How Did Harold Get to The Capital Wasteland? And Why Did He Choose to Go There?

TheKingofVault14

TheKingofVault14

Fallout Fan For Life!
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TBH, THIS is one of the biggest headscratchers in Fallout 3 for me! I honestly can't comprehend how Harold of all people was able to reach the East Coast without a scratch, it really boggles my mind on how he was able to do that, and especially in his current state with that weird tree mutation coming out of his head. Also I don't recall him ever explaining why he decided to leave Gecko for the East Coast, was that ever explained anywhere else in the game on why he left? Seriously can someone please tell me how the heck did he get to the East Coast!? And what was his reason for leaving Gecko in the first place for The Capital Wasteland!?
I mean, the only other character I can think of that was able to move from the West Coast to the East Coast in Bethesda's Fallout games, is Kellogg from Fallout 4.
But even with Kellogg, I can at least see him being able to reach the other side of the country, Harold on the other hand well, he's just Harold. He's definitely not the type to be able to fight whatever horrors that roam the vast hellscapes of the wasteland, between the travels through the West and the East.
 
This was always one of my biggest eyerolls for Fallout 3. I legitimately have no idea why he would care to head all the way to D.C. or how he would make the journey alive. Nearly every Bethesda Fallout game makes the post-war continental America seem like some kinda hiking trail where you can get from West to East with little to no problem at all. Fallout 76 wants you to believe Roger Maxson's era of BOS had the resources to trek from California to West Virginia (mind you, Roger Maxson's exodus just from Mariposa to Lost Hills alone was devastating to the group), Fallout 3 similarly had the BOS trek from California to D.C. but at least tried to explain how and pointed out the troubles they had along the way (which even then is annoying), and Fallout 4 had Kellogg who just wanders from San Francisco to Boston because reasons.

To answer your question however, Van Buren was going to have mentioned Harold as travelling further East after visiting the Nursery. I suppose Bethesda took that idea and ran with it, having him literally travel East till he saw the opposite coastline.

"By the 2250s, Harold was ill. The tree in his head developed an unknown disease and was dying. Much to his surprise, Harold found himself affected as well. He didn't think he was going to die, but he just didn't feel right in the head. So, he set out on a quest for a cure. Naturally, he didn't have an easy time of it either. People just didn't seem to want a mutant around anymore, but Harold didn't let that stop him. He persisted in his quest until he came upon the Twin Mothers tribe, which originated from his home, Vault 29. Much to his surprise, the tribe took him in and accepted him as he was. He explained his quest to the tribal leaders and was told that they would consult their goddess. Days later, Harold was approached by the tribal shaman and given a potion to drink. It was a foul concoction, but it worked. Bob, the tree, got better and was happy again. Harold couldn't let such a good deed go unrewarded, so he offered to help the tribe in any way that he could. They smiled at him, and thanked him, but declined his help. "The goddess will provide," they always said. Harold said that he would like to pay his respects to the goddess, and was taken to the tribal shrine to be granted a private audience. He wasn't really surprised when the projected image of a woman appeared before him, but he was taken aback when she told him where he could find her. His return to the Nursery was a moment of joy for Diana and "new experience" to him, as much of his early memories faded with age. Harold traveled to the Nursery and spent considerable time there. He even considered settling down and spending the remainder of his day in the tranquility of the gardens. Eventually, he left and traveled even further east. If the Prisoner gives Diana the information on the FEV and the New Plague from the Boulder ZAX, Diana will be able to create a cure to the New Plague virus in the form of small fruit, by genetically engineering it from Harold's tree."

As to the HOW, I really couldn't say. Just like I can't say for Kellogg and the BOS.
 
PaxVenire said:
"By the 2250s, Harold was ill. The tree in his head developed an unknown disease and was dying. Much to his surprise, Harold found himself affected as well. He didn't think he was going to die, but he just didn't feel right in the head. So, he set out on a quest for a cure. Naturally, he didn't have an easy time of it either. People just didn't seem to want a mutant around anymore, but Harold didn't let that stop him. He persisted in his quest until he came upon the Twin Mothers tribe, which originated from his home, Vault 29. Much to his surprise, the tribe took him in and accepted him as he was. He explained his quest to the tribal leaders and was told that they would consult their goddess. Days later, Harold was approached by the tribal shaman and given a potion to drink. It was a foul concoction, but it worked. Bob, the tree, got better and was happy again. Harold couldn't let such a good deed go unrewarded, so he offered to help the tribe in any way that he could. They smiled at him, and thanked him, but declined his help. "The goddess will provide," they always said. Harold said that he would like to pay his respects to the goddess, and was taken to the tribal shrine to be granted a private audience. He wasn't really surprised when the projected image of a woman appeared before him, but he was taken aback when she told him where he could find her. His return to the Nursery was a moment of joy for Diana and "new experience" to him, as much of his early memories faded with age. Harold traveled to the Nursery and spent considerable time there. He even considered settling down and spending the remainder of his day in the tranquility of the gardens. Eventually, he left and traveled even further east. If the Prisoner gives Diana the information on the FEV and the New Plague from the Boulder ZAX, Diana will be able to create a cure to the New Plague virus in the form of small fruit, by genetically engineering it from Harold's tree."
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Wow this is new to me, I actually didn't know the full plan of what Harold's story was going to be in FO3: Van Buren, nice find and thanks for sharing that!
Heh, and you know I wouldn't be surprised if that's what Bethesda did, reusing scrapped Fallout content for their own Fallout game. Seems to be their M.O. ;)

Also, I really appreciate your takes @PaxVenire you make these discussions interesting!
:-) :clap:
 
TheKingofVault14 said:
Wow this is new to me, I actually didn't know the full plan of what Harold's story was going to be in FO3: Van Buren, nice find and thanks for sharing that!
Heh, and you know I wouldn't be surprised if that's what Bethesda did, reusing scrapped Fallout content for their own Fallout game. Seems to be their M.O. ;)

Also, I really appreciate your takes @PaxVenire you make these discussions interesting!
:-) :clap:
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If you got the time for it you should read the Van Buren Design Documents, lots of good stuff in there.
 
Because Bethesda wanted him there.
Just like all the BOS members we see (they even bring a Maxson for fun), all the Enclave members we see (they bother mentioning they moved, while they could have said there was an enclave division here from the beginning. This is the capital after all), including someone who deserted navarro before his friends came here.

Although, i'd say that Harold is established as an important caravan leader in his pre-mutation life. Not saying that he tried to open new trade route, but he could have joined some caravans and went from one city to another, and not finding one where he could settle, and keep going.
 
Its so disrespectful to take him and then kill him/literally root him into the ground. Its the equivalent of taking another kid's toy and breaking it so the other kid can't play with it anymore.
 
Nah. it's no big deal~

One thing in Fallout's open world model is that characters have itchy feet tendency. They run around all the time, all the places. Harold run to DC. Marcus run to Charleston, Mojave. The whole Project Purity scientist group run from their original place, supposedly so far away nobody know sheesh about it, to DC hellhole.

As for specific whys for Harold and Marcus, it's NCR. They were growing to single unified state at that time, with humans as super majority. The room for muties in that region is reducing years by years. They can still live there, but why bother when they have the ability to move away? Super Mutants are super hardy, and ghouls are longlived, rad-healing in the 1st place. They can migrate easily.
 
This does make me wonder whether ghouls have to worry about wasteland predators when traveling. Are ghouls even edible? They supposedly stink like rotting flesh, would that attract predators or deter them? Do creatures like deathclaws leave them alone if spotted from a distance, or are they so territorial that they attack anything on sight?
 
Iprovidelittlepianos said:
This does make me wonder whether ghouls have to worry about wasteland predators when traveling. Are ghouls even edible? They supposedly stink like rotting flesh, would that attract predators or deter them? Do creatures like deathclaws leave them alone if spotted from a distance, or are they so territorial that they attack anything on sight?
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Decided to check the random encounters for Fallout 1/2 as I don't care for 3 and beyond as its aggro can be manipulated in any which way you want to to make things fight one another and there is an encounter in Fallout 2 where some ghoul crazies are fighting some gecko's.

There is also an encounter near Necropolis of a half-eaten person (which could be a ghoul) that has some loot on him.

We should consider the fact that there are animals in the wild that will not attack animals that seem sick. Like a cat that wants to attack a bird but if the bird doesn't move then the cat assumes that the bird might have a parasite that wants to be eaten so it can spread so it opts out of attacking the bird.

Insectoids probably don't have this kind of a knowledge of mammal physiology so they would probably not know what is diseased and what isn't.

If I had to throw out a wild guess I'd say that ghouls would probably be attacked by less things but because of how slowly they move it means it would take them longer to get to the same place a normal human would so the frequency of encounters might end up being higher so it probably evens out.
 
Mr Fish said:
If I had to throw out a wild guess I'd say that ghouls would probably be attacked by less things but because of how slowly they move it means it would take them longer to get to the same place a normal human would so the frequency of encounters might end up being higher so it probably evens out.
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Well of course thanks to Fallout 4, we now know that that ghouls are capable of sprinting at break-neck speeds despite being up to two centuries old (or older!) and rotting. So, probably, Harold just sprinted from Nevada to Maryland.
 
laclongquan said:
Marcus run to Charleston, Mojave
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I have to point out that the Marcus example of him moving from Broken Hills, Nevada to Mount Charleston, Nevada isn't at all the same as trekking from Gecko which is roughly on the California/Nevada border all the way to Washington, D.C.

Sure Fallout characters have itchy feet and a tendency to explore, but the timeframe of doing such in the post-apocalypse at least tried to make sense in the originals. It took the NCR 85 years to occupy Hoover Dam despite the Followers of the Apocalypse confirming it's existence in the 2170s before the NCR was even established, 176 years if you count the Shady Sands years, and that's only the neighboring state to California. Bethesda wants you to believe it took the Brotherhood of Steel 25 years to occupy West Virginia out of one bunker in California.

I'll admit anyone could *probably* make it to D.C. in the span of 30 years from Fallout 2 to Fallout 3, but I'm with Norzan on this:
Norzan said:
Lazy writing is what got Harold to the Capital Wasteland.
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Before Harold get his Bob, he's a wandering merchant all over the not-NCR, from the Hub to Mariposa. That type of profession doesnt favor the non-itchy-feet people. We are talking about miles and miles of bloody wasteland here, full of radiation, gecko, giant rats, let alone raiders.

So talk about him up and move from Gecko to cross the continent is not out of imagination. He's a ghoul, so put a ball of plutonium ore in his pocket is like getting a permanent healing moveable source. He doesnt need to settle down anywhere to heal. Ghouls are more mobile than Super Mutant with that advantage.
 
They could for sure make it but they gave no reason why or how so it seems stupid. The writer is God but the writer for Bethesda is mentally retarded.

What people do not know is my fellow Creek indians helped Harold cross the Great Plain area. It's cannon balls.
 
Harold was just another victim of Bethesda trying to recycle as much as they could from the first two games, because coming up with your own shit takes far more work than just copy and pasting old content into your new game.

But with Fallout 4 they proved they can't come up with new shit that is compelling in any way (The Minutemen and The Institute are some of the dumbest factions in the series), so either way it's bad.
 
The factions in 4 are not dumb they just could not write them properly. The Institute is a neat idea it's just they made them completely retarded instead of smart. Realistically they should have merged Railroad and Minutemen into one faction as well.
 
TorontoReign said:
The Institute is a neat idea it's just they made them completely retarded instead of smart.
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They felt a bit too much like Big MT creating all these horror spawns and throwing them into the wasteland. I liked the whole Tyrell Corporation angle that was teased in Fallout 3, they should've just stuck to that.

TorontoReign said:
Realistically they should have merged Railroad and Minutemen into one faction as well.
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Absolutely, but I think they should've merged the Brotherhood with the Minutemen and Railroad too.
 
I gave up on FO4 half way through but aren't the institutes motivations explained as "It's complicated" and "You wouldn't understand" to cover up for how fucking retarded they act?
 
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