English is so hard to learn. It is as commonly spoken as it is now only because it's the legacy of the global British Empire. Mandarin Chinese is a much more efficient language. At the very least, its rules don't get bent as often, most phrases can be shortened and there are idioms and shortened proverbs to express just about everything.
And there aren't as many words that can easily be mistaken as something vulgar.
Fallout 3 is full of places where side-quests are possible. Just found something quite interesting.
Let me start from the beginning. I was almost reaching Reilly's Ranger's HQ somewhere north of Rivet City when I heard this mad rant everywhere on this street. Next thing I know, I found this back alley with this playground. Nothing unusual, so I went ahead.
Suddenly, I heard a beep from a mine being triggered. Since I'm tough enough to withstand a mine blowing up under me and I didn't see any mine in front of me, I just stood still and waited for it to explode.
Surprise~! Boom! Boom! BOOOOOM! BOOOM! BOOOOOM!!!!
Thus I watched as my body flew up to the sky with my left arm and right leg mysteriously and conspicuously missing.
I didn't give up. Reloading the game, I went back to that alley to in order to deactivate all those mines and bring them with me. All mines have great value/weight ratio. Usually weighs 0.5 and sells for 25. All that money lying on the ground was reason enough to reload and retry many times over.
Second time, I died again. I didn't see any mine near me but I heard the beep. I thought there must be a mine hidden in a bush nearby. But as I flew I saw my corpse, lacking a leg, flying by a person. Holy cow! What the heck? I didn't see anyone anywhere on that street before.
That perked my curiosity to the max. At that point, nothing could have stopped me from trying everything possible to find that guy.
That person had to be nearby, so I went to that alley again. I found this second storey of one of the buildings that had its wall facing the alley and its ceiling destroyed. That made me suspect that the person was there, but because of my angle I couldn't see anyone without stepping onto the place where I suspect the hidden mines were.
So back to the mines and nukes. This time I did it very cautiously - I press F5 to Quicksave after each nuke or mine I loot. And again I died, but I was able to reload back to the last mine I looted nearby.
After 3 more tries, I thought I knew where the hidden mines were, but when I stepped into the bush on my left I saw only dirt.
Huh? Then boom boom leg gone arm gone etc etc...
I didn't know what was happening and suspected a bug that made the mine invisible. So I went to my right the next time and... no invisible mines! Woot!!
Finally I knew the radius of the area on this side that triggered those invisible mines. So I walked through the alley while sticking to the wall on the right and explored the other side. Eventually I spotted a nuke under an empty oil drum. Because of its position when I went close enough to take it, the angle was too steep for me to see it. So I had to squat down to loot it.
You see, in Fallout 3 squatting down = activate Stealth mode. In stealth mode, the top of my screen tells me if I'm spotted or in danger of being spotted by someone.
So when I squatted down, I saw that I was "DETECTED". Right away I knew it must be the guy I was looking for. I picked that nuke, Quicksaved and looked around. Sure enough, I saw a man on the alfresco second floor.
Instintively, I stood up and ran towards him, thinking that maybe there was a way to jump up to that level and speak to him. Boom boom limbs blown apart etc etc.
I reloaded and this time, instead of running to him, I look around to find a way up. I didn't see any, so I continued away from him out of the alley. At this point, I suspected that maybe the hidden mines were linked to him because the area I found to trigger those mines were in his line of sight.
At the exit though, there was this guy huddling down in the corner. I spoke to him and found out that the guy upstairs was the mad man on the speakers and he was the one holding the trigger to the mines and nukes in that alley.
Using my 1337 Charisma, I persuaded him to run to that guy and tell him to shut up. As he ran I retreated to somewhere safer. It was then that I saw the size of the mushroom clouds. Those weren't from the mini-nukes I was trying to loot. Probably specially programmed only for this alley.
I ran to the alley after that and found the mad man gone and the speakers mute. Nothing was left except for pieces of the poor fool. No trace of the mad man could be found though.
Curious, I googled and found that there was nothing to be done for that guy. No side-quests nothing. Not even a conversation was possible unless I cheated using the console and made myself fly to that guy.
Oh well.
Fallout 3 is so full of possible side-quests and stuff that don't need to be there. This is just one example. Though they are from the same developers, I couldn't find such nonsense in Oblivion. I like these things though, because they made the world appear more real. Erratic stuff that has nothing to do with me and what I do is common in the real world. Similarly, this suicidal lunatic has nothing to do with my quests and was there merely for the sake of being there.
This sort of thing is also quite unlike bonus stuff because it serves no purpose at all. It doesn't give me loads of money, only a few mines and mini-nukes. Neither does it reveal any background story or bonus content. It is just plain pointless, which makes Fallout 3 all the more realistic.
I'm not sure if you can think of anything that has totally nothing to do with you throughout your life. Maybe a neighbour living five stories above you whom you've only glanced once in the last 10 years?
I don't know about you, but occasionally I do see people I've never seen before take the lift up with me in my block. Young people wearing school uniforms and carrying bags are usually residents.
Of course, the times that I leave/return home are usually non-peak hours, so I'm usually alone in the lift. This means I don't really know any of my neighbours except my primary school friend. Heck, I don't even know who lives in one of the units on my floor. And there are only 4 units on each floor of my block. Either they're very quiet or it's empty.
I fear getting old. I saw my great-grandaunt a few times within the last couple years before her death some years back. She didn't recognize me and my brother, only my mum. Yes she was smiling and seemed happy, but I don't want to end up like that if that's what longevity means.
The last time I saw her, she was in a home for old folks waiting to die in Penang. I seriously don't want to end up like that. She had 2 children, both adopted. Probably had to do with the fact that she was an uni grad. Too rich, standards too high, who knows?
Both her children are successful people today but there she was living in a place where nobody seems to want to talk with anybody. Probably too old to talk. Many of them had difficulty just moving around and the rooms I saw were double rooms which means very few people.
At that last time, she could barely remember my mother and my bro and I had to reintroduce ourselves. I wouldn't be surprise if she was really pretending to remember my mum just so that she had someone to talk to. She knew she was just waiting for the end and had already surrendered to it. Just spent her last days in her bed with the TV.
Typing about her makes me curious about her story. What was it like to be an uni grad back in her day? To be my great-grandaunt (in Chinese it's 姑太, and grandaunt in Chinese is 姑婆), she had to be over 80, maybe even over 90. This means she was already a teenager when WWII started, when WWI was still called "the Great War".
OMG! I sense epicness in her tale. Damn, I think I'll have to ask my mum some day, though I suspect she doesn't know much about her past either. My paternal relatives would know more, but we don't keep in contact with them. Dang...
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