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- Aug 17, 2018
That was such a lame sequence though.
Prime did all the work for you. All you did is follow him and be useless.
In a good game, you'd be controlling the robot.
Fallout series
- Thread starter exball
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Prime did all the work for you. All you did is follow him and be useless.
In a good game, you'd be controlling the robot.
Ira the Weatherman
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Aug 25, 2019
The whole 'futuristic jingoist 50s America' thing was clearly intended as an answer for themes they had conceived earlier in development. It explained how the war started in the first place, and helped introduce the atompunk, vaults, shady military experiments and other unique narrative in a game that otherwise might as well have renamed itself 'Mad Max: California'.
People forget that the whole 50s thing was really invented by Bethesda because they're creatively bankrupt. It really didn't play a part in 1, or even 2. The people wore leather singlets and had mohawks, they weren't dressed like the cast of Mad Men. They lived in newly-constructed adobe huts, rather than bombed-out old houses with radios and shit. While I don't really mind the route Bethesda has taken, it is a fact that the pre-war culture stuff was originally just a barely glimpsed-at backdrop for the actual story.
- Joined
- Aug 17, 2018
I wouldn't say they invented it, it was an element that was always there. Just much more subdued and in the background.
Even in Fallout 1; pre-war tech had tubes, cars had 50s design, lots of Art Deco (though that's more 30s), etc..
Even the idea to use 50s songs is straight from Fallout 1's intro:
Bethesda just took that element and ran it into the ground like they do with everything.
- Joined
- Dec 10, 2019
Still a super based robot
Peasant
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Apr 19, 2019
It's an autistic nitpick, but that line is probably meant more to refer to the Vice President's lack of introspection, given that it doesn't make a lick of sense for a far-future tribal to know or give a shit about American political parties.
- Joined
- Feb 12, 2019
I'm still enamored by those big brain Twitter takes. Even if you want to over think things and wring blood from a stone trying to draw parallels about Communism and Capitalism through the Great War, the only conclusion someone who really knows their lore should come to is that a communist system simply can't compete with the American market over time.
It was China who shot first. It's referenced in the military logs in earlier games, but in the off-map missile silos in 4 it's made explicit. The U.S. had won - we know they had taken back Alaska and they were beginning to deploy power armor teams in mainland China, plus we can infer from New Vegas's memorials that they had occupied the Gobi Desert and begun penetrating the Yangtze River basin. What did China have at that point? A rock in San Francisco Bay and a few splinter cells around Maryland? Throughout the series you're shown countless companies who competed with each other for contracts and market share, all with their own technological innovations to show for it. What had the Chinese developed to counter the products of Vault-Tek, West-Tek, or Rob-Co? A stealth suit and an outdated submarine. Whoo-hoo. It's analogous to the Cold War, where all the U.S. had to do once the U.S.S.R. stood down on their threats of nuclear war was wait for them to starve themselves of resources and promptly collapse. The series, if anything, makes the point that communism can only win at the bad end of a nuke.
Hell, you can even draw further parallels with authoritarian factions that aren't Chinese. The Enclave spent 150 years improving their weapons and defences, only to get kicked over by a spear-chucking savage who only had the people of the world at their disposal. Neither the Legion nor the N.C.R. can get a good handle on Southern Nevada because they're too large and inefficient, and that's with a functional hydro dam and robot army to incentivize them to get their shit together. If you really want to take any underlying political meaning from the lore it's the libertarian idea of an agile free market being superior to any amount of dictatorial pressure.
It was China who shot first. It's referenced in the military logs in earlier games, but in the off-map missile silos in 4 it's made explicit. The U.S. had won - we know they had taken back Alaska and they were beginning to deploy power armor teams in mainland China, plus we can infer from New Vegas's memorials that they had occupied the Gobi Desert and begun penetrating the Yangtze River basin. What did China have at that point? A rock in San Francisco Bay and a few splinter cells around Maryland? Throughout the series you're shown countless companies who competed with each other for contracts and market share, all with their own technological innovations to show for it. What had the Chinese developed to counter the products of Vault-Tek, West-Tek, or Rob-Co? A stealth suit and an outdated submarine. Whoo-hoo. It's analogous to the Cold War, where all the U.S. had to do once the U.S.S.R. stood down on their threats of nuclear war was wait for them to starve themselves of resources and promptly collapse. The series, if anything, makes the point that communism can only win at the bad end of a nuke.
Hell, you can even draw further parallels with authoritarian factions that aren't Chinese. The Enclave spent 150 years improving their weapons and defences, only to get kicked over by a spear-chucking savage who only had the people of the world at their disposal. Neither the Legion nor the N.C.R. can get a good handle on Southern Nevada because they're too large and inefficient, and that's with a functional hydro dam and robot army to incentivize them to get their shit together. If you really want to take any underlying political meaning from the lore it's the libertarian idea of an agile free market being superior to any amount of dictatorial pressure.
- Joined
- Dec 12, 2018
The message that I get from the series is that ideology is often just a mask for tribalism, that's the point behind the "war never changes" message. Ultimately, the US and China were starving dogs protecting their turf, it wasn't any more complicated than that. The games definitely often seem to lean towards libertarian ideals, but at the same time Lonesome Road makes the point that tribalism (or at least finding a home to invest in) can be a good thing. The entire theme behind the DLC is that Ulysses finally found some measure of peace in Ashton, and the Courier came and fucked that up by accidentally blowing up the town and never looking back, because that's the nature of wanderers who never get attached to anything. Honest Hearts deals with the same message, and at no point does the game heavily chide you for choosing to drive the White-Legs out of Zion, which might as well be one of the most nationalistic and tribal choices you can make in the series. The DLC goes to great lengths to let you determine for yourself if this way of thinking is sometimes justified.
- Joined
- Feb 12, 2019
Of course that's the actual theme of the series, I'm simply splitting hairs and playing devil's advocate for the Twitter thread which clearly had that lost on them. The real point of the Great War background is that it doesn't matter. Almost nobody in the post-war world knows what China or the U.S. are, at best they're obtuse scribbles on old buildings. Even with all of the evidence of what happened nobody ever stops to learn from it. No matter how hard the two nations fought they were both destroyed and their hardships forgotten. History, and the violence that drives it, repeats itself. Not as part of any greater cycle but because it's simply the nature of man. War isn't to be celebrated or scorned, it should merely be respected.
The character arc of Joshua Graham from Van Buren to Honest Hearts is the most sincere expression of Fallout's core message. No matter what conclusion Graham reaches it isn't truly satisfactory. He wanted to use his position as a military authority to reach out to the greater Wasteland and propagate his faith, and in doing so sacrificed both himself and his people. More than that, he's haunted by the knowledge that even if he hadn't walked that path he and his people would have died at the hands of tribals and their expansionism all the same. Conflict is an inevitable part of life, and those who blind themselves to that fact are themselves the most doomed to repeat it. That is what the core of the Fallout series is about.
Of course I don't have an IQ large enough to be represented in scientific notation, so the series is probably just about Brexit, or Funko Pops and whatever trash Bethesda's been shitting out for the last decade. What do I know - I only played the games.
The character arc of Joshua Graham from Van Buren to Honest Hearts is the most sincere expression of Fallout's core message. No matter what conclusion Graham reaches it isn't truly satisfactory. He wanted to use his position as a military authority to reach out to the greater Wasteland and propagate his faith, and in doing so sacrificed both himself and his people. More than that, he's haunted by the knowledge that even if he hadn't walked that path he and his people would have died at the hands of tribals and their expansionism all the same. Conflict is an inevitable part of life, and those who blind themselves to that fact are themselves the most doomed to repeat it. That is what the core of the Fallout series is about.
Of course I don't have an IQ large enough to be represented in scientific notation, so the series is probably just about Brexit, or Funko Pops and whatever trash Bethesda's been shitting out for the last decade. What do I know - I only played the games.
- Joined
- Aug 21, 2019
If I'm not mistaken didn't Mothership Zeta retcon this and say the fucking aliens started the Great War (thanks Bethesda).
I've always drawn the conclusion from the non-Bethsda developed Fallout's that the big overarching theme of the games is that no matter how developed and technologically advanced people are (or not developed and advanced) we still operate on the same presumptions that we have been working on forever, the big one being war. No matter the time or the conditions people will always divide along racial, moral, political, and practical lines. Racial being the various mutants ghouls and super mutants (because lets face it cant be putting real race tensions in these games), moral being the various religious groups, political being the NCR, Caesars Legion, the Enclave to an extent, and practical being the raider groups that dont care about anything besides surviving in the most efficient way possible (theft and murder).
- Joined
- Feb 10, 2017
No. China confirmed to have fired first. The aliens were known to an extent Pre-War, but had no bearing on the outcome of the war itself.
By Fallout 4 you get confirmation via various logs and even a ghoulified Chinese sub captain who was at ground zero for The Great War China fired first.
- Joined
- Jan 3, 2017
There's a wrinkle in the original games from one of the AIs you meet -- can't remember if it was the one in The Glow or the one you meet in the Brotherhood's San Francisco bunker -- that the war was actually started by bored AIs who had gone so crazy from their physical isolation that they did it just to have something to do.
- Joined
- Feb 10, 2017
From what I recall, until Fallout 2, they left it kinda up in the air who exactly fired first, though if the Chinese had as much AI controlled system as the US, that very well could have been true.
Fallout 2 has the Enclave President claim China did it, but you have to take his words with a grain of salt since he's obviously biased.
Fallout 3 again leaves the implication China fired first as being true, but doesn't really fall one way or another. New Vegas was kinda vague as well, but if you check the Black Mountain logs, they imply it actually may have been true China fired first.
Fallout 4 finally has them just straight up say China did so, mostly because their back was to the wall and they felt they were doomed if they did NOTHING, so the nukes flew. Doesn't really contradict previous games, and given the U.S. had a lot of things hooked up to computers, the one to make the final call very well may have been a Chinese AI that took the pants shitting fear of the Chinese leadership as a green light to launch the nukes.
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- Joined
- Nov 9, 2014
I never understand where the hatred for Bethesda comes from. I played Fallout back at day one. I have as much right to intense Fallout nostalgia as any slavering fanboy and yet, I love the Bethesda games. Yeah New Vegas is better, because of course it is, Obsidian have the advantage of a dev team that's been making RPGs since, well Fallout. The thing is Bethesda have tried to deepen the lore and update a complex genre for modern players whilst still maintaining the overall spirit and aesthetic of the game. Personally I think they've done a fair job. Yeah Fallout 76 isn't great, but it only suffers from the same problems a lot of online multiplayer games do these days. Ultimately there were a lot of fates for Fallout worse than Bethesda.
- Joined
- Jun 25, 2013
I mean, Brotherhood of Steel was a thing before Bethesda took the IP. And a lot of the issues people have with the modern games can be traced back as far as 2.
And New Vegas was able to come about due to 3 being successful. So credit is where credit’s due.
Really, 3 onward being set away from the West Coast was pretty smart on Bethesda’s part. They’re certainly divisive, but at the end of the day, they clearly did something right to garner the good will and fan base they have.
Either way, I always look forward to the salt and controversy that comes with every new Fallout game.
- Joined
- Nov 9, 2014
The existence of the NCR makes the west coast a dumb place for a game. New Vegas to the coast is peaceful, civilized, safe. If Bethesda are smart, the next game will be BIG, and possibly be set slightly further in the future. I always see the Fallout games as having a logical endpoint, that being the reestablishment of what we would consider a civilized society. Mr House predicts that very event in the timeline and its about 100 years ahead of Fallout 4. I'd like to play games that make me a part of that. I'm fanboy as HELL about Fallout. I have fucking Ink Spots albums on Vinyl that I spent ages hunting for because getting them mint is a fucking chore. My MAME cabinet has a full sized NCR flag as a dust cover and right this very second my 3D printer is pumping out an NCR Ranger helmet piece by piece. It's a big part of the things I love. Fallout 3 and 4 are fundamentally good games. They have their issues, because all games do, but they're good. Hating on them is like hating on Star Wars, or Call Of Duty, or the MCU. It's fun, it's edgy, you can be cool on FaceBook. Without wanting to sound like a douche, I probably have more of a right to critique Fallout than the average 18 year old nouveau gamer who has a false nostalgia for games they haven't played. My opinion on Fallout 3 and 4 is that they're admirable, solid entries in the series.
- Joined
- Jan 3, 2017
If you didn't want to sound like a douche, I'm afraid to tell you you've failed.
I've been playing since 1988, with Wasteland on my C64, so watch it, junior.
- Joined
- Aug 17, 2018
I enjoyed FO3 but I can definitely understand why people hate it.
It is awful as an RPG. Stats barely matter, you constantly get railroaded into completely retarded choices, the writing is absolutely abysmal, few quests and most of them suck, and piss poor world building (Look! It's [real world city] but full of rubble that references every obvious thing everyone knows about [real world city] + wacky places that make no sense at all)
And this was supposed to be a sequel to Fallout, the game that pretty much defined the "modern" WRPG genre.
Instead you got an even more dumbed down Oblivion (with guns).
They also never got the original setting and tone right.
The dark humour is replaced with just plain silliness and references. The retrofuturism is replaced with people born generations after in a completely different world obsessing about 50s culture for no reason.
Fallout's world was harsh and cynical with a gloomy oppressive atmosphere - In Fallout 3 you never get the feeling that people struggle to survive - they're all free to devote their life to the dumbest shit while you yourself mow down level-scaled enemies while listening to Butcher Pete, never to encounter a place that actually feels dangerous.
In movie terms: Fallout was A Boy and His Dog, Fallout 3 was Mad Max 3.
- Joined
- Jun 25, 2013
New Vegas’s DLC was essentially foreshadowing to future disasters that could essentially reset the setting.
Between the red cloud, tunnelers and the stuff that goes on in Big MT, the West could potentially face some major problems.
Probably one of the reasons why I don’t care too much about the DLC personally. Makes it so that your choices you made in the game don’t matter and just gives a flimsy excuse for more games.