Concord tries to kill me.

Codsworth told Marilyn to seek assistance in Concord, and so off to Concord she went, trusting that her faithful robot slave wouldn’t send her into a hostile environment.

It’s a peaceful little town…for about 5 seconds.

Almost immediately, Marilyn spies the first person she’s seen in this post-apocalyptic wasteland. He’s even running towards her in excitement!

Oh, wait.

So Marilyn, a law-school graduate who’s never before attacked a fellow human being, does what any peaceful law-school graduate with a gun would do in this situation.

She paints the fucking town red with the blood of her enemies.

Some people yell down from a balcony, asking for help against a gang of Raiders, who are apparently crawling all over this unpleasant town like flies on a headless corpse. Marilyn does not yell back asking how the fuck these people think one woman with a crappy gun and basically no armor can wipe out a town full of heavily-armed sociopaths.

The trapped people are holed up in the decaying Museum of Freedom. Marilyn blasts her way through the place, killing Raiders and looting everything that isn’t nailed down. After getting lost for what seems like goddamn hours, Marilyn finally (FINALLY) finds her way upstairs to a group of people who don’t want to kill her. Even though one of them is holding an awfully big gun.

‘Scuse me while I whip this out.

It turns out that this ragtag, beat-down little group contains the last five surviving members of the Minutemen, a post-war organization dedicated to protecting small communities within the Commonwealth. Their de facto leader is Preston Garvey, who I’m sure is not overcompensating for anything.

Preston turns Marilyn over to a guy named Sturges, who starts talking about needing a fusion core for some power armor that’s apparently just hanging out on the roof of the museum. Marilyn, who only came to Concord to find out what happened to her kidnapped son, sighs as she realizes that she’s going to have to run errands for incompetent people in order to get any information. Despite the fact that Marilyn single-handedly cleared the museum of all Raiders, Sturges and Preston are scared to go down to the basement to retrieve a fusion core.

Marilyn dutifully trudges down to the depths of the museum, grabs the fusion core, and then promptly gets lost as fuck on her way up to the roof. The next time I see a museum, I’m going to punch it in the face.

She finally (FINALLY) reaches the roof. She puts the fusion core into the power armor and climbs inside. It’s ugly as hell, awkward and clunky, but she feels much safer encased within its steel womb.

Now, since I played over 100 hours of this game half a year ago, I do have some random, vague memories of it. As soon as Marilyn stepped into the power armor, I remembered that saving at this point was critical. I didn’t remember why it was critical, but I knew that I would hate myself if I didn’t do so. If only I could remember why…

OH MY HOLY FUCK THAT’S WHY!! JESUS CHRIST OMG IT’S COMING RIGHT AT ME!!!

So, I died. I don’t want to say that Marilyn died, because she lives on through the magic of reloading saved games. But I died big-time. I’ve gotten to level 19 with Belladonna in Skyrim without dying once, and now my poor little level 3 Marilyn gets disemboweled by a goddamn deathclaw. Fuck you, Fallout.

Seriously, though, I’m starting to remember that this game is just hard. It’s not Dark Souls hard or anything, but I’ve gotten used to the expansive, sort of lazy feel of Skyrim, where I don’t have to be on constant alert. In Fallout 4, there are lightning-fast ghouls who hide and lay in wait like crocodiles in a river, and mole rats who burst out of the ground, and deathclaws who are even deadlier and claw-ier than their predecessors.

After reloading, I decide to attack from a different angle.

Unfortunately, the Legendary Deathclaw refuses to wander within range of the museum roof. Marilyn dispatches all of the Raiders from the relative safety of higher altitude, and then (after desperately wandering around to see if there’s a less-confrontational way to confront the beast) decides to lure the deathclaw out by blowing up the cars around it. The explosions and fire do enough damage to get the deathclaw within a manageable health range, and Marilyn dispatches it by heroically running backwards at full speed until her AP charges up enough to use VATS.

I didn’t take any pictures, because it was a terrifying experience that I’d prefer not to relive.

Now that Marilyn’s done all the hard work, Preston decides to move himself and his four friends into Marilyn’s old neighborhood.

“I’m just so happy to be here in the ruins of my former life. Thanks for the memories, Preston!”

And so the settlement of Sanctuary is born.

Marilyn has to admit that it isn’t so bad, having a safe little enclave filled with fellow humans (of the friendly variety).

Home is where the drugged-out grandma is.