So I had an odd thing happen in Fallout 4 and wondered if anyone else has seen this kind of thing. This post will contain minor spoilers for random (I think!?) events.

So I was headed out past Tenpines Bluff for the first time, traveling pretty much directly east. I came to a small cliff and at the bottom was a derailed train. Climbed down and met a woman selling a Brahmin. Bought it and asked her to deliver it to one of my settlements. Started checking out the train and got jumped by some ghouls. My dog and I took care of them in short order. While looting the bodies I heard voices.

I followed them to a small shack and inside were two men, one threatening the other with a gun. Both were named Art and both looked alike. It was the classic sci-fi conundrum of which man was the real dude, and which was the carbon copy. I tried to use my powers of persuasion to de-escalate the situation but failed. (Had I known I was going to have to be persuasive I would’ve slipped into my sequin dress and replaced my welder’s goggles with sexy sunglasses!) In the end I was pretty much forced to attack one of them, which I did. He put up quite a fight but I won. The other Art thanked me and started wandering off but then curiosity got the better of me (me, in this case, referring to the player, not the character) and I attacked the 2nd Art too, already planning to reload my last save game but just curious if I’d be able to tell which was the “real” Art by the corpses. My plan went awry when he killed me, though.

So I loaded the save game I had from Tenpines Bluff and headed in the same direction. Found the same woman selling the same cow and I bought it again. Started searching the train but did NOT get jumped by ghouls this time. Then I noticed Art wandering down the tracks away from the train. I chased after him and tried to talk to him but he said “I just want to be left alone.” and kept going. I went back to the shack where I’d seen the two Arts arguing in my other game and found a corpse…of Art. And a synth core. So I guess this time the real Art took care of the Synth without any help from me (even though I believe I got to the scene a little faster thanks to no ghouls).

Maybe I’m reading too much into this, but I’m kind of excited about the possibility that the game world kind of chugs along without you, and so depending on when or where you are, or maybe depending on a random number generated when you start or load a game, you’re going to experience difference events in different play-throughs, or the same events in different ways, or… something.

I mean the reality is it’ll be a miracle if I actually finish Fallout 4, but still it’s nice to think that if I do finish it and love it so much I want to play through it a second time, some of my experiences will be different.