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Geneforge vs Fallout 2 (Or Battle Alpha's vs Deathclaws)

Deathy

Liturgist
Joined
Jun 15, 2002
Messages
793
Yup, time for a new Geneforge thread! If this keeps up, I could almost justify a Geneforge forum.

This time, I'll compare Geneforge and Fallout 2 with their use of intelligent monsters, or, more specifically, Deathclaws and Battle Alpha's.

In Fallout 2, intelligent deathclaws were part of a genetic experiment (FEV, d00d!). They had intelligence comparable to a human child, and formed a (suprisingly) stable society in which killing seemed to be taboo (unlike your average deathclaws) and abducting skilled humans to help them seemed to be the norm. It came off feeling pretty fake, I thought.

In Geneforge, you came across a rough society of battle alpha's (Freeplace). These Battle Alpha's, having gone rouge, had formed their own society, which was partly based on their violent nature and partly based on emerging intelligence. It came off feeling very confused.

The main difference between the deathclaw and the battle alpha's is that the battle alpha's, although essentially animals, had some degree of human intelligence (being heavily modified humans), while the deathclaw were pure animals before they were "modified by the Enclave".

However, they're pretty much the same concept, intelligent animals forming a society.
The problem with the Fallout 2 implementation is that it lacks the confusion that made the Geneforge implementation feel so real.
It's natural that such a society would be incredibly confused, on an instinct vs intellect level, with neither holding sway over the other.

I wonder why the developers of Fallout 2 neglected this kind of depth, and I wonder if Vogel was attempting to emulate the intelligent deathclaw with Freeplace...
 

LCJr.

Erudite
Joined
Jan 16, 2003
Messages
2,469
Fallout 2 seems(was) pretty rushed. Maybe they had other plans for fleshing out the Deathclaws? Maybe it just got tacked on without giving it much thought also.

As for Vogel trying to emulate the Deathclaws with Freeplace I doubt it. At least not consciously anyway. I believe in one of the interviews he mentions he plays Fallout but it seems to be more a continuation of the "abandoned creations" theme. You can tell he really put a lot of thought into the game and tried to come up with believable behaviours and evolution for each of the creations after their abandonment.

As a sidenote can you imagine what the Battle Alpha's mythology will be in the future generations? "And the great Shaper gods came down and taught us their wisdom! We learned how to do the dishes. Wash and fold our clothes. Gather food and even use storage containers."

Question: What about the Vlish? Would you consider them intelligent also or just simply cunning? They're capable of forming communties and controlling roamers to do their work.

edit>Let me add this, If I was a Shaper I'd make the damn things sterile. Not all the creations just the dangerous ones. Seems the last thing you'd want is for a rogue pair to start breeding. But then there wouldn't be much of a game if they did that:)
 

Saint_Proverbius

Administrator
Staff Member
Joined
Jun 16, 2002
Messages
11,479
Location
Behind you.
To me, it seemed more like Vault 13's intelligent deathclaws were only really there to provide a deathclaw as an NPC. It was all part of the "everything in Fallout 2 was intelligent" thing that really loused up the setting, in my opinion. So, yeah, I thought it felt highly contrived and poorly done.

I think the thing that Freespace offers over Vault 13 is simply that Deathclaws aren't supposed to be smart, whereas Battle Alphas do have intelligence on a basic level. They were left to fend for themselves, and they developed a society. The deathclaws in Vault 13 were just plain silly. They were given intelligence from an experiment, and they wondered off to found a would-be utopia where everyone got along, basically. It was just absurd, really.

That said, I really wish that Freespace offered more. Of course, Vault 13 in Fallout 2 didn't offer much either other than talking to the mother and the quest for the VOX control, but I would have loved it if Freespace offered more of a glimpse in to the lifestyle of the Battle Alphas left on their own. Instead, they were just bunched up in a cave or building type thing with trash everywhere. That didn't tell us all that much about them.
 

larpingdude14

Scholar
Joined
Nov 15, 2007
Messages
631
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