Interview Deiley on His Deathclaws

[Paul_cz]

I didn't mind talking deathclaws. In fact, when I played it for the first time and encountered them, I thought that was completely unexpected and pretty awesome thing. Plus Goris was fun character.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

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

Not to mention that the Nightkin weren't addicted to being invisible. They were addicted to the effects of the Stealthboy. The fact that thing bends light around it means it has to have some sort of fairly power field it generates. If you're constantly exposed to that strong of a field for that long of a time, I'd say you wouldn't feel normal outside of that field. This is probably one of the tamest things in that list to the point where I'm not even sure why it's in there with a list of "craziest things in Fallout". Well, unless you just think they actually are addicted to being invisible and not affected by how the Stealthboy works.

I didn't mind talking deathclaws. In fact, when I played it for the first time and encountered them, I thought that was completely unexpected and pretty awesome thing. Plus Goris was fun character.

Yeah, but most of us finished Fallout 2 when we were older than eight years old.

 

[deuxhero]

Having actually tried to come up with some original mutants for a tabletop Fallout thing, I've got to agree with the bit on how limited the options for 1950s retro future mutants are and how they're to be used with care. This is especially so when you don't want to just go "Giant X" and/or "multi-headed X".

Spoiler

I wound up leaning on the plot hook that most of the local "mutants" are actually transgenics intended to have useful properties for pre-war humanity and went backwards: What materials could an animal/plant produce that the pre-war civilization would want and how could that go horribly wrong?

 

[Daedalos]

Talking deathclaws was fucking stupid in a sea of lulzy and stupid shit in fallout 2, that polluted the franchise already.

Tim Cain no doubt hated and still hates shit like this, see his video on pop culture references.

fallout 2 is filled to the fucking brim with pop culture refs...

still a good game tho..

 

[Jacov]

Fallout 2 was good in terms of it building mechanically on top of the foundation Fallout 1 had: more uses for skills, more items, QoL, more quests and areas to explore. But story and atmosphere wise F2 was meh. It's still was alright (excluding weird shit like ghosts and talking rats), but no way near as good as F1. It had that cute little subversion of expectations in it: that you are «Chosen One», but everyone treats you like a dirty savage (which you are), and I liked how they showed that supermutants moved on and tried to find a place for themselves, but that's it in terms of cool stuff.

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. It's rough around the edges sometimes, but it was certainly made by people who understood the strenghts of Fallout and who loved what they were doing.

 

[Paul_cz]

Yeah, but most of us finished Fallout 2 when we were older than eight years old.

I did too, I was 13. But I still don't mind it. Fallout had ghouls and The Master, so my threshold for seeing bizzare things in Fallout wasn't particularly narrow.

 

[lukaszek]

Not to mention that the Nightkin weren't addicted to being invisible. They were addicted to the effects of the Stealthboy.

i recall it was about them having phobia of people looking at them?

 

[Jacov]

Not to mention that the Nightkin weren't addicted to being invisible. They were addicted to the effects of the Stealthboy.

i recall it was about them having phobia of people looking at them?

Repeated use of Stealthboys caused them developing schizophrenia. I don't think they are addicted to Stealthboys per se, they are just delusional and paranoid, in a state of constant stress because they have a bad case of schizo and no medical help. So it would make sense that escaping into a safespace where no one can see them, feels good for them.

 

[Late Bloomer]

Not to mention that the Nightkin weren't addicted to being invisible. They were addicted to the effects of the Stealthboy.

i recall it was about them having phobia of people looking at them?

Repeated use of Stealthboys caused them developing schizophrenia. I don't think they are addicted to Stealthboys per se, they are just delusional and paranoid, in a state of constant stress because they have a bad case of schizo and no medical help. So it would make sense that escaping into a safespace where no one can see them, feels good for them.

I believe the addiction to stealth boys are what caused the schizophrenia and paranoia. They have panic attacks if they don't use them.

 

[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.

 

[Late Bloomer]

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

 

[SlightlyRadioactive]

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.

 

[deuxhero]

The alternative is to make mutants radiation only, which is itself dumb. When I started working on my own subsetting my solution was

Spoiler

make all the local mutants either actually transgenics (intent to be able to mimic how FEV was supposed to be the twist of Fallout 1) or explicitly originate from up north

but that's equally one and done.

 

[Tweed]

I like Goris.

 

[spectre]

Damn that guy has issues. 20+ years after and he is still butthurt about how his pet idea was handled during development.
Even though it did make it and was even incorporated as part of the main quest.
Nevermind still being salty that it had to stand up to criticism from someone higher up the ladder.

A lot of folks trying their hand in the creative business have one good idea going and are all about that singular thing.
Not realizing that bouncing ideas off other people (who may react in a number of ways) is how the work is done.
There was an opportunity for him to grow, turns out he didn't take it. Sad.

Dunno, I rather enjoyed Gors' arc along with the tragic ending. I thought it made for a good drama,
even though the character was an oddball among oddballs as far as followers are concerned.
I was a bit older than 8 at the time, but I remember that encounter in Vault 13 as something positive.
What started as an - oh shit, there's no way I'm fighting through that - moment, quickly got turned around in an interesting twist.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

Sapient deathclaws always felt weird to me. The very first time you meet a deathclaw in the series was as a ravenous beast that killed people. It was clearly meant to show how drastically different and how much more dangerous wasteland wildlife is. Making them not only able to speak but also show compassion and be reasoned with detracts from that theme, as well as competing with the super mutant's gimmick, where yes, they are dangerous brutes, but they aren't mindless animals.

To me, it detracts from the overall grittiness of the series by making it more like some kid's cartoon, where you can befriend the 8 foot murder lizard because some exec's kid thought having a dinosaur as a friend would be cool.
I see a lot of people talking about how Fallout was always goofy, and I'm like, have you even played the first game? Fallout 1 isn't goofy. There are some funny moments, but it overall was pretty gritty and bleak.
Fallout 2 did arguably start the trend of Fallout being a goofy meme fest (including talking deathclaws...), but even then it tried to maintain some of that grittiness. You can do shit in that game that most companies wouldn't have the balls to do now, hence why a Remake or Remaster would be disastrous.
Hell, apparently the new versions of Fallout that Bethesda released on GOG have the children removed, whereas the classic versions (the one I use) still seem to have them.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

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.

Bethesda's treatment of the Fallout franchise is much like how GW treats Warhammer. They don't care about the internal consistency of the setting, they only care about pushing the next big shiny for their fanbase to consoom.
Except with GW it's even worse because it's their own damn franchise. Bethesda just adopted Fallout so they can milk and abuse it. GW created Warhammer and started to abuse the hell out of it when they got big enough.

 

[Roguey]

With the hindsight of years, I'm not sure Fallout 2 was great at all. Remove all the shoulders it stands on (i.e fallout 1's asset, setting, and engine) and it's a pretty shoddy game. Everything it "innovated" on seems to have been a mistake.

It's like if IWD2 ended up more revered than IWD.

This is the power of having a lot more content that isn't barebones and a lot of quality of life features.

Things that will bug you severely if you've played Fallout 2

• There's no "take all" button (argh).
• You can't move more than $999 at a time.
• You can't use Page Up and Page Down in your inventory (aaargh).
• New items go to the bottom of your inventory instead of the top (don't they have playtesters to catch this sort of thing?).
• You can't barter freely with party members.
• You can't tell party members to move out of the way (or anyone else).
• Party members can't change armour.
• Party members can't gain levels.
• There's nothing in the way of combat settings for party members.
• Party members move about a lot while you're trying to use healing skills or Steal on them.
• Did I mention some stuff about party members?
• Your destination on the world map is reset every time you have an encounter.
• The layout of Vault 15 is simply wrong!
• "Rest until morning" only goes to 6.00 even though a lot of people in the game consider 7.00 or 8.00 to be the start of business hours, which is usually what you're waiting for.
• You "take damage" when earning a level (because your current HP level doesn't go up).
• You need a perk to get green outlines around your NPCs in combat (oh yeah, that's worth a perk. How about you need a second level of the perk to get yellow outlines for critters outside your line of sight?).
• Money isn't displayed in dialogue.
• Carry Weight isn't displayed in inventory.
• There's no car, which means there's no trunk (but actually I don't have a problem with that).
• Using explosives from an active item slot doesn't drop the explosive (so why can you do it at all?).
• If you try to use something during combat, like opening a door or searching a corpse, your character will walk slowly up to it even if you have "always run" on.
• There are very few reputations, no special perks, very few ways of improving your character except for perks.
• You can't choose whether to avoid random encounters or not.
• There are time limits (although the most damaging one was removed by the patch).
• There is significantly less humour and what-the-heck playfulness (not all think this is a downside).
• As previously expounded, random skill checks and static skill starting values tend to reduce the difference between character types.
• The game is rather brief if you know where to go and what to do.
• Excessive looting is pointless since there's little to invest in (excessive looting should always be rewarded).
• You'll finish the game well before reaching the highest character levels unless you devote time exclusively to xp hunting.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

Mechanically and content wise Fallout 2 is superior. However, in terms of writing and atmosphere it does feel a little lacking.

 

[Jacov]

Number 1 Fallout problem: Slayer is a level 18 perk.

 

[Devastator]

When I first played Fallout 2, I thought that the terrible temple of trials was the worst thing in the game. Until I entered Vault 13 and started wondering how anyone thought that whole section was a good idea.

In retrospect, Fallout 2 could have turned out a lot worse. Imagine adding a few more Deileys on the team and letting them do what they want.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

Yeah, Temple of Trials wasn't great. Mariposa was pretty silly too, with that Super Mutant just somehow spawning critters out of goo even though there would be no reason that FEV could somehow recreate an entire bloody deathclaw or mole rat on command. I mean, I can understand the floaters because they are freakish mutant things and you can reason that the FEV is just merging together whatever flesh it can find or something, but a whole ass gecko? Really?
No wonder Emil thought he could get away with radiation witches with shit like that.

 

[Roguey]

Mariposa was pretty silly too, with that Super Mutant just somehow spawning critters out of goo even though there would be no reason that FEV could somehow recreate an entire bloody deathclaw or mole rat on command.

He's a magician, that's the gag. Like pulling rabbits out of a hat.

 

[Cologno]

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

6; 5 (+3 for boobies); -2; "holy hell like lol wtf is this thing"

 

[smaug]

Mechanically and content wise Fallout 2 is superior. However, in terms of writing and atmosphere it does feel a little lacking.

That’s bullshit. The atmosphere was pretty much identical because most of the atmosphere comes from the aesthetics and sound design. The only major difference is the wasteland isn’t new to the player anymore. The dialogue in Fallout 1 is mediocre aside from the normal functional dry stuff. I’m replaying it again and at least half of it is just repeating the same information the player got 2 minutes earlier. It’s dry and functional but it’s not really “good” and certainly not any better than F2. F2 has some cringe but that doesn’t justify such blanket general statements.