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stillwinterair · 6 years

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tell us about desmond!

Des is the ONLY protagonist in a last-gen Bethesda game that I haven’t overhauled, reset, or replaced, which is a damn shock; my original characters in Fallout 3, Oblivion, and Skyrim all went through at least one complete revitalization, where I scrapped them entirely and replaced them with a different character, my Lone Wanderer perhaps being the most dramatic of the bunch with probably 3-4 playthroughs with huge changes each time before landing on the character that I now consider to be the “canon” version

I’ve played through New Vegas as Desmond four times now and am in the middle of a fifth and haven’t changed anything major, he’s only really gotten deeper (not in the edgy way but like the more complex and better-thought-out kinda way) as time has gone on. A lot of that’s due to my second playthrough of the game, which I played between the releases of Dead Money and Honest Hearts, because… that was a longer release window than I’d been anticipating. I started Dead Money the day it came out but was really frustrated the whole time and ended up quitting at the very end because I couldn’t figure out how to not lock myself in the fucking vault at the end. I rage quit, then came back a couple months later to start over. At first just the DLC, but then I figured, why not the whole game? I could prepare for Honest Hearts that way because lmfao little did I know it was gonna be a five month window between DLCs

Now here it’s worth noting: I am more depressed than I have literally ever been, my first year with this game. Early spring of 2011 is when I was originally supposed to be graduating high school. But over the winter, I had pneumonia AND the flu, back to back, while dealing with my parents’ divorce and a whole slew of other mental health issues, after transferring schools literally JUST for my last year because I was already depressed for a whole bunch of other reasons and felt like I needed a change of scenery. I was a mess, and by this point I was realizing that I’d already missed too much school to graduate as I’d planned, so I wouldn’t be able to come back until the fall and would be graduating a year late.

(Honestly this was also probably why I couldn’t figure out how to get out of the Sierra Madre vault, I didn’t have the patience for it, so there I was standing at the end of my high school career and Dead Money and unable to finish either)

So it’s mid to late winter, maybe early spring, and I start New Vegas over. And this character is damn near a blank slate. I recognize that I liked most, if not all of the choices I made in my first playthrough, but I don’t really have anything to ground me in them. So I step outside of Doc Mitchell’s house, run through the tutorial, yadda yadda yadda, the normal new game stuff. I’m listening to Radio New Vegas the whole time, listening to the news, trying to immerse myself in the character and the experience.

But then night’s falling, and I do something I almost never did in my first playthrough: I switch the radio over to Mojave Music. And Tony Marcus’s “Lone Star” starts to play. And everything falls into place.

I decide Des is from Texas. He’s from a little ranch town, but they’ve been running dry in recent years, so they sent Des out to raise caps in the wasteland and come back some day with enough to revitalize the town. He’s meant to be their savior, and he’s got a host of people back home waiting on him, hoping to see him on the horizon, some sunny day soon. It’s a lofty goal for a little town, but they have love and hope and optimism in spades, and not much else.

Cheesy, but that’s the kind of thing I needed at the time.

But then, I realize: Part of the reason this character worked so well for me the first time was because he was a blank slate. He didn’t know shit about the politics of New Vegas, nor how the world worked, nor where to go or what to do, and neither did I. So I decided: Benny’s bullet wiped his memory. He remembers bits and pieces, but for the most part he has amnesia. He has hyper-specific memories of random, unimportant instances of his past life, up to and including the vividly traumatic memory of Benny’s attempt on his life, but for the most part, who he was before is gone. That way, a few of the off-handed in-game comments you can make about, say, visiting New Reno and such can make sense.

So just like it did me, that song stirs something in Desmond: The hint of a hint of a memory, sitting just beyond his reach, that he won’t ever find again. He’ll wander the wastes until the end of his days, no clue that he’s got folks back home waiting for him to come home and save him. And one by one they’ll all give up and move on, until only his parents are left, alone and dying on a dead stretch of land.

But regardless, that turn of fate was better than the alternative. Because Des had, before his run in with Benny, taken a turn for the worse. It didn’t take long after leaving the homestead for him to turn to unsavory work, because that tended to be all that was available, especially when on the fringes of Legion territory. Mercenary work, theft, and assassination became the norm for him, and after a while he basked in it, because he was damn good at it. His natural charm and quick hand made him especially adept at armed robbery, and as he hopped from crew to crew and town to town, he saw the benefits to the criminal life. Instead of taking his winnings back home, he considered cashing out and investing in something that’d make him rich, or happy, or maybe both. He became a shitty, awful person with selfish goals.

The Platinum Chip job was to be one of his last, but fate intervened. He lost the memories of who he was, but it all left a mark on his soul. He feels the things he’s done, even if he can’t remember them. He’s stolen from good people, killed innocents, ripped folk off and was generally an arrogant, snide jackass. The only people he got along with were fellow criminals, and even them, he’d leave when it was convenient or killed when they disagreed. And something deep inside him still knows all that, and is desperate to make up for it.

So Des is generous, and he’s kind, and he’s caring, but in a distant way. He works through crippling guilt he doesn’t understand, spills his own blood and sweat to set things right, but the moment a task is done he leaves and tries not to return. He worries his presence is going to ruin things, so he makes sure he’s only involved long enough to fix a problem. Then he keeps people at arm’s length.

Which is hard. He’s a social person, and he’s good at falling in with people. He’s just also innately good at leaving them. He’s selfless and he’s depressed and the combination makes him feel selfish. So he’s afraid of commitment, but is even more afraid of leaving a task half-finished, a problem half-fixed.

He talks his way out of things as much as he can. He’s not big on sneaking around, and he’s most fond of pistols and rifles. He sees the NCR as the best outcome for New Vegas–by no means perfect, but better than a power vacuum or a dictator. He cares deeply for people, is highly empathic, and is a natural problem solver. He’s talkative, but pretends not to be; he’s a natural leader, but tries not to be. He hates choosing people’s fates, but he’ll do it if no one else will. And he hates killing, but damn if it doesn’t come easy. He acts like he prefers solitude, but is most at home when surrounded by close friends. And nowhere feels more at home than the Lucky 38.

And yet, true to his nature, he leaves again not long after the events of New Vegas wrap up, not because he wants to, but because he feels like he should; because the city and its people and the lands around it will be better off without him. But he’ll never forget the lessons the Mojave taught him.

#oc: desmond

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