Christmas. Christmas never changes. Every day this week though, Fallout: New Vegas gets into the spirit of the season as a selection of mods make wishes come true... for better or worse. Today, new friends mean new opportunities, but at what cost? The answer: Pants.

Previously: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4




Zombies sighted. Crush them like they're the democratic spirit that made this country what it was, before we made it a nuclear wasteland with our ancestors' now legendary douchebaggery.









Enemies neutralised harder than that family at the start of Fallout 2, sir. Permission to put on the special power armour with a spacious enough codpiece to handle serious murder erection, sir?



Oh, this couldn't feel more wrong.



Cass, if it's wrong to use an evil paramilitary army as your personal security service to seize control of a casino from its proper owner, turn it into a fortress, and profit from a zombie apocalypse you accident'ly started, I don't want to be right.





Kinda getting that feeling, yeah, Comic Sans. Pretty sure even most folks who'd make deals with the devil would take one look at the Enclave offering to just follow orders and go "Jesus, no! Are you insane!? No! Just... just no! "



Ah, come on-



Last I heard, Satan refused to sign a deal with those guys, saying they were too ruthless. And they're just following your orders? You know there'll be some catch.



Sir! No catch! You have the Command Radio sir! While you have that, you can just phone us and we obey your every whim for reasons that make such obvious sense they hardly need explaining, sir!



Yeah. Like it's that simple. One whim to rule them all, one whim to realign them; one whim to bring them here, and in the weirdness, oh, nuke Black Mountain.



COMMENCING ORBITAL STRIKE!



What? No, wai-





Well, there goes my soul. Right then. Just happened. Burned right away to a sulphurous crisp. Text message from the devil, sayin' "Rose of Sharon Cassidy, be seeing you soon." Thanks for that, boys. Way to go.



Eh, don't go beating yourself up over it. Last I checked, beating up a few of Caesar's Legion-



...



...



Huh. Right then. Or beating up Powder Gangers and other evil sorts can wipe that clean off the ol' karmic slate. Come on. We got a casino to start running.



Yeah, about that, Trajan Pro. Not sure just putting on these fancy business suits is enough to run Mr. House's casino. For starters, pretty sure he's got an army of Securitrons who don't like us much.





Army of Securitrons who don't like you very much destroyed, sir! I shot that cowboy one who looked like he was going to do something really interesting but ended up not!



Right, okay, but it's not like we can just stand about and just act all proprietorial, like we're just role-playing casino ownership while these guys shoot zombies.



No need. Look what I found in the back.





See? Course, I don't reckon even us and our friends here will be able to to run the whole place ourselves. Enclave's good for shooting zombies, not so much at dealing blackjack. First gambler to say 'hit me'...



No shit. You got a back-up plan then?





Mr. House's old robot pets? You sure that's a good idea? They're not even working.



Least if we use these malfunctioning pets, we know they're-



No. Don't even think about it!



House-broken!



*pant* You meant 'Caesar'.



Oh, shush.





Right. So, we're all up and running, more or less, assuming 'not having the money to open any tables or buy any booze' counts as 'less', and I'm thinking it probably does. Any ideas for raising quick money in a zombie apocalypse?



Figured a good starting point would be heading to Freeside, finding all the scrap we can get, then crafting it together into more worthwhile stuff and selling it to the gun runners for starting investment capital.



That actually... sounds quite sensible.



Then I figured, screw that, let's do this.







Of all the things I've ever woken up without my pants to find, I like this one the best. 'Course, technically, we just appeared here with all our stuff still on, like something went wrong. Not sure why you had us take it off anyway.



Seemed the thing to do, I guess. Fair being fair and all that. Think we should get dressed and head back before anyone notices?



Wouldn't do much for our reps to be seen in the least stylish underwear this side of Dragon Age, though I'm pretty sure we could go to church like this and no-one'd care. Come on. We've got a casino to run and the Enclave'll be getting lonely.





Cass, when we started this casino, two long hours ago, you ever think it'd be as successful as this? Caps and chems flowing, the Lucky 38 restored to its old glory, the zombie apocalypse almost never spilling in from outside?



I don't care if the chems are better at Gomorrah. Sod'em! You tell those gamblers that only the Lucky 38 is protected by the Enclave, and- yeah, sure boss. Wonder what Mr. House thinks of how we're running his beloved casino?



Aw, I reckon he's happy to see the old girl full of life again.






My... piss tube... is filled... with impotent rage....





So what's wrong? You look like someone put Bonzi Buddy on your PIPBoy.



I dunno, Cass. Just don't feel right, is all, being in here and not out there like in the old hours.



Even with the zombie apocalypse going on out there?



I guess just sitting around in one place just 'aint for me whatever's out there. I need to feel the sand... the snow, I guess, underfoot. Taste the air, then be sick 'cause it's full of radioactive poison. You know? The open trail, that's the life for me.



And also a million or so zombies.



Point. Still, y'know.



Way I see it, we've got everything anyone could want, right here. At least until the Enclave get back to their old tricks. Come on, let's head to the VIP lounge. Just got in a new shipment of alcohol in need of popping open.



Tell you what, how 'bout you start the popping without me. Just going to go swap the guards outside, okay? Swap the guards, do a few other quick things. Business things. Like a business guy. Be there 'fore you know it.





Courier...





He's not coming back, is he, ma'am?



Depends. Would you and your soldiers likely return to your evil ways and go on a genocidal killing spree if the guy with the Command Radio suddenly vanished, leaving an obvious power vacuum for your insane masters to exploit?



Yup.



In that case, yes.




And so the Courier, who had first seen the Christmas snow in Goodsprings, continued to see Christmas, in a Mojave Wasteland forever changed by strange weather, the hordes of the undead, and some seriously dodgy shit to look up on your own time.


Rose of Sharon Cassidy continued running the Lucky 38, which turned out to be surprisingly boring after a while. Eventually, tired of waiting for the Enclave to turn evil, she packed up her caps and went west. Life was peaceful there.



Unleashed, the Enclave revelled in their ability to conquer the Mojave, before remembering that they were too stupid to do anything without orders, and that the Courier had kept the Radio. Their leader was heard to comment "Arse."



FISTO WROTE AUTOBIOGRAPHY, "CLOSED FIST, OPEN HEART!" IT SOLD SURPRISINGLY WELL!



Still brainwashed, Edward Sallow - better known as Caesar and 'Caesar' - found himself travelling with the Doctor, though was too nerve stapled to appreciate the honour. Sometimes, the Doctor used him as a coat rack.



Xenite continued demanding "Uhmmm... is this supposed to be humorous?" until being randomly flattened by a falling bison on an otherwise uneventful Tuesday.



Trudy, owner of the Prospector Saloon, reverse-engineered the weapons found in her bar, raised an army, and declared herself Boudica, Queen of the Wastes. Anyone describing her horde as "Caes-HERs Legion" was crucified, for funsies.



Mr. House's constant complaining led to the coining of the phrase "The House Always Whines". Proving the point, he spent several years bitching about this to himself until his life support system finally committed suicide.



And so the Courier's holiday season came to an end... for now. In the new world of the Mojave Wasteland, fighting continued, blood was spilled, and many lived and died - just as they had in the old world, and original game. Because Christmas... Christmas never changes.

Today's Mods: Frozen World, Zombie Mod, Enclave Commander, Zombie Apocalypse, Run The Lucky 38, More Perks

Christmas. Christmas never changes. Every day this week though, Fallout: New Vegas gets into the spirit of the season as a selection of mods make wishes come true… for better or worse. Today, when was the last time the Doctor arrived to find nothing going horribly wrong? Just saying...

Previously: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3




Trespassers, hello! How strange! Better tell me your name. It's tougher to be a trespasser when everyone knows your name, and I'd know. Of course, that's me, and you're probably not me, because I think we'd have met.



They call me The Man With No Name.



How fascinating! They call me the Doctor. Some people, anyway; the smart people. Others, The Oncoming Storm, The Destroyer Of Worlds, The Lady of Pai- no, wait, that's a secret. Anyway, mustn't stop. Unless!



Unless what?



What? What's with all these questions? Have a Jelly Baby. Didn't think I liked them any more. Turns out I do, as you can see from my face. Not a red one! The red ones are my favourites. I bite the little toe off first. Going for the head is barbaric.



What is this place? Some kind of spaceship?



Ah! Half-right! Mostly right. Time and space, you see. It's my TARDIS, and it can take you anywhere and anywhen and anywha. You'll discover that. Well, usually. Right now, it's stuck to this wasteland, and changing time of day.



Does that mean you could teach me how to fly it?



A human? Please. Now, if you had a Time Lord brain perhaps, yes, but there is no way a regular person could handle this, except for any of the ones who can or if it starts flying itself. You though? Sorry, I just don't-





Well, I'll be. If that isn't the most wonderful, amazing contrivance I've seen in... oooh, five minutes. Be my guest then! Turns out it's actually as easy as picking a destination and pulling a lever. No problem at all.



Alright then, pardner. Reckon I'll set the co-ordinates for my suite at the Lucky 38. Cass, stand by. I'm pulling the lever. And... nothing happened. "Unable to land at these co-ordinates" it says. Doctor?



Well, you know TARDISes. Always buggier on the inside.



You do remember that we can teleport at will?



Sssh there, New Amy. Pond 2.0. Anothermy Pond. No. No, I won't be saying that again, definitely not. Try another destination if you like, or don't.



I know where. Something I been meaning to do, but for all them new Legion patrols in the Mojave. Someone I owe a debt to, and I just figured out how to best repay.





Hail Caesar.



That's 'Caes-.





NANOPROBES INSERTED! INITIALISING NEURAL TAKEOVER SUBROUTINE! I AM YOURS TO COMMAND!



Yeah, reckon that's more like it. You're coming with me.





...



FISTO ONLY WENT OUT FOR FIVE MINUTES. NOW FISTO ALONE.





You did what?



Made Caesar our new pack mule. Thought your back'd be happy.



That's not Caesar. Met Caesar once. Not as good with salads as you'd expect.



Okay, I can't take this any more. Let's say goodbye to our new friend here before things really start getting strange?



Leaving so soon? Did I mention you can explore the bowels of the TARDIS if you're in the mood for what I hear you people call 'adventure' times?



Thanking you kindly, sir, but I don't think we'll be poking round your bowels. What's say you drop us off in Freeside so we can continue our patrol?





Well, this all seems reassuringly quiet. So what's the plan, chief? Check in with the Kings? Go take a look at the Strip?



In a bit, Cass. First things first, want to see if there's any more of them magic books lying around. Got a bit of a taste for the old sparkly stuff, and you never know. Here. Like this one. This looks promising.





Necronomicon? Almost positive you shouldn't read that one, Caslon Antique. Let's just go hit the Atomic Wrangler, maybe check the blackjack tables. Bet someone's put naked ladies or something on the back of the cards.



Eh, what's the worst could happen?





THE ANSWER WAS ZOMBIES!





A LOT OF GODDAMN ZOMBIES!





Okay, so in retrospect, this may not've been my best idea. Probably not even in the top five or so, if I'm honest. Ideas?



NEVER TOUCH ANYTHING EVER AGAIN!



And in terms've ideas that might help right now?



We can't hold them back! There's no way House has enough Securitrons without dealing with the Platinum Chip thing, and somehow I don't see we've got time now. Doubt we'll get NCR or what's left of the Legion helping so much either.



Not seeing what choice we got, not 'less you want me to call the Enclave on this radio and beg them for help. Know you'd never want me doing that.



Are you kidding? Call them!



Ahem. Excuse me. Is that... is that the evil remnant of the US government? We seem to have us a bit of a zombie problem. In New Vegas. Look, this is awkward, but you know how you guys are the baddies and so have the best toys?



I dunno. Maybe 1/5 mutant, on my mother's side? Yeah, I know, but... look, it's you guys spent years taking order from a computer. And you heard your music? Who's the real freaks? Yeah, okay. Nightkin. Point taken. So anyway... hello?



Well? What did they say?









Why, I I believe we said "What the hell, it's Christmas."


Today's Mods: Frozen World, Female Caesar's Legion, Increased Legion Presence, Increased Wasteland Spawns, Cortex Scrambler, The TARDIS In The Wasteland, Electro-City, Zombie Mod, Enclave Commander,

Christmas. Christmas never changes. Every day this week though, Fallout: New Vegas gets into the spirit of the season as a selection of mods make wishes come true... for better or worse. Today, the wasteland beckons, but not quite as the Courier and his partner Cassidy expect.

Previously: Part 1, Part 2




Morning there, Myriad Pro. Hand on fire? Guessing that means you found some new toys around town, or really need to put a few skill points into cooking, stat.



Was that a...



Pun not intended. What's up with that anyway?



Book of magic spells in Doc Mitchell's old place - "Vol 1: Hellfire". Gotta say, suddenly I find myself more ambivalent 'bout setting the world on fire. Not the only new toy I found either. Look at this here fellow from Trudy's place.



"Big Bomb"?





...



...





And that's the story of how we got chased right out of Goodsprings...



SHUT UP AND KEEP RUNNING I THINK THEY HAVE PITCHFORKS!





Think we can prob'ly take a breather now, don't you think? Hey, Nipton. You remember this place? Legion raided it way back when, stuck all the people up on crosses, burned it to the ground for sins committed. Ah, nostalgia.



Yeah. Think... think things might have changed a bit since, Arial Black.





Shiny new caravans? Pretty houses? A welcome banner over the town hall and not a single crucified townsperson? Tssk. Some places have no respect for tradition.





Don't worry, I won't have you forcibly sold cookies or made to attend a PTA meeting. It's useful that you happened by. I want you to witness the fate of the town of Nipton, to memorize every detail. And then, when you move on-



What do you mean, the fate of Nipton? Place looks Stepford new to me.



Indeed, Courier. This was a town drowning in moral sickness, cowardice, decay... but overnight, look! A wretched hive, stripped of all decadence, of all filth; rendered pure as the mysterious white snow all around. It is become... perfection.



The Legion's gone into the decorating biz now? Caesar's Legion?



That's 'Caesar'.



Whatever.



Was this our direct doing? No, but it is as I dreamed. Clean. Orderly. Quiet. A true civilisation of the wastelands, away from guns and fiends. There will be book clubs, Courier, and amateur dramatics every weekend. There will be salsa.





The hell, boss? I WAS STANDING RIGHT HERE!



Still are, so quit your yapping. Had to be done, and you know it, for the thin end of the wedge and all good folks who don't need subjecting to the first all ghoul version of King Lear. C'mon, I reckon things may be worse'n we thought.





Don't know about worse there, Marker Felt, but definitely pornier and with a hell of a lot more guns and people wandering around to use those guns. Not one person out there wished for world peace or somesuch?



Extra lighting from those Electro-City folks is handy, mind, what with the nights suddenly actually being dark and everything. And at least we're not going to fall for that Door business again.



We agreed never to speak of The Door again!





Hey, look. A door in the middle of nowhere. Think we should open it?



Can't think of a reason not to.





AAAARGH!



AAAARGH!





AAAARGH!



AAAARGH!





GRAAAARGH!



Meh.





Weirdest thing, portal to Hell ending up spitting us out over at a place called "The Bison Steve Hotel". Funny old world, 'aint it? Anyhoo, let's find us some good old walking music on this here PIPBoy radio, shall we?



Second thoughts, let's chat some more about The Door. Just saying, if I ever have to listen to Big Iron again I'm going to have to smash the nearest person with a PIPBoy's head in with a golfclub - then mine.



No, look, Cass. My radio's picking up all kinds of stations now. J-Pop, Christian Rock, old propaganda. Classic Christmas songs!






Suddenly Big Iron isn't sounding so bad. Hey, what's that? Is that an Enclave logo on that radio in your pack? Tell me you just picked that up off a corpse somewhere, or us two are going to have some serious Words.



Don't be silly, Cass, you know I'd have nothing to do with those incredibly powerful, genocidal zealots, most likely.



This is exactly why people hate travelling with amnesiacs. I catch you dosing my food with FEV or anything and you'll be singing Old World Blues from here to wherever I finally finish kicking your ass.



Never rightly said I had amnesia as I recall. Just don't talk much about the old days. Anyway, don't be worried. You'll never catch me doing that, pardner.



Well, good. That's... wait a minute, when you say 'never catch you', you mean-





What in the seven hells is this thing supposed to be?



No idea. Door's open though...




Today's Mods: Frozen World, Female Caesar's Legion, Increased Legion Presence, Increased Wasteland Spawns, Cortex Scrambler, The TARDIS In The Wasteland, Wacky Weapons, The 8 Books, Electro-City, Nipton Rebuilt, The Door, CONELRAD, Radio Free Wasteland

Christmas. Christmas never changes. Every day this week though, Fallout: New Vegas gets into the spirit of the season as a selection of mods make wishes come true... for better or worse. Today, the wasteland wakes up to an unusually snowy world - at least except the Jacobstown mutants, but it's not as if anyone was heading over there with a bottle of wine and seasonal good cheer anyway.

Previously: Part 1




Cassidy! Get yourself up, something amazing's gone and happened! There's snow everywhere and it's like Santa's been and everyone's woken up with something they most wished for last night. You'd better come out and-





What? Quit gawpin' already. Not like you've never seen me with bed hair before.



Aaah. Cass, you didn't... didn't go to bed last night wishin' for a better childhood or anything, right? No like, secret desire for a lost youth or nothing?



Yeah, those long days of not being able to drink are top of my nostalgia list. You been shot in the head again there, Haettenschweiler?



In that case, little lady, you better go find a non-broken mirror somewhere pretty soon. I'll be... you'll find me over here, by the tree. Behind the tree, most likely.



Jeez. Don't know what's up with him today, but...



...





Listen up, perverts. I am not some Lydia to play dress-up with. Lydia wouldn't start lopping off balls with broken whiskey bottles, and believe me, I have a lot of whiskey bottles going spare. This was your doing, you better pray it reverses right now or-





Aw, you looked so cute.



That never happened, you got it? Never happened. Now what the hell's going on? Where did the snow come from? Why's there dancing strippers outside? Where's my hangover? Why is no-one else looking like they want to scream?



It's a Christmas miracle, Cass! Everyone got what they wanted.



And you're saying that like it's a good thing? Your semi-amnesia stretched to where we live, Segoe UI? Don't see most folks round here asking for pre-war books or anything. We'd all better pray whatever happened didn't get as far as Caesar...





Hail Caesar!



That's 'Caesar'.



Whatever. Our scouts have verified the reports. The entire south-east of the Mojave is filled with Legionaries, none there yesterday, many in more accurate Roman armour. It's like we're an actual army instead of a small town Ren-Faire in skirts.



As a wise man named Aristotle once said, “Be not arrogant when fortune smiles, or dejected when she frowns.” If fortune is smiling, it behooves us to accept gracefully, wouldn't you say, Praetorian?



Great Caesar is forever wise.



Yes. Yes, indeed. That... ah... that rather reminds me. Some of your Frumentarii... not me of course, I would never presume to question such as yourself... have been wondering about the... uh... rather sudden change of staff around here?



The what, Lucius?



The... uh... the way your Praetorian guard rather seem to have been... replaced overnight with rather more... distaff counterparts. Modestly hot redhead ones, to be exact. It seems a little... out of... out of character for a misogynistic despot?



I like my new 'Vale' girls. Tell anyone who complains that we all have our crosses to bear in this life, and they shall find themselves bearing theirs all the way to a radioactive Golgotha if they do not remember their place.



Sir? You appear to have... a delivery waiting outside from a man named Boone. Note attached says "Happy Saturnalia from me and my dead wife, you fascist piece of-" and then it's all just crossed out. Shall I have it sent away?



Nonense! It must be tribute from an admirer of my attempts to civilise this wasteland. Bring it before me! Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's!






FISTO THE LOVE-BOT IS HERE! PREPARE FOR NUMBNESS!



Praetorians! Defend me! Destroy this abomination!



FISTO IS INDESTRUCTIBLE!





Reckon you just might got a point there, at that. Going to be a lot of slavers and rapists and such getting their presents too, and while I'm guessin' we won't be seeing those for various reasons of good taste...



EVEN FISTO IS DISTURBED BY GOOGLING 'SEXOUT'



...stands to reason some folks might need defending from their neighbours' ideas of how the world outta be. What you say, Cass? Should we go see what's new out there? I reckon there may just be unfinished work for us yet.



Sure beats hanging around here waiting for aliens to attack or whatever. Say, if everyone out there got what they wanted, how's about you? What was your gift?



Aw, you know me, Cass. I'm just an old-style cowboy at heart. Always said, with the sun kept from my eyes, big iron on my hip and the horizon callin' me forwards, I got all any pilgrim could ask for in this life.



That's surprisingly mature.



Yeah, so I was surprised as hell to wake up owning some toy called a "Cortex Scrambler" that nerve-staples folks to be my slaves. Like this guy.





Wait, wha- NANOPROBES INSERTED! INITIALISING NEURAL TAKEOVER SUBROUTINE! I AM YOURS TO COMMAND!



You are so losing karma points for that.



Suggest we spend some time looking round to see what else might be lying round town for us to use, then tomorrow, hit the dusty trail to go check out the big bad wasteland. You with me one last time, Cassidy?



Snowy trail. And at least you're still acting like I got a choice, even with you holding that thing, so I figure that's cause to stick around for a bit.



Aw, shucks, Cass, like I'd ever do a thing like that. I reckon we've been through enough for you to know your business as well as me.



Thanks, I guess. Means... means a lot.



Just make sure's you keep your distance, only use your ranged weapons, and open up that inventory - I got a whole heap of crap I been meanin' to unload.



...I am sworn to carry your burdens.



What was that there, partner?



Nothing. Probably nothing at all...


Today's Mods: Frozen World, Placeable Christmas Trees, Cass and Veronica Shojo Restyled, Female Caesar's Legion, Increased Legion Presence, Increased Wasteland Spawns, Cortex Scrambler

Christmas. Christmas never changes. Every day this week though, Fallout: New Vegas gets into the spirit of the season as a selection of mods make wishes come true... for better or worse. This silent night though, a woman called Cassidy just stares into another empty glass, killing time in Goodsprings' Prospector Saloon and waiting for a certain someone to finish walking a Lonesome Road.



'Twas the night before Christmas, and all over the Mojave
Not a... um... larvae? Harvey? Sod it, never mind...




So there I was, pretending to be in the middle of an anecdote, when this stranger walked into my bar. Did me a solid or two. Didn't even try to sell me to cannibals that one time. Can't say fairer, so we've been partners ever since.



Sorry, was you talkin' to me there?



Then he just runs off, for the fourth time. Sorry, Cass, he says, you wait here, some guy called Ulysses wants to see me alone-like, and it'd be rude to bring company. Some Christmas, right, sitting drinking alone like I got nothing better to do.



Girl, enough. This here's my saloon, not your Bar Humbug.



Only Christmas sprit I'm looking for this year goes in a glass, Trudy. Pint glass for preference. Keep it coming 'til I could strum myself off to a photo of Caesar.



That's 'Caesar'.



Whatever.






Oh, if it isn't the man with the lobotomy scars coverin' up the bullet marks behind his brain. Can't say as I noticed you gone, save for no-one tellin' me what to do with my stimpacks or leaning in close for a while.



Who's this guy?



Pardner, I reckon you can just call me The Man With No Name.



Oh, that's not what I've been calling you these last few drinks, Courier. Trudy, pour him two fingers of whatever you've got left back there. Figure I about bought this saloon tonight already, may as well go for the furniture and all.



Much obliged there, little lady.



Be glad I'm drunk enough not to know which of you I can punch without a sore ass from hitting the floor. So anyways, find your mysterious fella rocking the epic hate-on? What did he end up wanting anyway?



I dunno. About five hundred corks to plug up the bulletholes, I'm guessin. That varmint had himself skin like his daddy was a deathclaw and his momma a radscorpion. Still, I reckon we both got what we was looking for.





Courier, have you heard that old world saying, 'do not shoot the messenger?'



'Course.



I HAVE NOT!





Actually, now's I think, he probably expected more out of it, or he wasted himself a heck of a lot of time setting up his plans. And me, I just realised I had no real reason to play his game from the start. New stuff I got from it looks dumb too.



Well, great. I'm good too, since you're asking. So, where next, now you're all done with that business? We going to go deal with that House guy? Maybe give the Legion what for, or go questing for the NCR's spine in some cave?



Later, Cass. Reckon we take the Christmas off, enjoy some time with our loved ones, enjoy the holiday and all that. Saving the world can wait a few days.



Loved ones. Yeah, right. Never knew my Dad, Mom was a tribal, died when I was a kid, and last I checked you're not exactly Mr. Social, Mr. One Friend At A Time. Think a thousand turkeys out of my ass will be enough?





WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!



What the shit?!



Rose of Sharon Cassidy! I have been sent to help you learn the true meaning of Christmas! You will be visited by three ghouls of past, present and future, who will humorously show you the error of your cynical ways and-



Do we know you? You look as familiar as this sounds.



Oh, I do apologise. My name is Marley. You may have heard of me.



Jacobstown Marley?



He's my cousin. I'm from Nipton. Or was, before... you know.



Oh. Seems like a missed opportunity, that.



Yeah, well, what are you going to do?



For starters, this.





Great. More mess to clean up.



Oh, stow it. You've had two hundred years and still not done anything about the broken mirror in the bathroom. Don't pretend to be Little Miss Houseproud now.



The heightened perception of this very nice hat on my head suggests you're upset about something. Was it something this guy said?



Huh?



I just don't like Christmas, okay? If there was ever a Santa giving people what they wanted, he got nuked or stopped checking the mail centuries ago. Tomorrow's just another radioactive day like any other, and that's all there is to it.



You never know. Maybe this year will be different...



Please, there's only one impossible delivery boy round here, and he don't wear red. Gah. Calling it a night already. Anyone needs me, I'll be on a floor somewhere between here and Victor's place, or giving Easy Pete a run for his title.



Merry Christmas anyways, Cass. Santa asks, some of them sherries and mince pies was from you. Old soda and a squirrel on a stick anyway. Reckon we're okay swapping traditions up some, now everything's bout gone to poop.





"Merry Christmas, Cass," indeed. Not enough moonshine in the wastes.



...



Guess though... guess it wouldn't be so bad, that lobotomised optimism there being true. Like, just for a bit, the world waking up and there being snow everywhere, and presents under trees, and everyone just...





Yeah, right, Cassidy. As if.


Today's Mods: Frozen World, Placeable Christmas Trees

Obsidian's uncannily accurate recreation of South Park's art, animations, and fart jokes in its upcoming Stick of Truth RPG first came into being without a budget. Kotaku's lengthy profile of the storied studio revealed that CEO Feargus Urquhart and his team constructed early prototypes for show creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker without financial support.

Urquhart initially stressed to the pair that any sort of South Park game should mirror the show's construction-paper style, saying to them, "Let’s pretend we can do all the RPG stuff. We can handle that. If it doesn’t look like the show, all of this is pointless."

So, Obsidian crafted working examples unpaid as a proof of its enthusiasm for making the crossover work. Stone and Parker immediately loved the results. "We took it in to Matt and Trey," Urquhart said. "And Trey just grabs the controller and he's like, ‘This feels awesome!' And Matt runs up to the screen and he goes ‘That's the construction paper!' And they were like, ‘Let's do this.' And that was that."

The rest of the profile goes over Obsidian's shelved and successful projects and its rise from the ashes of Black Isle Studios. And if you feel a surreal sort of excitement over the fact the developer responsible for Fallout: New Vegas is working on a game involving sentient feces and a High Jew Elf class, we're right there with you.

The lead programmer of Fallout 1 and 2, Tim Cain, has been airing his views on Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas in an in-depth chat with RPG Codex. The co-founder of Troika (Arcanum, Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines) is currently working on the upcoming South Park RPG with New Vegas developers, Obsidian, but he reckons it's a close call between the two modern Fallouts.

"If I were to compare the two games, I would say that Fallout New Vegas felt like it captured the humor and style of the Fallout universe better than Fallout 3," he said, "but I have to hand it to the FO3 designers for developing VATS, a cool twist on called shots for a real-time game."

Cain found Fallout 3's wasteland to be a lot more lavish than New Vegas', the incidental details and attention to detail that went into every environment didn't just sell the feel of the post-apocalypse, it hid self-contained stories among the debris.

"I also loved the set decoration FO3. There was so much destruction, yet obviously everything had been meticulously hand-placed. So much story was told entirely through art. I ended up naming these little art vignettes and creating side stories in my head about what had happened.

"There was "The Suicide", a dead guy in a bathtub with a shotgun, and I figured he just couldn't handle life after the bombs. There was "Eternal Love", a couple of skeletons in a bed in a hotel room, forever embracing each other.

"My favorite was "Desperate Gamble", where I found a feral ghoul in an underground shelter filled with lab supplies and lots of drugs... except for Rad-X. I imagined that a scientist found himself irradiated and desperately tried to synthesize some Rad-X to cure himself before he succumbed, but he was too slow. I did notice that whatever was left of his mind sure did seem to enjoy toilet plungers."



Fallout 3's art direction was a big part of Fallout 3's appeal for Cain, but he later said that art should take second seat to design. "I care more about a game being fun than being beautiful, because no matter how good you look, people will move on to the next pretty thing and forget about you. If you make a fun game, people will remember that. And a fun game needs to be accessible, by which I mean that game had to present its rules clearly and then follow them."

Cain certainly isn't alone in his central complaint about Fallout 3, though. "I hated the ending. There, I said it."

It's okay, Tim. I understand. "I didn't like the sudden problem with the purifier, and I especially didn't like the lack of real, meaningful multiple endings beyond what I chose in the final few minutes. But the worst thing about the ending was there was no mention of the fate of places I had visited. In my head I had already imagined slides for Megaton, the Citadel, Rivet City, Underworld, GNR, the Enclave or the mysterious Commonwealth. But I got... pretty much nothing."

Which modern Fallout did you prefer, and what would you like to see from Fallout 4?

Much like earlier Obsidian game Knights of the Old Republic 2, what we got in Fallout: New Vegas was only part of what was planned, or even implemented only to be dummied out. Modders to the rescue! Investigating the source with forensic care, there are now many fixes available to do everything from turn Freeside back into the single map it was meant to be, to adding back characters that were cut. Better still, you can grab the necessary mods in a set of easy packages - right here!

There are more changes still to be made, but the ones on offer so far include full quests, missing characters, an in-engine version of the introduction, and several packs containing small changes that don't warrant their own full mods. Check the descriptions for compatibility information though, as a few apparently don't play well together (a Brahmin companion called Betsy and the new Open Freeside being the most obvious.) Head over here for a preview of what might be coming back later.

To address some fans' feedback about the game's ending, BioWare has said it’s working on "a number of game content initiatives” for Mass Effect 3 in addition to existing DLC plans. The possibility of BioWare modifying the game's ending has stirred a conversation on Twitter, message boards, development blogs, and elsewhere: would changing a game's final moments based on feedback set a bad precedent for video games' creative integrity? Or is it actually a way of taking advantage of the unique ease with which games can be edited?

One voice I wanted to include in this dialogue was that of BioWare's fellow writers and designers throughout the industry. To find out what they thought, I talked to Chris Avellone, Gary Whitta, Greg Kasavin, Jesse Schell, Chuck Jordan, Paul Taylor, Steve Gaynor, Susan O'Connor, and Bobby Stein. They've worked on Fallout: New Vegas, Bastion, Far Cry 2, Frozen Synapse, BioShock, BioShock 2, and other games. I’ve presented their opinions here, which are only edited for clarity.

Looking to improve your ending? Check out our in-depth guide to Mass Effect 3's War Assets and Readiness before reloading your save.

I asked each person the following question: Do you object to the idea of developers changing a game's narrative based on player feedback after release? Or do games (especially games that promote player agency) present a unique opportunity for "story collaboration" between users and producers that designers should take advantage of?

Here are the responders and their responses.


Chris Avellone
Avellone is Obsidian’s Creative Director, Chief Creative Officer and a co-owner at the studio. His game credits include Fallout 2, Icewind Dale II, Star Wars: KOTOR II, Neverwinter Nights 2, Alpha Protocol, Fallout: New Vegas, and F:NV’s DLC.

"Games should take advantage of feedback and using it for DLC changes and sequel changes. I feel BioWare does this from game to game already, and it’s the reason that some companions have achieved the prominence and romance options in the games that they do because the players strongly responded to those characters—and I’ll be blunt, we as narrative designers have no idea how a character’s going to be received, and “breakout” characters we envision may end up not being that at all once the game is released into the wild.

Most importantly, game development is an iterative process. Our goal is to entertain our players. No one knows more about what they consider “fun” than the player themselves. While you can’t please everyone, there are iterations that make sense to do in DLC content and sequels. As a case study, the DLC process from Fallout: New Vegas allowed us to collate all the weapon feedback from FNV and adjust it, and it also allowed us to take a long look at what gameplay elements and mods people were making for New Vegas and incorporate that into the narrative and quest lines. The best example is we noticed that people were making a LOT of homebase mods. So, we designed a good chunk of Old World Blues to specifically revolve on you making a new homebase in New Vegas with all the improvements people were pointing out. Even better, we were able to make it part of the story and the characters. Everybody wins, and people seemed to really enjoy it based on the fan (and press) response—but the catch is, we never would have thought to do that without analyzing the fan response and taking that into account."

 

Steve Gaynor
Gaynor was a Level Designer on BioShock 2, then Lead Designer and Writer of the Minerva's Den DLC. He worked on BioShock Infinite for a year before leaving Irrational to go indie.

"There's great value in thinking about the story of a game as a collaboration between the player and the developers. In the collision of fiction and game mechanics, my experience of a game is never exactly the same as yours; the more systemic and divergent the results of the player's contribution, the better. Much of the player's experience of Deus Ex or Skyrim is the story of how the player played that game, and how they shaped the gameworld to express themselves; the experience of Minecraft is entirely that. It's incredibly powerful.

But things like "cutscenes" and "endings" are completely authored by the developers, and the developers altering the authored content of a game after the fact has nothing to do with the systemic player-developer collaboration described above. It's no different than a movie or book being released and, upon fan outrage, being edited and re-released to pander to the most vocal dissenters in the audience. It's not unique to games; it is unique to a certain type of entertainment media that attracts fans who feel entitled to dictate exactly how the product should bend to their desires, instead of standing as a unique experience to be enjoyed, or not, on its own merits."

 

Gary Whitta
Whitta was Editor-in-Chief of PC Gamer for four years. He wrote the film Book of Eli. Whitta is currently a story consultant and writer for Telltale’s The Walking Dead game, for which he’ll write the fourth episode.

"I'll be interested to see how BioWare will respond to the fan reaction in terms of future content—clearly they intend to do something, but what remains to be seen. As much as it left me with many questions and ultimately feeling kind of uncomfortable, I really hope they don't attempt to retcon or in any way "undo" the ending they presented. I've always felt that games like Mass Effect are all about living with the consequences of your choices, no matter what they may be, and I think BioWare should do the same thing here and stick with their original choice, trust their original creative instinct, rather than allow the fan response to cause them to second-guess themselves. My gut feeling is that they will add new content to help clarify and resolve some of the questions that are out there while sticking to their original creative intentions and I while that's less bothersome than calling a complete do-over, as a storyteller it still bugs me.

I read an op-ed which argued that since videogames are a "malleable artform" that get altered and patched all the time people shouldn't be bothered by this. Well it bothers the hell out of me. Games usually get changed for technical reasons like bug fixes and multiplayer balancing. Altering one of a game's artistic cornerstones—story—merely to appease the malcontents is wrong. While I'm sure George Lucas would agree about the malleability of art, I think changing the ending of such a high-profile title would set a very disturbing precedent for games."

 

Chuck Jordan
Jordan is an independent game developer. He worked at LucasArts in the late ‘90s, wrote dialogue for Telltale’s Sam & Max adventure games, and did game design and writing for Disney Imagineering, an interactive development arm of the company.

"Considering how much time people have spent trying to advance the idea that video games are works of art, it's disappointing to see so many people defending the idea that games are product. It's almost enough to make me think that writing thousands of words about the nature of artistic expression in interactive entertainment on my own low-traffic blog were a waste of time.

There's usually an outcry whenever a movie's obviously been focus-grouped into mediocrity, or when a pop star is clearly targeted at a particular demographic. And when a video game gets a console release with a UI tailored to controllers, we have to listen to incessant complaints that the game's been "dumbed down" just to appeal to a larger audience. Apparently the value of ‘audience feedback’ can fluctuate.

Products are made to the specifications of customers. Art is supposed to be an expression of creativity. If you're invalidating your team's ‘vision’ to appeal to the demands of players, then you've crossed the line from art to commerce. That's no different for interactive entertainment than it is for anything else.

It's frequently framed as ‘empowering the player,’ but pandering isn't empowerment. People seem to have forgotten that "give the people what they want" was always intended to be a pejorative expression. If the goal of a game is to provide the player with the tools to create her own story, then the developers need to actually give the player those tools. Not just a series of scripted events based on what the developers think their audience wants.

Essentially, BioWare created the problem for themselves by, to be blunt, promising more than they or any other developer could deliver. They've sold the Mass Effect series on the premise that the player can completely customize his character and his character's story—entire planets with complex storylines that some players will never even see! (And also sex with aliens). But even the largest team of writers and content creators won't be able to deliver an indefinite number of conclusions that all have the same level of impact, satisfying enough to conclude a multi-year, multi-game epic series. People have been spending years trying to come up with a way to create systems that generate compelling narratives, and no one's cracked the problem yet.

That's probably because it's not really a problem; developer-created narratives still have plenty of value in interactive entertainment. And they can be collaborative: the developer and the player work together to complete a story. The player's interaction with the system is what gives the story meaning. When I'm playing games, I prefer to be surprised, to be shown something I wouldn't have come up with on my own. And it's hardly a collaboration if one of the participants can always get his way just by complaining loudly enough."

 

Greg Kasavin
Kasavin was Editor-in-Chief of GameSpot for a decade. He’s currently Creative Director at Supergiant Games. Supergiant released Bastion last year. Kasavin mentions that he has played and completed Mass Effect 3 (and both previous games) and that he’s “a longtime fan of BioWare, ever since Baldur's Gate. BioWare's classic games are a big inspiration to me.”

"I think developers are well within their right to make positive changes to games post-release, and in the vast majority of cases this is seen by players as a good thing if not an expected thing these days. For example, a high-quality multiplayer game needs to be nurtured and maintained over time by its developers as its player base grows more experienced and inevitably discovers exploits or other issues. I'm always willing to give developers I trust the benefit of the doubt when it comes to making changes post-release.

Making narrative changes post-release can be tricky because story is seen as canonical... history can't be rewritten, and so on. But I think it's important to note this type of thing does happen sometimes. Fallout shipped with a time-sensitive main quest that gave you a really bleak ending if you took too long to finish that quest. In the first patch, the developers eliminated the time limit, removing what could be seen as a major aspect of the ending. Years later, Fallout 3 got patched so that you could continue playing post-release. Many movies, including classics like Blade Runner, got director's cuts with major narrative changes said to reflect the true authorial intent.

Whether it's appropriate is a judgment call. I don't think these cases are just a matter of the creators of these works buckling to pressure. I think they wanted to do the right thing, for the sake of their work and their audience. Likewise, in the current case of Mass Effect 3, I fully expect BioWare will do whatever they think is best. I think BioWare has accomplished an incredible achievement with Mass Effect, and I'll be interested to see how it evolves from here."
 




Jesse Schell
Schell is a Professor of Entertainment Technology at Carnegie Mellon, founder of Schell Games, and a former Creative Director at Disney. In 2010, Schell got a lot of attention for a speech he gave at DICE about gamification in the age of Facebook. He’s currently working on the Kickstarter-funded Puzzle Clubhouse.


"It's an interesting question. My feeling is that it's their story, they can do what they want—there isn't much to object to. Now, the question is, will it make people happy? This is a much more difficult question. So, here are some facets:

1) If people really hate the original ending, maybe changing it will make people like the game more. If so, good idea—change it!

2) People want the world of Mass Effect to seem real and solid. When you change the world like that, it robs the world of its illusion of reality. Uh, oh, don't change it!

3) This could be an awesome publicity stunt, designed to get people to talk about and pay more attention to the game. In that case, create controversy, act like the old ending will be "replaced" but then change the game so that depending on your actions in the game, you get two different possible endings!

I predict number three..."

 


Bobby Stein
Stein is ArenaNet’s Lead Writer on Guild Wars 2. He formerly worked as a freelance writer and editor for developers including Microsoft Game Studios, Nintendo, and Tripwire Interactive.

"It all depends on the game. In Guild Wars 2, players have agency to push their personal stories in different directions, while also creating their own experiences by simply exploring the world and participating in dynamic events, dungeons and other activities. There’s so much content that it’s hard to say that there’s really an ending to it, just discrete conclusions to many related stories.

We believe that the success of our game will come from our investment with the community. It’s a respectful partnership. We’re not simply releasing a game and then moving on to the next project. We’ll support it for years to come. We already have ideas for future content, but we’re constantly listening to our players to see what resonates with them. So, it’s never wrong to listen to your community’s feedback, but ultimately you have to take all those ideas and opinions and weigh them against what’s best for the world you’re evolving."

 

Dave Grossman
Grossman is a LucasArts alum. He co-designed Day of the Tentacle with Tim Schafer. With Schafer and Ron Gilbert, he's considered one of the creators of the Monkey Island franchise. Grossman is Design Director at Telltale, at which he helped write and design Tales of Monkey Island and other games.

"As a writer in an interactive medium, I think the idea of collaboration with the audience is really interesting. We get a little taste of it at Telltale, where, because we work episodically, we can respond to fan feedback (usually in small ways) in the later episodes of a season. But the possibilities become more and more intriguing as the whole gaming world gets used to content that updates more or less constantly, and developers get more adept at reacting to audience feedback that comes back instantly. In theory (in theory, I said) you could get close to that conversational Dungeons and Dragons experience, where the game master and the players are sitting around a table spinning a tale together. The developer essentially trades, at least to some degree, the role of author for the role of...'curator' might be a good way to put it.

Of course, what I’m talking about there is a situation where collaboration with the audience is an aspect of the experience which is included by the developer on purpose. It’s part of the plan from the get-go, presumably because the developer believes there is entertainment value (or some other value) in doing it that way. It’s a bit different when collaboration was not part of the plan, and an author makes revisions to a finished work because some portion of the audience responded in a negative way. I have no hard-and-fast objection to that either, indeed, I wonder whether the idea of a “finished work” is even a concept that has much validity these days. I update my website all the time, why not my game or my story? What I would ask about is not Whether an author changes a narrative, but Why? Is it done in pursuit of quality? Of a better representation of the message of the original? Or just because people complained?

My brain now insists on traveling back to 1991, when my comrades and I released Monkey Island 2. That game had a fairly bizarre ending, for which I personally bear some responsibility, and about which a significant portion of the audience expressed displeasure. During development there was a lot of discussion over whether the ending was a good idea, and I have to say that in retrospect it’s not my favorite, but I was into it at the time. If we made that game today it would be easy to revise the ending after release—but I still wouldn’t. We had our reasons for including it, and I wouldn’t change it, never have wanted to, and I suspect Ron and Tim would both say the same. Frankly, a great game with a contentious or unpopular ending is not necessarily a bad thing.

But I’m also moved to consider The Curse of Monkey Island, made by my friends Larry and Jonathan a few (okay, six) years later. Here again there were complaints about the ending, in this case because it was absurdly short. I happen to know that they had planned a much more elaborate end, but ran out of budget (a good example of how reality sometimes prevents you from doing the best thing). I’m pretty sure that, given the chance, they would revise that—but not just because the audience raised its voice, because it would be a genuine improvement on their vision for the game.

And in the end, I think that’s where I land: Listening to the audience is important, but it’s when you agree with them that you should make changes. If you’re going to revise stuff, by all means go ahead, but be sure you’re doing it because you want to, not because you think you should."

 


Paul Taylor
Taylor is Joint Managing Director and one of the co-founders of Mode7. He wrote Frozen Synapse. Earlier this week, Taylor revised the ending to Frozen Synapse “as a stupid experiment,” he says. “The community requested ‘more ponies and dinosaurs’ so we gave our artist free reign to fulfill that brief. This ending should only be around for a couple of weeks before we revert back to the original ending and restore the integrity of our creative work! It was quite liberating to trash the end of the story completely, it definitely made me think about a few things.”


"I don't think you should revisit the ending of something after it’s been released. I've not seen anything to suggest that BioWare were actively considering doing that though.

I'm all for taking player feedback on stories, especially with a branching narrative, because there the player definitely has some kind of ownership of what's happening. However, that should definitely be done during development. Once it's out, it's out: you're trivialising your own decisions by messing with them.

It seems to me that game developers are still battling with story in general: it's rarely executed in an elegant way. Even something like Dear Esther, which I love, has some severe limitations on what it's able to do with narrative. It does intrigue me that text-based interactive fiction has had this incredibly rich history of gameplay and narrative innovation (which continues with some of the stuff people are producing in that form today) but none of that as really crossed over into more mainstream gaming."

 


Susan O’Connor
O’Connor is a professional game writer. She’s written for BioShock, BioShock 2, and Far Cry 2, among other games. She founded the Game Writers Conference, now part of GDC Austin. In 2008, she shared the GDC “Best Writing” award (for BioShock) with Ken Levine, Joe McDonagh, and Emily Ridgway.

"Whoever said 'Dying is easy, comedy is hard' never wrote for video games. I haven't played Mass Effect 3 yet, so I can't speak to that game specifically, except to say that my heart goes out to those guys on the team, who I am sure worked incredibly hard on that project. This whole experience has got to be a punch in the gut for them. Speaking more generally, this issue feels like one of player expectation. The takeaway, for me, is that if players are promised player agency, they're going to want to see that promise delivered all the way to the (bitter) end.

If players know from the get-go that they're playing an authored game—or if they're lulled into complacency with the illusion of agency—then they'll accept an authored ending, as we've seen with other successful games. The trick is to know up front which kind of game the team is making, so that they can set player expectation—AND TEAM expectation as well. If the creatives know up front that they're not the ones telling the story—that their job is to give players the tools to tell their own story, and then get out of the way—then they'll come at the work from a completely different place. And the end result will be dramatically different. Better? That I don't know. Only time will tell. (I'm a sucker for a good story, myself, so I'm a little biased.)"


 
Top-of-page Mass Effect 3 illustration by PATRYK OLEJNICZAK. See more Mass Effect illustrations on Patryk’s blog. http://garrettartlair.blogspot.com/

The Games Developers Conference has just begun in San Francisco. Devs from every corner of the industry are congregating to talk about their craft. It’s a very exciting time.

GDC is less console iteration and booth babe than E3. It's more about quiet announcements and candid industry chatter. That said, this year’s show is already shaping up nicely, especially for us PC gamers. We have men on the ground, sniffing out scoops in real-time.

Will Valve open the Pandora’s box that is the Steam Box? What’s the mystery game that EA are due to announce on Tuesday? What will Sid Meier have to say in his keynote speech? Are Hitman Absolution’s crowds extremely good or a bit good? Read on for the highlights.



The conference begins low-key but unpredictable. Today, we’ll be attending various talks from indie developers and meeting up with Paradox Interactive. Tuesday is a similar affair, though some Planetside 2 news might break later on.

Things get really exciting on Wednesday. Lord of Civ, Sid Meier is doing a talk on Interesting Decisions, Notch is having a Fireside Chat, Square Enix are talking Deus Ex and Valve are talking TF2. There’s also rumours of a mystery game getting announced by EA in their Game Changers conference. It could relate to more Sim City news, or something even more exotic. IO Interactive will also be unveiling Hitman Absolution’s outstanding-looking crowd tech.

We’ve got a bundle of interviews on Thursday with some of your favourite devs, but we can’t give away too much yet. We’ll also be attending postmortems on Portal 2, The Old Republic, Fallout, The Witcher 2 and League of Legends. It’s going to be one hell of an insightful day. Keep an eye on our GDC 2012 tag for more.

Bioware kick off Friday’s schedule with a talk on Contrast and Context in Story and Cinematics. There’ll also be discussion from Zynga and PopCap, an analysis of recent Indie hit Dear Esther, along with chats on experimental play sessions, game dev parent’s rants and the nature of game reviews. We’ll almost definitely have something to say about all that.

And then it’ll be over. The most exciting developments won't be on the schedule, so keep an eye on our GDC 2012 tag for more. Excitement!