Interview Deiley on His Deathclaws

[luj1]

If you want a Fallout game that feels like a proper successor to Fallout 1 play Fallout: Sonora. It's very good, especially for a mod that was made by a bunch of Yakuts and Russians in a basement.

Funny that all the best mods for Fallout are Russian

And all of them are incredibly good. I'd take Fallout of Nevada over any form of FO3-4

 

[Jacov]

And all of them are incredibly good. I'd take Fallout of Nevada over any form of FO3-4

I'm yet to try Nevada. How is it compared to Sonora?

 

[Juju Zombie]

Talking Deathclaws is the dumbest thing I ever heard of. Imagine if the main characters in Jurassic Park could have a conversation with the T-Rex and Raptors.

You obviously haven’t seen the latest entries in the Jurassic franchise

 

[Zeriel]

FEV became to Fallout what the force is to Star Wars.

Female Evolutionary Virus? It all checks out.

 

[H. P. Lovecraft's Cat]

Talking Deathclaws is the dumbest thing I ever heard of. Imagine if the main characters in Jurassic Park could have a conversation with the T-Rex and Raptors.

You obviously haven’t seen the latest entries in the Jurassic franchise

No and I never will.

 

[Basshead]

FEV became to Fallout what the force is to Star Wars.

 

[Strig]

Talking Deathclaws is the dumbest thing I ever heard of. Imagine if the main characters in Jurassic Park could have a conversation with the T-Rex and Raptors.

 

[PunchYouInTheFace]

Fallout 2 did arguably start the trend of Fallout being a goofy meme fest

I think Fallout is as meme fest but more subtle. Fallout 2 is just... too "on your face".

Fallout 2 is certaintly an all-rounded *better* RPG games, RPG as in traditional, not out of the box, following tradition, non-evolving..... like Marvel Cinematic Universe. It's the status quo of RPG design.

Fallout 1 was like unstable material, shit inconsistent, new theme, new shit, non-linear, broken stuff being put together with duck tape, but it's evolving. Those who come later, understand what they're trying to pull and trying to mimic it... by either creating something new again (Space Wreck), or following tradition (again) (Fallout 2, Underrail, Colony Ship).

Anyway, I think early Obsidian/Avellone has this tendency to preserve status quo design when BioWare (back then) evolving from Baldur's Gate 1/2, to Neverwinter Nights, to KOTOR.

Not sure what's the fuzz is about with the deathclaw thingy though, I think it's fine.

 

[TalesfromtheCrypt]

This Deiley guy is retarded, and I don‘t particularly care for the talking Deathclaws. But man, this thread reminded me how criticism of Fallout 2 has always been waaay overblown on the Codex since the very beginning.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

But man, this thread reminded me how criticism of Fallout 2 has always been waaay overblown on the Codex since the very beginning.

I remember when someone from NMA went through the Fallout 2 data files to make a list and count every single pop culture reference in Fallout 2. There were close to 200 of them. That's when Feargus admitted there were too many of them.

The criticism of Fallout 2 was never overblown. The problem was that a huge chunk of people, particularly at the time, thought Fallout 2 was the better of the two because it was "more". You had more guns, including a bunch of them that didn't really fit the setting. You had more towns, but many of them were basically theme parks like "Western World", "Future World", "Mutant World", "Mafia World", and so on. Fallout and New Vegas were definitely more uniform across their regions, with New Vegas having a somewhat more Western style theme. While New Vegas did have certain sub-themes, they didn't feel as "in your face" as Fallout 2 did.

Is Fallout 2 a bad game? Not really. Were there improvements to Fallout? Yeah, there were with things like how the inventory was sorted, telling companions to move, and so on.

 

[TalesfromtheCrypt]

Fallout 1 is clearly the superior game, I fully agree. Regarding the Theme Park criticism: Maybe I need to play it again to refresh my memory, but for me the only out of place locations were New Reno (which was still great from a gameplay perspective) and San Fransisco.

What would "Future World“ be, for instance? Vault City? I thought the place was interesting and made sense within the setting‘s timeline. I don‘t have a problem per se with various locations having their unique twist, after all, settlements developing in relative isolation and largely independent from each other is a staple of the setting, so it makes sense they would be quite different.

Hey, I get the criticism, and I too appreciate the pureness of FO1’s setting. I just think that all in all, FO2 is a good RPG despite the problems with the setting.

 

[SharkClub]

In a series full of little green aliens, men who turn into trees, super mutants addicted to being invisible, and cryptids like The Mothman, the idea of deathclaws that could talk somehow crossed the line in Fallout 2. Nearly three decades later, their creator John Deiley still doesn’t get what the fuss was.

“I mean, you’ve got super mutants, you’ve got ghouls, why not have something that can stand up to the super mutants?” he tells me in our online interview, discussing the outspoken backlash from developers like Obsidian Entertainment co-founder Chris Avellone who deemed them “too silly” for a series with brains in jars and sentient toasters.

Most if not all of those are from Bethesda Fallouts. And people who were criticizing silly things in Fallout 2 hated Bethesda Fallout.

You'd be surprised these days, I think. A lot of mouthbreathers who grew up with Fallout 3 and have rose tinted glasses for it try to legitimize their awful opinions by telling everyone that it is the true successor to Fallout 1 and that it's "dark and gritty" like the original, with Fallout 2 being the odd one out for being too silly. Of course, they'll make sure to omit the retarded writing, dueling superhero town, vampires, cthulhu shit (will never be Fallout no matter how much Bethestards jerk off the Dunwich Building etc.), aliens, Little Lamplight existing for 200 years next to a supermutant hive, Tenpenny Tower somehow still standing in the middle of a bombed out wasteland, etc. Fallout 3 is more themepark than Fallout 2 could ever hope to be, every location is just 1 "epic" wacky thing and the whole place revolves around that.

Cognitive dissonance is a hell of a thing.

 

[Shaki]

If you want a Fallout game that feels like a proper successor to Fallout 1 play Fallout: Sonora. It's very good, especially for a mod that was made by a bunch of Yakuts and Russians in a basement.

Funny that all the best mods for Fallout are Russian

And all of them are incredibly good. I'd take Fallout of Nevada over any form of FO3-4

It's really not surprising, Russia is the closest thing we have to a post-apocalyptic wasteland, after all.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

I should get a copy of Atom. Apparently it's the closest thing to a modern Fallout today.

 

[luj1]

ATOM is very bland, it's 1:1 Fallout clone. Underrail has better atmopshere, closer to Fallout in my opinion

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

Oh. Good thing I have UnderRail then.
My issue with UnderRail as a Fallout successor is that it is a lot more combat heavy; Fallout gives you a lot more options to talk out of combat or resolve conflict in alternate ways, whereas in UnderRail such options are pretty limited.
Still a great game though. I picked up Heavy Duty not too long ago and will do another UnderRail run after I get some other entries in my backlog cleared.

 

[smaug]

But man, this thread reminded me how criticism of Fallout 2 has always been waaay overblown on the Codex since the very beginning.

The criticism of Fallout 2 was never overblown. The problem was that a huge chunk of people, particularly at the time, thought Fallout 2 was the better of the two because it was "more". You had more guns, including a bunch of them that didn't really fit the setting. You had more towns, but many of them were basically theme parks like "Western World", "Future World", "Mutant World", "Mafia World", and so on.

There’s nothing wrong with Theme Park design when it’s done well ala Fallout 2. The only theme park that is terribly done both setting and storywise is San Francisco. New Reno’s gangsters is pushing it but the actual place of it within the larger narrative is logically justified and makes sense. Every other place prior to New Reno is fine in terms of the Fallout setting. If you’re going to bring up Gecko, in Fallout 1’s ending (one of them it states the ghouls found secrets of engineering and started developing and selling technology) so it’s not out of this world silly.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

What would "Future World“ be, for instance? Vault City? I thought the place was interesting and made sense within the setting‘s timeline. I don‘t have a problem per se with various locations having their unique twist, after all, settlements developing in relative isolation and largely independent from each other is a staple of the setting, so it makes sense they would be quite different.

Hey, I get the criticism, and I too appreciate the pureness of FO1’s setting. I just think that all in all, FO2 is a good RPG despite the problems with the setting.

When you start off Fallout 2, it's very close to the feeling of the first game. You have Klamath and The Den. Even Modoc and the Ghost Farm are pretty decent. The NCR makes sense considering the background of the NCR and how they've taken over power to the point where they dictate the regional currency. Aside from those locations, once you get further along, every town feels very different from one another, almost as if they're from different games.

I think some of this comes from being rushed. They knew they wanted mobsters in New Reno, and they wanted a semi-Western tone to Redding, and so on, but they never really back filled in the things you expect from a town in Fallout. Not everyone in New Reno is a mobster, but I bet they need something too. Vault City was one of the few places where they did have an "outskirts" which filled the gap between the town theme and the rest of the world, but I don't remember there being too much in that area. At least you could see it there, though.

ATOM is very bland, it's 1:1 Fallout clone. Underrail has better atmopshere, closer to Fallout in my opinion

I like both of these games, but Underrail is pretty crazy when it comes to the difficulty ramp. Underrail is highly difficult with the atmosphere dragging you through the difficulty. You get splatted, utterly annihilated, but you still want to push forward because the setting and presentation are done so well, if that makes sense.

 

[luj1]

The OG Fallout atmosphere is hard to replicate. Sort of this bleak and haunting broken world. The only other time I felt that was when I played Tactics.



Really felt like you died somewhere beyond the farthest star.

 

[9ted6]

FEV should have been a one-and-done thing for just the first game? Instead, it seems to have evolved itself in to the "explain your bad idea" virus.

FEV became to Fallout what the force is to Star Wars.

It is actually worse, because, different from Star Wars, in every new (Bethesda) entry in the franchise it needs to be explained how the hell this super secret thing produced by the U.S. Government in a specific place has managed to fall in the hands of unrelated pre-war organizations around the country.

Last I checked 76 introduced some profoundly retarded subplot to explain FEV in Appalachia involving some kind of DEFCON competition. Now the lore's at "Vault Tec caused total nuclear war to make more money." It'll only keep getting worse.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

Last I checked 76 introduced some profoundly retarded subplot to explain FEV in Appalachia involving some kind of DEFCON competition.

They also have the Brotherhood of Steel in West Virginia 25 years after the Great War ended. How bad is that?

 

[Sinder Velvin]

I already posted this in the other thread about Deiley, but I wanted to just mention it here as well: Deiley is now claiming that Chris Avellone disallowed pagans in Van Buren, to which Chris has replied that this is wrong and there was actually an entire pagan faction you could join:

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

The "bad info from the source" bit is pretty funny. Either The Gamer is putting words in Deiley's mouth, or Deiley's lying about the whole thing to make Chris Avellone look bad. That's the only two things that could be happening here.

 

[Jedi Master Radek]

I already posted this in the other thread about Deiley, but I wanted to just mention it here as well: Deiley is now claiming that Chris Avellone disallowed pagans in Van Buren, to which Chris has replied that this is wrong and there was actually an entire pagan faction you could join:

Never suspected that you can find a world that would feel so anachronistic to Fallout franchise.

 

[Jacov]

If you want a Fallout game that feels like a proper successor to Fallout 1 play Fallout: Sonora. It's very good, especially for a mod that was made by a bunch of Yakuts and Russians in a basement.

Funny that all the best mods for Fallout are Russian

And all of them are incredibly good. I'd take Fallout of Nevada over any form of FO3-4

It's really not surprising, Russia is the closest thing we have to a post-apocalyptic wasteland, after all.

Jokes aside, while most of Russia doesn't look like a post-apoc setting nowadays, in 90s-00s it pretty much did look like it was through an apocalypse — because it actually was the case. The collapse of USSR and Yeltsin's August Coup and following «Wild 90s» with their poverty, bandit gangs and liberals dismantling Soviet factories and selling them for parts to China. Endless wars creating that doomer mindset: Afghan, Chechen wars, etc.
Most of Russians (and I think a lot of other post-Soviet peoples) growing up in 90s-00s have regularily seen destroyed or abandoned buildings, either Soviet ones or incomplete new ones where a development company went bankrupt or stole investment funds leaving an empty husk of an office or a mall behind. During my childhood, I've spent countless hours exploring those derelicts, climbing dangerous heights, finding old Soviet artefacts.
That's why I think post-apoc was and is generally popular in East Europe. It was all around us, everyone could relate. And now we are romanticizing it.