Finally Got To Visit Dad In The Hospital
Jan. 19th, 2026 11:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crossover_chickYeah, despite the return of the snow last night, we didn't get enough to completely fuck up the roads, so Mom was finally able to take me to the hospital to see Dad in person this morning. Got there a little before 10 AM (official start of visiting hours), and we stayed until about 1 PM -- mostly because the doctor came in briefly while Mom was helping Dad get washed up and changed into some new clothes, and we decided to wait until he came back around again to tell us the results of the MRI Dad had recently. Which, um, were not good. Long story short, we won't know EXACTLY what we're dealing with, and for how long, until they do the biopsy (which we're hoping will be tomorrow), but -- yeah. He's got shit all through his body, and we're basically just figuring out how long he has. *sigh* Suffice to say, I wasn't fully with it for the rest of the day. Glad I got to go down there in person and sit with him and end up explaining the Fallout games to him and Mom when he asked me what I've been doing, but -- fucking hell. I want a redo on 2026 and we're not even through January yet.
*pinches bridge of nose* Anyway. Despite that news derailing my brain a bit, I was able to get three other things done today:
Portal 2: Yes, I did finally start my replay of this after lunch today – look, I’ve been using video games to distract myself and experience some form of happiness all throughout this long-ass weekend, and I don’t see why I should stop now. Anyway, I booted up the game a little before 3 PM, and got through:
A) The initial pre-game prepwork – namely, adjusting the music volume down a little bit (don’t want it drowning out any of the dialogue, like what nearly happened at the start of New Vegas), and changing the sound “output” section (at least, I think that’s what it was called, I don’t remember because I wasn’t paying that much attention) from “Headphones” to “Two Speakers” because, well, that’s what I’m using to play the sound on my computer, a pair of speakers. For some reason, this caused the music on the menu screen to cut out entirely – not the SOUND, I was still getting the “blips” from moving from menu item to menu item, just the music. No idea why – it was bizarre. O.o
B) The included “Lab Rat” comic, which shows how we went from Chell blowing up GLaDOS and getting sucked up to the surface at the end of the original Portal to Chell waking up in an Extended Relaxation Chamber in the Relaxation Center at the start of Portal 2 (basically, Doug Rattmann, having also escaped outside after GLaDOS went boom, saw her get dragged back inside by the Party Escort Bot, and went back in to help her however he could, because he was responsible for her being on the testing track in the first place – he made her Test Subject #1 during his initial escape into the walls from GLaDOS because he knew her abnormal tenacity meant she’d EVENTUALLY defeat the homicidal robot; unfortunately, due to being unable to get past some turrets, he was unable to rescue her from the Relaxation Center, but he WAS at least able to patch her chamber into reserve power to make sure she had life support, even if she had no assigned wake-up date, before climbing into a relaxation vault stasis bed for his own potential “long sleep”) – I read this while waiting to see (or, well, I guess more accurately HEAR) if the music would ever return to the menu, figuring that it was better than just hanging around doing nothing! Plus it is a good comic – establishes what kind of guy Doug Rattmann is, has some interesting flashbacks to Aperture in its heyday (and how GLaDOS got her hands on that neurotoxin), and bridges the gap between games pretty well. I’m glad they made it, and glad they included it with the game for situations like these!
C) And – after realizing the music wasn’t going to come back on its own and restarting the game because I found the largely-silent menu just unpleasantly weird – Chapter One of the game, “The Courtesy Call!” Which covers:
I. Chell being roused by the announcer after her first fifty days of suspension to look up and down before staring at some art and enjoying a bit of classic music, so the player can get an idea of how the movement controls work
II. Wheatley then waking Chell up again after an unspecified amount of time and – after the bit where he tells her that she might have severe brain damage given how long she’s been under, and the game teaching you what the “jump” button is by pretending it’ll make her answer Wheatley’s questions – smashing her relaxation chamber through the decayed remains of all the OTHER chambers and finally through a wall so she can find the portal gun they need to get out of Aperture
III. Chell working her way through a couple of VERY busted-up and overgrown testing chambers after falling into another relaxation vault after leaving her relaxation chamber at Wheatley’s request (if you’re wondering what the difference is, the vault is the little glass cube thing we saw in the original game and is intended for subjects who are actively testing, while the chamber is like a hotel room and is intended for longer stasis), including the classic “just place the cube on the button” test and a test where she had to press those tall “standing” buttons to manipulate portals to let her into a pair of cracked glass “cases” to put a cube on a button, then reach the door
IV. Chell briefly meeting up with Wheatley in the wreckage of another test chamber where she SHOULD have been able to find the single-portal gun – only to fall through the floor the minute she approached the empty podium into a deeper level of the facility; Wheatley went on ahead to wait for her (saying he’d be back in an hour to try and find her body to bury if she was dead), and she eventually found the single portal gun at the end of the corridor she’d fallen into, framed by a bunch of Doug’s murals
V. Chell getting back to the testing track proper (accompanied by the pre-recorded Announcer, since GLaDOS was out of commission) and doing more tests (with me taking out the ruined remains of the cameras on the wall whenever I could, just for funsies), including:
a. Having to use portals to get a cube out of a pit to put on a button (easy)
b. Having to use portals to get a cube in a pit AND a cube atop a platform to put on two buttons (made slightly harder because the stationary orange portal was atop another platform, but still pretty easy)
c. Using a portal to get out of a room with a glass ceiling – only to land on said glass ceiling and break it (fortunately turning it into a ramp so she could still keep on keeping on)
d. Having to use portals to retrieve a cube on a far pedestal in a bunch of toxic water to put on a button (to create a ramp up to the button that actually opened the exit door), then having to carefully time the pressing of two standing buttons to drop a cube into a portal and then raise some of the floor to stop it getting immediately flung into the deadly water thanks to the position of the stationary portal so it could be retrieved to put on the door button (difficulty slooowly ramping up)
e. Having to use portals to fling herself onto a platform, then retrieve a cube in a closed glass case (by shooting a portal into the one hole on the top), then fling both the cube and herself onto the platform to do the usual “put the cube on the button to open the door song-and-dance” (we all know the drill by now)
f. And having to use portals to fling herself onto one platform to get a cube, then fling herself and the cube onto another platform so she could put the cube on a button, then fling herself onto a third, higher platform that flipped out of the wall when the button was pressed to escape the chamber (we do love a good flinging puzzle)
VI. And Chell catching up with Wheatley in the next chamber; failing to catch him when he disengaged from his rail (this will come back to haunt her later); plugging him into the wall so he could open a secret panel into the backstage areas so they could escape; carrying him over various catwalks and through GLaDOS’s utterly-wrecked central chamber; bringing him into the central breaker room and unwisely plugging him into the main console – where he proceeded to turn everything back on and accidentally reactivate GLaDOS; and finally getting tossed into the broken Aperture Science Artificial Intelligence Incinerator by her nemesis (after said nemesis smashed up poor Wheatley) and made to walk through the incinerator room to find the dual portal gun before returning to the testing track by making her way backwards through the original Chamber 19 from the end of the first game (while GLaDOS told her about how she’d been forced to relive Chell killing her over and over and over again thanks to a “black box auto-save” feature, and how she now intends to make Chell test for the rest of her natural life...and then how maybe she’ll take up reanimating the dead as a hobby)
*nods* Pretty good progress, if I do say so myself! I left off at the start of Chapter 2, “The Cold Boot” – next time, we’ll start making our way through the next set of tests, under the watchful eye of GLaDOS! Should be fun. :P
Writing: I got to this late, due to what I feel is a rather understandable inability to focus this afternoon, but I did manage to do another page’s worth of edits on Chapter 6 of “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland” tonight. This section covered:
A) Pisha allowing that Simon going mad might be enough to keep him from breaking the Masquerade, but insisting that killing him would have been better and asking if Alice trusted in her Malkavian Disciplines that much...then not believing Alice when she explained she had nothing to do with Simon’s madness and that it was Pisha who drove him over the edge (I was going to say that “to be fair, it’s harder to believe a MALKAVIAN on such matters,” but – honestly, who would know better if someone was driven mad by their hand or not?)
B) Alice freely admitting that she hadn’t particularly wanted to send Simon to Pisha’s dinner table, as it seemed an awful thing to do to someone, and Pisha informing her that she shouldn’t worry about the morality of it – after all, someone who enters the domain of a tiger may end up being devoured – before going “if it makes you feel better, I only prey on the weak and worthless” (that did not make Alice feel better, Pisha, thanks)
C) Alice revealing that she’d spoken to Strauss about Pisha’s condition, and had learned that no, she didn’t need to kill that entire camera crew – and that she hadn’t presented herself to Prince LaCroix, who was understandably pissy about the situation...before revealing her shotgun and informing Pisha that a flesh-eating bitch who calls a human “it” in front of her may end up having her head blown off (yay for mangling her metaphor and throwing it back in her face)
D) An annoyed Pisha sealing off the room with mystical fire (Alice was very upset) before growing her nails into claws and attempting to pounce on Alice – Alice managed to dodge and retreat to the shelves just under the vent she used to get in, then succeeded at keeping Pisha at bay for a bit with both her shotgun –
And the reveal that she had no interest in Pisha’s secret store of relics (after Pisha told her that she could spend several lifetimes searching for them) – she just wanted her to go down for what she’d done to the Haunted LA crew. Pisha was rather surprised, asking if Alice didn’t crave the powers others had cultivated for themselves – Alice responded that she just wanted her fellow vampires to leave her alone. Which Pisha allowed wasn’t particularly weird –
Then added that Alice might get the solitude she wanted in Final Death, but for now, she’d have to put up with Pisha and her “friends.” I left things there, right before the reveal that Pisha’s “friends” were the corpses she’d planned to eat, reanimated with dark magic...we’ll see how Alice takes that (poorly) and how the fight goes from there tomorrow!
Workout: I did get back on the bike this evening – and I decided to stay with Many A True Nerd for the time being, as I’m still not sure I’m up for keeping up with the plot of an Oxventure episode, much as I’d like to get back to them. Instead, I have decided to watch Jon’s “The Worst Courier” series – mostly because I have seen an “ad” for it at the end of many of Jon’s Fallout-related videos over the years, and I figured it was about time I checked it out. :p So what is “The Worst Courier?” Simply put, it’s a challenge run Jon did for Fallout: New Vegas about five years ago, starring Useless Steve, the Worst Courier! Why is he the worst courier? Simple –
Thanks to console commands, he started out life with a one in all SPECIAL stats, and a five in all skills (the lowest starting number you can get in both). He was literally good at nothing – hence, Useless Steve. And to make things harder, Jon insisted on playing in Very Hard mode, and using a special mod to make ammo have weight, stimpacks heal over time, and Rad-Away heal over time like in Hardcore Mode – though, hilariously, he did not require Steve to eat, drink, or sleep. I guess he figured Steve would have enough on his plate without basic human needs. XD So yeah – the challenge was to get this guy to the end of the game while dealing with all that. I started today with “Fallout: New Vegas - The Worst Courier,” AKA episode one, and got through:
A) The introduction of Useless Steve – who, in addition to having shit SPECIAL stats and shit skills (and no traits, by the by), also had the worst haircut and facial hair that Jon could find in the game – and a look at just how hard his life was going to be by showing how he couldn’t talk Doc Mitchell into giving him more stimpacks, couldn’t use the chemistry set to make his own stimpacks, and couldn’t repair the 9mm submachine gun for his own use
B) Useless Steve attempting the tutorial with Sunny Smiles, and showing off how shit his shooting was thanks to his lack of skills, lack of Strength (because, as it turns out, weapons in this game have a minimum amount of Strength you need to wield them effectively, and most of the ones Steve was carrying were out of his league), and lack of Agility (which actually determines how fast you equip a gun and how fast you reload it, which is a factoid I didn’t know before! Well, at least I know my own Victor will be very quick on the draw, even if he needs some time to get used to shooting guns again). The gun sway was REAL, folks! Despite this, though, he managed to shoot down all the sarsaparilla bottles, help Sunny kill the geckos by the well (mostly by getting up in their faces and using his lightest gun and VATS to kill them in four shots), and even save the menaced settler (who managed to take LESS damage than the one in Victor’s save! Though, to be fair, in this universe, one of the geckos got caught in the scenery, so…)
C) Useless Steve looting the town for anything that could help him be less useless, including grabbing any and every skill magazine (which temporarily boost a skill by ten points) out of the local mailboxes, making off with Doc Mitchell’s pre-War hat (because clothing often boosts SPECIAL stats), and robbing the settler he just helped of her Chinese Spec Ops manual to boost his Sneak skill up a precious three points (because skill BOOKS permanently increase skills)
D) Useless Steve getting given the “hey, gather up all the star bottle caps from Sunset Sarsaparilla bottles” mission by one Malcolm Holmes, and Jon considering trying to find all 50 because the laser gun Pew Pew is actually a decent weapon and doesn’t have a high Strength Requirement...then having Steve kill Malcolm to take his stuff – notably, his Barter-skill-increasing clothes to get better prices in the stores
E) Useless Steve buying a shovel off the guy in the General Store and going grave robbing up at the local graveyard (taking care of the local bloatflies via the tried-and-true method of “rush up to them and shoot them in the head in VATS”) – then, when that didn’t pan out as well as he’d hoped, heading toward the Yangtze Memorial to try and rob the graves there...only to have to abort the mission when a giant radscorpion took an interest in him; cue him accidentally luring the monster into town and getting a bunch of Goodsprings residents killed (including Easy Pete!) and him having to hide the bodies because “nobody needs to know” XD
F) Useless Steve chatting with Trudy while hiding from the giant radscorpion outside – selling a bunch of stuff to her (for better prices than at the General Store as Trudy liked him for saving that settler); showing off some of the low-Intelligence dialogue options (which are generally less erudite than the Intelligent ones); and managing to get enough XP to level up to Level 2, spending his paltry eleven skill points on boosting Speech up to 8 and Lockpick up to 13, and taking the “Intense Training” perk (one of THREE perks he could take) to boost his Strength up to 2 so he could use more guns
G) Useless Steve also getting Joe Cobb, leader of the local Powder Gangers, killed via giant radscorpion (dude tried to take it on and failed miserably), leading to the failure of “Run Goodsprings Run” (the quest where you help the gang take over the town) – but not “Ghost Town Gunfight” (where you help Goodsprings fight back – apparently the gang will attack even without their leader); cue Steve looting Cobb’s bodies for goodies (including a Stealth Boy), then going to Ringo and kicking off “Ghost Town Gunfight” because, well, he literally couldn’t help the Powder Gangers anymore. And, to his credit, while he wasn’t able to get help from MOST of the people around town (either because he couldn’t pass their speech/skill checks, like with Trudy, or because they were dead, like with Easy Pete), he WAS able to get Chet to give him and Sunny Smiles some leather armor and extra ammo with the help of his new Barter-boosting outfit and a “Salesman’s Weekly” skill magazine. It’s the little wins!
So yeah – Useless Steve is useless, but he’s getting a few things done, at least! Even if one of those things is “kill a bunch of people via giant radscorpion.” XD I left off with Jon declaring that Useless Steve would now wear Easy Pete’s hat in his memory – and because it was kind of a terrible ugly hat, so it fit Steve’s aesthetic. XD Tomorrow, we’ll see how “Ghost Town Gunfight” goes and how useless Steve will be in that fight!
*nods* Glad I managed to start Portal 2 after meaning to for so long -- and I am already enjoying the adventures of Useless Steve, so I'm looking forward to watching more of his nonsense as the week goes on. :p As it stands, though, I should probably get to bed -- I ended up taking tomorrow off as well because, well, Mom still needs the car for her running around and to visit Dad, and I'm not really in the right headspace for work. Hoping I can distract myself with more stuff tomorrow, but we'll see...night all.
*pinches bridge of nose* Anyway. Despite that news derailing my brain a bit, I was able to get three other things done today:
Portal 2: Yes, I did finally start my replay of this after lunch today – look, I’ve been using video games to distract myself and experience some form of happiness all throughout this long-ass weekend, and I don’t see why I should stop now. Anyway, I booted up the game a little before 3 PM, and got through:
A) The initial pre-game prepwork – namely, adjusting the music volume down a little bit (don’t want it drowning out any of the dialogue, like what nearly happened at the start of New Vegas), and changing the sound “output” section (at least, I think that’s what it was called, I don’t remember because I wasn’t paying that much attention) from “Headphones” to “Two Speakers” because, well, that’s what I’m using to play the sound on my computer, a pair of speakers. For some reason, this caused the music on the menu screen to cut out entirely – not the SOUND, I was still getting the “blips” from moving from menu item to menu item, just the music. No idea why – it was bizarre. O.o
B) The included “Lab Rat” comic, which shows how we went from Chell blowing up GLaDOS and getting sucked up to the surface at the end of the original Portal to Chell waking up in an Extended Relaxation Chamber in the Relaxation Center at the start of Portal 2 (basically, Doug Rattmann, having also escaped outside after GLaDOS went boom, saw her get dragged back inside by the Party Escort Bot, and went back in to help her however he could, because he was responsible for her being on the testing track in the first place – he made her Test Subject #1 during his initial escape into the walls from GLaDOS because he knew her abnormal tenacity meant she’d EVENTUALLY defeat the homicidal robot; unfortunately, due to being unable to get past some turrets, he was unable to rescue her from the Relaxation Center, but he WAS at least able to patch her chamber into reserve power to make sure she had life support, even if she had no assigned wake-up date, before climbing into a relaxation vault stasis bed for his own potential “long sleep”) – I read this while waiting to see (or, well, I guess more accurately HEAR) if the music would ever return to the menu, figuring that it was better than just hanging around doing nothing! Plus it is a good comic – establishes what kind of guy Doug Rattmann is, has some interesting flashbacks to Aperture in its heyday (and how GLaDOS got her hands on that neurotoxin), and bridges the gap between games pretty well. I’m glad they made it, and glad they included it with the game for situations like these!
C) And – after realizing the music wasn’t going to come back on its own and restarting the game because I found the largely-silent menu just unpleasantly weird – Chapter One of the game, “The Courtesy Call!” Which covers:
I. Chell being roused by the announcer after her first fifty days of suspension to look up and down before staring at some art and enjoying a bit of classic music, so the player can get an idea of how the movement controls work
II. Wheatley then waking Chell up again after an unspecified amount of time and – after the bit where he tells her that she might have severe brain damage given how long she’s been under, and the game teaching you what the “jump” button is by pretending it’ll make her answer Wheatley’s questions – smashing her relaxation chamber through the decayed remains of all the OTHER chambers and finally through a wall so she can find the portal gun they need to get out of Aperture
III. Chell working her way through a couple of VERY busted-up and overgrown testing chambers after falling into another relaxation vault after leaving her relaxation chamber at Wheatley’s request (if you’re wondering what the difference is, the vault is the little glass cube thing we saw in the original game and is intended for subjects who are actively testing, while the chamber is like a hotel room and is intended for longer stasis), including the classic “just place the cube on the button” test and a test where she had to press those tall “standing” buttons to manipulate portals to let her into a pair of cracked glass “cases” to put a cube on a button, then reach the door
IV. Chell briefly meeting up with Wheatley in the wreckage of another test chamber where she SHOULD have been able to find the single-portal gun – only to fall through the floor the minute she approached the empty podium into a deeper level of the facility; Wheatley went on ahead to wait for her (saying he’d be back in an hour to try and find her body to bury if she was dead), and she eventually found the single portal gun at the end of the corridor she’d fallen into, framed by a bunch of Doug’s murals
V. Chell getting back to the testing track proper (accompanied by the pre-recorded Announcer, since GLaDOS was out of commission) and doing more tests (with me taking out the ruined remains of the cameras on the wall whenever I could, just for funsies), including:
a. Having to use portals to get a cube out of a pit to put on a button (easy)
b. Having to use portals to get a cube in a pit AND a cube atop a platform to put on two buttons (made slightly harder because the stationary orange portal was atop another platform, but still pretty easy)
c. Using a portal to get out of a room with a glass ceiling – only to land on said glass ceiling and break it (fortunately turning it into a ramp so she could still keep on keeping on)
d. Having to use portals to retrieve a cube on a far pedestal in a bunch of toxic water to put on a button (to create a ramp up to the button that actually opened the exit door), then having to carefully time the pressing of two standing buttons to drop a cube into a portal and then raise some of the floor to stop it getting immediately flung into the deadly water thanks to the position of the stationary portal so it could be retrieved to put on the door button (difficulty slooowly ramping up)
e. Having to use portals to fling herself onto a platform, then retrieve a cube in a closed glass case (by shooting a portal into the one hole on the top), then fling both the cube and herself onto the platform to do the usual “put the cube on the button to open the door song-and-dance” (we all know the drill by now)
f. And having to use portals to fling herself onto one platform to get a cube, then fling herself and the cube onto another platform so she could put the cube on a button, then fling herself onto a third, higher platform that flipped out of the wall when the button was pressed to escape the chamber (we do love a good flinging puzzle)
VI. And Chell catching up with Wheatley in the next chamber; failing to catch him when he disengaged from his rail (this will come back to haunt her later); plugging him into the wall so he could open a secret panel into the backstage areas so they could escape; carrying him over various catwalks and through GLaDOS’s utterly-wrecked central chamber; bringing him into the central breaker room and unwisely plugging him into the main console – where he proceeded to turn everything back on and accidentally reactivate GLaDOS; and finally getting tossed into the broken Aperture Science Artificial Intelligence Incinerator by her nemesis (after said nemesis smashed up poor Wheatley) and made to walk through the incinerator room to find the dual portal gun before returning to the testing track by making her way backwards through the original Chamber 19 from the end of the first game (while GLaDOS told her about how she’d been forced to relive Chell killing her over and over and over again thanks to a “black box auto-save” feature, and how she now intends to make Chell test for the rest of her natural life...and then how maybe she’ll take up reanimating the dead as a hobby)
*nods* Pretty good progress, if I do say so myself! I left off at the start of Chapter 2, “The Cold Boot” – next time, we’ll start making our way through the next set of tests, under the watchful eye of GLaDOS! Should be fun. :P
Writing: I got to this late, due to what I feel is a rather understandable inability to focus this afternoon, but I did manage to do another page’s worth of edits on Chapter 6 of “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland” tonight. This section covered:
A) Pisha allowing that Simon going mad might be enough to keep him from breaking the Masquerade, but insisting that killing him would have been better and asking if Alice trusted in her Malkavian Disciplines that much...then not believing Alice when she explained she had nothing to do with Simon’s madness and that it was Pisha who drove him over the edge (I was going to say that “to be fair, it’s harder to believe a MALKAVIAN on such matters,” but – honestly, who would know better if someone was driven mad by their hand or not?)
B) Alice freely admitting that she hadn’t particularly wanted to send Simon to Pisha’s dinner table, as it seemed an awful thing to do to someone, and Pisha informing her that she shouldn’t worry about the morality of it – after all, someone who enters the domain of a tiger may end up being devoured – before going “if it makes you feel better, I only prey on the weak and worthless” (that did not make Alice feel better, Pisha, thanks)
C) Alice revealing that she’d spoken to Strauss about Pisha’s condition, and had learned that no, she didn’t need to kill that entire camera crew – and that she hadn’t presented herself to Prince LaCroix, who was understandably pissy about the situation...before revealing her shotgun and informing Pisha that a flesh-eating bitch who calls a human “it” in front of her may end up having her head blown off (yay for mangling her metaphor and throwing it back in her face)
D) An annoyed Pisha sealing off the room with mystical fire (Alice was very upset) before growing her nails into claws and attempting to pounce on Alice – Alice managed to dodge and retreat to the shelves just under the vent she used to get in, then succeeded at keeping Pisha at bay for a bit with both her shotgun –
And the reveal that she had no interest in Pisha’s secret store of relics (after Pisha told her that she could spend several lifetimes searching for them) – she just wanted her to go down for what she’d done to the Haunted LA crew. Pisha was rather surprised, asking if Alice didn’t crave the powers others had cultivated for themselves – Alice responded that she just wanted her fellow vampires to leave her alone. Which Pisha allowed wasn’t particularly weird –
Then added that Alice might get the solitude she wanted in Final Death, but for now, she’d have to put up with Pisha and her “friends.” I left things there, right before the reveal that Pisha’s “friends” were the corpses she’d planned to eat, reanimated with dark magic...we’ll see how Alice takes that (poorly) and how the fight goes from there tomorrow!
Workout: I did get back on the bike this evening – and I decided to stay with Many A True Nerd for the time being, as I’m still not sure I’m up for keeping up with the plot of an Oxventure episode, much as I’d like to get back to them. Instead, I have decided to watch Jon’s “The Worst Courier” series – mostly because I have seen an “ad” for it at the end of many of Jon’s Fallout-related videos over the years, and I figured it was about time I checked it out. :p So what is “The Worst Courier?” Simply put, it’s a challenge run Jon did for Fallout: New Vegas about five years ago, starring Useless Steve, the Worst Courier! Why is he the worst courier? Simple –
Thanks to console commands, he started out life with a one in all SPECIAL stats, and a five in all skills (the lowest starting number you can get in both). He was literally good at nothing – hence, Useless Steve. And to make things harder, Jon insisted on playing in Very Hard mode, and using a special mod to make ammo have weight, stimpacks heal over time, and Rad-Away heal over time like in Hardcore Mode – though, hilariously, he did not require Steve to eat, drink, or sleep. I guess he figured Steve would have enough on his plate without basic human needs. XD So yeah – the challenge was to get this guy to the end of the game while dealing with all that. I started today with “Fallout: New Vegas - The Worst Courier,” AKA episode one, and got through:
A) The introduction of Useless Steve – who, in addition to having shit SPECIAL stats and shit skills (and no traits, by the by), also had the worst haircut and facial hair that Jon could find in the game – and a look at just how hard his life was going to be by showing how he couldn’t talk Doc Mitchell into giving him more stimpacks, couldn’t use the chemistry set to make his own stimpacks, and couldn’t repair the 9mm submachine gun for his own use
B) Useless Steve attempting the tutorial with Sunny Smiles, and showing off how shit his shooting was thanks to his lack of skills, lack of Strength (because, as it turns out, weapons in this game have a minimum amount of Strength you need to wield them effectively, and most of the ones Steve was carrying were out of his league), and lack of Agility (which actually determines how fast you equip a gun and how fast you reload it, which is a factoid I didn’t know before! Well, at least I know my own Victor will be very quick on the draw, even if he needs some time to get used to shooting guns again). The gun sway was REAL, folks! Despite this, though, he managed to shoot down all the sarsaparilla bottles, help Sunny kill the geckos by the well (mostly by getting up in their faces and using his lightest gun and VATS to kill them in four shots), and even save the menaced settler (who managed to take LESS damage than the one in Victor’s save! Though, to be fair, in this universe, one of the geckos got caught in the scenery, so…)
C) Useless Steve looting the town for anything that could help him be less useless, including grabbing any and every skill magazine (which temporarily boost a skill by ten points) out of the local mailboxes, making off with Doc Mitchell’s pre-War hat (because clothing often boosts SPECIAL stats), and robbing the settler he just helped of her Chinese Spec Ops manual to boost his Sneak skill up a precious three points (because skill BOOKS permanently increase skills)
D) Useless Steve getting given the “hey, gather up all the star bottle caps from Sunset Sarsaparilla bottles” mission by one Malcolm Holmes, and Jon considering trying to find all 50 because the laser gun Pew Pew is actually a decent weapon and doesn’t have a high Strength Requirement...then having Steve kill Malcolm to take his stuff – notably, his Barter-skill-increasing clothes to get better prices in the stores
E) Useless Steve buying a shovel off the guy in the General Store and going grave robbing up at the local graveyard (taking care of the local bloatflies via the tried-and-true method of “rush up to them and shoot them in the head in VATS”) – then, when that didn’t pan out as well as he’d hoped, heading toward the Yangtze Memorial to try and rob the graves there...only to have to abort the mission when a giant radscorpion took an interest in him; cue him accidentally luring the monster into town and getting a bunch of Goodsprings residents killed (including Easy Pete!) and him having to hide the bodies because “nobody needs to know” XD
F) Useless Steve chatting with Trudy while hiding from the giant radscorpion outside – selling a bunch of stuff to her (for better prices than at the General Store as Trudy liked him for saving that settler); showing off some of the low-Intelligence dialogue options (which are generally less erudite than the Intelligent ones); and managing to get enough XP to level up to Level 2, spending his paltry eleven skill points on boosting Speech up to 8 and Lockpick up to 13, and taking the “Intense Training” perk (one of THREE perks he could take) to boost his Strength up to 2 so he could use more guns
G) Useless Steve also getting Joe Cobb, leader of the local Powder Gangers, killed via giant radscorpion (dude tried to take it on and failed miserably), leading to the failure of “Run Goodsprings Run” (the quest where you help the gang take over the town) – but not “Ghost Town Gunfight” (where you help Goodsprings fight back – apparently the gang will attack even without their leader); cue Steve looting Cobb’s bodies for goodies (including a Stealth Boy), then going to Ringo and kicking off “Ghost Town Gunfight” because, well, he literally couldn’t help the Powder Gangers anymore. And, to his credit, while he wasn’t able to get help from MOST of the people around town (either because he couldn’t pass their speech/skill checks, like with Trudy, or because they were dead, like with Easy Pete), he WAS able to get Chet to give him and Sunny Smiles some leather armor and extra ammo with the help of his new Barter-boosting outfit and a “Salesman’s Weekly” skill magazine. It’s the little wins!
So yeah – Useless Steve is useless, but he’s getting a few things done, at least! Even if one of those things is “kill a bunch of people via giant radscorpion.” XD I left off with Jon declaring that Useless Steve would now wear Easy Pete’s hat in his memory – and because it was kind of a terrible ugly hat, so it fit Steve’s aesthetic. XD Tomorrow, we’ll see how “Ghost Town Gunfight” goes and how useless Steve will be in that fight!
*nods* Glad I managed to start Portal 2 after meaning to for so long -- and I am already enjoying the adventures of Useless Steve, so I'm looking forward to watching more of his nonsense as the week goes on. :p As it stands, though, I should probably get to bed -- I ended up taking tomorrow off as well because, well, Mom still needs the car for her running around and to visit Dad, and I'm not really in the right headspace for work. Hoping I can distract myself with more stuff tomorrow, but we'll see...night all.
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Date: 2026-01-20 01:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2026-01-21 04:52 am (UTC)