Unpopular Opinions about Video Games

My problem with NuFallout isn't mechanical. It's what happened to the setting.

Between Fallout 1 and 2, the world evolved. Humanity was starting to rebuild. Yeah, most of the world was still wrecked, but there was change. Progress. The NCR was building cities, infrastructure. A stable government (after a fashion).

Fallout 3 and 4 are still people fighting over goddamned 200 year old twinkies and bottles of soda in ruined gas stations and living in un-repaired ruins and cobbled together shacks made out of busses and pieces of crashed airplanes.

New Vegas sort of straddled the line, and it mostly worked because New Vegas was supposed to be a frontier area that hadn't had as much rebuilding happen... But even then, look at New Vegas. House and the gangs had done a fair job restoring at least a chunk of Vegas, there was trade between them and the NCR, diplomatic relations, signs of progress. The world felt like it was growing and evolving.

Bethsda-Fallout is a stagnant world replaying the same meme gifs for eternity.
That's because the accomplishments of the Fallout 1 and 2 heroes changed the west coast, not the whole of the USA. The heroes of Fallout 1 and 2 made the return of civilization possible, but it was a local civilization that returned, America didn't suddenly get out of the Dark Ages and back on track. Only the West Coast did. The story of Fallout 3 was how the East Coast recovered, with a renegade version of the BoS serving as the NCR of the East Coast. By the time of Fallout 4, DC has recovered, and the BoS is expanding northward into the Boston Commonwealth, just like how the NCR grew in power over the course of Fallout 1 and 2, and by the time of New Vegas, they've defeated both the California BoS and the Enclave, and they're expanding eastward into the Mojave.
 
That's because the accomplishments of the Fallout 1 and 2 heroes changed the west coast, not the whole of the USA.

That's an excuse, I'm sorry.

The heroes of Fallout 1 and 2 made the return of civilization possible, but it was a local civilization that returned, America didn't suddenly get out of the Dark Ages and back on track. Only the West Coast did.

Yeah, but that's my problem. There's no reason it should only have happened once, in one place, over a span of over two hundred years.

I'm not even demanding an East Coast version of the NCR. Just... fuck it, anything other than living in literal garbage heaps and scavenging the mysteriously endless supplies of twinkies and cokes. We see a handful of people trying to grow a few little dirt gardens that wouldn't put food on their table for a week much less months at a time, and a few people raising Brahmin. And that's effectively it. Nobody is trying to build anything. Nobody is even trying to clean up anything. The player character in F4 is the second coming of Jesus, Buddha, and Odin all at once just because they actually inspire people to get off their ass and do something.

The story of Fallout 3 was how the East Coast recovered, with a renegade version of the BoS serving as the NCR of the East Coast. By the time of Fallout 4, DC has recovered, and the BoS is expanding northward into the Boston Commonwealth, just like how the NCR grew in power over the course of Fallout 1 and 2, and by the time of New Vegas, they've defeated both the California BoS and the Enclave, and they're expanding eastward into the Mojave.

And I will defend the Brotherhood of Steel in F4 as one of the few truly good parts of that game, but they are a long way from being the NCR of the East Coast. It's also not clear how sustainable or expandable it is - as far as I know, the BoS, at least the east coast brotherhood, doesn't have the capability of producing most of it's tech. It just scavenges it. Every suit of power armor or vertibird they lose is just gone forever. Yeah, they build the Prydwyn, but it's a one-off thing made of stuff they found in the destroyed Enclave base.
 
Again, what I said about Mass Effect 2 stands; it was, to most fans, the highlight of the series; the party member stories and the suicide mission are seen as the highlight of the trilogy, with most players having fond memories of said stories, hence why ME3's ending felt like a sad embarassment in their eyes, especially since ME2's recruuitment and loyalty missions had fans really invested in the party members and their stories.

@MembersSchoolPizza
That's an excuse, I'm sorry.
No it isn't. The actions of the FO1 and FO2 heroes helped California, not the whole of the USA, which was still mired in raider gangs, tribals, and random merc bands that don't give a shit about civilization.

Hell, Arizona was a giant pile of shit full of raiders and monsters before Caesar's Legion showed up and civilized the place. They didn't drag themselves out of the Dark Ages, Caesar had to do it for them. Who was there to civilize DC? Nobody. The BoS and the Enclave were new arrivals and didn't have enough time to clean up the place yet. Then there's the fact that the Lone Wanderer eradicated the East Coast Enclave, meaning that one out of two armies that could've cleaned up the East Coast got eradicated, root and stem. Meaning that it was all up to the East Coast Lyons BoS, and they were only able to establish a foothold in DC AFTER the main events of FO3.

I'm not even demanding an East Coast version of the NCR. Just... fuck it, anything other than living in literal garbage heaps and scavenging the mysteriously endless supplies of twinkies and cokes. We see a handful of people trying to grow a few little dirt gardens that wouldn't put food on their table for a week much less months at a time, and a few people raising Brahmin. And that's effectively it. Nobody is trying to build anything. Nobody is even trying to clean up anything. The player character in F4 is the second coming of Jesus, Buddha, and Odin all at once just because they actually inspire people to get off their ass and do something.
You're assuming that nations that can rebuild the wreckage of post-apocalyptic America just grow on trees. They don't. Without the actions of the Vault Dweller and the Chosen One, the NCR would've been strangled by mutants or gassed by the Enclave before it could even spread its wings. The only reason they're an expanding power in FNV was because two heroes of destiny eradicated massive threats that could've stopped them from growing.

The East Coast didn't have that until FO3, and after FO3, the Lyons BoS was able to establish its strength and began expanding in FO4. Arthur Maxson was able to go on foreign crusades because the Lone Wanderer eradicated the Enclave, allowing the East Coast BoS to expand and grow, taking control of the DC area and building itself up as a power.

And I will defend the Brotherhood of Steel in F4 as one of the few truly good parts of that game, but they are a long way from being the NCR of the East Coast. It's also not clear how sustainable or expandable it is - as far as I know, the BoS, at least the east coast brotherhood, doesn't have the capability of producing most of it's tech. It just scavenges it. Every suit of power armor or vertibird they lose is just gone forever. Yeah, they build the Prydwyn, but it's a one-off thing made of stuff they found in the destroyed Enclave base.
The same could be said for the NCR. Hell, half the conversations you have with them in the Mojave show that the NCR is expanding too fast and can't even protect its own supply lines. Unlike the Legion, which eradicates all threats before expanding, hence why caravans marked by Legion banners don't get attacked by raiders or mutants. And their tech is mostly salvaged Veritibirds, power armor, and guns that are probably older than most of the people using them.
 
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guns that are probably older than most of the people using them.
Not really. The NCR Service Rifles, alongside most of their small arms, are newly-manufactured by the Gun Runners. The top-notch NCR gear is pre-war by and large, sure. But the NCR does manufacture new hardware.
 
You're assuming that nations that can rebuild the wreckage of post-apocalyptic America just grow on trees. They don't. Without the actions of the Vault Dweller and the Chosen One, the NCR would've been strangled by mutants or gassed by the Enclave before it could even spread its wings. The only reason they're an expanding power in FNV was because two heroes of destiny eradicated massive threats that could've stopped them from growing.

The East Coast didn't have that until FO3, and after FO3, the Lyons BoS was able to establish its strength and began expanding in FO4. Arthur Maxson was able to go on foreign crusades because the Lone Wanderer eradicated the Enclave, allowing the East Coast BoS to expand and grow, taking control of the DC area and building itself up as a power.

Again, I'm not demanding a functional New World Government or something. I'm just asking for some signs of people doing anything other than living in the wreckage of the old world and eating f'ing twinkies and coke. Or an explanation as to why there are still twinkies and coke, for that matter. Why vehicles sitting out in the elements for two hundred years haven't rusted badly. Why nobody has built so much as a log cabin, or a stone hut, and instead everyone lives in wrecked busses and shanties made from road signs and old pallets.

Some sign, any sign, that anyone is doing anything other than the exact same thing they were doing 10 years after the bombs fell two hundred years ago.

The same could be said for the NCR. Hell, half the conversations you have with them in the Mojave show that the NCR is expanding too fast and can't even protect its own supply lines. Unlike the Legion, which eradicates all threats before expanding, hence why caravans marked by Legion banners don't get attacked by raiders or mutants. And their tech is mostly salvaged Veritibirds, power armor, and guns that are probably older than most of the people using them.

Yes, but the NCR over-expanding is an acknowledged plot point. It's actually a major plot point. And even at that, the NCR is - for wasteland standards - huge. It has an actual standing military, whole cities under it's governance, etc. The East Coast brotherhood is a few dozen people? Maybe a very small number of hundreds, depending on how many they left back in the Capital Wasteland? Any expansion is over-expansion, for them.

And no, incorrect on that last point: The NCR canonically has industry and they make new armor and weapons. Not vertibirds or power armor, no, but conventional armor and weapons for the troops, yes. The technology level of the NCR is seemingly somewhere around mid-20th century tech. They have a lot of the same stuff we have today, what they don't have is any of the Fallout super science.
 
False. ME2 was basically the high point of the franchise.
The one in the franchise with the OTT blood spatter, introduced ammo mags which ruined the flow, and enemies that couldn't be target at all depending on what colour you had vs them?

The plot was pointless the whole game a waste of time.
Actually, I have seen people who have played the originals like Fallout 3 better.
I've seen people who want to fuck kids, doesn't mean they're right.
Also, Fallout's story was always kind of shit. FO2 forces you to fight the Enclave no matter what, and they're just basically American Nazis with a shallow Nixon stand-in for a villain. The Master in FO1 kills himself when he finds out his mutants are sterile, despite the fact that he has a cult of humans on standby who can easily serve as breeding stock to turn into more mutants.
Tell me you haven't played fallout without telling me you haven't played fallout.

F2, like NV, is made by the wealth and breadth of the side quests, the story is a means to an end. Plus, F2 has the best villain of them all; Frank Horrigan.
I came to the old games later and hated them.
I hate F1 when I first played it. It took me a while to get into it, but when I did, boy howdy was it amazing.
Not only that, as someone who owned Fallout Brotherhood of Steel back in the day I was told how that was some travesty.
Brotherhood of steel is best forgotten by everyone.
 
@MembersSchoolPizza
Some sign, any sign, that anyone is doing anything other than the exact same thing they were doing 10 years after the bombs fell two hundred years ago.
The only reason there's even an NCR in the first place is because a pair of chosen ones helped Shady Sands survive. Without them, Shady Sands would've been ground under the heel of mutants or gassed by the Enclave, and all you'd have in the west coast are scattered settlements and death. Which is what DC had before the Lone Wanderer.

Yes, but the NCR over-expanding is an acknowledged plot point. It's actually a major plot point. And even at that, the NCR is - for wasteland standards - huge. It has an actual standing military, whole cities under it's governance, etc. The East Coast brotherhood is a few dozen people? Maybe a very small number of hundreds, depending on how many they left back in the Capital Wasteland? Any expansion is over-expansion, for them.
The Lyons Brotherhood were originally a few dozen people. But then they opened the floodgates and let anyone who can hold a laser rifle straight into the club and they recruited people from the Capital Wasteland once they began to grow in power there, so by the time of FO4, they'd probably be several thousand. The NCR itself is also in the thousands, not the millions. Which is why a band of raiders cosplaying as Roman soldiers are an actual threat to them, instead of just some random tribe that gets genocided by a great power.

And no, incorrect on that last point: The NCR canonically has industry and they make new armor and weapons. Not vertibirds or power armor, no, but conventional armor and weapons for the troops, yes. The technology level of the NCR is seemingly somewhere around mid-20th century tech. They have a lot of the same stuff we have today, what they don't have is any of the Fallout super science.
Once again, false. Most NCR soldiers are wielding pistols or rinky-dink service rifles, certainly not the high-quality guns that you find in the Gun Runners' store. You pick off guns from dead NCR troops, and they're typically low-quality shit, whereas the Gun Runners sell you new, high-quality guns. Chief Hanlon even complains that there's not enough service rifles or body armor for the NCR soldiery. The only soldiers who get the high-quality manufactured shit are the Rangers or the Heavy Troopers who wield anti-materiel rifles, assault rifles, or miniguns.

Not really. The NCR Service Rifles, alongside most of their small arms, are newly-manufactured by the Gun Runners. The top-notch NCR gear is pre-war by and large, sure. But the NCR does manufacture new hardware.
Most of the manufactured stuff goes to the Rangers and the Heavy Troopers. If you pick up guns from dead NCR soldiers, they're weathered service rifles that are on the cusp of malfunctioning, whereas the Gun Runners' stuff is brand-new and works well. The high-quality guns like assault rifles, miniguns, and anti-armor rifles are wielded by rangers and heavy troopers, not the average pleb in a brown potato sack.

The one in the franchise with the OTT blood spatter, introduced ammo mags which ruined the flow,
Ammo mags forced a resource management mechanic into a game where, prior to that, you can just sit your ass down on one corner of the map and kill everyone without even moving.

and enemies that couldn't be target at all depending on what colour you had vs them?
Really, that's not the ME2 I played. Mine had enemies that shredded your shields if you were dumb enough to not take cover.

The plot was pointless the whole game a waste of time.
The party member stories and the suicide mission show otherwise. Those missions were, for most ME fans, the highlight of the entire trilogy. Especially since the first game had potential, but still had kinks and cheese all over the story, whereas the third game was basically an afterthought.

I've seen people who want to fuck kids, doesn't mean they're right.
The majority of gamers and fans were OK with FO3 when it came out in 2008. So no, they're not comparable to people who want to fuck kids. If anything, it's the people who dick-ride the first two games that are the minority, since they're ass-mad that a game like FO3 made Game of the Year back in 2008. You know, back then when games actually had to be good to get that title.

F2, like NV, is made by the wealth and breadth of the side quests, the story is a means to an end.
False. What you mean to say is ''FO2's sidequests were more engaging than the main story, which is about as entertaining as a box of rocks''. Which, ironically, is the same thing you crucify Mass Effect 2 for.

NV was all about the factions you picked and which side you fought for in the main story. Hell, outside of the NCR, there aren't that many sidequests for the other factions, since they had everything lined up already, whereas the NCR needs the hero to save them left and right; an NCR player has way more sidequests to do than a Legion or House player does. So depending on which side a player chose, they may or may not have done that many sidequests. Your average Legion or House player probably stuck to story missions mostly, while the NCR players had more to do.

Plus, F2 has the best villain of them all; Frank Horrigan.
Frank Horrigan is a mutant with a fist for a brain. He's nowhere near the level of Caesar or House in terms of compelling characterization. Frank is just a monster that the Enclave points at its enemies, whose only real strength is intimidation and the fact that the game-makers are lazy shits who just gave him 10 across the board. He doesn't actually display any self-awareness or intelligence on his own part in the story; he's just an overpowered stooge blindly taking orders. At least Lanius had his story of how he wound up in the Legion and why people are scared of him, and his tactics are superior to that of General Oliver's, having his men infiltrate the Hoover Dam and catch Oliver's men off-guard.

I hate F1 when I first played it. It took me a while to get into it, but when I did, boy howdy was it amazing.
Most folks don't get past that part. They just find a game they hate, and they throw it away and go back to playing FF7, Paper Mario, or Starcraft.

The thing is, games compete with each other for entertainment purposes. If a game is too frustrating or annoying for a player, your average dork isn't going to tough it out and wait till it gets good. No, they'll throw the game away or sell it back to the store, and go back to games that are fun to play. This is why CRPGs like Fallout 1 and 2 lost the RPG race to games like Final Fantasy 6 and 7. The latter two aren't just easier to pick up and play, but have more engaging stories to tell. Entire generations grew up with those two games as their first taste of RPGs, whereas the small-scale sales of FO1 and FO2 shows that those games were niche titles at best.

Brotherhood of steel is best forgotten by everyone.
Why, because it proved that the company that owned Fallout prior to Bethesda was willing to whore it out like a cheap skank?
 
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The only reason there's even an NCR in the first place is because a pair of chosen ones helped Shady Sands survive. Without them, Shady Sands would've been ground under the heel of mutants or gassed by the Enclave, and all you'd have in the west coast are scattered settlements and death. Which is what DC had before the Lone Wanderer.

And if it hadn't been the NCR, it may have been someone else. You're taking the Great Man view of history - if not for the Vault Dweller, and then later the Chosen One, apparently nothing would have happened.

I don't subscribe to that view. Something would have happened. We know other things did happen, outside the scope of the game protagonists. Hell, the NCR itself mostly was created outside the scope of the game protagonists, however much their actions may have been influential. Other things happened, too. New Canaan was a prosperous settlement, we know, before it was raised. Ceaser raised his legions.

Specifically what happened might be different. Maybe there never would have been an NCR. Maybe there never would have been a Legion, for that matter. But something would happen, because something usually does happen.

The Lyons Brotherhood were originally a few dozen people. But then they opened the floodgates and let anyone who can hold a laser rifle straight into the club and they recruited people from the Capital Wasteland once they began to grow in power there, so by the time of FO4, they'd probably be several thousand. The NCR itself is also in the thousands, not the millions. Which is why a band of raiders cosplaying as Roman soldiers are an actual threat to them, instead of just some random tribe that gets genocided by a great power.

"They'd probably be" is pure speculation. We have no reason to think that even "with the floodgates open" they would swell in numbers that much, that quickly. They're still elitist assholes who think most Wastelanders are backwards savages.

Canonically the NCR has a population of somewhere north of a quarter million by the time of New Vegas. What percentage of that is soldiers is up for speculation, of course. It's also not clear exactly what counts as a "citizen" of the NCR.

The Legion is a threat because, despite the scant numbers we see in New Vegas, they're actually huge.

Once again, false. Most NCR soldiers are wielding pistols or rinky-dink service rifles, certainly not the high-quality guns that you find in the Gun Runners' store. You pick off guns from dead NCR troops, and they're typically low-quality shit, whereas the Gun Runners sell you new, high-quality guns. Chief Hanlon even complains that there's not enough service rifles or body armor for the NCR soldiery. The only soldiers who get the high-quality manufactured shit are the Rangers or the Heavy Troopers who wield anti-materiel rifles, assault rifles, or miniguns.

This is a case of game mechanics not matching the in-game lore. But to be fair, the NCR in New Vegas were over-extended and their supply lines were breaking down. Again, that's a plot point in game - they were, among other things, trying to build a rail network back to The Hub to move supplies to the Mojave. They were scavenging supplies at that point.
 
The only reason there's even an NCR in the first place is because a pair of chosen ones helped Shady Sands survive. Without them, Shady Sands would've been ground under the heel of mutants or gassed by the Enclave, and all you'd have in the west coast are scattered settlements and death. Which is what DC had before the Lone Wanderer
That's true to a point but you're forgetting a key reason for why those were threats and what they wanted. The Enclave and the Unity were both existential threats to a greater order in California but they were also trying to build new societies. The unity wouldn't have just killed everybody and scavenged ruins. They would have corralled normal humans and likely evolved some sort of fucked up apartheid state as the Master eventually realized the mutants couldn't breed and he just killed the nascent societies that were forming.
The enclave would have literally killed everyone and set up small inbred outposts but they would still make something even if it sucked compared to anything else. Compare that to the Capital Wasteland where its major threat has been the unity but dumber and inept and maybe the enclave who are honestly way more chill than they used to be and it's somewhat more understandable but 200 years of this shit should have been solved by the BOS or the enclave by now since you really could have solved everything by just shooting the Super Mutants and raiders.
 
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@MembersSchoolPizza
And if it hadn't been the NCR, it may have been someone else. You're taking the Great Man view of history - if not for the Vault Dweller, and then later the Chosen One, apparently nothing would have happened.

I don't subscribe to that view. Something would have happened. We know other things did happen, outside the scope of the game protagonists. Hell, the NCR itself mostly was created outside the scope of the game protagonists, however much their actions may have been influential. Other things happened, too. New Canaan was a prosperous settlement, we know, before it was raised. Ceaser raised his legions.

Specifically what happened might be different. Maybe there never would have been an NCR. Maybe there never would have been a Legion, for that matter. But something would happen, because something usually does happen.
Without the Vault Dweller or the Chosen One, the NCR would've been dead, or it wouldn't exist. You'd either have roaming bands of mutants everywhere annihilating or mutating any signs of human civilization, or the FEV would've worked, and all people outside of the Enclave and the people in the Vaults would be dead. The Great Man view of history is something that video game worlds ascribe to. Remove the hero, and the world is doomed. The real world doesn't work like that, sure, remove one guy, and another takes his place. I mean, look at the Crisis of the Third Century; one guy after another tried to become the chosen one of the Roman Empire and lead them as Emperor.

But that's not how video game stories work. Without Mario, Bowser would've ruled the Mushroom Kingdom. Without Samus, the infection of Phazon would've spread across the Galactic Federation. Without Master Chief killing the Prophet of Regret, the unified Covenant Empire would've destroyed mankind. Without Revan, the Galactic Republic would've been destroyed by the Mandalorian Neo-Crusaders. Video games practically LIVE on the Great Man theory. This is especially true for Fallout, since the Vault Dweller was crucial in destroying the Unity, and the Chosen One was crucial in destroying the Enclave. If those threats were allowed to live, there would be no NCR, no civilization in the west coast; the Brotherhood would've either been trampled upon by the mutants or eradicated by the superior firepower of the Enclave.

Hell, just look at Arizona. It was an uncivilized shithole until the Legion came around and civilized the place, wiping out raiders left and right and bringing order to the place. Even after all that time, they weren't able to restore civilization themselves; the Legion had to drag the place out of the Dark Ages kicking and screaming. It was mostly populated by raiders that the Legion either massacred or assimilated. Fallout's version of Arizona remained an uncivilized shithole long after the bombs dropped, and a literal ''great man'', Edward ''Caesar'' Sallow, had to ride in with his troops and bring order to the place. DC didn't have that until the end of FO3.

"They'd probably be" is pure speculation. We have no reason to think that even "with the floodgates open" they would swell in numbers that much, that quickly. They're still elitist assholes who think most Wastelanders are backwards savages.

Canonically the NCR has a population of somewhere north of a quarter million by the time of New Vegas. What percentage of that is soldiers is up for speculation, of course. It's also not clear exactly what counts as a "citizen" of the NCR.

The Legion is a threat because, despite the scant numbers we see in New Vegas, they're actually huge.
False. The Lyons Brotherhood were declared heretics by the Brotherhood at large BECAUSE they weren't elitist assholes. You're talking about the Outcasts who thought that wastelanders are backwards savages not worth saving, but Elder Lyons thought otherwise and they started recruiting from the outside.

The NCR is also deeply divided. Meaning that even with 700K people, only several thousand troops could be brought to bear against the Legion. The Legion wouldn't be a threat if the NCR was a stable, organized power, but it isn't, and the Legion is taking full advantage of the NCR's weaknesses in order to seize the Mojave from them.

This is a case of game mechanics not matching the in-game lore. But to be fair, the NCR in New Vegas were over-extended and their supply lines were breaking down. Again, that's a plot point in game - they were, among other things, trying to build a rail network back to The Hub to move supplies to the Mojave. They were scavenging supplies at that point.
That's not just the game mechanics, even Chief Hanlon complains that there's not enough rifles and body armor to go around for the troops. They're basically in the same situation as Russia in WW1. Except it's even worse, since at least Russia in WW1 was united under the Czar, whereas the NCR is a divided society with brahmin barons and landowners keking the government and not caring at all for the average NCR citizen. The Legion had its start when Edward Sallow's mother had to take refuge among the Followers of the Apocalypse because his father got killed in the Boneyard. If the NCR could protect its citizens, it wouldn't have an enemy in the Mojave, because Edward Sallow would've remained a loyal NCR citizen had his father not died.

That's true to a point but you're forgetting a key reason for why those were threats and what they wanted. The Enclave and the Unity were both existential threats to a greater order in California but they were also trying to build new societies. The unity wouldn't have just killed everybody and scavenged ruins. They would have corralled normal humans and likely evolved some sort of fucked up apartheid state as the Master eventually realized the mutants couldn't breed and he just killed the nascent societies that were forming.
Oh, no, the Master kills himself when he finds out the mutants couldn't breed. It would've made more sense if he did make an apartheid state with the mutants and his cultists, but he doesn't do that. Also, the Enclave would've killed everyone outside their walls save for the vault dwellers.

The enclave would have literally killed everyone and set up small inbred outposts but they would still make something even if it sucked compared to anything else. Compare that to the Capital Wasteland where its major threat has been the unity but dumber and inept and maybe the enclave who are honestly way more chill than they used to be and it's somewhat more understandable but 200 years of this shit should have been solved by the BOS or the enclave by now since you really could have solved everything by just shooting the Super Mutants and raiders.
The Capital Wasteland has no organized army trying to make things better. The Enclave and Lyons' Brotherhood were recent arrivals; they could've cleaned up DC, but the FO3 player was forced by the plot to fight and wipe out the Enclave. So it was just the Lyons Brotherhood that was left to clean up the place. It's like with Arizona in the Fallout universe; it was a massive pile of shit full of raiders and monsters until the Legion rode in and restored order the only way they knew how-by killing enough people that the rest got the point and bent the knee.
 
The plot was pointless the whole game a waste of time.
What's great about leaving the series after hearing ME3 was bad is that, as far as I'm concerned, everything after the DLC for ME2 never happened, so none of ME2 was retconned. Granted, I don't remember much of the plot of either game as I've not played them since the original release back in the day.
 
What's great about leaving the series after hearing ME3 was bad is that, as far as I'm concerned, everything after the DLC for ME2 never happened, so none of ME2 was retconned. Granted, I don't remember much of the plot of either game as I've not played them since the original release back in the day.
Me1 is the only game that counts for me. ME3 was great to play mechanically but boy-oh-boy did they shit the bed in the writing department.
I won't turn this into an autistic slap-fight

This last page or two has turned into an autistic slapfight
Damn.
 
The real world doesn't work like that, sure, remove one guy, and another takes his place. I mean, look at the Crisis of the Third Century; one guy after another tried to become the chosen one of the Roman Empire and lead them as Emperor.
I'd honestly argue the world actually does work like that. Maybe they aren't literally fate bound or superheroes but even observing how much someone can change even the course of events by tampering with the flow of s conversation clearly lends credence to the idea of human agency.
trying to make things better. The Enclave and Lyons' Brotherhood were recent arrivals; they could've cleaned up DC, but the FO3 player was forced by the plot to fight and wipe out the Enclave. So it was just the Lyons Brotherhood that was left to clean up the place. It's like with Arizona in the Fallout universe; it was a massive pile of shit full of raiders and monsters until the Legion rode in and restored order the only way they knew how-by killing enough people that the rest got the point and bent the knee.
Even with the BOS and the enclave being recent arrivals, it doesn't quite make sense that none of the communities gathered a full fledged response to an army of borderline retarded and genocidal mutants. There are plenty of settlements in the DC ruins and plenty of interconnectivity by the point of FO3. At some point, there should have been attempts to cull the mutants outside of Vault 87. You could retroactively say the institute is involved (somebody hires those Talon company mercs who try to kill you for good karma) but until Bethesda confirms it, then it's up in the air.
As for Arizona, I can buy that society was a shithole. Arizona is a shithole today but you also have to remember that Arizona didn't have the innate advantages that California hads. California has a plentiful agricultural region, a strong tech base thanks to the Brotherhood of steel, a humanitarian effort led by the followers of the apocalypse and plentiful trade as the backbone of its economy. California has the eaay ingredients for supporting itself and expanding a nation-state but Arizona doesn't. Of course, Caesar took the wrong lessons from his visit and started sperging about Hegel but we have enough Legion vs. NCR debates.
 
The whole point of the intro is that the Council IS acting like a kangaroo court when they were protecting Saren, and they only budged when confronted with irrefutable proof
Irrefutable proof already existed before, but you are explaining the game using batman and superman as examples so whatever.
You guys read the dialogue and descriptions? I don't think any games have good dialogue per say, at best they have good lines. I've heard baldurs gate ii has good lines, especially the villain does. Personally the best "dialogue" and voice acting I've seen is in blood and captain claw, which coincidentally are my personal favourites when it comes to voice acting, doesn't matter if blood and Duke 3d is just full of rehashed army of darkness lines. Stephen weyte is a literal god king, get out of here with that Jon St John shit. Duke 3d and God hand English dub come second. Special mention to Rondo of blood for so bad it's good dialogue/voice acting. Another special mention to dungeon keeper for amazing voice acting.
I don't, bro. But I played Mass Effect when it came out, and since I was a retarded kid back then I enjoyed it.

Decided to play it again because of nostalgia but I can't take it anymore. As an adult, this kind of writing is unacceptable. I mostly only play action games nowadays.
 
The heroes of Fallout 1 and 2 made the return of civilization possible, but it was a local civilization that returned, America didn't suddenly get out of the Dark Ages and back on track.
Nigga in Fallout 4 there is a bar which still has skeletons inside from 200 years ago and it's still in operation. This is the level of dissonance people are talking about. The owners haven't removed the skeletons from their store for 200 years... "Dark ages" doesn't justify this.
 
Nigga in Fallout 4 there is a bar which still has skeletons inside from 200 years ago and it's still in operation. This is the level of dissonance people are talking about. The owners haven't removed the skeletons from their store for 200 years... "Dark ages" doesn't justify this.
It'd be a fun change of pace if F5 is set in a completely restored, but walled-off, mega-state, where the history of the bombs falling and the history of the country has been changed by a family descended from Overseers of the vault. Like a monarchy style family but not so real-world and gay.

The factions are; Those who wish to keep history a secret and maintain control, those who want to know the history to help avoid an upcoming conflict by several 'tribes', and those who want the state destroyed, the people freed to left to roam the wastes once more.

Done right, with most of the game set outside of the main city/hub, where there are still skeletons, desolation and radioactive mutants, would be superb to juxtapose the clean, demolition man style 'utopia'.
 
Back in ye olde tymes before FO3 there was quite a bit of disdain for FO2 due to the sillier things and pop culture references in the game.
The canonization of FO2 came later.
The one in the franchise with the OTT blood spatter, introduced ammo mags which ruined the flow, and enemies that couldn't be target at all depending on what colour you had vs them?
With ME2 they decided to not only clean up a bunch of jank but instead gutted and replaced these systems wholesale. Then they walked a bunch of these changes back in ME3 but gutted other things instead (hello ping-probe-flee "sidequests"). Which also had to do with ME3 being under huge release pressure and looking like a massive rushjob as a result.
 
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