A major problem I see with a lot of video games such as Fallout 3 (and The Elder Scrolls) is that the protagonist is put in situations in-game that would be near-impossible to survive in real life. The first problem is how is some vault dweller able to become good enough in combat in such short times to be able to take on professionally trained Enclave soldiers, for example. If lore-wise the Lone Wanderer takes months or years to train (which still wouldn't make sense considering how urgent the story is in Fallout 3) the problem is he still performs super-human feats such as escaping a high security Enclave base. I mean, come on, no matter how good someone may be in combat, there's basically zero chance you would be able to fight yourself out of dozens of professionally trained, very well equipped, soldiers and robots.

So I guess my question is, lore-wise, how is the Lone Wanderer able to achieve all this? Unless what is seen in-game isn't a very accurate depiction as to what happens in the lore.

Well apparently killing a few Vault Security officers makes your guy the best fighter in the world, which doesnt make any sence. I dont even know how he would know how to use Energy Weapons. I mean, a Gattling Laser? How the [censored] does he know how to work one of those? I mean, he should have been killed off a long time ago. I dont get how he could get into Vault 87 past the dozens of SM, or through Raven Rock past the dozens of Encalve Soldiers, or past the dozens more at Adams Air Force Base. Or through Old Olney, where the Deathclaws should have torn him apart. I think this game depicts something inaccurate is in the lore...

Maybe the Lone Wanderer is ultra powerful because he/she was raised in a comfortable vault rather than the cruel, harsh wasteland. And besides, you could just turn the difficulty up and then the Lone Wanderer would be as weak as everyone else.

You got it backwards. He would be ultra powerful and knowledgeable if he wasnt raised in a vault. He wouldnt know how to do anything if raised in a vault, which he was. So the Lone Wanderer's abilities doesnt make any sence at all lulz.

I think he was being sarcastic. Lulz.

As for getting through Raven Rock, he had turrets 'n' Sentry Bots backing him up which would of helped a fair amount, I guess. And most weapons are pretty simple to load and fire (battling the recoil on the other hand is a different matter). A laser rifle's simple; you just look where the MF cell is, try and pull it out and then flop a new one in. The gatling laser's reload system is just queer and doesn't seem to be viable.

well when you level up you devote your time to learn a new thing with skill points i guess...

If we all remember, Dear Ol' Dad gave the LW his own BB gun and a shooting range when he turned 10. That gives us about 9 years worth of "shoot the targets/Radroaches" training. Granted, there are a few issues, but most of this involves the LW looking at a new weapon and saying "How do I use this?"

Of course, we do have the whole urgency of the main quest to deal with... but let's be honest. Dad says he went west of Evergreen Mills. The LW is effectively just out of the vault; he hadn't heard of Megaton or Rivet City until a few hours or days ago. How would he know where Evergreen Mills is? I'm one of the players who view this as the "natural" break in the Main Questline- here the LW has lost all track of his dad, since he doesn't know where the raider base is; and unless he asks Pinkerton or visits Girdershade (neither of which he knows the locations of either) he has little hope of finding it other than to go out and search the Wasteland. Here, the LW could go from "Newbie" to at least "Wasteland Veteran" easily enough before he finds his way back to dad and into Vault 87 and Raven Rock.

Also, we need to remember something; in FO, the Vault Dweller had to, among other things, infiltrate and destroy Super Mutant heaven AKA Maroposia, and in FO2, the Chosen One had to infiltrate and destroy Raven Rock. Both of these are suicide missions, and only the Chosen One would (plausibly) have the experience required to perform such a mission.

At any rate, when we play video games (or read/watch fiction) we have to do something called suspension of disbelif to allow us to accept things like this, otherwise we ask "How is a single fighter supposed to destroy the Death Star?" "How is Frodo supposed to destroy a ring that the largest army in the world is after and corrupts those who possess it?" and "How is Ripley supposed to beat the Alien Queen using an Exo Suit designed for lifting heavy objects?" These, we have to remember, are done by people with relatively limited experence in such things (Luke has never flown in space in actual combat, Frodo mostly lived in the Shire, and Ripley's only previous encounter with an Alien involved lots of running and hiding.)

Well in all fairness just about every video game has some variation of this very same problem. Particularly when it comes to RPGs, protagonists very unrealistically learn and become experts in a whole bunch of areas that would normally take decades for human beings to become adept at.

In any Fallout game you'll have characters becoming uber-gods in fields like medecine, science, mechanics, different kinds of weapons, unarmed combat, melee combat, hacking and lockpicking, stealth, etc. All by "magic" points which you add to each skill when you go up a level and have absolutely nothing practical to do with the skill themselves. The other unrealistic way to improve stats is by reading a book and blamo you got 10-14 more points in that skill.

You don't learn science by conducting experiments, studying it for years, or any hands on task within the game. You gain points and put them into the science skill and then the game allows additional options related to science during gameplay which were unavailable before reaching a certain point in that skill.

Now this is simple gameplay mechanics, it's not supposed to be a realistic representation of the PC learning and becoming experienced with any given skill. Hell most RPGs have characters becoming experts in ridiculous amounts of time because the way exp is delivered vs ingame time passing is completely unproportional.

My Vault Dweller (In the original Fallout) was an expert in medicine, first aid, small weapons, diplomacy, energy weapons, and was healthy at a few other skills as well as trekking across the Calfornia Wasteland and defeated the Master and destroyed his uber facility almost single handedly (had 3 companions including Dogmeat) in less than 150 days!

My Chosen One (Fallout 2) who was some uneducated dumb tribal managed even more impressive status, fought and defeated entire crime families, took down the Enclave, again almost entirely single handedly save for another dumb tribal, an old merchant, a seasoned fighter and 1 super mutant. And my Chosen One accomplished most of these things in just under 2 years game time from the moment he left Arroyo. Not to mention that the vast majority of the time that was consumed was in travel time between one location to another.

My Lone Wanderer (F3) follows in similar pattern to Chosen One, thanks to there not being a time limit to complete the game such as the original Fallout.

If you take any other RPG you'll see just about the same thing; my peasant farmer in NWN2 became an uber warrior that destroyed a virtually unkillable enemy when entire armies couldn't touch him and then conquered death/mortality itself on death/existence's own plane. All this happened within a ludicruous short span of time of maybe a year or at the most 3 depending how much time you allow for the construction of Crossroad's Keep. This isn't limited to RPGs either; why does a lone Marine manage to defeat the entire legions of hell while every single other counterpart, even more experienced soldiers, get cut to ribbons in games such as Doom? It's all part of video game make believe.

I'm sure you get the point. But fact is that PCs in games are always uber-powered in spite of most being portrayed as coming from humble origins. Just look at it as if fate in that specific video game world destined that PC to overcome all those things and don't pay too much attention to the details like, well, realism.

I'd like to submit that it's really a problem inherent to the game format.

In any first-person/player-controlled combat game, you're going to have issues with the PC being "overpowered" simply because human twitch reflexes are vastly superior to AI-controlled things such as dodging and aiming. Unless the AI is specifically programmed to act like it's on crack (in which case you'd have a game full of spazzing, zig-zagging enemies which would look very strange) it will act in a fairly predictable, and fairly platonic, manner, compared to the PC who is free to run and dodge however they wish, take action against enemy NPCs anywhere within the limits of viewing distance, and lob grenades around like water balloons - simply because you can. The AI has no such "just because" behavior and can only respond to stimulus themselves - essentially they're always going to be at a disadvantage, because they are always on the defensive as far as PC-vs-NPC combat goes.

On the other end of the spectrum you have the previous Fallout games in which the combat was turn-based and success chance was simply calculated by the CPU; player reflexes had no effect on the outcome of combat. That made it "fair" because the PC was constrained by the exact same rules and limitations as the AI was. Take that away, and it all boils down to the fact that AI has a long way to go before it will really be able to provide a challenge to gamers beyond simply increasing the number of enemies per encounter.

I think his point refers to the fact that an inexperienced 19 year old or so character can become a death dealer all of a sudden and a master skilled superhero within the game world, I don't think his anolysis was directed to the comparison of gameplay mechanics such as human vs AI.

Within the scope of what he is mentioning, characters becoming supreme beings within the short period of time the game's story unfolds, practically every game has this suspension of disbelief, including turn based RPGs. As I mentioned, my inexperienced Vault Dweller became Duke Nukem in less than 150 days which is an unrealistic representation of a human being gaining experience and overcoming the kinds of odds he was facing. This is true of just about every video game that doesn't involve playing sports or a rapping muppett.

On what you describe, there are plenty of FPS games which have superior AI at multiple degrees of difficulty no matter how fast the player's trigger finger is. Far Cry for example has brilliant AI which uses tactics, as do enemies in Killzone 2, Brothers in Arms was fairly brutal as the series continued forward and Operation Flashpoint is unforgiving given its realistic depiction of damage where a single shot can kill you if it hits a critical area (And more often than not does). In quality FPS games enemy AI works together with some characters suppressing you to cover while other enemies flank and kill you. F3's AI system is designed to be more like a hybrid FPS/RPG combat system and should not be viewed as the standard when it comes to real time combat games ability to kick a player's butt; there are scores of games which have excellent enemy AI which you would have great difficulty to defeat.

I know that. My point was that it doesn't matter; you could strip out all of the perks, the skillups, the entire character-development aspect of the game and have the PC stumble eternally around like a drooling, Vault-virgin retard with a bullet spread the size of Rosie O'Donnell - still wouldn't matter, because in the end human ability to control the actions of a character still trump anything that game design or AI can throw at us (hence why we're still able to beat such games as you've listed, despite being [most of the time] one person versus hordes of enemies). Other than the combat skills (human-controlled), there is really nothing that inherently makes the Lone Wanderer some "death-dealing superhero."

I don't know if the OP has realized it, but damn near every videogame ever made adheres to that rule. The only way to make a game not feel like ezmode is to make it completely statistics-based, which, let's face it, just isn't very fun after a while.

I'm going to guess that OP just doesn't play many videogames.

oh i have a great idea, let's make the vault dweller a moron that can't even hold a gun, what would that be for a game then...
--the protagonist in FO2 was a tribal for gods sake, he probably never saw a gun either, and yet he managed to kill the president and horrigan as well

I still want to know how the folk from Vault-13, who knew much about technology and other worldly skills thanks to the Vault library, and the Vault Dweller (who was skilled in firearms, diplomacy, and much more by the end of his journey) went on to start a tribal village. It's still my biggest gripe with Fallout 2.

Ok,this question is stupid,Why? cuz even if we put u in that world you will be forced to learn or die.also think how foolish would be to play game where u are weak so much that u could not kill a simple raider....

It's a game.

In Fallout 2, the Chosen One is a tribal who starts out wearing nothing but leather skins and ends up taking out the Enclave single-handed.

And the Enclave was actually deadly back then, not the nerf Enclave of F3.

This is because the game is just that, a game. Not a realistic military simulation meant to accurately model the real-world results of a lone person taking on an army equipped with superior technology.

Its funny how everyone tries to destroy the thread with "its just a game". Clearly its just a game. But, its still necessary to see why your character can learn instantly. I still dont get how he knows how to load in MF cells into a Laser Rifle. I wouldnt know. I would be lik "Wtf is this?", then charge something and beat it to death with the LR. Also, how does he know how to use Power Armor? The training isnt anything, just relax. Oh yeah, because that is all you have to do to learn PA.

If the game had to show how the protagonist learned everything, at least several years would have passed from beginning to end. Some games, such as Halo, Doom, and Crysis avoid this by having the PC as a member of the military and would have such traning before the game takes place. Others, such as Fallout 3, need to skip such things just to make the timespan seem "right." It's a bit of give & take.

Besides, who'd really wanna spend 90% of the game training to do the final 10%?

And that would be realtime years.

If you want to call "it's a game" an invalid excuse, then all we're really going to accomplish from that point forward is an extremely laughable philosophical discussion about the nature of games in general (among many other things) - and then you'd have to get into things like movies. Do you watch movies without getting up and walking out of the theater rolling your eyes? Then congratulations, you're a hypocrite.

So what the [censored] does movies have to do with learning how to use weapons in Fallout 3? In fact, how the hell did you get to movies in general? This is the fallout universe discussion subforum. Your clearly in the wrong place talking about movies. Besides, saying "its just a game" renders this entire subforum useless...

Fallout 3 is a game. For games to be fun, or playable, you have to make certain concessions to realism, like not implementing a tedious, MMO-style "grind" to improve one's skills; it would simply take too much time. Even MMOs make that concession - do you become an expert fisherman within a day or two of actual fishing? No.

Which - I'll just spell it out for you :rolleyes: - is exactly what movies do with their plots, or else they'd be twelve hours long and still wouldn't "realistically" show how or why everything in the plot was able to happen. That's "what the [censored]" that particular allegory has to do with Fallout 3.

Since we're obviously operating on different levels of comprehension (and civility) I now consider our interaction in this thread concluded.

No, it isn't, as evidenced by the fact that the game exists in its current state and not how you imagine it should be. And you're probably in the minority of people who choose to go for minimum INT and try to bludgeon someone with a firearm rather than studying it firsthand and trying to figure out its purpose through logic or simple trial and error.

And you clearly don't understand that the "fade to black" is a cinematic technique used to imply the passing of time. You can't seriously expect them to sit around and write a two hour long mandatory training sequence for something which never required training in the original games.

Which movies are you talking about that have anything to do with this game? By the way, if you dont explain things at all, clearly a person wont know what you are talking about, as games are definately not movies, and the only thing they have in common is entertainment. And most movies I know of that are actually worth a [censored] already have their characters knowledgable in whatever they do.




No I go for high INT for the game. Shouldnt be so quick to judge based on nothing, definately wont get you anywhere in life. And how am I supposed to even know what the ammo looks like for the LR? How do I know what its called? How do I know how to load it? Dont just say "its a game, deal with it". That arguement doesnt get anybody anywhere. Clearly you dont understand that though. Your arguement doesn explain this in game. Just explains how the game works around this.

Its called a video game.

Its not meant to be real. /thread.

Trial and Error for loading, simple association for how the ammo looks (what raider's gonna be using a sawed-off shotgun but carry 5mm ammo?) Talking with the merchants for names of the stuff. Example for the last:

LW: "Yes, I'd like to buy a gun that shoots beams of light and the batteries to power it."

Merchant: "You mean a Laser Rifle and some Microfusion Cells?"

But... this thread seems to be trying to ask why Video Games aren't like real life, and that they should explain some of this stuff realistically (which is why the explanation of "it's a game" isn't flying here.) But, as I've said before, they've gotta sell the games, and I'm sure not many people would want to spend 90% of their time in the game preparing for the 10% of content (such as quests, NPCs, etc.)