The thrust of the argument isn't wrong but I think everyone figured that out back in 2008 because its fairly obvious, regardless of your personal enjoyment of any or all of them, that Fallout 3 and Fallout 1/2 are not the same type of game and there's at least of couple of missteps in there when the guy starts trying too hard.

If I hear the "you can purify radioactive water with dirt" line one more time as a serious criticism I'm going to throw a vat of liquid virus at whoever says it. The setting has always been rife with scientific nonsense. If there is a problem with the irradiated nature of the Capital Wasteland and the way it is dealt with (and I would fully agree there is) it is not the fact that in the real world it wouldn't work that way.

And this is why it's a good thing when a developer or IP does not become a slave to it's fanbase. (fan is short for fanatic)

If the "hardcoe" fans had their way with Fallout it would still be an isometric, top down, turn-based rpg. No game could ever evolve if it's at the whims of it's fans.

oh please beth's fallouts are better in every way then Black Isles, fo1/2 were about deep as a puddle with a thin layer of monty python on top. while i agree beth aren't the best writers in the world but at least they came up with original stories instead of copying and pasting the whole "help us mr vault dweller your the only one that can find the g.e.c.k/waterchip for reasons" .

But that was LITERALLY Fallout 3's plot.

Indeed, I had more issues with the continuity. L.A. was apparently hit harder than D.C. given how there was barely anything left of L.A, yet radioactive water was clearly not a problem in Fallout 1.

... Copying and pasting the stories of Fallout 1 and 2 is exactly what Bethesda did with Fallout 3. There was barely any originality there.

D.C. was hit FAR harder then L.A., and L.A. exists in miles of ruins with tons of small communities like the Gun Runners, Followers, Blades, Regulators, and others.

The second half of Fallout 3 story is that. Instead of sending some BOS soldiers to the vault they sent some 19 year old vault dweller for reasons.

you can purify radioactive water with dirt.

>inb4 someone cherry picks this post to add to some dumb montage of "Bethesda fans everybody" image

Fallout 3 was barely an original pinnacle of storytelling but it appealed in a different light to a different genre, in an entirely different age. That's why it was a good game to people who played it first. It used the creative plots of the first two as a way to try and please old fans, "Look, see? We played the first two!" which the old fans took as a personal insult instead.

The first two were great and original, but Bethesda needs to put on their pants and make something original and good. And preferably hire someone other than Emil Pagliarulo. That'd probably finally appease these 'wine snob' fans if it had better writing.

You can indeed. Viruses can also take the form of a thick liquid which you can immerse yourself in. Oh wait.

There are modders out there working on turning Fallout 1 into a sandbox via FO3/NV GECK.

With FO4 coming out, they might just decide to move things over too that games newer engine. But they might just stick with using FO3/NV.

I think the reason a lot more people don't live in D.C. isn't because of how hard it was hit - it's because of all the hostile groups that flock there.

Either way the west coast was hit hard, and radioactive water isn't hinted at being an issue anywhere in the first two Fallouts... the scarcity of water was the problem.

Agreed. Not even slow, but a chore. When I played both, it felt like I was fighting with the game rather than playing it. Gave up on FO2 after going through a crap ton of random encounters that I was in no way prepared for nor capable of being prepared for while getting to Vault City... only to be hated by them for doing something that I still haven't figured out.

And that was on easy.

California is largely a desert, already suffering from water shortage problems in the real world, with few major cities spread out over hundred of miles. It wouldn't have been hit as hard in the war, and there would have been far more places where the radiation wasn't high enough to make the water toxic forever.

The east coast on the other hand is the exact opposite, with major metropolitan areas one after the other, which would have caused it to be hit magnitudes higher then the west, and tons of things like the rust belt(which was the cause of the Pitt's highly toxic water), to constantly contaminate the water.

It makes sense that the east, which exists polar opposite of the west, would have the opposite problems of the west.

You forget, the west coast had Vault 13, Vault 15, the LA tech demo vault, and Vault 8, along with 5 GECKs, to boost early population numbers.

The east has had zero vaults that actually worked, or at least allowed people to go back out into the wastes in large numbers.

This.

I'm an advocate of Fallout returning partially to what it once was, but that doesn't mean I'll only be contented with (or even want) an isometric turn-based combat system, or the return of Black Isle/Interplay, videos like this only propagate stereotypes such as: 'The same dumb BU-BU-BUT MUH GURPS! arguments as seen before eh?'

But can you purify radioactive water with radioactive dirt? That's the problem in the CW- it's not just radioactive water, it's radioactive EVERYTHING. The city, the animals, the people, the grass... it's all radioactive. Not enough to make you die from standing around, but enough to imoact your long-term health. Dr. Li explains that the pervasiveness of radioactivity in the CW was why they couldn't get the purifier operational without the GECK, and the scouting reports from Vault 101 about 30 years prior point out that background radiation levels are still well above "acceptable" levels, but not hazardous enough to require radiation suits for exploration.

I just wanted to get hit with a vat of liquid virus.

Yeah well that isn't how radiation works, which is why it was dumb, and before you say "well FO isn't RL", that isn't how radiation worked in FO 1 and 2 either. So point being, if you gonna have some anomaly, which is fine, then explain it, otherwise you have a self created plot hole.

FO 3 has far too much head canon, where people have to make up their own reasons why such and such makes sense, sometimes referring to "SCIENCE" for their answer. Well, when the player has to create the explanation, that isn't good writing.

That explains why the L.W dies from drinking too much Aquapura.

Even after spending most their life in a vault, the L.W still isn't "pure" enough to survive the modified FEV.

The L.W. dies from drinking infected aqua pura because both James and Cathrine are wastelanders, and thus mutants, and thus, he is a mutant himself. He could have never survived it, ever.

Even assuming the modified FEV wasn't really the strain from Fallout 2 that killed pure and impure humans indiscriminately - The Lone Wanderer is a mutant. The more generations your ancestors have lived in the wasteland, the more mutated you are, according to President Richardson and his scientists in Fallout 2.

You just pointed out a good reason(out of many options) why the MQ of FO 3 was dumb as hell. The alternate option is choosing suicide, so unless your LW has an Int of 1, would never do it.

Even if his folks weren't wastelanders, his trips around the wastes involve a few mutations, Moria browns questline and the greyditch ant reward comes to mind.

Unless, you know, he/she doesn't actually know [censored] about his parents(as the game heavily suggests), like how much radiation they were exposed to when they were outside, and thus, if they were mutants or not, and thus, if he/she is a mutant or not.

That, or the LW may feel like dying to save the wasteland from its horrors, such as super mutants, feral ghouls, giant mutant animals, and the psychopaths, raiders, and cannibals, its plagued by is an acceptable trade off.

It is pretty clear that dad explains the LW was not born in the Vault, and thus fairly obvious parents are wastelanders.

As far as the second part, that also means the LW decides killing off everyone they have met since the game started is also worthy of dying for this sacrifice. However, in game, the LW doesn't come to this conclusion, this "I will die to save the wasteland from x".

-That's not what was being contested, what was being contested was if they were exposed to enough radiation to make themselves enough of mutants to be able to die from FEV.

-Something Eden brings up, and you get to think about on the way to the purifier.

-Its literally the whole point of stepping into the purifier knowing its likely to kill you. Inserting the FEV or not, you still die for humanity, the FEV exists as a means to define what humanity should be. The entire plot is one giant Jesus allegory, dying for mankind is part of that.