Waynetta Update 1.1: Sweet Darlene
To recap:
I awoke with my head stitched back together by a friendly old man. In exchange for some couch-taco action, he allowed me to rob him blind. Then he dressed me in his dead wife’s clothes and sent me out to find love among a pile of gecko corpses.
I’ll get back to that in a moment, but I need to point something out first:
HE HAD A REGULAR MIRROR THIS WHOLE TIME!
Ugggh, I knew this wasn’t my underwear…
Anyways, Doc gets me ready to head out on my own, but not before allowing himself to indulge in a little weird patriarchal posturing:
Okay, but… I mean, it’s a vault suit, man. It’s thick enough to block nuclear contamination and it literally zips all the way up to my ears. Besides, what the hell do the citizens of New Vegas and its environs call “immodest,” anyways? YOU LIVE IN VEGAS. EVERYONE’S ALWAYS NAKED.
Note: I have never been to Vegas in my life. I went to Reno once and it was Meth City and I got scared, so I shot a man just to watch him die. That’s slang for “hid in the hotel, ate a room service salad, and jilled off.” But I’m still pretty sure that a lot of people in Vegas are spectacularly naked a lot of the time.
Also, does everyone who grew up in Doc’s vault also talk like a cowboy, or is this some kind of affectation? Hmm, I smell a fanfic! (I’m not going to write it.)
See? “Sunny Smiles,” that’s a total stripper name. And you call me brazen…
Anyways, after a few pleasantries, I decided to see which article of this man’s deceased wife’s clothing suits me best. I started with the “Vintage Parkstroller Outfit” and–
I look like friggin’ He-Man! Uggh, vault suit, vault suit…
Well, I guess I can’t stay in here making Doc new inkblots forever. Time to step outside and face my destiny!
Hisssssssssssssssssssssssssssss!
Luckily, I don’t have time to roll around on the ground in pain as the harsh post-apocalyptic sun burns my retinas… because I have to wait for ten million notifications that various DLC and mods have loaded!
Cool.
I–
*sigh*
Okay, I’m a whole year older and I’ve been standing in Doc’s yard this whole time, but it’s fine. Skin cancer is basically an inevitability with the courier lifestyle, anyways. So now! Moving on! To adventure!
AAAAAAAAAAARGH!!!
I run away from Doc’s horrible lawn, which is apparently haunted by popup ghosts, and immediately find an abandoned gas station. With a working vending machine and a door that has stayed locked for hundreds of years and cannot be picked by any known methods. Sure, why not?
Hur hur. Mr. Handy’s an old-fashioned sort of robot, if you know what I mean. *wink*
Unfortunately, I lack the skills needed to turn him into the kind of handy-bot a lady might have use for, so I continue on.
It’s around now that I remember the most important part of my quest: finding a hat that will make me, in the words of Walt Whitman, so bangable. My failure to do so thus far weighs my heart with doubt. Yet I press on stalwartly. Neither rain nor snow nor lack of sexual hattitude shall stop the courier from doing… whatever she came here to do! I already forgot!
I attempted to engage a cleverly-named NPC in some light banter, but all he did was microaggression me.
OH YEAH? WHY DO YOU JUST ASSUME I WANNA GO BUY SOMETHING? BECAUSE WOMEN BE SHOPPING?!
Flush with righteous indignation, I decide to steal his drugs. Luckily for me, he’s so checked out that he doesn’t seem to notice when I steal magic cactus right from underneath his smelly desert butt.
TAKE THAT, YOU GENDER FASCIST! Man, I am gonna get some coyotes fucked up tonight. It’s gonna be awesome!
I also break into his dumb house and steal some of his dumb stuff. I looked around to see if he had a dumb wife I could also steal, but luckily no woman has taken a chance on becoming Mrs. Settler, so I yoinked everything except a couple of beers and his pathetic collection of fruits, and went on to the next adventure!
P.S. Even that idiot had a mirror. JUST SAYIN’.
After an expositional chat with an old man named Easy Pete who claimed to be some sort of scavenger archaeologist and a robot with a TV for a face who apparently saved my life, I finally enter the saloon in search of this “Sunny Smiles” gal. Now, I’ve heard tell that in New Vegas, a “sunny smile” is when the stripper holds herself horizontally on the pole and does the splits, so I was expecting quite a bit from this woman.
And friends, she did not disappoint.
Unfortunately, the sounds this sweet angel makes when she opens her mouth are less compelling than the time Jessica Chobot guest-starred in Mass Effect 3. But it’s okay, baby, we don’t have to talk. Let the language of love be our only form of communication.
It feels abrupt to leap right into business before I even know how she likes her eggs in the morning (unfertilized, I hope) but this seems like a good time to just put myself in someone’s hands and ask them, “Bitch, how do I live” so…
Bitch, how do I live?
I will follow you anywhere.
I took a walk around first, though, giving her time to prepare for the unstoppable force of bangability that is Waynetta. Something I’ve always liked about Fallout games is that the world really feels “lived in.” Little things, like empty bottles on a bar table, or concert posters that–
–wait, Madame Lolita? Ain’t that a kick in the head contradiction in terms?
Oh, look, even this random saloon has part of a mirror. Again, just sayin’.
After a thwarted attempt at stealing (my karma! My precious karma!) I finally join Sunny outside.
It’s about now that I make a decision. See, I can accept a lot of flaws in a partner; I really don’t care what you look like or weigh so long as you’re nice to people and make me laugh a couple of times. But I’ll be damned before I scream out a muffled “SUNNY SMIIIIIILES!” during intimate moments, so her sweet country ass is named Darlene now.
Darlene doesn’t seem to mind the name change, and sadly, she doesn’t seem ready to commit to our relationship, either. She just wants to… teach me how to shoot a gun?
And here’s the worst part of this intro, from a game design perspective. I feel like I’ve been a courier out here in the wilds of Nevada for some time now. Certainly, I didn’t end up getting shot in the head on my first jaunt, right? So then why does sweet Darlene feel the need to explain how to shoot and aim a gun?
This would have played better if Doc had set it up as some sort of test of his medical skills, like “Let’s see if I screwed your head back on straight. Shoot a few of those bottles off the fence, and we’ll see how you do.” Then it would feel a lot more natural, and the progression into joining Sunny on her shooty-shoots patrol would also be more organic. But what do I know, I work for the competition.
Okay, but only if you also teach me how to navigate these fertile hills, wink! That time I just said “wink” out loud, because people in Goodsprings seem kinda slow. I don’t think she got it, though. But I’ll keep trying. After all, tomorrow is another apocalyptic day.