Part 21: Curse Your Inevitable And Pointless Betrayal

Curse Your Inevitable And Pointless Betrayal

Welcome back! Last time on ATOM, we mutilated a Perfidious American Saboteur on behalf of... a pedophile cannibal, and then we made a disgusting porn movie with "General Nasty" and a bunch of mutants. Now, Xander77 had the interesting observation that in Fallout, mutants represented minorities and that ATOM's take on mutants is the take of someone from a less tolerant society. I'm also informed that you can get pretty much every one of the mutants to join General Nasty's unfunny sex video. We're just going to leave that alone right now, and go take General Nasty's advice to show Horny Hussars, Vol 1 to the local cinema owner.





: Do you know you sold tapes to human traffickers?



: I'm serious. They had a secret base in Peregon.



: Why not. What's on today?



Now we could watch something good, or...

: Look, I wanted to show you this tape... [Extract the porn tape]

: "Horny Hussars vol. 1..."? I don't like where it's going... Okay, let's see this film of yours.

I chuckled. I admit it, I can be occasionally juvenile.



: Well... What do you think?

: I'll be honest with you, if I start screening THIS in my parlour, soon people in civilian clothes will pay me a visit and lead me in an unknown direction. Then my body will be found with a bullet in the back of my head, and the police will write it off as suicide... This borders on illegal! Take this tape away from me! Please, and let's never talk about it again...

: Okay, okay. Who would have thought you were such a prude?

You know, the joke here is essentially that we mega sexually harassed this guy by surprising him with disgusting graphic material. Like, ok, Horny Hussars is kind of a funny title, but...


Alright. Back to the sewer bar.



Ha ha. Look, before someone pulls up the old Ash of Gods LP and points out that I joke about the game having four questions, I want to point out that's some shit I put on the internet for free and actually looking at the game. Sure, the bartender is a postmodernist critique of the gaming format, but it's not like he has anything interesting or deep to say. I'm an internet rando and I can make these same critiques. This is, at best, 2000s internet humor.



Of course, the ATOM team couldn't come up with an original way to convey Shpak's facial expressions, so they provide us with the dull prose of a history textbook.

: I managed to call this Uncle Hook bastard. Our long distance discussion didn't reach any result, however. That's why we're having a good old-fashioned meetup. He'll bring his boys, I'll bring mine. We'll talk about future relations and become good buddies. Or some blood will be spilled. If that happens, I promise it will be Uncle Hook's blood.



: Don't blame me for your problems.



We're getting sold out, aren't we?

: What will I get for attending?



The Dead City is Moscow so we can do a Stalker/Metro ripoff zone.

: Fucking hell... Fine. I'll go.



: Meet them at the Old Bridge, got it.




Off we go.



The Old Bridge is just outside Krasnoz.



Huh I wonder who that could be for.

: I don't fucking get it. That's it? This is everyone Shpak managed to gather to defend his interests? That's the first time Valera Dober's gang was sent for such small fry.



Once again, the ATOM devs are completely unable to write this guy as a vicious bandit we should be terrified of. Now part of it is the medium - we've slaughtered 200 men in our journey to become the greatest and horniest Cossack swordsman, but another part of it is that they immediately feel the need to interject dull descriptive text that undoes Dober's confidence.

: As a working man, a man of business, I completely understand that son of a bitch smuggler..! He decided to save some money on protection! Decided to sacrifice us! I - I can respect his wit. But because of him cutting corners in his budget, our throats are also going to be cut!

Suddenly the game decides that these are serious and dangerous bandits, despite us running into hordes of heavily armed bandits all game. For fucks sake, the Pizzagate fight is harder.

: I like you, grandpa. It's a good trait to respect your chief until death do you part. I'll kill you last.

: Mierda! That cabron sent us to our doom! I am hoping you'll get us out of this tight spot, Bear Bearovitch. But even if not, I will gladly die by your side!

Uh, thanks Fidel.



What the fuck is that streetwise option? We're gonna threaten him with gang rape? What?

: [Speechcraft] Think logically, my hard rockin' amigo: why would I come to such a meetup without reinforcements already on their way?

I'm sorry, am I supposed to take "hard rockin' amigo" as a threat someone would make?





Now, the actual answer is "I can one hit all you motherfuckers with my deadly Cossack Steel", but I guess we have the option of claiming that demons are going to eat his soul? What the fuck?

: They are following my footsteps as we speak. They will be here in just a few minutes.

: [Valera Dober coughs and looks down]



: For example, one of my friends is looking at you through his rifle scope.

: [Valera Dober's smirk goes away, as he thinks he really spotted something in the distance]

: What the hell is that? Around 200 meters away. Is that a bottle? Or an optical lens?! Shit. Don't wanna find out. Three of you stay here and fight, I'm going towards the camp.

: Hey! Polkan, you know the way to the "Wounded tourist" tunnel? You're going with me. You too, Vasya. Bye, bitches!



Holy shit, really? The narration points out the fight is easier...then the character says it. Did originality kill ATOM Team's editor, so they swore undying revenge and vowed to make only derivative garbage?

: The fight just became easier. [Attack]




We open the fight by instakilling a bandit on the first turn. Now there are 2 bandits. Why was our party scared we were gonna die again?



Their damage output is dogshit and they die easily. Maybe the three guys who left had some kind of heavy weapons? Who cares? Let's go back and confront Shpak about how he thought a random encounter could kill us.



Yup. That's the end of the Sewer Mafia quests.



And with this poorly written letter we're given our hint on where to track down Shpak, but that ends this questline.

Curious readers might ask themselves, what if we'd sided with Tawfik instead? Well, the game has the exact same outcome - we kill different people, and don't mutilate a guy for a cannibal pedophile, but Simon runs off to the Dead City and per the developers you get the same amount of loot and exp. The game has a running theme that nothing the player does actually matters and all the dumb conspiracy crap goes down anyway. Well, we can at least check on our weird "friend" Kruul.



Fuck this game.

Next time: The return of Dan the Bandit Man!