ivpiter said:
It...did...in some form. It neatly sewed up the story arc, which was really needed, but the design was NOWHERE near what they wanted for the game. It was good, but once they got the engine down, they were kinda forced to ship the game or not at all, and thusly weren't able to make it EPIC.
I would like to see a return of Sir-Tech, or at least if someone could find out WHAT the plans were for Wiz8, and could mod them in, that might be quite a boon.
*coughsourcecode!cough*
While I'm dreaming this route, maybe Bethesda might be so generous to Freeware another title or three from when they didn't suck. Daggerfall and maybe a Terminator game.
After all, some people managed to save Ultima 9 a bit by adding in better details, I believe. I think it was tailored more towards the storyline Garriott and others wanted.
And with the computer specs it was expected to load and run upon, while the world ran to UNHEARD of complexity. Sometime, check out the state editor in Ultima 7, either one. Check out the schedule and time-related switches. Then check out the map editors made by several fans. Then make your own dream castle off somewhere to stash your loot and giggle yourself sick.
What other fanbase has THAT much depth? With that much attention and care to a series, it just grows.
As much as Jeff Wilson's VooDoo memory system was LOATHED by a lot of people, it allowed for some brilliance to be given to an unsuspecting audience. It allowed for all of this complexity to work. The complexity and detail still survives today.
You know my opinion of RT vs TB. So for that many to be running that many complex activity schedules at the same time, and do it to a higher competency than Bethesda...
I'm fucking impressed.
Another RPG classic series driven into the ground. The 4-5 Merged World was brilliant - alot of creativity in that game and the most obnoxious optional dungeon since that insane cursed isle at the close of Pools of Darkness.
Good times.
Dude, they were in my opinion...BRAIN CANDY.
Then you have some people verbally masturbating over how wonderful Baldur's Gate is.
*sigh* Children.
I have a lot of respect for sound effect and music mixers in the industry. First, the pay is shit. Second, you get a LOT of creative freedom. It kind of balances out. Marc Schaefgen is often missed when people talk about Origin Systems, including on the OSI Wiki page (!), and he was an awesome addition to Origin's talent. It rather irks me that people like Romero still get their ass kissed while brilliant people like this fellow go relatively missed. I've been meaning to help fill out Mobygames for some time, every time I look at it, I see all the spaces and gaps where people need to have some info entered in. Like the movies, a lot of people go uncredited. In my experience, having a loyal fan come and toy with an interface and other parts of the design is far greater than having a chump intern. Most I know of couldn't QA their way out of a bag, yet are still hired with "Free Donuts".
As for the FEV, a simple saying proves right. Proof is in the pudding, or in this case, the game. What made it into the game stands. It is canon. It is the finished, released product that is widely distributed, therefore it is held to be the established material.
FEV doesn't even begin to explain the presence and locations of the ghouls in the game. Arguably, they could have been FEV infected and mutated "differently", but FEV prevents further DNA mutation. From any source, virus or radioactive particle bombardment.
Although I'd suggest that Harold was initially radiation damaged, became a really stunted mutant but got a higher thought capacity, as did another hybrid. Talius also fits Harold and Grey's "variety" of ghoul/mutant.
While Grey was a bit radiation-touched, this might have actually accelerated or allowed the assimilation of other critters. I'm willing to nod to a hybrid mutant, sort of a pre-ghoulified human that got dipped before the damage became too severe.
I believe the ready grafting of new creatures of a radiated and dipped subject might in fact explain Harold's Tree.
Damn the Fallout developers...as their research was in-depth and I've known them to be purposefully contradicting between each other on us, to make us come up with a lot of thoughts and conspiracies on our own. Hendee was good for this on the Fo2 boards.
Remember, even talking raccoons were part of the original design docs, and I had to "Roshambo" one of the idiots on my design team that said "Hey, that could have been cool!" However stupid the idea might have been initially, it also fit alongside a form of the canon. This canon is also established to note that FEV prevents radiation poisoning, as I believe a couple mutant sources might mention the "fleet of radioactive steam trucks". On that one, I am guessing simply because I can't pin down which mutant might have said it. I believe it might have been the Lieutenant.
I have further edited the initial post, search by "EDIT I" to find where it begins.
RKO, Howard Hughes, Orson Welles, the Illuminati, Kissinger, conspiracy, WTFITHINKMYHEADJUSTEXPLODED!!!
Careful of the harmful mind rays that are about to begin, they are awesome and thought-instilling. You may want to put on your tinfoil hat and share whatever 4too is smoking, because it's going to help. A little.
It expands a bit more into Fallout's dark ironies, namely through movie influences. This is where I pull out some obscure shit, because it is another aspect of Fallout that MY father could recognize as "somewhat RKO production style". Which is full of darkly amusing unintentional parallels that include RKO's rocky treatment by rich investors, namely another speed nut (like Herve is the car nut for Interplay/Titus/(Insert Soon-To-Be Fucked Company Name Here), and how quality names are treated.
The intro for Interplay was a fairly unique one, I'd say MADE for Fallout. Most companies go with a standard company logo and don't show that appreciation. It had a cigar-rocket, and seemed to hint at the "station calls" seen in the style of RKO's productions.
Another rich dark irony:
Check out this page for some VERY interesting background information about a MAJOR Hollywood related event of that time.
IMDB.com said:
IRONY! The nation's love for nukes kills the nation's own beloved star, or at least might have helped what was already going on. Hell, maybe the Duke could have spat out the tumer eventually and just choked on it before he could chunder it out. He might have been alive and staying rich by selling Duke Chunks on Ebay if it weren't for a lot of ironic things.
Invisible in this would have to be the "unnoticed people" - those whose deaths the country did not really care to note until it was frankly too late. It was like a careless kid playing with a gas can in the back yard and now holy shit the whole neighborhood is on fire!
There just went a few thousand Native Americans. While the Pentagon later still cares about the Duke, of course.
Reparations for the "unwillingly migrated people of African ancestry forced into degrading slavery" is one thing...but allowing casinos is the reparations for the remnants of the Glowohshit Tribe?
Mmmm, democracy at its finest. The unofficial motto of which is "Nobody's blame." Which is also a key feature with other such associated events that have a *little* to do with Fallout's background feeling. Check out some background on McCarthyism if it is unfamiliar, and also the Rosenberg couple. Their role was extremely minor and they were fried for it (several times in the case of Ethel, three to be precise, and she only apparently knew about her husband's role and had no active part), and it must be noted that in the grand sense of things, these people evened the sides and did cause many eventual conflicts that caused many seriously fugly skirmishes and wars all over the world that cost many soldier and innocent lives...
...but if it were not for that equalization of arms and nuclear power, the US was ONE step away from making anything Red wake up under a mushroom cloud in the sky. Just because they could, and Communism was evil. This is about the time Kissinger was sniffing around nukes, and I can only be thankful that The Other Side had them too. Otherwise, I doubt we'd be able to handle cancer as well as the Duke.
Speaking of cancer, the Duke, and Howard Hughes:
Now we have the Homeland of McCarthyism Security and the War on Terrah. Blacklists are being made, and happens all the time in the owned giant media outlets. Hmm, history does have a fondness for repeating itself because people are indeed too stupid to learn from the mistakes of previous decades. Since, y'know, they weren't there then and so they didn't happen, of course. Who is back? Kissinger! He's the actual Sith Emperor in this sad misplaced Fallout
OS (the console game, so don't think this really means these references should be used in Fallout) Star Wars parody, with many puppets leading up to his current duo, Lord Dick and Darth D'huh! This feeling of McCarthyism was also a bit felt in much of the fiction...and a distrust of scientists. For after all, radiation and The Bomb were BAD things, and scientists brought this upon us. The horrible mistakes of mankind brought back upon them was a recurring theme in much of the fiction of the period setting Fallout is taken from. Then the country went a bit pacifist, got a bit toasted out of their minds, and disconnected with reality. Along came the shiny lights of the 80's and a new, shiny, empty business and fake US was born, ready to believe anything as the country spends itself into debt fighting the same thing they promoted years previous. For political reasons, of course, as the tobacco barons were still demanding a part of America. They still do. What they have paid is chump change while America goes through the addiction chain fed to them from birth.
Caffeine is clearly the first. I've seen kids be given caffeine at a young age, and it calms them down. You know what that is? A chemical dependency they have come to know since before birth. I would easily bet that most of the mothers drank caffeine in some form on a daily basis when pregnant. Scarily enough, it does matter. I've know few Native Americans and people outside of the US to be "afflicted" with ADHD. It's simply caffeine dependency.
Nuka-cola. Who the HELL knows what is in it?
Then, to be cool, the cigarette companies get you after you're fully hooked into a chemical dependency cycle on caffeine. They don't even offer a decent product - they give you some additive-filled shit that addicts you to so many by-product chemicals, nicotine is the LEAST of your worries. That said, I enjoy a good wrapped cigar, and most of George Burns amusing wisdom.
"I can remember when the air was clean and sex was dirty."
The "smoke" of the Fallout region is a designed habit-forming drug, designed to make the person buying it poorer and addicted. This is a good parallel of the continued increase of additives by the tobacco companies through the decades, and a partial combined reference to crystal meth and crack. While Ronny Raygun and Wife were cracking down on the green stuff that allows people to eat (still a schedule 1, I think), Mayor "Cracklin'" Barry was enjoying life in D.C. a few miles away.
Now add in some Illuminati references and some ties between rich-ass Howard Hughes-like characters, the US government to nuke the world and be the only survivors with only the ones they WANT to survive dependent upon them, kind of the like commercial and government designs for vaults through the scare of The Bomb (the govt could preserve a fighting force and round up the scav survivors and use them as "preserved labor"), and you'd have another aspect of the design planned for Fallout, but only preserved in limited form. Remember, the Enclave WERE working with New Reno on several levels, IIRC. However shite the premise of New Reno fit into the setting, tying it into other locations was worked well, and into a larger background storyline. It was made well, but didn't quite fit into the post-apocalyptic premise, and is where most of the harsher canon sticklers tend to shake their heads at how campy it got. Fallout is more about dark ironies, the occasional groaner (like when you killed Kenny, naturally), and more sinister underlying details. Like Iguana-On-A-Stick, a staple of the wastelander's diet. ;D
Back to the setting and The Enclave. It was as the government had planned, establishing cooperative and yet invisible ties into the remaining populace, able to exploit them at will. Arroyo, for example, and The Enclave's activities elsewhere in the region.
Humans are so willing to prey upon each other.
Here is another good movie reference. Howard Hughes, despite his hunt in his own staff for Reds, made/edited/WTFed some decent movies, though was a bit...odd about it. It was also an RKO picture.
You may now take off your tinfoil hat. The harmful mind rays have ceased. Until next time...
Watch the skies!
