Fallout series

Unimaginative Username said:
Nobody makes Duke Nukem Forever jokes anymore because the years of delay and abysmal quality of the final product don't even seem all that bad by modern standards.
Click to expand...
A 5.5-6/10 released in 2011 would be rated somewhere between 6.5-7.5/10 today because of how low the standards have gotten. DNF, sonic 06, and others are clearly bad games, but I don't want to kill myself when I play them and they do have soul because the devs genuinely tried at the time.

Space marine 2 and helldivers 2 would be great additions in the 7th gen library if they released back then, but wouldn't be seen as groundbreaking.
 
Star Classic said:
we know that at least the upper echelon of Caesar's legion is literate, given the bill of sale for Boone's wife.
Click to expand...
There's also the humorous image of Aurelius of Phoenix hunched over his desk doing paperwork.
1763930049462.png
 
Unimaginative Username said:
Nobody makes Duke Nukem Forever jokes anymore because the years of delay and abysmal quality of the final product don't even seem all that bad by modern standards.
Click to expand...
And Duke Nukem Forever at least has the justification of going over at least three or four completely different iterations and four different studios in that timespan. A good chunk of the clunkers of today not only don't have that excuse, but the reasons why the suck are infinitely less defensible of why DNF sucked.
 
Friendly Primarina said:
Plus it's been out for longer than its development cycle (14 years).

Has anyone noticed how literacy is just as much taken for granted in the Mojave as in a developed country? We know at least some of the Three Families can read because Cachino keeps a journal and someone is updating the sign outside The Tops with new acts. So who taught them? The securitrons? If they were warring tribes up to "a few years ago" (the loading screen says "a few decades ago" but there's no way Benny is that old)I can't imagine they were passing down the written word to their children.

It's not even so much that everyone can read - you could probably come up with an explanation for half the NPCs in the game. It's the fact that everyone assumes that you, a complete stranger, can read and keeps handing you notes and such. The only one who doesn't and takes precautions is Elijah, of all people.

I know it's petty, but since Bethesda Fallouts are criticized for having unreasonable/unexplained living conditions, it seems only fair to point it out. Also sorry if this has been discussed already. Searching this thread for "literacy" just brings up posts about media literacy.
Click to expand...
Mass illiteracy was never really a thing in the U.S that's something falsely portrayed in modern pop culture.

Most communities, even rural ones had schoolhouse and in the 1800s illiteracy rates were around 11%
 
Jace on ice said:
Mass illiteracy was never really a thing in the U.S that's something falsely portrayed in modern pop culture.

Most communities, even rural ones had schoolhouse and in the 1800s illiteracy rates were around 11%
Click to expand...
If my post suggested that the US had had mass illiteracy IRL, then I apologize since that was not my intent. The people immediately after the War could read, but the state-funded schooling probably evaporated and the parents were too busy trying to not die to teach their kids. There could have been families that did teach their kids but were wiped out along the way.

The Boomers and BoS have the luxury of a defensible position that allows them to set up schooling and have members that teach their younger members. The rural communities out in the wastes are probably too busy fending off raider attacks to set up anything like that.
 
Friendly Primarina said:
True, but it still takes time and effort to sit a child down and teach him to read. After the war parents would have been too busy fending for their lives or maybe children were made orphans. Illiterate kids go on to have illiterate kids themselves and so on. After all, the Sorrows started out English-speaking and literate, at least according to Randall Clark.
Click to expand...
Reading inside of an urban area post war would be necessary for basic survival, not being able to read in those places would be a death sentence (unless they have some meme stat build). For most people they could get a basic grasp on reading without anyone needing to explicity teach them just through exposure in such an environment but if they lived their whole lives out in the wilderness with little to no exposure to pre-war shit then not knowing how to read would make sense.
It's also important to note that even in the harshest life-or-death living situations there is still downtime, people still get bored, and there are books everywhere in Fallout.
 
Friendly Primarina said:
If my post suggested that the US had had mass illiteracy IRL, then I apologize since that was not my intent. The people immediately after the War could read, but the state-funded schooling probably evaporated and the parents were too busy trying to not die to teach their kids. There could have been families that did teach their kids but were wiped out along the way.

The Boomers and BoS have the luxury of a defensible position that allows them to set up schooling and have members that teach their younger members. The rural communities out in the wastes are probably too busy fending off raider attacks to set up anything like that.
Click to expand...
Historically speaking if you were a soldier or participated in combat in any capacity you knew how to read.

Even in medieval England which is stereotypically portrayed as a land of semi retarded dirt eating peasants even the lowest level pikeman was taught to read at least at an elementary level because not being able to read meant you were unable to follow orders/the chain of command and thus a massive fucking liability on the battlefield.

An illiterate soldier was a dead soldier.
 
It's sad (and confusing) that the Sorrows lost their ability to read even after Clark gave them so many letters and books and stressed to them the importance. At least the New Canaanites are reteaching them.
 
>IMPLYING said:
All the DLCs are tied together like that. Dead Money feels like the penultimate conclusion to the arc with Lonesome Road being the finale.
Click to expand...
That explains a lot about the recommended levels:
  • Honest Hearts: 10.
  • Old World Blues: 15.
  • Dead Money: 20.
  • Lonesome Road: 25.
Honest Hearts had Graham talking indirectly about Ulysses so...
 
>IMPLYING said:
All the DLCs are tied together like that. Dead Money feels like the penultimate conclusion to the arc with Lonesome Road being the finale.
Click to expand...
I used to do DM before LR, but given the very last ending slide for OWB and how all the items in big MT are named after their users (whom the courier should have no idea about if done before DM) it just feels wrong to do it before LR.

OWB and DM also feel like the level recommendations should've been swapped. OWB I wouldn't touch with a stick unless I'm level 20-25 and DM loses what little danger/horror if done too late into a playthrough.

I usually just do HH, DM, OWB, and then LR.
 
It's so weird how conclusive Dead Money feels and then realise it was the first DLC released for New Vegas.
DM -> HH -> OWB -> Lonesome Road
DM does speak of some things you'd encounter in future DLC but it just feels wrong to play in release order, even if you meet the level recommendations.
I prefer the ascending order of level recommendations personally, more so from a narrative focus than a gameplay one.
HH -> OWB -> DM -> LR
I always imagined this was a narrative-focused reshuffle, given LR being last is a given since it's high-levelled but also because the DLCs seem to build up to Ulysses. HH is the odd one out with this ending slide and no hint of the upcoming bout with Ulysses:
And with that, the Courier walked out of the history of the tribes of Zion and back to the gathering storm of the Mojave Wasteland.
Click to expand...
OWB:
Sink Central Intelligence Unit: We could say more, but the stories in the Big Empty speak for themselves. Now armed with the Transportalponder, the Courier could return to the Dome at any time and crack open the secrets of the Big Empty, one by one. The Sink sat vigilant, waiting for its master to return, shoes covered in Mojave dust. Only one road yet remained, and it was one the Courier had to walk alone
Click to expand...
DM (Christine alive):
Christine, her mission complete, found new purpose as the Sierra Madre's warden. She watched over it silently - by choice. Over time, the ghost people came to see her as one of the Holograms. They would watch, silently, as she walked among them. At times, Christine thought of the Courier, who had kept Elijah's hand from her throat. The Courier reminded her of the other courier she had met in the Big Empty, and wondered if the two had found each other at last. She did not think of them again until she heard the legends of the Divide. The Divide, where the two messengers, the two couriers, fought beneath an ancient flag, at the edge of the world
Click to expand...
The ending of DM with Christine alive is more definitive about Lonesome Road whereas the ending of OWB is more vague. From a story perspective, DM feels penultimate than the very first. OWB introduces you to Christine, who would evoke a, "hey, wait, I know you!" going into it from OWB. Whilst your care is more instilled from going from DM to OWB, knowing Elijah needed something from these (scientists at big MT) batshit maniacs and then the subsequent reveal he is now your captor in DM is equally a surprise.

DM's ending breaks if you were to do LR first for some reason. So would OWB's actually.
Where's the secret-secret Dead Money ending where you can trigger the Elijah ending early by nuking the NCR in Lonesome Road and then telling Elijah you're his top guy at the opening convo of Dead Money?
 
>IMPLYING said:
Where's the secret-secret Dead Money ending where you can trigger the Elijah ending early by nuking the NCR in Lonesome Road and then telling Elijah you're his top guy at the opening convo of Dead Money?
Click to expand...
considering that perks like grunt can't interact with gun runner's weapons because of load order bugs I don't think that would be possible
 
Finding out that Ulysses was just a retarded tribal that blamed the Courier for the destruction of the Divide purely because they delivered a package that they knew nothing about is to this day one of greatest disappointments to come out of video games for me. Seeing the bits of pieces of him left in the base game, reading the wiki about how much planning went into him before he was cut, finding more and more traces of him in each sequential DLC, knowing we were going to confront him and finally find out exactly what tied him to the Courier's past, all of that just to find out he's just a glue huffing spear chucking Gary Stu upset that the mail man delivered a package. Having to look into his dumb fucking unblinking fake eyes all because Avellone didn't want his husbando to have a potato face like everyone else, all while he bears his bull shit at you acting like you're responsible for the NCR not being able to recognize symbols of the fucking Enclave and thinking it was a good idea to send the suspiciously nuclear detonator shaped object to an area full of nuclear silos. Listening to him try to morally grandstand because something the Courier couldn't have predicted happened as a result of doing their job, something that even he acknowledges they were lucky to survive, all while his job was to purposefully and consciously destroy communities like New Canaan and prep tribes like the White Legs for violent assimilation into the Legion. Realizing after the fact that this new home he was so upset to lose was literally just Megaton, but New Vegas. Having him admonish you for something the player didn't even decide to do. The ending slide for when you kill him having the audacity to shoehorn the Courier throwing the flag over Ulysses' dead body so they can cast doubt as to "whether done as a sign of respect, or in anger" was a fucking pathetic attempt on Avellones part to act like his OC didn't get own-zoned. Dean Domino was purposefully written to be an arrogant reprehensible prick and I'd sooner spare him than Ulysses. Putting him in the all 10 SPECIAL club with Frank Horrigan like General Gobbledygook can compare to America's strongest glowy is a fucking joke. Ulysses was so fucking stupid that I felt no sympathy for Avellone when he got cancelled. The first couple times I replayed New Vegas after all the DLC was out I paid extra attention to his audio logs and dialogue because I assumed I was just misunderstanding him and that there must be some kind of grand design but eventually I just realized it was Avellone huffing his own farts. The betrayal I feel every time I'm reminded of Ulysses' existence still stings and it's hard to not hold it against the rest of the game. Now I just skip all the dialogue in Lonesome Road and treat it like an extended dungeon crawl like the Mehrunes Razor DLC in Oblivion. New Vegas Bounties 3 unironically does what Lonesome Road tried to do but better. Plus I did not care for ED-E's side plot in Lonesome Road. It insisted upon itself.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom