After hours of practice, they all believed they were ready to deal with the monster. They turned on the Xbox, and besides loading up the Xbox home screen, the game booted up instead. It was strange, but they all convinced themselves the spirit haunting the game wanted them to play its version of Fallout: New Vegas.
Upon first exception, the home screen was fine. Gorgie went through every option on the menu, looking through settings, saves, looking for anything that worked. Which it did. However, what made them confused was how all the 5 save files made by the victim were corrupted and couldn’t load. The first save only had 40 minutes of playtime, there the player was located in Nipton and being level 6 with neutral karma. The second had over an hour of gameplay, with them being at 188 Trading Post, level 10, again with neutral karma.
After a long conversation, they all agreed that the saves were naturally made as the victim progressed through the game. Yet couldn’t answer on how the autosave only had 2 minutes of gameplay but it didn't reveal details of the level the player was at nor their previous location.
Every save file had a screenshot of the last thing the player was looking at. None of the previous files had anything odd, just the player looking at the wall or out of the open. Yet the autosave was strange. It showed a picture of a kid’s room from what seemed to be taken from behind the child playing Fallout: New Vegas on their Xbox.
Gorgie tried to load up the autosave, but all he got was a prompt to see if they wanted to delete the save file. He clicked no, but doing that deleted the save. Jayden wondered why the spirit revealed itself right to them at that moment. He couldn’t tell if the spirit liked to play tricks on them or if it knew that Jayden and his team were tasked to defeat it.
Upon starting a new game, it ran as expected. The cut-scene played and the monologue about how “war never changed” while introducing the conflict of the game remained unchanged. When the game loaded, they spoke with Doc Mitchell, a doctor and the first NPC every player would meet and created a character without any problem. After interacting with the NPC and taking all of his belongings that were useful and could sell, they all decided to leave the house to get the necessary resources to speedrun the game.
They explored the outside area of Goodsprings, not entering any building or going beyond the town’s borders. Dameo explained that the spirit could’ve changed some code or assets that should be visible. While the autosave was an example he leaned in to support his hypophysis. Jayden knew it was a bit of a gamble and a waste of time, all he cared about was for Gorgie to complete the game and defeat the spirit.
After finding no evidence of asset corruption, change, or erasure, they made their way to the saloon to get the .375 magnum revolver inside so they could speedrun the game by using a speed exploit that could help Gorgie traverse vast distances without the need to fast travel. However, beforethey went to the entrance of the saloon, they all laughed as they noticed Easy Pete’s name was changed to “Difficult Pete”. Pete was an old prospector of Goodsprings, and a fan favourite in the gaming community.
Gorgie approached Pete to start a dialogue. ‘Things ought to be settled for awhile. Hope it stays that way.’ Pete greeted the player character with a raspy voice. However, besides having the usual dialogue tree, the only option available was “…”.
‘Is that the only response in the game?’ Hank openly said.
‘No,’ Jayden pointed to the screen. ‘Remember how we had options when we talked to Doc Mitchell? We should have a list of things to say to Pete.’
Gorgie shrugged as he turned back to talk to everyone who stood behind him before he clicked on the only dialogue option. ‘In that case, we might as well move on.’
‘You should.’ Pete replied before the dialogue between the NPC ended. Everyone turned to each other, baffled as to how the NPC was able to respond to Gorgie.
‘It’s the spirit,’ Dameo reasoned. ‘It can hear us, perhaps it is a way it wants to mess with us.’
Hank folded his arms, ‘but why?’
‘Best not think about it.’ Gorgie replied after saving the game in front of Pete, wanting to use that interaction as some sort of evidence or a way to backtrack to perhaps integrate the NPC in the future.
Stolen novel; please report.
The moment they entered the saloon, everyone besides Hank was left confused for every NPC and intractable items were despawned. Even the .375 revolver, the item they needed to speedrun the game had disappeared. Disheartened, but not unbroken. They left the saloon, hoping to buy the gun from the general store. However, when they went outside, every building disappeared. Even the saloon they’ve exited from.
Without the necessary equipment to continue, they all agreed to journey north for an easy shortcut to New Vegas, hoping everything despawned. However, they were mistaken. The roads leading north were plagued with deathclaws and cazadores, high level enemies and creatures Gorgie had no means or capabilities of fighting against, which led to multiple deaths and wasting their time. Gorgie couldn’t sneak past them or best them in any way. He was well and truly incapable of winning. The best they could do was head south with the hope they could find anything useful in Primm, if the spirit didn’t delete everything of use.
The journey south was quiet, empty, an eerie atmosphere that made Jayden and his team uneasy. There were no enemies, no idle items that could be picked up, nor was there any ambient music. All there was is a land of sand and ruins of a fictional world. Primm was empty, the NPCs there were gone, including every item with the only things remaining were the buildings. They explored around a small town, but couldn’t find anything of use or meaning. Gorgie tried to turn on the Pip-Boy radio, but it was silent from the other side.
With little to do, they continued south for the Mojave Outpost. As they got close enough for the two giant metal statues to render into view, so did the bodies of hanging NCP characters. The bodies were stiff like they were placed there to create a twisted diorama, an edgy joke to rile a reaction from people who stumbled upon the scene. But to Jayden and the rest of his team they were frustrated, irritated that they couldn’t progress any further and had to deal with the spirit’s attempts in disturbing them. It was clear to Jayden and the rest of his team that the bodies were low rendered props that couldn’t be looted or interacted with. Worst of all, they couldn’t find anything inside the Outpost.
‘This is fucking stupid! We are wasting our time,’ Gorgie blurted out.
Jayden looked at his watch and discovered they wasted almost two hours. ‘Is there any other way to speedrun the game?’
Hank clicked his fingers before he pointed to Jayden. ‘Pete, he had the magnum. Why not load the save, kill him, and get that?’
Dameo rubbed the ridge of his nose. ‘We still need to get some special ammo for the exploit to work.’
‘Better to get half of what we need than nothing at all.’ Hank argued, ‘I know it might not be much, but so far it’s the best bet we have so far.’
Gorgie paused the game and went to the save file where they stood near Pete. ‘It isn’t like we are making any progress either way.’ He loaded the save file before he leaned back into the couch to watch the game load the previous save. ‘I just hope it works, I don’t want to continue playing this game.’
‘Something wrong?’ Jayden concernedly asked.
‘It feels wrong, like really wrong.’ Gorgie admitted, ‘I don’t know why, but it feels like I am always being watched when I play that game… like, someone was right behind me.’
Hank chuckled, trying to lighten up the situation. ‘I’m sure that is us.’
Gorgie shook his head, ‘no, not you guys… I don’t know. It could be just me.’
The game loaded up, but besides being in front of Pete and in Goodsprings. They were back at the Outpost, this time in third person facing the player character. Everyone was silent as they stared at the player character, it had blond long blond hair tied up in a knot, glasses, and a soft gentle face. Having the exact features as Gorgie, even when he didn’t customise his character.
‘I think this is enough,’ Hank said as he walked over to the Xbox and turned it off.