I’m going to discuss one of the missions in Fallout: New Vegas (Crazy, Crazy, Crazy), so there will be spoilers.
You find out that Super Mutants (and Nightkin) have settled at Black Mountain, a radio array. After a disagreement, a mutant named Marcus left to found Jacobstown, while Tabitha stayed on. She rules Black Mountain, and humans are to be killed on sight. She’s also using the radio array to broadcast her ‘message’ to lure other Super Mutants to Black Mountain. Another mutant, Neil, lives in a shack at the bottom of Black Mountain and attempts to tell all new arrivals about Jacbostown before they can become ensnared by Tabitha.
The mission is to climb Black Mountain and end Tabitha’s reign of terror.
Now, I hadn’t listened to Tabitha’ “radio show”, and only had what Neil and Marcus had told me to go by. I managed to convince Neil to help, and he said he’d meet me near the top. Given I’m a sneaky type character I snuck my way up, killing mutants as sneakily as possible (Nightkin are very, very hard to see when cloaked. I don’t know how you’d do it if you were playing in Standard Def, rather than High Def). Eventually I reached Neil, who offered to disstract the guards so I could sneak in.
Note that he does this by telling the guards he saw an intruder in the village – which is where you meet him. So you need to either be prepared to fight some cloaked Nightkin, or find a good place to hide – a niche off to the left side, above Neil works.
There’s a Super Mutant with a rocket launcher on a tower to the right, so you need to either take them out, or sneak past. I, of course, snuck past. Then took them out.
So let’s look at the setup here. I’ve just battled a dozen or so Mutants, of various types, to reach the buildings of the Array itself. Tabitha, who rules these Mutants, is still to be found and dealt with. Clearly she’s going to be a “boss fight” or similar. Whatever happens, this is not going to be easy.
As I usually do, I poked around the other buildings before even thinking of entering the main one (presumably Tabitha’s hangout).
One building was a store-room. I found a broken “Mr Handy” style robot, which I had the Science to fix. I’m curious, so I fixed it. It turns out the robot’s name is Rhonda, and she asks you about Tabitha, then she began following me.
I finished searching the store-room and stepped out, to be faced with Tabitha. I’m glad I saved before leaving the building…
Instead of attacking me, Tabitha was grateful I’d fixed her friend and decided that they were going to resume doing what they were doing before Black Mountain – wandering the wastes…
This was so unexpected, and such a quirky twist of a quest ending, that I began giggling uncontrollably. What’s even better is that it fits so well! If you continue from there and read various log entries, you find that Tabitha is likely a bit insane (a problem with Nightkin and their Stealth Boys), and very, very childlike. She dresses female, though Mutants don’t technically have gender, and wears a wig and feminine glasses. The best part, though, really is the unexpectedness of it. I was fully expecting some kind of dramatic boss fight or similar, and here I solved the quest without even understanding what I was doing. And I reunited some old friends.
While I’m glad not all quests are like this, I found this one very satisfying and amusing. Full marks to Obsidian for this quest!
