The Hubologists managed it off the Golden Gate Bridge, science I guess.

Presumably from other facilities like the Oil Rig that would've survived the war. Hell there's a semi-functional space shuttle in San Francisco more than a century after the nukes fell and Van Buren was going to introduce Bloomfield.

How would they know if the mainland could support a civilization again after such a short period of time? Shady Sands wasn't even built until 2142 and that was a small village with all sorts of issues. The largest settlements before the rise of the NCR was a collection of shacks around a dirty oasis filled with people that were constantly killing each other over their limited water, being preyed on by mutants and fending off hordes of raiders and a small town built out of junk. The control Vault which we know the Enclave was monitoring or in contact with was a tiny settlement with a radioactive water supply that was causing genetic damage. Not exactly shining examples proving the viability of the mainland to support a proper civilization. More like struggling people eking out an existence amongst the ashes.

Not to mention the whole presence of the Master's Army in California for parts of this period which would've been a strong argument against recolonization, the growing xenophobia and classification of outsiders as genetically inferior which prevents them from being included in this new Enclave nation and means recolonization will now unavoidably require a major military commitment that the small numbers of Enclave may not be up to or may need a lot of time to prepare for. The Enclave being absent for such a long period of time is perfectly believable.

The fact that Caesar's a former member of the FoTA is surely irrelevant though, as far as I'm aware the Legion haven't been influenced by much of the FoTA beliefs after all, quite the reverse....

They didn't have to be agressive but they were and now they're gone.

They only enslave the necessary (a handful of people) and kill the majority, unlike the Legion who kill those they feel are necessary to kill and enslave the rest.

Also remember that Caesar's rise to power isn't the norm throughout the wasteland, otherwise the games would all be just warlords controlling small regions and fighting for power (which I would like as a game someday).

Their main goal wasn't to unite the wastes like Caesar but to exterminate all who weren't pure blooded like them so they can build and grow.


The Rig was built in the 2060s and Fallout 2 takes place in the 2240s.

That's 180 years.

I wasn't arguing against a crane not working, that's a little detail. I was just pointing out that you got your facts a little mixed up by saying an oil rig that was destroyed when it was 180 years old was over 200 years old.

So a exaggerated a bit.
Still doesnt change the point- that there is no way the rig would have lasted that long.
The crane is the whole reason i brought it up- it was a reply to The Enclave.


as for the "extermination" bit

had they not hid out on the rig for so long, they wouldnt have gotten all "kill everyone else"
Exactly why did they stay otht there so long? We will never know.
Where did they get materials to build vertibirds and PA when they never left the rig? we will never know.



as i said in an earlier post
"the Enclave aren't a particualary rational bunch of fellows"
Thats all the reasoning anyone needs for any dumb thing the enclave has done.

One thing that I hope this thread has shed light on is that The Encalve not bombing the ciotadel is small potatoes as far as writing goes, when compared to their entire exitence being a giant cluster [censored] of a writing assignment (on many levels).

@Okie: So their escaoe the earth plan hinged on a I sure hope our spaceships survived Nuclear war.

And..they would have to leave rig to get to it...and travel what they originally think is going to be a nasty dangerous wasteland?

These hardships survivors felt would have been alleviated by the Enclave had they done something, and there possibly would have been no super mutants.

I recently saw an interview of a retired marine colonel. I can't remember the exact quote, but he basically said inaction is equal to failure, and it is always better to act, and learn than to do nothing. The Enclave should know this, and it is actually something I have said before.

As far as FoTA and Caesar goes, it example of a guy, living in land of mutants, deathclaws, raiders, etc who took over a state and formed a nation in 20 years, with no prior political or military training. Clearly, the Enclave had the advantages and training to do the same. I guess they do not, because of "plot convenience".

As far as numbers go, Caesar started this nation with one other dude, and I will assume there at least two people on the rig....

Already responded to this arguement, Caesar and the Enclave are very different with their goals, wants, and how they react to people:

Actually he started his take over with all of the Blackfoot Tribe and started Caesar's Legion with at least six tribes under his control.

Indeed, the problem with using spaceflight as the explanation currently however, is that we obviously don't know its status with regards to canon. If it is canon, the explanation for the inactivity on the rig is at the very least adequately explained, as is the purpose of the vault experiments which as of now have no explanation other than "for the lulz."


Which apparently wouldn't be that much to ask in the Fallout universe. In Van Buren, it was going to be shown that the Hermes 13 and 14 rockets were perfectly intact and ready to go at a moments notice at the Bloomfield space center when they were left out on the launch pad.

So yeah, not that tall of an order really.

We don't know the goal of 2077 Enclave. And goals don't matter, if Caesar, a man with no training could do it, I would hope Enclave could.

And he had to take over those tribes. It began with him and one dude, they took over leadership. He didn't wake up, doing nothing, and found himself the leader of the Blackfoot Tribe. He had to become a leader..

Considering how many government shelters and other secret facilities like Mariposa, Lost Hills, the Sierra Army Depot etc. came through the Great War intact I don't see that as a huge gamble. At least not anymore than gambling that their original shelters or the Oil Rig weren't going to get nuked either.


I don't see why getting from Point A to Point B would've been a giant problem. After all they got to the Rig just fine.


Yes but the Enclave does not give a [censored] about these people as demonstrated by the fact they sealed many of the survivors up to die in morally bankrupt experiments to improve their own odds of survival. Braving the dangers of the wastes to build a new country in the hopes that with their technology and organization it won't svck quite so bad as it appears to doesn't seem like behavior I would expect from them particularly when the original plan of evacuating to a new pristine planet not filled with deadly radiation and mutated horrors might still be possible.


Again using the explanation Tim Cain came up with they were doing something: they were preparing for their trip and then preparing to retake the mainland once the trip was abandoned. There's no reason to assume the Enclave was just sitting on their hands.

Yeah, and who knows what that hypothetical situation would have been in end product.

The fact spaceships are in perfect condition sounds like a plot convenience to me!! Lol.

Why does Beth get such a bad rep again? Hrmm

Because there's a difference between 1. good writing which makes use of a SCIENCE! based relative implausibility for the sake of continuing an excellent story. As well as providing great writing via gameplay choices and quest paths.

and 2. Using a cop out deus-ex machinima to explain how the bad-guys you set up to be the "big bad threat" never really were apparently. As well as having poor gameplay choices and an overall poorly thoughtout questline.

I've already said that the original Fallouts are not above criticism and I stand by that statement wholeheartedly, but objectively speaking, there is far more wrong writing wise with Fallout 3 than there is with regards to Fallout 2 or Fallout 1.

Fallout 3 Lead Designer Emil Pagliarulo:

"All of the followers were implemented into the game fairly late in development, after the main story had already been nailed down. So, you know, we had the scene at the end of the game, with deadly radiation, and never really compensated for the fact that you could have a Supermutant, or Ghoul, or robot, who could possibly turn the purifier on for you. We'd only ever planned for you sending Sarah Lyons into the purifier, because we knew, from a story standpoint, that she'd definitely be in there with you.
What we could do -- and what we did ultimately do -- is cover that stuff in dialogue. You can ask those followers to go into the purifier, and they'll tell you why they won't. We felt that fit with their personalities, but really, they didn't "sell" that to the player in a single line of dialogue. So, in the end, the player's left with a, "Huh, why the hell can't they do it?!" sort of feeling.
So the story does kind of break down. But you know what? We knew that, and were OK with it, because the trade-off is, well, you get these cool followers to join you."

Yes Bethesda knew the story broke down and were okay with it. Because it's cool to have followers. I mean maybe a minute cut scene to have your radiation immune buddy get distracted by some Enclave troopers and be unavailable at the climix? Too much work I guess.

See you can nitpick details all day long (a long lasting Oil Rig! Potentially intact space vehicles! my god the writing is so awful!) and it's obvious to anyone with half a brain that the original Fallouts had flaws in many areas but this is the reason people mock Bethesda. Because they don't care about writing. And they admit they don't care. Just deal with it and move on. Stop trying to defend the indefensible here.

Exactly this.

If you've ever read the Van Buren design documents, the Van Buren team detailed the writing and the storyline in painstaking detail. They fleshed out every possible outcome and tied everything they could with the overall themes of the Fallout series and the game itself.

That's what it means to be an excellent writing team. So they got a few details wrong? Overall they did a better job than Bethesda ever did or ever cared to do with Fallout 3.

And the other developers didn't see the plot holes they created?

Obviously they did, and just approached it as a deal with it later answer.

I'm not defending FO3 writing. People love to jump on the "bad writing/plot convenience" bandwagon and act like it didn't exist previously or in NV.

It gets old.

The spaceship'vault thing doesnt explain anyting about the enclave or why they were out on the rig for so long, it only muddles things up even more.

I have discussed this before (though it has been a while)

See if this is logical.

1) We are planning on going into space if and when the world is nuked.

2) We will need vaults to have huge cross sections of populations in confinement with different variables so we know what to expect when we are confined on our trip through the solar system

3) We will monitor this progress in confinement for close to two centuries.

$) Derp


To top it all of.... They wanted to go to space because (absolute worst case) the world wouldnt have been habitable outside of some type of box .. Give that some thought and get back to me when you get to the point in realizing that regardless of the plan, they will still be living in a confined box, because other planets as well as space itself are not habitable. I would argue they are less habitable, given solar radiation, but in the best case scenario for space travel they are still living in a confined box. Maybe just maybe they beat the improbable odds and they find a planet that is habitable outside of our solar system in enough time.

But we all know how all the real fallout fans hate aliens in the fallout universe, right?


Please understand that this would have been bad writing piled on top of bad writing.

This had destroyed any faith I've ever had with Bethesda. If they are so utterly idiotic that they let the game go as is just so we'd have " cool followers " then they don't deserve Fallout. The uncaring attitude is something you can't have in any game. Grr, dinorage.



I consider it a mess when all we know of is their developing new tech. We don't know who their leader was, or what their agenda was. Don't get me wrong, I like the Enclave but I do think we should know more about them. As for your last point, the NCR is kind of a mess too. We should know more of them and the Enclave.

Exactly.

Couldn't tell you. None of them were ever stupid or conceited enough to admit in an interview that they didn't care the story behind the game they designed broke down at some point and they were okay with it. There sure seemed like there were a lot fewer plot holes in Fallout 2, they were less noticeable and some of the designers who worked on it have proven time and again that they are quite competent game designers and writers overall (Avellone, O'Green, Everts spring to mind).

I don't know what you're doing if you're not trying some awful equivalency defense of Fallout 3 by asserting that since the originals also had flaws it is not okay to criticize Bethesda for their far more numerous ones. Or do you just object to the fact that every time someone mocks Bethesda they don't put in a little note saying "Of course the originals also had flaws?" If you're trying to actually prove that Bethesda is just as competent as Black Isle and Obsidian when it comes to writing good luck. Reality disagrees.


What's the issue here? Why does it matter to the Enclave if they flee the planet within a decade after the war or a century later if it improves their odds of success? And close to two centuries? Bombs dropped in 2077. The Enclave was starting research into new forms of power armor by 2198. You don't need advanced power armor to colonize a new planet so presumably the Enclave had already shifted their goals by this point. The NCR, the first proven large-scale nation in the post war Fallout universe only starts coming into being about a decade earlier around the time the Core Region is transforming into something much more civilized and habitable.

Again using the original explanation that the guy who made the Enclave actually came up with all these pieces start to fit together. Where's the bad writing?

its more than that. People priase the writing of the originals. there is a thread on the front page right now exclaiming that somehow anyone that works with BIS is made some great writer. Dont play coy, you know how people prop up the writing of the old games. People dont just say "the writing beth used was bad" its mroe that they say "Beths writing is bad compared to Iply/BIS' writing" you know this.

as far not being dumb enough in admitting to their plotholes in the originals.. youre right. The devs never did.
Instead they had MCA write the FB and say things like "no one is really sure why ghouls are ghouls. Some devs say radiation. Some say rads and FEV" "I think Tim Cain was watching a lot of X-files when he came up with the vaults as eperiments" and "the enclave arent a particularly rational bunch of fellows"

Means the same.. They dont have answers as to why they did some of the things they did. orhey thought it just might be cool, but didn't think it through.






You mentioned vauts being explained...
Experiments to see what it is like to be confined,. when you are monitoring said experiments from a confined location.........
They are living through the very conditions they would hope to be gleaning information on through experiments.

Also i edited my opther post to include something like this:
To top it all of.... They wanted to go to space because (absolute worst case) the world wouldnt have been habitable outside of some type of box .. Give that some thought and get back to me when you get to the point in realizing that regardless of the plan, they will still be living in a confined box, because other planets as well as space itself are not habitable. I would argue they are less habitable, given solar radiation, but in the best case scenario for space travel they are still living in a confined box vice worst case scenario on earth.. Maybe, just maybe they beat the improbable odds and they find a planet that is habitable outside of our solar system in enough time. But then, that would mean they were aliens and that there could even be terrestrial aliens on that planet (since its habitable and all), so i cant see people getting behind that. because Fallout isnt about Aliens or space.. Any "real" fallout fan knows this!

Why all the hate on Bethesda?

Not to mention instead of trying to come up with a rational reason to answer the OP of this thread, it took 4 minutes to bash writing.

Yet, is it possible to come up with rational reasons? Yes.

1. Project Purity was main goal. Take, setup defense.
2. They overconfident and don't view BoS as a threat, especially if they accomplish #1.
3. Time. If LW concentrating on task at hand, it is only a few days before RR destroyed.

Along lines of "Why didn't Enclave take Citadel" you can ask, in regards to FO2:

"Why didn't Enclave carpet bomb San Fran?"

"Why didn't Enclave sink the oil tanker?"

"Why park the tanker in San Fran and not say, a mile off shore?"

"How did Enclave know Arroyo were Vault 13 descendants, and if they 'tracked them via pib boy', why not track the Chosen One?"

Also, by FO1 there are plenty of towns and people growing. This 80 years after war, Enclave could prolly still swoop in and take over, as it is pre-NCR. So they still have big space plan? 80 years and still on plan A, which they have made no attempt on it? Meh.

I don't think there's that many people here who actually hate Bethesda. Its all justified criticism.

Yes and they're right. Again Black Isle and Obsidian are better writers than Bethesda. You and Evlbastard are getting hung up on this idea that saying that somehow means Black Isle/Obsidian were flawless which obviously isn't true or you're mad we're criticizing Bethesda without also criticizing Black Isle/Obsidian in a thread which had nothing to do with either one of those studios. I'm not really sure.


Yes. Possibly because they made a lot fewer and less blatant ones that didn't get players in an uproar over the obvious crappiness of it. See why people think BIS/Obsidian are better writers than Bethesda?


So what you're saying is that a Black Isle developer went out of his way to try to collate and expand on Fallout lore in preparation for an upcoming game (Van Buren) while consulting with previous developers to get their thoughts? Do you see again why it looks like Black Isle put a bit more thought into this writing thing than Bethesda?


Actually it means they thought it through quite intently and just had differences of opinions. I would love to see a difference of opinion between Emil Paglialuro and Todd Howard on some aspect of Fallout 3's lore but I suspect it never happened because neither cared much and just went with whatever.


A location that's not at all isolated however. While the average Enclave citizen may be poorly informed the leadership obviously had a wealth of information about the outside world. You can't understand how seeing if you could convince an isolated population with absolutely no information about the outside world to follow set orders for decades without questioning or disobeying them might be of massive interest to a group like the Enclave?


Not really a good idea to conduct potentially disastrous social experiments on yourselves though.


They presumably had a planet that was habitable or could be made habitable in mind. And a whole planet would obviously not be a confined box but an opportunity for humanity to rebuild on a world that hadn't been stripped of its resources before being nuked into oblivion. I don't even understand what the last bit of this is about. Mainly it seems like a lame attempt to equate Tim Cain's hypothetical background for the Enclave with Mothership Zeta. If you think those are remotely equivalent or even particularly similar beyond both involving space (which was never the objection to Mothership Zeta) I understand why you can't grasp the difference in writing quality between Obsidian/Black Isle and Bethesda.

Well depending on Fallout 4 we will see what actually turns out from the events of Fallout 3, Ed-E was very vague as to the condition of the Enclave and east coast status(Which means they could be in full retreat or alive and thriving) We dont know. My thinking is seeing as regardless of the endings on what the player did both endings would suggest that the Enclave are still alive and kicking, maybe back to Isolation for awhile or depending on if the citadel was nuked building their numbers back on Adams Air Force Base and Excavate raven rock (Which i hope this scenario plays out when theyre writing the lore). So whatever way you put it, it doesnt matter theyre still alive regardless of everyones actions just for the love of FALLOUT dont trash them again bethesda writers.. Certainly dont make them a major force again atleast for another 2 or 3 games. Alive and behind the scenes is where they belong for now.. Tip for Bethesda bring back the old armor, the new armor is just lame as hell.