The Fallout game series is one of the most loved and hated series at the same time. Regardless if you love it or hate it however, anyone who has sat down and taken the time to become invested in the game usually walks away with some redeeming experience. The Fallout series follows the protagonists on their individual journeys across the vast and barren wasteland on their respective quests. Now, anyone who has ever played a Fallout game knows the real fun comes not from that main questline, but rather the side quests and intriguing characters you’ll meet along the way. Quests and characters that ultimately have no real barring on the overall outcome of the story, yet seemingly exist to make the path you take there all the more enjoyable. The following NPCs are worthy of a spot at the top of that list and will truly never be forgotten when we look back on our in game choices.
Easy Pete
Just picture it, you find yourself on the wrong end of an 18-Karat run of bad luck ending with a bullet lodged firmly in your dome piece. When you wake up, surprisingly, after the local town Dr. finishes scraping the led from your noggin and deems you mentally fit… somehow, you wander into the one horse town and up to the local saloon where just outside the door you find a soft spoken Ol’ feller appropriately named Easy Pete. Admit it, the sight of the old prospector outside the bar drew your interest more that popping off some shots on empty bottles out back. You wanted to know more, you wanted to be his friend, and when those nasty old powder gangers rode into town you wanted his dynamite. Regardless on if he would fork over the loot or not, you fought your heart out to protect not the tow of Goodsprings, but Easy Pete.
Gary!
By this point in your travels as The Lone Wanderer you have begun to grow accustomed to some of the more predictable elements of The Capital Wasteland. You enter an abandoned school, Raiders. Snooping around in downtown D.C., Mutants. Breaking into a government controlled underground vault system, some raiders, bugs, wastelanders, nothing too fancy there right? Wrong. Enter Vault 108. Upon cracking open the nuclear worn sealed door, you will be greeted with faint yet ominous, “Gary”. “My name’s not Gary ” you may think to yourself as you proceed to explore deeper, unless your name really is Gary… yikes. As you bypass the mandatory post war vault corpses you begin to notice they are in fact ALL Gary. Then boom, faster than you can think twice about the fact your dad sounds eerily similar to Liam Neeson, a swarm of vault dwellers with the vocabulary equivalent of a Pikachu are plumbing you wit a vast array of melee attacks as they all call out, “Gary”. However once you have defeated the relatively small army of Commander Cody bootlegs and begin your ascension back to the surface, you come to realize how much you enjoyed your visit in Vault 108. You laugh audibly at the fact the dialect comprised entirely of the word “Gary” still involved punctuation and enunciation. From there on out, you could never hear the name “Gary” the same way ever again.
Takahashi
“Nan-ni shimasho-ka?“
Confessor Cromwell
Behold! For he is the prophet of Atom and leader of the undying glow! You stroll into a metal heap fresh off a newly acquired set of daddy issues and after being greeted by Calamity Jane waltz down the crumbling isle way to find a man shouting at an active nuclear bomb that is conveniently placed in the center of town. Without even stopping to think that somewhere out over the horizon this bumbling cesspool might be considered an eye sore, you engage in conversation with the man who is knee deep in irradiated water preaching about “The Glow”. You decide to humor him and toss him 10 rusty bottle caps that have been surely giving you tetanus for days now, and ask him just what in the blue hell his issue is. He informs you that you are now dwelling in his sacred land and that every eye will be blinded by his glory and every ear stricken def to hear the thunder of his voice, Atom that is of course, who lets not forget, is an active atomic bomb. Nevertheless his stories entertain you and you carry on your way now knowing there is in fact organized religion in the wasteland, well more of cult but to each their own. All fun and games right, until you’re be escorted into a basement of a burned down house and being nothing short of breast fed “holy water” by a bunch of dudes high off battery fumes. Even after all that though, you’d feel bad about blowing up Megaton because you’d miss your irradiated little buddy. Hell, he’s even popular out in the commonwealth.
Dukov
Slinkin’ around downtown near the metros of D.C. and acting like for some unknown reason you are more important than it’s other patrons, you find yourself between a rock and a hard place. By that of course we mean between a sizable camp of raiders placed conveniently in front of a camp of super mutants and an Enclave post (yes, we play with Broken Steel like we were meant to). Naturally instincts kick in as you slip between them into an open building between the two. Inside is not your typical office building or abandon super market however, rather a full scale bachelor pad! When a man who could only ever be described as a cross between Hugh Hefner and Vladimir Putin approaches you wearing nothing but some sexy sleepwear you begin to believe you’ve made the right choice. After you emotionally recover from being given the nickname “Clown shoes” you come to realize while Dukov may live in the middle of a hell hole with two prostitutes who are about as trust worthy as Amada, it’s still a pretty solid set up. Not to mention a fast track to free booze and pre-war money. All thanks to you, you crazy stereotype sex god.
Harold
It had to be didn’t it. The absolute greatest minor character in the history of the franchise. What starts out as a bright new adventure exploring the hub gets intriguing when you run into a friendly ghoul, who oddly enough has a sapling sprouted from his head. To each his own you figure and begin listening to his story, which is essentially the entire backstory for the game even though Harold remains largely minute in his actual in game role. After many hours of getting the water chip and putting The Master in his place (you better have), Bing, bang, boom, roll credits. You move on with life until the next generation of the most compelling game in existence brings you back the sweet sensation of post-apocalyptia. Bam here we go. Who am I, The Chosen One (Not Drew McIntyre). What am I doing here, finding the GECK. Got it! But wait, guess who’s waiting in Gecko. It’s our boy tree head, Harold and Bob, that would be the name of the ever growing tree in Harold’s brain, and they want their power plant fixed. Simple enough, fix the plant, move on with life, end the president, obtain the GECK, save the wastes. Another year in the books, but wait, Fallout is back… IN DAZZLING 3D. After hours of searching for your old man, or lets face it, exploring the niche areas of the map because that’s the selling point here really isn’t it, you stumble upon Oasis. Greeted not by Liam or Noel Gallagher, but equally as shocking… trees! Trees blooming with life as far as the eye can see! But why, why are trees growing here and not in the rest of the hellscape that is The Capital Wasteland? I’ll tell you why, Harold. Taking a big ol’ hike up to D.C. Harold and Bob have hunkered down, by decision of Bob and are now the focal point of a cult. Being a cult icon ain’t always jet and hookers though my friend, so once and for all we get to close this chapter of human… tree history and take Harold out behind the wood shed.
In all honesty this was the hardest article I have ever written, don’t get me wrong it was physically the easiest, once I began typing everything just flowed so naturally. The hard part was narrowing down the list of names to a select few! As I am currently writing this there is a list of 13 more names I considered for spot on this blog. Who knows, maybe we’ll do this again sometime soon! If you’d like to see more content like this leave a comment down below and let me know what you thought!
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