Rick vs Fallout the Unforgiven

 

Review:

 

The Unforgiven is a Fallout mod about revenge, a woman with a chip on her shoulder, and a small town known as Gravestone. At its core, it's a western, specifically, the darker ones you'd see in the 70s made by Italians for some reason.

Right off the bat, the mod deals with themes such as SA, exploitation, and heavy violence. Yeah, it's a bit dark. The mod's better endings are acquired not through pacifism, but having to get your hands dirty and killing someone.

The story of it really captures the western movie feel: You start off by grabbing a bounty off a bounty board, then you go through the mojave before finding that your target has been killed by someone else, Locke. Now you must join up with Griffa and find him for your revenge.

This takes you to Gravestone where you take up a series of tasks that end up with you finding Locke. The quests are filled with morally ambiguous characters and you can end up changing certain characters fates depending on your actions.

As a story, it's fairly well structured: The main characters feel like people with different ideologies and hidden motives. As dark as it was, with the best endings being more bittersweet, I liked it for the most part.

As a game mod? Well…

 

Spoiler Warning.

I wasn't quite a fan of how it was handled. First off, in order to access the majority of the mod, you have to decide not to kill Locke when you first meet him. This isn't so bad except the game kinda doesn't give you much of a reason not to kill him right then and there. You just have to… decide not to kill him for no reason. This will come up later.

So then you randomly get captured by slavers(Who don't give you a collar for some reason…) and meet Griffa who actively hates Locke, and subsequently the NCR, for killing her tribe. This'll also come up later, but it is interesting to see a different perspective on the NCR.

You get led to Gravestone and here's where my problems start. You see, each quest the village gives you allows you to solve the problems diplomatically. Except, if you want the good ending where Griffa survives, you shouldn't do that. You see, you can diplomatically solve the problem with the shopkeeper's son, but then you have to deal with the Deserters.

You can try to reason with the Deserters, then they randomly decide to say, "Hey, leave Griffa with us as insurance!" and, being the good friend I am, I say no and kill everyone because they're assholes.

Then you deal with the Dalgos who are mad that one of their brothers were murdered by a villager. So, being the good samaritan that I am, I try to reason with them. I'll get back to this one because it frustrated the hell out of me the most.

Then you deal with the Sun Crows who you can solve by fighting to the death with one of their champions. However, they end up attacking anyway. Again, I'll get back to this.

Finally, Penny, one of the villagers, gets taken to a sex/snuff film ring in which you end up having to save her. This leads to you going back to the village where everybody's dead. Oh, and Locke's there.

This is where my problem with the mod lies. You see, part of the good ending of the game involves you telling Griffa to hold off on killing Locke until some type of justice can be served(He ends up dying by his wounds if you do this however because this mod kinda hates you). However… if you want Penny to survive after you save her? You gotta kill the Dalgos when you first meet them. For whatever reason, if you convince them to back off, they'll come back during the mod's climax and kill Penny for their dead bro! Even though, by this point, his killer is already dead! You can even tell them this!

Heck, if you leave Griffa with the Deserters, you lose the points that you would need to get the good ending, which is obvious enough.

Wait, what's this mod trying to say? That killing is good unless it isn't? I read the article on Nexus and the author of the mod brought this up, mentioning revenge killing. Oddly enough, I didn't see revenge as the issue. I saw violence was the issue. There is no peaceful solution at all in this game. It's just killing until the mod says it's bad!

The article in question brings up how it was meant to deconstruct speech checks… but I feel like that goes against Fallout's core design philosophy of either sneaking, fighting, or talking your way out of a problem. From a story standpoint, fine, not every solution can be solved by talking, but from a gameplay standpoint it just doesn't work and I got so frustrated, I restarted the whole-ass mod.

And it kinda bothers me how the article seems to imply that violence should be the solution which I don't really agree. It almost tries to say that nobody can be swayed that easily. Okay, fine, but as a game though? Well, this means that if you're a speech build, no good ending for you!

The mod itself even undermines this whole philosophy! The Sun Crows only attacked because Griffa decided to be a jerk and steal their stuff so they can slaughter the village of Gravestone and hurt Locke. It's in-character, but still... Basically, I failed because of someone else's own jackassery!

The article talks about how Gravestone was always going to fall, which… not gonna lie, and this is a me thing, so I'm biased-putting that out right now- that kinda makes me not care? Like, why don't I just kill the entirety of the Sun Crows before then? Wouldn't that just solve all the issues (Actually, I don't know if that's an option.)

Honestly, no quest made me madder than the Dalgos because it looks like everything can be solved peacefully from their end. I didn't even see anything they did that was actually evil until they killed Penny. I might have missed it in the dialogue, but I felt so bad for them that I wanted to end this diplomatically, even if the author actively hates that method.

I'm wondering if he's a Renegade player on Mass Effect…

But if you go that route, they kill someone, forcing you to kill them anyway!

You know what would've made that more palatable? Have the Dalgos take someone hostage after you talk to the Sergeant outside of town, during their quest. That way, you can prove your point and not make the player feel like they just wasted their fucking time.

So, in order to start the mod, you have to keep Locke alive. In order to keep Griffa alive, you have to: kill the Dalgos, kill the Deserters, kill the Sun Crows, and keep Locke alive? Um…

I can't help but wonder certain things, like, the mod wants Locke to be right that violence is the answer or something. Actually, the article says that. I don't want to call Creator's Pet, but it has shades of that.

All in all, it's a mod that has a good story, good acting, good characters, but it's a kick in the teeth to play especially if you're a good guy peacekeeper.

Play if you like:

-Dark storytelling

-Gray morality

-Good characters

Don't play if you like:

-Playing speech characters

-Pacifism

-Saving everyone

-Yourself.

I would still at least try this mod, if only because it is well done. My gripes are from a gamer's perspective more than anything else. I only grabbed this mod because the Griffa companion required it anyway…