Van Buren main plot and the missing doc #13

[The Dutch Ghost]

I always thought it would make more sense that Presper and his cronies were infected by accident with the virus, ODYSSEUS becomes aware of this and locks up them up as its instructions demand.

 

[Ausir]

Pretty much only the BOMB doc refers to them as infected. And them being infected by Presper is only introduced in that doc so that you could persuade them that it wasn't a lighter strain but the real thing and that Presper is only using them and intends to get rid of them.

I think it would work better if Presper just gave them what he said is a vaccine to the virus, while simply infecting them with the virus itself.

Them being locked in Tibbets too doesn't make sense because otherwise they'd be on the list of prisoners that the PC has to retrieve.

 

[The Dutch Ghost]

But it would still leave the question open of why to infect them with the virus?
Presper might have caught it unaware at the Boulder science dome but to infect himself and the ex NCR soldiers on purpose?

 

[Ausir]

All scientists who accidentally infected themselves with the virus at Boulder walk in environmental suits all the time not to infect other people while there is no mention of Presper being infected or being brought to the prison than the BOMB doc, so I'm just going to disregard it (especially that it contradicts the stuff about people you have to retreive to the prison).

 

[Kan-Kerai]

But if the virus freely floats in the bloodstream and cannot rewrite the DNA of any cell, it wouldn't be able to spread to new carriers or make any new copies of itself, so I don't see how someone mutated with FEV could give it to someone else

Viruses can free-float in any fluid. We also know that at least one strain of Limit-115 seems to be able to travel through the air (the Boulder document mentions different strains, by the way). Blackjack wouldn't have needed to come into contact with a person's blood at all. The most likely explanation is that he inhaled it when Presper initially released the virus.

Presper and his followers released the New Plague in the remote areas near Boulder and Denver. It was close enough to the quarantine prison to spur ULYSSES into action, but not near enough to huge populations to start a general panic.

Sounds like aerial transmission to me... Unless you'd rather believe Presper and his small group of soldiers traveled around and gave everyone an injection.

Either way, it explains how the virus could get into Blackjack in the first place. Aerial transmission also explains why the scientists at the Boulder Dome were wearing quarantine suits, and it explains why ULYSSES is desperately trying to round up the escaped prisoners before they infect everyone.

It explains why Presper and co. use Nutrient Paste, and why you have to as well. The paste puts the disease into complete dormancy, where it isn't communicable and manifests no symptoms.

If you don't use Nutrient Paste throughout the game, it causes ULYSSES to flip the fuck out because you're infecting far more than the amount of people Tibbets can hold faster than they can be gathered, so he has to accelerate the planned launches from BOMB-001. Thus if the player is negligent in managing his plague symptoms, they have to shut down or destroy ULYSSES before it nukes the shit out of everything in a panic. (Thus screwing up Presper's plan as well, as he wished to at least leave some infrastructure intact- e.g. The Nursery and Boulder Dome)

While a super mutant could somehow contract the virus by contact with its carriers, he wouldn't spread it to others (unless they have direct contact with his blood)

Anyone near Blackjack could be infected just by breathing the same air as him, let alone drinking the same water, etc.

The copies of the virus inside him wouldn't die, as without the receptacles in his DNA for the Plague to latch on to in the first place, the virus goes inactive. That is, until he passes it on at which time the virions effectively "re-activate" and attempt to infect the new host.

even the copies of the virus that managed to get into his bloodstream would soon die out simply because they'd attempt to infect his cells which would then be repaired by the FEV

The point is that the virus wouldn't try to infect his cells at all, as his cells simply don't have the receptacles that the New Plague latches on to. There is no cell repair process involved because he isn't infected in the first place.

Thus Blackjack is a carrier, "someone whose cells are infected but who suffers no ill effects while he infects other people with it".

Really, there's no plot hole. Honestly.

 

[Ausir]

I got this from Jeff Husges who designed Mesa Verde:

I can't remember if Blackjack was supposed to be one of the escaped prisoners, or if it was just an idea. Unlike the Devil Dog, I never fully fleshed him out - it was still in the pre-production phase. If it was fully established that mutants were immune to the New Plague, I'm sure there would've been a story reason implemented.

And since there are 2 contradictory versions (the BOMB doc one and the Sawyer one) about Presper's men being infected or not, I'll just arbitrarily choose one of them for my campaign - the "not" one, since it doesn't really make sense for them to intentionally infect themselves to get into Tibbets and then get freed by their friends along with other prisoners if they could just free the prisoners themselves and avoid all the risks (which they did in MCA's original campaign) and the BOMB version doesn't explain why they aren't on the list of people the Prisoner must retrieve.


EDIT:

The point is that the virus wouldn't try to infect his cells at all, as his cells simply don't have the receptacles that the New Plague latches on to. There is no cell repair process involved because he isn't infected in the first place.

Thus Blackjack is a carrier, "someone whose cells are infected but who suffers no ill effects while he infects other people with it".

Really, there's no plot hole. Honestly.

I still wouldn't call him a carrier, since he isn't really infected if the viruses aren't using his body do multiply (they do so in carriers even if the carrier doesn't suffer ill effects). Even if they're in his body, they're just dormant.

An asymptomatic carrier (or just carrier), is a person who is infected with an infectious disease or carries the abnormal gene of a recessive genetic disorder, but displays no symptoms. Although unaffected by the disease or the disorder themselves, carriers can transmit it to others.

An infection is the detrimental colonization of a host organism by a foreign species. In an infection, the infecting organism seeks to utilize the host's resources to multiply (usually at the expense of the host).

At most, he could be called a vector:

In epidemiology, a vector is an organism that does not cause disease itself but which spreads infection by conveying pathogens from one host to another.

(I know Wikipedia isn't exactly a very reliable source, but then again, we're just talking about fictional viruses in a fictional universe, so it'll do).

If you don't use Nutrient Paste throughout the game, it causes ULYSSES to flip the fuck out because you're infecting far more than the amount of people Tibbets can hold faster than they can be gathered, so he has to accelerate the planned launches from BOMB-001. Thus if the player is negligent in managing his plague symptoms, they have to shut down or destroy ULYSSES before it nukes the shit out of everything in a panic. (Thus screwing up Presper's plan as well, as he wished to at least leave some infrastructure intact- e.g. The Nursery and Boulder Dome)

Or at least the player might be led to believe so, because in reality there were no time limits in the game.

There was no time limit. There was talk about having some NPCs you meet die from the mysterious plague, but the details weren't worked out yet. I assume we'd do something where the death wouldn't occur until the PC had gotten key information or had already done that NPC's quests. I think it would have been a nice emotional impact to have the PC re-enter a town and find that Old Bob, the kindly doctor who the PC helped with his research, suddenly died.

 

[Kan-Kerai]

Yep, I should've said Blackjack was a vector. That's what I meant, but I was stuck on the term "carrier". And really, you're right again- whatever works, it's just a minor plotpoint anyway.

And yeah, I was looking at the ULYSSES bit from the player's point of view. Not really from the technical perspective. Kind of similar to how in Oblivion the main plotline is about the Daedric invasion (oh my god they're going to destroy everything), when in reality there's no time limit to it and other than scripted events, there are never any attacks.

Anyway: I managed to piece together a skeletal framework of Presper's plan, including an explanation for the "why weren't they on the list problem". (note- I'm actually working on a campaign of my own, which is why I'm so enthusiastic about it)

It's a definite work in progress- I didn't bother putting in explanations about some of the parts of his plan that happened before the game began, even though I referenced them in passing. Some of it's probably wrong. ZAX's calculation for Presper being a vector calculation/targeting solution stands out, that's admittedly just a guess. Though it would explain why Presper deletes it- the deletion implies it's not related to the Plague cure.

In any case, here it is. Take it or leave it.

----------------------------
Presper's grand plan

Presper infects himself and a few elite NCR soldiers with the New Plague during his initial release of it. This is so ARGOS gathers them up with the other prisoners, thus granting them access to the Tibbets Facility.

After they're brought in, the rest of the NCR soldiers (who aren't infected) aligned with Presper attack Tibbets, blowing a hole in the walls and letting all the prisoners out. This starts the "timer" on BOMB-001 firing its missiles, and initiates the quarantine controls on ULYSSES.

----------------------------
Interjection: I'm not sure what's up here.

My thought is that perhaps Sawyer had the idea that Presper does something to ULYSSES during the confusion of the attack, maybe has something to do with the "split" in ULYSSES' core. Maybe he needed to screw up ULYSSES in order to carry out his plan, as ULYSSES could override most of what Presper plans to do. After all, ULYSSES could control ZAX, Diana, and BOMB. Presper would've had to do something.

This could also explain why the soldiers attacked and damaged ARGOS, as otherwise ULYSSES could direct it to hunt down and capture Presper and co. fairly quickly.

My best guess is perhaps Presper infects Coleridge and co. for insurance. He needs them early on, but after his plan is complete, he doesn't have any more use for them. He's able to convince them to let him infect them as well because he'll need their help in the escape from the prison, which is entirely plausible.

He also needs them throughout the game for various reasons (attacking the NCR senate, defending the BOMB-002 wreck and the Bloomfield launch platform, protecting him from the PC and BOMB-001's defenses).

However, he can then prevent them from killing him after they've realized he's betrayed them by holding the fact that he's the only chance they have for a cure over them.

That's my best analysis of the changes Sawyer made, at least with the limited info I have. My luck J.E. can probably find a way to use Occam's Razor against me and shoot it down in one sentence.

/end Interjection
----------------------------

ULYSSES plans to use ARGOS to round up the prisoners, but ARGOS is (presumably) damaged in the attack. Thus ULYSSES can't tell ARGOS what to do, so ARGOS is running around randomly trying to pick up the escapees.

ULYSSES then strikes a deal with you to have you round up the prisoners. What you don't know is that when 90% of them are brought in, BOMB-001 will fire and destroy Tibbets and everywhere else as well, effectively purging the plague.

There's no conflict in not having to bring Presper and co. in, as you only need to bring in 90% of the escapees- not all of them.

Presper and co. head to the Boulder Dome, priming the cryogenic chambers of his "Army of the Sleepers", former NCR scientists and young women he's been sending to the Dome for the last few years to put into cold sleep. He finds out that some of them didn't arrive, but he forges on. He locks the computers controlling their cryogenic capsules down, trying to prevent interference from you or the people at the Dome.

He uses ZAX to calculate plague dispersion vectors, and then deletes the data once ZAX is done the calculations. He uses that information to create his targeting data for BOMB-001. He also brings a datacan so ZAX won't have to cannibalize its memory- ZAX has been attempting to derive/calculate a cure for the New Plague, which has been taking up massive amounts of memory. Unfortunately, Presper's datacan is the wrong type and he has to trust that the PC or the Boulder scientists will find a way to stave off ZAX having to overwrite test data.

Presper knows about the Nursery as well, which is also a major part of his plan. He plans to use DIANA and the nursery to "regrow" the wastes, after Limit-115 is purged. He hopes that along with DIANA and ZAX, they'll be able to devise a permanent cure to the New Plague as well. This is something the player can do, using ZAX's test data, Diana's knowledge of the New Plague and the genetic information of Harold's tree.

Presper was able to get General Coleridge and co. to come along because he told them the Boulder Dome would be a safehouse when they went to war with NCR. Presper has told Coleridge the whole purpose of the exercise is to overthrow Governor Dodge at Hoover Dam, and to "rebuild" the NCR, when in reality the whole point is to purge the entire wasteland and start over. This leads into you being able to expose Presper's deception in the endgame.

Presper and co. then travel to Bloomfield, where they override the security at the launch pad so they can hop on Hermes-13 and travel up to BOMB-001, where they wait for ULYSSES to send the transmission for BOMB to fire. Presper manages to override the launch codes, and injects the targeting solutions ZAX calculated instead.

Then you either fight him, convince Coleridge and his soldiers of Presper's deception, etc. Then you find out you can only prevent up to 2/3 of the missiles from firing, and have to make the decision which places will be nuked.

 

[Ausir]

My thought is that perhaps Sawyer had the idea that Presper does something to ULYSSES during the confusion of the attack, maybe has something to do with the "split" in ULYSSES' core. Maybe he needed to screw up ULYSSES in order to carry out his plan, as ULYSSES could override most of what Presper plans to do. After all, ULYSSES could control ZAX, Diana, and BOMB. Presper would've had to do something.

I think you got it wrong a bit. Sawyer is actually the one who said that in his version (and MCA's original version), Presper and his men weren't infected and they were part of the group that attacked Tibbets. It was in Foletto's BOMB design that says that Presper infected himself and his people in order to get into Tibbets (which isn't properly explained except for it being a key to convincing Coleridge to join you).

According to Sawyer, ULYSSES/ODYSSEUS is impossible to hack even by Presper, and even if Presper wanted to do something to it during the confusion of the attack, he could do it as one of the attackers, without the need to infect himself, Coleridge and co.

Foletto:

Once enough people were infected and ULYSSES “arrested” enough people to just about fill up the prison, Presper infected himself, Coleridge, and a handful of loyal soldiers so they too could be taken into the prison. Once there, the rest of Presper’s men, who were not infected, would stage an attack on the prison which would allow everyone to escape.

Sawyer:

No, his [Presper’s] people were not infected. They were all in environmental armor. When they attacked the prison in the pen and paper game, they literally hit the side of the prison with a missile. It created a breach that the robots were unable to repair, which explained how you could escape after each time you were (potentially) captured. I always figured they would just blast open a hole and let all of the prisoners try to run free.

I figured that was a little more spectacular a beginning anyway. Rocket blows open side of prison, dudes in environmental suits basically run through saying, "run for it!" and blasting robots and then they disappear mysteriously.

The design docs were from different periods, not everything is properly explained in them, and they contradict each other quite a bit, so you just have to choose between different devs' versions. Personally, I'll just go with the version where Presper and his men weren't infected.

Tibbets is not destroyed by a nuke from BOMB, but by ULYSSES melting its core and exploding.

And it isn't clear why ODYSSEUS really gives a shit until after all of the prisoners have been returned, at which point it does some massive calculations of where everyone has traveled and it shows that you (and the other six prisoners) have spread the plague Limit-115 to a variety of places. At that point, ODYSSEUS makes the determination that the plague is spreading too far, so it arms the BOMB satellites and melts itself down to (try) killing all of the prisoners. You get the info from watching ODYSSEUS' monitors after the last prisoner is returned, which (if i recall correctly) were all over the prison.

Anyway, here's a summary of the main plot I got from someone who got it from one of the devs:

ACT 1

After The Prisoner busts out from Cell Block 13 of the Tibbets Facility (aka The Big Empty). ULYSSES, the supercomputer running the prison, attempts to stop The Prisoner, but the confused and damaged bots are no match for the player. However, The Prisoner realizes that he's going to continue to be a target unless he somehow shuts ULYSSES down. Unfortunately, all access to the lower sections of the prison have been sealed off due to the damage the prison has suffered. ULYSSES' protocol states that all escapees must be retrieved and accounted for (dead or alive) before the security lockdown will end. The Prisoner realizes that if he's ever to be free of the robotic menace, he's going to have to find those other prisoners and somehow get them back.

Of course, the player can choose to ignore the goal and adventure at will. However, as ULYSSES repairs the damage to itself, its retrieval bots will become more powerful. Eventually, ULYSSES will send out ARGOS, the best of the best, a nearly-unkillable bot of enormous size. The EM field generated by ARGOS is so powerful that it interferes with other electronic devices when it's close by. The player will know this because when he opens up his PIPBoy, he'll get nothing but static.

And so, The Prisoner wanders the wasteland, searching for the other escaped prisoners and generally having a good time.

These details are a bit fuzzy and might even be flat-out wrong, since the events of Act 2 were still being worked on.

ACT 2
After returning the required prisoners to The Big Empty (dead or alive), ULYSSES cancels the lockdown and allows access to the prison's lower levels. The Prisoner can access ULYSSES and send out a tranmission to disable the hunter bots. Unfortunately, the supreme hunter bot, ARGOS, has malfunctioned as a result of exposure to high levels of radiation in the wasteland and no longer obeys ULYSSES' commands...

The Prisoner also discovers another reason why ULYSSES wanted the prisoners back in the first place –the supercomputer needed to know just how far everyone got so it could finish up its series of calculations. It seems that everyone who was imprisoned in The Big Empty carried a rather nasty population control virus codenamed "Limit 115". The virus can be fatal, but its primary purpose was to induce sterility in human populations, still an inevitable death but much, much slower and sneakier.(Where and how The Prisoner ended up with the virus, I forget).

The Prisoner, in his travels, has spread the virus throughout much of this region of the wasteland, and when he returns to areas he's visited, he'll find a lot of sick people and animals, and several NPCs he's acquainted with will have died.

ULYSSES, having now determined just how far the virus has spread, sends the results to the BOMB-001 satellite lying dormant in orbit and then self-destructs. BOMB-001 awakes itself from hibernation and begins preparations to turn most of the wasteland into a nuclear inferno (again) to stop the spread of the virus.

As if matters weren't bad enough, The Prisoner's actions have attracted the attention of Doctor Presper, the evil villain who engineered this whole mess in the first place. The Prisoner may have met Doctor Presper and his crew at Boulder Dome in Act 1. The meeting was not particularly friendly, and the good Doctor was not forthcoming with his reasons for being at Boulder Dome. (Of course, the Boulder Dome meeting is conducted through a computer, so The Prisoner can't kill the Doc at this stage of the game).

The Doc expected ULYSSES's bots to retrieve all the escapees on their own, and will be surprised to find out how big a part The Prisoner has played. Presper, being a genius, recognizes that the player is a bigger threat than he anticipated and has decided to move against him. Having amassed a small army of loyal followers during Act 1, Presper's group takes over Fort Abandon and sets up small watchgroups in each of the major population centers to keep an eye out for the The Prisoner and eliminate him.

Presper and his crew depart for Bloomfield Airfield Base, where they take one of the shuttles up to BOMB-001, sabotaging the remaining shuttle so no one (especially the PC) can follow. Fortunately, the sabotage isn't thorough enough, and the remaining shuttle is damaged but repairable.

The Prisoner's primary goals:
1. Determine where Presper went.
2. Find parts to repair the shuttle.
3. Repair the shuttle and follow Presper.
Secondary goals:
1. Discover some means of slowing or curing Limit 115.
2. Retake Fort Abandon (calling upon any allies like the tribes, the Brotherhood, or the NCR).

(NOTE: Some of that info could be completely inaccurate, or it could be how I thought everyone thought the game was going to go)

ACT 3
I'm not too sure how Act 3 is supposed to end, since it was Foletto's area. I *believe* it went something like this:

1. ULYSSES transmits the coordinates to the satellite, targeting a number of places in the game region (as well as places like Vault City). Its calculations show that the blasts have an almost 100% certainty of eliminating the spread of Limit-115.

2. Presper, being a super-genius, reprograms the targeting computer by adding some places as targets and removing others, all part of his plan to reshape the wasteland to his liking.

3. After Presper and his crew are dealt with in the usual Fallout way (combat, diplomacy, stealth, or science), the Prisoner is still left with a countdown to launch. Unfortunately, he can only do so much.
There are two certainties on the BOMB-001: missiles *will* launch, and a lot of people *will* die. The Prisoner will face the difficult choice of determining which part of the wasteland gets blasted. He can't cheat by blowing up empty land; the BOMB-001's computer is too smart for that, and won't fire on invalid targets. A high Repair skill will allow the PC to disarm some of the bombs, but there's not enough time for them all. Same for the Science skill and hacking the computer. I forget what an evil PC can do here, but it's something totally nasty.

4. The bombs drop, the satellite blows up (either self-destructing or just falls apart from being in orbit so long), and the Prisoner and companions escape in an emergency pod.

5. Cue movie, playing "I Don't Want to Set the World on Fire" as the pod arcs over the Earth. Large nuclear blasts can be seen dotting the lands beneath the clouds.

6. End slideshow presentation fires. Of course, there's not complete destruction, or there wouldn't be much of a slideshow. Just enough to give an emotional kick to events, especially if the player spent time making a place better and then had no choice but to nuke it in order to save some other place.

7. The Prisoner's fate movie rolls. No idea what this was going to be.

8. End credits roll.

Of course, that whole thing is even more tentative than most things in the game, being at the end and all.

 

[Kan-Kerai]

My previous post was an attempt at reconciling the different explanations of events. You're right, I got mixed up in the process.

The only thing Foletto's version adds is a way for Presper to prevent Coleridge and co. from killing him after they realize he's betrayed them, and of course a way for you to exploit it.

The problem is that adding that makes one hell of a mess of everything else in the plot. There's also the problem of whether adding the plague to the Coleridge/Presper dynamic is really needed. After all, exposing the fact that Presper's betraying their "plans" for NCR to Coleridge and co. should be enough on its own.

So yeah, you're right. Ignoring the infection idea is much cleaner and makes more sense.

 

[Ausir]

If you haven't noticed, I added lots of stuff to my post above in my last edit .

 

[Kan-Kerai]

Wow, thanks for the plot summary. Clears a lot of things up!

Edit: Noticed it while editing my last post.

 

[ratsnack]

i want to visit bomb-001! great thread and thank you for the wiki

 

[Jesterka]

i want to visit bomb-001! great thread and thank you for the wiki

And who wouldn´t, honey?

Personally, if I could choose one place to play, I would pick Burham Springs or Boulder or Hoover Dam. It´s a pity that no ingame screens of eg. Burham Springs slipped away... (OK, on the assumption that there was something completed to show)


Ausir, great work with the plot summary (again). I´ll buy you a big carton of Gamma beer when I go to Poland.

 

[Black]

That's some great story, I'd totally like to nuke Vault City! But, of course, for great justice ;d.

 

[edahl]

Fallout: Van Buren documents you say? Where may I venture upon such desirable assets? Enlighten me!

In other words: Do want!

 

[Ausir]

You mean the documents that have been at NMA for the last 2 years?

http://nma-fallout.com/forum/dload.php?action=category&cat_id=61

 

[edahl]

Exactly those. Thank you!

 

[Briosafreak]

 

[Ausir]

I got some more from other devs:

New Plague:

No. The effect of the plague was that you'd see some people in any area
you visit eventually sicken (and a few of them may die, been a while
since I read the docs but I believed there was a small chance of
death). Not all, but some. And they'd be sterile. So if you went to
Xtown in January, when you came back in Feb a lot of people would be
doing cough and sneeze emotes, and maybe a couple nonessential NPCs
might be dead and the other NPCs would mention how they got sick.

The main result of the plague was that it causes sterility, and at
the end of the game you have to decide which places you visited are
or are not going to get "cleansed" by the satellite's nuclear bombs.

Cure:

I believe that was open for exploration, yes, but I think it was more
of a vaccine than a cure -- people already infected would still have
it in their system (like the player's character) and act as carriers,
which is why they needed to be isolated or destroyed.

Fort Abandon:

That's because it was originally going to be a fortified hub
settlement that could change hands over the course of the game, and
Josh was going to design it, but we pushed back working on it because
Josh was also doing the primary tech design. I believe in the end,
given our projected deadlines, we were also going to scale down the
role and size of FA because we were already building "PC Town" at the
dam, and a redundant player-controlled area didn't make a lot of
sense, and would make PC Town less unique for it.

Presper:

I don't remember exactly why, though I believe we had an easier time
justifying to ourselves that Presper was a modern scientist rather
than the ONE nutty professor who happen to get thawed out. In other
words, it stretched our suspension of disbelief too much if ONLY
Presper was the one who woke up. I think. Like I said, I don't
remember exactly.

If I remember correctly, Jericho was just the water desalination plant, with a small support community built up around it. There isn't much in the way of documentation on it other than that. The prime idea was that the plant was mostly broken down, barely producing enough water to support the locals, but a player with a high Repair skill to restore a great deal of functionality and turn Jericho into a place of significance. Otherwise, it was just your typical Shady Sands type of town, with a few sidequests here and there.

 

[Ausir]

Hah, I just got confirmation from John Deiley who designed Nursery - I was right, Harold's tree was the source of the cure (and I rock for figuring it out from incomplete sources).