So gone are the days of a unique and interesting ethical greyness of the post-apocalypse. And in finishing the story, there were no unexpected surprises – things didn’t change much following my choice, and certainly not in an unpredictable way. I knew what the alternate endings to the path I trod before were because the two options had been lain out before me the last time I went through. In my second play-through of F4, I realised that I’d found almost everything there was to see I’d been to almost all of the locations, killed the inhabitants, looted the chests and left, and in the places I hadn’t found, killing something and looting a chest was about all there was to do. I play it for the things I miss the first time and discover on a later play-through. I don’t play Fallout in order to check off all the settlements I’ve liberated, or the areas I’ve wiped clean of enemies. The uniqueness of Fallout is in its one-of-a-kind atmosphere, the tongue-in-cheek humour, the secrets and surprises that lay hiding around the world, waiting to be stumbled upon, and the feeling that in making choices, you’re never making things perfect you’re making friends and enemies, and changing the world before you. That helped to heal the breach between Sunspear and the Yronwoods, but it had opened new ones between Quentyn and the Sand Snakes… and Arianne had always been closer to her cousins than to her distant brother.Īnd you can get a base-building open world FPS game elsewhere. And in due time, Quentyn was given to Lord Anders to foster as a sign of trust. The Red Viper went to Oldtown, thence across to the narrow sea to Lys, though none dared call it exile. Blood feud and rebellion would surely have followed Lord Edgar’s death, had not her father acted at once. Before the coming of the Rhoynar they had been kings over half of Dorne, with domains that dwarfed those of House Martell. The Yronwoods were an ancient house, proud and powerful. Afterward men called him ‘the Red Viper,’ and spoke of poison on his blade. In his youth her uncle Oberyn had fought a duel with Edgar, had given him a wound that mortified and killed him. Quentyn had been fostered by Lord Anders of House Yronwood, the Bloodroyal, the son of Lord Ormond Yronwood and grandson of Lord Edgar. Though if truth be told, she scarcely knew him. "I love my brother,” said Arianne, though only the moon could hear her. They were only just born, they were just here I’m telling you, my boy Quent and those older boys he runs around with! I saw him waving when they went off to fight the monster to get justice for his auntie, he was so scared but trying to be brave, just wave, just wave and you’ll be fine, he’ll be home by nightfall, you’ll see. They ate and slept, yelled and sang, wept and laughed and farted. They had friends, every bit as much as those heroes who succeeded. A book later, we have been shown (not just told, but shown) that every one of those nameless Not The Heroes whom the skinchanger dispatched with such swift and terrible ease had a story. I’m talking about Quentyn, because I see him and his dead friends in the trail of skeletons outside Varamyr’s lair. I’m not talking here about the setup Varamyr’s Prologue does for Jon’s character arc, nor for Bran’s, as both are well-trod territory by now. What makes this chapter not just a nightmare (though it is that, and a peerlessly skin-crawling eldritch nightmare if ever I was jerked awake screaming from one) is the many-layered resonances it has with the book that follows. They were ready, in the name of Story, to dance with dragons. They were going to save their lovers, avenge their families, slay the feared and hated Sixskins, or die trying. Scared, maybe-certainly-but they were there. They are (the dragon would always pause to think in the heartbeat before he began bathing in their blood) doing what they think they’re supposed to do, the best thing they know how to do, as far as their cattle brains are concerned. They thought the gods would guide their hand to strike the beast true, or some such rot, never realizing until it was too late that the gods weren’t home and it was just them and the nightmares. They thought they would be able to hear the songs to be written of their triumph in their ears, rather than their own heart drumming a nervous beat and the shrieks of their companions (those that had made it this far). They must have thought it would feel differently than this, he mused as he approached them. Never quite as tall as they thought they were, these heroes, the dragon would sigh every time as he uncoiled and moved towards the door. It was only natural, then, that they started showing up at his doorstep.
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