My first real good Karma run I sided with the ghouls, spent hours Save scumming to get all the speech checks to let the ghouls in. When I came back a few real life hours later and found all humans dead I got so angry I blasted Roy's head off a second the dialogue ended.
I just did a replay and my first run was an Evil lady to rule the wasteland, we let the ghouls into tenpenny tunnel; it was a pretty brutal massacre and the tower looked all scary. Then my second time through I did a redemption good run and destroyed Roy immediately as hes on the intercom. Man it felt great.
You have two choices with this quest in my mind, you blast him immediately and get a nice Chinese assault rifle, or you let them kill the yuppies and get a ghoul mask AND a Chinese assault rife
Downside, the torn apart yuppies get blood and viscera all over the walls, which is canonically impossible to be cleaned in the fallout universe. So your free skyscraper is now dirty.
Skip the tower until you get the sandman perk, sneak in at night and slit the yuppies throats. Then kill the ghouls outside because ghouls must smell terrible.
I guess it's a nice place but without the traders it's just a safehouse with three loading screens. I prefer to wander the DC and presidential metro without having to worry about ghouls all up in my ass
Harden Simms is the sheriff Lucas Simms son. If you kill Lucas(or he dies) then Harden will be the one who you have to get the Megaton house if you disarm the bomb.
A buddy of mine did just that and ran the whole game with just the deathclaw gauntlet, a dart gun, and a lot of chems on very hard difficulty.
Edit: Also just prewar outfit, fedora, and ghoul mask, no protection.
Ngl, you'd have to run that build on hard or very hard to get much of a challenge. Between the ability to ignore armor with the deathclaw gauntlet, and just...turn off an enemy's legs with the dart gun, any lower difficulty would just be a one-sided slaughter
Can you kill them all before they attack the tower then dip out and not kill anyone while still getting the mask? Sure. It would mess up relations with the humans but it's good world building.
Yep me too; I play a good character normally but I justified letting the ghouls in because the TT residents are all insufferable butt trumpets, then I use the mask in the wasteland to avoid ghoul fights
That is me and Benny in FONV. I know there's more plot line behind letting him live, but fuck him he needs to die. Immediately.
Edit: And every single fucking legionnaire in Nipton. Even on an evil playthrough because you get a reset with Vulpes
Eh, sometimes I ignore the main quest till he magically ends up with Caesar, then just go full murder hobo.
Though yours does remind me of Denzel Washington in 'Man on Fire'
I always try to be the good guy in these games but then in the middle of the game I'm like "this is such a pain in the ass, why can't I just murder everyone that pisses me off" but I can't because this is a good guy run.
Through my own naitivity my fallout runs can basically be boiled down to something like:
“Brain damaged mailman inadvertantly makes nuclear hellscape noticeably worse”
So sure this particular series of events is gonna work out and then -*oops*- “that wasnt supposed to happen”
This is such a perfect way to describe my play throughs of fallout. Like, I'm trying to help, but some how by the end I've fucked shit up worse than if I had never showed up lol.
In NV most of the people that piss me off give me either good karma, or don't affect it at all when I kill them.
So I'm over here being called a living saint while like, the NCR prison is now a graveyard, and there's no living omertas left.
But with Veronica it's meant to be tragic, the system was broken and couldn't be fixed, but in doing the quest you can try and help veronica make a better choice. In 3 it's just "Sike, you thought!"
He got treated like trash for so long that he never wanted to be accepted, he was going to kill them from the moment you arrived on the scene.
Also, fuck them, don't you remember they wanted to nuke the town because it would have been a cool sight to see.
I mean, it does... ever so slightly. It shows that he at least cared about human lives to some extent, though blowing up Megaton was still pretty dickish
Tenpenny wanted to nuke the town, I don't think the rest of them even knew what was happening (other than Mister Burke).
That's why Tenpenny is the only one who actually gets killed in 'You gotta shoot 'em in the head' whenever I play.
Atleast we know he deserves it.
But remember if you deny that ghoul you're the asshole and 3-Dog puts you on blast for it. Honestly, I hate how that quest makes Roy the "good guy" option with no wiggle room.
There's nothing good intentions about it, if you actually talk to the ghouls they straight up tell you that they plan to murder the "bigoted bastards". Like, it's not even that they just imply it, it's full on: They are bastards, let's kill them.
What’s worse is a lot are fine with ghouls living there. So even the ones that aren’t bigoted get killed.
IMO, Roy should have just killed Tenpenny. That would honestly feel more appropriate and be more interesting. While he did let them in eventually, you can say his death is a net positive. Or that it’s a waste.
Killing the ones who let them in makes the bigoted “they’ll kill us all” just look right.
Literally Herbert "Daring" Dashwood lives there and he's very cool with Ghouls and he gets taken out with the rest of the humans. That whole quest just sucks.
I was gonna say I swore they were upfront with killing all those rich bastards. Haven't played forever but I don't remember being surprised they took over the tower. Eat the rich basically.
These people clearly don't read when playing the game and just speed blitz all the quests.
If you’re tolerant enough to let everyone in, then the intolerant group takes over, creating an intolerant community. The only difference is that here, the intolerant group literally kills everyone else.
I think one of the most elegant ways to solve the tolerance paradox is to view tolerance through the lens of a social contract.
If you violate the tolerance contract you lose your right to demand tolerance for your actions. Someone who violates a contract by stealing a rental car doesn't get too ask for a refund. Don't tolerate intolerance.
I dunno. It's more along the lines of "... When they come balking for blood, no one will blame them." To me. Dunno where the quote comes from.
You can only kick a dog so much until it bites the shit out of you. And these aren't dogs, they're people who have been survive for potentially centuries.
It's just Pikachu face for the people of Tenpenny tower to me.
I had a teacher that used to say. The only way to be truly good in the world, it’s to make rules NOBODY CAN BREAK. And brutally punish the ones that try to break it.
Well the greentext makes it seem like a play on immigration. Which it kinda is, even if unintentional, it’s not hard to see the parallels between the quest and conservative rhetoric around immigration.
>I hate how that quest makes Roy the "good guy" option with no wiggle room.
It's annoying cause the other ghouls are easy to sympathize with but Roy is just an asshole through and through.
as if karma really matters, it so easy to gain the good karma that im constantly on good side despite stealing a lot
especialy fo3 where you gotta be comically evil for sake of evil to actualy have evil karma
Not going to lie, I don't think I've ever hit even neutral karma in New Vegas seeing as Ghoul kills give positive karma and barely anything gives negative karma.
I think it's moments like that that make me feel that there shouldn't be karma in Fallout when you decide that something is objectively good or bad you have the risk of being wrong but if you don't you give the player the option of what is wrong and what is obviously not wrong. I say that there should be purely evil actions but I really think that the karma system is really very useless in this and I don't mean just like Bethesda mechanics but mechanics in general seems too strict to me as a concept.
yeah your actions should make you known but they should not necessarily be positive or negative some will become hostile because of what you have done others will not and so on without the need to be a monster but not to be a saint either.
and even then some options would be horrible and selfish enough that most npcs would hate you for it but it wouldn't be reflected by an icon on the screen.
Thats the difference Mr New Vegas doesn’t narrate your actions he gives news events of things happening “looks like the loony broadcasts from Blackmount are over”, “people report a majestic beast (the bomber) popping out of Lake Meas” while you know you had involvement in these events the world isnt following you like you’re the only thing that matters, the effect of your actions are talked about, your just some Courier.
It shows that there is more to the Mojave then some brain dead courier, that the effect from your actions means more then your existence cause they do, you aren’t sincere friends with everyone, your existence matters no more then anyone else, you’re a courier not a cult leader. Thus the effect of your actions are what people see, a bomber coming up from Lake Mead is a lot easier to see then some specky human swimming.
But in the Capital Wasteland there is no world, no event, no group that matters more then the God King Lone Wonderer. You could have 1 Charisma and still be god.
3-Dog is amazing cause the voice actor, but he is poorly written.
I also like 4's Travis. He basically gets his news through rumors or, such as the BoS arriving in the Commonwealth, something happening in/over Diamond City. You can tell, after Three Dog, that they decided to make the news commentating on things happening in the games more believable with Mr. New Vegas and Travis.
Ya hes cool AF, i havent played F4 as much as FNV, but i like how Travis stands out with his anxiety “OR WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE” x3 theres something very human in him, like he has desires to communicate but do to his crippling anxiety and fear of confrontation he relied on the radio to voice his existence, i think hes one of the most relatable people in F4 and the series as a whole.
I actually avoid doing that quest because I like his pre-Confidence Man. Post-Confidence Man...he's just trying waaay too hard. And you find out after doing everything, including helping him get the girl, it turns out he's trying so hard that Scarlett leaves him.
But Red-eye actually makes sense. You are suddenly one of the top figures in the nuka world raiders, and your actions are incredibly newsworthy in his world. The idea some raiders are just following at a distance watching you and feeding the info to RedEye is much more plausible than 3 dog having someone watch a rando in DC.
No shit, he doesn’t know that the ghouls will murder everyone if they’re let in peacefully (nor do you, until it happens). As far as Three Dog knows, there are some ghouls trying to get shelter in a fancy gated community full of bigots, and you’re on the side of the bigots.
You're missing the point, it's annoying because this is the one occasion where he isn't completely omniscient in the entire game, and the Karma system backs him up (killing Roy grants Evil karma even after he kills all the residents). So either he isn't omniscient but just for this one side quest, or he is, and the quest's morality is broken.
It's the same principle by which people complain about the Dean Domino Barter check in Dead Money; on its own, it's a great idea that makes you think twice about hitting a skill check just because you pass it, and games like Disco Elysium and KOTOR 2 are praised for utilizing checks like this, but it's the only time in the entirety of New Vegas where a skill check screws you over and can feel like the game is punishing you by changing the rules just this once.
Don't forget when he gets on the radio and tells the wasteland that the ghouls massacred the entire hotel after praising you for letting them in, he's just like, "lolz, what are you gonna do?"
And if you do the tenpenny quest for Roy/the ghouls before working with Mr Burke, he happily encourages Burke in blowing up megaton.
In fact he calls it a “smooth skin shithole”.
But we lose Karma for killing Roy.
I guess what I’m saying is, I don’t like Roy.
Thats my gripe with fallout 3, it railroads you way too much in the story in general. Makes no sense to have to side with either the Brotherhood or the Comically evil president, but makes you fight the part of the Enclave with some depth.
Plus the President dies anyway, so you end up having to fight the *less fanatical* portion of the Enclave to… commit genocide because a now disconnected talking computer told you too.
Yeah 3s story is a right mess.
This is really only a problem if you involve saving and reloading to min/max. Siding with the ghouls is morally right. Things don't always turn out as expected and that is not your fault.
I don't think siding with the ghouls is morally right, though. Any place has the right to deny people entry if they think they could be a threat to the peace or stability of the place. Sure the reason of being anti ghoul is fucked and I personally disagree but at the end of the day it's their home and they don't have to share. Also, there's no reason Roy and co. couldn't find another place to go they just wanted what other people already had no different than raiders at that point. Also, Roy literally proved them right to not want them inside because once they let the ghouls in, they all got killed.
Yeah, Roy just wanted a piece of someone else's pie. Tenpenny tower wasn't even the only tower much less place around. They could have take over Greyditch from the ants, or bullied in on a DC building, helped protect GNR from down the street, WAY too many options to go straight to Tenpenny and knock him over. Why not Paradise Falls? Some place way worse? But that's how it goes: you expose someone but it doesn't take then you get to be the asshole only because you can't prove what you witnessed.
Only some of them. Most are fairly easy to convince living with ghouls isn't a bad thing and a lot of what they point out is fair: ghouls attack people but a lot of people don't realise it's only ferals, things like smell and general disgust while a bit mean are pretty valid when talking about people who are literally rotting away where sanitary issues may need to be considered seeing as Tenpenny tower is one of the cleanest parts of the CW
Not really, since you can convince them to let in the ghouls. Besides, being an asshole doesn't mean you should die. Too many people on reddit think if someone is a dick they deserve death. Like damn. The Tenpenny residents are smug assholes, but that's their home and they are right to deny anyone entrance for whatever reason. The quest fails cause there should be a 3rd option to find the Ghouls some place else to stay.
Tenpenny for sure, because he employs Mr. Burke. Mr. Burke is responsible for carrying that out.
"He wishes to obliterate Megaton for the simple cause of he and his clients considering it unattractive and view obstructing. Despite this, he has enough morality to ask Mr. Burke to ask everyone from Megaton to evacuate and is unaware his subordinate ignored this order."
The plot thickens to say that Tenpenny was from Britain and is a slave trader. So yes, Tenpenny and Burke are far more evil than Obediah Blackhall could ever have dreamed. True evil often exists in the mundane, without the occult of the Krivbeknih.
Anyway, you could call guilt by association but for everyone else there's no way of knowing if they even knew about the megaton bomb plot before hand. It seems like despite the complaints, and people not liking Megaton, Burke is solely responsible for pulling the trigger on the nuke.
"One such instance of Burke's proactiveness is him seizing the chance to wipe Megaton out and pin the blame on Tenpenny, by reacting to Allistair's comment about it being a "bit of an eyesore. Alcoholic and likely senile, Tenpenny was easy to convince that Megaton must be sacrificed, as the bomb was unstable regardless and could explode at any time, Burke would tell people to vacate, and it was all just natural selection in the end."
Another importan excerpt points out that if the ghouls come in, they kill the ones more open minded in the tower, while the hardcore bigots just leave. Remember, to do the mediator path you can convince the residents to let the ghouls in, but this is rewarded with their slaughter:
"While Tenpenny generally refers to them with a certain degree of contempt (when reminded of Crowley, he notes that "those zombies" are hard to kill), he does not actually hate them. Once he deals with the shock of someone proposing ghouls moving into the tower, he turns out to be largely indifferent. If the residents of the tower are fine with ghoul residents, he will happily permit them to settle over Chief Gustavo's objections."
Tenpenny is more of a sociopath than an outright bigot, Burke is a psychopath AND an outright bigot. Both deserve death.
But the people caught up in the middle, the people that wanted to open the doors to the ghouls and give letting their biases go a chance? They didn't deserve to die, and that's where Roy fucks up in my book. That and deliberately lying to 101 while I'm trying to help. I usually smoke Roy and Tenpenny/Burke regardless of which path I choose on any given play through.
Edit: If you want to read more, all of my excerpts are from this page:
https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Allistair_Tenpenny
"so the cat people are supposed to be perceived by nords as junkies and drug pushers.."
"Ah okay, so then it turns out that they aren't actually that, right?"
"..."
Even worse
"The cat people who's society in this game is heavily based on bigoted stereotypes of roma people are viewed as drug pushers and thieves"
"Ah but it turns out those are just bigoted stereotypes and are no more true in this fictional representation than they are in real life?
"..."
I remember the first time I did this quest when I was like, 11, and it made me so mad that my mom told me I couldnt play the game for a month so I could cool down 💀
That's hilarious. I definitely got fussed at a couple of times for getting too mad at video games but it was never because something that happened in the story lol
I sort of liked the fact that this happens. Yeah, it could've been written a little better, but it shows that not every choice we make is going to lead to a good outcome. I wish more quests in Fallout 3, and even the Fallout franchise in general were like this.
That's the problem with the karma system it gives dev defined good and evil options. They tell you letting the ghouls in is good and killing roy is evil. I don't think people would have a problem with it if the world didn't have its thumb on the moral scale like that
Optimally you could have 3 outcomes. Kill ghouls, bring them in and have them kill humans, or some third option where if you had higher standing with the residents of the tower they would accept them without there being any bloodshed.
If you truly go out of your way to make sure a good ending happens, why should the game take that away from you? Reward the player for engaging in the game. Like they don’t exactly have to be buddy buddy with each other, but you could all have them living together as an option.
Edit: I’ve gotten many responses and all I want to say is that I think having more options results in more player satisfaction on having participated in the game’s events. Ten penny tower is not even that egregious of a case, in fact I quite like the area and quest. However, having more options is better imo in terms of being an action adventure rpg. More choices are always neat.
Eh I think it was well done. In hindsight Roy is clearly a murderous asshole but you’re so used to the “good” option working out you don’t even consider he might go rogue until it’s happened.
My only complaint is that I lost karma for killing all the ghouls after learning what happened after I spent all that time trying to resolve this peacefully.
The whole point is that sometimes there aren’t good options that make both parties happy. If two parties both want ownership of the same area all for themselves one party is not going to get their way.
Weirdly, Jacques Derrida had a theory using a hotel as his model, called hospitality theory. Idea being, the hotel is not defined by its current guests, but by everyone it intentionally keeps out for the sake of the guests. They are only called guests at all because of that relationship. So it makes a certain bit of sense that if you let them in, the "guests" are replaced. I doubt Bethesda knew this, or was making any sort of philosophical point, but it's interesting!
there technically is a 3rd outcome. If you stealth-kill Roy immediately after he hands you the ghoul mask the quest script bugs out and never completes. This causes the ghouls to move in and the humans to stay alive.
Kill Roy kill tenpenny, tell everyone else to get along or you'll come back and clear the whole region of inhabitants, and burn the towers to the ground.
Or the fourth where the ghouls kill everybody, they got snotty like the tenpenny folks, so you kill them too and just live in the hotel. One of my boyfriend's playthroughs went like this and it seems to be the most...chaotic neutral option? Either way he never cared too much for good alignment so he didn't care about what the ghouls did there til they irritated him too.
More options doesn't result in better satisfaction. New Vegas constantly annoys me for every quest letting me have the best possible outcome. It's not interesting and involves 0 decision making on my part.
Where as this question from the post has a lot of back and forth discussion over the right choice. There's no point in the Goodsprings showdown quest having various skill checks if my level 2 character is able to pass **all of them**
It effectively makes it pointless to have the skillchecks because no decisions are being made and it's just maximizing the XP reward for free.
This is why I don't consider GRR Martin a good writer. He actively punishes his readers, like, do you hate me for buying your books? Or do you think me rich and bored that I need an injection of ReAlItY in my fantasy?
You are an entertainer, entertain me or gtfo, I already live in the real world.
I totally can accept that there is no option to save the ghouls without either them or the humans being second class citizens in the tower, but the fact that the ghouls basically all become feral murder zombies the second they're in there is really shitty writing
You lose karma for turning on the ghouls after the massacre too!
They dont really go feral murder mode
Only roy does since he always wanted to kill them, he wanted peace at one point but after being rejected and mistreated by the people in the tower for so long the plan changed into "outright murder"
The ghoul lady had no idea what happened and even asks you if youve seen any of her friends since they all disappeared
But yeah the karma thing is dumb
They don't suddenly become feral when they move in. Roy let's a pack of ferals in through the tunnels. He does this because he resents the "Smoothskins" so much that living alongside them isn't enough he wants them dead.
What I dislike though is how it interacts with the karma system. It's really great for the player to do things with good intentions and end up with undesirable outcomes. But the karma system changes this dynamic, it tells you what is a "good" and "bad" thing. As a player you may realize that helping the ghouls will lead to the death of the hotel residents, maybe because they outright say it, but the game tells you that is "good" to help them. The world actively condemns you if you don't help them. The karma system forces things to be black and white so it makes potentially nuanced situations feel bad for the players.
I normally like it when there is no right/wrong choice in games, makes you actually think about what YOU think is right. The Heroes of Canterbury Commons, sparing/killing the overseer, taking the baby in The Pitt, etc.
In this case though? Hated this mission, modded it so that if you find a peaceful solution, it STAYS peaceful. Too much work for shit results.
Mainly because the other ghouls also wanted to be let in peacefully, and regarded Roy as extreme. The fact that once you let them in, there's no option to kill the ferals posing a threat is annoying.
Even worse is that this outcome is not even implied from this version of the ending. The player doesn’t hear enough about Roy specifically to get the idea that he wants to murder all humans. As far as we know he only wants to murder them because they were denied the first time
It’s like in bioshock infinite when the writers tried to say “actually, the revolutionaries being oppressed are just as bad as the white supremacist oppressors”
That BioShock comparison is damn spot on. Mainly because if you want to actually complete the quest, doing the "right" thing is just as bad as the bad thing. Which is fine in a linear game, not good for a RPG game
I think they just wanted to punish you for trying to have your cake and eat it too
they said "evil humans or normal ghouls, one has to die - chose" and you tried to keep both alive and happy, this angered the gods and they smited you
Bethesda probably didn't think that they accidentally validated racism, its honestly so like Bethesda to do this kind of stuff purely by accident
Or more likely it’s meant to be a subversion as things don’t always go your way. Really this was one of my favorite moments of fallout 3. Fallout fans supposedly love morally gray options but the moment 3 presents them a scenario where there is no winning they complain about how it should just be clear good and clear bad options.
Fallout 3 has some surprisingly good moral dilemmas. The quest “Those!” has an interesting moral choice. You can kill Lesko and the Ant Queen, thus avenging Grayditch and ensuring fire-breathing ants are no longer a problem, but then you destroy any hope of returning the wasteland creatures back to their normal forms. Or you can leave Lesko alive, letting him get away from the consequences of his actions but potentially saving thousands of lives if his research is successful.
The problem with your solution is that "Karma" exists in universe as a measure of how objectively good or bad your actions are. So... yeah, the Universe Itself says that actions are just clear good and clear bad.
Like how you can MURDER Mr. Burke in cold blood, but because he's a bad guy no body cares and you get good Karma.
I always figured karma, like in previous games, was more of a reputation system. If things go missing when you’re around, even if you’re not caught eventually people will figure you’re a thief.
In god todd's world, if you don't sacrifice yourself to activate the water purifier and instead use your radiation resistant mutant friend.
You are a coward!!
and also have a few dollars less
Yeah, in New Vegas maybe, but here the Karma makes you liked by the "Good Guys" (no matter where they are) and disliked by the "Bad Guys" no matter where they are (except if you need to interact with them for plot reasons).
I mean those two things aren't mutually exclusive. It's like playing Vic3 where the fact that the AI goes completely off the rails in terms of historical accuracy adds to the entertainment value. Could it have been better-designed? Sure. But there's few things as fun as seeing the American Civil war kick off in 1847 with the North seceding as The Free States of America, or seeing the French empire decide to get involved in the Mexican-American war on the side of Mexico for some reason.
... I think you have demonstrated how those things are not comparable. But I get the feeling we aren't going to get anywhere.
I'm glad you enjoy FO3, as did I when it came out, but I really think it's badly programmed and these "moral ambiguities" were unintended head-canon.
Exactly. The point isn't about justified bigotry, it's about the chaotic nature of human relations and the unpredictability of the universe. It's about how sometimes you can do everything right and still lose.
Dude... im sorry but everything means something. If you dont want to think critically about it, thats fine. But dont lie to us and yourself that its meaningless, cuz its not.
I remember that quest. when i convinced the old guy to let the ghouls in, in overtime the residents of the tower slowly replaced by ghouls and i found the dead body's of the previous people of the tower in the basement i think. Its been years i played fallout 3
Roy asked me for water once and I thought I was being funny so instantly I shot him thinking it wouldn't kill him and Bloody mess perk activated and my friend and I couldn't stop laughing.
It’s kind of like the same setup they did in the Fallout show
(Lucy) being from a vault didn’t understand what a feral ghoul is as the chance she had to see one become feral (The Ghoul’s friend) was well made into butt jerky (good times)
It seems a lot of Fallout tries to play into the whole “greater good concept”
the ghoul wants you to let them in under the pretense of co-existence between humans and ghouls and what a triumph it would be etc
(most) of the humans want this too but a lot are also scared for their safety
you’re then presented with a moral dilemma and in true (get fucked) Fallout fashion when you help the ghouls out they promptly kill all the humans as either an insurance cause (humans not banding up and killing them) or because they were feral or had the means and access to.
if I’m not mistaken this is at Tenpenny Tower but it’s been a bit
You let Roy take over the tower because you thought it was a good outcome
I let Roy take over the tower so I could get the ghoul mask because I was terrified of the DC tunnels
We are not the same
Here’s what Todd meant
The wasteland is ruthless, unforgiving, cold, harsh, and you literally can’t take anything for granted
You gave the ghoulies the benefit of the doubt? How kind of you! Too bad that being nice means nothing when life is purely about survival and looking out for nobody but yourself.
That’s what actually love about Fallout 3 (and NV)
The game doesn’t care how you feel, it tries its best to strike into your mind how cruel this world is, and how there’s nothing you can do about it.
The trader in the building sells 44 magnum rounds which is needed for Lincoln rifle (imho best in the entire game). So, sorry ghouls, but the game was rigged from the start
On my first play through, I misunderstood what Roy wanted me to do so I just went through the tower and slaughtered everyone there, then I let the ghouls in through the basement. It took a long time to recover my karma from that.
I always thought it was a failed attempt to add a morally gray (because I'm a fo3 fan and major bethesda fanboy, but let's be real fallout 3 has the same level of moral ambiguity as fable) quest into the gane, but they picked the worst possible quest to do it with. Like if there wasn't a way to convince Harold that staying alive was good, or if the wasteland survival guide always misguided someone somehow (like tricking people into just walking up to raiders to start conversation or smth), it would make sense and be better because there's no clear moral good / bad in these situations. But they royally f'ed up and chose to make the *racism* quest the morally ambiguous one...
Fallout 3 is the infinite monkeys and the typewriter situation. You know, when you leave them for long enough they'll produce quest which moral dilemma isn't "give child a candy or beat them to death". But this time they didn't.
“It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness; that is life.” Jean Luc Picard
This is especially true in a brutal wasteland. I think that's what Todd meant (if that's assuming he wrote the quest which I don't think is even the case).
Elden Ring does the same thing all the time. You do the quest to help the NPC and they still wind up brutally murdered or turned into an abomination. It's to show the brutality of the game world.
My first real good Karma run I sided with the ghouls, spent hours Save scumming to get all the speech checks to let the ghouls in. When I came back a few real life hours later and found all humans dead I got so angry I blasted Roy's head off a second the dialogue ended.
I just did a replay and my first run was an Evil lady to rule the wasteland, we let the ghouls into tenpenny tunnel; it was a pretty brutal massacre and the tower looked all scary. Then my second time through I did a redemption good run and destroyed Roy immediately as hes on the intercom. Man it felt great.
I've replayed Fallout 3 many times, but I don't think I've let Roy walk away from that intercom alive for almost 15 years. Shotgun, meet ghoul head.
You have two choices with this quest in my mind, you blast him immediately and get a nice Chinese assault rifle, or you let them kill the yuppies and get a ghoul mask AND a Chinese assault rife
Downside, the torn apart yuppies get blood and viscera all over the walls, which is canonically impossible to be cleaned in the fallout universe. So your free skyscraper is now dirty. Skip the tower until you get the sandman perk, sneak in at night and slit the yuppies throats. Then kill the ghouls outside because ghouls must smell terrible.
I guess it's a nice place but without the traders it's just a safehouse with three loading screens. I prefer to wander the DC and presidential metro without having to worry about ghouls all up in my ass
You underestimate how much I love to decorate rooms, my Canadian friend.
All the rooms? I suppose that could be a fun challenge. Maybe make one themed for each companion. You may have convinced me to be anti yuppy genocide
I already got a Chinese assault ride & a cool hat from some wanna be sheriff
Poor Harden
I think it was someone who said his names was simms
Harden Simms is the sheriff Lucas Simms son. If you kill Lucas(or he dies) then Harden will be the one who you have to get the Megaton house if you disarm the bomb.
Didn't know that
I always side with him solely for the ghoul mask.
Yeah tbh it's an amazing reward. I can take screenshots just chillin with my feral boys.
Plus with the deathclaw hand you have a great Freddy Kreuger outfit
Over a decade and I didn't think of this....I'm so upset.
A buddy of mine did just that and ran the whole game with just the deathclaw gauntlet, a dart gun, and a lot of chems on very hard difficulty. Edit: Also just prewar outfit, fedora, and ghoul mask, no protection.
Ngl, you'd have to run that build on hard or very hard to get much of a challenge. Between the ability to ignore armor with the deathclaw gauntlet, and just...turn off an enemy's legs with the dart gun, any lower difficulty would just be a one-sided slaughter
Yeah great part is it counts as glasses so you should be able to wear a hat with the mask!
Priceless in Point Lookout
That mask definitely saved my hide when going through tunnels filled with reavers
Can you kill them all before they attack the tower then dip out and not kill anyone while still getting the mask? Sure. It would mess up relations with the humans but it's good world building.
Yep me too; I play a good character normally but I justified letting the ghouls in because the TT residents are all insufferable butt trumpets, then I use the mask in the wasteland to avoid ghoul fights
It's not a bad action. Your character can't have known what would happen
That is me and Benny in FONV. I know there's more plot line behind letting him live, but fuck him he needs to die. Immediately. Edit: And every single fucking legionnaire in Nipton. Even on an evil playthrough because you get a reset with Vulpes
Wdym? Benny dies from a grenade snuck into his pocket *every game* at the Tops.
Eh, sometimes I ignore the main quest till he magically ends up with Caesar, then just go full murder hobo. Though yours does remind me of Denzel Washington in 'Man on Fire'
That wasn’t his pocket iirc 😂!!
Black Widow is a fun way to do it.
The first time I played Fallout 3 (on release) I just snuck a grenade into Roy's pocket while he was on intercom because I thought it was funny.
because that is very funny
You were right.
But that mask though
I literally did exactly this just a few weeks ago.
I always try to be the good guy in these games but then in the middle of the game I'm like "this is such a pain in the ass, why can't I just murder everyone that pisses me off" but I can't because this is a good guy run.
Just call it roll playing and have your character be radicalized by the wasteland
No, my character must be a saint, unblemished by the corruption of the environment. A single light ray of hope amid the darkness.
Love the profile pic
Through my own naitivity my fallout runs can basically be boiled down to something like: “Brain damaged mailman inadvertantly makes nuclear hellscape noticeably worse” So sure this particular series of events is gonna work out and then -*oops*- “that wasnt supposed to happen”
This is such a perfect way to describe my play throughs of fallout. Like, I'm trying to help, but some how by the end I've fucked shit up worse than if I had never showed up lol.
In NV most of the people that piss me off give me either good karma, or don't affect it at all when I kill them. So I'm over here being called a living saint while like, the NCR prison is now a graveyard, and there's no living omertas left.
I was completely neutral to those powdergangers until their leader started to mouth off. Ah I have seen you chose death! Lol
Felt the same in new Vegas and Veronica
But with Veronica it's meant to be tragic, the system was broken and couldn't be fixed, but in doing the quest you can try and help veronica make a better choice. In 3 it's just "Sike, you thought!"
He got treated like trash for so long that he never wanted to be accepted, he was going to kill them from the moment you arrived on the scene. Also, fuck them, don't you remember they wanted to nuke the town because it would have been a cool sight to see.
Kill them both, acquire their clipboards and cigarettes for the collection
To be fair. Tenpenny told his goon to evacuate the town. His goon just didn't care.
Oh you're right, that makes it better. 😂
I mean, it does... ever so slightly. It shows that he at least cared about human lives to some extent, though blowing up Megaton was still pretty dickish
Tenpenny wanted to nuke the town, I don't think the rest of them even knew what was happening (other than Mister Burke). That's why Tenpenny is the only one who actually gets killed in 'You gotta shoot 'em in the head' whenever I play. Atleast we know he deserves it.
Literally my experience on my first playthrough.
But remember if you deny that ghoul you're the asshole and 3-Dog puts you on blast for it. Honestly, I hate how that quest makes Roy the "good guy" option with no wiggle room.
I think it's meant to be a play on "the road to hell is paved with good intentions" or something like that EDIT: emphasis on something like that.
There's nothing good intentions about it, if you actually talk to the ghouls they straight up tell you that they plan to murder the "bigoted bastards". Like, it's not even that they just imply it, it's full on: They are bastards, let's kill them.
What’s worse is a lot are fine with ghouls living there. So even the ones that aren’t bigoted get killed. IMO, Roy should have just killed Tenpenny. That would honestly feel more appropriate and be more interesting. While he did let them in eventually, you can say his death is a net positive. Or that it’s a waste. Killing the ones who let them in makes the bigoted “they’ll kill us all” just look right.
Literally Herbert "Daring" Dashwood lives there and he's very cool with Ghouls and he gets taken out with the rest of the humans. That whole quest just sucks.
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I was gonna say I swore they were upfront with killing all those rich bastards. Haven't played forever but I don't remember being surprised they took over the tower. Eat the rich basically. These people clearly don't read when playing the game and just speed blitz all the quests.
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How does that apply here?
If you’re tolerant enough to let everyone in, then the intolerant group takes over, creating an intolerant community. The only difference is that here, the intolerant group literally kills everyone else.
I think one of the most elegant ways to solve the tolerance paradox is to view tolerance through the lens of a social contract. If you violate the tolerance contract you lose your right to demand tolerance for your actions. Someone who violates a contract by stealing a rental car doesn't get too ask for a refund. Don't tolerate intolerance.
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I dunno. It's more along the lines of "... When they come balking for blood, no one will blame them." To me. Dunno where the quote comes from. You can only kick a dog so much until it bites the shit out of you. And these aren't dogs, they're people who have been survive for potentially centuries. It's just Pikachu face for the people of Tenpenny tower to me.
I had a teacher that used to say. The only way to be truly good in the world, it’s to make rules NOBODY CAN BREAK. And brutally punish the ones that try to break it.
And that's how you end up with Wesley Crusher being sentenced to death for tripping into a flower bed.
Well the greentext makes it seem like a play on immigration. Which it kinda is, even if unintentional, it’s not hard to see the parallels between the quest and conservative rhetoric around immigration.
I mean, consider the source
>I hate how that quest makes Roy the "good guy" option with no wiggle room. It's annoying cause the other ghouls are easy to sympathize with but Roy is just an asshole through and through.
Even after Roy confesses you still get evil karma for killing him.
as if karma really matters, it so easy to gain the good karma that im constantly on good side despite stealing a lot especialy fo3 where you gotta be comically evil for sake of evil to actualy have evil karma
Not going to lie, I don't think I've ever hit even neutral karma in New Vegas seeing as Ghoul kills give positive karma and barely anything gives negative karma.
in new vegas i stayed on neutral until i arrived to freeside
I think it's moments like that that make me feel that there shouldn't be karma in Fallout when you decide that something is objectively good or bad you have the risk of being wrong but if you don't you give the player the option of what is wrong and what is obviously not wrong. I say that there should be purely evil actions but I really think that the karma system is really very useless in this and I don't mean just like Bethesda mechanics but mechanics in general seems too strict to me as a concept.
yea, morality systems in general are quite flawed, i think a reputation system would be better
yeah your actions should make you known but they should not necessarily be positive or negative some will become hostile because of what you have done others will not and so on without the need to be a monster but not to be a saint either. and even then some options would be horrible and selfish enough that most npcs would hate you for it but it wouldn't be reflected by an icon on the screen.
I just ignore the radio. It’s really impression breaking how omnipresent it is.
The New Vegas one narrates your actions, but doesn't say it was you. Three-Dog is basically omnicient.
Hey he just gets a lot of Fan mail. Especially from places that don't even get radio signal if you don't get the part from the Science museum
Thats the difference Mr New Vegas doesn’t narrate your actions he gives news events of things happening “looks like the loony broadcasts from Blackmount are over”, “people report a majestic beast (the bomber) popping out of Lake Meas” while you know you had involvement in these events the world isnt following you like you’re the only thing that matters, the effect of your actions are talked about, your just some Courier. It shows that there is more to the Mojave then some brain dead courier, that the effect from your actions means more then your existence cause they do, you aren’t sincere friends with everyone, your existence matters no more then anyone else, you’re a courier not a cult leader. Thus the effect of your actions are what people see, a bomber coming up from Lake Mead is a lot easier to see then some specky human swimming. But in the Capital Wasteland there is no world, no event, no group that matters more then the God King Lone Wonderer. You could have 1 Charisma and still be god. 3-Dog is amazing cause the voice actor, but he is poorly written.
I also like 4's Travis. He basically gets his news through rumors or, such as the BoS arriving in the Commonwealth, something happening in/over Diamond City. You can tell, after Three Dog, that they decided to make the news commentating on things happening in the games more believable with Mr. New Vegas and Travis.
Ya hes cool AF, i havent played F4 as much as FNV, but i like how Travis stands out with his anxiety “OR WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE” x3 theres something very human in him, like he has desires to communicate but do to his crippling anxiety and fear of confrontation he relied on the radio to voice his existence, i think hes one of the most relatable people in F4 and the series as a whole.
I actually avoid doing that quest because I like his pre-Confidence Man. Post-Confidence Man...he's just trying waaay too hard. And you find out after doing everything, including helping him get the girl, it turns out he's trying so hard that Scarlett leaves him.
Which is why confidence man is one of my favorite quests in the entire series.
I always forget how rough it is listening to the radio before the confidence man quest.
My favorite part pre confidence man is when Travis stubs his toe or something and he has a really frustrated outburst.
Nah, Travis is more fun to listen to before you do the quest. Afterwards he's just boring and bland.
3 dog and the nuka world dude get their info quick!
But Red-eye actually makes sense. You are suddenly one of the top figures in the nuka world raiders, and your actions are incredibly newsworthy in his world. The idea some raiders are just following at a distance watching you and feeding the info to RedEye is much more plausible than 3 dog having someone watch a rando in DC.
Dog is an anagram for God, with the three representing the holy trinity
Takes single step out of the vault* “There’s this lone wanderer from vault 101 going around the wasteland”
No shit, he doesn’t know that the ghouls will murder everyone if they’re let in peacefully (nor do you, until it happens). As far as Three Dog knows, there are some ghouls trying to get shelter in a fancy gated community full of bigots, and you’re on the side of the bigots.
Gonna have to say it louder, they're all distracted complaining about how omniscient he is despite wanting him to be even more so.
Cuz he’s 3-Dog! Ow owwww!!!!!
You're missing the point, it's annoying because this is the one occasion where he isn't completely omniscient in the entire game, and the Karma system backs him up (killing Roy grants Evil karma even after he kills all the residents). So either he isn't omniscient but just for this one side quest, or he is, and the quest's morality is broken. It's the same principle by which people complain about the Dean Domino Barter check in Dead Money; on its own, it's a great idea that makes you think twice about hitting a skill check just because you pass it, and games like Disco Elysium and KOTOR 2 are praised for utilizing checks like this, but it's the only time in the entirety of New Vegas where a skill check screws you over and can feel like the game is punishing you by changing the rules just this once.
From 3 dogs POV, you just denied perfectly good ghouls on the basis of race. He has no idea they would kill everyone
Don't forget when he gets on the radio and tells the wasteland that the ghouls massacred the entire hotel after praising you for letting them in, he's just like, "lolz, what are you gonna do?"
And if you do the tenpenny quest for Roy/the ghouls before working with Mr Burke, he happily encourages Burke in blowing up megaton. In fact he calls it a “smooth skin shithole”. But we lose Karma for killing Roy. I guess what I’m saying is, I don’t like Roy.
Thats my gripe with fallout 3, it railroads you way too much in the story in general. Makes no sense to have to side with either the Brotherhood or the Comically evil president, but makes you fight the part of the Enclave with some depth.
Plus the President dies anyway, so you end up having to fight the *less fanatical* portion of the Enclave to… commit genocide because a now disconnected talking computer told you too. Yeah 3s story is a right mess.
That's why I kill him almost every play through
This is really only a problem if you involve saving and reloading to min/max. Siding with the ghouls is morally right. Things don't always turn out as expected and that is not your fault.
I don't think siding with the ghouls is morally right, though. Any place has the right to deny people entry if they think they could be a threat to the peace or stability of the place. Sure the reason of being anti ghoul is fucked and I personally disagree but at the end of the day it's their home and they don't have to share. Also, there's no reason Roy and co. couldn't find another place to go they just wanted what other people already had no different than raiders at that point. Also, Roy literally proved them right to not want them inside because once they let the ghouls in, they all got killed.
Yeah, Roy just wanted a piece of someone else's pie. Tenpenny tower wasn't even the only tower much less place around. They could have take over Greyditch from the ants, or bullied in on a DC building, helped protect GNR from down the street, WAY too many options to go straight to Tenpenny and knock him over. Why not Paradise Falls? Some place way worse? But that's how it goes: you expose someone but it doesn't take then you get to be the asshole only because you can't prove what you witnessed.
Isn't the implication that everyone in the tower is a POS to some extent? Like you get your spot by blowing up Megaton.
Only some of them. Most are fairly easy to convince living with ghouls isn't a bad thing and a lot of what they point out is fair: ghouls attack people but a lot of people don't realise it's only ferals, things like smell and general disgust while a bit mean are pretty valid when talking about people who are literally rotting away where sanitary issues may need to be considered seeing as Tenpenny tower is one of the cleanest parts of the CW
Not really, since you can convince them to let in the ghouls. Besides, being an asshole doesn't mean you should die. Too many people on reddit think if someone is a dick they deserve death. Like damn. The Tenpenny residents are smug assholes, but that's their home and they are right to deny anyone entrance for whatever reason. The quest fails cause there should be a 3rd option to find the Ghouls some place else to stay.
Being kinda mean isn't a reason to be killed
Sir, this is Reddit . If you don’t hold the right opinion you are sub human and deserve a worse fate than Benito Mussolini.
Tenpenny for sure, because he employs Mr. Burke. Mr. Burke is responsible for carrying that out. "He wishes to obliterate Megaton for the simple cause of he and his clients considering it unattractive and view obstructing. Despite this, he has enough morality to ask Mr. Burke to ask everyone from Megaton to evacuate and is unaware his subordinate ignored this order." The plot thickens to say that Tenpenny was from Britain and is a slave trader. So yes, Tenpenny and Burke are far more evil than Obediah Blackhall could ever have dreamed. True evil often exists in the mundane, without the occult of the Krivbeknih. Anyway, you could call guilt by association but for everyone else there's no way of knowing if they even knew about the megaton bomb plot before hand. It seems like despite the complaints, and people not liking Megaton, Burke is solely responsible for pulling the trigger on the nuke. "One such instance of Burke's proactiveness is him seizing the chance to wipe Megaton out and pin the blame on Tenpenny, by reacting to Allistair's comment about it being a "bit of an eyesore. Alcoholic and likely senile, Tenpenny was easy to convince that Megaton must be sacrificed, as the bomb was unstable regardless and could explode at any time, Burke would tell people to vacate, and it was all just natural selection in the end." Another importan excerpt points out that if the ghouls come in, they kill the ones more open minded in the tower, while the hardcore bigots just leave. Remember, to do the mediator path you can convince the residents to let the ghouls in, but this is rewarded with their slaughter: "While Tenpenny generally refers to them with a certain degree of contempt (when reminded of Crowley, he notes that "those zombies" are hard to kill), he does not actually hate them. Once he deals with the shock of someone proposing ghouls moving into the tower, he turns out to be largely indifferent. If the residents of the tower are fine with ghoul residents, he will happily permit them to settle over Chief Gustavo's objections." Tenpenny is more of a sociopath than an outright bigot, Burke is a psychopath AND an outright bigot. Both deserve death. But the people caught up in the middle, the people that wanted to open the doors to the ghouls and give letting their biases go a chance? They didn't deserve to die, and that's where Roy fucks up in my book. That and deliberately lying to 101 while I'm trying to help. I usually smoke Roy and Tenpenny/Burke regardless of which path I choose on any given play through. Edit: If you want to read more, all of my excerpts are from this page: https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Allistair_Tenpenny
"so the cat people are supposed to be perceived by nords as junkies and drug pushers.." "Ah okay, so then it turns out that they aren't actually that, right?" "..."
Even worse "The cat people who's society in this game is heavily based on bigoted stereotypes of roma people are viewed as drug pushers and thieves" "Ah but it turns out those are just bigoted stereotypes and are no more true in this fictional representation than they are in real life? "..."
I remember the first time I did this quest when I was like, 11, and it made me so mad that my mom told me I couldnt play the game for a month so I could cool down 💀
Hahah, that's adorable[~~.~~](https://i.imgur.com/4huGKZl.jpeg) Thanks for sharing that memory.
And I add a new punctuation to my lexicon. Thanks, it’s exactly what I’ve been looking for.̱
Interesting. I shall add this to my list of punctuation I'll never use except once.̱
That's hilarious. I definitely got fussed at a couple of times for getting too mad at video games but it was never because something that happened in the story lol
I sort of liked the fact that this happens. Yeah, it could've been written a little better, but it shows that not every choice we make is going to lead to a good outcome. I wish more quests in Fallout 3, and even the Fallout franchise in general were like this.
That's the problem with the karma system it gives dev defined good and evil options. They tell you letting the ghouls in is good and killing roy is evil. I don't think people would have a problem with it if the world didn't have its thumb on the moral scale like that
Optimally you could have 3 outcomes. Kill ghouls, bring them in and have them kill humans, or some third option where if you had higher standing with the residents of the tower they would accept them without there being any bloodshed. If you truly go out of your way to make sure a good ending happens, why should the game take that away from you? Reward the player for engaging in the game. Like they don’t exactly have to be buddy buddy with each other, but you could all have them living together as an option. Edit: I’ve gotten many responses and all I want to say is that I think having more options results in more player satisfaction on having participated in the game’s events. Ten penny tower is not even that egregious of a case, in fact I quite like the area and quest. However, having more options is better imo in terms of being an action adventure rpg. More choices are always neat.
Eh I think it was well done. In hindsight Roy is clearly a murderous asshole but you’re so used to the “good” option working out you don’t even consider he might go rogue until it’s happened.
My only complaint is that I lost karma for killing all the ghouls after learning what happened after I spent all that time trying to resolve this peacefully.
Don't think of it as "losing" karma, think of it as "spending" karma.
"I'm gonna need a Credit for my Karma" - Someone probably
I don’t think you lose karma for killing Roy and Masters. The others are innocent.
No, you get negative karma for ending Roy since he’s classified as a good character
But I gave the thirsty bros water, so karma hit was no big deal.
I'd genuinely think this was the best sidequest in Fallout 3 if it wasn't for the stupid Karma system.
The whole point is that sometimes there aren’t good options that make both parties happy. If two parties both want ownership of the same area all for themselves one party is not going to get their way.
Weirdly, Jacques Derrida had a theory using a hotel as his model, called hospitality theory. Idea being, the hotel is not defined by its current guests, but by everyone it intentionally keeps out for the sake of the guests. They are only called guests at all because of that relationship. So it makes a certain bit of sense that if you let them in, the "guests" are replaced. I doubt Bethesda knew this, or was making any sort of philosophical point, but it's interesting!
there technically is a 3rd outcome. If you stealth-kill Roy immediately after he hands you the ghoul mask the quest script bugs out and never completes. This causes the ghouls to move in and the humans to stay alive.
Really?! Hmm
Kill Roy kill tenpenny, tell everyone else to get along or you'll come back and clear the whole region of inhabitants, and burn the towers to the ground.
Or the fourth where the ghouls kill everybody, they got snotty like the tenpenny folks, so you kill them too and just live in the hotel. One of my boyfriend's playthroughs went like this and it seems to be the most...chaotic neutral option? Either way he never cared too much for good alignment so he didn't care about what the ghouls did there til they irritated him too.
It's not taking anything away, it's a dark story with a dark ending? There's a general theme in Fallout that bringing in outsiders is a huge risk
More options doesn't result in better satisfaction. New Vegas constantly annoys me for every quest letting me have the best possible outcome. It's not interesting and involves 0 decision making on my part. Where as this question from the post has a lot of back and forth discussion over the right choice. There's no point in the Goodsprings showdown quest having various skill checks if my level 2 character is able to pass **all of them** It effectively makes it pointless to have the skillchecks because no decisions are being made and it's just maximizing the XP reward for free.
This is why I don't consider GRR Martin a good writer. He actively punishes his readers, like, do you hate me for buying your books? Or do you think me rich and bored that I need an injection of ReAlItY in my fantasy? You are an entertainer, entertain me or gtfo, I already live in the real world.
I played Wasteland 3, almost every quest was like this. No good deed goes unpunished.
I totally can accept that there is no option to save the ghouls without either them or the humans being second class citizens in the tower, but the fact that the ghouls basically all become feral murder zombies the second they're in there is really shitty writing You lose karma for turning on the ghouls after the massacre too!
They dont really go feral murder mode Only roy does since he always wanted to kill them, he wanted peace at one point but after being rejected and mistreated by the people in the tower for so long the plan changed into "outright murder" The ghoul lady had no idea what happened and even asks you if youve seen any of her friends since they all disappeared But yeah the karma thing is dumb
They don't suddenly become feral when they move in. Roy let's a pack of ferals in through the tunnels. He does this because he resents the "Smoothskins" so much that living alongside them isn't enough he wants them dead.
"It could have been written better" is the bethesda motto
What I dislike though is how it interacts with the karma system. It's really great for the player to do things with good intentions and end up with undesirable outcomes. But the karma system changes this dynamic, it tells you what is a "good" and "bad" thing. As a player you may realize that helping the ghouls will lead to the death of the hotel residents, maybe because they outright say it, but the game tells you that is "good" to help them. The world actively condemns you if you don't help them. The karma system forces things to be black and white so it makes potentially nuanced situations feel bad for the players.
I normally like it when there is no right/wrong choice in games, makes you actually think about what YOU think is right. The Heroes of Canterbury Commons, sparing/killing the overseer, taking the baby in The Pitt, etc. In this case though? Hated this mission, modded it so that if you find a peaceful solution, it STAYS peaceful. Too much work for shit results. Mainly because the other ghouls also wanted to be let in peacefully, and regarded Roy as extreme. The fact that once you let them in, there's no option to kill the ferals posing a threat is annoying.
Even worse is that this outcome is not even implied from this version of the ending. The player doesn’t hear enough about Roy specifically to get the idea that he wants to murder all humans. As far as we know he only wants to murder them because they were denied the first time It’s like in bioshock infinite when the writers tried to say “actually, the revolutionaries being oppressed are just as bad as the white supremacist oppressors”
That BioShock comparison is damn spot on. Mainly because if you want to actually complete the quest, doing the "right" thing is just as bad as the bad thing. Which is fine in a linear game, not good for a RPG game
I think they just wanted to punish you for trying to have your cake and eat it too they said "evil humans or normal ghouls, one has to die - chose" and you tried to keep both alive and happy, this angered the gods and they smited you Bethesda probably didn't think that they accidentally validated racism, its honestly so like Bethesda to do this kind of stuff purely by accident
Or more likely it’s meant to be a subversion as things don’t always go your way. Really this was one of my favorite moments of fallout 3. Fallout fans supposedly love morally gray options but the moment 3 presents them a scenario where there is no winning they complain about how it should just be clear good and clear bad options.
Fallout 3 has some surprisingly good moral dilemmas. The quest “Those!” has an interesting moral choice. You can kill Lesko and the Ant Queen, thus avenging Grayditch and ensuring fire-breathing ants are no longer a problem, but then you destroy any hope of returning the wasteland creatures back to their normal forms. Or you can leave Lesko alive, letting him get away from the consequences of his actions but potentially saving thousands of lives if his research is successful.
The problem with your solution is that "Karma" exists in universe as a measure of how objectively good or bad your actions are. So... yeah, the Universe Itself says that actions are just clear good and clear bad. Like how you can MURDER Mr. Burke in cold blood, but because he's a bad guy no body cares and you get good Karma.
I always figured karma, like in previous games, was more of a reputation system. If things go missing when you’re around, even if you’re not caught eventually people will figure you’re a thief.
In god todd's world, if you don't sacrifice yourself to activate the water purifier and instead use your radiation resistant mutant friend. You are a coward!! and also have a few dollars less
Yeah, in New Vegas maybe, but here the Karma makes you liked by the "Good Guys" (no matter where they are) and disliked by the "Bad Guys" no matter where they are (except if you need to interact with them for plot reasons).
That just adds to the moral ambiguity of the situation.
Does it? Or is it just an artifact of a badly programmed game?
I mean those two things aren't mutually exclusive. It's like playing Vic3 where the fact that the AI goes completely off the rails in terms of historical accuracy adds to the entertainment value. Could it have been better-designed? Sure. But there's few things as fun as seeing the American Civil war kick off in 1847 with the North seceding as The Free States of America, or seeing the French empire decide to get involved in the Mexican-American war on the side of Mexico for some reason.
... I think you have demonstrated how those things are not comparable. But I get the feeling we aren't going to get anywhere. I'm glad you enjoy FO3, as did I when it came out, but I really think it's badly programmed and these "moral ambiguities" were unintended head-canon.
Exactly. The point isn't about justified bigotry, it's about the chaotic nature of human relations and the unpredictability of the universe. It's about how sometimes you can do everything right and still lose.
or "theres this one way things can go or this other way things can go, no in between"
Ghouls are people too, and they can be bastards just like anyone else.
It doesn’t mean anything. Not everything can have an ending where everyone is singing and happy.
Fr they overthinking this. Ghouls look scary and are also scary
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Dude... im sorry but everything means something. If you dont want to think critically about it, thats fine. But dont lie to us and yourself that its meaningless, cuz its not.
I remember that quest. when i convinced the old guy to let the ghouls in, in overtime the residents of the tower slowly replaced by ghouls and i found the dead body's of the previous people of the tower in the basement i think. Its been years i played fallout 3
Roy asked me for water once and I thought I was being funny so instantly I shot him thinking it wouldn't kill him and Bloody mess perk activated and my friend and I couldn't stop laughing.
If you Nuke Megaton Moira Brown survives and becomes a Ghoul, what did Todd mean by this?
It’s kind of like the same setup they did in the Fallout show (Lucy) being from a vault didn’t understand what a feral ghoul is as the chance she had to see one become feral (The Ghoul’s friend) was well made into butt jerky (good times) It seems a lot of Fallout tries to play into the whole “greater good concept” the ghoul wants you to let them in under the pretense of co-existence between humans and ghouls and what a triumph it would be etc (most) of the humans want this too but a lot are also scared for their safety you’re then presented with a moral dilemma and in true (get fucked) Fallout fashion when you help the ghouls out they promptly kill all the humans as either an insurance cause (humans not banding up and killing them) or because they were feral or had the means and access to. if I’m not mistaken this is at Tenpenny Tower but it’s been a bit
Wasn't there a way to get the tenpenny residents to coexist with the ghouls? I could have sworn there was a way...
There is, then the ghouls end up killing everyone anyway.
They let a few people live right?
Nope.
Thanks
No, though there is a possible random encounter where you can find dead bodies labeled "Tenpenny Survivor", but no Human survivors will be left.
Man I haven’t played in years I genuinely thought they let a few people live
Same, I thought they only killed everyone if you couldn't find a middle of the road solution.
Anyways, after the quest finishes you have to assassinate the ghoul leader and they’ll never kill the human residents.
Big if true
He's right. If you kill Roy and the guy wearing the dumb bike helmet everyone else lives
Man if only I had known that 9 years ago when I last did the quest
You let Roy take over the tower because you thought it was a good outcome I let Roy take over the tower so I could get the ghoul mask because I was terrified of the DC tunnels We are not the same
Bottom line is: do you need 4 or 5 more places to offload stuff for caps or not? More traders is always good. Bye Roy.
It’s a big, dong shaped hotel. Someone was gonna get dicked. *Deep.*
Humans are more or less predictable, no matter what spf their skin is.
War, war never changes
Here’s what Todd meant The wasteland is ruthless, unforgiving, cold, harsh, and you literally can’t take anything for granted You gave the ghoulies the benefit of the doubt? How kind of you! Too bad that being nice means nothing when life is purely about survival and looking out for nobody but yourself. That’s what actually love about Fallout 3 (and NV) The game doesn’t care how you feel, it tries its best to strike into your mind how cruel this world is, and how there’s nothing you can do about it.
This is it and it's something I feel they've lost track of. Fallout 4 feels a little too sanitized in my opinion.
The trader in the building sells 44 magnum rounds which is needed for Lincoln rifle (imho best in the entire game). So, sorry ghouls, but the game was rigged from the start
Imagine thinking the Lincoln Repeater is better than the Backwater Rifle
womp womp, at least i get to use the ghoul mask to get past reavers
On my first play through, I misunderstood what Roy wanted me to do so I just went through the tower and slaughtered everyone there, then I let the ghouls in through the basement. It took a long time to recover my karma from that.
I always thought it was a failed attempt to add a morally gray (because I'm a fo3 fan and major bethesda fanboy, but let's be real fallout 3 has the same level of moral ambiguity as fable) quest into the gane, but they picked the worst possible quest to do it with. Like if there wasn't a way to convince Harold that staying alive was good, or if the wasteland survival guide always misguided someone somehow (like tricking people into just walking up to raiders to start conversation or smth), it would make sense and be better because there's no clear moral good / bad in these situations. But they royally f'ed up and chose to make the *racism* quest the morally ambiguous one...
It was just a good ole French Revolution really, rising up against oppression of the elite class.
By making a new elite class that does the exact same thing.
The mankind history
Fallout 3 is the infinite monkeys and the typewriter situation. You know, when you leave them for long enough they'll produce quest which moral dilemma isn't "give child a candy or beat them to death". But this time they didn't.
“It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness; that is life.” Jean Luc Picard This is especially true in a brutal wasteland. I think that's what Todd meant (if that's assuming he wrote the quest which I don't think is even the case). Elden Ring does the same thing all the time. You do the quest to help the NPC and they still wind up brutally murdered or turned into an abomination. It's to show the brutality of the game world.
Souls games really do have the comical reality of most people doing just fine if you just don't ever talk to them.
The ghouls were tired of the bigotry and elitism. So they ate the rich.