I had the same thing happen to me in Metro Central, but my shotgun blast was to the feral’s head. The thing was obliterated just as dogmeat executed a flying leap at it.
Ya’ll will probably think I’m nuts, but sometimes when I come across children’s toys in a burned out house or some forgotten tunnel it makes me a bit sad (especially if one of the haunting songs is playing)…or if I shoot a feral ghoul and it’s got a teddy bear on it or something like that.
I was also exploring a burned out factory and came across a series of holotapes talking about a guy searching for his father and who was
…slowly turning into a ghoul. He found his father and he was already a ghoul, but the guy on the tape sort of was transitioning into ghoulification, as 3 Dog puts it. It was kind of sad as the guy was totally losing it at the end…and when I finally ran across him in the basement I felt bad about blowing his head off. Well…I got over it, but there for a micro-second or so I felt bad for the guy. Then I cheerfully looted his mangled corpse. I mean, he DID have a Chinese Assault Rifle after all…no sense having that go to waste…
-XT
I only just got out of a seriously nasty encounter a few minutes ago. Almost done with the main quest, so I decided to do some exploring of places I’d found but left for when I was better equipped. Like the Deathclaw Sanctuary. Now, I’d been there before, both in this game and the previous one, and there had never been a Deathclaw right outside, so I just fast travelled there.
Woops.
I stumbled into a mini-encounter. An Enclave squad with two pet deathclaws, fighting two wild deathclaws. And me in the middle. I panicked and ran - only cost me 4 stims.
Has any way to disable the excessive VATS slow motion surfaced yet? Some kind of hack? I’ll wait for that before I return to this game, as it wastes a massive amount of time. It gets old.
Was that the Dunwich Building? I felt something after going through there, but it certainly wasn’t sentimentality. :eek:
Yeah, that was the Dunwich building. And it wasn’t so much ghoulification as the son being corrupted by the Necronomicon.
Oh, it was spooky alright. There was almost a Fear type moment, though it happened so fast I wasn’t sure it was real. Freaked me out a bit though.
No, it was the holotapes that were kind of sad, especially the later ones. I’m not sure what, if anything, you were actually supposed to do or get out of that (afaik there wasn’t a quest or really anything to DO in there), but it was still an interesting little experience.
BTW, anyone else cap out their level long before they finish the game? I’ve been 20 for a while and I STILL haven’t gone to Vault 112 to find my father yet.
I’m thinking of using one of the mods on the site I posted earlier to let me increase my level cap to 30…only problem is that you lose all your karma if you use it now.
Oh…and there was an announcement a few days ago. The SDK is going to be released fairly soon…so, hopefully we can expect some decent mods by the New Year! Woohoo!
-XT
Don’t use VATS if you don’t like the effect. Personally, I like the slo-mo thingy (nothing better than taking out some raider chick with a head shot and seeing her slowly tumble through the air…I LOVE the smell of napalm in the morning!) but if you don’t like it, simply play the game without VATS. Sometimes I kill stuff with just the gun…I think the same percentage rules apply as I seem to kill things at range with small guns about the same as VATS. The only difference I see is that I conserve ammo better with VATS, and that’s only really a factor early in the game. By now I have ammo pretty much coming out of my ears. About the only thing I’m short of is mini-nukes…even my 5mm ammo is over 3k.
-XT
The point was just that it was the ‘experience’, like the random encounters in the first two Fallout games. It was a riff on H.P. Lovecraft stuff, and so you were just supposed to go through and enjoy it.
Although there is a bobblehead on the lower level.
Yup, got the bobblehead…and that’s ALWAYS a good thing. I think I’m up to 7 now. And I figured it was just for the experience of doing it…one of the things I really like about this game is that I enjoy just playing…just running about and exploring, instead of having to do quests or feeling I have to level. One of the only problems I have with the game is with the level cap…I don’t understand why they cut it off at 20 when, as I said, I’ve capped out and I haven’t explored even half the world yet. And by no means was I trying to level either…hell, I probably haven’t done a third of the quests.
-XT
Well, I happen to like it too for conservation and less stressful gameplay. I tend to use it on most kills, and the slow motion for each gets really old. It would be pretty cool without slow-motion also. It would still be quite cinematic when your character executes a scripted sequence of kills, like in movies where some guy pulls a gun and blasts 5 guys before they react. It still has merit without the slow motion.
I’m sure if enough people are annoyed by it someone will mod it. What I wish is that you could stay in VATS until all your action points are used up. A lot of times I’ll target the first target with two shots and a second target with two shots and a third target with my remaining shot, only to have all three die in one burst…and taking me out of VATS with AP’s left. I also wish I could do other things while in VATS, such as change weapons or use stimpaks…which is something you used to be able to do in the earlier Fallout games.
Oh yeah…and I WANT my Gauss Rifle damn it! Also, I’d like some of the other guns from the original games.
-XT
It has to be because they abandoned the leveled creatures in oblivion as everyone hated them…
If you could level past twenty either on one of the exploitable bits or just by putting off the main quest as you have, you could kill the game. Not that you still can’t by playing very easy and taking the right perks, but you know…
That’s actually my one real complaint with this game. The ‘named’ weapons simply don’t make up for the fundamental lack of variety. Fallout 2 simply blows Fallout 3 into tiny bits of dust.
I want a choice between a CAWS or a Jackhammer instead of just a generic “combat shotgun”. I want gauss weaponry. I want a G11E. Hell, I want a freakin’ pipe rifle, as some of my fondest memories of Fallout 2 include getting my first ‘real gun’ and blowing mole rats away with it in Klammath.
~sigh~
.50 Cal machine gun with DU ammo…sigh. There were so many weapons in FA1/FA2 and even Fallout Tactics…I hope someone out there brings at least a few of em back.
I’d also really love the car (or maybe a motor cycle this time since they seem to be all over). The tank/APC from Fallout Tactics would also be cool.
-XT
The thing I miss most about the Gauss weapons is the sound. That whiplash SNAP, inevitably followed by whatever you were shooting at exploding. Ah, good times.
Does anyone have any tips on ammo acquisition? My first time thru the game was with a mostly melee character. I’m replaying with small weapons and I upped the difficultly…and I’m going through ammo very quickly. It’s kind of a cool challenge, switching between weapons when one runs low, but I can’t afford to keep fighting Mirelurks in vault 92. I have a feeling I’m going to get to a point where I’m glad I’ve been lugging a ripper and some frag mines around with me…
Well, there is the perk that lets you find more ammo than normal.
I’ve played through without using a melee weapon at all (I even shoot the radroaches and flies). Ammo hasn’t been a problem at all, especially 10mm or the rifle ammo. Even the more exotic ammo like the .44 or .308 I have tons of…same with rockets for the rocket launcher and 5mm for the mini-gun.
One thing you might want to keep an eye out for is a schematic for the Rock-It-Launcher…it lets you shoot anything junk laying about at the bad guys. Also, if you don’t have lockpick you may want to take that one too, as a lot of ammo is locked up. There is also a perk (who’s name presently escapes me) that let’s you find more ammo when you open a box (though I didn’t take this one). Also, choose well on what loot you take and find a good place to sell it (I like the chick in Megaton and the Market on the old air craft carrier)…they almost always have ammo for sale, so pick up whatever they have as well as all the stimpaks they carry. Money is fairly easy to come by once you can fast travel to where the vendors are. What I did early in the game was load up on decent loot, find some landmark, then fast travel back to the vendor, dump the loot and change it into ammo and stimpaks, then fast travel back to landmark.
-XT
I got the scrounger perk as soon as it was available. It’s also a good idea to buy all the ammo you might use from every merchant you encounter. And, you know, check every damn desk, cabinet, crate, safe, corpse, etc. etc.
I think you reach an equilibrium of sorts somewhere around level 10. Where exactly depends on how your character is designed and how conservative you’ve been with the ammo. After that it isn’t much of a problem. In my experience, frag nades and missiles are hard cash, to be exchanged for actual ammo as soon as you find a merchant. (Sydney)