Fallout 3 - How I Handled SubQuest "Oasis"

So, yes, I play video games. Fallout 3 is an excellent game. I want to talk about one sidequest in it. Major Spoiler potential here, but if you had the same moral and intellectual conundrum I did, maybe reading my thoughts on it could help you. Maybe.

Granted, it’s just a game, but I still like to be able to feel that my in game decisions are right for me.

So here is the deal, you character comes across a little place in the wasteland teeming with green growth. The place is called "Oasis". It turns out, all of this growth stems from one man, Harold, who has rooted to the spot and been there for decades, while a mutation ravages his body. He has named the growth “Bob”. Yes, he talks to it, and yes Harold is a tad mental.

There are three options.

1- Put Harold out of his misery (he's very bored) by killing him.

2- Rub a substance on his heart to inhibit his overall growth, but keep him alive.

3- Rub a substance on his heart to accelerate his growth so the greenery spreads all across the wasteland.

Now, one of these 3 options, I dismissed immediately. No way in hell was I going with option 3 (more on that in a minute). The very idea was bone chilling. I was stuck between the other two.

I was curious as to what other people decided to do, so I started checking the game forums. Boy was I surprised at first to see other people considering option 3 as a valid choice, and even going so far as to call that greenery “natural”.

My first thought, was “are people really this retarded?” Not a very charitable thought, as I then considered that many of these people were quite possibly just kids who had not yet taken even a HS Biology class yet.

Let me tell you the problem I had with option 3. Harold made it quite clear that all the greenery was still “him”. That it was like having senses all over the valley his mutation had covered so far. That means, from a biological consideration, all the trees, plants, and grass, despite having different physical structures, are still genetically the same. Not just the same, but still all one single organism.

Harold got this mutation by falling into a vat or puddle of goo inside a military facility. By what definition can one call this “natural”? Whoever started the association “green = good” needs to be slapped back into his or her momma.

The critical element for a successful ecology is biodiversity. Harold’s growth is the opposite of biodiversity. Granted, it’s a shortcut to a green planet, but at what cost in the long run? The pools of water surrounded by greenery have just as much radiation as water anywhere else in the wasteland. Maybe I would have felt differently if the greenery were having a tangible positive impact on the environment, like removing or reducing radiation levels wherever it grew, but it did not. The greenery was just there for its own sake. It just looked pretty. Nothing in nature exists just to look pretty. In fact, things that are pretty in nature serve to attract organisms that the pretty thing finds useful in some way. And by useful, I mean they serve as either a vector for proliferation (spreading seed), or as a resource (food). That consideration makes the greenery “Bob” potentially ominous.

Now, is helping Harold commit suicide an option? Depends how you feel about suicide. I consider it a last resort. The question I had to have answered was “Is Harold’s potential for personal development over?” And at first, it seemed like that answer was “Yes” as he was stuck in one spot, and the people who came around him were only there to worship him.

But then I talked to Sapling Yew, the little girl, and learned that Harold did indeed have a friend, and where there is one friend, there is the potential for other friends. Having friends who can come and share stories, and Harold being able to still do the same…yes, Harold still had the potential for personal growth.

The other thing to consider, at this point with the growth “Bob” already spread across this valley, there is no guarantee the death of Harold would mean the death of “Bob”. And given my feelings already mentioned about “Bob”, that seems like a Very Bad Thing.

So I went with option 2. Inhibit the growth (stopping “Bob”) and accepting that Harold would continue to live, likely for a very long time. But considering that knowledge in the Fallout 3 Wasteland is at a premium, with undamaged books selling for considerable bottlecaps, Harold has the opportunity to become a living repository of knowledge for the future generations. He can be more than he currently is.

I also imagined future scientists (after completing Project Purity) could travel north, and really study Harold and “Bob”. And discover for sure whether or not “Bob” represented a true potential for benefitting the Wasteland (then come up with a way to undo the growth inhibition), or if he really was a potential ecological disaster fortunately stopped before it had a chance to upset the existing biodiversity (scant though it is) of the Wasteland.

Lot of thinking for a video game, I know. But that’s just me.