GrimSheeper said:
Ordinaryundone, I do not dislike Fallout out of principle. I dislike it for the same reason Invisible War was a bad Sequel to Deus Ex. Disregard for established rules and completely alienating decisions made for the sake of appealing to a larger audience.
But it DIDN'T throw out that much. At least, not nearly as much as the naysayers would have you believe. You say they don't explain the presence of the BoS, but they do. You say you've played Tactics, so you know how they got across the country, and then FO3 puts it quite plainly that Lyon's had his falling out with the main force and went to Washington. You say the mutants are stupid and disorganized, but its no different than the mutants in Fallout 2. The Master is dead, long dead, and most mutants were never that smart to begin with (only an exceptional few have any real intelligence
It seems like Tactics is completely non-canon anyways, since the BoS of the Midwest was the most powerful faction ever. After repairing the Calculator to control vast robot armies and having goddamn Deathclaws in power armor in their army, how could they not be?
You say they don't explain the presence of the BoS, but they do. You say you've played Tactics, so you know how they got across the country, and then FO3 puts it quite plainly that Lyon's had his falling out with the main force and went to Washington.
As for the validity of Tactic's story, my theory is "If it doesn't actively contradict previous canon, its ok". Tactics exists in its own special area of the story, far away from everything currently going on. There is no reason why the BoS couldn't be super-powerful and still not matter. Travel in the Fallout universe is a slow process, and the BoS (with the exception of Lyon's group) is extremely insular and doesn't bother with the Wasteland. I could completely see them acquiring a huge, powerful army and simply sitting on it.
The Supermutants do not tie some sticks together like a treefort, they build trenches and sandbag barriers showing at least de Vauban-esque understanding of defensive combat operations. Also they abduct people to turn them into more mutants despite probably only being able to guess the vats are responsible. It doesn't at all feel like they're the dumb brutes they are supposed to be with the huge amount of troops all acting towards increasing their numbers through Vault 87.
Well, unlike the BoS the Mutants could have simply walked from one side of the country to the other (Jacob managed it). They are certainly tough enough, and 200 years is a long time. And following the Master's death its not like the army had anywhere else to go. The members of the Master's army, even the dumb ones, would still know how the vats work, and could have started up the mutant strain on the east for company and numbers, or more likely have run into more themselves and taught them the secret. Or maybe they just learned it through trial and error. Mutants my be stupid, but they don't lack for meanness. Maybe they thought it was funny dumping prisoners into toxic waste and seeing what happened, and they got lucky with the process.
As for their tactics....well, you can take the theory of them meeting "smart" mutants, or maybe they just picked it up from watching the BoS or even the Enclave. Hell, maybe one or two of them can read, or they saw all the war propaganda, or maybe figuring out how to dig a trench is more instinctive than we think when you are getting shot at.
What just bugs me most is the amount of mushroom clouds. Fallout is nuclear power in every appliance possible, I know and enjoy that 50's feeling of technological blind trust. After 200 years of scavenging, I still wonder why there's even fission material in the car engine or why the cars haven't been turned into walls yet. It's just too much, every car explodes violently in a mushroom. The only bomb physically able to do that is the Megaton bomb since a cloud has to reach 3 miles in height before forming the mushroom form. Nuclear explosions do not normally look like that just because they are nuclear, and any conventional bomb will, given enough explosive material, form a mushroom cloud.
It's Fallout, man. The same series that takes place 200 years in the future but they are using 1950's level atomic weaponry. The same universe that has portable powered armor and radiation that makes giant ants that breath fire. Saying the science is on the softer side of the scale is an understatement. Chock it up to artistic license and let it go. A mushroom cloud is THE defining iconography surrounding atomic weaponry.
Also, nobody seems to try and rebuild in those 200 years after the war, where does all the food come from, or the ammo? New Vegas did that so much better
This is a decent point, but you have to remember that D.C. got nuked into the stone age compared to the West. Half of the Vaults seemed to fail miserably with no survivors, and the Capitol Wasteland is effectively a warzone, with the BoS in a constant firefight with the Mutants and a huge number of raiders tearing up the outskirts of the city. No one has been able to step up and take control like the NCR, simply because any settlement that gets too big becomes too much of a target. Plus, they hadn't had a "savior" like the Vault Dweller or the Chosen One to sort things out until the Lone Wanderer showed up. All the leftover food and ammo is probably around simply because no one has gotten to it yet. Too dangerous to go out and travel, lest you become raider bait or Mutie food.
Also, considering the high failure rate of the East Coast vaults, and the fact that we don't really know when any of them were supposed to open, how do we know that the survivors simply didn't get out later than the ones on the West coast?
, The design isn't bad in the fallout games the art style isn't that great considering the concept is post-apocalyptic fantasy land.
