For an entire year, Fallout fans have been watching one player named Jon on his YouTube channel, "Many A True Nerd." What's so special about Jon's run of Fallout: New Vegas that some viewers treated it like a TV show and watched it weekly with friends?
From the start, our adventurous player committed to playing New Vegas all the way through without ever healing. Not one health point, not ever. Stimpaks and other forms of healing were strictly forbidden. And once his in-game character — a female avatar he humorously named "Please Don't Shoot" — died, she would stay dead. No respawning, no continuing the game beyond death. He called it a YOLO run, aka "you only live once."
How long could Jon keep it going? Was it even realistic to try to get through the entire game without dying once, and never healing? That suspense is what kept viewers coming back. Jon is an incredibly skilled player, and he undertook some meticulous planning to increase his chances of success.
Remarkably, Jon made it through the entire game, starting with 445 health points and ending at 260. So he did the next logical thing: he kept going into the game's DLC levels. The problem is, Fallout: New Vegas' four download packs are notoriously harder than the main game, Many A True Nerd's subscriber base naturally thought he was crazy. Why screw up a seemingly impossible success with a continued run into territory that's many levels worse than "impossible"?
Undeterred, Jon trudged onward, making his way through Honest Hearts, Old World Blues, Dead Money and Lonesome Road. It took months of planning and playing, but (spoiler alert) he did it — by the skin of his teeth.
Starting with those 260 health points he finished the main game with, Jon made it all the way through with a terrifying 23 health points to show for it in the end. It's a long, complicated tale, and Kotaku has the whole story, peppered with details from Jon himself, if you want it.
The first episode of Jon's DLC run is embedded below, but to watch the entire mind-blowing achievement for yourself, head over to the Many A True Nerd channel on YouTube.
Be sure to follow T-Lounge on Twitter and visit our Facebook page.
