Fallout 2: Another day, another bloody casino shootout. Slaughtered the Mordinos, cleared out the Stables, and with that was pretty much done with the entire eastern portion of the map. I've clearly screwed myself out of getting SkyNet somehow; Science is boosted enough to get the cyber-brain, and I'm sure I've got all the parts for the robot (I checked FAQs for this), but when I go to the computer itself it keeps giving me a message about data corruption or something. I'm guessing what happened is that I tried talking to SkyNet while the robot was only half-finished for the purpose of asking it what other parts I might need, it tried to download itself into an incomplete robot when I did this and ended up just getting fragged as a result. Sad.
Anyway, there wasn't much left but to deal with Navarro next, since a bunch of San Fransisco stuff depended on it. It was pretty easy to con my way in and out. Took longer than it had to because I had to redo parts of it, though--the save/load bug with Miria made her respawn outside the perimeter fence and get exploded by a mine once. Can't have that. I know she's useless in a fight, but she's my wife, dammit! And since the game clearly doesn't count her as one of my allies (I've got five other goons following me around, which should be the max for an MC with 10 charisma), there's no harm in keeping her. What amuses me is that none of the Enclave guards even took notice of her while she was with me inside the base. I think the devs really expected your spouse to get killed or divorced in short order. Anyway, second thing that made me redo bits of the base was the fact that I somehow lost the goddamned vertibird plans after leaving the place. No, I don't know how either. It's possible I just forgot them in the base, but I was sufficiently paranoid about the sergeant seeing me walk back in right after abandoning my post (and going hostile as a result) that I just reverted to an earlier save (in retrospect, it would've been extremely easy to just murder Chris and use his entrance to the base's underground. Oh well).
Hit up the Brotherhood of Steel building and the military base after that. HOLY SHIT. Combined with Navarro's haul...Advanced power Armor GET. 2x hardened power armor GET. Brotherhood armor GET. TALKING ROBOT DOG GET. And that's not even mentioning the weapons. The world is suddenly a very scary place to be for people who are not in my posse.
(Okay, so robo-dog is actually a pretty cruddy PC, but how could I not bring him along? He fits right in with a super-mutant voiced by Worf, a gigantic chameleon with an attitude problem and horrific claws, and a guy with a freaking bone through his nose. I feel kinda bad for Vic, who is objectively a much better PC just for actually being able to equip weapons and armor but was left moldering in Vault 13 when I picked up Goris, but I'm not going back for him now.)
With all this ungodly powerful equipment finally in my possession, I decided there was no better way to celebrate than by massacring Scientologists. Which was actually kind of tricky, but only because the force fields lock you inside their compound as soon as you attack either of the group's leaders and I couldn't find a computer terminal that would lower them. The actual fighting was hilariously one-sided. In the end, I just had to let my allies deal with the leader while I hung out by the entrance.
(Oh, I forgot to mention earlier, the first time I talked to the Shi leadership? Lee was going on about how the emperor is wise and powerful but almost no one is allowed to see him, and etcetera and so on, and I'm thinking there isn't an emperor, is there? I walk into the next hall just enough to see into the emperor's room, and there's a supercomputer sitting in it. This is totally The Old Man in the Cave, and that is win.)
Anyway, that and tanker stuff just about wraps things up for San Francisco. Apparently I got Badger killed. Feel rather bad about that. Thought he was safe, since I got the impression that he didn't actually do the hacking; he said something about security risks and then my only dialogue option was "Never Mind," which I assumed meant that he wasn't actually going through with it. Yet the Shi gunned him down anyway. (And it's just now that I remember that the Scientologist Hubologist tech who actually did do the hacking mysteriously vanished not long afterwards. Though that may also have something to do with the fact that I also convinced him to wipe his own organization's database.)
Only a few lingering sidequests at this point and it doesn't look like I can complete any of them: SkyNet (already covered); I'm assuming Dragon and Lo Pan were supposed to be a sidequest where you pick a side and eliminate the other, but neither of them will talk to me now (on account of my joining the Hubologists--which I only did in order to infiltrate their compound and kill every last one of them; guess I should've dealt with the martial artists as soon as I arrived in San Fran); and the mystery elevator in the Toxic Caves, which I was sure just required the electronic lockpicking kit but still stubbornly insists that I "need something electric." Failing to care about loose ends by now, though. The game can't possibly hand me any more broken than I've received in the last few hours. It's time to head out to the oil rig, wipe out the Enclave, and kill this fool who calls himself the president. Justice is fucking coming in the form of an oil tanker up your ass.
