New Vegas has done something that not even the original Fallouts managed for me, it made me “get” the setting and love it immensely
The original Fallout had some whacky humor and situations, but it could also be very grim and dark in its apocalyptic setting, while Fallout 2 sort of took things too far with the tongue in cheek and cultural references but sort of lost a bit of the tone of what Fallout is
And that made me realize something
Fallout 3 is not as bad as I thought it was; for all of ita inane dialogues, bad writing, stupid quests, lifeless characters and retarded plot it sort of fits on this idea I had; Todd and Bethesda looked at Fallout and instead of embracing the concept of an apocalypse where the world is turned upside down and humanity shows its worst survival instincts sort of got it wrong and focused on the tongue in cheek aspects of the setting
Of course people in Bethesda’s Fallout Universe would live right next to a dud nuclear bomb, have a secret society for rescuing androids, a goth wannabe vampire gang, Peter Pan, super mutants would turn into mindless orcs, child ghouls could remain inside a fridge for 200 years, a crazy scientist would get his kicks over cross dressing as a little girl and torturing his fellow vault companions.... they played it for laughs
Yes
Todd and company decided that Fallout was more about exploding headshots, robot man vs antlady superheroes fighting in the middle of the street...
It is like a few months ago I went to the movies with a girl I was dating to see Bladerunner 2049 and while I was transfixed by the cinematography, setting and characters she thought it was really bad, complicated and basically didn’t understand any of it so she called it “the computer threesome movie”... I mean that is exactly what she took from it; for all of its themes of what it means to BE human for her it was just a kinky weird movie
I look at New Vegas (which can have some less than stellar dialogues and quests) as the capo labore of Obsidian; they finally had the chance to do Fallout right and frankly they ran away with it. They played up to the standards of the older games and took a serious approach as an homage to those first 2 games and it shows, to be it is not only the best Obsidian game of all time but the best Fallout game period
So where does this leave Fallout 3?
It is stupid, inane and simplistic because it was meant to be like that, nobody in Bethesda tried to do a “bad” Fallout game, they did what they though was Fallout
Their Fallout universe is whacky, ultra violent and tongue in cheek and New Vegas is completely different, mostly played straight with a few very well placed Dark humor themes
The fact both games run in the same engine and technically had the same base system goes to show the vastly different ideology behind both games
We here at the Codex we turn our noses at Fallout 3 but that whacky humor did vibe with a lot of people because of the same way some people find Adam Sandle funny while others are Dave Chapelle fans, one is aimed at low brow tits and farts jokes while the other parodies modern trends and issues through comedy... it is not that one is bad and the other is good, it is simply that they have different audiences
Right now I am enjoying New Vegas tremendously, savoring each second of the experience in ways the older Fallouts didn’t quite managed to hook me and though this experience I can look a bit more forgiving on Fallout 3 because I finally understand where is it coming from
The original Fallout had some whacky humor and situations, but it could also be very grim and dark in its apocalyptic setting, while Fallout 2 sort of took things too far with the tongue in cheek and cultural references but sort of lost a bit of the tone of what Fallout is
And that made me realize something
Fallout 3 is not as bad as I thought it was; for all of ita inane dialogues, bad writing, stupid quests, lifeless characters and retarded plot it sort of fits on this idea I had; Todd and Bethesda looked at Fallout and instead of embracing the concept of an apocalypse where the world is turned upside down and humanity shows its worst survival instincts sort of got it wrong and focused on the tongue in cheek aspects of the setting
Of course people in Bethesda’s Fallout Universe would live right next to a dud nuclear bomb, have a secret society for rescuing androids, a goth wannabe vampire gang, Peter Pan, super mutants would turn into mindless orcs, child ghouls could remain inside a fridge for 200 years, a crazy scientist would get his kicks over cross dressing as a little girl and torturing his fellow vault companions.... they played it for laughs
Yes
Todd and company decided that Fallout was more about exploding headshots, robot man vs antlady superheroes fighting in the middle of the street...
It is like a few months ago I went to the movies with a girl I was dating to see Bladerunner 2049 and while I was transfixed by the cinematography, setting and characters she thought it was really bad, complicated and basically didn’t understand any of it so she called it “the computer threesome movie”... I mean that is exactly what she took from it; for all of its themes of what it means to BE human for her it was just a kinky weird movie
I look at New Vegas (which can have some less than stellar dialogues and quests) as the capo labore of Obsidian; they finally had the chance to do Fallout right and frankly they ran away with it. They played up to the standards of the older games and took a serious approach as an homage to those first 2 games and it shows, to be it is not only the best Obsidian game of all time but the best Fallout game period
So where does this leave Fallout 3?
It is stupid, inane and simplistic because it was meant to be like that, nobody in Bethesda tried to do a “bad” Fallout game, they did what they though was Fallout
Their Fallout universe is whacky, ultra violent and tongue in cheek and New Vegas is completely different, mostly played straight with a few very well placed Dark humor themes
The fact both games run in the same engine and technically had the same base system goes to show the vastly different ideology behind both games
We here at the Codex we turn our noses at Fallout 3 but that whacky humor did vibe with a lot of people because of the same way some people find Adam Sandle funny while others are Dave Chapelle fans, one is aimed at low brow tits and farts jokes while the other parodies modern trends and issues through comedy... it is not that one is bad and the other is good, it is simply that they have different audiences
Right now I am enjoying New Vegas tremendously, savoring each second of the experience in ways the older Fallouts didn’t quite managed to hook me and though this experience I can look a bit more forgiving on Fallout 3 because I finally understand where is it coming from