Fallout Tale of Two Wastelands, a proper look at Fallout 3 writings and designs

[Fedora Master]

You can not fix modern Fallout.
You can not fix Bethesda.
Any discussion of these topics is a waste of time and effort.

 

[Ol' Willy]

Behemoths is a good idea for BOSS type of monster. It's the kind where I dont hesitate to take out my best weapon.

Find a place where he can't get you - like a building or a shed - and then you can kill him even with 10mm Pistol

 

[Yosharian]

Behemoths is a good idea for BOSS type of monster. It's the kind where I dont hesitate to take out my best weapon.

Find a place where he can't get you - like a building or a shed - and then you can kill him even with 10mm Pistol

They should be completely immune to weapons like that but Bethesda are afraid of old school mechanics, you know, the ones where the goal of an RPG is simulation of an actual fantasy world instead of a monetized Skinner box

 

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

As for its logic... Boyo, chameleons and lizards can get to the size of Deathclaw, mantis to the size of giant mantis, rat to the size of Keeng Rat, ant to Giant Ant and Giant Fire Ant.... I dont see any problem with Super Mutants grow to the size of Behemoth. And they are rare after all~

Seriously, Behemoths dont have any existential problem.

They should be completely immune to weapons like that but Bethesda are afraid of old school mechanics, you know, the ones where the goal of an RPG is simulation of an actual fantasy world instead of a monetized Skinner box

I remember that in the OG Fallouts, armorless Super Mutants were as tough as metal armor, and shooting them with a 10mm pistol was pretty much an exercise in futility.

Stuff like combat and power armor doesn't work without a proper damage threshold/hard resist mechanic.

I miss Damage Threshold and such mechanics. FNV did well with it, but the whole "minimum chip damage" was bullshit. If you're immune to bullets, you are immune to bullets. The end. I loved how in FO1/2, Power Armor let me take attacks with zero damage. That felt soooo good.

 

[laclongquan]

Behemoths is a good idea for BOSS type of monster. It's the kind where I dont hesitate to take out my best weapon.

Find a place where he can't get you - like a building or a shed - and then you can kill him even with 10mm Pistol

That's boring. I know it's a good tactic, but you general get to them when you are high level and fully equipped. You dont want to play tunnel rat at such time.

And 10mm pistols dont do shit. They have big HP pool, so you would shoot to break several 10mm pistols and thousands rounds going that route. TOO maso for me.

What's fun is to shoot mininuke or HE missile at them to see mushroom clouds going up.

Failing that, shoot gatling laser or multiplas to see several lines of light cut across the sky.

 

[50726f73706572]

laclongquan, I would recommend that you just make your own game. If you just want to study that's ok but remember the lemons you are squeezing are rotten.

Fixing FO3 is a dead end. There is no expansion to FO3 that could benefit from your fixes. You'd have to make one.
The game is dead and was not evey considered a fallout game by those who know fallout.
And if you are in the business of creatively expanding a game, you may as well start properly from scratch.

Remember FO3 isn't something you found in bad condition. It didn't slip into disrepair, it was badly designed as a whole.
There is no payoff.

You can't keep digging and hope to find the hidden city of fallouty content we never imagined might exist.

In fact should you discover anything of value like FO3's source code, it would be unleashing a curse, and we would all be worse for it.
It would be like unleashing a deadly plague upon yourself. It would debuff your INT stat bigly.

Start from scratch.

Even if you modded FO1,FO2 literally no one would care no matter how innovative or decent the content. Except the Russians.
Only total conversions matter anymore, and you're better off making your own game then.

 

[0wca]

laclongquan, I would recommend that you just make your own game. If you just want to study that's ok but remember the lemons you are squeezing are rotten.

Fixing FO3 is a dead end. There is no expansion to FO3 that could benefit from your fixes. You'd have to make one.
The game is dead and was not evey considered a fallout game by those who know fallout.
And if you are in the business of creatively expanding a game, you may as well start properly from scratch.

Remember FO3 isn't something you found in bad condition. It didn't slip into disrepair, it was badly designed as a whole.
There is no payoff.

You can't keep digging and hope to find the hidden city of fallouty content we never imagined might exist.

In fact should you discover anything of value like FO3's source code, it would be unleashing a curse, and we would all be worse for it.
It would be like unleashing a deadly plague upon yourself. It would debuff your INT stat bigly.

Start from scratch.

Even if you modded FO1,FO2 literally no one would care no matter how innovative or decent the content. Except the Russians.
Only total conversions matter anymore, and you're better off making your own game then.

Agreed. The problems of FO3 cannot be fixed with mods, because most of them are narrative flaws that take a massive dump on Fallout's lore.
Sneedclave aside, I hated how Bethesda threw in the Enclave even though they were destroyed at the end of FO2 and the fact that they turned them into generic, bland bad guys just to make their shitty plot work.

You can fix FNV's shortcomings with mods, like the lackluster combat which is easily fixed by applying some combat mods. FO3 however, is beyond repair.

 

[laclongquan]

No no. I make this thread, this review, just to prove otherwise.

Sure, that bag of lemons is not very good, with some (only some) of it is rotten.

But it's nowhere as bad as Codex made it out.

Of course, it's nowhere as good as its reviews would have you believe either.

 

[laclongquan]

There was a problem with Fallout3 companions: They dont make you wanting to carry them during the game. An entire problem of writing (for dialog and quest) and placement.

Unlike FNV's Cass. Or Veronica. both made my hand itch the first minute I see them. Which is pretty early, so to speak.

Fallout 3's companions in order of possible and logical move to meet:
- Jericho in Megaton. Male? and Evil karma only to get him? Pass~ Even if just steal a few things to lower karma is easy to do... Meh, you are not that worthy.
- Clover in Paradise Falls. This require you go out of the way to visit slaver central, do some enslaving thing, to even get access to her. The enslaving thing did stop me in my track even if the targets are escaping slavers. And if you dont have correct karma you cant hire her. Thank god TTW change charisma bobblehead so we can hire her without twisting ourself into pretzel. If we want her. Meh.
- Dogmeat in Scrapyard. Almost no sign forcing you to go there unless taking a perk at level 14 to be a contract killer. So unless you metagame, you dont know about that dog.
- Charon, a ghoul in Museum of HIstory, Underworld. Most likely meet him in main quest. Problem: ghoul. Meh.
- Sergeant RL3 in a far off corner. Also a robot.... ugh~ And neutral karma to hire is not attractive.
- Paladin Cross... late game only. And black female. And good karma. old F3 has a mod that send her to Tenpenny Tower but no such luck with TTW.
- Butch, same as above. Male. Meh~ Also a F3 mod allow hiring him earlier than late game, but meh~
- Fawkes. Super Mutant. Very late game. Super Meh~

I dont mind the karma thing, because if target worth it, two command console will deal with it in a heartbeat.

The only one slightly attract my interest is clover. unfortunately she's behind some very annoying gate. Which kill my interest.

So very out of characteristic for me, I play Fallout 3 alone, in total contrary to my Fallout 1/2 days where I play with full party and more. Fallout New Vegas because there's some practical consideration for too big party, but at least I manage Veronica, Cass, EDE, and a (modded) Willow.

Let's just say the companion design in Fallout 3 fail big time.

Seriously. The Fallout 3 companion cast is terrible. I advise a good companion mod right at start if you want. Because otherwise it's not worth to bother.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

But it's nowhere as bad as Codex made it out.

Of course, it's nowhere as good as its reviews would have you believe either.

This applies to a lot of games thanks to codex's contrarian nature.

There was a problem with Fallout companions: They dont make you wanting to carry them during the game. An entire problem of writing (for dialog and quest) and placement.

I don't think Bethesda games had any fleshed out companions until FO4. Probably as a response to how well they were received in FNV.

 

[laclongquan]

Fallout 3 is a game full of potential, looking from POV of a tactical player, or storyfags.

I strongly disagree, this project was doomed to fail even before it started. Not just the game, the boring ass design, the lack of imagination, understanding of the themes.

After a long time play Mojave's desert theme, I come to the conclusion that Fallout3's Capital wasteland does contain some stark thematic arts. 50s point of view about how a future post apocalyptical America after a nuclear war. Really after the destruction, I mean, not recovering like Fallout New Vegas's Mojave or Fallout 2's West Coast. Much closer to Fallout 1, but even near the war than that. F1 is all about out of vault see some recovering, and watch the embers of war spark. But F3 is about out of the vault and right into a war.

 

[Sykar]

FO 3 is a shit stain and a travesty not just as a Fallout game but as a game in general and it baffels me to this day that this piece of mental diearrhea has such a big fandom. By any objective measure you have to dig through mountains of shit to find a few tiny pyrite nuggets.

No no. I make this thread, this review, just to prove otherwise.

Sure, that bag of lemons is not very good, with some (only some) of it is rotten.

But it's nowhere as bad as Codex made it out.

Of course, it's nowhere as good as its reviews would have you believe either.

Bullshit. Let me give you a brief list of stuff that is objectively shit:

Graphics: bottom tier even for its time. Especially faces escaped straight out of uncanny valley.

Animations: horrid, among the worst I have ever seen from so called "AAA" studios.

Story/Writing: The story is without rhyme or reason. People have survived this idiotically hostile environment for centuries. So what exactly is daddy's little purifier fixing?

Dialogue: "Have you seen my dad? Middle aged dude" this perfectly sums up the overall level of dialogue. It is atrocious, incompetent and utterly retarded.

World building: It is completely nonsensical. I and many other critics are not expecting detailed perfectly indepth world building but Bethshit did not even get the bare minimum of logical world building done. If this were some Gobliins! level of parody it would not matter, but it is not. It is post-apocalyptic with people and society supposedly recovering from the great atomic war yet no efforts are made in rebuilding anything, people prefer to live in garbage than building something. But hey we can live next to an unexploded nuke how funny is that! /DERP

RPG aspect: Meaningless, thanks to people seeing the chances to succeed savescumming is easy and safe with no effort. Overabundance of attribute and skill points make any character into an even better allrounder than a gifted character in FO 1+2 making the entire RPG system pointless and worthless.

Gunplay: Bottom tier which is irredeemably trash and you will be hard pressed to find a worse AAA title in that regard.

VATS: Basically cheat mode for "nostalgia" even though a good chunk of the audience never even played the original FO games and thefore this is just a rotten dried out carrot on a stick for the few dumbfuck fans of the original.

So what exactly is left? Less than a handful of quests. It is not even good as a hiking simulator because there are not many interesting/beautiful sights to find, if any.

But it's nowhere as bad as Codex made it out.

Of course, it's nowhere as good as its reviews would have you believe either.

This applies to a lot of games thanks to codex's contrarian nature.

There was a problem with Fallout companions: They dont make you wanting to carry them during the game. An entire problem of writing (for dialog and quest) and placement.

I don't think Bethesda games had any fleshed out companions until FO4. Probably as a response to how well they were received in FNV.

It applies to FO 3.

 

[koyota]

Still have to go with the F01,2/NV gave a much better feeling of living in an moody isolated lonely post-apocalyptic world.

From the Music to the Barren truly feeling like civilization is gone setting, There is a special sense of coziness isolated mood that I get when playing F01.

-------------

Jeez guyz, there's a whole other dip tank at Ft. Daggerpoint! Infinite muties! Did you even *play* FO:New California??!!!!

Or F76 that for some reasons has a whole dozen of them in a west Tek West Virginia research center.

F76 retconning the brotherhood of steel into GOOD EX-US military (In contrast to the BAD ex-us military Enclave) medieval age Larpers, can go re-retcon itself please.

 

[Alphons]

Overabundance of attribute and skill points make any character into an even better allrounder than a gifted character in FO 1+2 making the entire RPG system pointless and worthless.

Skills are even more broken in this game than some people give it credit.

Spoiler

He was wrong with his initial calculations and he gets all 100s a level earlier- at level 7.

 

[wishbonetail]

Okay, registered because I just can’t stand watching you people discussing this pile of writing with straight faces.
Let’s see.
Rivet city. Bunch of people living in METAL tub in RADIOACTIVE water. They should be radiated to high hell there, this place is not liveable in any way, this is just crazy. Where do they get food, they don’t grow anything (Dr Lee managed to pluck some carrots, good for her)? What do they produce to trade? There are no production facilities of any kind in sight. People just walk around eating and drinking and not doing anything worthwhile.
Tenpenny. Tower of “rich” people.Why are they rich? What do they have to get rich? It just a tower in the middle of nowhere. A single supermutant with a rocket launcher can level this appendage to the ground. Again, where are their crop fields and water supply. What do they produce to trade? These “rich” people” just go on with their leisurely lives doing pretty much nothing. It really doesn’t make much sense.
Lamplight/Big city. My english level is just not good enough to describe this all time everyone’s favourite hot smokin masterpiece. SO if i remember correctly there were these teachers with school children on excursion who got trapped in a cave during bombing. Teachers died somehow so kids decide they don’t need no grown ups(no education, no thought control). So they survived IN A CAVE FOR 200 YEARS BY SCAVENGING MOSS OF THE WALLS (and what about vitamin d deficiency?). But It gets better. So these KIDS have been INBREEDING among themselves for 200 years while exiling everyone who reached a certain age to the Big city. This was obviously written by some kind of high sicko (Stephen King, maybe?). It would be much less fantasy that after this much time spent in a cave on a certain diet these kids should’ve turned into some kind of raging troglodytes. So, they somehow exile grown ups to Big city which itself is just another Nowheresville without any resources in sight (no crops no water) being constantly raided by mutants. Guess they survive on pure badassery and stashed cave supermoss while having time and strength to discuss dates and bang each other.
Megaton. Yes, it’s a town built around undetonated bomb just for lulz. Yes, Tenpenny wants it to be detonated just for lulz. Some high level worldbuilding here, don’t you dare to compare it to other Fallouts. And again no crop fields here, just one malnourished brahmin. Obviously, town people survived on its milk and meat (which is supposedly regrown after a while due to radiation).
Don’t remember much about Republic of Dave except that it belongs on some cartoon for 5 year olds.
Paradise falls is the only settlement that makes some sense. Except that the sheer amount of mutants and raiders is astounding. These slavers and raiders outnumber peaceful population like 10:1. Whom do they even raid?
Postapoc worldbuilding is supposed to be all about resources and NV showed us how it should be done. Main conflict and pretty much all other conflicts in New Vegas are about resources. It is what makes the world believable and differentiates it from theme parks. I just can’t believe that these same people made Morrowind which is all about worldbuilding (dunno didn’t compare the credits).

 

[Ol' Willy]

But hey we can live next to an unexploded nuke how funny is that! /DERP

The concept itself is not that idiotic. A skilled writer can make it work.

But Jewthesda has no skilled writers.

How it is explained in the game?
The nuke lies in the center of a nice crater; this crater provides natural cover from winds and stuff. Thus, people have built a city inside a crater and learned to love the bomb (yay, we're quoting prestigious cinema here!)

It, of course, makes no sense.
What exactly made this crater? Unexploded nukes don't make huge craters. Therefore, by pure chance, this nuke was dropped into already existing nice crater.

Crater itself is a shit place for a longtime settlement. It will cover you from the winds in the IMMEDIATE FALLOUT but afterwards is useless. It is worse than useless, in the rain all the toxic water will be yours because you live down under.

Not to say that there are RUINS OF THE CITY right behind the corner, with some buildings (including school building that as big as the entire Megaton) and basements still standing.

Everyone knows about the bomb. Everyone knows that it's not disarmed. And of course it's not guarded, because what wrong could happen with not disarmed nuke?

 

[Cpt. Dallas]

Stupid question, but how would one combine a GoG version of F3 with a Steam version of NV for TTW?

 

[The Dutch Ghost]

F76 retconning the brotherhood of steel into GOOD EX-US military (In contrast to the BAD ex-us military Enclave) medieval age Larpers, can go re-retcon itself please.

What a terrible shitty retcon.
And obviously written by someone who thinks the BOS are the 'Knights of the Wasteland" rather than a bunch of xenophobic technology hoarders.

 

[Sykar]

Stupid question, but how would one combine a GoG version of F3 with a Steam version of NV for TTW?

You don´t since anything touched by Derpout 3 becomes tainted.

 

[Duraframe300]

Words

Megaton is what stops me every time I try to get through F3 (though I have managed to do so). It's one thing if they build around the bomb as a potential deterrent. But, no. After all this time Megaton has presumably been standing nobody thought of even making a fucking fence around the thing.

Not only that, but they let a crazy maniac preach directly beside the bomb. And NOT ONLY THAT the fucking story has you, a random fucking bloke, being asked to disarm it. And it's not like you have to build up some trust for this shit. No, simply walk into town and the stupid ass sheriff will blow you to take the job.

Megaton is the worst, most illogical town I have ever seen, both in its concept and execution.

 

[Sykar]

Words

Megaton is what stops me every time I try to get through F3 (though I have managed to do so). It's one thing if they build around the bomb as a potential deterrent. But, no. After all this time Megaton has presumably been standing nobody thought of even making a fucking fence around the thing.

Not only that, but they let a crazy maniac preach directly beside the bomb. And NOT ONLY THAT the fucking story has you, a random fucking bloke, being asked to disarm it.

Megaton is the worst, most illogical town I have ever seen, both in its concept and execution.

Little Lamplight?

 

[ItsChon]

You give these Fallout New Vegas fags an inch and they try to take a mile. If you can get yourself to like that shit game, liking FO3 is not a big leap to take. Fallout fanboys are the worst.

 

[Sykar]

New Vegas is leaps and bounds better than FO 3.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Tenpenny tower is one of the best written locations in any RPG

 

[Bigg Boss]

No no. I make this thread, this review, just to prove otherwise.

Sure, that bag of lemons is not very good, with some (only some) of it is rotten.

But it's nowhere as bad as Codex made it out.

Of course, it's nowhere as good as its reviews would have you believe either.

And people are telling you that is retarded and you are wasting your time. Nothing you or anybody else says is new on this topic but feel free to spin wheels if it makes you happy. Not being a dick just keeping it real motherfuckers always talking about keeping it real so I am keeping it real.