Part 53: Buffy Season Five: Captain Buffy

Buffy Season Five: Captain Buffy

At this point we've pretty much seen all the gender specific differences in Fallout 2, so this update is more a matter of using Buffy to see a few different odds and ends that for whatever reason couldn't be shown with the other two.



Picking up from the last update, now's a good time to head out and deal with the raiders. This is a condition for something that only this character can manage. This is the front entrance to the Raider cave, which is what you have a 50/50 chance of finding without a map.



The place is full of explosive traps, which can't really do much against power armor, and even has a couple of pit traps.



Naturally those drop you into the middle of a scorpion pit. Scorpion jelly for everyone!



Getting through all the traps gets you a 500 XP bonus, for what it's worth. The last tunnel is also covered in explosive traps, and there's much less leeway in avoiding them. The best thing is to just trigger them yourself by running ahead of everybody else. Once one goes off, all of the other nearby traps will usually go as well.



The mercenaries won't actually become aggressive until you go through the second set of fences, so you can get a bit of humanizing chatter if you hang out and watch them for a few minutes. At least one of them finds Lynette attractive in an "aristocratic, domineering, slave-advocating kind of way." Yeah, these guys are definitely not from the NCR.



This time our silent friend didn't join in the fun, but he also can't communicate with us in any way. He tends to vanish at some point no matter what you do.



Now that we've dealt with the raiders, this is our next step. There's a hidden respect value for NPCs, and Lynette really, really gets off on being called First Citizen. I can kind of understand that, as being called "Mr. President" would probably be a considerable ego boost. At this point in the game this is about the only way we can raise respect with Lynette, so I looped this conversation about 15 times.



The result is a special title that makes you the highest ranking military figure in Vault City. In order to get this you have to have 74% or higher Speech and CH of 7 or more. You have to complete the entire Raiders/Bishop quest line and deliver the information to Westin, and as mentioned you have to make sure that Lynette likes you by kissing her ass sufficiently. It's the last one that probably keeps most people from getting it.



You get a pretty decent experience boost for it, as well as access to a couple of other scenes and events in Vault City.



It results in a dialogue change for most people, especially the gate guards...



And you can also bring Marcus into the city without everyone flipping their shit and the entire place going hostile on you.




Sergeant Stark gets all kinds of pissy about it, but considering the whole 'go scout these places for me' crap I'm more than happy to annoy him. Of course, that's not all...



Since you can make him apologize to Cassidy, clear his record, and pay him off for busting up his bar. You get an experience award for this, as well as $500 and the text log praises you for abusing your authority.



You can also take Marcus to the doctor and have them extract 80 years worth of ammunition that was encysted in his skin. He still won't do the dermal implants, but since we've already got them that's not an issue.



By my count that's about 185 bullets stuck in Marcus over the years, tough old bastard that he is. We'll just ignore the fact that ammunition that has been fired shouldn't be usable.



After that it's time to head to New Reno for a few more extras. Turns out that Mrs. Wright doesn't think much of you being a porn star, although how she recognizes you is a very good question. Naturally, once you make this response she isn't interested in talking with you again.



The Wrights actually have a liquor distilling operation under the train station in New Reno, and going down there in Power Armor results in this bit of floating text. There's supposed to be a quest where you disable the stills at Mrs. Wright's request, but I haven't been able to trigger it and I'm definitely not going to be able to do it with this character.



Also, it turns out that you can get away with just walking past Eldridge and going to his basement, as long as you don't do it at night. Guess I probably didn't need to kill him in the main playthrough. Oops.



I hadn't known about this before, but it also turns out that you can upgrade all of those power fists found on super mutants into mega power fists. As compared to other upgrades this one raises their selling price substantially, and is a pretty damn good way to get ahold of some extra energy cells.



Hidden in a bookshelf in the basement is the easter egg people have mentioned in New Reno: a power armor technical manual. People who played the original Fallout might remember that you needed to find one of these to get yourself a suit of power armor.




This is the run where I also completed the "get 10 porn mags" quest, leading to a bit of dialogue about how they know about unsticking things at the Cat's Paw...



The reward is a readable book that'll boost your Energy Weapons skill by 10%. It's not terribly useful for this character, but it could be handy if you've already got high Energy Weapons skill and want to save some skill points.



At this point we're just picking up extras before the end and boosting our experience points a bit. While wandering I found a couple more tombstones in Redding with shout outs to the developers. A neighboring tombstone claims that Fred Hatch died while trying to get Myron's voice recorded.



At some point near Redding I hit level 24, and with a character named Buffy there's only one Perk choice at that level. For some reason this character was one of the more difficult ones to level, perhaps as a result of not being able to complete a few quests.



The last thing I checked before the endgame was Typhon's reaction to the whole '10,000 bottle caps' thing. Turns out that he's actually been in the old ghoul's home long enough that he's lost track of what currency people are using and feels terrible about it. I got to watch a midget get stuck in an abandoned well and got 2,000 XP, so I'm feeling great.



There's no change in the oil rig at this point, but without the option to impregnate the Bishops we do get a different ending for New Reno: the Wrights use the equipment from the Sierra Army Depot to attack the other families (ignoring the fact that I'd already killed most of them) ad take control of the city in a war that lasts about 43 minutes. In the future, history teaches that the Wrights were the founders of New Reno.



And with that, a final view of our Champion Porn Star Prize Fighter Sexpert Gigolo Made (Wo)man Chosen One.

Now, about that third alternate play through…