Middling Saturday
Feb. 21st, 2026 11:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crossover_chickLike, it wasn't horrible -- I didn't have to clean, I got a chocolate chip pancake for breakfast because Mom had leftover batter from making Dad a pancake, and I got at least a few things done from my makeshift to-do list -- but it also wasn't fantastic either -- I didn't get as much sleep as I wanted from staying up too late last night, Dad had kind of a tough day due to the chemo, and the big news of the day was us learning that we're currently under a BLIZZARD WARNING for tomorrow night into Monday. *grimacing* Soooo, yeah. And I'm rapidly approaching "staying up too late" again tonight, so let's get the write-up sorted and then head to bed already:
Tumblr: Well, there was nothing going on over on Valice Multiverse, and I didn’t get anything done with my drafts on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) – but I did at least manage to catch up on some of the blogs I follow and straight-up reblog a few things I’ve been meaning to get to –
A) A poll by strangeandrandompolls where you had to spin a wheel full of randomized animals, then vote on how you’d feel if you were suddenly turned into that animal (love it, like it, indifferent, dislike it, hate it). I got turned into a narwhal and voted “like it” because I felt like I could live with that. Narwhals don’t have to worry about all the shit going on with US politics, after all! Though, being a female narwhal, I wouldn’t get the cool iconic horn-tooth-thing, sadly. Meeh.
B) A thread about an iconic story from Weird Fantasy #18 from 1950, “Judgment Day!” where an astronaut, Tarlton, travels to a planet colonized by robots to see if they’re ready to join the Galactic Republic. Unfortunately, while the robots are reasonably advanced technologically and claim to have a fully-democratic society where everyone is allowed to pursue whatever job they wish, it turns out they reinvented racism in the form of all the orange robots oppressing the blue robots. Tarlton – who, note, is in a full spacesuit with a face-obscuring helmet during almost the entire comic – makes his orange guide take him to “Blue Town” and shows him that the blue robots are identical to him in all ways except color, and that they’re being restricted unfairly, then tells him that the robots are not ready to join the Republic. He does assure the bot before he leaves that there’s hope for their society yet, since humans once had this same problem, but eventually overcame it –
And if you guessed that the final panel reveals that Tarlton just so happens to be a Black man, you understand the point writer Al Feldstein, illustrator Joe Orlando, and editor Bill Gaines were trying to make. Which is more than the higher-ups at Weird Fantasy did, as they tried to insist that Tarlton not be Black, despite Al going “That’s the entire point of the story.” Fortunately Bill Gaines ended up telling them to fuck off, and the story ran with Tarlton Black as intended. You can see the thread, which starts with the iconic last panel in black and white posted by velvetvexations and eventually contains the entire full-color comic thanks to about-faces, here – I reblogged it both because it’s Black History Month and thus felt appropriate, and because while I’d seen another thread in the past with that iconic last panel, I hadn’t seen one that had the full comic before, and it’s a very good comic! Not subtle, but you couldn’t mess around with subtle back in 1950. (You can barely mess around with it NOW, let’s be honest.)
C) And another poll, this one by userfish, asking if you’ve ever felt an earthquake or not, as they were talking to their wife and apparently she never has – I voted “yes” and elaborated in the tags that I’ve felt two! Because while Rhode Island is not know for seismic events, we do get our share of tremors, and two of them were strong enough for me to notice. Though both of them were some years ago at this point – hell, the first one I felt was back when we lived closer to the beach! (The other one was more recent and happened while I was at work.) Of course, now that I’ve said that, I’m wondering if a third one is going to strike anytime soon...I hope not, we’re getting enough Bullshit just from the weather (as, again, BLIZZARD WARNING in effect...).
Fallout: New Vegas: Poor Courier Victor had a bit of a painful day in the Mojave today, not gonna lie – but he also managed to kill a bunch of geckos and an asshole who tried to get him killed AND pick up a new achievement, so it wasn’t all bad. Let me take you through it:
A) I picked up where I left off last time, with Victor standing right outside the general store, having just sold a bunch of stuff to Chet (and bought some ammo and a whetstone, to be fair). I had him quickly check out the two workbenches by the side of the store to see if there was anything particularly interesting he could make on them (there wasn’t), then sent him back inside the Prospector Saloon to check in with Sunny Smiles. She greeted him with a satisfied “That'll teach the Powder Gangs to avoid Goodsprings in the future” (depends on if a bug that lets you repeat “Ghost Town Gunfight” pops up, Sunny), and he asked if they could talk about the areas around Goodsprings. Sunny was amendable and asked what he wanted to know, and Victor inquired what other towns were nearby to start. Sunny informed him that Primm was to the southeast – impossible to miss given the giant rollercoaster smack-dab in the center of town, and currently home to an NCR outpost – while to the north was Sloan and Quarry Junction: “They mine rocks or something, but I heard they got troubles lately. I wouldn't head that direction if I were you, though. Got critters up there that don't take kindly to getting shot.” Victor, who needed to get on the road soon, was naturally curious to ask about these critters –
But, well, she’d mentioned the NCR, and he was also curious to get her opinion on them too. He thus went “NCR?” and she took the bait, clarifying “The New California Republic. Bunch of settlers and soldiers coming in from the West, fixing on making Nevada their own. They can be right pushy, but the roads are safer 'cause of them, so I tend to let it go. Not that I got a choice.” Victor asked what the NCR kept everyone safe from – Sunny told him, “Well, the wildlife for one thing. Rowdy locals for another. They're protecting their own. Just happens to help us.” before adding “They've been holding off this other group from the East, too.” Victor was pretty sure he knew who this other group was, but asked Sunny what she knew about them just in case –
And sure enough, she said that they were called Caesar’s Legion (which she considered a funny name), though she admitted she’d never seen them around Goodsprings, so she didn’t know much about them: “I hear rumors, that's about it. Supposedly they keep slaves and they got some real nasty ways of killing folks. But maybe that's just something folks in the NCR cooked up to make themselves seem more useful here. Less uninvited.” A fair enough suspicion, I suppose, given the NCR isn’t exactly popular in the area for all they make the roads safe – but trust me, Sunny, on this point the NCR IS NOT LYING. Wish you could go back to areas like Goodsprings and fill them in on what’s happening in the rest of the world later in the game – I’d love to see Sunny’s reaction to “yeah, the NCR are telling the truth about the Legion, you should see what they did to Nipton.” Ah well – 18 months of game development does not allow for such things!
B) Having gotten Sunny’s opinion on the local big-name factions, Victor switched to a more relevant topic – namely, what kind of critters were in the area? Sunny informed him that they played host to coyotes and geckos for the most part – “The coyotes are pretty dangerous in large packs, but otherwise they're nothing to really worry about. The geckos aren't too tough, but they've got a nasty bite. I've heard about bigger, nastier versions out in the wasteland, but I've never seen them.” She then warned him, “Stick to the roads when you can, and steer clear of the hills north of Goodsprings. The critters up there are big and poisonous.” *nods* I presume like a certain giant radscorpion that ruined Victor’s day before a reload up in the cemetery a few updates back. Very glad that fucker didn’t prove to be a problem going forward... Victor filed all this away, then told Sunny, “I need to get to Primm. Can you suggest a route?” Sunny was only too happy to give him directions, informing him, “Take the road southeast out of town till it hits the freeway. Primm is the town with the rollercoaster, straight south. Can't miss it.” She then added that “NCR patrols do a good job of keeping the highway clear, but I'd keep your gun where you can reach it easily. You never know who you'll run into. Off the road, you'll probably start running into hostile wildlife. My advice would be to stick to the highway when you can.” *nods* Very helpful, Sunny, thank you – you’re a great tutorial character. :) Victor thus ended the conversation and prepared to leave the saloon –
Only to get briefly distracted by the sight of one of the locals ambling up to the bar in some very interesting headwear – a tight-fitting helmet of some sort. Kind of like a metal aviator’s cap, I want to say? I unfortunately wasn’t able to get a very good picture of it – the owner of said helmet got up and started walking toward a booth while I was swapping to third-person mode (as I like to put Victor in my screenshots), and I got briefly distracted by seeing Ringo hanging out in another nearby booth while trying to track her – but you can get a glimpse of it here:
It’s the woman straight in front of Victor – I don’t know what that helmet is, but it does not look very good on her, does it? Townie fashion, somehow a thing in Fallout: New Vegas. XD (Also, enjoy the shot of the bar area, and the posters on the wall – don’t know why Trudy doesn’t fix the broken mirrors beneath them, but maybe she just doesn’t think it worth the bother.)
C) Anyway – having gotten his directions, and decided it wasn’t worth staring at the woman in the weird helmet (as his own sartorial choices ain’t that great either), Victor finally left the saloon to begin his journey! First stop was Goodsprings Source, as it was on the way and had that campground on the edge of it, where Victor could cook up some more of the gecko meat he was carrying at one of the campfires (I was hoping it would free up a little carry capacity). I thus had him cut through town, between one of the local farmers tending his crops and the pen full of brahmin and bighorners, heading in the general direction of the big rocks that marked the Source –
Then realized he was next to that house where Joe Cobb was hanging out before trying to raid the town and decided I might as well have a look around and see if there was anything interesting where he was standing. And indeed there was – a toolbox in the back of a truck, containing a number of tools and other potentially-useful items! I had Victor grab the scrap metal, the scrap electronics, and the Wonderglue for himself, then circle the house looking for more goodies. There was nothing around the back, though, and the only door inside was all boarded up, meaning there was no interior to investigate. Victor thus prepared to move on...but before he did, I had him check the mailbox of the destroyed house next door, as I couldn’t remember if he’d raided it before or not –
Which led to him discovering a Locksmith’s Reader! Along with a coffee mug and a regular cup, but I just wanted the skill magazine. :p Now intrigued, I had Victor loop around the remains of this house as well, looking for goodies – and this time, he was rewarded with two harvestable white horse nettles growing around the back! Don’t know what those are used for, but I had him pick them just the same! Pleased, I had him continue on to the next house in the line to check out the crops there –
But, alas, while there was pickable maize and prickly pears in the little garden, it was all marked in red, meaning someone owned it. And Victor isn’t going to steal anyone’s precious food. He’s not a total asshole like P. D. Shoot and Useless Steve can sometimes be!
D) Having gotten all he wanted out of town, Victor continued on into the Source, varmint rifle at the ready just in case there was trouble. He dropped down onto one of the little trails between all the rocks, then began following it past all the dead geckos toward the campsite, stopping briefly at one of the windmill-driven water pumps to get a drink – gotta keep that H20 need topped up, after all! A minute or two of walking later, he was almost where he wanted to be, dropping down off the nearby hill beside the campfire that I’m pretty sure can NOT be activated to make craftable goodies. I didn’t get a chance to double-check that, though –
Because shortly after Victor arrived in the campsite, a man came up to him! A man in a white t-shirt and brown cargo pants (named “Wasteland Doctor Fatigues” by the game), going by the name of Barton Thorn. He seemed a little worried when Victor turned to face him, holding up his hands at the sight of Victor’s gun, so I had Victor put the rifle away and approach him to offer a friendly hello. Barton greeted him with “Hello? Can you help me?” – Victor asked what was wrong, and Barton told him “My girl is trapped by geckos on the ridge and I can't get to her. Please, she's going to die!” Naturally, Victor didn’t want an innocent woman to die to the wildlife and thus asked where she was – Barton directed him to “go up the path past the broken radio tower and go to the right... they're at the top of the trail.” Fortunately for all concerned, the broken radio tower was directly behind Barton and thus not even my easily-lost ass could miss it. XD Victor promised to do what he could, and Barton thanked him, urging him to hurry. Victor thus got his rifle ready and headed up the nearby hill past the radio tower, while I noted that Barton had not actually seemed that fussed about his girl being cornered by geckos on the ridge…
But there was no point in worrying about that just yet – Victor had some geckos to kill! After climbing up past the tower, he got down low to avoid trouble and scanned the area with VATS, eventually locating one young gecko directly in front of him. He carefully snuck closer and closer to it until he had a good VATS shot at one of its legs, then fired, crippling one of its forelimbs. As you might expect, the gecko took offense to this and charged him, causing Victor to scramble backwards while waiting for his AP to come back, letting loose with a few manual shots –
But right as it looked like it was about to chomp him, it suddenly turned around and went back the way it had come. O.o Le heck? All I can think of is that it must have suddenly hit the edge of its roam area and had to retreat. Victor waited for it to return to its original position by the rock, then took it down with a couple of manually-aimed shots before creeping forward and collecting its meat. One gecko down –
But there was still at least one to go, as Victor had spotted it during his VATS scanning during the original fight. He thus crept up the ridge and around one of the rocky outcroppings, keeping an eye out for trouble, as the game kept informing me that he was being detected by a young gecko I couldn’t for the life of me see. Eventually, though, I spotted the little bastard, hanging out on the ridge overlooking the campsite proper with a buddy. I had Victor line up a VATS shot and cripple one of its limbs too –
Only for it to come rushing in with not just one buddy, but two! Apparently there had been another gecko in the area that I’d missed! Cue Victor scrambling away while crouching and desperately going in and out of VATS to take what shots he could when he had enough AP while the geckos lunged at him open-mouthed and did their best to bite through his armor. He managed to take down one, but the others were very intent on chomping him, and I could see his poor health getting whittled down. I thus paused the action by going in Victor’s Pip-Boy and having him chow down on a gecko steak for a bit of healing (power move, that), then – because he was wasting a LOT of varmint rifle ammo on shots that just weren’t connecting – moving over to the cleaver he’d picked up off one of the dead Powder Gangers to chop up the geckos on his ass! Because technically Victor does have more skill with melee weapons than he does with guns. For some reason, I couldn’t get off any shots in VATS (not sure if was pressing the wrong button or if they were too close or what), but fortunately a few regular panicked swings killed both without much problem. Victor harvested some meat and an egg off both corpses, then went to go loot the remaining dead bodies –
Only to be set upon by two more geckos! Who were full-grown adults and thus had an even nastier bite. *wince* The cleaver wasn’t doing the job against them, so I paused the action AGAIN as the game warned me that Victor’s health was low and he should consider using a stimpack or drinking some water to – well, use a stimpack and drink a can of purified water. XD And also to swap over to the 9mm pistol to see if it would do the job better –
And it most certainly did, taking out the two geckos in a volley of VATS shots and saving poor Victor from being murdered by glorified bipedal lizards. He took a moment to catch his breath, then looted some meat and hide from their corpses (and the corpse of another gecko he’d killed earlier nearby), along with grabbing a broc flower growing nearby –
E) And then looked up as a familiar Securitron suddenly trundled into the area! Victortron scooted up to him on his one wheel and greeted him with “You need to be careful, it's dangerous out here!” causing a baffled Victor to be like “how the heck did you know I was in trouble?” Victortron claimed “Heck, I can smell trouble a mile away” – Victor couldn’t help but mutter “Some trick without a nose,” but Victortron found that amusing, going “Heh, I like you, friend. Have I mentioned that?” Victor then asked if his robotic name-twin was following him, causing Victortron to explain that he felt kind of responsible for Victor, having saved his life and all. Victor assured him that he could take care of himself (mostly, with the help of stimpacks and water) – Victortron quickly assured him in turn that he wasn’t doubting Victor’s capabilities, “but everyone needs a hand from time to time. Maybe you'll return the favor one day.” Victor decided that was fair enough and just wished Victortron a pleasant goodbye – Victortron returned it with a “See ya round, buckaroo” and headed back toward town. Now, I knew Victortron could show up to save the Courier if they got into trouble around Goodsprings, but I thought it was specifically if you ended up on the road with the cazadores on it – I didn’t know he could show up during the fight against the geckos up here! And, of course, he showed up too late to actually HELP – though, having looked at the wiki, I think I should be grateful he showed up too late to kill anything. Because apparently he lobs GRENADES at the geckos, and given how up close and personal they were to Victor? Yeaaaah, that – that wouldn’t have ended well. *grimace* Thanks for the thought, Victortron, but I think Victor’s better off on his own!
F) Anyway – with Victor now fully aware that Victortron was keeping an eye on him and keeping him alive for mysterious reasons, he turned his attention back to the immediate problem: figuring out if there were any more geckos in the area. I had him scout the area, climbing up onto the rocks and VATS scanning on the regular to see if anything popped up. Nothing did, but while he was sneaking up the incline, he discovered a rather gruesome pile of bodies – both skeletons and fresher corpses – tucked up against some rocks to his right. D: I’m guessing those were the remains of some people who’d tried and failed to take out the geckos...disturbed, and not seeing any signs of geckos or the girl he was supposed to save, Victor prepared to turn back –
And then paused, because – was that a refrigerator on the rocks directly above the body pile? I had him take another look, and – yup. Fridge. Just randomly out in the open. Though this one contained not a kid, but food, judging by the container mention that appeared when I moused (well, joysticked) over it. Now intrigued, I prepared to have Victor climb up to it –
Then stopped because, oh dear, there was a bear trap set up right in front of the refrigerator, its rusted brown metal blending into the rocks. Fortunately, when he interacted with it, Victor proved to have the Repair necessary to disarm it, and he was able to get it to snap shut WITHOUT breaking a leg or taking off one of his fingers. Satisfied, I had Victor go down and around a bit to get a better angle for raiding, happening to look down as he did –
Just in time to spot another bear trap right in front of him. He nearly walked straight into it Useless Steve style. *facepalm* I quickly deactivated it, then did a proper sweep of the area, looking for more things that might cause Victor severe injury. Fortunately, all I found was one more bear trap by a footlocker, as easily disarmed as the rest. Whew – that nearly could have been bad! Would have been just poor Victor’s luck to have to limp back to Goodsprings and Doc Mitchell with a busted leg…
Anyway – with the traps disarmed, I could now see that Victor had stumbled across a tiny little camp in the fading light, on a cliff overlooking the campsite far below. The camp contained:
I. The aforementioned fridge, which contained iguana on a stick, Nuka-Cola, squirrel stew, squirrel on a stick, and whiskey
II. The aforementioned footlocker, which contained a couple of caps
III. An ammo box, which contained a 10mm pistol and 120 rounds for it, plus 3 10mm cases
IV. A mattress, which Victor was allowed to sleep on if he wanted
V. A chair and table, the latter of which had a camera and four aces on it
VI. The corpse of a fellow named Johnny, who was slumped in front of the chair, holding a fifth ace and carrying on him 11 caps and a Recharger Rifle (an energy weapon that requires 5 Strength to use properly, so not ideal for Victor), and wearing reading glasses and the Merc Charmer Outfit (which gives +5 to Medicine, Barter, and Speech, which is not bad)
VII. ...and four red balls lined up in front of the table near the edge of the cliff. Just sitting there until Victor accidentally walked into them and sent them toppling. Here, I have a picture (though I admit, it’s rather dark as Victor found the camp while night was falling):
Now, you may be thinking, “Okay – most of that makes sense for a little findable campsite in the Fallout games...but what’s with the red balls?” Well, the thing is, when Victor arrived at the little camp, he got the swirly-eyed Vault Boy “…” notification that he’d discovered a Wild Wasteland occurrence. And when I looked up this particular occurrence, I found that it was a reference to a weird failed steampunk RPG project called “Zybourne Clock,” that was created and then subsequently mocked ruthlessly for two years over on the Something Awful forums. The late Johnny was one of the characters created for the game, Johnny Five-Aces (hence all the cards near him), while the four red balls were a reference to a piece of fiction someone wrote about how time travel worked in that universe, with the timeline trying to “correct itself” every time something is sent through time. You can read more about the failed project here, but here’s the relevant passage about the balls:
“Imagine four balls on the edge of a cliff. Say a direct copy of the ball nearest the cliff is sent to the back of the line of balls and takes the place of the first ball. The formerly first ball becomes the second, the second becomes the third, and the fourth falls off the cliff. Time works the same way.”
...you see why this was mocked ruthlessly for two years. XD
G) Having discovered the reference to a failed game project I’d never heard of before, I naturally had Victor set about looting it. XD Or, well, looting what he could of it, as he didn’t have a hell of a lot of carry capacity left (I should probably bump THAT up by 50 or so too) – which consisted of basically the caps, the 10mm pistol and its ammo and ammo casings, and all the food out of the fridge. I was tempted by the Merc Charmer Outfit, not gonna lie, but Victor just didn’t have the space for it, and it had much less Damage Threshold than his current armor, so – yeah. Better to leave it! I was also briefly tempted to have him sleep in the bed nearby, but figured that dozing off in the open like that probably wasn’t the smartest idea. Especially since it was right next to the edge of a cliff. So instead I had him leave the camp and start heading down the slope again to find Barton and let him know that he’d killed the geckos but hadn’t been able to find his girlfriend –
Only for Barton to instead come to him. And announce, “Sorry I tricked you, but thanks for clearing out the Geckos. Now I can get to that stash up there... after I deal with you.” And then proceed to pull out a damn plasma pistol and start firing! Which, uh, was not good, as Victor was still very injured from the geckos. D: I quickly had Victor get into his Pip-Boy and stab himself with another stimpack, then had him drink a Sunset Sarsaparilla for good measure –
And was absolutely delighted to receive a Star Bottle Cap first try! What are the odds of that?! (Well, 5% I believe. :P) Unfortunately, though, I did not have much time to enjoy this little victory, because while Victor tried his best, and managed to cripple a leg with his 9mm, he was just not up to facing down a plasma pistol. Cue him getting melted in just a few shots, not even leaving a corpse behind for the camera to gaze soulfully at. :( Sorry, Victor – I didn’t expect him to have a fucking energy weapon so early in the game!
Fortunately for me, though, the game has a pretty generous autosave function, and reloaded to just about a minute earlier, before Victor had started his looting of the Five Aces camp. Having thus been forewarned about Barton coming to kill him, I forearmed Victor by having him heal up early – using both a regular stimpack and a homemade one (which technically gave Victor -1 Perception for a bit, but given his hat gives him +1 Perception, that was fine) and downing that Sunset Sarsaparilla as a chaser (which sadly did not yield a Star Bottle Cap this time around – shame) – and make sure his gun was fully loaded. Thus prepared, he did his looting and headed down the incline, where Barton met him again –
And this time, Victor was able to get into VATS right away and line up a bunch of shots on both the guy’s arms. Cue Victor crippling both with his trusty 9mm, and Barton choosing not to return fire with his plasma pistol, but instead to whip out a tire iron. As you might imagine, he ended up going down pretty fast this time around. XD Flush with victory, I had Victor examine the corpse for goodies, and claimed eight caps, a vial of Med-X, the plasma pistol and 25 energy cells –
And a “Note To Self.” Which read as follows: “Remember to not roll off the cliff and kill yourself while you're sleeping. You'll show her... you'll show everyone! What does ‘too stupid to live’ even mean anyway?” XD I guess we know who that mattress in the Five Aces camp belonged to now! And that Barton did have a girl at one point, though apparently she got sick of his bullshit and left. *nods* Good for you, lady. Victor shall fire the plasma pistol in your honor.
H) Anyway – it was now getting very late in the evening, and poor Victor probably didn’t want to spend the night out in the desert if he could help it, so I decided to put off the trip to Primm for another in-game day and instead send him back to his bed in Victortron’s shack. He thus set off back down the hill to the campsite, picking three bulbs of xander root and another broc flower along the way, then stopped for a moment at the campfire to do the thing I’d originally sent him there to do – grill up some more of his gecko meat into steaks! Of course, now he had rather more meat to cook… I ended up having him combine some xander root and broc flower into another dose of healing powder and cook eight more pieces of meat into steaks –
And to my surprise and delight, this popped an achievement – Crafty! For making 20 craftable items! So that was nice. :) Always fun to earn an achievement, even one you didn’t know about. Especially since a number of them give XP…
Anyway – having gotten Victor some more food and healing, I had him head back up the road, past the Indiana Jones fridge and along the edge of town, before arriving back at Victortron’s shack. Victortron himself was standing in front of it, but Victor managed to squeeze past him and through the door, and he plopped himself into bed right before midnight. *nods* He’d earned that sleep.
And so the playsession ended with Victor waking up a little before 7 AM, taking his morning drink from Victortron’s sink, having a healthy breakfast of squirrel on a stick, and stepping back out into Goodsprings. Next time – well, the plan is to start heading Primm-ward, but I might stop by Doc Mitchell’s place first and make sure Victor’s limbs are in full condition before he goes looking for more trouble. And given that Barton might have been sleeping in the Five Aces camp, I don’t think the goodies there were the “stash” he was talking about, so we might want to investigate the ridge some more...we’ll see what happens! I’m looking forward to it no matter what.
FreeTube: Well, I was hoping to watch more stuff from my Subs tonight, but Dad was having a rough evening (struggling to eat and dealing with pain), meaning Mom was having a rough evening (trying to support him while getting annoyed at him for constantly insisting he’s “all right”), and – yeah. Ended up being less time for videos than I thought. But I did fit in one that I’ve been meaning to watch for a while: “I Guess I'll Talk About Resident Evil Requiem” – Jane “interviewing” Andy about getting to play four hours of Resident Evil Requiem back at the end of January! (Why he was given the chance to play the game for four hours was not specified, but presumably it was so OXBox would then make a video promoting it.) Fortunately for everyone involved, Andy had a very positive first impression of the game, and was only too happy to talk about how awesome it was, and how he’d much rather be playing it than talking about it. XD The main takeaways from the video for me were as follows:
A) While Grace Ashcroft is ostensibly the main character (and indeed, three hours of the four-hour teaser Andy played focused on her), one of the classic RE heroes does return for this one – Leon Kennedy! Which I guess makes sense, because the Ethan Winters games both featured Chris in a small role, so it was Leon’s turn to appear again. Leon is fifty-something in this game as it’s set in the modern day or thereabouts (roughly 25 years after the events of RE2, at least), but he is still a fine hunk of man meat with perfect hair (Andy made it clear he was certain the female employees of Capcom were responsible for him being so sexy XD), and he is still perfectly capable of smashing a zombie’s head in with a well-placed kick. Also, the first of the little “Leon” sections Andy played had him facing off against a zombie wielding a giant chainsaw again – but this time, he got to pick up and use the chainsaw himself. Andy was very pleased.
B) While the game is being marketed as “Leon’s sections are the over-the-top third-person actiony stuff you loved from Resident Evil 4 and Grace’s sections are the creepy first-person horror-focused stuff you enjoyed from Resident Evil 7 and Resident Evil Village,” Andy thinks the split is not as sharp as that. Sure, in the version he played, Leon’s default mode was third-person and he did his usual kicks and whatnot, and Grace’s default mode was first-person and contained more puzzles and sneaking, but he emphasized that Grace’s background is as an FBI agent, so she already knows more about firing a gun than Ethan did at the start of HIS games, and is much better at holding her own in a fight. Yes, she starts out with a handgun (Leon’s ridiculously big one, in fact) with a single bullet, forcing her to sneak around and throw bottles to cause distractions and whatnot, but she eventually finds a proper gun of her own, and can find and craft ammo for it, and does her fair share of zombie shooting. Basically, Andy thinks that it would be perfectly viable to play her as a run-and-gun protagonist, just like Leon.
C) There’s a new, very weird crafting mechanic where you gather infected blood from zombies or buckets of viscera around the chronic care center (made out of a giant mansion, as this is a Resident Evil game and they take the “resident” part seriously) and then use that to craft everything from healing syringes to ammo. Jane was visibly “wha?” about that, and Andy admitted it was bizarre, but in that charming RE way, you know? XD Personally I think this is going to be Plot Relevant, given that you normally DON’T want infected blood anywhere NEAR you in an RE game, so the fact that it’s now a crafting component...hmmm.
D) The zombies in this one are a little like the ones in RE4 – that is, they tend to be fast and do things like use weapons if they’ve got ‘em – but they also have more interesting quirks to them. For example, one zombie might be obsessed with keeping the lights off, allowing you to draw him to specific places by turning on light switches. Another might be a former opera singer and thus have a sonic attack that can stagger poor Grace or Leon. The bigger “stalker” style enemies include a chef that likes to chop up bodies, and some sort of weird mutated baby-person who is TECHNICALLY too big for the halls you find him in, but who gets around that by smashing everything that’s in his way. And who apparently swears, if Andy is to be believed. XD Basically the zombies are a little more than just “shambling moaning humans” this time around, and that makes them much more fun. Oh, and if you don’t put them down properly, they CAN resurrect as faster zombies with huge bulgy heads, but Andy assured us this only starts happening once you get the shotgun, so… :p
E) And this game, or at least the section that Andy played, feels like it’s going back to the roots of RE games – we’re back to evil viruses over killer mold monsters (with the main bad guy going on about something called “Elphis,” which Andy and Jane gleefully named the P-Virus, ha ha), the main action takes place in a big ornate mansion, and one of the draws of the game is that we’re back in Raccoon City – or, at least on the outskirts of it, as the main city does remain kind of nuked. Andy said that one of the reasons he loved it so much was because it felt like it hit all the beats of a proper old RE game – especially the mansion stuff, because those are always his favorite parts of any RE game. Yes, probably the game will move to new locations (the trailer shows the old RE2 police station, so they’re basically Contractually Obligated to have Leon at least visit it at some point) later on, and there’s definitely some influence from the Ethan games with the ability to play in first person and whatnot, but it still felt to Andy like a return to what made the old games excellent, and he’s eager to play the rest of it.
So yeah – pretty good review, I think we can all agree! I am certainly looking forward to the inevitable Let’s Play the gang will do once the game officially comes out at the end of next week. :)
*nods* Not bad, I suppose -- I definitely had fun with my Courier Victor playsession. :) But now it is definitely time to head to bed. Tomorrow, plans include doing my taxes (unpleasant, but gotta be done), playing some Portal 2 or Baldur's Gate III (we'll see what I think is the better game under the circumstances), editing and queuing up Brynlee Marie's gift fic (very necessary), and getting in a workout (HOPEFULLY to the next episode of Jon's F:NV YOLO Remastered series). We'll see how that all pans out -- night all!
Tumblr: Well, there was nothing going on over on Valice Multiverse, and I didn’t get anything done with my drafts on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) – but I did at least manage to catch up on some of the blogs I follow and straight-up reblog a few things I’ve been meaning to get to –
A) A poll by strangeandrandompolls where you had to spin a wheel full of randomized animals, then vote on how you’d feel if you were suddenly turned into that animal (love it, like it, indifferent, dislike it, hate it). I got turned into a narwhal and voted “like it” because I felt like I could live with that. Narwhals don’t have to worry about all the shit going on with US politics, after all! Though, being a female narwhal, I wouldn’t get the cool iconic horn-tooth-thing, sadly. Meeh.
B) A thread about an iconic story from Weird Fantasy #18 from 1950, “Judgment Day!” where an astronaut, Tarlton, travels to a planet colonized by robots to see if they’re ready to join the Galactic Republic. Unfortunately, while the robots are reasonably advanced technologically and claim to have a fully-democratic society where everyone is allowed to pursue whatever job they wish, it turns out they reinvented racism in the form of all the orange robots oppressing the blue robots. Tarlton – who, note, is in a full spacesuit with a face-obscuring helmet during almost the entire comic – makes his orange guide take him to “Blue Town” and shows him that the blue robots are identical to him in all ways except color, and that they’re being restricted unfairly, then tells him that the robots are not ready to join the Republic. He does assure the bot before he leaves that there’s hope for their society yet, since humans once had this same problem, but eventually overcame it –
And if you guessed that the final panel reveals that Tarlton just so happens to be a Black man, you understand the point writer Al Feldstein, illustrator Joe Orlando, and editor Bill Gaines were trying to make. Which is more than the higher-ups at Weird Fantasy did, as they tried to insist that Tarlton not be Black, despite Al going “That’s the entire point of the story.” Fortunately Bill Gaines ended up telling them to fuck off, and the story ran with Tarlton Black as intended. You can see the thread, which starts with the iconic last panel in black and white posted by velvetvexations and eventually contains the entire full-color comic thanks to about-faces, here – I reblogged it both because it’s Black History Month and thus felt appropriate, and because while I’d seen another thread in the past with that iconic last panel, I hadn’t seen one that had the full comic before, and it’s a very good comic! Not subtle, but you couldn’t mess around with subtle back in 1950. (You can barely mess around with it NOW, let’s be honest.)
C) And another poll, this one by userfish, asking if you’ve ever felt an earthquake or not, as they were talking to their wife and apparently she never has – I voted “yes” and elaborated in the tags that I’ve felt two! Because while Rhode Island is not know for seismic events, we do get our share of tremors, and two of them were strong enough for me to notice. Though both of them were some years ago at this point – hell, the first one I felt was back when we lived closer to the beach! (The other one was more recent and happened while I was at work.) Of course, now that I’ve said that, I’m wondering if a third one is going to strike anytime soon...I hope not, we’re getting enough Bullshit just from the weather (as, again, BLIZZARD WARNING in effect...).
Fallout: New Vegas: Poor Courier Victor had a bit of a painful day in the Mojave today, not gonna lie – but he also managed to kill a bunch of geckos and an asshole who tried to get him killed AND pick up a new achievement, so it wasn’t all bad. Let me take you through it:
A) I picked up where I left off last time, with Victor standing right outside the general store, having just sold a bunch of stuff to Chet (and bought some ammo and a whetstone, to be fair). I had him quickly check out the two workbenches by the side of the store to see if there was anything particularly interesting he could make on them (there wasn’t), then sent him back inside the Prospector Saloon to check in with Sunny Smiles. She greeted him with a satisfied “That'll teach the Powder Gangs to avoid Goodsprings in the future” (depends on if a bug that lets you repeat “Ghost Town Gunfight” pops up, Sunny), and he asked if they could talk about the areas around Goodsprings. Sunny was amendable and asked what he wanted to know, and Victor inquired what other towns were nearby to start. Sunny informed him that Primm was to the southeast – impossible to miss given the giant rollercoaster smack-dab in the center of town, and currently home to an NCR outpost – while to the north was Sloan and Quarry Junction: “They mine rocks or something, but I heard they got troubles lately. I wouldn't head that direction if I were you, though. Got critters up there that don't take kindly to getting shot.” Victor, who needed to get on the road soon, was naturally curious to ask about these critters –
But, well, she’d mentioned the NCR, and he was also curious to get her opinion on them too. He thus went “NCR?” and she took the bait, clarifying “The New California Republic. Bunch of settlers and soldiers coming in from the West, fixing on making Nevada their own. They can be right pushy, but the roads are safer 'cause of them, so I tend to let it go. Not that I got a choice.” Victor asked what the NCR kept everyone safe from – Sunny told him, “Well, the wildlife for one thing. Rowdy locals for another. They're protecting their own. Just happens to help us.” before adding “They've been holding off this other group from the East, too.” Victor was pretty sure he knew who this other group was, but asked Sunny what she knew about them just in case –
And sure enough, she said that they were called Caesar’s Legion (which she considered a funny name), though she admitted she’d never seen them around Goodsprings, so she didn’t know much about them: “I hear rumors, that's about it. Supposedly they keep slaves and they got some real nasty ways of killing folks. But maybe that's just something folks in the NCR cooked up to make themselves seem more useful here. Less uninvited.” A fair enough suspicion, I suppose, given the NCR isn’t exactly popular in the area for all they make the roads safe – but trust me, Sunny, on this point the NCR IS NOT LYING. Wish you could go back to areas like Goodsprings and fill them in on what’s happening in the rest of the world later in the game – I’d love to see Sunny’s reaction to “yeah, the NCR are telling the truth about the Legion, you should see what they did to Nipton.” Ah well – 18 months of game development does not allow for such things!
B) Having gotten Sunny’s opinion on the local big-name factions, Victor switched to a more relevant topic – namely, what kind of critters were in the area? Sunny informed him that they played host to coyotes and geckos for the most part – “The coyotes are pretty dangerous in large packs, but otherwise they're nothing to really worry about. The geckos aren't too tough, but they've got a nasty bite. I've heard about bigger, nastier versions out in the wasteland, but I've never seen them.” She then warned him, “Stick to the roads when you can, and steer clear of the hills north of Goodsprings. The critters up there are big and poisonous.” *nods* I presume like a certain giant radscorpion that ruined Victor’s day before a reload up in the cemetery a few updates back. Very glad that fucker didn’t prove to be a problem going forward... Victor filed all this away, then told Sunny, “I need to get to Primm. Can you suggest a route?” Sunny was only too happy to give him directions, informing him, “Take the road southeast out of town till it hits the freeway. Primm is the town with the rollercoaster, straight south. Can't miss it.” She then added that “NCR patrols do a good job of keeping the highway clear, but I'd keep your gun where you can reach it easily. You never know who you'll run into. Off the road, you'll probably start running into hostile wildlife. My advice would be to stick to the highway when you can.” *nods* Very helpful, Sunny, thank you – you’re a great tutorial character. :) Victor thus ended the conversation and prepared to leave the saloon –
Only to get briefly distracted by the sight of one of the locals ambling up to the bar in some very interesting headwear – a tight-fitting helmet of some sort. Kind of like a metal aviator’s cap, I want to say? I unfortunately wasn’t able to get a very good picture of it – the owner of said helmet got up and started walking toward a booth while I was swapping to third-person mode (as I like to put Victor in my screenshots), and I got briefly distracted by seeing Ringo hanging out in another nearby booth while trying to track her – but you can get a glimpse of it here:
It’s the woman straight in front of Victor – I don’t know what that helmet is, but it does not look very good on her, does it? Townie fashion, somehow a thing in Fallout: New Vegas. XD (Also, enjoy the shot of the bar area, and the posters on the wall – don’t know why Trudy doesn’t fix the broken mirrors beneath them, but maybe she just doesn’t think it worth the bother.)
C) Anyway – having gotten his directions, and decided it wasn’t worth staring at the woman in the weird helmet (as his own sartorial choices ain’t that great either), Victor finally left the saloon to begin his journey! First stop was Goodsprings Source, as it was on the way and had that campground on the edge of it, where Victor could cook up some more of the gecko meat he was carrying at one of the campfires (I was hoping it would free up a little carry capacity). I thus had him cut through town, between one of the local farmers tending his crops and the pen full of brahmin and bighorners, heading in the general direction of the big rocks that marked the Source –
Then realized he was next to that house where Joe Cobb was hanging out before trying to raid the town and decided I might as well have a look around and see if there was anything interesting where he was standing. And indeed there was – a toolbox in the back of a truck, containing a number of tools and other potentially-useful items! I had Victor grab the scrap metal, the scrap electronics, and the Wonderglue for himself, then circle the house looking for more goodies. There was nothing around the back, though, and the only door inside was all boarded up, meaning there was no interior to investigate. Victor thus prepared to move on...but before he did, I had him check the mailbox of the destroyed house next door, as I couldn’t remember if he’d raided it before or not –
Which led to him discovering a Locksmith’s Reader! Along with a coffee mug and a regular cup, but I just wanted the skill magazine. :p Now intrigued, I had Victor loop around the remains of this house as well, looking for goodies – and this time, he was rewarded with two harvestable white horse nettles growing around the back! Don’t know what those are used for, but I had him pick them just the same! Pleased, I had him continue on to the next house in the line to check out the crops there –
But, alas, while there was pickable maize and prickly pears in the little garden, it was all marked in red, meaning someone owned it. And Victor isn’t going to steal anyone’s precious food. He’s not a total asshole like P. D. Shoot and Useless Steve can sometimes be!
D) Having gotten all he wanted out of town, Victor continued on into the Source, varmint rifle at the ready just in case there was trouble. He dropped down onto one of the little trails between all the rocks, then began following it past all the dead geckos toward the campsite, stopping briefly at one of the windmill-driven water pumps to get a drink – gotta keep that H20 need topped up, after all! A minute or two of walking later, he was almost where he wanted to be, dropping down off the nearby hill beside the campfire that I’m pretty sure can NOT be activated to make craftable goodies. I didn’t get a chance to double-check that, though –
Because shortly after Victor arrived in the campsite, a man came up to him! A man in a white t-shirt and brown cargo pants (named “Wasteland Doctor Fatigues” by the game), going by the name of Barton Thorn. He seemed a little worried when Victor turned to face him, holding up his hands at the sight of Victor’s gun, so I had Victor put the rifle away and approach him to offer a friendly hello. Barton greeted him with “Hello? Can you help me?” – Victor asked what was wrong, and Barton told him “My girl is trapped by geckos on the ridge and I can't get to her. Please, she's going to die!” Naturally, Victor didn’t want an innocent woman to die to the wildlife and thus asked where she was – Barton directed him to “go up the path past the broken radio tower and go to the right... they're at the top of the trail.” Fortunately for all concerned, the broken radio tower was directly behind Barton and thus not even my easily-lost ass could miss it. XD Victor promised to do what he could, and Barton thanked him, urging him to hurry. Victor thus got his rifle ready and headed up the nearby hill past the radio tower, while I noted that Barton had not actually seemed that fussed about his girl being cornered by geckos on the ridge…
But there was no point in worrying about that just yet – Victor had some geckos to kill! After climbing up past the tower, he got down low to avoid trouble and scanned the area with VATS, eventually locating one young gecko directly in front of him. He carefully snuck closer and closer to it until he had a good VATS shot at one of its legs, then fired, crippling one of its forelimbs. As you might expect, the gecko took offense to this and charged him, causing Victor to scramble backwards while waiting for his AP to come back, letting loose with a few manual shots –
But right as it looked like it was about to chomp him, it suddenly turned around and went back the way it had come. O.o Le heck? All I can think of is that it must have suddenly hit the edge of its roam area and had to retreat. Victor waited for it to return to its original position by the rock, then took it down with a couple of manually-aimed shots before creeping forward and collecting its meat. One gecko down –
But there was still at least one to go, as Victor had spotted it during his VATS scanning during the original fight. He thus crept up the ridge and around one of the rocky outcroppings, keeping an eye out for trouble, as the game kept informing me that he was being detected by a young gecko I couldn’t for the life of me see. Eventually, though, I spotted the little bastard, hanging out on the ridge overlooking the campsite proper with a buddy. I had Victor line up a VATS shot and cripple one of its limbs too –
Only for it to come rushing in with not just one buddy, but two! Apparently there had been another gecko in the area that I’d missed! Cue Victor scrambling away while crouching and desperately going in and out of VATS to take what shots he could when he had enough AP while the geckos lunged at him open-mouthed and did their best to bite through his armor. He managed to take down one, but the others were very intent on chomping him, and I could see his poor health getting whittled down. I thus paused the action by going in Victor’s Pip-Boy and having him chow down on a gecko steak for a bit of healing (power move, that), then – because he was wasting a LOT of varmint rifle ammo on shots that just weren’t connecting – moving over to the cleaver he’d picked up off one of the dead Powder Gangers to chop up the geckos on his ass! Because technically Victor does have more skill with melee weapons than he does with guns. For some reason, I couldn’t get off any shots in VATS (not sure if was pressing the wrong button or if they were too close or what), but fortunately a few regular panicked swings killed both without much problem. Victor harvested some meat and an egg off both corpses, then went to go loot the remaining dead bodies –
Only to be set upon by two more geckos! Who were full-grown adults and thus had an even nastier bite. *wince* The cleaver wasn’t doing the job against them, so I paused the action AGAIN as the game warned me that Victor’s health was low and he should consider using a stimpack or drinking some water to – well, use a stimpack and drink a can of purified water. XD And also to swap over to the 9mm pistol to see if it would do the job better –
And it most certainly did, taking out the two geckos in a volley of VATS shots and saving poor Victor from being murdered by glorified bipedal lizards. He took a moment to catch his breath, then looted some meat and hide from their corpses (and the corpse of another gecko he’d killed earlier nearby), along with grabbing a broc flower growing nearby –
E) And then looked up as a familiar Securitron suddenly trundled into the area! Victortron scooted up to him on his one wheel and greeted him with “You need to be careful, it's dangerous out here!” causing a baffled Victor to be like “how the heck did you know I was in trouble?” Victortron claimed “Heck, I can smell trouble a mile away” – Victor couldn’t help but mutter “Some trick without a nose,” but Victortron found that amusing, going “Heh, I like you, friend. Have I mentioned that?” Victor then asked if his robotic name-twin was following him, causing Victortron to explain that he felt kind of responsible for Victor, having saved his life and all. Victor assured him that he could take care of himself (mostly, with the help of stimpacks and water) – Victortron quickly assured him in turn that he wasn’t doubting Victor’s capabilities, “but everyone needs a hand from time to time. Maybe you'll return the favor one day.” Victor decided that was fair enough and just wished Victortron a pleasant goodbye – Victortron returned it with a “See ya round, buckaroo” and headed back toward town. Now, I knew Victortron could show up to save the Courier if they got into trouble around Goodsprings, but I thought it was specifically if you ended up on the road with the cazadores on it – I didn’t know he could show up during the fight against the geckos up here! And, of course, he showed up too late to actually HELP – though, having looked at the wiki, I think I should be grateful he showed up too late to kill anything. Because apparently he lobs GRENADES at the geckos, and given how up close and personal they were to Victor? Yeaaaah, that – that wouldn’t have ended well. *grimace* Thanks for the thought, Victortron, but I think Victor’s better off on his own!
F) Anyway – with Victor now fully aware that Victortron was keeping an eye on him and keeping him alive for mysterious reasons, he turned his attention back to the immediate problem: figuring out if there were any more geckos in the area. I had him scout the area, climbing up onto the rocks and VATS scanning on the regular to see if anything popped up. Nothing did, but while he was sneaking up the incline, he discovered a rather gruesome pile of bodies – both skeletons and fresher corpses – tucked up against some rocks to his right. D: I’m guessing those were the remains of some people who’d tried and failed to take out the geckos...disturbed, and not seeing any signs of geckos or the girl he was supposed to save, Victor prepared to turn back –
And then paused, because – was that a refrigerator on the rocks directly above the body pile? I had him take another look, and – yup. Fridge. Just randomly out in the open. Though this one contained not a kid, but food, judging by the container mention that appeared when I moused (well, joysticked) over it. Now intrigued, I prepared to have Victor climb up to it –
Then stopped because, oh dear, there was a bear trap set up right in front of the refrigerator, its rusted brown metal blending into the rocks. Fortunately, when he interacted with it, Victor proved to have the Repair necessary to disarm it, and he was able to get it to snap shut WITHOUT breaking a leg or taking off one of his fingers. Satisfied, I had Victor go down and around a bit to get a better angle for raiding, happening to look down as he did –
Just in time to spot another bear trap right in front of him. He nearly walked straight into it Useless Steve style. *facepalm* I quickly deactivated it, then did a proper sweep of the area, looking for more things that might cause Victor severe injury. Fortunately, all I found was one more bear trap by a footlocker, as easily disarmed as the rest. Whew – that nearly could have been bad! Would have been just poor Victor’s luck to have to limp back to Goodsprings and Doc Mitchell with a busted leg…
Anyway – with the traps disarmed, I could now see that Victor had stumbled across a tiny little camp in the fading light, on a cliff overlooking the campsite far below. The camp contained:
I. The aforementioned fridge, which contained iguana on a stick, Nuka-Cola, squirrel stew, squirrel on a stick, and whiskey
II. The aforementioned footlocker, which contained a couple of caps
III. An ammo box, which contained a 10mm pistol and 120 rounds for it, plus 3 10mm cases
IV. A mattress, which Victor was allowed to sleep on if he wanted
V. A chair and table, the latter of which had a camera and four aces on it
VI. The corpse of a fellow named Johnny, who was slumped in front of the chair, holding a fifth ace and carrying on him 11 caps and a Recharger Rifle (an energy weapon that requires 5 Strength to use properly, so not ideal for Victor), and wearing reading glasses and the Merc Charmer Outfit (which gives +5 to Medicine, Barter, and Speech, which is not bad)
VII. ...and four red balls lined up in front of the table near the edge of the cliff. Just sitting there until Victor accidentally walked into them and sent them toppling. Here, I have a picture (though I admit, it’s rather dark as Victor found the camp while night was falling):
Now, you may be thinking, “Okay – most of that makes sense for a little findable campsite in the Fallout games...but what’s with the red balls?” Well, the thing is, when Victor arrived at the little camp, he got the swirly-eyed Vault Boy “…” notification that he’d discovered a Wild Wasteland occurrence. And when I looked up this particular occurrence, I found that it was a reference to a weird failed steampunk RPG project called “Zybourne Clock,” that was created and then subsequently mocked ruthlessly for two years over on the Something Awful forums. The late Johnny was one of the characters created for the game, Johnny Five-Aces (hence all the cards near him), while the four red balls were a reference to a piece of fiction someone wrote about how time travel worked in that universe, with the timeline trying to “correct itself” every time something is sent through time. You can read more about the failed project here, but here’s the relevant passage about the balls:
“Imagine four balls on the edge of a cliff. Say a direct copy of the ball nearest the cliff is sent to the back of the line of balls and takes the place of the first ball. The formerly first ball becomes the second, the second becomes the third, and the fourth falls off the cliff. Time works the same way.”
...you see why this was mocked ruthlessly for two years. XD
G) Having discovered the reference to a failed game project I’d never heard of before, I naturally had Victor set about looting it. XD Or, well, looting what he could of it, as he didn’t have a hell of a lot of carry capacity left (I should probably bump THAT up by 50 or so too) – which consisted of basically the caps, the 10mm pistol and its ammo and ammo casings, and all the food out of the fridge. I was tempted by the Merc Charmer Outfit, not gonna lie, but Victor just didn’t have the space for it, and it had much less Damage Threshold than his current armor, so – yeah. Better to leave it! I was also briefly tempted to have him sleep in the bed nearby, but figured that dozing off in the open like that probably wasn’t the smartest idea. Especially since it was right next to the edge of a cliff. So instead I had him leave the camp and start heading down the slope again to find Barton and let him know that he’d killed the geckos but hadn’t been able to find his girlfriend –
Only for Barton to instead come to him. And announce, “Sorry I tricked you, but thanks for clearing out the Geckos. Now I can get to that stash up there... after I deal with you.” And then proceed to pull out a damn plasma pistol and start firing! Which, uh, was not good, as Victor was still very injured from the geckos. D: I quickly had Victor get into his Pip-Boy and stab himself with another stimpack, then had him drink a Sunset Sarsaparilla for good measure –
And was absolutely delighted to receive a Star Bottle Cap first try! What are the odds of that?! (Well, 5% I believe. :P) Unfortunately, though, I did not have much time to enjoy this little victory, because while Victor tried his best, and managed to cripple a leg with his 9mm, he was just not up to facing down a plasma pistol. Cue him getting melted in just a few shots, not even leaving a corpse behind for the camera to gaze soulfully at. :( Sorry, Victor – I didn’t expect him to have a fucking energy weapon so early in the game!
Fortunately for me, though, the game has a pretty generous autosave function, and reloaded to just about a minute earlier, before Victor had started his looting of the Five Aces camp. Having thus been forewarned about Barton coming to kill him, I forearmed Victor by having him heal up early – using both a regular stimpack and a homemade one (which technically gave Victor -1 Perception for a bit, but given his hat gives him +1 Perception, that was fine) and downing that Sunset Sarsaparilla as a chaser (which sadly did not yield a Star Bottle Cap this time around – shame) – and make sure his gun was fully loaded. Thus prepared, he did his looting and headed down the incline, where Barton met him again –
And this time, Victor was able to get into VATS right away and line up a bunch of shots on both the guy’s arms. Cue Victor crippling both with his trusty 9mm, and Barton choosing not to return fire with his plasma pistol, but instead to whip out a tire iron. As you might imagine, he ended up going down pretty fast this time around. XD Flush with victory, I had Victor examine the corpse for goodies, and claimed eight caps, a vial of Med-X, the plasma pistol and 25 energy cells –
And a “Note To Self.” Which read as follows: “Remember to not roll off the cliff and kill yourself while you're sleeping. You'll show her... you'll show everyone! What does ‘too stupid to live’ even mean anyway?” XD I guess we know who that mattress in the Five Aces camp belonged to now! And that Barton did have a girl at one point, though apparently she got sick of his bullshit and left. *nods* Good for you, lady. Victor shall fire the plasma pistol in your honor.
H) Anyway – it was now getting very late in the evening, and poor Victor probably didn’t want to spend the night out in the desert if he could help it, so I decided to put off the trip to Primm for another in-game day and instead send him back to his bed in Victortron’s shack. He thus set off back down the hill to the campsite, picking three bulbs of xander root and another broc flower along the way, then stopped for a moment at the campfire to do the thing I’d originally sent him there to do – grill up some more of his gecko meat into steaks! Of course, now he had rather more meat to cook… I ended up having him combine some xander root and broc flower into another dose of healing powder and cook eight more pieces of meat into steaks –
And to my surprise and delight, this popped an achievement – Crafty! For making 20 craftable items! So that was nice. :) Always fun to earn an achievement, even one you didn’t know about. Especially since a number of them give XP…
Anyway – having gotten Victor some more food and healing, I had him head back up the road, past the Indiana Jones fridge and along the edge of town, before arriving back at Victortron’s shack. Victortron himself was standing in front of it, but Victor managed to squeeze past him and through the door, and he plopped himself into bed right before midnight. *nods* He’d earned that sleep.
And so the playsession ended with Victor waking up a little before 7 AM, taking his morning drink from Victortron’s sink, having a healthy breakfast of squirrel on a stick, and stepping back out into Goodsprings. Next time – well, the plan is to start heading Primm-ward, but I might stop by Doc Mitchell’s place first and make sure Victor’s limbs are in full condition before he goes looking for more trouble. And given that Barton might have been sleeping in the Five Aces camp, I don’t think the goodies there were the “stash” he was talking about, so we might want to investigate the ridge some more...we’ll see what happens! I’m looking forward to it no matter what.
FreeTube: Well, I was hoping to watch more stuff from my Subs tonight, but Dad was having a rough evening (struggling to eat and dealing with pain), meaning Mom was having a rough evening (trying to support him while getting annoyed at him for constantly insisting he’s “all right”), and – yeah. Ended up being less time for videos than I thought. But I did fit in one that I’ve been meaning to watch for a while: “I Guess I'll Talk About Resident Evil Requiem” – Jane “interviewing” Andy about getting to play four hours of Resident Evil Requiem back at the end of January! (Why he was given the chance to play the game for four hours was not specified, but presumably it was so OXBox would then make a video promoting it.) Fortunately for everyone involved, Andy had a very positive first impression of the game, and was only too happy to talk about how awesome it was, and how he’d much rather be playing it than talking about it. XD The main takeaways from the video for me were as follows:
A) While Grace Ashcroft is ostensibly the main character (and indeed, three hours of the four-hour teaser Andy played focused on her), one of the classic RE heroes does return for this one – Leon Kennedy! Which I guess makes sense, because the Ethan Winters games both featured Chris in a small role, so it was Leon’s turn to appear again. Leon is fifty-something in this game as it’s set in the modern day or thereabouts (roughly 25 years after the events of RE2, at least), but he is still a fine hunk of man meat with perfect hair (Andy made it clear he was certain the female employees of Capcom were responsible for him being so sexy XD), and he is still perfectly capable of smashing a zombie’s head in with a well-placed kick. Also, the first of the little “Leon” sections Andy played had him facing off against a zombie wielding a giant chainsaw again – but this time, he got to pick up and use the chainsaw himself. Andy was very pleased.
B) While the game is being marketed as “Leon’s sections are the over-the-top third-person actiony stuff you loved from Resident Evil 4 and Grace’s sections are the creepy first-person horror-focused stuff you enjoyed from Resident Evil 7 and Resident Evil Village,” Andy thinks the split is not as sharp as that. Sure, in the version he played, Leon’s default mode was third-person and he did his usual kicks and whatnot, and Grace’s default mode was first-person and contained more puzzles and sneaking, but he emphasized that Grace’s background is as an FBI agent, so she already knows more about firing a gun than Ethan did at the start of HIS games, and is much better at holding her own in a fight. Yes, she starts out with a handgun (Leon’s ridiculously big one, in fact) with a single bullet, forcing her to sneak around and throw bottles to cause distractions and whatnot, but she eventually finds a proper gun of her own, and can find and craft ammo for it, and does her fair share of zombie shooting. Basically, Andy thinks that it would be perfectly viable to play her as a run-and-gun protagonist, just like Leon.
C) There’s a new, very weird crafting mechanic where you gather infected blood from zombies or buckets of viscera around the chronic care center (made out of a giant mansion, as this is a Resident Evil game and they take the “resident” part seriously) and then use that to craft everything from healing syringes to ammo. Jane was visibly “wha?” about that, and Andy admitted it was bizarre, but in that charming RE way, you know? XD Personally I think this is going to be Plot Relevant, given that you normally DON’T want infected blood anywhere NEAR you in an RE game, so the fact that it’s now a crafting component...hmmm.
D) The zombies in this one are a little like the ones in RE4 – that is, they tend to be fast and do things like use weapons if they’ve got ‘em – but they also have more interesting quirks to them. For example, one zombie might be obsessed with keeping the lights off, allowing you to draw him to specific places by turning on light switches. Another might be a former opera singer and thus have a sonic attack that can stagger poor Grace or Leon. The bigger “stalker” style enemies include a chef that likes to chop up bodies, and some sort of weird mutated baby-person who is TECHNICALLY too big for the halls you find him in, but who gets around that by smashing everything that’s in his way. And who apparently swears, if Andy is to be believed. XD Basically the zombies are a little more than just “shambling moaning humans” this time around, and that makes them much more fun. Oh, and if you don’t put them down properly, they CAN resurrect as faster zombies with huge bulgy heads, but Andy assured us this only starts happening once you get the shotgun, so… :p
E) And this game, or at least the section that Andy played, feels like it’s going back to the roots of RE games – we’re back to evil viruses over killer mold monsters (with the main bad guy going on about something called “Elphis,” which Andy and Jane gleefully named the P-Virus, ha ha), the main action takes place in a big ornate mansion, and one of the draws of the game is that we’re back in Raccoon City – or, at least on the outskirts of it, as the main city does remain kind of nuked. Andy said that one of the reasons he loved it so much was because it felt like it hit all the beats of a proper old RE game – especially the mansion stuff, because those are always his favorite parts of any RE game. Yes, probably the game will move to new locations (the trailer shows the old RE2 police station, so they’re basically Contractually Obligated to have Leon at least visit it at some point) later on, and there’s definitely some influence from the Ethan games with the ability to play in first person and whatnot, but it still felt to Andy like a return to what made the old games excellent, and he’s eager to play the rest of it.
So yeah – pretty good review, I think we can all agree! I am certainly looking forward to the inevitable Let’s Play the gang will do once the game officially comes out at the end of next week. :)
*nods* Not bad, I suppose -- I definitely had fun with my Courier Victor playsession. :) But now it is definitely time to head to bed. Tomorrow, plans include doing my taxes (unpleasant, but gotta be done), playing some Portal 2 or Baldur's Gate III (we'll see what I think is the better game under the circumstances), editing and queuing up Brynlee Marie's gift fic (very necessary), and getting in a workout (HOPEFULLY to the next episode of Jon's F:NV YOLO Remastered series). We'll see how that all pans out -- night all!
