Never claimed to. The problems with the setting of Fallout 3 don't require me to speak for anyone, because they aren't subjective. The fact that there is a large population of people in an environment without plants or clean water two hundred years after food production came to a screeching halt is an objective flaw in the setting of the game. You can gloss over that subjectively if you don't care, and that's fine, but it's a flaw regardless.



I wouldn't pin any post-nuclear war survival strategies on what you've "learned" from Fallout 3. Just saying.



This gets back to the difference between objective and subjective. You are, subjectively, entitled to feel how you want about the setting and gloss over problems. That doesn't make the problems any less real.

Note, please, that I'm not demanding scientific accuracy. My suspension of disbelief covers water remaining dangerously irradiated for 200 years, big talking robots, and laser guns. My suspension of disbelief does not cover problems with the infrastructure of the society that are brought directly to attention by the game within the context of the game. To mention a couple quick examples:

1. Tenpenny Tower. The game goes out of its way to explain how citizens of Tenpenny Tower are wealthy, and pay rent to Mr. Tenpenny for a safe, luxurious place to live. These problems wouldn't matter, except that the game calls the user's attention to them. Where do the tenants of Tenpenny Tower get money? It can't be through producing anything of value, they don't. It can't be trade, since no one is let in. So it must be an endless money-sack they store conveniently in their asses. Where does the food they eat come from? This problem applies across the board, but is worst in an isolated community that doesn't do any trading or scavenging.

2. Megaton. How the hell does Megaton have food, water, and electricity? Scavenging for food might work in a setting 20-30 years after a nuclear holocaust, but 200? Assuming the food lasts that long without going bad (it's science fiction, I can assume that), the Capital Wasteland has a fairly large population who, presumably, had parents who needed to eat to survive and have kids. Was there just an enormous food factory nearby that still feeds everyone to this day? If so, it contradicts Moira Brown's food scavenging quest.
It can't really be hunting, either. There isn't enough game nearby to support even the Republic of Dave, so it's hard to buy that it supports the population of Megaton. Further, there is no plant life outside of the Oasis (a fact that, again, is brought to the player's attention actively via radio announcement), so even the mutated animals shouldn't/couldn't exist. What do they eat? People? Is the entire food chain dependent upon 200 year old Fancy Lad Snack Cakes?



There are farms in Middle Earth. Argument defeated, try again. Though even if no farms were mentioned in the books or shown in the movies, it isn't a nuclear wasteland so certain things (such as food, water, and the characters pooping) can just be taken for granted.




Fallout 3 isn't a bad game, it's an above average game that suffers horribly from bad writing and setting design.



No. The things I've mentioned as being wrong with the game are things wrong with the game. Something as obviously stupid as breaking a GECK to finish a water purifier isn't just bad writing in my opinion, it's bad writing in fact. The same goes for President Ebil giving the protagonist the plot-device-poison, despite it being the crux of his entirely illogical and nonsensical master plan to kill everyone and the fact that you are railroaded into actions that give President Ebil no reason at all to trust the protagonist. Objectively, Fallout 3 had a poorly constructed plot. You can -ENJOY- a bad plot, lots of women enjoy romance novels that are objectively awful (*cough* Twilight). That is where preference and opinion come into play. Something being enjoyable does not make it good.



Stop apologizing. I stand by my assertion that this isn't a matter of preference. You can prefer ruins to rebuilding, and that's fine. That doesn't mean Fallout 3 executed the ruined post-apocalypse setting well.

Your arguments are vaild Pandabearparade but I still fail to see how it is not a matter of preference. Why is the preference of liking Fallout 3's atmosphere any less vaild than that of the atmosphere presented in any other game? Because of Logic? Realism? Why are those factors the end all to arguments? Why is it that when playing a game set in an alternate fantasy universe I must have realism knocking down my front door?

What makes it so that it is not a matter of preference? Why must the series only go the way of New Vegas's setting? By saying "its not a matter of preference" you are acting like there is no other setting that can be used besides the one that makes the "most sense".

In your opinon Fallout 3 is a horrible game. Thats fine I can respect your opinion.

But saying "its not a matter of opinion (preference) Fallout 3 is a bad game no matter how you look at it" is incorrect because its also my opinion that Fallout 3 is a rather good game and so is its setting. Why does your opinon have more merit than mine? You act like there is always an outside power that can definitively say whether something is "bad" or "good". Fallout 3 got nominally good reviews from most critics. Its a game that won many awards. New Vegas followed suit in that regard.

By the same token, the example you provided (twilight) got many good reviews and is generally considered to be a good series (not by me or you but still..) but it is our subjectivity towards the novel that makes us believe it to be bad. In the real world, objectivity is something that is virtually impossible to achieve, you for instance, are not being objective, nor am I. We are both being subjective and our opinions will continue to butt heads.

In any case I'll try to respond to some of your points.



I fail to see how they aren't. For the reasons I explained above.



My point was not to argue that Minas Tirith cannot support life. My point was to give an example of how ridiculous an arguement against a movie can be (I have heard this argument myself). It draws parallels to the argument against the setting of Fallout 3. The idea im trying to impose here is that when looking for too much realism in a game/movie infringes upon your ability to enjoy it, prehaps its time to let things go a bit.



By whose reckoning? Who was the one who said that this is how we are to define the game and no other opinions about it are allowed? Fallout 3 was, as I said, given good reviews and is an extremely successful game. Apparently the bad writing and setting design were not bad enough.



By your opinion yes.



Forgive me for that.

I already stated that 'liking' Fallout 3 and it being 'good' aren't the same thing. I don't think I defined what I meant well enough what I said 'it' isn't a matter of preference. Fallout 3 having a well crafted narrative is NOT a matter of preference. Enjoying the Fallout 3 narrative -is- a matter of preference.



It's not about literal true-to-life realism, but realism within a self-contained world. Fallout 3 doesn't make sense in it's own context, thus the writing is bad and the setting fails. If you can ignore the objective flaws and enjoy the game anyway, there is nothing wrong with that.



You're building a straw man. I never said the only way to build a setting correctly is to do it the way New Vegas did, I said Fallout 3 did an awful job. It's possible to do a ruined wasteland in a way that makes sense, Fallout 3 just didn't make it work.



Have I said Fallout 3 was a horrible game in this thread? If I did (I don't think I did and I'm not going to reread every post I've made), I meant it's a bad game in the context of its setting, characters, and story. Overall (as I know I've stated two or three times now), Fallout 3 is an above average game. The bad writing just drags it down significantly.

What I think you meant was that I can't state that Fallout 3 has a bad story as fact, because my opinion isn't any more valid that yours. You, again, miss the point. Going back to the Twilight anology, there is nothing wrong with twelve year old girls enjoying that movie. That said, OBJECTIVELY, Twilight was an awful movie with severe deficiencies in acting, story structure, and dialogue.

Fallout 3 has bad writing. That isn't my opinion, that is something I can demonstrate (and have been). If you enjoy the story regardless, that's fine, but you can't call it 'good' just because you enjoy it. You even acknowledged that all of the points I brought up were valid!



The game presents itself as a serious take on post-apocalyptic America, so I judge the story as though it was written for advlts with a brain and not children. If it was a comedy, or purely a shooter, the standards for the writing would be lower (which is why Halo has bad writing and no one notices or cares).

Fallout 3 got good reviews, that's true. I don't take mainstream reviewers very seriously anymore, to be honest. But I'm not judging the game as a whole (which I would personally give a 7.5-8 out of 10), but the flawed story and setting. If you want to contest that the story isn't flawed, call me on that assertion and ask me to demonstrate the problems. It really is that easy to prove, if you're right and the narrative is -good- I won't be able to bring up a significant amount of problems and you'll be able to dismiss/counter the ones I do.

why don't we just agree on that and leave this bloody battlefield?



actually I hate the story.

I just really like the atmosphere and prehaps that is just because I can overlook some of the issues with it. Prehaps in the future a better compromise between the "rebuilding and desolate" atmospheres can be made.

Maybe I have been misinterpreting you Pandabear. I'm just not a person to believe that objectivity is possible in a normal context. In any case I think we should call it a truce. I can see where you are coming from and I personally don't like getting into arguments.

So truce for the time?

Truce.

So anyway on to more important matters.

Twilight svcks :down:

...but that's just your opinion! Lots of raging preteen girls would lynch you for that statement. :whistling:

they could try :toughninja:

Well except for the vampires being glittery emo's I thought the films were okay.
Not revolutionary or awesome but they weren't that bad.

The problem here is alot of 'arguments' cant be legitamate because they are opinions. For example, I found F3 to have a pretty decent story, while others say it is just terrible. I found F3 to be a wonderful atmosphere, others said it wasn't. I could defend the logic to settlements, others nitpick.

The point is, alot of the going ons here are arguing opinions, it doesnt matter if 'a large group of people hate Fallout 3' there may be a larger group of people who love Fallout 3. The point is people will never cease to argue because this entire argument is purely subjective opinion and that 100% fact. So it will never end.

It's just terrible. You seem to think that what I'm doing (and anyone else who dislikes Fallout 3's story) is merely asserting my opinion as fact, which I'm not. I'm asserting as fact the notion that Fallout 3 has an awful story, and then demonstrating that this is the case. The narrative as a whole makes no sense and collapses if looked at critically for even a second.

There are so many flaws in the main story of Fallout 3 that it's difficult deciding which problems to point out, honestly. After daddy decides to resist the men in power armor and kill himself (another moment in fail writing, by the way), you are railroaded into the sewer and forced to escort people you may or may not like to the Citadel. Why? Men in power armor are chasing the protagonist and you don't even get the option to tell them to fend for themselves and save your own ass? The reason given by the poorly voice acted Dr. Li is "You won't get into the Citadel without me!" Who said I (the protagonist) wanted to go to the Citadel at all? Presumably I could just get far enough away to get off the Enclave radar and escape on my own, the only reason that option is revoked is lazy writing and plot convenience.

Project Purity, the goal for the entire main quest, makes no sense. Purifying water isn't difficult, and if clean water is so hard to come by in the Capital Wasteland it's impossible to believe the population could exist. Why don't they just leave, again? As the audience we know the rest of the country isn't as bad as D.C., but even without having metagame knowledge it just stands to reason that you would want to leave the most radiated section of the country. Assuming for a moment that the population can't leave because the invisible walls won't let them, is it really a good idea to break the pre-war miracle McGuffin just to clean your water? The item that, as stated in the game, terraforms the nearby landscape into a clean, virgin, arable landscape?

What's the rush to take Project Purity at the end of the game? Why would the Brotherhood care if the Enclave got the purifier working? Isn't that what they want in the first place? It's not like they can't try taking the purifier after it's working, so the entire rush to claim it is artificial and another example of bad writing that should have been caught in the rough draft.

I could go on, and on, and on. If this obviously sloppy storyline works for you, that's fine. But objectively it's awful, and there is no way around that.



No you couldn't. At least not with anything that you base in the information presented in Fallout 3. Anyone can contrive an excuse for just about anything they like when it comes up short, but that doesn't make the ad hoc reasoning a 'good' excuse. There is no good reason to break a GECK, or for President Ebil to hand over the key to his grand master plan (that makes no sense) to someone he has literally no reason to trust.

Fallout 3 did fail in the aspect that Pandabearparade is saying, Lieu. In every other Fallout game, there have been farms and the such. And any place that had power (i.e. Broken Hills from Fallout II) had a generator or something. Was Fallout a good game? Yes. Did it have below average writing? Yes.

This.



It made my friend, who lived vampires, hate the simple idea of vampires (when his girlfriend made him watch it).

It was the worst movie I've ever seen...

We are so off topic.

Ok, but what about the interracial thingy. Aliens, pointy eared humansized pixies with queer accents, etc. Who knows what they have down there... tentacles maybe. Do you like humping a squid?

so wait are you a girl because Twilight svcks its practically a Chick flick.

I was making the point that there are objective standards that we hold literature/film to, and proving that with the example of Twilight, which is objectively awful.

the building layouts were not all the same in FO3, sure certain parts might be copied and pasted, big deal, at least there were dungeons to explore which is a lot more than i can say for NV, it doens't have any of that. none. FO3 had lots of unique locations, so not sure what you're talking about.

yes exactly who didn enjoy those dungeons. You could litearlly be in one for hours. Not to mention you could be in those Metros forever phew those could get crazy.

I prefer Fallout 3. Does that mean it's better? No.
I also prefer vanilla ice vream over chocolate but if I had a choice... strawberry!
Anyway... these X vs X posts are getting old.

You gotta be kidding me? CHOCOLATE ALL THE WAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! With some raspberry sorbet... :rolleyes:

you have to make something to post right.

totally, i like the metro tunnels, i got lost in em lots of times for a while, thats kinda fun actually, there were times i was lost in em for an hour or more, and had to stop and save the game and come back later and try to figure out where to go, eventually you get the layout, but yeah i like complex buildings and tunnels, lob enterprises was pretty ig, so was red racer factory and the capitol building, also the roosovelt academy and the chryslus building, it took a while to explore those places, and you had to deal with robots and supermutants, to me thats fun, thats the fun of the game right there for me.

yah the same with me. But i kinda actually dreaded going into the Metros they scared the [censored] out of me sometimes and i always wanted a companion along. I have been always scared of vaults they creep me out. Everytime i see a vault i hope there is people in there that are friendly and dont want to kill me -hahah not. the Lob enterprises done ring a bell to me would you please elaborate on that so i may know what it is. I proabably forgot what it is.

but..but.. strawberry is delicious!

well exploration is the most important thing in a fallout game no wonder FO1 and 2 weren't nearly as popular as FO3, and even new vegas is only rated at 7.5 at gamespot and FO3 is rated at 9, that speaks for itself as far as i'm concerned, bethesda will be making FO4 and they're far better at this type of game than obsidian is, bethesda brought the franchise back to life with FO3, obsidian didn't bring the franchise back to life, they went 2 steps forward and 3 steps backwards by not making the game good for exploration or combat.