We could retitle this update (And the last) "Some of the Ghoul NPCs in This Game Are Dicks" but I'd think that'd be too long, and that would apply to pretty much the majority of the other NPC's in the game as well, not just ghouls.
So today, we'll be focusing on the Tenpenny Tower sidequest. There's some cool ideas in here, but it's totally let down by:
1) Poor writing
2) Poor quest design (IE: Not enough options)
3) The fucking karma system
Let's get to it, shall we?
Yes, we're going to have to use the intercom everytime we enter the building. At laugh at those who got the Tenpenny Tower suite as a reward for blowing up Megaton. This is karma right here. Good characters only fast travel and go through one loading screen, evil ones fast travel and go through 3.
Of course, it isn't quite as bad as the Strip.
I mentioned it before with the last update, but the people in Tenpenny Tower are apparently rich. I really don't how you could be rich in the Capital Wasteland, there's no obvious economy to speak of. No mining, no farming, no ranching, none of that. Yet somehow these people are rich. I guess the people who claim the first luxury hotel after the apocalypse get to call the shots as to who is rich.
This is the leader of the guards. We talked to him a bit last update.
This guy is kind of a dick.
"How's that Ghoul situation coming along?"
"That damn Roy Phillips won't take no for an answer. Keeps showing up, looking for a handout. He and his kind aren't wanted. End of story. If I were a betting man, I'd place a stack of caps on him trying something violent soon. And that would make Tenpenny nervous. I don't like it when Tenpenny gets nervous. But I can't spare the manpower to go hunt down Roy Phillips and his band of misfits, or I'd gladly end this thing once and for all."
"Perhaps the residents could be "persuaded" to let the ghouls live here."
"You're out of line. Those filthy bitches can stay living in those metro tunnels. They'll move in here over my dead body."
Yeah, some of the people in the tower are assholes (This guy) but some of them are actually pretty cool. (Dashwood for example.)
"That can be arranged. You don't look like much."
Yeah, I know it's a stupid option, but it's the only non-"Ghouls suck" option.
"Are you threatening me? You're obviously an idiot, so I'll let that one slide. But I'm warning you, I won't hesitate to kill you if I have to."
Likewise. Still, believe it or not, the supposedly evil people of Tenpenny Tower are really the more reasonable side in this sidequest.
"I'm going to find a non-violent solution to your Ghoul problem."
Mostly to avoid Three Dog bitching us out over the radio.
"That's a laugh. Roy Phillips can't be reasoned with. Trust me. But go ahead and try to talk some sense into him. It's your funeral. They've holed up in the nearby metro tunnels."
Why am I not surprised.
"They're living with packs of Feral Ghouls. They've barred the main entrance. Go through the train yard. Good luck, kid. You're gonna need it."
For some reason, picking the non-violent option through dialogue doesn't give us the quest, but we tell him we'll kill the ghouls instead. Don't worry, it doesn't really matter what you say to him. (Speech checking him gives you a free assault rifle.)
So now we're off to another metro station. Are you sensing a pattern here?
There's a trainyard filled with ghouls over here.
I never used SMG's much in this game.
But, Sydney's SMG takes down these ghouls in about one round of attacks in VATS.
This is a cool little location though.
Christ, another reaver. This things are so annoying. I don't mind the idea of having boss enemies, but can you make them more powerful in other ways than making them ridiculously bullet spongy?
Unloading a ton of bullets into it's head at point blank should do some damage.
Some lucky crits and we wear it's health down pretty fast.
There it goes. They never even have any decent stuff on them either.
There's a good amount of supplies to be found here.
Now we're in the metro. We find this skeleton with an assault rifle and some ammo for it. It's not like we need the stuff though, we have a fully repaired Perforator and over 1,700 rounds of ammo for the thing. There are benefits to hoarding you know.
Let's play with the Railway Rifle a bit more. (Love this gun now. Never actually made it before in a playthrough before this LP.)
It's a pretty damaging weapon and it's not too loud too.
This quest has relatively little combat compared to stuff like Reilly's Rangers but it wouldn't hurt if for the next Fallout game Bethesda toned down the constant encounters with ghouls in these tunnels. Give it some time to build up atmosphere perhaps.
The Railway Rifle pins heads and limbs to the wall, it's pretty cool like that.
Now would be a bad time to run into a rea-
God damn it.
Backpedaling and shooting it with a ton of shotgun shells helps.
The Dart Gun was something I forgot to use on the reaver that would have been extremely helpful in that situation. (It cripples limbs, so we could avoid more damage from the ghoul.)
Ugh.
So we run into the lookout for the ghouls down here. He is pretty trusting of us, all things considered.
A bit of a temper is putting it mildly. He is a psychopath.
So another cult-like group of rebels being shunned by humans hiding out in the metro tunnels. That sounds familiar...
Roy's skin is weird looking. It's like blue-ish.
"So what are you doing in the Metro Tunnels?"
"Biding our time, making plans, getting ready. Tenpenny and his pack of elitist wannabees can't keep us out of that tower forever."
At this point, even a good karma character should see that letting Roy into the tower is not the right idea. At all.
"We got rights. And we'll tkae them if they aren't given to us."
"I might be able to get you in there."
"I already got a plan. They think I'm a monster. I'll show them the real monsters!"
By killing everyone in the tower!
That's a great plan.
"We'll unleash our feral brethren on them: all those bigoted sons-of-bitches will get torn apart. Trouble is getting past the damn subway access door!"
Subway access door? You think Tenpenny would have blocked that off a long time ago, considering how many things crawl through those sewers.
"You see, there's some kind of escape door that leads from the Tenpenny basement to the subway tunnels. There must be some way to get that open."
"Let me try talking to Tenpenny. Maybe he wouldn't mind you living there."
"Ha! Those snooty bitches probably can't stand living with each other, let alone with us. But by all means, try talkig to Tenpenny if you like. But it won't work. Then we'll do it my way. You get that escape door in Tenpenny basement open, and I'll unleash those ferals on 'em!"
I guess it really isn't much of a surprise what eventually happens if you actually let the ghouls in peacefully, but you aren't given the option to just kill Roy and leave the other ghouls alone. And because you massacre all of them, you get bad karma, and Three Dog bitches over the radio about how much of an asshole you are.
But, we've found a way to sort of trick the game, you see.
Now it's time to leave. Just like that other particular quest with a settlement in the metro, this is a shortcut that you could use to get here faster without all that fighting. That means we'll have to backtrack back here, doesn't it?
Now we're right near Tenpenny Tower. It looks pretty impressive in this screenshot, doesn't it?
So let's talk to Tenpenny about this plan we propose.
This is all that Tenpenny does, sit out here all day. Must be a boring life.
You know, for an NPC vital to so many quests, there are an awful lot of quests involving you killing him and by doing so, locking you out of others. You'd think they'd give him plot armor like every other major NPC in this game.
"There are some Ghouls who want to live here. What do you think about that?"
"Why - I do believe you've lost your mind! Ghouls, living here? You're serious?"
"What if the residents are okay with Ghoul neighbors?"
"Ha! I don't suppose I'd mind terribly if Ghouls were to live here."
I seriously don't get what's so evil about Tenpenny. Burke was the one who suggested he blow up Megaton, but besides that, he seems like just a snobby rich guy.
"And it'd be a good bit of sport hunting them down if they misbehaved."
Oh... Well, they do that with everyone here, not just ghouls. (Remember the many death threats we received from Gustavo downstairs?)
Apparently money is directly proportionate to how evil you are in Fallout 3's universe.
"I dare say though, you'll have a bit of trouble convincing certain residents to go along with your novel proposition. Tell you waht. If you can convince Mr. and Mrs. Wellington, Mr. Ling, Ms. Montenegro, and Ms. Lancaster, those Ghouls can live here. Have you seen me shoot? I'm quite proficient, if I do say so myself."
Tenpenny has some interesting stories. I suppose we'll talk to him about them later if we get the chance.
And now we commence the part of the quest I like to call "Speech check NPC's and get pretty much the same dialogue and dialogue options for each of them."
Maybe I should shorten the name. I'm not showing you all of the conversations because they play out the exact same way, but I'll show you one of them.
You have to talk to 5 different NPCs and convince them that to allow the ghouls to stay (Every time it just ends up with them leaving though, so I don't know.)
They basically have the same dialogue, calling you a ghoul lover and all sorts of terrible names. This makes them out to be bigoted assholes, but here's the thing: They're partially right. In Fallout 3, ghouls can become feral over time, meaning they might literally turn on them. Of course, the other ghouls seem fine, but Roy? He threatened to murder his way in here multiple times, of course these people are going to be absolutely terrified of the ghouls.
And then every single person you convince to leave, leaves Tenpenny Tower and most of them time ends up dead out in the wasteland because they have no way to defend themselves.
You see, apparently the majority of the people in Tenpenny Tower are considered evil by the game, through the GECK or through characterization. (Tenpenny is considered very evil and you get a sizeable amount of good karma for killing him.) But there's nothing that really says why they're evil. They aren't tied in with slaving or anything, they just have the gall to keep their tower clean and tidy, while the rest of the settlements in the wasteland are still filled with skeletons. I get that they're supposed to be uptight, rich snobs who don't really care about the common folk of the wasteland, but at least they aren't actively trying to kill them. The Power of the Atom quest is ridiculous in and of itself, I almost consider it non-canon for this games already poor written universe. And even then, that's just Mr. Burke and Tenpenny.
Eventually we get all dissenting opinions to leave the tower and probably die out in the wasteland or something.
"The bigots have all been taken care of. So the Ghouls can move in now. Right?"
"Well, if my tenants want Ghoul neighbors, they can have them! Though the Ghouls must pay and follow the rules like everyone else."
Completely reasonable. Aside from Megaton, why is Tenpenny labeled very evil again? I can think of way more eviler NPC's than Tenpenny who are labeled just evil.
"You're a clever one aren't you? I'm glad this situation has been resolved! It's a bit crass, but here's a little something for your troubles."
500 caps for a few speech checks? Don't mind if I do.
So now back into the metro to talk to Roy.
So Roy gives us a ghoul mask for our troubles. This quest isn't quite over yet. There's a catch.
Letting the ghouls in gives you good karma right? Well, come back a few days later, and everyone who isn't a ghoul in the tower is killed. By Roy, of course.
Even Dashwood, who is totally in support of the ghouls. In fact, as soon as he enters the tower, Roy kills Tenpenny.
So, as far as I am guessing, we kill Roy, we save the people living in the tower, and the can coexist with the current residents.
Fuck the games programming, we really should have been able to kill only Roy as a solution from the start.
There's now a ton of ghoul residents in Tenpenny Tower. They seem to be getting along quite nicely, surprisingly.
Let's make sure that doesn't change.
You can see the blood stains all over Tenpenny's Suite.
So yeah, Roy kills Tenpenny no matter what. I hope you didn't do this quest before You Gotta Shoot Em in the Head or evil Power of the Atom.
Roy gets what's coming to him though, don't worry.
So, I assume this outcome works but we won't know that for a few day in game time. I'll get back to you on that.
The worst thing about this quest, is how the karma system plays into it. You kill the ghouls at the start of the quest? Quite a bit of evil karma, and you get Three Dog bitching at you over the radio, despite Roy actually threatning the tower. You peacefully bring the ghouls in, you get good karma (That makes sense) but when Roy betrays everyone, you still get bad karma for killing him. This was a reasonably grey moral choice, but they ruined it with the karma system and not giving you enough choice. It's great that you can speech check the people of the tower to let the ghouls in, but you can't do other, more reasonable options, such as pointing the ghouls in the direction of Underworld or convincing Roy to back down.
So, in order for us to get a satisfactory outcome, we kind of have to play the game a bit. In the end, I think the best option is to simply not choose to get involved in the quest, but that's not really an option that the game recognizes. At least Roy didn't have plot armor.
