slowpoke checking in: New Vegas

[Zakhad]

The only time I confuse Aussies and Kiwis is when they're inner-city University-attending types whose accents have been so denatured they may as well be mid-Atlantic, and even they start to differ from each other once everyone has a few glasses in them.

My secret is out

Hey, my secret is darker . I'm like Colin Hay from Men at Work, I swap between my strayan accent and my immigrant/international accent depending on circumstance. Hard to be taken seriously in Uni circles when you're pronouncing things the same way you would when yelling at the footy (or at those parts of modern games that demand twitch/savescumming).

Couldn't find one of Colin Hay doing it between sentences, but he can. Anyway, here's his Scottish; here's Strayan.

 

[Roguey]

Did the Fallout bible say that the people retained their various separate accents over several centuries? Because if so, that's just outright retarded.

Keep in mind Fallout had Aradesh and Fallout 2 had Sulik.

 

[Hirato]

Considering that Fallout 1 is set 84 years after the war, and that Aradesh is of a rather venerable age, I'd be willing to bet that both his parents came from outside Vault 15, and that he was born in the vault, or that he is the descendent of people with that lineage.
With that in mind, I'm far more forgiving, but honestly, his accent isn't nearly as out of place as a 'Strayan style accent is in America, 200 years after the whole world got nuked to hell and back.

Fallout 2 is set another 80 years whence, Sulik is another matter, his origins aren't really explained, he's a tribal with a grudge against slavers, and it's more or less left at that.
But if Vault 13 refugees can turn from vault dwellers into Arroyo as we know it in the span of ~80 years, and if we assume that Sulik's tribe has been around for longer.
His manner of speaking really isn't that jarring he looks the part too.

At any rate, I personally think both of them are far less out of place than a lone kiwi in a cast of hundreds.

 

[Zakhad]

Did the Fallout bible say that the people retained their various separate accents over several centuries? Because if so, that's just outright retarded.

Keep in mind Fallout had Aradesh and Fallout 2 had Sulik.

Always figured that Sulik's accent was just the way his tribe had started speaking - which the tribals in Zion seem to confirm, since they also developed their own language/accent.

 

[Gozma]

I am not bitching about stupid shit like accents because F2 already made everything in the the setting stupid already. This sow cannot be unfucked we just gotta deal with the implications going forward

Gannon has a real Bioware character problem which is that he doesn't seem like he should be adventuring. This is the thing where they make the videogame like an office comedy for low level white collar/government office laborers like a network sitcom - paying no attention to the tone dissonance while I am constantly gibbing random human beings. It's like buddy you are not cut out for this; go head a steering committee to investigate the proposal of making stimpacks and psycho for me. The VA is pretty good though, it's just really weird.

Also they play it completely straight that some American NCR sniper got raped by a guy from a comedy lunatic faction that doesn't make sense and you win the quest by using medicine checks to psychiatry her. I reacted to this like if some woman in Baldur's Gate said a beholder had raped her and the game played it straight.

Also is it just me or is the Q-35 special plasma rifle like the best bang-for-the-point investment gun in the game? Like 1/3 Fiends has a plasma rifle so it's easy to fix, the skill req is really low, the ammo is common as dirt even if you are converting it 2-for-1 to overcharged cells... (edit: I do not use VATS so there are probably things that are better if you do)

 

[Zakhad]

Gannon has a real Bioware character problem which is that he doesn't seem like he should be adventuring. This is the thing where they make the videogame like an office comedy for low level white collar/government office laborers like a network sitcom - paying no attention to the tone dissonance while I am constantly gibbing random human beings. It's like buddy you are not cut out for this; go head a steering committee to investigate the proposal of making stimpacks and psycho for me. The VA is pretty good though, it's just really weird.

To be fair, I thought that was part of his character arc, although some might disagree *avoids spoilers for once*. You're right, though. But then, except for the robots, all of the characters seem to be following you for no particular reason. (I mean, same with the robots, but they don't really need a reason.)

Also they play it completely straight that some American NCR sniper got raped by a guy from a comedy lunatic faction that doesn't make sense and you win the quest by using medicine checks to psychiatry her. I reacted to this like if some woman in Baldur's Gate said a beholder had raped her and the game played it straight.

Why would a beholder... how... ueaaagh.

Yeah, who wrote that quest? the only thing lazier than a fedex quest is a quest solved with a single skill challenge (here with a little arbitrary fedexing strung on to the end). Arcanum would at least have made you take her as a temp companion while you go and kill the guy, otherwise leaving her situation as insoluble, or something. But gamebryo handles temp companions really poorly (see Oblivion permanent temporary companion exploits, where you just avoid finishing their quests), and modern games don't like to punish you for what order you do quests in.

Also is it just me or is the Q-35 special plasma rifle like the best bang-for-the-point investment gun in the game? Like 1/3 Fiends has a plasma rifle so it's easy to fix, the skill req is really low, the ammo is common as dirt even if you are converting it 2-for-1 to overcharged cells... (edit: I do not use VATS so there are probably things that are better if you do)

Nah man. Plasma shots travel too slowly. Standard Laser rifle is better. Scope it, add a beam splitter, sneak attack critical deathclaws with CHs on both beams and then finish them in a few more shots as they run towards you. lasers have better fire-rate, too, I think. Helps to have a DT-removing ammo, but as you say, loads of MF cells around to make optimised/over-charged. And plasma rifles much rarer in some areas. But I repair most things with weapon repair kits anyway, since I scavenge every single WPK component I can lay my filthy post-apocalyptic hands on, and shoot for repair 50 pretty soon so I can get light touch at level 2 and not waste a level with bullshit perks *sperg*.

 

[Zakhad]

...and some drugs.

Drugs are good, m'kay.

Don't know how FNV got past the Australian censors: the game's implicit message is basically, "Winners do as many drugs as possible", or, "when in doubt, snort everything."

And sperg: aspergers. So an autistic-like obsession over something. In the case of breaking a game by character-building, then yep, =munchkin/twink.

 

[Zakhad]

Not just snort, you're restricting yourself. You gotta inject, drink and eat everything too.

My first (and only) finished walkthrough, the battle with Lanius was won with a big carbine and getting high on every drug I had on my inventory. Considering Lanius can RUN LIKE HELL, broken legs or no broken legs, and fights you with a HUEG RAPE SWORD that catapults you away (I was once thrown high into the sky and stayed there for fifteen seconds or so) and breaks your shit, its only fair. Did I also mention the +25 Legionaries shooting, punching and slashing the hell out of me?

Myself, I rarely finish playthroughs of anything more than once (last levels/areas are usually terrible slogfests, plus the reward mechanics of character improvement/looting are all gone by then, and if it's a second time you already know the plot). Even with favourite non-rpgs like Thief, Stalker CoP, and Psychonauts I've only been bothered finishing the last areas once or twice. Played through Baldur's gate so many times, finished maybe once. System shock 2? Fuck those alien levels. Wasteland? Final fortress is irritating. And so forth. Torment the major exception.

So anyway, the only time I got to Lanius I... talked him down. Not even a satisfying "speech combat" victory, like Torment. Just skill check success and then no fight. Hope they do remove speech skills from P:E, invisible stat checks combined with complex interdependent dialogue far superior.

 

[Hirato]

I also talked him down....








Into fighting me man to man

 

[Zakhad]

You... talked Lanius down? That's just lame, man.
When I saw Lanius, I KNEW it was EPIC COMBAT TIME!!!!!

I also talked him down....








Into fighting me man to man

You guys at least tricked Elijah into getting trapped in the vault, right? That was one situation where violence was definitely the less awesome option.

I felt huge satisfaction as he raged impotently behind my fleeing back.

 

[Hirato]

Vault? What vault?

Spoiler

I watched the whole thing unfold a few times.
He approaches the door, and then the security turns on and open fires upon him, forcefields and other annoying stuff also activate at this point, and once he's snuffed, your collar starts beeping.

He doesn't actually go into the vault.

 

[Zakhad]

Vault? What vault?

Spoiler

I watched the whole thing unfold a few times.
He approaches the door, and then the security turns on and open fires upon him, forcefields and other annoying stuff also activate at this point, and once he's snuffed, your collar starts beeping.

He doesn't actually go into the vault.

Damn, I really hoped he'd stay there.

And I need to remember about spoilers.

 

[Carrion]

I think

Spoiler

it works if you don't turn on the security turrets and other stuff. You just have to sneak out of the area before the force fields get activated.

 

[Roguey]

Yeah, who wrote that quest? the only thing lazier than a fedex quest is a quest solved with a single skill challenge (here with a little arbitrary fedexing strung on to the end).

It was Josh Sawyer's idea, George Ziets wrote it. Personally I find straight men writing about a lesbian woman's rape to be quite disgusting and inappropriate.

So anyway, the only time I got to Lanius I... talked him down. Not even a satisfying "speech combat" victory, like Torment. Just skill check success and then no fight. Hope they do remove speech skills from P:E, invisible stat checks combined with complex interdependent dialogue far superior.

Torment didn't have speech combat. You just pick the WIS or CHA or I'LL KILL MYSELF WITH THIS SWORD SWEAR TO GOD lines and win. It certainly didn't have any "complex interdependent dialogue." Invisible checks are lame too, but those will be a toggle.

 

[Zakhad]

Yeah, who wrote that quest? the only thing lazier than a fedex quest is a quest solved with a single skill challenge (here with a little arbitrary fedexing strung on to the end).

It was Josh Sawyer's idea, George Ziets wrote it. Personally I find straight men writing about a lesbian woman's rape to be quite disgusting and inappropriate.

True. Although I'm not sure we should decree that all straight men stay away from the topic, either. It's good that they at least want to address he consequences of rape, rather than providing the player titillating near-rape scenarios (Far Cry 3, that new Lara Croft debacle, and other games I avoid like the plague). They failed to deal with it, though, which is why we are talking about it. I suspect the more important problem is that there are too few women/lgbti people in game design, despite changes to the supposed all 12-year-old-straight-male gaming demographic gradually filtering through to some in the industry. Ideally, gay women would be free to write about the trauma of straight men, and vice versa. Until then, I suppose, we complain.

So anyway, the only time I got to Lanius I... talked him down. Not even a satisfying "speech combat" victory, like Torment. Just skill check success and then no fight. Hope they do remove speech skills from P:E, invisible stat checks combined with complex interdependent dialogue far superior.

Torment didn't have speech combat. You just pick the WIS or CHA or I'LL KILL MYSELF WITH THIS SWORD SWEAR TO GOD lines and win. It certainly didn't have any "complex interdependent dialogue." Invisible checks are lame too, but those will be a toggle.

Unless you didn't have the sword/knife, or didn't use it. Even with the high stats, it was possible to fail by picking wrong. But yes, invisible stat checks are only marginally better than the alternative, especially in Torment where stats were much easier to modify than in most games. As long as you have WIS/INT/CHA or their equivalent in a game, though, you kind of have to make dialogue checks relate to them (unless you go the BG2 route of just ignoring stats completely for the purposes of roleplaying, and eliminating most varying outcomes along with it).

My ideal (here, of course, I indulge that favourite passtime of the codex, imagining ideal games) is a game without any psych/social stats or skills at all: you're as smart as you play your character. Everyone gets the dumb/smart options, without these being obviously divided into HURR DURR ME STUPID and "Sir, I think you overlooked the consequences of Meinong's theorem for the purposes of your argument". There are way too many games where a stupid character still understands everything (Bioware), and the reverse (my high int Wizard failing to pick the moustache-twirling villain until the plot compells it), which latter can be worse. Games don't have to have protagonists as willfully oblivious as that in Dark Messiah of M&M to make me feel disconnected from the choices available by the arbitrary stupidity of every option. The whole realm of mental stats are a bad hangover from tabletop D&D. If we still want spellcasting to be based on stats rather than skills, link it to endurance or something (which Arcanum kinda did with "willpower").

 

[tuluse]

It was Josh Sawyer's idea, George Ziets wrote it. Personally I find straight men writing about a lesbian woman's rape to be quite disgusting and inappropriate.

I don't really see how a gay man would do a better job.

I mean wouldn't a straight guy better understand the whole not wanting to have sex with a man thing?

 

[Jack]

It was Josh Sawyer's idea, George Ziets wrote it. Personally I find straight men writing about a lesbian woman's rape to be quite disgusting and inappropriate.

Aye, they should stick to writing about straight white men in loving hetrosexual relationships, agreed.

 

[Gozma]

There is another woman across town that also got raped and mutilated by cook-cook, and she's working as a pimp. I could see the feminist criticism about the lulzy drug-crazed cannibal chef raping masculinized women motif forming before my eyes.

I wish there had been a dialog option that said, "Man I killed that guy by shooting him in the feet with guns I don't normally use so his bounty head wouldn't get melted. GIMME A QUEST REWARD."

Also about laser rifle vs. plasma rifle: The laser rifle seems to fucking miss for me for no reason all the time. The plasma rifle at least creates a moving thing in the world that will cause damage to anything it hits, like a rocket in Doom; this really makes it good against anything that is approaching you, 'cause they will often wander into its collision path even if the shot was poor.

 

[Zakhad]

It was Josh Sawyer's idea, George Ziets wrote it. Personally I find straight men writing about a lesbian woman's rape to be quite disgusting and inappropriate.

I don't really see how a gay man would do a better job.

I mean wouldn't a straight guy better understand the whole not wanting to have sex with a man thing?

Well, I won't speak for people I'm not, but from my experience with gay guys and dykes (I'm friends with a few, and I dated a lesbian for a while once, too... long story), I would say that maybe the fact that you think that, suggests what the problem is. Lesbians aren't just guys with lady parts. In a society with defined gender preferences, like the late twentieth/early twenty-first century, the experience of being a marginalised orientation can lead to some fairly complicated feelings towards sex and gender in general. It might well be worse for a gay woman to be raped by a man than it would be for a man - it would certainly be different. I don't really want to start grading rapes from bad to worse: knowing a few people who've experienced them, there are really no "better" rapes.

Also, We don't really know much about the sexual identity politics of the post-apocalypse, beyond how people respond to the cherchez-la-femme perk etc., and that Arcade, Christine, etc. talk openly about their preferences. We don't even know if anyone even identifies as straight or gay. It's implied, but never absolutely determined. For all we know, it's like the world of Firefly, where most people are a little more flexible - the fiends could spend every night in a bunch of drugged-out gender-bending orgies, for all we know. The legion regard women as lesser - maybe they practise the ancient Hellenic attitudes to love, that another man is the better choice for actual (sexual) bonding? The ancient Romans didn't really have their fixed ideas of straigt or gay, either. As Curio said of the real Caesar, he was "omnium mulierum uirum et omnium uirorum mulierem" ("every woman's man, every man's woman"). I love to imagine that while all these little twelve year old gamers are thinking how tough the Legion is, the legionaries "under the tent canvas" are violating every idea they have about what constitutes proper ideas of masculinity. And since Josh Sawyer wrote the legion, and he has a tatt from the Bellum Catilinae, I wouldn't be surprised if that were the case.

Anyway...

In short, it's complicated.

That's all assuming, of course, that you really are a guy. It's the internet, so you could be a hyper-intelligent pan-sexual giraffe for all I know (and if you are, I'm totally cool with that).

Edit: Quote is from Suet. Divus Iulius LII, btw. If any other periti latinae linguae homines in filo sint. And if any of them want to suggest a better word for "comment thread" than filum, you're welcome. What does modern Italian use? Anyone?

 

[tuluse]

To be honest I was just trying to rile Roguey up a bit.

That said when it comes to writing, I generally feel that either a writer is able to a situation well and thus he *should* or he can't and shouldn't, and sexual preference isn't a determining factor in what an author should write about. George RR Martin has writing both about lesbianism and rape and I think he's done a pretty good job at it.

 

[Black_Willow]

I have to agree with Roguey, I also find writing about homosexuals (and homosexuals in general) quite disgusting and inappropriate.

 

[Carrion]

To be honest I was just trying to rile Roguey up a bit.

That said when it comes to writing, I generally feel that either a writer is able to a situation well and thus he *should* or he can't and shouldn't, and sexual preference isn't a determining factor in what an author should write about.

Yeah, pretty much. Shakespeare wrote about rape numerous times, I wonder if that was that disgusting and inappropriate too. Or was that a different thing since he only wrote about heterosexual women getting raped?

What really matters is the writing and not the writer. In this particular case one could complain about the fact that making Cook-Cook a rapist is a really cheap way to make him look like subhuman scum, or that the writing displayed a poor understanding of the mental trauma potentially caused by rape, or that the whole rape thing in general wasn't tastefully done, but definitely not about Sawyer and Ziets being straight white men because that has nothing to do with anything. I don't know, maybe Obsidian should just hire Jennifer Hepler to write the female characters for them so that they could write about serious issues like rape in their game that features nuclear war, murder, mass murder, torture, mutilation, incineration, decapitation, dismemberment, human experimentation, slavery, schizophrenia and other less severe things.

 

[tuluse]

Talking about the homosexuals, I think women in dangerous places should be rare in teh wastelands. A post-nuclear society would be very patriarchal, because women can make babies and men can't. I think Caesar's Legion makes a lot of sense in that aspect, too bad they made them treat the women like shit and other evul stuff.

Which should make homosexuals even rarer, and considered odd. Women who aren't hereto should be considered strange or even traitorous ("how dare you not to have babies bitch!").

Lesbians would probably have children regardless (whether voluntary or not).

That said, there are matriarchal primitive societies, so I see no reason why one couldn't exist in the wasteland.

 

[Roguey]

Ah this thread turned terrible right quick.

Unless you didn't have the sword/knife, or didn't use it. Even with the high stats, it was possible to fail by picking wrong.

The same goes for New Vegas? You get a number of speech/barter options and have to choose the best argument.

George RR Martin has writing both about lesbianism and rape and I think he's done a pretty good job at it.

Lesifoere would get such a derisive thrill from reading that sentence.

 

[Jack]

I don't know, maybe Obsidian should just hire Jennifer Hepler to write the female characters for them so that they could write about serious issues like rape in their game that features nuclear war, murder, mass murder, torture, mutilation, incineration, decapitation, dismemberment, human experimentation, slavery, schizophrenia and other less severe things.