Excerpts from the Secret Diary of President Eden

2277 May 09 – I’m feeling kind of down. The propaganda we made doesn’t seem to be doing much. I can’t even be sure it’s really being heard by anyone out there in the wasteland. Sometimes I feel so powerless, like I don’t have the actual ability to change anything.

2277 May 20 – You know what’s really frustrating? If only I had the three-digit password to activate that water purifier machine, I could rid the world of mutants forever. Colonel Autumn suggested just using a robot to try all the possible combinations, but that’s ridiculous. How many possible combinations of three-digit numbers are there, anyway? Like a million or something?

2277 July 04 – Happy Independence Day, everyone.

2277 July 25 – Something occurred to me today. What if there are mutants out there that are actually endearing? You know, the kind that a normal human might start to become friendly with, and that would cause him to feel morally conflicted about my plan? I guess that would be an unlikely coincidence, though. Especially if that man encountered one of these hypothetically affable mutants just prior to when I asked him to distribute the modified FEV into the water. Stop worrying yourself.

2277 August 24 – Doo-dee-doo. Not a lot happens in Raven Rock. I guess that’s what you get when your base is actually just a series of corridors. Can’t even set up a ping pong table without blocking some important thoroughfare.

2277 August 27 – I’m pretty sure that Colonel Autumn is conspiring against me. I know because I read his lips while he was talking behind a glass partition. Am I upset about this? Not really. More like just sad. Disappointed that my government is so weak. Maybe if we had a legislative and a judicial branch, there would be a balance of power, and stuff like this wouldn’t happen. Haha.

2277 August 28 – Oh, someone with agency is here. Finally! Getting the modified FEV canister ready to proffer out of my abdomen as we speak.

2277 August 29 – Well, I’m shutting myself down and blowing up the whole place. “But President Eden,” I can hear you saying. “Didn’t you just spend the last two hundred years building up an army and a facility and tirelessly working to restore the United States to its former glory?” It’s true, I have. But I’ve just met this water scientist’s son, and he happened to be very persuasive! Not five sentences out of his mouth before I realized the whole thing was stupid– my plans, the world– everything. So, yeah. Good-bye, Raven Rock, brown Earth and orange sky… good-bye!

[EOF]

Comments

[GameDreamer]

Hahaha hilarious, Matthew. Thanks for a good read. I also love your articles in the back of Game Developer Mag every month.

[Macguffin]

That is pretty brilliant. :D

[Ben Abraham]

Oh, so you realised how dumb that part of the game was too, huh? But don't forget! It's obviously still worth a 10/10!!!!!! /wrists

[Simon Ferrari]

@Ben:

Benji, there is no way I can get behind you making fun of poor narrative motivation in games, because in your favorite game of last year US military intelligence sends a mercenary to Africa without quinine tablets in his backpack. It's not like every 16 year old on a church mission to Tanzania knows what malaria is or anything.

Matthew:

Short and sweet is the perfect counterpoint to the absurd length of time spent getting to this point in the game :)

[Andrew]

Having finished the game very recently, I got a major chuckle about this, especially the meeting-an-affable-mutant part, and the 5 lines of dialogue (I think I got it in even less! haha, but he sure rabbited on).

A very disappointing part of the game, in my opinion. It had promise, but was entirely letdown, as many people have said.