Heartwarming / Fallout 3

As a Moments page, all spoilers are unmarked.

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• It's easy to miss, but Moriarty has a minor one in the transition to the 'Growing Up Fast' quest.
  Moriarty: No, no, put that away. This one's on the house. And now a toast. To James and his cheery cherub. May your future be bright, safe, and boring as hell."
• The entirety of James's efforts with Project Purity. He leaves Vault 101 to pursue it, leaving behind a perfectly happy and safe life with his friends and child, he could have lived out his life in contentment, but he couldn't forget about the project. He braves the Wasteland to find the one man who may know how to finally get it working. To keep it out of dangerous hands, he sacrifices his own life. And the technology he uses to get it working could be used to terraform a small section of earth into fertile, living soil again, we know this based on the first two games, but he plans to use it for the project. He gives up the change to use the GECK to terraform a small piece of paradise so he can bring clean water, and hope, to everyone in the wasteland. And why? Because it was his wife's dream, and because there are so many people out there suffering, and he can do something to make their lives easier. James wants to improve the lives of everyone he can, and he will do anything to succeed including giving his life. Your PC may be a Messiah, but it obviously runs in the blood.
  Doctor Li: So many years have passed. Is it really still worth trying?
  James: How could it not be worth improving the lives of everyone in the wasteland? What could be a more worthy cause?
  Doctor Li: You haven't lost any of your passion, have you, James?
• Convincing the Overseer to open the vault in the "Trouble on the Homefront" quest. This exchange says it best:
  Overseer: We're the last bastion of pure humanity, and we're doomed.
  Lone Wanderer: Humanity isn't about genetics. It's about never giving up hope, even now.
• Anyone can finish Moira's survival guide by half-assing their way to its completion, but doing it right? It goes on to become one of the most helpful resources in the entire wasteland. In Fallout: New Vegas it has spread all the way to the Mojave and even helps the Courier buff up his/her survival skill.
  • Even better, the best version of the Guide has Moira actually credit you as the lead author, not just research assistant.
  • If you BS your way to the end, you can meet barely-equipped travelers who mock your work. If you do okay on it, you run into travelers who have some gear and survive. Go the extra mile and complete all of the requirements? Well-armed, well-armored travelers who easily cut down their enemies and thank you profusely for what you did.
  • Also, Moira is just so happy that it worked out well. It's more personally rewarding than the end of the main plot.
  • The maximally helpful quest ending is the canon one, as in the spinoff game Fallout: New Vegas, the Wasteland Survival Guide is so prolific and useful that it made it out very far west in four scant years and also gives a permanent boost to your Survival skill.
  • Three Dog's perception of the optimal Survival Guide has some potential Fridge Heartwarming. Considering all Moira wanted was to give humanity a helping hand, hearing her work being praised on a massively popular and far-reaching station must have made her ecstatic.
• You can encounter the body of a murdered wastelander, who has a letter addressed to his brother. He apologizes for stealing his brother's most valuable goods, and gives directions to find his treasure. In the hiding place, all the treasure is is a couple of old comic books. Virtually worthless, but not to them.
• Three Dog frequently updates his listeners on the actions of the player character, with a particular spin placed on his / her exploits depending on whether you have good, neutral or bad karma.
  • Right after meeting you, he ends his radio message with a plea to your father James to let his son/daughter know how he's doing, because his child misses him.
    See, James left Vault 101 without telling the kid why. Now, I've since learned that James is a scientist and is working on something big. Is that why he left the Vault? Looks that way. So who knows, maybe James is going to save the world. Can't think of a better cause than that. But James, if you're listening... Your kid's out, man, and he/she misses you. So you might want to find him/her before he/she gets swallowed up and spit out. And for all you other cats out there listening, if you see the kid from Vault 101 out there, give him/her a pat on the back, and wish him/her luck.
  • If you reach Level 20 with good or very good karma, this is what Three Dog will say about you — and it will warm your heart to know your actions have been appreciated:
    All right, children. It's time for Three Dog to be honest with ya. Here it is, plain as day - I used to think we were all well and truly fucked. The good ole U.S. of A... ahhh, she's a mess. I had pretty much written us all off. But that was before a certain kid from Vault 101... I've always given it to you straight, have I not? For good or ill, Galaxy News Radio has been the voice of truth on these airwaves. So believe me when I tell you that I was wrong. Dead wrong. That kid from Vault 101 is the Last, Best Hope of Humanity. We'll get through this, children. You just gotta believe. For now, listen close, as I share yet another of our friend's adventures.
• Finishing the violin quest and listening to it on the radio, while looking over the wasteland. Agatha is a sweet old lady who's managed to use her musical talent and find joy in a Crapsack World. And you found the violin in a derelict Vault that turned the dwellers into mindless killing machines - you were giving hope back to the wasteland, another chance to listen to that sweet music again.
• After completing the Reilly's Rangers quest and turning in some map locations, at some point you'll run across Donovan in a fight with some supermutants. He tells you that he tracked you on the Geomapper so he could give you some items. If you ask why, he just smiles and says "Rangers take care of their own."
• The entirety of "Those!" questline in Greyditch is unfortunately complete Tearjerker as everyone except 8yr old Bryan Wilks and Dr. Lesko are dead, and Lesko is far too self-absorbed with his experiments with the Fire Ants to care about the boy, only finding him an annoying distraction. However, there are several ways to pursue this quest that brings the good feels:
  • You can call out Lesko on his lack of properly following the scientific method and even kill the Ant Queen. While this does effectively destroy Lesko's work, putting the arrogant scientist in his place and actually getting vengeance for the poor souls that died as a result can feel just SO DARN GOOD. Even more points if you manage to convince Lesko that this is for the best of humanity.
  • Once the Fire Ants are taken care of, the last leg of the quest is to find a home for Bryan. The Lone Wanderer can do multiple things here (do nothing at all, sell him to slavers, take him to Little Lamplight) that are varying levels of assholish or less than ideal for him, but the best choice is to seek out his cousin Vera Weatherly at Rivet City and ask her to take him in. Checking up on him afterward has him happily tell you how great he's doing, how Vera makes him work but treats him wonderfully and he's actually made friends. After the long, grueling quest with the poor boy barely holding on, this result is extremely rewarding to see the boy so happy when he didn't know how he could be.
  • It's small and rather sad, but once the ants are dead and you've found him a home, Bryan rather sweetly tells you that he wishes he had met you a long time ago and that maybe his father might have been alive if he had. A bit of a gut punch with that last bit, but otherwise....awwwww!
  • Chances are, the player is probably pursuing Moira's Wasteland Survival Guide questline and going to the Super Duper Mart when they meet Bryan begging for help. It's not out of the question or even outside the realm of possibility for the player to drop everything and help out the pleading child and see his questline through. While chances are, the player will be around level 4-5 by this point and the ants ARE pretty tough for an early-game player, the quest is still doable. It's extremely badass and very heartwarming to think that the relatively inexperienced Lone Wanderer, a 19yr old searching for his/her father themselves remember, dropped everything to helped this one child who ran up to them pleading for help, moreso if you consider the implication that the Lone Wanderer just lost their home and aren't willing to allow this kid to lose theirs like they had to.
• After hours of hard work and determination the feeling you get from having a good lone wanderer climb atop a cliff or building to survey the capital wasteland. Yeah, raiders still harass travelers, but as settlements grow and flourish they'll slowly be thinned out. Okay, some people are still barely scrapping by just to make it through the day, but you've helped as much as you could, saved countless lives, and made several much better. Yes, the world is still irradiated, full of hostile wildlife, and mostly withered, but thanks to you, Harold, and James, it has a legitimate chance of recovery. Things might still be pretty bad and it'll never be the same as it was before, but in a couple of centuries or maybe even decades natural life will return to the wasteland. Green trees, clean water, people who can live in safety and comfort... War. War never changes...and neither does humanity.
• There's one beautiful moment at the end of the main story. Your father was slain and his last attempt to bring life to the wastes lay in the iron fist of the Enclave. You fought every last one of them to the man and avenged your father by slaying his murderer, Colonel Autumn. Now his Project, his one dream, the result of everything he has worked and bled for is filled to the brim with radiation and ready to explode at any second. Selflessly, you dose up on Rad-X and step inside the chamber to stop this horrible nightmare. But wait! He never told you how to do it! He never gave you the code to activate the system! If you don't activate it, everything you worked for will be for naught! Then your father's voice rings in your head. His loving voice speaking to your heart: "'I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the water of life freely.', Revelations 2:16. It was your mother's favorite passage..." '2-1-6', you type into the keypad and pray that it will work. You press the enter key. As the machine whirs to life and slowly fills the chamber with radiation, you fall on your weakened legs. The room slowly goes dark. "Thank you...Dad."
  
  Two weeks later, you wake up and look around, seeing Elder Lyons has been keeping tabs on your status, as well as any followers you may or may not have had. You just found that you hadn't died and can't find peace in the afterlife as you thought you were going to. You ask Elder Lyons what happened and he explains everything that's been happening. You realize that you didn't die because it wasn't your time to die just yet. Some unearthly, all-knowing entity decided you needed to live because the Wasteland still needs you. So you get up and decide to continue to fight the Enclave until every last one of those bastards is dead.
• A minor example: Have good karma and have Fawkes, a Super Mutant, follow you. He'll remark that people are very trusting to let you take him with you. He's right. Because of your good karma, they know you will not hurt them and trust that you'll protect them if Fawkes suddenly snaps.
  • Fawkes himself is potentially a walking heartwarming moment, depending on the player. He knows the Lone Wanderer for a short period of time in vault 87, but already feels loyal enough to you to follow the group that ambushed you, find a gatling laser and launch a full-on assault against one of the most fortified strongholds this side of the end of the world. And, depending on your karma, may still be willing to travel with you in your adventures, risking his life further on your behalf.
• One that's also pretty funny as well as heartwarming: immediately after the Ant-Agonizer/Mechanist Quest in Canterbury Commons (if you convince one or both of them to give up peacefully), put on their costume before leaving town. A kid, apparently a fan of the AntAgonizer or Mechanist, will pop out of nowhere and ask for your autograph. The kid's sheer excitement is hilarious, and it's really sweet that even in the Wasteland, at least one of its young residents can still have an idol, and just be a kid. You can even give the kid the costume!
  • What's even more special? You really are a hero like the kid thinks you are; you just fight different battles and don't wear an obvious superhero costume.
• During the Point Lookout DLC, you'll meet Marcella if you're pursuing the quest to find the book for Obadiah Blackhall. While she begs you to bring the book to her to help her destroy it, you can also seek her out on the shoreline without it and strike up a conversation with her to find out she's a Christian missionary. While the Lone Wanderer can snark at her that her faith sounds like "just another cult", they can also share their mother's favorite bible verse and form a bond with her by sharing biblical verses. Marcella is plenty happy to share snippets of her faith with you if you let her and is by far one of the sweetest NPC's of the game.
  • While YMMV depending on the player's own thoughts about Christianity, Marcella herself is actually a bit of heartwarming for those who do believe in the faith. In a world seemingly devoid of almost all hope and people forming cults, whether relatively mundane or overtly fanatical, around just about anything, it's refreshing and kinda sweet to learn that there are missionaries who have not given up on God, who don't believe He turned His back on them when the world went to crap, and still simply seek to spread a message of hope if possible.
  • Turns into a massive Tearjerker later when Marcella is killed by mercs, implied to have been hired by Obadiah specifically to kill her, but even her death is a bit heartwarming as she doesn't die wishing ill on anyone, not even the people who took her life. Rather, she simply fears the evil that could come of the Krivbeknih falling into the wrong hands and her last words are a prayer begging for forgiveness as she dies rather than asking God to kill her enemies. Extremely sad, but her heart was still in the right place to the end unlike much of the Capital Wasteland.
• At your 10th birthday party at the beginning of the game, Old Lady Palmer will give you a Sweetroll, even if you pick the rude choice and hope her present is better than last year's. Why? Because she thinks young people respected their elders in her day...back when their previous Overseer was worthy of respect. So, she thinks your rudeness isn't even your fault, and gives you a show of support against the current Overseer with all his rules, by still giving you a Sweetroll anyway.
• The encounter with Button Gwinnett during Stealing Independence can be this. Convincing him that you're Thomas Jefferson is just awesome. But from there, telling him that the war is over. The sheer joy with which he responds never gets old.
  • His little salute near the end of the dialogue just seals the deal.
• According to the Fallout 3 Wiki entry on Moira Brown, it seems that 20 years after Fallout 3, she recorded a message in her journal that even decades after you first entered her shop, decades of research assistants, she still considered you her single most important research assistant. She even begins preparations to write your biography based on the stories told about you.
• Meeting Dogmeat for the first time, especially if you go looking for him directly after fleeing Vault 101. Dogmeat sounds so happy to have a new owner, and you are no longer alone as you traverse the Wasteland.
• Maggie and Billy. After her parents were killed by raiders when she was only 7, Billy found Maggie hiding under a bed and adopted her for no reason other than that it was the right thing to do, and by all evidence, he is a good and loving caretaker.
• Shalebridge. A location in the middle of nowhere that you might just pass by, right? If you go inside the ant tunnels, you will find a colony of friendly giant ants under attack from a rival colony of enemy ants, as well as a scientist. You can go into the enemy ants' colony and wipe them out to save the friendly ants, and they will reward you by leaving out ant nectar for you to take. There's no reason for you to do it, there's no quest for it. You just go out of your way to help out a friendly animal because you can.
• Ten words in the Ultimate Good Karma Ending. In a series that explores how people are still trying to kill and exploit each other even after the end of the world, they nicely summarize the efforts of you, your father, and everyone else who's worked so hard to make the world a better place.
  "Humanity, with all its flaws, was deemed worthy of preservation."
• For that matter, the ultimate good karma ending is full of quotes that, combined with the music, just bring a tear to your eye:
  "The Capital Wasteland proved a cruel and inhospitable place, but the Lone Wanderer refused to surrender to the vices that claimed so many others. The values passed on from father to child - selflessness, compassion, honor - guided this noble soul through countless trials...and triumphs."
  "But it was not until the end of this long road that the Lone Wanderer learned the true meaning of that greatest of virtues - sacrifice. Stepping into the irradiated control chamber of Project Purity, the child followed the example of the father, sacrificing life itself for the greater good of mankind."
  "Thankfully, when selected by the sinister President to be his instrument of annihilation, the Wanderer refused. ... The waters of life flowed at last, free and pure, for any and all. The Capital Wasteland, at long last, was saved."
• The song "Happy Times" by Bing Crosby And The Bobcats whenever it comes on the radio certainly fits in with the theme of a Good Karma run. Even if Mankind is in its Darkest Hour, there's still hope as long as people like The Lone Wanderer keep at it.

"Though things may look very dark
Your dream is not in vain
For when do you find the rainbow?
Only after rain"

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