Time for another fallout 3 discussion

[Lazing Dirk]

Fuck it, I've nothing better to do right now.

The animals are irrediated yes, so what's your point? You can still eat them, in fact if you kill a molerat you can eat it fine, sure you'll get some radiation...

Yes, and that's just from 1 of them. Now eat that irradiated food every day and see how long you survive (hint: you don't). Oh my bad, I was forgetting about the 4 acres of warehouses filled with nothing but rad-away that they use every time they eat, that must be it. No wait that never happened and it's fucking stupid.

I donno what you mean by the trade caravens can't defend themselves, they could in my playthrough?

I can't really refute this since I barely remember that crap, but I recall them having like 1 guy with a revolver as defense? In a wasteland that has raider bands and deathclaws and shit. But whatever, who cares, it's not important, they still need to get the food in the first place. Speaking of which...

Obviously no one is going to be growing food, they can't, it's a wasteland, with lots of rocks. That's why they rely on wildlife

If they can't grow food because it's a wasteland, then what does the wildlife eat? Hopes and dreams?

There's also the option of scavenging for food, like those food cans in the supermart.

TWO. HUNDRED. YEARS. Even if, by some miracle, you found food, guess what? You can't eat it, because it's been TWO. HUNDRED. YEARS. And if you're gonna say the food will still be okay because it's irradiated, see point 1.

You know why nothing in Fallout 3 makes sense? Because they weren't world-building, they were place-making. They just shat out whatever sounded cool (Town full of kids! Underground bunker! Town around a nuke! Big robot!) and plonked it down without thinking about how any of it actually connected together or interacted with each other, or how it worked at all. It's an RPG fairground full of fun little rides to go on and you're not supposed to question it; just sit there and push the win button you dumb fuck.

 

[deama]

Fuck it, I've nothing better to do right now.

The animals are irrediated yes, so what's your point? You can still eat them, in fact if you kill a molerat you can eat it fine, sure you'll get some radiation...

Yes, and that's just from 1 of them. Now eat that irradiated food every day and see how long you survive (hint: you don't). Oh my bad, I was forgetting about the 4 acres of warehouses filled with nothing but rad-away that they use every time they eat, that must be it. No wait that never happened and it's fucking stupid.

I donno what you mean by the trade caravens can't defend themselves, they could in my playthrough?

I can't really refute this since I barely remember that crap, but I recall them having like 1 guy with a revolver as defense? In a wasteland that has raider bands and deathclaws and shit. But whatever, who cares, it's not important, they still need to get the food in the first place. Speaking of which...

Obviously no one is going to be growing food, they can't, it's a wasteland, with lots of rocks. That's why they rely on wildlife

If they can't grow food because it's a wasteland, then what does the wildlife eat? Hopes and dreams?

There's also the option of scavenging for food, like those food cans in the supermart.

TWO. HUNDRED. YEARS. Even if, by some miracle, you found food, guess what? You can't eat it, because it's been TWO. HUNDRED. YEARS. And if you're gonna say the food will still be okay because it's irradiated, see point 1.

You know why nothing in Fallout 3 makes sense? Because they weren't world-building, they were place-making. They just shat out whatever sounded cool (Town full of kids! Underground bunker! Town around a nuke! Big robot!) and plonked it down without thinking about how any of it actually connected together or interacted with each other, or how it worked at all. It's an RPG fairground full of fun little rides to go on and you're not supposed to question it; just sit there and push the win button you dumb fuck.

Like you said, it's been 200 years, the populace outside should have somewhat gotten used to radiation, not just in being able to deal with it, but from an evolutionary standpoint, being able to just take more than average, or flush some of it naturally. I guess if you want to dig deeper, that could also explain why the player character is so powerful (or gets powerful so quickly), because he's a normal human that hasn't had all his faculties fucked up by centuries of radiation.

I remember the trade caravans not having trouble with small fry stuff like those flying bugs, molerats, or a dog or two. I doubt they'd have to face many yao guis or deathclaws in their travels.

Ok, the food growing thing might have been too much on my part, there is an alive forest (small-ish) place up north, so I guess that helps. The animals get their food from other animals or other humans, from underground worms, or from some caves that might have some plants or other things to scavenge for, for the animals. And like I said, fish, the animals could go get some fish.

It has been 200 years, but you can still find food cans fine, e.g. if you explore some places there's still gonna be food, like in moira's quest about going to a suparmart, you can find some food there, you can even find raiders there probably scavenging for food there too.

 

[Lazing Dirk]

If they can't grow food because it's a wasteland, then what does the wildlife eat?

The animals get their food from other animals

 

[Funposter]

the populace outside should have somewhat gotten used to radiation

This is a powerful shitpost.

 

[Lazing Dirk]

the populace outside should have somewhat gotten used to radiation

This is a powerful shitpost.

Shouldn't suicide bombers be resistant to explosions by now???

 

[luj1]

Both 3 and 4 are rubbish. Especially 4 because it was made by Todd Howard, the devil. But again it's like saying misereré (fecal vomiting) is worse than ordinary vomiting.

 

[Blaine]

If this deama guy has ever passed through a science classroom, it was in a janitorial capacity.

I won't attempt to weigh in on every instance of ignorance regarding life processes, biospheres, etc., and I won't weigh in on the sad and pathetic nature of defending Fallout 3 and 4 (at least not right now), but I'll weigh in on food preservation because I have the perfect source:



After just shy of 40 years, a military-grade ration containing food absolutely loaded with preservatives and in state-of-the-art protective packaging is still already starting to go bad, or already has gone bad. This process is greatly accelerated if a ration is stored in a warm or hot environment.

After 200 years, absolutely no food whatsoever from the old world would remain edible, unless an industrial-grade freezer had continued to run the entire time, keeping it frozen.

 

[Quillon]

the populace outside should have somewhat gotten used to radiation

This is a powerful shitpost.

Shouldn't suicide bombers be resistant to explosions by now???

They are. No explosion can kill them after the first.

 

[Agame]

It has been 200 years, but you can still find food cans fine, e.g. if you explore some places there's still gonna be food, like in moira's quest about going to a suparmart, you can find some food there, you can even find raiders there probably scavenging for food there too.

If you are 12 years old I forgive you, but otherwise just take some time to think logically about some of the stuff you are saying.

 

[deama]

If they can't grow food because it's a wasteland, then what does the wildlife eat?

The animals get their food from other animals

By other animals I meant worms, insects, fish, and other small life forms; forgot wtf I'm supposed to call them.

If this deama guy has ever passed through a science classroom, it was in a janitorial capacity.

I won't attempt to weigh in on every instance of ignorance regarding life processes, biospheres, etc., and I won't weigh in on the sad and pathetic nature of defending Fallout 3 and 4 (at least not right now), but I'll weigh in on food preservation because I have the perfect source:



After just shy of 40 years, a military-grade ration containing food absolutely loaded with preservatives and in state-of-the-art protective packaging is still already starting to go bad, or already has gone bad. This process is greatly accelerated if a ration is stored in a warm or hot environment.

After 200 years, absolutely no food whatsoever from the old world would remain edible, unless an industrial-grade freezer had continued to run the entire time, keeping it frozen.

I'm not comparing food preservation against real life though, you could even find some stuff from the old world in new vegas, so fallout's universe isn't entirely based on realism it seems. Not to mention deathclaws and other crazy mutations in the span of less than 100 years.

 

[Blaine]

Whatever. Setting that aside for a moment, your fundamental lack of understanding of the food chain is excruciating to witness.

You've argued that no one would be able to grow crops because of irradiation, which isn't true, since plants are actually extremely resistant to radiation compared to animals and many can still grow in irradiated environments.

However, even if that weren't the case, you went on to argue that because of this, people (in Fallout 3/4) relied on wildlife for sustenance. VIRTUALLY ALL FOOD CHAINS ON EARTH BEGIN WITH PLANTS OR SOME EQUIVALENT, LIKE PLANKTON OR ALGAE. Animals can't survive just by eating other animals if some of them aren't eating abundant food sources at the bottom of the food chain, like leaves, grass, bark, insects (which also require plants for their own insect food chains), fruits, nuts and so on.

Saying that animals survive by eating each other in the absence of plants (or an equivalent) is extremely, fantastically, colossally dumb. The dumbness is squared when one considers that plants are far more resistant to radiation than animals.

The only possible exception to this is life such as extremophile organisms that live off of the heat and minerals emitted by deep-sea vents, but even then, they have their own little food chains; instead of sun and soil, they have heat and minerals from the vent.

 

[Okagron]

I donno what you mean by the trade caravens can't defend themselves, they could in my playthrough?

In my playthrough, every single person defending the caravans died defending the caravan. And i mean every single one. There are also raiders and Enclave patrols going on about, killing everything that moves. Gonna tell me that guy with a laser pistol in poor condition is gonna beat a guy in power armor? You also have to remember that the game implies these caravans move, because they have to move if they want to trade. Seeing them doing nothing doesn't mean they are literally doing nothing. And the fact they have to move, means they are gonna run into heavy shit because Bethesda decided to make the wasteland so hostile that you run into raiders or super mutants or anything else every two minutes.

Obviously no one is going to be growing food, they can't, it's a wasteland, with lots of rocks. That's why they rely on wildlife and probably fish too since the river isn't too far away. The trade caravens probably come from other settlements outside of fallout 3's map too.

Then how the hell do Fallout 1, 2 and New Vegas show people growing food? Oh that's right, you can grow food in the Fallout universe after the bombs fell. Blaine also pointed out that something i was gonna say and it's that plants are highly resistant to radiation.

There's also the option of scavenging for food, like those food cans in the supermart.

200 years food. Yeah, i would totally eat that. And then probably puke my guts or some shit.

And are we seriously gonna start using the "it's probably not like real life"? Unless outright stated or shown that it's not like real life, like ghouls or super mutants, we are gonna assume it's like real life.

 

[Kyl Von Kull]

deama

as much as people like to bitch about the details, it's not about the details. They're all just symptoms of the same disease: very few places in Fallout 3 feel connected to other places beyond quests like "check on my brother in Arefu" or "find out the history of Rivet City for my survival guide." This results in a world that feels incoherent. No one would care about where the food comes if there were anything tying the game world together.

One example: the Enclave and the BoS are supposed to be at war, but this has no impact whatsoever on Megaton or Rivet City or Tenpenny Tower or Canterbury Commons. You see soldiers and vertibirds all over the wasteland yet everything else stays pretty much the same.

Compare that to New Vegas where the war between the Legion and the NCR is omnipresent. In fact, most of the content in the game is somehow tied to the broader conflict. Wherever you go, the war is there. Everything feels like it's connected to everything else.

Here's the rub: Bethesda didn't design a disconnected, incoherent world because they're idiots who made a bunch of mistakes. They deliberately created an incoherent world because that's their design philosophy. The Bethesda model is all about feeding the player a steady drip of content that stands on its own, so you can play the game in twenty minute increments and nothing of value will be lost. They want their games to be as accessible as possible.

But you can't make a coherent world that's full of bite-sized pieces of standalone, almost self-contained content. It's one or the other. The thing that Bethesda's core audience craves is also the reason many of us can't get invested in Fallout 3.

 

[deama]

Whatever. Setting that aside for a moment, your fundamental lack of understanding of the food chain is excruciating to witness.

You've argued that no one would be able to grow crops because of irradiation, which isn't true, since plants are actually extremely resistant to radiation compared to animals and many can still grow in irradiated environments.

However, even if that weren't the case, you went on to argue that because of this, people (in Fallout 3/4) relied on wildlife for sustenance. VIRTUALLY ALL FOOD CHAINS ON EARTH BEGIN WITH PLANTS OR SOME EQUIVALENT, LIKE PLANKTON OR ALGAE. Animals can't survive just by eating other animals if some of them aren't eating abundant food sources at the bottom of the food chain, like leaves, grass, bark, insects (which also require plants for their own insect food chains), fruits, nuts and so on.

Saying that animals survive by eating each other in the absence of plants (or an equivalent) is extremely, fantastically, colossally dumb. The dumbness is squared when one considers that plants are far more resistant to radiation than animals.

The only possible exception to this is life such as extremophile organisms that live off of the heat and minerals emitted by deep-sea vents, but even then, they have their own little food chains; instead of sun and soil, they have heat and minerals from the vent.

Not exactly, I argued that no one can grow crops cause it's a rocky wasteland, too many rocks to grow anything of size. Sure there might be clearings here and there, but they're either too far away from a water source, or have hostile groups nearbly.

And again, I screwed up and said animals eat animals, I meant worms/low life forms, algae (like u mention), fish, and potentially plants growing inside caves.

I donno what you mean by the trade caravens can't defend themselves, they could in my playthrough?

In my playthrough, every single person defending the caravans died defending the caravan. And i mean every single one. There are also raiders and Enclave patrols going on about, killing everything that moves. Gonna tell me that guy with a laser pistol in poor condition is gonna beat a guy in power armor? You also have to remember that the game implies these caravans move, because they have to move if they want to trade. Seeing them doing nothing doesn't mean they are literally doing nothing. And the fact they have to move, means they are gonna run into heavy shit because Bethesda decided to make the wasteland so hostile that you run into raiders or super mutants or anything else every two minutes.

Obviously no one is going to be growing food, they can't, it's a wasteland, with lots of rocks. That's why they rely on wildlife and probably fish too since the river isn't too far away. The trade caravens probably come from other settlements outside of fallout 3's map too.

Then how the hell do Fallout 1, 2 and New Vegas show people growing food? Oh that's right, you can grow food in the Fallout universe after the bombs fell. Blaine also pointed out that something i was gonna say and it's that plants are highly resistant to radiation.

There's also the option of scavenging for food, like those food cans in the supermart.

200 years food. Yeah, i would totally eat that. And then probably puke my guts or some shit.

And are we seriously gonna start using the "it's probably not like real life"? Unless outright stated or shown that it's not like real life, like ghouls or super mutants, we are gonna assume it's like real life.

I don't really know what to say about the caravans, they worked for me, so idk.

In fallout 1/2/vegas they can grow food because the land isn't as rocky and hostile as fallout 3's, there's more pockets of civilisation, and even less radiation (in new vegas).

I'm not saying that we shouldn't compare the whole thing to real life, what I'm saying is that things can/have to be stretched for the setting to work, like would a lot of radiation force life to create deathclaws/2-headed cows, and all sorts of crazy shit in the span of 100 years? Maybe, maybe not, maybe it could also do some other stuff? Preserve food better? Force humans to be able to handle some radiation?

deama

as much as people like to bitch about the details, it's not about the details. They're all just symptoms of the same disease: very few places in Fallout 3 feel connected to other places beyond quests like "check on my brother in Arefu" or "find out the history of Rivet City for my survival guide." This results in a world that feels incoherent. No one would care about where the food comes if there were anything tying the game world together.

One example: the Enclave and the BoS are supposed to be at war, but this has no impact whatsoever on Megaton or Rivet City or Tenpenny Tower or Canterbury Commons. You see soldiers and vertibirds all over the wasteland yet everything else stays pretty much the same.

Compare that to New Vegas where the war between the Legion and the NCR is omnipresent. In fact, most of the content in the game is somehow tied to the broader conflict. Wherever you go, the war is there. Everything feels like it's connected to everything else.

Here's the rub: Bethesda didn't design a disconnected, incoherent world because they're idiots who made a bunch of mistakes. They deliberately created an incoherent world because that's their design philosophy. The Bethesda model is all about feeding the player a steady drip of content that stands on its own, so you can play the game in twenty minute increments and nothing of value will be lost. They want their games to be as accessible as possible.

But you can't make a coherent world that's full of bite-sized pieces of standalone, almost self-contained content. It's one or the other. The thing that Bethesda's core audience craves is also the reason many of us can't get invested in Fallout 3.

There doesn't seem like there is a war between enclave/brotherhood, but that's because the enclave doesn't have any reason to, what, capture megaton? A town with an active nuke in the middle? Why would they do that? Even if they did, some hostile person/thing could sneak in and trigger the nuke; the civilians could just threaten to nuke themselves when the enclave demanded their surrender.
Moving on to rivert city, again, not a lot of reason for enclave to seize rivert city, it's a well defended outpost, by the time they seize it the brotherhood could have used that time to take over the enclave base.

 

[Blaine]

Things that Bethesda are terrible at:

• dialogue with any level of sophistication, subtlety, wit, or genuine humor
• choice and consequence
  
• moral and ethical grey areas
• world-building, a concept that some people just flat-out don't understand
• remaining faithful to acquired IP source material
  
• evolving past essentially the same development tools they've been using since Morrowind

Things that Bethesda are good at:

• hiring competent artists (but not animators, it seems)
  
• level design (this seems counter-intuitive, since in practice their level design is linear and boring, but it actually takes skilled level designers to disguise linear, boring levels so convincingly)
  
• buying other people's original IPs to use as their own
• marketing
  
• following market trends and fads (going to consoles as early as Morrowind; Fallout Shelter and Fallout 76 [late to the party with Fallout 76])

 

[BlackAdderBG]

The thing that bothers me the most in Gamebryo Fallouts is when in 200 years no one cleaned or build a single fukin house. Is like all survivors mutated into gypsies. They make medicine, weapons, future tech and all stupid shit, but can't build wooden houses. Bitch chop a tree and stick it to the ground and cover it with leaves, the bushmens can build it why can't the retards in nuFalllout. Also the use of plain sheet iron/tin everywhere for buildings. These retards at bethesda had never seen metal roof in their life if they think you could sleep from the sound of even a slight breeze.

 

[Funposter]

deama
Compare that to New Vegas where the war between the Legion and the NCR is omnipresent. In fact, most of the content in the game is somehow tied to the broader conflict. Wherever you go, the war is there. Everything feels like it's connected to everything else.

Here's the rub: Bethesda didn't design a disconnected, incoherent world because they're idiots who made a bunch of mistakes. They deliberately created an incoherent world because that's their design philosophy. The Bethesda model is all about feeding the player a steady drip of content that stands on its own, so you can play the game in twenty minute increments and nothing of value will be lost. They want their games to be as accessible as possible.

But you can't make a coherent world that's full of bite-sized pieces of standalone, almost self-contained content. It's one or the other. The thing that Bethesda's core audience craves is also the reason many of us can't get invested in Fallout 3.

I would actually say that Bethesda CAN create a more coherent and logical world than that of Fallout 3, and it actually shows in Skyrim. Now, some of that could be lessons learned from looking at New Vegas, or it could just be that they have a better handle on how to design a world in The Elder Scrolls universe. The civil war in Skyrim permeates many interactions, is present in much of the dialogue, has something of an impact on the main quest, and also allows the player to pick one of two sides in a conflict which doesn't have black and white moral choices. Granted, it's severely under-developed, much like the entirety of the game-world, but it displays an awareness of how to build a world in a somewhat logical way. Whiterun is a central location with ample farming land, a meadery, and villages housing even more farming land or lumber mills within its Hold, therefore it acts as the central trade hub of the region, and is central to the civil war due to its supposed-neutrality. Windhelm has mills up-river in either direction, a port, and two farms outside its walls dedicated to growind wheat (let's assume winter wheat) as well as SNOWBERRIES~~. It's also lacking a lighthouse for its port, which points towards Bethesda's inability to establish truly coherent worlds, but they have displayed the ability to create somewhat logical ones.

I think Bethesda's design regarding Fallout suggests a fundemental misunderstanding of the world in which it takes place. Skyrim operates as a theme park game similar to Fallout 3 and 4, but is far more internally consistent.

 

[Lazing Dirk]

It's also lacking a lighthouse for its port, which points towards Bethesda's inability to establish truly coherent worlds, but they have displayed the ability to create somewhat logical ones.

I guess you missed the quest where you're asked to put out the fire in the Solitude lighthouse so you can loot a ship when it runs aground. I bet it's because you get it from an argonian and you're a dirty Stormcloak racist!

 

[Funposter]

It's also lacking a lighthouse for its port, which points towards Bethesda's inability to establish truly coherent worlds, but they have displayed the ability to create somewhat logical ones.

I guess you missed the quest where you're asked to put out the fire in the Solitude lighthouse so you can loot a ship when it runs aground. I bet it's because you get it from an argonian and you're a dirty Stormcloak racist!

I said Windhelm, not Solitude. Solitude has its own share of problems though, being built on top of a bizarre natural arch and bording on nothing but mountains and a swamp - where do the people of Slitude get their food? From that single crop down by the stables?

 

[Butter]

It's also lacking a lighthouse for its port, which points towards Bethesda's inability to establish truly coherent worlds, but they have displayed the ability to create somewhat logical ones.

I guess you missed the quest where you're asked to put out the fire in the Solitude lighthouse so you can loot a ship when it runs aground. I bet it's because you get it from an argonian and you're a dirty Stormcloak racist!

I said Windhelm, not Solitude. Solitude has its own share of problems though, being built on top of a bizarre natural arch and bording on nothing but mountains and a swamp - where do the people of Slitude get their food? From that single crop down by the stables?

If you want to be charitable, you could say that Solitude is the Imperial foothold in Skyrim, and so there must be a lot of food and other goods shipped in. Lots of communities in northern Canada aren't self-sufficient and rely on regular supply runs as well.

 

[Lazing Dirk]

I said Windhelm, not Solitude.

Oh Windhelm, right, I always get that one confused with Whiterun. "Why does he think Whiterun needs a lighthouse? He must mean the Solitude port".

 

[Funposter]

It's also lacking a lighthouse for its port, which points towards Bethesda's inability to establish truly coherent worlds, but they have displayed the ability to create somewhat logical ones.

I guess you missed the quest where you're asked to put out the fire in the Solitude lighthouse so you can loot a ship when it runs aground. I bet it's because you get it from an argonian and you're a dirty Stormcloak racist!

I said Windhelm, not Solitude. Solitude has its own share of problems though, being built on top of a bizarre natural arch and bording on nothing but mountains and a swamp - where do the people of Slitude get their food? From that single crop down by the stables?

If you want to be charitable, you could say that Solitude is the Imperial foothold in Skyrim, and so there must be a lot of food and other goods shipped in. Lots of communities in northern Canada aren't self-sufficient and rely on regular supply runs as well.

Yeah but even major ports actually need to...make stuff. What do the ships do, just head over there with cargo and then get sent back empty?

 

[Sigourn]

I don't understand how this argument somehow works in favour of Little Lamplight. Yes, you do have the draw the line somewhere, and Little Lamplight is so far beyond that line it's past the fucking horizon. And you're comparing that to skill points? "Little Lamplight is fine because standard RPG mechanics can be weird sometimes!" Jesus christ.

Little Lamplight falls apart the moment, as it was correctly pointed out Btongue's video, you are stripped of all your combat and intimidation powers when facing the children. I have seen countless of Bethesda apologists claiming that it was because of "censor reasons", but they all conveniently ignore that Bethesda knew, BEFOREHAND, what said censorship consisted of, and they could have avoided it just by not making a town full of children you cannot kill.

Little Lamplight is a glorified Pokémon fence. Something you should easily be able to get past, but you cannot because of the developer's incompetence.

 

[Sykar]

discuss this further

You find a lasergun in a trashcan 3 minutes out of the vault. No discussion needed.

In a supermarket.

 

[Sigourn]

It's also lacking a lighthouse for its port, which points towards Bethesda's inability to establish truly coherent worlds, but they have displayed the ability to create somewhat logical ones.

I guess you missed the quest where you're asked to put out the fire in the Solitude lighthouse so you can loot a ship when it runs aground. I bet it's because you get it from an argonian and you're a dirty Stormcloak racist!

This fucking quest, goddamit. That you cannot report the Argonian to the authorities is the prime example Bethesda can't into quests.