Too good for my own good

| Wednesday, May 30, 2012
I started playing Fall: New Vegas yesterday.  I kept thinking to myself, "Wouldn't it be great if there was something a bit like Skyrim, but with guns?"  And lo and behold, in my Steam library there was Fallout 3 which I'd played a bit and in close proximity a title of a similar title but with an added colon: New Vegas.  A bit of downloading and viola, the slideshow and music and damn if it wasn't all so inspiring.

I must ask this though: Does everyone start the game by getting shot in the face?  It seemed to be scripted cinema, but then it seemed strangely prophetic, that I'd spend a whole lot of time getting shot in the face with the deck stacked against me.

A sniper named Ghost, which seemed like an interesting coincidence, sent me to look at a town.  And oh what did I find...  On the way in I met a man on the way out, literally, who'd been lucky enough to survive.  Further in I met several people on the way out, figuratively, hung up on crosses.

Everything was on fire.  Just thought that needed mentioning.

Further still and there were guys dressed like they were at an Anachronism Fair, which is like a Renaissance Fair, but set in Rome and featuring men with guns.  That explained the crucifixions.  I talked to them.  It turns out they were sadistic, murderous, backstabbing moralistic zealots (I didn't pick up on any beliefs, just a lot of judgement).  So I did the moral thing and started a shootout.  Turns out they wear really good armor and are practically invincible when shot by a gun better suited to rats (and I don't mean New York City rats, just normal rats).  But I don't give up.  I reload and try new tactics and eventually they're all dead.  Along the way I get some notifications that the group they're associated with doesn't like me.  Whatever.

La la la la la la shooting ants and shooting ants la la la la la dee daaaaaa!

Runnin' down the high way, goin' to the next town!  What's with that guy, named Legion Assassin?  I'm shootin' at him, he's shootin' at me.  I though I had armor but it was papier mache!

Okay, freak encounter with a rude jerk who says that Caesar wants me dead.  Whatever.  He's dead (not Caesar, that would be too easy).

La la la la la la shooting bandits and shooting bandits la la la la la dee daaaaaa!

Runnin' down the high way, goin' to the next town!  What's with that guy, named Legion Assassin?  I'm shootin' at him, he's shootin' at me.  I though I'd won but they're still after me!

Seriously, more of them?  Give me a break.  But I managed to win, thanks to a nearby patrol and some traders I was hanging out with (and got killed).  Onward!

La la la la la la shooting more bandits and shooting more bandits la la la la la dee daaaaaa!

Runnin' down the high way, goin' to the next town!  What's with that guy, named Legion Assassin?  I'm shootin' at him, he's shootin' at me.  Seriously, what the hell, people?  Eeee!  (gotta rhyme)

I'm running into a serious problem known as Bullet Shortage.  Since they shrug off attacks so easily, I have to do a lot of shooting.  It's BS.

This is, of course, all my own fault.  Ghost specifically said I was just supposed to do recon, not start a war.  So what did I do?  I started a war.  The game went to a great deal of effort to explain to me that this was a bad idea.  It killed me over and over, pushing me back to previous saves.  And I just kept going.  I was warned: "These guys are really hard to kill, even when you get the first shot and that first shot is two sticks of dynamite that still don't kill them."  A normal person would pick up on the subtle hints like the quest dialogue and the repeated crushing defeats.  But no, rather than interpret it as "you're not supposed to do this" I instead went with "this is a challenge" and I rose to that challenge.  At my own expense.

There is of course a way around all this.  I can wear the armor I picked off their corpses.  It makes me similarly invincible.  Except then everyone else shoots me on sight, including the guys I want to be friends with.  I'm relegated to an armor dance, wearing the disguise of my enemies, scanning the horizons, and at the first sight of people who wouldn't otherwise cause me any trouble, switching to my other, vastly inferior armor.  This was tricky when the Legion was hanging out near a camp that I wanted to duck into.  Take it off too soon and I get shot.  Take it off too late and I get shot.

On the plus side, I've only developed one drug addiction so far, Hydro or something like that, stuff that helps put my limbs back together well enough to move without quite healing anything.

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