Spoiler Warning 2×20: Anger Management

By Shamus Posted Thursday Jul 8, 2010

Filed under: Spoiler Warning 114 comments

If you’re playing the Spoiler Warning drinking game, then you might want to go ahead and put yourself on the waiting list for liver transplant before you hit play.

Hello, person from the future. This space used to have an embed from the video hosting site Viddler. The video is gone now. If you want to find out why and laugh at Viddler in the process, you can read the entire silly story for yourself.

At any rate, the video is gone. Sorry. On the upside, we're gradually re-posting these old videos to YouTube. Check the Spoiler Warning page to see the full index.

I’d intended to point this out during the episode, but of course the conversation got all confused like it always does and I forgot:

What about the slave collars when you free the kids? The game goes out of its way to show that your slave collar will detonate if you run. Fine, fine. But then the game forgets all about this and everyone just runs off with no problem. What’s the deal with these collars? Are they proximity based? Or are they detonated manually by one of the slave owners?

There are fences and armed guards to keep the slaves in check, so the story doesn’t need the collars to justify their imprisonment. It’s just another element of the world that’s established, forgotten about, and then contradicted, leaving nagging questions or plot holes.

Also, as Josh mentioned, we are now recording in W I D E S C R E E N! What he doesn’t mention because we didn’t know it until now, is that Viddler is crap and doesn’t recognize the widescreen-ness of the video. It insists on mooshing it down to some other aspect ratio, and no degree of fussing with the embedded player size can correct this. Boo.

 


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114 thoughts on “Spoiler Warning 2×20: Anger Management

  1. Henebry says:

    Interestingly, the ad embedded at the beginning of the episode is un-smooshed widescreen. Says something about Viddler’s priorities: save the goodies for the paying customers!

  2. X2-Eliah says:

    Widescreen, that’s good. Compression, not so much.

  3. Kreek says:

    I’ve notessed a few inaccuracies in your beliefs about fallout 3

    a few episodes ago you were saying that ghouls weren’t immortal until fallout 2

    however fallout 1 takes place a mere 84 years after the war, its possible that ghouls simply didn’t KNOW they were immortal until fallout 2

    that said, i haven’t yet had the opportunity to play 1 or 2 yet so its just speculation on my part

    as for the collars on the slaves, yes its stated that the slavers monitor them and manually detonate them

    in many cases when you get things wrong i just consider it a case of “Didn’t do the research” http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DidNotDoTheResearch

    despite these few mistakes I’m quite enjoying the play-though

    1. Shamus says:

      Actually, if they are detonated manually, then where is the remote? Or are there multiple remotes? You’d need that to get the slave collars off. They run off, still wearing the collars. Are they going to wear them for the rest of their lives?

      Any time you need to “do research” to make sense of a story, it’s a problem with the story, not you.

      1. Jep jep says:

        Well, according to dialogue (if you rescue the kids the sneaky way) the remote is supposedly the computer in Eulogy’s lair. Just another case of “look for your answers” storytelling philosophy.

        1. X2-Eliah says:

          Shame that the other fifty or so problems related with little lamplight can’t be ailed by doing a bit of research.

        2. Shamus says:

          So… inmate hops the fence. Slaver then runs inside to to EJ’s computer and activates their “detonate” thing? Is that what happened to Carter?

          And that means these people that have just run off (still wearing collars) could be killed at any time by someone using EJ’s computer. So they aren’t really free at all.

          1. Syal says:

            That would have been a great twist ending; the collared boys show up at Little Lamplight, the slavers blow them up, the hero shrugs at the sight of the town in ruins and goes on past.

          2. Jep jep says:

            Well it really makes much more sense if you do it the sneaky way. Part of the quest involves that you need to either use the computer to mess up the “detonation signal” so they can’t blow up the collars or let one of the kids somehow remotely access it (or something like that..I can’t remember) so they can run away safely.

            1. Roll-a-die says:

              Yet, it doesn’t happen when you do it the brute force way, because Bethesda didn’t want to kill 1/4 it’s town of Mini-Sues’. It wasn’t sure how it would effect ratings, and it sure as hell didn’t want to offend people, I mean what with the blatant swearing, the implied sex, the shear amount gore, the implied torture of children. Ya, that’s a fun fact, the room Randy went into behind the pen, there’s actually splatters of blood all over that area, the toys have blood stains on them, a mattress soaked in blood and so on. Is this kind of a “You see this bar, I’ve built it up with my bare hands, you see those pictures on the wall, I raised those kids, look down the street, you see the church at the end of it, I built that, what about the houses, I built those too. But you know what, you screw ONE GOAT…” issue for video games?

              1. Vipermagi says:

                Interrogating the kids after killing everything gets you dialog that states they managed to disrupt the signal, iirc.

                I do wonder: Why don’t the slavers pop the collars once they notice they’re dropping like flies? Scorched Earth and so on.

                1. Someone says:

                  Well, its not like they are going to flush all of their “goods” down the drain just because of you. Besides, they have no idea you are after the children, for all they know you are just another dumbass vigilante ‘needs puttin down.

              2. Jep jep says:

                You have to remember that the main reason you don’t really see any violence towards kids in any game at all is because of laws in place in a lot of countries that restrict or prohibit the depiction of any sort of excessive violence towards children. Any game that would profoundly offend these would practically lead to it potentially being banned completely or set the rating so high that the stores can’t put it up for display etc. Just in general hamper the sales to a point that it could kill your business.

                I can’t really come up with more than three games from the top of my head where you could even witness something bad happening to children and as for those go:

                Fallout 2
                Heavy Rain
                Dragon Age: Origins

                And aside from FO2, you’ll never get to see any child get gored or otherwise suffering violent fate and you’ll never be fighting children specifically. (DAO: Despite the fact that you might be fighting a possessed child somewhere in the story, the actual fight is against the demon)

                Even FO2 had to be released with a non-children version in some countries.

                http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallout_2#International_versions_and_censorship

                ___

                So it’s all there for fairly understandable reasons, plotholes or no. I think it was a stupid choice to begin with to put so many children in the game, let alone create a whole underground town full of them. It just doesn’t work with the rest of the setting. For what it’s worth, you can actually witness there in the Murder Pass a whole selection of what looks like children’s skeletons laying around.. sort of figures they at least tried to make some effort to go around the fact that no kids can’t die in the game.. (except the all two of them in Megaton)

                1. Someone says:

                  Adding to the list of “games where you could even witness something bad happening to children”:

                  Deus Ex. You could blow up, knife and shoot the little buggers yourself, drag their corpses to the nearest piss-stained alley, drop them in a dumpster and reduce their bodies to bloody giblets with a laser sword. Ah, simpler times…
                  Pathologic. Not only could you kill children, you were actually required to kill them to achieve some of your goals.
                  Dwarf Fortress. Duh.
                  I think you could kill children in some of the Hitman games.
                  Silent Hill. Duh. Again.

                  But I digress.

                  Its interesting that you can kill children by blowing up Megaton in FO3. The thing to note here, is that its possible only if you dig deeper into the game than most Moral Guardians and witchhunters ever will.

                2. ACHV_Dragon says:

                  Don’t forget the Fables. In the first one your sister gets her eyes taken out of her head. In the second, your sister is shot then you are shot out of a window and fall 20 stories. And somehow live.

                3. Jep jep says:

                  Like I said, it really is all about the business. Suppose some games just get away with it better than others, but it’s still not that many games all-in-all. The current trend seems to be they specifically avoid having violence happening to children. Half-Life 2 was supposed to have kids in it; They had even included them in a test version with the kids working in some Combine factory. But eventually they got axed from the game and instead Valve came up with the suppression field thing as to explain why there are no kids. Which worked for the better anyway, but there it is.

                  Edit: Link-> http://half-life.wikia.com/wiki/Combine_Factories#The_Cremator_Factory

                4. Atarlost says:

                  It’s rather a lot older, but I recall there being room in an Ultima V dungeon full of hostile children behind bars. And you lose karma in that game if you leave a combat or room that has living hostiles. So, of course, you jab halberds through the bars until they’re all dead to keep your good karma.

                  I think Ultima VI has them too, but in the open where they can actually attack you, but it doesn’t have karma loss for fleeing battle. Doesn’t give karma loss for killing anything hostile either though.

                  Then there’s Ultima VII where your second companion is a kid. I guess they couldn’t do that now because he tends to die if you go to dangerous places before he levels up. Actually, all companions do. There are also a couple altars out in the woods with dead babies on them.

                  Origin wasn’t very child friendly.

                5. IronCastKnight says:

                  Also Drakengard, a game which, if one bothers to play beyond the generic default ending, becomes all about killing children.

                6. evileeyore says:

                  I think the less said about Bioshock and the horrors visited upon children the better. ;)

                7. Sleeping Dragon says:

                  Yeah, the problem they know about this policy in advance and then, knowing that, they build an unskippable city of children, make the most annoying NPCs ever, make the only workaround not only REPORTEDLY deadly but actually literally deadly and not working (I mean trekking through the irradiated wasteland)… they even went so far as to remove the usual “lawful stupid/idiotic evil” opposition and plain and simple just give you a good quest… I mean, we’re complaining a lot about how the “evil” options usually make no sense other than being a bastard but Lamplight doesn’t even have that one, not for real anyway.

                  Also, Re: Megaton. Yes, you can kill 2 children by blowing it up, but it is abstract. Blowing up an entire city isn’t (from the rating point of view) as bad as killing a person “up close”.

                8. Sekundaari says:

                  I’ll add Arx Fatalis to the list. I can’t remember whether you could kill the one child in the game by sword (probably), but you definitely could let her die. Sacrificed by an evil cult in a demon summoning ritual, no less.

      2. SolkaTruesilver says:

        Well.. not necessarely, Shamus.

        Many of our most favourite games have in-game explanation of some of the logic fail that we encounter, but the game don’t force-feed these explanation to you. They are pretty gameplay-wise useless, and they only satisfy those who want to go and look out for this information.

        You know, like the Codex Entry of Dragon Age. or the Books in Oblivion. Or the books and many conversation of Baldur’s Gate. Or many computer entries in the original Fallout.

        Yes, it is a case of “did not do the research”. The explanation is in the game, you just missed it, and then you judge the game harshly because YOU missed the explanation, not because the game doesn’t provide you with one.

        I ain’t forgiving Fallout 3 for many of it’s shortcoming, but don’t judge harshly people who tells you that you simply missed the information you complain is missing.

        1. Shamus says:

          Certainly a codex is a cool thing, but if the game just threw everything into the codex and left obvious unexplained things all over the place then I’d fault it there, too. A codex is a great way to enrich a world. But you shouldn’t need to turn to it to have basic things explained to you. If something doesn’t make sense, it yanks you out of the story. If it happens a lot, then you get Plot Collapse.

          And in this case the explanation makes no flaming sense. So it’s even WORSE. It looks like a plot hole, but if you take the time to dig around and see how it works, you’ll see it’s really a COUPLE of plot holes.

          1. rayen says:

            That why you hate it so much it’s a nested plot-hole.

          2. evileeyore says:

            Amazingly enough, I’m with Shamus and crew on this one.

            When I first encountered the slavers and got the “As long as the slave is moving towards Paradise Falls the collar won’t explode” I presumed that meant it was monitored automatically. So if a slave is moving towards PF and not moving away, their safe. I figured once they got there it might switch (or be switched) over to a “As long as they are within a set perimeter” deal.

            Then I get the real story, that it takes a Slaver atcivating the collar for it to go explodey… and it all went stupid.

        2. Roll-a-die says:

          Once again, it comes down to main and side plot points and back story/setting information. Your setting can have holes out the wazoo, as long as none of them are privy or extrapolated on within the plot, and thus brought directly to the attention of the players.

        3. acronix says:

          So, the Codex, the in-game books…all are a Compendium of Explained Plot Holes for Dummy Players?

      3. Roll-a-die says:

        To be fair, this only applies to main or side plot points, which in this case it is, not backstory. Deus Ex would likely make very little sense, backstory wise, without some research in game. But if you learn everything, you’ll eventually find that it’s remarkably well crafted.

        1. Kdansky says:

          I argue that something should make sense on first glance, and possibly have some interesting hooks that are unclear. And if you dig deeper, you find those.

          – The slaves wear collars, which explode on certain conditions, such as leaving a certain zone, or removing the collar, or sometimes for no apparent reason at all.
          – There is a computer room that is heavily guarded which contains the machinery for the explosion orders.
          – You can find out that the “no reason” explosions have been triggered manually, because that is possible too, and that one can also manually override the explosion mechanism.

          Look how many interesting things you could do with this!

  4. Digital says:

    that would actually be kinda clever if the drugs effected you like that

  5. Mike says:

    I thought you had to disable the computer system before you could free the kids – that disabled the collars.

    1. X2-Eliah says:

      That probably was intended, but then characters with insufficient science stat couldn’t do it at all, and we can’t have that in a Bethesda game now, can we?

      1. Roll-a-die says:

        Actually in the default game, your options are to buy them, to steal the keys or hack the computer, and thus do a stupid quest, or re-enact D-Day.

        1. Shamus says:

          Steal the keys? Who has them? I’d always wanted to be able to take slave collars off of people. That’s actually really cool. Can you take the collars off of the adults in the slave pen?

          1. Valaqil says:

            If I remember correctly, you should be able to remove collars with a high Science or Explosives.

            1. Shamus says:

              You can do that to the wasteland slaves, but the attempt is activated by dialog.

              These slaves have no such dialog option. :(

            2. RTBones says:

              I have encountered a wandering slave or two that will allow you to try and disarm the collar before it blows up, but never seen it on a “random slave.” I have never actually successfully done the disarm – there always seems to be a raider firing missiles at me when I have found the wandering slave. Lets see — disarm the collar and get blown up by a missile, or run from the collar and “disable” the idiot raider lobbing missiles from h3ll to breakfast….

              1. Kdansky says:

                hthreell? Is that some kind of C-class responsible for tree-structures?

          2. acronix says:

            The key is in one of the named slavers, Forty or Fifty or Something. There´s a copy in Eulogy´s table too, if I recall correctly.

            1. Audacity says:

              Isn’t that just the key to the slave pen gate? I don’t think it lets you remove the collars.

              1. acronix says:

                Yes, I was answering to “where are the keys?” for the “you can solve this quest via using keys” from Roll-a-die. The collars are always kept. Unless you blow their heads.

  6. X2-Eliah says:

    Another thing, I noticed how the Mysterious stranger Jingle went off several times in this vid (and in previous ones too) without him actually appearing.. Is that another bug?

    1. Greg says:

      I think he’s just off-camera at the time.

      1. Vipermagi says:

        The camera would still show the Stranger then.
        The sound does play some times, but there are more conditions to him triggering. One such condition is enemy health (has to be below an arbitrary X). The sound, however, is not tied to those same conditions, so it occasionally plays incorrectly.

        Due to Josh’s pretty good luck with triggering the Stranger, it happens pretty often.

    2. Nidokoenig says:

      When I played, I’d occasioanlly hear the jingle go repeatedly in crowded areas. When this happened, I’d have to kill the guy I was VATSing, but everyone else in the vicinity would get slaughtered. This was why I switched to a modified stranger with just a combat shotty, I like to have someone left to punch the blood out of.

    3. Audacity says:

      It’s a bug, sometimes the Stranger gets locked inside pieces of level geometry. An example of this can been seen in one of the Pitt episodes. The Stranger appears waist deep in sidewalk and unable to do anything except wiggle back and forth.

  7. Someone says:

    The collars are supposedly detonated manually, I guess slavers carry some kind of remote and eyeball the explosion every time someone manages to escape.

    Which raises some questions about your (PC’s) particular enslaving method. Apparently you can slap on a collar on someone as far away as Rivet City and they will obediently leg it to their new life of slavery in Paradise Falls, braving all the dangers of the wasteland to get shipped off to some shitty steel mill. If potential explosive decapitation motivates them to do all that, who is supposed to detonate the collar? You dont have to stick around to eyeball it, and even if you did, you would have no way to blow up the slave. And the slavers dont seem to have a sophisticated surveilance system to remotely monitor it. The way you enslave people is either a rather expensive bluff or another thing nobody thought to adress.

    Overall, collars were added as a gameplay crutch to allow enslaving game mechanic. The fact that they had to add not one but TWO bogus devices to shoehorn it in is…yeah

    1. Audacity says:

      I was about to bring this up as well, as it raises all sorts of questions. Questions like: “How do the slavers broadcast the detonation signal any distance, when Karma Dog can’t send a clear signal more than a few city blocks?”; and “Why don’t they give you a detonator, or remove Clover’s collar? If they have the ability to destroy what you just bought anytime they want, do you really own it, or are you just renting?”; and also “If these collars are so effective, and the Pitt is their biggest, or rather, ONLY customer, why don’t the slaves in the Pitt have collars? Wouldn’t that be a far more effective way to control them, and prevent uprisings?”

  8. Drexer says:

    Really Josh really? A Spoiler Ending?

    (I’m assuming it still is Josh the one working on the editing)

    Tsc tsc tsc

    On another note, I am enjoying quite a bit this tone of range towards the sub-plot, it is quite differentiated from the previous rage at the main plot. And still fun.

    And you know what Shamus, I think you ntoed down exactly my problem with Fallout 3. I bought the game, thinking it had been made with FPS fun in mind, not knowing about its roots yet. And I hated it. Then I played Fallout 1&2 and I loved them.

    I’m not so angry at Bethesda that they tried to move towards the simple yet fun mechanic. I’m angry that they didn’t do so fully. They created some concepts where it would be nice to just go wild, but then you have the most worst parts of an RPG which make no sense without the rest(inventory, low health with constant healing, etc…) which restrain you and prevent you from having any kind of fun whatsoever.

    1. Josh says:

      I needed footage that was in 16:9, because Windows Movie Maker apparently can only do 4:3 or 16:9 in a single video, but not both. And the only footage I had was from the three episodes we’d recorded in widescreen.

      And then it turned out that Viddler hates widescreen anyway. Awesome use of my time, right there.

      (On that note, I did manage to encode a video that worked in widescreen on Viddler, so hopefully, we won’t have any further problems with squashed videos from here on out…)

  9. Syal says:

    I just wanted to draw attention to the awesome profile shot of Cuftbert at 28:24-26.

    It makes it even more ridiculous that those kids would try to threaten him.

  10. Valaqil says:

    One would assume that the plywood door was built by the teachers / guides at Little Lamplight during their time there. Or perhaps a few of the 14-16 year olds before they have to leave.

    I have to _completely_ disagree about Nuka Grenades. Each grenade requires one quantum. If I want AP, I have my stats and perhaps some Psycho. My most recent playthrough, I focused on Explosives and grabbed all three schematics for grenades. That means that for (1) Nuka Cola Quantum, I could make (3) Nuka Grenades that _each_ dealt 500 damage. Without a critical hit. I did that quest, found as many Quantums as I could, and was swimming in high explosives through the end of Broken Steel. And I never took the Quantum perk. (I got to where I would snipe as many as possible with the Victory Rifle, then go on a rampage with Nuka Grenades and Bottlecap Mines. I can not recommend that option enough.)

    Heh. Nuked the town, terrorized them with the Shishkebab… “No sir, I’m not planning on making trouble, Mayor MacCready Sir.”

    1. PurePareidolia says:

      Yeah, I think according to the wiki there are 120 quantums in the game so there will still be plenty. Or you could cheat.

      1. Shamus says:

        Wow. 120? I don’t think I’ve found more than 80 of them, and i thought I’d been everywhere.

        1. Someone says:

          Every Nuka-Cola vending machine has a small chance to spawn a quantum when you first enter its world cell. Thus their overall amount widely fluctuates depending on your luck.

        2. Valaqil says:

          I checked for curiosity’s sake. Apparently there are 97 in placed locations and you should be able to get ~120 from vending machines based on standard drop rates. There are probably ~200 in your game.

  11. PurePareidolia says:

    In one of my playthroughs Squirrel (one of the child slaves in Paradise falls) mentioned he had deactivated the collars himself and bet they wouldn’t even notice or something.

    Turns out nobody did.

    Also I did this with Child at heart and there’s an unmarked quest where you can play Princess and Macreedy off against each other. That and a free laser rifle, so that’s nice too.

    Now, I didn’t find this as annoying as most the first time through. Mainly because I was too busy wondering what the hell was going on and how it worked. But also because I had already cleared out Paradise falls and was allowed in off the bat. Not that I don’t recognize how it is incredibly annoying when you pay attention to them obviously.

    Now I know that may have sounded like a backhanded compliment given it wasn’t totally negative. For that I apologize and wish to point out I still believe they’re in league with the super mutants. it’s the only explanation that makes any modicum of sense out of that place.

    Oh, and you could just use the console to unlock such doors. Just saying.

    1. Audacity says:

      EDIT/

      The Symbiosis of Survival and Human Evil:

      A short, but unintentional, thesis exploring the power structure and sustainability of the Little Lamplight Caverns settlement, and its relationship to the surrounding settlements and factions, both political and moral.

      /EDIT

      I always figured they must worship the super mutants and give them human sacrifices, Lord of the Flies style. They probably alert the mutants before they kick the older kids out the front door, instead of delivering them direct, to keep up appearances.

      That’s why there are so very few people, all of them utterly useless whiny idiots, in Bigtown. The super mutants only choose the strongest and smartest to join their ranks. The others are allowed to live in Bigtown, which is really nothing more than an elaborate holding pen where the humans sustain themselves until needed to bolster food stockpiles, like free range cattle.

      Obviously the children wouldn’t be at all keen on this idea if they have to eventually grow up, so it is likely that only the two leaders, the mayor and schoolteacher, know. They inform only those they clandestinely select and groom to be their replacements of how things truly work, then when they grow old enough, sneak off to one of the other settlements rather than Bigtown. In these settlements they kidnap toddlers which they deliver back to Little Lamplight, thus sustaining the population, and explaining why the wasteland’s child quota is only four.

      They may also be in league with the slavers, whose faked raids they rely on to maintain the fear of the wasteland outside which allows them to hold authority. In exchange they occasionally gift them a few of the healthier better looking kids to be sold as slaves. This arrangement is also a useful method of eliminating political enemies and those too close to stumbling upon the truth.

      This elaborate facade is the more easily maintained by the fungus which serves as the children’s primary food source. It contains chemicals which induce a mild sense of apathy, and sharpen most young children’s inability to focus on a single complex subject for any great length of time. This is also why older children must leave, as the drug’s effects decrease with age.

      The leaders, and their proteges, avoid this effect by minimizing their ‘shroom intake. Instead eating primarily scavenged foodstuffs. However two hundred year old packaged foods are barely digestible, often inducing problems like chronic diarrhea, or constipation. Much of Mcready’s jerkassiness is owed to this fact, as he has not shit right in the whole of his ten year existence.

      1. Michael says:

        Wow, the idea that McReady literally cannot take a dump makes so much sense… he’ll just explode when he hits 40. (Cookie for the first person to get the reference.)

        Anyway, I think you might be over thinking this a bit. It would require the super mutants to have a long term plan and the ability to delay gratification, neither of which are abilities they seem to possess.

        1. Someone says:

          They are a lot like the writers in that regard…

        2. Audacity says:

          I am over thinking it, for the sake of humor. I originally only wrote the first paragraph, but that couldn’t logically stand on its own so I had to keep filling the holes.

  12. ps238principal says:

    So am I to understand that you’ve never had Joseph reactivate the computer in the reactor room that allows you a back entrance to Vault 87?

    It doesn’t make up for Little Lamplight, but there’s a terminal just beyond that door with a kind of nicely dark bit of vault history regarding a guy who committed suicide (and you’ll love this) because he could hear the children in Little Lamplight outside of the walls, mistaking them for his dead child’s ghost or something.

  13. Someone says:

    I remember the first time I was playing, I speech checked McDouche at the entrance and decided to walk around and explore, talked to the kids. McJackass started getting on my nerves, and obviously I decided to teach him a lesson (Wasteland Etiquette 101: Talking shit about people in power armor may prove hazardous to your health), pulled an assault rifle out of my pocket, wondering if the local equivalent of the childkiller perk gives you 5% crits against children or something… The moment when I discovered that the kids are invincible was the single most frustrating moment in the game (if not in my entire life).

    Nuka grenades are pretty neat, though Girderhade is ridiculous.

    I was pretty frustated by Paradise Falls when I first got there. It was supposed to be the obligatory “wretched hive of scum and villainy”, but the only really evil thing there is slavery. It has nothing on New Reno, where you had the whole gamut of postapocalyptic evil activities: prostitution, pornography, street violence and gang warfare, drug distribution, weapons trafficking, gambling, etc. Four (FOUR!) kingpins to work for and even a possibility of a spectacular quadruple-cross. Lots of fun activities for opportunistic scum. Paradise Falls is just no comparison, there is nothing to do there other then round up more and more slaves for more and more useless caps. And most of the slaves are raiders anyway.

  14. RTBones says:

    Things that make you go Hmmmm….: can you actually have a spoiler for Spoiler Warning? The ending credits for this episode would seem to indicate YES.

    My first play through, like most everybody else, I was just flat annoyed by the kids at Little Lamplight – and I passed the speech check. I was so annoyed, in fact, that I simply tried to blast through this section of the game without paying much attention to it. When I actually did pay attention to what was going on, I ended up ignoring it due to being, well, that much more annoyed. There is not even so much as a simple minefield at the back gate – which, if employed properly (along with some dialog from some of the @#!$!! kids), could at least BEGIN to explain why the plywood wall and a bunch of @#$!! kids could hold back a Super Mutant infestation.

    1. acronix says:

      There´s a theory, but it is unsupported by the game (surprised? I bet no). The supermutants and the kids have a agreement involving Big Town. The supermutants can´t reproduce, so they need to either kidnap people or breed them. So why not do both? They leave Lamplight alone if, every so often, they spit to the wasteland the “grown ups”, who are latter kidnaped once they get to Big Town to be thrown into the FEV-things-that-make-supermutants. In exchange, the supermutants protect the kids. It all makes sense! Except where the kids get more kids.

      My take is that the kids are fungi. Or have a bunch of adults slaved for breeding purposes.

      1. Andrew B says:

        Well, they only chuck them out at 16. It might not be legal, but kids can certainly reproduce younger than that. (And, given they are living in a totally adult free environment with, one can only assume, limited to no contraception, it seems pretty certain to me that they would!)

        1. acronix says:

          That´s just “Ewwwwww!”. I vote for fungi!

        2. Michael says:

          I believe that was my will to live gasping it’s last.

          On a serious note, the chances for a woman female to survive birthing, without medical aid, and under 16 is pretty freakin’ slim. So even if you’re right (and that was my first thought on the subject), birthing would have a horrific attrition rate, and couldn’t maintain a stable population base.

          EDIT: Is there a strike out tag? Because the spoiler was supposed to simply have a line through it… not a red box over it… oops…

          1. TSED says:

            Uhhh, some one doesn’t know about history.

            European wives were married off at 11 easily for decades if not centuries. Women under, say, 8 would likely have a very hard time surviving, but 12, 14, 16 year olds? Easy.

  15. potemkin.hr says:

    OMG OMG, widescreen :D
    Finaly now I can watch the episodes on my 16:9 laptop.
    This keeps getting better and better…

  16. Gandaug says:

    Hate. Viddler. So. Much.

    1. McNutcase says:

      Ditto. My screen is wide. I put it in full screen mode, and it’s frakking smooshed. I think Josh needs to suck it up and not use all of his shiny new pixels, because VIDDLER IS A PILE OF BRAHMIN BYPRODUCTS!

  17. Greg says:

    As I commented last episode. I have never ever before played a game which made me feel frustrated by my inability to murder children.

    Maybe Fallout3 is like the vaults — never intended to save anyone.

    1. Senji says:

      Don’t you just LOVE mods. Invincible jackasses eh? Not anymore >:)

  18. Marlowe says:

    I always assault Paradise Falls because – y’know – I always play as a good character and the stuff that they’ve got here in Paradise Falls is worth a fortune.

    Always nice when mass murder – er…doing good and making a profit coincide.

    I’ve had it happen to me where a dead body will yell at me for stealing stuff. Try stealing some more stuff: see if she complains about it.

    Looting corpses for positive karma!

    Q. How do you tell the difference between talking corpses and ghouls?
    A. The corpses look better.

      1. Marlowe says:

        Nice article. I think the Thief series has the lock on ‘heroic stealing’ and appropriately treated the whole activity with sardonic humour.

      2. Jarenth says:

        I…

        …I want to play Peaceout: New Vegas.

  19. acronix says:

    I always wondered why Vault 87 is the only vault that has TWO (2) backdoors connected to a bunch of caves. What´s their purpouse? Is it explained somewhere, or are they just a Entrance Convenient Doors?

    1. Nyaz says:

      Yeah, that was what I was thinking might be the problem, too. Josh, are you exporting this as anamorphic? If you are, use square pixels instead.

      So if you’re exporting it as 720×480 and there’s a checkbox for “anamorphic” in your video editing application, uncheck that and export it with 860×480 and SQUARE pixels (I think that’s the widescreen square pixel-ratio thingy for NTSC. I’m unsure. I live in a PAL-country where the numbers are more sensible.)

    2. McNutcase says:

      “It’s your fault for doing the sensible thing. We didn’t bother to check for this flag, so you need to turn off the setting that makes your recordings not suck for everything else.”

  20. Neil D says:

    One of the things I enjoy most about these types of games are the little tableaus and object constructions you come across, like the beer-pong thing. Or better, the plunger room where you can clearly trace the last few moments of a whacked-out fetishist’s life. These things really give a sense that these places were inhabited and that objects were placed there by real (and often, quite loopy) people, rather than by some randomizer. (Or more prosaically, by an imaginative level designer rather than a bored, lackadaisical one.)

    How bored or insane would a person have to be to set up a chess game between a garden gnome and a teddy-bear?

    I think my favourite has to be the utility tunnel near Penn. West (if I recall correctly). It wasn’t until I was on my way out and passing the scene for the second time that my back-brain processed what the two ramps with the car hulk sitting between them, the motorcycle wreckage beyond the ramps, and the skeleton hanging from the overhead light all had to do with each other. Man, did I laugh at that!

    1. acronix says:

      We must give credit to Bethesda for those. They may suck at plotting and dialogue writting, but they are awesome at scenery storytelling.

    2. Josh R says:

      My fear is that Obsidian won’t do as good a job, and end up with a much blander world.

      On topic, I cleared out Paradise falls long before I hit little lamplight. So didn’t really have any problem.

      1. PurePareidolia says:

        Agreed. that’s really one of the only fears I have for New Vegas.

        1. Coffee says:

          The tough question is, if you had to choose just one, would you rather have a bland world with interesting characters, or an interesting world with bland characters?

          1. Syal says:

            Whichever one had the sense to not focus on the bland part.

            1. Coffee says:

              I think you can forgive a bland landscape (to a point) when the characters a) make up a significant proportion of the story, and b) are interesting beyond the obvious.

              While the set pieces of Fallout 3 always seem interesting and cool, but you can’t have a conversation with them. They’re wonderful, but they work because you’re only seeing the aftermath; you’ve got the punchline, and they didn’t have to make a joke.

              1. X2-Eliah says:

                Then again, if we are talking ‘interesting characters’ AKA Bioware RPG tropes, then that’s not really an improvement at all.

          2. PurePareidolia says:

            Having played Borderlands for a bit and gotten a feel for bland characters, I’d much rather a bland world. I can fast travel and ignore the world, or download mods to make it more interesting, but if the characters are just glorified “help wanted” billboards I have absolutely no emotional investment in any of the plot or any of the side quests. This greatly limits the amount of time I spend playing versus the amount of time I spend saying “why am I playing?”.

            Of course Borderlands answers this with “get money, level up, MORE GUNS!” to which I reply “help! I can’t stop playing and it’s 12am!” to which I’m dismayed to hear only maniacal laughter, or in more reality based scenarios, nothing at all because I’m too busy getting more guns, money and XP.

            I guess it doesn’t matter which one is interesting, as long as there’s still something interesting enough for me to keep playing.

            1. Michael says:

              I’m not sure I’d call Borderlands bland. Simple, idiotic(ly hilarious), sure, but the setting is filled with flavor.

              I’m not sure if that makes sense or just sounds like me rambling like a fanboy…

  21. TheBritish says:

    Clearly I’m the only person who liked the Sierra Nuka-Cola quest :(

    I liked collecting something like Nuka Cola Quantum, where it’s everywhere, but rare-ish. Where collecting all of them is difficult :(

    I just liked Sierra. I thought she was one of the more original Fallout 3 characters. She wasn’t a generic wastlander… she was so addicted to Nuka Cola she was crazy in a way that entertained me… :(
    — Also, I never actually -want- to kill kids in videogames, but it bugs me when I throw a grenade at an army and the child in the middle is unharmed. I would rather just be punished prohibitively for harming a child than the surviving a nuke… but games companies either can’t risk harm to children, may not find it moral themselves, or hey, who wants to do 3d modelling on a dead child? It’s not the most fun job.

    I think I’d live with “Game Over – You were so distraught over the murder of an innocent child, you chose to take your own life.” :)

    1. acronix says:

      Funny thing: in Minefield, there´s the skeleton of a kid lying in a bedroom that has a bunch of toys gathered around. It´s just a regular one scaled down, but still.

      1. Sekundaari says:

        I’m sure I’ve seen a skeleton of a baby (scaled down even further) in some DC metro tunnel, next to it’s carriage and the skeleton of its parent.

        1. acronix says:

          Wouldn´t that be a midget more than a baby?

          1. Roll-a-die says:

            There’s also the fact that the kids skeleton morphs and splits correctly when shot, it just doesn’t have the gore on the limbs.

          2. Sekundaari says:

            I don’t think midgets travel in baby carriages. (Could be wrong, of course.) But yes, regarding the bone structure the skull is too small for a baby and so on. The simple scaling down is far from a perfect method.

  22. Fists says:

    On the kids being rediculously annoying I have a possible explanation although it could be a little far-fetched: Maybe the kids being invincible and obnoxious is really a satire of modern society and legal systems.
    Kids in real life are becoming obnoxious and arrogant because they know that no-one is allowed to punish them in any meaningful way. A sixteen year old boy was recently caught stealing from us and he had no fear or remorse despite already having a string of offenses and just being out of juvenile detention, he was exactly like McCready in knowing he was untouchable despite the men confronting him being much bigger.

    A more plausible concept is that one designer came up with the idea from this concept but when suggesting it used the guise of PC griefing so that the others would go along

    1. Coffee says:

      Waaaaay too much credit to Bethesda, I think.

      More like making kids vulnerable to damage at all would a) cause a need for editing in some entire markets, b) cause outrage if/when the Jack Thompsons of the world found out about this “Child Murder Simulator,” and c) mean that the player would miss out on all this cool stuff! Wow! Cool stuff!

      I’m guessing the design brief for these guys was something like “These kids survive on their own in this cave, they get attacked by slavers and super mutants, but fend them off. They’ve got the attitude of kids, but the wasteland savvy of adventurers, and they aren’t afraid of no grown up who wants to march into their town – no matter who they are!” and that went through the monkey-typewriter treatment and became “these kids will antagonise you for no reason, continually.”

      1. Syal says:

        It IS conceivable that it’s a deliberate attack on the child immortality regulation; if enough people complain that the children are invincible, then maybe they won’t have to be the next time around.

        Of course, the obvious answer fits better.

        1. Someone says:

          Im afraid complaints like “let us kill children, why cant we murder children!?” just give more ammo to gamebashers worldwide. To us it may be an obvious isolated case of bad writing, but take any Lamplight hating post here out of context (like the scaremongering media outlets always do) and you have an instant Fox News controversy, milkable for months to come, complete with pitchfork-wielding Concerned Parents, aspiring politicians looking for things to rally against, the whole package.

          1. Jarenth says:

            Solution: just let the hate-mongering gamebashers play through Little Lamplight themselves. Nobody goes through that section without jonesing for some retaliation.

            It occurs to me that maybe this was Bethesda’s plan for Little Lamplight all along.

      2. Scourge says:

        Sounds to me like a case of: McCreedy is a pretty cool guy. He fights supermutants and monster and isn’t afraid of anything.

      3. acronix says:

        I´m quite sure they didn´t design the “kids fend of the atrocities of the wasteland!” first and then added the jerkass atitude to them. They first made them invincible (for obvious reasons) and then though what they could do with that: and they tought it would be very funny to have people want to kill them, but not being able to, so they gave them the worst possible personality, which base is a bunch of insults directed to the player.

        Addendum: Wahahahahaha! I said “they tought”. I´m so funny!

  23. Ravens Cry says:

    Though your guys ranting is great, I simply adore the Funkorama theme you chose. Seriously, I downloaded it from Kevin MacLeod’s website.

  24. evileeyore says:

    Side Note since viddler refuses to accept my comments:

    In response to the grenade naysayers,
    If you learn to use grenades properly, timing throwing them, bouncing them, etc, you can have them blow mid-air, in an enemies face, etc. Pretty much however and where ever you want.

    Nuka-Cola grenades: 1 Quantum per construction, each extra schematic adds one more grenade made. So if you have 3 Schemaitcs, you make 3 grenades per Quantum. 500 damage each.

    1. Gandaug says:

      And that 500 damage is only base. It is significantly higher with better Explosives skill.

      Even so I never used them. A3-21’s plasma rifle was my choice for a weapon. When I got bored of that I’d just switch it out for a bit with something else for a bit.

      1. evileeyore says:

        I got very good at grenading in S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and the skill just carried over into F3. I prefer a combo of Combat for up close work, Hunting or Sniper rifle for distant work, Chinese Assualt for “oh shit I’m running low on other ammo work”, a silenced weapon of some sort, and grenades for tricky over obstacles/around corners and groups.

  25. Kdansky says:

    Squished widescreen is a lot worse than normal 4:3. Please switch back. The only thing worse than squished formats are formats inside formats. Nostalgia chick often has 16×9 inside 4×3 inside 16×9 frames. Instead of “one kind of borders for those people who have the ‘wrong’ screen” we all get borders in all side, and some of us get a double helping to boot. I’d rather people would just record in one format and keep everything in that format, I really do not care if the chosen format is 4:3 or 16:9.

  26. SatansBestBuddy says:

    You know, I’ve been thinking about doing an LP, and I’ve found the Something Awful fourms pretty helpful in regards to tech problems and such.

    Here’s a blurb I Cut-&-Pasted from one of their threads:

    Know Your Video Hosting -Originally by Syrg, updated April 5, 2010

    Viddler
    Pros: Has been fairly reliable. If you stuff your video in an FLV, it will stream the original file without reencoding. If you don’t, it will resize down and mangle your quality – you can avoid some of this by viewing through the polsy player which will resize back.
    Cons: Lower-end CPUs will struggle if you go over the default resolution, as Viddler’s player resizes it in real-time for some reason. Have been known to delete accounts occasionally with little explanation, but this is a rare occurrence and may be the result of a system bug. No source file downloads.

    Blip.TV
    Pros: HD options that look really good. No time limit.
    Cons: Determined to keep the site centered around episodic content like TV shows. In Blip’s opinion, voice commentary LPs fit this just fine (make sure you have some commentary very early in the video, maybe a short intro before the meat of the video, so that they don’t get confused and kill your account). SUBTITLE LPS ARE NOT ALLOWED ON BLIP, YOUR ACCOUNT WILL BE DELETED AND YOU WILL BE SAD. Basically, don’t use it as just a video dump: fill out all of their forms and make it look like a tv show. It’s not a huge hassle.

    I put Blip up there cause it has fewer ads, better quality and lets me download the mp4, which I prefer over streaming so I don’t have to buffer or nothing, but I like Viddler too cause of the cool comment system.

    You can find more detailed information in the LP section of the forums, but it’s mostly recommendations for various programs dealing with the techy stuff that I think you’ve already sorted out.

  27. some random dood says:

    NOT REALLY FOR PUBLISHING ON SITE.
    Just as an FYI, did Josh mention that he bought a new nVidia graphics card? Might want to take a look at this site and make sure the receipt is kept! (Hopefully this will not be needed, but just in case…)
    http://www.semiaccurate.com/2010/07/12/nvidia-backpedals-gf100gtx480-underfill/

  28. Sydney says:

    The invincible children wouldn’t be a problem if you’d play the game right and not shoot at them. I never even noticed they were unkillable, because they don’t need to be killed to get to the next level. Never even occurred to me to kill them.

  29. Sydney says:

    (whoops; missed the Edit window by a hair. let’s just pretend this is one long comment instead of a double-post.)

    Who cares if it makes sense? It’s just a game. I’d love to listen to you guys play Chess.

    “If my life was on the line, I think I could bring myself to move orthogonally. How ridiculous is this? And he doesn’t even have the CHOICE. He just HAS to move diagonally. And how is a bishop going to kill a knight, anyway?”

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