@@imakazero His seeds are spread to the wind. They could blow north. They could be spread stuck in the fur or hides of the wasteland creatures. If traders get a sapling, it could be traded north for resources.
Heres one: treat him like a human being? Side with Mother on one condition: they stop teeating Harold like an all powerful God, treat him like a human. Bring in a radio, people, books, magazines, anything to make him happy without killing him, even going as far as to get him friends.
@@nautilusshell2089 but he doesnt, what he does ask them for however just becomes a stupid riddle to them, and they are especially wary about bringing people, as well as technology, in any case this does nothing for the constant pain, difficulty breathing and unending insomnia that he is suffering day by day.
Yew will grow, listen to him and take care of his needs. I trust her, because they're friends. And she's the fruit of treeminders' society, so they'll trust her.
so you are going to bring a tree a book that can't turn the pages. i think that would be an insult. secondly unless they get new music, trust me i would want to kill myself eventually. new people, how long has Harold and bob been there, how long has it taken them to seed the trees around them. would these new people keep Harold and bob a secret until enough trees could be grown.
There was one line of dialogue where Harold admits to have seen the Lone Wanderer coming by viewing him "through the leaves of other trees." That is an amazing ability... made hilarious by the fact that Harold peeking through other trees leaves makes Bob jealous! If Bob spreads throughout the world then Harold could probably achieve something akin to omnipresence.
@@ashketchup9040 don’t forget to mention the many trees we’re gonna cut down as well. Yes he’ll be able to see the world again, but he’ll also witness the horrors we are capable of, which I’m pretty sure he is well aware of, considering how long he’s lived.
DeelIo, same I would literally be his therapist and best friend I feel so bad for him I am literally about to cry that’s how bad I feel for him, why am I so weird ;-;
I always killed him. Its sad but I always hated how he was being exploited against his will, to the point they no longer saw him as human. And whether it was right or wrong for the waste lands I honored his wishes of release
@@mikeehrmantraut1899 I agree plus I can't imagine what would happen if raiders or groups like the institute would were to take over the area. It be horrible what they'd do to him
@@ryanhernandez5632 OH god that would be horrible if the institute was taking over the area they would probably study and making another bio weapon that would be scary and putting Harold out of his misery was the right thing I don't want him to stay like a tree
He is not a human anymore. He is a super mutant because he got mutated at Mariposa with FEV when he was with Richard Grey/Master. He ceased to be human when he became a mutant. He is a tree.
It is only self-sacrifice because they don't let you use the supermutant companion (who can take the radiation!), which never made sense...seriously, that they wanted needless sacrifice is one of the things people (like me) hated, which also got us Broken Steel :)
There is a win win situation here, Harold's depressed, because he can't move and is bored right? Get him some tv and some video tapes, get treeminders to read him stories, but a radio beside him or something
The best choice would have been one that was not available: introduce near brain-death to Harold, so he can no longer suffer but his body still works (and thus produce the trees).
It won't work. The brain in the Robobrain is used as a central processor.That's all, the memories are wiped clean. Oxhorn even made a video covering Robobrains and the disturbing truth behind them. And making him a synth would mean creating an impostor that looks or acts like him.
I use the liniment on my major playthroughs. Harold is still changing and mutating, no-one knows what he will become. His major reasons to die are mainly because he is stuck in one place, I don't think he mentions being in continous pain or anything, it is the fact he has only one view, few ways to entertain himself and has to put up with the treeminders. One thing he does mention is that he knew you were comming. It's possible he will continue to change and be able to use his senses across the entire network of trees and plants that Bob's seeds create. If that is a possibility, then keeping him alive at this point I think is the correct thing to do. He seeks to die because he believes himself immobile, but if the reach of his senses go to the edge of the grove that can be treated. So far his seeds have been left cast randomly via winds but he could request that the treeminders take them further afield to start groves near to other settlements. It is of course a guess, but Harold may not be as trapped as his thinks he is.
I like keeping him around spreading his influence. He's stuck in the moment. He needs to think about what he can do now use that to move toward as well as think on how he might mutate further as the OP stated. Or I could burn the mutant and let the world heal naturally. I prefer option 2.
That’s a good point. It’s likely as the green grows, he’s able to “see” more of the Capital Wasteland than he ever could. After all, he “saw” us coming even though he physically couldn’t move and is only able to look in one direction.
and even if he will be a slave, it's one life for thousands and maybe millions if spread far enough outside the area. Some person out there today is suffering already to help us and the future us stay safe
I also see a future of Yew becoming the leader of the Treeminders and tending to Herald and Bob, she actually listened to him, and he admitted she made him happy. Piece of cake choice. Always grow. Growth before death.
I think you forgot that Harold is gaining a sort of 'omniscience' over the passage of time. He was able to see the player coming before they arrived, blaming it on 'boredom.' It won't be long before Harold learns how to use this new ability to it's full potential, escaping the confines of his roots. This ability completely shifted my outlook on the situation. This is why I felt justified in increasing his growth. It won't be more than a few decades until he's beyond that grove and across the capital wasteland, able to see all. Yeah it's making a big decision for him, but he agrees afterward it's for the best + he won't be stuck there for much longer + it's helping life return to the world much quicker.
He agrees that it's for the best because you gaslight him into believing that he's being selfish. Same way most victims of coercion "agree" to their abusers demands.
@@j.jbinks9669 LOL that's one hilarious interpretation XDD. Its funny you see "gaslight" where most see "convince with compelling arguments". Bethesda makes games for children not dark stories about victim abuse lol. I don't remember the game dialogue perfectly but I'm pretty sure I don't remember gaslighting harold when I played through Fallout 3. The dialogue in the game is pretty bad. The most they will do is have a sentence like "But the community needs you and so does the capital wasteland!" and then he'd be like "yeah you're right". So...honestly its more likely that the vault dweller just changed his mind. That's what Bethesda would write. They write simple dialogue like that (which thankfully has improved in their recent games)
@@radscorpion8I agree except the “Bethesda makes games for children” part. There’s a lot of horrific material in Fallout definitely not suited for kids.
This is a bit of spoilers but the ending of fallout 2 does says bob creates fruit and bobs seeds can survive in even the most iradiated and dry places in the wasteland
If you kill Harold without burning him Bob/Herbert are still green and thus alive so I can assume he is still producing seeds so He still grows just at the same speed as before meaning it would still happen slowly
i asked a philosopher and ethnics professor about this. He was legit interested. He said that like most things it depends. Most people can agree that making one person suffer for the benefit of many others is better than everyone suffering.
The thing is you can convince Harold this as well. It lessens his suffering to the point of probably being able to ignore it and even enjoy life. Much like he enjoys having Yew around.
Still haunts me that i let him live. That was the only place with green growth i had found in the whole wasteland, for all i knee it was the only growth in the whole world. I couldnt throw it away. Hardest choice in the entire game for me.
Helpertin right? It was either kill Harold and make him happy but the wasteland will remain a wasteland. Or don’t fulfill his request and the landscape transforms for the better. I chose the greater good as well.
@Homelander A month late, but are you being serious? It's a friggin' video game, don't call people "sElFiSh" because of an option they picked in a VIDEO GAME, you're probably the guy who calls people jerks for doing a "bad guy" playthrough. It's a game, guy.
Harold would always remain to be my most favorite character in all of Fallout. I always found his humor from Fallout and Fallout 2 so charming. When I saw his name and recognized his voice, my heart burst for joy only to sink on how sad his life has become. But I can never bring myself to put him out his misery.
He really is an incredibly charming character. Whether he can genuinely share thoughts with Bob, or it’s just the delusions of a centuries old man, the mutual respect that he and Bob share is incredibly touching. He truly sees Bob as his equal and harbours no ill will against him for their situation. Such a well written character.
Fallout three is full of places where the speech option you want isn’t there. Such as when James asked why you left the vault, there’s no option to say they were trying to Kill me.
If there was a way to have Harold braindead? Harold wouldn't suffer anymore, his body would still be alive, Bob would still be alive. Bob seems to be a name for the mutation, he doesn't have a manifestation in Harold's brain, like a voice or a double personality. Harold probably wouldn't mind, the green would still spread, only Sapling Yew would be sad...
That’s a fair option. Not sure how it would be accomplished, but it’s certainly something that would satisfy both the needs of the people and the needs of Harold.
Its probably kinda crappy to suggest this but I feel like eventually he would go insane/brain dead just based off his mental state. That way the green would spread but he wouldn't be mentally burdened, at least anymore. He didnt seem to be in a very stable mind as he referred to his mutation as Bob instead of just what it was so maybe he was getting there and just needed to suffer longer in order to do so? Just my opinion
@@TawnyRain2332 I disagree, he has been around since the bombs dropped and imo he seems less insane in this game than in fallout 2. It is too bad we couldn't get to know more about his ability to "see" through the trees, to me it seemed like he was slowly fusing with the tree kinda like the master in fallout one. Tbh they have a lot in common, being dumped in the same vat, being worshipped as gods, being immobile and having slight psychic powers
I always honored Harold's wish. I didn't even realize you could justify otherwise to him after the fact. To me, keeping a person alive in a state they consider torture because it'd be helpful to the wasteland is... terrible. I always honored Harold's wish. Edit: Of course I destroy his heart, what monster would burn Harold? Watching Harold burn was VISCERALLY UPSETTING...
*Institute:* Growth! For the greater good! *F4 Brotherhood of Steel:* Kill it! It’s an abomination! *Railroad:* We must keep it as a secret from the other factions! *Minutemen:* -there’s a settlement that- ...Actually you are the leader, you decide
I would have been interesting for Fallout 4 to have like a creation club, or possibly DLC where you travel to the Capital Wasteland because the Brotherhood wants to eliminate Harold for being a mutant, an easy target, but maybe Harold objects this time because he sees the beauty of living and helping others. (assuming the Leaf Mother Laurel is the canon ending)
Rodri G But couldn’t one argue that Oasis is in itself, a settlement? Make Bob make more seeds to expand Oasis and the Capital Wasteland, nay, the whole world shall become one big settlement!!!
Harold's pain PARTIALLY stems from what I feel is a strong desire to be with people. he loves to tell stories, he appreciates Yew because shes willing to listen. What bothered me.... GREATLY... about Oasis, is that I saw Harold being tormented because the faith built around him made it impossible for anyone to actually HEAR him. They built a wall around him.... the gate doesn't even face him... its built BEHIND him... They completely shut him out... He's been forced to be alone. a man who spent his life wandering and from what I gathered, loving every second of it. has now been sealed in a room, where he can't even see the door. I wanted to spread Harold's influence....I wanted to allow the world to grow.... but I took his life in my first playthrough because those people weren't deserving of him. They were nice, yes.... but that kindness came from ignorance. All of their thankfulness was for nothing, because they couldn't even say it to his face. The game limits the player's options.... but if it were possible, I'd want to solve the problem by showing those people what they've done. Their faith makes them good people on the surface, but they need to see the cruelty and the weight they've put on a single man. They don't seem like they're totally lost, and maybe.... just maybe.... if they're willing to be WITH Harold instead of below him.... Harold could find happiness as well. In the meantime, I'd ask him if he'd be willing to spread.... to discuss it with him... I'd want to come back and give him new stories while watching him grow. All while letting him know that, if hes become too tired.... or maybe the side effects of the growth are too much.... that I'm ready to do as he asked to begin with.
I sympathize with Harold's suffering, but given the state of the world, I feel that encouraging his growth his ultimately the best option. If the game allowed it, I would allow it, I'd spread the forest, but force the Treefolk to acknowledge him as a person, to work with researchers of the Wasteland to bring life back to the land, and to promise Harold a release from his suffering at some point in the future when things are stabilized, even if that means waiting decades to centuries. Sadly, these games simply aren't that nuanced.
@@wtxcrazydonut i mean from what i'm seeing he has a pretty good idea, making harold the foundation of the new world is a good even though he already is a foundation for the treefolk and he hates/enjoys it. Because he likes his time with Yew, hes still human so i'd say give him things that he can listen to or watch or do something and maybe some people would connect with him like yew did and he can both save the wasteland and have a happy life. And i get the point that if he has to wait centuries for himself to die that everyone in this generation would be dead and new people could use him for bad or even torture him for fun, but my solution for that is have like a family tradition of going to see harold and hang out with him and be kind folk, and for people to protect him. Also i get that people like the lone wanderer wont be around to govern what happens so you just train select few to be like him, boom and then harold is happy/safe and the wasteland is restored. And when everything is green is harold wants to be put down so be it he at least deserves his request after basically saving the wasteland.
@Anthony Johnson well.. I mean.. He would quite literally be saving the life of everyone in the wasteland. Certainly, forcing him into this kind of thing is wrong in a society like ours where things alright, but when the future of humanity depends on it? When one singular person can restore the area of hundreds if not thousands of people AND the future generations..? It is for the greater good.
Programmer here. it's not about nuance. it's about code. doing something like this would take a lot of time, effort and space for something only a small percentage of people would see. whilst i would love to see more of that kind of stuff in the future. back then it was simply not achieveable
@@Riccool I would have to agree with you, as much as i would live to see that option it just wasnt possible or plausible to do back then, such a few amount of people would see that effect and probably even fewer people would think about doing this option. Now if they made this a mandatory mission in the game that would be a different story but because it isnt I wouldn't waste the time, effort and space in the code to do this.
I wish there was a way to engineer Harold's seeds to be able to create seed bearing plants so Harold could be at peace whilst still being able to help the wasteland flourish
I understand where you're coming from when you say that siding with one of the treeminders is worse than burning Harold. However, I feel like that's a gray area. Going out of your way to exploit a man's fear to kill him is absolutely horrendous
@@Casandraelf Speedrunners usually kill him with fire since it's the quickest way to finish the quest. Some people also deliberately choose the more evil option when they are making an evil aligned character, it is an RPG afterall.
what if there was a way to pull him apart and make him into an ent of some manner, seperate out his hands, implant his heart in his body, maybe trim out his branches and give him some metal boots so his feet cant take root again and let him mill about the wastes. Hell, the Brotherhood of Chicago might take him, they have sentient deathclaws for fucks sake.
there's actually suppose to be an option where your suppose to convince harold to live since his strain of fev is what's allowing all the plants to grow back
I if given the option,would take his dna reseacrch into it or get one of many scientists in the games to help,then kill him,gaining humanity back to harold,and make a thriving wasteland
I wish there was an option for he tree minders to treat him like a person instead of a god cause the only person he likes is the one person who treats him like abuman
The only ones with the technology to achieve this are “The institute” and barely anyone in the entire wasteland know about their existence. Even the lone wanderer doesn’t know they exist. So ya, that’s not really an option.
@@gr1m720 ya and i believe the institute is the only one that can actually do anything with harolds DNA. DNA needs highly specialized equipment which only the institute has. equipment made from scraps really isnt gonna get anything accomplished
Please don't take this the wrong way but....In the world we see in Fallout games, why would you care if someone calls you....EVIL? It is just a wee little bit temporary damage to karma points, nothing more. After the bombs fell, it took a maximum of one month and most of the police officers realized they are no longer receiving paychecks (or that automated salary system continued paying them with worthless toilet paper known as dollars instead of caps) so they tossed away their uniforms and badges and went home. That means it is not like anyone will arrest you for murder if you burn Harold. It is not like you cannot kill a Radstag or Yao Guai without the next thing being someone asking for your hunting permit. Also, I have sold LOTS of homemade Jet in the Commonwealth with zero consequences. Having realized this, it is not actually so heavy to play Fallout games.
@@bitterman7258 Yes, but morals is much more flexible concept in the post-apocalyptic world than it was before the Great War. Also, there is no longer the same law than there was before the bombs fell. In some sense, it may be good, in some sense, bad.
@@Cybernaut76 while yes the wasteland is fucked and there is evil in it, people with morals and hope still exist on it and they're the ones actually trying to make a difference, and as long as those people exist in the wasteland, you cant burn alive a talking tree without being considered evil
@@bitterman7258 True enough. However, I think you can get away with a lot of psychopath stuff (such as the things you can do by installing Depravity and Diary of a Madman) if you do them wisely. It is not like CSI will come and investigate and then get you or anything.
Personally, I go with Laurel and use the Liniment on his heart. After all, Harold admits his wishes were selfish in the end. Though I wish there was another option. I would want a way to destroy Harold's Brain. If we leave him braindead and his body lives on he will no longer suffer and Bob can carry on.
Okay, but can we talk about the sap that Tree Father Birch makes you drink? If it can stop the growth of a tree, then what does it do to a human being? ..Damn...
Can't say what it does to them. But 1 drink from that sap will not make them braindead, I mean when lone wonderer drank the sap but didn't lose its intelligence. Also Herald is not a human anymore. The effects it has on herold will not affect the humans.
Hajime Hinata harold does say that it was made by one of the treeminders, it either makes them high (run around crazily) or make then unconscious and wake up seeing his face and become terrified
There’s a random encounter where you meet a trader who presumably went through the same ritual. He talks about Harold like he’s a God like the other Treeminders would while moving his head around in a strange manner, so he must’ve went insane or delirious or something from it. When you finish speaking with him, he dies a moment afterwards. I guess the results from drinking the sap can vary, and you were lucky enough to not go through the same things as that guy.
Here’s my solution: leave his heart exposed, get the Treeminders to hang out with him and help his quality of life** while we (the Lone Wanderer) find Super Mutants to squeeze for all their FEV-contaminated blood. Using that and some Chemistry, we distill the FEV before grabbing a new human being. Over the course of a year (to collect one of Bob’s seeds) we’ll find out if the other trees grow seeds and we talk with Harold to help him cope with his situation. A year passes, a seed is collected, we recreate Harold’s situation with more than a couple human beings who’ll join caravaners and straying Treeminders in reaching other settlements in and outta the Capital Wasteland.With all of this done, Harold can be asked if he’s okay with his life as it is or if he still desires death. If he wants death, we put him down after he spends time with Yew and we ensure that the Treeminders understand that he’s just joining “his children” by taking root somewhere else...and then we kill him quickly. If he’s okay with being alive, we increase his mutation, spurring on the Capital Wasteland’s growth of foliage. The branching out (HA) Treeminders will be doing this as well, essentially creating a cycle to gradually bring greenery back to all of Post-Apocalyptic North America. All of the Harold replicas will be getting far better treatment and will be brought to grow strong, fast and vast. Far from perfect, this is the best plan that encompasses all of the outcomes on hand. We maintain isolation of Harold while improving his situation, giving enough time to answer important questions while the Treeminders get somewhat educated on their “god”’s circumstances, help everyone get closure, expand the greenery’s growth in the wasteland, and bring an old friend some peace in a hellish existence. I know that improving Harold’s situation takes zero effort. Bring him a radio, books, magazines, pip boy games, and just hang out with the poor man. Feed him if that’s at all a possibility so he feels like he’s not in a living hell! This has been agreed on by the community. It’s the rest of it that’ll take some work to complete. Far from perfect, it’ll give everyone a chance to improve everything around them. If Harold still craves death, he’ll have died with one good year outta centuries of hell and there’ll be a newer, less tortured generation to do what he unintentionally did. The wasteland would grow, the Treeminders would become better and Harold would find peace one way or another!
Personally i'd let him grow. Yes there is the 'using him as a slave' argument, but like he said himself, there are times when he can still be happy. I think he could have a life that's at least more happy than not if he was just able to get a bit of help to experience 'normal' life again. Have people to talk to (who don't see him as a god), bring him a radio, flip through a few pages of a book with him, maybe feed him? (Hestill has a mouth, teeth, and tongue after all.) All sorts of things to give him a life he can at least somewhat enjoy, all while knowing that he is (with any luck) making the WORLD better for people.
I think his happiness should be out of the question when letting him live. Here is an idea, stand still for a couple minutes, hours, days, you can't eat, you can't drink, and you definitely can't sleep, no amount of books or people could bring you enough happiness if you had to experience that for hundreds of years. What if you side with laurel, after a couple years he would be completely surrounded in himself, forever alone in the dark with nothing to company him. If you let him live it's for anybody but him, don't try to rationalize it.
@@Noah-gk7rn He CAN be happy though. He says so himself when he's talking about the kid. I'm not saying he could have the best life in the wasteland, but if one kid can make him happy i'm sure people treating him like he's not a god could make him happy too. Treat him like a human helper instead of a god and he just might find a good purpose and meaning in his life. You can say "try standing still for a long time without food or sleep" but that's ghouls in a nutshell. Being a ghoul sucks, that's unarguable, but if you could at least be a tree-ghoul with a purpose you could still enjoy living.
@@thetwistedsavant5821 What happens when he loses an audience though? This is a post-apocalyptic wasteland bound by no laws of man, some super mutants could role around one day and decimate the tree cult, potentially leaving Harold alone again, and what if that doesn't happen, did you even read what I said, maybe you did, did you think about it? Do you think you could find happiness hundreds of years alone, or worse yet surrounded by people who can't give you the one thing that every living being seeks eventually? Death?
@@Noah-gk7rn You kill raiders every day in this game. They are bad people, but still people, and you dont know what they think or do when you are not around. All of them probably with relatives who dont have them anymore. You have done worse as a player in fallout 3.
@@-gemberkoekje-5547 Just because you kill people trying to do harm to yourself, makes it okay to let someone rot and go insane in eternal loneliness then?
What tipped it for me was Harolds ability to "see" us coming. he has a connection to the trees and plants that sprout from Bob and it's an ability he is still developing. So he still has more to achieve in his life. and by spreading the grove of tree further and further out, Harold is able to see more and more. Given time he would not only provide green resources for the wasteland, but connect to it. See all the people and experience a large civilization. And help it with the spread of information and assistance just like he used to before he found Bob. I only wish you can point that out to Harold, he might even agree to it. And if it becomes too much, his heart is still vulnerable by not being crystallized in sap.
@@samsh0-q3a it's not even about becoming a god. Harold was a caravan leader, supplier and trader of goods and info. he knew the only way we survive is togeather. He was always selfless till the day he was mutated and after. Given an option to see the benifet and not be talked at and worshiped like a god, but instead talked to as a human, he could do great works for the world.
Kalen Gell that’s the problem though. He *wants* to be alone. He is tired of the Tree Minders who don’t treat him as an intelligent person with bodily autonomy and it definitely doesn’t seem like he wants to be treated like a god.
In my opinion, Laurel and her liniment is the best option for Harold and Bob because Harold complains about not being able to go anywhere and with the liniment spreading the seeds out further Harold could see through them. (If Harold is right about his claim of being able to see through them)
He could also watch humanity regrow. Be a source of wisdom He could listen to radio. Have books read to him. He is suffering from mental illness. And is suicidal. Ethunisation has already been found to be unethical. But lets all talk about how the suicidal person wanting to die means killing him instead of treating him is the only right option.
The thing is, while Harold may find it agonizing to stay there in this way, and that in the moment it may be best to kill him, if he were let grow more and to spread more quickly, overtime he may have people arrive that can help him in his predicament or at the least overtime, someone will help him with his boredom.
The people that claim they want what’s best for him wanted to enslave him. What makes you think people arriving later won’t do the same? Making him a slave and saying “maybe someone else would come around” is pretty evil.
here's an interesting follow up question: Could we wait kill Harold XX years later when the other trees have covered most of the wasteland and perhaps start developing seeds of there own?
That's what I thought but remember he's bored but his leaves are his eyes so by siding with Laural he can see and watch othee wastelanders. It reminds me of Caleb's fate in Fallout 4 but much more complex.
@@ryszakowy and dont forget look around him those trees grew within 20 years that large because he was there for around 20-30 years so they already grow at an extreme rate
Maybe he’s okay in the moment, but what about 100 years later, or 100 years after that. He’s stuck in one spot for eternity. In real life, a few days of solitary confinement in prisons can destroy a persons mind. Imagine months going by where nothing happens at all and you’re entirely alone. That’s just endless suffering
I ended up making the same choice when confronted with this quest, and I got the same takeaway. I couldn't bring myself to kill him, so I did what felt like the next best thing-to give his life new meaning by making him grow faster-and he actually seemed glad I didn't carry out his original wish.
@@TW-sh2un The little girl may help with that. Who knows when she grows up she might help make things comfortable. A radio to listen to and a few people to just you know... talk to and listen. Sure they might still worship him but at least its better interactions.
Emp United You realize since he’s essentially immortal that the amount of time she spends with him is a blink of an eye? That little girl grows up and keeps him company for maybe 80 years. The colony will be dead within a couple 100. He could live for 10,000 years or longer. That’s 9000+ years of no interaction, just staring at the same wall, unable to move or end his state in any way. That would be a living hell for any conscious mind
Its a hard question but I killed Harold as he wanted as it was his decision he would kill himself if he could and I would probably want someone to end my misery if I was trapped in one spot for eternity but thats my opinion
Actually, the irony is if he could move enough to kill himself he wouldn't have been depressed in the first place. He was a ghoul so he was gonna live forever anyway one place is as good as any other.
The whole ethical argument behind Harolds desire to die is a load of Brahmin shit. This is a situation where there’s no right answer...but it varies from person to person. From community to community that’s in harolds company at the time. That’s how i see it...from where I’m standing if I was the lone wanderer and Harold asked me to kill him...looking at his entire situation I’d kill him without any hint of doubt in my decision. I’d feel guilty killing him...I’d have to live with that choice all my life knowing I killed what seemed like someone who’d be a good conversationist and someone who’s seen this nuclear war from the very beginning. that I couldn’t help in any other way..but I’d know there’s no other choice in the matter and I’d do it again. Anyone who thinks letting one person or a small group of people suffer for “the greater good” as shown from that scene in Hot Fuzz will literally never have to worry about being in the shoes of the victim. No one in human history has ever found themselves in a situation where they’re trapped against they’re will in some shape or form and thought “naw you know what? It’s fine..I don’t mind this..I’m helping other people...my suffering will benefit society.” No one..and Obviously, That’s why people who think to keep Harold alive for the greater good will be totally fine with it until it’s they’re turn...a turn they’d never have to fear arriving because Harold is trapped for all eternity. Harolds desire to die obviously stems from extreme boredom, irritation, unable to eat, sleep, walk around. He can’t even move enough to end his own life OF COURSE HE’D WANT TO DIE!! Since Harold was a ghoul before he was obviously going to live for what seems like an eternity. Why he never minded his situation before is because he had total control over his fate...he was a regular person like all of us. Take that control away and what are you left with? A thinking person trapped in a body that’s no longer yours because you have no control over it. Others will say “oh Harold will have company” “what about Yew she’s Harold friend” “Just get Harold a radio, a book, friends, do stuff for him.” Well guess what? He’s still got NO CONTROL over his own actions. Who the hell would want to live they’re life being cared after not able to do a single thing for yourself?? And I do literally mean a single thing...I don’t mean jobs or labor. Also these people in Oasis will die..eventually. Yew will die..eventually. You can argue future generations of humans will care for Harold as the treeminders did. Guess what? People don’t know that..the lone wanderer was able to figure out Harold’s not a god..just a man trapped in a tree...able to produce unlimited resources for all time. so that means plenty of other people could figure that out too. And humans can become fucking evil scumbags. If not Raider, slavers, talon company. Any faction of evil intent find Harold and take advantage. But even future treeminders could. Hypothetically speaking...What’s stopping a treeminder from say 150 years in the future to suddenly realize “Oh wait...you can’t do anything, we don’t need to worship, or even care for you..like at all. No you will serve us no matter what” And then they will reap the rewards from it. If Harold could move and break himself free of bob/Herbert then all of this would be muted as he’d lose the only reason to want to kill him self and continue on with his long life. But since he cannot. And all of the books, humans, radios, music whatever in the world would break ANYONE eventually into wishing to just die. Besides if that were me I’d be sick of hearing the same old songs on the radio, or talking to the same people, seeing the same sights by 3 years if I’m lucky. What makes Harold who’s BEEN in this wasteland for two centuries already any different? Harold is suffering an eternal Hell of having no control over his own fate..that he must rely on the mercy of wastelanders or the goddamn cooks he’s stuck with to do for him. No amount of company or entertainment will ever EVER make anyone wish to be alive at that point. So yeah...I’d kill him, the old ghoul’s suffered enough at this point.
My philosophy is this: Harold is an individual, if he wants to die, especially for the amount of years he's lived and the restrictiveness of his situation. It is ultimately his decision on what he wants for his own life. Birch and Laurel are both forcing something on him he doesn't want. Burning him isn't evil, it's exactly what he wants it's painful and frankly a bit tortorous, but not evil since it's what he requests (though you can also destroy the heart too. There's that option also. Which is a faster death). Regardless of how he's killed it fulfills his request. But one other thing: it's clear death isn't really what he wants. If it was, Yew's presence honestly probably wouldn't make him happy. It's likely what's making him miserable is having to listen to everyone's problems and being treated like the one that's going to solve them since he's worshipped as an idol. If there were options to convince the worshippers to provide him with entertainment like a radio and treat him more like a friend than a god, I think it would do him some good. And even after that, if he wants to die, he should be granted the request, but I don't imagine he'd want to if his other needs were met and he was just treated like a person and given the same human decency of privacy, boundaries, and respect.
Um, He explicitly and firmly states that he does not want to burned to death because it would cause him extreme pain. We also learn from Yew that it’s his worst fear and he worries about it constantly. So that does bring us to the conclusion that burning him is evil and does not in any way fulfill his clear request to go into the caves and destroy his heart.
Bringing life back to a dead wasteland so humanity can stop savagely fighting and murdering for scarce resources is way more important. In reality, there are no easy decisions. If we all lived according to the, “morals over necessity” philosophy, 90% of everything we’ve accomplished as a species and problems we’ve solved would still exist.
@@solrhopalocera5704 bringing life back wouldn't change anything though, people would still be as ruthless before. When the world is rebuilt in a few thousand years it'll be a wasteland again
I've seen the main arguement about letting Harold live despite him actually coming to terms with it as, "But what if he changes his mind in hundreds of years?" Okay, if he does? Why would he not be able to convince someone to kill him then? Alternatively, the dude may just be depressed and actually want someone to talk him out of it, because that's what the mission seemed like to me.
For me, deciding to kill Harold is the same that handing a gun to a depressed person who wants to kill themselves, and I'm not even sure that he actually wants to die. 🤷♂ He's tired as fuck of the Tree people, but if you have gone through extreme pain or anxiety, you know that at that specific moment all you want to do is die, eventhough you don't actually want it. Bojack Horseman did a great analysis of this in "The View from the Halfway Down", it's really common for suicidal attempts survivors to actually regret their decision at the last moment... So my idea would be, give the man some respect, treat him as a human and if after that, he wants to die, then grant that wish.
@@marcoc7388to be fair, he has been sitting in the same spot for 20 years and is constantly being used as a slave to help the people, if you were told you had to sit somewhere for hundreds of years, not being able to sleep, or eat, or do anything a normal person would do, would you want to live? For what. But ya I get what your saying, or typing I guess.
I wouldve gone with the mothers option, because Harold does realise that he eould be helping thousands, possibly millions of people, and creating a brighter future for the wasteland
Idk about him but if I'm him, it won't really effect me cuz standing there doing nothing for decades seeing your love one dies will emotionally destroy me even if I know that I save a lot of people... but those action is being force by someone else and I would feel like a tool. but idk since I'm a one selfish human being
@@souko3455 but he wouldn't be alone for eternity. Of course he will see his love ones die of old age but he will also see new life being born as well( I mean the offsprings of the worshipers). So that will keep on healing the wound of herold. But it would be tragic if his entire family is slaughtered by raiders or enclave. Then it would be a hell to live in.
@@rahulsar2030 idk man, it's like you found something that you love but then it disappear. Then you found new person you love then it disappear again. Idk about other people but I would be insane if that happens. Living a life where you know that your love one will die over and over again and you have to experience every single lost for decades would make me crazy insane. I would feel really depressed. It's like my life now where I still feel lonely even though I have family and friends, only the closest people makes me feel truly happy and that guy have to experience losing that special people over and over again. The worst thing is that he can't do anything about it. He only can stand there doing nothing when that happens.
I use the liniment because it is one of the only ways to save the wasteland, but also, Harold is in turmoil, he wants to die because he's absolutely miserable. I would normally respect someone's wishes to that regard but, alive he can do so much good for the world and I believe that his sacrifice, his torment, will save the wastes and he will be recorded as a hero. I hope that the knowledge of all of the lives he improves and the people he saves will provide comfort.
But if he expands, and no one learns that Oasis is the center of it, people will just think the trees have miraculously made a comeback, and will start cutting them down for lumber with no care for whence it came. Harold would be a god only to the Treeminders, to the rest of the capital wasteland, a myth.
crypto1223 well considering 3 dog knows about it( and he is the general source of information on stuff about the wasteland for most people in the area) I’m pretty sure people will likely find out that oasis is the source of it all, and the capital wastelanders will also likely spread information about oasis
I have lived through a point in my life were I was suicidal. I was abused my dad and forced to most of the work around the house, from a very young age. So at age 12, I took a razer to my wrist and cut it, in front of both my parents. It wasn't deep enough to draw much blood and I was willing to continue, but I was stopped by my dad. My mom, later that day, talked with me about what happened. I started to understand that even though my life was bitter and mean, I had people that needed me and my help. From the younger kids I read out loud to, to my mother who suffers from depression who loves my smile. I realized life isn't just about living for yourself, its also important to live for others. If you see it like that, it makes sense to help the Capital Wasteland, because Harold at the point when he asks you to kill him can't see it. He is blinded by his own self to see into the future. So my choice is to save him. I say save because he needs someone to show him how to keep living, which is something both the Lone wonderer and Yew show him.
The thing is that he doesn't care about becoming a tree. He just sees no more reason to live after 2 centuries of wandering the wastes; all up and down the former U.S. If you let him live, you can tell him how the people around him look up to him, even Sapling Yew loves to talk to him at night. In a bleak world like Fallout's... I think they're overdue for a new god like Harold. To make them feel safe. To make them feel that, maybe... life can get better.
Thing is Harold is being selfish when you meet him, he doesn't even bother considering those that rely on him, especially Sapling Yew who looks up to him and finds comfort in his being there. Then there's the matter of Harold getting Omnipresence from the plants. @Kipras Medeišis - Yeah.. the USA was birthed from it and is still considered the most free place in the world. Damn those Christians.
Samuel Reyna And yet Americans were the ones to bring doom to the wastes as well. My point on how religion is born, wasn't an attempt to say that Christianity by itself is bad, but that it was designed to be used to direct masses. It is very likely that more and more Father or Mother take desicions FOR their god, more and more they are going to become gods themselves in people's eyes.
Life is slavery to existence, to yourself, and to those around you. In the end, if you can convince Harold that his life is worth living in service to his people or to the Commonwealth, it will be better than his pointless death. Maybe someone should consider reading some books to Harold? He seems interested in reading and that would be yet another way to make his life bearable. Other concessions of this nature should be made in order to keep Harold happy, if only as a compensation for the immense service he provides to the world.
The man tree does literally nothing. How... Exactly is he enslaved? Bc he is depressed and noone is killing him, instead caring for him. I dont understand this point people are trying to push
@@reaperofzombies9698 He literally can't move from that spot he's in. It is not enslavement to any master or person, but enslavement to the predicament he is in, no real control over his life.
That's an awfully depressing way of looking at the world. I disagree. People enslave other people, that has happened; it still happens. But are we really just slaves to our own lives? Are we slaves to everyone in our presence? I don't think so. I say that the only thing that can enslave you besides people are the bad decisions you make, and falling into despair because of them. I mean no offense, but that's what your point of view sounds like.
@@jonathansteppig4116 perhaps enslavement is a harsh term for it, but in the end that's what it is, it doesn't prevent us from being happy or successful or anything else, it is simply part of the rules we all have to live by.
Maybe the treeminers could have shifts to keep him happy through reading to him and having conversations instead of praising him like a god as he has no care for that. PS: It is definitely enslavement if he is being forced to do something he doesn't want to do
I usually go with tree mother laurel. Since it's the one that's best for the most people. Harold isn't upset and we can tell him how much he matters to everyone. It's the best option even if its not the most moral. I love these morally ambiguous quests!
I hate the whole "The needs of the many, out way the needs of the few." argument. The problem, in the real world, is that people would never sacrifice themselves for others. By others I don't mean family and friends; people won't give up their life for strangers. Humans aren't innately evil, but we are selfish. We don't want people to suffer in Africa, but we do nothing about it.
Is it strange that I come back to visit Harold after going out on adventures? I feel I owe it to him after using him like that. If only they'd remaster fallout 3 and maybe add a bit more too
Well, in my gameplay I've sided with mother, not only because doing so, harold is capable of bringing back life in the capital wasteland, but also because both mother and father are the old face of the oasis cult. In time Yew could not only grow with harold, keeping him as a close friend, but also change the cult to show them how to treat him like a human being.
honestly yes, its all just a waiting game for herald as I'm sure many child and people would gladly try and entrain him. though I'm sure he could also ask to have his arms cut out of the bark so he can atleast touch things xd
It is one human being Make a promise to come back Tell him to ask Yuwe when she is old enough to kill him. Try to feed him or soak his roots in Nuka cola Who knows maybe bob does the job for you ?
I agree with pretty much everything you said. In my own gameplay, everytime - I chose to kill Harold (not with fire though, man that's messed lol). He is a person under all that bark, and he has the autonomy to ask for his life to end. Yes, it will be hard on Sapling Yew, yes the struggle of the wasteland will be longer and tougher without his abilities helping to repair the world. But ethics, they aren't about easy choices. Ethics are about finding the right choices, the ones that can be justified with moral arguments. Harold knows his pain, Harold knows his wishes - He's not crazy (well...I guess that's debatable lol) - he's making an intelligent, informed choice. He wants to die, and if I was in his "roots" I wouldn't want someone else making that decision for me because they thought they knew what was best.
Harold is putting the choice on you to end his life, he cannot do it himself. Doing it yourself and having someone do it for you are two separate things, essentially putting a gun up to your head and pulling the trigger is way different than having a stranger do it for you. A lot of people who claim to want to opt out don't go through with it, they don't really want to die but life is fucked up at the moment and they want release.
I haven't seen this comment here so I'll add my two cents. Have we considered the fact that the "trees" in Oasis may not technically be trees at all? Or that they might not be a safe form of life to introduce into the wasteland in the long run? I don't think we can positively say that Bob's fruit is safe for human consumption, or that his saplings won't strangle out other potential life as an invasive species, so spreading his seeds across the wastes on a hope and a prayer seems like playing with some dangerous pseudoscientific assumptions. One of the huge themes of the Fallout series has been examining how humanity's hubris, in the field of science in particular, ultimately put it on the path to extinction from a variety of threatening sources, and nuclear holocaust simply happened to be the first to transpire. Spreading Bob's seeds may just be yet another blunder on that path, we simply don't know enough to make the right call. I think the best realistic option with Harold would be to study him closely, get Li or some of the Brotherhood scribes involved perhaps, and determine if these plant cells seem safe beyond a shadow of a doubt.
the problem with your theory of bob's fruit being an invasive species is that at the time that fallout 3 was made, it was considered part of the lore that most plant life was dead or nonexistent in the wastes was so spreading the seeds would have been a miracle at that time
@@gusty7153 What I'm referring to with the phrase "invasive species" is that these Bob plants could easily end up dominating their environment in a harmful way that prevents other plants from ever being able to return and flourish naturally. The absence of competition in an ecosystem does not preclude the potential for harm when introducing a new species into that system. If anything, it becomes more likely that harm may occur. Human history is filled with examples of this exact phenomenon. Now, I'm not saying that this is a risk you cannot or even should not take given the full context of ecological disaster the wasteland is facing, but it is a risk you must at least consider. In the Fallout universe, humanity fucked up big time, and despite that clear lesson, humans keep repeating those same mistakes again and again in almost every game. When it comes to Harold, spreading those seeds seems like a big mistake just waiting to happen, from my perspective at least.
I think letting him spread is the best option. He says he san see you coming to him in the grove and can see through the trees. He says problem is not being able to "eat or read" pretty much he has no entertainment, but he likes when Yew comes to talk to him. When his forest spreads all over the wasteland he will be able to see everything, find entertainment everywhere, become the capital wasteland and turn it into the capital grove. This may even make him new friends that will come to him that he could enjoy talking with and hear story's from. It's a win win for everyone.
Reisha Ananda It could be a more merciful choice than him living for centuries or millennia, and it gives him a truer god complex than what his worshippers bestow upon him. I like her option, as opposed to the guy’s option. Laurel is right, if the place stays secluded, but is already known about, it will be doomed, and the guy’s sap will be pointless. Additionally, I think killing Harold is a humane approach, as it is euthanasia of a mortal person who is suffering from severe boredom, but he is not completely miserable. So the question is: Do you grant Harold the end to his mortality he desires, or do you have him reach his maximum potential, thus helping the world around him? Tough choice.
Avgel I don’t think that would be the case, if his body works like actual trees. For example, if you look at birch forests, they’re all interconnect like Harold seems to be in game and they still live for centuries, like most other trees (if I’m not mistaken, this is from an article I read some time ago and may not be totally accurate.)
When i played through F3 forever ago i didn't complete the quest, i left, unable to side with the treeminders and imposing that choice onto him, and unable to kill him because to me he was alone and depressed. I thought he could still be happy so over my adventuring I'd make my usual stops in megaton to stow loot, I'd head to rivet city to trade, and then I would head up to oasis, every once in a while I would stop by Agatha's to hear her play. I would bring snacks for yew and trade with the minders and then RP my own option with Harold. One where i made it a goal to bring him back to humanity if I could. Trading stories about the past, bonding over the thrill of scavenging and other shenanigans, having conversations about philosophy and life, sometimes I would just go to let him talk, its important to feel heard. I remember writing a scene or scenario where we concocted a plan to pull harmless pranks on the grownups with yew. With a companion that was able to see him as a person over time the depression of his situation faded. Over the course of my little fan fiction and we became true friends and we talked about his transformation and the limitations, but also the possibilities. He was beginning to develop new senses as Herbert(that joke never got old) continued to grow and spread, and with consistent news of current events brought back his spark of adventure and hope. Its was one of the very last things i did in my complete playthrough of the game, after project purity and hope had returned to the capital wasteland, but we decided together to finally (i worked on this playthrough over about a year and a half) use the liniment on his heart, not only in the hopes of spreading growth and a peaceful way of life from oasis but also for the adventure of embracing the mutation. I left it with the what ifs because i was finally ready to move on from the game and I was satisfied but Headcanon is that over the years he got his life back, his happiness, and his ability to choose how he would live it.
Your fan fiction is actually the more sane line of thinking. You don't meet a stranger asking for a suicide, and then you kill him. You would actually want to know a bit more of him, talk a little bit, spend some time, that actually makes perfect sense in a real world scenario.
@@BillyKamp That was my thought, so many situations are restricted by the nature of the medium, more than once we have to make a choice that is pretty black and white only because its missing the nuance of how a real interaction would play out between real people. For Oasis, it probably wouldn't have made sense for Bethesda to have invested months of work, hundreds of recorded lines of dialogue and scripted events for a few extra branching conversation options for a relatively small sidequest, and really they already put so much. I just wanted to do justice for the character and assuage my own curiosities so I filled in my own blanks so the choices fit the "full" narrative, at least the one I added to. I had some interesting conversations with the frozen folks of mothership zeta, I was taking Japanese(I did rather poorly, lol) in high school at the same time of this playthrough so i had a lot of fun not just being unable to understand each other, but having humorous miscommunications based on my very limited understanding of the language. Damn I loved this game...
This is probably the most beautiful part of the wasteland that shows the best side of the nature and people and has the hardest decision in the entire franchise in my opinion
I got it! Harold is experiencing a Bethesda glitch in his own world! We joke about them without end on this side of the screen, but Bethesda's bugs affect their world too, and Bob is just the first case. How long until their glitches affect a whole region?
No matter what you do you will feel guilty for not ending his life and make him free or watch him suffer to not have his favor fulfilled and lonely for ever and ever Except for bob of course he'll be with him for life, maybe even when he's free from the root.
No matter the choice you feel bad, kill Harold and you end a beautiful friend ship, make Harold grow against his will and he basically becomes just a resource not a human. It's a hard choice but I think killing Harold is the only real good choice. It isn't the best choice but, it's a neutral choice
Maybe. I think that choosing Laurel’s option gives Harold a truer god complex though. He is already worshipped by a cult. So, if he were to be the source of a revitalized wasteland, then he may be seen as a holy figure throughout it. Though, this option may give him a shorter life than the sap, because he will have to work harder. The question is: Do you grant Harold an end to his mortal life, or do you make him become something greater than himself, that can affect the wasteland as a whole, for the better of humanity?
“You've consoled yourself by thinking that all the torture and murder is for the greater good. This implies that there is a greater good… and a lesser good. It implies that there are multiple distinct goods, and that these can be quantified and compared.” - Ethics Committee Orientation, SCP Foundation Saving Harold is, in my opinion, a lesser good than the good done by forcing him to survive.
yep, its an act of cowardice, he's simply suicidal and doesn't want to live anymore. it would be just as wrong to kill any suicidal person simply bc they want to die. Thats without taking into acct the amount of people that could be saved by Harold
I loathe that quote. A decent percentage of folk have a individual moral compass/philosophy so whatever observation the Ethics Committee is trying point out is moot when it comes to these people.
Some paths are definitely superior to others. I guess the legitimacy of the quote depends on your definition of "good" but its plain and simple to see that certain ways of life produce healthier societies. Take the moral and social justice elements out and still, you will see the productivity of ideas in their societies. Therefore, they can be compared. and they must. Take an incident like the rape of nanking, do you really believe that the ideologies that led to that atrocity are no better or worse than those of the U.S. today? There IS a greater good and it is left to man to make out what it is.
5:45 The problem with this and all of Fallout is that plants, unlike animals, are extremely resistant to Ny immune to radiation. This is why some of worst radiated places on earth are very green, because plants don’t give a fuck. If the fallout universe were to be more accurate then there would be a lot more green, at least in the places where enough water happens to fall.
Morally it is right to help him end his life, as it is simply assisted-suicide. And at the very least someone suffering for so long should have the option to go out on their own terms. But logically his suffering is nothing compared to that of the collective of the wasteland. In a world where people are eaten by monsters, torn apart by ghouls, murder-raped by raiders, and being at war with supermutants, his continued existence could help ease the horrors that is daily life in Fallout. So while it was a hard decision to make (at least for myself) I chose to spread his influence further in the hopes of helping more people. Which is also why at the end of the game (I didn't have Fawkes or the DLC) I walked into that irradiated chamber and activated the G.E.C.K with no hesitation. And then the DLC dropped like a few months later and my sacrifice was made meaningless as I was brought back to life and allowed to run around and be a murder-hobo in power-armor again.
Here's the thing, choosing to sacrifice yourself in order to activate the G.E.C.K is completely different from forcing Harold to live because YOU have the choice of sacrificing yourself while Harold has no choice in the matter.
I remember the first time i ran into this thing and was bored but i had the flamer and wonder what would happen if i flamed him...the results were pretty scary(i actually got scared from his scream)
My reason for killing Harold? People survived the Great War, they’ve survived the aftermath so far. Throughout time people have struggled to meet their material needs, and yet that did not mean their lives were miserable and meaningless. I think Humanity will be fine without or Harold (or just doomed to repeat history with or without him)
I completely agree; while you can tell Harold afterward that others need him, that's just telling him to get over it, more or less. You're telling him to just tough it out because others want him to. You're not giving him a reason to live, or to want to live, or to enjoy life. He needs a reason to have a perspective future, goals, dreams, something besides being imprisoned in that spot and used as a battery for all eternity. Otherwise, it's just not right to force him to live. If a patient begs you to take them off life support, you're *not* supposed to force them to stay on it.
But that is a reason to live. Helping others is a reason to live. His connection with Yew is a reason to live. Suicidal feelings occur more often than they are the answer.
@@shorewall Having someone need you sometimes makes someone want to live, but it's not always that simple. Having a reason to *have* to live is not always the same as *wanting* to live. It's like turning it into a chore he's forced to do forever and ever. There's no option to make it *not* a chore for him, which means to me, there's no option to make him *want* to live out of anything more than obligation.
Siding with Harold, popping his heart is the best possible option. He suffers no longer and you receive the best reward: A perk called Barkskin, which increases your DR by 5 permanently.
I've never played Fallout 3 before, but I can relate to Harold on an emotional level. Being stuck in one location all your life and being deprived of everything that makes you human isn't a life, it's just endless and ever-growing pain. If I met Harold in the horrifying and tragic state he's in, I'd let him speak everything that's on his mind and follow his requests. He's being exploited as a resource against his own will, which is a terrifying concept to think about. Despite his mutated and horrifying state, Harold deserves to die peacefully while being granted humanity and dignity instead of being treated like a slave.
From a person who's been severely depressed for most of their life, don't listen to Harold. He needs external stimulus and companionship, not death. Besides I think eventually he'll form a giant tree hivemind type deal and be able to transfer between trees and go wherever he wants.
I would love to see that. Like in twenty years, the lone wanderer picks a fruit and Harolds face pops up on the tree like "Hey buddy! COUGH COUGH COUGH"
You can't exactly compare being depressed to being mutated and disfigured to the point that you're unrecognizable as a human being, forced to stand in one place for hundreds of years unable to sleep, eat, piss, or do anything that a normal human does. My man Harold isn't just depressed. He's been tortured, forced to endure a hell no man on Earth can even comprehend. Harold has seen everyone he loves die around him as time takes them, and he's forced to stand there unable to do anything as time goes on. And all he asks from you is the sweet release of death, but you're too selfish to grant him that one wish?
Yeah, I don't think depression and being stuck for over 20 years without being able to eat, sleep, do anything, just suffering while a disfiguration merges you with a tree coming out of your fucking brains can compare. Sorry. Also, by external stimulus you are saying slavery.
I am a bit late on this one, but man, I remember this quest. It was the reason I did NOT go there in subsequent playthroughs at all. I destroyed his heart, as he was wishing for. It was HIS last wish, and HIS life we were talking about, of course I was doing what HE was wishing for. But the reaction of Yew was so heartbreaking, I could not do this quest again.
Frankly I think a lot of Harold's issues would be solved if someone just got him a radio to listen to.
Get this man a FUCKING medal (im not begin sarcastic)
Chronomaton -a fiew hours later
Herbert:“Please, i beg of you, not three dog again...“
@@PancakemonsterFO4 a) Who the hell is Herbert?
b) If the rest of the Wasteland can put up with Three Dog, then HAROLD can deal, too.
subzerobadass that’s what I said, Harrison
Bingo bango bongo i don't wanna leave the kongo oh no no no no nooooo~
That might eventually be a worse fate
I was 100% expecting to find a sapling of Harold to be in the fallout 4
Get to work on that mod please.
Harold:[notices] Ohhhhh Noooooo.
Like groot from gardians of the galaxy
Well remember fallout 4 is in the commonwealth, 3 is in capital wasteland
@@imakazero His seeds are spread to the wind. They could blow north. They could be spread stuck in the fur or hides of the wasteland creatures. If traders get a sapling, it could be traded north for resources.
Heres one: treat him like a human being? Side with Mother on one condition: they stop teeating Harold like an all powerful God, treat him like a human. Bring in a radio, people, books, magazines, anything to make him happy without killing him, even going as far as to get him friends.
well they dont understand that they are speaking to a person, they see him as a miracle or a god.
@@UltimateGamerCC then he can just ask for those things
@@nautilusshell2089 but he doesnt, what he does ask them for however just becomes a stupid riddle to them, and they are especially wary about bringing people, as well as technology, in any case this does nothing for the constant pain, difficulty breathing and unending insomnia that he is suffering day by day.
Yew will grow, listen to him and take care of his needs. I trust her, because they're friends. And she's the fruit of treeminders' society, so they'll trust her.
so you are going to bring a tree a book that can't turn the pages. i think that would be an insult. secondly unless they get new music, trust me i would want to kill myself eventually. new people, how long has Harold and bob been there, how long has it taken them to seed the trees around them. would these new people keep Harold and bob a secret until enough trees could be grown.
There was one line of dialogue where Harold admits to have seen the Lone Wanderer coming by viewing him "through the leaves of other trees." That is an amazing ability... made hilarious by the fact that Harold peeking through other trees leaves makes Bob jealous!
If Bob spreads throughout the world then Harold could probably achieve something akin to omnipresence.
And then when a forest fire breaks out, omnisuffering lmao
@@ashketchup9040 don’t forget to mention the many trees we’re gonna cut down as well. Yes he’ll be able to see the world again, but he’ll also witness the horrors we are capable of, which I’m pretty sure he is well aware of, considering how long he’s lived.
@@ashketchup9040 Do you feel horrible pain when someone pinches a little bit of your skin?
One tree is like one cell dying.
@@JoceBeggar Yeah, so imagine all your cells burning. You can't, thus, omnisuffering lmao
@@ashketchup9040 How the fuck would you burn all the trees in the world at the same time? If another Great War happened, but them everyone would burn
honestly, if FO3 was real, I would give Harold entertainment, a radio, a book, anything, treating him as a person, then also go with Mothers option.
Your good person
I’d give him a library and make him a king give
I would set up camp next to Harold,and keep him company
DeelIo, same I would literally be his therapist and best friend I feel so bad for him I am literally about to cry that’s how bad I feel for him, why am I so weird ;-;
Still, he would see all of his loved ones *_die_* that would be a fate worse than death
I always killed him. Its sad but I always hated how he was being exploited against his will, to the point they no longer saw him as human. And whether it was right or wrong for the waste lands I honored his wishes of release
Ryan Hernandez to be free I honor his wish to be free I don’t want him to be a tree his wish will be free
@@mikeehrmantraut1899 I agree plus I can't imagine what would happen if raiders or groups like the institute would were to take over the area. It be horrible what they'd do to him
@@ryanhernandez5632 OH god that would be horrible if the institute was taking over the area they would probably study and making another bio weapon that would be scary and putting Harold out of his misery was the right thing I don't want him to stay like a tree
He is not a human anymore. He is a super mutant because he got mutated at Mariposa with FEV when he was with Richard Grey/Master. He ceased to be human when he became a mutant. He is a tree.
@@valeriouscatastros8717 but the tree has the feelings and thoughts to those of a human. He is still a person but inside a tree.
Dillema, do you want:
-The best for Harold
-The best for the community
-The best for the capital wasteland
Best for the world
Best for me and Harold. I want that barkskin perk
People in the Capital Wasteland kinda suck.
@@mynameberamen1779 not all think about little lamplight and big town
Best for harold
Harold’s quest really does play well with the main theme of Fallout 3: self-sacrifice.
Honestly, basically every sacrifice in the game was avoidable and dumb, so no, fuck the theme.
@@seigeengine Nah the theme was well implemented along with all of the other morally grey choices in the game.
@@AyyyC not the ending
Whatchu mean? I sent Fawkes into the purification chamber
It is only self-sacrifice because they don't let you use the supermutant companion (who can take the radiation!), which never made sense...seriously, that they wanted needless sacrifice is one of the things people (like me) hated, which also got us Broken Steel :)
"Stuck here for centuries"
Centrees
Trees
Me: ha
Stuck there for centrees? That (Christopher) wood s-uck. ;D
Christopher woods
Woods
Harold and bob made a woods
Me: xd
I'm in a good WOOD!
Christopher Woods
No dude no🥺😢
Christopher Woods sksksksksksk
(That was a joke btw I’m not a 14 year old girl)
There is a win win situation here, Harold's depressed, because he can't move and is bored right? Get him some tv and some video tapes, get treeminders to read him stories, but a radio beside him or something
Yos
You deserve a medal
His eyesight might be really bad though
@@JeritHD he never looks at the wanderer so i imagine he can't see at all
All he needs is some weed killer and in a couple years he will be freeeeeeeeeeee
This whole ethical dilemma could be solved if Bethesda decided to add like 5 more options in dialogue.
"[Perception 5] Dude, should I bring you a radio or something?"
@@nicrobe9443 "[Charisma 7] yo, save the Wasteland dude"
“[Low Intelligence] I have this courier friend, he may have more options for you.”
@Anthony Johnson And? That doesn't change the fact that keeping harold alive benefits the entire wasteland.
@Anthony Johnson Because he can supply food for everyone else just by existing.
The best choice would have been one that was not available: introduce near brain-death to Harold, so he can no longer suffer but his body still works (and thus produce the trees).
WOuld have been a perfect pair of Checks, Science 75 - 100 to explain the theory, Medicine 75 - 100 to perform the procedure.
Stole that from doctor who
LOBOTOMY TIME BABY
We need to know if the trees sprouted from Harold can produce their own seeds. Or are they sterile? That would change everything.
That starts with Harold and ends with the masses in brainwashing helmets.
“Can you imagine THAT? Stuck here for *cen-trees* “
I hate you for this pun
>:(
LMMFAO
*_*
@@jaytheredpanda183 wasn't that funny
Idea: Take out Harolds Brain, put it in a robobrain, boom, both Bob and harold survive!
Or maybe make him as a synth
It won't work.
The brain in the Robobrain is used as a central processor.That's all, the memories are wiped clean.
Oxhorn even made a video covering Robobrains and the disturbing truth behind them.
And making him a synth would mean creating an impostor that looks or acts like him.
But don't they wanna die?
are you trying to make the terminator with natural resources
200IQ playz
I use the liniment on my major playthroughs.
Harold is still changing and mutating, no-one knows what he will become.
His major reasons to die are mainly because he is stuck in one place, I don't think he mentions being in continous pain or anything, it is the fact he has only one view, few ways to entertain himself and has to put up with the treeminders.
One thing he does mention is that he knew you were comming. It's possible he will continue to change and be able to use his senses across the entire network of trees and plants that Bob's seeds create.
If that is a possibility, then keeping him alive at this point I think is the correct thing to do. He seeks to die because he believes himself immobile, but if the reach of his senses go to the edge of the grove that can be treated.
So far his seeds have been left cast randomly via winds but he could request that the treeminders take them further afield to start groves near to other settlements.
It is of course a guess, but Harold may not be as trapped as his thinks he is.
I like keeping him around spreading his influence. He's stuck in the moment. He needs to think about what he can do now use that to move toward as well as think on how he might mutate further as the OP stated.
Or I could burn the mutant and let the world heal naturally. I prefer option 2.
He may as well reach to godhood!literaly!
That’s a good point. It’s likely as the green grows, he’s able to “see” more of the Capital Wasteland than he ever could. After all, he “saw” us coming even though he physically couldn’t move and is only able to look in one direction.
and even if he will be a slave, it's one life for thousands and maybe millions if spread far enough outside the area. Some person out there today is suffering already to help us and the future us stay safe
I also see a future of Yew becoming the leader of the Treeminders and tending to Herald and Bob, she actually listened to him, and he admitted she made him happy. Piece of cake choice. Always grow. Growth before death.
I think you forgot that Harold is gaining a sort of 'omniscience' over the passage of time. He was able to see the player coming before they arrived, blaming it on 'boredom.' It won't be long before Harold learns how to use this new ability to it's full potential, escaping the confines of his roots. This ability completely shifted my outlook on the situation.
This is why I felt justified in increasing his growth. It won't be more than a few decades until he's beyond that grove and across the capital wasteland, able to see all.
Yeah it's making a big decision for him, but he agrees afterward it's for the best + he won't be stuck there for much longer + it's helping life return to the world much quicker.
He agrees that it's for the best because you gaslight him into believing that he's being selfish. Same way most victims of coercion "agree" to their abusers demands.
@@j.jbinks9669 LOL that's one hilarious interpretation XDD. Its funny you see "gaslight" where most see "convince with compelling arguments". Bethesda makes games for children not dark stories about victim abuse lol. I don't remember the game dialogue perfectly but I'm pretty sure I don't remember gaslighting harold when I played through Fallout 3. The dialogue in the game is pretty bad. The most they will do is have a sentence like "But the community needs you and so does the capital wasteland!" and then he'd be like "yeah you're right". So...honestly its more likely that the vault dweller just changed his mind. That's what Bethesda would write. They write simple dialogue like that (which thankfully has improved in their recent games)
@@radscorpion8I agree except the “Bethesda makes games for children” part. There’s a lot of horrific material in Fallout definitely not suited for kids.
Alot of people just throw the word gaslight around
@@radscorpion8”makes games for children” Fallout 3 is 18 rated, meaning it can only be bought by people over 18.
This is a bit of spoilers but the ending of fallout 2 does says bob creates fruit and bobs seeds can survive in even the most iradiated and dry places in the wasteland
bob will save the wasteland. Make Harold live and grow more
No one should eat his fruit or his nuts. Pun intended.
@@axlmagnus It's an abomination and must be destroyed!
After that he'll truly be a plant.
If you kill Harold without burning him Bob/Herbert are still green and thus alive so I can assume he is still producing seeds so He still grows just at the same speed as before meaning it would still happen slowly
i asked a philosopher and ethnics professor about this. He was legit interested. He said that like most things it depends. Most people can agree that making one person suffer for the benefit of many others is better than everyone suffering.
The thing is you can convince Harold this as well. It lessens his suffering to the point of probably being able to ignore it and even enjoy life. Much like he enjoys having Yew around.
You seriously think it's alright to torture one person so that others can live a bit more comfortably?
@Milkycharizard the capital wasteland will be fine thanks to project purity
@@wtxcrazydonut never said its alright. Neither are good options but itd better for 1 person than 100000 people to suffer isnt it?
Real Utilitarian Hours who up?
Still haunts me that i let him live. That was the only place with green growth i had found in the whole wasteland, for all i knee it was the only growth in the whole world. I couldnt throw it away.
Hardest choice in the entire game for me.
Helpertin right? It was either kill Harold and make him happy but the wasteland will remain a wasteland. Or don’t fulfill his request and the landscape transforms for the better. I chose the greater good as well.
@Homelander What was your choice in, The PITT?
@Homelander How is it any more selfish than killing a man because of your own morals and leaving the entire cult to starve?
@Homelander you cant make an omelet without breaking some eggs
@Homelander A month late, but are you being serious? It's a friggin' video game, don't call people "sElFiSh" because of an option they picked in a VIDEO GAME, you're probably the guy who calls people jerks for doing a "bad guy" playthrough. It's a game, guy.
Harold would always remain to be my most favorite character in all of Fallout. I always found his humor from Fallout and Fallout 2 so charming. When I saw his name and recognized his voice, my heart burst for joy only to sink on how sad his life has become. But I can never bring myself to put him out his misery.
He really is an incredibly charming character. Whether he can genuinely share thoughts with Bob, or it’s just the delusions of a centuries old man, the mutual respect that he and Bob share is incredibly touching. He truly sees Bob as his equal and harbours no ill will against him for their situation. Such a well written character.
When I first play FO3 back in 2008 I used to light Harold's ass up. But knowing what I know now I can't bring myself to do it 😭
Recognized his voice? His voice and voice actor is completely different in Fallout 3.
@@J05TI Could be a similar tone and or inflection
Love him, he's such a goofball and Harold is a great name
Fallout three is full of places where the speech option you want isn’t there. Such as when James asked why you left the vault, there’s no option to say they were trying to Kill me.
If there was a way to have Harold braindead? Harold wouldn't suffer anymore, his body would still be alive, Bob would still be alive. Bob seems to be a name for the mutation, he doesn't have a manifestation in Harold's brain, like a voice or a double personality.
Harold probably wouldn't mind, the green would still spread, only Sapling Yew would be sad...
That’s a fair option. Not sure how it would be accomplished, but it’s certainly something that would satisfy both the needs of the people and the needs of Harold.
Its probably kinda crappy to suggest this but I feel like eventually he would go insane/brain dead just based off his mental state. That way the green would spread but he wouldn't be mentally burdened, at least anymore. He didnt seem to be in a very stable mind as he referred to his mutation as Bob instead of just what it was so maybe he was getting there and just needed to suffer longer in order to do so? Just my opinion
there was already suppose to be a way convince harold into being happy about his condition. he wasnt in any real pain, just immobilized
@@TawnyRain2332 I disagree, he has been around since the bombs dropped and imo he seems less insane in this game than in fallout 2. It is too bad we couldn't get to know more about his ability to "see" through the trees, to me it seemed like he was slowly fusing with the tree kinda like the master in fallout one. Tbh they have a lot in common, being dumped in the same vat, being worshipped as gods, being immobile and having slight psychic powers
TawnyRain2332
I had a fried with a large tumor on his neck he called Bobby. Naming something helps humans be less afraid of it
I modded fallout 4 to be green as a result of harold growing and spreading across the wasteland due to the liniment
@@dungeonmaster81_10 Then how is Dogmeat Alive. Is it just Bethesda messing up?
@@dungeonmaster81_10 damnit my mod isnt lore friendly now...
@@raynightshade8317 the new dogmeat is a synth maybe?
Naw dude dogmeat is like shaggy an ultimate being of power that never dies how do you describe it being unratiated when most other dogs are
@@zrytun6019 looking at the wiki other than the first two games he could have survived though 3, Vegas and 4 with a normal gods livespand
I always honored Harold's wish. I didn't even realize you could justify otherwise to him after the fact.
To me, keeping a person alive in a state they consider torture because it'd be helpful to the wasteland is... terrible.
I always honored Harold's wish.
Edit: Of course I destroy his heart, what monster would burn Harold? Watching Harold burn was VISCERALLY UPSETTING...
Lol so you did watch him burn at least once is what you're saying?
@@syntheticteapot I've seen video of him burning. In this video.
:P
@@syntheticteapotharold go screaming 😅
@@IndirectCogs lmfao awful.
Harold was my old friend from The Hub.
Of course I carried out his request.
Get a room, you two.
@@grandmasterhashmixtapemast910 wot?
*Institute:* Growth! For the greater good!
*F4 Brotherhood of Steel:* Kill it! It’s an abomination!
*Railroad:* We must keep it as a secret from the other factions!
*Minutemen:*
-there’s a settlement that- ...Actually you are the leader, you decide
I would have been interesting for Fallout 4 to have like a creation club, or possibly DLC where you travel to the Capital Wasteland because the Brotherhood wants to eliminate Harold for being a mutant, an easy target, but maybe Harold objects this time because he sees the beauty of living and helping others. (assuming the Leaf Mother Laurel is the canon ending)
kill the tree, and use it to help out our settlement. ill mark it on your map.
no if you are the minutemen you would have no time to work through this dilemma. because another settlement needs your help.
@demonpride1975 yeah, the position of the Minuteman would’ve indifference
Rodri G But couldn’t one argue that Oasis is in itself, a settlement? Make Bob make more seeds to expand Oasis and the Capital Wasteland, nay, the whole world shall become one big settlement!!!
Me seeing Yew after killing Harold: "I'm sorry, little one"
Yew: "You did it, what did it cost?"
Me: "A friend and a solution for the wasteland"
Harold's pain PARTIALLY stems from what I feel is a strong desire to be with people. he loves to tell stories, he appreciates Yew because shes willing to listen.
What bothered me.... GREATLY... about Oasis, is that I saw Harold being tormented because the faith built around him made it impossible for anyone to actually HEAR him.
They built a wall around him.... the gate doesn't even face him... its built BEHIND him...
They completely shut him out...
He's been forced to be alone. a man who spent his life wandering and from what I gathered, loving every second of it. has now been sealed in a room, where he can't even see the door.
I wanted to spread Harold's influence....I wanted to allow the world to grow.... but I took his life in my first playthrough because those people weren't deserving of him.
They were nice, yes.... but that kindness came from ignorance.
All of their thankfulness was for nothing, because they couldn't even say it to his face.
The game limits the player's options.... but if it were possible, I'd want to solve the problem by showing those people what they've done.
Their faith makes them good people on the surface, but they need to see the cruelty and the weight they've put on a single man.
They don't seem like they're totally lost, and maybe.... just maybe.... if they're willing to be WITH Harold instead of below him.... Harold could find happiness as well.
In the meantime, I'd ask him if he'd be willing to spread.... to discuss it with him... I'd want to come back and give him new stories while watching him grow.
All while letting him know that, if hes become too tired.... or maybe the side effects of the growth are too much.... that I'm ready to do as he asked to begin with.
I sympathize with Harold's suffering, but given the state of the world, I feel that encouraging his growth his ultimately the best option.
If the game allowed it, I would allow it, I'd spread the forest, but force the Treefolk to acknowledge him as a person, to work with researchers of the Wasteland to bring life back to the land, and to promise Harold a release from his suffering at some point in the future when things are stabilized, even if that means waiting decades to centuries.
Sadly, these games simply aren't that nuanced.
What kind of a world are you building if its foundations are built on this?
@@wtxcrazydonut i mean from what i'm seeing he has a pretty good idea, making harold the foundation of the new world is a good even though he already is a foundation for the treefolk and he hates/enjoys it. Because he likes his time with Yew, hes still human so i'd say give him things that he can listen to or watch or do something and maybe some people would connect with him like yew did and he can both save the wasteland and have a happy life. And i get the point that if he has to wait centuries for himself to die that everyone in this generation would be dead and new people could use him for bad or even torture him for fun, but my solution for that is have like a family tradition of going to see harold and hang out with him and be kind folk, and for people to protect him. Also i get that people like the lone wanderer wont be around to govern what happens so you just train select few to be like him, boom and then harold is happy/safe and the wasteland is restored. And when everything is green is harold wants to be put down so be it he at least deserves his request after basically saving the wasteland.
@Anthony Johnson well.. I mean.. He would quite literally be saving the life of everyone in the wasteland. Certainly, forcing him into this kind of thing is wrong in a society like ours where things alright, but when the future of humanity depends on it? When one singular person can restore the area of hundreds if not thousands of people AND the future generations..? It is for the greater good.
Programmer here. it's not about nuance. it's about code. doing something like this would take a lot of time, effort and space for something only a small percentage of people would see.
whilst i would love to see more of that kind of stuff in the future. back then it was simply not achieveable
@@Riccool I would have to agree with you, as much as i would live to see that option it just wasnt possible or plausible to do back then, such a few amount of people would see that effect and probably even fewer people would think about doing this option. Now if they made this a mandatory mission in the game that would be a different story but because it isnt I wouldn't waste the time, effort and space in the code to do this.
Who knows, maybe Harold's mutation will go so far he literally becomes an ent
in a sense he was in fallout 2, now he is rooted in the ground and looks to be stuck there the rest of his days.
Becomes the mighty hiss tree
Maybe in fallout 5(not 76) hewill be an ent
Ent??
Yeah wtf is an ent
13:56 imagine scavenging the forest and hearing this
hella creepy
@@doubleaa7368 WHat does that even mean
The day the bars closed that was my reaction
The big foot be having his time with his girl
Nightmare fuel
I wish there was a way to engineer Harold's seeds to be able to create seed bearing plants so Harold could be at peace whilst still being able to help the wasteland flourish
13:57 Jesus, that scream!
XD
Heheh
@Dreamedorgen 3 No, he's going Ultra Instinct.
Secret boss battle! Spriggan Ghost Harold appears from the burning ash.
I wonder what he was like as a human
I understand where you're coming from when you say that siding with one of the treeminders is worse than burning Harold. However, I feel like that's a gray area. Going out of your way to exploit a man's fear to kill him is absolutely horrendous
why not just destroy his heart if you're going to kill him? it's kinder
@@Casandraelf Speedrunners usually kill him with fire since it's the quickest way to finish the quest. Some people also deliberately choose the more evil option when they are making an evil aligned character, it is an RPG afterall.
@@optimisedoptimist9922 oh, I know that. Speedruns are all about beating the game as quickly as possible. I meant for more general playthroughs
what if there was a way to pull him apart and make him into an ent of some manner, seperate out his hands, implant his heart in his body, maybe trim out his branches and give him some metal boots so his feet cant take root again and let him mill about the wastes. Hell, the Brotherhood of Chicago might take him, they have sentient deathclaws for fucks sake.
there's actually suppose to be an option where your suppose to convince harold to live since his strain of fev is what's allowing all the plants to grow back
I if given the option,would take his dna reseacrch into it or get one of many scientists in the games to help,then kill him,gaining humanity back to harold,and make a thriving wasteland
Exactly that's what I thought
I wish there was an option for he tree minders to treat him like a person instead of a god cause the only person he likes is the one person who treats him like abuman
The only ones with the technology to achieve this are “The institute” and barely anyone in the entire wasteland know about their existence. Even the lone wanderer doesn’t know they exist.
So ya, that’s not really an option.
@@solrhopalocera5704 there was the scientist guy who wanted something from harold
@@gr1m720
ya and i believe the institute is the only one that can actually do anything with harolds DNA. DNA needs highly specialized equipment which only the institute has. equipment made from scraps really isnt gonna get anything accomplished
I just wanna hug him. He's been through so much.
He's literally saying "Don't touch me I want to be left alone".
"burning Harold to death is the evilest thing we can do" *proceeds to cook Harold*
Please don't take this the wrong way but....In the world we see in Fallout games, why would you care if someone calls you....EVIL? It is just a wee little bit temporary damage to karma points, nothing more. After the bombs fell, it took a maximum of one month and most of the police officers realized they are no longer receiving paychecks (or that automated salary system continued paying them with worthless toilet paper known as dollars instead of caps) so they tossed away their uniforms and badges and went home. That means it is not like anyone will arrest you for murder if you burn Harold. It is not like you cannot kill a Radstag or Yao Guai without the next thing being someone asking for your hunting permit. Also, I have sold LOTS of homemade Jet in the Commonwealth with zero consequences. Having realized this, it is not actually so heavy to play Fallout games.
@@Cybernaut76 the world may be dead in the fallout universe, but people still have morale and the sense of what is right and what is wrong
@@bitterman7258 Yes, but morals is much more flexible concept in the post-apocalyptic world than it was before the Great War. Also, there is no longer the same law than there was before the bombs fell. In some sense, it may be good, in some sense, bad.
@@Cybernaut76 while yes the wasteland is fucked and there is evil in it, people with morals and hope still exist on it and they're the ones actually trying to make a difference, and as long as those people exist in the wasteland, you cant burn alive a talking tree without being considered evil
@@bitterman7258 True enough. However, I think you can get away with a lot of psychopath stuff (such as the things you can do by installing Depravity and Diary of a Madman) if you do them wisely. It is not like CSI will come and investigate and then get you or anything.
Personally, I go with Laurel and use the Liniment on his heart. After all, Harold admits his wishes were selfish in the end. Though I wish there was another option. I would want a way to destroy Harold's Brain. If we leave him braindead and his body lives on he will no longer suffer and Bob can carry on.
A bit off topic but what rifle weapon is this on the video?
And how or where can I get this rifle on the game?
Agreed
In other words, you want to turn the tree into a vegetable.
So you would give Harold a lobotomy?
@Scorpio 1971 it's a lever action rifle from the Point Lookout DLC
Okay, but can we talk about the sap that Tree Father Birch makes you drink? If it can stop the growth of a tree, then what does it do to a human being?
..Damn...
I think it makes humas live longer. Or make them braindead like the other treeminders.
Probably makes them sterile
Can't say what it does to them. But 1 drink from that sap will not make them braindead, I mean when lone wonderer drank the sap but didn't lose its intelligence. Also Herald is not a human anymore. The effects it has on herold will not affect the humans.
Hajime Hinata harold does say that it was made by one of the treeminders, it either makes them high (run around crazily) or make then unconscious and wake up seeing his face and become terrified
There’s a random encounter where you meet a trader who presumably went through the same ritual. He talks about Harold like he’s a God like the other Treeminders would while moving his head around in a strange manner, so he must’ve went insane or delirious or something from it. When you finish speaking with him, he dies a moment afterwards. I guess the results from drinking the sap can vary, and you were lucky enough to not go through the same things as that guy.
Here’s my solution: leave his heart exposed, get the Treeminders to hang out with him and help his quality of life** while we (the Lone Wanderer) find Super Mutants to squeeze for all their FEV-contaminated blood. Using that and some Chemistry, we distill the FEV before grabbing a new human being. Over the course of a year (to collect one of Bob’s seeds) we’ll find out if the other trees grow seeds and we talk with Harold to help him cope with his situation.
A year passes, a seed is collected, we recreate Harold’s situation with more than a couple human beings who’ll join caravaners and straying Treeminders in reaching other settlements in and outta the Capital Wasteland.With all of this done, Harold can be asked if he’s okay with his life as it is or if he still desires death. If he wants death, we put him down after he spends time with Yew and we ensure that the Treeminders understand that he’s just joining “his children” by taking root somewhere else...and then we kill him quickly. If he’s okay with being alive, we increase his mutation, spurring on the Capital Wasteland’s growth of foliage. The branching out (HA) Treeminders will be doing this as well, essentially creating a cycle to gradually bring greenery back to all of Post-Apocalyptic North America. All of the Harold replicas will be getting far better treatment and will be brought to grow strong, fast and vast.
Far from perfect, this is the best plan that encompasses all of the outcomes on hand. We maintain isolation of Harold while improving his situation, giving enough time to answer important questions while the Treeminders get somewhat educated on their “god”’s circumstances, help everyone get closure, expand the greenery’s growth in the wasteland, and bring an old friend some peace in a hellish existence.
I know that improving Harold’s situation takes zero effort. Bring him a radio, books, magazines, pip boy games, and just hang out with the poor man. Feed him if that’s at all a possibility so he feels like he’s not in a living hell! This has been agreed on by the community. It’s the rest of it that’ll take some work to complete.
Far from perfect, it’ll give everyone a chance to improve everything around them. If Harold still craves death, he’ll have died with one good year outta centuries of hell and there’ll be a newer, less tortured generation to do what he unintentionally did. The wasteland would grow, the Treeminders would become better and Harold would find peace one way or another!
Personally i'd let him grow. Yes there is the 'using him as a slave' argument, but like he said himself, there are times when he can still be happy. I think he could have a life that's at least more happy than not if he was just able to get a bit of help to experience 'normal' life again. Have people to talk to (who don't see him as a god), bring him a radio, flip through a few pages of a book with him, maybe feed him? (Hestill has a mouth, teeth, and tongue after all.) All sorts of things to give him a life he can at least somewhat enjoy, all while knowing that he is (with any luck) making the WORLD better for people.
I think his happiness should be out of the question when letting him live. Here is an idea, stand still for a couple minutes, hours, days, you can't eat, you can't drink, and you definitely can't sleep, no amount of books or people could bring you enough happiness if you had to experience that for hundreds of years. What if you side with laurel, after a couple years he would be completely surrounded in himself, forever alone in the dark with nothing to company him. If you let him live it's for anybody but him, don't try to rationalize it.
@@Noah-gk7rn He CAN be happy though. He says so himself when he's talking about the kid. I'm not saying he could have the best life in the wasteland, but if one kid can make him happy i'm sure people treating him like he's not a god could make him happy too. Treat him like a human helper instead of a god and he just might find a good purpose and meaning in his life. You can say "try standing still for a long time without food or sleep" but that's ghouls in a nutshell. Being a ghoul sucks, that's unarguable, but if you could at least be a tree-ghoul with a purpose you could still enjoy living.
@@thetwistedsavant5821 What happens when he loses an audience though? This is a post-apocalyptic wasteland bound by no laws of man, some super mutants could role around one day and decimate the tree cult, potentially leaving Harold alone again, and what if that doesn't happen, did you even read what I said, maybe you did, did you think about it? Do you think you could find happiness hundreds of years alone, or worse yet surrounded by people who can't give you the one thing that every living being seeks eventually? Death?
@@Noah-gk7rn You kill raiders every day in this game. They are bad people, but still people, and you dont know what they think or do when you are not around. All of them probably with relatives who dont have them anymore. You have done worse as a player in fallout 3.
@@-gemberkoekje-5547 Just because you kill people trying to do harm to yourself, makes it okay to let someone rot and go insane in eternal loneliness then?
Do you think the Biological Research Station at the Sink in the Big MT could clone Bob’s seed pods?
That's actually really smart
Big mountain can do anything
If they can make cazadores I’m pretty sure they can make a tree
DiscordMarauder I’ve no doubt they can make a tree. The question is, “Can they make a tree that won’t try to murder people?”
Good question...
13:56 Let's be honest we all did a save right before trying that XD
the first time i attacked him it was with the shishkebab and he burned down
When I was younger burning him to death terrified me.
harold after a few years more he will call himself Deku Tree
Congratulations, you linked Zelda and Fallout
@@blueotter5954 if Nintendo's reading this, they need to sneak the Capitol Building into the Hyrule map for their next game
What tipped it for me was Harolds ability to "see" us coming. he has a connection to the trees and plants that sprout from Bob and it's an ability he is still developing. So he still has more to achieve in his life. and by spreading the grove of tree further and further out, Harold is able to see more and more. Given time he would not only provide green resources for the wasteland, but connect to it. See all the people and experience a large civilization. And help it with the spread of information and assistance just like he used to before he found Bob.
I only wish you can point that out to Harold, he might even agree to it. And if it becomes too much, his heart is still vulnerable by not being crystallized in sap.
yup he may become a full blown god at some point.
@@samsh0-q3a it's not even about becoming a god. Harold was a caravan leader, supplier and trader of goods and info. he knew the only way we survive is togeather. He was always selfless till the day he was mutated and after.
Given an option to see the benifet and not be talked at and worshiped like a god, but instead talked to as a human, he could do great works for the world.
Thank you, this is the reason I went with Laurel’s choice. Harold isn’t as alone as he thinks he is.
ch0pper116 hmmmmm good points
Kalen Gell that’s the problem though. He *wants* to be alone. He is tired of the Tree Minders who don’t treat him as an intelligent person with bodily autonomy and it definitely doesn’t seem like he wants to be treated like a god.
In my opinion, Laurel and her liniment is the best option for Harold and Bob because Harold complains about not being able to go anywhere and with the liniment spreading the seeds out further Harold could see through them. (If Harold is right about his claim of being able to see through them)
I don't see how seeing trough them helps, yeah it could be entertaning but its the wasteland and all you find is missery all around.
What if he’s a Sadist?
Any stimulation is good stimulation at that point.
He could also watch humanity regrow.
Be a source of wisdom
He could listen to radio.
Have books read to him.
He is suffering from mental illness. And is suicidal.
Ethunisation has already been found to be unethical.
But lets all talk about how the suicidal person wanting to die means killing him instead of treating him is the only right option.
@@reaperofzombies9698 a paralyzed lonely man wishes to die?
Why not grant him peace?
I would want to die if I was a tree
Why? Agreed
Fuckin same
Why? But What if you were in Harolds shoes and not just a tree
Why? I wouldn’t. Being a tree sounds peaceful.
@@fumarc4501 yeah but you'd probably be in pain never moving just sitting absorbing rads it has to get boring after years of pain and boredom
The thing is, while Harold may find it agonizing to stay there in this way, and that in the moment it may be best to kill him, if he were let grow more and to spread more quickly, overtime he may have people arrive that can help him in his predicament or at the least overtime, someone will help him with his boredom.
The people that claim they want what’s best for him wanted to enslave him. What makes you think people arriving later won’t do the same? Making him a slave and saying “maybe someone else would come around” is pretty evil.
@@BitesTheDust119 he needs to talk to Joshua Graham
here's an interesting follow up question: Could we wait kill Harold XX years later when the other trees have covered most of the wasteland and perhaps start developing seeds of there own?
That's what I thought but remember he's bored but his leaves are his eyes so by siding with Laural he can see and watch othee wastelanders. It reminds me of Caleb's fate in Fallout 4 but much more complex.
@@ryszakowy but if you accelerate his grow, tree start covering the wasteland within decades.
@@ryszakowy and dont forget look around him those trees grew within 20 years that large because he was there for around 20-30 years so they already grow at an extreme rate
@@ryszakowy The trees are growing because of Harold. They weren't growing before Harold.
lewis251100 I was thinking that same thing
I side with Laurel, after I explain everything, he comes to terms with it and seems to be happier after it finding a new purpose in life.
Maybe he’s okay in the moment, but what about 100 years later, or 100 years after that. He’s stuck in one spot for eternity. In real life, a few days of solitary confinement in prisons can destroy a persons mind. Imagine months going by where nothing happens at all and you’re entirely alone. That’s just endless suffering
Tim W still, he’s in the middle of a massive forest with birds and insects. That’s completely different from solitary confinement.
I ended up making the same choice when confronted with this quest, and I got the same takeaway. I couldn't bring myself to kill him, so I did what felt like the next best thing-to give his life new meaning by making him grow faster-and he actually seemed glad I didn't carry out his original wish.
@@TW-sh2un The little girl may help with that. Who knows when she grows up she might help make things comfortable. A radio to listen to and a few people to just you know... talk to and listen.
Sure they might still worship him but at least its better interactions.
Emp United You realize since he’s essentially immortal that the amount of time she spends with him is a blink of an eye? That little girl grows up and keeps him company for maybe 80 years. The colony will be dead within a couple 100. He could live for 10,000 years or longer. That’s 9000+ years of no interaction, just staring at the same wall, unable to move or end his state in any way. That would be a living hell for any conscious mind
Its a hard question but I killed Harold as he wanted as it was his decision he would kill himself if he could and I would probably want someone to end my misery if I was trapped in one spot for eternity but thats my opinion
Actually, the irony is if he could move enough to kill himself he wouldn't have been depressed in the first place. He was a ghoul so he was gonna live forever anyway one place is as good as any other.
If you decide to burn him to death his scream is truly horrific and disturbing.
@@michaeljones7916 but the question is, would it be true mobility, or would it be the ability to simply turn a little bit, or maybe use one arm.
The whole ethical argument behind Harolds desire to die is a load of Brahmin shit.
This is a situation where there’s no right answer...but it varies from person to person. From community to community that’s in harolds company at the time.
That’s how i see it...from where I’m standing if I was the lone wanderer and Harold asked me to kill him...looking at his entire situation I’d kill him without any hint of doubt in my decision.
I’d feel guilty killing him...I’d have to live with that choice all my life knowing I killed what seemed like someone who’d be a good conversationist and someone who’s seen this nuclear war from the very beginning. that I couldn’t help in any other way..but I’d know there’s no other choice in the matter and I’d do it again.
Anyone who thinks letting one person or a small group of people suffer for “the greater good” as shown from that scene in Hot Fuzz will literally never have to worry about being in the shoes of the victim.
No one in human history has ever found themselves in a situation where they’re trapped against they’re will in some shape or form and thought
“naw you know what? It’s fine..I don’t mind this..I’m helping other people...my suffering will benefit society.” No one..and Obviously, That’s why people who think to keep Harold alive for the greater good will be totally fine with it until it’s they’re turn...a turn they’d never have to fear arriving because Harold is trapped for all eternity.
Harolds desire to die obviously stems from extreme boredom, irritation, unable to eat, sleep, walk around. He can’t even move enough to end his own life OF COURSE HE’D WANT TO DIE!!
Since Harold was a ghoul before he was obviously going to live for what seems like an eternity. Why he never minded his situation before is because he had total control over his fate...he was a regular person like all of us.
Take that control away and what are you left with? A thinking person trapped in a body that’s no longer yours because you have no control over it.
Others will say
“oh Harold will have company”
“what about Yew she’s Harold friend”
“Just get Harold a radio, a book, friends, do stuff for him.”
Well guess what? He’s still got NO CONTROL over his own actions. Who the hell would want to live they’re life being cared after not able to do a single thing for yourself?? And I do literally mean a single thing...I don’t mean jobs or labor.
Also these people in Oasis will die..eventually. Yew will die..eventually.
You can argue future generations of humans will care for Harold as the treeminders did.
Guess what? People don’t know that..the lone wanderer was able to figure out Harold’s not a god..just a man trapped in a tree...able to produce unlimited resources for all time.
so that means plenty of other people could figure that out too. And humans can become fucking evil scumbags.
If not Raider, slavers, talon company.
Any faction of evil intent find Harold and take advantage.
But even future treeminders could.
Hypothetically speaking...What’s stopping a treeminder from say 150 years in the future to suddenly realize
“Oh wait...you can’t do anything, we don’t need to worship, or even care for you..like at all. No you will serve us no matter what”
And then they will reap the rewards from it.
If Harold could move and break himself free of bob/Herbert then all of this would be muted as he’d lose the only reason to want to kill him self and continue on with his long life. But since he cannot.
And all of the books, humans, radios, music whatever in the world would break ANYONE eventually into wishing to just die.
Besides if that were me I’d be sick of hearing the same old songs on the radio, or talking to the same people, seeing the same sights by 3 years if I’m lucky. What makes Harold who’s BEEN in this wasteland for two centuries already any different?
Harold is suffering an eternal Hell of having no control over his own fate..that he must rely on the mercy of wastelanders or the goddamn cooks he’s stuck with to do for him. No amount of company or entertainment will ever EVER make anyone wish to be alive at that point.
So yeah...I’d kill him, the old ghoul’s suffered enough at this point.
"You killed my bestest friend!All I want to do is cry!”Proceeds to have a deadpan face
Oxhorn
Hey, Oxhorn can we start putting up polls on the videos so the community can vote on which choice we think is the best option.
VictoriumStudios 78 the BOS suck
@@sawyer3818 got eem
That’s a wonderful idea
What happened to the poll feature, everyone was using it then suddenly stopped.
@@sawyer3818 How will the BOS ever recover
I killed the treeguy because:
1] they were using him as an idol to worship.
2] he was in torment.
@Logan Waltz 😂
But not because he asked?
aRE YOU MOHAMEDAN?
Jes Cruz what?
AverseEX AverseEX Mohamedan, destroy idol, behead infidel, church to mosque, oppress women
My philosophy is this: Harold is an individual, if he wants to die, especially for the amount of years he's lived and the restrictiveness of his situation. It is ultimately his decision on what he wants for his own life. Birch and Laurel are both forcing something on him he doesn't want. Burning him isn't evil, it's exactly what he wants it's painful and frankly a bit tortorous, but not evil since it's what he requests (though you can also destroy the heart too. There's that option also. Which is a faster death). Regardless of how he's killed it fulfills his request.
But one other thing: it's clear death isn't really what he wants. If it was, Yew's presence honestly probably wouldn't make him happy. It's likely what's making him miserable is having to listen to everyone's problems and being treated like the one that's going to solve them since he's worshipped as an idol. If there were options to convince the worshippers to provide him with entertainment like a radio and treat him more like a friend than a god, I think it would do him some good. And even after that, if he wants to die, he should be granted the request, but I don't imagine he'd want to if his other needs were met and he was just treated like a person and given the same human decency of privacy, boundaries, and respect.
Man I wish this was in Fallout
One word=
Centaurs
Um, He explicitly and firmly states that he does not want to burned to death because it would cause him extreme pain. We also learn from Yew that it’s his worst fear and he worries about it constantly. So that does bring us to the conclusion that burning him is evil and does not in any way fulfill his clear request to go into the caves and destroy his heart.
Bringing life back to a dead wasteland so humanity can stop savagely fighting and murdering for scarce resources is way more important.
In reality, there are no easy decisions. If we all lived according to the, “morals over necessity” philosophy, 90% of everything we’ve accomplished as a species and problems we’ve solved would still exist.
@@solrhopalocera5704 bringing life back wouldn't change anything though, people would still be as ruthless before. When the world is rebuilt in a few thousand years it'll be a wasteland again
I've seen the main arguement about letting Harold live despite him actually coming to terms with it as, "But what if he changes his mind in hundreds of years?" Okay, if he does? Why would he not be able to convince someone to kill him then?
Alternatively, the dude may just be depressed and actually want someone to talk him out of it, because that's what the mission seemed like to me.
For me, deciding to kill Harold is the same that handing a gun to a depressed person who wants to kill themselves, and I'm not even sure that he actually wants to die. 🤷♂
He's tired as fuck of the Tree people, but if you have gone through extreme pain or anxiety, you know that at that specific moment all you want to do is die, eventhough you don't actually want it. Bojack Horseman did a great analysis of this in "The View from the Halfway Down", it's really common for suicidal attempts survivors to actually regret their decision at the last moment...
So my idea would be, give the man some respect, treat him as a human and if after that, he wants to die, then grant that wish.
@@marcoc7388to be fair, he has been sitting in the same spot for 20 years and is constantly being used as a slave to help the people, if you were told you had to sit somewhere for hundreds of years, not being able to sleep, or eat, or do anything a normal person would do, would you want to live? For what. But ya I get what your saying, or typing I guess.
I wouldve gone with the mothers option, because Harold does realise that he eould be helping thousands, possibly millions of people, and creating a brighter future for the wasteland
"he eould be helping"
good job
Yeah, i think like that too
Idk about him but if I'm him, it won't really effect me cuz standing there doing nothing for decades seeing your love one dies will emotionally destroy me even if I know that I save a lot of people... but those action is being force by someone else and I would feel like a tool. but idk since I'm a one selfish human being
@@souko3455 but he wouldn't be alone for eternity. Of course he will see his love ones die of old age but he will also see new life being born as well( I mean the offsprings of the worshipers). So that will keep on healing the wound of herold. But it would be tragic if his entire family is slaughtered by raiders or enclave. Then it would be a hell to live in.
@@rahulsar2030 idk man, it's like you found something that you love but then it disappear. Then you found new person you love then it disappear again. Idk about other people but I would be insane if that happens. Living a life where you know that your love one will die over and over again and you have to experience every single lost for decades would make me crazy insane. I would feel really depressed. It's like my life now where I still feel lonely even though I have family and friends, only the closest people makes me feel truly happy and that guy have to experience losing that special people over and over again. The worst thing is that he can't do anything about it. He only can stand there doing nothing when that happens.
I use the liniment because it is one of the only ways to save the wasteland, but also, Harold is in turmoil, he wants to die because he's absolutely miserable. I would normally respect someone's wishes to that regard but, alive he can do so much good for the world and I believe that his sacrifice, his torment, will save the wastes and he will be recorded as a hero. I hope that the knowledge of all of the lives he improves and the people he saves will provide comfort.
Or the lone wanderer will be the one who was thanked for instead of harold
He feels through the trees so you should expand turn him into a god.
But if he expands, and no one learns that Oasis is the center of it, people will just think the trees have miraculously made a comeback, and will start cutting them down for lumber with no care for whence it came. Harold would be a god only to the Treeminders, to the rest of the capital wasteland, a myth.
crypto1223 well considering 3 dog knows about it( and he is the general source of information on stuff about the wasteland for most people in the area) I’m pretty sure people will likely find out that oasis is the source of it all, and the capital wastelanders will also likely spread information about oasis
Disagreed
I have lived through a point in my life were I was suicidal. I was abused my dad and forced to most of the work around the house, from a very young age. So at age 12, I took a razer to my wrist and cut it, in front of both my parents. It wasn't deep enough to draw much blood and I was willing to continue, but I was stopped by my dad. My mom, later that day, talked with me about what happened. I started to understand that even though my life was bitter and mean, I had people that needed me and my help. From the younger kids I read out loud to, to my mother who suffers from depression who loves my smile. I realized life isn't just about living for yourself, its also important to live for others. If you see it like that, it makes sense to help the Capital Wasteland, because Harold at the point when he asks you to kill him can't see it. He is blinded by his own self to see into the future. So my choice is to save him. I say save because he needs someone to show him how to keep living, which is something both the Lone wonderer and Yew show him.
Gg being gaslit by your own mother I guess
The thing is that he doesn't care about becoming a tree. He just sees no more reason to live after 2 centuries of wandering the wastes; all up and down the former U.S. If you let him live, you can tell him how the people around him look up to him, even Sapling Yew loves to talk to him at night.
In a bleak world like Fallout's... I think they're overdue for a new god like Harold. To make them feel safe. To make them feel that, maybe... life can get better.
Interesting as you actually have just described how Christianity came to existence in the first place. We know how it well turned out with that one.
Thing is Harold is being selfish when you meet him, he doesn't even bother considering those that rely on him, especially Sapling Yew who looks up to him and finds comfort in his being there. Then there's the matter of Harold getting Omnipresence from the plants.
@Kipras Medeišis - Yeah.. the USA was birthed from it and is still considered the most free place in the world. Damn those Christians.
Samuel Reyna
And yet Americans were the ones to bring doom to the wastes as well.
My point on how religion is born, wasn't an attempt to say that Christianity by itself is bad, but that it was designed to be used to direct masses. It is very likely that more and more Father or Mother take desicions FOR their god, more and more they are going to become gods themselves in people's eyes.
My mistake, misunderstood you a little bit :p
@@kiprasmedeisis5159
They wouldn't become gods. They would become prophets.
Also, you're forgetting that Harold is immortal.
I stopped his growth and I regret it. He said he could see through leaves so accelerating the growth would help him discover new places ;-;
Life is slavery to existence, to yourself, and to those around you.
In the end, if you can convince Harold that his life is worth living in service to his people or to the Commonwealth, it will be better than his pointless death.
Maybe someone should consider reading some books to Harold? He seems interested in reading and that would be yet another way to make his life bearable. Other concessions of this nature should be made in order to keep Harold happy, if only as a compensation for the immense service he provides to the world.
The man tree does literally nothing. How... Exactly is he enslaved? Bc he is depressed and noone is killing him, instead caring for him.
I dont understand this point people are trying to push
@@reaperofzombies9698 He literally can't move from that spot he's in. It is not enslavement to any master or person, but enslavement to the predicament he is in, no real control over his life.
That's an awfully depressing way of looking at the world. I disagree. People enslave other people, that has happened; it still happens. But are we really just slaves to our own lives? Are we slaves to everyone in our presence? I don't think so. I say that the only thing that can enslave you besides people are the bad decisions you make, and falling into despair because of them. I mean no offense, but that's what your point of view sounds like.
@@jonathansteppig4116 perhaps enslavement is a harsh term for it, but in the end that's what it is, it doesn't prevent us from being happy or successful or anything else, it is simply part of the rules we all have to live by.
Maybe the treeminers could have shifts to keep him happy through reading to him and having conversations instead of praising him like a god as he has no care for that.
PS: It is definitely enslavement if he is being forced to do something he doesn't want to do
I usually go with tree mother laurel. Since it's the one that's best for the most people. Harold isn't upset and we can tell him how much he matters to everyone.
It's the best option even if its not the most moral. I love these morally ambiguous quests!
"Can you imagine being stuck here for cen-TREES"
._.
haha
Stupid raider humour
I hate the whole "The needs of the many, out way the needs of the few." argument. The problem, in the real world, is that people would never sacrifice themselves for others. By others I don't mean family and friends; people won't give up their life for strangers.
Humans aren't innately evil, but we are selfish. We don't want people to suffer in Africa, but we do nothing about it.
Y Tho
I did everything I could to help the treeminers. But Herald asked me to end his pain. So I did.
Agreed
Comprehensible choice .
Yo don't burn him! Wood is important! No wood=not a lot of places to live!!!!!! One like=save Harold
@@sharonhilton8670 I didn't burn him. I just blew his brain out.
@@lorddemonoss3945 head shot...quick easy....painless he felt nothing
Why didnt harold just say "Bother me when its important, and get me a radio!" Problem solved.
because he's tried to tell them stuff like that, they don't listen to him.
It's worse than prison he litterlay cannot do anything
Figure out how to free him
@@pepeiann I mean he can always grow
Cuz nothing they can bring up is important to him
Is it strange that I come back to visit Harold after going out on adventures? I feel I owe it to him after using him like that. If only they'd remaster fallout 3 and maybe add a bit more too
Well, in my gameplay I've sided with mother, not only because doing so, harold is capable of bringing back life in the capital wasteland, but also because both mother and father are the old face of the oasis cult.
In time Yew could not only grow with harold, keeping him as a close friend, but also change the cult to show them how to treat him like a human being.
honestly yes, its all just a waiting game for herald as I'm sure many child and people would gladly try and entrain him. though I'm sure he could also ask to have his arms cut out of the bark so he can atleast touch things xd
@@henrymcbark7337 you know that a good point, could we theoretically cut the wood enough to where bob wont be hurt but harold can move to an extent
It is one human being
Make a promise to come back
Tell him to ask Yuwe when she is old enough to kill him.
Try to feed him or soak his roots in Nuka cola
Who knows maybe bob does the job for you ?
You: Harold dies good or bad?
*all of my brain cells are typing*
5% Damage Resistance?! Hold my treesap
Lmaoo 😂
This is essentially the moral paradox on whether creating a utopia where everyone is happy except for one person being tortured
Takes Burning Man to a totally new level, no I am not sorry
I've seen you before
shy guy with a sombrero you ain’t the first
@@mindyauron *Joshua Graham enters the chat*
@@redsteel815 "God cant do all the work"
I agree with pretty much everything you said. In my own gameplay, everytime - I chose to kill Harold (not with fire though, man that's messed lol). He is a person under all that bark, and he has the autonomy to ask for his life to end. Yes, it will be hard on Sapling Yew, yes the struggle of the wasteland will be longer and tougher without his abilities helping to repair the world. But ethics, they aren't about easy choices. Ethics are about finding the right choices, the ones that can be justified with moral arguments. Harold knows his pain, Harold knows his wishes - He's not crazy (well...I guess that's debatable lol) - he's making an intelligent, informed choice. He wants to die, and if I was in his "roots" I wouldn't want someone else making that decision for me because they thought they knew what was best.
Harold is putting the choice on you to end his life, he cannot do it himself. Doing it yourself and having someone do it for you are two separate things, essentially putting a gun up to your head and pulling the trigger is way different than having a stranger do it for you. A lot of people who claim to want to opt out don't go through with it, they don't really want to die but life is fucked up at the moment and they want release.
@TofuVoid
so you saying the needs of the one outweigh the needs of everyone else...?
“He’s just standing there..MENACINGLY”
I haven't seen this comment here so I'll add my two cents. Have we considered the fact that the "trees" in Oasis may not technically be trees at all? Or that they might not be a safe form of life to introduce into the wasteland in the long run? I don't think we can positively say that Bob's fruit is safe for human consumption, or that his saplings won't strangle out other potential life as an invasive species, so spreading his seeds across the wastes on a hope and a prayer seems like playing with some dangerous pseudoscientific assumptions. One of the huge themes of the Fallout series has been examining how humanity's hubris, in the field of science in particular, ultimately put it on the path to extinction from a variety of threatening sources, and nuclear holocaust simply happened to be the first to transpire. Spreading Bob's seeds may just be yet another blunder on that path, we simply don't know enough to make the right call. I think the best realistic option with Harold would be to study him closely, get Li or some of the Brotherhood scribes involved perhaps, and determine if these plant cells seem safe beyond a shadow of a doubt.
I agree. Just look at what happened with the Fire Ant experiment in Greyditch.
Reading this reminds me of the horrors of Vault 22
Well, on the other hand, nothing else grows in ht wasteland, CO2 buildup will eventually be lethal :)
the problem with your theory of bob's fruit being an invasive species is that at the time that fallout 3 was made, it was considered part of the lore that most plant life was dead or nonexistent in the wastes was so spreading the seeds would have been a miracle at that time
@@gusty7153 What I'm referring to with the phrase "invasive species" is that these Bob plants could easily end up dominating their environment in a harmful way that prevents other plants from ever being able to return and flourish naturally. The absence of competition in an ecosystem does not preclude the potential for harm when introducing a new species into that system. If anything, it becomes more likely that harm may occur. Human history is filled with examples of this exact phenomenon. Now, I'm not saying that this is a risk you cannot or even should not take given the full context of ecological disaster the wasteland is facing, but it is a risk you must at least consider. In the Fallout universe, humanity fucked up big time, and despite that clear lesson, humans keep repeating those same mistakes again and again in almost every game. When it comes to Harold, spreading those seeds seems like a big mistake just waiting to happen, from my perspective at least.
"Now I may have been experimenting with jet at the time." -three dog
"Yew's her name"
What a great password
I both love and hate you
care to explain?
"username"
@@JD_Lennon username
I think letting him spread is the best option. He says he san see you coming to him in the grove and can see through the trees. He says problem is not being able to "eat or read" pretty much he has no entertainment, but he likes when Yew comes to talk to him. When his forest spreads all over the wasteland he will be able to see everything, find entertainment everywhere, become the capital wasteland and turn it into the capital grove. This may even make him new friends that will come to him that he could enjoy talking with and hear story's from. It's a win win for everyone.
"No sacrifice. No victory." - Transformers.
I like to think Laurel's treatment shortens Harold's lifespan due to all the extra stress imposed on his systems.
thats messed up lol
Reisha Ananda It could be a more merciful choice than him living for centuries or millennia, and it gives him a truer god complex than what his worshippers bestow upon him. I like her option, as opposed to the guy’s option. Laurel is right, if the place stays secluded, but is already known about, it will be doomed, and the guy’s sap will be pointless. Additionally, I think killing Harold is a humane approach, as it is euthanasia of a mortal person who is suffering from severe boredom, but he is not completely miserable. So the question is: Do you grant Harold the end to his mortality he desires, or do you have him reach his maximum potential, thus helping the world around him? Tough choice.
Why? Its like vitamins or fertilizer. It doesnt make life harder by heavying your work load, it makes you better so you have the potential to do more
Avgel I don’t think that would be the case, if his body works like actual trees. For example, if you look at birch forests, they’re all interconnect like Harold seems to be in game and they still live for centuries, like most other trees (if I’m not mistaken, this is from an article I read some time ago and may not be totally accurate.)
When i played through F3 forever ago i didn't complete the quest, i left, unable to side with the treeminders and imposing that choice onto him, and unable to kill him because to me he was alone and depressed. I thought he could still be happy so over my adventuring I'd make my usual stops in megaton to stow loot, I'd head to rivet city to trade, and then I would head up to oasis, every once in a while I would stop by Agatha's to hear her play. I would bring snacks for yew and trade with the minders and then RP my own option with Harold. One where i made it a goal to bring him back to humanity if I could. Trading stories about the past, bonding over the thrill of scavenging and other shenanigans, having conversations about philosophy and life, sometimes I would just go to let him talk, its important to feel heard. I remember writing a scene or scenario where we concocted a plan to pull harmless pranks on the grownups with yew. With a companion that was able to see him as a person over time the depression of his situation faded. Over the course of my little fan fiction and we became true friends and we talked about his transformation and the limitations, but also the possibilities. He was beginning to develop new senses as Herbert(that joke never got old) continued to grow and spread, and with consistent news of current events brought back his spark of adventure and hope. Its was one of the very last things i did in my complete playthrough of the game, after project purity and hope had returned to the capital wasteland, but we decided together to finally (i worked on this playthrough over about a year and a half) use the liniment on his heart, not only in the hopes of spreading growth and a peaceful way of life from oasis but also for the adventure of embracing the mutation. I left it with the what ifs because i was finally ready to move on from the game and I was satisfied but Headcanon is that over the years he got his life back, his happiness, and his ability to choose how he would live it.
That's wonderful. :)
That's deep..
Oh, man, is there a link!? But if not, it's still a great story.
Your fan fiction is actually the more sane line of thinking.
You don't meet a stranger asking for a suicide, and then you kill him.
You would actually want to know a bit more of him, talk a little bit, spend some time, that actually makes perfect sense in a real world scenario.
@@BillyKamp That was my thought, so many situations are restricted by the nature of the medium, more than once we have to make a choice that is pretty black and white only because its missing the nuance of how a real interaction would play out between real people. For Oasis, it probably wouldn't have made sense for Bethesda to have invested months of work, hundreds of recorded lines of dialogue and scripted events for a few extra branching conversation options for a relatively small sidequest, and really they already put so much. I just wanted to do justice for the character and assuage my own curiosities so I filled in my own blanks so the choices fit the "full" narrative, at least the one I added to. I had some interesting conversations with the frozen folks of mothership zeta, I was taking Japanese(I did rather poorly, lol) in high school at the same time of this playthrough so i had a lot of fun not just being unable to understand each other, but having humorous miscommunications based on my very limited understanding of the language. Damn I loved this game...
This is probably the most beautiful part of the wasteland that shows the best side of the nature and people and has the hardest decision in the entire franchise in my opinion
I got it! Harold is experiencing a Bethesda glitch in his own world!
We joke about them without end on this side of the screen, but Bethesda's bugs affect their world too, and Bob is just the first case. How long until their glitches affect a whole region?
No matter what you do you will feel guilty for not ending his life and make him free or watch him suffer to not have his favor fulfilled and lonely for ever and ever
Except for bob of course he'll be with him for life, maybe even when he's free from the root.
bob is a synth
No matter the choice you feel bad, kill Harold and you end a beautiful friend ship, make Harold grow against his will and he basically becomes just a resource not a human. It's a hard choice but I think killing Harold is the only real good choice. It isn't the best choice but, it's a neutral choice
Maybe. I think that choosing Laurel’s option gives Harold a truer god complex though. He is already worshipped by a cult. So, if he were to be the source of a revitalized wasteland, then he may be seen as a holy figure throughout it. Though, this option may give him a shorter life than the sap, because he will have to work harder. The question is: Do you grant Harold an end to his mortal life, or do you make him become something greater than himself, that can affect the wasteland as a whole, for the better of humanity?
Technically, no matter what choice you choose, Harold becomes content with what's happened.
if you can make him in coma and give the liniment, you can fulfill harold's wish while favoring for the greater good
“You've consoled yourself by thinking that all the torture and murder is for the greater good. This implies that there is a greater good… and a lesser good. It implies that there are multiple distinct goods, and that these can be quantified and compared.”
- Ethics Committee Orientation, SCP Foundation
Saving Harold is, in my opinion, a lesser good than the good done by forcing him to survive.
yep, its an act of cowardice, he's simply suicidal and doesn't want to live anymore. it would be just as wrong to kill any suicidal person simply bc they want to die. Thats without taking into acct the amount of people that could be saved by Harold
I agree with the quote , but come on , we all know the foundation doesn't "really " have a ethics committee
How do you think 110 Montauk was allowed?
That by itself is an ethical shitstorm.
I loathe that quote. A decent percentage of folk have a individual moral compass/philosophy so whatever observation the Ethics Committee is trying point out is moot when it comes to these people.
Some paths are definitely superior to others. I guess the legitimacy of the quote depends on your definition of "good" but its plain and simple to see that certain ways of life produce healthier societies. Take the moral and social justice elements out and still, you will see the productivity of ideas in their societies. Therefore, they can be compared. and they must. Take an incident like the rape of nanking, do you really believe that the ideologies that led to that atrocity are no better or worse than those of the U.S. today? There IS a greater good and it is left to man to make out what it is.
5:45
The problem with this and all of Fallout is that plants, unlike animals, are extremely resistant to Ny immune to radiation.
This is why some of worst radiated places on earth are very green, because plants don’t give a fuck.
If the fallout universe were to be more accurate then there would be a lot more green, at least in the places where enough water happens to fall.
12:57 In chorus, "The Greater Good." xD LOL brilliant, that one completely caught me off guard xD had a good laugh at it.
Flying Endeavor the greater good
@@remymoua9490 "How can this be for the greater good?" xD The greater good..
Is that a movie? How is it called?
@@TheNicko224 It is from the movie Hot Fuzz :)
@@TheNicko224 its called hot fuzz its a masterpiece and its on Netflix
Morally it is right to help him end his life, as it is simply assisted-suicide. And at the very least someone suffering for so long should have the option to go out on their own terms. But logically his suffering is nothing compared to that of the collective of the wasteland. In a world where people are eaten by monsters, torn apart by ghouls, murder-raped by raiders, and being at war with supermutants, his continued existence could help ease the horrors that is daily life in Fallout. So while it was a hard decision to make (at least for myself) I chose to spread his influence further in the hopes of helping more people. Which is also why at the end of the game (I didn't have Fawkes or the DLC) I walked into that irradiated chamber and activated the G.E.C.K with no hesitation.
And then the DLC dropped like a few months later and my sacrifice was made meaningless as I was brought back to life and allowed to run around and be a murder-hobo in power-armor again.
Here's the thing, choosing to sacrifice yourself in order to activate the G.E.C.K is completely different from forcing Harold to live because YOU have the choice of sacrificing yourself while Harold has no choice in the matter.
@@MogGamer821 exactly.
I remember the first time i ran into this thing and was bored but i had the flamer and wonder what would happen if i flamed him...the results were pretty scary(i actually got scared from his scream)
Lol when i was 11 or 12 it scared thr shit out of me
It scared the hell out of me
[Everyone in hell in my body] EVERYONE EVACUATE NOW!!!
Same !!! LOL
My reason for killing Harold? People survived the Great War, they’ve survived the aftermath so far. Throughout time people have struggled to meet their material needs, and yet that did not mean their lives were miserable and meaningless. I think Humanity will be fine without or Harold (or just doomed to repeat history with or without him)
Leaf him alone!
Maybe he'll grow out of it.
He already grow our of it
Get his a tree
...
...
Wood you stop? Lol
I completely agree; while you can tell Harold afterward that others need him, that's just telling him to get over it, more or less. You're telling him to just tough it out because others want him to. You're not giving him a reason to live, or to want to live, or to enjoy life. He needs a reason to have a perspective future, goals, dreams, something besides being imprisoned in that spot and used as a battery for all eternity. Otherwise, it's just not right to force him to live. If a patient begs you to take them off life support, you're *not* supposed to force them to stay on it.
But that is a reason to live. Helping others is a reason to live. His connection with Yew is a reason to live. Suicidal feelings occur more often than they are the answer.
@@shorewall Having someone need you sometimes makes someone want to live, but it's not always that simple. Having a reason to *have* to live is not always the same as *wanting* to live. It's like turning it into a chore he's forced to do forever and ever. There's no option to make it *not* a chore for him, which means to me, there's no option to make him *want* to live out of anything more than obligation.
Siding with Harold, popping his heart is the best possible option. He suffers no longer and you receive the best reward: A perk called Barkskin, which increases your DR by 5 permanently.
I've never played Fallout 3 before, but I can relate to Harold on an emotional level. Being stuck in one location all your life and being deprived of everything that makes you human isn't a life, it's just endless and ever-growing pain.
If I met Harold in the horrifying and tragic state he's in, I'd let him speak everything that's on his mind and follow his requests. He's being exploited as a resource against his own will, which is a terrifying concept to think about. Despite his mutated and horrifying state, Harold deserves to die peacefully while being granted humanity and dignity instead of being treated like a slave.
From a person who's been severely depressed for most of their life, don't listen to Harold. He needs external stimulus and companionship, not death. Besides I think eventually he'll form a giant tree hivemind type deal and be able to transfer between trees and go wherever he wants.
Yeah your not the one who has been stuck in place for over 20 years
I would love to see that. Like in twenty years, the lone wanderer picks a fruit and Harolds face pops up on the tree like "Hey buddy! COUGH COUGH COUGH"
You can't exactly compare being depressed to being mutated and disfigured to the point that you're unrecognizable as a human being, forced to stand in one place for hundreds of years unable to sleep, eat, piss, or do anything that a normal human does. My man Harold isn't just depressed. He's been tortured, forced to endure a hell no man on Earth can even comprehend. Harold has seen everyone he loves die around him as time takes them, and he's forced to stand there unable to do anything as time goes on. And all he asks from you is the sweet release of death, but you're too selfish to grant him that one wish?
Yeah, I don't think depression and being stuck for over 20 years without being able to eat, sleep, do anything, just suffering while a disfiguration merges you with a tree coming out of your fucking brains can compare. Sorry.
Also, by external stimulus you are saying slavery.
Madwolf Studios longer than 20 years
He had been a mutant like that (albeit not rooted to the ground like in fallout 3) for over 150 years
While long-term advantages seem great, I always remember that "The road to hell is paved with good intentions".
"The greatest things come only from hell"
yeah when faced with difficult decisions i just mindlessly trot out phrases that mommy taught me, that'll help
I am a bit late on this one, but man, I remember this quest. It was the reason I did NOT go there in subsequent playthroughs at all. I destroyed his heart, as he was wishing for. It was HIS last wish, and HIS life we were talking about, of course I was doing what HE was wishing for. But the reaction of Yew was so heartbreaking, I could not do this quest again.
This quest raises a number of great ethical quandaries that rack my brain to this very day