The Fallout Manifesto Part Oh-One
Until very recently, I had been fighting a battle over defective merchandise - a battle so intense that no one could even see that I was fighting. My Fallout: New Vegas disc needed replaced over two weeks ago. I was able to have one last night-long romp with it, and then it completely shat out a gallon of bugs.
I knew the game was buggy - moments after release, the reports were in that the game had an extraordinary number of bugs for a final release. The reason? “It’s a big game.” Hey now. Fallout 3, I recall, was a similarly big game, and that one only crashed on me about three times during the 100+ hours I spent on it. The crashes in New Vegas started with the security guy outside the Van Graff’s energy weapons shop in Freeside.
This bozo checks you for weapons before you go into the store (to keep players from robbing it the first time they enter). About twenty game hours earlier, I could freely enter the shop, make purchases, shoplift a couple of guns, and leave. Suddenly, whenever I tried to enter, the security guy would engage me in conversation, and the Xbox would go eerily silent. Then the game froze and displayed a message that the disc could not be read. After some trial and error, the results were that in no way should I try to enter that store if I want to continue playing - so I left it alone. Fuck ‘em, I can buy energy weapons elsewhere. The second constant interruption started happening whenever I tried to speak to a member of the White Glove Society named Chauncey. I should note that both the Van Graff security guard and Chauncey are black characters, and I warned my Xbox sternly not to be prejudiced against associating with black NPCs. It wouldn’t hear me out, though, and it was clear that in order to continue playing, I was in no way allowed to speak to Chauncey, either. Fuck ‘em, there are other… uh… NPC’s with names - and you should know that if an NPC has a name, then they have a quest for you or figure into a quest somewhere. I was now playing the game with full knowledge that there would be quests I could not complete. And I was fine with that because there were just so god damned many that I could bypass a few minor story points if it meant I could still roam the Mojave Wasteland in search of caps and adventure. I had just recently finished a quest that was long overdue for the Brotherhood of Steel, and thought that reporting back to them would finally put me in their good graces. Half of the Brotherhood was out there looking to shoot me on sight, but I snuck past the patrols and into their compound. If I could just make it to the Elder, then everything would be cool, and maybe they’d even show me how to wear Power Armor. Veronica would be really proud of me, too. So once inside, I hauled ass down the corridors to the Elder’s chambers, but…! The game began freezing inside the compound. Not for even trying to engage anyone in conversation - there were literally no other characters around. The game just couldn’t stand being in that compound, and froze unprovoked, to what uninspired players are calling “the black screen of death.” I call it “lights out, bitch” and can only try to rationalize it by imagining that someone sniped my character from the shadows, and without incident, my character simply stopped living, and thus stopped seeing. The black screen was a metaphor for descent into the great reef of beyond where my soul would be tested for the cut of its jib, and/or something, huyuck.
The bugs, it would seem, had won, because soon after this, the game began crashing everywhere. Perhaps my save file was corrupted, and I tried a much earlier one. It crashed, too, even sooner than my most recent save file crashed. I cleared the cache in my Xbox’s memory (a popular suggestion for people experiencing bugs in this game), and tried again - freeze, crash, freeze, crash. This was getting ridiculous. Maybe ALL of my saves were corrupted. So I started a new game. I had just finished tapping out the stats for a brand new character and was about to take Doc Mitchell’s tag skills test, and the game crashed halfway through the first question. Tried another new game, and it crashed in the same place. God of all fucking damnation, I thought, this game is fucking fucked. I took it out of the Xbox - which I realized was only the second time I had actually handled the disc in the one month I had owned it. The first was when I took it out of its package and placed it lovingly in the disc tray. I examined the business side of the disc, and there were four finely curved scratches in a single sector. The only explanations are that they were there the whole time, or more likely, that the douchebag Xbox made them while the disc was inside.
Which brings me to the battlefront. When I carefully worded a letter to the vendor describing my dissatisfaction with the product they sold me, they referred me to the Bethesda tech support team. When I spent an even longer time describing the problem to them, they asked if I could try the disc on another Xbox. Now while that’s not impossible, it is a bit impertinent because even if it works, am I supposed to steal that Xbox in order to continue the game? I only own one, myself, which five years ago was about one more than I said I would ever own. Then they told me to clear the cache. And hell, I did it again. I even tried the newfangled XX RB LB XX trick, which actually didn’t do anything (maybe because the cache had already been cleared). I tried the game one last time - it didn’t even make it to the title screen. The disc went in, and it was lights out immediately.
I thanked Besthesda for their response, and in my longest letter yet, explained that I want the disc replaced. I don’t want my money back, and I don’t want a different game. I’m not trying to scam anyone, and I even hinted that I could throw in the cash for the blank disc they would need to burn me another copy. But for god damn it’s sake, I had already spent 100 hours on this game (not to mention $60) which is a huge investment for me - 100 hours that could have been spent doing anything else. And I didn’t even get to finish the game once.
(This entry was written 21 days ago)
I knew the game was buggy - moments after release, the reports were in that the game had an extraordinary number of bugs for a final release. The reason? “It’s a big game.” Hey now. Fallout 3, I recall, was a similarly big game, and that one only crashed on me about three times during the 100+ hours I spent on it. The crashes in New Vegas started with the security guy outside the Van Graff’s energy weapons shop in Freeside.
This bozo checks you for weapons before you go into the store (to keep players from robbing it the first time they enter). About twenty game hours earlier, I could freely enter the shop, make purchases, shoplift a couple of guns, and leave. Suddenly, whenever I tried to enter, the security guy would engage me in conversation, and the Xbox would go eerily silent. Then the game froze and displayed a message that the disc could not be read. After some trial and error, the results were that in no way should I try to enter that store if I want to continue playing - so I left it alone. Fuck ‘em, I can buy energy weapons elsewhere. The second constant interruption started happening whenever I tried to speak to a member of the White Glove Society named Chauncey. I should note that both the Van Graff security guard and Chauncey are black characters, and I warned my Xbox sternly not to be prejudiced against associating with black NPCs. It wouldn’t hear me out, though, and it was clear that in order to continue playing, I was in no way allowed to speak to Chauncey, either. Fuck ‘em, there are other… uh… NPC’s with names - and you should know that if an NPC has a name, then they have a quest for you or figure into a quest somewhere. I was now playing the game with full knowledge that there would be quests I could not complete. And I was fine with that because there were just so god damned many that I could bypass a few minor story points if it meant I could still roam the Mojave Wasteland in search of caps and adventure. I had just recently finished a quest that was long overdue for the Brotherhood of Steel, and thought that reporting back to them would finally put me in their good graces. Half of the Brotherhood was out there looking to shoot me on sight, but I snuck past the patrols and into their compound. If I could just make it to the Elder, then everything would be cool, and maybe they’d even show me how to wear Power Armor. Veronica would be really proud of me, too. So once inside, I hauled ass down the corridors to the Elder’s chambers, but…! The game began freezing inside the compound. Not for even trying to engage anyone in conversation - there were literally no other characters around. The game just couldn’t stand being in that compound, and froze unprovoked, to what uninspired players are calling “the black screen of death.” I call it “lights out, bitch” and can only try to rationalize it by imagining that someone sniped my character from the shadows, and without incident, my character simply stopped living, and thus stopped seeing. The black screen was a metaphor for descent into the great reef of beyond where my soul would be tested for the cut of its jib, and/or something, huyuck.
The bugs, it would seem, had won, because soon after this, the game began crashing everywhere. Perhaps my save file was corrupted, and I tried a much earlier one. It crashed, too, even sooner than my most recent save file crashed. I cleared the cache in my Xbox’s memory (a popular suggestion for people experiencing bugs in this game), and tried again - freeze, crash, freeze, crash. This was getting ridiculous. Maybe ALL of my saves were corrupted. So I started a new game. I had just finished tapping out the stats for a brand new character and was about to take Doc Mitchell’s tag skills test, and the game crashed halfway through the first question. Tried another new game, and it crashed in the same place. God of all fucking damnation, I thought, this game is fucking fucked. I took it out of the Xbox - which I realized was only the second time I had actually handled the disc in the one month I had owned it. The first was when I took it out of its package and placed it lovingly in the disc tray. I examined the business side of the disc, and there were four finely curved scratches in a single sector. The only explanations are that they were there the whole time, or more likely, that the douchebag Xbox made them while the disc was inside.
Which brings me to the battlefront. When I carefully worded a letter to the vendor describing my dissatisfaction with the product they sold me, they referred me to the Bethesda tech support team. When I spent an even longer time describing the problem to them, they asked if I could try the disc on another Xbox. Now while that’s not impossible, it is a bit impertinent because even if it works, am I supposed to steal that Xbox in order to continue the game? I only own one, myself, which five years ago was about one more than I said I would ever own. Then they told me to clear the cache. And hell, I did it again. I even tried the newfangled XX RB LB XX trick, which actually didn’t do anything (maybe because the cache had already been cleared). I tried the game one last time - it didn’t even make it to the title screen. The disc went in, and it was lights out immediately.
I thanked Besthesda for their response, and in my longest letter yet, explained that I want the disc replaced. I don’t want my money back, and I don’t want a different game. I’m not trying to scam anyone, and I even hinted that I could throw in the cash for the blank disc they would need to burn me another copy. But for god damn it’s sake, I had already spent 100 hours on this game (not to mention $60) which is a huge investment for me - 100 hours that could have been spent doing anything else. And I didn’t even get to finish the game once.
(This entry was written 21 days ago)