Fallout 3 - Blood Ties (part two)

As promised, Vance was on the mezzanine overlooking the common area. The common area itself was a fascinating look into the Family. Filled with pews all facing the mezzanine, the whole area looked like the home of some kind of cult. This impression was strengthened when I saw Vance standing at the top of the mezzanine looking like some kind of warped preacher with his long black overcoat. I wasn't sure who the Family was but I was pretty sure that they were bad news. In any event, Vance was the key to locating Ian West so I headed up the broken escalator to where Vance stood.

"Welcome to our home," he said as I approached, "My people call me Vance. I lead this group of weary travelers and outcasts who need a home. We do not get many visitors here."

"Really, I wonder why? Could it be due to the number of landmines that you laid in the tunnels outside?"

I have to give him credit. He didn't even bat an eyelid. Unfortunately, nor did he answer my question. Instead, he just looked at me and asked "And to what do I owe the pleasure of your visit?"

"I'm looking for Ian West. I have a letter for him from his sister. I understand he is here?"

He turned and looked out over the common area before replying, "What you see before you is the last bastion of hope for the downtrodden and misunderstood. We are the remnants of society, cast aside like the clean-picked bones of a hunters feast. Men of science would call us cannibals, eaters of human flesh. Society labels us as monsters, demons and the unclean."

I couldn't help but blink at that. Did he just say cannibals? Visions of the West family, with their throats clearly having been gnawed upon, swam before my eyes. I definitely don't want to hang around here. Better find of Ian West and get out post-haste.

"Um, that's great," I said, "but I'm looking for Ian West. I understand he is here?"

"Ah! Your words illustrate why the hardships persist for my people. I think of my teachings as an improvement, a way to transcend our cannibalistic nature."

"What? Look, I just want to find Ian West. I really don't care if you are cann... um... Actually, if I accept that you're no longer cannibals, what do I call you?"

"Each member of the Family must speak one of the Laws. From these Laws, you can discover what we are. Return to me when you are ready."

With that, Vance turned and walked away. "Can't you just answer the frakking question?!" I yelled after him but he ignored me and continued on his way. Bastard.

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Several hours, and numerous confusing conversations with his "congregation", later, I had a fair idea of what I was dealing with. The Family were not cannibals - they were vampires. Not the actual mythical beings obviously but rather a group of people who follow the ways and rites of the vampires. What was fascinating though was their belief that they could sustain themselves purely on blood. The man in me screamed out against this abomination, telling me to turn and flee, but the scientist in me couldn't resist prying further.

I went back to Vance. If anyone was going to be able to satisfy my curiosity, he would be the one.

"Tell me what you've learned," he said as I approached, "What do you think we are?"

"You're vampires. Or at least you follow their fictional traditions. But what I don't understand is how you manage to get enough nutrients to sustain yourself from blood alone."

"Do you think I believe I can turn into a bat and fly away?"

"Well, of course ..."

"Of course not." Vance continued speaking as if I hadn't interrupted him, "Do I cast my image in a mirror? Absolutely."

"Yes, I know but ..."

"I have shown these people the way of the vampire. I've provided them shelter, organisation and a sense of belonging."

"Yes, I know but how ..."

"Ian is at a critical moment in his life right now. After all that occurred in Arefu, he is scared and confused."

Despite my annoyance, that last sentence caught my attention. "What? What do you mean? What happened to Ian in Arefu?"

"Ian's hunger for flesh overwhelmed him ... it drove him to kill his parents. Because of my intervention that night, he stopped just short of being lost forever to his cravings for flesh. Now, he has become one of us ... a member of the Family. The hunger that drives us must be kept in check. It is one of the most difficult things to teach."

I couldn't believe what I was hearing - Vance had actually listened and was answering one of my questions! In my shock, I missed the chance to get in another question and Vance continued speaking.

"I will allow you to speak to Ian. Perhaps you can help him come to grips with his greatest enemy. Himself."

And with that, Vance once again turned and walked off.

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I found Ian in a little room at the back of the Family base. He was sitting at the solitary chair in the middle of the room and staring blankly at the wall. Seeing the past perhaps? I'm not sure why but he looked oddly out of place. As if he was uncomfortable with where he was (or what he was?). One thing was certain though - his eyes held the look of a haunted man.

He looked up at me as I entered the room. Something in my eyes must have given me away for he turned back to the wall and said, "You must think I'm some kind of monster."

He sounded so sad. So alone. What can you say to a man who has not only seen his parents brutally murdered but who was the one who caused such tragedy in the first place.

"Ian, I'm sorry but I can't help you. I'm just here to give you this letter. Your sister, Lucy, asked that I deliver it to you."

For a brief moment, at the mention of his sister, there was a spark of life behind his eyes. With a whispered thank you, he took the letter and started to read. For a while, he was silent as he read the letter. Eventually, he looked up and I could see that the letter had clearly had an impact. His eyes watered and his voice choked as he struggled to find words.

After what seemed like an eternity of uncomfortable silence, he said, with a touch of regret in his voice, "Thank you. I think I had it all wrong. I shouldn't have come here. Please, tell Vance I've made my decision. I'm going home to Arefu."

After this, it wasn't long before Ian was ready to depart. When I informed Vance of Ian's decision to leave, Vance merely smiled and enigmatically babbled something about sheep and roads. In fact, Vance seemed happy with Ian's response and held no ill will at all. He even offered to send some of his own men to protect the town of Arefu in exchange for some blood packs. Truth be told, the whole incident ended rather abruptly and surprisingly without incident.

***********************************************************************

I left Arefu shortly after dropping Ian off. Evan King and the other residents were happy enough to see us return and after hearing how Vance had saved Ian West, they were more than happy to agree to Vance's proposal and accepted the Family into the settlement. They even invited me to stay with them. To be honest though, I couldn't wait to leave and was happy to see the back of Arefu and the creepy Family. And that was the situation when I left Arefu - Vance and the Family were safely inside Arefu and had agreed to protect it against raiders. A win-win situation all round.

In my travels across the Wasteland, I did occasionally think of Vance and of Ian West and ultimately came to a realisation. I never went back though. Considering that I have heard no news from Arefu since I left, I sometimes wonder how that little settlement is doing and whether I should go back to check on them. But considering my role in this whole affair, perhaps its better if I didn't.

I have to give it to Vance though. He really knew what he was doing. All the time that I spoke with him, he rarely addressed me directly and never answered my questions. Except once. The one time he answered my questions was when he needed to distract me from the deeper implications of what he was saying.

Vance told me that Ian had succumbed to his desire for flesh and killed his own parents. Vance told me that he had arrived in Arefu just in time to stop Ian from eating the flesh of his own parents. Vance told me that he had saved Ian's soul as a result of this.

But how did Vance know that Ian had attacked and killed his parents on that fateful night? How had he known exactly which night that Ian would lose control of his cannibalistic instincts? And was it coincidence that he had been able to get into Arefu just in time to stop Ian from eating the flesh of his parents?

Too many coincidences - the whole situation stank to high heaven. The only reasonable explanation for Vance being there that night was if he knew what was going to happen. And the only way he could have known that Ian's parents would die that night is if Ian had told him.

When I first arrived in Arefu, Evan King told me that he had been defending Arefu from the Family. That he was singlehandedly protecting the settlement from the wolves that sought to gain entry. And thanks to my efforts, the wolf was invited into the hen house.

FM 2010 - Preseason 2012/13

I haven't finished writing up part two of my blood ties quest yet so instead, you can hear about what I've been doing during the preseason in FM2010.
:P

England
2012 was the year of the European Championships. And, just as with real life, England failed to deliver on the international stage. After getting knocked out of the competition by Italy at the quarter final stage, the FA and the public demanded answers!

After none were forthcoming, the old manager was sacked and a new one brought in. Can you guess who?

I actually considered turning them down until they got better players.

Liverpool
After the abysmal season last year, I needed to ring the changes. Get rid of some flotsam and bring in some new quality players who would be prepared to die for the cause. In particular, I was looking for another attacking midfielder and a world class left back.

Unfortunately, as usual, things wouldn't go my way.

At the start of the preseason, Agger decided that he needed a new challenge and wanted to leave the club. As a result of this, I put him on the transfer list and had a look at other players in my squad. It looked like Babel was also starting to express discontent and was considering looking for a new challenge as well and I figure I am only going to get one more season out of him.

So instead of looking to strengthen my squad, I spent most of the preseason looking for players to replace existing squad members. And the transfer fees in this game are frakking ridiculous.

I managed to identify a world class LB and AMC in addition to some good DCs. However, the asking price of the players I identified were all in the GBP80M+ range - well outside my budget! And to be honest, I don't think I would pay that much even if I had the money!

In the end, I spent GBP41M (most of my transfer budget) on Sokratis Papasthopoulos, a DC to replace Agger. Yes, he is a good player but way overpriced. But then, what choice did I have? The annoying thing is that I still don't have a world class LB and its likely that the transfer kitty for next preseason is going to be spent on a LW to replace Babel.
>:(


Anyway, my squad in preparation for the year. The main reason that you see quite a few new names is because I intend to blood some of the youngsters and put some of the lower quality first squad into the reserves in preparation.



One last thing - despite having crippling debt, Liv are still considered one of the richest clubs in the World.

Fallout 3 - Blood Ties

As you know, I've been playing Fallout 3 recently. One of the quests which I really enjoyed was the Blood Ties quest and I figured I would turn that into a blog post. By the way, it should go without saying that this post will contain spoilers but just in case - SPOILER ALERT!

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The quest itself started off fairly innocuously. While talking to some of the townsfolk in Megaton, one of them mentioned that Lucy West appeared to be very worried about something. This didn't result in an entry in the quest log so, figuring it would be a 2 minute quest, I initially decided to ignore it. However, while wandering around Megaton trying to fix the broken pipes (another one of the quests without a quest log), I came across Lucy and took the opportunity to chat her up with her.

She told me that she hadn't heard from her parents in a while and was worried for their safety. Her family lived in Arefu, a small settlement to the north and she wanted me to deliver a letter to her family for her. Finally, an entry in the quest log!

The way I figured it, why the hell not? I mean, I planned to go north at some point anyway as Moira was looking for someone to check out Minesville. I could just do a quick stop at Arefu on the way, drop off the letter and get into Lucy's good books. Easy, right?

In hindsight, I guess I should have known things wouldn't be that easy. I mean, Bethesda wouldn't have bothered creating a quest log for a simple delivery job, right?
Bazinga!

I arrived in Arefu and, after talking my way past the crazy gun-toting sheriff guarding the entrance, made my way to the West residence. Of course, I knew something was wrong as soon as I got to the door and realised that it wasn't locked. Every other settler had locked themselves inside their homes as they were terrified of being attacked by a gang of thugs calling themselves the Family.

With a fair amount of trepidation, I pulled out my combat shotgun and went inside. Although the place was a mess, the first thing I actually noticed were the two dead bodies. Actually, there was the smell as well, but I digress. One of the bodies was sprawled over the bed and the other was sprawled over the floor. Not particularly pleasant, I'm sure you'll agree, but the really disturbing thing were the bite marks on the necks of the bodies. Clearly, Evan King had been doing a good job guarding the settlement...

Of course, this also meant that I wouldn't be able to deliver Lucy's letter. It wasn't until later, when I was telling King about the dead West family, that I learned about Ian West. Ian was the son and, with only two dead bodies in the house, the obvious question was - where the hell was he? The best guess from King was that the Family had him.

Time to go hunting.

But before I headed out, I needed to rest. The trek from Megaton had been long and, after several skirmishes with raiders and wild animals, I was in no condition to take on a gang of thugs. Would it be disturbing for you to learn that I took this opportunity to take a rest? Would your answer change if you found out that the rest I took was in the West residence and that I spent the night sleeping next to a cadaver?

Anyway, after a little bit of rest, I headed out and promptly got lost in the wasteland. At least, until I remembered that Evan King had mentioned that the Family was likely hiding in one of three possible locations and that he had kindly marked those locations on my pipboy. Hey, cut me some slack here! I'd like to see how calm you are after spending the night hugging a corpse.

I eventually found the Family holed up in the nearby Metro station. After creeping around in the dark tunnels for several hours, I spotted what looked like a raider standing guard outside some gates. Clearly, with the number of traps I had to disarm, these guys valued their privacy and probably wouldn't be happy to see me. Sticking to the shadows, I crept in a little closer and unslung my hunting rifle. One clear shot to the head - that was all I needed, one ... clear ... shot...

"Hey! What are you doing down here?"

It was around this point that I realised the guard was looking right at me. Clearly, a change of approach was called for.

"Umm,' I said a little sheepishly, "I'm ... looking for Ian West?"

"Oooh, you mean the new guy? Go on in, Vance said someone might come round. You should go see Vance first though. He's up on the mezzanine." And with that, the guard opened the gate.

"Oh. Okay," I said, "Thanks."

That's me - the soul of brevity. In my defence, this wasn't the reception I had expected. What with their attacks on Arefu and the number of traps that, presumably, they had laid out to keep people away, I was expecting a bit more ... drama ... before being able to get inside the compound.

Be that as it may, I was in!

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Mass Effect 2 - conversations

I posted my impressions of ME2 a while back. Looking back at that post, I realised that there was one significant omission from it.

First off - I should say that I loved ME2. I think its a great game and, in many ways, it really is a lot better than ME1. The combat gameplay is so much better, it feels like a different game. ME2 also has one of my favourite NPCs of all time (namely, the very model of a scientist Salarian, Mordin Solus) who has some of the best dialogue in the game. However, despite the fact that BioWare really made a lot of improvements in the design of ME2, there was something about it which felt off. There was something which prevented me from playing it as much as I played the original ME1.

And reading this article put that reason into focus for me. Ultimately, I felt that the decisions in ME1 were better than in ME2.

If you look back at my post on ME1, you will find that I actually devoted a fairly large chunk of the post to the role playing decisions that you got to make in that game. In particular, one of the things I loved about ME1 was that making renegade decisions often felt like taking a very pragmatic approach to the problem versus an idealised goody-goody two shoes approach. This really allowed me to play my FemShep as a good person out to save the Universe but who didn't have time to deal with the niceties of a social situation. She wasn't nasty - she was just purely focused on the mission. As I put it in my original post - if you got in her way, she would take you down without a second thought.

However, the decisions in ME2 didn't give me that same impression. In playing ME2, I very often felt like the responses were boiling down into a nice Shep vs jerk Shep situation (granted, there were some exceptions but this was the overall feeling I got). The problem is that my FemShep wasn't a jerk and the renegade response often felt like it was being a jerk for the sake of being a jerk. And this is borne out by my bitch brigade FemShep in ME2, who halfway through the game, had a high paragon meter but only a small renegade meter which was the opposite of what she had at the end of ME1. In the end, I had to start acting like a jerk just so I could up my renegade meter (as you know, having a high renegade meter is important if you want to make certain renegade decisions).

For whatever reason, BioWare weren't able to avoid the nice Shep / jerk Shep situations which they avoided so well in ME1. Hopefully, things will improve with ME3.