art by Jonas De Ro

We’re taking our time, we’re extremely excited about it and the reason we’re kind of holding back right now is because we want to wait until it’s really there to show it to everybody.

That was a quote from Todd Howard, the Executive Producer and Game Director at Bethesda Softworks, in an interview with GameStar at E3 this year. And it may be the most frustrating non-confirmation of Fallout 4 yet. Occurring in the last few minutes of the interview below, Todd Howard responds to a question about current projects by explaining how they aren't going to reveal what they are working on too soon, referring to the project (that many of us reasonably assume is Fallout 4) only as "it".

(As a side note, if you like interviews like this, you should really check out the great interview with Todd Howard conducted by Wil Wheaton.)

Now, for something Fallout: Equestria related. There are many great readings in progress, as well as Crazed Rambling's completed reading and the amazing radioplay. Here is another that deserves special attention. Radio is Magic Entertainment (RIME) is performing a rather stunning series of live readings. Check it out!

And now, here is the final part of my writing for the Fallout: New York City project. You can find the first three parts in my blog here, here and here. In these segments, I began delving into the history of Alex and Kitrina, utilizing colored text for the flashbacks much like I'd used colored text for computer terminal entries before. (Interestingly enough, the characters' backstory was tied to The Institute. If the rumors are true, then Fallout 4 will expand on the same Fallout lore that I wanted to play around with when developing these characters.) These were the last segments that I wrote on my own -- after this, I was working cooperatively with two other writers. Unfortunately, other members crucial to the project were unable to continue due largely to real life issues, and the project was abandoned. I apologize for how abruptly this ends.

Once again: this is pure Fallout fan writing -- no ponies involved. As such, the story lacks the themes, virtues and ultimately positive perspective on the nature of people that makes Fallout: Equestria something uniquely pony.

Children’s Center for Early Learning, corner of Church and Marlborough, Brooklyn. Day Four. 2:34 am Kitrina sat on one of the park benches outside the boarded up façade of the children’s center, eating apple-marinated bloatfly (an east-coast recipe similar to the western bloatfly slider) and reading an old copy of the Wasteland Survival Guide which she had found in Deno’s Wonder Wheel Arcade back Coney Island. That was less than a day before, but it seemed like a lot longer. Alex was on another bench, opposite her, reading the medical journal he had found in the Vault and eating in silence. A gap of about ten feet and a void of about a million miles seemed to stretch between them. She knew what her brother had done had to be done. She suspected she would forgive him for it a lot sooner than he would forgive himself. She wasn’t at that point yet, but she didn’t condemn him either. Honestly, she felt a lot of nothing. Just weariness. And hurt. Her arm hurt, and itched inside the medical brace. Her head throbbed from where the Vault Survivor had pistol-whipped her, knocking her unconscious. Little eddies of sick grey pain rolled from her right breast and stomach, both badly bruised, every time she took a deep breath. Which she did a lot, because she was still smelling phantom wafts of the abattoir stench of Vault 114. Her body ached, almost like she had been thrown around in the back of a truck by a Topsy. And then there were the little pains left over from being too close to her own grenade. It had been a long, horrible day. They were both exhausted, physically and emotionally. And sleep deprivation was setting in. They needed to find a place to curl up and hide safely. Kitrina knew that once she fell asleep, she wouldn’t be waking for many hours. Kitrina looked over at the duffel bag. The two men who abducted them, the Vault Survivors as she thought of them, went down fighting hard. Killed double their number before being overwhelmed. As soon as they fell, Alex had turned the power back on, killing their IFF’s. Without them, Kitrina had been able to sneak in and fetch the duffel bag, and Alex already had one of his knives. The fight that followed had been fairly quick. They’d even managed to recover most of their belongings. She had known the stench of that open Vault would attract things. Bloatflies had already found their way into the entrance by the time they made it back to the Vault door. They served as heralds of worse to come… and as dinner. The fires were still burning on Ocean Parkway. North was GEU territory, so they had struck east along Church Avenue. Surely, somewhere up ahead was a building they could seal themselves in safely for the rest of the night.

Golden Krust, Church Avenue. Day Four. 3:02 am “I’m going to guess this place served pies.” Alex considered it a fair assumption, being as the big awning on the other side of the broken plate glass window read Golden Krust. The street-side shop was small and almost entirely open to the elements, making it useless as a place to sleep, but there was a locked back room which might prove more helpful, or at least worth scavenging. If he could get in. A lock like this shouldn’t give him any difficulty, but he was fighting through the haze of sleep deprivation. He growled when he failed a third time. Kitrina, despite her own weariness and depressed demeanor, couldn’t help but perk up at the chance to school him; it was rare for her to be the one to know some snippet of trivia. “And you guess wrong, o’ brother of mine. Ethnic food. About a hundred years before the war, these places popped up all over New York like Dots’ Delis.” She seemed to warm to the place, “But that doesn’t mean there won’t be any flour in that storage room, so get that door open!” He would have turned and barked something, but just then the tumblers aligned. He swung the door open, shooting his sister a triumphant look and… “OW!” He winced as he felt teeth bite into his leg in an unarmored part of his suit just above his left boot. Alex stumbled back, his IFF flaring red unhelpfully, and stomped on the radroach. He looked up and saw five more scurrying about the storage room, and spotted the small hole in the back wall that they had wiggled in from. Behind him, he could hear his sister laughing. For the next several minutes, Alex stomped the offending insects into mush while Kitrina pulled select items from upper shelves where the roaches hadn’t gotten into them. “Great. Now I’ve got radroach on my boots.” “Considering what I waded through to get that holotape out of engineering, I’d say you got off lucky.” Kitrina shot him a scoffing look. “Besides, they’ll be clean again in no time. The snow is really beginning to stick out there… oooh, habaneros!” He watched her pull a jar full of angry red peppers floating in liquid the color of pain. “Are you sure those are even good anymore? Or the rest of this stuff?” His sister unzipped the duffel bag and stashed her latest find inside. “Oh yeah. Trust me, this is pre-war stuff. They packaged and pickled everything with so many super-preservatives that our stomachs will be around long after the rest of us has rotted away.” What a thought. Alex frowned, wanting to say something about already hauling around her heavy-ass light machine gun, and not wanting to lug that rather heavy-looking jar around too, but he bit back his tongue. If ingredients for food made her happy, then that’s what he’d carry for her. He owed her that much, and more. After what he’d put her through today… well, he hoped the stuff she was finding in here lasted a while; maybe then it would help pay the balance. (Well, that an having nearly been crushed to death in a station wagon by an enraged Topsy.) Snow was blowing in through the hole in the wall. Alex went back out to the front of the shop, looking for anything that might be more suitable a place to rest. Without electricity, in the snowy dead of night, all he could see was shadows against shadows. His Pip-Boy light illuminated too little, and was probably more useful for helping raiders or gangers spot him. “Hey, Kit, can I borrow your night vision goggles? His sister walked up to him, lowering the goggles over her eyes and looking through the one good lens. “Sure, and my eyes with ‘em. I’ve grabbed what’s good and put it in the duffel bag. Left it back there. It’s too heavy for me to lift.” Alex let out a long-suffering sigh. After a moment of consideration, Alex shoulder on his backpack and turned to get the duffel bag from the back room. Behind him, Kitrina scanned the street. “There’s a large building a few blocks ahead. I can’t see it very well, but it seems largely intact.” Alex nodded. “We’ll look there next.” There should be interior rooms or a basement that they could seal up and that would be free from the wind. He cursed softly as he stepped on a rolling pin and stumbled into the door frame. (For pies, his mind insisted.) He picked up the duffel bag… with effort. “There’s a cemetery around it,” Kitrina’s voice followed him. “When did our lives become Halloween?” ,he thought morosely. He tripped on the same damn rolling pin on the way back, nearly taking a tumble. His mind insisted on dreaming up the consequences falling could have wrought: jars shattering in the bag, a vile mix of hot peppers and severed arms. Alex shook the image. He needed sleep. As he reached Kitrina, his sister grabbed him by the arm and tugged roughly. “Get down!” His mind clearing in a moment of panic, Alex dropped to his knees. “W-what?” His voice was low. He scanned with his Pip-Boy’s IFF, but there were no marks other than the blue of Kitrina. But he knew that didn’t mean much. Kitrina had much keener senses, and her IFF had proven to have considerably more range than his own. And she had the goggles. “Three targets moving across the street up ahead. Men, armed with assault weapons, wearing blackened combat armor and helmets with night vision goggles. Don’t recognize their insignia.” Meaning not GEU or Watch. Mercs. That could be really bad news. Mercs tended to range from completely indifferent to openly hostile, depending on what they were being paid for and how much scruples they could muster between them. Best to stay low. But before Alex could communicate his intention to Kitrina, somebody started shooting.

Off the New Jersey shoreline, northeast of Point Pleasant. Then. Bright lights on the water. The chopping sound of a salvaged outboard motor. Kitrina watched from the railing of the New England Pride as the strange boat drew near, hard silhouettes of heavily armed men becoming visible on the bow. Her left hand instinctively clinched the strap of her hunting rifle. "Are they raiders, father?" She didn't look to the man standing next to her as she spoke, not letting the men on the approaching craft out of her sight even for a moment. "No, kitten, they look like mercs." Her father had binoculars, and could see much more than she could. Kit didn't like the tense tone of her father's voice. "What do they want?" With raiders, there would be no need to ask. But these were people she didn't know. Her Pip-Boy marked them as blue. They could be buyers. She heard the captain call to cut the engines. Behind her, she sensed someone else move up to the railing. Bobby. "I don't like the looks of this," he whispered. She heard him clicking the safety on his assault carbine. The paddleboat wheel stopped turning and the New England Pride slowed lazily in the night water. Their sister ship, The Minuteman, was at least three hundred yards back; she could barely hear it beneath the sound of the water and the growl of the merc ship's motor. Kit felt her father place a hand on her shoulder. "Kitten, I want you to go get your brother. Then the two of you hid up on the roof and keep very quiet." His voice was calm and brooked no argument. "Keep your rifle ready. Just in case." Kit swollowed, staring at the nearing vessel a moment more before turning from the railing to search for Alex. She didn't look back, not even when the blue marks of the strangers suddenly shifted to red. Not even to see her father for what would have been the very last time. Golden Krust, Church Avenue. Day Four. 3:17 am. Now. Gunfire. Kitrina ducked, grabbing her brother instinctively and pulling him down with her as she crouched behind the lower edge of the Golden Krust's war-shattered streetside window. Gusts of frigid wind, laced with snow, blew through the storefront, carrying in the sound of the firefight. Kitrina looked at her Pip-Boy. Two red marks. Whoever the mercs were engaged with had taken down one of them. However, all the gunfire seemed to be coming from the mercs' position now. Kitrina was getting blue marks for whoever they were shooting at. That was usually trustworthy. Kitrina unzipped the duffle bag and rooted a moment before her hand closed on what she was looking for. "What are you doing?" Alex hissed. "We don't know who's involved. Or why." Kitrina ignored her brother. Honestly, she didn't care. Maybe she was too tired and too sore to be thinking straight. She'd seen too much today, and her thoughts were bleak. Taking down a couple of mercs would feel good. Sure, there was no realistic chance that these mercs were those mercs, but for tonight they were a forgiveable substitute. Kit stood up in the window, cocked back her arm, pressed the arming button, and hurled the grenade as hard as she could. Her experience earlier in the day had instilled the lesson that distance was desirable. The grenade hit the ruined Ford Jetson just beyond the merc's position and bounced off the roof, continuing past until it hit the side panel of the next car and tumbled to the snowy ground somewhere out of sight between them. The mercs, concentrating on the fight in front of them, saw neither Kit nor the grenade, but they did hear the twin thunks of metal hitting metal nearby, and turned to face the source of that sound. The explosion rocked the Jetson, flame gouging through the empty spaces of its broken windows and missing doors. The mercs were knocked back by the force, one falling to the ground. Kit watched, her feeling of elation plunging to frustrated despair as the mercs got back up shakily. Clearly the automobile had shielded them and their body armor protected them from what fire and shrapnel had made it through. A weary alarm flooded through Kit as she processed -- she had just engaged a superior force with an ineffective attack. Damn it! Quickly, she ducked back down, hoping the mercs hadn't spotted her... only to see Alex throw himself to the wolves. Her heart sank further, knowing knives do not win against assault rifles.