Fallout series

[Sunflower Samurai]

I don't think an early release was its main problem when its plot is painfully below even fanfic standards. Granted, I only just finished watching a playthrough of it but even Fallout 3 didn't feel as blatant with its MEMBER FALLOUT elements. The Not!Master+Lieutenant was just awful. A lot of the dialogue you could pick was just the one line. The tie ins to the actual Fallout games in the endings were also shit.

Oh yeah when it came to its crappy plot thats not really excusable with the forced beta release but as a whole with its gameplay and world elements those needed the lil bit of polish that was just not there, and that was most of the big dissapointment with it when it came to its reception, the plot was mostly set aside to the missed potential of its world beyond the vault act

 

[TVStactic]

Yeah, I'm not too keen on people saying that Fallout needs to be handed over to Obsidian after how lousy The Outer Worlds was. The best I'd give them would be having them & inXile assist Bethesda on the next game and maybe handle the DLC afterward (not ragging on inXile, they just don't yet have experience in making a game like modern Fallout).

Until they can prove themselves with games like Avowed, I don't trust Obsidian to handle Fallout by themselves.

The Outer Worlds isn't really lousy, it's safe. obsidian wanted to set up a solid base for them to go through. that's why it resembles fallout, that's why it has kapitalism bad message and it's somewhat tame with it being the administrators being shit and dumb because the frozen popsicles end up helping the colony to survive and they only figure that out once phineas is arrested or you manage to oust them, that's why people are corporats, it's on the 1st worldo you get to "notice" that.

media loved it, they didn't get much criticism... then microsoft bought their asses.

 

[LORD IMPERATOR]

I'll take your advice to heart

Jesus Christ, I'd sooner take Bethesda at its greediest than nuObsidian. Tyranny was half-finished meh, PoE was hyped up only to crash and burn, Outer Worlds was regular meh, and Deadfire made Numenara look like a proper sequel. Nothing but hit or miss with the most painfully mediocre hits with their own fair bit of cringe.

That's another problem I have with the Obsidian fanbase. I love KOTOR 2. I love New Vegas. But the Obsidian that made those games is gone for good. Guys like Chris Avellone left, while the current crop of writers they have at Obsidian make the Frontier devs look like Donald fucking Trump. KOTOR 2 questioned the moral absolutes of the SW universe, New Vegas allowed you to justify democracy, corporatism, and/or fascism with each side having its own bright spots and flaws.

Outer Worlds was supposed to be Hegelian Dialectics 2: Space Mojave Boogaloo, but it can't even manage that. It's just "WAAAH, CAPITALIST MAN BAD!" OK, we get it, capitalism has flaws. Horrible, horrible flaws. We've all read the histories of robber barons utterly screwing over the country and the common man. But you know what's worse? Communism and socialism. Why didn't we see both sides being flawed, like human beings are? Instead, Pickle Rick can properly thaw people from cryo-stasis when the corporate scientists can't, and the corporate idiots also can't figure out that eating nothing but saltuna will utterly fuck your body over-something that even cavemen can figure out. If the enemy is this stupid, why would I feel anything when I triumph over such numbskulls? It's like shooting retarded people in the face, you don't feel like a conqueror, you feel more like a janitor.

In KOTOR 2, both the Jedi and the Sith have flaws. In New Vegas, both the New California Republic and Caesar's Legion are flawed. Both sides have their justifications, and both sides are flawed as fuck, allowing you to justify joining one side or another. Meanwhile, Outer Worlds threw that away and gave us a straightforward good-vs-evil plot with a villain faction that makes the Empire from Star Wars look downright magnanimous and saintly.

Yeah, I'm not too keen on people saying that Fallout needs to be handed over to Obsidian after how lousy The Outer Worlds was. The best I'd give them would be having them & inXile assist Bethesda on the next game and maybe handle the DLC afterward (not ragging on inXile, they just don't yet have experience in making a game like modern Fallout).

Until they can prove themselves with games like Avowed, I don't trust Obsidian to handle Fallout by themselves.

You wouldn't know that from the horde of Obsidian fans who want Fallout to be handed back to Obsidian right away. I can't wait for Microsoft to actually do that, only so that these fans would shut up once nuObsidian cranks out a new Fallout that's basically as woke as Outer Worlds while not even being as good in gameplay as New Vegas or Fallout 3.

The Outer Worlds isn't really lousy, it's safe. obsidian wanted to set up a solid base for them to go through. that's why it resembles fallout, that's why it has kapitalism bad message and it's somewhat tame with it being the administrators being shit and dumb because the frozen popsicles end up helping the colony to survive and they only figure that out once phineas is arrested or you manage to oust them, that's why people are corporats, it's on the 1st worldo you get to "notice" that.

media loved it, they didn't get much criticism... then microsoft bought their asses.

The problem is, they sold it as a spiritual successor to Fallout. If it was just its own thing with the makers not blaring their horns about how they made the OG Fallout, people wouldn't have cared, because there's lots of video games that revolve around asshole corporations making life shit for everyone. The problem is, they kept tooting their horn about how they made the OG Fallout and New Vegas, which then created a certain............expectation from them. People were expecting nuanced storytelling. People were expecting different sides to a conflict that each have their own justifications and flaws.

Instead, the Outer Worlds told the same story that Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace was telling, with asshole corporations screwing up border worlds, except the asshole corporations are even less sympathetic than the Trade Federation, not to mention stupider, too. It's hard to root for or sympathize with bad guys that are so stupid that they'd freeze most of their colonists when they don't even know how to thaw them out properly, or that a diet of fish only can be detrimental to good health. A good bad guy should be charismatic, powerful, and badass in their own right, so when you conquer them, you feel like you've accomplished something worth talking about.

Just look at the Enclave from Fallout 3 and Caesar's Legion from Fallout New Vegas. Both factions are tough enough to keep the good guys at their toes, both factions have cool aesthetics and a feel to them that gives them this badass aura, and both factions have leaders that can seduce you over to their side with silver tongues and charismatic speeches. John Henry Eden's promise of a reborn America and Caesar's promise of a stronger, better society untouched by greed and corruption are iconic enough to sway players over to their side. The Legion infiltrates and sabotages the NCR's war effort like it's no biggie, while the Enclave blew up the pet robot that the Lyons Brotherhood relied upon for their war efforts.

The Halcyon Holdings Board doesn't have that feel. They feel more like a stupider, more pointlessly cruel version of the Trade Federation from Star Wars, where they force humans to do the gruntwork for meager wages, in comparison to the Trade Federation where the organics are just doing comfy jobs on the ship or on the corporate office while the robots handle all the dirty work. And while a Commie might get a kick out of gunning them down, the Board doesn't really feel that epic in terms of faction power outside of their resources and manpower, and they just seem like any other tyrannical faction that can easily be replaced without losing anything. With them not being that smart, badass, or charismatic, I don't really feel a sense of "pride and accomplishment" in defeating them. It's like drilling holes in retarded people, it feels like mundane work at most.

 

[Snekposter]

That's my single biggest beef with The Outer Worlds. You're not fighting the villains. You're fighting their incompetence and laziness, which is an entirely different matter. If the story was presented as you basically being a janny and cleaning up their mess because someone has to, it would be somewhat improved. Instead you're portrayed as fighting these super-powerful people despite the fact they're all lazy, incompetent, and dumber than sacks of rocks.

 

[TVStactic]

The problem is, they sold it as a spiritual successor to Fallout. If it was just its own thing with the makers not blaring their horns about how they made the OG Fallout, people wouldn't have cared, because there's lots of video games that revolve around asshole corporations making life shit for everyone. The problem is, they kept tooting their horn about how they made the OG Fallout and New Vegas, which then created a certain............expectation from them. People were expecting nuanced storytelling. People were expecting different sides to a conflict that each have their own justifications and flaws.

Instead, the Outer Worlds told the same story that Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace was telling, with asshole corporations screwing up border worlds, except the asshole corporations are even less sympathetic than the Trade Federation, not to mention stupider, too. It's hard to root for or sympathize with bad guys that are so stupid that they'd freeze most of their colonists when they don't even know how to thaw them out properly, or that a diet of fish only can be detrimental to good health. A good bad guy should be charismatic, powerful, and badass in their own right, so when you conquer them, you feel like you've accomplished something worth talking about.

Just look at the Enclave from Fallout 3 and Caesar's Legion from Fallout New Vegas. Both factions are tough enough to keep the good guys at their toes, both factions have cool aesthetics and a feel to them that gives them this badass aura, and both factions have leaders that can seduce you over to their side with silver tongues and charismatic speeches. John Henry Eden's promise of a reborn America and Caesar's promise of a stronger, better society untouched by greed and corruption are iconic enough to sway players over to their side. The Legion infiltrates and sabotages the NCR's war effort like it's no biggie, while the Enclave blew up the pet robot that the Lyons Brotherhood relied upon for their war efforts.

The Halcyon Holdings Board doesn't have that feel. They feel more like a stupider, more pointlessly cruel version of the Trade Federation from Star Wars, where they force humans to do the gruntwork for meager wages, in comparison to the Trade Federation where the organics are just doing comfy jobs on the ship or on the corporate office while the robots handle all the dirty work. And while a Commie might get a kick out of gunning them down, the Board doesn't really feel that epic in terms of faction power outside of their resources and manpower, and they just seem like any other tyrannical faction that can easily be replaced without losing anything. With them not being that smart, badass, or charismatic, I don't really feel a sense of "pride and accomplishment" in defeating them. It's like drilling holes in retarded people, it feels like mundane work at most.

to be honest i have no idea why they turned focus, instead of the factions being gray and shit all we get is what snek says. maybe they wanted to cash in that whole "better fallout than bethesda" thingy but noticed it's expensive?

That's my single biggest beef with The Outer Worlds. You're not fighting the villains. You're fighting their incompetence and laziness, which is an entirely different matter. If the story was presented as you basically being a janny and cleaning up their mess because someone has to, it would be somewhat improved. Instead you're portrayed as fighting these super-powerful people despite the fact they're all lazy, incompetent, and dumber than sacks of rocks.

we got like one major faction that it's supposed to be the enemy and they don't even care about you so they mostly play internal politics bullshit because of the food crysis, the thing is they are phineas enemy because he's a murderer of sorts and they want him arrested for that due to him being sort of like a militant scientist that did trial and error on the ship's crew, then we got like the black chick and that token gayness on the main ship whereas the mechanic is the man in the relationship, the drunk black redhead that has demons to deal with, the ex-gang member that fucked up and wants to use you buy changes his mind after like two or three dialogues, the "padre" that is a manipulative bitch, the butch bisexual that has seen and done almost all sorts of hedonistic kinks (kinda like rose in FNV) and the robot. nuff said,

they even went up for some sort of og fallout inventary system like you can't customize armors/helms besides mods and guns.

 

[LORD IMPERATOR]

That's my single biggest beef with The Outer Worlds. You're not fighting the villains. You're fighting their incompetence and laziness, which is an entirely different matter. If the story was presented as you basically being a janny and cleaning up their mess because someone has to, it would be somewhat improved. Instead you're portrayed as fighting these super-powerful people despite the fact they're all lazy, incompetent, and dumber than sacks of rocks.

Exactly. The problem isn't just the single-minded narrative, there's also the fact that the villains are morons. It's hard to feel threatened when they're such paste-eating retards. How the hell am I supposed to feel threatened when they can't even figure out that a bad diet can kill you, or the fact that they're not even as smart as fucking Pickle Rick over there? They feel like the kind of degenerates that the Legion won't even bother crucifying, not the kind of enemies that can give you the same challenge as the Enclave. It's hard to feel like you're the hero when all you do is kill people that are dumber than a sack of rocks. It feels more like you're a glorified euthanasia machine killing people who would otherwise be too stupid to survive out in real life.

to be honest i have no idea why they turned focus, instead of the factions being gray and shit all we get is what snek says. maybe they wanted to cash in that whole "better fallout than bethesda" thingy but noticed it's expensive?

No, it's not about money. This game could have had the budget of a school project and it would still be great if the story was actually good. FNV had an outdated engine by 2010 standards, and yet it was still one of the better games of that year because of the story. KOTOR 2 wasn't groundbreaking in terms of money spent on making the game look pretty, yet its quality story is why people kept coming back for more. They were just lazy as fuck and wanted to appeal to the woke crowd, which of course, removes the very same appeal that New Vegas had. New Vegas allowed you to look at fascists and despots like Caesar and House, and even consider them to be viable alternatives to a crumbling democracy. They also humanized ex-fascists like the Enclave, where regular Enclave soldiers like Judah Kreger spoke of how they just wanted to civilize the place instead of just wanting to kill everyone who's not them. If FNV were written by NuObsidian, you'd bet your ass that Caesar and House wouldn't have a single redeeming trait to them, while the Enclave remnants would just be psychos running around killing people to relive the glory days and you have to put them all out of their misery. Outer Worlds not only fails to surpass New Vegas as a game, they couldn't even get what New Vegas did right.

we got like one major faction that it's supposed to be the enemy and they don't even care about you so they mostly play internal politics bullshit because of the food crysis, the thing is they are phineas enemy because he's a murderer of sorts and they want him arrested for that due to him being sort of like a militant scientist that did trial and error on the ship's crew, then we got like the black chick and that token gayness on the main ship whereas the mechanic is the man in the relationship, the drunk black redhead that has demons to deal with, the ex-gang member that fucked up and wants to use you buy changes his mind after like two or three dialogues, the "padre" that is a manipulative bitch, the butch bisexual that has seen and done almost all sorts of hedonistic kinks (kinda like rose in FNV) and the robot. nuff said,

they even went up for some sort of og fallout inventary system like you can't customize armors/helms besides mods and guns.

Basically. They didn't even try to innovate or go for the moral ambiguity of the old games. Fucking Star Wars games are more morally ambiguous, since you can always claim that the Sith and the Empire bring more stability than the corrupt, bureaucratic Republic and their emotionally-stunted Jedi. It's basically just Das Kapital in space, reversing the dynamic back in New Vegas where House IS a corporate, capitalist tyrant, but one with a vision unmatched by his foes. They showed you that an OCP-style corporate state can be just as viable as a democracy or a flat-out dictatorship when it comes to ruling over the ruins of society.

 

[TerribleIdeas™]

A good bad guy should be charismatic, powerful, and badass in their own right, so when you conquer them, you feel like you've accomplished something worth talking about.

There's a reason why I enjoyed Handsome Jack, both as a villain, and as a playable character - because as horrible as he ends up being, he's an amazing example of "the road to hell is paved with good intentions". Sadly, I can't see nuObsidian allowing any writing more nuanced and complex than "THIS IS OUR THINLY-VEILED AND NONSENSICAL ALLEGORY FOR ORANGE MAN, AND HE IS BAD, SO BAD THAT WE CAN'T EVEN MAKE YOU UNDERSTAND HOW BAD, HE'S REALLY BAD!"

 

[Ghost of Wesley Willis]

The Anti-Material Rifle is the most OP and funtastic gun in the game. I fucking LOVE sniping muties at Black Mountain and watching them backflip off the cliffs.

One of the reasons I loved NV more over 4 was because the ragdolls were so much fun in gamebryo.

There's just something that gives me a really sadistic dopamine rush and shit eating grin watching a legionary's corpse flying after I blew his head off with a .50 BMG round to the face or a crowd of feral ghouls get sent to space from a combination of at least a dozen bottlecap mines and C4.

 

[Alcatraz]

On the topic of the AMR, I was comparing weapons from NV the other day and the fucking Holorifle from Dead Money is, fully upgraded, actually comparable to the AMR. It's meant for shorter range, on account of the spread, but it also has four rounds and a DOT. Kinda makes me think of a slug shotgun. Really enjoying using it, it made clearing out the quarry a cinch.

There's also Paciencia, which can outperform the AMR with a Crit Build. Oh Baby!, the unique Super Sledge also puts out insane damage numbers, and with Pyromaniac the Cleansing Flame (GRA unique Flamer) will melt through anything in a matter of seconds. Even more fun with the Meltdown perk.

Oh god, that's right, fire weapons are classified as energy weapons for some ungodly reason. I honestly can't think of many games with good flamethrowers, so the assortment of (small) stuff fallout gives us is pretty good.

 

[LORD IMPERATOR]

There's a reason why I enjoyed Handsome Jack, both as a villain, and as a playable character - because as horrible as he ends up being, he's an amazing example of "the road to hell is paved with good intentions". Sadly, I can't see nuObsidian allowing any writing more nuanced and complex than "THIS IS OUR THINLY-VEILED AND NONSENSICAL ALLEGORY FOR ORANGE MAN, AND HE IS BAD, SO BAD THAT WE CAN'T EVEN MAKE YOU UNDERSTAND HOW BAD, HE'S REALLY BAD!"

Not to mention the fact that the capitalists of Outer Worlds are just stupid as hell. If you look at capitalist America in the Fallout universe, they accomplished a lot of things, from power armor to orbital death rays. Shit, the biggest capitalist in Fallout America even managed to shoot down nukes and avert the nuclear apocalypse on his own hometown. Meanwhile, the capitalists in Outer Worlds can't even figure out that eating Saltuna and NOTHING BUT Saltuna is bad for you. Compare that to evil capitalists in a game like say, Mass Effect, and the scenario is night and day. The sinister capitalists in Mass Effect, from ExoGeni, to Binary Helix, and Cerberus, were A) able to study a 50,000-year-old intelligent life form, B) were able to hatch a frozen egg from a dead race despite it being frozen for over a thousand years, and C) were able to REVIVE A HUMAN BEING WHOSE BODY BURNED UP IN ATMOSPHERIC RE-ENTRY. Compare that to the dumb capitalists in Outer Worlds who can't even solve a food crisis and whose leaders are just stupid evil, and it's not even funny anymore. There's no glory to be had in slaughtering brain-dead imbeciles, it's glorified euthanasia.

As bad as capitalism is, it still attracts scientific and technological innovation, because wealth and fame are both powerful motivational tools. People would pour in their energies to solve problems or find new solutions, because they know they're getting a fat paycheck for doing so. They can put their discoveries on their resumes when they apply for other jobs, and their discoveries will make them both rich and famous. For Outer Worlds to display capitalists as butt-faced morons when it comes to scientific problems is ignoring the real-world history of how capitalism motivated people to come up with technological solutions to problems with the promise of profit and fame.

The Enclave in Fallout 3 were able to create new power armors and energy weapons for their men. They were able to mobilize a base crawler that connected to a satellite weapon of theirs, that they used to destroy a nigh-invulnerable giant robot. The Institute in Fallout 4 were able to create perfect copies of people who can eat, sleep, and bleed like humans, and they also created teleportation technology in a time when most people worry about how much clean water can they store up. Say what you will about the Bethesda Fallouts, but their enemy factions were impressive, even though their strategies were NCR levels of stupid more than half the time. How can I feel a sense of achievement, when all I've done by the end of Outer Worlds is take out a bunch of greedy, spineless thugs who can't even figure out basics like human diet or how to solve a food crisis?

 

[moocow]

They included some bizzare conditions for "assault" which, they end up entirely using for situations of rape, which happens in pretty much ***half or most mods they ported to use their features or created themselves***

I love it when someone goes to great lengths to simulate violent sexual assaults, from blackmail/coercion to straight up rape, then gets squeamish about consensual sex with adults that "look too young" but aren't. And only sometimes (they list one encounter with a woman who looks young but her "resume" says she's 21 and call that consensual, but then encounters with those "syndrome" characters that look youngish but are really adults are called "statutory rape" despite them being consenting adults).

I wish there was a name for this. "Hypocrisy" seems too generic for it.

 

[TVStactic]

I love it when someone goes to great lengths to simulate violent sexual assaults, from blackmail/coercion to straight up rape, then gets squeamish about consensual sex with adults that "look too young" but aren't. And only sometimes (they list one encounter with a woman who looks young but her "resume" says she's 21 and call that consensual, but then encounters with those "syndrome" characters that look youngish but are really adults are called "statutory rape" despite them being consenting adults).

I wish there was a name for this. "Hypocrisy" seems too generic for it.

selective perversion? degeneratefaggotry? sparks of conscience?

there's the few i can throw in, not in a creative mood...

still if anything there's places for this and in general people draw lines at children-looking always, kinda like lolicon being shunned by hentai weebs or how raping/enslaving kids is frowned upon on fucking loverslab, yet bestiality with multiracial impregnation is okay for games like FN-3-NV-4...

 

[LORD IMPERATOR]

selective perversion? degeneratefaggotry? sparks of conscience?

there's the few i can throw in, not in a creative mood...

still if anything there's places for this and in general people draw lines at children-looking always, kinda like lolicon being shunned by hentai weebs or how raping/enslaving kids is frowned upon on fucking loverslab, yet bestiality with multiracial impregnation is okay for games like FN-3-NV-4...

Hey, back in FO2, you can get sexually ravaged by a Super Mutant AND a drug chemist. So it's not like Lover's Lab weren't getting any inspiration from the source material..........

 

[Chin of Campbell]

I'm playing Honest Hearts and it's hard to believe that the story of the Survivalist is in the same series as a giant bat dragon that infects everyone with a zombie virus that makes them grow premium currency out of their skin.

 

[God of Nothing]

I'm playing Honest Hearts and it's hard to believe that the story of the Survivalist is in the same series as a giant bat dragon that infects everyone with a zombie virus that makes them grow premium currency out of their skin.

Hey, if radiation can make you a mad immortal cannibal.

Fuck me, imagine if Clark ghoullified and was still defending the valley by the time you got there. Gigantic missed opportunity, even if he would've contested position of biggest badass with Joshua.

 

[Chin of Campbell]

Hey, if radiation can make you a mad immortal cannibal.

Fuck me, imagine if Clark ghoullified and was still defending the valley by the time you got there. Gigantic missed opportunity, even if he would've contested position of biggest badass with Joshua.

Eh. His story was much better with an ending.

Spoiler: Final Words

January 23rd
It's cold enough that I won't last long on the high mound up next to Red Gate. I think I've got enough breath left in me to make it. I'll just lie down and stare at the sky. Feels right.

I hope they'll do well. I hope no harm comes to them, from within or without. Did my best to prepare them with the last few notes. Said something kind about each one of them, what makes each one special. Told them The Father was pleased by their kind natures and that it would be up to them to handle things on their own from now on, that I'd be silent but still watching and still caring.

Lying, then. Oh yes.

Lied to you, Char. And Alex. And Sylvie. Told you I'd be with you forever. But I wouldn't go back and unsay it once if I could.

What was the point of it all? So many failures.

But I never forgot your face. Or Little Nut's. Or (sorry) Sylvie's. They used to say that happened after a while but it never did for me.

Maybe the only point of all this living was to keep those pictures in my head going for as long as I could. It was the only life I could give you. Not a day went by without.

It wasn't choice. I chose to die again and again. Just never did. Body had its own drive.

Well, the little ones will need it. Species will need it if it's to continue. That blind drive onward.

I wish them well. It's been a gift to me, at the end of it all, to behold innocence.

Goodbye, Zion.

Randall Dean Clark Feb 5th, 2053 - Jan 2124

I damn near teared up. My Courier, a jaded ex-Enclave whose cell was destroyed up north, doesn't use normal guns, but took his rifle out of respect. I'm going to pass it on to someone else so it can keep protecting people who need it.

I don't think I'd like him showing up in person. It'd ruin the myth.

 

[Snekposter]

Hey, if radiation can make you a mad immortal cannibal.

Fuck me, imagine if Clark ghoullified and was still defending the valley by the time you got there. Gigantic missed opportunity, even if he would've contested position of biggest badass with Joshua.

Eh... there's only one way his story could have properly ended, and we saw it.

 

[God of Nothing]

Eh... there's only one way his story could have properly ended, and we saw it.

It's how everyone's story ends. No harm in wondering what could have been.

 

[Exceptionally Exceptional]

Thinking over New Vegas and I'm still not sure why the fuck people like Ulysses so damn much. Even though I always try to be the good guy and talk him down a very large part of me just wants to blow the brains out of the overgrown angsty teenager.
Seriously, I just can't get this image out of my head.

Edit: The more I think on it the more I realize that Lonesome Road is my least favorite Fallout DLC. Even including the DLC for Fallout 3.

 

[God of Nothing]

Thinking over New Vegas and I'm still not sure why the fuck people like Ulysses so damn much. Even though I always try to be the good guy and talk him down a very large part of me just wants to blow the brains out of the overgrown angsty teenager.
Seriously, I just can't get this image out of my head.
View attachment 1945569

You can go home, Courier. You can go straight INTO OBLIVION!