Emancipation: Not all its cracked up to be.

Let me preface this with a few disclaimers.

1. I love Fallout 3. Its one of my favourite games, and I've sunk close to 40 hours into it. I'm going out of my way to play through it again, veeeery slowly to write my blog about it (talesofavaultdweller.blogspot.com) and loving it.

2. I am against slavery, regardless of race, creed, religious beliefs, etc. I don't think slavery is a good idea now, or ever.



In my personal game of Fallout 3, the one in which I am not blogging about (save a few posts on this side of things)I was working on a quest to help some escaped slaves. (Slavery is alive and well in the post apocolyptic wasteland) They had set up shop in a burnt out building, and called it the Temple of the Union. They had found the stone head of Lincoln somehow, and had a stone smith with them, so they decided this was a sign, and that they should take the head, and goto the Lincoln Memorial, and turn it into a beacon of hope for other slaves. Now, my character is good, morally speaking, so it only makes sense for him to help out, so I jumped at it.

First I had to goto the Memorial to ensure there were no slavers or Super Mutants about. There were, but I dealt with them promptly. The Slavers were easy, and it was profitable for me, in terms of ammunition and armour. The Super Mutants were not as easy, but I dealt with them anyways. Next, I had to get a picture of the Lincoln Memorial for the stonesmith, so he could recreate it properly. This was a bit more challenging, but a trip to the local museum and it was done. This was even more profitable, as I found the Lincoln Repeater, one of the more powerful in game weapons.

Next step was meeting the slaves at the Memorial. Sounds easy right? Just fast travel there, and bada bing, bada boom, achievement city. The problem was, they weren't there.

I looked on the Fallout Wiki and found it was a common bug, but the solutions they offered did not work for me. I tried 2-3 times, but no dice. Finally I decided that I would have to manually travel with them, ensure that they got where they needed going. It was slow going, and it was irritating, but for the most part, it actually made the game better, aside from the fact that I was doing it because of a bug, not because the game made me. Along the way we faced numerous threats, but since there were many of us (5 slaves, myself, my hired gun, my dog and their dog) we were able to handle them efficiently. The biggest problem we had was that we were travelling with some BOS outcasts, and one of them got a little loose with his missle launcher and caught one of our own within the blast radius. Obviously my people didn't like it, so we ended him.

Apparently travelling overland wasn't what they had in mind, so we took to a train station, following the tracks. Despite the fact that our destination was due south, these tracks took us due west. I questioned the wisdom of the detour, but followed along anyways, clearing the path of Feral Ghouls, and making sure all the locked gates were opened. I even had to close off a gas leak in one of the tunnels.

Once we hit the surface again, I was sure that we would swing around to the south, heading off to where we needed to go, but nope. Northwest now. I followed for a bit, but once we started getting near Megaton, I realized these slaves had no idea where they were going. At this point I was cursing them out continuously, saying that I should have told the slavers how to find them. I finally gave up on doing this the hard way and had J3nn look up how to handle this bug online. Apparently it takes these idiots 24-48 hours to get to where they need to go, likely because they feel the need to take a tour of the wasteland first. I delayed game time for 48 hours, and they finally made it. I was paid for my efforts, and sent along my way.


Stupid Slaves.