The water situation on the West Coast : Fallout Series Discussion

» Wed Jun 16, 2010 10:02 pm

Well, that's what people have been saying. I missed it the first time around (and so did most people, which is a bad design decision since noticing is necessary to make sense of events), but that explanation raises more questions than it answers. How would Colonel Autumn know to prepare for sudden irradiation by carrying special drugs? If Colonel Autumn is aware of the potential hazard, why aren't his troops also prepared?

It's still a plot hole because the explanation seems contrived.

You can definately see him get something from his coat and inject it if you pay attention... it IS subtle, but I assume you were supposed to be surprised when you see him alive later, which means it was supposed to be subtle.

Well, for one thing, Fawkes is female.

For another, I realize she says something about "destiny." That breaks the fourth wall so hard it almost defies belief, however. She might as well be saying, "I can't do that, the plot wouldn't work if the developers let me do the completely obvious and logical thing."

This was a simple design problem... they have said they added followers very late in the development process and didn't think through the ending problem, so they made a contrived attempt to explain it. It does svck, but at least they fixed it with Broken Steel.

I personally find it incredibly hard to believe that there are two hundred years' worth of orphans that somehow manage to survive the harshness of the wastes and end up at Little Lamplight. The Lamplight kids are isolationist and essentially have turned the caverns into a fortress. They don't really send out scouting parties.

Once again, the explanation seems contrived and implausible, which is why, explanation or no, this remains a plot hole.

Well for one thing, I am pretty sure there is some mention of Little Lamplight citizens venturing out into the wastes for trade... I think it is the chef kid who talks about it, but I could be wrong. They say they travel at night and hide from the mutants and such.

Secondly, they don't kick the kids out until they are fully advlts, like 16 or even later, so it makes sense thos kids could have children before they leave for Big Town and leave their kids behind.

» Thu Jun 17, 2010 2:54 am

Autumn probably knew there was potential for a massive radiation outburst in the purifier. After all, the machine is pulling tons of rads out of the water and has to find a way to store the radioactive particles and process them. Hence, he probably came prepared with his own special Rad-X type chem. It's not rad-x though, as rad-x comes in pills, whereas this comes in a syringe like Med-x. It's quite a shame that it isn't any of this stuff in the game. It would have been great to find a sort of super rad-x in Autumn's quarters in Raven Rock. Ideally it would give you 100% rad resistance.

As for Fawkes, it's not so much they programmed him to shy away from radiation, it's that they programmed him to be a [censored]. They wanted to make damn sure you died and ended the game when you started the purifier. Just to clarify, some people said BS doesn't fix this, it most assuredly does. With BS Fawkes CAN be ordered to start the purifier, as can Charon the ghoul.

Now Little Lamplight is easy. As others have said, they don't kick you out of Little Lamplight until you are 16 or 18, according to conflicting sources. (Now THAT is an inconsistency)
So there's plenty of time for the older lamplighters to have babies, and in fact it is implied that one former lamplighter had been with every dude in big town and in little lamplight. Big Towners might actually also bring their babies to Lamplight, where they would be much safer.

They also have scav teams that go across the wastes to scavenge and trade. Biwwy is one child who was kicked off the scav team for one reason or another. It's entirely possible that they take in orphans or stray children. In fact, there IS direct evidence that they do this in the game, as you can convince MacCreedy to let the orphan Brian Wilkes live in lamplight.

» Thu Jun 17, 2010 10:53 am

I don't think there is really a set age when you get kicked out of little lamplight, because after sitting in a cave for years you would most likely lose a sense of time and lose track of your age. The little lamplighters most likely base it off of when you seem like a grown up, which can vary.

» Wed Jun 16, 2010 8:26 pm

Or Beth decided to stretch the rules

I guess that's the annoying part. It isn't necessary. You can make an extremely scary, moderately radioactive post-war future with stuff still available to plunder without mutants and a 200 year wait. In my head, I correct this unneeded lapse in reality, and then FO3 becomes a completely awesome game. :^)

» Thu Jun 17, 2010 9:02 am

Thing is, it is more radiated than the West Coast, but less destroyed in terms of buildings etc. It doesn't really make much sense.

Not really compared to New Reno and how every other settlement in Fallout 1 & 2 are in pre-war buildings? Either way, it was just because in Fallout 3 you actually SEE the landscape as you travel. How boring would a landscape with no pre-war buildings be?

» Thu Jun 17, 2010 6:30 am

Where should I begin?

Colonel Autumn surviving the irradiated Project Purity chamber?

Fawkes can retrieve the G.E.C.K. amidst lethal radiation levels, but somehow cannot enter irradiated Project Purity chamber?

Little Lamplight somehow retains a substantial population of children for centuries, originating from one pre-war field trip?

I could go on at length, but suffice it to say, Fallout 3 is a finely aged Swiss cheese when it comes to plot holes (plus I haven't played the game since November, so I've forgotten most of the smaller ones).

Have you read the Fallout Bibles? In one of them he points out the reason there aren't more people/caravans/vehicles in the first two games is because of game mechanics. It would be illogical too show EVERY SINGLE PERSON in the wastes. No offense, but people only forgive it with the first Fallout games because they like 'em more.

» Thu Jun 17, 2010 4:58 am

Yes, it's reasonable to be prepared for radiation, and for normal wasteland travel, good ol' Rad-X and Rad Away suffice. You do expect to come across radioactive waste, mutants, water, and so on and so forth. Obviously though, the irradiated chamber was a special, particularly lethal case, and normal Rad-X and Rad Away weren't sufficient to survive bombardment. That meant a specially prepared medicine was needed, and how the heck did Autumn just happen to be carrying this perfect defense on his person?

Basically, it still seems contrived and implausible to me. If it didn't, would we even be having this discussion? No one would have noticed this as a potential plot hole at all if the scenes had been handled better to begin with.

Well, I can't blame Fallout 3 for the gender blunder. In Fallout 2, if you pay for a hoker for Marcus, he tells the Chosen One that Super Mutants aren't actually sterile. The developers later stated that Marcus was wrong, and that they are in fact sterile.

As for Fawkes' refusal to enter the chamber being a deus ex machina (which means "god from machine" [I knew that years ago, I didn't Google it

]), not quite. That's actually the opposite of what we're talking about, which is a refusal to help. Here's the Wikipedia definition of the term:

"A deus ex machina (pronounced /ˈdeɪ.əs ɛks ˈmɑːkinə/ or /ˈdiː.əs ɛks ˈm?kɨnə/,[1] literally "god from the machine") is a plot device in which a person or thing appears "out of the blue" to help a character to overcome a seemingly insolvable difficulty."

I'm not sure what you'd call the plot device that is Fawkes' refusal to help for no other reason than to support the plot. The best I can come up with is "cop-out."

We don't know that the soldiers didn't survive. In fact it's fully possible the two soldiers you see with him threw-out the game are the same soldiers. After all, the Enclave takes the purifier right after you leave, and could have easily gotten too them in time. In BS they fixed the plot-hole with Fawkes not going in. Little Lamplight does send scav teams out though. They should have had more than one person in Lamplight point it out though.