Is Fallout 3's story just expensive fan fiction?

[Flying-Emu]

Even fanfiction couldn't ruin the Brotherhood of Steel as badly as FO3 did.

 

[HT_Black]

Bah. Fallout 3 was horrible, and the plot was far from the only reason why. But it was definitely a big one.

 

[Waffle_Man]

Well, from an extremely literal stand point, it is. Bethesda had a lot of fans of the original fallout games, and they wrote fiction for it. However, some fan fiction is genuinely well written.

Then again, you also have a "my immortal" end of the spectrum, so it could be taken any number of ways.

 

[Voodoo_Person]

Personally I prefered F3, I just didn't get into the NV story as much, not that it isn't a brilliant game mind you

This is what I said about the game before it came out and 30 or so hours in, I say the same thing. The map i mostly empty fringes in new vegas. When you looks at the the pip boy there is a massive fringe surrounding the map which is empty desert. Most of the locations aren't worth visiting (in fallout 3 you would always find a skill-book which was nice).

To me, it just seemed like there was more to do in F3, I really didnt like the way NV restricts where you go by sticking enemies you cant beat because you're not strong enough in the way and also the way it stuck a shit load of invisible walls around so you cant take shortcuts, or jump off the Hoover Dam for the hell of it, and the other irritating the was the ending, you would have though they might have learnt from the reception of F3s original ending, lets hope the DLC fixes that

 

[MrJKapowey]

I personally thought that F3 was really good. The BoS in that game were like a splinter cell who had grown a conscience and realised that their aims would eventually end in their destruction, unless they encompassed the needs of the wasteland as a whole and formed an alliance as they did in Broken Steel. This made them more powerful and more able to form a stable base of operations in the Capital Wasteland whilst eventually having the potential to become similar to the NCR. The Enclave had to be added in to tie it up and to destroy them once and for all, whilst the Supermutants are just an allpervading menace through all of the wastes.

 

[MrJKapowey]

Sorry about the double post, really laggy internet.

 

[loc978]

Well to be fair, Fallout 3's inherently superior by virtue of the fact that it takes place on the east coast.

true, it was fun to see such an unlivable city in ruins, Fallout style. Kinda like Chicago in FoT.


.

On topic: Fallout 3's story is fanfiction in the way that the new Monkey Island is fan fiction. A new game made by fans of the old... who don't want to mess around with the universe too much out of respect for its creators... so it sticks to a proven formula.

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

No, it was not expensive fan fiction. As the holders of the IP, Bethesda's work (unless they later say otherwise) falls in the body of canon. By contrast, it is only by extraordinary circumstance that fan-fiction ever becomes a part of canon. They might be fans of the IP, but their work is elevated above fan fiction precisely because they also control the IP.

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

I personally thought that F3 was really good. The BoS in that game were like a splinter cell who had grown a conscience and realised that their aims would eventually end in their destruction, unless they encompassed the needs of the wasteland as a whole and formed an alliance as they did in Broken Steel. This made them more powerful and more able to form a stable base of operations in the Capital Wasteland whilst eventually having the potential to become similar to the NCR. The Enclave had to be added in to tie it up and to destroy them once and for all, whilst the Supermutants are just an allpervading menace through all of the wastes.

To be fair, there was even a precedent for such action. The BoS in Fallout: Tactics realized they needed new recruits to survive in the Midwest without other brotherhood support and thus they began recruiting the locals into their ranks. Of course, only the best and brightest ever got the fabled energy weapons and power armor.

 

[Syphous]

To be honest I've never enjoyed any of the Fallout story-lines. To me it's been all about the atmosphere, dialogue, and freedom of choice.

 

[Irridium]

Its shitty fanfiction. The main story in Fallout 3 was just awful. Sure it may seem good when you glance over it. But when you subject it to simple logic it falls apart completely.

Why didn't your father just assist the scientists in Rivet City instead of dragging all of them to try and revive a 30 year old dead project?

Why did your dad leave the Vault without telling anyone? Especially not you? Why did he think the insane Overseer wouldn't do anything drastic when he's, you know, insane and paranoid?

Why didn't they just focus on Megaton's water purifier?

Why didn't they use the GECK to make the wasteland a paradise?

Why didn't they just gather all the Mr. Gutsy't and use them to make pure water through condensation, like your butler robot?

Why did your father, instead of opening the doors in the main control area of Project Purity so you could end all the enclave soldiers there, choose to kill himself?

Why did the Enclave attack Project Purity? Why do they want it? Do they want to give people free water? Why is that bad? Sure its hinted that they may poison it, per Eden's request, but Colonial Autumn doesn't seem to get along with Eden and would have most likely disobeyed him since he, and many in the Enclave, wouldn't have been "pure".

Why did Eden ask you to poison the water? You weren't born in the Vault, so he's asking you to basically kill everyone in the wastes, even yourself. Who in their right mind would agree to that?!

When you find your father, why couldn't I tell him I went to come find him because the Overseer went insane and tried to kill me? No, seriously, play the game, find you father, save him, and try to tell him what happened after he left Vault 101. You can't, the game does not let you tell him the truth.

And about one other part of the game, not relating to the main story:

Where did Tenpenny Tower come from? Who built it? Where do the people get all their money? Yes they're all apparently "rich", but how? All they do is nothing, so where did they get their money? There's one guy who'd probably be rich, that old adventurer, but most of everyone else does nothing, produces nothing, and it just doesn't make sense.

Which brings me to another question, how did Tenpenny get so rich? How did he build the tower? If the building was already there, who the hell built a building in the middle of nowhere If he did build it, where did he get the materials to do so? Where does he get his money? Where do his tenets get their money? How does he pay his guards? Why don'this guards leave when you kill him?

Just so many holes in the game, its maddening.

 

[Megacherv]

I had a big problem with Fallout 3's main story. Now keep in mind this is one of my favorite games of this generation by far, so don't flame me too hard.

It's in Fallout 3 that they really changed the way the Fallout Mythos works. In the original Fallout 1/2, all of the wacky stuff that was going on was due entirely to the FEV. Ghouls, Mutants, Giant Insects, etc were all products of exposure to the FEV at Mariposa Military Base. Radiation was just plain old real world radiation - it gave you cancer and killed you.

In Fallout 3 they changed it so that just normal radiation causes mutations and creates things like ghouls and giant insects. That doesn't happen, we know exactly what radiation from an atomic bomb does - it gives you cancer or radiation poisoning and kills you. But they wanted an excuse to have all of these mutants exist everywhere in the Fallout world and not just around Mariposa - so they changed the story.

Also radiation doesn't poison water supplies for 200 years. Washington D.C. wouldn't be a wasteland after an atomic war, it would be a verdant forest overtaken by vegetation. Again, we know what radiation does. It only took a decade or so before people started living in Hiroshima and Nagasaki again, their water is fine.

Actually, the FEV still plays a part in the Super Mutants' mutation. When you go into Vault *something* to get the GECK, and you meet Fawkes, you see evidence of experimentation AND Fawkes himself explains the experiments carried out on him.

...you're really going to use the modding tools against Fallout 3? It was -called- the GECK for a reason >_>

Just to clarify, by GECK I meant the acual Garden of Eden Creation Kit that was the plot device about two/thirds into the main plot, not the modding tool. If you're just joking or not I can't tell but thought I'd clarify regardless.

Nah, I was joking about it, but it's silly either way. All vaults were issued a GECK, that was stated in FO2 I believe (maybe even 1) Some didn't get theirs. But they were all supposed to have one.

>> It's still not a point against FO3.

but most vaults didn't get a GECK. in fact most Vault were not designed to enable people to survive, the Vault system was this huge social experiment run by the Enclave and the only Vaults that did work as advertised were the control group of the experiment

using a brotherhood splinter faction was a cheap trick to have technologically advanced faction without interfering in the given story. I always liked the brotherhood better when they were total dicks, the whiny do-gooders of fallout 3 and tactics just suck and i like that they got their asses kicked by the NCR, imho a lot of the story of fallout 3 appears to be designed to interfere as little as possible with what we know happened at the west coast.

I agree with you here (I haven't played the original Fallouts, but I've read up quite a bit on The Vault), it's just that there's nothing particularly wrong about this. A reboot that has things slightly different doesn't make it bad, it just makes it different.

And Enclave? I thought it was Vault-Tec that did this.

 

[teebeeohh]

I had a big problem with Fallout 3's main story. Now keep in mind this is one of my favorite games of this generation by far, so don't flame me too hard.

It's in Fallout 3 that they really changed the way the Fallout Mythos works. In the original Fallout 1/2, all of the wacky stuff that was going on was due entirely to the FEV. Ghouls, Mutants, Giant Insects, etc were all products of exposure to the FEV at Mariposa Military Base. Radiation was just plain old real world radiation - it gave you cancer and killed you.

In Fallout 3 they changed it so that just normal radiation causes mutations and creates things like ghouls and giant insects. That doesn't happen, we know exactly what radiation from an atomic bomb does - it gives you cancer or radiation poisoning and kills you. But they wanted an excuse to have all of these mutants exist everywhere in the Fallout world and not just around Mariposa - so they changed the story.

Also radiation doesn't poison water supplies for 200 years. Washington D.C. wouldn't be a wasteland after an atomic war, it would be a verdant forest overtaken by vegetation. Again, we know what radiation does. It only took a decade or so before people started living in Hiroshima and Nagasaki again, their water is fine.

Actually, the FEV still plays a part in the Super Mutants' mutation. When you go into Vault *something* to get the GECK, and you meet Fawkes, you see evidence of experimentation AND Fawkes himself explains the experiments carried out on him.

...you're really going to use the modding tools against Fallout 3? It was -called- the GECK for a reason >_>

Just to clarify, by GECK I meant the acual Garden of Eden Creation Kit that was the plot device about two/thirds into the main plot, not the modding tool. If you're just joking or not I can't tell but thought I'd clarify regardless.

Nah, I was joking about it, but it's silly either way. All vaults were issued a GECK, that was stated in FO2 I believe (maybe even 1) Some didn't get theirs. But they were all supposed to have one.

>> It's still not a point against FO3.

but most vaults didn't get a GECK. in fact most Vault were not designed to enable people to survive, the Vault system was this huge social experiment run by the Enclave and the only Vaults that did work as advertised were the control group of the experiment

using a brotherhood splinter faction was a cheap trick to have technologically advanced faction without interfering in the given story. I always liked the brotherhood better when they were total dicks, the whiny do-gooders of fallout 3 and tactics just suck and i like that they got their asses kicked by the NCR, imho a lot of the story of fallout 3 appears to be designed to interfere as little as possible with what we know happened at the west coast.

I agree with you here (I haven't played the original Fallouts, but I've read up quite a bit on The Vault), it's just that there's nothing particularly wrong about this. A reboot that has things slightly different doesn't make it bad, it just makes it different.

And Enclave? I thought it was Vault-Tec that did this.

Well not the enclave exactly but rather the top echelon of the US government that would become the Enclave after the great war. Vault-Tec did design the vaults that way but they were either pressured by or controlled directly(not 100% sure on this one) by the government

it's not that i didn't like fallout 3 i just think the BoS on the east coast sucks

edit: radition(all science, really) works differently in fallout than in the real world, ghouls are mutated by radiation, nuclear fission reactors are the size of a backpack and they build highly advanced robots 0 years after inventing the transistor

 

[ThorUK]

Bethesda did Fallout 3 more or less with their own team, and Fallout@ New Vegas was done on the Fallout 3 engine, but with Obsidian's design team - being a sequel of course it would get better (seeing as Bethesda are not one of those companies who just release expansions as sequels).

 

[sanguinator]

i enjoyed everything about it, although it has low replay value.

 

[JediMB]

I enjoyed Fallout 3, despite its standalone nature. Things like how Vault-Tec got their hands on the FEV and such are questionable, and as is how the Enclave managed to build such a power base in the east after the events of Fallout 2, but I can accept that.

New Vegas is, overall, a whole lot better in setting, plot, humor, and game functionality. Obsidian know how to take a finished game system and make it more awesome, as became evident when I replayed KotOR II recently. And, yeah, I really liked how everything felt more connected to the two original games.

Hell, New Vegas even managed to incorporate some elements of Fallout 3 (mention of the Brotherhood chapter that went to the east coast) to enrich the experience. It's funny that the east coast BoS are pretty much exactly what Veronica wishes for the rest of the Brotherhood to be.

EDIT:

Also, unlike F3, I immediately started a second character after completing NV. I suppose that says something.