"Have you ever wondered what it's like? To be wanderers in the Fourth Dimension? Have you? To be exiles?"
"There are some corners of the universe that have bred the most terrible things, things that act against everything that we believe in. They must be fought."
"Courage isn't just a matter of not being frightened, you know. It's being afraid and doing what you have to do, anyway."
"You may be a Doctor, but I'm the Doctor, the definite article, you might say!"
"Brave heart, Teagan."
"I am the Doctor, whether you like it or not!"
"Anybody remotely interesting is mad in some way or another."
"Physician, heal thyself."
"Before I go, I just want to tell you, you were fantastic. Absolutely fantastic. And you know what? So was I!"
"I'm not just a Time Lord, I'm the last of the Time Lords."
"Geronimo!"
"I'm the Doctor, and I save people! And if anyone happens to be listening, and you've got any kind of problem with that: TO HELL WITH YOU!"
. . .okay, so you probably noticed that I'm a Doctor Who fan, if that overly long intro wasn't an indication, just check out the Doctor Who label right here on the blog. I'm also a fan of the Fallout franchise, in particular Fallout: New Vegas. Some of its DLCs were my earliest reviews. So, naturally, when I found something that combined the two into one mass of chocolate-y and peanut butter-y goodness... well, it was kind of a no-brainer, wasn't it?
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| This is Reese. And ED-E. |
Thus, using the same multiverse theory that led to Shade becoming the new Batman, my attempt to recreate my New Vegas character in Steam form led to Reese Avellone, Courier and the wet dream of any NRA member with the amount of guns he likes to carry, leaving the house of Doc Mitchell and going out on a roaring rampage of revenge against the man in the checkered suit. Before he took more than five steps from the house of the good doctor, though, he heard a sound that would become all too familiar to him in the days to come (and those that came before!) and a tall, blue box materialized upon the dusty ground. Out of that box came a humanoid figure in a full-body spacesuit... a figure claiming to be him from the future! Given a Gallifreyan Holodisk that looked suspiciously like a holotape, the supposed future Reese told him that all he had to do was go to Gibson's Scrapyard and find a suspiciously similar blue box there waiting for them.
They could spend a life of scavenging, killing, and heartache or they could really live.
Reese being Reese, as soon as this fella left in his box, decided to put it aside and continue on his path. After helping the people of Goodsprings and getting a lead on a job hunting down some bounties at the Saloon, he eventually made his way down to Primm and eventually to Novac and then... well... well, you see, Reese found the Gibson's Scrapyard and found that big, blue box.
Inside, he found that it was indeed bigger on the inside and a helpful hologram guided him through the usual questions and particulars about the box - the TARDIS as it was called. After a brief tutorial to repair the TARDIS navigation systems, Reese found himself symbiotically linked with the TARDIS and was able to travel anywhere in time and space... within the Mojave Wasteland, anyway (for now).
So, right off the bat, the mod has a fun intro quest ("Unto, the Future") to introduce you to the TARDIS. Mind you, it is a bit of a walk from Goodsprings to Gibson's Scrapyard, but afterward... well, there's not a lot of walking going on, at least not outside of the TARDIS. The inside of the TARDIS is a very different story. It is bigger on the inside, and there are a variety of rooms within it that can be turned on and off at the TARDIS console controls. These range from the Workshop, which is necessary to craft many of the items introduced in the mod such as the sonic screwdriver and the means to repair the TARDIS via a TARDIS repairkit, to the Science Lab - which is necessary in order to become a Time Lord - and the Wardrobe - where you can retrieve (at random) the outfits of various companions and supporting characters from within the show's history.
Really, a lot of the detail here (and where most of your enjoyment of the mod will come from) is put into the fanservice. The TARDIS exterior and pretty much all of the interior that I've been able to find are all original assets created by the Foundry, the modding team responsible for this. It's definitely a labor of love, where the mod team has done its best to recreate faithfully many aspects of the show or create new assets (such as rooms in the TARDIS) that we haven't seen or have only been mentioned beforehand on the show.
This isn't, however, just limited to the TARDIS. While you do travel around in the TARDIS to destinations around the Mojave (first at random and later more purposefully), some of the places you land can be... changed. This can be something as simple as finding Bad Wolf graffiti (sorry, "Ornery Caterpillar") on the wall of a building or something as complex as landing in the East Vegas Pump Station and getting ambushed by a trio of Cybermen! Yes, the mod adds new enemy types such as the Cybermen, the Daleks, the Silence, and the Weeping Angels.
The Weeping Angels, by the way, are very appropriately terrifying as all you can hope to do is avoid them or use a specialized form of mine to send them back into the time vortex for 24 hours. Rather like their first appearance on the show, they can only move when they aren't being observed. This is true in Who Vegas, and it doesn't matter if you're playing in first or third person... if you can see them, they can't move. If you can't see them, you're seconds from an insta-kill. Yeah, there's no being sent back through time... well, except in one instance in a quest.
The enemies also have appropriate sound files as well. The Daleks shouting their customary "EX-TERM-IN-ATE!" and Cybermen "DE-LETE!" and so on.
So for the questline. As of this writing, I haven't completed the end of the Who Vegas mod (largely due to crashes having to do with my own computer that I'm still working on), but I have seen it. Traveling through time and space (and you do travel to a developed instance of an alien world on a few occasions as well as through time a few times), you will eventually notice a series of glowing cracks in the walls in various locations both in the Mojave and on these alien worlds. When you activate the TARDIS art gallery, one of the pieces is a torn painting and another crack - one that is transmitting a message from Gallifrey.
Without wishing to spoil, the quest is rather long and drags if you don't know what you are doing. There really is no shame in looking up the FAQ on this one (not that I shame people for looking up the FAQ period). You have to collect six painting fragments that are indeed scattered across the universe. Once you find them and restore them, you open a portal to Gallifrey... or, more specifically, the Death Zone!
Remember? The Five Doctors? The Tomb of Rassilon? Borusa getting stoned out of his mind?
Like I said, this mod is fanservice galore, but never undeservedly so. It draws deep into the legacy of Doctor Who and pulls out something utterly amazing. I haven't even gotten into the biggest draw of the mod: becoming a Time Lord. Turning on the TARDIS library and finding the appropriate safe will get you the schematic for a fob watch and a recipe for Time Lord genetics. Hoping into the Science Lab, using your Science and Medicine skills, you'll break down food items into Base Aliki, Base Acid, and Base Proteins in order to combine them with the fob watch and create a Symbiotic Nuclei. You consume the Nuclei (how do you eat genetics? No idea. Bet the Time Lords could do it, though.) and get a Karma-related message as you burst into flame...
...and your face remains the same. However, the character you have then is counted as your first of thirteen incarnations. When you die, you get the options of regenerating right away, holding it back in the style of a really bad episode, or just dying and not using a regeneration. Mind you... deaths like head explosion don't really care if you have regenerations left, so it's best to make sure your enemies don't get crits on you.
Without getting into super crazy deep spoilers, though, that's all I really have to say about Who Vegas. It's great! If you have New Vegas for Steam and want to try something a little different, it's definitely something I'd highly recommend for your mod list. Check it out!
Fallout Who Vegas is available on the Nexus, it's worth it. Believe me.
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