Bethesda could pull an Operation: Anchorage scenario where the memory pods are used in place of the Brotherhood tech for some more "out there" scenarios. A Fallout style re-enactment of the Revolutionary War could be entertaining
[QUOTE=TheRealRudy;49572830]pretty much every fallout game has, despite some serious (and sometimes even depressing) plot points and story, lots of these moments, and they're part of what makes fallout, you know, "fallout". hell new vegas had a prime example in the form of a DLC, old world blues.[/QUOTE]
I mean, we're talking about a series where becoming a porn star, having an extended name-calling fight with a child, appealing to a troupe of Elvis impersonators, and persuading a hideously mutated monster grandma to travel with you are all acceptable and perfectly reasonable answers to problems.
[QUOTE=Aaron0000;49572870]Bethesda could pull an Operation: Anchorage scenario where the memory pods are used in place of the Brotherhood tech for some more "out there" scenarios. A Fallout style re-enactment of the Revolutionary War could be entertaining[/QUOTE]
I'd rather any more VR/memory pod segments have more meaning than that lorewise, personally. They're a good excuse to explore pre-war events that can't be expanded on otherwise.
Also the Operation: Anchorage VR stuff was pre-war tech, not Brotherhood.
[QUOTE=Ganerumo;49572704]Maybe, just maybe the stuff like dunwich borers / the cabot quest aren't supposed to be taken seriously.
It's the same deal as shit like godzilla's footprint or the tardis showing up in fallout 1, or the fact you can time travel in fallout 2. You're supposed to take it with a grain of salt.[/QUOTE]
The Cabot questline is a huge effort for something that's not supposed to be taken seriously, especially considering there's scant few side quests NOT given by Preston or some such "radient" system. Plus it does give you the Unrelenting Force gun and their Ghoul bodyguard does seek you out so it's something they wanted you to experience. Imagine if during The Molecular Level when you turn on the teleporter you and the guy helping you get beamed up to an alien mothership for two seconds and the guy goes "oops, let's try again" and then you go to the right place. It'd be dumb.
[QUOTE=Everything;49572875]I mean, we're talking about a series where becoming a porn star, having an extended name-calling fight with a child, appealing to a troupe of Elvis impersonators, and persuading a hideously mutated monster grandma to travel with you are all acceptable and perfectly reasonable answers to problems.[/QUOTE]
Okay, but those are silly moments in a series that still has plenty of serious straightforward stuff in it. Fallout games have always had a cheeky streak, but I'd hardly say that Fallout "unapologetically embraces absurdity, satire and referential humor in almost every aspect of its world", and I'd hesitate to equate the two. Fallout isn't a totally gritty and serious post-apoc game but it's not the polar opposite of one either.
[QUOTE=DiscoInferno;49572947]The Cabot questline is a huge effort for something that's not supposed to be taken seriously, especially considering there's scant few side quests NOT given by Preston or some such "radient" system. Plus it does give you the Unrelenting Force gun and their Ghoul bodyguard does seek you out so it's something they wanted you to experience. Imagine if during The Molecular Level when you turn on the teleporter you and the guy helping you get beamed up to an alien mothership for two seconds and the guy goes "oops, let's try again" and then you go to the right place. It'd be dumb.[/QUOTE]
Obsidian Entertainment spent a lot of time making Old World Blues and the game gives you a quest and an unskippable message to get there yet it's still a batshit crazy DLC that's really difficult to take seriously because it's literally about playing as a brainless husk with all your organs scattered around, some of which [I]talk back to you[/I].
As long as it's not tied to the Main Quest it's fair game.
It's weird how people were okay with a DLC where brains in high tech jars would talk to you and say such things as "hand penises" for extended periods of time but then a joke quest about a kid getting stuck in a fridge for a hundred years pops up and people flip their shit.
I get that OWB was a lot better written but that doesn't make its content any less intentionally stupid.
[QUOTE=Ganerumo;49572963]Obsidian Entertainment spent a lot of time making Old World Blues and the game gives you a quest and an unskippable message to get there yet it's still a batshit crazy DLC that's really difficult to take seriously because it's literally about playing as a brainless husk with all your organs scattered around, some of which [I]talk back to you[/I].
As long as it's not tied to the Main Quest it's fair game.[/QUOTE]
Old World Blues was brilliant because, under all those science fiction jokes and general silliness, there was a serious social commentary, which imo is the pinnacle of Fallout writing.
There was a really good reddit post about it sometime ago, I'm trying to find it but can't remember the title now.
edit: personally I feel weird stuff like aliens (and the Cabot House quest from what I've heard of it; haven't gotten to that yet) work best on the sidelines, little hints at how insane the Fallout world really is. That kind of stuff isn't usually expanded on well enough to contribute anything to the overall story and theme of Fallout.
But then stuff like Old World Blues comes along that is just perfect and earns its place as a main quest.
edit again: how was i not aware of this speech option
[t]http://i.imgur.com/TVG930m.jpg[/t]
[QUOTE=Ganerumo;49572963]Obsidian Entertainment spent a lot of time making Old World Blues and the game gives you a quest and an unskippable message to get there yet it's still a batshit crazy DLC that's really difficult to take seriously because it's literally about playing as a brainless husk with all your organs scattered around, some of which [I]talk back to you[/I].
As long as it's not tied to the Main Quest it's fair game.[/QUOTE]
I don't think mad science is the same as ancient aliens.
Like you see disembodied brains, batshit crazy impossible technology and stuff that belongs in vintage science fiction all the time in fallout, it's part of the tone.
But suddenly introducing wacky precursor aliens as an alternative to human evolution combined with all the worst parts of Indiana Jones and the crystal skull and immortality serum as plot points in a side quest is kinda jarring, and a bit crap imo.
It felt like i went from reading a recent copy of Judge Dredd directly to one of the first issues.
[QUOTE=Ganerumo;49572963]Obsidian Entertainment spent a lot of time making Old World Blues and the game gives you a quest and an unskippable message to get there yet it's still a batshit crazy DLC that's really difficult to take seriously because it's literally about playing as a brainless husk with all your organs scattered around, some of which [I]talk back to you[/I].
As long as it's not tied to the Main Quest it's fair game.[/QUOTE]
yeah but old world blues plays into the themes of the series, just taking retro-futurism to it's extreme
that's a little different to adding in ancient aliens to the canon
the issue isn't about ~real-world~ realism, it's about consistency within the world
everything in Old World Blues was explained and made sense within the given rules of the Fallout world. Kid in a fridge raises a lot of inexplicable questions, like what did he eat? how did nobody come across him til now? why isn't he insane? how can he not realize he's been severely mutated?
[QUOTE=DChapsfield;49573042]the issue isn't about ~real-world~ realism, it's about consistency within the world
everything in Old World Blues was explained and made sense within the given rules of the Fallout world. Kid in a fridge raises a lot of inexplicable questions, like what did he eat? how did nobody come across him til now? why isn't he insane? how can he not realize he's been severely mutated?[/QUOTE]
i dont understand why people don't get that this is the big problem with the ghoul kid quest, in that it fucks with internal consistency and isn't considered an easter egg like the TARDIS or dinosaur footprint. it just literally has no reason to be in the game.
[QUOTE=Ganerumo;49573008]It's weird how people were okay with a DLC where brains in high tech jars would talk to you and say such things as "hand penises" for extended periods of time but then a joke quest about a kid getting stuck in a fridge for a hundred years pops up and people flip their shit.
I get that OWB was a lot better written but that doesn't make its content any less intentionally stupid.[/QUOTE]
The implausibility isn't the point, it's the lack of purpose. All of the silly stuff in OWB justifies itself by reinforcing the mad science themes of the story, and the thing about hand penises is meant to highlight how the Think Tank have become detached from their own humanity.
Why is Billy still alive inside a fridge for 200 years? Who the fuck knows or cares.
[QUOTE=_charon;49573020]Old World Blues was brilliant because, under all those science fiction jokes and general silliness, there was a serious social commentary, which imo is the pinnacle of Fallout writing.
There was a really good reddit post about it sometime ago, I'm trying to find it but can't remember the title now.
edit: personally I feel weird stuff like aliens (and the Cabot House quest from what I've heard of it; haven't gotten to that yet) work best on the sidelines, little hints at how insane the Fallout world really is. That kind of stuff isn't usually expanded on well enough to contribute anything to the overall story and theme of Fallout.
But then stuff like Old World Blues comes along that is just perfect and earns its place as a main quest.
edit again: how was i not aware of this speech option
[t]http://i.imgur.com/TVG930m.jpg[/t][/QUOTE]
OWB is great because the voice actors all are amazing, and the tech is tech'd to the tech, Sierra madre i think is the pinnacle as far as writing is concerned because at the end of all of it, you just wanted to get the hell out of there, maybe with a pack of saturnite steak knives and gold but you wanted to get out. OWB has character, the lonesome road is sort of annoying because you really don't feel engaged with its main character, and honest hearts has a few good things but its not very good otherwise
In situations like the kid in the fridge and the dunwich locations in both Fallout 3 and Fallout 4, ghouls aren't supposed to be taken as the usual ghouls you find every where else, they're in as a joke.
The ghouls in Dunwich Borer and Dunwich Tower are created by eldritch horrors. That doesn't mean all ghouls are created by eldritch horror within the canon simply because of these two locations.
The kid in the fridge, being an obvious joke about old TV shows like Lassie where Timmy would always get stuck in the dumbest places and an obvious stab at Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, isn't supposed to make sense because it's just a short, absurd joke.
You're not supposed to overthink it in the same way you're not supposed to overthink why there's a reference to some really bad fan fiction perched on top of a cliff in New Vegas with Wild Wasteland turned on.
[QUOTE=Ganerumo;49572704]Maybe, just maybe the stuff like dunwich borers / the cabot quest aren't supposed to be taken seriously.
It's the same deal as shit like godzilla's footprint or the tardis showing up in fallout 1, or the fact you can time travel in fallout 2. You're supposed to take it with a grain of salt.[/QUOTE]
It's just that we're in Mass. literally the birth place of Lovecraft and the setting of his best stories, it's just one of those "it would make sense" things.
[QUOTE=Ganerumo;49573076]In situations like the kid in the fridge and the dunwich locations in both Fallout 3 and Fallout 4, ghouls aren't supposed to be taken as the usual ghouls you find every where else, they're in as a joke.
The ghouls in Dunwich Borer and Dunwich Tower are created by eldritch horrors. That doesn't mean all ghouls are created by eldritch horror within the canon simply because of these two locations.
The kid in the fridge, being an obvious joke about old TV shows like Lassie where Timmy would always get stuck in the dumbest places and an obvious stab at Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, isn't supposed to make sense because it's just a short, absurd joke.
You're not supposed to overthink it in the same way you're not supposed to overthink why there's a reference to some really bad fan fiction perched on top of a cliff in New Vegas with Wild Wasteland turned on.[/QUOTE]
I guess your "just ignore certain elements when it's convenient to ignore them" philosophy works with the Dunwich stuff, they [I]are[/I] after all just lovecraft references, but I can't jive with it when you're using it to discount billy. there's no ignoring that billy shouldn't exist in the game and if they [I]really[/I] wanted to make a ~*~hilarious~*~ reference to timmy, they should've done it in a more subtle way (like with the so funny skeleton poses) or, as you mentioned, have it an optional encounter with some kind of wild wasteland perk/trait.
[QUOTE=Sableye;49573064]OWB is great because the voice actors all are amazing, and the tech is tech'd to the tech, Sierra madre i think is the pinnacle as far as writing is concerned because at the end of all of it, you just wanted to get the hell out of there, maybe with a pack of saturnite steak knives and gold but you wanted to get out. OWB has character, the lonesome road is sort of annoying because you really don't feel engaged with its main character, and honest hearts has a few good things but its not very good otherwise[/QUOTE]
Lonesome Road to me earned points for being gorgeous in its destroyed landscape and at least I thought Ulysses has some gravitas to him. That and I like Virgil-esque psychopomp characters and ED-E was my fave companion.
I feel like a lot of people just tend to forget about the whole suspension of disbelief thing when it actually matters and become incredibly critical at the times where it literally matters the least.
I can understand criticizing the main quest for not making much sense because it's the main quest, but side activities like cabot house or dunwich borers or kid in the fridge are just that, side activities.
[QUOTE=Ganerumo;49573076]In situations like the kid in the fridge and the dunwich locations in both Fallout 3 and Fallout 4, ghouls aren't supposed to be taken as the usual ghouls you find every where else, they're in as a joke.
The ghouls in Dunwich Borer and Dunwich Tower are created by eldritch horrors. That doesn't mean all ghouls are created by eldritch horror within the canon simply because of these two locations.
The kid in the fridge, being an obvious joke about old TV shows like Lassie where Timmy would always get stuck in the dumbest places and an obvious stab at Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, isn't supposed to make sense because it's just a short, absurd joke.
You're not supposed to overthink it in the same way you're not supposed to overthink why there's a reference to some really bad fan fiction perched on top of a cliff in New Vegas with Wild Wasteland turned on.[/QUOTE]
That's the problem though. The wacky bullshit in the other games was incidental. It happened and then you moved on. A group of middle aged ladies attack you with rolling pins, you kill them and move on thinking "That was fucking weird." Fallout 4 has to make a fucking quest out of it, it can't be "What, that kid was stuck in a fridge for 200 years? That's really odd", it's "Oh my god, you poor child, I'll help you find your parents who inexplicably live in their old house 200 years after the bombs fell, in the middle of a flooded swamp area, right next to gunners who want to kill them for some reason."
Some things are better when they're there and then they're gone. If you dwell on the ridiculous stuff without justifying it you weaken the more serious stuff.
[QUOTE=WillerinV1.02;49573107]I guess your "just ignore certain elements when it's convenient to ignore them" philosophy works with the Dunwich stuff, they [I]are[/I] after all just lovecraft references, but I can't jive with it when you're using it to discount billy. there's no ignoring that billy shouldn't exist in the game and if they [I]really[/I] wanted to make a ~*~hilarious~*~ reference to timmy, they should've done it in a more subtle way (like with the so funny skeleton poses) or, as you mentioned, have it an optional encounter with some kind of wild wasteland perk/trait.[/QUOTE]
There was a 'Timmy in the well' joke in Fallout New Vegas, with Wild Wasteland.
[QUOTE=Ganerumo;49573118]I feel like a lot of people just tend to forget about the whole suspension of disbelief thing when it actually matters and become incredibly critical at the times where it literally matters the least.
I can understand criticizing the main quest for not making much sense because it's the main quest, but side activities like cabot house or dunwich borers or kid in the fridge are just that, side activities.[/QUOTE]
What? No, they're not. Side quest content counts as content. It's a quest. Some people play these entire games without ever completing the main quest, or even starting on it.
Bethesda's main quests are always relatively short and easy experiences. It's usually the side quest content that stands out the most, and sure, Billy in the fridge is a pretty rare find, but the Cabot quest is one of the biggest side quests in the game. It's among the longest with the most effort put into it and the most branching. Not only that, but playthroughs will have you receiving this quest in one way or the other.
You [I]cannot[/I] dismiss all the bullshit the Cabot house quest brings into the lore by saying "well it's a side activity."
[QUOTE=Ganerumo;49573076]In situations like the kid in the fridge and the dunwich locations in both Fallout 3 and Fallout 4, ghouls aren't supposed to be taken as the usual ghouls you find every where else, they're in as a joke.[/QUOTE]
is this not mental gymnastics??
If they're not supposed to be usual ghouls, then why are they just usual ghouls? How is the onus on me to reinterpret the scenario in order to fit the world that the builders have [u]just[/u] misrepresented in front of me?
[QUOTE=Janus Vesta;49573126]That's the problem though. The wacky bullshit in the other games was incidental. It happened and then you moved on. A group of middle aged ladies attack you with rolling pins, you kill them and move on thinking "That was fucking weird." Fallout 4 has to make a fucking quest out of it, it can't be "What, that kid was stuck in a fridge for 200 years? That's really odd", it's "Oh my god, you poor child, I'll help you find your parents who inexplicably live in their old house 200 years after the bombs fell, in the middle of a flooded swamp area, right next to gunners who want to kill them for some reason."
Some things are better when they're there and then they're gone. If you dwell on the ridiculous stuff without justifying it you weaken the more serious stuff.[/QUOTE]
But it's a side quest that takes less than half an hour to complete. It's as secondary as it gets.
Wild Wasteland also started an unmarked quest to find a Lassie reference in New Vegas and it came with.
[editline]20th January 2016[/editline]
[QUOTE=DChapsfield;49573144]is this not mental gymnastics??
If they're not supposed to be usual ghouls, then why are they just usual ghouls? How is the onus on me to reinterpret the scenario in order to fit the world that the builders have [u]just[/u] misrepresented in front of me?[/QUOTE]
Billy's a really obvious Indiana Jones / Lassie joke that takes half a second to understand, and the dunwich tower ghouls are made clear by listening to the tapes scattered all over the place, same deal with dunwich borers.
[QUOTE=DOG-GY;49570034]To be fair it is a hard problem to solve for a game of this scale, especially when project development needs to occur alongside engine development. They surely know but didn't have time.[/QUOTE]
I'm not sure that they do know though, or they do and are oblivious to the fact that it's bad. I'm honestly doubtful of their competency given their track record with this kind of stuff.
A good little example here is the color information they chose to use for textures. They opted to use 3 textures per material, with a combined total of 7 - 8 color channels. In doing this method, they lost specular color (greyscale specular map :disappoint:) and still had 3 textures and the associated draw calls for them. They used a 4 channel albedo, 2 channel normal map, and 2 channel spec/gloss. Instead of doing this, what they could have done was implement a metalness shader, and have a 4 channel albedo, and a 4 channel normal map with the X/Y normals in RG, and metalness texture in B channel, and the gloss texture in the A channel. They would have had 2 textures per model/material instead of 3, and they would have gained metallic specular color information in the process.
Now I'm not a graphics programmer so maybe I'm missing some secretive reason why they picked a feature-incomplete shading system with a larger number of texture files, rather than a two-texture full featured metalness system, but I'm blank, I just can't see the advantage; to me it just sounds like an oversight. They didn't think it through and committed to a system that likely harmed the game's performance and limited the capabilities of the shaders on the artist's end. A very similar dynamic happens with with environment maps, rather than implementing a modernized cubemap system for each world cell and improving the games graphics and saving themselves a bundle of time in the longrun, they decided to use an untold number of random and sporadic environment maps on a per-material basis, completely hampering their own artistic quality control in the process. Again, I don't think there was any logic to it, it just sounds like an oversight.
Wot I think is that Bethesda is deeply conservative and unwilling to change or improve their artistic pipeline, I've encountered a lot of people like this in my schooling, my jobs and my projects; people who are completely set in their ways and won't adjust to accommodate improvements in technology, and I think Bethesda may just full of these types of people. Every time bethesda has commented on things, such as "why do you still use the .nif format instead of .fbx" their answers are always along the lines of "because we're used to it and don't want to change it." There's no real logic or rational, they just don't want to be bothered to implement efficiency improvements, and it makes the quality of their games suffer.
[QUOTE=Ganerumo;49573148]But it's a side quest that takes less than half an hour to complete. It's as secondary as it gets.
Wild Wasteland also started an unmarked quest to find a Lassie reference in New Vegas and it came with.[/QUOTE]
Finding Jimmy in the well in New Vegas is literally just Rex marking it on your map. In Fallout 4 Billy is a character, his parents are characters, they have a story with which you are expected to interact.
In New Vegas it was a small joke, in Fallout 4 you're supposed to take the quest somewhat seriously. It's dwelling on something that should be left alone.
[QUOTE=DiscoInferno;49572309]That Cabot bollocks springs to mind. I know some people love Lovecraft or whatever that shit is but to me it was kust the wierdest and stupidest nonsense and was just completely ill-fitting to Fallout. Mothership Zeta was better.[/QUOTE]
Again, I don't see a huge problem with the cabot quest. It was a good enough quest to not warrant overthinking (unlike that terrible kid in a fridge quest)
Fallout 1 has people with telepathic abilities, Fallout 2 has a ghost, a deathclaw-conjuring super mutant, etc. There's a lot of weird supernatural shit in the fallout universe, and the cabot house questline is not *that* big of a stretch on all that.
You're really forcing that "it's a joke to Lassie" tbh. I don't really see that when it's the obvious nod to where kids really did get stuck in abandoned refrigerators because of locks that don't open from the inside. The Indiana Jones nod is pretty easy to see though.
The fact he's called something as stereotypical as Billy and that he's got a ghoul family waiting for him makes his existence an obvious joke and nothing to dwell on for long.
They had more money to spare so instead of being a note on a dead body it's a ten minute long quest.
[QUOTE=WillerinV1.02;49573049]i dont understand why people don't get that this is the big problem with the ghoul kid quest, in that it fucks with internal consistency and isn't considered an easter egg like the TARDIS or dinosaur footprint. it just literally has no reason to be in the game.[/QUOTE]
I think this adds to a problem on my list of problems with Fallout 4, that Bethesda was more thinking "What could we do that'll make the player go "OH WOW COOL"?".
There's more "holy shit cool" moments than moments like OWB.
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