Hating progress (fallout)

[Xooiid]

I happened to like Fallout 3. It could be that I had just left Ft. Meade when it came out, so seeing how much detail they put into the city layout was a kick. Not to mention that there were a few more brilliant things about it:

1)The enclave, though based off the Oil Rig, was known to have several different outposts throughout the area, including the Navarro Outpost. It makes sense that they would flee across the Midwest, where their tech would keep them relatively protected from the storms, and set up shop in another area for their plans.

2) The FEV atmosphere burst did affect the West Coast population (And was a major plot point for Fallout 2), but since it didn't spread to the Eastern Coast, it wouldn't have the same effect. Super Mutants, either discovering a batch of FEV or carting their own, would be able to reproduce their ranks. Also, remember that these super mutants are in a somewhat 'infant' state, so mutants like Marcus wouldn't have the time to develop. Fawkes himself says that it's strange that he hasn't went insane.

3) I do admit that a lot of the lore was missing, and I don't agree with Harold being turned full tree, even though it makes sense. A couple of years back, when a Fallout MMO was being tossed about, one of the factions discussed was the 'Oasis Keepers', the tree people essentially expanding to spread word of their 'God' to the wastes. So Harold may make a cameo appearance, if in spirit only.

For a game in the main series, I think it fits well. Though, with the DC Wasteland slowly becoming modernized, and the NCR looking to restore the country (If they're still alive at the end of NV), it may be that another war in the Dead Plains of the Midwest is on the rise.

And war...war never changes.

 

[brainslurper]

What I would LOVE to see for Fallout 4 is have Bethesda build the world, make the atmospherics and the visuals and build the physical aspects of the quests

No. No. NO. NO. The atmosphere in NV was LIGHT YEARS ahead of Fallout 3 when it came to feeling like Fallout. Also, Bethesda does the QA for all their games, NV's buggines was Bethesda's fault.

Waiiit. So you are blaming bethesda for the bugginess in a game that they didn't even develop? This is the irrational hatred of bethesda that we are talking about. The writing in NV was better then the writing in F3, but the aptmosphere was far better in f3. The universe in NV didn't feel as realized as it could have been, like if they had more time vegas wouldn't have been 2 casinos and a shop.

 

[brainslurper]

I happened to like Fallout 3. It could be that I had just left Ft. Meade when it came out, so seeing how much detail they put into the city layout was a kick. Not to mention that there were a few more brilliant things about it:

1)The enclave, though based off the Oil Rig, was known to have several different outposts throughout the area, including the Navarro Outpost. It makes sense that they would flee across the Midwest, where their tech would keep them relatively protected from the storms, and set up shop in another area for their plans.

2) The FEV atmosphere burst did affect the West Coast population (And was a major plot point for Fallout 2), but since it didn't spread to the Eastern Coast, it wouldn't have the same effect. Super Mutants, either discovering a batch of FEV or carting their own, would be able to reproduce their ranks. Also, remember that these super mutants are in a somewhat 'infant' state, so mutants like Marcus wouldn't have the time to develop. Fawkes himself says that it's strange that he hasn't went insane.

3) I do admit that a lot of the lore was missing, and I don't agree with Harold being turned full tree, even though it makes sense. A couple of years back, when a Fallout MMO was being tossed about, one of the factions discussed was the 'Oasis Keepers', the tree people essentially expanding to spread word of their 'God' to the wastes. So Harold may make a cameo appearance, if in spirit only.

For a game in the main series, I think it fits well. Though, with the DC Wasteland slowly becoming modernized, and the NCR looking to restore the country (If they're still alive at the end of NV), it may be that another war in the Dead Plains of the Midwest is on the rise.

And war...war never changes.

I agree, but all the NCR could have lost in NV was (spoilers) a president and control of the dam and the area surrounding vegas.

 

[brainslurper]

Faithful to the originals? *Vomits allover the screen* Not by a fucking long shot. Good game sure. But hardly faithful.

Fallout 3 was a decent game in its own right. But a shit Fallout game. (I spent 300+ hrs in it )

The earlier ones just captured the atmosphere so much better and had alot more variety in terms of characters and things you could do. And they were more RPG's while F3 is a Shooter with some RPG elements.

F:NV was a step in the right direction.

The fact that the first two had more segments of black humour made the seriousness of the various of topics and things you ran into so much more grim at times even though you were having a chuckle.

Fallout 3 is just.... Grey and bland mush. And the story sucked a hairy asshole and was a huge let down. F:NV's story was alot better by F3's standard.

A better story only counts for so much when the game won't let you see the effects of your actions.

 

[brainslurper]

Combat was much less emphasized, but still more so than I wished. I still enjoyed it much more over 3.

I would disagree. The game was far more combat oriented in my opinion, far more enemies and weapons, plus modifications and functioning ironsights.

 

[brainslurper]

1. The Enclave shouldn't exist anymore. They were wiped out in Fallout 2.

Not necessarily. A faction can be 'wiped out' but its ideologies and culture can remain for others to take up.

I'm tempted to break Godwin's Law here as an example.

They weren't "wiped out" either, at least not to the point where their presence in DC was impossible.

 

[brainslurper]

It's a different genre. Is it even remotely surprising that fans of a tactical, turn-based RPG franchise will be annoyed that the new entry in their series is a first-person shooter (with RPG elements)?

Just to get this out of the way before my main argument: It's not an FPS with RPG-Elements. If anything, it's an RPG with FPS-Elements. If it was primarily an FPS, you wouldn't take up so much time talking and negotiating and just exploring. And you wouldn't have Quests that would let you decide doing things without engaging in combat. I know it sounds stupid, but just because a game let's you shoot in First-Person, it's not automatically a First-Person-Shooter.

Anyway, as for my stand in this debate:
I first got really interested in the FO-Series when I read a preview for FO3. I liked how they described the freedom of choice and the atmosphere. Coincidentally, I got FO2 as a gift for subscribing to the magazine that published this preview. I installed and was hooked for weeks! I finally got 3 on Christmas. I played and enjoyed it. But after I was done (completely done, with DLCs and all) I asked myself some questions: Why should I poison the water of the Capital Wasteland and ruin my father's work because a computer I blew up just days ago told me to? Why does the BoS want a rampaging thief, cannibal and slayer of the innocent to fight for them? Even though one of them refuses to follow me because of my actions? She seems to know that I'm an a**hole. Did she just not tell the others or what? And why should I blow up the Citadel? Yeah, I get some nice equipment when I do that, but first of all, that is some stupid motivation for killing off the faction I spent most of my time with and second, I don't even KNOW about that! Also, are the people of Washington retarded or something? They had 200 friggin' years and the best they have to offer is a settlement built out of plane parts and one inside a ship! AND BOTH HAVEN'T EVEN GOT 100 INHABITANTS!
The thing with the BoS and the Enclave didn't really bother me. I thought it was well explained that Lyons was just a good person who couldn't see the people suffer (especially because, like I said, they all seem to be retarded, while he comes from a place where there are settlements you could very well call a Metropolis) and there were people in his chapter that supported his viewpoints and others who didn't. Okay, that doesn't explain why the PENTAGON only has the shoddy T-45d Power Armor and there are only TWO suits of the regular T-51b (and one of them only if you installed Operation Anchorage) in the entire Capital Wasteland, but still.
And the Enclave...well, there were still soldiers patrolling the Core Region after the Oil Rig was destroyed and Navarro still had Vertibirds, if I remember correctly. Also, Raven Rock was a base built before the war, so it still could have had a lot of technology inside it.

So, my biggest gripes were the lack of real choice in the main story, the lack of consistency regarding my actions (I can understand that my father can forgive me for blowing up Megaton, but I don't get why the White Knights of the Wasteland still see me as their savior just cause I share some genes with a scientist!) and the thing that in the Fallout Universe, the DC Area seems to be occupied by morons who experienced the Great War by going out of their houses, looking at the nukes and saying "Ooooh, nice!" (hence the little number of people still living. For goddness' sake, there's a 'town' with TWO PEOPLE LIVING IN IT! WHY DON'T YOU GO TO MEGATON OR RIVET CITY?) and the rest, who managed to survive and have offspring was unfortunately 'blessed' with a genetic code that stopped their descendants from developing any kind of new civilization in TWO-HUNDRED YEARS! California had that after just 84!

I still liked the game, but NV and especially FO2 (haven't played FO1) are far superior in terms of consistency and logic (for those complaining about the science in the FO-Universe: It was explained somewhere, that the science in the Fallout-Universe works differently from ours. Hence the ability to become a zombie-like creature from too much radiation)

A couple of things to point out.
The citadel tolerates your insanity because they need you, either that or bethesda didn't feel like writing another story for mean people.
The war killed off the majority of the population, so it wasn't until the vaults started to open that humanity started rebuilding itself. Even then there were irradiated monsters preventing any real progress from being made. There are no super mutants, death claws, or yao guai in California. As far as I know.
Why shouldn't you be able to blow up the citadel? Complaining about a choice you had the common sense not to make is pointless.

 

[NerfedFalcon]

I guess the lore inconsistencies are because of:
A) it's a reboot
B) Washington D.C. is a very long way away from central America, where all the other Fallouts took place.

 

[brainslurper]

Fair enough, Skyrim is exempt from this.

With my exams coming in less than a week, I figured it wasn't a very good idea to buy a million-hour RPG just yet.

Yeah, it's a lot better trust me.

What I would LOVE to see for Fallout 4 is have Bethesda build the world, make the atmospherics and the visuals and build the physical aspects of the quests, and for Obsidian to do all of the writing (but for the love of God never let Obsidian near a one or zero).

I would force obsidian's writers to use parchment and quills, just to be safe.

 

[brainslurper]

This is the second time a thread like this about Fallout has come around, and I'm seeing the same thing as I saw before with the "lore inconsistencies".

Now, this time, will someone please explain to a non-Fallout1&2-player what these "lore inconsistencies" are and how they are so damaging to the game that it is considered to have "ruined" the series?

In regards to stories between sequels, I never see "lore inconsistency" as a viable argument for the quality of a game as long it still has a solid turn out. I know people who claim to have hated WoW:Cataclysm (a reasonable opinion), but the first thing they bring up as a huge element that ruined the game was the addition of the playable Worgan and the "lore inconsistency" it brought that "ruined" the game.

As a writer, I firmly believe that the only question an author should answer in regards to lore is not whether or not to change it but should it be changed in the interest of bettering the story.

The enclave was dead since fallout 2. Bringing them back is bad writing, especially in those numbers.

Black and white morality. Fallout never did that. Only two bit hacks write this shit.

Making the old world glamorous. No fallout game ever did that. The old World sucked, and everyone knew it.

The BOS never care for anyone but technology. Turning them into this huge force of white knights is another bad plot.

The technology in Fallout 3 is too outdated for Fallout's world. They had future technology, not 1950s tech. Fallout 3 limited it to 1950s tech, but left out everything else.

Fallout 3 left out modern weapons and modern energy weapons. These were not prototypes, these were commercialized things.

Fallout followed some form of logic. Making radiation stay for 200 years while the rest of the world is rad free is another bad plot hole.

FEV was never a Vault tec project. That was a top secret project in mariposa ONLY by EXECUTIVE ORDER.

The GECK is NOT a magic device. Its a compilation of tools like a first aid kit. All it had was a reactor, some machines, some holotapes, and a pen flashlight. Nothing more.

Fallout 3 was written like a bad fan fic. Period. It added nothing, and did things only for the "cool factor."

Expecting every single bit of the enclave to be wiped out in fallout 2 is also bad writing.

You wouldn't glamorize the old world if you lived in an irradiated crater?

The brotherhood split in half over it's purpose. The outcasts left because they wanted to follow the brotherhood's old ideology. This is an example of dynamic characters, not inconsistency.

Have you really gotten the point of complaining about the presence of different weapons, especially when it is for the most part consistent?

Last time I checked, we don't turn into zombies when we are irradiated. We get cancer and die. Also, is it really that unlikely that Washington DC was hit harder then everywhere else?

 

[brainslurper]

I guess the lore inconsistencies are because of:
A) it's a reboot
B) Washington D.C. is a very long way away from central America, where all the other Fallouts took place.

There are about two lore inconsistencies. One is what the GECK is, and who made the FEV. Both so minor that there is NO way people should be saying that it ruined anything.

 

[brainslurper]

The original writers did an admirable job of covering Bethosft's missteps with the Enclave Remnants/ED-E questlines, and the crashed alien ship random encounter. As much as those points sucked in F3, Fallout:NV made them canon.

The Enclave base in Chicago, yes, but the Enclave just shouldn't have been so strong.

Aliens, however, are not canon in NV.

J.E. Sawyer said that anything added by the Wild Wasteland trait is non-canon, and aliens are one of the things added.

As far as not choosing sides, Bethsoft does that, it's just linear writing, not really a lore issue;

Spoiler

To be fair they did give you the option of sabotaging the water purifier but it did seem half assed and tacked in

I'm not just talking about lore, I'm also talking about "feel".

Not being able to join the Enclave (who thought you were pure) was stupid, and an evil character joining the BoS and fighting alongside them is just stupid considering how morally white they made the BoS. Yeah you can blow up the Citadel, but that isn't for the Enclave, that's just for teh lulz.

I loved fallout 3, but the fact that you have no other choice then convincing an omnipotent robot to self destruct seems unrealistic. And not very fun. That option should be reserved for speech oriented characters. Anyone else should have had to join them or fought their way out.

 

[RhombusHatesYou]

There are no super mutants, death claws, or yao guai in California. As far as I know.

Errrr... Supermutants and Deathclaws have been part of the game since Fallout 1.

 

[brainslurper]

4. Really??? Did you play Fallout 2???? In Fallout 2 Harold has a tree growing out of his head I don't see how it's unreasonable to assume that it would grow bigger. Again not a lore inconsistency.

That doesn't stop it from being a dick move.

Now Harold can never appear in another Fallout game that doesn't take place around the capital wasteland and is now practically dead.

Harold held the record for being the only character to appear in all main Fallout games...not anymore, thanks Bethesda.

Here's to wishing that he pulls up in a dirt filled dump truck in F4.
Seriously though, they did give him an interesting story.

 

[brainslurper]

There are no super mutants, death claws, or yao guai in California. As far as I know.

Errrr... Supermutants and Deathclaws have been part of the game since Fallout 1.

Thought you meant actual california.. for some reason...

 

[Fijiman]

What I would LOVE to see for Fallout 4 is have Bethesda build the world, make the atmospherics and the visuals and build the physical aspects of the quests, and for Obsidian to do all of the writing (but for the love of God never let Obsidian near a one or zero).

Let's hope they do good on this one. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGg6m7CEluE
And Obsidion didn't do that bad of a job on New Vegas, but they didn't do that great of a job either.

 

[Condiments]

Combat was much less emphasized, but still more so than I wished. I still enjoyed it much more over 3.

I would disagree. The game was far more combat oriented in my opinion, far more enemies and weapons, plus modifications and functioning ironsights.

Additional combat features don't necessarily mean there is MORE emphasis, just the options are there. Sure, there are more ways to kill people, but there are also far more ways to circumvent conflict altogether through the use of more skill checks and better quest design. I killed my fair share of things, but I honestly did more talking and sneaking. That is the beauty of the character system, and quest design they implemented. That is what the original fallout was about. There was combat, but it can be marginalized depending on your build. My latest run of the game, I made a smooth-talking guy with some gun skill, and had a lot of followers. Whatever situations I ran into that I couldn't talk my way out of, I had my friends blast them away.

 

[BrionJames]

Oh boisee! I could say a lot of things here, having been around for the first two Fallout games (I never played tactics) and New Vegas and 3. They're all excellent games. As far as I'm concerned Fallout is my portal to a dystopian Mad Max style future. There I can flex whatever muscles seem necessary. I can chose to be a wandering savior like Clint Eastwood's man with no name or be like Gary Oldman from the Fifth Element. The point being it feels like a Post Apocalypse RPG. As for the whole sequels not being good as the previous, everyone is going to have their own opinion. I myself feel like I am witnessing a downward trend in one of my favorite developers. Mass Effect when it was first released, blew my hair back like you wouldn't believe. Mass Effect 2 was entirely underwhelming, dumbed down and watered down. I don't know if it has to do with Bioware going being bought by Electronic Arts, but I've watched their games change and I've only noticed the difference since then. Post whatever pseudo psychological comments you like, but Mass Effect and Bio Shock were better than there sequels. This is of course is my opinion, but until I see Bioware do something to restore my trust, I have little hope for them.


....I know Bio Shock Infinite is going to kick lots of ass. And I know Irrational did the first game and not the second.