429: Lore Iceberg 6: Hacking, Van Buren, and the Shining Armor Bug

0:00 [SPEAKER_00]: Welcome to the Fallout lorecast. [SPEAKER_00]: The podcast that explores the boundaries of our knowledge about the world of Fallout. [SPEAKER_00]: Welcome back to the Fallout lorecast and we are taking a look at the iceberg entries again. [SPEAKER_00]: And like usual, we will be looking real close at each of these, seeing if the actual description here holds up.

0:20 [SPEAKER_00]: Finding any details that we could maybe correct and then adding some other things that well these little entries Don't really discuss because like I said before these were designed to go through very quickly and like one after the other real quick For people to read through or to create a video on or something like that But when you actually dig into them, there's always a lot more there.

0:42 [SPEAKER_00]: So let's get into it [SPEAKER_00]: We are still in tier one. [SPEAKER_00]: These are the most commonly known things. [SPEAKER_00]: And it is a little bit embarrassing to me that there was a considerable amount of time before I realized that this next one was a thing. [SPEAKER_00]: And it is a thing.

1:03 [SPEAKER_00]: But there's definitely some details here and some specifics to dig into that. [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe many of you weren't aware of. [SPEAKER_00]: One of my talking about the terminal bracket lines. [SPEAKER_00]: It says in the iceberg when hacking in any of the 3D Fallout games, clicking on a block of text closed by two brackets can either remove a dud password or reset the amount of tries you have.

1:26 [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know how well known it is, but it's a good tip for the next time you have trouble breaking into a computer. [SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so that's what it was already in the in the iceberg entry and raise your hand if this is something you've never heard before because I have a feeling there are a lot of people who just didn't know this and when I dig into the research it turns out that this is something that has been well known for a long time, but you know me and a lot of you we spend our time online, I'm in all the fallout subreddits and community stuff and this is not one that I've seen brought up very often at all.

2:01 [SPEAKER_00]: And it does make me curious. [SPEAKER_00]: Which games work that way? [SPEAKER_00]: Do they have differences? [SPEAKER_00]: Is there a lore reason? [SPEAKER_00]: What else is going on here? [SPEAKER_00]: So I did some digging. [SPEAKER_00]: And, well, let's get into some of the nitty-gritty.

2:14 [SPEAKER_00]: Some of the details about the entry. [SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't say this, but both brackets have to be the same type. [SPEAKER_00]: If one is a parentheses on the left, the other has to be a parentheses on the right. [SPEAKER_00]: And it works for all sorts of different kinds of [SPEAKER_00]: brackets, you know, like the triangle looking one, the blocky looking one, the squiggly looking one, I don't know all the names for them.

2:33 [SPEAKER_00]: But as long as they match up, then it works. [SPEAKER_00]: And it seems to be kind of random. [SPEAKER_00]: The one that you get that does it is kind of random. [SPEAKER_00]: We're not really sure. [SPEAKER_00]: People really haven't data-mined this, at least as far as I can tell. [SPEAKER_00]: And so we don't really know the odds, but [SPEAKER_00]: It does work.

2:48 [SPEAKER_00]: This is a thing. [SPEAKER_00]: And it works a little bit differently in each of the games. [SPEAKER_00]: In Fallout 3 and New Vegas, four wrong guesses locks the terminal permanently. [SPEAKER_00]: And this is the part where a lot of you were going to be like, yeah, I know that. [SPEAKER_00]: And in Fallout 3 and New Vegas, if you back out before the last guess, then you're okay.

3:06 [SPEAKER_00]: The terminal resets. [SPEAKER_00]: In New Vegas alone, if you back out after a wrong guess, the next attempt makes you wait longer. [SPEAKER_00]: In Fallout 4, you're only locked out for 10 seconds, so it doesn't completely lock you out of the terminal. [SPEAKER_00]: In Fallout 4 also, clicking a dud character, like an unmatched bracket, doesn't actually cost you a guess.

3:28 [SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't cost against you. [SPEAKER_00]: In Fallout 76, Lockouts are also temporary. [SPEAKER_00]: It is reduced by 33% by the hacker card, whatever those things are called. [SPEAKER_00]: I always forget specific names for things. [SPEAKER_00]: You know me, words are hard. [SPEAKER_00]: All right, but let's look a little bit deeper into this.

3:46 [SPEAKER_00]: What about perks and items in Fallout 3 and New Vegas? [SPEAKER_00]: ComputerWiz gives you one more try on a terminal that you're already locked out of, but this doesn't exist in 4 or 76. [SPEAKER_00]: And for, the science bubble had gives you one extra guess. [SPEAKER_00]: So things changed between those.

4:03 [SPEAKER_00]: Also in for, [SPEAKER_00]: close to metal, which is Nick Valentine's Perk, gives you extra guesses and halves the lockout. [SPEAKER_00]: In 76, there's a variety of different things that can happen. [SPEAKER_00]: Hacker, expert hacker, and master hacker all separate cards because of the way 76 works.

4:19 [SPEAKER_00]: Each adds one point of hacking skill, and the master infiltrator legendary perk makes all three hacker cards completely unnecessary. [SPEAKER_00]: So it frees up stuff in your build for other things, which is kind of nice. [SPEAKER_00]: And they've adjusted these in 76 over the years. [SPEAKER_00]: They continue to mess with this stuff added new cards, all of that stuff.

4:39 [SPEAKER_00]: So it does seem to fluctuate more than the others, but it is a live service game. [SPEAKER_00]: So that makes sense as well. [SPEAKER_00]: But let's go a little bit deeper because there's some stuff that even if you are familiar with all of this and you're somebody who's played a lot of the games and you're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I do the hacking thing in each one, I understand how it all works there's some behind the scene stuff and some other subtle things that a lot of people don't know the hacking game itself started as a countdown timer game with letters popping up on the screen now on March 9th.

5:09 [SPEAKER_00]: In the 2020 VICE interview, programmer Dan title, I hope I'm pronouncing his last name correctly. [SPEAKER_00]: T-E-I-T-E-L said he thought players would just hate it and called it not funds. [SPEAKER_00]: This is not fun. [SPEAKER_00]: So they changed it. [SPEAKER_00]: The originally it would have been a totally different game altogether.

5:26 [SPEAKER_00]: His friend Bob then emailed him and said, hey, do you remember this with a link to an online mastermind game? [SPEAKER_00]: Which became the inspiration for the system that we currently have? [SPEAKER_00]: And this concept of it originally starting as like a timer game was also confirmed by an interview with Eric Dietrich of Bethesda.

5:45 [SPEAKER_00]: Now there are some myths out there. [SPEAKER_00]: Some players say that the type of bracket decides what specifically happens, because there's like two different things that can happen. [SPEAKER_00]: Now, you might be wondering, what about Fallout 1 and 2 and the spin-off games and all of that?

6:01 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, this doesn't show up, at least not like this. [SPEAKER_00]: There's a science skill role for hacking, but there's no mini-game associated. [SPEAKER_00]: So this is very much a Bethesda addition to the series, and I think it's a solid one. [SPEAKER_00]: I kind of like the little hacking game.

6:16 [SPEAKER_00]: I don't mind it. [SPEAKER_00]: You know, oftentimes with these little mini-games, you're trading that line between [SPEAKER_00]: two invasive is this two annoying, is it not fun anymore or is it actually fun and it makes the game more interesting and it feels like you're actually in the world hacking a terminal or something like that.

6:35 [SPEAKER_00]: And I feel like this is a pretty good balance. [SPEAKER_00]: I don't think I'm actually hacking a terminal so much as it's not annoying enough for me to want to skip it or to even get a bunch of perks and things to make it easier. [SPEAKER_00]: It's just the sort of thing where you go, well, okay, this is what I'm going to do in order to get into the door, so this is the mini game I'm going to play, that's fine, and then it takes you a second and then you go through the door.

6:55 [SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, I don't really mind it. [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know. [SPEAKER_00]: What do you all think? [SPEAKER_00]: Alright on to the next one, this is a doozy, this is Van Buren. [SPEAKER_00]: I did an episode years ago on Van Buren, but it's worth going back and taking a look at it. [SPEAKER_00]: And it's been so long.

7:17 [SPEAKER_00]: I don't remember specifically everything I set on the episode, and I'm going to go listen to and entire half an hour of something in order to rehash it. [SPEAKER_00]: But we're coming at it from a different perspective anyway. [SPEAKER_00]: Again, we're going to take a look at the iceberg, we're going to break it down, and then we're going to see what else we can add on top of it.

7:34 [SPEAKER_00]: Van Buren was the codename for Black Isle Studio's version of Fallout 3. [SPEAKER_00]: It would have retained the isometric perspective of the previous games, but would have used full 3D models. [SPEAKER_00]: Because of its cancellation, somewhat late in development, we have a lot of information on the game, including a tech demo.

7:51 [SPEAKER_00]: We know that the game would have real-time and turn-based combat as options. [SPEAKER_00]: You would have been able to play as a human, a Google, or a Super Mutant, and it would have still taken place in New California. [SPEAKER_00]: Due to financial problems, the game was canceled in 2003, and a lot of its concepts have never been reused.

8:11 [SPEAKER_00]: Alright, so let's get in the pickie here. [SPEAKER_00]: The actual setting is the American Southwest, which included Arizona, Nevada, Utah, and Colorado, and no actual new California locations were planned on the map. [SPEAKER_00]: Now, it did include the NCR. [SPEAKER_00]: They would have been right on the edge of the map, and according to Nucopedia, they cite a interview with Sean Reynolds, who says the map's westernmost locations mark the NCR's eastern border, you play in the land just east of the NCR, and they would have been very important to the plot as well.

8:46 [SPEAKER_00]: Including a scientific advisor, well a former scientific advisor, to the NCR's president's president, Andy, who would have made a appearance in this game as well. [SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so what about all the different races that you could choose from? [SPEAKER_00]: This is something we've talked about for years.

9:01 [SPEAKER_00]: We've discussed this with our patrons on our patron chats about how it would be really cool in the next fall of game to be able to choose to play a goal. [SPEAKER_00]: And they've worked this into fall of 76. [SPEAKER_00]: I still want to be a super mutant though. [SPEAKER_00]: I think that would be a lot of fun.

9:12 [SPEAKER_00]: But the details there are a little different. [SPEAKER_00]: The playable ghouls and playable supermines were discussed, but they were decided to be scrapped, and the plan ended up being that you would just be a human, and you would start as a prisoner, which feels very Bethesda before Bethesda, if you know how the Elder Scrolls games start.

9:33 [SPEAKER_00]: And, yeah, there are some ideas that never made it into the other games, but there are a lot of ideas that were reused, and we'll get to that in a minute. [SPEAKER_00]: Also, the concept that it was late in development is also contested. [SPEAKER_00]: Tim Kane, who seems to be one of the most accurate sources, not only the, like the progenerator of the entire follow thing, but also somebody who kept some pretty good records from the time compared to a lot of other people, estimated that there was at least 12 to 18 months left.

10:01 [SPEAKER_00]: For a game back then, that's a long amount of development time because they were turning out games much faster than they did these days. [SPEAKER_00]: And even that information is contested by Josh Sawyer, who on July 29, 2024 said, honestly, his 18-month estimate was optimistic. [SPEAKER_00]: With the staff we had, it would have been at least two years.

10:23 [SPEAKER_00]: And ultimately it was scrapped on December [SPEAKER_00]: So as usual, the details are a little bit more interesting than the quick little overview gives us, but okay, what elements specifically were actually reused or inspired things in Fallout New Vegas? [SPEAKER_00]: Because remember, a lot of the same people who worked on those early Fallout games ended up at Obsidian and also worked on New Vegas.

10:50 [SPEAKER_00]: So, we have, of course, the Southwest setting. [SPEAKER_00]: It's a very similar geographical part of the world. [SPEAKER_00]: Caesar's Legion and Hoover Dam are mentioned in Van Buren. [SPEAKER_00]: And so, those things became more fleshed out in New Vegas. [SPEAKER_00]: Joshua Graham, he was the hanged man in Van Buren, and he became the burned man in Os Hart's.

11:12 [SPEAKER_00]: New Canaan Old World Blues. [SPEAKER_00]: We've got the Big M.T., the Boulder Dome Scientists. [SPEAKER_00]: A lot of that stuff comes from Van Buren. [SPEAKER_00]: And so a lot of stuff was set up and then either reused or kind of repurposed in slightly different ways for new Vegas. [SPEAKER_00]: But none of it made its way to fall out three.

11:29 [SPEAKER_00]: The actual fall out three doesn't have like inspiration from Van Buren that it pulled over. [SPEAKER_00]: It is very much its own thing. [SPEAKER_00]: And the setting is completely different. [SPEAKER_00]: The story is very different. [SPEAKER_00]: It wouldn't make sense to have some of those same characters or for example, a faction like Caesar's Legion that doesn't [SPEAKER_00]: Fallout 3 became its own thing when Bethesda took over, and then, Obsidian had an opportunity to kind of rework a lot of the ideas from Van Buren into New Vegas.

11:58 [SPEAKER_00]: Now, there are some other facts and details that most people don't know. [SPEAKER_00]: This was the second time, this was not the first time there was an attempt at making Fallout 3. [SPEAKER_00]: The original Fallout 3 was planned for 1999, and then it was cancelled. [SPEAKER_00]: And that team moved over and worked on Icewind Dale.

12:18 [SPEAKER_00]: Now, you might remember Icewind Dale was kind of like Baldur's Gate. [SPEAKER_00]: From that time period, Dungeons of Dragonsy kind of thing. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that was the team that would have originally done Fallout 3. [SPEAKER_00]: There was also a mandate from the publisher at the time, according to Chad Nicholas.

12:33 [SPEAKER_00]: that both multiplayer and real-time combat would be required for a Fallout 3. [SPEAKER_00]: And so you can see that already at this early time period, they were thinking about ways of and putting this in air quotes, modernizing the game and moving it into maybe potentially be able to reach a new audience.

12:52 [SPEAKER_00]: An audience that was craving more multi-player and more real-time combat at the time. [SPEAKER_00]: This idea of stopping and doing turn-based combat in the early 2000s, the late 90s, was becoming a thing that people were kind of like, I don't know, wearing out on. [SPEAKER_00]: You can see it in the evolution of, for example, the Final Fantasy series, where they continue to do turn-based combat through the games, but then they try to make it more active as it goes.

13:18 [SPEAKER_00]: And Bethesda made a good call in my opinion, turning the game into an actual action game, [SPEAKER_00]: that you could slow down and use vats to make it feel a little bit more turn-based, but it was kind of the best of both worlds. [SPEAKER_00]: And I think overall it was a good call, but you could tell that the developers who had originally worked on it, were kind of struggling with that idea.

13:40 [SPEAKER_00]: How did they do that with the tech they had at the time? [SPEAKER_00]: There's also details about the plot that a lot of people don't know. [SPEAKER_00]: So, here's the setup. [SPEAKER_00]: We've got Pressper, right? [SPEAKER_00]: Pressper is the scientific advisor to President Tandy. [SPEAKER_00]: He grows up in shady sands.

13:55 [SPEAKER_00]: He turns against the NCR because he believed the Caravan houses were eating away at it. [SPEAKER_00]: There was some like internal conflict there. [SPEAKER_00]: He came to believe that only pure blood humans could inherit the earth. [SPEAKER_00]: He stated that it was to preserve the master race.

14:12 [SPEAKER_00]: Humans feels very unclear to me, kind of Nazi also. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, okay. [SPEAKER_00]: So he ends up studying this document called Limit 115, which is a design doc for the new plague strain. [SPEAKER_00]: Remember the new plague? [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: And he figures out that it's got some significant genocidal potential.

14:32 [SPEAKER_00]: So he's like, okay, this is a good idea, right? [SPEAKER_00]: And decides that this is going to be a good way to cleanse the world. [SPEAKER_00]: Another important element in the plot is the prison that they call Tibet's T. Our Tibbets, maybe T. I. [SPEAKER_00]: B. [SPEAKER_00]: B. E. T. S. This old federal prison, it used to be an Arizona.

14:48 [SPEAKER_00]: It was called The Big Top. [SPEAKER_00]: It has this big dome on top. [SPEAKER_00]: In 2040, the government takes it over. [SPEAKER_00]: They work with vault tech and Poseidon oil for the safe house project. [SPEAKER_00]: And that should sound familiar, because that's the same program that built the vaults.

15:04 [SPEAKER_00]: There's also an AI in the prison. [SPEAKER_00]: It's run by Odysseus, or in some documents, it's referred to as Ulysses, another name that shows up in New Vegas, a split personality machine intelligence, and all of the staff are robotic. [SPEAKER_00]: Now, it's pre-war orders include doing things like tracking, plague outbreaks, preparing launches for its BOMB001, which is a nuke that it can fire from orbit, from a satellite, it's like a space station or something.

15:36 [SPEAKER_00]: And it doesn't just fire one, I mean, you can't fire a nuke, but there are 24 nuclear missiles that are actually sitting up there, ready to be used at a moment's notice. [SPEAKER_00]: So let's dig into Presvers Plan. [SPEAKER_00]: This plan, step number one, release the plague. [SPEAKER_00]: It's followers release it in a remote area near Boulder and Denver.

15:57 [SPEAKER_00]: This was strategic because it's close enough for the prison AI to notice it, remember it tracks things like the new plague. [SPEAKER_00]: But it's far enough away from these big cities and the places where people are currently settled. [SPEAKER_00]: In order to avoid mass panic, it's kind of this stealth release of the virus.

16:15 [SPEAKER_00]: And now that the virus is out there, step two, Odysseus tracks down people who are infected and starts to lock them up in the prison in Tibet. [SPEAKER_00]: Step three of his genius plan is to get inside. [SPEAKER_00]: He infects himself with the new plague, and his lieutenant Coolridge and his loyal soldiers so that all of them are arrested and taken into the prison together.

16:39 [SPEAKER_00]: It's a pretty bold thing to inject yourself with a new plague, but that's that's his genius idea. [SPEAKER_00]: Step number four is that everybody breaks out. [SPEAKER_00]: Prosper, he figures out that he can't hack Odysseus directly, so he has other members of his group who are unaffected, attack the prison, and then they free all the prisoners, and they try to convince the AI that the outbreak can't be contained in any normal method.

17:07 [SPEAKER_00]: You can kind of see where this is going, right? [SPEAKER_00]: This idea that like, oh no, there's a big outbreak. [SPEAKER_00]: Oh no, all these people are infected. [SPEAKER_00]: And then hey, they all escaped and the plague is now getting bigger outside. [SPEAKER_00]: You're going to have to do something desperate.

17:21 [SPEAKER_00]: So that triggers the countdown. [SPEAKER_00]: Odysseus sends his iPods and his guard robots. [SPEAKER_00]: Argus to hunt down all of the escapees, and then once about 90% of them are recaptured, it decides to launch the nuclear missiles in order to clean all of them and prevent future further infection.

17:43 [SPEAKER_00]: The idea being that you stamp them all out with one big nuke, all in one location, in order to save the world because that's what it's programmed to do. [SPEAKER_00]: Step number six, I think we're at number six, is for Prosper to take control of the station. [SPEAKER_00]: He has planned that he would be able to take control of the actual bomb BOMB001 before this happens, and then he will be able to reprogram the targets and have the bomb triggered, but it will then target the targets that he wants at aiming at, not all of the people, including himself, who have the new plague disease.

18:18 [SPEAKER_00]: Then the goal is that all 24 of those missiles, I guess, something like that trigger a new nuclear holocaust. [SPEAKER_00]: They bomb everyone else that he thinks is impure. [SPEAKER_00]: They all hide in the boulder dome. [SPEAKER_00]: And then once that is all done, they come back out.

18:34 [SPEAKER_00]: Now, the hardest part of the team dealing with being infected by the new plague for him will be hacking the launch codes and he's a very confident kind of villain type who thinks he's smarter than he actually is and that's kind of the sticking point is like will he be able to hack that in time and so that's the villain side of this but then where do you come in because like I [SPEAKER_00]: You are one of seven escapies who end up staying free out in the world, and the others have names.

19:03 [SPEAKER_00]: There's Blackjack, Daniel, Chagas, Malat McBride, Ginger Flowers, and Jillian McKinley. [SPEAKER_00]: wonderful names. [SPEAKER_00]: And then, according to the Tibbets page, it says that the escapees travel spread limit 115. [SPEAKER_00]: The idea being that you're maybe one of the carriers of the plague as well, and you out in the world are spreading it around.

19:24 [SPEAKER_00]: Everything comes to a head because the virus is spreading, uh, Odysseus is going to arm and launch the bomb. [SPEAKER_00]: And then there's this big act three moment where there's this like the [SPEAKER_00]: countdown, T-minus 120 minutes until the missiles launch, and then there's like a command center door that gets jammed, and then you're up in space, and you have to spacewalk with magnetic boots.

19:46 [SPEAKER_00]: And of course, depending on how you make decisions, early in the game, different things happen, you face cool ridge, you fight NCR guards, some of prosperous people potentially, it depends again on your choices. [SPEAKER_00]: Some characters may or may not be there, pierce, brigs, David's in, [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe they're there, depends on your choices again, and then maybe you get control of the nukes, and then you can decide where they go, or there's some other locations that you can stop that from happening.

20:11 [SPEAKER_00]: It's kind of a whole thing. [SPEAKER_00]: And we don't know the whole list of potential endings. [SPEAKER_00]: This is just kind of what is known about the plot. [SPEAKER_00]: And I don't know, hodgepodge retailing by myself. [SPEAKER_00]: But it's something like that, right? [SPEAKER_00]: And it feels kind of [SPEAKER_00]: There's a lot to it.

20:32 [SPEAKER_00]: And there's even some overlap with things that are mentioned in the Fallout Bible. [SPEAKER_00]: And so you can see that like they're pulling a lot of these ideas together, but we never got a finalized version of it and a lot of it was still in process, especially if the game was still two years out.

20:47 [SPEAKER_00]: This description of the plot once they finished the game might have been completely different. [SPEAKER_00]: We don't know. [SPEAKER_00]: But there are some things we do know about the tech demo. [SPEAKER_00]: So. [SPEAKER_00]: No mutants allowed, which I've mentioned before, posted screenshots and video originally on April 30, 2007, and then the demo showed up online, May 2, 2007, right after Bethesda bought fallout.

21:10 [SPEAKER_00]: And that dates a little bit tricky, because the original purchase of the rights, the license to make fallout 3 was on July 2004, which is still years before this. [SPEAKER_00]: but it wasn't until April 2007 that the entire franchise purchase went through for $5.75 million. [SPEAKER_00]: So it is kind of an interesting timing coincidence.

21:32 [SPEAKER_00]: Now the demo takes place during the Great War and it ends, it's like a tutorial section that ends in Vault 1, and it's pretty buggy. [SPEAKER_00]: Now, there were some more leaks, and these leaks also centered around no-mune salaud, on 2005 and 2006, where design documents leaked out. [SPEAKER_00]: And so, more of this information we have kind of trickled out over those years.

21:53 [SPEAKER_00]: Now, some other fun information, in interview, a very recent interview, July 1, 2026, [SPEAKER_00]: Josh Sawyer said that interplays executives never came to see the demo, producer Tom French told him that remaining staff later said, quote, well, if we had known that you had made this, then maybe we wouldn't have canceled it.

22:14 [SPEAKER_00]: What's up? [SPEAKER_00]: Good job, executives. [SPEAKER_00]: You couldn't just say, hey, what are you guys working on? [SPEAKER_00]: Show it to us, right? [SPEAKER_00]: And what's kind of interesting is that the way season two of the TV show ends points toward events happening in Colorado.

22:29 [SPEAKER_00]: Now, there was a notification that went up online. [SPEAKER_00]: It was Walter Walton Goggins, if it was Walton Walton Walton. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm sure nobody else has ever made that mistake. [SPEAKER_00]: But anyway, he was saying that they had just wrapped up shooting for season three and at the end of season two It seemed like things were going to Colorado, so maybe there's some of this van beer and stuff that'll show up in season three because some of it was didn't used a new vagus But it would make sense because well the other elements might actually work for Connected thing like the TV show which [SPEAKER_00]: brings about more events that had happened in New Vegas and kind of expands on them.

23:09 [SPEAKER_00]: So that makes sense, right? [SPEAKER_00]: I'm not going to hold my breath for that, but it wouldn't be a huge surprise, right? [SPEAKER_00]: And over the years there have been fan projects that have tried to bring this back to life. [SPEAKER_00]: There's Project Van Buren. [SPEAKER_00]: This was a unity remake.

23:25 [SPEAKER_00]: It started in 2017. [SPEAKER_00]: And then there's also follow yesterday, which was built on the fallout [SPEAKER_00]: So there you go, a quick look back at Van Buren and some of the stuff that you may or may not have already known. [SPEAKER_00]: All right, we've got one more entry before we wrap up this episode.

23:47 [SPEAKER_00]: The iceberg says in shining armor bug, in shining armor is a perk for the dead money DLC in New Vegas in theory. [SPEAKER_00]: The perk would give the courier bonus DT to energy weapons while wearing metal armor or sunglasses. [SPEAKER_00]: However, due to a coding typo, it does nothing.

24:06 [SPEAKER_00]: It's another meme in the community and there are mods that fix the typo, but that's about it. [SPEAKER_00]: Okay, pretty short and simple. [SPEAKER_00]: And this is something that was first aware of due to finding a mod that fixed it. [SPEAKER_00]: I didn't even realize that this was a thing.

24:18 [SPEAKER_00]: And then I was like, oh, that makes sense because I guess it didn't really feel like it was doing much when it tried to use it in the game. [SPEAKER_00]: but I didn't worry about it too much. [SPEAKER_00]: But here, let's get into the specifics. [SPEAKER_00]: The bonus is plus 5DT with any metal armor and plus 2 with reflective eyewear.

24:34 [SPEAKER_00]: So a total of 7 if you use both. [SPEAKER_00]: And this all comes from a typo. [SPEAKER_00]: When the perk checks the weapon skill called energy, it's not checking energy weapons. [SPEAKER_00]: And so you have a mismatch of the label. [SPEAKER_00]: And so it doesn't trigger. [SPEAKER_00]: Now you might know some of these details, the listed requirements for this are repair of 20 science of 70 and level 2, which is kind of funny because the most science you can have at level 2 is 67, which means that you're 3 points short.

25:03 [SPEAKER_00]: At least I think that's right. [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know, let me know. [SPEAKER_00]: Let me know if there's a way around that or if I'm doing that wrong. [SPEAKER_00]: But I think that's actually the case. [SPEAKER_00]: So the fix here is the community patch, yep, the you could cheat guy unofficial patch, which fixes both of the bugs and make sure that this is actually working the way it's described.

25:22 [SPEAKER_00]: This just feels like in a little bit of an oversight. [SPEAKER_00]: It feels like the kind of thing that was. [SPEAKER_00]: Listed out in a specific way as they were doing game dev, somebody implemented a function. [SPEAKER_00]: They had a typo in the function, but then they also didn't go back and review the way it actually functions and actually worked to 100% match the language of the description.

25:43 [SPEAKER_00]: So, that brings up a lot of questions with game development. [SPEAKER_00]: This is the sort of thing that happens all the time. [SPEAKER_00]: You start with a design doc and then you implement something. [SPEAKER_00]: And then you go, is that the way it doesn't actually match? [SPEAKER_00]: And is that the way we want it actually implemented?

25:57 [SPEAKER_00]: And if it doesn't, you have to adjust either one or the other. [SPEAKER_00]: You either have to change the description, or you have to change the function in the game to match the description. [SPEAKER_00]: So, one of them has to adjust. [SPEAKER_00]: And in the game, they just don't match.

26:11 [SPEAKER_00]: So the solution became to patch it in the game and make it match the actual text and work the way the text says it does. [SPEAKER_00]: Which seems reasonable to me. [SPEAKER_00]: So there you go. [SPEAKER_00]: That's a thing, and it's mostly accurate in the iceberg and with some other little details.

26:24 [SPEAKER_00]: All right, we're gonna take a quick break. [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for tuning in, and I appreciate you being here. [SPEAKER_00]: We're gonna go thank our patrons. [SPEAKER_00]: So don't go anywhere. [SPEAKER_00]: Thanks for being here, and thank you to everyone who supports the show, including our newest patrons, Bruno and Death Thrasher, Death Thrasher, that's a good name.

26:45 [SPEAKER_00]: And of course you get shoutouts if you're a Sentry brought every week, we've got Bruno who's our new Sentry bot, [SPEAKER_00]: Also, if you're enjoying the show and you have friends who enjoy Fallout, please share it with them, leave us a 5 star review, and we'll read it out like this one on Apple Podcasts from Hudson who says the robots Bethesda lore lifeline.

27:09 [SPEAKER_00]: I have been listening to the podcast for around a year now and playing Fallout for even longer. [SPEAKER_00]: The non-stop Fallout lore keeps me entertained on long car rides, new Vegas on top. [SPEAKER_00]: Thanks Hudson. [SPEAKER_00]: I appreciate it. [SPEAKER_00]: Well, thanks everybody for tuning in.

27:21 [SPEAKER_00]: We'll be back next week with some more iceberg stuff. [SPEAKER_00]: So until then, don't get the new plague and try to nuke everybody. [SPEAKER_00]: That's not a good idea. [SPEAKER_00]: All right. [SPEAKER_00]: See you next time. [SPEAKER_00]: To plug into everything else we're doing, check out robotsradio.net, reach out to me on Twitter at robots underscore radio, check out the robots radio rocket club where you can join me and a bunch of our other creators creating your podcast, starting a new podcast or helping your current podcast grow.

27:52 [SPEAKER_00]: There's more information about that on robotsradio.net as well. [SPEAKER_00]: And you can always talk with us and the entire community over 2,000 people on the robots [SPEAKER_00]: Come join us. [SPEAKER_00]: We'd love to chat with you. [SPEAKER_00]: See you guys next time.