Fallout IX: Nuclear Cash Cows Go MMOoooooo!

[Brookshw]

For some reason after you finish Crazy, Crazy, Crazy the peaceful way, Tabitha and Rhonda take their sweet time coming down the mountain. This isn't the first time I've returned to Black Mountain after a long absence to see them still there.

Tabitha and Rhonda shall always be at the mountain, and more importantly, in our hearts

(the mod to keep the Black Mountain Radio going after you finish the quest is essential!)

[LibraryOgre]

In a fit of boredom, I made the tallest tower I could at Abernathy Farms. It was 19 actual stories tall; I can call it 20, since my floor at 19 could be a stairway, that I could not build anything adjacent to (going up 2 steps took me out of the vertical reach of the workshop)

[SZbNAhL]

Heard a Mr New Vegas line today that I'd never heard before:

The mysterious deaths of several old men around New Vegas, including a doctor, have led some to suspect a serial killer may be responsible. No suspects have been identified, but seniors are advised to be on the lookout for the so-called Denture Killer.

I found a full list of his voice lines on the wiki, but no indication of what triggers them. The only old people I've killed were Orion Moreno and Old Lady Gibson (a glitch turned her hostile), neither of whom are doctors and only one of whom is a man. I checked on Mitchell and Henry and they're both fine. Anyone know what caused this?

[Haruspex_Pariah]

Heard a Mr New Vegas line today that I'd never heard before:



I found a full list of his voice lines on the wiki, but no indication of what triggers them. The only old people I've killed were Orion Moreno and Old Lady Gibson (a glitch turned her hostile), neither of whom are doctors and only one of whom is a man. I checked on Mitchell and Henry and they're both fine. Anyone know what caused this?

The wiki doesn't have a clear answer, but I found a discussion where the participants thought it was triggered by failing Auld Lang Syne. Which would happen the moment you killed Orion Moreno.

[SZbNAhL]

The wiki doesn't have a clear answer, but I found a discussion where the participants thought it was triggered by failing Auld Lang Syne. Which would happen the moment you killed Orion Moreno.

Ah, so the game can't distinguish between killing on Enclave Remnant and killing all of them? I guess that sort of makes sense. Good to know there are still things I haven't done in this game.

[Triaxx]

I mean you need them all.

[LibraryOgre]

The more I play Fallout 4, the more I want a game set on like November 1st, 2077... the bombs fell just over a week ago. You've been hunkered down in your bunker since then. But, now, the food is starting to run out and you've got to start looking for food, water, and allies.

[Brookshw]

The more I play Fallout 4, the more I want a game set on like November 1st, 2077... the bombs fell just over a week ago. You've been hunkered down in your bunker since then. But, now, the food is starting to run out and you've got to start looking for food, water, and allies.

It's a mod called Frost.

[LibraryOgre]

It's a mod called Frost.

REaaaaallllly. On NexusMods?

[factotum]

The more I play Fallout 4, the more I want a game set on like November 1st, 2077... the bombs fell just over a week ago. You've been hunkered down in your bunker since then. But, now, the food is starting to run out and you've got to start looking for food, water, and allies.

Bethesda's style of world building would perfectly suit that--having a building still full of corpses of people who died when the bombs fell makes sense when it's a few months later (I think a week might be a bit too early!), not so much when 210 years have passed.

[Spore]

Bethesda's style of world building would perfectly suit that--having a building still full of corpses of people who died when the bombs fell makes sense when it's a few months later (I think a week might be a bit too early!), not so much when 210 years have passed.

Yea. I can get the skeletons and whatnot in small secluded areas but in urban areas? You live here and you havnet cleared out the houses from loot and corpses? Come on you are an animal!

[GloatingSwine]

The problem with a Fallout game set a week after the bombs fell is that none of the Fallout things should really be in it yet because they don't exist.

So it would basically just be Rust.

[factotum]

The problem with a Fallout game set a week after the bombs fell is that none of the Fallout things should really be in it yet because they don't exist.

So it would basically just be Rust.

To be fair, he just said "A game set a week after the bombs fell", not specifically a Fallout game. Also, what makes a Fallout game anyway? Stuff like super-mutants and deathclaws that they keep crowbarring into every game don't make sense in all of them--they had to have the Institute come up with FEV completely independently of the West Coast people just to explain why we see super-mutants in the Capital Wasteland and the Commonwealth! To my mind a lot of Fallout goes back to the alternate history that existed before the bombs fell, and that would be the same whether we're a few months in or 200 years.

[Vinyadan]

The more I play Fallout 4, the more I want a game set on like November 1st, 2077... the bombs fell just over a week ago. You've been hunkered down in your bunker since then. But, now, the food is starting to run out and you've got to start looking for food, water, and allies.

TBH, I think it would be horrifying. It's like the final parts of The Day of the Bomb, only without food and help coming in from the outside. This doesn't mean that it would be a bad game, but it would be a major thematic shift.

However, the thing about collecting resources made me think that it would be nice, if F4 manufacture and settlement system had a simpler resource system.

[Haruspex_Pariah]

Kind of a technical question. It there a reason why shooting someone in the head in New Vegas can sometimes cause them to be decapitated as though you'd just slashed them in the neck with a katana?

The whole exploding head thing might be over the top, but intuitively it feels more appropriate as a death animation than their head just cleanly sliding off after being hit with bullets.

It's a small thing admittedly, but kinda bugs me.

[Brookshw]

REaaaaallllly. On NexusMods?

Last I looked. It's pretty brutal, get ready to get really good at melee. Also there are a number of add-on mods people have made that the author recommends. I forget the name off hand, but look around, some add nice flavor to the survivors. Also, friendly people are......well, good luck. But if you max out charisma you can start building a small town eventually. Also the perk trees and crafting are a bit different.

[LibraryOgre]

Bethesda's style of world building would perfectly suit that--having a building still full of corpses of people who died when the bombs fell makes sense when it's a few months later (I think a week might be a bit too early!), not so much when 210 years have passed.

I like to think that, immediately after the war, there was actually another civilization that lasted for a while on the East Coast, and died out about 20 years before Fallout 1 happened.

The problem with a Fallout game set a week after the bombs fell is that none of the Fallout things should really be in it yet because they don't exist.

So it would basically just be Rust.

There'd be SOME Fallout things, but not some of the big ones. There'd be no Brotherhood of Steel, but there would be the remains of the US Military. There might be ghouls, but no super-mutants. Still have drugs and guns and wild animals and roving packs of raiders.

And something else occured to me in playing Fallout 4: Myron was a liar. He did not invent Jet. We find it in places where no one could have been since it's "invention" by Myron, so it has to be pre-War.

(And now I read the article and that's canon)

[factotum]

There'd be SOME Fallout things, but not some of the big ones. There'd be no Brotherhood of Steel, but there would be the remains of the US Military. There might be ghouls, but no super-mutants. Still have drugs and guns and wild animals and roving packs of raiders.

Technically, "remains of the US military" and "Brotherhood of Steel" are the same thing--the Brotherhood was founded by deserters from Mariposa Military Base in 2077 after the bombs fell. I don't suppose they immediately called themselves the Brotherhood of Steel, but it's the same organisation in all but name.

[GloatingSwine]

To my mind a lot of Fallout goes back to the alternate history that existed before the bombs fell, and that would be the same whether we're a few months in or 200 years.

It really doesn't though.

Fallout 1 and 2 were not actually terribly interested in the world before the bombs fell, they're about exploring and affecting the strange new societies that developed in the aftermath.

They started from a different place to modern expectations of post-nuclear SF for stylistic reasons, not because they were interested in a world where the '50s never ended.

And something else occured to me in playing Fallout 4: Myron was a liar. He did not invent Jet. We find it in places where no one could have been since it's "invention" by Myron, so it has to be pre-War.

Or Bethesda didn't give a **** what happened in previous Fallout games, probably never even read about the things they were including and how they related to the world, and kludged in things that shouldn't have been there because they have no imagination or narrative talent of their own they just lazily copied the iconography of Fallout and pasted it over their puddle-deep open world design?

[factotum]

Fallout 1 and 2 were not actually terribly interested in the world before the bombs fell, they're about exploring and affecting the strange new societies that developed in the aftermath.

They started from a different place to modern expectations of post-nuclear SF for stylistic reasons, not because they were interested in a world where the '50s never ended.

But it was the society that existed before the bombs fell that resulted in the societies we saw--and at least those societies *did* develop, rather than the entire world being frozen in aspic at the point the bombs fell and then only really waking up when the protagonist arrives on the scene, as we see in Fallout 3 and 4. And also, while they wanted a 50s style for stylistic reasons, they did at least think about what would have to happen in order for that to come about, which is why the transistor was never invented in the Fallout universe, hence giving an excuse why super-advanced computers of the 2070s use CRT monitors and have user interfaces that would have looked laughably antique even in 1995 in the real world. Imagine, making changes and thinking through how they would affect the world--there's something Bethesda has never done!

Overall, I guess the point I'm making is that looking at Fallout and saying, "Oh, it has to be a desert, and it has to have super-mutants and Deathclaws to be a proper Fallout game" is not only over-simplifying to a massive degree, but it's also a large part of why Fallout 3 and Fallout 4, for all their good points, aren't really great Fallout games.

[GloatingSwine]

But it was the society that existed before the bombs fell that resulted in the societies we saw

But it wasn't though.

Not at all.

It was the circumstances they found themselves in when they were developing, everything about the societies you visit in Fallout 1 and 2 comes from the circumstances they developed in. What resources they had and what specific challenges they had to overcome (or failed to overcome, in the case of Necropolis), who they were in conflict with, who they could exploit, and how far their influence could grow.

The old world was just not important in Fallout until Bethesda. Even when people found leftovers from it, like Mariposa, the important thing was what they did with them not what they had found.

Fallout 1, 2, and New Vegas look forward, Fallout 3 and 4 only look backwards.

[Triaxx]

That's not entirely fair. Fallout 1/2/NV do look back, but mostly to ask: What went wrong? What should we do that they did not?

3/4 mostly look back and ask how do we get back there? Which of course you can't, but they ask anyway.

[Brookshw]

The old world was just not important in Fallout until Bethesda. Even when people found leftovers from it, like Mariposa, the important thing was what they did with them not what they had found.

I seem to recall a major antagonist if F2 being the remnant of the original government, laying the basic question of whether we should be shackled to the past or choose our own future. No?

And something else occured to me in playing Fallout 4: Myron was a liar. He did not invent Jet. We find it in places where no one could have been since it's "invention" by Myron, so it has to be pre-War.

(And now I read the article and that's canon)

Incidentally, there's no Jet in F76, so if it did exist pre-war then presumably it was only in certain geographies.

[Driderman]

It really doesn't though.

Fallout 1 and 2 were not actually terribly interested in the world before the bombs fell, they're about exploring and affecting the strange new societies that developed in the aftermath.

They started from a different place to modern expectations of post-nuclear SF for stylistic reasons, not because they were interested in a world where the '50s never ended.



Or Bethesda didn't give a **** what happened in previous Fallout games, probably never even read about the things they were including and how they related to the world, and kludged in things that shouldn't have been there because they have no imagination or narrative talent of their own they just lazily copied the iconography of Fallout and pasted it over their puddle-deep open world design?

As much as I love bashing Bethesda for their treatment of the Fallout franchise I'm pretty sure you can get Myron to admit that he didn't actually invent Jet in Fallout 2, but it may an involuntary memory retcon on my behalf

[MCerberus]

I'd say the biggest difference between the worldbuilding styles is that Bethesda never seems confident in letting the setting inform the characters and having that do the heavy lifting. Everything not utilitarian to the player seems to be shoved off to the background.

Remember that moment in New Vegas when you talk to the Ranger commander the first time, and he talks about the lake? It's a sad moment where an old veteran doesn't know if he's left the world a better place. It has nothing to do with anything, is optional, but it MEANS everything if you do the quest associated with him.

Meanwhile, in FO4, 90% of the Railroad doesn't have dialog options if they aren't handing you a radiant quest.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

I'd say the biggest difference between the worldbuilding styles is that Bethesda never seems confident in letting the setting inform the characters and having that do the heavy lifting. Everything not utilitarian to the player seems to be shoved off to the background.

Remember that moment in New Vegas when you talk to the Ranger commander the first time, and he talks about the lake? It's a sad moment where an old veteran doesn't know if he's left the world a better place. It has nothing to do with anything, is optional, but it MEANS everything if you do the quest associated with him.

Meanwhile, in FO4, 90% of the Railroad non-hostile NPC's doesn't have dialog options if they aren't handing you a radiant quest.

FTFY

And that's really my problem with the direction Bethesda went with the series. It's supposed to be an RPG, but there are actual unashamedly combat-focused first-person shooters with more plot development than FO4 (Rage 2 being an example). Your only interaction with NPC's, aside from shooting or vendors, is limited to a) Yes, I'll take your quest, b) I'll take your quest, but I'll be sarcastic about it, c) Make an RNG-dependent check to get some caps for agreeing to take the quest (or take it without the extra caps anyway), or d) I'll do your quest later. And 95% of the quests devolve into "Go here, kill that, optionally get something to bring back to me for quest reward".

I mean... come on. You went ahead and villainous the Brotherhood (as compared to previous fallout iterations, but especially FO3 and NV) and turned them into jackboot bigots, you've got the mustache-twirling sciency-evil of the Institute, and yet neither has any personality beyond 'Villainy for the evlulz'. Hell, Caesar from New Vegas has more charisma and personality than both put together, and manages to be both a more believable villain AND a nastier one in the bargain. I mean, it's kinda pathetic how you turn the Brotherhood into an actual literal racial purity faction and still somehow manage to make them as dull as wet cardboard. I mean, hell... Wolfenstein New Order has a better evil scientist than both the Brotherhood and the Institute combined.

You want to know how we got F76 and no NPC's? This is how we got there.

[factotum]

I don't think the Brotherhood and "racial purity" is that much of a stretch--remember, back in Fallout 1 they explicitly preserved pre-war tech for their own use, and you weren't allowed a sniff of it unless you were a Brotherhood member, and all the games have preserved that characterisation to some extent. So, not racial purity, maybe, but certainly *factional* purity has been a big thing with them.

[LibraryOgre]

I don't think the Brotherhood and "racial purity" is that much of a stretch--remember, back in Fallout 1 they explicitly preserved pre-war tech for their own use, and you weren't allowed a sniff of it unless you were a Brotherhood member, and all the games have preserved that characterisation to some extent. So, not racial purity, maybe, but certainly *factional* purity has been a big thing with them.

They were also anti-mutant, suspicious of ghouls, and never really used robots. I don't see "We don't want synthetic humans" as a big stretch for them.

[MCerberus]

They were also anti-mutant, suspicious of ghouls, and never really used robots. I don't see "We don't want synthetic humans" as a big stretch for them.

*Fallout Tactics quietly sobs forgotten in the corner*


Anyway. Let's boot up that one game and see if Bethesda decided to make a Fallout game after all. Abandon hope all ye who enter here.

[Brookshw]

*Fallout Tactics quietly sobs forgotten in the corner*


Anyway. Let's boot up that one game and see if Bethesda decided to make a Fallout game after all. Abandon hope all ye who enter here.

Haven't gotten too far into the update yet, bit so far I'm a fan. Multiple ways to go through a quest as well as outcomes, dialogue options that change based on your stats. Looking good!