Editorial Some thoughts on the Fallout 3 article

[Vault Dweller]

Tags: Bethesda Softworks; Fallout 3

I decided to share <a href=http://www.rpgcodex.com/content.php?id=149>some thoughts on the Fallout 3 article</a> with you guys:
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<blockquote>To show that Bethesda understands and, like, totally digs the setting, the game features exploding nuclear reactors in cars and mind-blowing "tell me it's a joke" handheld nuclear catapults. In the example described in the Game Informer article, the main character, undoubtedly inspired by the famous Baron Munchausen, kills two giant ants by shooting at a NEARBY car's nuclear reactor. A small nuclear blast destroys the car and the ants, but ignores the resourceful main character, standing a few meters away. The nuclear catapult is an even more retarded concept and, hopefully, needs no explanation. Using nuclear explosions in close combat in a survival game that watches your rad count is kinda stupid. Even for Bethesda. </blockquote>

 

[Edward_R_Murrow]

You know.....I really want you to be wrong. I want myself to be wrong. I want a good Fallout game just as much as anyone.

But damn....one really must to be naive as one can be to believe Bethesda is going to do anything but make an RPG-lite like Oblivion....but with guns and mutants and explosions.

And if you ever edit anything in, consider talking about the severe lack of modding talk. If I recall correctly it was a big topic when both Morrowind and Oblivion were announced. Looks like the fans won't be able to fix Bethesda's shit.

 

[TalesfromtheCrypt]

Guys, I have added a vault boy, its Fallout now.

 

[Amasius]

To bad for Bethesda that they can blacklist the Codex only once.

 

[denizsi]

Not that I think it's unrealistic to expect the perceived implication, but I think that it's obvious the "snippets" of yellow/green text in console frame in the article aren't supposed to be 1:1 representation of all the ways things would/might play out in the game. I might be wrong but I think it's a common practice to put such texts to occupy more page space and to create hype. For instance, take a look at the "regular game idea / Troika game idea" segments in question 3 in DarkUnderlord's Codex interview with McCarthy for Dropship. If you take those segments out of their context, they are the same as the parts in GI. I don't think there's a literal implication of scripted, railroaded events in those parts, I don't think it makes much sense to interpret them as such, even if it's Bethesda.

 

[KazikluBey]

A lot of your commentary is just spot on, but I think it would be more effective if it didn't read like a nerd rage, since it feels like you're making it personal with Bethesda, instead of just letting your sarcastic text stand on its own and let the reader decide just how stupid they are.

 

[POOPERSCOOPER]

Is todd howard crying?

 

[Vault Dweller]

@ denizsi

Well, these snippets describe what the journalist(s) saw on the screen. Do you have reasons to doubt them? It's basically the only gameplay description, and it's a very straight forward one. You get a quest to detonate the nuke, you get a meeting place, you go there, eventually run into more mutants than you can handle. Then the cavalry shows up, introducing the BoS guys to the player and offering to travel with them.

That whole "I'm gonna die now, oh wait, I'm being saved" is a scripted event that implies a lot more linearity than the generic hype in the article implies.

 

[Woetohice]

__

 

[Cthulhugoat]

Fuck you, VD. I'm even more depressed now...

 

[Pariah]

I agree with you 100% that they've definitely fucked their chance.

However, even I wouldn't hark on the presence of mutants on the East Coast. At the end of the first game, Perlman made a point of saying that the armies retreated to the east. Considering how long they live and how great in numbers they were, it doesn't seem unlikely that they'd be there.

Also, Marcus makes a point in the second game to clarify that the sterility in mutants is only temporary.

Othat than that though, I'm with the author on the overall status of the game.

 

[Black]

This article is full of win...
Good job.

Also, Marcus makes a point in the second game to clarify that the sterility in mutants is only temporary.

Bwuh?
It was a joke.
Mutants can't reproduce

 

[denizsi]

sip

I do, as I don't think the game would be demonstrated in that much detail this early, as to show (the nonexisting) multiple everything.

The mag's job is to transfer the journalist wannabe's experience into hype, so they need to present the snippet in the form we read in the article, the form that's usually best for masses only when a straight play is "richly" described. So even if the quests would be choking full of multiple paths and ends, we would most likely see one presentation like the one we have, especially this early in development (what, still 1.5 years to go?). So whoever played/demonstrated the game, I'd say it was most likely one single play in a specific way and the GI guy(s) just took from the experience to turn it into something straight.

Think of the journal entries in Oblivion. Despite the railroaded gameplay, some few choices you get to make are reflected in your journal in a similar fashion. Such journal entries could very well imply a railroaded gameplay for those few specific events when out of context, even though they weren't of such nature.

I agree that it's obvious the Stormtroopers of Brotherhood of Selfless Steel encounter was scripted but that doesn't tell much either as it's of greater possibility that it was intended for GI to write home something about. It's not that "out of touch with reality" to expect that very encountenter might depend on some conditions in real game, even by Bethesda's standards. I can clearly see the likeliness of it being an unconditional scripted event, but the early timing and vagueness of article itself isn't allowing for "experienced interpretation" in my opinion.

edit: Let me show an example of a different type of perception of why I think you're failing your objectivity in this regard:

In the distance, you can see the town. There's no turning back after this.

So he had a choice early on?

The money's not really that good, now that you think about it. You press the button anyway...

If there is absolutely no other option past that point, why the reconsideration? For teh drama? Some people might very well think "he probably could give up and NOT detonate the thing, but he'd most likely get into lots of trouble. He made a last minute call and thinking the trouble he might have gotten into, didn't strayed from his early choice", and this might very well be the poor implication the poor devs tried to give. Make no mistake, I'm not trying to find anything positive in this as even this probability is elemental in my opinion, and would not be a representative of the quest design in general.

 

[Jedi_Learner]

...

 

[Pariah]

Bwuh?
It was a joke.
Mutants can't reproduce

I'm pretty sure they can.

I don't think he was making a joke.

 

[Rohit_N]

I honestly think that was a joke.

 

[Sisay]

I honestly think that was a joke.

It was so incredibly stupid MCA had to change the official position to "it was a joke all along guys!1" in Fallout bible.

"So if supermutants can now reproduce..."

"They can't. Marcus was joking in New Reno. Super mutants are sterile. Blame me for another episode of bad humor, oh cruel reader."

 

[Black]

Bwuh?
It was a joke.
Mutants can't reproduce

I'm pretty sure they can.

I don't think he was making a joke.

2. Does FEV really cause sterility? In Fallout 1 it seemed like the answer was a resounding yes, and a number of reasons for this were given by Zax and Vree. But then in Fallout 2 after you take Marcus to the Cat's Paw he says "I hope she doesn't get pregnant" and says that the FEV doesn't make mutants go sterile, it just makes it take a few years "to get the juices flowing again". Moreoever, the deathclaws in Vault 13 were infected with FEV and yet they are able to reproduce. So, does the FEV cause sterility or not?

Answer:

* FEV causes sterility in some creatures. FEV does cause sterility in super mutants and ghouls - Marcus' comment in New Reno was a joke only (and it was an inappropriate one, for which I apologize for).

From FO Bible

Fallout 2 is not canon anyways, so don't worry about it.

Oh, okay...
FO3 will probably be the best canon Fallout anyway.

 

[kingcomrade]

Fallout 2 is not canon anyways, so don't worry about it. Neither is the Fallout Bible, which should have been called Retconing And Made-Up Justifications For Inconsistencies By Some Guy Bible.

 

[mathboy]

If the mutants weren't sterile, where were their children?

 

[Fez]

They kept them in Europe where kids are all invisible and safe from harm.

 

[kingcomrade]

If the mutants weren't sterile, where were their children?

Apparently they moved to the East Coast.

 

[Amasius]

They kept them in Europe where kids are all invisible and safe from harm.

 

[Zomg]

Do news post comment threads not automatically get posted in two subforums now? If so, awesome.

 

[Punck_D]

Very good read, the sarcasm helps to make things clear to those who still not understand why this is no decent Fallout 3 in any ways.