Tonight, Fallout: New Vegas will be released at midnight, and shortly after midnight, I will be back at my apartment playing it until the sky lightens upon the arrival of the sun. This is a scenario that has repeated itself numerous times throughout my teenage and adult life. It's nothing to brag about, it's just a fact: sometimes I play video games really, really late at night. A lot of times it's just Halo, but sometimes it's an RPG that I'm busy pouring my life into, such as Oblivion, Mass Effect or Fallout 3. Many of these nights blend together and become indistinguishable from one another. Tonight, however, will be different.
When I play a game with some semblance of a moral compass, even if it's simply as primitive as "help this guy find something so he'll give you supplies or, if you want, blow his brains out and take them", I'm always the good guy. Well, once, years ago, I played through as a bad guy in the first of the Knights of the Old Republic games. But that was only after I had played through as a good guy, so I don't really count it. I don't know what it is. Surely, wouldn't it be easier just to kill everyone and take whatever I wanted than to help them with their trivial, meaningless tasks like killing rats in their basement or finding their long lost daughter or trekking across an irradiated wasteland killing super mutants? Yeah, I indulge in the occasional homicidal fantasy where I methodically stalk the residents of a virtual town, picking them off one by one with a scoped revolver or an enchanted broadsword, but I never save. Being the good guy is just awesome. All of the characters love you, you get the best weapons and armor, the most experience points and the game hails you as a savior. I say, "no more".
Alas, my career as a virtual paragon is at an end.
No longer, madame elf, will I gather alchemical ingredients for you in the goblin-infested forest in order that you may surrender some wizard's staff or enchanted tome. If I want it, I'll simply hack you up and loot it from your still-warm corpse. And if any of the city's guards take issue with that, they'll meet the same fate.
My apologies, good sir, but now that I've fought my way through this mutant-infested town and claimed all the spoils, I have absolutely no desire whatsoever to escort you to safety. You may either fend for yourself or I'll give you a quick death right where you stand.
Dear Galactic Council, I don't care if your ship is about to be overcome by an ancient, massive cyborg ship that drives you insane merely by being in its vicinity. Maybe you should have listened to me when I told you the damn thing was coming at the beginning of the game. I've got other shit to do, now. Enjoy being space dust.
I could go on, oh, I could go on. I've faced choices like that a million times in my gaming career. But tonight, when New Vegas comes out, I'm done. From what I've heard about the game, it starts with my character being shot in the head twice, buried in the desert and left for dead. Now if that's not an excuse to murder every damn thing I come across in that game, I don't know what is. I don't care if every guard in town spills his wrath upon me. I don't care if I have to wait until I hit the level cap so that even the largest of firearms poses no threat to my armor. I don't care, little girl, where your daddy is. He's probably dead. I probably killed him. I'm done being a nice guy, at least in video games. For this one title, this one playthrough, at least.
