The days are getting longer, the
temperature warmer, and the snow is less than three feet deep. It’s almost spring time here in New England,
and that means my mind and gaming habits turn towards raucous outdoor
adventure. I recently fired up Fallout:
New Vegas, a game as much about surviving in the wilderness as it is about
blasting mutants, and was greeted by the mustachioed face of my smiling,
badass, gay cowboy.
Yes, you read that right. Fallout: New Vegas is a game that rewards you
for playing a friendly gay cowboy (mustache optional) in a world where cowboys
and rangers are fighting Imperial Rome over the Las Vegas strip (yup, that’s
more or less the whole plot). Here’s how
you do it:
First, be Good Natured. Taking this perk at first level deducts
points from all of your combat skills while increasing many of the important
non-combat skills like First Aid, Speech, and Barter. Sounds bad for a gunslinging cowboy, but you
are only going to want the cowboy-oriented combat skills (guns & melee) so
it’s easy to move points around to get all the wild west wasteland shootin’ and
stabbin’ skills you need.
Second, you should be into dudes. Serious.
By second level, if you are male, you can take the perk Confirmed
Bachelor which rewards you for your intimate familiarity with the male body to
give you +10% damage to the same sex (and a good chunk of your enemies are men),
plus the chance to flirt with an occasional wasteland wanderer.
Third, make sure to get good at
shootin’ and stabbin’, because by level eight with 45 points in guns &
melee you can take the Cowboy perk, giving you +25% damage done by dynamite,
hatchets, knives, revolvers, and lever-action guns.
From there you can add in perks like
quick draw, gunslinger, and a host of other gunfighter & survivalist perks
to round out your cowpoke. By building a
gay cowboy step by step, you get a whopping +35% damage to some of the best
some of the coolest weapons on your most common enemies. Certainly this was a crafty plan of the
writers, and I love them for it.
