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camwynSo I realized something about one of the quests in Fallout 3 yesterday- "Blood Ties".
The basic idea of the quest is that you're supposed to deliver a letter from a woman in Megaton to her family in a settlement called Arefu. When you get there, you find out that her parents are dead and her brother is missing. Also, there's supposedly next to no blood at the scene where you find the parents' corpses (despite the huge red splortch on the floor underneath one corpse), and if you have a high enough Medicine skill you find bite marks on the necks that go all the way to the bone.
Further investigation reveals that the weird scary gang that attacked the town and killed all their Brahmin cattle the night the parents died calls themselves the Family, and they've got hold of the brother. When you actually find them, they're a fairly standard gang, but they're not Raiders- there's no body parts on the wall, no sign of drug use in their headquarters, etc. Turns out they're a group of ex-cannibals (no, really) who've been taught to follow some of the basic literary/mythical traditions of vampires in order to keep themselves from going completely berserk and chowing down on human flesh regularly. Basic community laws include: No eating flesh. No going around in daylight. No bearing children. No feeding on children. No killin' or huntin' people for pleasure, only for food. Blood, it turns out, is enough to shut off the craving to eat human flesh- even blood that's been donated and bagged rather than taken directly from the vein.
They invaded Arefu when they did because their leader had encountered Ian, the brother, a few times before and realized that the kid had a problem. It was Ian who killed the parents, not the Family- because Ian had intended to eat them. The Family stopped him before he could do that. Guess they just took the blood since it would go to waste otherwise... anyway, Ian's in seclusion with them deciding what to do next, and unless you're a very slick talker you can't convince the leader to let you see him, you have to weasel the password out of somebody. If you talk to Ian he tells you there's something wrong inside him, that he's a monster and a sick freak and he's been this way all his life. Investigate far enough and you find out that it started when he was a kid, and that he may have murdered or attempted to murder someone with intent to eat their flesh when he was around ten or twelve. His sister stopped him at the time. He's struggled with the urges all his life and he had a breakdown that night in Arefu. You're supposed to give him the letter from his sister, at which point he goes OMG SHE STILL TOTALLY CARES I SHOULD TOTALLY GO HOME NOW. After that you can make some deals involving the Family and how they treat Arefu from now on, and when you get back to Arefu, Ian's living in his parents' house again and everyone in town is okay with this. And this is the good karma solution.
So let me see if I've got this straight, Bethesda: you're saying that the only thing you REALLY need to overcome lifelong mental illness (if this isn't windigo psychosis outside a First Nations cultural framework I don't know what is) and addictive personality disorder is a family member who writes to you now and then, and to live in the community where you grew up? Living with people who can teach you a form of discipline that manages and controls the worst of your urges so that they never devolve into complete insanity means nothing. All the chronically mentally ill really need is to live with people whose idea of handling insanity is 'let their family members deal with them'. (There's a madwoman in Arefu. Her name's Brailee Ewers. Her mind snapped a while ago and she thinks the whole place is a cheerful prewar town complete with yards and grass and trees and a neighborhood association. Her husband looks after her and has gotten to the point of constant irritation with everyone around him, and calls his wife 'dumber than a bag of hammers' when he finds out she's been talking to outsiders.) This is TOTALLY the best way to straighten out the mentally ill- just put them back in the situation where they already lost control and killed two people in the first place.
Yeah, no.
Let's not even go into the expectation that everyone in Arefu is going to be so happy to see Ian that they just up and forgive him for killing his parents. Seriously- in the best-karma solution, the Family sends someone to guard Arefu, and the people in Arefu regularly donate blood, and Ian lives in Arefu again. We're talking about small town America here, post-nuke or no. There is no way that these people are going to be this forgiving. Either they'll assume the Family slaughtered the Wests, or they'll learn that Ian did it, and they're going to be angry as hell at one or the other. And I very, very much doubt that a small, frazzled, frightened community is going to be understanding enough to let the person or persons they perceive as the murderer live in peace no matter how many explanations they get. Either Ian or the Family member who gets posted as a guard would be hanging from the Arefu overpass and set on fire by the end of the week. Much as I know there are communities that are immensely supportive and caring, we're talking about a patricide/matricide here, and unless the Wests were horrifically abusive towards Ian, that's a crime that gets virtually no sympathy anywhere. I didn't see a lot of sympathy towards Brailee in the townsfolk, either- the only person who even acknowledged her existence was her husband, the bag of hammers guy. These folks are gonna be about as kind towards Ian's mental illness as most Americans were towards Lyle and Erik Menendez. At best.
I'll be rewriting the ending of that particular quest for Ellen's OOM, thanks. Ian will be staying with the Family and it will be presented as a case of keeping him in confinement and out of the townsfolk's hands until he can interact with society again, plus they'll agree to guard the village as partial reparations for past crimes against the townsfolk. (The rest of the reparations will involve getting them new farm animals and supplying them with better weapons, since those are major issues in Arefu and it's never explained where the live Brahmin come from after the quest is over in-game.) It's post-nuclear America, there are no therapists left alive; this is the best anyone can do, I reckon.
The basic idea of the quest is that you're supposed to deliver a letter from a woman in Megaton to her family in a settlement called Arefu. When you get there, you find out that her parents are dead and her brother is missing. Also, there's supposedly next to no blood at the scene where you find the parents' corpses (despite the huge red splortch on the floor underneath one corpse), and if you have a high enough Medicine skill you find bite marks on the necks that go all the way to the bone.
Further investigation reveals that the weird scary gang that attacked the town and killed all their Brahmin cattle the night the parents died calls themselves the Family, and they've got hold of the brother. When you actually find them, they're a fairly standard gang, but they're not Raiders- there's no body parts on the wall, no sign of drug use in their headquarters, etc. Turns out they're a group of ex-cannibals (no, really) who've been taught to follow some of the basic literary/mythical traditions of vampires in order to keep themselves from going completely berserk and chowing down on human flesh regularly. Basic community laws include: No eating flesh. No going around in daylight. No bearing children. No feeding on children. No killin' or huntin' people for pleasure, only for food. Blood, it turns out, is enough to shut off the craving to eat human flesh- even blood that's been donated and bagged rather than taken directly from the vein.
They invaded Arefu when they did because their leader had encountered Ian, the brother, a few times before and realized that the kid had a problem. It was Ian who killed the parents, not the Family- because Ian had intended to eat them. The Family stopped him before he could do that. Guess they just took the blood since it would go to waste otherwise... anyway, Ian's in seclusion with them deciding what to do next, and unless you're a very slick talker you can't convince the leader to let you see him, you have to weasel the password out of somebody. If you talk to Ian he tells you there's something wrong inside him, that he's a monster and a sick freak and he's been this way all his life. Investigate far enough and you find out that it started when he was a kid, and that he may have murdered or attempted to murder someone with intent to eat their flesh when he was around ten or twelve. His sister stopped him at the time. He's struggled with the urges all his life and he had a breakdown that night in Arefu. You're supposed to give him the letter from his sister, at which point he goes OMG SHE STILL TOTALLY CARES I SHOULD TOTALLY GO HOME NOW. After that you can make some deals involving the Family and how they treat Arefu from now on, and when you get back to Arefu, Ian's living in his parents' house again and everyone in town is okay with this. And this is the good karma solution.
So let me see if I've got this straight, Bethesda: you're saying that the only thing you REALLY need to overcome lifelong mental illness (if this isn't windigo psychosis outside a First Nations cultural framework I don't know what is) and addictive personality disorder is a family member who writes to you now and then, and to live in the community where you grew up? Living with people who can teach you a form of discipline that manages and controls the worst of your urges so that they never devolve into complete insanity means nothing. All the chronically mentally ill really need is to live with people whose idea of handling insanity is 'let their family members deal with them'. (There's a madwoman in Arefu. Her name's Brailee Ewers. Her mind snapped a while ago and she thinks the whole place is a cheerful prewar town complete with yards and grass and trees and a neighborhood association. Her husband looks after her and has gotten to the point of constant irritation with everyone around him, and calls his wife 'dumber than a bag of hammers' when he finds out she's been talking to outsiders.) This is TOTALLY the best way to straighten out the mentally ill- just put them back in the situation where they already lost control and killed two people in the first place.
Yeah, no.
Let's not even go into the expectation that everyone in Arefu is going to be so happy to see Ian that they just up and forgive him for killing his parents. Seriously- in the best-karma solution, the Family sends someone to guard Arefu, and the people in Arefu regularly donate blood, and Ian lives in Arefu again. We're talking about small town America here, post-nuke or no. There is no way that these people are going to be this forgiving. Either they'll assume the Family slaughtered the Wests, or they'll learn that Ian did it, and they're going to be angry as hell at one or the other. And I very, very much doubt that a small, frazzled, frightened community is going to be understanding enough to let the person or persons they perceive as the murderer live in peace no matter how many explanations they get. Either Ian or the Family member who gets posted as a guard would be hanging from the Arefu overpass and set on fire by the end of the week. Much as I know there are communities that are immensely supportive and caring, we're talking about a patricide/matricide here, and unless the Wests were horrifically abusive towards Ian, that's a crime that gets virtually no sympathy anywhere. I didn't see a lot of sympathy towards Brailee in the townsfolk, either- the only person who even acknowledged her existence was her husband, the bag of hammers guy. These folks are gonna be about as kind towards Ian's mental illness as most Americans were towards Lyle and Erik Menendez. At best.
I'll be rewriting the ending of that particular quest for Ellen's OOM, thanks. Ian will be staying with the Family and it will be presented as a case of keeping him in confinement and out of the townsfolk's hands until he can interact with society again, plus they'll agree to guard the village as partial reparations for past crimes against the townsfolk. (The rest of the reparations will involve getting them new farm animals and supplying them with better weapons, since those are major issues in Arefu and it's never explained where the live Brahmin come from after the quest is over in-game.) It's post-nuclear America, there are no therapists left alive; this is the best anyone can do, I reckon.
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