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True, so I guess it's another agree to disagree thing - barring the examples we're talking about above, I don't think the writing is horrible. I think most of it's fine and occasionally strays into good - as long as you're interested in the game recapturing the surreal pulp style of a lot of 1940s - 60s sci-fi and adventure fiction, which is what it's generally going for with all the cults everywhere and villages/settlements based around a single theme like Star Trek planets.
Of those games, I like Morrowind, Skyrim, Fallout 3, and Fallout: New Vegas, but I just can't seem to handle Oblivion and Fo4.
I tried a lightly-modded Oblivion recently and probably enjoyed it more than I have at any point in the past, but it's still just terrible. I'm not srue what it is exactly about it, there's just simultaneously too much content in the game (in the form of copypasted dungeons) and not enough. MW sort of has the same problem, there's a ton of content but it's almost entirely bad, but Morrowind at least looks nice and has a bit of worldbuilding to dig into.
I meticulously fine crafted Skyrim with 100 gameplay mods to inject more challenge, variety, improve exploration, make it more of a RPG, improve combat. It just cannot be made a good game. The biggest issue is the retard-tier dungeon design, balance that is impossible to maintain despite nerfing the crap out of myself and loot drops, utterly boring barebones RPG systems (lol three attributes and perks that are stuff like +20% damage, others pointless), copy-paste world design galore, and braindead-tier overall challenge (combat, puzzles, exploration/navigation, inventory & character management, quest design). Like Morrowind, once you have explored half the game, it is pointless to continue as balance is fucked and everything is copy-paste blandness you've already seen multiple times. Only here it's more like 1/4 of the game + you need to mod the crap out of everything and nerf yourself to make gameplay interesting and maintain balance for the 1/4. the game is irredeemable garbage. You have awful taste.
This is without even getting into how absolutely dull the writing, characters, and music are. Well, some tracks are pretty great, but it is a short and somewhat bland soundtrack and needs modding to expand too.
Imagine defending F3 and then choosing the outstandingly retarded "quest" in literally one of the most retarded games in history as your champion, holy shit.
Basically, Fo2 is a great game if you approach it as a piss-take, but a terrible game if you approach it as a sequel to Fo1. Similarly, Fo3 is a solid game if you approach it as a series of weird adventures out of the pages of Amazing Stories magazine, which is what they're going for, but a terrible game if you approach it as a Fo1 sequel.
Rating bethesda games(and FNV) just to piss off morrowind fanboys;
Arena & Daggerfall: Never played them/10
Morrowind: 2/10
Oblivion: 3.25/10
Fallout 3: 3.75/10
Fallout 4: 2.75/10
Skyrim: Never played it/10
Fallout 76: 0.25/10
starfield: Never played it/10
Fallout New Vegas: 8/10
Outer worlds: 3.5/10
Level scaling is one of my biggest gripes in games, so naturally Bethesda games don't really appeal to me =/.
I meticulously fine crafted Skyrim with 100 gameplay mods to inject more challenge, variety, improve exploration, make it more of a RPG, improve combat. It just cannot be made a good game. The biggest issue is the retard-tier dungeon design, balance that is impossible to maintain despite nerfing the crap out of myself and loot drops, utterly boring barebones RPG systems (lol three attributes and perks that are stuff like +20% damage, others pointless), copy-paste world design galore, and braindead-tier overall challenge (combat, puzzles, exploration/navigation, inventory & character management, quest design). Like Morrowind, once you have explored half the game, it is pointless to continue as balance is fucked and everything is copy-paste blandness you've already seen multiple times. Only here it's more like 1/4 of the game + you need to mod the crap out of everything and nerf yourself to make gameplay interesting and maintain balance for the 1/4. the game is irredeemable garbage. You have awful taste.
You just described every nuBethesda game, broken, shallow, stupid and boring. The reason why I rate Skyrim slightly higher is because its the only nuBethesda game that has decent overworld.
Nope, there are big differences between these Beth style games
Monocled tier: New Vegas
Is worth something tier: Morrowind and FO4
Shit but just about playable tier, if you lower your standards: FO3 and TOW
Complete and utter iredeemable shit tier: Skyrim and Oblivion
It's a significant scale.
also FO4 has a vastly superior and significantly more varied overworld than Shitrim.
Daggerfall is the height of TES and Fallout 1 is the height of Fallout. Again, with both series, you have to take each of the games on their own terms - they're all disappointing if you compare them with the high point, but good if you go into them for what they are.
If you go to Morrowind expecting a true Daggerfall sequel (or just a functional, balanced RPG), you're left with a lump of shit, but if you go in with the attitude of "okay, the game's broken and the quests are boring linear busywork and the dungeons are copypasted and the combat is dire, but I want to see an interesting world and learn about the lore and history", then you're in for a good time. It winds me up when people pretend like some of these games are masterpieces while others are dogshit, when really it mostly comes down to what kind of tone and setting you prefer, since Bethesda games from MW onwards are all just about walking around a largely unreactive world and getting into fights. Some of them are undeniably more in-depth than others, of course, but the differences between them are often not as profound as people make out.
Why are we all doing ratings out of 10, now? Anyway:
Fallout: 9/10
Fallout 2: 7/10
Fallout 3: 6.5/10
Fallout: New Vegas: 7.5/10
Fallout 4: 2/10, not trying to be harsh, I just genuinely don't get it, and I've really tried
I can't see the appeal of 2 or NV unless you think playing chess with a talking radscorpion after boxing with Mike Tyson before going to Nevada and listening to an aging hippie liberal douche educate you on gender theory are fun Fallout times to be had.
You mention Little Lamplight, and that's what I'd consider to be actually "terrible" writing - it doesn't make sense in context, because they forgot to explain where the kids are coming from (though there's a sidequest solution in which you deliver a child to them, so maybe they take in orphans, but who fucking knows honestly).
The implication is that it's mostly the teenagers having kids before leaving for Big Town, the game doesn't get too much into it because A) they'd have to model toddlers and B) the location is a big Lord of the Flies reference (a school was having an excursion in the cave when the bombs dropped) next to the location that actually matters (Vault 87, where the GECK is).
You mention Little Lamplight, and that's what I'd consider to be actually "terrible" writing - it doesn't make sense in context, because they forgot to explain where the kids are coming from (though there's a sidequest solution in which you deliver a child to them, so maybe they take in orphans, but who fucking knows honestly).
The implication is that it's mostly the teenagers having kids before leaving for Big Town, the game doesn't get too much into it because A) they'd have to model toddlers and B) the location is a big Lord of the Flies reference (a school was having an excursion in the cave when the bombs dropped) next to the location that actually matters (Vault 87, where the GECK is)
Don't forget that Lamplight was a development holdover from when 3 took place right after the bombs fell. When they moved the timeline up 200 years they moved almost nothing along with it. If the game was set in 2078 or whenever, Lamplight would almost make total sense.
You mention Little Lamplight, and that's what I'd consider to be actually "terrible" writing - it doesn't make sense in context, because they forgot to explain where the kids are coming from (though there's a sidequest solution in which you deliver a child to them, so maybe they take in orphans, but who fucking knows honestly).
The implication is that it's mostly the teenagers having kids before leaving for Big Town, the game doesn't get too much into it because A) they'd have to model toddlers and B) the location is a big Lord of the Flies reference (a school was having an excursion in the cave when the bombs dropped) next to the location that actually matters (Vault 87, where the GECK is)
I dunno, a single line of dialogue in Big Town about how they send their kids back to Lamplight for safety would have sufficed, because that'd pretty much explain the existence of both settlements, but the game doesn't even have that. Although that would also necessitate an explanation of why Lamplight is considered safe, given that the only thing between it and the outside world seems to be a kid with a gun and a sheet metal fence.
The only explanation I can see is that people leave their kids at Lamplight, and it's a sort of wasteland orphanage, but then I don't get why it would be considered more safe than, like, Megaton.
I've tried basically approaching it as post-apocalyptic Far Cry, and something about it still made me bounce off it. I think just the enemy health bloat and the weapon mod system which didn't interest me at all. I'll have to try it again sometime but my impression of the game was so bad that it's tough to go back to.
I've tried basically approaching it as post-apocalyptic Far Cry, and something about it still made me bounce off it. I think just the enemy health bloat and the weapon mod system which didn't interest me at all. I'll have to try it again sometime but my impression of the game was so bad that it's tough to go back to.
In order to have any amount of fun you need mods to rebalance the gameplay and avoid interactions with NPCs as much as possible, the quests and writing in this game is horrible.
There are mods to make combat more lethal, remove level scaling, expand survival aspects of the game, balance out the loot etc. You can mod it into a really challenging game if you know what you are doing.
Fallout: 9/10
Fallout 2: 7/10
Fallout 3: 6.5/10
Fallout: New Vegas: 7.5/10
Fallout 4: 2/10, not trying to be harsh, I just genuinely don't get it, and I've really tried
I can't see the appeal of 2 or NV unless you think playing chess with a talking radscorpion after boxing with Mike Tyson before going to Nevada and listening to an aging hippie liberal douche educate you on gender theory are fun Fallout times to be had.
Replying late to this, but: just enjoy each game for what it offers.
Don't go into Fo2 expecting it to make any amount of sense at all, instead just go into it expecting it to be a deliberately-retarded joke which occasionally makes you laugh by losing your toe, or running an old ghoul over in your car, or breaking the fourth wall, or having your character recite lines from Blues Brothers.
Don't go into Fo3 expecting a tight, logically coherent world, instead go into it expecting it to be a series of surreal, dreamlike nightmares inspired by old pulp stories, where you meet a load of deranged cults and peculiar characters and become lost in a grim, hauntological echo of the 1950s.
Don't go into New Vegas expecting it to be a bombastic and colourful trip through a lively world, instead go into it expecting the usual Obsidian stuff - interesting ideas and concepts relayed through mostly drab, boring characters, which is nonetheless worth it for the fascinating and intricate worldbuilding on display.
All of them offer good C&C, mechanically and tonally varied quests, solid roleplaying opportunities, accomodations for different character builds, and a lot of unique atmosphere. They're all good in that regard; it's just a matter of adjusting yourself to the tonal differences. Amend your expectations for each one and engage with each game on the terms it wants you to engage it on, because if you expect the same thing out of them that you expect from Fallout 1, it'll just be disappointing letdowns across the board.
Really stupid things like Annah ghost, talking plant, chess radscorpion etc are such tiny and inconsequential parts of Fallout 2. Judging a whole game by them is a shallow and disingenuous take. Obviously, game lacked a good director like Sawyer was for New Vegas, who would cut silly crap and made other things more cohesive, but fact remains that world of Fallout 2 is most dark and mature of any Fallout game.
In Fallout 1 we have several unsettling locations - The Glow, Necropolic and Boneyard that serve as remainder of horrible nuclear war, but in general I get positive vibes while playing, it feels like humanity is going in the right direction. In contrast to that in Fallout 2 we have slavery being widely spread and accepted industry, medical experiment being performed on humans on a large scale, drugs being used to control population of a city, large part of society regressed into tribalism. There is an interesting dynamic between local powers struggling for control over region while being dependent on each other via trade. That dynamic served as prototype of more elaborated faction mechanics of New Vegas - the last Fallout game even worth mentioning. Fallout 2 is, despite what detractors would try to sell you, a worthy part of Fallout trilogy (F1, F2 and F:NV).
I actively tried multiple times to play Fallout 4 and could never get more than a few hours into any playthrough, no matter the mod setup or whatever.
Fallout 3, despite what anyone says, is a good enough game that I played it through twice and happily enjoyed it. Would I do it again? No, but that is more than enough to call it acceptable.
Not really; San Francisco is absolutely terrible in both tone and content, and yet it's one of the most prominent endgame locations, and its influence actually stretches outside the settlement itself given that you meet Hubologists as a world map encounter. New Reno, which the game does its best to direct you towards (the tavern brawler in Klamath telling you about it, people in Broken Hills directing you there, etc) is pretty bad for the most part as well, although the alternate ways to kill the family bosses are a lot of fun. Chris Avellone himself admitted New Reno didn't make any sense in the context of Fallout, iirc. (EDIT: it's from an old RPGCodex interview:
NCR is interesting as an idea but doesn't really come off IMO, there's not enough worthwhile content for the settlement to feel complete - the most interesting thing about them is the quest that ties them to Vault City. Redding, too, is poor, not least because part of the town is dedicated to an inexplicable, elongated Sharpe reference that few people will get and anyone who does get will just be confused by.
The only settlements I think work on an entirely un-comedic, dramatic level are Broken Hills (barring chess scorpion), Klamath (barring Keeng Rat), and The Den (barring ghost), the latter two of which are not particularly interesting. Funnily enough, I'd also say the Vault 13 Deathclaws are one of the more unironically engaging parts of the game, even though everyone else seems to absolutely hate them and they're generally considered out of place (I don't get why, they're 100% in line with how FEV is portrayed in Fo1). Modoc is also fairly subdued, I suppose, but the main draw of the town is exploding a toilet and covering everyone in shit.
In Fallout 1 we have several unsettling locations - The Glow, Necropolic and Boneyard that serve as remainder of horrible nuclear war, but in general I get positive vibes while playing, it feels like humanity is going in the right direction. In contrast to that in Fallout 2 we have slavery being widely spread and accepted industry, medical experiment being performed on humans on a large scale, drugs being used to control population of a city, large part of society regressed into tribalism. There is an interesting dynamic between local powers struggling for control over region while being dependent on each other via trade.
I agree with part of this. The Tribals, however, are garbage. They literally built a statue of the Vault Dweller's head in the middle of their village. These people are two generations descended from the Vault 13 residents, at most. It doesn't make a lick of sense. It's an excuse to get Dwight Schultz to read funny lines out, and to take the piss out of typical RPG starting towns (hence why you're literally named the Chosen One).
I think it's entirely fair to say that Fallout 2 mostly succeeds as a joke, and was largely intended as such - it's genuinely funny at times, the theme park nature of each settlement is enjoyable as long as you're not expecting it to make much sense, and the Chosen One is a great protagonist precisely because of his/her propensity to say fourth-wall-breaking shit and make bizarre pop culture references. It was my favourite Fallout game as a teenager, simply because I thought it was hilarious. I still do, though the joke of getting your ear bitten off by Mike Tyson is increasingly less funny when you leave adolescence.
Confusing, since with Fo4 they removed basically everything that people had praised in New Vegas. I never understood it - people are saying to them "we like Obsidian's writing and interpretation of the Fallout setting, please follow their example" and Todd turns round and says "you like New Vegas, huh? well, check this out!!!" and produces a shitty FPS with almost no relation to the Fallout setting and no semblance of Fallout-style quest design, miles further away from NV than Fo3 was.
Then people reacted badly, so they tried to mollify everyone with... an MMORPG.
