Part 46: The Journeys of Hung Wei Lo: Episode 2

The Journeys of Hung Wei Lo: Episode 2



Picking back up the Journey of Hung Wei Lo, we'll just go ahead and skip ahead to the Modoc mines since there's not much else to talk about before then. If you ask for his identity instead of telling him about New California you get this little bit of dialogue before he runs off, as well as a 500 XP point bonus for uncovering more obscure pop culture.



Jinxed turns the boxing ring into a comedy of errors.

"On some other planet your fighting style would be impressive. Your weakness is that we are on Earth. I think"



Outside of New Reno we run into our first Special Encounter. Keep in mind that if you didn't have decent outdoorsman you'd get dumped into this without the opportunity to refuse.



The game suggests you might want to save in a new slot, and it means it. Your car mysteriously ends up on the other side of the bridge, so you can't proceed without making it across.



And to do that, you've got to get by this jerk. Monty Python reference ahoy!



"Ask me the questions, bridge keeper. I do not know the meaning of fear, for my dictionary was abridged."



"While I can lay claim to Testocles, Seymour Heine, and The Chosen One, I am Hung Wei Lo of Arroyo."

"Really?"

"That's what they tell me. Wait, does that count as one of the three questions?"

"Of course not! Ahem..."



"To search for the Holy GECK. Have you seen it?"

"No. Now, the final and most terrible question!"



"What do you mean? The statistic or level requirement?"

"What? I don't know, just answer the question!"



"Aaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhh!!!!"

As in the movie, the key to getting past the bridge keeper and getting the best reward is to answer his question with a question. You'll still get past if you give him the right answer, but you want him to fail and die instead.



Doing so allows you to loot him for the Bridgekeeper's Robes, which are actually a reskinned combat armor. Especially early on this is quite a bonus, although you can't use them as a base material for combat implants.



They also look fabulous.



"Were all of these scorpions here a minute ago?"

"There are some questions that we and I shouldn't be asking."

Seriously, you can get some ridiculous encounters with scorpions. I killed a lot of them trying to find special encounters.



Some things never get old.



"I see my reputation has proceeded me."



Since we're Jinxed and haven't got any of the other advantages that Luke did on the main play through, it's time to even the odds a bit more.



"Yes, that's quite a collection you have there. No, you don't need to share."

In case any of you had any doubt that they were mocking Mike Tyson.



The other thing you can pick up are a pair of weighted boxing gloves, which have the result you can see here. Battering your opponent into submission with them IS a valid strategy. It's still better to aim for the head, but we're definitely going to cause damage this way. Using these also changes the damage resistance reward we get, but I'll have to cover that later.



In addition to the more prosaic mobsters, you can also encounter yakuza wandering around New Reno. They don't have their own families.



In addition to a ridiculous number of throwing knives, they also carry around wakizashi… which are pretty decent melee weapons.



You might not realize this on a number of playthroughs, but you actually have stat requirements for getting some of the final quests for the families. Salvatore won't offer you the final quest without 6 charisma, which we don't have.



"I hope that's not my lock pick set you're talking about."

Yeah, there's nothing stopping us from going in and talking with the actresses while they're between takes… and they're actually kind of funny.



"Are you sure it's not both?"



"I would only hope that one would involve less punches to the face than the other. Or to the back of the head."



Moving on to Vault 13 (skipping the fight with Darius and his guards, by the way), if you go down to fix the machine you can also help yourself to the GECK while you're at it. This won't upset the Deathclaws… they'll just say that they couldn't find the GECK and you walk out whistling.



Nevermind the armor we're wearing. This is a random encounter that's interesting to me, since it seems that Marcus is not the only survivor of the Master's army running around the wasteland. He's just the most friendly.



We can tell Tandi about finding Vault 13 if we go back to her to turn in the Vault 15 quests after we go to Vault 13...



But she doesn't react too well to being told the Vault is full of Deathclaws.



Another neat thing you can do is threaten Thomas Moore to get some cash out of him for keeping his secret. Lynette is interested in hearing about him as well, but we'll leave that for another time.



Finally, for today, the Jinxed trait can result in some real friendly fire casualties when enemies have high volume weapons. Unfortunately, the defensive planning for the Sierra Army Depot was good enough that there are only so many places this can happen… but it is possible for turrets to have a critical failure and lose all their ammo, which renders them helpless since they can't reload. With good enough armor and the Jinxed trait it's quite feasible just sit at the maximum range they'll fire at you and wait until they have a failure.