http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/editorials/op-ed/5569-Fallout-Boy

Very interesting read, especially for someone from the old generation like myself. He brings up a good question which I've been turning over for awhile now, one reinforced in my head after reading Jesse Heineg's thoughts here and at NMA...are most of my problems with this game the fault of Bethesda (surely some undoubtedly are) or are they the fault of the forever-changed landscape of the PC gaming industry? Could it ever be possible to exist as a somewhat financially stable entity producing the sort of games I (and those cranky others) want to play?

Discuss.

This ispretty muchw aht I've been saying in concerns to some of the older generation, and while I [censored] love FO1 and 2 I just have to point out that games like that don't SELL any more.

and video games are a business >.> so you kinda have to conform if you wanna make a buck.

Them killing Harold almost made me chuck this game out of a window.
Theres some nostalgia rage for you.

Sure iso games don't sell but turnbased ones still do.

Very good article.





Bethesda made Fallout 3 a game for the masses. In doing that they had to make sure the game could be accepted by lots of people, not being to complex or slow. And that's why it's just an okay (and not a great) game.

Killing harold is YOUR choice. The game doesnt force it.

Actually, I think killing harold is a good thing... He needed to be here to link the games, but he just can't keep appearing forever.

Errr...needed? I don't buy that for a second. Now don't get me wrong I actually thought that whole part was fairly interesting even if it was a sort of obvious mastvrbatory move on Bethesda's part (i.e. "OMG I need to add grass and leaves I can't take it anymore I weep for the comfort of Oblivion!") but to say he HAD to be there in the same way the B.O.S., the Enclave, the G.E.C.K., the supermutants, regulators, raiders, robots, deathclaws,..oh gosh...have you noticed that while naming off the elements of FO3 they are really all just rehashed elements of FO1 or 2? The only thing Bethesda really added are some, imo, really dopey sounding TES characters like Mirelurks and Yao Guai. Sure, I get that they're mutated animals...but could you have come up with names stained a bit more with fantasy-spooge?

My point:

I'd have a lot less of a problem if I felt that Bethesda didn't just spray paint Fallout stencils on a destroyed landscape with the Oblivion engine and say "here it is! lol, Fallout!" There's not a whole lot that they actually added to the series that feels particularly amazing to me. Jesse Heineg says elsewhere "I suspect that one of the reasons that they imported so many of the factions from the west coast was to include those "familiar faces" that Fallout players have learned to expect. Importing them all wholesale to the Capital Wasteland stretched my credulity a bit, but hey, we have the Brotherhood of Steel, so how can I complain too much?" which I agree with and understand though I can't help but disagree about the B.O.S. and I really wish they came up with a new enemy. Was the Enclave really necessary? I'm sorry but Bethesda are going to have to do a bit more than just make the series all purdy and shiny for me to jump completely on board here...because soon enough the purdy and shiny element is going to get boring and I'm going to go right back to the playing, modding and discussing of 1 & 2.

You clearly did not play the Replicated Man quest.

I see Fallout 3 as a bridging game - and beacuse of that harold needed, yes, needed to be there, as did the BOS, and the Enclave. I see both Harold and the BOS as the "Alternate" players in the world - Like it or not, when something big happens, they're there, doing what they think is the right thing to save the world from itself (The Classical BOS in saving knowledge/tech - and lets not forget they were planning to deal with the mutant threat on the west coast (once they could verify the thread), and trying to find a way to solve the enclave problem).

But there are plenty of openings in fallout 3 for fallout 4 to be the proper Beth Fallout. The Insitute and the Commonwealth are shaping up to be very powerful mysterious forces, Rivet City is looking to be a good "new" NCR style force, Talon Company isnt going to disipear, and the Regulators can be built and extended upon too. Some elements needed to appear in three, so they could be completely gone and "dealt with" by 4 - The Enclave, and to a lesser extent, Harold.

I feel confident in saying that had they not included any of the older factions people would have complained as well (probably even more).

I handled it the "good" way the first time and thought it an utter letdown. I'm in the middle of doing it "evil" right now and you're right...this does seem a great addition to the series. Unfortunately it is just a mini-story with no real lasting effect or consequence. It's really no better than any mini-quest from Fallout 2...even the Smiley the Trapper quest for instance, is about as consequential and Fallout 2 is made up entirely of these sorts of moments. FO3's best moments seem to be as good as FO1&2's most pedestrian.



I hear you knocking but you can't come in. No seriously, nobody had to be there. Like I said, unlike many old Fallout fans who were up in arms about Harold, I actually liked that whole part...but for the sake of argument no. No he was not needed. Fallout is Fallout and nothing in Fallout 1 was necessary in Fallout 2 to let you know it was a Fallout game. A few references or appearances (maybe a lone wandering random encounter with an Enclave deserter, for example) would have sufficed. Some of these things make sense on a topical level as to why Bethesda put them there, some don't and some I'm quite ok with...especially the creatures.



Talon was a good start...but how dynamic or memorable is a faction you can't even interact with? Rivet City? The whole 12 people that live in this supposedly ginormous city? *shakes head sadly* I just don't buy it. The Regulators were from FO1. I'll give you the Institute and Commonwealth...IF they decide to flesh it out and deepen it contextually. Anyway, I hear what you are saying...and I'm not THAT upset about it all...but it is this kind of "lack" which is preventing me from seeing this as a great game. Instead I see it as an entertaining time-ditch.



Oh for the love of...

You know, I almost made a disclaimer so that we could avoid this very comment you just made. I so knew it was coming...and yet it is unfortunate because you obviously merely took what you wanted to take from my post and missed the point. I'm not talking "any" and...*clenches fist, releases, shakes head* you know what? If you can't go back and understand the real point I was making then just forget it. Not worth my time.

Wow, what is your problem? I'm just making the general statement that people would have complained either way. When it comes to this game Bethesda has been in nearly all cases "damned if they do and damned if they don't" as it were. I can only imagine the moaning that would occurred had Bethesda announced that they were including none of the old factions and creating new ones.

I read your post and understood your point. Next time however, by all means, put up a disclaimer if it will prevent you from having a tantrum over a simple comment not even directed at you :rolleyes:

Maybe you should have asked a few questions to the quest giver before dealing with the quest either way... Taking a job without asking questions, tut tut, some good guy...


The regulators are NOT from fallout 1. Admittedly there is a similarly named faction, but they have nothing in common at all - One is a group pretty much enslaving a town, and the other is a bunch of secret do-Gooders. As for 12 people in Rivet City, its game logic - I didnt see any food storage areas in the vaults, nor is there space for 1000 people, Where are those people going to sleep, and more imprtantly, what are they going to eat? The reason you don't see it is because its boring, and of no consequence - What you see in the game is just representative of what is really there - its no the whole thing. Rivet city is a great place for a grouping of cities to start, its well fortified, it has a functioning government (its the most developed government in the capital wastes if you exclude the enclave), and is a centre of commerce and learning for the region, I can see Megaton alying with them for their biological know how in growing food, and Canterbury commons for technical and military assistance.

No offense intended, but I don't think you're really taking home the whole message behind that article. Particularly the stuff from the second page.

I am a dinosaur, a relic of a dead era. I have strong and enduring memories of playing games like Ultima, Zork, Wing Commander and Wizardry on a PC that would be catastrophically outclassed by the modern cell phone. This is the equivalent to being lost on modern indie bands because I'm so busy listening to Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones and Pink Floyd. It's not just t that tastes and desires have changed since the advent of the cassette tape, much less the CD, but is there really much benefit trying to reinvent the past?

Do I really want a Fallout 3 that is just a coda on the already outstanding symphony of the first two games? What is left to do in that vein? When I think about it from that perspective I realize that my true desire for Fallout 3 and, frankly, the revisiting of a bygone PC gaming era is a virtual impossibility.

I want to do it all again for the first time.

There is a reason that sequels usually have a property of diminishing returns, and it has little to do with the illusion of creative bankruptcy or the fallacy of lazy development. The problem is that the traditional sequel is trying to recapture a moment that is only valuable because it had never been captured before. It's not just that developers and gamers are trying to recapture lighting in a bottle, they are trying to capture the lightning that has already struck.

The author isn't saying that the world of PC gaming has changed to where it couldn't make those games anymore. He's even saying, fairly directly, that trying to blame the developers is being fallacious. What he's saying is that the original Fallout games, for many old timers, have been idealized in their memory because they were amazing when they first played them. Now as he says, modern games can outclass old games by leaps and bounds. Even a decade or more ago, games like the Myst series and Lucas Arts adventure games and stuff blew Zork and it's ilk out of the water in pretty much all respects - yet you still hear people talk about their first time playing Zork, and people still make jokes about being eaten by a grue. Heck, I still make those jokes too.

I actually really like that article, because it's a problem I've had to wrestle with before. Doom 3, for example, was in pretty much all respects a better game than Doom 1/2. But for the life of me, even to this day, I don't really like it. It didn't do anything wrong - it's got demons from hell and you're a space marine and all the trappings of Doom are there. It /is/ a Doom game. But it's not Doom 3 I wanted back before iD made Quake.

What you're doing is making an irrelevant argument since the discussion wasn't about "all or none."



What? And maybe you should have asked me specifics before making an assumption? I have read through every possible bit of dialog in this game I've come across, tediously, as dialog is quite possibly my favorite aspect of cRPG's. I know that there are technically 3 outcomes to the quest and 1 that is sort of a cheat (two of them I already have seen in my first playthrough, and I'm actually playing it the other way right now). Anway, the first quest-giver on my first play-through was Victoria Watts so I think you're misunderstanding me. Again, I felt that this side of the quest was not fleshed out and could have been deeper. After it was over I was like "huh. that's it, eh?"



Similarly? It's the same feckin' name, man.



None taken and no I didn't miss the message. I commented on the specific message in my first post but It was a sort of two-topic situation for me in trying to get to the bottom of why I, like the author, didn't find FO3 to be better than "ok" and why I could never consider it "great." That's why I brought the conversations with FO1 dev Jesse Heineg up and spoke from that angle and that's just where the thread seemed to go from that point.

So I guess that means that everyone with the same name is Exactly the same? In America, they call Left wingers "Liberals", in australia the "Liberal Party of Australia" is as conservative as they come. Does everyone called bob in the fallout universe have a tree in their head (Hey, same name!)? Happy Harry running his shop in the VC courtyard must be a supermutant because there's a Harry supermutant in FO1, same with sally Dutton...

You've judged the book by the cover. The groups have absolutely nothing in common, they are not the same group, do not have the same goals or motivations, and have presicely no links.

As for the replicated man quest, for most players, the First questgiver will be Zimmerman in Rivet City, who'll tell you all about the commonwealth when he asks you to find the andrioid....

So if there was a group called "The Enclave" in FO3 but acted differently than FO2 that'd be just a weird coincidence to you? I don't buy it. It's just canon-breaking laziness, imo.

So its canon breaking because on the other side of the continent there is a group of secret do gooders, that share a name with a group of tyrants on the west coast? Despite there being nothing in game, except the name that links the two? A group of tyrants who disipeared BEFORE adytum joined NCR - IE probably at least 100 years before game day?

If anything the "new" regulators would hunt down the "old" regulators.

It's canon-breaking via laziness on the part of the developers creating a faction with the same name as a faction in the game they are inherently taking all of their cues from. Why "regulators" at all then? Why not a different name?

So in a series, it is prohibited for groups to have similar sounding names? Even when these groups do not even share the same area of influence? Even when these groups dont even appear in the same era of that worlds history?

Actually, I think the idea that groups who never met each other, never even heard of each other is a "breach of canon" is a ridiculous claim. I'll give you points for lazyness, but not on Canon breaking.

If we trace the route of the source of the word "canon" - The Cathoilic church - they dont have a problem with people with similar sounding names - heck their popes even change their names to the names of other saints and popes - JP I was nothing like JP II.

LOL! Dude (aside from really giving me a gut-laugh) stop saying that! It is not a "similar sounding" name! It is the SAME name!!!



I only meant to say that it's canon-breaking by default. Meaning that their inherent laziness in re-using an already existing name within the Fallout universe breaks the canon of that original faction. At no point have we been faced with any clues as to WHY they have the same name or that it's a reference, a wink, a nod...nothing. It would be one thing if there was a reference somehow that lead you to understand that these are maybe renegades...but still...that would just go back to my original complaint of Bethesda merely using these names and factions from the west coast and placing them on the east coast because they couldn't be arsed to invent their own names or factions (at least not any that have any real depth).



Ok, well let's not trace the Latin roots of words now. You and I both know what my point is.

Ugh. Fine. My examples were not meant to be limited to "all or none" scenarios, hence why I never ruled out any combination of the two.

If it helps you, I'll rephrase. I'm fairly confident that people would have complained if any of the factions from the previous games not been included.

:slap:

Hehe. Ok then, for the sake of the argument I'll split the consumers of this game into 4 simplified sections:

1) Teh Rabids (canon/bible followers, etc)
2) The Old Skool (more casual than #1 but know the originals well)
3) TES (along for the Bethesda ride)
4) nUUbs ( &/or casual gamers in general)

now i'll list who would have complained if "some but not all" factions were left out:

1) Would not have complained. Everybody in this group has been arguing about the relevance of western factions being placed on the east coast.
2) Half & Half. This one's a toss up. Some people might say "why didn't we get the B.O.S.?" while some say "B.O.S. on the east coast? Why?"
3) Would not have complained. No reason to.
4) Would not have complained. No reason to.

Way I see it, odds aren't in that favor.

You missed group 2.5: People who played the old games and remember them fondly but don't really have anything "invested" in them one way or another. They probably never read a wiki or a bible entry, but dangit, they remember how cool the Brotherhood of Steel were.

What? No, dude. That fits perfectly within my idea of #2.

We're never going to agree on this, but its not canon breaking for an organisation in a completely different location to independently come up with a different name. If you want to make the lazyness argument, then you have a point, but its not canon breaking. To break canon, it would have to be a contradiction of what has gone on before. This isnt, its a group that independently came up with a name for themselves that just happened to be used a hundred years or so previously in a part of the country they have absolutely no communication with.

Now if they were the same group - that would break canon as that area is under the control of the NCR.

It doesnt have to be explained - just like it doesnt have to be explained how Butch survived 100 years, regressed into a child, and found himself in Vault 101.

I was thinking your 2 were more like less fanatical 1s. Thats where I would put myself. I'm not "rabid" about it, but my interest certainly goes beyond "Wow, the brotherhood of steel were kewl", I've read the bibles and so forth.