Without ever having been in a scrap worse than a fistfight in his life, the Lone Wanderer becomes a stone-cold killer, capable of mowing down those who he would have said good morning to the previous day. How could this possibly happen? No basic training, no hard-knocks life to toughen, what should be, a soft, yellow bellied teenager. Afterward, there isn't a single nightmare, not a single flashback, no remorse, no panic attacks, no PTSD. What kind of sick, demented person do you have to be to not even flinch at the thought of killing another human being for the first time? How much more twisted do you have to be to not feel bad after slaughtering hundreds?

The Lone-Wanderer's transformation is remarkable, and especially noticable during VATS, where his face is one of calm, or sometimes mild annoyance at the thought of having to slay yet another foe. Honestly, what kind of person is he?

-Penguin

The Vault Dweller was a dike.
Chosen One was an idiot and a porm star.
The Warrior... He's cool.
And finally, The Lone Wanderer is a psychopath.

It's a nice ensemble of protagonists don't ya think?

Because Beth thought it would be good to have are characters age set for us and to making it so talking our way out of having to killing was not a possibility. So I can only guess Beth wanted are character to be a mindless unfeeling killing god.

Well, there are all the daddy issues that arise from being abandoned by the only parent you ever knew...

Some things aren't easily explained by nature vs. nurture. Also, you go from having everything handed to you like it's nothing, to being shoved out into a wasteland of hostility, violence, and wanting. How could people turn into raiders? Why wouldn't they? Life svckS. Anger, bitterness, resentment, depression, all these things can easily turn a 19 year old into a psychopath who lashes out.

How do we know there aren't such issues? You control your character. His/her personality and rationale are up to you.
I played my character(and still do) as having been more or less shocked into his current state. As long as he continues fighting, constantly in the middle of the action, he will remain focused and his fragile psyche will be protected by the coldness of necessity. When the dust settles and the mutants are heaped in piles in DC and the Raiders are slaughtered to their last, the Lone Wanderer will not find peace. He will find fetish, he will find drink, he will find the collapse of his workmanlike personality as he finally comes to terms with who he has become, but peace? Never. He is as likely to die by his own hands as by any other cause.

New Vegas has some people dealing with Psychological Trauma like such as Corporal Betsy and the women at Gomorrah.

Remember that the first time the Lone Wanderer killed somebody(Officer Kendall most likely), it was because he was trying to kill the Lone Wanderer. If I were in that situation and if most were in that situation, without thinking, most would just blow his brains out and think about moral standards later when the coast is clear. The first time is the hardest and since the first time was based on instinct and the Lone Wanderer didn't hesitate, he would get more and more used to it. Not to mention in the beginning, the only people the Lone Wanderer would most likely kill would be raiders who make a threat to his life.

Perhaps, but there are long stretches of time during which the Lone Wanderer is either sleeping or walking. You'd think that what he'd done would sink in by then.

-Penguin

Pupose, the begining has use searching for the only parent we've ever known, The rest of the game has us seeking revenge, broken steel allows us to aid a faction who's helped us with everything and had us fighting to avenge a fallen comrade and continue to skull-[censored] the enclave.

Once the dust has settled, the Lone Wanderer is either going to need to continue working with the BoS, finding another purpose, suicide, or something much, much worse.

The answer is easy enough if you really think about... He played to many violent video games and thus became desensitized to such things, so much so in fact that shooting people became fun... Which as we all Know is the path all gamers are walking on (heheh according to some) Thankfully though he had not been exposed to a bit more "flesh shots" or he would have been a wife beater or rapist to boot...


All that aside the haunted hero works well in some roleplay situations but not one where someone or something is trying to kill you every 5 minutes as its kind of hard to feel sorry for someone who is shooting you for no reason or in the wanderers experience gunning down fellow vault dwellers around you (the mini event where the couple get poped if you get there fast enough). Plus it kind of falls on you to feel any regret as you are the one playing him... There were a few times when out of the blue I was attacked by typically non hostile Npcs (wander merchants and there ilk) for really no reason i could think off (not stealing or anything) and i gunned em down for I realized who they were I did feel a bit bad and actually said out loud to the game " now why the hell did you do that" before I looted them and moved on.

Everything becomes easier the more you do it. Get forced into "them or me" situations enough you'll pick them faster and faster.

From the very beginning, my character was psychologically traumatized!



Trish wakes up, hits on her best friend, gets rejected, gets told that Jonah has been murdered, kills a guy she's known for years (Officer Kendall) because he intends to kill her first, blows Butch away accidentally when he comes out of nowhere, watches Butch's mom get eaten by radroaches, shot Officer Gomez on sight for fear he was going to attack her as well, and proceeds to blow past the rest of the security team in order to get out... only to be forced to kill her best friend's father, forever damaging their friendship and damning her to a life out in the wasteland.

Once she's outside, she wanders around in Springvale for a bit, kills Silver and takes over her home, and proceeds to hide there until the food and water run out.

The raiders over at the Elementary School always have food and water they've stolen from somewhere... so she [censored]s herself out to them in exchange. Since she pretty much looks like one of them and talks like one of them anyways... she's eventually beaten bloody, bludgeoned to within an inch of her life, and inducted into their gang.

Inside the raider gang, she quickly learns to embrace her new-found violent edge. After just a few weeks, she manages to crack the code on their leader's terminal and read about what a sniveling coward he is.

Trish slits his throat while he sleeps one night, and just for spite she kills his dog as well.

When the rest of the gang awakes the following morning, Trish has styled herself their new boss... and says that they're going to do things a little differently from now on. The females of the gang are washed up as best as can be managed and put to work as prosttutes throughout Springvale. The men are responsible for tearing down all the ruined buildings around town, and erecting new shacks and smaller hovels in their place.

Trish travels to Megaton herself, where she rounds up all those settlers who have been denied citizenship... and leads them back to Springvale where a new settlement is being born. Travelers headed for Megaton find there is now another location to peddle their wares... and soon a deal is struck between the four major caravans and the Springvale raiders, which Trish has affectionately dubbed the "Ordinance Committee".

That's actually where she is right now... still rebuilding the city...

... I'm trying to come up with some place to have her get enough bricks to 'rebuild' the school... which will teach brutal, raider-inspired skills for survival... but it's tough. Everywhere where there's a brick building is like... miles and miles away. It would take forever for a bunch of raiders to move them all the way to Springvale by hand.


Still, Trish... totally went raider... she's all numb to violence now.

It happens!

You've forgot the Courier.

You know, not everyone who kills another person in combat or self defence has to go into some deep epiphany about the rights and wrongs of killing and the need to find purpose. If that was the case then most of our grandparents/parents/friends in the Army would have been a lot weirder.

However, murdering a person just for the fun of it or to take some special bottlecaps would probably cause most sane people to go into a fit of depression afterwards.

The Courier is a tool. Literally.
(S)He's just a tool to be used by House, Yes Man, Caesar or... Whoever NCR has.

Environment makes a difference, your looking from a modern western perspective, people in different locations around the world dont all react the same, environmental factors play a part in what shapes you. Alot of soldiers that are PTSD sufferers have aqcuired that not just from the shock of killing, but from going from the traumatic situations of going from a war zone where your expected to have the mindset to kill the enemy and to survive yourself, and then to placed into civilian life and told ok now forget everything and switch to civilian mode without acclimatising, where theres no transition between one to the other, where traumatic memories are still present.

For the wastelander the world is a completely different place, there would probably not be a moment to stop and reflect on the events of the day, well today i killed 10 raiders that wasnt fun because tomorrow i may have to kill 15 to just stay alive, and the next day and the next, there would have been an initial shock but it would have become common place over time because that is the state of the world, for the courier it was some survival and revenge against benny, not so much fun to find you had just been buried to find yourself alive and kicking and revenge is a very strong motivation, and any obstacle that got between you and your target is nothing but it would mostly be the emptiness after killing benny, then i suppose it was just curiosity about the chip and realising that you were alive now and had to live another day, survival also another strong instinct in people.

Looking at these people, from the way we live, try to imagine your born in the sudan, your parents are killed and your still a child and the militia gives you a gun and says go kill these people, and thats your life, or you wake up in the morning in a massively overcrowded city its dirty and smelly and you live in a construction of cardboard and corrugated iron, and everyday you have to scrounge for food, and theres always an ever present danger that someone may stab you for what little you have. Looking at the fallout lifestyle from, living in a reasonably comfortable western lifestyle where most people believe that it'll never happen to us and if anything have it reinforced.

Also killing for survival is different to just plain murder, killing the raiders to stop them killing you is different to killing the guy in front of megaton that asks you for water, he's an innocent, i understand that going from the soft vault life to jumping to killing in the wasteland, may effect some, but again survival is a strong instinct, and its not as if you can just jump a transport and return to civilisation because your in it and this is your life from now on, and whether you choose to help the settlers or become enclave or a raider, this is still the state of the world and thats your world.

Actually, the Vault Dweller was a lawyer. (Albert)

A lawyer can be a dike as well.

And why he was a dike was because he freakin' killed The Overseer at the end.
I mean, The Overseer just thought he did what was best for everyone inside V13, and VD (hurr hurr hurr..) blows a part of his torso off!
Totally uncalled for!
So yeah, Vault Dweller was a complete dike.

Bloody Mess much?

The Overseer was executed later on by the Vault Dwellers either way, and he was trying to keep the vault experiment going (The chip dying was'nt intentional, but the lack of chips was.)

is it canon? it's true that the pic of Albert was somewhat similar to a certain dark picture of the Vault Dweller.

The thing about the wasteland is that there's no p$ychiatri$t$ around to talk him into a trauma, subsequently diagno$e said trauma and finally try to 'cure' it with expen$ive therapy all by them$elve$.

"So there's nothing bothering you after killing you best friends dad, as well as a few hundred others?"
"No not at all"
"And you're sure about that, nothing bothering you?"
"No, nothing bothering me at all, everything's fine"
"So just going around killing everything doesn't do anything to you?"

And here the player comes in

A "Well, there's this and that and such and so and "
or
B "Well it was fun"
or
C "no problems at all"
or
D [aim laser pistol and pull trigger]

You chose

A [P$ychiatri$t $how$ $$$ in hi$ eye$]
B [P$ychiatri$t sees paycheck going down the drain]
C [start over]
D [P$ychiatri$t is disintegrated] and [:angel: gained]

Biggest reason I think is that the character is left open so that your not forced to play a certain char...
maybe you don't care you killed someone...
maybe you do and your RP that you suffer and shoot up drugs at night...

maybe you become a raider (lol loved the story btw)

No point in thinking to deep... while yes it's a story and a charcter it's still a game... so we have to realize that we make the char the way we want and we decided how he feels and reacts to situations...

case in point... Ian West... when I got to the family and he admited he killed his family I told him to stay... then proceeded to slaughter the family out of pure shock of their canabalism... during one of my playthrus... I then killed lucy to hide the fact I had something to do with her brother out of guilt and from there spiral into a serial killer...

the other *current* playthru... I try to be another family figure like lucy and help him get thru the situation... i even brought him to megaton to live with lucy (scc mod) I then joined the Rangers with Sydney and had them relocate to Megaton... ect ect...

imagination...

if my char was forced to act a certain way I would not have played it a second time...

choices... my friends... choices

I RP for my second character, who at first tried to avoid killing people, but then killed the madman who the Overseer had hit Amata...

My character then became addicted to jet, mentals, and Med-X while wearing Lucas Simms' sheriff's duster...

he thought he was Lucas Simms. LOL RP is fun!

Then what type of game would we have? "Your player is in a state of shock from killing people. You cannot move or attack for the next week." A super mutant comes by and eats you. Game over. Now wtf would that be. It would be like having a game that you NEEDED to eat but eating too much gave you cramps so you had to sit down and wait. Over sleeping has given you a head-ache. Find some medication. Your character has gone deaf from hearing bullets, you can no longer hear anything from the game. You have been shot and are bleeding out, game over. A shot in the head has made you blind, you can no longer see anything. So what if he doesnt have emotions. The whole world has gone into hell and you worry about this guys emotions? Just... what?

Actually, there was psychological trauma. We saw it in Point Lookout, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGXwSUI-rtY from Punga Fruit. It's a pretty powerful look at what has really stuck with the Lone Wanderer in his journeys. I say it's powerful because it was completely unexpected, and before Point Lookout we absolutely no insight into the mind of the Lone Wanderer. Of course, I would have preferred if we had gotten insight like this more often throughout the game (though obviously I wouldn't want them to overdo it), but at least they did something.