Wasteland Detective.

Warning: Fallout 3 main quest spoilers. Do not read if you don’t want spoilers for “Following in His Footsteps” or “Scientific Pursuits”.

Quests in Role Playing Games can feel very similar. Go to an area, talk to a specific NPC, kill some creatures, find an object and return it to an NPC, add these elements together in different combinations and you’ve got a dozen quests differentiated by a layer of contextual coating. Little in the way of thought is required unless the quest is explicitly a puzzle. Even if a quest is ostensibly a detective story solving the mystery is usually a case of going from point A to point B and talking to the required people at each location before moving on, there’s rarely a need to investigate as everything is presented to you. Maybe you might have to find one specific NPC in a given location, but the chances are the moment you talk to them you’ll know you’ve found the right person. Of course in order to get anything from them you’ll probably have to perform a further quest, and it’s back to the same sequence of actions in a different order.

It’s rare to find a quest where you really have to use your brain and work something out, where you have to make that mental connection between two facts or event in order to work out where to go next. There’s very little requirement to use the “little grey cells”.

I can only remember one instance where such action has been required and I believe it was the result of a bug.

Playing Fallout 3, I’d completed the first part of the main quest to try and find my missing father and had been told to head to the Galaxy News Radio building. My first attempt to do so ended in a violent death at the hands of a Super Mutant Behemoth so instead of trying again immediately I set about wandering around the outskirts of Washington DC, ostensibly trying to find a different route to the GNR building but in truth just exploring for its own sake. After visiting a number of locations along the banks of the Potomac River I came across Rivet City.

Since I was looking for my father, the majority of the dialogue choices with characters include and option to ask if they have seen him. Taking this tact with Harkness the guard at the entrance to Rivet City I was told that I should talk to a Doctor Li. This I did and within moments of starting a conversation with her she recognised me, having known my father. During the subsequent discussion with her she was able to tell me that my dad had been to Rivet City and had left to return to Project Purity. At this point I was presented with a single dialogue choice stating that I had been to Project Purity and not found anything. It felt a little strange to be presented with this as the only option because as far as I knew I had no idea where Project Purity was. Unable to do anything else I selected that option and was told I should return and look for some Holotapes or other clues as to my father’s current whereabouts. I was able to gain a little more information about the purpose of Project Purity but was unable to find out where it was, as the game seemed to think I had already been there.

Standing there in Rivet City with the knowledge that I had actually been so close to finding my father and not realised it, and that I would now have to work out where exactly Project Purity might be I felt a growing sense of admiration for Fallout 3. I no longer felt like I was simply following the trail of breadcrumbs set out before me in order to find my father but that I had been fortunately enough to come across an old friend of his, through my own actions not by following a prescribed quest and that now I would have to retrace my steps and try and work out where I’d been that might have housed Project Purity.

After some thought I decided upon a possible location. I returned to the Jefferson Memorial and set about exploring in earnest. It turns out I was correct in my deduction and the reason I’d not realised it was the location of Project Purity was because upon first entering the building hours earlier I’d encountered a number of Super Mutants and without the resources to deal with them I’d left before venturing further than the first few rooms. For the following hour or so as I explore the extents of the Jefferson Memorial and Project Purity labs I felt an emotional investment in the storyline that the game had been unable to instill in my before that point. I felt like I was now actively searching for my father and using my brains to deduce where he might be and where he might have gone. After recovering and listening to some of my father’s recordings I was looking forward to trying to location this mysterious Vault 112. I brought up my PipBoy to start planning my searching only to find that the game was now pointing me to a specific location in the Western wastelands, the implication being that somehow without having ever visited that area of the wastelands and with only some vague information to go on I somehow knew exactly where to go. The spell was broken, I was no longer an active participant in the search for my father, I was once again simply along for the ride, following the breadcrumbs laid out for me.

For a little over an hour my investment in the storyline of Fallout 3 was greater than with any other game. My actions and those of my character were in sync: I was actively looking for my father. I was investing my time in the search and getting somewhere, only for the curtain to be  pulled back after all my efforts. The game took my hand and showed me exactly where to go next. All that effort had been meaningless, I would find my father regardless of the effort I put into the search; I just had to follow the trail. I gave up with the main quest at that point, it was clear that the freedom to actually try and find my father wasn’t going to occur, I was going to be guided all the way, destine to follow and never to think for myself. For a time Fallout 3 came so close to the ideal of “being there” that it was able to provide an experience I’ve never had before. Only for it to fall back on the traditional signposting in a desire to ensure I didn’t get lost. Surely part of exploring a place is the potential to get lost, to miss something and find an alternate route for yourself?