In Fallout 3, you can leave Vault 101 without a single casualty, and Amata becomes the killer

A pacifist run in an RPG is often an illusion of clean hands. A player can go the entire game without pulling the trigger once, but someone else will gladly do the dirty work for them.

It gets especially awkward when that very someone later shows the hero the door over spilled blood.

Exactly that quirk is tucked into the first hour of Fallout 3, which Bethesda Game Studios released in October 2008. In the "Escape!" quest, Vault 101 can be cleared almost without a fight if you sneak around and simply run from the guards when they spot you.

But if you hand Amata a 10mm pistol beforehand, she empties it into Officer Mack, who is interrogating her in the overseer's office, in one continuous burst. One commenter dubbed her the "First NPC to use VATS".

The claim that she killed him "in cold blood" was quickly disputed. Amata was held by force, questioned, and threatened, so by the logic of the scene it looks closer to self-defense.

The irony doesn't go away, though. In the "Trouble on the Homefront" questline, the conflict in the vault can be settled through diplomacy, Alphonse Almodovar hands the post to his daughter, and the new overseer still banishes the Lone Wanderer, citing the deaths.

The decision has its defenders. The hero's runaway father, James, left chaos behind him, along with radroaches that broke into the vault, and in the eyes of the residents the Lone Wanderer looked like a runaway too. Amata now answers for everyone, including people she can't stand, and the fastest way to calm the vault is to remove the irritant.

Critics counter that the game barely shows this rift. Only supporters of the old overseer are openly hostile, while the other residents greet the hero neutrally or even warmly, and exiling the only person with Wasteland survival experience right before the vault opens for trade looks remarkably shortsighted.

The scene clearly nods to the ending of the original Fallout, where Overseer Jacoren exiled the Vault Dweller. In the original, the decision had a clear motivation that fit the character: the overseer feared that a savior who had tasted freedom would stir up everyone else.