Circuit Jerk

Thanks to the Broken Steel add-on I’ve once again returned to Fallout 3. I lost all motivation before becuase of the lack of leveling up I was doing. Now that I can pass level 20, its time to explore the wasteland for 10 more levels.

There’s a huge difference between level 20 and 21. At 20, you feel like you’ve accomplished something greater than just beating the game. You’re still vunerable, but in a one on one fight, few things in the wasteland beat you.

At 21, you get this wreckless god complex where you beeline to wherever the next place you want to visit it. It becomes less about completing objectives and more about “I want to see what that building looks like after a nuclear war.”

I visited three places of interest last night whilst collecting bobbleheads.

The Capital: I thought for sure entering the capital would be a sight to see. I wanted to stare into the dome’s dwarfing majesty, gaze at the ruble that was once gorgeous statues of each of the states greatest heroes, break into where laws are made and broken.

Instead I ran into a super behemoth fighting Talon Company Mercs. After launching a couple mini-nukes into the rotunda and gazing into the dome, I realized that the capital was in fact a boring place to visit.

Bethesda Ruins: This was my second stop, sort of the nerd capital. The developers of Fallout (and Elder Scrolls) put their building into the wasteland. I don’t know if the employees of Bethesda love their building for putting it into the game or hate it because of how sterile it is, but essentially they have one of the ugliest buildings in the D.C. area bar maybe the F.B.I. building.

Then as I was wandering through rubble and cubicles I thought about how fun it would be to wander through the ruins of your work clearing out super mutants. Showing your friends “your desk” in the post apocalyptic wasteland. Perhaps one of the ghouls running around looks remarkably like a boss no one likes. The building became much more appealing to me when I started thinking about it less like ruins and more like the virtual simulation everyone has ran through their mind before.

The Dunwich Building- I strictly went to this building for one reason, the melee-weapons bobblehead. I ran into an NPC on the way to this ruin in the southwest corner, and the NPC warned me that the place had some shady shit going down.

He was right.

This was one of the more fun experiences in the wasteland. This building, instead of being your typical ruins, is more of a haunted house. Each section of the building gets darker and darker. Doors close on their own, dismembered body parts litter the offices but are still flinching, glowing ones ominously light the next room.

A disasterous story unfolds about a traveler named Jaime. I’m not going to ruin anything incase people want to discover it themselves, but Jaime had one of the toughest lives out of any wanderer. Go to this building at night, with the lights out, and alone. You might just feel a twinge of survival horror enter this action RPG.

Bethesda was smart adding to the level cap. Its the only thing that brought me back into the wasteland. I had planned on playing through as an evil character eventually, but I think I’ve gotten my full fill. I have about half a dozen missions and the Broken Steel add-on to finish still. After that, I think Bethesda will leave my life until I decide to start Elder Scrolls 3.