Fallout - New Vegas

[Avilan the Grey]

Is there anyone else as psyched about this as I am?

I found ME2 to be my favorite 3D RPG ever, but FO3 is right up there, way ahead of DA:O. Especially since it's so easily modded.

The only thing that annoys me right now is that the long FO:NV trailer really doesn't show anything about the game.

[Comet]

It seems to be quite similar to Fallout 3 in terms of gameplay. I was kinda hoping for some more radical changes, but I suppose this works too.

I'm mostly excited about the idea of having a real, working city in the middle of a wasteland. And the cowboy-theme they have going. It's just so fitting and the character creation interface looks to be hilarious from what I've seen.

[king.com]

It seems to be quite similar to Fallout 3 in terms of gameplay. I was kinda hoping for some more radical changes, but I suppose this works too.

I'm mostly excited about the idea of having a real, working city in the middle of a wasteland. And the cowboy-theme they have going. It's just so fitting and the character creation interface looks to be hilarious from what I've seen.

Im just hoping dialog/plot/characters are going to be more like fallout 1 and 2...

[Avilan the Grey]

One thing that sounds great is that apparently Vegas has both kind of super mutants (the gray, intelligent ones from FO1 / 2 and the green "hulk speech" ones from FO3). That makes sense, if one group spread eastwards, and the other westwards.

[Rustic Dude]

One thing that sounds great is that apparently Vegas has both kind of super mutants (the gray, intelligent ones from FO1 / 2 and the green "hulk speech" ones from FO3). That makes sense, if one group spread eastwards, and the other westwards.

Wait, what?

(And by the way, I'd love if orange muties stayed in their Washington hole. Didn't like them)

[DabblerWizard]

They're not green, and they're not orange. They're yellow.

[Inhuman Bot]

One thing that sounds great is that apparently Vegas has both kind of super mutants (the gray, intelligent ones from FO1 / 2 and the green "hulk speech" ones from FO3). That makes sense, if one group spread eastwards, and the other westwards.

You mean the Master? He's dead.

[Avilan the Grey]

They're not green, and they're not orange. They're yellow.

(Really obnoxious teenage voice) What ev-ver.
:smallbiggrin:

To me they have always looked more "snot green", which is basically yellow with a little green tint. The official, intended color is green though, AFAIR.

[Klose_the_Sith]

I'm interested. Dunno if I'm interested enough to pick the game up (I detest playing RPG's on my computer and the 360 is a regular dust-gathering money-sink now that I can play my RTS's in bed) but I'm definitely interested.

Fo3 was my first Fallout game, as I am young and uneducated. Cest la vie (as the American's say) - I enjoyed it overall and thus I am interested in a sequel.

[Avilan the Grey]

You mean the Master? He's dead.

Yes, but there are still mutants from his breed out there, apparently.

This also highlights the difference between the breeds:

The west coast "master" breed: intelligent, sterile, but with the equipment intact (both male and female). Can have sex for pleasure.

The east coast "Vault Tech" breed: dumb as rock, sterile, asexual (no gender).

I remember all those (not only on NMA) that screamed bloody murder because they could not get the point that the East Coast muties were the result of a completely different experiment.

[Inhuman Bot]

Yes, but there are still mutants from his breed out there, apparently.

This also highlights the difference between the breeds:

The west coast "master" breed: intelligent, sterile, but with the equipment intact (both male and female).

The east coast "Vault Tech" breed: dumb as rock, sterile, asexual (no gender).

See the bolded part. :smalltongue:

I'm remembering one particular mutant in FO 1, perhaps, but they struck me as rather dim.

[Avilan the Grey]

See the bolded part. :smalltongue:

I'm remembering one particular mutant in FO 1, perhaps, but they struck me as rather dim.

Smarter than the east coast ones though.

[Starbuck_II]

See the bolded part. :smalltongue:

I'm remembering one particular mutant in FO 1, perhaps, but they struck me as rather dim.

Fallout Tactics has a few intelligent mutants.
I'm wondering about Deathclaws:
It is like Kobolds query- do we get dog-like or reptile ones.
In Fallout 2 there were even super smart Deathclaws (okay only as smart as a human, which is super smart for a deathclaw).

[Erloas]

As much as Fallout 3 disappointed me, I'll still wait and see. Mostly because its not Bethesda making the game, since I've been disappointed by every game of theirs I've tried. On the other hand I do like Bioware's games, and I do like the ideas of Fallout even if the 3rd one seemed to fail at those ideas in so many places.

[JadedDM]

They're using the same game engine as Fallout 3 used, but hey, this one will probably actually have decent writing. So I'm looking forward to it.

I wouldn't play Fallout 3 after all I heard about it (especially the ending), but I will play this.

[Falgorn]

I hope with this game there's a bigger map, and more quests. I get that it's the apocolypse, but two major cities?
Also, a motorcyle would be cool.

[Triaxx]

Two major cities? Perhaps but Las Vegas wasn't destroyed, and so the preservation of tech means that the smaller cities could have been rebuilt much easier.

[Lord of Rapture]

Im just hoping dialog/plot/characters are going to be more like fallout 1 and 2...

Still don't understand this complaint, seeing as I didn't see anything special regarding dialogue, plot, or characters regarding the original two...

[warty goblin]

Just so long as they discover colors besides brown. I don't usually mind games being a bit monochromatic, but all of the Fallouts have been so intensely committed to being the color of dirt they gave me a passionate urge to look at something else.

[Inhuman Bot]

Also, a motorcyle would be cool.

And not very Fallouty. At all.

[littlebottom]

i am looking forward to this. to be perfectly honest, the only 2 games i was really interested in coming out this year, before the year began were this and FFXIII, there are others ill take a look at, but this is a must buy.

it would be interesting if they put another form of transport in though, not running slowly and forever, and not instantly going "im here!" it would be fun to cruise around the waste running things over in a jeep. of course part of the game would then consist of joyriding and running about everywhere looking for fuel to find out that when you get back to your vehicle its been nicked, totaled, is now home for some freaky creature.

[Erloas]

Still don't understand this complaint, seeing as I didn't see anything special regarding dialogue, plot, or characters regarding the original two...

What I didn't like about the dialog and characters in FO3 was the fact that they didn't fit with the world. It seemed like all of the characters were transplanted from someplace else to where they were at. Most of the quests you were asked to do kind of seemed like that as well. Everything seemed to fit together better in the first two.

[Starbuck_II]

And not very Fallouty. At all.

Tell that to Mad Max (Mel Gibson played a Wasteland type merc: alas Fallout universe). He had a Bike.

[chiasaur11]

Everything seemed to fit together better in the first two.

Like New Reno, Talking Deathclaws, Kung Fu, Scientology, and a freaking MAGICIAN in Fallout 2?

That kind of fitting together?

[Grumman]

And not very Fallouty. At all.
I don't give a damn about the canon. You purists can choose not to use it if you like, but implementing proper support for vehicles in the game would make it the best thing since real life.

[Inhuman Bot]

Tell that to Mad Max (Mel Gibson played a Wasteland type merc: alas Fallout universe). He had a Bike.

Mad Max also wasn't set after an Apocolypse that was entirely started by a lack of fuel. You know, the stuff used to power bikes.


I don't give a damn about the canon. You purists can choose not to use it if you like, but implementing proper support for vehicles in the game would make it the best thing since real life.

Horses in Oblivion weren't that great, and thus kept me from being too dissapointed by a lack of vehicles in FO 3.

Besides, in both games, I loved walking and takeing in the scenery.

[Zevox]

Meh, no. I was pretty unimpressed with Fallout 3 when I played it earlier this year, so if this game is going to be like that, my interest is minimal at best.

Zevox

[SparkMandriller]

As much as Fallout 3 disappointed me, I'll still wait and see. Mostly because its not Bethesda making the game, since I've been disappointed by every game of theirs I've tried. On the other hand I do like Bioware's games, and I do like the ideas of Fallout even if the 3rd one seemed to fail at those ideas in so many places.

You realise Bioware aren't involved with this, right?

[Erloas]

You realise Bioware aren't involved with this, right?

Oh yeah, it was Obsidian... which happened to have made sequels to several Bioware games. Bioware didn't sound quite right but I didn't take the minute to look it up, I just remembered New Vegas was being made by a company I did like the games of.

[Lord Fullbladder, Master of Goblins]

Now, see, I have only one big hope for this game. Less Radscorpions. Let's try to remove ourselves from the arachnids, people.

[Lord of Rapture]

What I didn't like about the dialog and characters in FO3 was the fact that they didn't fit with the world. It seemed like all of the characters were transplanted from someplace else to where they were at. Most of the quests you were asked to do kind of seemed like that as well. Everything seemed to fit together better in the first two.

You mean Fallout One, with the TARDIS and the obviously fake British thief master?

You mean Fallout Two, with the talking scorpion and Monthy Python and the Holy Grail?

Are we talking about the same games here? :smallconfused:

[warty goblin]

Meh, no. I was pretty unimpressed with Fallout 3 when I played it earlier this year, so if this game is going to be like that, my interest is minimal at best.

Zevox

My difficulty with Fallout 3 was basically twofold. Firstly the world was like a really boring Oblivion, except with possibly less emphasis on trying to make sense. Secondly I was constantly comparing it to STALKER, and FO3 usually came out worst in that matchup, both in terms of atmosphere and mechanics.

[Grumman]

Mad Max also wasn't set after an Apocolypse that was entirely started by a lack of fuel.
Actually, it was. The Mad Max apocalypse was caused by civil unrest, caused by an energy crisis.


Horses in Oblivion weren't that great, and thus kept me from being too dissapointed by a lack of vehicles in FO 3.

Besides, in both games, I loved walking and takeing in the scenery.
Sure, but sometimes you want to go on a road trip. Put in a car that has some cargo space and a few spare seats for followers and I think it would make the game better.

[Zevox]

My difficulty with Fallout 3 was basically twofold. Firstly the world was like a really boring Oblivion, except with possibly less emphasis on trying to make sense. Secondly I was constantly comparing it to STALKER, and FO3 usually came out worst in that matchup, both in terms of atmosphere and mechanics.
I'd be here all day if I tried to spell out all the different things I wasn't fond of with Fallout 3. I've never played Oblivion or STALKER, but I do agree that the world for FO3 was really boring, with the exception of a few locations (and even they quickly lost their charm). And I'd say the same for the main story, and the stories of most of the side-quests. Which are pretty big strikes against it right there.

Another major problem I had was the colors and brightness. Because of how all the usually-dark browns, grays, and blacks blended together, I had to turn the game's brightness up to maximum just to be able to tell what I was looking at consistently. That's terrible. I've never encountered a problem like that in any other game, and I've played games that some people have complained about being not colorful enough before (Dragon Age: Origins, for instance, which even has an in-game joke about how prevalent the color brown is in its world).

I also couldn't get over how everything you ran into that dated from before the apocalypse looked like it was from the 1950s (aside from the high-tech stuff like the lasers, anyway), but in-game sources put the apocalypse as occurring in the 2070s. That made no sense whatsoever.

I'd better stop myself before I go on (see the first sentence again). But basically my final judgment was that FO3 was a decent game, but not a good one, and certainly not one that made me interested in playing games similar to it. Hell, I didn't even bother fully exploring the game's world - once I hit the maximum level I went and finished the main story so I could say I'd beaten the game, then set it aside and moved on to better games. It just failed to keep my interest.

Zevox

[warty goblin]

I'd be here all day if I tried to spell out all the different things I wasn't fond of with Fallout 3. I've never played Oblivion or STALKER, but I do agree that the world for FO3 was really boring, with the exception of a few locations (and even they quickly lost their charm). And I'd say the same for the main story, and the stories of most of the side-quests. Which are pretty big strikes against it right there.

I can't say I found anything particularly objectionable about the side or main quests, but I certainly didn't find any of them particularly compelling. That's actually OK with me, I can play along just fine with basically no plot motivation if the gameplay is enough fun, but it still was a disappointment, particularly compared with Oblivion, which managed to actually get me invested in the story now and again.


Another major problem I had was the colors and brightness. Because of how all the usually-dark browns, grays, and blacks blended together, I had to turn the game's brightness up to maximum just to be able to tell what I was looking at consistently. That's terrible. I've never encountered a problem like that in any other game, and I've played games that some people have complained about being not colorful enough before (Dragon Age: Origins, for instance, which even has an in-game joke about how prevalent the color brown is in its world).
I can't say as I had to monkey with the colors, but this might be because I play on a PC instead of a console. Being three feet from the monitor helps, and I've played so many shooters that I'm pretty adept at picking up on movement even if it is fairly camouflaged.

No, my objection was not that I couldn't tell what was going on, merely that I didn't care to see what was going on after about four hours. For an ostentatiously open world game, the endless ruined buildings and dead trees sure killed my urge to explore dead. What I found particularly curious about Fallout 3's art is that it was so boring it wasn't even bleak and depressing after a while. STALKER, which actually bothered to have colors and plants and stuff felt infinitely more oppressive and dismal than Fallout did. Here's an example (http://www.legitreviews.com/images/reviews/490/stalker.jpg) of what I mean, which is literally the first landscape shot that popped up on my image search.


I also couldn't get over how everything you ran into that dated from before the apocalypse looked like it was from the 1950s (aside from the high-tech stuff like the lasers, anyway), but in-game sources put the apocalypse as occurring in the 2070s. That made no sense whatsoever.
I think the setting is supposed to be sort of parody/deconstruction of nineteen fifites culture. Since I actually don't care about nineteen fifties culture, this does nothing for me. Now if they had done the nineteen sixties, that would have been something- hippies in the apocalypse!


I'd better stop myself before I go on (see the first sentence again). But basically my final judgment was that FO3 was a decent game, but not a good one, and certainly not one that made me interested in playing games similar to it. Hell, I didn't even bother fully exploring the game's world - once I hit the maximum level I went and finished the main story so I could say I'd beaten the game, then set it aside and moved on to better games. It just failed to keep my interest.

Zevox
I'd say Fallout 3 was one of those games I could certainly see how and why other people found it excellent, but I did not. I didn't even find it bad really, just not interesting enough to spend a lot of time with. A lot of this is because I'd played STALKER first, and found it's version of post-apocalyptia so much more compelling, it's weirdness so much more genuine feeling, and it's gameplay much more gripping with the constant lurking horror and neverending struggle to survive. To say nothing of the vastly superior guns and gunplay.

[Zevox]

I can't say I found anything particularly objectionable about the side or main quests, but I certainly didn't find any of them particularly compelling. That's actually OK with me, I can play along just fine with basically no plot motivation if the gameplay is enough fun, but it still was a disappointment, particularly compared with Oblivion, which managed to actually get me invested in the story now and again.
That first is pretty much what I meant. The stories weren't exceptionally bad or anything, but they were boring. Barely worth using as excuses for you to do something. And while I agree that some games with no plot but good gameplay can be good, FO3 was an RPG, and for me at least, story, setting, and characters count for a lot in an RPG. I've run across a few that I've played for the gameplay in spite of a poor story - Disgaea 2 being the one that comes to mind right now - but those are rare.

And it's not like FO3's gameplay was anything special either. For the most part it was basic FPS plus that VATS system, and while that system was kind of nice, I was quite annoyed that it didn't let you target specific body parts when using melee attacks. I went for a melee character since I don't really like FPS gameplay, you see. The third-person perspective also seemed to have been tacked on, as it was much harder to use in combat than the first-person one (at least, for melee combat), which again annoyed me because I prefer a third-person perspective to a first-person one, so I was initially happy that they gave me the option there.


No, my objection was not that I couldn't tell what was going on, merely that I didn't care to see what was going on after about four hours.
Yeah, there was that too. Part of the whole boring setting problem.


STALKER, which actually bothered to have colors and plants and stuff felt infinitely more oppressive and dismal than Fallout did. Here's an example (http://www.legitreviews.com/images/reviews/490/stalker.jpg) of what I mean, which is literally the first landscape shot that popped up on my image search.
Huh. Well, I don't know about "oppressive and dismal," but it is certainly more interesting to look at than anything in FO3.


I think the setting is supposed to be sort of parody/deconstruction of nineteen fifites culture.
...I... cannot see how they expected that to work, if that was the case. Nor how it would make it make any more sense that everything in the world in the 2070s that wasn't ultra-high-tech looked like it was from the 1950s. Really, if they wanted the world to look like a post-apocalypse 1950s, they should have had the apocalypse occur in the 1950s. And come up with some excuse for why technology advanced faster than it actually did if they really wanted to also have laser tech and the like too - hell, it'd probably be easy to tie that in to what caused the apocalypse.

Zevox

[Klose_the_Sith]

<Snip>

Cool story bro.

[Toastkart]

...I... cannot see how they expected that to work, if that was the case. Nor how it would make it make any more sense that everything in the world in the 2070s that wasn't ultra-high-tech looked like it was from the 1950s. Really, if they wanted the world to look like a post-apocalypse 1950s, they should have had the apocalypse occur in the 1950s. And come up with some excuse for why technology advanced faster than it actually did if they really wanted to also have laser tech and the like too - hell, it'd probably be easy to tie that in to what caused the apocalypse.Zevox

It's the same setting as the other Fallout games. It's called an alternate history, where our world and the fallout world diverged was the 1950s. It even said so in the manual.

I do agree that the story for the main quest and side quests were subpar, but I found the gameplay and exploration enjoyable. It was also one of the buggiest games I've ever played. I've only beaten the game once because of game breaking glitches and I've tried several times.

[Eldan]

Really, Fallout 3, like Oblivion, shouldn't be seen as a game. They are pretty bad games.
They are, however, excellent frameworks for modders to work on.

[Avilan the Grey]

...I... cannot see how they expected that to work, if that was the case. Nor how it would make it make any more sense that everything in the world in the 2070s that wasn't ultra-high-tech looked like it was from the 1950s. Really, if they wanted the world to look like a post-apocalypse 1950s, they should have had the apocalypse occur in the 1950s. And come up with some excuse for why technology advanced faster than it actually did if they really wanted to also have laser tech and the like too - hell, it'd probably be easy to tie that in to what caused the apocalypse.

Zevox

You misunderstood the look and setting. The setting is not post-apocalyptic 1950ies.

The setting is "Classic visions of the future as seen in the 1950ies, and then nuked". It is deliberate Zeerust.

You have to imagine this whole world as a book written by a Sci-fi writer in 1954, just before Rock'n Roll became the new thing.

[Jibar]

Now, see, I have only one big hope for this game. Less Radscorpions. Let's try to remove ourselves from the arachnids, people.

So... not heard the rumours about giant mutant desert spiders have you?
As big as cars.

[king.com]

You misunderstood the look and setting. The setting is not post-apocalyptic 1950ies.

The setting is "Classic visions of the future as seen in the 1950ies, and then nuked". It is deliberate Zeerust.

You have to imagine this whole world as a book written by a Sci-fi writer in 1954, just before Rock'n Roll became the new thing.

In fact theres a lot of debate to the alternate timeline that fallout is set in, some argue that the Vietname war never took place or atleast never went the same way as it did in our world. This would have never led to the rebellous anti-government social groups that it did in our timeline.

The only confirmed shifts (outside of those directly affecting the war) is that the silicon chip was never invented, hence the use of the 40s and 50s computer technology surviving with the use of transistors. The other is that the secret organisation in control of the US government know as the Enclave was running the show up until the war.

I disliked fallout 3 because of how it seemed to repeatedly miss the point. Now people say, "its a new game, it doesnt have to be the same!" Thats true up until you increment the number at the end. If you want to do something different, you add a ":" to distinguish its connected but not the same. Fallout: Tactics did it, and whether you like it or not people werent too fussed as it was designed to be different. Fallout 3 tried to be fallout 1 + 2 but missed not only the ideas of the exploitation of humanity even amongst these apocolyptic times but also decided to miss the black humour and numerous pop culture references.

Some say Moira Brown was supposed to be the obvious black humour. Well humour of fallout's style needs to be subtle, not beat you over the head with a sledgehammer. Also, moral choices? WHO needs them... Fallout 3 does. I dont think there was a serious moral choice in the entire game. Nuke a city or dont. Fallout 1 + 2 needed you to question your decisions at certain points. The Vault City vs New California Republic was an interesting one. Do you allow VC to be harassed by the raiders so that the subsequent NCR occupation to take place, particularly since NCR are close to the good guys and VC are closer to the evil side of things. Or do you respect their independence and help them?

[Avilan the Grey]

I disliked fallout 3 because of how it seemed to repeatedly miss the point. Now people say, "its a new game, it doesnt have to be the same!" Thats true up until you increment the number at the end. If you want to do something different, you add a ":" to distinguish its connected but not the same. Fallout: Tactics did it, and whether you like it or not people werent too fussed as it was designed to be different. Fallout 3 tried to be fallout 1 + 2 but missed not only the ideas of the exploitation of humanity even amongst these apocolyptic times but also decided to miss the black humour and numerous pop culture references.

Personally I disagree completely.

It is not as over-the-top as FO2 (a lot of the quirkier things and random encounters in FO2 are even by FO2 writers considered non-canon) but the exploitation, pop culture references and the black humor is definitely there.

[king.com]

Personally I disagree completely.

It is not as over-the-top as FO2 (a lot of the quirkier things and random encounters in FO2 are even by FO2 writers considered non-canon) but the exploitation, pop culture references and the black humor is definitely there.

Really, the monty python references were non-canon...you dont say.

The only thing i actually found humorous was the the slaver leader being black, you know a whole dig at the supposed 'white guilt' and a statement saying that it was simply a case of 2 civilisations being in the certain situation and nothing to do with what people believe white people should apparently feel guilty about.

Outside of that...i dont know, perhaps you could give me a reference or two?

[Avilan the Grey]

Really, the monty python references were non-canon...you dont say.

The only thing i actually found humorous was the the slaver leader being black, you know a whole dig at the supposed 'white guilt' and a statement saying that it was simply a case of 2 civilisations being in the certain situation and nothing to do with what people believe white people should apparently feel guilty about.

Outside of that...i dont know, perhaps you could give me a reference or two?

You seem to have a more sophisticated sense of humor than I do. I caught the whole "Black slaver" thing, but I saw it more of "proof of humans being bastards" and less "funny".

Examples:

The super mutant wondering if he used to be a woman.
The protectron sitting on the toilet with scrap metal in the bowl.
The Captain Ersatz Mel Gibson character that tries to rob you (and is a coward without bullets in his gun).
The whole Ant-agonizer / Mechanizer fight.
The GOAT.

[Comet]

Say what you will about the writing and story in Fallout 3, but the robotic personalities were hilarious. All in all, I ended up enjoying the transition from gritty wasteland survival to flashy fantasy sci-fi a lot more than I probably should, since it's not really what Fallout should be about in my mind.

I do hope that Vegas is more down-to-earth, but I still enjoyed Fallout 3 immensely. And I do prefer it to 1 and 2 in some respects. It's easier to just pick up and play, for one, and the action is somewhat more satisfying.

Still, I'd really hoped we'd get something new gameplay-wise again with Vegas. Oh well.

[king.com]

You seem to have a more sophisticated sense of humor than I do. I caught the whole "Black slaver" thing, but I saw it more of "proof of humans being bastards" and less "funny".

Examples:

The super mutant wondering if he used to be a woman.
The protectron sitting on the toilet with scrap metal in the bowl.
The Captain Ersatz Mel Gibson character that tries to rob you (and is a coward without bullets in his gun).
The whole Ant-agonizer / Mechanizer fight.
The GOAT.

Well, i developed that humour from playing games....like fallout 1 and 2 :smallbiggrin:

See i found that super mutant thing to be franky covered up by the "stupid mutant is stupid" thing going on so i didnt get the humour in it.
Didnt notice the protectron myself.
The mel gibson robbery was frankly uncomfortable to me as with dogmeat it seemed pretty obvious that your supposed to fill that mad maxx role.

Ah the comic book fight. I could have found that interesting if they had developed it further but when it was simply that one confrontation sort of left me a bit empty. Though maybe it was because i instantly knew how to resolve the situation perfectly.

The GOAT? Why was that exactly? Some people tell me it kinda relates to the American career test system or something which apparently is condemned as being a poor indicator yet is designed to determine your future career but we dont have anything like that in Australia so i cant compare. I will say that i chuckled at the overseer question though.

[Avilan the Grey]

The GOAT? Why was that exactly? Some people tell me it kinda relates to the American career test system or something which apparently is condemned as being a poor indicator yet is designed to determine your future career but we dont have anything like that in Australia so i cant compare. I will say that i chuckled at the overseer question though.

The Overseer question is the main punchline there, but the whole test is made up of "dark humor / crapsack world". It is funny because no one questions how weird, horrible and violent the alternatives are.

Oh more stuff: The Robo-brains "you could at least try to run, I am trying to kill you after all" said in a quite concerned and polite voice...

[Lord of Rapture]

Well, i developed that humour from playing games....like fallout 1 and 2 :smallbiggrin:


:smallannoyed:

I see none in those games.

[king.com]

:smallannoyed:

I see none in those games.

Woaaaah boy. Here we go. Here are some of my favourites

Vault Dweller: How did you survive?
Harold: Didn't. Got killed...

Seems to so appropriately sum up the fallout universe. You see, humanity has already been exterminated, this world, this existance is simply the futile attempt to perceive what has already gone to the past.

Other things such as Myron (in FO2) who consistantly proclaims himself as the "god" of jet, and that he will be remembered forever only to be mentioned in the final credits as being killed by a jet-addict and forgotten, never to be remember.

EDIT: or when Cassidy says "God i wish i had a limit break...".

[Lord of Rapture]

Woaaaah boy. Here we go. Here are some of my favourites

Vault Dweller: How did you survive?
Harold: Didn't. Got killed...

Seems to so appropriately sum up the fallout universe. You see, humanity has already been exterminated, this world, this existance is simply the futile attempt to perceive what has already gone to the past.

Other things such as Myron (in FO2) who consistantly proclaims himself as the "god" of jet, and that he will be remembered forever only to be mentioned in the final credits as being killed by a jet-addict and forgotten, never to be remember.

That's not humor, that's irony. Amusing, yes, and appropriate, but not funny.

[Starbuck_II]

Mad Max also wasn't set after an Apocolypse that was entirely started by a lack of fuel. You know, the stuff used to power bikes.


You have watched the whole Max Max series, no?
Max was almost robbed at gun point over fuel. (but he got better).

[king.com]

That's not humor, that's irony. Amusing, yes, and appropriate, but not funny.

To you. To me that is black humour, laugh out laugh funny, both intelligent and entertaining. Perhaps something from wikiquote.

Vault Dweller: Where were the mutants coming from?
Harold: Everywhere! Hell, seemed like you couldn't fart without hitting one. But mostly in the northwest.
Vault Dweller: You farted Northwest?
Harold: [laughs] Pretty good... Noo...

Children of the Cathedral Guard: What do you want?
Vault Dweller: You wouldn't know where I could find a water chip?
Children of the Cathedral Guard: Water chip? Do you mean like ice chips? Up in the mountains, maybe.
Vault Dweller: Not that kind of chip, you moron!
Children of the Cathedral Guard: Watch your mouth, *******. These people may believe in peace and love, but I don't.

Vault Dweller: What is the Brotherhood of Steel all about anyway?
Darrel: The Brotherhood is a collective of men and women who have dedicated their lives to the preservation of technology.
Vault Dweller: I've heard that you people sacrifice puppies.
Darrel: Sacrifice puppies! Where the hell did you hear that one? Don't believe everything you hear in the wastes, they're all a bunch of pathetic lunatics.
Vault Dweller: Everyone is a lunatic outside the Brotherhood of Steel?
Darrel: Yes... a... well... a... No. It's just people don't even try to understand what we're all about.
Vault Dweller: Well?... I think you guys might be a little kookie myself.

Vault Dweller: What do you want with me?
The Lieutenant: The mind simply boggles at your intellect. Why the legions haven't bowed down at your feet by now, I'll never understand. Guards, take this idiot away!

There we go, thats some of the less subtle stuff.

[Lord of Rapture]

To you. To me that is black humour, laugh out laugh funny, both intelligent and entertaining. Perhaps something from wikiquote.

Vault Dweller: Where were the mutants coming from?
Harold: Everywhere! Hell, seemed like you couldn't fart without hitting one. But mostly in the northwest.
Vault Dweller: You farted Northwest?
Harold: [laughs] Pretty good... Noo...

Children of the Cathedral Guard: What do you want?
Vault Dweller: You wouldn't know where I could find a water chip?
Children of the Cathedral Guard: Water chip? Do you mean like ice chips? Up in the mountains, maybe.
Vault Dweller: Not that kind of chip, you moron!
Children of the Cathedral Guard: Watch your mouth, *******. These people may believe in peace and love, but I don't.

Vault Dweller: What is the Brotherhood of Steel all about anyway?
Darrel: The Brotherhood is a collective of men and women who have dedicated their lives to the preservation of technology.
Vault Dweller: I've heard that you people sacrifice puppies.
Darrel: Sacrifice puppies! Where the hell did you hear that one? Don't believe everything you hear in the wastes, they're all a bunch of pathetic lunatics.
Vault Dweller: Everyone is a lunatic outside the Brotherhood of Steel?
Darrel: Yes... a... well... a... No. It's just people don't even try to understand what we're all about.
Vault Dweller: Well?... I think you guys might be a little kookie myself.

Vault Dweller: What do you want with me?
The Lieutenant: The mind simply boggles at your intellect. Why the legions haven't bowed down at your feet by now, I'll never understand. Guards, take this idiot away!

There we go, thats some of the less subtle stuff.

All right, the last two were kinda funny, but the others weren't at all.

[Starbuck_II]

I liked the all but the second.
I never encounted those dialogues while playing Fallout 1 or 2. Guess I never picked same choices.

[Erloas]

One thing is that Fallout 1-2 has some over-the-top stuff, parodies pulled directly from other sources, and the occasional thing that didn't fit. FO3 however that was like 90% of the characters you run into. Almost no one acts like they are living in a post-apocalyptic world. They aren't struggling to survive, they are all worrying about trivial pointless things. Of course there are exceptions to that in FO3, but the people that fit into the world of FO3 are vastly outnumbered by people that don't.

As for not getting the black comedy in the first one... it was all over the place. I don't know how you could miss it. Of course by the standards of "comedy" that we seem to see today (in everything, not just games) its not really a wonder.

[deuxhero]

Like New Reno, Talking Deathclaws, Kung Fu, Scientology, and a freaking MAGICIAN in Fallout 2?

That kind of fitting together?

Magician?

At least Fallout 2's odder elements made each location unique, doesn't work for Fallout 3's "Oblivion with Guns"ness.

[Lord of Rapture]

One thing is that Fallout 1-2 has some over-the-top stuff, parodies pulled directly from other sources, and the occasional thing that didn't fit. FO3 however that was like 90% of the characters you run into. Almost no one acts like they are living in a post-apocalyptic world. They aren't struggling to survive, they are all worrying about trivial pointless things. Of course there are exceptions to that in FO3, but the people that fit into the world of FO3 are vastly outnumbered by people that don't.

:smallconfused:


As for not getting the black comedy in the first one... it was all over the place. I don't know how you could miss it. Of course by the standards of "comedy" that we seem to see today (in everything, not just games) its not really a wonder.

Correction: attempts at black humor are made all over the place. 50% of the time it gets through, the other 50% it's lost in the sea of bland, boring dialogue.

[warty goblin]

That first is pretty much what I meant. The stories weren't exceptionally bad or anything, but they were boring. Barely worth using as excuses for you to do something. And while I agree that some games with no plot but good gameplay can be good, FO3 was an RPG, and for me at least, story, setting, and characters count for a lot in an RPG. I've run across a few that I've played for the gameplay in spite of a poor story - Disgaea 2 being the one that comes to mind right now - but those are rare.

I seem to generally sit on the other side of the gameplay vs story fence as you, since I'll put up with a really crap story for good gameplay but very seldom the reverse. The problem with FO3 (and given my limited experience of the other Fallout games, this holds true for 1 and Tactics as well) is that neither the story nor the gameplay are particularly compelling.

Which is a real pity, because up until I got out of the Vault, it was absolutely brilliant.


And it's not like FO3's gameplay was anything special either. For the most part it was basic FPS plus that VATS system, and while that system was kind of nice, I was quite annoyed that it didn't let you target specific body parts when using melee attacks. I went for a melee character since I don't really like FPS gameplay, you see. The third-person perspective also seemed to have been tacked on, as it was much harder to use in combat than the first-person one (at least, for melee combat), which again annoyed me because I prefer a third-person perspective to a first-person one, so I was initially happy that they gave me the option there.
I basically ignored the melee attacks because I knew in advance that I couldn't target specific bodyparts. Unfortunately the gunplay was remarkably mediocre whether from first or third person, with weird imprecise controls and amazingly unsatisfying weapons. Probably not a problem for people who don't play shooters, but I do play quite a few shooters, nearly all of which have more satisfying virtual firearms.



Yeah, there was that too. Part of the whole boring setting problem.


Huh. Well, I don't know about "oppressive and dismal," but it is certainly more interesting to look at than anything in FO3.
Probably because the screencap doesn't include the sound design,which, on reflection, is about half of STALKER's atmosphere.



...I... cannot see how they expected that to work, if that was the case. Nor how it would make it make any more sense that everything in the world in the 2070s that wasn't ultra-high-tech looked like it was from the 1950s. Really, if they wanted the world to look like a post-apocalypse 1950s, they should have had the apocalypse occur in the 1950s. And come up with some excuse for why technology advanced faster than it actually did if they really wanted to also have laser tech and the like too - hell, it'd probably be easy to tie that in to what caused the apocalypse.

Zevox
Like I said, Fallout's settings in any of the games have never grabbed me, so you're not alone.

[Zevox]

It's the same setting as the other Fallout games. It's called an alternate history, where our world and the fallout world diverged was the 1950s. It even said so in the manual.
Okay, I never looked at the manual, since video game manuals so rarely seem to have anything worth reading these days. But honestly, it doesn't help - it just says that the Fallout world "remained locked in the cultural norms of the 1950s," with no explanation for how the hell such a thing is possible. We can barely go a decade without significant cultural shifts in the real world, but the game expects me to buy that the Fallout world can sustain an identical culture - and building, clothing, vehicle, etc etc designs, in spite of technology advancing to quite high levels in the meantime - for 127 years?

I don't normally have problems with suspension of disbelief for just about anything, but apparently, this game found just the right way to bug the hell out of me in that regard.


I seem to generally sit on the other side of the gameplay vs story fence as you, since I'll put up with a really crap story for good gameplay but very seldom the reverse.
Eh, not necessarily. Like I said, my big problem with that is with RPGs. For those, I place a lot of importance on the story, setting, and characters. For most other genres I can certainly ignore a bad or nonexistent story for good gameplay, just not usually RPGs.


The problem with FO3 (and given my limited experience of the other Fallout games, this holds true for 1 and Tactics as well) is that neither the story nor the gameplay are particularly compelling.
In that, we are in agreement. (For 3 at least - I haven't played the others, so I cannot comment on them.)

Zevox

[Triaxx]

It's really hard to compare the Fallout games to STALKER, largely because the settings are different. Fallout is set in a Dystopic Post-Apocalyptia. STALKER is set in the ecological aftermath of a nuclear disaster.

STALKER is designed as a shooter, and thus most of the interaction is intended to be killing things. Fallout is designed as an RPG. What 3 really lacked wasn't interesting colors, or a good shooter control scheme. What it really lacked was interesting characters.

Megaton and Rivet City were the largest settlements, and seemed to be populated mostly with unimportant characters, who existed for no reason other than to keep the game from seeming empty. The population of Megaton? Almost entirely 'Megaton Settlers', who have a total of one useful interaction with the PC, which is to give you stuff. The truth is, that Canterbury Commons, and Big Town and even Arefu felt more like Fallout than Megaton or Rivet City ever did. Small settlements scratching out a living, barely defended against roving bands of Raiders, Slavers, and Super Mutants, which is what the Fallout games are supposed to be about. If you didn't think that Lamplight was Black Humor, I don't know what you're seeing.

Pop culture references? Those they did get in spades. Mel was humorous, though not the best. Dunwich Building, which is truly scary when you play with BS, so you're running into Reavers. A crap your pants moment to do Lovecraft himself proud. Andale? The Twilight Zone-esque Vault 112? Most of the pop culture references are so very subtle they're hard to get.

The story telling in the Fallout games has always been crap. That's not why you play. Except for Tactics, the main characters have always ended up applauded Butt Monkies.

1) You found the Water Chip, great. Now go stop the Super Mutants you probably didn't know about before.

2) You found the GECK. Now guess what? The bad guys grabbed all your friends and you have to get them back.

3) Hooray, you found Dad. Wait, he's dead? Now I have to fix the damned thing? Great. What, it's going to Explode? It'll kill me? Wonderful...

Now that I think about it, it was true in Tactics as well, but it wasn't quite so blatantly silly about it. Except for: 'Here's your pop-gun and tin foil suit, now go defeat the endless hordes of enemies.'

'Oh, and the gun doesn't have ammo.' But it did throw down a ton of hints that something was coming to fight when what you were doing was done, so most things didn't come as a surprise if you were paying attention.

[Starbuck_II]

than Megaton or Rivet City ever did. Small settlements scratching out a living, barely defended against roving bands of Raiders, Slavers, and Super Mutants, which is what the Fallout games are supposed to be about. If you didn't think that Lamplight was Black Humor, I don't know what you're seeing.


San Francisco in Fallout 2 reminds me of Rivet City. Granted, Rivet had a bigger ship to live it (and San had homes on land as well).

I do agree about Canterbury Commons, Big Town, and Arefu were great.

[warty goblin]

It's really hard to compare the Fallout games to STALKER, largely because the settings are different. Fallout is set in a Dystopic Post-Apocalyptia. STALKER is set in the ecological aftermath of a nuclear disaster.

There are important differences. This doesn't stop the Zone from being a fundamentally more interesting place than the Wasteland.


STALKER is designed as a shooter, and thus most of the interaction is intended to be killing things. Fallout is designed as an RPG. What 3 really lacked wasn't interesting colors, or a good shooter control scheme. What it really lacked was interesting characters.
I'm not an RPG expert, but I can't think of very many where my primary interaction isn't killing things. I just have to talk to more people first to figure out what things I should kill.

Besides, by giving me a gun in first person, Fallout 3 undeniably a shooter to at least some degree. Comparing it with other games that use the same basic mechanic seems pretty reasonable.


Megaton and Rivet City were the largest settlements, and seemed to be populated mostly with unimportant characters, who existed for no reason other than to keep the game from seeming empty. The population of Megaton? Almost entirely 'Megaton Settlers', who have a total of one useful interaction with the PC, which is to give you stuff. The truth is, that Canterbury Commons, and Big Town and even Arefu felt more like Fallout than Megaton or Rivet City ever did. Small settlements scratching out a living, barely defended against roving bands of Raiders, Slavers, and Super Mutants, which is what the Fallout games are supposed to be about. If you didn't think that Lamplight was Black Humor, I don't know what you're seeing.
But pretty much all RPG towns fall into the trap where either 90% of the population is essentially window dressing, or else the town has a very small population consisting entirely of quest givers. It annoys me as well, but Fallout 3 can hardly be singled out for this.


The story telling in the Fallout games has always been crap. That's not why you play. Except for Tactics, the main characters have always ended up applauded Butt Monkies.
So why are we supposed to play if the storytelling is crap? I suppose I could see being absolutely captivated by the gameplay, but I consider that fairly unlikely.

[chiasaur11]

Magician?

At least Fallout 2's odder elements made each location unique, doesn't work for Fallout 3's "Oblivion with Guns"ness.

1) Melchior Sr. In the military base.

2)... You didn't go there. You seriously didn't go there.

I mean, even aside from the "remember the Rube Goldberg device? Or the Oasis? Or the superhero fight?" question, anyone who says "Oblivion with guns" nonironically is kinda making themselves (and their argument) look a lot less intelligent than it would look without.

Just... avoid it in the future, if you would.

[Garland]

"They could have programmed me to love, to forgive; but noooooo. ..."

If anything, we need more robobrains :smallbiggrin:

[SparkMandriller]

2)... You didn't go there. You seriously didn't go there.

New Vegas is just gonna be Fallout 3 with guns imo.

[Starbuck_II]

There are important differences. This doesn't stop the Zone from being a fundamentally more interesting place than the Wasteland.

Clear Skies kinda sucked so even Stalker has stinkers (plus it was way too buggy).
Plus, enemies respawned like an MMO in Clear Skies.

I mean, sure maybe the original Stalker was good, but Clear Skies shows how bad they can get.

I mean, the artifact thing was good. Stalker makes itself more difficult with the whole bleeding issue (everyone has no clotting agent in their blood). I've seen hemophiliacs with more clotting.

[warty goblin]

Clear Skies kinda sucked so even Stalker has stinkers (plus it was way too buggy).
Plus, enemies respawned like an MMO in Clear Skies.

I mean, sure maybe the original Stalker was good, but Clear Skies shows how bad they can get.

I mean, the artifact thing was good. Stalker makes itself more difficult with the whole bleeding issue (everyone has no clotting agent in their blood). I've seen hemophiliacs with more clotting.

Respawning enemies has yet to really bother me. If the combat in a game is enjoyable, respawning enemies give me more chances to have fun*. This is particularly true in STALKER, where often the AI would simply be doing stuff all on it's own, so you get fun things like being ambushed by a bunch of Meat eating the carcasses of the soldiers you killed last time through, or trying to pick your way through an irradiated area without pissing off the mutant dogs enough to make them attack you.

*On the flipside of course respawning enemies in a game with bad combat is annoying, but most games are so combat centric that it's probably a sunk ship already.

[Triaxx]

There are important differences. This doesn't stop the Zone from being a fundamentally more interesting place than the Wasteland.

True, but that's not my point. My point is that the settings are different. The Wasteland is purely post-apocalyptic, where as STALKER is more of a jungle, than a wasteland.


I'm not an RPG expert, but I can't think of very many where my primary interaction isn't killing things. I just have to talk to more people first to figure out what things I should kill.

Besides, by giving me a gun in first person, Fallout 3 undeniably a shooter to at least some degree. Comparing it with other games that use the same basic mechanic seems pretty reasonable.

By that same logic, Oblivion giving you a bow makes it a shooter.

Yes, klling things is an important interaction, but it doesn't do anything to the story, unless it's a boss. The characters drive the stories. And the stories aren't really there.

From two, we have New Reno. It's not story important. It's out of the way, and if you follow the story, you'll probably never see it. But there are four stories there, one for each family. You'd also miss Redding, and the Sierra Army Depot. Where the first two gave you the freedom to ignore the story and go explore, if you didn't, you'd miss it. 3 let's you ignore the story, but seems to want to lead you around by the nose, and demand you see all the side quests.


But pretty much all RPG towns fall into the trap where either 90% of the population is essentially window dressing, or else the town has a very small population consisting entirely of quest givers. It annoys me as well, but Fallout 3 can hardly be singled out for this.

I know that, but even though, you talk to everyone, because occasionally one of the various masses has a quest you'd miss otherwise. F3 doesn't have that. Most of the characters will go out of their way to shove their quests in your face. Better still, many of 2's characters had no storylines of their own and still had names. Even worse, it seemed most characters fell into two categories: No quest, and no name, or Name, Quest, Essential.


So why are we supposed to play if the storytelling is crap? I suppose I could see being absolutely captivated by the gameplay, but I consider that fairly unlikely.

Super Mario Bros., Roguelikes, Ultima. Games that if they had stories, were essentially excuses to kill enemies. That's what they are here, and the games don't suffer too much for it. I'm firmly of the opinion that if you want to tell an epic story, then you should go and do it and not pretend to make a game.

[Lord of Rapture]

... You didn't go there. You seriously didn't go there.

I mean, even aside from the "remember the Rube Goldberg device? Or the Oasis? Or the superhero fight?" question, anyone who says "Oblivion with guns" nonironically is kinda making themselves (and their argument) look a lot less intelligent than it would look without.

Just... avoid it in the future, if you would.

Ignore them. The Fallout fanbase deserves the unsavory reputation it gets around the net for being a bunch of unpleasable bastards.

[Foeofthelance]

Mad Max also wasn't set after an Apocolypse that was entirely started by a lack of fuel. You know, the stuff used to power bikes.

If I remember FO3, there where these bizzare "pod" bikes running around that looked like someone had squeezed a cockpit into the nose cone of a missile. Not exactly a Harley, but if consider it the idea of what a futuristic "50s" bike would look like...

And they're nuke powered!

[Lord Fullbladder, Master of Goblins]

So... not heard the rumours about giant mutant desert spiders have you?
As big as cars.

Well, there's goes all my desire for playing the game. I'll show myself out.

[JadedDM]

New Vegas is just gonna be Fallout 3 with guns imo.

Now I half hope New Vegas is just Fallout 3 with swords...you know, just to really mess with people's minds.

:smallbiggrin:

[Comet]

Now I half hope New Vegas is just Fallout 3 with swords...you know, just to really mess with people's minds.

:smallbiggrin:

I think I read an interview somewhere where they said that they want to make melee weapons more effective than in Fallout 3. It's not quite the same, but close enough :smalltongue:

[Avilan the Grey]

Weapon customization is official, according to Swedish PC Gamer.

[warty goblin]

True, but that's not my point. My point is that the settings are different. The Wasteland is purely post-apocalyptic, where as STALKER is more of a jungle, than a wasteland.

Different schmifferent. One of them is boring, the other is not. The second is therefore better, whatever the other differences there are.


By that same logic, Oblivion giving you a bow makes it a shooter.
So what's your point? The bow controls in Oblivion are actually fairly OK. Nothing to write home about, but they never actively made me wish to play something else. Fallout 3's gun controls unfortunately do. I'm not sure how either of those is an invalid criticism.


Yes, klling things is an important interaction, but it doesn't do anything to the story, unless it's a boss. The characters drive the stories. And the stories aren't really there.

From two, we have New Reno. It's not story important. It's out of the way, and if you follow the story, you'll probably never see it. But there are four stories there, one for each family. You'd also miss Redding, and the Sierra Army Depot. Where the first two gave you the freedom to ignore the story and go explore, if you didn't, you'd miss it. 3 let's you ignore the story, but seems to want to lead you around by the nose, and demand you see all the side quests.

I generally hold the heretical opinion that side quests are usually a really bad idea. I'd rather play a single, shorter narrative where decisions have major impacts than a much bigger game with loads of sidequests. Most of those are just distractions that don't impact anything.



I know that, but even though, you talk to everyone, because occasionally one of the various masses has a quest you'd miss otherwise. F3 doesn't have that. Most of the characters will go out of their way to shove their quests in your face. Better still, many of 2's characters had no storylines of their own and still had names. Even worse, it seemed most characters fell into two categories: No quest, and no name, or Name, Quest, Essential.
I consider that good design honestly. I don't find running around talking to every schmuck in a town and hearing/seeing the same response twenty-seven times to be fun. In fact I find it to be anything but fun. If the game tells me the people I need to talk to, that saves me a lot of time and bother for no benefit. That's a good thing.



Super Mario Bros., Roguelikes, Ultima. Games that if they had stories, were essentially excuses to kill enemies. That's what they are here, and the games don't suffer too much for it. I'm firmly of the opinion that if you want to tell an epic story, then you should go and do it and not pretend to make a game.
Oh I quite understand playing a game for the gameplay and not the story- I adore playing FPS games against bots for example. I just do not understand why one would tolerate the nearly constant irritations of RPG gameplay if the story wasn't a motivator.

[Eldan]

I generally hold the heretical opinion that side quests are usually a really bad idea. I'd rather play a single, shorter narrative where decisions have major impacts than a much bigger game with loads of sidequests. Most of those are just distractions that don't impact anything.


Now that just seems to be a point where our opinions differ. I'm not saying that Fallout did it particularly well, but I just love going out there on my own, often with no better goal in mind then "just let's walk westwards for a while" and see what I find. People having problems is something which, to me, can add a great deal of life to a place. Now, the question is if in an irradiated wasteland, people would really be asking for you to deliver their letters or find their stupid trinkets. But if the writing is well done, heck, sidequests can make the game so much better. I'd say Torment is a good example. Getting trees into Sigil by making people think about them? Creating a man by mentioning him often enough? Those are just interesting parts of the game which really serve well to show how Planescape works.

[Starbuck_II]

Different schmifferent. One of them is boring, the other is not. The second is therefore better, whatever the other differences there are.


Agree sometimes Stalker was boring. Clear Skies sometimes didn't even let me throw screws 1/2 the time it was supposed to.
I'd push the screw button and throwing would happen.
Sorry, can't get out the dislike of Clear skies. It was like they made it buggy on purpose.

But at times it was cool I'll admit. The carrying storage thing sucked though (I liked Fallout Str system better).
I did like the artifact thing though.

[Triaxx]

Different schmifferent. One of them is boring, the other is not. The second is therefore better, whatever the other differences there are.

Boredom that comes from not wading through fountains of blood every step? Frankly, I find that the empty space gives me the freedom to decide how to approach a confrontation, or avoid it if I so choose.

Evergreen Mills is an amazing example. In a shooter? There's no option but going in guns blazing and hope that you survive with enough health by hiding behind cover. In F3? I have that option, or I can circle around behind it and come at it from the high ground, and use my Sniper Rifle to pick apart the entire encampment from well beyond their range. Most shooters only give you a Sniper Rifle because of arbitrary range limits on every other gun.


So what's your point? The bow controls in Oblivion are actually fairly OK. Nothing to write home about, but they never actively made me wish to play something else. Fallout 3's gun controls unfortunately do. I'm not sure how either of those is an invalid criticism.

Because you're treating it as a shooter. Plain and simple. It's not.


I generally hold the heretical opinion that side quests are usually a really bad idea. I'd rather play a single, shorter narrative where decisions have major impacts than a much bigger game with loads of sidequests. Most of those are just distractions that don't impact anything.

Right, because shooters are famous for impacting decisions: A) Kill the enemy, B) Kill the Enemy, or C) kill the Enemy. I have yet to meet the shooter that gives me another viable option.


I consider that good design honestly. I don't find running around talking to every schmuck in a town and hearing/seeing the same response twenty-seven times to be fun. In fact I find it to be anything but fun. If the game tells me the people I need to talk to, that saves me a lot of time and bother for no benefit. That's a good thing.

You call it good design, I call it lazy. No, there's not a reason to have everyone looking the same, especially when there are enough reasonably different looking pieces of clothing to go around.

The truth is that while it saves bother, it comes at the cost of immersion. Do I want to talk to everyone? Probably not. Should I want to because they might have something interesting to do? Absolutely. The game should be as much about exploration as it is about killing things. Otherwise it should be nothing more than a rail shooter.


Oh I quite understand playing a game for the gameplay and not the story- I adore playing FPS games against bots for example. I just do not understand why one would tolerate the nearly constant irritations of RPG gameplay if the story wasn't a motivator.

I'm not saying that a game without story is perfect. But I'm saying that the main story doesn't have to be. I've never completed Oblivion's main story. It's boring and doesn't interest me. I continually go back to the game, for the different ways of playing out, and playing with the sidequests. I can spend hours merrily dodging guards to pick up expensive items to sell for the thieves guild, or whack away at trolls for no reward other than piling the corpses in a heap.

Just because the story the game threw at me isn't interesting, shouldn't stop me from being able to create my own. I like side-quests for the questions in them. Do I really want to help this guy get his awesome doo-dad back? Or do I want to get it, and then keep it until I'm done with it?

Playing it like a shooter essentially means you're playing with a checklist. 'Done this, done this, this, and that. Okay, now what's next on the list.' And in doing so, you only need to play once because then you'll never play again, and you'll miss tons of things to do. You probably didn't find the nuke launching satellite. Or the Wondermeat machine. Probably missed the sewer entrance into Hubris Comics.

[warty goblin]

Boredom that comes from not wading through fountains of blood every step? Frankly, I find that the empty space gives me the freedom to decide how to approach a confrontation, or avoid it if I so choose.

I have nothing against space to maneuver or long periods without combat. I absolutely adore Far Cry 2, which had both in spades. STALKER might have a little less freedom of engagement, but it has plenty of space to explore, and I could easily go half an hour or more without getting into a fight.

The difference I found was that in Fallout 3, after I hit about level 5, I could basically always respond in a completely optimum manner to every single situation, because ammo had no weight, and my carrying capacity was so high I could carry a platoon's worth of guns everywhere. There wasn't any real sense of improvisation to fights, just pause the game, open up the inventory, select the best gun for the range, then shoot. I never had to make hard decisions about equipment because I could carry everything.

STALKER and Far Cry 2, by limiting the hell out of my inventory make me actually think in advance, and occasionally, just occasionally, get caught with my pants around my ankles because it would sure be handy to have a sniper rifle but I went with the shotgun.


Evergreen Mills is an amazing example. In a shooter? There's no option but going in guns blazing and hope that you survive with enough health by hiding behind cover. In F3? I have that option, or I can circle around behind it and come at it from the high ground, and use my Sniper Rifle to pick apart the entire encampment from well beyond their range. Most shooters only give you a Sniper Rifle because of arbitrary range limits on every other gun.
Those are the shooters that suck. In really good single player shooters stealth or long range engagement is absolutely an option.



Because you're treating it as a shooter. Plain and simple. It's not.
Er, no. The gunplay is delivered in the same manner as a shooter. It uses the same weapons tropes as a shooter. And the shooting sucks compared to a shooter. This in no way reduces the entire game to a shooter. It merely points out that in a comparison of a very, very similar game mechanic it comes up wanting to most of an entire genre.


Right, because shooters are famous for impacting decisions: A) Kill the enemy, B) Kill the Enemy, or C) kill the Enemy. I have yet to meet the shooter that gives me another viable option.
That's a fair point, but so what? RPGs tend to boil down to kill person A at bequest of person B, or kill person B at the bequest of person A. Or kill it because it's a nameless enemy spawned in so I can kill it.



You call it good design, I call it lazy. No, there's not a reason to have everyone looking the same, especially when there are enough reasonably different looking pieces of clothing to go around.

The truth is that while it saves bother, it comes at the cost of immersion. Do I want to talk to everyone? Probably not. Should I want to because they might have something interesting to do? Absolutely. The game should be as much about exploration as it is about killing things. Otherwise it should be nothing more than a rail shooter.
If laziness saves me needless irritation, I'm all for it. I liked that Oblivion named all of the people for about the first four towns I found. Then it just became a grind, because in order to find the one interesting thing to do I'd have to talk to a dozen people, most of whom would say exactly the same thing.



I'm not saying that a game without story is perfect. But I'm saying that the main story doesn't have to be. I've never completed Oblivion's main story. It's boring and doesn't interest me. I continually go back to the game, for the different ways of playing out, and playing with the sidequests. I can spend hours merrily dodging guards to pick up expensive items to sell for the thieves guild, or whack away at trolls for no reward other than piling the corpses in a heap.
And I'd rather a game with a good main story and a protagonist with actual personality than one in which I do a horde of side quests.


Just because the story the game threw at me isn't interesting, shouldn't stop me from being able to create my own. I like side-quests for the questions in them. Do I really want to help this guy get his awesome doo-dad back? Or do I want to get it, and then keep it until I'm done with it?
That's a completely valid position that I don't hold.



Playing it like a shooter essentially means you're playing with a checklist. 'Done this, done this, this, and that. Okay, now what's next on the list.' And in doing so, you only need to play once because then you'll never play again, and you'll miss tons of things to do. You probably didn't find the nuke launching satellite. Or the Wondermeat machine. Probably missed the sewer entrance into Hubris Comics.
The game gives me a literal checklist. And no, I didn't find any of those things because I never finished the game. Instead I went to play something fun.

[Avilan the Grey]

Er, no. The gunplay is delivered in the same manner as a shooter. It uses the same weapons tropes as a shooter. And the shooting sucks compared to a shooter. This in no way reduces the entire game to a shooter. It merely points out that in a comparison of a very, very similar game mechanic it comes up wanting to most of an entire genre.

Again, you are wrong. If you don't pay attention, at all, you might think so. The "gunplay" is delivered as in an RPG, aka the character's skill is more important than yours. It is more subtle than say Dragon Age, but the mechanic is there. Ever wondering why you miss 10 shots from 10 yards away if you don't boost your skills? FP does not an S make.

[warty goblin]

Again, you are wrong. If you don't pay attention, at all, you might think so. The "gunplay" is delivered as in an RPG, aka the character's skill is more important than yours. It is more subtle than say Dragon Age, but the mechanic is there. Ever wondering why you miss 10 shots from 10 yards away if you don't boost your skills? FP does not an S make.

And yet, when I raise my skills, the shooting still sucks. Besides, if I'm aiming in realtime in the first person, it's an FPS. It might be an FPS with window dressing, but as far as I'm concerned that portion of a game can most definitely be judged as a shooter.

[king.com]

And yet, when I raise my skills, the shooting still sucks. Besides, if I'm aiming in realtime in the first person, it's an FPS. It might be an FPS with window dressing, but as far as I'm concerned that portion of a game can most definitely be judged as a shooter.

So if im not pausing when i play dragon age, does that make it a god of war clone?

Im sorry but its kinda far fetched to associate two different ideas simply because they share a perspective.

[Zevox]

So if im not pausing when i play dragon age, does that make it a god of war clone?
Dragon Age plays nothing like God of War, pausing or no. Fallout 3, however, most definitely does play just like a shooter as far as combat goes. Having a stat system in addition to the first-person point-and-shoot combat system makes it marginally more like a RPG, but it most certainly does not change the FPS combat style of the game. The only significant non-FPS element to the combat was the VATS system.

Zevox

[SparkMandriller]

You guys are as bad as the people who insist that Metroid Prime isn't an FPS. :/

[king.com]

Dragon Age plays nothing like God of War, pausing or no. Fallout 3, however, most definitely does play just like a shooter as far as combat goes. Having a stat system in addition to the first-person point-and-shoot combat system makes it marginally more like a RPG, but it most certainly does not change the FPS combat style of the game. The only significant non-FPS element to the combat was the VATS system.

Zevox

Okay then, answer me this, if i never fight outside of VATS, what does that make the game?

[chiasaur11]

Okay then, answer me this, if i never fight outside of VATS, what does that make the game?

Pac Man.

Hey. I don't make the rules.

[Zevox]

Okay then, answer me this, if i never fight outside of VATS, what does that make the game?
Slow and annoying to play?

Seriously though, the game's genre is not determined by which of its features you use, but by what its features are. Fallout 3 is an FPS/RPG hybrid. How that basic fact could seem disputable to anyone who played it baffles me.

Zevox

[warty goblin]

Okay then, answer me this, if i never fight outside of VATS, what does that make the game?

We-go turn based light in first person?

[ApatheticDespot]

There are important differences. This doesn't stop the Zone from being a fundamentally more interesting place than the Wasteland.

Wait, what? The DC Wasteland from Fallout 3 is without equivocation or qualification the best, most interesting and most engaging setting I have ever seen in any game of any genre. I'm not just saying that for effect, I'm entirely serious. I've never played STALKER so I don't know how good it is, but a lot of the criticisms of Fallout 3 in this thread simply baffle me. I honestly don't know where many of them are coming from or what they're referring to, it's as though I played an entirely different game.

[SparkMandriller]

Wait, what? The DC Wasteland from Fallout 3 is without equivocation or qualification the best, most interesting and most engaging setting I have ever seen in any game of any genre. I'm not just saying that for effect, I'm entirely serious. I've never played STALKER so I don't know how good it is, but a lot of the criticisms of Fallout 3 in this thread simply baffle me.

You're seriously trying to say that Fallout 3's setting is so good that you can't even accept that STALKER's could be better? :/

[Lord of Rapture]

You're seriously trying to say that Fallout 3's setting is so good that you can't even accept that STALKER's could be better? :/

I have to agree. I love Fallout 3 to death, but I can't exactly say it's the best setting ever.

That goes to WH40K. :smallbiggrin:

[Eldan]

As I've said before, both Fallout 3 and Oblivion are games that, out of the box, aren't really all that great. They are games that you have to invest a few more hours into hunting down and installing the right mods. It means that Bethesda screwed up. Big time. But it also means that without them, I'd never have gotten anything like Midas' Magic, or that first sight of the Wasteland with Fellout installed.

[Triaxx]

Impossible. WH40K lacks Deathclaws. Argument nullified.

Warty: We get it, you hate RPG's. You expected a shooter and didn't get it. So you don't like the game. Perhaps you'll like the next, but probably not. That was really all you had to say.

Oh, and Metroid Prime isn't an FPS. It's an awesome FPS.

[Lord of Rapture]

As I've said before, both Fallout 3 and Oblivion are games that, out of the box, aren't really all that great. They are games that you have to invest a few more hours into hunting down and installing the right mods. It means that Bethesda screwed up. Big time. But it also means that without them, I'd never have gotten anything like Midas' Magic, or that first sight of the Wasteland with Fellout installed.

I got Fallout 3 for the Xbox 360 (shoot me, PC fans :smalltongue:) and I loved it to death. Your argument does not apply to everyone in this case.

Though it does apply to everyone for Oblivion. :smallannoyed:

[Klose_the_Sith]

I got Fallout 3 for the Xbox 360 (shoot me, PC fans :smalltongue:) and I loved it to death. Your argument does not apply to everyone in this case.

Though it does apply to everyone for Oblivion. :smallannoyed:

I was about to write this more or less word-for-word.

Such is life, I suppose that the Lord of Rapture will just have to accept my soul in cookie form or something.

[Lord of Rapture]

I was about to write this more or less word-for-word.

Such is life, I suppose that the Lord of Rapture will just have to accept my soul in cookie form or something.

Yippee! My first internet cookie! :smallbiggrin:

[Klose_the_Sith]

Yippee! My first internet cookie! :smallbiggrin:

Soul cookies are always the most delicious of them all :smallwink:

[warty goblin]

Warty: We get it, you hate RPG's. You expected a shooter and didn't get it. So you don't like the game. Perhaps you'll like the next, but probably not. That was really all you had to say.

I didn't expect an FPS. I expected a game I would seriously enjoy and be able to commit a lot of time to, like I did with Oblivion. For various reasons-of which only the poor gunplay is directly related to shooters- I instead found something relatively unenjoyable. Not bad, but not a game that I particularly wanted to spend weeks upon weeks playing either.

It's unfortunate, because the opening sequence in the Vault was frankly one of the best things I've played, and the level up system was actually pretty fun.

[Lord of Rapture]

Why, oh why, for the love of sweet god, would you choose FO3 (which, admittedly, is rife with flaws) for a game that never lets you actually get more powerful as you progress and whose setting may as well be in one same f***ing meadow?

And town guards that are somehow more powerful than the demons of hell?

And rife with incredibly inane and frustrating minigames and poor design choices for the most basic of tasks?

And an leveling system where you gain points by jumping?

And...

[Starbuck_II]

Wait, you level up in Oblivion by jumping? Seriously?

[Ikialev]

Wait, you level up in Oblivion by jumping? Seriously?
If it's your major skill, you can level up by raising it by 10. And acrobatics are raised by jumping.

[Eldan]

To explain: Oblivion has two major principles in leveling it shares with all Elder Scrolls game (or at least with Morrowind, I never got to play the others):

Major skills: you select an array of skills from a list to be your major skills. These start at a higher level, define your class, and getting a total of ten increases in them gets you a level.

The other is learning by doing: practising a skill increases it. So shooting fireballs makes you better in destructive magic, picking locks makes you a better at picking locks, jumping often makes you better at jumping.

Which is a good system in theory, but sadly also means that hopping up and down like a monkey on speed means you level faster when athleticism is in your major skill list.

Another problem was that in Oblivion, the world leveled with you: whenever you level, everything else gets stronger as well. Which leads to the problem that being a bard and leveling your Diplomacy means that everyone else gets better weapons to kill you with.

[Avilan the Grey]

Basically, in Oblivion, the best strategy is to do the opposite of what is officially correct:

Pick your Major skills as Minor skills and the other way around. That way you won't level up too fast despite using your bow a lot of if you sneak all the time.

[Eldan]

Yeah. The most powerful characters are those upgrading their combat skills and having stuff they don't use, like Alchemy or Lockpick or whatever as their main stuff. The system isn't really all that useful.

[Avilan the Grey]

Yeah. The most powerful characters are those upgrading their combat skills and having stuff they don't use, like Alchemy or Lockpick or whatever as their main stuff. The system isn't really all that useful.

It is an interesting idea, but they should have worked the kinks out before releasing it.

Back OT, I must say that FO:NV looks REALLY good.

[Triaxx]

Acrobatics, not Athletics. Athletics is running and swimming. Acrobatics is jumping, and falling down and getting hurt. Humorous note: You can't level Sneak and Athletics at the same time, because you can only use one of them. But you can level Acrobatics at the same time. You simply look incredibly silly.

Which minigames were inane and frustrating? If you're talking Lockpicking, I'll see that and raise you Fallout 3's lockpicking. It's even worse, because there's NO INDICATION, of whether you're doing the right thing or not. At least Oblivion gave you some visual reference. Blocking me out of harder locks didn't really help anything because by the time I was capable enough to deal with them, I simply saved the game and then reloaded until I succeeded at forcing them.

[Starbuck_II]

Acrobatics, not Athletics. Athletics is running and swimming. Acrobatics is jumping, and falling down and getting hurt. Humorous note: You can't level Sneak and Athletics at the same time, because you can only use one of them. But you can level Acrobatics at the same time. You simply look incredibly silly.

Which minigames were inane and frustrating? If you're talking Lockpicking, I'll see that and raise you Fallout 3's lockpicking. It's even worse, because there's NO INDICATION, of whether you're doing the right thing or not. At least Oblivion gave you some visual reference. Blocking me out of harder locks didn't really help anything because by the time I was capable enough to deal with them, I simply saved the game and then reloaded until I succeeded at forcing them.

Yeah, it did. Remember it became stiff if the lock wasn't right.
It was a good indicater. It was not stiff if you did it right: yes this meant you couldn't rush the lock without breaking your pick, but that was kinda realism.

Look here is a good explaination:
Players attempting to pick a lock will have to pass a mini-game in which they must place a bobby pin and screw driver inside the lock and properly manipulate it until it opens. Being careless and impatient will likely result in a broken pin so the best way to approach lockpicking is to jimmy the lock until either the controller starts to vibrate or the pin starts to shake. If either of these things happen, ease off on the screw driver and re-orient the pin at a different angle. The longer you can turn the screw driver without the pin shaking, the closer you are to picking the lock.

[Coidzor]

...I... cannot see how they expected that to work, if that was the case. Nor how it would make it make any more sense that everything in the world in the 2070s that wasn't ultra-high-tech looked like it was from the 1950s. Really, if they wanted the world to look like a post-apocalypse 1950s, they should have had the apocalypse occur in the 1950s. And come up with some excuse for why technology advanced faster than it actually did if they really wanted to also have laser tech and the like too - hell, it'd probably be easy to tie that in to what caused the apocalypse.

Zevox

Is called retro-futurism. You remember all those things about the WORLD OF TOMORROW that the 1950s produced? That's the sort of thing that was taken as inspiration for a lot of the aesthetic.

[Eldan]

Yeah. Read some older SciFi from the time, or try to dig out some really old black and white SciFi movies... you might recognize some of the ideas.

[Zeful]

Wait, what? The DC Wasteland from Fallout 3 is without equivocation or qualification the best, most interesting and most engaging setting I have ever seen in any game of any genre. I'm not just saying that for effect, I'm entirely serious. I've never played STALKER so I don't know how good it is, but a lot of the criticisms of Fallout 3 in this thread simply baffle me. I honestly don't know where many of them are coming from or what they're referring to, it's as though I played an entirely different game.

Not an entirely different game, you just came at it from a different perspective. FFX's Spira was a more convincing "After the End" setting that the Capital Wasteland. Spira's at least believable. The timeline for FO3 doesn't work unless you assume some kind of Super Nuke composed of Salt was used on the DC area, and the buildings were somehow capable of lasting more than five years without maintenance and collapsing. After 200 years the capital wasteland would look more like Oblivion than Oblivion has a right to.

[Inhuman Bot]

Not an entirely different game, you just came at it from a different perspective. FFX's Spira was a more convincing "After the End" setting that the Capital Wasteland. Spira's at least believable. The timeline for FO3 doesn't work unless you assume some kind of Super Nuke composed of Salt was used on the DC area, and the buildings were somehow capable of lasting more than five years without maintenance and collapsing. After 200 years the capital wasteland would look more like Oblivion than Oblivion has a right to.

Actually, the makers of Fallout had a response to that. (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MST3KMantra)

[Zevox]

Is called retro-futurism. You remember all those things about the WORLD OF TOMORROW that the 1950s produced? That's the sort of thing that was taken as inspiration for a lot of the aesthetic.
I vaguely recall some old cartoons of the sort that used to play on Cartoon Network. Still doesn't make it make any sense, though.

Zevox

[Inhuman Bot]

I vaguely recall some old cartoons of the sort that used to play on Cartoon Network. Still doesn't make it make any sense, though.

Zevox

It's like... Have you ever played Kingdom Hearts, perhaps? It's like that.

It's a weird premises, and requires some open mindedness.

[Zevox]

It's like... Have you ever played Kingdom Hearts, perhaps? It's like that.

It's a weird premises, and requires some open mindedness.
Yes, I've played Kingdom Hearts. It's an oddball crossover game. FO3 isn't anything like it.

Zevox

[Foeofthelance]

I vaguely recall some old cartoons of the sort that used to play on Cartoon Network. Still doesn't make it make any sense, though.

Zevox

You also have to remember that a large part of the game is the result of mass social engineering/experimentation. The foundation of the Enclave spent the better part of the Cold War designing the Vault experiment and manipulating the public opinion/social atmosphere. It also helps if you can believe that the counterculture of the sixties never happened, since the wars of the Fallout 'verse were all much less "We can't let communism spread!" and much more "If we don't win this, all the lights go out tomorrow." The Fallout 'verse never left the Fifties social atmosphere because the people running it didn't want it to, and rather than people disagreeing with them, there was plenty of evidence that they were doing the right thing.

[king.com]

Slow and annoying to play?

Seriously though, the game's genre is not determined by which of its features you use, but by what its features are. Fallout 3 is an FPS/RPG hybrid. How that basic fact could seem disputable to anyone who played it baffles me.

Zevox

My point is that it shouldnt be compared to say STALKER, hell i didnt even like fallout 3 but im able to recognise a distinct difference in gameplay with the two. I mean do you compare Deus Ex to say...Halo? No, they are radically different games with different ludology and saying that simply because each share a certain field of gameplay does not mean that you should completely judge that a game be good or bad based upon this alone.


I got Fallout 3 for the Xbox 360 (shoot me, PC fans :smalltongue:) and I loved it to death. Your argument does not apply to everyone in this case.

Though it does apply to everyone for Oblivion. :smallannoyed:

Im going to have to say...wrong. On PC we have the WH40K mods :smallbiggrin:


I vaguely recall some old cartoons of the sort that used to play on Cartoon Network. Still doesn't make it make any sense, though.

Zevox

Also, i dont understand how a fictional universe which specificlly goes out of its way to point out that it is about an alternate timeline is somehow difficult for you to grasp? ALTERNATE TIMELINE: nothing we take for granted post world war 2 is the same in the fallout universe.

[Zevox]

You also have to remember that a large part of the game is the result of mass social engineering/experimentation. The foundation of the Enclave spent the better part of the Cold War designing the Vault experiment and manipulating the public opinion/social atmosphere. It also helps if you can believe that the counterculture of the sixties never happened, since the wars of the Fallout 'verse were all much less "We can't let communism spread!" and much more "If we don't win this, all the lights go out tomorrow." The Fallout 'verse never left the Fifties social atmosphere because the people running it didn't want it to, and rather than people disagreeing with them, there was plenty of evidence that they were doing the right thing.
Don't recall hearing about any such thing in the game, but even assuming you're right, it still makes no sense. What does anyone have to gain by even attempting such a thing? And do you really expect me to believe that social conditions can be manipulated on a scale that size? It's not like people thinking for themselves and cultural changes started with the 60s or anything, that's just part of how humans work. Always has been. Plus even if you could convince me that those were reasonable, I simply cannot buy the idea that such a thing could last a full 120 years. No society could be forced to remain static that long. It's simply ridiculous.

Really, like I said, if they wanted a setting like this, they should've used an excuse for technology to advance much more quickly than it actually did, and set the apocalypse date in the 50s. That would make sense. The way it is, though, doesn't.


My point is that it shouldnt be compared to say STALKER, hell i didnt even like fallout 3 but im able to recognise a distinct difference in gameplay with the two. I mean do you compare Deus Ex to say...Halo?
Wouldn't know, I've never played STALKER or Deus Ex. I was simply pointing out that yes, Fallout 3 is in part a FPS game.


Also, i dont understand how a fictional universe which specificlly goes out of its way to point out that it is about an alternate timeline is somehow difficult for you to grasp? ALTERNATE TIMELINE: nothing we take for granted post world war 2 is the same in the fallout universe.
An alternate timeline is still set in the real world, and most aspects of real world logic still apply, except insofar as fantasy or sci-fi elements added to the alternate timeline modify them. And no fantasy or sci-fi element is affecting the aspect I find so ridiculous here.

Zevox

[chiasaur11]

Wouldn't know, I've never played STALKER or Deus Ex. I was simply pointing out that yes, Fallout 3 is in part a FPS game.


Alright.

Here's what you do.

Play Deus Ex. We'll wait.

Once you're done, we can resume the discussion.

Because, dude. It's Deus Ex.

[SparkMandriller]

Wouldn't know, I've never played STALKER or Deus Ex.

what a shame

[Lord of Rapture]

An alternate timeline is still set in the real world, and most aspects of real world logic still apply, except insofar as fantasy or sci-fi elements added to the alternate timeline modify them. And no fantasy or sci-fi element is affecting the aspect I find so ridiculous here.

Zevox

....

This is an established part of the Fallout canon since the beginning. It's supposed to be retro. It's supposed to be 50's ish. Even the most rabid NMA member will tell you this.

Is it so hard for you to accept that a game in a particular franchise follows at least some of the franchise's established setting?

[Foeofthelance]

Don't recall hearing about any such thing in the game, but even assuming you're right, it still makes no sense. What does anyone have to gain by even attempting such a thing? And do you really expect me to believe that social conditions can be manipulated on a scale that size? It's not like people thinking for themselves and cultural changes started with the 60s or anything, that's just part of how humans work. Always has been. Plus even if you could convince me that those were reasonable, I simply cannot buy the idea that such a thing could last a full 120 years. No society could be forced to remain static that long. It's simply ridiculous.

Really, like I said, if they wanted a setting like this, they should've used an excuse for technology to advance much more quickly than it actually did, and set the apocalypse date in the 50s. That would make sense. The way it is, though, doesn't.
Zevox

There's no proof that it remained static, though. As far as anyone can tell the whole Civil Rights movement still came about, segregation ended, etc. Its just that some of the major aesthetics remained. When the fuel crisis began, instead of switching to smaller, more fuel efficient cars they went for nuclear powered ones that kept the same big body designs. They actually went out and built rocket cars and ray guns and big bulky power armor suits. Their level of technology caught up to their predictions of the future fast enough that they never quite caught on to the dystopias and morose inner prospecting that modern media goes for these days. Remember, a lot of the cultural values the 50s are remembered for are actually a lot older than that particular decade and were actually quite common up until the late 50s and early 60s, when they got replaced by dissatisfaction with the way things are and were. That dissatisfaction never occurred in Fallout, because the promises of the future were kept.

[Zeful]

Actually, the makers of Fallout had a response to that. (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MST3KMantra)

Except it's a bad response. Fallout 3's setting works if you remove a zero from the number of years since the war (20 instead of a 200) barely. As it is, for anyone with a vague understanding of how reality works, especially the reclamation of plant life in abandoned cities, being brown and having buildings standing after 200 years shatters immersion every time you see anything.

Taking the game at face value, I find Final Fantasy X to be a more rewarding gaming experience.

[Avilan the Grey]

Don't recall hearing about any such thing in the game, but even assuming you're right, it still makes no sense. What does anyone have to gain by even attempting such a thing? And do you really expect me to believe that social conditions can be manipulated on a scale that size? It's not like people thinking for themselves and cultural changes started with the 60s or anything, that's just part of how humans work. Always has been. Plus even if you could convince me that those were reasonable, I simply cannot buy the idea that such a thing could last a full 120 years. No society could be forced to remain static that long. It's simply ridiculous.

Really, like I said, if they wanted a setting like this, they should've used an excuse for technology to advance much more quickly than it actually did, and set the apocalypse date in the 50s. That would make sense. The way it is, though, doesn't.
Zevox

You are still not grasping the concept.

Fallout is not ONLY an alternative time line. This is not "Normal earth, but without the Vietnam War".

It is The Future! as imagined by some Sci-fi writer in the late 40ies, early 50ies. And then nuked.

This is why it runs on Science!, and everything is covered in very heavy Zeerust.

[warty goblin]

Except it's a bad response. Fallout 3's setting works if you remove a zero from the number of years since the war (20 instead of a 200) barely. As it is, for anyone with a vague understanding of how reality works, especially the reclamation of plant life in abandoned cities, being brown and having buildings standing after 200 years shatters immersion every time you see anything.

Taking the game at face value, I find Final Fantasy X to be a more rewarding gaming experience.

And if you take it to be twenty years after the war, there really shouldn't be time for all those radically new species to develop. Although that's fairly forgivable, since damn near everything with nukes in it gives you mutants, often within weeks.

Although the thing that really, really broke my sense of immersion in FO3? Finding edible steaks in houses. I mean come on, that's not even trying to make the setting believable. Most of the other stuff could be vaguely justified as a legitimate stylistic or design choice, but finding two hundred year old edible meat was just stupid.

[Foeofthelance]

I thought most of the steaks were either "Hungry Man" style frozen dinners or left overs from the local wildlife. Which ones in particular?

[Zevox]

Alright.

Here's what you do.

Play Deus Ex. We'll wait.

Once you're done, we can resume the discussion.

Because, dude. It's Deus Ex.
Looking at it on Wikipedia, doesn't look like my kind of thing. FPS combat is always a good sign that I'm unlikely to like it (to answer the obvious coming question, I wouldn't even have played FO3 if I hadn't gotten it as a Christmas gift). Plus it's a PC game, and I tend to stay away from those outside of the strategy genres.


This is an established part of the Fallout canon since the beginning.
That just means that I'd have had the same problem with the previous games if I had played them.


There's no proof that it remained static, though. As far as anyone can tell the whole Civil Rights movement still came about, segregation ended, etc. Its just that some of the major aesthetics remained. When the fuel crisis began, instead of switching to smaller, more fuel efficient cars they went for nuclear powered ones that kept the same big body designs. They actually went out and built rocket cars and ray guns and big bulky power armor suits. Their level of technology caught up to their predictions of the future fast enough that they never quite caught on to the dystopias and morose inner prospecting that modern media goes for these days. Remember, a lot of the cultural values the 50s are remembered for are actually a lot older than that particular decade and were actually quite common up until the late 50s and early 60s, when they got replaced by dissatisfaction with the way things are and were. That dissatisfaction never occurred in Fallout, because the promises of the future were kept.
I'm sorry, but I just don't buy it. Like I said previously, the aesthetics thing is a big problem too, given you would expect those to change as technology advanced, especially for vehicles, buildings, radios, and so on. And I think you far overestimate the stability of cultural values pre-60s. And again, one of my biggest problems is the whole 120 years thing. That just stretches the whole thing way beyond belief, no matter how you slice it.

Zevox

[king.com]

Looking at it on Wikipedia, doesn't look like my kind of thing. FPS combat is always a good sign that I'm unlikely to like it (to answer the obvious coming question, I wouldn't even have played FO3 if I hadn't gotten it as a Christmas gift). Plus it's a PC game, and I tend to stay away from those outside of the strategy genres.


I'm sorry, but I just don't buy it. Like I said previously, the aesthetics thing is a big problem too, given you would expect those to change as technology advanced, especially for vehicles, buildings, radios, and so on. And I think you far overestimate the stability of cultural values pre-60s. And again, one of my biggest problems is the whole 120 years thing. That just stretches the whole thing way beyond belief, no matter how you slice it.


Hah, saying Deus Ex has FPS combat. Thats interesting, yea its first person but you can go through the entire game without combat, you level up skills in how you want to play the game. Dont like combat? You level up lockpicking and electronics and sneak/pick/hack your way past everything. Hell even the boss doesnt actually have you shooting him and you defeat him by defying his ideology and substituting your own beliefs. You can play the game like a shooter, like its thief, like combat and killing someone is game over (in fact non-lethal mission completion often results in a bonus

Also you dont know about the vault network being a series of experiments by the enclave? Like Vault 13 being the "control" which was supposed to be opened 200 years later but due to a malfunction with the water chip forced it to be opened in order for it to survive. Vault 53, where everything was designed to break down but was easily replaceable to test stress on humans. Vault 12 which had a door which was designed not to be closed to test the effects of light radiation over prolonged periods (the result was the creating of the "ghouls" near the city of Necropolis but it was also discovered that the Forced Evolutionary Virus (FEV) occassionally had a similiar effect on highly irradiated humans). etc etc

Also, on the ability for the existance of mutants, that was pretty much explained by the FEV which resulted in somewhat random mutations upon those suffering from heavy radiation poisoning. Hence the radscorpions and the explanation for the ghouls being able to reach across the entire West and East coast of the US.

Also, what i dont understand is where you are getting your information from. You seem to be someone who has lived in an alternate reality where science developed in a completely different direction. In a world where cold fusion was effectively perfected, how can you say that a science FICTION universe is not entirely believable. I think it has more information that most plots out there and provides much of the plotholes with potentially viable information.

The entire idea of the fallout pre-60s culture was that of a civilian population, utterly loyal to their government and hold the wartime 'stiff-upper lip' mentality of invasion, despite the obvious result of war being...well nuclear annihilation, something no force of will of strong work ethic is able to stand up against. You are utterly at the mercy of something so much greater than you and the idea is to question "What if a society like that remained, so blinded and loyal to its government, so utterly ignorant of reality, and how would that thought process react after everything was broken down by nuclear FALLOUT?".

Its like saying that George Orwell created a poor world due to his desire to create an idea and develop the world to reflect a potential future. Its just a bit foolish. The world makes enough sense to be believable and beyond that you should be focusing on the events.

[Avilan the Grey]

I'm sorry, but I just don't buy it. Like I said previously, the aesthetics thing is a big problem too, given you would expect those to change as technology advanced, especially for vehicles, buildings, radios, and so on. And I think you far overestimate the stability of cultural values pre-60s. And again, one of my biggest problems is the whole 120 years thing. That just stretches the whole thing way beyond belief, no matter how you slice it.

Zevox

I have noted that you don't buy it. I assume you also don't buy the aesthetics in say Star Trek TOS, Lost In Space, Moon base Alpha or Dr Who?

Speaking about the vaults again: The reason for the experiments were that the American Gov. (and the Enclave) were testing what would happen with people if on a Generation Ship. The original plan for the Enclave was not to be stuck on an Oil Rig, but to be out in space by now. They wanted to know the physiological and mental consequences of being stuck in an environment like that for hundred of years.

[Eldan]

I agree that 200 years is quite stupid: there should be plant life there, even if it's irradiated. I mean, what do these people live from, anyway?

The old Fallout games made a little more sense, being set much closer after the war.

[Triaxx]

In all fairness to Bethesda, they A) were confused in forgetting that DC is not in the desert, which the first two were. And B) that they took the setting from the first game, which was exactly as suspected, 20 years after the attack, not 200. If one goes back and looks at Fallout 1, you'll see that there are plants, growing back as well as being cultivated, as well as the mutant spine throwing plants of Fallout 2.

One of the delightful bits of Tactics, is that even there the enviroment has rebounded quite a bit, but it's stillfinding it hard, probably because all of the chemical spills that resulted from the nuclear impacts. Not to mention the potential of the Atomic blasts cracking nerve agent storage facilities. We saw what happened when a direct blast cracked the FEV storage facility.

[Avilan the Grey]

In all fairness to Bethesda, they A) were confused in forgetting that DC is not in the desert, which the first two were. And B) that they took the setting from the first game, which was exactly as suspected, 20 years after the attack, not 200. If one goes back and looks at Fallout 1, you'll see that there are plants, growing back as well as being cultivated, as well as the mutant spine throwing plants of Fallout 2.

One of the delightful bits of Tactics, is that even there the enviroment has rebounded quite a bit, but it's stillfinding it hard, probably because all of the chemical spills that resulted from the nuclear impacts. Not to mention the potential of the Atomic blasts cracking nerve agent storage facilities. We saw what happened when a direct blast cracked the FEV storage facility.

On the other hand, the following things should be taken in account for the Capital Wasteland:

Thanks to the heavy bombardment(?) the area has suffered catastrophical climate change and more importantly geographic change (see the Potomac that is now a series of small lakes, not a river, because the land itself has moved, and several hills are created that does not exist in IRL Washington DC. Combine this with a sever lack of rainfall (it rains, but very very sparingly, and for gameplay purposes we do not get to see an actual rainfall)
In short, DC is actually a desert after the war.

[Erloas]

On the other hand, the following things should be taken in account for the Capital Wasteland:

Thanks to the heavy bombardment(?) the area has suffered catastrophical climate change and more importantly geographic change (see the Potomac that is now a series of small lakes, not a river, because the land itself has moved, and several hills are created that does not exist in IRL Washington DC. Combine this with a sever lack of rainfall (it rains, but very very sparingly, and for gameplay purposes we do not get to see an actual rainfall)
In short, DC is actually a desert after the war.

Well as for the Potomac, if you greatly change the land a river will just find a new course, it will not become lakes. After even a decade areas like that would dry up without rainfall to keep them full, which makes them big puddles that happen to be in an old lake bed. If the source of the river still existed (springs and snow runoff) then the river would have found a new course, rivers change course quite often (in geological terms) as results of major geographic changes.


As for changing the weather... well thats really questionable. Atomic weapons might be able to do that, but being relatively close to a shoreline would imply a fair amount of moisture, usually at least. But the thing about weather is that when it changes it usually changes in lots of places, if rain stops falling in one place it means it is falling somewhere else, thats just how the water cycle works and no amount of nuclear weapons will change that.

So if it really is a desert with little rainfall and next to no vegetation, there is no reason (realistically or even using Science!) why people would still be living there after hundreds of years. People would move on to more hospitable areas where things are growing, because without plants nothing lives. There is only so long you can live off the refuse of the previous society before it runs out, and there sure is a lot of left over easily scavenged stuff for being so long since the bombs and so many people in the area. And a frozen dinner, no matter how much salt and preservatives it has, is going to last even a year, let alone 200, sitting out (usually on shelfs), even in a freezer it doesn't mean much because there isn't any power to keep it cold.


When you take away the mechanisms that make civilization work then it either dies or goes back to being nomadic. In FO1&2 they went back to nomadic and simple farming, at least for the most part. At least some people were farming and raising animals. It wasn't shown everywhere, but it was in a few places and was at least implied to be happening around other areas, just not that you got to see. In FO3 that wasn't the case.

[chiasaur11]

In all fairness to Bethesda, they A) were confused in forgetting that DC is not in the desert, which the first two were. And B) that they took the setting from the first game, which was exactly as suspected, 20 years after the attack, not 200. If one goes back and looks at Fallout 1, you'll see that there are plants, growing back as well as being cultivated, as well as the mutant spine throwing plants of Fallout 2.

One of the delightful bits of Tactics, is that even there the enviroment has rebounded quite a bit, but it's stillfinding it hard, probably because all of the chemical spills that resulted from the nuclear impacts. Not to mention the potential of the Atomic blasts cracking nerve agent storage facilities. We saw what happened when a direct blast cracked the FEV storage facility.

20 years?

It's, at minimum, 80some. Just checked the timeline.

Although, really. Criticizing the science just feels pedantic to the extreme in this particular case.

[Lord of Rapture]

20 years?

It's, at minimum, 80some. Just checked the timeline.

Although, really. Criticizing the science just feels pedantic to the extreme in this particular case.

The series is built upon bad science. Trying to criticize any of it seems a fair bit silly. :smalltongue:

[chiasaur11]

The series is built upon bad science. Trying to criticize any of it seems a fair bit silly. :smalltongue:

I meant the case of Fallout in general, yeah.

[JediSoth]

I enjoyed the original Fallout immensely. I never really played Fallout 2. I enjoyed the heck out of Fallout 3 (played through to the end of the OC twice), though I admit it's a better game if you can get it modded.

For me, whether or not I enjoyed the game is the most important thing.

I am looking forward to New Vegas. I really, really hope they don't raise the system requirements, though. I'm not sure I'll be able to swing a new computer before it comes out.

[Erloas]

The series is built upon bad science. Trying to criticize any of it seems a fair bit silly. :smalltongue:

Well yes, the game is built around bad science, its practically a cornerstone of the world. However, it was a least kind of consistent before.

The science of the GECK wasn't there, but the science of what it was trying to accomplish was. It was there to help people rebuild society with the ability to cultivate the land. Sure how the Water Chip actually functioned is questionable, but at least the result of it, cleaning water, made sense.

As for the timeline, Wikipedia has the War taking place in 2077, Vault 13 opening (FO1 starting) in 2161, so 84 years later. Then FO2 starts 80 years after that.
It was always supposed to be long enough after the War that no one alive remembered the world before and it was just a mysterious past shaped by propaganda.

FO3 seemed to increase the the technology level, at least that was still working, by quite a bit. Where as, if anything, old technologies should be decreasing because it stops working and can't be repaired.

[Beleriphon]

FO3 seemed to increase the the technology level, at least that was still working, by quite a bit. Where as, if anything, old technologies should be decreasing because it stops working and can't be repaired.

Elder Lyons is probably the reason for this particular issue. He wants to save the people of the Capital Wasteland, and has been there for a good long time.

[Triaxx]

20, 80, meh, makes no difference to me.

As for the river, it's possible that the water is continuous, but it's flowing under the ground in places.

[Eldan]

Or it's a temporary river, and only flows when it rains. Of course, as often as it rains in that game, that should be just about always.

[Avilan the Grey]

The series is built upon bad science. Trying to criticize any of it seems a fair bit silly. :smalltongue:

Correction: The series is built on Great Science!. If you spell it without the ! you are doing it wrong.

[Avilan the Grey]

FO3 seemed to increase the the technology level, at least that was still working, by quite a bit. Where as, if anything, old technologies should be decreasing because it stops working and can't be repaired.

Apparently the DC region was much more into robots than the rest of America; all ticket personnel in the subway, for example, was protectrons.

As for your other post:
Yes I know, but remember that there are rumors that China has a "weather-changing" machine now. Besides, the idea according to the FO3 creators that the water, whichever was left, took another route either to the sea, or changed direction completely and went somewhere else, into the country.

And the reason people are still living in the area is because it is too dangerous to move. The word of god is that the DC area is one of the worst places in America. Admittedly, the Pitt for example is far worse, but most other places are nicer, like NCR and the Commonwealth. The problem is to get there and survive.

(Besides, human settlements exists almost everywhere IRL, from the Sahara desert to the far north with ice 8 months of the year).

[Lord of Rapture]

Well yes, the game is built around bad science, its practically a cornerstone of the world. However, it was a least kind of consistent before.

The science of the GECK wasn't there, but the science of what it was trying to accomplish was. It was there to help people rebuild society with the ability to cultivate the land. Sure how the Water Chip actually functioned is questionable, but at least the result of it, cleaning water, made sense.

As for the timeline, Wikipedia has the War taking place in 2077, Vault 13 opening (FO1 starting) in 2161, so 84 years later. Then FO2 starts 80 years after that.
It was always supposed to be long enough after the War that no one alive remembered the world before and it was just a mysterious past shaped by propaganda.

FO3 seemed to increase the the technology level, at least that was still working, by quite a bit. Where as, if anything, old technologies should be decreasing because it stops working and can't be repaired.

Eh, I was mainly responding to Zevox's posts in which she won't shut up about how the 50's culture of the pre-war US completely breaks her suspension of disbelief.

[Rustic Dude]

50's appearance is, in my opinion, the best thing in terms of image that F3 achieved(Cars, robots, phones). The rest, no so much. The first time I played, all went smooth as silk until I got out of the Vault. Bam! Looks like if the bombs felt a few years ago!

I was sort of dissapointed, I wanted to see how much had the Wastes recovered since the two first Fallouts, but they had to do that. Great.

(One of my other gripes with this game, in the lore thing, is the humongous amounts of Pre-War FOOD that are scattered around. Really, game? So that's why the people doesn't farm? :smallyuk:)

About Science, I don't care so much. I am pretty well with the Applied Phlebotinum.

[Zevox]

Hah, saying Deus Ex has FPS combat.
As I said, I'm just going off Wikipedia here. The screenshots for the game there distinctly look like those of a first-person shooter, and the description of the combat even starts off saying "Deus Ex features combat similar to first-person shooters." And given I'm not much more interested in stealth, lockpicking, and the like that you mentioned as the alternatives, it still doesn't sound like my kind of game.

And since most of the rest of your post had nothing to do with the problem I've been talking about, perhaps I should re-state my issue. I find the game's presentation of its setting, wherein culture and aesthetics from the 1950s lasted all but unchanged for 120 years until the apocalypse could occur, totally ridiculous. I have no problems with super mutants, the vaults, and the other things you went on about. But no, contrary to your final statement there, the world, or at least that aspect of it, does not make enough sense to be believable, which is why that issue was always a nagging annoyance to me while playing the game. And the explanations you and the one or two others responding to me have presented are far insufficient to make it believable from where I'm sitting.


I have noted that you don't buy it. I assume you also don't buy the aesthetics in say Star Trek TOS, Lost In Space, Moon base Alpha or Dr Who?
Haven't seen any of those. I know Star Trek is a sci-fi series which doesn't even occur on earth (for the most part), though, and is set in the far future, so I doubt I'd have problems with that - unless their aesthetics for humans were taken straight from some decade of the 20th century and they claim that those simply never changed, but from what little I've run across of them that doesn't seem to be the case.

Fallout 3 differs from Star Trek there in that it presents an alternate history where aesthetics apparently stayed constant for 120 years. That I find unbelievable.


Eh, I was mainly responding to Zevox's posts in which she won't shut up about how the 50's culture of the pre-war US completely breaks her suspension of disbelief.
He (*points to icon below avatar*). And I continue posting about this only because others continue attempting to convince me that such is believable, and I continue finding the explanations for it inadequate. It wasn't even one of my biggest problems with the game, just one that nagged at me enough that I remembered it when I made an earlier post in this thread noting some of the things I didn't like about the game, and the discussion kind of spiraled out from there since that was the remark people responded to.

Zevox

[Inhuman Bot]

Would it help to say that the Falloutverse takes place on a planet called Notearthtopia?

[king.com]

And since most of the rest of your post had nothing to do with the problem I've been talking about, perhaps I should re-state my issue. I find the game's presentation of its setting, wherein culture and aesthetics from the 1950s lasted all but unchanged for 120 years until the apocalypse could occur, totally ridiculous. I have no problems with super mutants, the vaults, and the other things you went on about. But no, contrary to your final statement there, the world, or at least that aspect of it, does not make enough sense to be believable, which is why that issue was always a nagging annoyance to me while playing the game. And the explanations you and the one or two others responding to me have presented are far insufficient to make it believable from where I'm sitting.

Fallout doesnt take place on earth. It takes place on FalloutEarth. In fact, there is nothing to even state that fallout had any timeline consistant with ours, its just assumed thats where a cultural shift takes place but nothing even in the Fallout Bible claims it. In fact you could argue this falloutearth only developed 1950s culture in the 2050s, theres really nothing which contradicts that.

[Starbuck_II]

50's appearance is, in my opinion, the best thing in terms of image that F3 achieved(Cars, robots, phones). The rest, no so much. The first time I played, all went smooth as silk until I got out of the Vault. Bam! Looks like if the bombs felt a few years ago!

I was sort of dissapointed, I wanted to see how much had the Wastes recovered since the two first Fallouts, but they had to do that. Great.

(One of my other gripes with this game, in the lore thing, is the humongous amounts of Pre-War FOOD that are scattered around. Really, game? So that's why the people doesn't farm? :smallyuk:)

About Science, I don't care so much. I am pretty well with the Applied Phlebotinum.

Farming usually produces radioactive vegatables.
Did you miss the clean veggies on the airplane carrier? It is the same area in the airplane carrier you get the +int bobblehead (the lab).

So there is farming, but most of it is unprofitable.

[Zevox]

Would it help to say that the Falloutverse takes place on a planet called Notearthtopia?
Considering this is plainly not the case, no.


Fallout doesnt take place on earth. It takes place on FalloutEarth. In fact, there is nothing to even state that fallout had any timeline consistant with ours, its just assumed thats where a cultural shift takes place but nothing even in the Fallout Bible claims it. In fact you could argue this falloutearth only developed 1950s culture in the 2050s, theres really nothing which contradicts that.
...except, you know, that the game's instruction manual explicitly says otherwise.

"Imagine if, after World War II, the timeline had split. Our world forked into one branch, the Fallout universe into the other. In that other branch, technology progressed at a much more impressive rate, while American society remained locked in the cultural norms if the 1950s."

So yes, this is clearly an alternate version of our earth. It's obvious enough from the game itself, but the manual makes it impossible to even pretend otherwise.

Zevox

[Foeofthelance]

Question, did you notice all the loading screen materials? About things like the food riots, the annexation of Canada, etc.? There's nothing that says that the pre-Fallout society was entirely static, which seems to be your biggest problem. As a suggestion, try looking at it as the prelude to 1984, except rather than see Big Brother completely rise and artificially lock the culture into stasis there was an attempt to that was partially successful, but ended early due to nuclear warfare. I think that's the important bit to remember. The Fallout 'verse isn't the result of natural stasis, but an artificial one that was implemented by an iron fist wearing a velvet glove.

[Zevox]

Question, did you notice all the loading screen materials? About things like the food riots, the annexation of Canada, etc.?
Of course, although it was difficult to make heads or tails of them, since no context was provided and it was impossible to read much more than the large headlines. It was obvious they were pre-apocalypse events, but that was it.


There's nothing that says that the pre-Fallout society was entirely static, which seems to be your biggest problem.
Not really. The aspects that the setting does expect me to believe remained static are enough to bug me, and my biggest problem is the length of time over which it expects me to believe they remained static. As I've said so often, 120 years is a ridiculous amount of time for such things to remain static. It simply doesn't happen. About the only way I could buy it happening is if this were a fantasy setting and mass-mind-control magic or some sort of temporal distortion or time-loop magic were involved.


As a suggestion, try looking at it as the prelude to 1984, except rather than see Big Brother completely rise and artificially lock the culture into stasis there was an attempt to that was partially successful, but ended early due to nuclear warfare. I think that's the important bit to remember. The Fallout 'verse isn't the result of natural stasis, but an artificial one that was implemented by an iron fist wearing a velvet glove.
Having never read 1984, I'm at something of a disadvantage to answer this, but I did already mention that I don't buy that societies can be manipulated on such a scale with such a degree of success over such a long period of time the last time the notion of a group trying to do that came up. And again, the long period of time is really the key to my problem here. Shorten it significantly, maybe even to as long as a few decades, and I might buy it, albeit more hesitantly the longer you draw it out. But 120 years? No.

Zevox

[warty goblin]

"Imagine if, after World War II, the timeline had split. Our world forked into one branch, the Fallout universe into the other. In that other branch, technology progressed at a much more impressive rate, while American society remained locked in the cultural norms if the 1950s."

So yes, this is clearly an alternate version of our earth. It's obvious enough from the game itself, but the manual makes it impossible to even pretend otherwise.

Zevox
I think this bit of the manual highlights the key issue. Rapid technological progress simply is not accompanied by static culture. To the extent that culture is static, it requires periods of very limited technological progress and very little political change, neither of which occur in the set up to the Fallout universe.

A much more interesting path for the designers of the original Fallout to have taken would be to hypothesize the sort of rapid technological progress seen in the game, and then build society to match. Or decide to keep things locked in the 1950's, but had the nuclear war anyway. Both of these would be more believable than what they did, the first one would make for better science fiction and the second for a better deconstruction of the 1950's.

Now of course after they didn't do that for the first game, it really couldn't be done for the second or third; one really cannot blame FO3 for sticking- more or less- to the established canon no matter how occasionally headscratching that may be.



Having never read 1984, I'm at something of a disadvantage to answer this, but I did already mention that I don't buy that societies can be manipulated on such a scale with such a degree of success over such a long period of time the last time the notion of a group trying to do that came up. And again, the long period of time is really the key to my problem here. Shorten it significantly, maybe even to as long as a few decades, and I might buy it, albeit more hesitantly the longer you draw it out. But 120 years? No.
Zevox
I have read 1984. That sort of manipulation of people was pretty believable, and things very close to it have been done by various fascist/communist powers in Earth's history. The problem is that it takes an enormous level of government control, one I just don't see being consistent with Fallout's perky 1950's Americana atmosphere.

[Erloas]

I think you probably need to put 120 years in a bit more perspective. Sure 120 years lately has had all sorts of big changes, but for society in general 120 years is not that much. There are a lot of previous cultures that easily went hundreds, maybe even close to thousands of years without drastic changes.
The core values generally don't change that much. Really the last 100ish years has been the exception rather then the rule in terms of societal change.

That being said, in the first Fallouts the style was very much 50s, but beyond the government propaganda there wasn't a whole lot of what the society was really like. How much the people believed the obviously cheerful face the government put on the propaganda wasn't really known. The up-beat "we'll win this war" idea is something that pretty much always follows along with a war.

The society to me is one that comes across as style over function, where having a stylish car was more important then having a highly efficient one. The technology has a touch of steam-punkness about it, just without the steam. Technology took off in a different direction where computers never really caught on and filled remedial roles in society but never became the device every person had. With a more closed in world view thanks to the ongoing cold war the USA didn't adapt the way it did and people weren't as interested (and didn't have access to) in the rest of the world. It was probably just as much that they didn't care as it was they really believed the propaganda. Just look at the real countries that exist right now, and how little some of them have changed if they don't have easy and unlimited access to the rest of the world.

Technology was still advancing there too, just not the same technologies. With things like gauss rifles and energy weapons, but not things like computers and telecommunications.


Of course Fallout 3 muddied the water quite a bit. They took some ideas that were at best hinted at in propaganda and instead turned it into the real life history. They took a history that no one alive remembered and only existed as the propaganda of the government and turned it into reality.

It would be like trying to define the 1920s by a few old movies, some government propaganda from the time, a few select pieces of technology, and some ad campaigns. Then comparing that to the real history from an unbiased and culturally focused history book. They will have things in common but its not going to be close to the same. You could probably even do that with the 80s (which I assume most of us were alive for at least to some extent).

The problem really is that FO3 didn't seem to know how to do anything in moderation. They took some of the ideas from FO1&2 and exploded them out to all encompassing levels, which to me took a lot of the charm and mystery out of the world.

[Foeofthelance]

Having never read 1984, I'm at something of a disadvantage to answer this, but I did already mention that I don't buy that societies can be manipulated on such a scale with such a degree of success over such a long period of time the last time the notion of a group trying to do that came up. And again, the long period of time is really the key to my problem here. Shorten it significantly, maybe even to as long as a few decades, and I might buy it, albeit more hesitantly the longer you draw it out. But 120 years? No.

Zevox


Ah. 1984 was a rather sad novel concerning the inevitable fate of Western civilization as predicted by one man. Basically the government takes over to such an extent that it not only runs everything from the power company to the television studios, but uses those agencies as a means to tap people's lives and monitor them for dissent. Dissenters are rounded up and either tortured into admitting they were wrong and the government is right, or just killed out right. So all of society either believes the propaganda or pretends to in order to survive. Its where we get terms like "Big Brother", "Though Police" and "Double Think". The Fallout 'verse has the Enclave playing a similar role, from the deliberate social experiments of the vault, McCarthy style political attacks on anyone (and much more successfully, considering the "hot" nature of the Cold War), mass control of the media, and dropping Power Armored soldiers on people complaining about the price of bread.

[Zevox]

I am aware of the basics of 1984, just not enough details to give any really informed response to the comparison.

Zevox

[warty goblin]

I think you probably need to put 120 years in a bit more perspective. Sure 120 years lately has had all sorts of big changes, but for society in general 120 years is not that much. There are a lot of previous cultures that easily went hundreds, maybe even close to thousands of years without drastic changes.
The core values generally don't change that much. Really the last 100ish years has been the exception rather then the rule in terms of societal change.


I am well aware that there are plenty of time periods in human history where not much (apparently) changed for considerable periods of time. I am not aware of any that occurred during periods of very rapid technological or political change. In fact one could go so far as to typify time periods and places undergoing quickly advancing technology or politics by the large societal changes that go alongside the others.

Expecting society to remain basically constant in the face of changes like this- which clearly occur in the Fallout background- is simply not consistent with human history or common sense. People, and people's behaviors change when their environment changes.

[Foeofthelance]

Ah, ok. Well, for the sake of the conversation:

By the end of the book, the main character is proudly announcing that 2+2=5 because that is what Big Brother tells him.

Basically it comes down to the idea that tyrants can "fix" a society at a certain point, so long as they have a clear and clean method of handing down power to the next generation of tyrants. This the Enclave could and did do.

[Starbuck_II]

Can't you get the same values using vector math?

[Eldan]

Or rounding.

[Rustic Dude]

Farming usually produces radioactive vegatables.
Did you miss the clean veggies on the airplane carrier? It is the same area in the airplane carrier you get the +int bobblehead (the lab).

So there is farming, but most of it is unprofitable.

But it isn't showed in the game. Fallout 1 and Fallout 2 had pretty decent farms(mutated crops, but not very radiated food), and it gave the games some consistency. I am aware that there are some items of actual food, but they are a tiny fraction of all the food Wastelanders in F3 eat-canned food from our time.

It should be much more unprofitable eat 200 years old food. Better a bit irradiated, than dead from hunger or intoxication.

[Eldan]

The way I understood it, there was some BS about the food being sterilized from radiation. Didn't make much sense.

[Erloas]

The way I understood it, there was some BS about the food being sterilized from radiation. Didn't make much sense.

If the background radiation is strong enough to kill off, and continue to kill all the types of bacteria and fungus that would grow on food then there is not even a small chance of humans surviving in the area. So yeah, they didn't think that one through at all.

The other thing that always bothered me is why the toilets have higher radiation (by what 4x?) then the sinks 3 feet away. Especially since 99.9% of places use the same water lines for both and without a working water plant (or at least pumps) there wouldn't have been a drop of water in those pipes for 119+ years. Sure in the reestablished towns, but every single sink still standing in a shell of a house apparently still has running water.

With as many raiders that are everywhere its amazing there is anything of even a slight bit of value left anywhere, as opposed to valuable stuff being laying around everywhere. At least in FO1&2 most of the time if you wanted something you had to steal it off someones shelf.

[warty goblin]

But it isn't showed in the game. Fallout 1 and Fallout 2 had pretty decent farms(mutated crops, but not very radiated food), and it gave the games some consistency. I am aware that there are some items of actual food, but they are a tiny fraction of all the food Wastelanders in F3 eat-canned food from our time.

It should be much more unprofitable eat 200 years old food. Better a bit irradiated, than dead from hunger or intoxication.

And unless the pre-war people stored food in lead cans, the preserved food is gonna be pretty irradiated as well. Maybe not as much, but I find it hard to believe it would be absolutely rad free.

[Eldan]

Yeah. Instead, you walk into a ruined subway shaft and ten minutes later, come out with pockets full of booze and ammo.

Okay, the subways could be justified in that most people don't want to go fight the ghouls for the stuff there, but it's the same for most buildings.

[Zeful]

The way I understood it, there was some BS about the food being sterilized from radiation. Didn't make much sense.

Except that's what the US military does to it's military rations. Those things, if unopened, will stay fresh for years.

[MrPig]

And unless the pre-war people stored food in lead cans, the preserved food is gonna be pretty irradiated as well. Maybe not as much, but I find it hard to believe it would be absolutely rad free.

If they stored food in lead cans, they'd be dead from lead poisoning.

[Starbuck_II]

With as many raiders that are everywhere its amazing there is anything of even a slight bit of value left anywhere, as opposed to valuable stuff being laying around everywhere. At least in FO1&2 most of the time if you wanted something you had to steal it off someones shelf.

Raiders in Fallout3 aren't just robbers/thieves. They are insane A-holes that like to mutilate corpses. The reason they haven't taken everything of value? They are crazy!

[Alleine]

And I continue posting about this only because others continue attempting to convince me that such is believable, and I continue finding the explanations for it inadequate. It wasn't even one of my biggest problems with the game, just one that nagged at me enough that I remembered it when I made an earlier post in this thread noting some of the things I didn't like about the game, and the discussion kind of spiraled out from there since that was the remark people responded to.

Zevox

Well then, I'll go ahead and say it isn't believable, cuz it really isn't. IMO, its funny. The contrast between that 50s "American Dream" sort of thing vs a post apocalyptic wasteland makes me giggle. I never really thought Fallout was trying to be serious, so I never took it as such and that worked for me. Maybe I'm just easily entertained :smallsmile:



OT: I'm interested in New Vegas, I read something about a giant laser. These guys really know how to get my interest! Hehehe.
I'm especially interested since its being done by a lot of the same people who did Fallout one, which I enjoyed immensely. Hopefully it'll not only be a bit more polished that FO3, but also include whatever magics that made me like FO1.

[warty goblin]

Raiders in Fallout3 aren't just robbers/thieves. They are insane A-holes that like to mutilate corpses. The reason they haven't taken everything of value? They are crazy!

It's a well known fact that any apocalyptic scenario will cause an estimated 75% of the population to go completely crazy, develop a taste for serious fetishwear, start getting turned on by pain, and become absolutely fixated on killing one particular person, often referred to as 'the protagonist.'

In extreme cases, this behavior may preempt the actual apocalypse- see Bloodrayne 2.

[Dhavaer]

And unless the pre-war people stored food in lead cans, the preserved food is gonna be pretty irradiated as well. Maybe not as much, but I find it hard to believe it would be absolutely rad free.

It is irradiated. The only non-irradiated food is punga fruit, the fresh stuff from Rivet City and bubblegum for some reason, IIRC.

[Inhuman Bot]

I just saw PCgamer's preveiw of New Vegas, and wow, it looks more awesome then I thought.

I mean, a crossdressing, schizophrenic supermutant reculse? Good old fashioned super mutants? Awesome.

I also like how karma and reputation are seperate again. Sure, murdering and eating someone in private is bad for karma, but if you're helping old ladies accross the street in public..

[warty goblin]

It is irradiated. The only non-irradiated food is punga fruit, the fresh stuff from Rivet City and bubblegum for some reason, IIRC.

Good catch, I'd forgotten that. Still, even less reason to eat it, it's two hundred years old and glows in the dark! Least the giant ant meat is fresh...

[Arcanoi]

Do we know for a fact that American culture in the Fallout 'verse remained STATIC? Or did it just morph back into a semblance of 50's culture during the years leading up to the War?

Also, it's a commonly demonstrated occurrence that societal changes occur faster the more people interact. The ability to interact with people who share your views gives your views far more power, which is why cultures remained more static in the past due to smaller populations that traveled less and had less 'leisure' time.

[SparkMandriller]

I just saw PCgamer's preveiw of New Vegas, and wow, it looks more awesome then I thought.

I mean, a crossdressing, schizophrenic supermutant reculse?

I'd hate to imagine what you were expecting.

[Rutskarn]

I tend to think of the Fallout games as what people in the 50s thought the apocalypse would be like. Mutations? Why not. Irradiated water? Makes sense. It doesn't have to actually make sense from a science standpoint, since it's a reflection of the Duck-and-Cover nuclear cluelessness prevalent in society at the time.

[Avilan the Grey]

I tend to think of the Fallout games as what people in the 50s thought the apocalypse would be like. Mutations? Why not.

There is no need to "tend to think" about it this way. It is exactly how it is meant to be.

[Eldan]

On that subject: the edition of Gamma World I have at home has an interesting introduction. I don't have the book here to quote it, but it basically boils down to:

"We introduced mutations in the game, as a way for players to play fire-spitting flying plantmen. Then Chernobyl happened and we saw that mutations actually do happen. Well, damn."

[EleventhHour]

Good catch, I'd forgotten that. Still, even less reason to eat it, it's two hundred years old and glows in the dark! Least the giant ant meat is fresh...

Don't forget that NukaCola was made to be (slightly) Radioactive in the first place! :smalleek:

[Parra]

The way I rationalised the canned food in Fallout was something along the lines of the Twinky Myth made real, basically they made food that was so full of additives/chemicals/radiation that it would stay fresh Forever!


The bit that bothered me, more than the food or lack of farms, was the peoples attitudes. Alot of them just didnt seem to be living in the same post-apocalyptic wasteland that I was. Their attitude made it seem like the bombs were only dropped ~30 years ago and not ~200
Not to mention the apparent agelessness of some pople (crazed vault survivors?, Dr. Brahim?) At least with the Chineese Remnants they were Ghoulified and it kinda made sense.

All that said I quit like the setting and the feel of the place and I am really looking forward to New Vegas

[Avilan the Grey]

Don't forget that NukaCola was made to be (slightly) Radioactive in the first place! :smalleek:

And the acceptable rate for "Severe internal injuries" was 15% of test audience for Nuka Cola Quantum.
(Not surprising if the whole idea with it was to make it radioactive enough to actually glow, and not only in the dark).

[Inhuman Bot]

I'd hate to imagine what you were expecting.

A schizophrenic, crossdressing Ghoul recluse, of course.

[Foeofthelance]

Grrr. Decided to reinstall FO3 because of this thread. DataCab2 apparently has an error in it. Now I need to figure out how to fix this...

[Avilan the Grey]

The way I rationalised the canned food in Fallout was something along the lines of the Twinky Myth made real, basically they made food that was so full of additives/chemicals/radiation that it would stay fresh Forever!


The bit that bothered me, more than the food or lack of farms, was the peoples attitudes. Alot of them just didnt seem to be living in the same post-apocalyptic wasteland that I was. Their attitude made it seem like the bombs were only dropped ~30 years ago and not ~200
Not to mention the apparent agelessness of some pople (crazed vault survivors?, Dr. Brahim?) At least with the Chineese Remnants they were Ghoulified and it kinda made sense.

All that said I quit like the setting and the feel of the place and I am really looking forward to New Vegas

About the food: I have strong memories of the chocolate bars from my military service (94-95) and the fact that some of those were packed in the 60ies (radiated) and still "good".

As for the "agelessness". What are you talking about exactly?
The Dr. Braun thing was very easy: The "pods" kept people alive, but barely. And the computer simulation was not programmed to age people's appearance.
The Garys are clones, and I just assumed they had kept making them over the years.

[Parra]

The Dr. Braun thing was very easy: The "pods" kept people alive, but barely. And the computer simulation was not programmed to age people's appearance.


But consider this, if Dr. Braun was your sterotypical scientist in his 40's or 50's when the bombs dropped he would be ~250 by the time the Vault Dweller encounters him. Life support or not thats streching things abit. Especially when you can walk up to his pod and look inside to see a roughly middle aged man

[Klose_the_Sith]

But consider this, if Dr. Braun was your sterotypical scientist in his 40's or 50's when the bombs dropped he would be ~250 by the time the Vault Dweller encounters him. Life support or not thats streching things abit. Especially when you can walk up to his pod and look inside to see a roughly middle aged man

I coulda sworn the point was a pseudo cryo-sleep, specifically designed so that he could torture everyon for all eternity.

Or at least that's just what I figured as I went about my merry way.

[Avilan the Grey]

Okay, so far we know the following (Source is Swedish PC gamer that got the only official sneak peek for a Scandinavian magazine at Obsidian Studios):

Geckos: Check.

More complicated dialogues and more options depending on skills: Check.

Weapon modifications: Check.

Over the top weaponry: Check.

NCR: Check.

Three species of Super Mutants* living in uneasy peace / civil war depending on the player's choice: Check.

I am definitely drooling over this already.

*The more intelligent survivors of the Master's army, The hulk-speaking, more numerous eastern FO3 kind, and the Nightkin (now more schizophrenic since being invisible a lot does that to you, apparently).

[Garland]

This is more about Fallout 3, and I did a forum search before but didn't really find exactly what I wanted: I'd like you guys to recommend a good body/face mod with underwear (all the major ones in fallout nexus are nude, and I don't like to leave nude corpses scattered everywhere). For the faces, there's one called Project Beauty that seems very nice.

So, can you recommend some mods about that? (basically good model replacers, confirm if Project Beauty is any good, and if there are any armor replacements that have to go with the new bodies)

Thanks in advance.

[Calemyr]

This is more about Fallout 3, and I did a forum search before but didn't really find exactly what I wanted: I'd like you guys to recommend a good body/face mod with underwear (all the major ones in fallout nexus are nude, and I don't like to leave nude corpses scattered everywhere). For the faces, there's one called Project Beauty that seems very nice.

So, can you recommend some mods about that? (basically good model replacers, confirm if Project Beauty is any good, and if there are any armor replacements that have to go with the new bodies)

Thanks in advance.

I hear you on this. I've looked into this myself. The options I selected require a little personal modification, though.

Breeze's male body has three options you can use - one of which includes underwear (but no shirt). It's a pretty good solid option. You just have to change the name of the underwear mesh from upperbodyunderwear.nif to upperbody.nif and you should be good.

The female answer is less optimal, mainly because most body modders can't fathom that you'd want to cover up their work like that. I'd have to wait until I get home to look, but I remember a few mods that would fit, but they're not well supported by costume/skin mods. I found it easier to make my own:

The trick that works best in my experience is to find a clothing mod with a suit that you think works for underwear (I used a Type3 refugee costume I got from one mod) and then change the mesh's name to upperbodyfemale.nif and use it in place of the nif file that body mod gives you. Put the rest of the meshes and textures as directed and you're good - a popular, good looking, and well supported model without having to feel like a necrophilic pervert.

[Calemyr]

And just because I don't want that last post to be the last thing I say today, I'd like to add my opinion of Fallout 3 in case anyone actually cares.

The Fallout series is a joke and was always meant to be a joke. You are supposed to enjoy the disparity between 50's era optimism and post-apocalyptic brutality. The series has never taken itself seriously and has always included odd moments of sheer silliness such as the TARDIS or the crashed whale (from the Hitchhiker's Guide series) or the paradox caused by breaking the water chip in FO2 that started the story of FO1. Reality is included when it furthers the joke and is discarded when it gets in the way.

Fallout 3 is probably best described as the equivalent of chinese takeout. It's fun and all, but it's not particularly satisfying in any long term sense. The plot is bipolar (if you care about the main plot, you can't really justify the sidequests) and while there are some interesting characters, most of them are too bland to even have names. Even knowing this, however, every once in a while I find myself with hankering for some sweet and sour chicken and eggrolls.

What makes the game great is the mods, which allow you to customize the game to suit whatever tastes you have and fix any complaints you find. Want a motorcycle? Go ahead. Want to carry a wrench and build an army of killer robots to follow your every whim? Knock yourselves out. Want to build a harem of plot-related girls in fancy clothes and carrying ridiculously overdesigned guns and then make them pose for Charlie's Angels-style screenshots? Be my guest. The game is good, assuming you are looking for fun rather than a realistic world or a cunningly crafted storyline. The modding community makes it great.

[Garland]

Thanks a lot Calemyr, that was very detailed and helpful. :smallsmile:

[Calemyr]

Dang it... Between this thread, my new graphics card, and Avilan the Grey's Let's Play thread, I've got an irresistible urge to start up a new game of FO3. I've even toying with making a Let's Play of it, though I'd want to get Avilan's blessing before I even try to compete with him. Tell me if this sounds like an interesting potential run:

Nate Jameson, an intelligent boy picked by the GOAT to serve as the vault's pip-boy programmer. Very good with just about anything mechanical, he rebuilt his pip-boy into a PDA just to see if he could and wired his biometric sensors into a targeting program called VATS in order to cheat in a marksmanship contest with Butch. I haven't decided whether or not he becomes RobCo Certified and provides Big Town with an army of robot guardians just because he can, but I know he develops a hobby of collecting the corpses of motorcycles which he then rebuilds and arms to the teeth. Might even use the Real Time Settler mod to develop Big Town into the shining beacon it originally believed to be.

He either fights with Energy and Melee (if I go the RobCo route) or Small Guns and Unarmed (if I don't). If he uses melee weapons, he's definitely going to use a wrench as his melee weapon of choice.

Likely appearance of Nate:
http://img255.imageshack.us/img255/8030/demom.th.jpg (http://img255.imageshack.us/i/demom.jpg/)


Anyway, that's the idea I'm playing with. Any opinions? Can you see why I love the modding community?

[Avilan the Grey]

Dang it... Between this thread, my new graphics card, and Avilan the Grey's Let's Play thread, I've got an irresistible urge to start up a new game of FO3. I've even toying with making a Let's Play of it, though I'd want to get Avilan's blessing before I even try to compete with him. Tell me if this sounds like an interesting potential run:

Nate Jameson, an intelligent boy picked by the GOAT to serve as the vault's pip-boy programmer. Very good with just about anything mechanical, he rebuilt his pip-boy into a PDA just to see if he could and wired his biometric sensors into a targeting program called VATS in order to cheat in a marksmanship contest with Butch. I haven't decided whether or not he becomes RobCo Certified and provides Big Town with an army of robot guardians just because he can, but I know he develops a hobby of collecting the corpses of motorcycles which he then rebuilds and arms to the teeth. Might even use the Real Time Settler mod to develop Big Town into the shining beacon it originally believed to be.

He either fights with Energy and Melee (if I go the RobCo route) or Small Guns and Unarmed (if I don't). If he uses melee weapons, he's definitely going to use a wrench as his melee weapon of choice.

Likely appearance of Nate:
http://img255.imageshack.us/img255/8030/demom.th.jpg (http://img255.imageshack.us/i/demom.jpg/)


Anyway, that's the idea I'm playing with. Any opinions? Can you see why I love the modding community?

I don't have a problem with it (besides, it's not like I can stop you:smallwink:).

I like your character plan.

Jack and Jill are two sides of the same coin, both are a little crazy (Jack loves things that goes BOOM. Jill loves guns to an unhealthy degree). Jack more so, as well as a less picky moral compass, but neither of them are persons I would be really afraid of.
I just can't bring myself to play Jack as a total freak. I am working my way into negative karma slowly though.

I see you plan to use all those mods I have looked at, found interesting, and deemed too complicated to bother with :)

I can recommend the Cantenbury Commons Guard mod and the Stronger Fort Independence mod since it gives much more guards to those two places. For some reason no one has made a mod for Big Town that is either not totally inadequate or way over the top (there is one mod that turns Big Town into a military base, but that destroys the whole feel and look of the place), so in order to make Big Town survivable you almost need the Real Time Settler mod to get the town protected.

The goal with the mods I am using is to make FO3 more fallout-y (less powerful (slower leveling), hard-to-get power armors, more customizing options.

[Calemyr]

I don't mean you could *stop* me, per se. You did get to this before me, however, so it'd be poor form not to take your opinion into consideration.

Frankly, I'm just not certain I'd do an LP. As much as I like creative writing, I've never done an LP before and I do bore easily. I'm really just floating it out there to see if the core ideas would be interesting enough to bother attempting.

...and whether I should evolve the character along the Mad Scientist path ("They ask me why I have an army of robot warriors under my control. I ask why they do not!") or the MacGuyver path ("Let's see here, a fission battery, a steam assembly, a pressure cooker, a crutch... with this I could make something that could pin a man's hand to a wall from a hundred yards away!"). I can never decide which I want to play...

[Calemyr]

Just for the fun of it, though, this would probably be my first entry if I did it...

April 15th, 2275

Testing... testing... 1, 2.... 1, 2...

It works! Oh, Floyd and Stanley are going to flip when they see this! "No, Nate, you can't make Pip-boy's smaller." they said. Ha! Not only is this smaller and more convenient, I now have access to features that had been locked out before! Yes, friends! I am just that good!

Ahem... I should be professional about this, shouldn't I... Okay, here goes:

My name is Nathan Jameson, age 17. I work in the vault's maintenance department as the Pip-boy programmer beside Stanley and Floyd. My father is James, the head of the vault's medical department, and my mother is Cathryn, who died when I was born. There isn't much else to say, I guess, other than how much of a genius I am for getting this thing to work! Man, this rocks! Er... right, professional. Right.

Surprisingly, even though it's no longer attached to my arm, this Pip-boy is still getting readings from the biometric sensors. Useful bit of knowledge, that... Now the only question is what can I do with it? I've got a few ideas, but I'll have to work on them later...




February 12th, 2276

Almost got into a fight with Butch again today. He was harassing Amata outside of the classroom again, trying to ask her out. Fortunately, the girl has better taste than that. I've been fighting with Butch and his gang off and on since we were ten years old, but the Overseer always comes down hard on my old man over it. I don't get it, I really don't. I mean, I know he doesn't get along with my father, and he never resists a chance to bust his chops, but I'm sticking up for his daughter for crying out loud! Still, I promised my old man no more brawls after school, and I stuck to it.

He was right, though, there are much more satisfying ways to fight someone than with your fists. This time I hit him where he was weakest: his leadership. All it took was a quiet conversation with Wally Mack about how he lets Butch call the shots and suddenly good ol' Mack is in full defensive mode, storming off in a huff and dragging poor Paul along behind him. It was all Butch could do to chase after them, as if Mack was following his orders. Oh, how he glared at me as he left! I've given him black eyes and bloody noses before, but I don't think I've ever enjoyed myself this much. I mean, what's he going to tell the Overseer? That I told Mack that Butch was the leader? Ha! And I scored points with Amata in the bargain. Of course, Amata still won't date me because of her father's rivalry with my old man, but she's my best friend in this dump in any case.

Oh, gotta go. I'm helping Floyd with the computers tonight, the main frame's been asking people if they would like to play a game again. Last time that happened someone accidentally turned on the vault's defense systems and the time before that somebody was eaten by a grue. Better get ahead of it this time.

[Foeofthelance]

I coulda sworn the point was a pseudo cryo-sleep, specifically designed so that he could torture everyon for all eternity.

Or at least that's just what I figured as I went about my merry way.

He does mention at one point that the pods are keeping them from aging, I believe, but at the same time their bodies have become so reliant on the machines that when the system kicks them out the atrophied muscles all kick over and fail, killing them.