Notes From New Vegas 3
Nov. 9th, 2010 11:14 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
camwynNotes From New Vegas 3: Pants 'Em If They Can't Take A Joke
So the last time we met we were pootling around the desert near Goodsprings with Sunny "Totally played by Michelle Rodriguez no matter who her actual voice actor is" Smiles. The last thing she told you was to go up to the town saloon and meet the lady who runs it, since she likes to meet anybody new in town. Well, why not. Sure, you're at the opposite end of town from the saloon but that's okay. There's a road, it's nice and easy and it looks safe. Go for it.
I am not sure I can emphasize how important it is to stick to the damn roads early in this game. Everything in the desert except the plants wants to kill you. (The killer plants come later.) Unless you have good armor and a good gun and made a point of arranging your skills so that you have good combat capabilities straight out of Doc Mitchell's, you will end up a gecko's lunch, or maybe a coyote's, or maybe- and these are the real nasty ones- a scorpion's. You'll be fighting them later with merry laughter as you send their parts splattering, but for now, early in the game, stay on the roads. Please.
Mind you, if you took Weird Wasteland as a perk, you may notice on the way up the road that there's a refrigerator off to one side. With a skeleton in it. Wearing a fedora. I am very sad that the refrigerator was not radioactive, but what can you do... Yeah, you're gonna get a lot of incidents like that with Weird Wasteland. I guess someone at Obsidian complained that Fallout 2 had too many silly pop culture references in it, so they decided to make the silly stuff completely optional. Whatever.
Anyway, when you get to the saloon, the woman who runs the place is having an argument with an angry man in a Kevlar vest. Eventually the angry man goes away and you get to talk to the woman, and OH HAI PLOT. Apparently there's a prison down the road somewhere run by the New California Republic and the prisoners there staged a revolt. In the woman's own words, "They're chain gangs who were supposed to work on clearing the railroads out here. Turns out giving dynamite and blasting powder to convicted criminals wasn't such a good idea. Who knew." Joe Cobb, the guy in the vest, is one of these prisoners- they call themselves Powder Gangers- and he's trying to get the town to give up a caravan trader named Ringo who crossed the Gangers, and if they don't he's gonna blow the town up.
So, let's see. So far you've woken up in a Rat Pack era gangster movie, walked outside into a 90s post-apocalyptic movie, and now you've wandered into an old-school Western. And there's probably going to be a few more movies tacked on as you go. You know what? I can live with this. Considering how long I'm going to spend with this game just to resolve all the main plots, I'm good with the multiple genres. Beats paying the same price for movie theater admission to see this many flicks. At least I get to participate in these movies.
Anyway, this being Fallout, you can ask about how to help out the town or you can just up and leave. Janice is a reasonably nice person with a knack for talking to folks and fixing things. She also has a knack for recognizing when a situation is going to get her shot in the head again. Cranky convicts armed with dynamite and guns and not having anything to lose? Yeah, that's gonna get her shot in the head. Is she capable of sneaking past them? Oh hell no. She's not capable of sneaking past a sleeping giant evil sheep without waking it up. So... maybe she can do something about this with some help from the townsfolk-
ow. Brain. Ow. No, she is not Ciaphas Cain, HERO OF THE IMPERIUM. No. She hasn't got the Melee for it.
Anyway. Trudy- that's the lady who runs the bar, and apparently she's also the mayor, not that I remember anyone telling me this- Trudy points Janice at the old Poseidon Gas station up the road a ways. If you've only ever played Fallout 3 you don't know Poseidon; they had Red Rocket Refueling in the DC area instead. If you've played Fallout 2 you remember them. They ran the Oil Rig. I'm not gonna explain that- you either know what it means or you don't, and if you don't and you want to play Fallout 2, I'm not going to spoil it for you. Ringo's hiding up there and you should go talk to him. Maybe you can get him to leave town or something. Oh, and by the way, the guys who shot you in the head passed through. One of them was a guy in a tacky suit, and some of them were Great Khans. Gang members turned into a tribe, basically; the Khans are from Fallout 1. Guess the original Vault Dweller didn't kill 'em all off after all. They're still kinda jerks, from the sound of things. Didn't capture anybody's daughter for a slave this time, but they made a stink in town and broke the saloon's radio.
Of course they broke the radio. This is Fallout. There will always be a radio to fix. Metzger's radio. Three Dog's radio station. This radio. They do like broken radios in this game. Fix the radio and the mayor gives you some money in thanks. And you get Wayne Newton in the game- well, okay, you'd get him anyway, if you turned on your Pip-Boy's radio and set it to Radio New Vegas. He's Mr. New Vegas, the announcer.
Of course he is.
*cough*
Anyway. Once you've had your chat with Trudy you have a choice. You can leave town, because the only thing stopping you is a risk of horrible Wasteland death, and that's going to be there no matter what. You can go find Ringo and talk to him about what might help. Or you can go find Joe Cobb and offer to side with him and take over/destroy the town. I've said before that I'm really not good at playing on Team Evil, so I don't know what happens if you make nice to Joe; mind you even if I were going to be evil, Joe's a jerk, so I'd probably flip him off regardless and find some classy evil to sign up with. I went looking for Ringo instead.
Ringo's a little tense when you find him. I can't really blame him. For one, he's got Joe and the other Powder Gangers looking to kill him, and for two, he's named Ringo in a world that does not appear to remember the existence of the Beatles, which probably means he was named after something embarrassing. If you talk to him for a while he'll tell you that he's willing to fight the Gangers if he could just get some help. He'll also offer to teach you to play a card game called Caravan, which you can win a good amount of caps from. Ringo suggests that if you really want to fight back you should talk to Michelle Rodriguez, since she's seemed the most open to lending him a hand. Unfortunately I don't understand the instructions, myself, so I've just said that Janice is a bad Caravan player and left it at that.
Turns out that Ms. Rodriguez is just itching for an excuse to go lay the smackdown on the Powder Gangers, but says you'll need more than just her. She suggests Chet The Shopkeeper Next Door, Trudy the Bartendin' Mayor, and Easy Pete the Old Dude With Dynamite. She also notes that you're going to need to be able to convince them that you have a fighting chance, which means either a skillful plan or a silver tongue for Trudy, a good economic argument for Chet, and an understanding of explosives for-
Waaaaaaaaaait, is this an excuse for making sure the player has at least a couple of reasonably respectable skill scores in things other than Guns before entering the rest of the game? Sneaky, Obsidian, very sneaky. Yeah, basically in order to assemble this posse, you need to be able to pass skill checks with each of the characters you talk to for help. Chet won't open his inventory to you unless you convince him that letting the Gangers run rampant is bad for business, so that's a Barter score of 25 you need. Trudy needs to know you're sneaky enough to survive or talk cleverly enough, which means either Sneak or Speech 25. And Easy Pete, who looks just enough like Elder Lyons from the last game to make things weird, refuses to give you dynamite unless you have Explosives 25 on the grounds that he doesn't want people blowing their own arms off. Smart man, Easy Pete. (He's also got some other interesting conversational paths, so talk to him about stuff other than blowing up Powder Gangers.) Oh, and you need to talk to Doc Mitchell too. He won't be coming out to fight, but he'll give you some stimpaks to patch yourselves up. (He grew up in Vault 21. He doesn't admit it, but he gives the impression of having wicked agoraphobia. He never leaves his house.)
Once you've got them all on your side you can tell Ringo you're ready to go, but I strongly suggest buying some decent armor from Chet first, assuming you can afford it. Remember, you are fighting convicts armed with dynamite and guns, and unless you have special downloadable content you are walking around in a Vault suit with all the protection power of a piece of wet burlap. If you have the cash, buy a decent gun too. Your pistol's nice but you probably want more than that. As soon as you tell Ringo that the posse is ready to go, Michelle Rodriguez runs in and tells you that the Gangers are coming, so do yourself a favor and don't talk to Ringo at night. Theoretically the night doesn't affect your combat skill checks, but it's kind of annoying to fight in the dark, so just talk to Ringo during the day and save yourself the trouble. And then go outside and take point, because no matter how helpful Chet is, you're still talking about a posse of townsfolk versus convicts with nothing to lose. If you're just going to let the convicts win you should've sided with Team Evil outright in the first place.
The convicts aren't all that hard to fight off, although you do have to run around a lot to avoid being dynamited. Some of them have armor that I assume they got off the prison guards. Some of them are basically wearing shorts and cowboy hats and trying to attack you with cleavers from the prison kitchen. I am not sure what those guys were thinking. Perhaps they're on chems. Then again, the temptation to run at them with your straight razor instead of your gun and scream that you serve a dark and hungry god, howling that you dedicate this blood this day to your lord Axlotl, is kind of powerful.
... just me? Okay then.
Once the Gangers are all dead, pants 'em. Just go up to each corpse and take everything in their inventory, including their clothing; the corpses will miraculously develop T-shirts and boxers even if you take the clothing off one of the guys who wore the shorts with a bandolier and nothing else. Do not think that this is so you can get free armor from the more sensible dead guys, because the instant you put a Powder Ganger outfit on, you're officially Disguised As A Powder Ganger even if you put it on standing in front of the townsfolk. You will be treated as a member of the Powder Gangs by anybody in the game. And their enemies will hurt you. Just pants the dead guys so you can sell their armor and any of their stuff to Chet. It's not like the dead guys need it, and it's not as if the townsfolk are going to do anything about it should you just leave the corpses in the street. Repair the actual armor with other sets of Powder Ganger getup and then go sell the stuff, and take whatever armor or weapons the dead guys have and sell or keep it as needed. Having dealt with the Gangs you'll have a nice reputation in Goodsprings and Trudy will give you a discount. Chet won't because he's afraid this'll come back and bite the town in the ass (as far as I know it doesn't).
Congratulations, you've survived your first quest and you've organized a successful posse. Pop open a Sunset Sarsaparilla, kick back with some grilled giant mantis, and find a mattress to sleep on before heading out of town. The nearest Mojave Express office is in Primm, just down the road in the town with the roller coaster, so in the morning you'll be going out of your way to go anywhere at all but there.
So the last time we met we were pootling around the desert near Goodsprings with Sunny "Totally played by Michelle Rodriguez no matter who her actual voice actor is" Smiles. The last thing she told you was to go up to the town saloon and meet the lady who runs it, since she likes to meet anybody new in town. Well, why not. Sure, you're at the opposite end of town from the saloon but that's okay. There's a road, it's nice and easy and it looks safe. Go for it.
I am not sure I can emphasize how important it is to stick to the damn roads early in this game. Everything in the desert except the plants wants to kill you. (The killer plants come later.) Unless you have good armor and a good gun and made a point of arranging your skills so that you have good combat capabilities straight out of Doc Mitchell's, you will end up a gecko's lunch, or maybe a coyote's, or maybe- and these are the real nasty ones- a scorpion's. You'll be fighting them later with merry laughter as you send their parts splattering, but for now, early in the game, stay on the roads. Please.
Mind you, if you took Weird Wasteland as a perk, you may notice on the way up the road that there's a refrigerator off to one side. With a skeleton in it. Wearing a fedora. I am very sad that the refrigerator was not radioactive, but what can you do... Yeah, you're gonna get a lot of incidents like that with Weird Wasteland. I guess someone at Obsidian complained that Fallout 2 had too many silly pop culture references in it, so they decided to make the silly stuff completely optional. Whatever.
Anyway, when you get to the saloon, the woman who runs the place is having an argument with an angry man in a Kevlar vest. Eventually the angry man goes away and you get to talk to the woman, and OH HAI PLOT. Apparently there's a prison down the road somewhere run by the New California Republic and the prisoners there staged a revolt. In the woman's own words, "They're chain gangs who were supposed to work on clearing the railroads out here. Turns out giving dynamite and blasting powder to convicted criminals wasn't such a good idea. Who knew." Joe Cobb, the guy in the vest, is one of these prisoners- they call themselves Powder Gangers- and he's trying to get the town to give up a caravan trader named Ringo who crossed the Gangers, and if they don't he's gonna blow the town up.
So, let's see. So far you've woken up in a Rat Pack era gangster movie, walked outside into a 90s post-apocalyptic movie, and now you've wandered into an old-school Western. And there's probably going to be a few more movies tacked on as you go. You know what? I can live with this. Considering how long I'm going to spend with this game just to resolve all the main plots, I'm good with the multiple genres. Beats paying the same price for movie theater admission to see this many flicks. At least I get to participate in these movies.
Anyway, this being Fallout, you can ask about how to help out the town or you can just up and leave. Janice is a reasonably nice person with a knack for talking to folks and fixing things. She also has a knack for recognizing when a situation is going to get her shot in the head again. Cranky convicts armed with dynamite and guns and not having anything to lose? Yeah, that's gonna get her shot in the head. Is she capable of sneaking past them? Oh hell no. She's not capable of sneaking past a sleeping giant evil sheep without waking it up. So... maybe she can do something about this with some help from the townsfolk-
ow. Brain. Ow. No, she is not Ciaphas Cain, HERO OF THE IMPERIUM. No. She hasn't got the Melee for it.
Anyway. Trudy- that's the lady who runs the bar, and apparently she's also the mayor, not that I remember anyone telling me this- Trudy points Janice at the old Poseidon Gas station up the road a ways. If you've only ever played Fallout 3 you don't know Poseidon; they had Red Rocket Refueling in the DC area instead. If you've played Fallout 2 you remember them. They ran the Oil Rig. I'm not gonna explain that- you either know what it means or you don't, and if you don't and you want to play Fallout 2, I'm not going to spoil it for you. Ringo's hiding up there and you should go talk to him. Maybe you can get him to leave town or something. Oh, and by the way, the guys who shot you in the head passed through. One of them was a guy in a tacky suit, and some of them were Great Khans. Gang members turned into a tribe, basically; the Khans are from Fallout 1. Guess the original Vault Dweller didn't kill 'em all off after all. They're still kinda jerks, from the sound of things. Didn't capture anybody's daughter for a slave this time, but they made a stink in town and broke the saloon's radio.
Of course they broke the radio. This is Fallout. There will always be a radio to fix. Metzger's radio. Three Dog's radio station. This radio. They do like broken radios in this game. Fix the radio and the mayor gives you some money in thanks. And you get Wayne Newton in the game- well, okay, you'd get him anyway, if you turned on your Pip-Boy's radio and set it to Radio New Vegas. He's Mr. New Vegas, the announcer.
Of course he is.
*cough*
Anyway. Once you've had your chat with Trudy you have a choice. You can leave town, because the only thing stopping you is a risk of horrible Wasteland death, and that's going to be there no matter what. You can go find Ringo and talk to him about what might help. Or you can go find Joe Cobb and offer to side with him and take over/destroy the town. I've said before that I'm really not good at playing on Team Evil, so I don't know what happens if you make nice to Joe; mind you even if I were going to be evil, Joe's a jerk, so I'd probably flip him off regardless and find some classy evil to sign up with. I went looking for Ringo instead.
Ringo's a little tense when you find him. I can't really blame him. For one, he's got Joe and the other Powder Gangers looking to kill him, and for two, he's named Ringo in a world that does not appear to remember the existence of the Beatles, which probably means he was named after something embarrassing. If you talk to him for a while he'll tell you that he's willing to fight the Gangers if he could just get some help. He'll also offer to teach you to play a card game called Caravan, which you can win a good amount of caps from. Ringo suggests that if you really want to fight back you should talk to Michelle Rodriguez, since she's seemed the most open to lending him a hand. Unfortunately I don't understand the instructions, myself, so I've just said that Janice is a bad Caravan player and left it at that.
Turns out that Ms. Rodriguez is just itching for an excuse to go lay the smackdown on the Powder Gangers, but says you'll need more than just her. She suggests Chet The Shopkeeper Next Door, Trudy the Bartendin' Mayor, and Easy Pete the Old Dude With Dynamite. She also notes that you're going to need to be able to convince them that you have a fighting chance, which means either a skillful plan or a silver tongue for Trudy, a good economic argument for Chet, and an understanding of explosives for-
Waaaaaaaaaait, is this an excuse for making sure the player has at least a couple of reasonably respectable skill scores in things other than Guns before entering the rest of the game? Sneaky, Obsidian, very sneaky. Yeah, basically in order to assemble this posse, you need to be able to pass skill checks with each of the characters you talk to for help. Chet won't open his inventory to you unless you convince him that letting the Gangers run rampant is bad for business, so that's a Barter score of 25 you need. Trudy needs to know you're sneaky enough to survive or talk cleverly enough, which means either Sneak or Speech 25. And Easy Pete, who looks just enough like Elder Lyons from the last game to make things weird, refuses to give you dynamite unless you have Explosives 25 on the grounds that he doesn't want people blowing their own arms off. Smart man, Easy Pete. (He's also got some other interesting conversational paths, so talk to him about stuff other than blowing up Powder Gangers.) Oh, and you need to talk to Doc Mitchell too. He won't be coming out to fight, but he'll give you some stimpaks to patch yourselves up. (He grew up in Vault 21. He doesn't admit it, but he gives the impression of having wicked agoraphobia. He never leaves his house.)
Once you've got them all on your side you can tell Ringo you're ready to go, but I strongly suggest buying some decent armor from Chet first, assuming you can afford it. Remember, you are fighting convicts armed with dynamite and guns, and unless you have special downloadable content you are walking around in a Vault suit with all the protection power of a piece of wet burlap. If you have the cash, buy a decent gun too. Your pistol's nice but you probably want more than that. As soon as you tell Ringo that the posse is ready to go, Michelle Rodriguez runs in and tells you that the Gangers are coming, so do yourself a favor and don't talk to Ringo at night. Theoretically the night doesn't affect your combat skill checks, but it's kind of annoying to fight in the dark, so just talk to Ringo during the day and save yourself the trouble. And then go outside and take point, because no matter how helpful Chet is, you're still talking about a posse of townsfolk versus convicts with nothing to lose. If you're just going to let the convicts win you should've sided with Team Evil outright in the first place.
The convicts aren't all that hard to fight off, although you do have to run around a lot to avoid being dynamited. Some of them have armor that I assume they got off the prison guards. Some of them are basically wearing shorts and cowboy hats and trying to attack you with cleavers from the prison kitchen. I am not sure what those guys were thinking. Perhaps they're on chems. Then again, the temptation to run at them with your straight razor instead of your gun and scream that you serve a dark and hungry god, howling that you dedicate this blood this day to your lord Axlotl, is kind of powerful.
... just me? Okay then.
Once the Gangers are all dead, pants 'em. Just go up to each corpse and take everything in their inventory, including their clothing; the corpses will miraculously develop T-shirts and boxers even if you take the clothing off one of the guys who wore the shorts with a bandolier and nothing else. Do not think that this is so you can get free armor from the more sensible dead guys, because the instant you put a Powder Ganger outfit on, you're officially Disguised As A Powder Ganger even if you put it on standing in front of the townsfolk. You will be treated as a member of the Powder Gangs by anybody in the game. And their enemies will hurt you. Just pants the dead guys so you can sell their armor and any of their stuff to Chet. It's not like the dead guys need it, and it's not as if the townsfolk are going to do anything about it should you just leave the corpses in the street. Repair the actual armor with other sets of Powder Ganger getup and then go sell the stuff, and take whatever armor or weapons the dead guys have and sell or keep it as needed. Having dealt with the Gangs you'll have a nice reputation in Goodsprings and Trudy will give you a discount. Chet won't because he's afraid this'll come back and bite the town in the ass (as far as I know it doesn't).
Congratulations, you've survived your first quest and you've organized a successful posse. Pop open a Sunset Sarsaparilla, kick back with some grilled giant mantis, and find a mattress to sleep on before heading out of town. The nearest Mojave Express office is in Primm, just down the road in the town with the roller coaster, so in the morning you'll be going out of your way to go anywhere at all but there.
