Game News NMA clears up FO3 storyline confusion

[Vault Dweller]

Tags: Fallout 3 (Van Buren)

<a href=http://www.nma-fallout.com>NMA</a> posted this <a href=http://www.nma-fallout.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4472>clarification</a> of the FO3 storyline. The source isn't mentioned though, so think what you will.
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<blockquote>The player more or less gets "jumped" by a bunch of robots while minding his own buisness at the start of the game. When the player comes to, he is in a strange prison with many other people. Your not some unique magical guy that these robots were hunting. Your just some John Doe character who gets caught up in things. Your guy is just another unlucky bastard the robots picked up. You don't have amnesia, so no Planescapey thing there either, though obviously you were blacked out for a bit.
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Now the player starts to work on his escape plan, and right before his plan is complete the prison is attacked. This is not a "Unknown force rushes in to miraculously save the PC" situation. You *already* had things in hand; it's just that these dudes
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happened to inter! fere with *you*. Furthermore, the people attacking the prison don't specifically care about you. Unlike in Lionheart, you aren't on the run from powerful opponents and you don't necessarily need the help in escaping - it just so happens that someone else beat you to it.
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Once the attack has occurred, the PC's free to leave or stay.The prison's mainframe will eventually self-repair and start sending out retrieval bots to go grab any prisoners who wandered off (including you), but it's not a life-or-death situation. The prisons still busted up, so you can get out again if they drag you back. The robots coming after you are there just to remind you that there is a main plot. Meaning, eventually you might want to go see if you can stop these robots from coming after you or find out why they are grabbing people in the first place. Its not like they keep coming after you all game, or even most of it. So I hope you can see how its not like Lionheart or PS:T.
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Although the story has familiar elements, extra care was taken to make it feel different with lots of cool twists. After all, the venerable Fallout started out as a simple "Retrieve the one artifact that will save us all" quest, which has been done to death in just about every fantasy game out there.
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<i>Kharn commented</i>: So the player is not "some special hero", nor is he being hunted by "evil forces" that are after him specifically, nor does he suffer from amnesia.</blockquote>
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No comments, I've filled my quota of pissed off people for today
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[Major_Blackhart]

Now I'm not really sure what to think.

 

[Anonymous]

It still sucks and has nothing to do with Fallout's world.

 

[Major_Blackhart]

Well yeah, and the idea of a working, programable robot group is far fetched as well. And it does sound still alot like their other games, and the wrong ones, but at the same time...................................Ahhhh FUCK IT, YOU'RE RIGHT! I was just tryin to be somewhat optimistic or something like that. Well, at least it won't be made.

 

[Ausir]

Well, it's not like there aren't any robots in Fallout universe.

 

[Transcendent One]

That's my impression. It sounds pretty lame, not very Falloutish at all, but it is an improvement over the guy with amnesia.

 

[Raymondo]

Yeah, interplay have really gone down hill.

Although sometimes a game can actually be better in vision then sound but I don't think this is the case. Maybe Fallout is just one of them games which shouldn't be continued.

I think a deadly killer virus would have worked better but then again a deadly killer virus would be the apocalypse all over again.

A deadly killer virus fixes everything.

 

[Anonymous]

The way I see it, Fallout 3 is just Tactics in sheeps clothing.

It's not going to have anything really to do with the other Fallouts, yes, it'll be Post-Apoc, it'll have 50s hairdoos and billboards sprinkled around, but that doesnt mean that it's Fallout. The way I see it, it's not a true sequel because it's not building on the past Fallouts, it's extending from it. Look at Fallout 1 and 2, 2 was linked in story to 1's end and the locations in 2 were progressed forms of 1 (such as NCR). It was a sequel to Fallout because it was Fallout's world and characters progressed forward, a SEQUEL.

Fallout 3 was going to have it's own characters and locations and it's story is clear from here that it wasnt linked to Fallout 1 or 2, so why even make it Fallout? And then we got the fucking up of SPECIAL and the fucking up of combat into a messy RT/TB hybrid, and what other "Fallout" game did that? OH RIGHT, TACTICS.

And remember how Tactic's initial view was? Praise to them, o bringers of the new Fallout! Yay yay! Then we get it and it fucking sucks. I would bet a pretty penny the same thing happens with 3. Oh yay,yay, new Fallout (because the number next to the name changed!) glory to thee makers! OH HEY WAIT, THE GAME SUCKS.

Then there is the robots, I recall the only time the robots could fight you is if they had gone wonky and grabbed a gun. Robots in Fallout were part of the retro feel, we had Brainbots, which were the CRAZY SCIENCE ROBOTS OF THE FUTURE! And Mr.Handy who was those Handy,Dandy, Walk the dog and Clean the car robots mentioned in the 50s era as the wave of the future. No where was there OMG MEGA COMBAT ROBOTS, because they didnt fit the style of the game. I'm not nit-picking and denying new different robots could be made, but all and all, it just doesnt work in the damn setting. Same thing with the prison-bots, doesnt make sense. And hey, hold the phone, what other "Fallout" game had robots that were fucked up and focused on too much? OH RIGHT, TACTICS.

So you see what i'm getting at? It wasnt really a Fallout game, it had nothing to do with fucking Fallout besides the name, which is used because Jefferson got kicked into the can and they wanted to make something before their inevitable firing.

A nice sort of explaination of how it goes is something like, say you had some strange birth defect, an extra fetus arm growing out of your side. The doctors cut it off, not only because it's odd, but because it's hindersome and doesnt contribute to the body's well-being and development. Right, look at Fallout 3. Fallout 3 is that extra fetus arm on Fallout. It's an un-needed extention of something that could instead be good if they built up and onthe main body.

Think if Fallout 3 got made, sold alot due to namesake and Interplay wasnt spinning into hell. There would be more Fallout sequels, expansions all sorts of crap, and all of it would probably keep making new locations. Why? Because the developers suck wang and cant design a SEQUEL and instead make a part of the world to let their ideas run wild. They keep doing it over and over and we got a big messed up, retarded world that is inconsistant with each other. I'm not bad mouthing new locations in the games, but totally diverting from what made Fallout Fallout is pretty shitty.

Hope that made sense.

 

[Major_Blackhart]

We already got a few of those.

 

[Ausir]

Fallout 2 had lots of combat robots in the Enclave and SAD.

 

[undead dolphin hacker]

Sounds to me like you're trying to make the loss of Fallout 3 easier by saying, "Oh well it would have sucked."

Who cares whether it would have rocked or sucked. The depressing stickler is, you'll never know.

 

[Volourn]

Dophin wins. :D

 

[HanoverF]

I don't think it would have sucked, if done right it coulda been fun, but as Fallout 3 it sucks. It reads like a fanfic continuation of Fallout Tactics. Mysterious Super Robotic Prisons? In the Fallout world? Just doesn't fit. Well you could make it fit like you can make the Enclave fit and vaults being ridiculous experiments fit, but it ends up making the whole less cohesive.

 

[kumquatq3]

I don't know a ton about the plot, but I think it should be noted that this is just the start of the game. It's not like its the main plot.

 

[DarkUnderlord]

Have we got any word on just WHO exactly this "clarification" has come from?

 

[Realbumpbert]

Sounds like the beginning of BG2.

 

[Jed]

Sounds like the beginning of BG2.

Or Torment,... or Lionheart...

 

[Sol Invictus]

I just think that Puuk is annotating whatever storyline they wrote before, which just so happened to be Torment/BG/Lionheart-esque in nature with a bunch of new storyline details to make it seem like BIS knew what they were doing before the game got canned.

In all probability, the game was probably exactly as I said it was and that he's just making this stuff up so we think better of them. After all, you'd probably do the same if you wanted to save face and it isn't as if anyone can dispute it.

That issue aside, the game still doesn't sound like it fits into the Fallout universe. I'm willing to bet that when Tim Cain envisioned the pre-War Fallout world, there weren't any prisons run by robots and I'd like to ask when the last time you saw a bunch of wandering robots in either Fallout or Fallout 2 was.

The newly annotated story -seems- to be a lot better than what we 'originally figured' with all of these issues dealt with.

But here's a little question for you, Puuk: Why didn't you correct our misconceptions a little sooner?

 

[GreenNight]

Fallout 2 had lots of combat robots in the Enclave and SAD.

And in Fallout there was the glow (if I recall the name correctly)

 

[Ausir]

But I'm talking of those big, badass robots with miniguns and rocket launchers. Glow had only brainbots and floating eye bots.

 

[Balthamael]

In all probability, the game was probably exactly as I said it was and that he's just making this stuff up so we think better of them. After all, you'd probably do the same if you wanted to save face and it isn't as if anyone can dispute it.

Methinks you are taking yourself too seriously here. What would be the point for Puuk(it is him, right?) to alter the original storyline so as to please you and some other people? What is there to gain in doing that? To save face? I don't think so, Puuk was in the IWD2-team so I'm sure he is used to people hating his games at this point. More likely it is just as he says and he just wants to clear some confusion.

 

[Sol Invictus]

Don't be so naive, Balthy. People just like telling other people what they like to hear. While his motives may be good and pure instead of self-serving, for the sake of comforting us with the idea that the game would have been as good as we wanted it to be, it still doesn't change anything - if he made it up.

 

[kumquatq3]

If any of this stuff is "made up", I sure heard about alot of it a long while ago.


I doubt a conspiracy. Unless several people worked together to trick me. For whatever my word is worth.

 

[Volourn]

I can't beleieve people are now sideways accusing the Pukester of lying to save face. OMG I seriously doubt; he'd cry if you don't like the story of a probably non existent game. Weird stuff.

So what; if it isn't the most original story. FO1&2's stories weren't the most original either. Not to mention, all the flack 'cause of "killer robots" is a joke as I seriously doubt that it's so far fetch that they'd exist in the FO universe cosnideirng what exosted in FO1 & FO2.

Ah well. No biggie, either way.

 

[Azael]

I don't care if it's unoriginal or not, after all the starting point of the first game was pretty much as unoriginal as it gets "go fetch the one artifact that can save our people". The problem is that it doesn't seem plausible in the context of the setting.