Fallout: Sonora (a Mexican-themed Fallout game)

[Music] um [Music] have you ever seen anyone kill an overseer with a toothpick fallout senora is a fan made mexican-themed fallout game originally released in 2019 it happens to be maybe the fourth best fallout game ever made which is some big shoes to fill so how come you haven't heard about this game before well that's because of the language barrier primarily another reason is that the classic fallout games just don't have as big of an audience as the mainstream first person titles sonora rather faithfully imitates the style and gameplay of fallout 1 deviating from the old game in one important way and that is its story structure the first half of sonora is a detective investigation kind of like an arcanum while in the second half it becomes a political struggle like in new vegas several factions some completely new others very familiar will challenge each other for dominance in arizona this video is long and detailed but there will be a courtesy warning before we get to the end game spoilers if you are worried about that sort of thing let's begin part 1 press 2 for english shut up i'm funny don't get intimidated by the character creation screen it's a lot less complex than it looks our name is rafael we are a traveling doctor roaming the wasteland curing the sick but we also know how to use a rifle and a knife if it comes to that we are agile intelligent kind of strong and the rest of our stats are basically average finally i pick the spanish literacy trait the game mostly takes place in the former united states but there is also a little bit of post-apocalyptic mexico for us to explore the knowledge of spanish might come in handy it's 2167 the master died six years ago ncr doesn't exist yet neither does arroyo the tribal won't embark on his adventure for another 74 years welcome to the villa an isolated farming community our home the design document describes the villa as shady sands with a spanish accent but where is everyone the woman with a smoking pipe is grand maradoncia one of the village elders bad people came they had guns our man couldn't do anything all able-bodied villagers were taken our mom and dad were among the kidnapped in the cellar beneath the town hall there is a hidden room with old relics we are gonna need them the cellar is your basic boomer rpg tutorial dungeon grandma gave us an old lighter we can use to light these lamps but i'm not sure if it does anything mechanically might make the rats a little easier to hit we should be beneath the town hall one of the raiders who attacked the village was left behind looks like he fell down the stairs so this is the secret room we've been told about our character is surprised to see a computer in the villa the machine isn't working in the cabinet there is a box full of old stuff one of the items inside is a vault jumpsuit and so the adventure begins hmm doesn't look like all working age mails were taken here is chris he hid in the cellar while everyone else was fighting chris feels guilty for his cowardice but what's done is done using our doctor's skill we heal a wounded villager it costs us absolutely nothing to do this which is probably not very realistic while providing experience and reputation rewards a traveling doctor is a legit career path in sonora this is the building beneath which we found the vault jumpsuit strange that the jumpsuit doesn't seem to have a number on the back we took some casualties in the raid nothing we can do now the residential part of the village is a ghost town there is some interesting reactivity here like we can loot the empty houses but then once the owners get back if they get back they won't be super happy with us these two are opportunistic bandits they saw the village getting attacked thought maybe they could grab something valuable from the warehouse behind them the bandits are completely unafraid of us but they should be healing the sick is not our only talent the villa is politically isolationist we know next to nothing about the outside world the only exception being the nearby scavenger settlement welcome to garage city what's your business here show your hands says the guard apparently some of the local raiders suffer from a condition called the shakes a consequence of the cannibal lifestyle our character gets to use his doctor's skill in dialogue never thought about it but yeah the jackals are rumored to be cannibals says the guard we sell all the crap we brought with us from the villa and by our first suit of armor garage city is somewhat similar to junk town from the original game the local prospectors scavenge in the nearby industrial ruins they are controlled by a cartel the man named kogan is in charge but before we take a dive into the local politics i want to get a feel for the surrounding area special encounter a slave caravan transporting a device of some sort what's that symbol and who is the man in purple robes the old fallout games are interactive in various unexpected ways that's one of my favorite things about them you see these guys they're armed with hunting rifles powerful weapons at the stage of the game no way we're taking them on but i'm not content with leaving empty-handed in classic fallout if you score a critical hit on a character's head there is a very high chance of knocking them unconscious like this when they are unconscious you can freely access their inventory and take their stuff so we grab the merc's rifle and run away thanks for the free gun [ __ ] back in garage city kogan wants our help in dealing with the rival scavenger faction not sure if i'm willing to commit to this the man doesn't look up trustworthy or something a trailer at the edge of town nice new sprite the interior is also unique inside there is a trap door well look at that there is equipment here to produce counterfeit bottle caps indistinguishable from real caps because they are real caps we dismantle the equipment the what's electronics plant kogen send us here another new tile set pretty sure this one is only used once in the entire game this man is the leader of the scavenger faction that opposes kagan's little syndicate he is surprised to see we are working for the man considering he had a role to play in the kidnapping of our people now that is interesting information we access kogan's personal computer and confirm that this is indeed the case he actively worked with the kidnappers before and after they invaded the villa we learn of the nearby town of flagstaff there is a high degree of possibility our people were taken there lucas wants to take over the scavenger business actually he is a lot more ambitious than that there is a heavy-duty industrial machine in the watts plant if it could be restored to working condition the town's economy will no longer have to revolve around finding old crap in the ruins the conflict between the two gangs is inevitable this is the first time we have seen an energy weapon used in sonora there is another one at the plant if you have high enough repair skill to fix it colgan's dead lucas is now in charge and we know where to go next i am satisfied with this outcome but before we head to flagstaff there is one more place i want to check out [Music] what's up with the ventilation shafts the ruined house is full of traps remember when the guard inspected us for the signs of cannibalism-related condition these guys are the reason the jackals are a cannibal tribe you might be familiar with them they were in new vegas although in that game they didn't have much of a culture and were basically generic raiders they were supposed to be featured in van buren the original fallout 3 canceled by interplay in early 2000s the leader of the tribe is a woman called mad [ __ ] a powerful name despite what this might look like this is actually not a combat encounter location there are several ways of solving the jackals problem peacefully me though i choose violence a cannibal tribe this close to the villa it's just irresponsible to leave them alive thankfully even when it comes to violent solutions sonora offers many different options it's possible to attach a rope to one of the vents and drop right on top of the cannibals avoiding the traps or we can go back to garage city and ask the guard for backup all we need is a few good men and here they are the guys are not of a very high opinion of the jackals combat prowess the cannibals are numerous but individually weak they say we find a necklace made out of bullets of various calibers sonora makes a number of important changes to the skill system most notably pistols and rifles are actually two separate skills small guns govern our proficiency with pistols and smgs while the big gun skill reflects our competence with rifles shotguns and anything bigger machine guns flamethrowers miniguns so on this makes the big gun skill much more useful than it was in fallout 1 or 2. the caves are decorated with these tribal totems made out of trash and human bones it's possible to dismantle them using the repair skill interesting this looks high-tech wonder what it does looks like a kitchen that's gross this section of the caves hosts an improvised prison inside there is a desert ranger captured by the jackals one of these guys the man is wounded we are a doctor so we provide medical aid the ranger joins our crew for man is probably enough to take on mad [ __ ] well it was barely enough the garage city boys ended up dying to cannibals the ranger landed the killing blow on the cannibal leader see this the number 15 the jackals are one of the communities who emerged from vault 15. the khans are another such community shady sands and subsequently the ncr was founded by yet another group of former vault 15 residents i guess we're done here killed the jackals rescued a ranger lost two men not great not terrible let's talk about the sonora dev team for a minute the mod page credits a group of people but looking at the list closely most of these guys appear to be testers and qa now iteration is an important part of making a game good so i'm not one to dis testers or quality assurance people however it does seem that the primary creative engine behind sonora was a single individual and that would be alexander pogelusian who goes by the online handle black designer this is not even his first fallout game nor it is the largest alexander is basically one man tamriel rebuilt of classic fallout modding the developer put the design documents for fallout sonora in public access so i'll be referencing them in the video our destination is flagstaff a small town built around a prison colony and a uranium mine in new vegas era the place would become the headquarters of the legion but the events of that game are many many decades away you might remember this symbol we've seen it before the church of the holy fire an influential organization from phoenix flagstaff was practically built on the church's money brags the monk well since the church is so goddamn rich they wouldn't mind me borrowing this doctor's bag from their basement the goddamned cultists demand you convert to their faith before providing medical aid complains the father of a sick child the garrison this is where they keep our people as well as others they kidnapped and enslaved the man named faber is in charge he's this game's metzger the design doc says quote faber is african-american this creates contrast and historical recursion or irony because the slaves were black i might be persuaded to free the worthless peasants he says if you fix whatever is wrong with the mine first things first we provide medical aid to a collapsed miner there are two problems for us to solve the faulty equipment is one and the mole rat infestation is another we rescue a bunch of miners trapped behind a cave-in turns out these are some of our people from the villa on our way back to the entrance we are ambushed by a mole red king i get lucky with one of them critical hits in the eyes that instantly kills the target irrespective of damage dealt i thought you needed a perk for that repairing the mining equipment turned out to be much more challenging impossible actually using repair parts on an object that needs to be repaired will lower the skill check difficulty by 20 per part unfortunately we are so incompetent that even after using three sets of parts we still can't succeed in repairing the machine maybe faber has something else for us to do a few patrols were ambushed in the abandoned eastern part of the town he says find out what's going on um is that a museum i will never put points in the trap skill cool satellite another new sprite by the way in the basement of the museum we find the source of faber's problems a desert ranger vigilante he says the command didn't order the operation but they also didn't do anything to stop him i have no intention of stopping him either this isn't good another task we can't complete the ranger's name is kuruk i'm not sure if he ever tells us that but that's what the document says keruk means bear in navajo dialect in real life the reservation is not geographically far from flagstaff just outside of town there is a small hunting camp occupied by hostile tribals we rescue a captured traitor and escort him back to flagstaff this is good for our reputation but faber is not impressed although we do convince him to allow us to see our people our mother is here with a slave collar around her neck the collars work by dead money rules basically disobey me that collar on your neck will go off and take your head with it we learn another distress in fact not all our people are in flagstaff some of them were taken elsewhere we need to seek ranger assistance says mom at this point i'm out of options good thing we know the approximate location of the ranger hq so who are the rangers the answer is complicated but it's like this in 1988 interplay released a pre-boomer rpg called wasteland in that game you take control of a squad of the remnants of american military who call themselves the desert rangers wasteland didn't employ sophisticated world building and storytelling techniques or anything like that so the desert ranger ideology was they're basically good guys in 1997 the same company interplay released fallout the original the events of that game took place in a completely different fictional setting and yet it also had desert rangers although initially it was more of a homage than anything later on the rangers were formalized in fallout lore and we have one of them staring at us from new vegas box art sonora takes place six years after fallout 1. the ranger unification didn't happen yet ncr doesn't exist yet the founding of the republic is still decades away the rangers in sonora strictly speaking are not these guys they're more like these guys glorified wasteland cops did you know that the colorado river has something like 15 dams on the main stem hoover dam is one of them this little thing is another the power plant serves as the main ranger base of operations it's inaccessible to outsiders we talk to the officer and explain our predicament i feel bad for you he says there are many who are suffering the red plague from phoenix is expanding through arizona enslaving and conquering everything on its path so are you going to help unfortunately we don't have enough rangers our forces are busy elsewhere and then the [ __ ] has the audacity to ask us for help they need a radio tower repaired or whatever can't believe i used to think these guys were cool not far from the dam there is a small fishing village the locals have a problem with people disappearing the place is managed by this guy an ex-ranger veteran named garth he doesn't seem to care about the disappearances at all that's very not suspicious so i snoop around the aqueduct using a rope we descend into the manhole to the caverns beneath the village huh a bunch of half-beaten dead bodies somebody was trying to cover their tracks getting broken hills vibes from this one of garth's lieutenants confronts us it's obvious they are behind this but their motivations are not super clear the broken hills conflict in fallout 2 was about racism and speciesism but these guys i think they just don't like outsiders [Music] we have a problem when we report our findings to the ranger officer he just laughs at us and tells us to [ __ ] off garth is a respected man a pillar of the community the aqueduct locals like him the rangers like him killing people and leaving their bodies in the dungeon to be eaten by wild animals well that's just crazy talk and if we confront the man ourselves the entire community raises up to stop us unless you intend on killing every man woman and child in the aqueduct you have to reload [ __ ] the desert cup mafia not far from the dam there is a little abandoned town of quartz well it's not entirely abandoned the place is populated by ghouls most of whom live in a trailer park was there ever a trailer park in a fallout game before there must have been is there one in fallout 76 the design dock describes quartz as a gateway between arizona and california the town was also featured in wasteland 1. in fact in that game it was a major location you might assume that since the big guns category now includes both rifles and heavy weapons it's overall much more valuable than small guns while it's balanced by two things big guns tend to be specialized like for example this shotgun has a very short range and the ammunition tends to be more rare and expensive and most importantly big guns take more action points to use since the rangers won't help us we'll need to seek assistance elsewhere the closest nearby settlement is a place called sun brahman the first thing we see is a war camp the mercenaries or the colonists like they prefer to call themselves were sent here from phoenix this land belongs to lord aaron master of the holy fire and the ruler of phoenix says the leader of the mercs the local tribe of brahmin herders is squatting on aaron's land and we can't just evict them by force the brahmin the two-handed cows are a valuable commodity in phoenix sun brahman doesn't resemble a typical tribal village it's more like a small town with traders infrastructure and all it seems obvious that the community existed here for years possibly decades and it almost certainly predates aaron's rule but would it change anything even if it didn't we are all cursed by the dark brahmin says the leader of the tribals he wants to ally with the rangers i'm staying clear of the local politics until i learn more about the factions involved we do however provide medical aid to the wounded locals the medical bag we confiscated in flagstaff came in handy of course the rangers have their representative politicking with the tribals hmm what's this an ancient holy book a curiosity it's time we finally visit phoenix the place we heard so much about the biggest city in the game the place has old-school fallout 1 gothic vibe the aesthetic that is mostly absent in the subsequent games justice prevails no one escapes the vengeance of the heavens the city feels like a combination of angel's boneyard and the hub street vendors this lady sells clothing and armor it's time for us to upgrade to leather hell yeah this is a specialist on old relics like the book we found or that gizmo we retrieved from the jackals a while back it turned out to be a music box by the way a gun store and a shooting range you can pay to practice your firearm skills this is a one-time kind of thing and it costs a crazy amount of caps but the skill increase is permanent well it wouldn't be a fallout game if it didn't have a casino after we buy him a drink a traveler tells a spooky story about an old motel occupied by cannibal ghouls a local is trying to rob us using a primitive homemade handgun that's just sad underneath the city there is a vast network of sewers this section is used by the poor as shelter let's talk about music for a second the game uses the combination of old fallout music and original tracks composed by the artist nobody's nail machine their imitation of mark morgan's style is superb this is the theme of the city of phoenix [Music] jackals garage city [Music] but the star of the show is la ciudad del sol the theme of the invading mexican army uh spoilers the church of the holy fire has the same musical theme as the children of the cathedral in fallout 1. and as you can see the similarities don't end there this is intentional and kind of clever storytelling you'll figure it out the monks operate an impressive library free skill increases for us lord aaron resides on the top floor society isn't ready for independence the people need tyrants and guides he says our organization funds colonies and various projects if a project requires slave labor as they occasionally do it is provided we need to be very careful navigating this conversation one wrong word and our equipment will be confiscated and we'll end up enslaved in tucson that would be a sequence break we don't even know where tucson is yet it's obvious we won't find help in phoenix the rangers and the tribals won't help us either well that leaves us with one last option just kill the [ __ ] big guns and melee weapons have excellent synergy as it turns out knives and spares have relatively low ap cost and most of them don't require ammunition to use your rule came to an end sometimes our character would say a one-liner when we kill an important npc rest in peace roy faber this console deactivates the explosive colors we searched through the files on faber's personal computer some of the most physically developed villagers were taken elsewhere by the fire worshipers we rescue mom and others and escort them out of town i'm almost done with flagstaff but there is one last thing left to do we inform the vigilante ranger that faber is dead and he can return to base all things considered he wasn't super helpful the town is being consumed by a crime wave the slavers the colonists were keeping the peace one of their functions made the trains run on time i guess there are random dead bodies on the streets hm whatever [ __ ] flagstaff [Music] now that we rescued most of the captives let's head back to the villa and see if anything has changed well the place is certainly a lot more populated the game's design document emphasizes that the consequences of players actions are not just a matter of ending slides they must be immediately observable in game our father and a few others are still missing but we know who knows where they are fire worshipers these are mutated scolopendras new creature new sprite mid-tier enemy not super dangerous the sounds and death animations are fantastically well made [Music] we ask a bunch of traders in phoenix about slave caravans but nobody knows anything nobody saw anything the arena prize fighting is a fallout gameplay trope for this reason when i played sonora for the first time i made a character that specialized in unarmed combat unfortunately the phoenix arena turned out to be the only establishment of this sword in the entire game we perform our duties as a doctor by healing a wounded fighter the arena battles are extremely challenging and it's basically pointless to participate if you are not properly trained so i explore the phoenix underground instead we find this on one of the dead bodies an old watch the specialist on old crap says the device still works the atomic battery will be good for decades he tells of a faction called tin smiths from the town of tucson who love old tech like this there are many secrets hidden underground too many to cover in fact this out of the way place is the hq of one of the biggest regional raider gangs it's a fortress really and perhaps surprisingly not a combat encounter location there are quite a few quests we can do here i mean we won't but the option is there the raiders call themselves the blue shields this guy is the leader an amazing animated head understandably in sonora none of them are voice acted if you botch the dialogue you'll end up with your items confiscated and facing a firing squad yeah i'll be back later once i get a bigger machine gun [Music] welcome to casa grande a little town halfway between phoenix and tucson at least i think it's a town the place looks deserted the reason to visit are the water merchants it seems they have some kind of a problem with the locals i have no idea who is in the wrong here the situation eventually deteriorates and the merchant is about to die alright i i guess i have to help him so i take aim with a shotgun pull the trigger and accidentally hit the person i was trying to save you know what i'm not reloading the merchants had a problem with their water purification system i fix it using spare parts the least i can do after you know we don't forget about our responsibility to help the sick this here is the mansion of the mayor who calls himself a count empty beer bottles everywhere the man has a problem with alcohol we tell him our story and ask if a slave caravan went through here recently slavers are a powerful force and my town survives by servicing trade caravans don't you dare to break this relationship says the count this old man turned out to be more helpful remember how in the very beginning of the game during the character creation we picked the spanish literacy trait we didn't get the chance to use it until now the old man is happy to hear his mother tongue he and a bunch of others crossed the sonoran desert on foot most of them didn't make it life in post-apocalyptic mexico is not better than in the former united states it seems good old double-barreled shotgun is useful well into the mid game elsewhere an act of grave robbing goes wrong inside the cave we find a skeleton with this old us ranger badge a relic from the old world we found quite a few of those the challenge is figuring out what to do with them sometimes it's obvious sometimes not so much remember the music box we recovered from the jackals camp that was a while ago in casa grande we meet this kid who is playing with a grenade that's dangerous the kid isn't very talkative until we show him the music box now he's intrigued where did you get the grenade this unlocks a new location for us to visit an abandoned school god damn minds circumcision a gas mask not a unique item they sell those in phoenix but i'm sure it will come in handy in the basement we find a real prize a grenade launcher with several 40 millimeter grenades on our way back we're ambushed by raiders we take an ak-112 from one of the bodies this is another important upgrade because the ak fire is one of the more prevalent ammunition types ammo for big guns can be somewhat scarce but with this rifle we can fire in bursts all day no problem another dead raider provides us with the third important arsenal upgrade a pneumatic spear spears are some of my favorite weapons in classic fallout primarily because of the cool animations mechanically though they're almost completely worthless but not in sonora and that's not even the best spear we can get in the game let's check out this little location a spooky motel and a diner a bunch of dead bodies in the freezer these ghouls are the hosts they're armed with ripper knives they're cannibals as the traitor we rescued we need to get the hell out of here sure but i want to see what's in the basement first don't worry old lady you're safe now you can come with us the lady turned out to be their mom according to the design document the woman is supposed to be immobile chained to the bed her health damaged by the child raring i guess the custom sprite and the animation work turned out to be too much you know what i just realized we have a grenade launcher i wonder why they call themselves blue shields is this like a tribe of post-apocalyptic cops the grenade launcher is a surprisingly accurate weapon that deals amazing aerial effect damage oh my god are you for real that was the bandit leader this guy we take his head and on the body there is the first proper big gun we found a flamethrower a classic there are all kinds of interesting items here like this custom leather jacket makes me wonder what kind of quests we missed by refusing to be social with the raiders i believe these are the keys for the bike and this is a set of metal armor i usually end up skipping it in classic fallout games but not this time we put the key in the ignition let's go when i'm on the road i am indestructible [Music] no one can stop me but they try part two asphalt and trouble the bike comes with a storage compartment the space is limited but you can upgrade it the office of the local crime fighters and bounty hunters this is where they issue bounties on dangerous criminals i'm not a sheriff you idiot says the mercenary as it turns out there is a dangerous criminal in phoenix and that's us we are wanted in flagstaff fortunately after what we've done with the place the locals can't actually afford to pay the bill so we are safe for now based on what we've learned it's possible to make an educated guess where tucson is these guys are called tin smiths another faction but they don't allow just anyone inside the gates there are many ways of getting access but we simply show the guard the old watch we found in the phoenix sewers i'm a trader i have many rare items like this the tin man are post-apocalyptic cyborg people the design docks as they combine some of the features of reavers from fallout tactics the star trek borg and boomers from new vegas the settlement is built around an old military base this huge hangar serves as tintsmith hq the scientists and engineers are studying old airplane parts at least that's what it looks like on the surface the design dock says it's supposed to be an imitation they're playing scientists although i'm not sure if the actual game communicates that the tin smith trader has an amazing selection you see this thing these are nuclear batteries fuel for your bike in sonora your personal transport no longer runs on plasma rifle ammunition and this is a motion sensor in fallout 2 having this item in your inventory provides a 20 bonus to one's outdoorsman skill which is useful for avoiding encounters while traveling on the world map i assume in this game it's the same beyond the hangar lies the forbidden zone the part of the airbase that wasn't yet looted by the tin man the reason it wasn't looted is because of the still active ancient defenses this is what the slaves are for the tin man used slaves and mercenaries to organize human wave attacks on the robotic defenders hoping to eventually weather them down and who knows maybe one of the slaves gets lucky and grabs a useful piece of technology our people the ones are still missing are almost certainly in the forbidden zone assuming they're still alive it's basically an open-air dungeon full of melee robots occasionally you would meet a human survivor the best way of taking down robots is via disabling their sensor lenses hit them in the eyes the robots do a lot of damage and if you'll end up fighting more than one at the same time you'll probably die it's possible to visit the forbidden zone much earlier by getting enslaved by aeron but in that case your equipment will be confiscated characters specializing in unarmed combat would probably get through the dungeon just fine even naked [Music] olden b-24 liberators huh what's this by using the repair skill we de-attached the minigun from the plane yep it's a legit minigun skill wise we are quite proficient in using it but some of the bigger weapons in full-out have strength requirements we lack exactly one point of strength to use the weapon competently the bunker in the heart of the forbidden zone here we learn more about this place the airbase was managed by a military ai called zax when the bombs started to fall something went wrong with the machine's programming the staff attempted to deactivate the ai but it doesn't look like they succeeded we talked to zax the machine's main function is the disposal of old aircraft however in crisis situations like say a nuclear war and the destruction of the united states the ai is allowed a certain decision-making autonomy if the tin man and their benefactors i assume he means the monks gain full access to the air base this will have political consequences for the region tyranny wars population decline zax wants us to change his program any little so that the ai has even more freedom to act which it would use to wipe out the tin smith settlement interesting but what about the initial rebellion back during the war can't help but notice that the machine failed to mention that one so we deactivate the ai i'll deal with the consequences later here is dad he survived the air base i think this is it the last of the kidnapped this chapter of the main quest should be behind us dad will meet us back at the villa having conquered the forbidden zone we dramatically walk into the sunset it's time for us to meet the tin man leader his name is hard like in hard drive god damn i can't get over how amazing is the design of the talking heads in this game the tin man are the dumbest of sonora's factions there is no voice acting but the guy speaks like a borg drone and at one point he literally says you will be assimilated you and your people deserve freedom you can go he says one day the brotherhood of steel will come to your homes what will you do then be rational and surrender to progress the brotherhood of steel we the player know who they are but our character does not i suppose that explains the markings on the crates in tin smith warehouse the brotherhood not the church is their patron interested in learning more about the brotherhood operations in arizona i decided to do more work for the tin man the game displays in engine cutscene demonstrating that now since the forbidden zone have been conquered the cybermen no longer need some of their old connections the cyber dog is proficient at installing implants but not at conventional medicine we heal his patient ourselves the town outskirts tin smiths keep losing trading expeditions in this vault of a pre-war banking establishment we discover the reason for the disappearances a bunch of heavily armed runaway slaves led by an undercover ranger you do understand we can't let you go right he says well i can't let you go either the robot man is pleased but there is another problem a tin smith emissary they sent to casa grande is gone also disappearing without a trace the mayor the count claims he doesn't know anything about anything he's one of those people who always look like they're lying even though they're actually not we should check the local graveyard what are you doing [ __ ] asks the ranger the tin man are looking for the lost comrade he is in this grave we reply i know i put him there so you confess to murder name the reason why i should leave you alive i have six says the ranger the rangers are spreading false rumors about us go to steelport tell the brotherhood about this conflict but the audience with the brotherhood is not the only reason to work for the cyberman now that they consider us to be one of them we are allowed to install an implant it's basically a very expensive attribute increase you can only install one so it's important to choose carefully i pick intelligence i suppose strength would have been another good option so we could wield a minigun it's time we visit steelport the brotherhood paladins are well trained and exceptionally well equipped but there are few in number walking around puerto makes this immediately obvious there are barely any sentries here is a fun twist the brotherhood base isn't a settlement it's the ship and like with anything in sonora there are multiple ways of getting access one of them is via a recommendation from mr hard which i completely forgot we had another is by doing a classic brotherhood suicide mission to the north of here there is a place called inferno a bombed out city a brotherhood convoy was lost traversing the ruins go there find them bring them back the paladin also says something about an army advancing from the south so i guess the brotherhood isn't the biggest fish in the pond huh [Music] a traffic jam inferno is mexicali mexicali a mexican city that was almost certainly annexed by the united states before the great war due to its dangerously close proximity to the glow inferno became a city of ghoulified fev mutants we find one willing to talk i haven't seen an army ever since well since you people hidden the vaults what do you want there are no normies here go away there are a few of us left but even now there are rich demons and poor demons like myself he says the rich ones glow in the dark in life they used to be important people now after they became demons they still seek to dominate the rest of us that's fine let it be as they won't let them glow live forever in pain a pack shares food can't survive alone the glowing ones take the best bits and when there is no food it's the weakest of us that are eaten like myself they'll eat me and i'll be free the ghoul is a poet he seems to think it's the radiation that made him what he is but that's not quite the whole story the brotherhood survivors are kept in the church somewhere in town there are many melee enemies in inferno i conserve shotgun ammunition by using our pneumatic spear one of the convoy survivors is hiding in the sewers we heal his broken leg i'm pretty sure paladin barkley is a companion character but i prefer to work alone we'll pick him up on our way back the old supermarket is infested with demons and this is the old church the ghoul was telling us about just look at this excellent talking head i seriously unironically like it better than fallout 1 super mutants coincidentally this is the first super mutant we meet in sonora and one of the last barely any of them in this game he takes us to their leader a child of the cathedral named levious we tell him of our mission he'll help us if we help him a lab in the basement a number of interesting things here like that power armor it's missing a helmet and a bunch of mechanical components that's the item the convoy was transporting to puerto the brotherhood would want this recovered see the dead centaur in one of the cells a centaur is a type of fev mutant a hybrid between a human and a bunch of different animals according to one of the design docks it was supposed to be a unique centaur that managed to barely retain their ability to talk the scientists don't know what to do with it there was supposed to be a bunch of choices diana is a follower of the apocalypse anarchist post-apocalyptic doctors and scientists our kind of people fev [ __ ] up levious flock in a number of unpredictable ways the mutants feel constant pain the virus needs to be stabilized diana happens to be a specialist and she can do this if we recover hermetical toolkit lost somewhere in the city strictly speaking we don't have to help the mutants the situation can be resolved through violence or sneakery but since we are a wasteland doctor i feel it's our responsibility to ease their pain this is where the brotherhood convoy was ambushed by the inferno ghouls a monument to vicente guerrero an important revolutionary general of the mexican war of independence i'm sorry for butchering the name we find a power armor helmet in one of the crates this will come in handy on a body of the brotherhood technician there is this thing a mexican-made submachine gun hm23 this is a new weapon in sonora and uh i'm not sure if the gun has a real-life prototype in the building next door we find diana's stolen chemical kit the power armor is almost ready for transport we just need to get the mechanical component from levios diana performs a chemical experiment creating an fev stabilizing agent levious is grateful both of you deserve freedom he says you can live at any time but from now on inferno is a mutant city no normals will ever be allowed access we perform the final repairs on the power armor this is one of my favorite classic fallout weapon and armor combinations power armor and a spear sonora is the only game where this is an actual viable build because it's the only fallout game with advanced spears can't help but think we forgot something oh yeah paladin barkley alright let's go home so our bike has a single seat we have two companions how would this work oh it won't we have to come back for the bike later [Music] feels weird to be traveling with a group sonora companions are done in new vegas style meaning the followers are more developed and they comment on players actions and areas you visit but you can only have two at the same time a human and a pet follower diana is an exception because she is a temporary companion special encounter a crashed bomber inside the crate we find an atomic grenade powerful unique single use will come in handy one day welcome to the brotherhood says barkley the brotherhood hq is a gearing class destroyer it sailed here from california a one-way trip not enough fuel to go back and the ship's engines are not in the best condition the design dock says in the early draft of the game's script it was supposed to be a submarine which is also a cool idea but i'm glad they ended up doing a ship because it means we can have cool stuff like this or this these are terrier class surface-to-air missiles although in real life they look a little different all these sprites are unique to sonora of course that's the bridge it's not crude the ship isn't going anywhere the actual center of operations is below decks meet general dixon the regional leader of the brotherhood all power armor suits a property of the brotherhood of steel return it to the quartermaster immediately he won't talk to us until we do fine wearing pa actually does have disadvantages in sonora some characters won't speak to you lord aaron is one of them and you can't pickpocket people while wearing power armor which makes perfect sense but we are not into that stuff anyway if we really care about the safety of our people the villa should come under the brotherhood sovereignty in exchange for some surplus crops will protect you from threats and provide technological assistance says dixon this lady is the head scribe another fantastic animated head the ship is essentially a city-like location with many characters and side quests curious to function in torpedoes with nuke warheads this sounds more like a recipe for disaster than a practical weapon this terminal controls the launch very interesting we traveled to a brotherhood field camp in the sonoran desert paladin dobbs explains the mission together with a squad of soldiers we are to attack a raider camp and rescue a traitor they captured it's a little strange that all the raiders seem to speak spanish this is a new sprite by the way created by alexander berezin here are some more animations from alexander's art station page and here are the death animations they look fantastic the second mission has us and the squad of paladins attack a fortified raider camp in pumped out mexican town what is this fallout tactics you are looking at the new mexican urban tile set it's used in some locations in the southern part of the game world the territory is taken by the us from mexico creating new graphics for classic fallout takes an incredible amount of effort the devs didn't really have to make a new tile set and yet here it is and it fits the game like it was made by the original interplay team is that mexican money these guys are obviously not raiders but we know nothing about how the post-nuclear mexican state is organized there is an army of soldiers gathering in the south the only thing preventing them from marching to phoenix is the great sonoran desert the logistical challenge they would eventually overcome we make important gear upgrades combat armor is everyone's favorite sprite in classic fallout well maybe not everyone's but it certainly is mine look at that this thing is creatively called energy spear it uses the spear animations consumes energy weapons ammo and deals massive amounts of damage the last of dobb's missions has us attacking a raider field base hidden in a cave i suppose these are vanguard troops [Music] our buddy garage city guard is impressed with our bike and this is what it is for to impress other men there is honestly very little value in owning a vehicle in classic fallout kogan's former mechanic can make a number of upgrades to the bike and they're all extremely expensive that's the game's main money sink and this is just the first tier of enhancements it gets really absurd later on i had to resort to working for the gangsters in phoenix in order to make money there is this cool side quest where you rob a new cacola plant protected by mr handy robots and get away with a crate of bottle caps another way to make cash is bounty hunting there are four head hunting quests and they pay well remember the expert on old world oddities in phoenix he sells this thing a lamp we can attach to the bike not sure if it does anything mechanically perhaps it makes map encounters easier to avoid i don't know the design dock says if you have a deathclaw skull you can attach it to the bike for style points the problem is there are only three deathclaws in the game and i didn't manage to find a single one of them despite being lawed and detailed this video covers maybe one fifth of the content sequence break later in the story the tin man mechanic would upgrade our bike with jet boosters oh just your average everyday pre-regulation destroyer class solid fuel recoil booster you're serious yes the procedure costs a phenomenal 9 000 caps and it changes the look of the vehicle so it resembles ben's bike from lucasarts post-apocalyptic biker adventure full throttle [Music] [Music] we have some housekeeping to do the villas residents gather in the town hall for an important meeting what about that metal thing you are driving around kicking up dust scaring the children we don't need things like that some of the locals are just idiotically anti-technology there are two problems the elders want us to solve first there is the issue with the flagstaff mine the local authorities use forced labor creating demand for slaves the mind must be destroyed you guys should have told me this earlier and the second problem concerns the garage city scavengers who intend on reactivating the old industrial equipment this will no doubt bring more caravan traffic to the town and more unwanted attention to the villa the plant must be destroyed um i'm not sure i agree seems like our little victimized community is very quickly becoming the victimizer remember chris the local peasant who hid while the raiders were ransacking the villa he is gone the villagers intend to hang him for cowardice so he hid somewhere but first things first not sure why faber's mine administrator is still alive i think i just forgot about him in order to collapse the mine we have to place explosives anywhere on the first floor job done when it comes to garage city and the plant i choose to do nothing at all the politically isolationist anti-technology mindset seems stupid and disadaptive it's not even worth seriously discussing what we need is a bunch of guns and a patron the world is changing and the old man will have to change with it says our buddy lucas we are getting closer to the big spoiler segment but we are not there yet it takes a few days to cross the sonoran desert on our bike we are at the southernmost edge of the map welcome to hermosillo mexico perhaps a local can tell us about the political situation in the country was mexico ever featured in a fallout game before the new government and the army are terrible to peasants they are being worked like slaves some choose to flee north this is the garrison the talking head speaks spanish exclusively if you don't know the language you wouldn't be able to communicate or rather you would but not for long the design dock says he's supposed to insult the exclusively anglophone character by calling them a kulak you cross the sonoran desert that's hard to believe in any case turn around and go back the way you came this is a fort of the united mexican army civilians cannot enter can i join your ranks we ask the sentry a gringo from the north wants to join us just get the hell out of here well that was disappointing unlike say the jackals which was not a purely combat encounter location hermosillo kind of is you can either kill all the soldiers or sneak past them it's impossible to work for the mexicans if you choose the route of sneakery the location can be visited much earlier the wiki says 40 points in sneak is enough to do basically everything if you're careful but as a combat encounter this is one of the hardest locations so far the soldiers are armed with mexican-made machine guns and american m16 rifles i had to use most of the steam packs we collected in our adventure this guy jack is a merk prisoner held captive by the mexicans he works for the brotherhood but he is not a member of the organization jack is one of the potential companions if you want him for our service to the cause the general finally accepts us into the brotherhood proper now we can choose a career path scribe paladin scout or knight which is basically a brotherhood engineer depending on our choice we get different item rewards from the quartermaster one of the rewards is a suit of advanced combat armor which is cool but now since we are a full member we have another privilege [ __ ] yes before we get to the big time spoilers and the ending i want to finalize the review part of the video playing sonora feels like it feels like playing fallout 1 2 if that makes any sense well if you are a fallout nerd it should the original two classics have a very different tone different themes and a different writing style the stated intention behind sonora was to make more of fallout 1 and uh well mission accomplished one thing i want to complain about are map encounters random world map adventures are an important part of classic fallout gameplay the variety and complexity of encounters reached its peak in the second game and unfortunately sonora is not quite on that level it took me several in-game weeks to explore the remote southwestern part of the game world i was hoping to find deathclaws but instead i found a group of ants exploring the shore the game kept spamming this event over and over a trading caravan a common encounter type in every fallout game but in sonora i've only met a caravan once however there is a very good selection of rare or special encounters which is another part of the gameplay identity of classic fallout some of these are jokes or references others provide the player with important items here is a fun one a shy robot i managed to successfully avoid humans for 90 years meeting you ends my mission this is unacceptable i think this guy might be the only brain bot in the entire game here is an encounter so rare i haven't actually managed to find it in game had to use the cheat menu a super mutant mobile base crawler if i remember my fallout lore this one is supposed to be originally featured in fallout 2 but was cut from the final version sonora's biggest flaw is that it doesn't do enough with its mexican theme you've seen it yourself we picked a spanish literacy trade but they were barely any instances where we got to use it furthermore speaking spanish didn't seem to affect much story-wise i wish we could work with the invading mexicans the game hints that they might be ofcoms but nothing is stated explicitly the design document clarifies barely anything anyway that's fallout sonora there is a bike but no wingless land plane 5 out of 10 game at best take a look at the pinned comment once the english translation is ready there will be a download link thanks for watching major spoilers ahead [Music] part three fear and loathing in the sonoran desert like i said earlier the game's narrative structure doesn't actually resemble classic fallout much instead it's a detective investigation kind of like in arcanum and in the very end it becomes a faction conflict like in new vegas but before we start making big time political decisions we need to have a full picture of what's going on in the wasteland the last chess pieces need to be placed on the board this is vault 25 underneath the cathedral we [ __ ] our way inside it's one of the two phoenix vaults on the second floor there is an atomic bomb the weapon is not 100 operational but it's getting there i take it this is why the cultists were importing uranium from flagstaff what are they gonna do with a bomb though well it will become clear very soon i am pleased to meet you brother agents of the brotherhood told me about you and i must say you show a lot of promise the overseer is actually a brotherhood paladin ulysses grant named after the 18th president of the u.s who prior to that was a military leader and prior to that a veteran of mexican-american war what did the developers mean by this remember us noticing that the church of the holy fire very obviously resembles the children of the cathedral from the first game even the musical theme is the same this is intentional the cult is organized like that because the brotherhood was intimately familiar with the children and their methods like i said this is clever storytelling the cult is only a few years old back then phoenix was in turmoil the brotherhood stepped in took charge of one of the local factions rebranded it into the church and installed their own people in leadership roles this is why they're building a bomb it's near worthless for the cultists but the brotherhood certainly can find use for such a weapon the cult is directly puppeteered to act in brotherhood's interests slavery well the paladins don't like slavery but you know you can't make an omelet without breaking some eggs eggs in this case being our family members i'm not sure if i'm on board with this the rangers won't allow us inside the dam if we are wearing power armor we have to leave it with the bike the dam is another unique tileset not used anywhere else trading hall and barracks on the second floor look at all that power generating machinery and this here is the ranger boss he refuses to talk to us as long as we are a member of the brotherhood can't really blame him unlike the brotherhood the rangers are not involved in a grand conspiracy problems with rangers usually concerned vigilante justice and someone abusing power relatively small-scale stuff back in the cold hq we learned of the location of vault 27 the other phoenix vault looks like the place was breached we'll need a rope and a gas mask to navigate the dungeon the threats here are ghoulified former inhabitants we rescue a scientist stuck in one of the lower levels a potential companion looks like the mentally unstable overseer initiated something called protocol zero a self-destruct sequence that's not the whole story though i didn't show this yet but when we rescued our father from the tin man we were presented a holodesk containing a message from felix tejada the founder of the villa and a former resident of wool 27 this is where our jumpsuit came from they were running out of supplies the vault was overcrowded and politically unstable with constant revolts against the overseer's rule the only thing that would have allowed us to survive was the garden of eden creation kit writes tejada eventually our ancestor gathered a number of trusted men who managed to steal the vault's geck and escape into the wasteland leaving the rest of their comrades behind after a long and dangerous journey felix and his people found a suitable place and this is how the villa was founded the community built on betrayal in the very end of the message the founder tells us to stay clear of ancient technologies and to chase away outsiders before they can cause any harm i don't get it in the story toned by felix it was him who [ __ ] everyone over not the outsiders and the ancient technology was the thing that enabled the survival of the community i don't think our founder was a qualified leader meanwhile the village elders are uncharacteristically rational today we are peasants they say we don't know how to fight we need a patron we need to ally with the rangers the elders sent us on a diplomatic mission but i doubt the rangers would want to talk to us anyway besides there is something else we need to do first we track down chris he is hiding in the ruins not far from the villa wants to flee to the rangers or the garage city scavengers but needs provisions can't make the trip without food as we escort chris out of the ruins we are ambushed by a villa resident nothing personal chris he says you will have to become an example this was decided by the commune time for you to die there is no option for us to protest or stop them chris is gonna hang earlier when he asked for provisions i had to buy them in the villa itself i wonder if that's how we got found out i'm not sure what to say i take back the comment about the elders being rational the villa's residents are incredibly unsympathetic people the outcome of the founder's strategy was both catastrophic and avoidable despite having a geck a miracle terraforming tool the villa never became an economic powerhouse chris who is to be executed for cowardice seems to be a non-neurotypical individual like all [ __ ] communities in real life the [ __ ] peasants of the villa love abusing their own the preservation of the villa's authentic culture lol is no longer concerned to us so what else have we learned of fear and loathing in the sonoran desert let's see the brotherhood expedition arrived in the region five or so years ago they established diplomatic outposts in the neighboring communities since manpower was a concern the organization acted through proxies and intermediaries keeping low profile a typical fallout village has a population of dozens maybe low hundreds if it's a small town the city of phoenix and the surrounding area had fifteen hundred thousand people and ghouls living there in order to control such a large number of residents the brotherhood puppeteered a local cult the cult expands its territory by employing mercenaries and colonists to annex nearby lands the puppets have their own puppets the brotherhood controls lord aeron and aeron controls faber and his slavers who came to our home killed our people kidnapped our mom and dad forced us to embark on this adventure this is the strangest faction conflict i've ever seen in an rpg there is only one real faction the power imbalance is insane compared to the brotherhood the rangers are a non-entity this is very cool makes our decision making extraordinary complicated prior to new vegas full-out factions suffered from being excessively over aestheticized meaning they never had a coherent ideology or ethics and were instead represented by cool images and symbols kind of like star wars factions since the brotherhood never stood for anything real it was begging to be elaborated on in spin-offs and sequels fallout tactics the playstation box fallout 3 fallout 4 all presented their own vision of the brotherhood that had [ __ ] all to do with other interpretations in sonora the organization leverages their technological superiority and knowledge of the old world to pursue the agenda of cynical predatory imperialism this is my favorite portrayal of the brotherhood in any fallout game and everything was fine until the mexicans showed up so that's the situation we are a desert wandering doctor the question is how do we heal the wasteland when i played the game for the first time back in 2020 i ended up siding with the paladins my final act was blowing up the ranger dam the whole thing was done primarily via dialogue menus and honestly it felt uninspired good work amigo said the general the brotherhood technologies transformed the villa the old peasant culture that fetishized technological backwardness was gone the brotherhood maintained secret control over arizona for decades until their own vassals managed to push the order aside in a struggle for power strangely enough this ending all endings actually are perfectly compatible with fallout cannon the game takes place 74 years before the events of fallout 2 hundreds of years before new vegas there is more than enough time for boss to create a regional empire expand stagnate and eventually disappear without a trace but while siding with the brotherhood makes sense on an intellectual level emotionally it makes for an unsatisfying story after all all of this is their fault so this time we'll join the rangers but since the rangers are relatively weak in order to heal the wasteland we'll have to manually remove some of the bad actors from arizona michael corleone's style let's go through a checklist the church of the holy fire yeah they'll have to go despite aaron proclaiming himself the lord of phoenix i never got the impression that the church takes any active role in governing the city the only indication that something like this might be happening are the public executions the truth is the residents of phoenix can take care of themselves that's what they've been doing all this time anyway i don't think detonating the nuke will solve our cult problem that would probably take out half of the city have you ever seen anyone killing an overseer with a toothpick well you have now we cannot be stopped these were his last words well i happen to disagree the computer provides information about the status of the nuke it's 92 complete the mechanical components are provided by the tin man uranium used to be supplied by flagstaff shooting people in purple robes just like the old times i was certain melee weapons would become obsolete once we get enough ammunition for some of our big guns but uh no the energy spear is just too good we can't dismantle the nuke but at least i can make sure the cult engineers are dead now we need to take care of the second pillar of the cult leadership lord aeron ruler of phoenix remember the unique atomic grenade we found in a special encounter ages ago our work here is done next we have tin smiths of tucson we can't leave the tin man alone certainly not after we accidentally empowered them by deactivating the zak's ai plus it's the silliest faction in the entire game these people are dorks mr hard fights unarmed and hits like a truck he has a power fist or a similar enhancement the grenade launcher ended up being my second favorite new weapon in sonora the tin man outside the hangar don't even care what happened to their boss since the brotherhood and its vassals stand between phoenix and the invading army we'll need to take care of the mexican vanguard as well back to hermosillo the entrance to the army command post the mexican industrial tile set is brand new and i'm pretty sure it's used once in the entire game there are a bunch of unique tile sets like this the soldiers are led by general manuel serrabia son of a peasant grew up near monterey mexico after the government actions brought devastation to the land he joined the anti-state guerrillas there he met the future president of mexico after the revolution succeeded serabia became a field commander in the new mexican army rip revolutionary hero we layered a number of things from the computer terminal the mexican army command hq is located in the city of monterrey in northeastern mexico there are large-scale battles being fought at el paso the hermosillo vanguard was but a tiny expeditionary force now for the final challenge detonating these torpedo nukes will take out the brotherhood ship unfortunately we are not skilled enough at science to hack the computer this is for the best getting rid of the brotherhood without saying goodbye to the general would have been anticlimactic expecting intense fighting ahead i go back to the bike and re-equip our power armor power armored night kin are not real they can't hurt you the key allows us to access the terminal controlling the torpedo launchers i'm gonna edit this to make this look super easy so that the video flows better but this battle is appropriately hard for an end game challenge i had to reload 10 times or so the person in the end of the corridor is paladin barkley our companion from the inferno mission this is not scripted i just happened to leave him here i guess that's the end of his arc companions in sonora are supposed to have their own quests i wonder what was his alright so the terminal we need to program the torps to blow up inside the ship it's a dialogue puzzle kind of the process is similar to the computer interactions in full throttle the trick is avoiding all the trap options we set the timer for two minutes and run oh [ __ ] you i don't have time for this and so we escape if you return to puerto after the new goes off it will look like this burnt bodies giant ants and the crater all right so let's go join the rangers i think we should qualify i'm not going to bother you with the details but basically the ranger boss made us do a bunch of diplomatic assignments before the villa is accepted into the greater ranger-led community in san brahman we are to lead a counter-attack against the missionaries from the church in phoenix we are to make contact with an underground freedom fighting organization that seeks to overthrow aeron's rule but we did that already remember the axe ranger guard with a bunch of half-eaten skeletons in the closet it was our word against his and our word didn't mean much oh the situation changed guard is [ __ ] look at this a ranger duster just like a new vegas it uses the leather armor graphics so we sign an official agreement between the villa and the rangers time for the ending slides our community generally benefited from the new alliance some of the peasants got grumpy because losing a little sovereignty hurt their feelings or whatever don't look at me this is what the ending slides say for some reason the game seems to think that we agreed to uphold felix tejada's [ __ ] conservatism the villagers liked that so much they made us their leader apparently thanks but no thanks the rangers expanded their sphere of influence taking new territories creating new alliances the ranger leader what's his name satisfied with what was accomplished quit the organization and went wandering the wastes kind of like the vault dweller the brotherhood was evicted from arizona and had no presence in the region for generations the church of the holy fire downscaled its activities becoming a well a conventional religious institution i guess the minds of flagstaff collapsed under the weight of their own unsolved problems well and uh also because we blew them up with c4 the town's population aggressively contracted flagstaff i cry every day garage city also allied with the rangers for the benefit of both parties good for them the logistical challenges posed by the sonoran desert seems to have stopped the advance of the mexican military us assassinating their commander probably had something to do with it as well i still wish we could join them so that was fallout sonora while making the video i intentionally skipped around 80 percent of the side quests there are also several major locations i intentionally didn't visit a spanish-speaking village an oasis in the middle of the wasteland where the followers of the apocalypse set up their regional base a fishing settlement and an abandoned oil rig there is still plenty for you left to see if you choose to experience the game yourself sorry for the long ass video i figured this episode needs to be as complete as possible because realistically not many people will play a game made on the old fallout engine even when the translation is finally out anyway see you when i see you you

Channel: Warlockracy

Views: 222,264

Rating: 4.9647212 out of 5

Keywords: video games, gaming, game design, warlockracy, review, narrative review, fallout, fallout sonora, fallout sonora review

Id: h7lifTfHA7o

Length: 75min 25sec (4525 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 25 2021