Why Fallout is not Fallout - General

[QUOTE=Smoovedawg1;52547276] TLDR; This guy is an elitist; Fallout 3 is objectively good; [/QUOTE] my favourite part of fallout 3 is where i had to die in the radiation room even when my super mutant companion was standing right there because """it was my destiny""" or the harrowing moral choices of either "blowing up megaton" or "not blowing up megaton" but hey at least our dad fixed the water or some shit

[QUOTE=Cloak Raider;52547820]my favourite part of fallout 3 is where i had to die in the radiation room even when my super mutant companion was standing right there because """it was my destiny""" or the harrowing moral choices of either "blowing up megaton" or "not blowing up megaton" but hey at least our dad fixed the water or some shit[/QUOTE] And for a game about water, its not really important from a gameplay perspective.

[QUOTE=UnidentifiedFlyingTard;52547835]And for a game about water, its not really important from a gameplay perspective.[/QUOTE] Now you're making me want Obsidian to make a Fallout game set around a really flooded New Orleans where water is an important part of gameplay and an important theme. A kind of Bioshock infused Fallout??

Fallout 3 had some legitimately interesting decisions regarding the art direction but they were partly lost to the engine and the technical limitations of the time. I'm lucky enough to own the collector's edition art booklet of the game and it has plenty of written explanations from late Adam Adamowicz. It notably goes to great lengths to explain that the universe depicted in Fallout 3 wasn't meant to be a direct 3D adaptation of what was shown in Fallout 1 and 2 but rather followed the logic that art and architecture simply followed different paths in the east and west coasts. So, yes, Fallout 3 runs on a 50s retro-future aesthetic, but it was not meant as a betrayal or as a retcon of what Fallout 1 and 2 did, simply as an adjacent take in a geographically very different part of the world. For instance, the 1957 Ford Nucleon was used as a heavy source of inspiration for most of the vehicles in the game. Sadly it did not translate well into the actual game. However, I think the aesthetic of Fallout 1 and 2 also would not have translated well if brought in just as they were into a 3D engine: Fallout New Vegas sort of proved this since the least convincing aspects of the game from a graphical aspect tend to be the parts that were simply brought in from older games, whereas the most recognizable parts of the title from an artistic standpoint tend to be the new things that were created with Gamebryo in mind.

[QUOTE=Rudevinny;52547887]I'd rather Bethesda had never set their eyes on the series and the IP would've gone to Troika Games instead, who was vying for it at the time as well. Sure, New Vegas wouldn't exist if the series had fallen in the hands of Troika and/or died off instead of being desecrated. It'd be a shame, but far from a terrible loss for the people of this parallel universe. What would they know about a nonexistent game anyway?[/QUOTE] I somehow have the feeling Troika's financial situation wouldn't have made the IP much more secure. Then it'd be ferried along to another dying company or taken by Activision and given a worse fate than Bethesda could ever dream of. I don't feel there was any good, secure home for Fallout at the time, so I'm glad someone with at least the intentions of making their next Fallout an RPG got their grubby mitts on it.

[QUOTE=Jund;52546654]fo1 and 2 were "unknown hero" stories though[/QUOTE] Gonna have to stop you right there and say that no, they weren't. Fallout 1's protagonist has a canon story to him. He was male, he was not a complete and utter dirtbag, he didn't slaughter Vault 13 and collaborated with Shady Sands, so on and so forth. You cannot escape the fact you were initially part of the vault and that you got to leave to fix it up, you definitely weren't an "unknown." Fallout 2's protagonist also has canon origins to him. Your gender is not set in stone but you are invariably the [del]ancestor[/del] descendant of the Vault Dweller, you have established friendships and rivalries within Arroyo, and you're invariably attached to them because the story is about saving their skins [I]twice[/I]. New Vegas is the only game in the series which, without DLC, had no given backstory for the player. This was altered in Lonesome Road (a part meant to be in the original game but whose development was delayed due to time constraints) and no one liked it because the origin story was dumb [I]and[/I] it came out so late that by that point anyone who cared already had an established backstory for their character. Sure, Bethesda plays up the family aspect far more, but the previous games weren't blank slates. [editline]7th August 2017[/editline] [QUOTE=SGTNAPALM;52546677]On the topic of lost knowledge, the wasteland is lousy with intelligent pre-war ghouls. Figure that would sort that out. Just ask them.[/QUOTE] Pre-war ghouls aren't exactly the most sane bunch and a lot of them also weren't particularly skilled in any domain. An interesting, unwritten but strongly implied part of the Fallout lore is that most of the brightest minds of the country ended up locking themselves away and cut all contact with the survivors, who for the most part were unqualified average people who were denied vault entry and didn't have a secluded enough location to hide from the bombs. Lots of scientists, engineers, etc ended up trapped in the vaults where they died slow, possibly painful and humiliating deaths as a result of Vault-Tec's experiments. Others willingly hid far away from civilization, sometimes with plans in minds and sometimes just to get the fuck away from people. And then the rest were shot on sight by the newly formed BOS which was made of particularly pissed ex-military who really weren't fond of those bright minds whose modern inventions lead to the downfall of all civilization as we know it.

as well made as this video is it really irks me that he'll use x to defend the old fallouts and then turn around and say that very same thing lessens the new fallouts that and a fair few of his points are pure opinion, he might be able to sway me if he did more than lightly mention them and never expand

[QUOTE=Ganerumo;52547926]Gonna have to stop you right there and say that no, they weren't. Fallout 1's protagonist has a canon story to him. He was male, he was not a complete and utter dirtbag, he didn't slaughter Vault 13 and collaborated with Shady Sands, so on and so forth. You cannot escape the fact you were initially part of the vault and that you got to leave to fix it up, you definitely weren't an "unknown." Fallout 2's protagonist also has canon origins to him. Your gender is not set in stone but you are invariably the ancestor of the Vault Dweller, you have established friendships and rivalries within Arroyo, and you're invariably attached to them because the story is about saving their skins [I]twice[/I]. New Vegas is the only game in the series which, without DLC, had no given backstory for the player. This was altered in Lonesome Road (a part meant to be in the original game but whose development was delayed due to time constraints) and no one liked it because the origin story was dumb [I]and[/I] it came out so late that by that point anyone who cared already had an established backstory for their character. Sure, Bethesda plays up the family aspect far more, but the previous games weren't blank slates. [editline]7th August 2017[/editline] Pre-war ghouls aren't exactly the most sane bunch and a lot of them also weren't particularly skilled in any domain. An interesting, unwritten but strongly implied part of the Fallout lore is that most of the brightest minds of the country ended up locking themselves away and cut all contact with the survivors, who for the most part were unqualified average people who were denied vault entry and didn't have a secluded enough location to hide from the bombs. Lots of scientists, engineers, etc ended up trapped in the vaults where they died slow, possibly painful and humiliating deaths as a result of Vault-Tec's experiments. Others willingly hid far away from civilization, sometimes with plans in minds and sometimes just to get the fuck away from people. And then the rest were shot on sight by the newly formed BOS which was made of particularly pissed ex-military who really weren't fond of those bright minds whose modern inventions lead to the downfall of all civilization as we know it.[/QUOTE] For 1 and 2 those were the results of having sequels in the case of 1, and 2 still gives you a simple backstory as a tribal- your actions are still your own. In a sequel you are bound to hear about whatever it is the previous protagonist did in some way. The CO shot a deathclaw pet in the face and fucked the daughter of a mob boss and fathered the child who would become the head of a New Reno mafia family. So he wasn't completely good. Also, it's descendant, not ancestor. The VD is the ancestor of the CO.

[QUOTE=Ganerumo;52547926]Gonna have to stop you right there and say that no, they weren't. Fallout 1's protagonist has a canon story to him. He was male, he was not a complete and utter dirtbag, he didn't slaughter Vault 13 and collaborated with Shady Sands, so on and so forth. You cannot escape the fact you were initially part of the vault and that you got to leave to fix it up, you definitely weren't an "unknown." Fallout 2's protagonist also has canon origins to him. Your gender is not set in stone but you are invariably the ancestor of the Vault Dweller, you have established friendships and rivalries within Arroyo, and you're invariably attached to them because the story is about saving their skins [I]twice[/I]. New Vegas is the only game in the series which, without DLC, had no given backstory for the player. This was altered in Lonesome Road (a part meant to be in the original game but whose development was delayed due to time constraints) and no one liked it because the origin story was dumb [I]and[/I] it came out so late that by that point anyone who cared already had an established backstory for their character. Sure, Bethesda plays up the family aspect far more, but the previous games weren't blank slates. [editline]7th August 2017[/editline] Pre-war ghouls aren't exactly the most sane bunch and a lot of them also weren't particularly skilled in any domain. An interesting, unwritten but strongly implied part of the Fallout lore is that most of the brightest minds of the country ended up locking themselves away and cut all contact with the survivors, who for the most part were unqualified average people who were denied vault entry and didn't have a secluded enough location to hide from the bombs. Lots of scientists, engineers, etc ended up trapped in the vaults where they died slow, possibly painful and humiliating deaths as a result of Vault-Tec's experiments. Others willingly hid far away from civilization, sometimes with plans in minds and sometimes just to get the fuck away from people. And then the rest were shot on sight by the newly formed BOS which was made of particularly pissed ex-military who really weren't fond of those bright minds whose modern inventions lead to the downfall of all civilization as we know it.[/QUOTE] There being certain canonical things in later games isn't really the same as things being defined in that particular game but yeah there's still quite a few backstory assumptions. New Vegas also does still assume that you were working as a courier, and it requires that you're either interested in seeking revenge or reclaiming the platinum chip for whatever reason. These things are just incredibly minor in comparison to SHAUN

[QUOTE=elowin;52548094]There being certain canonical things in later games isn't really the same as things being defined in that particular game but yeah there's still quite a few backstory assumptions. New Vegas also does still assume that you were working as a courier, and it requires that you're either interested in seeking revenge or reclaiming the platinum chip for whatever reason. These things are just incredibly minor in comparison to SHAUN[/QUOTE] Yeah, Fallout 4 is more overbearing with your son existing, but you're also given more freedom regarding them than people say. You can still deny Shaun as your son as soon as you meet him again, you can also just flat out deliver a load of buckshot to his smug face immediately. All of those SHAUUUUUUUUN moments people keep talking about also tend to have some kind of evasive dialogue option where you don't mention shaun at all, or options where you instead seek revenge for your spouse, rather than seek to recover your lost son. You're given a set of established origins (lawyer and soldier, married and with a single child), but your actions from the moment you step out of cryo are yours. [editline]7th August 2017[/editline] [QUOTE=BlackMageMari;52547893]Now you're making me want Obsidian to make a Fallout game set around a really flooded New Orleans where water is an important part of gameplay and an important theme. A kind of Bioshock infused Fallout??[/QUOTE] The very early designs of Bioshock's enemies were actually fairly reminiscent of the kind of shit you'd find in Fallout, they were modeled but for the most part never animated. You can see them in the remastered version of the game, there's a museum level dedicated to them.

[QUOTE=Ganerumo;52548117]you can also just flat out deliver a load of buckshot to his smug face immediately. [/QUOTE] Right, and that's the moment the game completely shits the bed, the quest breaks, the PC stops making any sense what so ever, which leads me to believe that it's one of the infamous Bethesda bugs, wherein you can't quite tell if it's an incomplete feature or a bug that was never fixed. On one hand, you can still continue the... well, what's left of the story after it has been thoroughly chewed up by everyone's favourite dog that you literally can't avoid meeting; on the other hand the game is very-very unprepared for that turn of events and pretends that the PC just forgot about their kid for no reason. [quote]You're given a set of established origins (lawyer and soldier, married and with a single child), but your actions from the moment you step out of cryo are yours.[/quote] Funnily enough, that's what makes it even worse. From "established character" we're thrown right into GTA IV-tier territory of disassociation: "what reason a law graduate in pursuit of her lost son can possibly have to stop doing what she's doing to help a robot in a funny hat repair his crazy ship contraption and then fuck around building mansions out of scrap and dog shit for a couple of days?"

whoops

What do you mean "shit the bed and breaks" ? Each faction has a set of contingency plans in case the player fails to remain friends with the Institute, be it by refusing to join them, denying Shaun's identity, or flat out killing him. While the writing is as shoddy as you'd expect the game actually does have different quest paths from the moment you kill Kellogg. They join up at the Institute's reactor which you blow up in three out of four endings, and there's no ending slides which sucks ass, but factions actually react to your actions and if you fail to make the right compromises (keeping friends with the institute even if you don't want to join them, helping out different factions than your own, etc) you will eventually spark conflict and have to tie some extra loose ends. And the dissociation effect is here in [I]every RPG ever.[/I] Even a game like Zelda has this problem where the world is quite literally about to fucking end and Link still finds the time to help villagers round up chicken or whatever other stupid shit people ask of him. All of the other Fallout games have the same thing except maybe the first one, and people complained about the time limit and the relative lack of content in that game which shows that this sort of dissociation is actually quite healthy for the game.

What I personally enjoy about how fucking intense the gameplay/story dissonance is (or, if you prefer, the ludonarrative dissonance) in Fallout 4, is the fact that when I first started my playthrough, I immediately headed to the east after existing the vault. I then proceeded to do a scan line of east<->west, only ever dropping south a few centimeters on the map with each pass. By the time I finally reached Diamond City, I was level 52 and 3.5 game months had passed. And when I finally went to talk to Nick Valentine, my character who has been a grizzled battle-hardened slayer whose spent the past 200ish days taming the Wasteland just suddenly breaks down into a blubbering mess about how "I'M SO DESPERATE TO FIND MY SON PLEASE HELP ME HE'S ALONE AND MUST BE SO SCARED". And then when Nick brings up Supermutants, my character is like "What is a Supermutant?!" despite the fact I have killed hundreds of them by that point, including named Supermutants like Hammer. There's nothing wrong with an RPG having a strict narrative, like Fallout 4 tells. And there's nothing wrong with an RPG having a really loose and interpretative narrative, like Fallout 4 plays. The problem is when you mash them together without any attempt to reconcile them. Having an intricately woven narrative, especially one with time-dependency and urgency like Fallout 4's, naturally clashes with the do-what-you-want-how-you-want-when-you-want sandbox gameplay design. Either focus on the story and corral the player into following your narrative, or make the story vague and lofty and let the player do whatever the hell they want. When you try to have your cake and eat it, too, it just makes a jarring mess of incoherent dissonance.

Fallout 1 & 2 > 3

Man this thread is full of video game hipsters. The way you guys talk, you make it sound like Fallout 1 and 2 were perfect games and Bethesda fucked it all up with Fallout 3. I'd be willing to bet that 90%+ of the people in this thread played Fallout 3 years before even being aware of Fallout 1 or 2. When we were 12 year old kids we ate that shit up. Killing random people and monsters in a 1950's-esque post apocalyptic open world FPS was fucking awesome. None of you would give a single shit about Fallout 1 or 2 if the nostalgia for Fallout 3 wasn't there to begin with. From watching the OP, the only thing that's better about Fallout 1 and 2 is the story and dialogue options. There are more elements to a game than just that. Isometric RPGs are super dated, and for good reason.

[QUOTE=Gmod4ever;52548275]What I personally enjoy about how fucking intense the gameplay/story dissonance is (or, if you prefer, the ludonarrative dissonance) in Fallout 4, is the fact that when I first started my playthrough, I immediately headed to the east after existing the vault. I then proceeded to do a scan line of east<->west, only ever dropping south a few centimeters on the map with each pass. By the time I finally reached Diamond City, I was level 52 and 3.5 game months had passed. And when I finally went to talk to Nick Valentine, my character who has been a grizzled battle-hardened slayer whose spent the past 200ish days taming the Wasteland just suddenly breaks down into a blubbering mess about how "I'M SO DESPERATE TO FIND MY SON PLEASE HELP ME HE'S ALONE AND MUST BE SO SCARED". And then when Nick brings up Supermutants, my character is like "What is a Supermutant?!" despite the fact I have killed hundreds of them by that point, including named Supermutants like Hammer. There's nothing wrong with an RPG having a strict narrative, like Fallout 4 tells. And there's nothing wrong with an RPG having a really loose and interpretative narrative, like Fallout 4 plays. The problem is when you mash them together without any attempt to reconcile them. Having an intricately woven narrative, especially one with time-dependency and urgency like Fallout 4's, naturally clashes with the do-what-you-want-how-you-want-when-you-want sandbox gameplay design. Either focus on the story and corral the player into following your narrative, or make the story vague and lofty and let the player do whatever the hell they want. When you try to have your cake and eat it, too, it just makes a jarring mess of incoherent dissonance.[/QUOTE] Your character isn't nearly that fucking emotional about Shaun when you ask Valentine to help you though. By that point even if you bumrush to DC he's already fairly calm about the whole ordeal and only gets pissed again when Kellogg is brought up and you actually get to see him - given that you pick the specific dialogue option in the part of the wheel that's always dedicated to angry, negative, mean-spirited responses. I think people widely exaggerate the actual parental tones of your character regarding shaun and in my own experience playing the game I actually thought they were underplayed as a whole since the whole relation was so simplistic. Same with the whole "what's a super-mutant ?" thing, those types of questions are always available in games like these even if you're 200 hours in because they're here for the player, not for the character. There's only one instance I can think of where such an option actively disappears in fallout 4 and it's when talking to Abernathy - you can react much more negatively to the mention of raiders if you're higher level and have fought them in numbers already.

[QUOTE=gudman;52548254]Right, and that's the moment the game completely shits the bed, the quest breaks, the PC stops making any sense what so ever, which leads me to believe that it's one of the infamous Bethesda bugs, wherein you can't quite tell if it's an incomplete feature or a bug that was never fixed. On one hand, you can still continue the... well, what's left of the story after it has been thoroughly chewed up by everyone's favourite dog that you literally can't avoid meeting; on the other hand the game is very-very unprepared for that turn of events and pretends that the PC just forgot about their kid for no reason. Funnily enough, that's what makes it even worse. From "established character" we're thrown right into GTA IV-tier territory of disassociation: "what reason a law graduate in pursuit of her lost son can possibly have to stop doing what she's doing to help a robot in a funny hat repair his crazy ship contraption and then fuck around building mansions out of scrap and dog shit for a couple of days?"[/QUOTE] canonically the main vault dweller from FO1 is likely to be albert cole, a lawyer, as max is unlikely to have written the memoirs due to his story literally involving being dumb and strong lawyers do crazy shit in the fallout universe since canonically he shot the master with a plasma rifle, and the first things he did after leaving the vault was saving tandi and killing the rad scorpions

[QUOTE=Not64;52548260]Man this thread is full of video game hipsters. The way you guys talk, you make it sound like Fallout 1 and 2 were perfect games and Bethesda fucked it all up with Fallout 3. I'd be willing to bet that 90%+ of the people in this thread played Fallout 3 years before even being aware of Fallout 1 or 2. When we were 12 year old kids we ate that shit up. Killing random people and monsters in a 1950's-esque post apocalyptic open world FPS was fucking awesome. None of you would give a single shit about Fallout 1 or 2 if the nostalgia for Fallout 3 wasn't there to begin with. From watching the OP, the only thing that's better about Fallout 1 and 2 is the story and dialogue options. That's only one part of the game. Isometric RPGs are super dated, and for good reason.[/QUOTE] How insightful. Yes, Fo3 was the first fallout game I played, not because I was never interested in turn-based RPGs, rather because the setting didn't really appeal to me. Doesn't meant that now that I've experienced better options in the same genre and in the same series (Fo1 and 2 are objectively better games) I don't have any right to call it what it is, especially since I saw all of its glaring issues right then and there when it came out, just kind of accepted it due not having any alternative at the time. Btw for what "good reason" are isometric RPGs "dated"? There's still tons of potential, and there're still games like that coming out, it just isn't viewed as "safe" for modern audience by publishers any more and I wouldn't consider market's stagnation a "good reason".

[QUOTE=Rahu X;52547490]TES games, on the other hand, lock you into the hero's path. No matter what you do in the main quest, you have no real choice in how to tackle it. It's a linear story that always has the same beats and same outcome. To use one of the examples from the video, a TES story is very much like an Ultima story. Only instead of being some proud knight, you're an unknown prisoner. My point was, to expect Bethesda to go from writing decades worth of Ultima style stories to a Fallout story without any issues cropping up would be foolish. Fallout 3's approach to "shades of grey" was pretty much one step away from being Mass Effect, while Fallout 4 somehow ended up worse than that.[/QUOTE] It still baffles me that Bethesda went from their Elder Scrolls games, where you could be pretty much anybody as long as you have an excuse to be a prisoner at the start, to the set family relations they give you in their Fallouts. Especially since in Black Isle's Fallout 3 (Van Buren), you were going to start as an anonymous prisoner. [QUOTE=Ganerumo;52548117]Yeah, Fallout 4 is more overbearing with your son existing, but you're also given more freedom regarding them than people say. You can still deny Shaun as your son as soon as you meet him again, you can also just flat out deliver a load of buckshot to his smug face immediately. All of those SHAUUUUUUUUN moments people keep talking about also tend to have some kind of evasive dialogue option where you don't mention shaun at all, or options where you instead seek revenge for your spouse, rather than seek to recover your lost son. You're given a set of established origins (lawyer and soldier, married and with a single child), but your actions from the moment you step out of cryo are yours.[/QUOTE] Disagree. There is a little leeway if you're creative, but just about any conversation in the game flavors your PC a certain way (and then throws it out the windows for Nuka World.) And the Shaun chunks of the main quest are especially difficult to bypass without just kind of ignoring them. Even that alternate start mod that recuts the dialog for non-parental origins gets kind of sketchy around conversations about your son.

[QUOTE=Fire Kracker;52548292]canonically the main vault dweller from FO1 is likely to be albert cole, a lawyer, as max is unlikely to have written the memoirs due to his story literally involving being dumb and strong lawyers do crazy shit in the fallout universe[/QUOTE] Not to mention this [t]https://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/fallout/images/c/cf/VaultDwellerYoungFace.png/revision/latest?cb=20090903110014[/t] Given, it's from secondary sources so its canon nature is debatable, but it's the best we have without venturing into Brotherhood of Steel (which while extremely lore-unfriendly in every aspect actually had a pretty baller version of the old Vault Dweller as an old hooded figure with a white beard).

[QUOTE=gudman;52548296]How insightful. Yes, Fo3 was the first fallout game I played, not because I was never interested in turn-based RPGs, rather because the setting didn't really appeal to me. Doesn't meant that now that I've experienced better options in the same genre and in the same series (Fo1 and 2 are objectively better games) I don't have any right to call it what it is, especially since I saw all of its glaring issues right then and there when it came out, just kind of accepted it due not having any alternative at the time. Btw for what "good reason" are isometric RPGs "dated"? There's still tons of potential, and there're still games like that coming out, it just isn't viewed as "safe" for modern audience by publishers any more and I wouldn't consider market's stagnation a "good reason".[/QUOTE] it is a good reason, as the investment that they have to make into a game has to be worth what they get out of it had fallout 3-4 not been shooters at the time they came out they would have not been known as well as they are now we can always say "we can't know because it didn't happen that way." but we could make an educated guess based on other games such as pillars of eternity, and divinity and other more recent isometric RPGs. Fallout 4 is as well known as skyrim essentially, I could ask most young joes and janes on the street if they know it and most likely they'll atleast heard of it, but if i ask about literally any iso rpg, they'd be like "what?" and while i don't believe fallout would have died if it had come out as a iso-rpg, i don't believe it'd reach anywhere near the popularity it holds today

I still mostly just wish Bethesda had just made their own original IP as an homage to Fallout, much like Fallout was to Wasteland. Or marketed them as Bethesda-themed spin-offs, which they pretty much are.

[QUOTE=Not64;52548284]Man this thread is full of video game hipsters. The way you guys talk, you make it sound like Fallout 1 and 2 were perfect games and Bethesda fucked it all up with Fallout 3. I'd be willing to bet that 90%+ of the people in this thread played Fallout 3 years before even being aware of Fallout 1 or 2. When we were 12 year old kids we ate that shit up. Killing random people and monsters in a 1950's-esque post apocalyptic open world FPS was fucking awesome. None of you would give a single shit about Fallout 1 or 2 if the nostalgia for Fallout 3 wasn't there to begin with. From watching the OP, the only thing that's better about Fallout 1 and 2 is the story and dialogue options. There are more elements to a game than just that. Isometric RPGs are super dated, and for good reason.[/QUOTE] Well, my first Fallout was New Vegas, and then I played 2 after that. I have never touched 3 and have no need since I know the general story and the game doesn't work very well or at all on Windows 7. After playing 4 I have absolutely no need to play 3 either. It's just 3 with far better graphics, gunplay, mods added in as features, and less dialogue options.

[QUOTE=Cloak Raider;52547820]my favourite part of fallout 3 is where i had to die in the radiation room even when my super mutant companion was standing right there because """it was my destiny""" or the harrowing moral choices of either "blowing up megaton" or "not blowing up megaton" but hey at least our dad fixed the water or some shit[/QUOTE] My absolute favorite part about the ending is that you go to the waterplant to stop the enclave from turning the water on so you have to turn it on yourself ??????????????????

[QUOTE=Ganerumo;52548269]What do you mean "shit the bed and breaks" ? Each faction has a set of contingency plans in case the player fails to remain friends with the Institute, be it by refusing to join them, denying Shaun's identity, or flat out killing him. While the writing is as shoddy as you'd expect the game actually does have different quest paths from the moment you kill Kellogg. They join up at the Institute's reactor which you blow up in three out of four endings, and there's no ending slides which sucks ass, but factions actually react to your actions and if you fail to make the right compromises (keeping friends with the institute even if you don't want to join them, helping out different factions than your own, etc) you will eventually spark conflict and have to tie some extra loose ends. And the dissociation effect is here in [I]every RPG ever.[/I] Even a game like Zelda has this problem where the world is quite literally about to fucking end and Link still finds the time to help villagers round up chicken or whatever other stupid shit people ask of him. All of the other Fallout games have the same thing except maybe the first one, and people complained about the time limit and the relative lack of content in that game which shows that this sort of dissociation is actually quite healthy for the game.[/QUOTE] Did you try to kill the bastard? I did it the moment I saw him (because I didn't want to deal with the Institutes's shit, [i]I'll shoot my way to my son you bastards[/i] and partially because I didn't believe I'm allowed to kill an important NPC). The entire facility goes apeshit trying to kill you, but they can't because the area's inaccessible. After a while synth's hands and barrels of their guns start sticking out of the walls, a very unpleasant and unnerving sight to behold. And the way the PC informs their faction of choice is hilarious, pretty much "lol didn't work out". While yes, the dissociation between the story and player's freedom to fuck around is indeed present almost universally, it is much-much less of an immersion breaker in games where: 1) there's no implied sense of urgency or the time constraint is actually a gameplay mechanic, no matter how restrictive it actually is; 2) there's no personal stake in the story for the main character; 2.5) there's no established player character; 3) the story in general allows for that. New Vegas, even with Lonesome Road taken into account, doesn't place any kind of constraint on you exploring the world and game's content. Sure, you can go on a killing spree for fun, that makes little sense for a character who inhabits that universe, but at that point the player abandons the game's content proper. That's willing disassociation. Fallout 3 and 4, on the opposite, place the majority of their respective contents way too far outside the main story, same deal with Oblivion and Skyrim, to the point where you have to willingly forgo the main plot's tension and pace to go for the side content. It not only creates the aforementioned disassociation between you, the player, and your character, which isn't that big of a deal, it also damages the game's narrative and that's much worse. It's not a story anymore, it's a playground, and playgrounds necessitate a different set of rules for the plot. [editline]7th August 2017[/editline] [QUOTE=Fire Kracker;52548313]it is a good reason, as the investment that they have to make into a game has to be worth what they get out of it had fallout 3-4 not been shooters at the time they came out they would have not been known as well as they are now we can always say "we can't know because it didn't happen that way." but we could make an educated guess based on other games such as pillars of eternity, and divinity and other more recent isometric RPGs. Fallout 4 is as well known as skyrim essentially, I could ask most young joes and janes on the street if they know it and most likely they'll atleast heard of it, but if i ask about literally any iso rpg, they'd be like "what?" and while i don't believe fallout would have died if it had come out as a iso-rpg, i don't believe it'd reach anywhere near the popularity it holds today[/QUOTE] Well, yeah, I can't really disagree with the market, but the post I was replying to implied some other "good" reason. Also I could make an argument that if hypothetical isometric Fo3 received as strong of an ad campaign as its real-life retarded brother did maybe the situation would've been different, but in all likelihood it was already far too late at that point, isometrics were already dropped and the hypothetical situation was straight up impossible. So probably it's just my bias talking, I'd LOVE a modern isometric RPG with turn-based combat or a smart-pause, I can't accept that it'll never happen so don't take me out of my bubble okay?

[QUOTE=gudman;52548296]How insightful. Yes, Fo3 was the first fallout game I played, not because I was never interested in turn-based RPGs, rather because the setting didn't really appeal to me. Doesn't meant that now that I've experienced better options in the same genre and in the same series (Fo1 and 2 are objectively better games) I don't have any right to call it what it is, especially since I saw all of its glaring issues right then and there when it came out, just kind of accepted it due not having any alternative at the time. Btw for what "good reason" are isometric RPGs "dated"? There's still tons of potential, and there're still games like that coming out, it just isn't viewed as "safe" for modern audience by publishers any more and I wouldn't consider market's stagnation a "good reason".[/QUOTE] Fallout 1 and 2 are kind of dated honestly. The interface and base gameplay is very simple and playable today but some of the games systems are very obtuse. A fair amount of the game's skills, perks, and items are practically useless, action points are too important of a stat in combat, and the game has a lot of features that can be opaque, hard to spot, or otherwise not worth your time.

[QUOTE=cdr248;52548420]Fallout 1 and 2 are kind of dated honestly. The interface and base gameplay is very simple and playable today but some of the games systems are very obtuse. A fair amount of the game's skills, perks, and items are practically useless, action points are too important of a stat in combat, and the game has a lot of features that can be opaque, hard to spot, or otherwise not worth your time.[/QUOTE] He did not say FO1 and FO2 are not dated. He said Iso RPGs are not dated. FO1 and FO2 are dated because of their age, not because of their perspective. There are modern Iso RPGs (and pseudo Iso RPGs with a similar perspective but 3D worlds, like how Van Buren was) which are not.

[QUOTE=freaka;52548348]My absolute favorite part about the ending is that you go to the waterplant to stop the enclave from turning the water on so you have to turn it on yourself ??????????????????[/QUOTE] I always wondered if posters who say this actually got to the end of the game yeah you had the option of letting the enclave take the purifier, and then poison the water so that any mutated untermensch who unknowingly drank "purified" water died orrr you purify it yourself so that 70% of the inhabitants of the wasteland don't die from drinking water too pure for them [editline]7th August 2017[/editline] don't get me wrong, it's [i]far[/i] from well written or halfway satisfying, but it's not as contrived or nonsensical an ending as everyone makes it out to be

The most significant thing to me I feel was lost between "old" and "new" Fallout is the sense of desolation, and the scale of such desolation. FO3 is set in D.C, NV; Vegas, 4; Boston. On the other hand, 1 & 2 are southern and northern California, respectively. Even though the passage of time is diluted, it takes literal days to travel anywhere in 1&2, with encounters taking place in the ass-end of nowhere. In "new" FO, you're never more than 10 minutes from a populated area and never more than 10 steps from a point-of-interest - if you even decide to walk there instead of fast-travelling, something which further undermines that sense of scale.