Another example of Fallout's superiority over Fallout 2

[DragoFireheart]

BG2's plot is pretty good. It mainly gets bashed because it's not edgy enough, or something. Meanwhile Fallout is praised because you can shoot the overseer at the end for no reason, which is "EPIC LULZZ FTW!!!11!1!!!!" (or so codexers think...)

Yeah, the linearity and having to fight Irenicus 3 times is SO awesome.

It's almost like a JRPG!

 

[Clockwork Knight]

To make it worse, the Enclave's plan to exterminate American mainlanders is so completely contrived that it seems unfeasible and makes no sense - even though the Enclave is full of sane, balanced, unmutated human beings, and not the mentally broken creatures of the FEV experiments and the delusional fanatics of the Cathedral. The latter's plan still makes more sense!

Meanwhile Fallout is praised because you can shoot the overseer at the end for no reason [...]

Whoa. I wonder what you consider a valid reason to shoot someone, then.

Overseer: Thanks for the help. Now GTFO.

attackfighter:

 

[Mastermind]

BG2's plot is pretty good. It mainly gets bashed because it's not edgy enough, or something. Meanwhile Fallout is praised because you can shoot the overseer at the end for no reason, which is "EPIC LULZZ FTW!!!11!1!!!!" (or so codexers think...)

Yeah, the linearity and having to fight Irenicus 3 times is SO awesome.

Because linear = bad plot.



Dumbfuck detected.

 

[Mastermind]

From Zero to Hero and he could be a God.

TOB is not BG2.

Also, the story isn't about you becoming a hero. Someone steals your soul and you go and take it back while preventing the asshole who took it from being rewarded with godhood. I like it precisely because it's not another dumbfuck "save the world" story like Fallout (don't have anything against save the world stories, but they're done so often that they better have some unique hook to push it above banalshitboring).

 

[attackfighter]

Overseer: Thanks for the help. Now GTFO.

That brings up another problem with Fallout's plot: the reasoning behind the players banishment is contrived. It felt like they came up with the idea to make the player a neglected hero at the last minute, and considering it's just some throwaway gag at the end of the game, it likely was a last minute addition. They were really grasping at straws with that one, a normal human being would never act in such a way as the overseer did, he's just too ungrateful and his motivation is too weak.

As for the player's (possible) reaction, it too comes off as a half-baked idea. It's borderline cartoonish, like something I'd expect to see on looney toons.

"Sorry Doc, vaults full!"

"Ohhhhh you rascally overseer, I'll show you who's boss!"
*POW*

 

[Clockwork Knight]

Well, no one ever said the Overseer is normal. If the player can be a paranoid, ungrateful psycho, so can he.

But on a more serious note, you have to consider their reality. There are hicks that feel uneasy around a cousin who lives in the big city, why wouldn't a guy who lives in a cavern feel super uneasy about a guy who had contact with the "outside world"?

Plus the player just pops the Overseer's mole if he took bloody mess or if he's got evil karma, right? The "canon" reaction (as you see in FO2's manual) is that he just walked away (insert Vault_Dweller_forever_alone.jpg here), raged for a while, found some bros and founded Arroyo.

 

[torpid]

Fallout 2 had no focus. For the majority of the game you're just visiting a string of random towns, and then BAM! the main plot appears out of the blue.

Yeah, and that's the fun of it. Just travelling to new places, doing quests, beating enemies, getting stronger...

Yeah I didn't mind that aspect of FO2 either, as it's a bigger game than the first one. The more open a game is, the less I feel the need for a prominent story. Hell, I'd actually prefer more narratives where the main quest emerges as you play instead of being fed to you at the start of the game. And Fallout's story is fairly limited anyway: get the water chip and then investigate the mutants. The focus comes from the small size of the world and the limited number of settlements, rather than from the story being front and center.

 

[lisac2k]

Hell, I'd actually prefer more narratives where the main quest emerges as you play instead of being fed to you at the start of the game.

Well said I personally prefer this concept myself.

However, you have to let the player "dive" into the world somehow [until the point the main quest emerges], but then again, this is not hard to do with a proper setting and environment, i.e. I can't see much of a problem with it in a nice sandbox-looking game with decent features (a game parallel opposite to e.g. Oblivion.) For me, finding the water chip in Fallout was nothing more than an excuse to dive deeper into the world, and there's no way I can blame the designers for that, because I find the excuse relative decent and well-placed.

 

[attackfighter]

Well, no one ever said the Overseer is normal. If the player can be a paranoid, ungrateful psycho, so can he.

But on a more serious note, you have to consider their reality. There are hicks that feel uneasy around a cousin who lives in the big city, why wouldn't a guy who lives in a cavern feel super uneasy about a guy who had contact with the "outside world"?

Plus the player just pops the Overseer's mole if he took bloody mess or if he's got evil karma, right? The "canon" reaction (as you see in FO2's manual) is that he just walked away (insert Vault_Dweller_forever_alone.jpg here), raged for a while, found some bros and founded Arroyo.

The overseer is never built up to be paranoid or ungrateful, from what little you see of him he seems pretty normal. His sudden betrayal at the end is completely random.

And if you're gonna excuse the overseer's strange behaviour because he grew up in a cavern, then you might as well excuse the characters in 99% of RPGs as well. Viconia's a crazy bitch because she grew up in drow society and Moira Brown is a retard because all the water in her setting is radioactive lawl.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

I might...but I might not. We don't know jack about the overseer so speculating why he acted in such a cunty way isn't gonna be very fruitful.

Plus, sudden betrayals tend to seem random, otherwise they wouldn't work.

 

[attackfighter]

Ideally a sudden betrayal would seem random at first, but would make sense if you stopped to consider it in hindsight.

 

[Surf Solar]

He was always concerned with sending someone out in the wastes, then him/her even walking back to the vault and telling all the other dwellers how it is out there. There was always an underlying tone of worry in his voice when it comes to these things, so I don't know why it is so surprising that he decides he can't let you back in. Some dwellers even follow the "hero" IIRC, so his worries that the normal life in the vault might come to an end didn't just come out of the blue.

 

[Roguey]

Yeah, man the plot in FO was shit. I'll bet you could name 3 average RPG plotlines that are better, eh?

BG2
Torment
M&M7

You forgot Hellgate: London.

All plots are linear and I don't see the problem with confronting a villain multiple times.

Taking control away from the player in a RPG is a bad thing. Stop railroading me, I killed that guy fair and square. Plot armor is always a terrible thing, and not just in RPGs.

In Twitcher you have multiple encounters with both The Professor and Mr. Jarvid, yet no one has ever complained about that.

You must not be paying attention, because it was bad there too. It's bullshit if failure = forced reloading but success = forced failure anyway and every game developer ever needs to stop it.

The overseer is never built up to be paranoid or ungrateful, from what little you see of him he seems pretty normal. His sudden betrayal at the end is completely random.

An unfortunate but thou must moment. And no you can't ever bring up the subject again.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

Ideally a sudden betrayal would seem random at first, but would make sense if you stopped to consider it in hindsight.

He had his reasons, but there was no way to do it without seeming random and sudden.

Overseer: Could you go out in the wastes and bring something for us? By the way, I don't really intend to let you back inside.

VD:

 

[sea]

I never felt that the Overseer's motivation was random or came out of the blue. He makes it very clear that he (and many of the other Vault dwellers for that matter) believes that the Wasteland is a negative influence that needs to be avoided at all cost. Hell, he literally sends you out to commit genocide of the Super Mutant army despite not really having any clear motive other than the fact that they might be a threat... not to the Wasteland, but to good old Vault 13. He's xenophobic, perhaps rightly so, and that's reflected when he tells you at the end that your experiences outside are going to undermine the safety of Vault 13's way of life.

As for Fallout 2... well, yeah, as has already been said, the plot basically sucks. The whole "must save your village" thing is kind of contrived (and those visions? really?), the Enclave only appear near the end and their threat seems kind of arbitrary, in a "shit, we need a big bad end boss" kind of way, and the story is never woven into the events and history of the Wasteland in the same way as Fallout did it.

If I was writing Fallout 2 I'd change things up a bit: rather than have the Enclave just sort of appear randomly 2/3 through the game, there would be a number of towns struggling under their oppressive rule, some of them succumbing more than others. Here, the player would be exposed both to the Enclave's brutal methods of ensuring genetic purity, their exploitation of the "infected" for labour, but also to the way that they reward and improve the lives of people who are deemed pure enough, and their underlying motivations. Rather than outright kill mutants, instead they'd allow them to live, but limit breeding and reproduction of those considered impure. It'd start out as rumours, maybe just a few in the Den, but upon reaching Broken Hills it'd be clear that the Enclave were a serious threat to the existing way of life - without necessarily being an all-out terrible one. Depending on the player's actions, the Enclave could gain a larger or smaller foothold. Vault City would come under occupation by the Enclave during the course of the game, both for their knowledge (the location of the GECK), and their technology and people. Eventually you'd have the choice to either oust them from Vault City and take the fight to the Oil Rig, or to support the Enclave and have them take over Vault City entirely. On top of that, there'd be the final option of returning the GECK to Arroyo vs. giving it to the Enclave to help them establish their own personal Garden of Eden on the mainland. As for the FEV thing... well, either ignore it, or throw it in as a last resort plan when they realise they won't be able to take over the Wasteland (maybe X number of cities liberated?).

Obviously you'd have to change a few things around to get that to work, and there are many more options for different endings available, but I think even some relatively simple changes like this, with the Enclave involved a lot more in the Wasteland's affairs, would help establish them as a villain, all the while creating more established, organised political and social motives for the warfare in the Wasteland. It can afford to be less subtle than the first Fallout, which had a plot largely communicated by digging through old holotapes; we're past the whole "dead civilization" thing and on to "new civilization" after all.

 

[Hobo Elf]

One thing I'd like to see brought up is why the wasteland might not be a bad thing. I see so many crazy people craving for a real nuclear holocaust so that got me thinking on how the wasteland could be a wonderland for some people.

 

[Surf Solar]

One thing I'd like to see brought up is why the wasteland might not be a bad thing. I see so many crazy people craving for a real nuclear holocaust so that got me thinking on how the wasteland could be a wonderland for some people.

People "want" that because their lifes are boring/they feel caged in rules and all that stuff and a wasteland provides a lawless life, anarchy and all that. People just don't realize that real life isn't the same as a videogame.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

The nuclear holocaust is all fun and games until somebody grows an extra eye.

 

[Wyrmlord]

One thing I'd like to see brought up is why the wasteland might not be a bad thing. I see so many crazy people craving for a real nuclear holocaust so that got me thinking on how the wasteland could be a wonderland for some people.

Well, the Fallout games didn't show too much of a fascinating wasteland. It's mostly sand, I admit. Although The Glow, Vault 15, Mariposa, LA and Cathedral were quite atmospheric.

But I was truly fascinated by the world of abandoned industrial sites in STALKER. That makes Fallout look simplistic/

STALKER's style worked, because many of the farmhouses, the factories, residential areas, and communes in Chernobyl were specifically built as a model city that would show the world a true, nuclear-powered Soviet utopia. Instead, the whole site was abandoned before it was put to any good use, the apartments and factories went to decay without ever being filled to capacity, the grasses and meadows turned grey, and the streams filled with green sludge. Vacated by normal people, it was instead filled with scavengers and mind-controlled fanatics dressed in power armour, and armed to the teeth.

What is left is a thing of beauty. :D Really, I loved the dirty, rusty, derelict world of STALKER, and Fallout seemed too clean by comparison.

 

[zool]

One thing I'd like to see brought up is why the wasteland might not be a bad thing. I see so many crazy people craving for a real nuclear holocaust so that got me thinking on how the wasteland could be a wonderland for some people.

Well, the Fallout games didn't show too much of a fascinating wasteland. It's mostly sand, I admit. Although The Glow, Vault 15, Mariposa, LA and Cathedral were quite atmospheric.

But I was truly fascinated by the world of abandoned industrial sites in STALKER. That makes Fallout look simplistic/

STALKER's style worked, because many of the farmhouses, the factories, residential areas, and communes in Chernobyl were specifically built as a model city that would show the world a true, nuclear-powered Soviet utopia. Instead, the whole site was abandoned before it was put to any good use, the apartments and factories went to decay without ever being filled to capacity, the grasses and meadows turned grey, and the streams filled with green sludge. Vacated by normal people, it was instead filled with scavengers and mind-controlled fanatics dressed in power armour, and armed to the teeth.

What is left is a thing of beauty. :D Really, I loved the dirty, rusty, derelict world of STALKER, and Fallout seemed too clean by comparison.

As much as I love STALKER's style and atmosphere - which is, in my opinion, on par with Fallout's in terms of awesomeness - I still think Fallout introduced the player to a fascinating world. Fallout didn't seem "too clean" to me: actually, the only time when I felt some relief was when I reached Vault City for the first time - it felt like an oasis with clean streets, green grass, etc... I liked pretty much all the other places, those you've listed were atmospheric but even Klamath had a special kind of atmosphere in my opinion.

 

[bhlaab]

Because linear = bad plot.



Dumbfuck detected.

How about being poorly told through rambling unskippable expositiory dream sequences and featuring a multitude of pointless and asinine detours where ALL OF A SUDDEN your party finds itself in Fish City or some shit.

BG2 completely fell apart at Chapter 3 and it wasn't that great to begin with anyway.

 

[laclongquan]

The Overseer behaviour is pretty understandable, provided you dont trust any of his words.

Consider his dilemma: He is the ruler of a small community. As long as that community stay inside the vault he's ultimate ruler of their world. He neither need or want anything from outside, that's what he believe.

Now people know that there's a world outside of the vault. Dangerous, true, but liveable. Anyone disagree with the Overseer can just take a trek to the nearest farming community now that the are is pretty raider-free. His power over his people is crumbling.

He got a major war hero on his hand: strong, skilled, popular. If that hero stay he will be dethroned in no time.

In order to protect his rule he need to keep people inside and eliminate his rival. Exile the hero makes very good sense, to him.

Fuck what he said to VD. That's just plain pretty words mean nothing. Analyze what's going on and you will see why he banished VD.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

One thing I'd like to see brought up is why the wasteland might not be a bad thing. I see so many crazy people craving for a real nuclear holocaust so that got me thinking on how the wasteland could be a wonderland for some people.

Because in games they don't get to experience hundreds of discomforts of the wastes and saving and loading makes dangers meaningless.

 

[Wyrmlord]

The Overseer behaviour is pretty understandable, provided you dont trust any of his words.

Consider his dilemma: He is the ruler of a small community. As long as that community stay inside the vault he's ultimate ruler of their world. He neither need or want anything from outside, that's what he believe.

Now people know that there's a world outside of the vault. Dangerous, true, but liveable. Anyone disagree with the Overseer can just take a trek to the nearest farming community now that the are is pretty raider-free. His power over his people is crumbling.

He got a major war hero on his hand: strong, skilled, popular. If that hero stay he will be dethroned in no time.

In order to protect his rule he need to keep people inside and eliminate his rival. Exile the hero makes very good sense, to him.

Fuck what he said to VD. That's just plain pretty words mean nothing. Analyze what's going on and you will see why he banished VD.

Yes. One could say he was a nicer version of First Citizen Lynette.

Then, there is also the specie-ist element. The only humans are those who live inside the vaults. The ones outside the vault are mutants who have ceased to be human. However, this is a retrospective perspective of Fallout based on characters in Fallout 2, so I could be quite wrong in my second-guessing of Fallout's creators' intentions here.

Actually, if you see the Matt's Chat interview with Tim Cain, you see that the Interplay folks didn't try to be too sophisticated with the theme either. They knew they were just game developers and not philosophers. When asked by Matt about the politics of Fallout, Tim Cain gave a vague answer: "Well, yes, uh, we oppose some of the wrongs of governments. We think the military should be, uh, more accountable." So there is a caveat for not looking too much into motivations of people in Fallout.

It's just a game. My point was that makers of Fallout understood that narrative should only be a tool for game-related elements of problem solving and clue finding, while Fallout 2 simply used it for an elementary exposition by the President at the end. I am not one of the "storyfags" (although I detest using the word), and I think rather that a game's story should be judged not by its quality, but how it makes for a more enjoyable game.

 

[Roguey]

How about being poorly told through rambling unskippable expositiory dream sequences

Why do you hate Bhaal? It's the only time BG2 is subtle.

and featuring a multitude of pointless and asinine detours where ALL OF A SUDDEN your party finds itself in Fish City or some shit.

Because they capsized your boat. These things happen (see The Odyssey). You can also skip that city altogether by going through the portal to the Underdark in Spellhold, and as a bonus you miss out on the overpowered gamebreaking Cloak of Mirroring (which was even more OP and GB originally since it reflected all spell damage back to the source. And Bioware thought this was a perfectly acceptable item for you to have and it was perfectly sensible for some random band of attacking fishpeople to have it).