This situation is presented poorly:

> You can't ask Rick Baychowski anything about himself or why he deserted.
> You can't ask General Vargas or anyone else in the Citadel about Baychowski's arrest or the questions they want to ask him, nor can you ask any of the Rangers for advice on handling the situation.
> You aren't presented with any relevant information but instead forced to make an essentially blind decision.
> You aren't allowed to be creative in terms of solution, such as promising to put in a good word for Baychowski with Vargas in exchange for his help (perhaps using your dialogue skills... which shockingly do not come into play even once during this situation).

Given the poor presentation, I'd like to know the outcomes for each choice:

> Keep your word and let him escape.
> Break your word and return him to custody.
> Kill him.

Preferably spoiling as little of the plot as possible.

I'd be pissed if the game shits on you later for choosing the 'wrong' thing here after such a bad/contrived setup.

These would have been nice to have as options:

(Hard Ass) "You think anyone here would mind if I kick the shit out of a drunk-ass deserter? You'll help us or you'll need help picking up your goddamned teeth."

(Kiss Ass) "I'm sure you had your reasons for what you did. Help us out and we'll put in a good word with Vargas, get him to go easy on you."

(Smart Ass) "You'll help us because a Ranger, deserter or not, has to be tired of being cooped up in this shit-stained cage. Take us to the suits, and you get to stretch your legs and breathe fresh air. Or keep rotting here. Your choice."

(Dusty wine bottle) "Can't imagine they're giving you the good stuff... How about a trade?"

I can tell you what happens if you return him to custody. Virtually nothing. He goes back to the brig, you are commended for returning him and that's that. I doubt anything else will happen further down the road. I was expecting a lot more from this quest.

If you let him go, you will meet him again later on and get the option to go on a little treasure hunt with him.

Where? you can meet Red later on, but I don't recall seeing Rick anywhere.

My bad, I have a tendency to confuse videogame brothers. I'll be, like, "Luigi's the red dude,right ?" and "I dig Liquid's bandana, man".

That being said, Vargas told me he would have a serious chat with me when I told him I had freed Rick (apparently they were hoping he'd cough up some important information while incarcerated), but I went back to HQ and he never mentioned it again. So I guess there are no important consequences to this choice.

Any kind of information he would have divulged would probably have been skorpion-related anyway, and let's just say the skorpions aren't much of a problem anymore.

Thanks all for your answers, +1 to all posts. I suspected there'd be more to this somehow, but it doesn't seem so. I'm giving the answer to Luckmann for typing all that and giving a good description of why this quest feels so disappointing.

You guys are raising some good points. Never thought about it in that great detail.

I was mostly surprised because this is part of the main quest, every player has to do this in order to get the necessary radiation suits. This would be more palpable if it was just some minor, optional side quest that many players won't even find. You'd think the main quest would get the most work/detail.

But alas, I like this game so much, it doesn't drag down the whole experience.

Just been through this quest and have to agree with everything you said. I believe devs wanted to create one of those forced "it's going to be bad, and it's going to be on you" moments, but it felt rushed out the door, mainly because the people involved were all readily available for a negotiation, only there's no negotiation.

- You could convince Rick to tell you without freeing him, but there's no such option.
- You could convince Vargas to release him, but there's no such option. You can't even tell Vargas you're releasing him just because, there's no such option. (Options are "he escaped", "he died", "he's on his way", all lies).

If instead you had Rick in custody in the desert with no radio contact with Vargas (for some reason) then he would bargain his freedom with you for the info, only then you'd be excused to take such a wild call, arbitrarily cutting a deal with him against Ranger Command, where you genuinely had no option but to choose between your word and your duty. While Vargas is readily available and had already said your main mission was to find Damonta, it just feels freakish either way: you either break your word without even trying to have him released by Vargas or break your duty because the game has to go on.

Edit 1: I think this kind of discussion only exists because in general dialogs and missions are very consistent so far throughout the game. I'm impressed with the writing I see in Wasteland 2. The Baychowski situation is a minor slip.

Edit 2: Oh, by the way, all walkthroughs I saw tell you to bring Rick back, but none state the reason.

This felt awkward to me as well. You're put on the spot, which is fine I guess, but the options are a bit weird. I chose to release him as that felt like the most fair thing given the poor bloke helped us out, and Vargas told me off over the radio. Fully expected to have him working me over in some way, but there was just a slight comment about Ranger duty, and that was that. Would be nice to have a conversation with Vargas about it at least, where I could for example Smart or Kiss Ass him, about the need for those suits for the mission for instance.

One thing to consider is if your team doesn't have decent Safecracking skill, this would not prevent you from completing the main line quest by letting Rick go. He gives you the safe combination if you do release him on the spot.

Aha!!! But there is a way around all of this!!! Perhaps that's why the developers let both of the options involving Rick feel so disappointing. To avoid either of the above less-than-satisfying scenarios you (not your characters) need to be able to decipher Morse code (or find someone online who already has) and then figure out exactly how/where to use that information. (And remember, you can sometimes converse with characters about topics other than just the ones in the prompts.)

I can't say that I ever had any problems with the lack of options regarding Vargas and Rick Baychowski. Vargas made it clear that he wouldn't fall for dialogue skills in the game's starting conversation, if you chose to attempt any of those skills. And for Rick Baychowski it makes sense to not trade his precious commodity for anything less than freedom.

My beef with the whole situation is that he asks to be set free before the Rangers have the rad suits in their hands, and that is the only chance they have of releasing him (or so I thought). After that he still gives the code for the safe when they get to it, but the only way to get rid if him is then to bring him back to the brig. I even tried to bring him to his brother's scrapyard, but even though Red was still there, no new dialogue options. Clicking on Rick Baychowski does nothing, even though that would have been the most obvious and natural way to open a dialogue with the option to set him loose.

I really don't see why the developers felt such a pressing need to take that much control over the situation that they couldn't allow that. As it looks now, Team Echo doesn't even have to bring him back to the brig. Maybe they can take him all the way to Los Angeles? I think I might try that in my next playthrough. Could always use another body to help keep the suicide bots from rushing off to get shot to pieces.

Nope, that did not work at all. For some reason the developers decided that some way into the Canyon of Titan was the appropriate time to let Rick Baychowski start complaining about the ridiculousness of the situation, at which point he'll just leave, with or without permission.

The stuff about the Morse code was completely new to me, and that explains how the player could get the rad suits from Red without killing him. And then get another set from Rick, for no reason.

My reason for even looking into this is that the Gamepedia wiki says that "reportedly" bringing Rick Baychowski back to the brig makes The Blix available as a requisition from Mercaptain even if the Rangers didn't save Ag Center. That could be pretty useful, since that weapon gives no less than two different +1 bonuses to skills.

But in the playthrough where my Rangers did bring him back to the brig, I don't think I noticed The Blix among the weapons available after I'd brought back some Depleted Uranium. Maybe I should check again, just to make sure. So annoying that the game limits the number of saved games that's shown in the list, because for reasons like this I end up with tons of games saved at various points in the game.