There being more than one species of Super Mutant is stupid

[Bethesdaretconman]

Your suspension of disbelief has to be godly if you are alright with there being Super Mutants completely distinct from the Master. Vault 87 mutants, the institutes mutants, etc. If Bethesda wanted to bring Super Mutants back they should have had surviving members of the unity continue the Masters work.

EDIT: Wow, I guess I was tired when I wrote this, I forgot to give a good reason. My reasoning is that it just seems highly unlikely that people would get nearly the exact same result of creating Super Mutants like the Master did, I can believe others being able to create something like the charger from Left 4 Dead 2, but not something that has the intelligence to pick up a gun and shoot it. It also makes the Master look cheap and unoriginal seeing as there are other people entirely distinct from him making them.

 

[Deleted member 98605]

The 'canon' reason is that FEV wasn't all located at The Glow in San Diego. That was their excuse for Vault 87.

They didn't even give a reason or backstory for WV or The Commonwealth, iirc. Just that they're there/

We all know the real reason: Mutants are the 'orcs' of Fallout, the buff green things to fight. And we all hate it.

 

[Norzan]

Now West Tek apparently had the FEV and dumped it into a river so that Fallout 76 could have Super Mutants for the player to shoot at. The reasons for them to be in the new Fallout game are more and more contrived each time.

 

[Gizmojunk]

Of course it's stupid. It's always stupid [the results] when someone is more interested in applying iconic assets to sell something unrelated to them, than they are with presenting those assets in a way that is fitting and appropriate based on the established fiction.

FO3 was effectively TES re-skinned with recycled IP for brand name value alone. They paid for it [all] so they were going to shove it all in somewhere. Most of the major factions should have been footnotes in the history, and the studio having created new factions, and new locations; using the old assets as occasional salt—not the main course.

 

[HydroFlame]

So... there's FEV just swimming around in a river? Gotcha. Makes sense, Bethesda.

I would be somewhat okay with there being super mutants on the east coast as long as there was better lore about how they got there and why they are there, instead of, "This corporation and that corporation are evil so they decided to experiment with FEV!" In the Beth games we are supposed to believe they just... appeared. It's been a long time since I played FO3, but weren't the 87 mutants supposed to be the result of the military experimenting on how to create super soldiers? Okay... but is it ever explained how the virus got on the east coast? Did someone from the Enclave bring it back? Did someone go fetch it from the west? Did the military just have vats of the stuff sitting around?

Probably looking too much into it, ha ha.

 

[KingArthur]

I’m just gonna say that I agree. But then again, what did we expect? Beth wanted “scary mutant enemies” without having to work. Problem is, they took them from being intelligent to actually retarded. And that’s the real crime imo.

In F1, dumb Mutants were caused by a bad reaction to FEV. They were a rarity. The average mutant, aside from being sterile, was better than a human in EVERY WAY, including mentally. That’s why they were FUCKING SCARY. Beth threw that out the window and made them Hulks with guns. I’m just quaking in my boots. Oh no.

Fucking Bethesda, man.

 

[Alphons]

I wouldn't care that much about Supermutants from Vault 87 if they didn't waste so interesting concept.
How would Supermutants and humans interact without Master and Unity?

Imagine a Vault, around 2000 dwellers. FEV experiments killed many of them, leaving around 1000 intelligent Supermutants. They're superior to normal humans and ghouls in almost every way. It makes them dominant in many ways. They're better scavengers, as they can scavenge in places dangerous to humans (radiation or mutants). They're powerful fighters- every caravan would fight to hire them. Every raider gang with couple of Supermutants would have control over other raider gangs without them.



I also find it laughable that scientists from Vault 87 and Institute needed years and many test subjects to finally create Supermutants and then FO76 and states that they just had to dump FEV in river. Institute really has some brain- dead scientists.

 

[KingArthur]

and then FO76 and states that they just had to dump FEV in river. Institute really has some brain- dead scientists.

One day Institute Scientist #A-3457, let’s call him Jerry, accidentally knocked over the can of FEV. Playing it off like he did it purposefully, the other scientists lobbied for him to get promoted to management for his revolutionary experiment. Little did they know that Jerry was a sadistic fuck; he ordered coursers and synths to kill and replace innocent people, and invented the “it’s too complicated for you to understand” line that Father gives the Sole Survivor.
Jerry was later killed when his experimental sex courser beat him to death with his own penis. His last words were: “harder, bitch”. He was the smartest man the Institute ever had in charge.

For reference:

 

[naossano]

Except the next game to have 5 new species of super-mutants at the same time, because reasons..

 

[mannawyadden]

So an account with a name designed to take jabs at Bethesda makes a thread designed to take jabs at Bethesda and people eagerly reply to take jabs at Bethesda.

Then Mannawyadden shows up foolishly saying something on the topic of multiple mutant species that will inevitably be misinterpreted as defending Bethesda.

People will quote his post and disagree. He will reply trying to clarify and explain his viewpoint better, but eventually he realizes that discussing Super Mutant species is not the purpose or topic of the thread.

 

[Norzan]

Not to bash Bethesda itself, but their lack of creativity and shameless reusing of things from the previous games.

 

[Deleted member 98605]

But that's already happened. Masters, overlords, and Behemoths were the new 'variants', and apparently they work along Warhammer 40k ork lines where they keep getting bigger if you don't kill them. Somehow.

Just realized how fucked it is to have Super Mutant Masters as an enemy type. The Master weeps.

 

[KingArthur]

So an account with a name designed to take jabs at Bethesda makes a thread designed to take jabs at Bethesda and people eagerly reply to take jabs at Bethesda.

Then Mannawyadden shows up foolishly saying something on the topic of multiple mutant species that will inevitably be misinterpreted as defending Bethesda.

People will quote his post and disagree. He will reply trying to clarify and explain his viewpoint better, but eventually he realizes that discussing Super Mutant species is not the purpose or topic of the thread.

See kid? Now you’re getting the gist of it. Ah, seems like just yesterday you were a wide-eyed, naive optimist. Now you’re a cynical fucking asshole like the rest of us. Brings a proud tear to my eye, it does.

 

[Norzan]

What is it there to even discuss? They took what the Master believed to be the next step of human evolution and turned them into mindless ogres that only exist for you to shoot at. This decision was so horrendous that Obsidian mocked it in New Vegas.

This decision didn't made them go in a new direction, all they did was amplify one that already existed before, which was dumb Super Mutants. Besides not doing anything new with them, it made them boring.

 

[mannawyadden]

See kid? Now you’re getting the gist of it. Ah, seems like just yesterday you were a wide-eyed, naive optimist. Now you’re a cynical fucking asshole like the rest of us. Brings a proud tear to my eye, it does.

But I was already a cynical asshole in real life. I didn't want to become one on a video game forum. The Fallout universe was my happy place. I want to go back...tell me, how do I go back?....No...I can feel it...it's...it's happening again...I can't...stop myself...no...NO!!! It's coming---

Not to bash Bethesda itself, but their lack of creativity and shameless reusing of things from the previous games.

Like Fallout 2 did when it included Vaults, the West Coast setting, the Brotherhood of Steel, Khans, Harold, Deathclaws, Ghouls, and Super Mutants? Or when it recycled the plot of "your people are dying, go out into the wasteland and find some pre-war tech to save them"? The player character and their villagers were even direct descendants of the ones from the first game. Talk about lazy, right?

 

[Norzan]

Like Fallout 2 did when it included Vaults, the West Coast setting, the Brotherhood of Steel, Khans, Harold, Deathclaws, Ghouls, and Super Mutants? Or when it recycled the plot of "your people are dying, go out into the wasteland and find some pre-war tech to save them"? The player character and their villagers were even direct descendants of the ones from the first game. Talk about lazy, right?

You are completely forgetting that Fallout 2 happens in the West Coast. If those things didn't exist, people would ask where they went. What a terrible, awful argument you just came up with.

Super Mutants are shoved in the East Coast, even though there's plenty of evidence supporting that they shouldn't be there. They were made in the West Coast by the Master. Harold was shoved in the East Coast for no reason.

It's also the second game, made in a short amount of time, because the dev team had the whip cracked on them to make a competitor to Baldur's Gate in a small amount of time. Fallout 3 is the third game, made in four years. They had all the time in the world to come up with new shit, but instead recycled even more than Fallout 2.

They didn't retcon the Brotherhood of Steel into being altruistic wasteland saviors.

Except they did. The BoS members that have this mentality came from the West expedition. Meaning they came from a place where BoS still teaches their ways of hogging all technology and not care about wastelanders.

They retconned where the FEV came from and came up with an idiotic strain because they wanted a "brute" type enemy.

 

[mannawyadden]

I constructed a terrible argument? Good, because it was a satire of yours. I was being facetious to show how nonsensical it is to bash a game for reusing pre-existing elements from its own game universe. You saying that it's OK when Fallout 2 does it but that it's shameless recycling when Fallout 3 does it shows how clouded by bias you are.

I see that Van Buren was also going to take place in the southwest. Which sounds better to you:

1. Every Fallout game takes place the West or Southwest Coast of the United States so that they can keep reusing the same elements

2. Fallout games take place in different areas, and they make up reasons like satellite transmissions, crashed airships, and eastern migrations to keep reusing the same elements

----

The East Coast Brotherhood is not a retcon. In Fallout 3, the Brotherhood Outcasts exist because Lyons has betrayed the Brotherhood's original mission. The game states that the West Coast Elders would put Lyons in front of a firing squad for his treasonous actions if he ever dared to return.

 

[Deleted member 98605]

I constructed a terrible argument? Good, because it was a satire of yours. I was being facetious to show how nonsensical it is to bash a game for reusing pre-existing elements from its own game universe. You saying that it's OK when Fallout 2 does it but that it's shameless recycling when Fallout 3 does it shows how clouded by bias you are.

The East Coast Brotherhood is not a retcon. In Fallout 3, the Brotherhood Outcasts exist because Lyons has betrayed the Brotherhood's original mission. The game states that the West Coast Elders would put Lyons in front of a firing squad for his treasonous actions if he ever dared to return.

It's warping, not reusing, those game elements. Especially when the canon was that FEV was put in The Glow. ALL OF IT. Then the Master moved it around, and then the Enclave in the SEQUEL to the first game. There's a continuity there that isn't in 3.

And it doesn't matter what the game *says* when it does *show* it. What f3 showed was that Lyons was right, the Outcasts are not a factor and 'wrong', and that the BOS can support this expedition while in a fucking war with the NCR.

3 comes along and makes dumb mutants in DC because somehow vault tec got their hands on FEV, gives them no real fleshing out, and just makes them the orcs to shoot. Bland, boring, and stupid. They don't even explain it for 4, they're just there by 2180.

Fallout doesn't need SM in every game. I would go further and say it doesn't need the BoS, the Enclave, the NCR, or even vaults and even America. Fallout is about 'what do we do now? What new kingdoms of ashes do we make after we blew it all to hell'?

 

[mannawyadden]

Yes, it doesn't need them, but the people running the show see them as necessary iconic elements of the series. They always have. Look at Fallout Tactics or Van Buren. That's the reality of the situation.

There could be a Fallout game that takes place in Russia and it would still somehow have ghouls, super mutants and/or power armor in some capacity. Accept it.

 

[Norzan]

I constructed a terrible argument? Good, because it was a satire of yours. I was being facetious to show how nonsensical it is to bash a game for reusing pre-existing elements from its own game universe. You saying that it's OK when Fallout 2 does it but that it's shameless recycling when Fallout 3 does it shows how clouded by bias you are.

Gotta love how you purposely ignore what i said (which you do a lot, to make your arguments seem better than what they are) that Fallout 2 had way less development time than Fallout 3. I'm gonna put here in a nice, clean, easy to read paragraph. Please tell me what is worse.

Fallout 2 that had a very short development time and it was made to compete with Baldur's Gate. Obviously they had to reuse certain elements, but the reusage of elements also make sense here. It's the SAME general area. If they were gone, people would ask where they are.

Fallout 3 that had a four year development cycle, meaning they had all the time in the world to make Fallout 3, decided to shamelessly rehash even more than Fallout 2. They used CONTRIVANCES to put Super Mutants, Harold and others things from the previous games in the East Coast, even though a lot of these things originated from the West Coast.

You have to be completely delusional to not think Fallout 3 rehashed out of lazyness. And you and everybody can fucking piss off with that "bias" bullshit, always fucking warping every criticism of Bethesda Fallouts to the company itself. Stop using this, this is the laziest way to dismiss legit, well founded arguments. Seriously, this shit is starting to fucking piss me off.

If any other company did the same thing Bethesda did to Fallout, i would be criticizing them all the same. Nintendo, EA, Bioware, Activision, CD Projekt Red, any company would get scrutiny from me. Quit twisting everything towards the company itself.

The only thing i'm bias against is bad game design and forced nonsense. And the fact you are fine with them blatantly rehashing elements to this very day, shows the kind of fan you are. Instead of criticizing this, you become complacent and passive and decide to just accept it.