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

[Ol' Willy]

Mind you, if we can help the ghouls in, then the ghouls massacre them all.... THEN we detonate an Abomb in the basement of TPT. That and the nuke in Megaton would get us two towns obliterated in the bag~ What an achievement! An awesome way to play destroyer character. And awesome way to make James speechless when talking about it. :wishful:

Yeah, that would be cool. Also find some Chinese sub and destroy Rivet city for full effect

 

[laclongquan]

Nah, if you go that route there's only need to set up a reactor room that power up the entire Rivet City. And we get to operate it at critical level :Boom:

The lack of a reactor room in RC is pretty illogical, because it's one of biggest community in Capital Wasteland, plus a premier R&D facility.

Tale of Two Wasteland does introduce a hydroponic room in Science lab, but nothing of that vein.

Mind you, it's pure wishful thinking because RC is a critical place. James later on does return here to persuade Dr Li to bring her premier research team to help him at Jefferson Memorial. If it get destructible it would have introduced too much variants to bugs.

 

[Ol' Willy]

Nah, if you go that route there's only need to set up a reactor room that power up the entire Rivet City. And we get to operate it at critical level :Boom:

The lack of a reactor room in RC is pretty illogical, because it's one of biggest community in Capital Wasteland, plus a premier R&D facility.

Tale of Two Wasteland does introduce a hydroponic room in Science lab, but nothing of that vein.

Overloading reactor is boring. And already done in Fallout 2.

Torpedoing the godforsaken place would have been much satisfying.

Also, remember one of the satellite stations in the North West part of the map that allows you to bomb some locations? I guess it could have been made to fuck up some cities as well

 

[laclongquan]

Submarine route has one weakness is that it's logic-unfriendly. Submarines are labour-intensive, need constant care and fixing, "running on duct tapes and baling wires" is the description. A sub exist this long after the war is a bit unbelievable, and introducing new faction has its own problem.

 

[Daemongar]

, you still have to blow up Megaton

What do you mean "have to blow up Megaton"?

In all three games running back to back, I never blow it up even once. It's a central town full of amenities, Who would be stupid enough to destroy a central town?

Aaaaah, i forgot, dumb original Fallout 3 players, is whom.

I'm not sure I follow. You go to Megaton, get the bobblehead, complete a quest or two, then get paid to blow up that city. Then you go back and you continue quests with that ghoul. Yes, you can save the town yet - I don't know if you've noticed - you take even *more* of a karma hit when you shoot everyone, so by the game logic, blowing up the city is the least evil option.

 

[Ol' Willy]

Submarine route has one weakness is that it's logic-unfriendly. Submarines are labour-intensive, need constant care and fixing, "running on duct tapes and baling wires" is the description. A sub exist this long after the war is a bit unbelievable, and introducing new faction has its own problem.

Chinese nuclear sub maintained by robots for two centuries.

It's Fagout 3 we're talking about! Any inanity is possible!

 

[laclongquan]

, you still have to blow up Megaton

What do you mean "have to blow up Megaton"?

In all three games running back to back, I never blow it up even once. It's a central town full of amenities, Who would be stupid enough to destroy a central town?

Aaaaah, i forgot, dumb original Fallout 3 players, is whom.

I'm not sure I follow. You go to Megaton, get the bobblehead, complete a quest or two, then get paid to blow up that city. Then you go back and you continue quests with that ghoul. Yes, you can save the town yet - I don't know if you've noticed - you take even *more* of a karma hit when you shoot everyone, so by the game logic, blowing up the city is the least evil option.

What part of "central town full of amenities" do you have problem with?
1. It's central so after resting (for well rested buff) you can travel to any corner of the world with spare buff time for action.
2. It has all merchant type, from equipment to food and drink to doctor. Tenpenny Tower do have same but it's in a farthest corner of the world, much lesser quality than Megaton. One can understand why old fart Tenpenny want to destroy Megaton because his tower is much lesser, after all, but we are not Tenpenny.
3. Why would I need to kill anyone friendly? I am not a dumbass F3 console player who kill just for the lolz. If I want to reduce karma, just steal red-owned items and it fall right down. And friendly NPC mostly have trash loot so there's not even that excuse.
4. Destroy Megaton just bring some laughable XP and not even a good rpg excuse. Like I said, any story-fag player with normal logic would not destroy it, unless just to satisfy your inner destructive need, which mean you need psych session outside of gaming time.
5. Not even pretty mushroom visual because you can always shoot fatman at car wreckage park and see much better mushroom.
6. Destroy it will bring tirade from 3 Dog on radio, and James' bad opinion. Unless you want to hear tirade about your bad bad urge, why would you do it? Or are you masochist? Attention seeking?

 

[Daemongar]

What part of "central town full of amenities" do you have problem with?
1. It's central so after resting (for well rested buff) you can travel to any corner of the world with spare buff time for action.

True

2. It has all merchant type, from equipment to food and drink to doctor. Tenpenny Tower do have same but it's in a farthest corner of the world, much lesser quality than Megaton. One can understand why old fart Tenpenny want to destroy Megaton because his tower is much lesser, after all, but we are not Tenpenny.

Well, Tenpenny tower has the same stuff but I'll admit it's tempting to let the ghouls in to kill everyone there also - both cities are essentially evil so you have a point. Only let one town die would save me a lot of trips to sell tin cans and such.

3. Why would I need to kill anyone friendly? I am not a dumbass F3 console player who kill just for the lolz. If I want to reduce karma, just steal red-owned items and it fall right down. And friendly NPC mostly have trash loot so there's not even that excuse.

You'd have to look at it from my perspective. Pagans, a pimp and prostitute, people related to vampires, drunks, annoying shop-keeps, scrap metal mooches, that nosy black guy with a cowboy hat: that's pretty much all there is in Megaton. I never felt like anything was lost, and I feel guilty not blowing the city up but I'll admit I'd like to see the post credits where you let the town live. "And the wanderer did NOT blow up Megaton, but did shoot up the place just a little, but was still a good person deep inside" I'm guessing something like that.

4. Destroy Megaton just bring some laughable XP and not even a good rpg excuse. Like I said, any story-fag player with normal logic would not destroy it, unless just to satisfy your inner destructive need, which mean you need psych session outside of gaming time.

Well, it's kind of like how I play Caesar's Legion for every FONV playthrough: sure I *could* side with NCR, but then the ending doesn't feel right. Caesar makes the better argument. Something inside me says it's right to nuke Megaton and I'll leave it at that. I probably missed a lot of stuff.

5. Not even pretty mushroom visual because you can always shoot fatman at car wreckage park and see much better mushroom.

Not the same. You blow up a car, eventually the game pretty much forgets about it. You blow up Megaton, everyone knows that justice is back in the wasteland. That is, it's effects are more permanent gamewise. Kind of how pretty much up until power armor is available, I still wear the Tunnel Snakes jacket. It ties the whole story together.

6. Destroy it will bring tirade from 3 Dog on radio, and James' bad opinion. Unless you want to hear tirade about your bad bad urge, why would you do it? Or are you masochist? Attention seeking?

Well, you have a good point. Don't know how you can defend 3 Dog though - talks about "Fighting the good fight" while the Brotherhood guys protecting him open up on me on site. I usually install a radio mod that plays the songs of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas instead of the regular radio, so I don't get judged by 3 Dog, or at least I don't hear it.

 

[laclongquan]

Dawg, if you got a gang protecting your turf, you would praise them too.

OTOH, if you dont praise them, why would they protect your turf in the first place. After all, a bullet is cheap enough, and if they are too cheap for even that, one swing of combat knife solve all problem with the cost of a sore wrist.

Being a pessimistic realist, I have no problem with 3Dog and BOS protecting him~

 

[laclongquan]

Play again at the portion of finding Pinkerton in Rivet City about clues of replicated man, and history of the place.

- Lots of people know about this self-exile genius' possible location. Belle at the muddy hole bar, Seagraves (of course), and even Vera. Vera dialog make it feel like she know all anyone can know about that and the old "coup" but keep her mouth shut for fear of social trouble. And push sheesh like that to oldtimer Seagraves because he can speak about that without trouble coming (more).

- And genius is the word because this old bugger can do coding/science, surgery, and repair stuff. But the old coot possibly didnt pay enough attention to social politic, so his old team get seduced into Madison Li's side and he get kicked off the Council of Three being replaced by Madison. Man doesnt like it to this day, but still not too bitter about it. But if you think about it, Harkness after passed through his hand become chief of security and Danvers, despite being daughter of old founder and old Councilman (or maybe because of it) accept being second in command. Interesting isnt it? And his open supporter, Seagraves, is the chief repairman of the ship. So why he's out of sight, he still definitely has his hands in the cookie jar.

- Weirdly enough MC doesnt remember to ask the old man about Dad, possibly because thinking he's a hermit away from things. But He did record in his computer about breaking into Braun's vault to steal his memory banks, so man is VERY important in the course of searching for Dad.
++++This actually is the missing clue of how James can jump from Jefferson Memorial straight to the hidden vault in the middle of nowhere, despite VaultTecHQ doesnt record that location and Citadel's data about V112 get much corrupted. Pity there's bloody NO ACTION to direct player toward the oldster about Dad.
++++Another example of Fallout3's writings being subpar and unconnected, unfulfilling.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

i don't want to read more shit about failout's shit. this man said enough: https://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=27085
if it hadn't been posted already, you all suck.

 

[laclongquan]

Very nice writing, that Shamus Young's article. But it's not mine. I am having fun writing this thread, criticize the game in points I am interested.

One thing of note, despite being a heavy F2 player, I judge this game based on Fallout 3's own meter of quality . NOBODY, no cat, will accuse me of nostalgia in this thread.

Shamus still has that weakness, judge F3 based on F1/2 standard, or FNV. Really, this game is of different category than those other. Hell, it's NOT even same category as FNV. Damn thing is a tactical game infused with heavy element of RPG, not a RPG infused with elements of tactical game (which is FNV).
+++ Mind you, I agree with most of his points. Our difference is like 1+1 = 2 and 1/1 + 1/1 = 4/2. Yes, there's a difference.
+++ Shamus complaint about there's no one person step out and fix this shit during development. I have another POV about that: I suspect this mess is a fucking compromise between stated design (marketing) original vision of this IP (retrofuturism) and the weirdness of Bethesda writing aspect (which should have a weirdo as controller from highest level of management). Anytime a compromise come to stated designs and original, this weirdo should be the one open his/her mouth and said "no, it's too boring" and make shits messed up even further. People complaint about Todd but I suspect not him because he's too much of a front man. Does Todd a Bethesda's "owner" level, same as Avellone at Obsidian? If yes, then maybe him.

Based on that, I dare say my F3 criticisms is the best in Codex, because Codexers has heavy tendency to judge shits in F1/2 standard, aka storyfaggotry. Plus Codexers are 99% bad tactical game players.

 

[Wulfric Pinewood]

Very fine reading i must say. Im actually replaying both FNV and F3 right now.

 

[Valdetiosi]

Personally I make an exception to Failderp 3. I can beat that dead horse until the end of time!

Funny that I still remember this, but I decided to remake the video in the end.