Gaming is a great source of non-passive entertainment, but it also allows you to transport yourself to other worlds, if only for a little while, which can ease the pain of reality (if that’s what you’re looking for). This was the case for Reddit user NoohjXLVII, who explained to his wasteland-dwelling Reddit cohorts that Fallout 4 helped him deal with the death of his father the year prior. Then, tragedy struck again, and NoohjXLVII‘s brother passed away due to diabetes complications.
Without his brother and father gone, NoohjXLVII turned to gaming and Reddit, where Bethesda noticed his posts:
When automotron came out, I made a bipedal sentry bot with hammer saws and named it after my father, so in a way I was traveling the wasteland with my father. (He had the body type of a sentry bot… And liked to do wood working as a hobby hence be hammer saws).. The name of the bot was GR-36, as his name was Greg.
Anywho… It let me bond with my dad. Just wished the sentry bot voice had more interesting things to say, but it’s alright.
However, today my younger brother (age 24) is in the ICU… They don’t think he’ll make it. diabetes related stuff. He and I both loved the fallout franchise, always theorizing what we’d do if the events of fallout occurred in real life. He always wanted to be a super mutant and I wanted to be a ghoul, so we could travel the world together forever.
The circumstances are heartbreaking, but NoohjXLVII made another post informing Redditors about the great deed Bethesda did pretty much in secret — they created a wasteland version of his late brother Evan. In-game, he’s as pleasant as can be and insists on giving players a recipe for Nuka Love. Noohj explained that in-game Evan was almost perfect:
They made him too skinny, he should be as big as McDonough. If they also gave the character blackframe glasses, it’d be SPOT on. However they caught his essence pretty decently. The words they use sound exactly like him, however he was also a pretty funny guy, full of puns.
P.S. Don’t feel guilty about taking his stuff! He insists you take it and in real life he would give you the shirt off of his back to help those in need
Here is a video tour of the tower I made for him (Evan). I’m going to use a mod to make my brother be stationed at my tower, probably upstairs on that couch.
Bethesda also went out of their way to send Noohj a box full of Bethesda swag and a touching hand-written letter letting him know that Evan would be memorialized forever in Fallout 4, which you should absolutely check out here.
Gaming really can be a beautiful thing.
(Via Polygon)