That was about it, really, apart from dropping off a book at the library and shooting somebody in the face after they tried to rob me.

Okay, so I obtained the Declaration of Independence. I went to Arlington Library and downloaded some information. And I… er… spent a long, long time wandering around Rivet City, talking to everybody. Oh, and I went back to home in Tenpenny Tower. And found a random cavern full of raiders, who I slaughtered.

That sort of thing.

I also broke the illusion of the game completely at one point. I wanted to open the medicine cabinet in the clinic in Rivet City. I tried to pickpocket the doctor, but he caught me, took his key back and then, um, acted as if nothing had happened. So I got out my shotgun and shot him in the back of the head. Blood everywhere. But he wasn’t dead, just unconscious, and I couldn’t search his body. Ten seconds later he got up, dusted himself down and acted as if nothing had happened, welcoming me to the clinic.

Oh. Oh well.

I thought maybe there’d be more consequences. And I’d love it if it used the Morrowind system for killing NPCs, rather than using Oblivion’s unkillable NPCs. (In Morrowind you could kill anyone – if you had the skills to do so. If you killed an NPC essential to the main quest a message would appear letting you know, so you could reload your last save game. Much better than immersion-breaking immortal characters, I reckon.)

Not that any of that hurts the game in any significant way, but I always thought Fallout was about choices and consequences – it does hurt a little to have some of those choices taken away.

Finally found Moira in a town of ghouls called Underworld and presented her with my mole rat findings. Got myself a a new companion, a ghoul named Charon. He’s very useful to have around and he seems to get on okay with Dogmeat. Had to lose some more karma to get him into my party, but, hey, after nuking an entire town everything else I do seems like kids stuff.

I’ve made the radio news now and even had some bounty hunters come after me. They were quickly dispatched and some decent kit on them. More, please!

Found some slavers, but a misunderstanding involving a land mine meant they attacked us and we killed them all before we got a chance to talk to them. Ah well. I may be evil, but I don’t think I’m evil enough to help out slavers.

I also wandered into a fight between some super mutants and Talon Company mercenaries. Both sides decided to try and kill us. Both sides died.

I’m getting to know how to find my way around DC now, sort of. I’ve walked down the tracks between Museum station and, er, the station that’s one stop down the tracks from there loads of times now. It’s atmospheric and, now I’ve cleaned it out, it’s safe, too.

(NOTE: I’m not using fast travel in this game yet. In Oblivion I found it to be something of a crutch and I think it diminished the atmosphere of the game. In Oblivion is was almost essential due to how many problems the game had with its streaming, but the engine’s a million times better in Fallout, so that’s not an issue.)

I’m level seven now, I believe. Been taking the small guns perk for the last few levels. I hope it’s useful.

Still, it’s always fun, even when lost.

After getting the dog I headed back to DC to find the sewers I needed to go down to test out my stick of mole rat repellent. I got enough for the main objectives easily enough, but haven’t found enough to get the optional bonus. Annoyingly, I’ve found several mole rat corpses lying around in the sewers. I seem to have exited the sewers now and am in the subway system, which is populated by raiders. I hope there’s a place with more mole rats in down there, otherwise I’m going to have to return to the surface and wander the wastes around Megaton hoping that some will come and find me.

As for the dog, I’m not sure how useful he is. He won’t jump up or down, so some routes I could otherwise take through the city are blocked off to me. He’s good at showing me where bad guys are and does some damage to them, but I’m not sure whether or not he’s hindering my sneaking.

Anyway, I didn’t get on with the original two Fallout games, but I loved Oblivion. This game is an effective synthesis of the two. It feels exactly like a post-apocalyptic Oblivion, but the levelling and skills systems seem (from what I can remember) to have been taken wholesale from the Fallout games.

I did a lot of stuff and enjoyed myself thoroughly, but got a bit fed up with some fire ants that kept killing me. That quest was an effort – I probably should have left it for a few levels. Maybe level four isn’t the right time to be tackling it. My only decent weapons skill is Small Guns and my trusty pistol did very little damage to the ants, so I had to improvise with scavenged ammo and new guns. And mines. The main problem, though, was a lack of healing items. I got 500 bottle caps (the game’s currency) for being very naughty indeed, though, so maybe I should find someone selling medical supplies and stock up.