I’ve been accused at times of being cruel and unusual in the fates I inflict upon the characters in this Weird New West of Zombie Ranch, and not without cause. But oh, I’m still working the bunny slopes in comparison to stuff like Game of Thrones, right? Or for that matter, I recently finished the main story of Fallout 4 — and it is gut-wrenching. The scuttlebutt I always heard was that the story was weak or poorly done, and perhaps that’s true insofar as it’s easy to lose track of your quest for your kidnapped son in favor of building and tweaking settlements or any number of umpteen other options available to you. This is the curse of the open world game, I suppose, where pacing and motivations can die an unmourned death unless you deliberately keep a laser focus on the primary quest line. Even then, though, refusing to get sidetracked by side content could end up leaving you woefully unprepared and unable to progress just because everything’s hitting you too hard. The proverbial Beef Gate. In fact I believe some games–maybe even including Fallout 4–go so far as to put missions into the main line where the goal is just “Reach Level 30.” I’m not 100% sure it was Fallout that did it since I had left off any kind of real progression for several months and so if that happened it was at least several months ago. But anyhow–whoof–I finally got on to what I suppose would be Act 3 of the game’s arc and it’s pretty devastating if you’re the kind of person who likes to buddy up to various factions. I will refrain from spoilers since it’s more than possible there are other Johnny-come-latelies like Yours Truly who either haven’t started the game yet or possibly have just had it on the back burner while life or other games took priority. Let’s just say that Fallout 4 is a Post-Apocalypse game that no matter what route you choose will end in a more-or-less appropriately apocalyptic fashion, with nothing that could truly be called a “clean” victory. You may feel a bit cheated at times, like the game is forcing you down certain paths with no option but desolation, but I can’t deny that such darkness fits the genre. On the plus side, if anyone remembers that I had declared I made a FalloutRosa as my player character… I revisited her looks and, after much tweaking, morphed it to something that isn’t perfect but I’m fairly happy with. Dawn agreed that it at least has something of a proper Latina visage, which feels good after all my blogs of the past few weeks on the subject of character appearance. Just for kicks, here’s a side-by-side of Fallout 4‘s default female look and my Rosa Mark II: Not too shabby for a non-artist, right? Okay if I’m wrong don’t say it. It worked well enough to let my brain imagine the rest.