got asked by Nick if he had a moment to talk! Cue them having their first affinity conversation while Standard Protectron Buddy patrolled around, notably in between them a couple of times. XD This was Nick asking how Victor was holding up (Victor was like “well, I’m here now, so I gotta make it through”) and giving some of his history as a synth in Diamond City (sharing the stories of the Commonwealth Provisional Government massacre, what he learned about the Broken Mask Incident, and his own arrival in the city – while a lot of people suspected he was an Institute spy, the mayor at the time, Roberts, welcomed him in as Nick had saved his daughter from some kidnappers (by pretending he was rigged to explode XD). Nick started as a handyman, but everyone remembered him saving the mayor’s kid, so everyone asked him to look into missing person cases, and that’s how he transitioned to Nick the Detective) before assuring Victor that the Commonwealth could and would one day be his home. Aww. :)
D) And then they moved into the next room and a Legendary Synth Strider ruined the mood. XD Victor chugged a Nuka-Quantum and was able to take him out with a single shot – his buddy and his boss proved to be a little more difficult, but not by much. Victor looted the bodies, getting a Rapid 10mm off the Legendary (fires 25% faster, reloads 15% faster) before taking out an unfriendly turret in the computer room. And then hacked the terminal in the middle, only to realize it controlled the turret. Welp! He picked up more goodies in the room, including in the “victory” chest the FLL3 bearings he needed for Ironsides! :D So we’re almost ready to complete that quest when we’re back in the area. :) Victor also found a door he could unchain that allowed him to loop back to the start of the floor. Going around and making sure it was clear, he headed back into the little “stage” room and did some gun modifications – all the Institute laser guns he’d been picking up and scrapping gave him enough fiber optics to give Righteous Authority the Improved Sniper Barrel (which for some reason makes it hit harder – thing was MADE to be a sniper) and a Recoil Compensating stock, while the .44 got a Bull Barrel and a Reflex Sight, making it a Tactical Powerful .44. And then it was time for bed, at 11:22 PM, in the same spot since it felt the safest.
E) Victor woke up nice and early at 7:22 AM, and I directed him back into the computer room to unlock the mag locks on the security room in there and get all the ammo and such (though it required some additional lock picking – lot of novice-locked items in here! Well, it’s all experience). Then it was back to the stairs to go up to the top floor – Victor killed a turret up there, then took on the synths that appeared in response to the noise – they weren’t too difficult, fortunately. Another turret out, and the floor was basically clear. Victor and Nick did another sweep of the various offices and break rooms – Victor found a cooking pot set up in one of the nicer offices and cooked up a bunch of his food, and a copy of Guns & Bullets magazine (ballistic weapons now 5% stronger!) in the little kitchenette, near the hatch to the roof. So very worth coming up!
F) However, Kellogg is in fact down, not up, so it was back to the floor below to check on how to get to him. The stairs back down only led to the parking garage and that still-chained door, so it looks like the elevator Victor found in the computer room is the only way to Kellogg! And so that’s where I left him – after taking one moment to set up his portable workbench and move all his mods on his old 10mm over to the new Rapid one, and scrap the old one. Sorry, buddy – you served me well in the early game, but if I’m going to have an emergency 10mm in the late game, it’s gonna be one that fires faster. *nods*
And that’s that! Next weekend, we descend further into Fort Hagen! Should be fun. If by “fun” you mean “murdery.” XD
-->Writing: Another FO4 Playthrough Progression day – pretty much identical to the above of “explored the top two floors of Fort Hagen, destroyed all synths and turrets in their path, got Nick’s first affinity talk with some of his history with Diamond City, good some goodies, and did some good gun upgrades,” with only minor tweaks (like Victor doing all of his gun upgrades in one shot instead of two). Easy peasy lemon squeezy!
-->YouTube: I HAVE CAUGHT UP ON MY SUBS. I understand that this will probably last all of one evening, but I have actually done it, and I am pleased. :) Let me take you through it –
A) First up, taking the place of my workout (I’d INTENDED to start it earlier, but then got sucked into watching a bit of the Vikings/Bills game because, well, it was surprisingly exciting), and just so I could get it out of my Subs, we had Call Me Kevin and “I played the MW2 Campaign so you don't have to!” Yes, the two hour (well, one hour forty-eight minutes, but close enough) video from yesterday that I couldn’t get to, but managed to take out today! Basically it was Kevin playing through the entire single-player story campaign of the new Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II release – which, if you didn’t know, is the sequel to the 2019 Modern Warfare, which is a REBOOT of the ORIGINAL Modern Warfare and frankly I have NO idea what’s going on or what is happening because I don’t care about this series unless some YouTuber (generally, well, Kevin) is annoying people in multiplayer. XD But yeah, Kevin played through that campaign, which featured a bunch of soldiers (Brits and Mexicans mainly – I think almost every American in the game is actually evil) trying to track down a specific bald terrorist, save their captured CIA friend when she tried to help them on a mission, learn the hard way that their boss and his special team of goons is evil, and then finally team up as a special rogue team to take down the special team of goons and stop a missile fired from Chicago from hitting DC. Along the way, they wreck a good portion of the fictional city of Las Almas, Mexico (both chasing the terrorist and then capturing a specific drug lord for intel); crawl around a field in ghillie suits (Kevin was very excited as he loves those things); blow up an oil tanker to stop an already-armed missile hitting anything else (let’s never mind the environmental damage); have to do a forced “no gear stealth” mission when they are hit by the inevitable betrayal (Kevin was not happy about that one, as he is not patient enough for stealth); and generally cause some chaos, mostly because an Irishman who isn’t always paying attention to the subtitles or the on-screen tips and doesn’t always know the controls is in control of one of them whenever they’re not in a cutscene. XD Though Kevin did have some cool moments, like figuring out how to give enemies in buildings a VERY bad day by throwing in both tear gas and regular grenades through the vents, or being the immovable object whenever he got a riot shield. And to be honest, those cutscenes were a big reason why he did this entire video, as he was super-impressed by how vivid and lifelike they were. And to be fair, MWII clearly had a budget for animation – it was genuinely very impressive. But still, don’t ask me to explain ANY of this when it comes to plot or anything like that – all I know is that Kevin loves Los Vaqueros leader Alejandro and gets easily confused as to who is a civilian and who isn’t. XD
B) Then, this evening, we had Gray’s upload of the day – “Anything you draw comes to life in Draw Ramp” – Draw Ramp Jumping!, that is! Gray’s mobile pick of the day, which is a game where you have to draw ramps for various vehicles to leap off of to go across various courses and reach the finish area (which was fully destructible, to Gray’s delight). Courses ranged from a junkyard, to a canyon, to a city, to a snowy mountaintop overlooking a lake, vehicles ranged from pickup trucks to motorcycles to jet cycles paired with wingsuits, to A FREAKING TRAIN, and bonuses included upping the money you got from tricks, upping your initial speed, and upping how long your boosts last. Gray of course drew some completely out there ramps (including a loop just because he could), then began experimenting with ways to get the best speed and/or height so he could actually beat some of the harder boards, pouring all his upgrades into money to get more and more cash from completing boards. And then he discovered how a low and long ramp in the junkyard level can lead to you doing ALL the fun tricks and just overshooting the finish line entirely, and suddenly he was just racking up ALL the barrel rolls. Before finally getting all his boosts maxed out and then drawing a ramp that took him to space (aka outside of the drawn map). Surprisingly fun for such a simple game – but then again, that is the Gray way!
C) And finally, it was the weekly episode of Jon of Many A True Nerd: “Fallout: Tale of Two Wastelands - Part 4 - Hit The Underground Running,” AKA Jon and Wanda show the audience a better way to use the infamous metro tunnels in DC! And also show off a few different ways some missions can go down depending on what you do to whom and in which order. To put it in a little more detail –
I. Jon Hates How Bethesda Introduces You To Metro Stations – the reason the metro stations even exist in the game is because when FO3 came out, processing limitations meant that, rather than having a true open map like you have in FO4’s Boston, you had important locations in the DC Ruins existing in their own separate bubbles, and the metro stations and their connecting tunnels were how you traveled between these bubbles. However, the very first metro station you will probably run across, Farragut West, isn’t REALLY a metro station – or, at the very least, it does not connect to any of the others via the main lines. Its main tunnel is completely collapsed, and you have to navigate through to the main metro lines via a separate maintenance tunnel, which drops you out at the spot where the Brotherhood have helpfully painted some directions. Jon feels this is a bad introduction because it doesn’t properly teach anyone how to USE the tunnels. He recommends instead just going along the side of the DC ruins until you find Friendship station, which PROPERLY connects to the metro lines, and study its glowing map, which is entirely accurate and shows which stations connect where. Friendship connects only to one other station due to tunnel collapse, but that other station, Tennerly, is where you are going anyway – follow the signs and the Red Line, and you’ll reach the BOS signs just the same. If you pay attention to what stations are on which lines and which ones are still connected, you’ll always find your way to where you need to go. For example, if you’re doing the quest “The Good Fight” for Three Dog the Galaxy News Radio jockey, which requires you to go to the Museum of Technology to get him a radar dish to boost his signal output, by looking at the map, you will find that it’s associated metro station links up with the station that is in fact RIGHT BY RIVET CITY, which is your next main plot location to find your father. So if you’ve already taken the long way round to Rivet City for whatever reason, you can use its metro station to get to the Museum quicker; if you’ve already made your way to the Museum, you can use ITS metro station to get to Rivet City and avoid walking through raiders and super mutants along the river. Jon hates that Bethesda doesn’t spell out that “reading the signs and looking at the maps will lead you in the right direction as long as you know what stations are in what bubbles” and also that their quest markers in this game generally encourage the long way around even if that’s dangerous. Ah well.\
II. Jon Vs Alternate Universe Jon, AKA How To Screw Up FO3 Missions – being as Jon is dedicated to showing off the most complete playthrough he can of FO3 (even if he’s playing a hack that links it to F:NV and includes some of those mechanics – as he found when he looted some Brotherhood armor off a corpse and found that the NV disguise system was in play), he included a few trips into AU Jon’s save files to show how certain things could go differently if you play the “Following In His Footsteps” mission different ways (with AU Jon being very snarky about being called such XD). Key things shown include:
a. If you complete “Following In His Footsteps” WITHOUT going to Galaxy News Radio to talk to Three Dog (as in AU Jon’s save, by going to Rivet City right away and talking to Dr. Li, who promptly recognizes you as James’s daughter), if you then decide to go to Galaxy News Radio ANYWAY, a BOS patrol that is supposed to spawn when you first approach to help you take care of a whole bunch of super mutants (including a Behemoth!) just – doesn’t. That includes a dead member in the main plaza with a Fat Man, which is kind of key against the Behemoth. Basically, you can do things in the wrong order, but if you backtrack, the game WILL punish you by denying you help against some tough enemies.
b. If you straight up kill Three Dog (because he is killable) without asking him about your dad, “Following In His Footsteps” completes, and you get a new quest called “The Search Continues” that just says, in essence, “welp, you just killed your only actual plot-lead – time to wander the wasteland until you stumble across a different trigger!” You also get a new old lady DJ on the radio, which is kind of amusing.
c. If you talk to Three Dog, he will try to get you to do his quest “The Good Fight” (retrieving that dish) in exchange for information about your dad. You CAN speech check your way past this, though, which will put you on the right path to Rivet City and Dr. Li. However, if you then talk to him AGAIN, he will instead entice you to do “The Good Fight” in exchange for a holotape showing you where a good stash of military weapons are, and how to get into it. This is the option Main Universe Jon went with, because it allows you to do the quest and get some bonus treasure in the bargain, yay.
C) Jon Loves The Museum Of Technology – But it seems that Jon doesn’t actually require bribing to do Three Dog’s mission, as he considers the Museum it takes place in to be one of the best “dungeons” in the game. It’s small, but it packs a lot of fun stuff into it – not only are there just a bunch of cool wrecked exhibits to take in (and a fun little joke with the “Hall of Today” being completely buried in rubble), it supports multiple playstyles – if you’re better with fighting, you can just blast the super mutants inside (especially if you have the Rock-It Launcher like Jon, who has been killing a LOT of people using tin cans – and the ammo stays on the ground after firing, so you can just pick it up and fire it again); if you’re better at stealth, you can sneak past them (and the museum actually has THREE stealth boys on display for you to nick for this purpose); if you’re good with computers, you can also use the automated museum security to get the turrets to kill them. AND it has a secret unmarked quest in the museum information terminals where you have to follow a “breadcrumb trail” set up by a guy named Prime to claim the reward from his last heist with his friend. (Said breadcrumb trail is picking the right number out of a sequence of four on three different terminals; as per the guy’s name, you’re looking for the prime number, so have a list of those handy. Also the reward is in two parts, apparently, but the second part is at a different location – but Jon will show off THAT bit next week.) Add in all the different little rooms you can find, and it’s just a fun little location with lots to recommend it.
D) Burke Is A Lovestruck Creep – And, at the very end of the episode, after promising a treasure hunt next week (to get the cache Three Dog told us about and the other half of the Museum of Technology Unmarked Quest reward), Jon treated us to a dramatic reading of Mr. Burke’s first love letter to Wanda, delivered to a very unimpressed Colin Moriarty at his pub. It is so over the top and flowery, it is ridiculous. The man had ONE seductive interaction with Wanda (who, as I will remind everyone, is canonically 19 – yes, she is technically a consenting adult, and yes, age gaps in relationships are not inherently bad, but it IS a BIT creepy, especially Jon was only interested in getting him to not blow up Megaton) and he is head over fucking heels. And this is only his FIRST letter. We’ll be getting more of them. I can’t wait. XD
Okay, so catching up on YouTube felt good, and I enjoyed FO4, but I really wish I'd done tumblr, or Moose's messages, this morning, because I am running SUPER late now. Hopefully I'm not too tired tomorrow morning! Damn full week of work. . .night all!
