Putting the 'role' back in role-playing games since 2002.
Donate to Codex
Good Old Games
  • Welcome to rpgcodex.net, a site dedicated to discussing computer based role-playing games in a free and open fashion. We're less strict than other forums, but please refer to the rules.

    "This message is awaiting moderator approval": All new users must pass through our moderation queue before they will be able to post normally. Until your account has "passed" your posts will only be visible to yourself (and moderators) until they are approved. Give us a week to get around to approving / deleting / ignoring your mundane opinion on crap before hassling us about it. Once you have passed the moderation period (think of it as a test), you will be able to post normally, just like all the other retards.

Chris Avellone: Obsidian made multiple proposals to develop spin-offs for Fallout and The Elder Scrolls which were turned down by Bethesda

scytheavatar

Scholar
Joined
Sep 22, 2016
Messages
623
Chris Avellone probably does understand one thing, if you are going to make a post post apocalypse setting then does that inevitably mean you will need to make a post post post apocalypse? At some point you will start asking if the Fallout idea is something that can be milked long term. Since the wheels of rebuilding civilization would kill the whole point of the franchise.
 

Bulo

Scholar
Joined
Mar 28, 2018
Messages
336
You can just set the game somewhere else. All four New Vegas DLCs are technically post-apocalyptic

can't sell that to players with a hero complex, they would complain that their actions didn't matter

Fallout 76 is successful and nothing that happens in it ultimately matters
 

Camel

Scholar
Joined
Sep 10, 2021
Messages
2,489
Fallout 3 was post-apocalyptic and set on the US East coast and people still complained about the setting being frozen in time. You can’t satisfy everyone.
 

Bulo

Scholar
Joined
Mar 28, 2018
Messages
336
There is a degree of logic in the stagnation of the Capital Wasteland. Super mutants have been terrorising the city for centuries. It makes less sense in the safer rural fringes. Megaton doesn't really strike me as a 200 year project.

Also, I've always wondered: why is there a crater around the megaton bomb when it was clearly dropped from an aeroplane? The impact wouldn't displace that much earth
 

Yosharian

Arcane
Joined
May 28, 2018
Messages
10,186
Location
Grand Chien
There is a degree of logic in the stagnation of the Capital Wasteland. Super mutants have been terrorising the city for centuries. It makes less sense in the safer rural fringes. Megaton doesn't really strike me as a 200 year project.

Also, I've always wondered: why is there a crater around the megaton bomb when it was clearly dropped from an aeroplane? The impact wouldn't displace that much earth
Your mistake is expecting logic in Bethesda writing

There is a crater because it's fucking cool, nobody cares that that's not how science works, what are you, a fucking nerd or something?

Fallout isn't for you anymore sorry to break it to you
 

DJOGamer PT

Arcane
Joined
Apr 8, 2015
Messages
7,986
Location
Lusitânia
Fallout 3 was post-apocalyptic and set on the US East coast and people still complained about the setting being frozen in time. You can’t satisfy everyone.
The thing that Beth didn't understand is that Fallout is not a Mad Max type of post-apocalypse where the bombs dropped some 10 or 20 years ago
Fallout 1 is nearly a century after the bombs and there's already actual emerging civilization, 2 is set almost 2 centuries after the bombs and it's made clear there's actual cities dotting the wastes with functioning societies and trade between them


Super mutants have been terrorising the city for centuries.
But how did the Super Mutants get there in the first place?
The Vault Dweller nearly wipes them out by the end of F1 and without the Master there's no more production of Muties
 

Bulo

Scholar
Joined
Mar 28, 2018
Messages
336
But how did the Super Mutants get there in the first place?
Bethesda invents a new source of FEV with each new game. In 3 it was Vault-Tec, in 4 it was the Institute, and in 76 it was West Tek (but not that West Tek). The better question is, why do people from the East Coast call them super mutants? That was the Master's moniker
 

DJOGamer PT

Arcane
Joined
Apr 8, 2015
Messages
7,986
Location
Lusitânia
Man, now I'm left wondering what TES title with the team from NV would've been like
They had a great deal of experience with gamebryo, they knew what made Beth games appealing but they also vastly improved their experience, they had actual good writers at the time to make sense of the lore and plan a campgain, plus with Skyrim released recently they would be ridding the TES high like NV rode F3 high, so success financial and critical success would be garanteed

Really it seems like the ideal situation for both the companies and players
Bethseda works on the AAA numbered sequel slop for the masses and Obsidian reuses assets and fills in the gaps between releases with tigher spin-offs to sastisfy the hardcore audience

Todd always comes across as decent and genuinely interested in the projects he works on, even if they often tend to go horribly wrong.
In PatricianTV lastest review (the 8hour Starfield analysis), he presented an interview with a senior dev where he shares that ever since Skyrim's development, Todd (through no fault of his own, as he really is an approachable guy and enjoys discussing game design) has become increasingly more unreachable for his devs
Supposedly, pre-Skyrim any Beth dev could just knock on his office doors and consult him on whatever matter conserning the game, but now with mounting responsibilities to the corporate heads and the fact he has to run 3 big studios concurrently, it's pretty much impossible for anyone other than the lead devs to even schedule a meet with the man
 
Last edited:

d1r

Single handedly funding SMTVI
Patron
Joined
Nov 6, 2011
Messages
4,128
Location
Germany
But how did the Super Mutants get there in the first place?
Bethesda invents a new source of FEV with each new game. In 3 it was Vault-Tec, in 4 it was the Institute, and in 76 it was West Tek (but not that West Tek). The better question is, why do people from the East Coast call them super mutants? That was the Master's moniker
Truly Pagliarulo-esque!

Leave it to the gay paper rapist to come up with new infections in each new Fallout iteration!

CeRQrJP.png
 

Grampy_Bone

Arcane
Joined
Jan 25, 2016
Messages
3,903
Location
Wandering the world randomly in search of maps
A never-changing status quo, it'll forever be Fallout the First, same as how Dungeons and Dragons is always Dungeons and Dragons.
That's pretty much what Bethesda has done though. F2 and FNV had rising civilization, F3 and F4 are stuck in perpetual scavenger worlds.

Anyway I always wondered if FNV was pushed out the door intentionally buggy to sabotage the metacritic bonus and ensure it would not surpass the primary games.
 

Immortal

Arcane
In My Safe Space
Joined
Sep 13, 2014
Messages
5,070
Location
Safe Space - Don't Bulli
Chris Avellone probably does understand one thing, if you are going to make a post post apocalypse setting then does that inevitably mean you will need to make a post post post apocalypse? At some point you will start asking if the Fallout idea is something that can be milked long term. Since the wheels of rebuilding civilization would kill the whole point of the franchise.

I've heard the argument made that the Starwars setting is only equipped to tell one type of story. The "Young Jedi grows up, meets a mentor, challenged by the temptation of the dark side". Any other attempts to tell a different story are met with failure / rejected by fans.

Did MCA attempt to break out of that mould in KOTOR 2?
 

Roguey

Codex Staff
Staff Member
Sawyerite
Joined
May 29, 2010
Messages
36,547
That's pretty much what Bethesda has done though. F2 and FNV had rising civilization, F3 and F4 are stuck in perpetual scavenger worlds.
Tim Cain said Fallout 4 with its focus on synths (and synth rights) doesn't feel like Fallout to him anymore and I agree.

Anyway I always wondered if FNV was pushed out the door intentionally buggy to sabotage the metacritic bonus and ensure it would not surpass the primary games.
Chris Avellone claims they did not, Anthony Davis and Brian Fargo claimed they did. I'd say it's possible for two things to be possible at once, that Obsidian didn't manage the project as well as they could have (which is true of virtually every video game ever created) and that Bethesda moved the release date up just a tad to ding the review scores when the product was shaping up to be a little too good.
 

0sacred

poop retainer
Patron
Joined
Feb 12, 2021
Messages
1,795
Location
MFGA (Make Fantasy Great Again)
Codex Year of the Donut
can't sell that to players with a hero complex, they would complain that their actions didn't matter. Also no awesome button effect
That's less abrasive than Avellone's "just keep nuking the world so your actions don't matter" solution which pisses a lot of people off (me included).

welp, you could say at least there was some dynamic in the setting. Things beyond your control, sure, but it doesn't give off the vibe of a static world where your actions are window dressing.
 

Lemming42

Arcane
Joined
Nov 4, 2012
Messages
6,768
Location
The Satellite Of Love
In PatricianTV lastest review (the 8hour Starfield analysis), he presented dev interviews that make the assertion that ever since Skyrim's development, Todd (through no fault of his own, as he really is an approachable guy and enjoys discussing game design) has become increasingly more unreachable for his devs
Supposedly, pre-Skyrim any Beth dev could just knock on his office doors and consult him on whatever matter conserning the game, but now with mounting responsibilities to the corporate heads and the fact he has to run 3 big studios concurrently, it's pretty much impossible for anyone other than the lead devs to even schedule a meet with the an
Sounds about right - those behind the scenes pre-release Starfield videos gave the impression that the company had become unwieldy and bloated, with too many people doing too many different things, nobody talking to each other and no real central direction. Obviously made a lot worse by the amount of international outsourcing they did.

I get the impression that Todd himself is kind of tired at this point too, the days of being a hands-on project lead over a relatively small team are long gone and now he's basically just the face of a corporation and his main role seems to be to take the blame when people aren't satisfied with their products.
 

Yosharian

Arcane
Joined
May 28, 2018
Messages
10,186
Location
Grand Chien
All the old guard are tired and past it at this point

And a lot of them were never exactly swimming in talent in the first place

Time for Bethesda to be taken outside and shot in the head
 

The Jester

Cipher
Joined
Mar 1, 2020
Messages
1,741
A never-changing status quo, it'll forever be Fallout the First, same as how Dungeons and Dragons is always Dungeons and Dragons.
D&D was a lot to begin with, it can support a lot of stories and it's still D&D. Fallout was basically self-contained, seems very difficult to expand on without going bigger. Humanity wouldn't be left scrabbling around in the dirt forever, at least not in the apocalypse Fallout presented. Would love to hear Chris talk about this now and if he still feels the same.
There must be a delicate balance between Bethesda's shitty Mad Max theme park and Mojave's possible post-post-post-apocalyptic future that becomes almost indistinguishable from regular society.

Bethesda's approach leans too much into the exaggerated, almost caricatured post-apocalyptic world. On the other hand, Avellone's notion of keeping Fallout grounded in the aftermath, without allowing it to progress too far into a rebuilt world, aims to maintain that distinct Fallout feel.

The danger lies in losing what makes Fallout Fallout—struggling against humanity's past mistakes.
Avellone's extreme-sounding ideas about resetting and nuking regions might actually serve as a safeguard against Fallout losing its unique essence amidst a civilization that's too far removed from its post-apocalyptic origins.
 
Last edited:

Yosharian

Arcane
Joined
May 28, 2018
Messages
10,186
Location
Grand Chien
I honestly don't give a shit whether Fallout stays Fallout I just want a good game

If the series changes then it is what it is, but the principal thing is to make a fucking good videogame already
 

The Jester

Cipher
Joined
Mar 1, 2020
Messages
1,741
I honestly don't give a shit whether Fallout stays Fallout I just want a good game

If the series changes then it is what it is, but the principal thing is to make a fucking good videogame already
I guess it's all comes back to "what is Fallout to you?".
 

Drowed

Arcane
Joined
Dec 28, 2011
Messages
1,708
Location
Core City
Actually, what I regret the most is the fact that Skyrim:Obsidian was never released, so that I could see Bethesda and everyone else getting butthurt when it was considered superior to OG Skyrim in practically every way.
 
Joined
Jan 21, 2023
Messages
3,593
Todd is probably the guy who has the highest rank whenever he's in the room for the dailies, but he has to answer to the board of directors.
 

As an Amazon Associate, rpgcodex.net earns from qualifying purchases.
Back
Top Bottom