Fallout: Equestria Reviews: Chapters Three and Four

Video made by me.

So, you're all probably wondering what we're doing here, right? Normally I don't do reviews except on Sundays, unless its for a special occasion like a Holiday, which doesn't come up very often.

Well today happens to be KKat's birthday, so this fic review is, basically my gift to them. Yeah, its kind of short notice and I didn't really plan to do this, but lets go with it, here's hoping it'll go well.

So we'll be reviewing Fallout: Equestria again... I'm not really sure what else to say here other than that. I still have no idea what to do with these reviews, so, yeah, lets just go with it.

---Chapter 3: Guidence---

LittlePip wakes up to something that she's never actually experienced before, daylight.

I had never seen the sun before, and it was fair to say I still hadn’t. But the power of its light filtered down through the thick angry, cloud cover, turning a sickly color yet still brighter and warmer than the humming lights of Stable Two. The air itself looked somehow wrong in the light, off-color. But everything was illuminated. I could see motes of dust and ash floating about the room (I wondered how healthy it was to be breathing it), and for the first time I really grasped the expanse of the outside.

So, yeah, now that its daytime LittlePip can see the horrors of post-apocalyptic Ponyville, which she then decides to go back and try and get the box she found the night before unlocked instead of having to deal with that right now. Inside she finds an elegantly designed dress and we see, a rather girly side of our hero over it, but of course she's too small to wear it, but she puts it in her saddlebags anyway.

So with that she's ready to once again step hoof into the wasteland, mindful of the Sniper that had shot at her the night before, she carefully opens the door, and looks around. This is where we get a proper description of what has happened to Ponyville in the last 200 years, and its not exactly cheerful.

Post-apocalyptic Ponyville was a rotting skeleton of a once homey little town. Between collapsed buildings and burned homes, the streets were littered with rubble and refuse. And everywhere, garish paints of depravity and grotesquery. The graffiti was not limited to outside; the raiders had defaced the Carousel Boutique with an almost ecstatic fervor.

She then looks up and realizes that she had been sleeping under the corpses of dead cats, and quite understandably disturbed by this, she steps back, only to hear a beep. As the beeps continue, she has no idea what is going on, but somepony in the area saves her flank by shouting at her to close the door, which she does, followed by an explosion outside.

Thankfully LittlePip is alive, only a little shaken up... which given the fact that she almost blew up is completely understandable. The strange voice tells her to get moving because there are more coming, and LittlePip asks who it is, but before she can get an answer a Raider mare arrives with a grenade. She throws the grenade at our hero, but LittlePip on instinct alone catches the grenade in her telekinesis and throws it back at the Raider, blowing her up. When LittlePip realizes this, it dawns on her that she had just killed somepony

LittlePip at this point decides that she's had enough of this crazy town and sneaks out of it, distracting any more Raiders as she does. She gets shot at by the sniper again, but comes out mostly unscathed by the experience. She makes it out of town and starts healing herself up, but that's when something else decides to come out of the nearby forest. She understandably becomes tense at this point, and then a hideously mutated insect creature comes into view. She only has one shot left so she goes into hiding, only to have the creature get killed by, something else, but something friendly this time.

Yep, the voice is back and apologizes for what happened in Ponyville, pointing out that LittlePip didn't really have a choice. When she asks who he is, he says that he doesn't mean her any harm.

Video belongs to Konami, but, yeah... you know.

I swear I'm not trying to make all these Metal Gear Solid jokes.

Jokes aside, he introduces himself as Questioner, err, Watcher, darn it Puppysmiles, now you have me doing it too. This also marks the first mention of something called Taint, which is what the creature, a Bloatsprite had been mutated by, and... yeah, its not very pleasant sounding at all, but more on that later.

Then we get this actually kind of funny bit of dialogue:

“Thank you. And thank you for the warning about that... thing in the ground.”

“Mine.”

I blinked. “Y-you want my apple?”

The sprite-bot laughed, which was very weird to hear since the artificial voice didn’t have any inflection. “No. That’s what it was called. The explosive in the ground. It’s called a mine. It triggers when you step close.”

Video belongs to Fox.

LittlePip comments that Watcher is actually a robot, but he corrects her and says that it isn't the case. Ultimately he's a pony somewhere out there in Equestria that's controlling the Sprite-Bots around Equestria, and LittlePip is just happy to have a civilized conversation with somepony in the Wasteland.

Watcher says that he can't talk much longer, but he leaves LittlePip with one more piece of advice:

"Look, there are a few things you’re going to need if you want to survive out here. A weapon (or at least a lot more ammo for the one you have), armored barding, a bit of guidance... and most importantly, you need to make some friends.”

Its a bit simple, but ultimately good advice, and reflects the advice that Celestia gave Twilight in episode 1.

LittlePip asks what he meant by guidance, and he directs her to the Ponyville Library in order to find a book that he says would be good for her to know how to survive in the Wasteland. She questions whether or not she should trust him, and Watcher points out that if he wanted to kill her, why would he have saved her life? She admits he has a point, but before she can talk to him more, the annoying music starts up again.

She sneaks back into Ponyville and finds herself looking at the Library. That, really brings me back to season 1...

Video made by Applegeek.

That's when she finally spots the Raider Sniper who is on the balcony of the Library. LittlePip manages to sneak in though and enters the Library, which is filled with mutilated corpses of dead ponies left there by the Raiders and dear Celestia is it messed up. This is one of the first real indications of how utterly screwed up the Equestrian Wasteland is at this point, but its a good way to show this.

She also sees cages, one of which has living ponies in it, one of which is begging for her help, so she starts to get them freed. One of them thanks her and offers her some supplies, but LittlePip says that she'll need them more, its a good moment that shows LittlePip's character this early on, though she does take a shotgun shell.

LittlePip reassures a second pony that she'll be back and runs off into one of the other rooms, only to find herself face to face with a Raider Pony, who gets two shotgun blasts to the head.

I hadn’t just killed a pony -- these raiders had given up any right to the title! These were not ponies, they were sick monsters that needed to be put down! And Celestia help me if I wasn’t going to do just that. I didn’t realize it until that moment, but I was mad! The pure evil of this place had shaken me to the core... and my core was furious!

You know... I question Somber's choice to include the Raider Disease (more on this later in Project Horizons reviews), but sometimes I understand the need to explain such senselessness that you see in the Wasteland.

She takes out three more Raiders, and we get another pretty funny line.

“Shouldn’t you ponies be smarter than that? You live in a library!”

Lets try not to question the Raiders, there's not much we can do about them.

She finds a medical box and tries to take out one of the Raiders using a flurry of knives. The Raider tries to goad her, and then winds up dead for his troubles.

LittlePip goes back and frees the second pony, remembering the Sniper she gives them instructions on the safest way to escape. She then moves to the next cage and finds, a decaying corpse of a pony along with another pony. The corpse pony seems to be a Pegasus, which would be LittlePip's first encounter with one in the Wasteland.

And that's when the corpse suddenly moves, yeah its a Ghoul, but LittlePip doesn't know that so it freaks her out. So after calming down a little, and probably hoping that the Ghoul won't eat her brains, she frees the mare from her bonds.

“Now if I let you go, and you try to eat my brains, we’re going to have harsh words.”

Wow LittlePip, I meant that as a joke.

The Ghoul was at least thankful for being freed, but they didn't a stay to help. Since this is still a Raider area, two more decide to show up at this point... geez, where are all these Raiders coming from? Anyway, without many options at this point, LittlePip uses her telekinesis to drop a bookshelf on one of them. She also finds a pair of binoculars that had fallen off the shelf and picks up the Raider's assault rifle before going after the other Raider.

The second Raider then drops a bunch of mines on her... okay not exactly book smart, but points for strategy in this Raider. She creates a shield out of a kitchen table before the mines explode.

LittlePip gathers up what's left of the Raider armor and ammo. she finds the Raider again and he then runs off when he realizes how well armed she is... there goes the smartest Raider in the Equestrian Wasteland. LittlePip runs upstairs when she hears the sound of a pony calling for help and finds a poor filly that has been repeatedly brutalized and raped. She was surprised to then find the Ghoul from before is a hostage of the Raider.

LittlePip points out to the Raider that you can't really tell somepony to surrender if you have an ax in your mouth, and she threatens to shove a grenade up his tailhole... geez, overkill much? The Raider finally relents, drops his ax, and runs away as fast as he can, but she kills him anyway. She then tells the Ghoul that she's going to go take care of the Sniper and rushes off.

And, umm, hmm, it seems that her taking out the Sniper isn't here... I could've sworn I read that, oh well. She starts looking around, using the Sniper Rifle to take out any other Raiders on her way out of town. She also finds a memorial to Big Macintosh who apparently had died in the Battle of Shattered Hoof Ridge, something else that will be explored later. She ducks into a hiding spot she remembered from the broadcast she heard the night before.

She looks over what she had managed to find from the Library including one book that she had picked up.

“The Wasteland Survival Guide. By Ditzy Doo...”

---Chapter 4: Perspective---

So the chapter starts out with LittlePip calling herself stupid for deciding to check out the Ironshod Firearms after having read a chapter about pre-war technology in The Wasteland Survival Guide. Yeah, it didn't exactly go according to plan seeing as how she almost immediately got attacked by crazy ponicidal robots.

Yeah, sounds pretty much like all my attempts to play Fallout.

By this point LittlePip is running out of ammo and is pretty much only alive because she found a med kit in one of the bathrooms. The Robobrains (which is what they are) are down on the floor below looking for her. She comments on how, disturbing the very idea of Robobrains is, and yeah, I pretty much have to agree with her on that given how that tends to go in Fallout.

“Come on out. We only want to kill you for trespassing!”

You know maybe we should consider not putting organic brains into robots, just an idea.

But of course that's the least of her problems because there's also what seems to be a Mr. Gutsy in the building because apparently we can't let our hero have an easy time. She took out grenades and used them to take out the robot easily enough and then heads back out into the main room. She looks at the catwalk leading out and then deciding that it's too dangerous to walk across it, so she tries self levitation, which gets her as far as she needs.

And then the Robobrains decide to start shooting lightning at her again while she runs along the catwalk, nearly getting electrocuted at one point. She found a door that had to be unlocked with a terminal and set herself back down on the catwalk, thankfully she didn't get electrocuted this time. We also get this line, the first of many:

Oh fuck me with Celestia’s forehooves!

Are we going to have to start a colorful curse words count? If so, 1.

She jumped over the last gap to the other side and barely managed to hang onto it as the catwalk behind her fell, for a moment dangling over the ancient assembly line before she used her telekinesis to pull herself up. Just as she's about to head for the door however, she gets zapped by the Robobrains. She manages to pull herself up to her hooves (though for some reason the fic says feet for some reason), she tried the door and pushed it open and after another blast of electricity managed to pull herself in, taking out the Robobrain with what was left of the catwalk.

See this is why I like LittlePip, she's still new to the Wasteland, but she's very resourceful.

Luckily the room she finds inside the room has another way out, there's also a logo for the company on the wall.

IRONSHOD FIREARMS
How do you like them apples?

Wow that was a terrible pun given who ran Ironshod.

We get some more wartime propaganda posters, but more importantly she finds what will become her signature weapon, a revolver with an ivory bit with the familiar three apples mark. She manages to get a safe open, finding several pretty useful things including a StealthBuck, always useful. She starts checking the terminal while taking out an apple which had actually taken a bullet, and also it turned out that she could've just unlocked the safe with the terminal.

Yeah, that's pretty much what happens with me a lot too.

Anyway, she selects the option to open the display case, which triggers a message:

“Cousin Braeburn, Ah know we ain’t talked in some time, but the war effort’s takin’ a twist for the scary, and Ah might not have a chance t’ see ya again. Ah want t’ mend fences. Now, Ah ain’t gonna muck this up with words. We all know how well that went last time. Instead, Ah’m sendin’ ya Lil’ Macintosh as a gift and as an apology. T’show you I’m sincere. Keep ‘im safe for me, will ya?”

Yeah, the gun had been a gift to Braeburn, probably from Applejack, in order to try and make up with him. After gathering up some more gear she tries to take the elevator, but seeing as how there's no such thing as things being easy in the Equestrian Wasteland, it doesn't work. Luckily for LittlePip however, it was just an issue with the interface's battery being dead so she's able to get it repaired pretty quickly. As she starts to leave however, she remembers that Macintosh was a familiar name to her.

She leaves Ironshod Firearms and starts making her way around the buildings, she sees a Sprite-Bot which just ignores her, so its not Watcher at least. She starts looking around again, trying to figure out what to do next since she still has to find friends as Watcher had suggested to her before.

While poking around the ruins she finds a Red Rider Scooter as she reaches the edge of a playground, which has a skeleton of a foal in it. Its a sad moment really, a symbol of lost innocence among the ruins, a true tragedy. She finds an old Sparkle-Cola vending machine and used some of the bits she had found in Ironshod in order to get a soda. As she looked around she saw what I still consider to be very creepy, the "PINKIE PIE IS WATCHING YOU FOREVER" poster.

I swear those things give me the creeps.

She also first learns about the Ministry of Morale at this point from the poster as Watcher decides at this point to show up again, calling it a well-meaning idea that was so much better on scroll. There's a discussion about LittlePip still trying to find her place in Equestria, and Watcher implies that it might be because she hadn't found her Virtue yet. LittlePip asks what he meant by that, so we get an explination from Watcher:

“Well,” the flying ball began, “The greatest heroes of Equestria, ponies with lifelong bonds of unbreakable friendship and strength, were each known for exemplifying one of the great virtues of ponykind. Kindness, honesty, laughter…”

“Laughter is a virtue?” I asked dubiously.

“Roll with me on this,” the sprite-bot continued without breaking stride. “Generosity, loyalty and magic. They really didn’t know themselves, or each other, until one pony came to realize that her friends represented these virtues, and together they grew to live by them. Now, I’m not saying those are the only virtues, they are just a…” Now the bot paused as if searching for words. “…particularly important set. I’m just saying that perhaps if you learn to recognize the dominant virtue in your own heart, you will find yourself. And you won’t need anyone or anything else to tell you your place in the” Watcher’s voice cut out with an abrupt pop and music once again poured from the bot.

Yeah, a pretty incomplete explanation but not a bad one really. LittlePip sighs and finishes her soda, and then something occurred to her. The Wasteland Survivor's Guide had to have been written after the apocalypse not before, so she had to wonder if that meant that Watcher had sent her to save the ponies that were being held captive.

That's when the music stops again, and a new voice is heard over the Sprite-Bot, the charismatic voice of a Stallion.

“Friends, ponies, rejoice! Although the world about you is bleak, scarred and poisoned by the war of honorless, thoughtless, inferior ponies of the past, we do not have to live in the shadow of their greed and wickedness. Together, we can raise Equestria back to its former beauty! Together, we can build a new kingdom where all live together in perfect unity! It’s already happening, my good ponies. Already, the foundation for a new and wonderful age is being built. Yes, it’s hard work, but don’t we owe it to ourselves, and to future generations of ponies, to be better? No, to be the best we can possibly be? I’m telling you now, as your friend, as your leader, that we can. We must. And we WILL!”

While he hasn't been named yet, I'm sure anyone can figure out who this is. And I will freely admit, this guy is one of my favorite characters in the fanfic, I'll explain as we learn more about him.

The song continues and LittlePip is a bit perplexed, thinking that the voice is from the leader of all Ponies in Equestria. As she looks around, she spots a settlement in the distance and starts heading in that direction.

As LittlePip traveled around and got attacked by a mutant pig and took it out. She then finds an abandoned camp under a bridge with some food and ammunition, including this, I just wanted to say it:

“Magical Fruit” the label boasted, but it turned out just to be beans

.

Anyway she continues on her way towards the nearby Settlement when she gets shot at, again. She bandaged her leg up and looked around to see who had attacked her, only to see nothing until she looked up and saw a a rust colored Pegasus with a black desperado hat who then shot at her again, taking out a rock she was using to protect herself and the last of the water in her canteens.

She then saw a wagon with ponies in it that was heading in the area, she suddenly panicked, believing that the Pegasus was about to attack them so she got to her hooves again. She told the attacking Pegasus that she was going to protect the family, which made him suddenly stop his attack on her, and then he says that she's the one attacking them!

The Pegasus said that he had seen her and believed she was a Raider so he had shot at her, and LittlePip insists that she's not a Raider. Calamity of course says that she looks like one, but LittlePip doesn't have a chance to argue as she falls unconscious, this being the last words she hears:

“Calamity, what have you done?!”

---Concept Analysis: Raiders---

Raiders are a, simple but at times misunderstood concept in Fallout, Fallout: Equestria, and similar Post-Apocalyptic media.

At their core, Raiders are caused by the breakdown of society. There is no longer any law other than the law of the jungle, that you have to be strong in order to survive. The Raiders are built on this concept, and ultimately this is something that you have to understand, there is no other explination for Raiders.

While I was writing this review I was watching the episode of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation Fannysmackin', and at the end of the episode there was a quote that I found fit the nature of Raiders perfectly:

"The truth is, a moral compass can only point you in the right direction, it can't make you go there. Our culture preaches that you shouldn't be ashamed of anything you do anymore. And unfortunately, this city is built on the principle that there's no such thing as guilt. "Do whatever you want, we won't tell." So without a conscience, there's nothing to stop you from killing someone. And evidently you don't even have to feel bad about it."

Yeah, this is a post-apocalyptic world, and a lot of ponies are going to act like this, its something that holds true in a lot of stories in this genre. It all comes down to this idea that when there is no law, then the degenerates of society will rule, something that the Equestrian Wasteland shows repeatedly.

But the real question is, are all Raiders inherently evil? That's a complicated question in of itself, perhaps the world isn't always black and white, but we'll get into that later.

---Final Thoughts---

I've said it before, I'll say it again, I love Fallout: Equestria, this fic is how I got into My Little Pony and I don't regret checking it out. This is why I started these reviews really.

These two chapters while being pretty dark and a bit disturbing (I left out some of the more gruesome details to Ponyville), but that's to be expected in this kind of fic. This is still a wonderful story and I highly recommend it. These chapters are a good start, and it really shows off the themes and things of the fic.

I want to take this moment to thank KKat for creating such an amazing world for us all to enjoy. Happy Birthday KKat, I hope you have many more.

Chapter 3 gets a score of 5/5.
Chapter 4 gets a score of 5/5.

Read it Here.

Next review will be on Sunday of course, and it'll still be Project Horizons, see you guys then.

Video made by me.

Comments

[Ponymeat]

The problem I had with raiders in the original Fallout universe, at least the ones in Fallout 3 that are not part of an organized group, they only exist as a enemy for the player to fight. Their hostile to everyone, attack for no given reason, they're existence makes no sense in the Fallout setting precisely because they are generic enemies and not an organized faction. Not like the Khans or even the Fiends. They should NOT have survived two centuries after the apocalypse, the should have ether been stamped out completely by genuine raider factions or settlements.

So you can imagine how I am uneasy about raiders in Fallout Equestria, though at the very least they serve a thematic purpose to the story.

[RuinQueenofOblivion]

4447563 Well think about it this way, Raiders don't have to have survived as a group over 200 years, new Raider groups could easily pop up from failed settlements, escaped slaves, Vaults that went crazy, etc.