T w e n t y S i d e d

I talk a lot about idealism vs. pragmatism, and I think the NCR vs. Ky-SAR’s Legion would have been a great place to do this. Have the NCR dedicated to the ideals of democracy and bureaucracy to a fault. “Oh, your town is being raided nightly by fiends? We’ll table a motion at the next meeting to form a fiend oversight sub-committee and investigate possible solutions to this fiend issue.” At the other extreme would be the Legion. “The fiends are going to wipe you out. Pledge to pay us exorbitant taxes, and we will place your town under the protection of the Legion. We might need to take some of the men to serve in the legion and a few of the women for other stuff. Basically, sell yourselves to us, and we’ll see to it you survive.”

The game came close to this, but the Legion is just a bit too buffoonish to be a proper foil. They aren’t just callous. They’re bloodthirsty, incompetent, short-sighted, and ignorant.

And they dress like clowns.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

I know there are a lot of criticisms of Josh’s exceptionally unorthodox playing style. Some people have even gone so far as to suggest that Josh is a bad player. Laying aside the fact that this show is designed to be entertaining to watch – as opposed to a comprehensive guide on combat efficiency – I would like to draw your attention to a few bits of trivia. In this episode, Reginald Cuftbert:

1. Forgot to buy stimpacks.
2. Uses the weapon for which he has the least training.
3. Is slightly under-leveled for this section.
4. Is routinely crippled.
5. Has no companion.
6. Is wearing stealth armor to a stand-up melee fight.
7. Fights enemies in clusters.
8. Did not die once.

It’s a horrible and ill-advised way to go through life, but you can’t argue with success.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

Annotated:

00:52: I call this Bethesda View-ganking. It should be outlawed.

04:39: I know some people hate the bunny-hopping, but what drives me bonkers is lugging around heavy-ass weapons that you never use. SELL THE INCINERATOR.

05:19: This is my favorite Spoiler Warning stunt ever. Better than pants mining. It’s just gleefully juvenile and absurd.

10:33: This casino is the Atomic Wrangler. I meant to bring it up during the show, but we were busy with other things. This is where I lost my $16,000 jackpot to a crash. It’s also a very odd place and feels incomplete. The proprietor invites you to try the prostitutes and reads you the rules about how things work re: Paying for sex around here. You can hear the sounds of commerce-driven nookie as you explore the place. The only problem is that there are no prostitutes in the building whatsoever, and the sounds are coming from nowhere. It feels like they either didn’t finish the place, or they had to cut some content for rating purposes.

12:00: Josh decided to pummel this thug bare-handed, just for laughs. Which is why the fight took so long.

12:19: Josh dons the thug’s hat for a victory lap.

13:00: Man, that hike took FOREVER without the benefit of time-lapse.

14:58: SELL THE INCINERATOR.

17:27: For those of you keeping track at home, that was a four and a half minute bartering session. And people complained about the inventory sorting in Mass Effect.

22:26: NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

Spoiler Warning returns in partial triumph!

I’d just finished re-installing Windows in time for recording this session, and I’d neglected to balance my audio levels properly. Josh does what he can post-production, but this week I’m still going to cut out and sound crappy. Sorry about that. The interface on my sound card is this awful, proprietary gizmo with enough sliders to govern three soundcards, and making simple changes sometimes involves calling NASA for tech support.

We’ll have that ironed out next week. In the mean time, enjoy the sound of me shouting sentence fragments over a PA system with blown speakers.

So last week we canceled Spoiler Warning. Some people wanted us to post the crappy episodes. Others just wanted to know what happened. For the curious, here is what you “missed”:

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Spoiler Warning S5E13: Ring-a-Ding Bang, Baby!”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.