Great moments in PC gaming: Stealing and wearing your enemies' clothes
This gear was a steal.
Great moments in PC gaming are bite-sized celebrations of some of our favorite gaming memories.
There's an undeniable devotion to fashion among RPG players, and there's only one thing that brings me bliss more than wearing a fit I had to grind for: equipping a new piece of gear while standing over the body of an enemy I killed (or stole from) to get it.
Wearing my enemies' clothes is one of the most singularly satisfying acts of defiance in a roleplaying game. I've killed for the sake of fashion in Dark Souls and Monster Hunter and the like, but my real vice is any Bethesda RPG that will hand out the most premium looks to story-critical characters and dare me to make them my own.
It's not uncommon for an RPG to let me wear the trappings of my kills in the form of wolf helms and scaly armor, but the greatest glee is in stepping into the tailored look of a faction-leading character who totally deserved my wrath. My favorite thread heist of all time was against Benny, the checkered-suited fella who puts a bullet in your character's head in the opening cutscene of Fallout: New Vegas. Eventually I'm invited to enact some revenge on the guy once I track him down at the Tops Casino on the Vegas strip, but simply killing him amidst his "ring-a-ding"ing goons was not ice cold enough for my taste.
I love of rolling the Black Widow perk in Fallout games, the one that gives my female character some extra manipulative dialogue options (and damage) against men. Benny among them. With a freakish level of persistence and apparent lack of self-preservation, I convinced Benny that I was in fact not mad about the bullet hole in my head and was actually very, very into his whole "bad boy" vibe.
For my excellent acting skills I won an invite up to his penthouse, where I was free to return the iron-between-the-eyes favor before or after consummating my visit. With revenge enacted, I looted Benny's corpse for his unique, filigreed 9mm pistol Maria. But the more important loot, for me, was that checkered sport jacket.
I'd earned the right to wear that iconic suit, and the rest of the wasteland would know it.
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Lauren has been writing for PC Gamer since she went hunting for the cryptid Dark Souls fashion police in 2017. She accepted her role as Associate Editor in 2021, now serving as self-appointed chief cozy games and farmlife sim enjoyer. Her career originally began in game development and she remains fascinated by how games tick in the modding and speedrunning scenes. She likes long fantasy books, longer RPGs, can't stop playing co-op survival crafting games, and has spent a number of hours she refuses to count building houses in The Sims games for over 20 years.