Favorite and least favortie retcons?

Ben Soto

Ben Soto

Professional Salt Shaker
There are a lot of retcons in Fallout 4, for good and for ill. I'm interested in knowing what the general opinion of particular retcons are; if there are ones that are liked or disliked. For example, I really like the way Power Armor is handled as opposed to the rather bland use of it in Fallout 3 and New Vegas, as it makes it feel more like the bipedal tank that it should be rather than just another suit of armor. On the other hand, fuck Cabot House, fuck Vault 95, and FUCK KID IN A FRIDGE.
 
I don't like a single retcon or lore fuckup in Fallout 4 however I do like the change in ghoul origin story.
I never liked the idea that ghouls only came out of Vault whatever down in LA because it never closed properly. By that very standard there should be tons of places that didn't close properly or couldn't be closed properly and the inhabitants should have turned into ghouls.

So the retcon was that anyone anywhere could turn into a ghoul with the right conditions. And I like that far more. It also means new ghouls could be created.

I however don't like any retcons to ghouls in FO3/NV/
 
I don't like the PA retcons. PA is not supposed to be like a tank, it is supposed to be as mobile as a real soldier (the lore before was that power armor was supposed to feel and operate like a natural extension of a soldier's body, that is why the Vault Dweller, the Chosen One and all of the human followers could use then right away without any problem), offer good bullet protection and increase the user's strength to allow soldiers to carry heavy equipment and use heavy weapons without need to deploy heavy vehicles (those were all grounded because too little resources to make them move). Also about feeling like a tank in FO4, I don't feel like a tank at all because it is the only armor who gets damaged (at all) even by shots of low caliber pistols or someone using a switchblade... How is that a tank?

Look at FO1 and FO2, the characters in PA move and run at the same speed and they still fit through normal doors and all of that. All it does is making the character look a bit bigger/buff.

When I was in the army, I was in the artillery division and I had the "pleasure" of ride, operate and maintain quite a different number of armored vehicles (M60 Patton, Leopard 2, M901ITV, M113 APC, Pandur 2, Bravia Chaimite, Commando V150, Panhard VBL, Armored Humvee, M88A2, M60A1 AVLB and M728 CEV) and they do not feel like FO4 power armor either.
 
Mr Fish said:
I don't like a single retcon or lore fuckup in Fallout 4 however I do like the change in ghoul origin story.
I never liked the idea that ghouls only came out of Vault whatever down in LA because it never closed properly. By that very standard there should be tons of places that didn't close properly or couldn't be closed properly and the inhabitants should have turned into ghouls.

So the retcon was that anyone anywhere could turn into a ghoul with the right conditions. And I like that far more. It also means new ghouls could be created.

I however don't like any retcons to ghouls in FO3/NV/
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I'm not sure how I feel about ghouls in 3/NV vs the first two. In Fallouts 1 and 2 ghouls couldn't run and they looked like they were on the verge of falling apart. Whereas in 3 and NV they still look fucked up but they can walk fine, use guns just fine and even run.

At least they aren't Fallout 4's feral ghouls. Those I hate much more than 3 and NV's ferals.
 
Nothing. But biggest of nothings goes to what Bethesda was good at. Architecture. Fallout 3 really captured the Fallout's world "look" even though the first ones didn't have much of it. Fallout 4 buildings look like typical scammy money-sinking black hole californian "green technology" project of plasic towers made out of recycled materials, apart from historical Boston buildings, which are not a Bethesda's artists product and it doesn't count
 
Only good Retcon: Power Armor.

Most hated retcon: Everything else?
I hate the new Ghouls and the stupid retarded variants (Why are whittered, gangrenous and rotting ghoul stronger? that makes no fucking sense), the FEV fidning it's way yet again into the hands of people who have no fucking business in universe to have it, the T60 power armor being pre war and somehow more advanced than the T51 despite looking just like their t45 model, it reeks of fanfic, the Mojave Alien city obviously. There is just so much to choose from.
 
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Jet and Enclave Power Armor being recton to be pre-war. Either Bethesda was lazy and didn't care to look back on the history of the previous Fallout games or Bethesda believes that humans in the Fallout series are so backwards that they can't make any sort of achievements to the wasteland.
 
RangerBoo said:
Jet and Enclave Power Armor being recton to be pre-war. Either Bethesda was lazy and didn't care to look back on the history of the previous Fallout games or Bethesda believes that humans in the Fallout series are so backwards that they can't make any sort of achievements to the wasteland.
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See, they actually didn't retcon Enclave armor... Sort of. The game explicitly states the armor is post-War. The only time I can think of where it's even implied that its pre-War is in Nuka-World, which can be summed up as "gameplay and story segregation."
 
Ben Soto said:
See, they actually didn't retcon Enclave armor... Sort of. The game explicitly states the armor is post-War. The only time I can think of where it's even implied that its pre-War is in Nuka-World, which can be summed up as "gameplay and story segregation."
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You just gotta look at some of the stuff in Fallout 4 and go

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Wild wasteland.

Wild wasteland. Like the Star Trek encounters in Fallout 2. Fake. Fake news. Even if they don't say it, everyone knows it.

Kid in the fridge? Wild wasteland.

Black eyed ghouls? Wild wasteland.

T60? idk alchemy
 
Mr Fish said:
I never liked the idea that ghouls only came out of Vault whatever down in LA because it never closed properly.
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They should've really been the only ones to ever appear. The circumstances just happened to be right there. What "exactly", nobody knows; door was left unsealed and an event took place. A similiar question might be asked for "Why are there no natural platypuses outside Australia?"

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On topic.... there are no good retcons.
 
Favorite: not sure if is a retcon, but I like the radiation. Way better then 3/NV, someway close to 1/2.

The worst: THAT FUCKING GIANT HULKING THING IN YOUR ARM.

What's the problem with this?

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But this is a F3 retcon........huummm, for Fallout 4, I go with pre war vertibirds, I guess. Don't hate like this one above though.
 
Pretty much everything....
I honestly don't see a point in diving any deeper. From what I have seen thus far they tend to retcon the same or core items in every game so I figure over time Fallout won't be Fallout for very much longer.

Cats, those darn cats. Why did they bring cats back?!

Oh wait I was mistaken, its not Fallout anymore :( , that sure did escalate rather quickly...
 
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This might sound odd, but the Vaults being secret government experiments is a retcon I'm not entirely sure of these days. If it was just a handful of experiment Vaults and the rest were normal, then I feel that would be better and would make more sense, otherwise there really shouldn't be anyone left after all those bombs.

EDIT: The Pre-War world being a lovely place to live in, even if you're nothing more than a soldier or a lawyer. Awful.
 
Didn't the Kid in a Fridge quest completely retconned how apparently ghouls don't need to eat or drink, completely defeating the point of taking the water chip from Necropolis in the first game? How the ghouls needed the water chip in order to have water to drink?

If this is true, it just shows how Bethesda doesn't get this series and never will.
 
Favorite? I guess cats. Honestly, that one seemed mostly harmless compared to the lot.

Least? Everything else in F4 like how the pre-War world was fine and dandy, ghoul physiology, Jet being pre-War (which makes JE Sawyer's statement that they are supposed to be post-War products all the more sweeter) etc.

Ben Soto said:
See, they actually didn't retcon Enclave armor... Sort of. The game explicitly states the armor is post-War. The only time I can think of where it's even implied that its pre-War is in Nuka-World, which can be summed up as "gameplay and story segregation."
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Except the position that wikis now go for with regard to Enclave PA is either said PAs existed before the War (and their actual history) or the pre-War Enclave just happened to have the perfect PA design ready the whole time and only took up to F2's era to actually mass-produce them. Even the wikis have no idea what to make of that stupid retcon.
 
I guess I'll agree with cats. It's not that big of a deal anyway.

Almost anything else is just very stupid retcons. The worst part for me is that the series didn't even need retcons, especially that much of them. It seems that they mostly were done for shits and giggles or to shove any mindless shit in the game. Oh, right "writers and designers can have some fun in the worlds they build" as Pete Hines once said.
 
CerberusGate said:
Favorite? I guess cats. Honestly, that one seemed mostly harmless compared to the lot.

Least? Everything else in F4 like how the pre-War world was fine and dandy, ghoul physiology, Jet being pre-War (which makes JE Sawyer's statement that they are supposed to be post-War products all the more sweeter) etc.


Except the position that wikis now go for with regard to Enclave PA is either said PAs existed before the War (and their actual history) or the pre-War Enclave just happened to have the perfect PA design ready the whole time and only took up to F2's era to actually mass-produce them. Even the wikis have no idea what to make of that stupid retcon.
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From the loading screen:

"The X-01 series of Power Armor was specially engineered and employed by remnants of the U.S. military after the Great War, and offers increased protection over the older, pre-war models."

I don't see where the confusion is here. And this is from Fallout 4, so...
 
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