By Pentadact

1 Nobody’s Vault: “I looked up to find all the other students staring at me, and a trail of blood smattered across the walls leading to the limp body at my feet. I lowered my guard, and talked to the examiner. He agreed I should probably just skip the exam.”

4 Striking Out: “The shot ripped his right leg off at the knee, sending him pitching forward in a sprinkler-spurt of blood face-first into the dirt. All was still. The Fat Man was safe. I’ll be nice tomorrow.”

I decided to travel as far West as I could, as much to find out what would stop me as any reason to believe clues might lie this way.

I found a cave. It was called Lamplight Cavern. I went in. A twelve year-old boy told me to fuck off.

I wasn’t going to be nice today.

There’s a perk you can choose in Fallout 3 that makes you more persuasive to children. I’m serious, that’s its sole purpose. I don’t have that perk, and frankly I worry about those who do. Certainly situations do arise, like this one, where persuading a child is useful to your quest, but it’s the pre-meditation that makes this such a creepy thing to want. “Yeah, I’m probably going to need to convince some kids to do something they don’t wanna do. I’ll take it.”

I relied on raw charisma to get in. It was a society full of kids, which didn’t make a lot of sense given that they got here two hundred years ago, and they have a policy of kicking people out long before they reach child-bearing age. Luckily, though, one of the magic kids happened to know something about the android I’d made it my mission to hunt. She had a recording that confirmed the thing had acquired one of the two devices it was after.

As I’d arrived in Lamplight, someone else was leaving. Sticky. On my way out, I agreed to take him to Big Town because, well, he knew where Big Town was and I didn’t and I like places that are big.

Sticky tells randomly generated stories from modular – stupid – components. No two are ever quite the same, or interesting. He also runs off a lot. He’s one of those characters who was clearly designed to be annoying. While you can’t help but admire the developer’s resounding success, it’s hard to deduce why this was something they felt they had to achieve.

Tired not so much of Sticky wandering off – the break from his chatter was welcome – but of trying to find him again, I tried making him wear a variety of outfits before settling on a radiation suit. We weren’t headed towards any more than the normal amount of radiation, but the suit is bright yellow, and therefore easy to spot.

I had a good feeling about Big Town. Which was probably one reason it went so hideously wrong that the game actually stopped to produce a dialogue box calling me a sick bastard.