Haunted Gaming - Fallout 3 Hunted
Hey there. My name is Jason, and I am 23 years old. I am writing this because. Well, let's just say it really makes one think about morality, even in video games.
It was 2 years after the release of Fallout 3. By this point in time I had modded the game all to hell and essentially had a lot going on in the game from super powered weapons and high tech armor, to new NPCs and buildings.
I had been doing this for a while and decided to make an evil character this time. With the killable children mod installed and all essential NPC's turned off, I could essentially travel anywhere and slaughter anybody I pleased,
with little repercussions. Sure, the regulators would make an appearance every once in a while to tell me "what a bastard" I was, and how I will "pay for" my crimes. You know, the usual crap you hear spewed from their craws
like it means a bloody thing. I loved it though, sometimes I would try to get the drop on the regulators with a sniper rifle or mini nuke launcher. I was the hunter in this game. Raiders, regulators, children, shop keepers, you name it, I've hunted and killed it. Sometimes I felt it was a little boring, so I would handicap myself from time to time to keep it interesting. You know, take on some deathclaws and enclave soldiers with only a melee weapon and no armor.
Something to that effect.
Anyways, it was another Sunday afternoon and I had nothing else to do. I decided to go to Girdershade and kill off Ronald and Sierra and knick all their crap for shits and giggles. I loaded up a shotgun, an assault rifle, a sniper rifle, a combat knife, and I wore the Chinese stealth suit. I decided that would be far more than enough to thouroghly obliterate those two. I used the fast travel to go just outside of Girdershade. As I approached the boundaries of the small shanty town I felt like there was an NPC over by some dead trees and rocks off in the distance. I figured it was probably nothing, and even if it was an NPC, it was probably just a trader or random encounter or something of the like.
I continued on and entered Girdershade, killing Ronald and Sierra and stealing some Nuka Cola stuff I figured I could sell later. I exited Sierra's house and looked over to where I saw the NPC. The NPC was no longer there, so I decided to wander over there anyways to see if they were still nearby or something, as it hadn't taken me very long to turn Girdershade into a Nuka Cola ghost town. I saw nobody there and was about to turn around when suddenly a notification popped up on the screen. It said, "As you turn away, you notice a small note on the ground. The note says simply three words, come, to, Dunwich." I closed the prompt and I sat in my chair and thought what that could have possibly been about. I figured it must have been an old quest mod I had installed previously and figured it might be fun. Essentialy more people (or ghouls) to hunt down. I decided to head on over to the Dunwich Building and see what
this was all about.
As I approached, I decided to play it a little bit safe, as if this was a quest mod. I didn't know what enemies would be lurking around. I took out the sniper rifle and studied the surroundings. It all looked pretty normal. No NPCs wandering around, no enemies of any sort. I put my sniper rifle away and decided to use my shotgun, as it was close quarters in there and made it the most sense. I opened the door and entered the building. It all looked pretty normal at this point. No new ambiance, music, NPCs. It was all just the same. I started to wander through the building, prepping myself for an encounter with the enemies in here, mostly feral ghouls. I decided to crouch into stealth mode and wander around to hunt them. As I got further and further into the building I noticed something. There were no enemies at all, nothing. I exited stealth mode and looked through all the rooms, one by one. There was nothing. I mean, all the stuff was still there, but no ghouls. I began to wonder if this was part of the mod. That I would run into a new kind of enemy or there would be tons of enemies deeper into the building.
I started to go deeper down when suddenly, I heard....a very faint whispering coming from down the hall and in a room with a closed door. This was probably part of the mod. I figured it could be a horror mod or something... I enjoyed the thought of that. So I slowly walked down the hall, readying my shotgun. I got outside the door, and I opened it to find, nothing. There was nothing here. I sat hunched in my chair, scratching my head, wondering what the hell that was about. As I started to walk into the room I quickly stopped and looked down. There on the ground was a barely visible trip wire. This trip wire was different from the other's normally found in the game. It looked like fishing wire, damn near transparent. If I hadn't been alert and paying attention, I would have tripped the wire. I knelt down and safely disabled the trap. I walked around the corner to see what it would have set off, and my heart stopped. It was a nuke, like the one in Megaton. I walked up to it and a prompt came up saying, "There was a note attached to the bomb, it said, Well, you survived the first trap. Kudos. Can you keep going, I wonder?" I stared at the prompt for a while. What in the bloody hell kind of a mod was this? It was, unique I'd give it that. But I hadn't seen a mod use the nuke like this before. I simply shrugged it off as a really overzealous modder, and continued on my way.
As I got down to the depths of Dunwich Building, I found something that was a little comforting. It was one of the notes from the scientist turned ghoul. I picked it up and listened to it, as it was familiar enough to keep me going. It played out as normal, until I noticed that even after the message was supposed to have ended, there was still 15 seconds left on the tape. I wondered how the hell someone could have modded this, when suddenly the tape played the same goddamned whispering I heard previously from the room upstairs. It kept going for 8 seconds then stopped. When there was only 3 seconds left, the tape suddenly let out this loud piercing scream, like someone being attacked. I damn near fell out of my chair. After the tape stopped, I got pissed. Really? A fucking jump scare? That's the best they can come up with? Freaking amateurs.
I was just about to leave the room when suddenly, outside the door and down the hall I heard footsteps. They were slow but loud, and echoed, and they were slowly getting closer. I aimed my shotgun at the door, waiting for whoever or whatever was outside to open the door and attack. I figured this was it, the boss of the quest or some shit, but nothing happened. There was no red blip on the compass, nothing opened the door. There was just a shadow outside the door... standing there... doing and saying nothing. I stared at the door for what felt like hours, even though it was mere seconds. What the hell was this? Who could code the AI in a mod this good? I decided that I would try something else. I still had some mines I had picked up and decided to use them. I planted them in front of the door. I entered stealth mode and I opened the door to find, nothing. There was nothing there at all. I started to get furious. What the hell kind of troll quest mod was this? Nothing had happened, All that has happened so far was someone was fucking with me, and I was getting pretty damn sick of it. At this point, I just decided to leave. I went back through the building and was just about to reach the exit when suddenly, I heard the footsteps, except this time, they weren't slow, they were fast. Something was bolting towards me at a rate that I didn't think NPCs could move in this game. I heard the mines in the one room go off and the footsteps didn't stop! They just got louder as whatever it was got closer. I decided to bail and wait outside with my sniper rifle instead, and catch the prick by surprise. I ran outside of the building and I stood there watching on the hill, waiting for this asshole to come out so he could get shot in the face, repeatedly. I watched and, nothing. I sighed, this was stupid. I gave up and decided to fast travel back to Tenpenny Tower.
I went inside and, there was nobody there. There were no guards, no people, nothing. I was confused, did my game severely glitch out or something? Why was all this crap happening? I decided I would let my character go upstairs, I would save it, and figure it out later. I went up to my suite and entered room. It was, dark, very dark. I turned on my pip boy light and, there was a trail of a dark liquid on the ground, leading to the modded parlor. I took out my shotgun and decided to see what the hell this was and why my game was so screwed up. I walked into the parlor and, my mouth fell wide open. On the wall, scrawled in blood was one word, "Hunter". I saw the heads of every, single, fucking NPC I had ever killed. Every man, woman and child stacked on the pool table. I looked around, there were the corpses of animals sprawled on the floor. I started to back out of the room when I heard a slight creak behind me. I spun around and, I saw an NPC, it was me, the actual me. Except he was, paler, with darker hair, and cold soulless eyes. He stabbed my character in the gut with a knife, immediately taking my health from full to zero. As my character gurgled and thrashed, collapsing in a heap, he looked dead into my character's eyes... as if he was looking at me and said, "How does it feel being the hunted? To know how they felt, right before you ended their existences like they were nothing. This is only a warning, next time, I come to hunt you." The game suddenly crashed back to desktop. I stared in silence at my computer monitor, before walking over to my fridge, grabbing the whiskey, and drinking myself stupid until I passed out.
From that day forward I have never played a game as an evil character again. I always do the good and right thing, I always am helpful and only fight against those who are themselves evil. And every time I think of crossing that line, and being evil even for a second, I swear, outside my door in the hallway, I can hear footsteps, walking just outside, waiting for me to slip up.