Ender Quest –“Fallout: New Vegas”… after “Skyrim”

============================================

INFINITE DICTIONARY:

Ender Quest (En-DURR kwest): A gamer’s unrelenting quest to finally complete a game, whether for the story or for Trophies and Achievements (or both).

============================================

Tuesday

8:05 PM – “Oh my God. I can’t sprint.”

8: 13 PM – “Oh my God. ‘X’ isn’t ‘Store’ anymore. It’s always ‘Take All.’ Also, dammit.”

8:13 PM (again) – “What the!? What’s in my inventory!? I don’t know what half of this junk is! Why isn’t it sorted? And who’s ‘Cuddles’ and why do I have his Toy Car? Oh wait—Iiii remember. Ha! Good times!… <sigh> I still hate this.”

8: 39 PM – “Hoooooly *$#&! VATS!”

8:41 PM – “Oh, goddammit VATS!”

8:52 PM – “Dammit. I died. Well at least Skyrim has a really dynamic Autooooohmygod no!”

Wednesday

6:32 AM – After a break, I put my copy of New Vegas back onto my 360’s disc tray and pressed the eject button to close it. The tray didn’t close. I take it to mean my Xbox is whimpering and immediately apologize; is a hard crash like throwing up for an Xbox?

8:10 AM – After putting off New Vegas for a few hours with demos, I start it up only to find that the game will not load when I leave the Lucky 38 Casino. It’s here that the Ender’s Quest actually becomes difficult; up until here, I’d only experienced the usual, misdemeanor glitches. But, of course, on day two, as I find myself facing a game breaking glitch, I have to wonder… can I actually put up with this bull*$#&?

8:35 AM – After several attempts, the answer is “no, I can’t put up with this bull*$#&. At least not right now.” With a wistful look at Skyrim, I decide to hold off for one more day—maybe my Xbox just needs a chance to… cool down? Maybe it’s not completely Obsidian’s fault? Maybe…

9:30 AM – Screw that.

9:35 AM – A cache wipe and few spare game save deletions later and I’m back out of the Lucky 38… wondering why that should feel like such a damn victory. Because, really, did I want to play the rest of New Vegas? After having it critical fail on me a dozen times in one morning? After I fixed the problem myself?

Seriously, I didn't need the internet to make Zelda play again no problem.

Perhaps the more important question I find myself wondering at this point—as a major Bethesda fan, mind you—after an entire childhood full of Japanese games, why is that up until the recent rise of American video games, the only game breaking glitches I ever had to fix were solved by quickly blowing dust away? I really enjoy modern, Western-made games; my 360 collection is actually all Rockstar, Bethesda, Valve, and Bungie. But it’s getting more and more depressing to me how half of those firms (Valve and Bethesda) develop (and publish) huge titles that are just riddled with glitches. I know Japanese games aren’t spic and span, but I could finish Super Mario Bros. 3 without a glitch stopping me. And I don’t think we should continue on the road of casual acceptance of hard crashes and game breaking glitches. I mean… right?

12:18 PM – Assassinating a President.

3:52 PM – Sitting in a swimming pool in the spa area of the Ultra Luxe casino, in full armor, stuffing myself with food and then immediately drowning myself for a moment. Then I stuff my face again and so on and so on. All to rig the “Desert Survivalist” Achievement, which requires the player to regain a ridiculous amount of health by eating.

At first, I wonder if it’s worth how embarrassing this would be for my character. But then I imagine him, Jack, being absolutely fine with it, perhaps toasting the other rich bastards in the pool of the Ultra Luxe, sipping wine, then immediately drowning himself again, thrashing for a moment before coming back up, gasping for air and noshing on roasted gecko all at once.

Sunday

1:23 AM – Finished the game supporting Yes Man, essentially meaning I brought independence to New Vegas. Before I go on, I should specify that this is actually the second time I’ve beaten the game (the first time was… Friday? [following the Caesar’s Legion plotline]). So why isn’t this article done? Because (as always), completion for me means getting all of the achievements as well (in this case, the initial 1000 Gamerpoints (I’m not paying for DLC for this game).

The thing that strikes me about the ending though (aside from them being pretty well done and unexpectedly fulfilling), the credit roll is incredibly long. Seriously, I finished the game, put the controller down, made a sandwich, took a shower (still not kidding), came back, and the credits were still going. I don’t want to exaggerate, but that would mean that, at the very least, the credit roll for the most buggy, glitched out mess to hit the mainstream in recent years has a credit roll that indulges itself for at least thirty minutes. Thumbs up, guys. Great job.

Cause I mean, what a masterpiece!

Tuesday

2:25 PM – “Return to Sender.” Probably the worst experience, outright, that I’ve ever had with a Bethesda game. And just about enough to put an end to this Ender’s Quest. Maybe it’s one of the key character’s, Chief Hanlon’s, completely convoluted dialog that drives me crazy when it comes to this quest. Maybe it’s the way the game breaks if you go to a meeting place with Chief Hanlon before he (I shit you not) teleports there. But no… What makes me absolutely hate this quest is the fact that, for me, one of the quest options is broken so that you can’t end the quest the way I wanted to. In this game, the only true strength of which is its adherence to your choices and their consequences, I can’t expose a man who’s been falsifying government reports. Why? Because what happens afterward doesn’t trigger for me, for Lord knows what reason.

Now, I guess this shouldn’t be a major issue, but, I haven’t mentioned so many of the countless, stupid glitches I’ve encountered while playing this game again. Like the time I tried to end a mission by talking to a guy (for a second time after dying and having to finish the mission over again) and having the guy suddenly run away for no reason (and yes, the resulting 3 minutes of chase were exactly as hilarious and insanely annoying as you’re imagining). Or when, for the second time, one of my companions disappeared from my team (and despite seeing an indicator for her in the center of the world map) could not find.

A screen grab from the Fallout Wiki, listing all of the glitches for "Return to Sender." The sad thing? I couldn't capture all of them in one screen grab; there's at least another page's worth of glitches for this one quest.

Tack on the odd… family of glitches surrounding “Return to Sender” and the end result is honest rage. All I wanted to do was report this old liar, but Papa Quest Indicator-Be-Gone shows up. If, with an online glitch fix guide, I manage to get past him, Little Baby The-Next-Part-of-the-Quest-Just-Doesn’t-Activate is waiting for me, lag-shaped ba ba in hand. In the end, after all of that, yes, losing the freedom to actually roleplay my character was the last straw.

Now, I know that Skyrim isn’t without glitches, and like I said earlier, I know that Japanese games aren’t perfect, but I’ve felt lately like the video game industry has gotten a little gross lately. From Capcom’s mistreatment of Megaman to Valve’s casual refusal to fix Left 4 Dead’s server errors, gamers have had to put up with weird, personal baggage from gaming firms more than ever before. Years ago, you would never see a firm purposefully avoiding a mascot everyone loved. Yeah, one would disappear for a while or get a weird sequel that was nothing like what people wanted (Nintendo!… Goddamn Starfox Adventures…), but you wouldn’t see a developer just cancel every title for one character when people were clamoring for them.

In the same way, years ago, you wouldn’t see a mainstream console release that was this serious of a mess.

In completely ineffective protest, I’ve decided to add Obsidian to my personal “Don’t Buy from Them” list (along with Valve and Capcom [both obviously more difficult firms to ignore because both of them make great games {just not matching ethical business choices}]). I would add Bethesda, but no; I know that they’re glitch prone too, but… well, compare Skyrim and New Vegas! One of them runs on a completely new engine that’s really ambitious, and the other, developed by Obsidian, is made with an old engine using recycled graphics and it’s still a #*($ing mess.

Look, I’m not saying you should stop buying whoever’s games, but I am hoping more gamers will start to consider the quality in the programming of what they’re buying and the response from the firms that should fix them when that programming is shoddy.

Because, really, they’re video games—emphasis on “games.” They just aren’t supposed to be bitter or messy or upsetting. They’re supposed to just be fun.