Raiding Malls in Fallout 3

Hey, I've been thinking, it would be cool to replay some of my favourite games, only this time with a specific theme! So today's Now Playing comes with the theme "Let's Go to the Mall". You know, that song from the sitcom How I Met Your Mother. But anyway, that has nothing to do with my adventure today. This time I'll be taking a stroll around the wasteland of Fallout 3!

First, the background story: I first heard about Fallout 3 in 2010. It was simply the dream: a game in which you get to go anywhere and do anything you want. Naturally, I became obsessed with it. But unfortunately back then, I had a low-end rig, so while waiting for the day I finally get to play with a better one (though I wasn't sure when would that be), I resorted to playing Fallout 1, 2 and the spin-off Fallout Tactics. But enough with nostalgia. To speed things up, we'll start from outside of the vault. 

Look sir, he's dozing off during your class!

But before we truly begin, here's a summary of my life in Vault 101: when I was a kid, I was polite and nice to the adults, but not to my peers. My childhood archenemy, Butch gave me a good reason to do some serious face rearrangement on him before the G.O.A.T. test. It was a remarkable success. Butch suffered from a number of cripples and concussions and got unconscious 4 times. Other than that, life in Vault 101 was pretty dull. Ah, before I forget to mention, another thing with Butch, I refused to help him rescue his mother during the rodroach attack. Then I beat him to a pulp with my baseball bat. He never regained consciousness.

In my previous games, my choices and actions were the complete opposite of these.

So, anyway, behold! One of the very best products of war: The Capital Wasteland!

I am now free to go wherever I wish and do whatever I want! Naturally, first-time players would immediately head to Megaton but I've seen that miserable little town. I'm thinking about heading somewhere else this time. I have one mission in mind: raid every mall in the Capital Wasteland. But I won't do that straight away. That'd be suicidal. Who knows what's waiting for me there. I need to fully prepare myself.

Now, what do I need? Let me think. I have a pistol and a BB gun, in addition to my baseball bat, which by the way is soaked with rodroaches' bodily fluid and the blood of my archenemy. I have a lot of attires: approximately 15 pairs of Vault 101 jumpsuits along with 3 pairs of Vault 101 security armors, a pair of vault utility suit and a labcoat which supernaturally makes me cleverer by increasing my Science skill by +5 everytime I'm wearing it. But in order to survive, I'm going to need better items and equipment than these.

Jackpot!

Ah, look! I'm so lucky! That was easy. An abandoned RV, complete with a mattress, too! That's already good enough. I hereby claim this little shelter mine and mine only. If only there's a chest for me to store my loot. I really don't feel like selling my loot too early, at least not until I have gained higher Speech or Barter level. But I can't keep carrying them around either. The jumpsuits, nevermind those, but the security armors are heavy, each weighing 15 kg (I assume the measurement is in kilogram). Or maybe it's in pound, is it?

Ugh, I'm jinxed! I haven't been in the wasteland for more than 5 minutes and I'm already facing a bunch of bandits. I mean, raiders. Doesn't matter. The mask the raider on the middle is wearing is kind of rad. I want that! I guess that's the bright side of having to deal with them anyway. They don't know who they're messing with. Just because I'm fresh out of the vault, doesn't mean I'm dumb. Since I'm good with small guns, I don't have much problem resolving this situation.

One of them tries to spray me flames but to no avail because they're not close enough. Now that I know they have a flamethrower, I am more than willing to kill them. This is no longer self-defense. It appears that in the post apocalyptic future, you can behead people with bullets. Thanks to V.A.T.S., my attempt to do so has become much easier.

I changed the HUD colour from time to time.

My first day out here hasn't even end yet and I'm already looking dangerous and threatening. It's as if I've been out here for years. If you look closely at the screenshot above, you'll notice a pile of headless bodies on my doorstep, while the heads are on my mattress.

Yeah, those heads and bodies used to store the souls of the bandits I had a gunfight with earlier. They have been turned into decorative psychological defense. From now on, anybody who tries to get too close to my home will have second thoughts. Didn't I say this shelter is mine and mine only?

The next day, I have no choice but to head to Megaton for some trading. The mayor offers me 100 caps (the currency in the wasteland) to disarm an undetonated bomb which the town was named after. Just 100 caps to disarm a bomb that could explode and kill hundreds of people in the process? Says a lot about the life value of the people around here...

Oh, in case you don't know, the bomb sits right at the center of the town. Can somebody please tell me who was the genius who thought it was a culturally unique to build a settlement surrounding a bomb? I want to award him a Noble Prize, post-apocalyptic style. It's been 200 years since the bomb landed undetonated there, so it's fair enough that they trust it to not explode. Some of them even made a new religion out of it, but we'll get to that later.

One of the shopkeepers there, Moira Brown (obviously not the one pictured above), offers me a set of jobs to do. When we first met earlier, she gave me an armored suit for free. We hadn't even discussed anything yet, and already she was being generous. It isn't that big iconic armor suit that you see on the boxart of the game though, but as long as it has the words "armor" and "suit" put together, it's good enough for me. It must be her generosity that got me hooked. From then on, I feel inclined to chat with her.

So anyway, these jobs she wants me to do, they're for a book that she's been working on, she says. She wants to compile a bunch of advice on how to survive in the wasteland in the book. So naturally its title would be The Wasteland Survival Guide. Since the real-life me is similar to Moira here (researching and writing and stuff), I decide to listen to what she has to say about the job.

She's very good at making tempting offers. Or probably she appears so to me because I'm just too greedy and happen to pay close attention especially when I hear words like "reward", "a lot of caps" and "unique inventions". Either way, I could always use an advice or two from such a convincing speaker, but she's not meant to teach me such a skill.

I'm in for the jobs since those are the things I'll be doing anyway. I think I'm going to do the Super-Duper Mart job first, since, you know, I'm supposed to raid malls. Now it's about time I warmed myself up. By the way, take note that I'm not going to take any job that I have taken in my previous Fallout 3 adventures.

My business in Megaton is done for now. So I'm heading back to my place. It's too bad I can't mark the spot on my Pip-Boy map, but I figured I'll just fast-travel to somewhere nearby and from that location, travel on foot back to the safety of my little home of horror. But before that I exited the game to tweak the options in favour of the graphics. The game trolled around somehow and lowered the every aspect of the graphic quality on its own.

Alright, now we're talking. Now that the game is prettier, we can see how ugly the wasteland is. Look at all those debris and dusts! Okay, maybe you can't actually see them in the screenshot... At the moment, I'm heading to the nearby ruins called Fairfax Ruins. I want to, you know, look for malls. But I won't raid one straight away. I just want to know if there are other malls or marts besides the Super-Duper Mart.

Wait. You hear that? Explosions, in the distance! What's happening? Do you know that "boom!" is the short form of "Hey, whoever it is out there, I just want to let you know, I have a big ass gun here, so come get it!"? Well, now you know. It's too bad Bethesda left out sprinting ability, if not I would be sprinting right now.

Ah, bandits! I mean, raiders... *sigh* Why do I keep calling them bandits.. Let me do that again:

Ah, raiders!

That's better. Five of them. Being the badass I am, I beat them up single-handedly with my beloved baseball bat. I stripped the dead bandits off their armors and moved on. I think I have grown quite attached to my bat. It's my staple up-close-and-personal weapon. I think I should name it.

This guy blew himself up! I'm not kidding, I didn't even do anything! Maybe it was suicide bombing gone wrong. This somehow reminds me of Ivan from Red Alert 2. Well, it seems that a lot of people around the wasteland blow themselves up when I'm around...

So, I went into the building he came out of, destroyed the turret guarding the upper room, which I assume belonged to him, then looted the whole place. There were ammunition, purified water and a couple of Stimpaks.

A few days later, three bandits, who appear to be twins, try to turn my cabin into their own. The corpses that used to decorate my home have disappeared. Bad idea coming here, guys. I am not letting you go. You corpses will now have to take the place of the ones that have disappeared.

This is why, when I stripped somebody off their armor, I'd leave the armor on the ground. If you let the armor stays on them, it will disappear along with its owner. If you just leave the armor lying around, chances are it will still be there, the same way those junks such as cans and bottles remain wherever they are throughout the game.

Look! A couple of Brotherhood Outcasts travelling at night with their robot. And they're wearing powered armor suits that look like the iconic one on the cover art of the game. Or so I think. It's hard to confirm that at night. Only one way to find out...

Hey, remember the flamethrower I got earlier in the game?

I had to reload a couple of times though, because everytime I managed to fry the outcasts, their robot friend avenged their death with an instant-kill before I even got the chance to check out the powered suits. So I had to turn my imaginary hyena mode on and lured the robot away from my prizes, and then returned quickly to claim them.

Apparently, the powered suits required training to be wore, so that sucks. Maybe they aren't something that I can wear just like that, but have to be controlled in some ways. Hey, there's a bright side though. They're quite valuable! So, I sold them and although they were not in a good shape (I am hugely responsible for that, so fair enough), I got a huge sum of caps out of them.

Hey player, I've got something for you!

I spent the next couple of days travelling back and forth between Fairfax Ruins and Megaton. There were too many to sell and too little weight-limit. Everytime I was almost done with transporting all the loots I left in Fairfax Ruins to Megaton, a bunch of generous raiders would come out of nowhere "offering" me more things to loot. Then, I got some discounts from the ghoul working in the saloon in Megaton. It's all business, you know.

Eventually I made every trader in Megaton poor. They've ran out of caps. For now, they can't afford anything I offer them, unless it's for free. I, of course, like receiving free stuff but not giving them. So, I had no choice but stored the remaining unsold loots, mostly armors, in a Nuka-Cola vending machine in front of the Super-Duper Mart, hoping that they won't disappear too soon. Whether it's due to AI looting or just Fallout 3 being Fallout 3, I don't care. I just want my loots there when I finally get to sell them.

Finally, I'm inside the Super-Duper Mart right now. Okay, maybe it isn't actually a mall, but hey I'm having so much fun here beating raiders to eternal unconsciousness with my baseball bat and power fist! Yes, power fist! It's like a brassknuckle but big and heavy! And it's so razor-accurate (like, you know, a razor!) and instead of crushing heads, it dismembers them! How realistic!

Now that the mart has been cleared, I can finally do my shopping in peace. But later on, group of raiders returned to find their friends dead and stripped naked to their underwear. They should have walked away but they didn't. They received the same fate.

I also made the caravan traders penniless now. See, that's the problem with Bethesda. They should have made every trader in their games rich so that they won't run out of money buying loots from players. This is really killing my mood. If I can keep my loot somewhere safe then it won't much of a problem. But the thing is, even if I had a storage box somewhere, I'd still have to face the risk of giving away all my hard-earned (and stolen) items to bugs and glitches.

Really, mutant, really? No, I'm not afraid of facing him. I'm just pissed off right now. Just look at the mutant. "Hey look at me! I've got a minigun! You want it? Come get it then! But you won't be able sell it anyway, weheehee!!!" I killed him and his friend anyway. But I decided to hold on to the minigun because of its value as a weapon. Everything else, I stored in the Nuka Cola vending machine.

Anyway, I went back to Moira to report what happened back there in the Super-Duper Mart. I also got the food and medical items she wanted. She asked me to keep these items for myself, then rewarded me with more food. Okay, maybe she's really generous, no doubt about that. Any other day, I'd appreciated these, really, but now I don't want any more things stuffed into my pockets unless they're caps!

So I asked around and heard about this place called Rivet City. And so, I set on a journey to the city, hoping to find more traders to unload my loot onto. On my way there, I had a clash with a group of mercenaries. Turned out, I had built a quite a reputation for myself in the wasteland. Someone who thought he was second to me in terms of badass-ness had put a price on my head.

Hey I thought I was being a badass or something but apparently I've been known as a saint. Seems like I need to do more evil things (more things that are evil or things that are more evil, doesn't matter) so that people would stop viewing me as a knight in a shining armor but as a badass instead. Because I am a badass! This is upsetting. Let me draw my gun and teach whoever your boss is a lesson so that he won't mislabel badasses like me in the future.

Well... our gunfight didn't last long. I barely fired any shot. While I was taking cover behind a junk of a car, one of the mercenaries thought it was a brilliant idea to spray bullets all over it. Instead of impressing his friends, he made the damn thing explode, killing all of them in the process. The car exploded and flew through the air and into the river in spectacular fashion ("spectacular fashion" has become a phrase I frequently associate with explosions, thanks to Saints Row).

I merely survived. At least the guy's stupidity amused me. I'd forgive him for that, though. He was just trying to impress his buddies. I doubt he even knew what a car is, let alone how it works. I wish I'd known his name. Poor guy deserved a Nobel Prize, too. Let's pay some respect to our dead buddy with 5 seconds of silence, shall we?

Yes, our hero's name is Sensei Fu Jon Do (supposed to be John Doe, but due to limitation, so..)

The impact of the explosion crippled my right arm and left foot, which is weird since they're on different sides but whatever. After some magical stimpak fixes, I was good to go. Yay! Looting time! So anyway, while I was looting, I entertained some really deep thoughts...

Hey, the nuclear fallout took place 200 years ago, right? That means that car was nothing but scrap metal. Even if the gas tank was fine, surely the fuel had already evaporated so it must be empty. So how come the car exploded? I don't know, video game logic? At least they make us think, right?

Whoa, what the heck is this? Such abomination! Are you and bloodsucker from STALKER Call of Pripyat cousins? If so, I shall despise you less. In fact, I pity you a little bit. Must be a very torturing condition you are in, walking around like that, dragging your butt all over the road, unable to scratch it when it gets itchy since you've got no arms.

Oh wait, you've got tentacles. At least you can scratch your butt with... your... tentacles? Wait, are those tentacles or tongues? Okay you know what, let's just drop it here. I don't want this conversation getting more disgusting than it already is.

Well, well, look at this place. Booze everywhere. Did I just crash a party? Yup... it seems I did. Looks like they (some raiders I massacred earlier) were in fact having a party here. And look at this tree here they decorated. Christmas party perhaps? Do they still have Christmas party in the post-apocalyptic future? In fact, do they party at all?

At least there are some bunks so I'll spend my night here. My HPs are low and I need to sleep to restore them. But because "idiotic" is one of my most significant traits, I drank a few bottles of whiskey before I went to bed and developed an addiction to it. I woke up the next morning with a hangover. Nice. Now I need to carry some whiskies around.

So finally I found a way to solve my problem of frequently getting encumbered due to excessive looting. From now on, I'd repair items first before selling them. In order to repair an item, you're gonna need another item of the same type. These two items will merge together, producing a new and better version of the original item you're fixing.

The downside is, the price of the new repaired item is less than that of the two previous items combined. But at least merging items together during repair helps reduce the weight I have to carry. Plus, it's not the money (or caps) that I really care about. It's that feeling of not being able to sell stuff, regardless of their price, that really bothers me. I just have to sell things. Each "sell" click makes me feel happy and satisfied.

Apparently, there are places I am forbidden to enter in the wasteland. One of them is the men's restroom in Megaton. Thankfully, there's no need to unload craps of your body in Fallout 3 (or in most video games, but if there's any game that allows you to crap, let me know as soon as possible) no matter how much food you eat. If not, the people of Megaton will find my "works of art" all over town. Not that it would make any difference anyway.

The next forbidden place is the Pirate Pely Boat & Bait (screenshot above). Wait, I didn't mention how are these places forbidden to me, right? Well, the game crashes when I enter them (or, in the men's restroom's case, I never even got passed the front door).

I don't have any qualification in dentistry, but if you insist...

I noticed a very sharp increase of Super Mutant population the closer I got to Rivet City. I encountered about 10 to 15 of them on my way there. This one above is the first mutant I encountered on my way to Rivet City. I didn't want to waste ammo, so I ignored him because he was on a higher ground which I had no access to. But then he chased me all the way to the Memorial Point and persuaded me to check his teeth for any sign of decay. I told him they were fine, but he thought I was lying, so I "decayed" them for him. Apparently, bad breathe and decaying teeth are a symbol of pride among the mutants.

This one here was lucky for being the victim of my luckiest shot. He didn't have the chance for his speech of honour.

This brute doesn't understand the use of cover. Just because he's tough, he thinks it's okay to reload while being a sitting duck like that. While he was reloading, I took advantage of it and put a home address of my Power Fist in his face. If he ever comes back from the dead, rest assured that he will never repeat the same mistake ever again.

So... Rivet City is actually a ship that has been turned into a fortified settlement. Wow, these post-apocalyptic people are truly desperate to certify their settlement as a city. I supposed we should hide in a ship instead of a building during nuclear fallout, because chances are the ship will to be turned into a settlement, yes? Anyway, yeah, Rivet City is actually a ship. This is not a good sign.

And I was right. Each location is located on different levels of the ship, and the corridors all look the same to me. No wonder this bar here is empty. People get lost on their way here! But at least the bar owner had a lot of caps and was able to afford most of my things. Quite surprising for someone whose business doesn't seem to be profitable.

This is the view of the area at the edge of the map. It's hauntingly beautiful. Since it's inaccessible, so it's okay for it to be densely packed with tall buildings unlike the other parts of the wasteland.

Now we're talking. Welcome to the Rivet City market. The best thing about this place is that all the shops are situated next and close to each other. This makes trading less of a hassle. I can't believe I'm saying this but since Rivet City is a lot more boring than Megaton, I'm not going to prolong my stay here. The purpose of my visits will be mainly for business purposes.

Instead, I'm planning to revisit the area around Vault 101 tomorrow. I'll check my little cabin of horror, then I'll take a look at the remains of Springsville Elementary School, which I shall pretend as my great-grandfather's school as told to me by my father. So, tomorrow I will have to search through the place for my great-grandpa's trophy or locker or something. We'll see.

Okay, so maybe I didn't actually raid any mall... I'm not sure if there are actually malls in Fallout 3, I haven't thoroughly explored the game. But at least I raid a mart, right? You have to understand, this is Fallout 3 we're talking. There are so many interesting things happening around you, shifting your attention away and distracting you from doing what you're supposed to.

As a matter of fact, I never got to DC yet. No, I'm serious. Perhaps, when I feel like it, I'll continue my journey but it may no longer involve raiding malls or marts if that matters. But for now, my adventure stops right here since I've got a lot more games I want to try before my semester break is over. If you haven't played Fallout 3, you should do so now. Trust me, it's going to worth it.