Avoiding being mugged upon entering The Pitt?

[Sir Mediocre]

That four Pitt slaver lackeys with lead pipes can beat you unconsciousness regardless of your melee combat proficiency (or, in the case of that which prompted this request, my having been encased in T45-d power armor at the time) is...well, quite frankly, it smacks of Bethesda's usual penchant for blatant railroading. I can't be the only person of this opinion.

Is someone up to the task of creating an alternate disguise-less entry to the Pitt that would allow you to overwhelm the Pitt slaver regime by force WITHOUT being overwhelmed and disarmed first yourself? Ergo, one that would let you march in, guns blazing, and wipe the floor with the slavers instead of being taken captive the moment you set foot in the place?

I realize that the mugging scene is part of the story, but it is a silly and unessential part, in my opinion. Anyone who has discussed power armors in the PANZER thread can attest to the superiority offered by a suit of power armor. Whatever the method for bypassing the mugging part of the quest, that is the basis of my argument: Armament and combat skill should determine whether or not you can be overwhelmed by the Pitt Raiders.

[plumjuice]

This would be a large undertaking:

-Vast portions of the voiced dialogue would be rendered obsolete, meaning any new stuff would either be unvoiced or newly recorded. The latter of which involves a LOT of work.

-New quests would probably need to be devised in order to plump up play time, due to the very small amount of time it will take to clear a half dozen areas of raiders.

-All of the unique items you get from the ingot quest would need to be re-distributed. Not difficult in practice, but immersion wise you'll need to have them being used by the raiders, which might be difficult to balance.

-IIRC, the whole point of being deceptive is so you can get inside the main building without them barricading themselves in and turning any invaders into swiss cheese from relative safety. Sure, small arms might not kill you in Power Armor, but it's not like they don't have a few grenades lying around.

It's a nice idea, and certainly one a few of my past characters would have enjoyed, but it would an arduous task to make and bug fix, for a rather small reward. Just saying.

[Sir Mediocre]

Those are all good points, but bypassing the Steel Mill and its surrounding areas entirely isn't what I had in mind. What I DID have in mind was some sort of skill or equipment check that would allow you to gain the upper hand in the mugging scene and continue to infiltrate the place on your own terms. For example, when you walk through the door and the scripted scene initiates, all of your weapons are holstered regardless of whether you had them ready or not beforehand, and all player controls are disabled, as well. That doesn't make a lick of sense and occurs solely for railroading purposes.

I think remedying the situation would be as simple as disabling those parts of the script and, instead of having a four guys beat you senseless with pipes and their bare hands before you are transported to the slave pens/mill/wherever, have MORE guys present to both beat you senseless and turn you into Swiss cheese. If you have a quick trigger finger and a good gun, you can try your luck at out-shooting all the other guys before they can fill you with lead. Either that, or you could use a Stealth Boy prior to entering that area and attempt to sneak through unnoticed.

I could use the GECK to add copious quantities of mean-spirited Pitt Raiders to the area, but I don't know if I could alter the quest stages to my ends without screwing something up horribly in the process.

[plumjuice]

If you kill a dozen guards at the gate, how exactly is the rest of the current storyline supposed to have any sort of rationale or continuity? I don't understand how you think the beginning could be so radically altered and yet have no affect on the rest of the events.

[TrickyVein]

Plumjuice, I think you're being overly critical. This would make for a good mod even if all it does is to offer the player more choices and the illusion of being able to storm the downtown - at some point, the player would be captured, but whether that's at the gate or later on against impossible odds doesn't really matter for the quest. Consider the following:

In Deus Ex, if you choose to escape from Paul's apartment in Hell's Kitchen through the window when the MIBs knock on Paul's door, you are given no choice but to fight your way through or evade UNATCO troops until you 'die' and are captured and then you wake up in a cell in the MJ12 labs. What Bethesda has done, and what Mediocre takes issue with (and I imagine many others, myself included) is akin to if in Deus Ex, instead of being able to escape from your captors, your player controls were locked and you saw a cutscene or something after escaping out of Paul's window and then the screen fades to black and *bam* you wake up in a cell. That would have sucked. You can actually fight through UNATCO troops going as far back as Battery Park, where you meet Gunther.

Now that is awesome. I bet a lot of designers wouldn't even think to 'waste time' on letting the player choose to go down a hopeless path. No, there must be hand-holding at all times, lest you really lose yourself in a game and god-forbird feel like you have some real agency.

So in The Pitt, you could choose to 1) wear the slave outfit and then get smacked down or 2) go in guns-blazing and fight through raider scum until their numbers overwhelmed you and you 'die.' During the latter possibility, certain doorways would be locked, for instance to The Mill or other areas. I feel like this is totally doable. This offers a very tantalizing possibility for gameplay when you realize when you wake up a slave that you spent all of your ammo and used up all of your stimpacks: a real 'oh crap' moment for the player, and there aren't nearly enough of those moments in the game. 

[Sir Mediocre]

^^ Exactly! Although, why the slavers would take you as a prisoner instead of killing you outright after such an assault is beyond me. My main gripe with the scenario is that four guys with pipes were able to beat me up through a suit of power armor. There are more events similar to this one in Fallout 3, such as the stun grenade sequence with Colonel Autumn when you attempt to exit Vault 87. I tried running back and around a corner well beyond the range of a the grenade's blast radius before it fell from the ceiling, but I was incapacitated because the event was scripted. Even worse: If you decide to side with the Enclave and give Colonel Autumn  the activation code to Project Purity--oh, wait, you can't side with the Enclave, because the good Colonel shoots you in the head when you give him aforementioned code.

That kind of railroading is just bad writing.

Edit: On that note, I did a small test. If you enable player controls via console as soon as you go through the door before being mugged and you are fast enough in getting a gun out (I recommend a pistol, though I have increased headshot damage), you can kill the four lackeys and named slaver in VATS and be on your merry way. Hopefully, that doesn't break anything too badly. I'm going to see how far I can go.

[TrickyVein]

It's a trade-off, you know - at some point, if you just don't have the time or the impetus to invest in a divergent storyline it's OK to force the player into a bottleneck like that. But just because the game designers know what's going to happen doesn't mean the player has to as well. You can at least feel like it's possible to choose a different route. That's really valuable.

I forsee being able to kill the slave pitt master and any other raiders which are there - in which case you may want to think about adding different raiders at the very beginning so that you're not killing NPC references that are involved in quests. Know what I mean?

Then, I guess you'd need to think about how far into the playable area you'd like to be able to go - it probably won't extend beyond just the one - and from where more raiders spawn to overwhelm the player and then how powerful they should be. Probably from Uptown, walking along the scaffolding and from the Mill, too. Ausir, himself a former BoS would know how to deal with someone wearing power armor. He'd bring out the big guns. 

Yeah, so it doesn't make much sense why they'd keep you alive after that - maybe you could introduce a penalty of some kind where you start with reduced health or a crippled limb if you choose the violent route. 

[plumjuice]

My issues stem from the fact that all subsequent interactions and events during The Pitt are based upon you being undercover as a slave with no items. If you are going to go in guns blazing and kill all the raiders (very possible, and even easier with a sneak attacking silenced sniper) right from the off, very significant portions of the content do not make sense: collecting the ingots, the gladiatorial fights, the very start where you retrieve a slave uniform (although this could happen and you could still pop caps later I guess), all of the conversations with midea, all the conversations with ashur and his wife and cronies are almost entirely unusable.

And as you have already discussed, if you DO attack, they aren't going to let you live. So guns blazing isn't really viable as an alternate entry to the current story options. A new narrative, specific to this option would have to be created.

Like I said in my first post, I like the idea, but to make it feel natural, a lot of work would need to be done.

Now for some slightly more constructive stuff. Options:

-Go in guns blazing, get beaten. Ashur chooses to let you live as a gladiator. A sequence of events (tba) lead to you escaping the Hole. The workers begin the default riot as you escape, or possibly they just riot, and free you as part of it.

-Some form of drainage system is put in place (sewage probably) and a few extra exterior areas are added, so as to allow you to sneak into the main fort. The standard "Choose your side" convo happens, with some extra, unvoiced, dialogue replacing some of the current, concerning how you managed to get inside, etc.

-As soon as you attack the gate guards, the workers riot. You kill Ashur. U R WINRAR!!1

-You kill the gate guards. One of the higher ranked ones (who appears from offscreen) initiates dialogue. Speech check to speak to ashur. Standard "Choose your side" convo happens, with some changed dialogue to reflect new entry method.

That's all I got right now.

[TrickyVein]

IIRC, regardless of what you're wearing when you enter into The Pitt, the slavers just assume that you were an escaped slave who's found this stuff somewhere on the outside. 

As dumb as that is, that's the narrative, and so there's no reason to modify it. So the PC can choose to stir some trouble when you return to The Pitt and the slavers have to put you down. Ausir, wanting to impress upon the 'workers' that he is a benevolent god decides to show mercy. 

Otherwise, no one wants to seriously consider crafting an alternative narrative. That's not really what we're talking about here. 

[plumjuice]

Before the rest of this I would like to testify to the stupidity of having all your stuff taken (my T-51b, my AM Rifle, my 200lb of ammo and explosives) and have the guard say "Woah, where did a slave get all this stuff!" -_-

The reason the story would need to change is because the only reason you get your stuff back for your fights in the Hole is because you are a virtual unknown.

Assuming for the moment that a ruthless leader of murderers, striving with all his might to rebuild a small city on the corpses of slaves, doesn't just kill you to make sure you don't disrupt anything again, AND doesn't just put you (unarmed) in a death match in the Hole, AND doesn't send you (unarmed) out to the steel mill and refuse to let you back in, AND doesn't assume you are in league with werner and have you shot immediately, AND decides to simply make you another slave: He isn't going to give you your stuff back. And he certainly isn't going to let you near his wife. You proved yourself to be far too large and unpredictable a problem at the gate.

Which means the riot starts with you outside. Which means either you die, or you kill all of the raiders outside and charge the HQ whereupon you discover the door barricaded and boobie trapped, and you and all the workers die in a hail of gunfire from the upper floors.

As I have said, it's an interesting idea, I like it, but Ashur isn't some hippy with a flower garden; he's going to kill you the instant he thinks you are a threat to his vision. Consideration, I think, should be paid to the consequences of gunning down a dozen dudes right at the outset.

It isn't like it's their fault. To them you are either a slave or an enemy. Also, if you really intended to shoot them on sight, the entire conversation you have with werner before you take the train cart makes precisely zero sense. If you wanna talk about railroading, it starts earlier than the gate guards.