Mad Max: V8 Quest Entry Two

I’m trying something new with this series, something along the lines of the Metro Diaries written by Andrew, only not exploring the main story of Mad Max, but rather documenting the journey I have into a long term goal: installing the Ultimate Big Chief V8.

So, after the rather aimless yet somewhat fruitful ordeal last time, I found myself in Deep Friah’s stronghold. It came to my attention that I hadn’t completed a quest in a while and doing so would probably be quite beneficial for my mission considering the rewards.

With that in mind, I decided to talk to Deep Friah. Here, he seemed to be rather upset that one of his trusted followers had deviated and rebelled against his leadership, stealing something called the “Pilot Light”. He promised to give whatever he could if I could return the object to him.

Before I could begin the mission however, I apparently had to look at a certain sign for clues as to where his Acolyte had disappeared to. Why this was is anyone’s guess, as the sign was literally marked on my HUD instantly, so any sense of mystery or discovery about it was kind of squashed. Whatever the case, Deep Friah translated the hieroglyphs on the sign to mean that I must visit the Burning Mound at dark. So, a time sensitive mission. Great.

Now informed on what I had to do and where I had to go, I set off in my Magnum Opus to scout the area of the Burning Mound.

Chumbucket chatted idly to me about what the Burning Mound actually is, whilst I silently panicked as I realised my fuel is dangerously low. Luckily there was a refuel station nearby our target location, and my car’s fuel consumption was now upgraded to be extremely efficient. I’d probably be able to make the journey, and if not, I could pick a can up along the way.

Just then, however, a tiny camp of War Boys caught my eye. Blood lust setting in as it usually does when I encounter an enemy camp, I turned my car around to near their stronghold and exited the vehicle to pick a fight with the pale berserkers.

Bone hit bone, metal cut across flesh, and I began to see red as I crunched the squatters into the sand. The fight was relatively brief, but Max had lost just less than half his health after it was over. As I picked scrap up from the corpses, a couple of stray fuel cans grabbed my attention. Excellent.

Now completely refueled and with a spare can for the journey, I blasted off yet again.

The drive was mostly uneventful, though I briefly had some trouble as I’d accidentally enabled the first person driving option and forgot how to turn it off. When this was fixed, it was smooth sailing.

I arrived at the Burning Mound in good time, but had completely forgotten when I needed to be there - at dark. This was frustrating; as far as I knew there was no waiting feature in Mad Max, like there was in Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas. So my only option, really, was to drive about until the time came.

I jacked a nearby Stank Gum war vehicle to add to my collection in the meantime but even when I’d finished with that, it was still light out.

A Magnum Opus race was nearby, so to pass the time I decided to give that a go. The driving in this game was the most fun part, after all.

The Opus Wars are essentially a set of several missions where you are expected to get to a certain location in the best time you can. Because this is Mad Max, there are an infinite amount of ways to optimise this, from upgrading your Nitro to blast you across the map to simply flooring it in your car the good old fashioned way. I wasn’t very good at them thus far, but I had a lot of fun experimenting with going off the beaten path.

Alas, it was still light out.

I decided I was done for the day, having been thoroughly frustrated with this mission. I’d return at a later date to complete it.

Join me next time, when I finally complete the mission and collect Deep Friah’s reward for doing so.