When old games surprise you...

[TheOtherTed]

I've been playing Fallout 4 on and off since it's release, and I almost always do the Arlen Glass mission, in no small part because he's a random and quirky dude.  Never gave it (or him) much more thought when I completed the quest.

 

Last night, I got sent to rescue a settler from some building in Boston that I had apparently never visited before.  Didn't connect the name of the place with anything, until I suddenly started finding security notifications and angry warnings about Arlen Glass,  Turns out that...

 

Spoiler

old A.G. was a lead developer for his company, and a close friend of the company's founder.  However, when the founder retired and handed off the reins to his son, the son immediately dismissed A.G.  The old bird didn't leave without a fight, and had to be escorted off the premises several times.  All he wanted to do was make toys, and he couldn't quite get why the new boss didn't want to collaborate with him the way his father did.

In any case, A.G. got the last laugh.  Sort of.  He got ghoulified when the bombs fell, and survived 200 years of post-war devastation to finally perfect his craft - with the help of the Sole Survivor.  Sadly, we never see the result.

 

So how have old and comfortable games hit you in the face with something random?

[biostem]

It's kind of a sad mission, TBH.  It's nice to be able to help him get at least a little closure.  Frankly, the exploration and side quests are far more interesting than the main arc, of FO4, IMHO.  I haven't played in a while, as I spend most of my gameplay time now in FO76, but, again, it's the exploration and base building that keeps me playing...

[TheOtherTed]

Yeah, his troubles hit a bit close to home for me personally as well.  A few years back, I was doing contract work for a big pharma company.  Things were going well, until I came down with the flu for 4 days.  Got a call from my contracting agency saying that the contract had been terminated for "attendance related reasons," and that was that.  I got some grim satisfaction when the guy I directly worked for told me that the group we were in got disbanded about a month later.  I had already known that the project we were on was basically some exec's vanity project destined to go nowhere; I figure a slightly higher exec caught on to that and slapped the clown down.

 

...huh.  That sounded like a rambling life-story monologue from a companion in FO4.  No flirt option this time, though.  Sorry.

 

In other news, another game has since surprised me - FFXIV.  I'd tried playing it several times before, but could never get into it.  For reasons I can't figure out, though, I'm kind of digging it this time around.  Could be softening of the old brain, or it could be the chocobo porter music.  Never used one before this run, and for some reason that music tickles my funny bone.