Interview Codex Interview with MCA

[bryce777]

on new reno: fallout is not only about realism, it's about style and atmosphere as much as survival.

You said this, which is partly correct.
And then you said this:

the ganster setting fitted perfectly with the 50's theme that is an essencial part of fallout.

Which is not correct in ANY sense. Gangsters weren't a big part of '50s atmophere.

Japanese mobsters with samurai swords do not fit into post-apocalyptic of California any more than the kung fu Chinese people did. New Reno was TOO organized. It had casinos and crime bosses, but where are they getting their money? When people are struggling to survive after the bomb, they're going to go spend their money in huge casinos? That's not even the real problem, as you said there was something similar set in Junktown, though I don't agree that they were analogous.

The real point is that it doesn't fit the atmosphere like you said it does. Fallout is about survival, desperation, peasant communities and gangs and petty crime, lost technology, and radiation monsters. Not mobsters and Yakuza. New Reno was barely post-apocalyptic at all, it might as well have been set in 1920s urban decay area. Fallout 2 is full of shit that doesn't fit in with the setting, none of which is "essential" to what Fallout is.

Gangsters were still around in the 50s. Also, who said it had to be exactly 1955? I guess john sullivan was out of place, too, then. And the Khans - those biker guys are from the 60s! WTF?

Yakuza might be out of place, but they are just a random encounter in the wastes.

Overall, if you let such petty shit ruin a game for you, you seriously need to get a fucking life.

 

[elander_]

Isn't there an explanation for the gangster suits and the chinese kung-fu chars. If i recall correctly if you ask one of the gangster about their way of dressing they say their boss used to read certain magazines and likes the way they dress. They just enjoy dressing like that. As for the chinese kung-fu people they all come in a boat and have preserve their traditions in a weird fashion. In a post-apocalyptic world some weirdness should be expected. There are references to abandoned cities and reading materials that can be pilled in the wastes of dead cities filled with mutants. We should expect that the remaindings of civilization has tried somehow to copy the past with some adaptation. Also remenber the post-apocalitic civilization is very technologicaly advanced. Many doctors use vault technology to heal and restore injured people. One of these guys happens to be the golden egg chicken that supplies new reno with the drug they need. Fallout is kind of a mix of the old and the new without any organization.

 

[bryce777]

Also, the only ones dressed like mobsters are three bouncers at sharky's and a few random encounter mobsters.

In gangsterworld everyone was a gangster. Here, there are just a few games with a few dozen members. Mos of the people are not mobsters and presumably most of the people do not live on the strip....

 

[bryce777]

Also, this part of fallout 2 is very close to vegas in wasteland, and yet I don't ever hear people bitch about vegas being 'out of the setting' for wasteland.

In fact, I just replayed wasteland and they steal at least 3 quests/puzzles wholehog in fallout 2.

 

[AlanC9]

There are a couple of problems with New Reno, but it isn't as bad as people are saying.

As presented, New Reno isn't really a gangster town. It's a feudal town that has adopted the outward trappings of gangsters. I don't see a big problem with this.

The Strip doesn't seem to make much sense unless New Reno's a lot bigger than it appears to be. Nor does the porn. But drug and booze industries fit the setting just fine. As for the gambling, if you buy it in Junktown, you pretty much have to buy it in New Reno.

 

[HardCode]

Who the hell is MCA?

A game designer who also raps/rocks with The Beastie Boys.

Nice style of interview. More like a real back-and-forth TV interview. It's about time, instead of the "traditional" e-mail-to-person, receive-canned-answers interviews.

 

[Section8]

I can't believe people are bothering to argue this. New Reno is basically a completely different setting wedged into the game. It's like Mario games with the obligatory "Ice World", "Desert World", etc. It was entertaining enough, but...

Maybe Oblivion's persuasion minigame will be entertaining. That doesn't change the fact that it's poorly integrated, with no thought given to context. See what I mean?

"But oh noes! Gizmo has a casino!"

Yes, a tiny one, built out of sheet metal. New Reno has gigantic, multistory edifices of glitz. You can't even go close to comparing the two. It's like saying:

"Gothic has Swampweed, so Gothic 3 would be perfectly justified in having a town with two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a saltshaker half-full of cocaine, and a whole galaxy of uppers, downers, laughers, screamers... Also, a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of beer, a pint of raw ether, and two dozen amyls."

...Or...

"Fallout 2 had a car, so Fallout Tactics is perfectly justified in having Hummers, Tanks, APCs, etc."

...Or...

"Fallout had the Glow, so Fallout 3 should have 4 nuked underground military installations, all right next to each other, and each one should have about 27 storeys."

...Or...

"Fallout 2 had a joke about poo, so I don't have a problem with Fallout Tactics being one big joke about poo."

 

[Drakron]

I think New Reno was out of place because there were no apparent connections to NCR or Vault CIty.

Look at this way, New Reno works when traffic support its existence, NCR have power generators so there is a reason for porn industry to start up (Vault City and NCR can meet the supply) and gambling and prostitution also can be supported by the traveling caravan merchants.

Problem New Reno appears to be alone, there is little to nothing supporting New Reno porn, gambling and prostitution... its set in a void and that is the problem, if there were caravans and people from NCR and Vault City going around in it then yes, it would make sense or a lot more sense that 20 prostitutes in the street without anyone in then.

That is also why NCR looks odd because its just one town, if there was a ring of small farms towns around it we could understand NCR better but there was not, besides NCR town there was nothing supporting its existence.

Problem with FO2 is that at start you have the same look that the original Fallout but the moment you hit Vault City is like things change, I am not against making the game look like at the turn of century with the "border" towns having no power with the larger towns having more advanced technology but the game had in one hand the left overs of a nuclear war with very small towns and on the other NCR/Vault City/New Reno that lacked anything to support then (I understant Vault City was made by the GECK and so was already failing).

 

[Mantiis]

Problem New Reno appears to be alone, there is little to nothing supporting New Reno porn, gambling and prostitution

Wasn't new reno built on Jet? The most addictive drug you can get and as a result wouldn't New Reno be swimming in cash? Hence the porn industry and the Gambling?

Prostitution is the oldest profession in the world and can be found where ever people congregate even if it is illegal.

I would also submit that all the towns are bigger than you see in the game as a result you would not see everything a city/town has to offer. It is also smack bang in the middle of the area so traders probably make it a stop over on their way to other towns and to sell wares.

The real point is that it doesn't fit the atmosphere like you said it does. Fallout is about survival, desperation, peasant communities and gangs and petty crime, lost technology, and radiation monsters. Not mobsters and Yakuza. New Reno was barely post-apocalyptic at all, it might as well have been set in 1920s urban decay area. Fallout 2 is full of shit that doesn't fit in with the setting, none of which is "essential" to what Fallout is.

I don't even know where to start here - did you talk to any of the npcs in new reno? IT IS ALL ABOUT

survival, desperation, peasant communities

Many years had passed since the bomb dropped in fallout 1, decades later fallout 2 occured and for some reason organised crime coming about is hard to fathom? Taking the names their forfathers used is also a problem (mob,yakuza)?

My god there are even complaints about cars working; you people are fucked in the head.

 

[Drakron]

Wasn't new reno built on Jet? The most addictive drug you can get and as a result wouldn't New Reno be swimming in cash? Hence the porn industry and the Gambling?

No, Jet was fairly recent and only one of the families was dealing it it.

And if New Reno was locked then the economy would collapse if Jet was induduced, just like it was doing were it was open used.

So you dont get a New Reno swimming in cash, also the porn industry was porn MOVIES and you need power and electronics for that and only places were that was somewhat common avaible were Vault City and New California Republic, New Reno could not support a porn industry if it was unable to export it.

Same with prostitution, there was prostitution in some cities but they were a few ... unlike New Reno that looked to have more prostitutes that all other types of NPCs.

So unless they were paying to have sex with each other ... not able to support such high numbers.

Prostitution is the oldest profession in the world and can be found where ever people congregate even if it is illegal.

Yes but in the range that New Reno had ... unlikely.

I would also submit that all the towns are bigger than you see in the game as a result you would not see everything a city/town has to offer. It is also smack bang in the middle of the area so traders probably make it a stop over on their way to other towns and to sell wares.

Explain the lack of people in the casinos then ... you cannot.

You cannot show that New Reno or any other town was bigger ... sure you can argue about (Vault City is too small for the population that the Vault sould had) but the essence of the matter if you cannot expect people to come up with reasons why the place feels out of place and/or fake.

It sould have been shown to the player and it was not.

 

[spacemoose]

reality

Look here buddy, we don't want any of that here. Guns are cool, porn is cool, gangsters are cool, prostitution is cool. Mix 'em together and you get cool^cool.

Worrying about who the gangsters extort money from, if the whole town is populated by gangsters, and where the fuck do they get food is not cool.

 

[kingcomrade]

On the matter of towns which make no sense: Redding - who needs gold in a post apocaliptic world? And Gecko - what the hell did they need the energy the reactor produced for? There was nothing in that town that needed electricity. And they didn't even export it until you came.

This is exactly the sort of thing about Fallout 2 that makes it so incongruous to the setting. It's just a mish-mash of "oh that would be cool!" That sort of thing works really well in a strange fantasy game like PS:T, but not so well in Fallout. Just having random weird shit doesn't contribute anything to the setting, it's not part of Fallout's idiom, as you retards keep stating.

@WBC-
I'm pretty sure the "analog" car was a play on the way everything flashy in today's world is digital. The next line on that commercial is, "No digital anything!"

@bryce
I never said there were no gangsters in the '50s, retard. I even expected that response and worded my statement carefully, and yet you still managed to bumble into it.

 

[kingcomrade]

I don't even know where to start here - did you talk to any of the npcs in new reno? IT IS ALL ABOUT
Quote:
survival, desperation, peasant communities

What? What do mobsters, Yakuza with ninja swords, an S&M house, casinos, etc. have to do with meager living and desperation?

The real point is that it doesn't fit the atmosphere like you said it does

 

[kingcomrade]

Redding - who needs gold in a post apocaliptic world?

Or bottlecaps.

It's a medium of exchange. You basically just asked, what do people need with wealth? Hey, you don't need all of those green pieces of paper in your wallet, do you? I mean, they can't do anything, right? You can't make anything out of them, can you?

Gold, on the other hand, is pretty worthless if you already have a medium of exchange and live in a primitive society. I mean, if i"m not mistaken, the biggest use for gold today besides jewelry (not exactly A#1 priority after the bomb) is as conductors in microchips.

 

[Mantiis]

What? What do mobsters, Yakuza with ninja swords, an S&M house, casinos, etc. have to do with meager living and desperation?

How about the prostitutes? You left them out of that statement to make it sound more convincing. There are few things more desperate than a drug addict becoming a prostitute. Yakuza with ninja swords is a bad thing but randoms in the wastelands with rocket launchers is ok. Casinos - people like to gamble; plenty of people place bets when they are desperate: "I just need one lucky break". Meager living not so much but I wasn't quoting that. Unless you are a high up in one of the families you are desperate.

S&M house falls under prostitution.

No, Jet was fairly recent and only one of the families was dealing it it.

It is hinted that they had other drugs being created but Jet was the next big thing; so the argument still stands.

also the porn industry was porn MOVIES and you need power and electronics for

I can see your point but if you are in a position of power and you wanted porn made it would get done. Not all electronics were fried - from memeory they were using valves not transistors right? There were also porno mags and tapes in other parts of the game weren't there (I might be confusing it with another game...)?

Same with prostitution, there was prostitution in some cities but they were a few ... unlike New Reno that looked to have more prostitutes that all other types of NPCs.

It is also smack bang in the middle of the area so traders probably make it a stop over on their way to other towns and to sell wares.

As I said above it is a trade route where people go to have a good time. And plus you get addicted to jet instantly - the end result is a crakwhore (jetwhore?), need money for the next hit. This easily explains the numbers of prostitutes - their clients were the traders.

You cannot show that New Reno or any other town was bigger

I use common sense - otherwise the population of that whole area (fallout world) is 100-200 odd people.

It sould have been shown to the player and it was not.

You cant honestly believe that the developer has the time and resources to create a full scale model of what the town would be like in real life do you? Let's be serious here.

 

[spacemoose]

Redding - who needs gold in a post apocaliptic world?

Or bottlecaps.

It's a medium of exchange. You basically just asked, what do people need with wealth? Hey, you don't need all of those green pieces of paper in your wallet, do you? I mean, they can't do anything, right? You can't make anything out of them, can you?

They're only worth something because everyone is expecting everyone else to value them. They used to be backed by gold, but not anymore. Now its a sort of self fulfilling prophesy - the paper money is only worth something if you ( and a bunch of other people ) believe its worth something.

Gold, on the other hand, is pretty worthless if you already have a medium of exchange and live in a primitive society. I mean, if i"m not mistaken, the biggest use for gold today besides jewelry (not exactly A#1 priority after the bomb) is as conductors in microchips.

In these unpredictable economic times gold provides an island of security in a turbulent sea. You owe it to yourself, and your children to hold and share the intrinsic beauty and value of these beautiful Vienna Philharmonic coins. Call Monex today and join the millions of investors with a small part of their prortfolio in gold.

 

[bryce777]

Obviously, you can't count the fucking numbers otherwise the encounters alone would say there are 500 bandits for every dirt farmer out there.

Also, the whole idea of crime and tyrrany is not everyone survives. Especially with so many people addicted to jet.

New reno is not some goofy 'other setting'. Guess what? Different places are going to have different things going on! Not every city will be exactly the same. It it were it would be boring as fuck.

 

[Volourn]

Fuckin' anti NRs are morons! NR symbolizes the true greatness of the FO series. It is awesome, and is pure FO. Anyonw who dislikes it is a FAKE Fallout fan.

Period.

 

[Walks with the Snails]

Man, I'm getting vault13.net flashbacks. If the only folks willing to make the argument against are KingComrade (a newbie) and Section8 (a self-hating Fallout: Tactics developer ), it's probably due to boredom after having this argument with 500 people before you. I dunno, I guess everyone has to hash it all out at some point.

Yeah, you can justify New Reno as much as you want. I could write out a treatise justifying how Elminster could discover the secrets of nuclear fission and develop an atom bomb, but come on. Nukes in a D&D game would just be lame. Just don't do it. People who just swallow whatever you feed them as long as their box blinks and flashes at the right time when they type the keys will still go "cool" and play on, but fuck them, they'll uncritically like the game regardless of what you do. I don't care if other folks will wet themselves if you just manage to tack on some nice dialogue and situations. You can still have the nice dialogue and situations without mauling the setting in the process. If you need something that can destroy the world for your story just stick with the setting and make the doomsday device magical. If you just have to indulge the irresistable compulsion to work in a Dr. Strangelove easter egg into your game no matter the setting, name one of the head wizards Magus Strangelove and give him a cool levitating chair. He can even vocally fantasize about stashing away some bar wenches as good breeding stock in his indestructable magic tower. You don't have to put nuclear bombs in a stupid medieval fantasy game.

New Reno did suffer from a "ooh, this is cool, and this is cool, and this is cool" syndrome. It wasn't really cohesive and didn't fit. Glitzy, busy, profitable, modern-looking casinos 160 years after the last plastic was manufactured, hmm.

 

[Volourn]

Don't be a moron. Snails is wrong. And, he knows it. What a tool.

 

[Drakron]

When you say gold in FO2 is useless you are right and wrong.

On itself it was useless but the game was using gold coins as currancy and they come from either NCR or Vault City that were minting then.

That is why VC, NCR and NR wanted the gold ... NCR and VC wanted to control the economy of the wastelands (and so needed their coin to be used) as NR wanted to use it as pressure against VC and NCR.

 

[Lumpy]

Problem is, it's a post apocaliptic world. People have to focus on survival. A small casino like Gizmo's may exist. But there aren't enough rich people in the wasteland, to justify a town FULL of casinos and prostitutes. People can't live off Jet, you know. They have to work sometimes, not be high all day. All right, some may steal, but from whom? From each other? From the prostitutes?

 

[Severian Silk]

Do you think that it is a simple operation to supply alcohol to the entire united states? Or so supply heroin or cocaine? No, it is not. Pablo Escobar owned hundreds of farms used to produce coca leaves, for example. Crime bosses in Russia own as many legitimate businesses as anyone else.

I think his point was that this was too complex for the PA setting.

In China, there was once a pirate fleet with over 80,000 pirates all led by the same pirate queen.

One pirate queen != four competing gangster families.

the ganster setting fitted perfectly with the 50's theme that is an essencial part of fallout.

The gangster period was during Prohibition, in the 30's.

If you complain about new reno because of the sophistication of the crime organizations you should be equally pissed by by gizmo (was that his name?) running a casino in the middle of the radiated wasteland in fallout 1.

One crime boss is not the same as having four competing crime families.

 

[kris]

So you dont get a New Reno swimming in cash, also the porn industry was porn MOVIES and you need power and electronics for that and only places were that was somewhat common avaible were Vault City and New California Republic, New Reno could not support a porn industry if it was unable to export it.

Same with prostitution, there was prostitution in some cities but they were a few ... unlike New Reno that looked to have more prostitutes that all other types of NPCs.

Explain the lack of people in the casinos then ... you cannot.

You cannot show that New Reno or any other town was bigger ... sure you can argue about (Vault City is too small for the population that the Vault sould had) but the essence of the matter if you cannot expect people to come up with reasons why the place feels out of place and/or fake.

It sould have been shown to the player and it was not.

It seem all your problems with this derivates from the scale of Fallout/RPGs in general. Or possibly the way they present the whole little thing. I always had in mind that you play in a miniature version of the real land in the game. Obviously it is the real brunt of the people that go on missing since they are not interesting. I can see no problem in how they could sell and distribute the porn movies are anything, what I do agree on though is that they visualised New Reno in a bad way. The problem with their visualising is just what you mentioned with the lack of people in the casinos. The whole place lack customers, customers for all services. In fact only the boxing arena have at least some audience, but even that audience is seriously underdeveloped considering the money and attention the last fight seem to generate.

Having normal gangster style families is entirerly natural in my view and I should add that neither of them seems to be that wealthy really...

Do you think that it is a simple operation to supply alcohol to the entire united states? Or so supply heroin or cocaine? No, it is not. Pablo Escobar owned hundreds of farms used to produce coca leaves, for example. Crime bosses in Russia own as many legitimate businesses as anyone else.

I think his point was that this was too complex for the PA setting.

We are talking a 100 years to start up and organise. While a lot of infrastructure where lost, knowledge in general to start up something like this sure could be found.

 

[Mantiis]

Man, I'm getting vault13.net flashbacks. If the only folks willing to make the argument against are KingComrade (a newbie) and Section8 (a self-hating Fallout: Tactics developer ), it's probably due to boredom after having this argument with 500 people before you. I dunno, I guess everyone has to hash it all out at some point.

Yeah, you can justify New Reno as much as you want. I could write out a treatise justifying how Elminster could discover the secrets of nuclear fission and develop an atom bomb, but come on. Nukes in a D&D game would just be lame. Just don't do it. People who just swallow whatever you feed them as long as their box blinks and flashes at the right time when they type the keys will still go "cool" and play on, but fuck them, they'll uncritically like the game regardless of what you do. I don't care if other folks will wet themselves if you just manage to tack on some nice dialogue and situations. You can still have the nice dialogue and situations without mauling the setting in the process. If you need something that can destroy the world for your story just stick with the setting and make the doomsday device magical. If you just have to indulge the irresistable compulsion to work in a Dr. Strangelove easter egg into your game no matter the setting, name one of the head wizards Magus Strangelove and give him a cool levitating chair. He can even vocally fantasize about stashing away some bar wenches as good breeding stock in his indestructable magic tower. You don't have to put nuclear bombs in a stupid medieval fantasy game.

New Reno did suffer from a "ooh, this is cool, and this is cool, and this is cool" syndrome. It wasn't really cohesive and didn't fit. Glitzy, busy, profitable, modern-looking casinos 160 years after the last plastic was manufactured, hmm.

So basically you are saying "I don't think New Reno fitted in and you can't see that but you are wrong so it doesn't matter".

Awesome, I want to be you.

I liked new reno, I also believe it fitted in and this is the first I have heard of people not liking the place. The casinos I thought were there before the bombs dropped (I dont live in the US) so I thought the people living there just reused the left over buildings.

All you have said is "nukes dont belong in DnD so big casinos dont belong in fallout"; the arguments provided regarding new reno fitting into the fallout world are valid whether you like it or not, if you cannot give a rebuttal that isn't along the lines of "I'm right you are wrong" then possibly, just possibly you may be wrong and cannot see the whole picture.

Edit: and how were the casinos "Glitzy, busy"? They looked pretty run down to me.