Why is Fallout New Vegas considered good?

[MerchantKing]

The only good part about New Vegas is sneaking the gold out of the vault and leaving the DLC as the richest man in the wasteland.

 

[SomeGuyWithAnOpinion]

The only good part about New Vegas is sneaking the gold out of the vault and leaving the DLC as the richest man in the wasteland.

>Implying every player isn't already the richest man in the wasteland 4 hours into the game through normal play, given how utterly broken the economy in NV is.

 

[SpaceWizardz]

I've seen that reaction for Fallout in general. Political leftists who say it's a far left series but can only give ambiguous reasons why

The games openly mock the hysterical red-baiting attitudes of the American civil defense era and are unapologetic in its depiction of pre-war America as an imperial and militaristic beast that has dropped any pretense of enlightened society and is just attempting to eat and chew their fill.
There's more to it than this but that requires a game-by-game breakdown I don't care to do right now, we can simply glance at the ideological leanings and statements of leads like Cain and Sawyer to answer the "What did they mean by this?" question.

 

[SomeGuyWithAnOpinion]

I've seen that reaction for Fallout in general. Political leftists who say it's a far left series but can only give ambiguous reasons why

The games openly mock the hysterical red-baiting attitudes of the American civil defense era and are unapologetic in its depiction of pre-war America as an imperial and militaristic beast that has dropped any pretense of enlightened society and is just attempting to eat and chew their fill.
There's more to it than this but that requires a game-by-game breakdown I don't care to do right now, we can simply glance at the ideological leanings and statements of leads like Cain and Sawyer to answer the "What did they mean by this?" question.

But it's also a series where, after starting in the new world where we're all equal again, humanity devolved into slaving, capitalism, and all the other pre-war nonesense they were criticising in the first place.

The most leftist position you can read from this is "communism is good, but it's also literally impossible because human nature prevents it".

 

[MerchantKing]

The only good part about New Vegas is sneaking the gold out of the vault and leaving the DLC as the richest man in the wasteland.

>Implying every player isn't already the richest man in the wasteland 4 hours into the game through normal play, given how utterly broken the economy in NV is.

Without exploits of course. I like to roleplay as a humble merchant who has to get his big break before he can buy out everything.

 

[SpaceWizardz]

But it's also a series where, after starting in the new world where we're all equal again

Didn't happen, not only are the bombed-out skeletal remains largely still there across the country but the entire series premise is how much of the old world was pristinely preserved in vaults.
The very first settlement you visit in Fallout 1 is led by a practicing Hindu, history was in no way lost to time.

humanity devolved into slaving

Slavery was the economic engine for most societies until it wasn't, nothing ideological there.

capitalism

The one thing that really did get annihilated by the bombs. The most developed economy we've seen is in New Vegas, in which Mr. House is basically a feudal lord lending his lands to his vassals (cheekily dressed up in employer-employee language), NCR's arrival in the area and House acting as a guarantor of their "right" to the occupied Hoover dam and sharecropper territories suggests it's transitory though.
I did try to look up and see if someone more autistic and knowledgeable than me has done a more extensive write up on the characteristics of these imaginary video game economies but found nothing substantial. Presumably core NCR territory is more developed? Doesn't seem like we know enough to say.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

capitalism

The one thing that really did get annihilated by the bombs. The most developed economy we've seen is in New Vegas, in which Mr. House is basically a feudal lord lending his lands to his vassals (cheekily dressed up in employer-employee language), NCR's arrival in the area and House acting as a guarantor of their "right" to the occupied Hoover dam and sharecropper territories suggests it's transitory though.
I did try to look up and see if someone more autistic and knowledgeable than me has done a more extensive write up on the characteristics of these imaginary video game economies but found nothing substantial. Presumably core NCR territory is more developed? Doesn't seem like we know enough to say.

Although Fallout: New Vegas takes place outside the New California Republic proper, the NCR is quite clearly presented as a critique of unbridled American capitalism, with explicit similarities to historical 'Gilded Age' America and its 'robber barons'. There are even quests relating to the underhanded methods employed by wealthy landowners to expand their holdings even further, inspired by certain Hollywood westerns set in the relevant historical period.

 

[9ted6]

I've seen that reaction for Fallout in general. Political leftists who say it's a far left series but can only give ambiguous reasons why

The games openly mock the hysterical red-baiting attitudes of the American civil defense era and are unapologetic in its depiction of pre-war America as an imperial and militaristic beast that has dropped any pretense of enlightened society and is just attempting to eat and chew their fill.
There's more to it than this but that requires a game-by-game breakdown I don't care to do right now, we can simply glance at the ideological leanings and statements of leads like Cain and Sawyer to answer the "What did they mean by this?" question.

If you dig deeper though you find out that all the red scare hysteria in Fallout that's mocked on the surface was completely justified and reasonable.

The Chinese in Fallout were infiltrating the country, planting agents everywhere, planning massive sabotage operations and they were deploying bioweapons against America. The lore behind FEV is not that it started as a supersoldier project but as a genuine vaccine because the Chinese were aggressively blasting US soldiers and civilians with shit like the New Plague. They were shipping over guns and commandos and had literal radio stations set up to send out the message for everyone to rise up and take over the country when they invaded. According to the president in FO2 China fired the first nuke because they started losing and didn't want to make peace. The annexation of Canada is seen as critiquing America only but the fact China annexes almost all of Asia gets completely ignored.

For the most part you can't look at Fallout and say it's pro conservative or especially pro American but where I think its leftist fans fuck up is that they assume Fallout America = bad means that Fallout China and communism = good but that's never a message in any of the games, except in parts of FO76 which neither Cain nor Sawyer nor any of the older writers had anything to do with. All the games to that point paint China in Fallout as bad as the US and never is totalitarian communism stated or implied to have been better than corporate imperialism, yet shitreddits like gamingcirclejerk act like Fallout has nothing but open praise for it.

I don't even know if it's seriously anti capitalism in the first place. I remember reading that Obsidian added House's quest to destroy the Brotherhood as a way to try to give him moral balance since they thought he was too perfect of a choice and he's laissez faire capitalism personified. Maybe they intended the message to be capitalism is bad but it always seems like the bad guys are the huge corporations, while the individual traders, caravaneers and even House have flaws but aren't actually evil.

Meanwhile in nearly every ending the Followers are shown to be underprepared, incompetent and in way over their heads, despite often being called the best faction and a developer message that socialism is the only good system.

Long post but this idea that Fallout originally made China or communism out to be the good guy is tossed around alot and I think it's just wrong. It's annoying to see and whatever the writers intended it's not backed by anything ingame.

 

[Lemming42]

A lot of the stuff about the Chinese infiltration threat being genuine comes from Fallout 3 and Point Lookout, and I think it's fair to say that Emil's grasp of Fallout's themes is loose at best. Even within Fo3 and PL though, the scare is still portrayed in parts as being inexcusable, like the truck with the corpses of presumably-innocent Chinese citizens in the back.

The games definitely never really try to portray China as good (especially since we know comparatively little about China) but Fo1 and FNV are both pretty clearly concerned with attacking American militarism and general mid-20th-century attitudes, without much thought given to China. And of course in Fo2 the Enclave have more than a slight veneer of the Republican party to them, especially when you get ot the oil rig.

 

[9ted6]

A lot of the stuff about the Chinese infiltration threat being genuine comes from Fallout 3 and Point Lookout

There's several instances of it in FNV like the infiltrator suit at Hoover Dam and it's either 1 or 2 that says FEV was made in response to Chinese bioweapon attacks and that they went wild and conquered most of Asia.

 

[Lemming42]

I think New Plague being a Chinese weapon might be a Fo2 thing, in Fo1 there's only one mention of it iirc and there's no indication that it's an artificial virus, more just like one of many bad things that was happening in the build-up to 2077. I might be wrong though.

 

[SpaceWizardz]

leftist fans fuck up is that they assume Fallout America = bad means that Fallout China and communism = good but that's never a message in any of the games

You've gone from denying a left-wing perspective in the text to necessitating a Nutmeg style nationalist screed about the inevitable triumph of Communist China as the minimum "barrier to entry" for even being considered leftist.

he's laissez faire capitalism personified.

He literally refers to himself as an autocrat.

Meanwhile in nearly every ending the Followers are shown to be underprepared, incompetent and in way over their heads

Sawyer getting his dunks in on the succdems/demsocs.
Again, we know the ideals and beliefs of the individuals who worked on these games, any ambiguity of intent is entirely cope on your part.

 

[9ted6]

leftist fans fuck up is that they assume Fallout America = bad means that Fallout China and communism = good but that's never a message in any of the games

You've gone from denying a left-wing perspective in the text to necessitating a Nutmeg style nationalist screed about the inevitable triumph of Communist China as the minimum "barrier to entry" for even being considered leftist.

True that that's not a requirement to be a leftist game but it's frequently what leftist Fallout fans claim Fallout to be by design, a screed about the inevitable demise of capitalism and triumph of communism.

he's laissez faire capitalism personified.

He literally refers to himself as an autocrat.

Also true but he's upfront that he wants to leave people alone, doesn't want anyone getting devoted to him and wants to let the market run itself. He wants the absolute power to keep New Vegas a free market society.

Again, we know the ideals and beliefs of the individuals who worked on these games, any ambiguity of intent is entirely cope on your part.

We know Cain and Sawyer are outspoken leftists but is anyone else? I've heard mixed things about Boyarsky, some say he's a communist and others say he's a libertarian. I don't know what Avellone's politics are. There was a different guy altogether who wrote most of NV's base game quests and I don't know much about him either.

I'm not a coping Fallout fan and I do think its online fandom is left as shit overall but I still don't know if you can correctly call it a leftwing game, at least without using the same argument those leftist fans do that criticism of one side means endorsement of the opposite side. If they showed a highly successful communist faction and contrasted it with a collapsing capitalist faction like Wasteland does then I'd agree.

Do you think there are any moments in the writing in any of the games before 76 where leftist politics are directly endorsed?

 

[SpaceWizardz]

Also true but he's upfront that he wants to leave people alone, doesn't want anyone getting devoted to him and wants to let the market run itself. He wants the absolute power to keep New Vegas a free market society.

He's an economic statist who wants monopolistic control over the entire economy so he can personally dictate rapid industrialization and development of a space industry to get people off the planet.
Sorry bro, he's not a liberal.

I've heard mixed things about Boyarsky, some say he's a communist and others say he's a libertarian. I don't know what Avellone's politics are.

They're libs, presumably Cain is as well. Pretty sure Sawyer is the only self-admitted socialist.

There was a different guy altogether who wrote most of NV's base game quests and I don't know much about him either.

John Gonzalez
He went on to helm the Horizon Zero Dawn games which as I understand are pretty woke.

 

[Bulo]

A Slav posted fourteen threads in order to prove that Fallout 2 was a greater sequel than New Vegas. Just before his ban, a staff member urged him to acknowledge the superiority of New Vegas. "Nigger," replied the dying man, "to tell the truth, my computer never ran either game."

 

[Bulo]

(I forgot to transpose "dying man" with something Codex related but perhaps that's just wishful thinking on my part)

 

[Faarbaute]

(I forgot to transpose "dying man" with something Codex related but perhaps that's just wishful thinking on my part)

he could have also wrote eighty-eight posts

 

[agris]

(I forgot to transpose "dying man" with something Codex related but perhaps that's just wishful thinking on my part)

he could have also wrote eighty-eight posts

1337 or bust

 

[luj1]

Is there any mod which improves the cringe atmosphere and color palette to make the game more mature and creepy? Or should I just mod STALKER instead?

 

[9ted6]

Also true but he's upfront that he wants to leave people alone, doesn't want anyone getting devoted to him and wants to let the market run itself. He wants the absolute power to keep New Vegas a free market society.

He's an economic statist who wants monopolistic control over the entire economy so he can personally dictate rapid industrialization and development of a space industry to get people off the planet.
Sorry bro, he's not a liberal.

I've heard mixed things about Boyarsky, some say he's a communist and others say he's a libertarian. I don't know what Avellone's politics are.

They're libs, presumably Cain is as well. Pretty sure Sawyer is the only self-admitted socialist.

There was a different guy altogether who wrote most of NV's base game quests and I don't know much about him either.

John Gonzalez
He went on to helm the Horizon Zero Dawn games which as I understand are pretty woke.

So if Fallout's intended as veiled leftist propaganda where does that leave the game? Is it actually any good?

 

[Morality Games]

Seriously I don't get it.
Graphically, it's puke-inducing.
Gameplay-wise it's worse than any FPS in the genre. It's clunky, poorly-made and extremely badly designed and a complete disgrace for an FPS.
The AI is in shambles, literally.
The Factions are all rushed and expediated, Caesar's Legion(supposedly the beast from the East is a bunch of 30 dudes in football uniforms fighting with bat in an universe with guns??????) is a joke, Boomers faction is a joke, The Khans Faction is a joke. Enclave is a joke. Omerta is a Joke. The Strip, the casino is a place with roughly 10 dudes roaming around in the void.
The DLCs are all bad except Blood Money.
I feel like people like it for what it could have been rather than what it truly is: A shitty FPS with broken dialogues, broken quests, rushed storylines&Factions, A(bsent)I, blurry puke-inducing graphics, as well as an extremely buggy software.
And don't get me started with the open-world, it's a nothingburger, it is filled with nothing, and invisible walls to spice it up.

This thing is hailed as one of the best RPGs, this is madness.
Fallout 2 is hundredfold better than this piece of shit, there is no debate.

Well, Mrbtongue can explain a lot better than me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZ3GDcMXBFI

Get it while it's hot, it's only a matter of time until it gets copyright struck again.

There's also an adjacent video that doesn't address Fallout specifically (it's about why Morrowind is better than Oblivion and Skyrim) but it has implications for Fallout: New Vegas.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZUynhkal1I

 

[laclongquan]

The red-baiting thing only come into existence with Fallout 3, as they need to develop a counterweight to prewar America. Thus Chinese, then Chinese remnant, then Chinese in Operation Anchorage.
In Fallout 1/2, the opponent of America is barely built, if at all existed. Chinese faction come from Qin Shi Huang submarine in SF. But around new Reno we can find japanese weapon, wakizashi, about best melee weapon at the time. So US opponent is unclear.
In Fallout New Vegas, they barely mention the CHinese Remnant in East Coast, or Shi people in West Coast. The Katana is assume to be a recent product made in NCR. And the Chinese Stealth Armor is just... trace.

 

[Losus4]

I will never understand the cult-like mentality surrounding this very average game. No matter where this game is discussed online you always have the same neckbeard circklejerk... it's like yeah, it has speech checks, but they are not enough to negate its numerous shortcomings, for example—

- Invislbe walls, in far too many and inconvienient places which are not justified. This isn't F3 downtown debris blocking the side of the map, we're talking invisible walls all along easily scalable terrain.

- Lack of dungeons. Aside from the vaults, most interiors are a room or two at best. F3 had dozens of sprawling intricate dungeons, as well as the metro area.

- Fixed enemy spawns. Makes the game too samey after repeated plays. Bethesda's levelled lists are far better. In F3 you'll always stumble into some random shit going on, like enemies fighting other enemies, and if you don't encounter them you'll often hear them in the distance. Distant gunshots you hear in F3 are actual real time battle occuring, but the distant gunshots in FNV are merely stock sound effects meant to imply battle. If any random fights break out in FNV then I've yet to see it happen.

- Forcing ammo cases into inventory after shooting. It's like, please don't force shit into my inventory.

It's a decent looter shooter, but why it's held as some pinnacle of RPG design is simply unfounded.

 

[Butter]

I will never understand the cult-like mentality surrounding this very average game. No matter where this game is discussed online you always have the same neckbeard circklejerk... it's like yeah, it has speech checks, but they are not enough to negate its numerous shortcomings, for example—

- Invislbe walls, in far too many and inconvienient places which are not justified. This isn't F3 downtown debris blocking the side of the map, we're talking invisible walls all along easily scalable terrain.

- Lack of dungeons. Aside from the vaults, most interiors are a room or two at best. F3 had dozens of sprawling intricate dungeons, as well as the metro area.

- Fixed enemy spawns. Makes the game too samey after repeated plays. Bethesda's levelled lists are far better. In F3 you'll always stumble into some random shit going on, like enemies fighting other enemies, and if you don't encounter them you'll often hear them in the distance. Distant gunshots you hear in F3 are actual real time battle occuring, but the distant gunshots in FNV are merely stock sound effects meant to imply battle. If any random fights break out in FNV then I've yet to see it happen.

- Forcing ammo cases into inventory after shooting. It's like, please don't force shit into my inventory.

It's a decent looter shooter, but why it's held as some pinnacle of RPG design is simply unfounded.

Bethestard spotted.

 

[Losus4]

Bethestard spotted.

Let's throw labels around because we're too stupid to engage in any meaningful discourse.