Review MCA Wades in to the Wake of the Fallout TV Show

[Lemming42]

West-Tek is mentioned in Fo3, in the Museum of Technology I think. Emil was aware that it was a different company, he just engineered a shit explanation in order to have Super Mutants be present on the East Coast. iirc Vault 87 received FEV as part of its dumb "vault experiment", the rationale being that since Vault-Tec is a government entity/contractor (as of Fo2) and West-Tek is also a government entity, and the government were the ones overseeing the vault experiments, they decided that having an experiment based around FEV would be a good idea to see what incredible effects it would have on the dwellers (surprisingly, it turned them into FEV mutants).

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

West-Tek is mentioned in Fo3, in the Museum of Technology I think. Emil was aware that it was a different company, he just engineered a shit explanation in order to have Super Mutants be present on the East Coast. iirc Vault 87 received FEV as part of its dumb "vault experiment", the rationale being that since Vault-Tec is a government entity/contractor (as of Fo2) and West-Tek is also a government entity, and the government were the ones overseeing the vault experiments, they decided that having an experiment based around FEV would be a good idea to see what incredible effects it would have on the dwellers (surprisingly, it turned them into FEV mutants).

Yeah, and none of that makes any sense in even the remotest of mental gymnastics. The FEV started as a means of protecting against Chinese bioweapons, which would already be pretty Top Secret. Then they stumbled on the super soldier aspect, which would have made it even more secret. There's a reason why the Manhattan Project was only done in one location at a time, because the more places you're doing something, the more eyes and ears you're going to have on it. They were developing it at West Tek and then moved the entire thing to Mariposa. Even though both West Tek and Vault Tec were government contractors, they would have had their own independent clearances.

Furthermore, FEV wasn't even finished when the Great War happened. While there were some "promising results", there was nothing close to a final product and it was still being developed right up until Maxson and crew found out about it. Then Maxson and his men sperged out. So, why the Hell would West Tek turn over an unfinished biological agent to another company in order to test it on the inhabitants of a vault when they were still testing it in their own lab?

It gets even more stupid when Vault 87 turns in to Supermutants, which were something Richard Grey modified the FEV to do. Look at what it did to Grey. Look at the centaurs, which were Grey's first attempts at making FEV mutants. Supermutants weren't what he got the first go at using it. Yet, somehow, Vault 87 managed to randomly recreate the exact changes Grey made to the FEV to not only get Supermutants, but also one upped Grey with Supermutant Behemoths?

 

[Lemming42]

Yet, somehow, Vault 87 managed to randomly recreate the exact changes Grey made to the FEV to not only get Supermutants, but also one upped Grey with Supermutant Behemoths?

Their version is less refined than the one Grey developed, and was also applied to subjects differently, through aerosol rather than vats, which is why the mutants all end up retarded. Grey's version is obviously more refined due to all the fucking about he's done with it over the years. The EEP strain used in 87 still produces shit like this, the kind of failures Grey burned through before he developed FEV-2. iirc, the scientists in 87 were killed when the mutants broke out, and since none of them had the knowledge to upgrade or refine the FEV, they've just been using the shit version for 200 years.

As for the presence of Centaurs in Fo3 - absolutely no explanation offered, as far as I know. The even bigger plot hole of how the fuck they're getting human captives into Vault 87 when a whole plot point in the main quest is that no human can enter is also left as a mystery.

So, why the Hell would West Tek turn over an unfinished biological agent to another company in order to test it on the inhabitants of a vault when they were still testing it in their own lab?

To... test the effects of space travel, of course, same reason we need vaults with 999:1 sex ratios, cryogenic freezer vaults, vaults to turn people into supersoldiers, and vaults full of psychedelic drugs.

I believe the logic is that the government, being evil, decided that vault dwellers would make good test subjects for FEV. Under the game's logic, they're able to just order West-Tek to send a batch of FEV to a vault, since all schemes in question - the development of FEV and the vault experiment program - are run by The Government, so they're just shuffling their own resources around.

I think these explanations are all abysmal, in case it's not clear, and a very transparent, lazy attempt by Bethesda to explain why elements of Fo1 are being transplanted badly onto the opposite coast. I don't think they make a great deal of sense; I'm just repeating them here to confirm what justifications the game offers for itself.

 

[Zeriel]

And then Mr New Vegas keeps referring to Dean Martin and Bing Crosby in ways that imply that those figures are common knowledge to listeners

To be honest, the radio stations in nu-Fallout have always bugged the shit out of me. There's absolutely no logical sense that the only music remaining from before the bombs fell would be music produced pre-1960. Maybe it happens once because of some odd turn of events, but in every single location? I understand why they picked those old songs, considering they can be licensed fairly cheap, but it's the Ian Malcolm thing of, "Just because you can doesn't mean you should."

Yeah, it's also dumb because Fallout's world is not our world. I guess you can ignore using licensed music in the intro cinematic as an artistic choice, but when it comes to in-world stuff, it should all be riffs and take-offs on that music that is different and unique to the world, not the exact same shit, because the Earth in Fallout is not our Earth.

Maybe I'm reading too much into this, but it's like... is the only reason it's Nuka-Cola because they couldn't call it Coca-Cola without getting the rights? If so, that's hella dumb and I think the original devs were way stupider than I gave them credit for originally.

 

[9ted6]

It's always been the ironic thing about grogs like No Mutants Allowed where they blame 3 for the franchise becoming a self parodying nonsensical meme when 2 and BoS did that years before Bethesda got the license.

Fallout 3 is worse than Fallout 2. You remember why there's supermutants on the East Coast? Because one of the designers at Bethesda had the government give Vault-Tec some of the FEV. Why? Who knows. And how did they manage to recreate the work of Richard Grey? Who knows. It took Grey doing a lot of experimentation with the FEV in order to get supermutants. Centaurs and floaters were his early experiments before he "perfected" his process.

It makes no sense why the government would give their biggest secret to a government contractor that has absolutely nothing to do with the supersoldier program. It's said numerous times that the FEV was the biggest secret the government had before the war. Yet, this was the beginnings of silly shit Bethesda has done with Vault-Tec right up to the TV show.

Why is there a ghost? Why are there talking deathclaws? Why are the Enclave a meme?

FO2 was where you can see the start of Fallout doing shit that makes no sense and isn't particularly funny or cohesive but doing it anyway for the hell of it. If anything you can see it near the end of 1. Why is the Master psychic? Why is there a club of also psychic guys you can talk to to get to him? Why and how do psychic powers work? No answers, no references to it at any other point before or after, it's just there because idk lol.

But whereas 1 is mostly consistent with itself and doesn't really do any So Random Hahah! things they constitute the majority of FO2 and 3. Randumb shit constantly happens for no reason besides the developers thought it was cool and or funny.

3 runs the franchise into the ground but 2 is what started digging. I think sometimes Bethesda misunderstood the fanbase's praise for FO2 which was primarily in spite of the goofy parody overtones rather than because of it, and so they decided that's what Fallout fans wanted.

3 is worse than 2 and I'll never say otherwise, but one area I think 3 is better is that it tries taking itself seriously on a few rare occasions. It never does it well but it at least tries while 2 is laughing from start to finish. It doesn't care and never cares about a coherent narrative or flowing with 1. That's not always a bad thing either, 3's seriousness is usually stupid in itself, but nobody should be giving 3 flak when 2 had almost all the same narrative and lore problems. Shit, some of the show's problems with tone and story are also problems 2 has.

And then Mr New Vegas keeps referring to Dean Martin and Bing Crosby in ways that imply that those figures are common knowledge to listeners

To be honest, the radio stations in nu-Fallout have always bugged the shit out of me. There's absolutely no logical sense that the only music remaining from before the bombs fell would be music produced pre-1960. Maybe it happens once because of some odd turn of events, but in every single location? I understand why they picked those old songs, considering they can be licensed fairly cheap, but it's the Ian Malcolm thing of, "Just because you can doesn't mean you should."

They could've at least tried justifying it with the excuse of "This vintage music was archived and preserved while most newer music wasn't at the time of the war." Then it would at least make some sense.

 

[Lemming42]

Why is the Master psychic? Why is there a club of also psychic guys you can talk to to get to him? Why and how do psychic powers work? No answers, no references to it at any other point before or after, it's just there because idk lol.

It kind of works since the Psykers are all insane - something happened to the Master as a result of unfathomable levels of FEV exposure, but we're not sure what, and neither is he since he can't replicate his own abilities in any of his test subjects. They're mostly just there to make the end of the game feel even more terrifying, I think - the deeper you go into the Cathedral, the worse things get, and learning that the Master is essentially inside your mind just tops it off. He's not just fallen into a vat of green shit and grown an extra eyeball, he's actually started to transform into something that's never existed before and which nobody will have the ability to comprehend, let alone resist, and even he doesn't understand what's happening to him.

If you take Fallout as a standalone project and free it of the need to influence sequels, and assume that the Cathedral would be the last thing we ever saw of the Fallout universe, then the psyker stuff is fine I think: you're glimpsing behind the veil of the Unity and seeing the full extent of the Master's sickness, and what you see isn't entirely comprehensible. It's a pretty common theme in 1990s games, I've noticed - the flesh tunnels at the end of Alone in the Dark, the horribly malformed bridge at the end of System Shock, the giant sperm at the end of EarthBound, to some extent Xen in Half-Life, the seeping fleshy walls of Atlantis in Tomb Raider, and so on. They like taking things to a fever pitch and immersing you in the maximum level of weirdness and horror before the ultimate catharsis, and to do that effectively, you have to bring the story to a point where things have just started to slide beyond anything the player expected.

 

[Darkwind]

You all are sperging the fuck out over the music when it is very obvious, like MUCH of the FO universe it -is- an alternate timeline. So in that timeline some things advanced very far. Power armor, fusion, laser weapons, advanced gadgets, etc. but music, vehicles, the general aesthetic remained trapped in the 40s and 50s.

But let's wring our hands and go full autismo trying to puzzle out an answer to something that obviously the designers simply did not care too much about from the get go. It is clear they were going for Retrofuturism and put very little thought into the fine details of that like many other things.

 

[Lemming42]

They could've at least tried justifying it with the excuse of "This vintage music was archived and preserved while most newer music wasn't at the time of the war." Then it would at least make some sense.

Funnily enough, this explanation rang a bell. Looking on the Fallout wiki:

But there's no citation, so I'm not sure where they're getting it from. Looking over Three Dog's dialogue, he doesn't seem to mention it.

 

[Risewild]

But there's no citation, so I'm not sure where they're getting it from. Looking over Three Dog's dialogue, he doesn't seem to mention it.

The Fallout wiki is full of headcanon mentioned as fact.

Also, it happened in the past that when someone tried to correct some of the headcanon with factual stuff, someone went around and replaced it with the wrong stuff again.

 

[Cael]

But there's no citation, so I'm not sure where they're getting it from. Looking over Three Dog's dialogue, he doesn't seem to mention it.

The Fallout wiki is full of headcanon mentioned as fact.

Also, it happened in the past that when someone tried to correct some of the headcanon with factual stuff, someone went around and replaced it with the wrong stuff again.

You just described every wiki out there, especially the -pedia one.

 

[Decado]

The gameplay of FO2 was better, which is why I like it better. There were more and better weapons, different styles felt more playable, etc. Plus it was longer and there were more locations.

I still like FO2 over the first one. But I agree with the criticism that it was too goofy, there were too many pop culture references, and so on. Also there was dumb, genre-breaking shit like having a fucking ghost. But I also feel like Bethesda has not come up with something even 1/10th as clever as the Master, or the ghost farm under Modoc, or the nuclear plant full of ghouls who need help running the place so the Vault lunatics don't massacre them. So while FO2 was a step in the slightly wrong direction, it pales in comparison to insanely stupid shit like Three Dog or Little Lamplight.

 

[HeatEXTEND]

It doesn't care and never cares about a coherent narrative or flowing with 1.

Ah yes, the oh so coherent narrative of FO1. Nigga please. And fo3s' worst offense isn't the haha funny, it's 180ing the gameplay into something that has exactly nothing to do with its cRPG forebears while still having the gaul to use the number 3 instead of Fallout: Subtitle.

 

[SharkClub]

I find the criticisms of Fallout 2 to be extremely overblown, especially when being compared to the dogshit tripe in Fallout 3 and when people are trying to pass them off as "equally bad". The main difference between the two games is that aside from the very notable exception of San Francisco (thank Feargus for making that location almost totally indefensible), every major location is played almost entirely straight, even if there is retardation to be found under the surface (oftentimes quite literally with the big brain molerat encounters). Yeah, you could probably name one or two things from each location that are silly or "don't fit Fallout", but those things are almost never a major focus of the area (talking Deathclaws in Vault 13 and the Kung Fu shit/Hubologists in San Fran aside) and in-fact the major focus of most areas in the game involves slavery, drug addiction, racial tensions and regional political intrigue. Klamath is played entirely straight, Redding is played entirely straight, Vault City is played entirely straight and deals with serious themes, Gecko has a talking molerat but the rest is played straight with serious themes, The Den has a lorebreaking Ghost to contend with and the rest is our first sight of proper slavery in Fallout's post-apocalpyse, Modoc and the Ghost Farm are played straight aside from Laddie the dog and le epic funny toilet explosion that all the jewtubers that never actually played the game like to mention ad nauseum, Broken Hills has a fucking race war going on but oh no not the talking spore plant. There are serious themes and subplots spread throughout the game that wrap their tentacles around several locations' sidequests and stories. These are not the one-note locations from Fallout 3 that only exist because someone wrote "how about a town that only has kids that has existed for 200 years" or "how about a tower full of rich people not letting the dindu nuffin ghouls in" on a napkin.

Compare this roster of areas with Fallout 3 and you've got Tenpenny Tower; the pristine tower still standing in the middle of a flattened barren wasteland, full of posh people which inexplicably are rich and have money despite being in the middle of a post apocalypse 200 years removed from when the money existed, led by a fucking British guy that somehow managed to cross the atlantic ocean and retained a British accent, who is somehow wealthy despite the game never explaining how he is wealthy. Little Lamplight the cave full of kids which has somehow not been overrun by mutants or slavers for 200 fucking years despite the fact that they kick out anyone who becomes a teenager and they have 1 guard on either entrance. Megaton built around an unexploded atomic bomb and nobody there really batting an eye at it, the Sheriff sees you walk into town and it takes one minute to convince him you're the man for the job for finally disarming the bomb they've built their community around for decades. Republic of Dave. Dueling superhero town. Arefu's vampire larpers. Supernatural cthulhu mythos shit (that tons of people inexplicably seem to be completely okay with despite hating the ghost in the den btw). Almost every single location in Fallout 3 has an equal amount of retardation to San Francisco, if not more, and there is almost no value to Fallout lore/worldbuilding to be found in any of it, the same absolutely cannot be said for Fallout 2.

But because some zoomer saw a reference (which they didn't realize was a reference until they read a wiki page) in a piece of dialogue for a Fallout 2 location it's suddenly been agreed by the useful idiot Bethesda-rimming consooming masses that Fallout 2 is just as bad as Fallout 3, or equally as often that Fallout 3 is dark and gritty and takes the setting seriously unlike Fallout 2.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

To... test the effects of space travel, of course, same reason we need vaults with 999:1 sex ratios, cryogenic freezer vaults, vaults to turn people into supersoldiers, and vaults full of psychedelic drugs.

I agree, the "space travel" thing makes no sense at all considering the experiments they came up with when they were filling in the gaps.

What also doesn't make sense is that Vault 111 was supposed to be the test bed for the cryogenic freezer vaults and it failed horribly. You can't even explain away it's failure as Kellog messing with things, since viable specimens are important to The Institute because he says that your character is a spare. All the wards in the vault are controlled by separate computers, and apparently you, your spouse, and the kid were the only ones left judging by his dialog. But hey, why let what they show you in Fallout 4 get in the way of using that same shitty technology that didn't work for the TV Show, right?

Yeah, it's also dumb because Fallout's world is not our world. I guess you can ignore using licensed music in the intro cinematic as an artistic choice, but when it comes to in-world stuff, it should all be riffs and take-offs on that music that is different and unique to the world, not the exact same shit, because the Earth in Fallout is not our Earth.

Well, the question is when they diverge, but there are modern Big Band jazz groups who I would assume could use some money. I doubt many people would recognize it and it would be on theme.

You all are sperging the fuck out over the music when it is very obvious, like MUCH of the FO universe it -is- an alternate timeline. So in that timeline some things advanced very far. Power armor, fusion, laser weapons, advanced gadgets, etc. but music, vehicles, the general aesthetic remained trapped in the 40s and 50s.

The aesthetic doesn't change, but they do make new things. Music would probably be one of those. Since you mention cars, notice that they're not all still driving 1950s cars.

 

[deuxhero]

And then Mr New Vegas keeps referring to Dean Martin and Bing Crosby in ways that imply that those figures are common knowledge to listeners

To be honest, the radio stations in nu-Fallout have always bugged the shit out of me. There's absolutely no logical sense that the only music remaining from before the bombs fell would be music produced pre-1960. Maybe it happens once because of some odd turn of events, but in every single location? I understand why they picked those old songs, considering they can be licensed fairly cheap, but it's the Ian Malcolm thing of, "Just because you can doesn't mean you should."

Ain't That a Kick in the Head? - 1960
Blue Moon - 1961
Hangover Heart - 1960 (doesn't actually appear, but was planned to)
Heartaches by the Number - 1960
It's a Sin to Tell a Lie - 1979 (there's older versions, but the 1979 version is used in game)
All the Joshua Sawyer originals - 2010 (Aside from the public domain stuff, the base for Green Clouds and Dust Whirls is the 1993 Cobwebs and Rainbows. I do agree this sort of post-war takes on songs is something Fallout should do more.)
(Also Take Me Home, Country Roads is from 1971)

Of course, the practical reality is that most really old music is way cheaper to license than newer stuff in that old style.

I find the criticisms of Fallout 2 to be extremely overblown, especially when being compared to the dogshit tripe in Fallout 3 and when people are trying to pass them off as "equally bad". The main difference between the two games is that aside from the very notable exception of San Francisco (thank Feargus for making that location almost totally indefensible), every major location is played almost entirely straight, even if there is retardation to be found under the surface (oftentimes quite literally with the big brain molerat encounters). Yeah, you could probably name one or two things from each location that are silly or "don't fit Fallout", but those things are almost never a major focus of the area (talking Deathclaws in Vault 13 and the Kung Fu shit/Hubologists in San Fran aside) and in-fact the major focus of most areas in the game involves slavery, drug addiction, racial tensions and regional political intrigue. Klamath is played entirely straight, Redding is played entirely straight, Vault City is played entirely straight and deals with serious themes, Gecko has a talking molerat but the rest is played straight with serious themes, The Den has a lorebreaking Ghost to contend with and the rest is our first sight of proper slavery in Fallout's post-apocalpyse, Modoc and the Ghost Farm are played straight aside from Laddie the dog and le epic funny toilet explosion that all the jewtubers that never actually played the game like to mention ad nauseum, Broken Hills has a fucking race war going on but oh no not the talking spore plant. There are serious themes and subplots spread throughout the game that wrap their tentacles around several locations' sidequests and stories. These are not the one-note locations from Fallout 3 that only exist because someone wrote "how about a town that only has kids that has existed for 200 years" or "how about a tower full of rich people not letting the dindu nuffin ghouls in" on a napkin.

Compare this roster of areas with Fallout 3 and you've got Tenpenny Tower; the pristine tower still standing in the middle of a flattened barren wasteland, full of posh people which inexplicably are rich and have money despite being in the middle of a post apocalypse 200 years removed from when the money existed, led by a fucking British guy that somehow managed to cross the atlantic ocean and retained a British accent, who is somehow wealthy despite the game never explaining how he is wealthy. Little Lamplight the cave full of kids which has somehow not been overrun by mutants or slavers for 200 fucking years despite the fact that they kick out anyone who becomes a teenager and they have 1 guard on either entrance. Megaton built around an unexploded atomic bomb and nobody there really batting an eye at it, the Sheriff sees you walk into town and it takes one minute to convince him you're the man for the job for finally disarming the bomb they've built their community around for decades. Republic of Dave. Dueling superhero town. Arefu's vampire larpers. Supernatural cthulhu mythos shit (that tons of people inexplicably seem to be completely okay with despite hating the ghost in the den btw). Almost every single location in Fallout 3 has an equal amount of retardation to San Francisco, if not more, and there is almost no value to Fallout lore/worldbuilding to be found in any of it, the same absolutely cannot be said for Fallout 2.

But because some zoomer saw a reference (which they didn't realize was a reference until they read a wiki page) in a piece of dialogue for a Fallout 2 location it's suddenly been agreed by the useful idiot Bethesda-rimming consooming masses that Fallout 2 is just as bad as Fallout 3, or equally as often that Fallout 3 is dark and gritty and takes the setting seriously unlike Fallout 2.

Fallout 2's horrific inconsistencies in tone and lore (Even on the crit path the Enclave is woefully inconsistent: You can bluff your way in as a new hire.) can be blamed on the fact that the game was made in 8 months, while Bethesda has no excuse

 

[Decado]

And then Mr New Vegas keeps referring to Dean Martin and Bing Crosby in ways that imply that those figures are common knowledge to listeners

To be honest, the radio stations in nu-Fallout have always bugged the shit out of me. There's absolutely no logical sense that the only music remaining from before the bombs fell would be music produced pre-1960. Maybe it happens once because of some odd turn of events, but in every single location? I understand why they picked those old songs, considering they can be licensed fairly cheap, but it's the Ian Malcolm thing of, "Just because you can doesn't mean you should."

Ain't That a Kick in the Head? - 1960
Blue Moon - 1961
Hangover Heart - 1960 (doesn't actually appear, but was planned to)
Heartaches by the Number - 1960
It's a Sin to Tell a Lie - 1979 (there's older versions, but the 1979 version is used in game)
All the Joshua Sawyer originals - 2010 (Aside from the public domain stuff, the base for Green Clouds and Dust Whirls is the 1993 Cobwebs and Rainbows. I do agree this sort of post-war takes on songs is something Fallout should do more.)
(Also Take Me Home, Country Roads is from 1971)

Of course, the practical reality is that most really old music is way cheaper to license than newer stuff in that old style.

I find the criticisms of Fallout 2 to be extremely overblown, especially when being compared to the dogshit tripe in Fallout 3 and when people are trying to pass them off as "equally bad". The main difference between the two games is that aside from the very notable exception of San Francisco (thank Feargus for making that location almost totally indefensible), every major location is played almost entirely straight, even if there is retardation to be found under the surface (oftentimes quite literally with the big brain molerat encounters). Yeah, you could probably name one or two things from each location that are silly or "don't fit Fallout", but those things are almost never a major focus of the area (talking Deathclaws in Vault 13 and the Kung Fu shit/Hubologists in San Fran aside) and in-fact the major focus of most areas in the game involves slavery, drug addiction, racial tensions and regional political intrigue. Klamath is played entirely straight, Redding is played entirely straight, Vault City is played entirely straight and deals with serious themes, Gecko has a talking molerat but the rest is played straight with serious themes, The Den has a lorebreaking Ghost to contend with and the rest is our first sight of proper slavery in Fallout's post-apocalpyse, Modoc and the Ghost Farm are played straight aside from Laddie the dog and le epic funny toilet explosion that all the jewtubers that never actually played the game like to mention ad nauseum, Broken Hills has a fucking race war going on but oh no not the talking spore plant. There are serious themes and subplots spread throughout the game that wrap their tentacles around several locations' sidequests and stories. These are not the one-note locations from Fallout 3 that only exist because someone wrote "how about a town that only has kids that has existed for 200 years" or "how about a tower full of rich people not letting the dindu nuffin ghouls in" on a napkin.

Compare this roster of areas with Fallout 3 and you've got Tenpenny Tower; the pristine tower still standing in the middle of a flattened barren wasteland, full of posh people which inexplicably are rich and have money despite being in the middle of a post apocalypse 200 years removed from when the money existed, led by a fucking British guy that somehow managed to cross the atlantic ocean and retained a British accent, who is somehow wealthy despite the game never explaining how he is wealthy. Little Lamplight the cave full of kids which has somehow not been overrun by mutants or slavers for 200 fucking years despite the fact that they kick out anyone who becomes a teenager and they have 1 guard on either entrance. Megaton built around an unexploded atomic bomb and nobody there really batting an eye at it, the Sheriff sees you walk into town and it takes one minute to convince him you're the man for the job for finally disarming the bomb they've built their community around for decades. Republic of Dave. Dueling superhero town. Arefu's vampire larpers. Supernatural cthulhu mythos shit (that tons of people inexplicably seem to be completely okay with despite hating the ghost in the den btw). Almost every single location in Fallout 3 has an equal amount of retardation to San Francisco, if not more, and there is almost no value to Fallout lore/worldbuilding to be found in any of it, the same absolutely cannot be said for Fallout 2.

But because some zoomer saw a reference (which they didn't realize was a reference until they read a wiki page) in a piece of dialogue for a Fallout 2 location it's suddenly been agreed by the useful idiot Bethesda-rimming consooming masses that Fallout 2 is just as bad as Fallout 3, or equally as often that Fallout 3 is dark and gritty and takes the setting seriously unlike Fallout 2.

Fallout 2's horrific inconsistencies in tone and lore (Even on the crit path the Enclave is woefully inconsistent: You can bluff your way in as a new hire.) can be blamed on the fact that the game was made in 8 months, while Bethesda has no excuse

I would agree that the Enclave, as a main antagonist faction, is woefully underdeveloped. Frank Horrigan is not as cool of a bad guy as the Master. But again, he is still light-years ahead of anything Bethesda did in FO3 or FO4.

 

[Hydro]

So has this corpoass licker uncucked himself? Keeping track of these threads is so tiresome.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

Fallout 2's horrific inconsistencies in tone and lore can be blamed on the fact that the game was made in 8 months, while Bethesda has no excuse

Even more sad is that Bethesda essentially just repeated what Black Isle did in 8 months. If Bethesda didn't hold the rights to everything Fallout, the Enclave in Fallout 3 is a pretty clear case of plagiarism. The Enclave's master plan was pretty much a beat for beat repeat of their plan in Fallout 2. As unfleshed out as Frank Horrigan was, Autumn was even more cookie cutter with very little motivation beyond he "works there". At least Black Isle went back and explained Frank Horrigan as a "true believer" which tends to go towards the fact that the Enclave essentially kept him around despite the obvious FEV mutation he underwent, going so far as to building an armor around his new body.

The big problem with the Enclave in Fallout 3 is that they probably shouldn't have been "The Enclave", since the guys in Fallout 2 were their own thing entirely. I don't even know if The Enclave in Fallout 2 even knew the Fallout 3 guys existed, because had they not been stopped by the player character, their master plan would have killed off the guys on the East Coast since there'd be no way to give them the counter-agent. You'd think that would have given the East Coast "Enclave" a fairly unique perspective on that master plan, since it would have killed them. So, maybe not a good plan in case there were other remnants of the government out that that they were unaware of as well.

 

[9ted6]

I find the criticisms of Fallout 2 to be extremely overblown, especially when being compared to the dogshit tripe in Fallout 3 and when people are trying to pass them off as "equally bad". The main difference between the two games is that aside from the very notable exception of San Francisco (thank Feargus for making that location almost totally indefensible), every major location is played almost entirely straight, even if there is retardation to be found under the surface (oftentimes quite literally with the big brain molerat encounters). Yeah, you could probably name one or two things from each location that are silly or "don't fit Fallout", but those things are almost never a major focus of the area (talking Deathclaws in Vault 13 and the Kung Fu shit/Hubologists in San Fran aside) and in-fact the major focus of most areas in the game involves slavery, drug addiction, racial tensions and regional political intrigue. Klamath is played entirely straight, Redding is played entirely straight, Vault City is played entirely straight and deals with serious themes, Gecko has a talking molerat but the rest is played straight with serious themes, The Den has a lorebreaking Ghost to contend with and the rest is our first sight of proper slavery in Fallout's post-apocalpyse, Modoc and the Ghost Farm are played straight aside from Laddie the dog and le epic funny toilet explosion that all the jewtubers that never actually played the game like to mention ad nauseum, Broken Hills has a fucking race war going on but oh no not the talking spore plant. There are serious themes and subplots spread throughout the game that wrap their tentacles around several locations' sidequests and stories. These are not the one-note locations from Fallout 3 that only exist because someone wrote "how about a town that only has kids that has existed for 200 years" or "how about a tower full of rich people not letting the dindu nuffin ghouls in" on a napkin.

I agree to an extent and like I said 3 is definitely worse than 2 in almost every possible way, but saying 2 is a masterpiece that's always serious and respectfully handles the lore is as wrong as saying that about 3 or 4. It occasionally presents a serious veneer but if you examine it past the surface level everything is a tunnel leading you to the next dated and unfunny pop culture reference or joke. I'd almost say that's worse because of the jarring tonal shift it creates. You go from a brewing post apoc race war to fighting Mike Tyson and taking his ear as a trophy.

The main antagonists around which the whole story revolves aren't even relevant for most of it, just like 3, and the Enclave in both games is boring and lacks any characterization. 2 only slightly comes ahead because beneath all the Republicans Am I Rite jokes the Enclave's plan in 2 makes some level of sense and you can sort of kind of see why they do what they do. 3 gives Autumn an even more reasonable motivation but instead of being lost amid shitty 90s liberal humor it's lost amid shitty writing and a railroaded plot where the Enclave has to be evil and retarded because the story demands it.

2 also scraps what little advantage it had by railroading the climax and forcing you to fight and destroy the Enclave. At least 1 gave you a choice and some level of C&C even if the Unity ending was obviously an afterthought. And 2's Enclave largely shares the problem many settlements in 3 have. What do they eat? Where do they get supplies from? There's no indication they have other bases besides Navarro and the Oil Rig, they kill Vault dwellers rather than recruit them so they have no new members or genes coming in, so how have they maintained a large and highly advanced army and scientists who aren't inbred for 150 years? Because the plot says so.

3 and especially 4 are much worse about it all but my point is that many of the same reasons why 3 and 4 are terrible are also why 2 is terrible. 3 and 4 serve as the conclusion of the trend of flanderizing and retardifying Fallout but 2 is what started it.

Is 2 as bad as 3/4? No. Is it bad? Yes. Did it do many of the same things wrong as far as narrative, worldbuilding and C&C go? Absolutely yes.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

2 also scraps what little advantage it had by railroading the climax and forcing you to fight and destroy the Enclave.

I think the problem with The Enclave in Fallout 2 is they wanted a bad guy worse than The Master, so they had to raise the bar on their evil. It still makes no sense to me why they'd need the people of Vault 13 and Arroyo if the plan was to "kill everybody". I would think you'd need two lines of the same genetics in order to make something that only killed one of those two groups. But somewhere along the way, they just decided that wasn't evil enough.

2 also scraps what little advantage it had by railroading the climax and forcing you to fight and destroy the Enclave.

Well, this goes hand in hand with the whole "kill everybody" thing. It's kind of hard to negotiate with a group that's whole thing is killing you and everyone you know.

What do they eat? Where do they get supplies from? There's no indication they have other bases besides Navarro and the Oil Rig, they kill Vault dwellers rather than recruit them so they have no new members or genes coming in, so how have they maintained a large and highly advanced army and scientists who aren't inbred for 150 years?

The Oil Rig is obviously bigger than what's shown, but at the same time, they wasted quite a bit of real estate on that stupid puzzle room.

I think the biggest problem with Fallout 2 is that's where everything started to get wacky, and Bethesda designers' "Rule of Cool" doesn't allow for subtlety.

 

[BosanskiSeljak]

Are there any retcons that don't stem from Fallout 2?

 

[Zeriel]

2 also scraps what little advantage it had by railroading the climax and forcing you to fight and destroy the Enclave.

I think the problem with The Enclave in Fallout 2 is they wanted a bad guy worse than The Master, so they had to raise the bar on their evil. It still makes no sense to me why they'd need the people of Vault 13 and Arroyo if the plan was to "kill everybody". I would think you'd need two lines of the same genetics in order to make something that only killed one of those two groups. But somewhere along the way, they just decided that wasn't evil enough.

2 also scraps what little advantage it had by railroading the climax and forcing you to fight and destroy the Enclave.

Well, this goes hand in hand with the whole "kill everybody" thing. It's kind of hard to negotiate with a group that's whole thing is killing you and everyone you know.

What do they eat? Where do they get supplies from? There's no indication they have other bases besides Navarro and the Oil Rig, they kill Vault dwellers rather than recruit them so they have no new members or genes coming in, so how have they maintained a large and highly advanced army and scientists who aren't inbred for 150 years?

The Oil Rig is obviously bigger than what's shown, but at the same time, they wasted quite a bit of real estate on that stupid puzzle room.

I think the biggest problem with Fallout 2 is that's where everything started to get wacky, and Bethesda designers' "Rule of Cool" doesn't allow for subtlety.

Not really. Negotiating your own survival is a classic theme. Hell, our very own Vince did that with Age of Decadence and its many endings. Some of them aren't very logical at all if you view them from 1,000 feet up, because it turns out people have ambitions and do dumb shit because they figure it'll turn out alright, and sometimes it doesn't (yes, I still love the "fuck it, I'm gonna blow up a nuclear bomb in my face, because I can, that's why" ending). But setting that one aside, there's the one where you become the genocidal god's right hand man and just faithfully execute his new world order, because it turns out that in the real world, people more often serve truly evil people than they resist them.

 

[HeatEXTEND]

many of the same reasons why 3 and 4 are terrible are also why 2 is terrible.

Okay Todd.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

Are there any retcons that don't stem from Fallout 2?

Quite a few. The times the bombs started dropping was set in Fallout 3, just before 10AM on the East Coast per Fallout 3 but they're at a kid's birthday party on the West Coast when they start going off in the TV Show. The Ghoul Serum thing retcons all of the Fallout games. Shady Sands getting nuked in 2277 when it's mentioned as being functional numerous times in Fallout New Vegas in 2281. Shady Sands is in LA in the TV Show but it's near Fresno in the games. Vault Tec buying up cold fusion to keep the Great War going but the Vault Survival Guide(Fallout 1 Manual) has an advertisement for the GECK using cold fusion. Mr. House is completely changed from being the savior of Las Vegas to one of the guys who wanted to nuke the world for profit. The Brotherhood is yet again made in to a superpower which retcons not only Fallout 2 but also New Vegas. Ghouls now have Wolverine healing even when not in area with heavy radiation.

There's quite a few more, but that's just off the top of my head while I'm sucking down coffee. The retcons aren't the only reason the show sucks, though. The writing is completely retarded. For example, there's a scribe that was talking about his childhood and says he worked as a "shitter" on a fly farm. The farmers would feed him so he'd shit, and that attracted the flies which were collected and sold for protein. Seriously.

 

[HeatEXTEND]

For example, there's a scribe that was talking about his childhood and says he worked as a "shitter" on a fly farm. The farmers would feed him so he'd shit, and that attracted the flies which were collected and sold for protein. Seriously.

wtf lol