Fallout series

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Another day another 6 hour long Creetosis video dunking on Fallout 3. Somehow I never get tired of these long ass video essays dunking on Bethesda games, great way to pass the time during uneventful days.


A major point someone made ages ago on another forum regarding bethesda's handling of fallout is that the Elder Scrolls is BGS' baby, Fallout is the adopted IP that is used for tech testing and cash milking.
The problem with this analysis is that modern Elder Scrolls games are also mediocre/trash compared to the classics ( Daggerfall, Morrowind, Oblivion if we're being generous).
Ever since Skyrim all BGS games have been complete ass, this problem isn't exclusive to their Fallout games.
 
Replaying Fallout 4, holy fucking shit are the moral choices in this game a mess.

In Vault 81, there is a quest where a boy gets infected with an unknown disease carried by a molerat, and if you get hit by one you get it too (they are bugged of course, so if only your companion gets bitten then you still get it). The disease is also unremoveable by ordinary means and gives you a permament debuff (-10HP which is practically unnoticeable, but that's besides the point). There is only one cure which get at the end of the quest, and you have to choose whether to save the boy or cure yourself.

Now, from a gameplay standpoint, there is no reason not to give the cure to the boy - in exhange for like 1 level worth of HP you get large amount of affinity points with most companions and a place to sleep, which is expecially valuable in Survival mode. But from roleplaying one? The molerats were guinea pigs infected with various pathogens, many of which were developed specifically for the purpose of the vault's experiment - creating an universal cure for thousands of diseases, and that almost certainly includes black death, smallpox and the like. It is implied that since you are an adult the disease will barely have any effect on you, but you don't know that for sure - what if you got infected with Super AIDS that takes several days to settle in? What if you spread it to others outside the vault? Not to mention, you are the only person who managed to infiltrate the Institute and thus essential in deciding the fate of the Commonwealth - you are way more important than some random kid.

But no, keeping the cure for yourself is treated as a comically evil contrarian choice by the game, and there are zero downsides for giving it away. I wish it was a morally tough choice. I wish you could say "Look, we don't know what kind of illness I have contacted, it could be Super AIDS that will kill me in a few days. I have a world to save, many people rely on me and can't afford me to die from it. The boy will die but thousands of lives will be saved. I'm sorry." Or at least make the debuff way harsher so you actually have an incentive to act selfish.

By the way, did you know that there multiple children on deck of the Prydwen? If you shoot it down they all die, which is NEVER adressed. Just like blowing up the Institute and potentially killing of hundreds of people unfortunate enough to be in the blast radius.

Just like in classic games, you always have only two choices - morally good one with no downsides and an evil contrarian one. But in Fallout 4 what is "good" is often completely retarded, e.g Raiload memory-wiping synths and leaving them confused about why they are immortal.
 
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Total Sneedclave Victory in Wpath.
 
In an ideal world the Fallout TV show would have just been an episodic adventure serial starring a vault dweller going on various adventures in The Wasteland and solving ethical quandries, sometimes with gratuitous violence.
 
In Vault 81, there is a quest where a boy gets infected with an unknown disease carried by a molerat, and if you get hit by one you get it too (they are bugged of course, so if only your companion gets bitten then you still get it). The disease is also unremoveable by ordinary means and gives you a permament debuff (-10HP which is practically unnoticeable, but that's besides the point). There is only one cure which get at the end of the quest, and you have to choose whether to save the boy or cure yourself.
Oh, this quest is an even bigger mess than you think it is. First of all, mole rat bites go thru power armor. I know Bethesda had cardboard power armor in Fallout 3 that mole rats could chew thru, but there is zero reason you should get infected while wearing one, especially with the visual upgrade it got in Fallout 4. Second, we need to talk about what happens behind the scenes when you get bit. So, every single effect in the game like using Jet or getting a debuff from hardcore conditions/chem withdrawals ect. is done by a spell. This dates back to the days of Morrowind/Oblivion, but it serves the same purpose in Fallout games as it does in TES, and the Mole Rat Disease is no different. Essentially, it is a debuff/withdrawal that never goes away.
If it's just a few SPECIAL points that take a hit, that's no big deal, you can raise them back easily enough. The problem lies with those pesky 10 hit points, which the game treats as if they are damage you are constantly taking due to how shoddily this spell was handled behind the scenes. What this means is that if you give the cure to the kid, you cannot sleep in your new bed in Vault 81 because you cannot sleep or rest or wait or fast travel when you're taking damage. That's right, you are permanently barred from using any bed for the rest of the playthru, it's bad enough in the normal game but if you are playing Hardcore Mode, you're just straight up fucked. Nobody play tested this, that's why I always go in the debug room and just get a cure from the QA chest whenever I do this quest, as long as I don't get bit or am wearing power armor anyways. BTW, the "cure" is just a Stimpack that heals full health and removes this one specific debuff, I'm not even sure it cures poison or radiation or anything like that. So much for being a cure-all, sad part that this quest is one of the most interesting and complex ones in the entire game.

Oh, and just for shits and giggles, there is another really bad bug here: After the Mole Rat situation has been taken care of, the Jet head loses it and his sister asks you to deal with him, preferably without using violence. Here is the thing, the sister is actually one of the few settlement upgrades in the game, you can assign her to a trade kiosk and she will upgrade it from level 3 to level 4, which is the only way this can be done, and has unique loot for sale like named legendary armor pieces or weapons. These special settlement upgrade NPCs are very rare, and most of them are tied behind random encounters that are almost impossible to trigger reliably due to a bug, leaving a lot of unique gear and kiosk upgrades unobtainable. Anyways, if you talk the Jet head down peacefully, the sister is supposed to go into one of your outposts, but she never will. There was a wrong flag implemented, he actually has to be KILLED but you cannot initiate the fight as she will refuse to talk to you afterwards. What you need to do, and this is the only way to get her as a settler, is to talk to her brother but insult him, so that he is the one that starts a fight, then kill him. Nobody in the vault cares, and now you can give his sister the good news. Oh, and some times even if you do this she will still refuse to go to your settlements, this is a random chance that has nothing to do with your skills or anything else, just a random chance of bugging out for no reason. There are people out there who think is this the best game in the franchise, btw.

Edit: I just checked the wiki and apparently you can just throw the cure on the floor and chose to give it to Austin in dialogue and then pick it up from the floor afterwards and cure yourself. Game doesn't check if you have it in your inventory. I should mention a similar bug occurs in Fallout 3, the raider that ambushes you to take Naughty Nightwear will have a full condition set spawn in his inventory even if you drop the damaged one from the safe if you chose to give it to him. This means you can have two pairs after you kill him, and keep the fully repaired one for yourself.
Talentless hacks make these games.
 
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One thing that's a bit annoying about Fallout 3 haters is how they always focus on the fact that the game is very light on RPG elements, while failing to understand that their beloved Fallout 2 (most worshipped game in the series by the og fans) also suffers from the same issue.

In Fallout 2 all your choices mean nothing in the end because every ending always results in the player being forced to kill president Richardson and Frank Horrigan ( and let's not forget being forced to blow up the oil rig as well) .

At least in Fallout 3 your had the option to backstab the Brotherhood in Broken Steel by blowing up the citadel, and in the main game you could also chose to infect Project Purity with the FEV killing everyone in the wasteland in the process, unlike in Fallout 2 which gives you no real choices on how you can complete the game.
 
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You also might think you could use the magic cure that fixes everything on your son who has Plot Disease, but it is not even something you can mention in dialogue.
 
"When someone has the same opinion as you but they express it in such an annoying and obnoxious way that you lowkey don't want to agree" continues to a be defining law of the internet.
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It saddens me that I have to reference this image often, intentionally or not.
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I mean he's only been here for less than 2 years and he has nearly quintuple the amount of posts the average old fag on this site has. Even Null posts less messages a day on average than this guy.
When you don't have much to do with your life, you're going to go where you feel most comfortable, not realizing you're making your life worse by doing it. Why else do I and others vanish for days on end?
Just like in classic games, you always have only two choices - morally good one with no downsides and an evil contrarian one. But in Fallout 4 what is "good" is often completely retarded, e.g Raiload memory-wiping synths and leaving them confused about why they are immortal.
Like every fully Bethesda made game, it drips with potential but everyone mops it up and throws it out the window for someone else to...do nothing with it because the gayming industry are a bunch of retarded janitors.
 
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In Fallout 2 all your choices mean nothing in the end because every ending always results in the player being forced to kill president Richardson and Frank Horrigan ( and let's not forget being forced to blow up the oil rig as well) .
There is no scenario where The Chosen One would have been able to join The Enclave, and the other alternative is just letting the world die, since that's what happens if you don't blow up The Oil Rig. New Vegas had an ending planned where The Courier would have gone to Mojave Outpost and went back to California, ending the game prematurely. You know why that ending wasn't included? Because it sucks, and nobody would have went for it.

You're acting like you just thought of something nobody has ever heard of, when this point has been debunked to hell and back all the way back in 2009. Even the Megaton mockery lasted longer before it got boring(well, it's still funny to me even today, at least).

Again, creating a strawman to attack older games does not excuse the shortcomings of Bethesda titles, and never will. Anyone trying to argue using this logic already lost before they begun because they admitted their game sucks, it won't suck any less even if you pull some sort of internet W out of your ass.
 
One thing that's a bit annoying about Fallout 3 haters is how they always focus on the fact that the game is very light on RPG elements, while failing to understand that their beloved Fallout 2 (most worshipped game in the series by the og fans) also suffers from the same issue.

In Fallout 2 all your choices mean nothing in the end because every ending always results in the player being forced to kill president Richardson and Frank Horrigan ( and let's not forget being forced to blow up the oil rig as well) .
F2 is more of an RPG than F3 will ever be. Just because the F2 ending is linear, you cant say that F3 is an "rpg" because in one DLC you can have a choice to do something else.
 
F2 is more of an RPG than F3 will ever be. Just because the F2 ending is linear, you cant say that F3 is an "rpg" because in one DLC you can have a choice to do something else.
Ironic thing is that Fallout 3 is the last game that Bethesda made that could even remotely be considered and RPG. Skyrim isn't one, Fallout 4 isn't one, Fallout 76 definitely isn't one and while Starfield shows some promise, it is ultimately just poor man's Fallout 4.
This means that most Bethesda fanboys only have experience with real RPGs in the form of Fallout 3 or maybe Oblivion, especially after the recent demaster. Morrowind has too much reading and no compass markers so that's a no go, and Daggerfall? Well...
So yeah, Bethesda fans trying to lecture anyone, let alone proper CRPG fans that have been playing these games when they were in their diapers, is always hilarious. That particular point he mentioned was one of the first hot topics from back when Fallout 3 released, from the very much unwanted Bethesda tourists who tried to argue that Fallout 3 was superior, and it went about as well as you could expect.
 
fallout 3 got weapon/armor power level gradations correct and I will always be annoyed that the good, linear progression of gear as your player progresses through the story/world was totally destroyed in 4.
I know 4 destroyed a ton of things but power progression is a game mechanic I love and one that did not need to be removed just for the sake of bethesda's dumb weapon and armor modding feature,
which I'd argue allowed bethesda to be really fucking smarmy about having "six gorillion" weapons but in reality its actually less weapons than 3 (I can't compare to new vegas because that weapon roster was great).

3 did a good job of aping the weapon and armor roster of 1 and the effort to emulate a better system produced better results than 4 scrapping that system.
 
fallout 3 got weapon/armor power level gradations correct and I will always be annoyed that the good, linear progression of gear as your player progresses through the story/world was totally destroyed in 4.
I know 4 destroyed a ton of things but power progression is a game mechanic I love and one that did not need to be removed just for the sake of bethesda's dumb weapon and armor modding feature,
which I'd argue allowed bethesda to be really fucking smarmy about having "six gorillion" weapons but in reality its actually less weapons than 3 (I can't compare to new vegas because that weapon roster was great).

3 did a good job of aping the weapon and armor roster of 1 and the effort to emulate a better system produced better results than 4 scrapping that system.
The idea that you only need a handful of weapons or armor pieces because you can theoretically turn each one into several different variants is retarded beyond belief. Specialized gear and FNV "Less is more" weapon mods are much better design decisions, and Outer Worlds did modding much better anyways since it resembles how it looked in NV but still has that "you can have several pistols and each one fulfills a different role" philosophy alongside truly unique weapons you cannot mod at all(without mods, that is).
Also, every suit of Power Armor feels the same in Fallout 4. First of all, there is no Enclave presence in Boston so X-01 can easily be retconned, but what's the difference between Raider/T45/T51 and T60 variants? Well, Raider is garbage but easy to repair, and the T variants just have aesthetics going for them, choose whichever one you want. Oh sure, the armor and radiation resistance are technically better on some variants, but due to the retarded, ass-backwards way resistance works in F4 you gain less and less benefits past a certain threshold, which means more or less every Power Armor variant protects you almost the same anyways. There aren't even any truly unique mods Power Armor mods between variants, if there are any then they are so miniscule and worthless I haven't noticed them. On top of that, you cannot equip the Power Fist in Power Armor anymore so unarmed combat builds are completely gimped. Every suit in F3/NV felt not just earned but also different from one another, each one suited a different playstyle and build and players chose them for those reasons rather than just looks.

What does this result in, at the end of the day? Well, Fallout 4 has absolutely no good loot past a certain point, other than literal junk. Guns are worthless and are best scrapped for resources, or for weapon mods you don't have. Armor is completely useless, and not like you will be switching variants too much, Power Armor pieces are completely pointless since not only are there no Power Armor variants or reasons to have more than one suit, but you cannot even get legendary pieces without mods(with the exception of a few hand selected pieces dropped on certain NPCs). There is nothing to loot in this looter shooter, Fallout 3 had this problem too but at the very least the early game was much better balanced and you found yourself picking up everything you could. By the time you had nothing better to find, you had enough currency to break the game anyways and you would likely start looking for unique variants of your gear found in random locations, NPCs or from quests, where as in Fallout 4 if you want unique variants, you are shit out of luck and have to rely on RNG except for a few hand placed variants. I have no clue what the plan here was, even junk is pretty much useless past a certain point in Fallout 4 when you have nothing left to upgrade and you don't care about the settlements mechanics, so all you have left is grinding out enemies like you're playing an MMO for loot. Little wonder they just gave up and made an actual MMO for the sequel.
 
fallout 3 got weapon/armor power level gradations correct
It fails on energy weapons if you're introduced to them the way the devs intend- with two near-broken Laser Pistols in a Super-Duper Mart right after they gave you a 10mm Pistol that is still probably above 80% CND. It's slightly less terrible if you rush the main quest and get the 30% CND one that's by the dead Initiate when your 10mm is probably hovering at 50% by that point.
Everything else- eh, better than other Bethesda titles after it, agreed.
 
It fails on energy weapons if you're introduced to them the way the devs intend- with two near-broken Laser Pistols in a Super-Duper Mart right after they gave you a 10mm Pistol that is still probably above 80% CND. It's slightly less terrible if you rush the main quest and get the 30% CND one that's by the dead Initiate when your 10mm is probably hovering at 50% by that point.
Everything else- eh, better than other Bethesda titles after it, agreed.
There is one in the safe in the metro tunnel that leads to GNR, if you're actually rushing towards the main quest, and there is several different locations close to Megaton which also have one if you know where to look. Biggest problem with energy weapons in 3 is that plasma pistol is worthless in this game. You find it way too late for it to do anything, altho the classic titles had that problem as well. New Vegas handled this problem much better, you just get to select which one you want and lasers/plasma have much more pronounced differences, matter of preference rather than one being an early game weapon and the other being a late game weapon.
Pretty weak that they cut out pulse weapons for a DLC, as that's what Mothership Zeta guns are essentially. Same with Gauss Rifle, which isn't an energy weapon but a small gun, you still fire bullets. Now that I think about it, an energy weapons walkthru in the vanilla game is pretty fucking boring without the DLC, there really is just a laser and a plasma, pistol and rifle variants and that's it. No tri-beam, no pulse, no gauss, not even magnums(MPLX and Microwave Emitter), energy weapons actually fulfilling many different roles and therefore needing less weapon variety might be the only category where Fallout 4 actually succeeded over 3.
 
The FO4 weapon modding system is a neat concept but implemented terribly. You can absolutely swap out barrels, stocks, magazines and sights on weapons to customize and alter their function IRL, and being able to take something like a Chinese Assault Rifle and replace the barrel, foregrip, and stock to get something like an AKS-74U would be plausible for a skilled gunsmith with a workbench and tools to do, and then of course going full Mall Ninja with grenade launchers and laser sights and so on should be allowed.
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Unfortunately instead of anything realistic or plausible we get a pile of absolute garbage with literal scrap weapons made out of rusty pipe and gamified mechanics such as receivers magically making bullets do more or less damage because uh... reasons.
 
Except they're all just the same gun except that one type is a statswap of the most common one and the Gatlaser as an outlier.
Laser and Plasma weapons in that game are the only ones that arguably work as they were intended. You can turn the basic weapon into a basic pistol/rifle, a marksman rifle, a sniper rifle, an automatic, a shotgun, an automatic shotgun, a flamethrower for plasma variants and there is one handed or two handed option for all of these. If every single weapon in the game had this amount of customization, then maybe the system would have been received better. As is, the only other weapon that has as much complexity is the basic pipe gun, which nobody ever uses.
As usual, modders make guns which make this system work as intended and actually offer various builds for their weapons instead of an option on what sight to give it or if you want to turn it into a peashooter by making it automatic.
 
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