Alone - A Fallout 3 Love Letter -
The first time I entered the Capital Wasteland I was a child. Way too young to be wielding a shotgun or a ripper. I had been given my mom's xbox controller and told to stay alive. I have no clue why she was in the mall at level 5, or why she trusted an eight year old to kill supermutants, but I had been watching her do it for months, so how hard could it be?
I would come into her room at night and watch her play. She would play far past when I would fall asleep, sometimes I'd wake up in the middle of the night hearing music, gunfire, or otherwise raider shenanigans. It was perfect. It is home.
I almost died when I was 11. I went into sepsis and I was only about an hour away from dying. When I was hospitalized I noticed my room had an xbox 360. My mom would never let me play for too long on the home tv, but this was an unusual circumstance. She brought Fallout New Vegas from home and let me play on the tiny hospital tv. I didn't get very far. I had watched her play the Big MT DLC and I wanted to do that instead. But I had to start all the way from the beginning.
When I got home, I went straight back to Fallout 3. My own Lone Wanderer. My dweller. My mom and I still to this day talk to each other about what we're doing. Where we are at. We could talk to each other about "How's your fallout 3 wanderer doing" "Oh we're taking the bill of rights, right now." And that kind of mutual love for a video game cross generationally is so so hard to come by but so so precious.
So thank you, Fallout 3. You are a broken mess, an objectively falling apart game. But this game helped form my identity, my relationship with my mother, my understanding of myself. I love this terrible game. It means the world to me.