A quick question on the game ending (I’m not there yet)…
Does the game “end” after you’ve completed the main quest line (the Dad one?). I’m at the ‘meet them at Project Purity’ stage. Reason I ask is because I love to explore, and so continually put off each stage of this quest to do side quests (plus, I can’t help but check out every building I come across - almost to the point where now I’m worried I’m hitting sites before I should and missing more side quests).
I want to continue the main quest, but am worried that if I finish the last stage (whatever that may be) that suddenly the game will cut-scene or something and say “great job” and then, oops, nothing more to do.
I suppose I could always go back to a previously saved game in that case…now that I think about it.
The game does end after the main quest completes. You aren’t really in danger from exploring at this point, though. The main ways you can miss out on things are by talking to Dr. Li before doing the GNR stuff, and by stumbling on Vault 112 before you’re supposed to.
I’m trying to arrange an installation of my collection of 20 intact garden gnomes (and matching brahmin skull) at my house and I’m having a hell of a time getting them all to stand up facing the right direction, oh, what distress! I somehow got one to stand up on its head, though.
I managed to get a complete set of pool table balls and pool sticks for my house expansion. I also have a nice teddy bear on my big queen sized bed and a fully stocked Nuka-Cola machine. Most of the rest of my house is decorated with odds and ends.
Wish the two robots in my gun room were functional though…
Handy rule of thumb, is to make a new game save before you go to Vault 87. After you finish that quest, the plot pretty much picks up a sense of urgency, although there are still a few places where you can hop out of the main plot to do side stuff.
I’d save it after you’ve escaped from Raven Rock - you can have Fawkes as a follower. Although it does make the Citadel off-limits for general wandering.
After I delivered Dr Lee to the Citadel and got approval for the use of powered armor, but before I talked to the old man the second time. The added benefit to this is you also can engage Enclave soldiers all throughout the wasteland, since they are trying to take over. You can also find them pretty easily since they put up big lights around their mini-bases.
You know, I’m just not cut out for evil. I started a new game intending to explore those parts of the game I’d missed (Paradise Falls quests, blow up Megaton, etc) and I just can’t enjoy being evil. Even shaking down Silver wasn’t fun. I’m such a goody two-shoes it’s depressing.
I had the hardest time just getting evil karma. I decided to play a character who’s out for himself. I didn’t want to just be an asshole for the sake of assholishness but rather be someone who wants to take the easiest path through his adventuring career. Lying to Moira about doing her experiments would give me a bit of a karma drop, but I had to blow up Megaton to get to evil (though I stupidly forgot to hire Jericho before I did so). I still do or–in the case of the slave whose collar I tried (emphasis on tried) to remove*–try to do good things. It’s hard to get all of the quests otherwise. I have to fight against the urge to pick the “of course I’ll help” choice and take the “what’s in it for me” option to continue my selfishness streak.
(I just had a moment of clarity. I came upon a group of Talon Company Mercs who weren’t aggressive, and I wondered if it was a bug. I just realized it was because I wasn’t a goody-two-shoes any more).
*I laughed when another slave, upon seeing the results of my failure, said, “Better him than me.”
I accidentally was evil fairly early in the game when I got caught pickpocketing one of The Family’s outer guards and had to kill him. That meant I had to kill all of them. So spent a bit as an evil char, but it is far easier in this game to be good, and I fairly quickly turned back to Neutral and now have been Good for some time (and must be quite high in the good compartment, since I just had a similar accident at the Republic of Dave and wiped them all out too, but am still Good).
Part of it is two-fold and has to do w/ dialogue choices. First, I too have a hard time being an asshole. Second, I worry that being an asshole means that I will miss out on particular quests.
Since this is my first time thru game, I may find it a bit easier to try for evil next time, but who knows.
Becoming Evil is easy just blow up Megaton and your karma instantly drops to the bottom, no matter how Good you were before but staying Evil can be difficult.
No clue, but fair warning as I was surprised when I came across this place.
Everyone was showing up as ‘green’ (i.e., friendly) on my compass but the main gate was locked and no one was at gate for me to talk to. So I found a way to sneak into the compound, thinking I’d just go up and chat that way, but sneaking in turns them hostile - they started shooting at me. So I had to kill 'em (even tried holstering my weapon to no avail)…and have no idea what the ballot box is for now.
It may be standard M.O. in this game if you sneak into a gated compound that you become an enemy, but it was first time I’d done it.
I’ve scrambled my way back to Level 7 now with the new hard drive, taking a somewhat different (improved) path so far compared to my first foray.
The black widow perk has definitely opened up some new and interesting things for me, down paths that I had assumed to be dead ends from my last go-round. The resolution I ended up with between the Family and Aeru(sp?) was not what I was expecting at all.
I negotiated for the Family to protect the town, going back and forth between them in the quest with Lucy’s letter. It surprised me that there were rewards to be gleaned that were not prompted as part of the quest (i.e. going back to the head Vampire guy one more time and having him teach me how to gain 20 HP from blood capsules).
I realize now how lucky and stupid I was to have come across the Firebrand when I was only on level 4 last time, and I had wasted it on the Grey Ditch fire ant quest.
Kids always show up green on compass it seems, so it might have been that all the green marks I saw were kids only, and the adults are at first hostile. Not sure until I play again, I guess
Your resolution to the Arefu/Family quest actually shouldn’t have anything to do with the Black Widow perk; I got the same result my first go-through without having the Lady Killer perk, and also got that result the second time through’ I have the Black Widow perk but I don’t remember any Black Widow dialogue options (Whenever Black Widow kicks in, the dialogue option will indicate that it is a perk-related option.)
Unrelated observation, at least somewhat. I was just surprised to stumble onto the
terminal password leading me to Lucy’s brother because of the Black Widow perk. I was only at the Family location right at that moment to trade.
The surprise that prompted my post was the different conversational options that opened up with the guy sitting in the corner of the Saloon in Megaton who wanted to hire me to blow the place up
I got Fallout 3 for Christmas (I wanted to wait until I’d finished teaching for the semester). I’m trying to do it spoiler-free, so it’s hard not to look through this thread for fear of seeing even accidental spoilers. I’m dying a lot, obviously, but everything is an adventure.
One non-gameplay question, though. I’m using an XBox 360, and a few times the game has totally crashed–either a black screen or frozen screen. Anyone else encountering this kind of problem?
I’ve heard of people having problems on the 360 with crashing. On the computer the only crashes have been mod related for me so far. Lately the game has crashed every time I try and exit. My friend who is the modder goes into a complex discussion about memory buffers and clean up programs but I figure the root cause is one of the mods I’m using is having issues. Since it only occurs when I leave the game though I don’t think I need to fret about it too much.
Since I don’t have an X-Box though my question is…how would/does Bethesda update their software for potential problems in a game like Fallout? On the PC you just download an update (there have been 2 so far though I haven’t gotten either as I wasn’t having issues).