In Fallout 3—and Bethesda games more generally—sometimes you'll tell your companion to go away. You know: Go wait for me back at home base. They'll say okay and then run off. Most of us assume they just run off-screen and disappear. Maybe you tried to follow them once, but you probably didn't make it all the way home. You probably got distracted by an interesting ruin or cave filled with loot and monsters.
Curious videogame experimenter Any Austin, however, wanted to know if they actually go where they say they'll go—or more generally where anyone goes, ever, in these games when they say they're going somewhere. What Austin found was pretty interesting: Yeah, if you tell Dogmeat to go home to Vault 101, he'll actually get there… eventually. He'll spend real-time hours getting there along an incredibly roundabout way—and if you're along for the ride, he'll stop to fight every single mutant, raider, crab, scorpion, roach, and robot he finds.
