Unpopular Opinions about Video Games

[Chuck McGill]

The difference in writing quality between Interplay Fallout and Bethesda Fallout can be summarized by examining the first settlements that appear in their respective canons. In Fallout 1, the first settlement you will usually stumble across is Shady Sands. It is an incredibly practical settlement. They've built walls around the settlement to keep them safe from intruders. They've built homes that appear to be made of clay, which is an extremely practical building material in a post-industrial environment. And those homes are stocked with wooden furniture that could easily be fabricated with fairly low-tech tools. They've made a latrine, a well for irrigation and fresh water, cattle pens, and even have planted crops inside the city walls.

Compare this to Megaton in Fallout 3. For starters, the settlement was built inside a crater, perhaps the least defensible position one could ask for. The walls and settlements are made of patchy scrap metal which would provide no protection from rain and no insulation from the elements. You'll sweat like a pig during the summer and freeze to death in the winter. The buildings all appear extremely rickety and are build on top of each other in a haphazard fashion, leaving them vulnerable to falling over when a hurricane or windstorm blows in, the support stilts rust, or just plain because they appear to be slapped together by someone with no experience building structures. To make matters worse they explain these parts were scrapped from pre-war hangars, which inevitably begs the question "why didn't they just set up shop in the old planes/hangars?" And what do the citizens of Megaton eat? You don't see any crops anywhere, just a single Brahmin wandering around that apparently eats dirt all day. What do they drink? There's a water treatment facility, but its toward the top of the settlement so a groundwater well is obviously out of the question. And don't try handwaving it by saying "they trade for it" either, what the fuck are they trading? Do they just offer bussy to every wandering trader for cans of beans? Setting up shop near an atomic bomb is pretty stupid, but I'll give that a pass since they at least give a handwave explanation that the Church of Atom wanted it this way. It's pretty clear that Bethesda Fallout had a particular design in mind when they designed this place, but they didn't want to do the work of truly bringing the place to life. You don't exactly need a genius civilization building gigachad on deck to tell you "don't build your settlement in a crater with no natural resources out of scrap metal you found off planes somewhere". I could forgive all these things if Megaton was a struggling dying shithole settlement run by retarded cultists, but no, it's one of the most successful settlements in the Capital Wasteland by far.

And don't even get me started on Fallout 4, where there are settlements with humans living in them that don't bother to clear out any rubble from the buildings they occupy, scrap the old rusted out cars for scrap metal or bury the skeletons in the buildings they sleep in because....THEY JUST DON'T, OKAY????

 

[Whoopsie Daisy]

Is it unpopular opinion that people take Fallout too seriously? Idk, gonna need a thread check on that.

Correct me if i'm wrong, but I believe Fallout was the first popular franchise to be A) neglected, B) to be given to a new company that wasn't part of the OG team or had any experience in Isometric games, C) go shafted on a remake, D) got gutted and sold to soyfags as a new level of consoomerist slop.

Fallout was a canary down the mine and trendsetter of "watch how the industry can fuck this franchise up and get away with it".

Diablo followed a similar pattern, except a few years later.

@Chuck McGill Great points about the settlements. F1 and F2 are cleaned up, but lazy bethesda leaves skeletons in because "people died here 2spooky4me", rather than crafting a clever narrative.

The opening/intro movie of F1 is still haunting today and sets up the tone of the game perfectly. The game starts with a 3D head (big deal at the time) telling you that everything has gone tits up and YOU need to save everyone that you love. Contrast that with 'aww baby and perfect wife, oh noes, da bombs, noo sean'. Pathetic.

 

[xXx: State of the Union]

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.

Legitimate question

Has anyone made a mod that just removes skeletons and shit like that?

 

[Judge Dredd]

Is it unpopular opinion that people take Fallout too seriously? Idk, gonna need a thread check on that.

You're right.

To go further, the kind of "but how do they eat!" bullshit in this thread is part of what's been killing western RPGs in general (and Fallout specifically). Instead of focusing on things that make New Vegas great like moral and ethical questions, a multi tiered approach to quests that isn't just good-evil-sarcastic, or writing that ties the world together, instead people are complaining about huts being made from steel instead of clay, or arguing about why the cities still have rubble, so that's what Bethesda focuses on.


Here's an idea. Instead of autistically obsessing over lore and realism, how about embracing the DnD/TTRPG style that people claim to appreciate? Fallout 1, 2, and New Vegas with Wild Wasteland are clearly a shitpost given all the references and jokes. So instead of trying to expand the lore so that autists can complain about this or that, have games that take place at different places and times. Fallout UK, Fallout Japan, or a Fallout game that takes place a year after the bombs fell?

 

[Chuck McGill]

You're right.

To go further, the kind of "but how do they eat!" bullshit in this thread is part of what's been killing western RPGs in general (and Fallout specifically). Instead of focusing on things that make New Vegas great like moral and ethical questions, a multi tiered approach to quests that isn't just good-evil-sarcastic, or writing that ties the world together, instead people are complaining about huts being made from steel instead of clay, or arguing about why the cities still have rubble, so that's what Bethesda focuses on.


Here's an idea. Instead of autistically obsessing over lore and realism, how about embracing the DnD/TTRPG style that people claim to appreciate? Fallout 1, 2, and New Vegas with Wild Wasteland are clearly a shitpost given all the references and jokes. So instead of trying to expand the lore so that autists can complain about this or that, have games that take place at different places and times. Fallout UK, Fallout Japan, or a Fallout game that takes place a year after the bombs fell?

The point of that post was to highlight how Bethesda's writing is deficient at a basic level compared to Interplay's writing, and you're being dishonest by implying that the details I brought up are just niggling little sticking points that only an autist would notice. I could bring up more substantive issues, like how the BoS is operating a fucking airship in a post-apocalyptic environment. Or how and why the Institute are manufacturing synthetic robots indistinguishable from the real thing despite pre-war robots being massive, clunky and obviously robotic. Or why you have to go into the Water Purifier yourself in 3 despite having companions that give no fucks about radiation(no, I do not care that Broken Steel fixed this, that is what they shipped). Or why super mutants are now on the East Coast despite being manufactured at the Mariposa Military Base on the West Coast in Cali. Or why the Enclave is back in 3 despite seemingly being wiped out at the end of 2.

All of these are major plot points. If these issues were fixed, I would happily overlook things like how poorly designed Megaton is when you think about it for longer than five minutes. And they almost always boil down to one of two factors.

1. Bethesda had an idea they wanted in the game and they crowbarred it in with no regard for how it breaks other elements of the setting.
2. Bethesda felt that they had to rip off something from the first two games. Super Mutants have to show up. The Brotherhood of Steel has to show up. The Enclave has to show up. Because you can't have a Fallout without the Brotherhood of Steel.

And in what way exactly is my autism ruining Fallout? These fucking things get more nonsensical with every entry. You bring up New Vegas as though that game's lore wasn't the most detailed and well-loved of the Fallout games by a wide margin. If Bethesda did listen to its autistic fans, there's no way they could have ever thought the plot of FO76 was in any way a good idea.

 

[MembersSchoolPizza]

To go further, the kind of "but how do they eat!" bullshit in this thread is part of what's been killing western RPGs in general (and Fallout specifically). Instead of focusing on things that make New Vegas great like moral and ethical questions, a multi tiered approach to quests that isn't just good-evil-sarcastic, or writing that ties the world together, instead people are complaining about huts being made from steel instead of clay, or arguing about why the cities still have rubble, so that's what Bethesda focuses on.

Note, I'm not actually complaining about New Vegas overmuch. With the conceit that they were obviously reusing a good chunk of the Fallout 3 assets, they did a pretty good (not perfect, but pretty good) job of at least trying to address the issues I'm talking about. Kind of. I mean, there were stupid bits, too, but not to the extent of F3 or F4.

And I'm not actually intending to get into a specific nerd slapfight about things like the political structure of the NCR, or excact troop numbers, or... or anything. That's really a distraction from my main point that @LORD IMPERATOR kind of dragged me down.

It's like the world stopped about a week after the bombs fell in F3 and F4. We get story that suggests there's been two hundred years of history, but we don't see any actual in-game evidence. Buildings that weren't destroyed outright are still remarkably preserved. Hell, power is still working in most areas. There's still food to be found in stores... somehow.

It's like the bombs fell, and a few days later people pulled themselves out of the ditches and basements and looked around, and just... shrugged and gave up. Moved into a burned out house, stockpiled a bunch of empty Nuka Cola bottles and Fancy Lad snack cakes, which apparently respawned as soon as they left the store, and said "This is the new normal, and it will forever more be exactly like this". They've just stopped living. It is, in more than once sense, a world populated by NPCs.

I don't even demand that things improve. Just that they change in some way. If people went back to living in caves and yurts, ala the New Vegas tribes or the Zion Valley tribes? That's a change. It's some acknowledgement that the world is different. The Legion was doing something different.

You can say I'm whining too much about realism. Maybe I am. But for me, that level of blatant nonsensical world building drags me out of the game. And it didn't have to happen. Look, if you took Fallout 3 or 4, and knocked 100 years off the calendar, or even 150, you could tell exactly the same story, it would work just as well, and make a lot more sense.

 

[X Prime]

Why is Megaton in a crater? Because it's cool and memorable.

Why are skeletons in a bar? Because it's cool and weird.

That's it. It's all about what is cool, like most anime. It doesn't have to make internal sense for normies to like it.

 

[MembersSchoolPizza]

Why is Megaton in a crater? Because it's cool and memorable.

Why are skeletons in a bar? Because it's cool and weird.

That's it. It's all about what is cool, like most anime. It doesn't have to make internal sense for normies to like it.

Right. That's what I said a page or two back: Bethesda-Fallout is a snapshot of a post apocalyptic setting deliberately frozen so they can do all the memes and tropes and not bother to actual develop a world. It's not a world, really, it's a theme park.

 

[X Prime]

Right. That's what I said a page or two back: Bethesda-Fallout is a snapshot of a post apocalyptic setting deliberately frozen so they can do all the memes and tropes and not bother to actual develop a world. It's not a world, really, it's a theme park.

I keep repeating myself on this point, but it's because it's true: anime and social media have absolutely killed the ability to write.

There's no incentive to actually think your artistic endeavor through in terms of themes and so on. Just throw in some vague lore in a text entry and you will have idiots lapping it up instead of going "the devs were just being lazy."

 

[Forgotten Beast]

Here's an idea. Instead of autistically obsessing over lore and realism, how about how about embracing the DnD/TTRPG style that people claim to appreciate

Realism isn't the same thing as coherence, this is a very basic concept in fiction; I can't even begin to understand how the fuck this is THE thing killing western RPGs when Classic Fallout's approach to lore and worldbuilding is in the absolute minority even in its own franchise by this point, let alone the rest of the industry. The hard truth is that if you want a RPG that's a little deeper than a puddle you need to have at least somebody in your team that cares about autistic shit so that your world doesn't crumble upon casual inspection like a modern Bethesda game. Specially in a medium like videogames, where the world is much more important to the player than it's characters, you have to at least care a little. The point isn't people discussing what survivors eat or what their homes are made of,the point is why didn't Bethesda gave a fuck and tried to have their cake and eat it too by taking a theme park approach to worldbuilding while relying so much on environmental storytelling. You can't really have both.
This doesn't mean that any word has to be an slave to its own lore, and any real Fallout fan would tell you that even in the original trilogy there's a lot of playing fast and loose with the setting's rules and saying "fuck it".

Fallout UK, Fallout Japan

A game that isn't set in America isn't a Fallout game by reasons that should be beyond obvious at this point.

 

[MembersSchoolPizza]

A game that isn't set in America isn't a Fallout game by reasons that should be beyond obvious at this point.

Actually I would say one set in China could be interesting. Probably impossible to do justice to without pissing off Poo Bear, though.

 

[X Prime]

It would just lead to Unarmed having actual Wuxia moves.

 

[popnloch ness monster]

every other npc would be black, maybe all of them

 

[TVB]

It's all about what is cool, like most anime. It doesn't have to make internal sense for normies to like it.

It's because normies expect fictitious works that happen to be limited to a child audience to be "mature, grounded and realistic for adults."

 

[Calandrino]

Is it unpopular opinion that people take Fallout too seriously? Idk, gonna need a thread check on that.

Maybe people aren't taking it seriously enough. If people made some credible threats of violence instead of complaining on the internet, maybe Bethesda would stop treating Fallout like some kind of a game.

 

[Friendly Primarina]

The difference in writing quality between Interplay Fallout and Bethesda Fallout can be summarized by examining the first settlements that appear in their respective canons.

Adding on to this, in Goodsprings you can see crops being grown and livestock around. There is a water source nearby, too. Presumably the townsfolk grow a surplus of crops so they can trade with caravanners and brew alcohol to stock the saloon. There are no fortifications but there is a dedicated security guard and guard dog, on top of every resident being armed.

 

[Judge Dredd]

A game that isn't set in America isn't a Fallout game by reasons that should be beyond obvious at this point.

It's not obvious to me. The best Fallout content (Point Lookout and Old World Blues) take place outside the major cities, what's the problem? Is it that Fallout is tied to 1950s Americana and their sci-fi? Either transplant that to the new setting, or better yet, use their 1950s culture and visions of the future.

It's like the world stopped about a week after the bombs fell in F3 and F4. We get story that suggests there's been two hundred years of history, but we don't see any actual in-game evidence. Buildings that weren't destroyed outright are still remarkably preserved. Hell, power is still working in most areas. There's still food to be found in stores... somehow.

This doesn't mean that any word has to be an slave to its own lore, and any real Fallout fan would tell you that even in the original trilogy there's a lot of playing fast and loose with the setting's rules and saying "fuck it".

Yes, this is a problem caused in part by the setting and what they want to do verses what lore nerds want.

FO4 did everything the fans demanded. There are farms, there are water sources, there are homes to live in. You can even clean up rubble in settlements. Why isn't it the perfect game writing wise? The rubble and skeletons aren't the cause of the writing problems, they're a symptom.

The entire setting is 1950s vision of the future, but post apocalypse. Each game has many different outcomes, so you have to either move the timeline forward, change location, or decide on a fixed canon outcome.

Fallout decided on the time jump option, and each time jump has to be enough that the immediate actions of the player are not a concern. But this leaves questions like why there is no effort to rebuild. You also can't delete things like Jet and Super Mutants from the setting because they're up their with ghouls, vaults, and power armour as key parts of the setting. So work has to be put in to give an excuse as to why they're still around.

If all other options are off the table because it would upset the lore nerds, the only option realistically speaking is to abandon the setting all together.

 

[MembersSchoolPizza]

FO4 did everything the fans demanded. There are farms, there are water sources, there are homes to live in. You can even clean up rubble in settlements. Why isn't it the perfect game writing wise? The rubble and skeletons aren't the cause of the writing problems, they're a symptom.

There are barely farms in F4. Barely. Unless you're talking about the ones the player can make, which I go back to what I said earlier... The player character is the only person who does anything, basically.

The "there are homes" thing is sorta true, but it's still all just living in scavenged junk. No attempts even by the player to do better than that.

 

[xXx: State of the Union]

I'm convinced that people who haven't accepted that Bethesda worlds are meant to be simulation and not recreation (or as some like to call it, a theme park) by design are just being angry to be angry at this point.

 

[Forgotten Beast]

Every videogame is closer to a simulation than a recreation, RPGs doubly so. There's nothing wrong with that, like there's nothing wrong with calling Bethesda's attempts lousy and lazy, and stating that they are doing a bad job on purpose is not much of an argument.
Even dumb and seemingly simple works of fiction need somebody to give at least half a fuck, but I guess one can get away with it when you have virtually not competition like Bethesda.