A new-found appreciation for Fallout 3

I avoided the main quest in Fallout 4. That game was, and probably still is unplayable without mods... but there are some very good mods that completely overhaul the balance of the game and make it a decent shooter/looter with character progression. My Fallout 4 run was heavily modded. Every aspect of the game - changed. There was even bullet physics and with a lot of drugs you could strafe out of minigun spray from a certain distance. Seeing the bullets in V.A.T.S. was awesome.

What bugs me to this day is that when ran out of things to do I did the main quest... and it bugged. The game literally soft-locked itself and wouldn't complete a quest in the Institute after being out for years. And what was even more bizarre was the fact that the F4 community on Steam did not help when I posted for help. I got a few snarky remarks instead... I had to complete the quest via a console command in the end.

 

I just thought that was the way to play it honestly. Do people seriously make a bee-line for every quest? Why even play an open world game then, and specifically one that's about exploration...

Hubs can be good and fast travel is inferior to contextual travel options, but Megaton was mostly just okay and merely pointing to a spot on the map and watching a marker track across it a la Fo and Fo2 isn't much better respectively.

I lean towards NV, but it's not totally ideal. When you get somewhere developed for a quest then NV shines, and certainly outdoes Fo3, but it largely lacks open exploration. Almost everything is tied to something. Quest locations are freaking everywhere. You have routes thrown at you left, right, and center. And when it comes to places you can just find and freely wander through, they tend to be less developed. The easiest fix I can think of is to use procedural generation to create spaces in between all the handcrafted wonderment, and throw in some contextual travel so that people have options.

 

Fallout 1 and 2 aren't about politics tho

Fallout doesn't have any large scale politics and in Fallout 2 there's like one or two sidequests about new reno/vault city/ncr, hardly political simulator.

It seems like in your rants you kinda just make up stuff that isn't there in Fallout 1 and 2.

It was Morrowind in actuality. It's an adventure game with a few whistles and bells that's it. Not an RPG

 

Politics is a broad subject. It isn't just governments, i.e office politics. Any faction that has leadership has politics, including tribals. Any conflict between groups that involves diplomacy is political, even if the dialogue is crude.

 

About «fast-travel» (i hate that word), i think it is the bane of continuous gameworld. I expand more on it there.

About Megaton, there is ton of other issues, and it would take too long to list them, but the game is quickly spoiled when you get to the biggest city as soon as you start the game. It will only lead to disapointments on disapointments when you reach other settlements. It might be a bit formulatic, but by placing the biggest cities at 75% of your most expected progression, the rpg usually manage to make that location more impressive, as you get an actual feeling on how those cities actually stand out compared of what is around.

About going off-path, i had some fun protecting the caravans after the main quest. Maybe the most fun in the whole game, but that thing was hindered by how the game managed the caravans. Those idiots just wander around and get stuck somewhere. They never actually «reach» a city. They just spawn near a city when scheduled to, then leave it, but if you follow them, you will never reach another city. (plus other annoying bugs)

 

Politics is an extremely broad term and it's not just about goverment politics. It can be literally about two groups of people with different views on how things can be done, which happens quite a lot in Fallout 1 and 2. And hardly happens in Fallout 3.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics To make it easier for you. Actually do your research first before coming off as an ignorant. Which you do a lot.

The main point of the series for the first two games and New Vegas is to explore ethics and politics of the factions in the wasteland. The Bethesda Fallout games are about exploring destroyed places to just shoot at enemies and collect junk. And when it tries to do something that is actually related to the main point of the series, it's most of the time clear cut good guys and bad guys. There are no nuances or anything that can make even the more brutal factions seem they have an actual logical motivation.

Or you have absolutely no idea what you are talking about and you just make baseless claims. Which is about 90% of what you post here honestly.

 

dude, no need to be an asshole
also, the very first sentence from that article says "Politics is a set of activities associated with the governance of a country or an area"

 

Just a piece of trivia:

Did you know that Obsidian didn't use Bethesda's dialogue system? Obsidian has their own in-house dialogue system made by themselves for their games, and they altered the developer's kit that Bethesda gave them (to make FNV) to be able to use that dialogue system?

 

Fallout: Tactic is also doing that to some extend. Even if they weren't the original developpers and had a very rushed schedule, they still did it better than the current IP owners.

 

Fallout 3 has Mothershit Zeta, the most idiotic canon DLC for a modern Fallout game ever. It isn't passed off as The Lone Wanderer dreaming about it (oh god I'd wish.. I would of gave less of a fuck about it then), it actually happens. You get PICKED UP BY ALIENS, and the whole DLC happens in AN ALIEN SHIP where a LITTLE GIRL helps you gather several survivors, ONE OF WHICH IS A LITERAL JAPANESE FUCKING SAMURAI and the final battle is a literal fight between YOUR SHIP and another ALIEN SHIP using DEATH RAYS on each other. Let's not forget the audio holotapes where the aliens literally ABDUCT A COW and it keeps mooing as it gets dissected.

Oh and the worst thing of all? The holotape that implies the aliens made the nukes go off. That dreadful fucking holotape. I don't care if Bethesda cut it, it's still there in the game files and it SHOWS Bethesda's DUMB implications. And maybe it's not cut, maybe it's a bug. We've talked about it in my post about Mothershit Zeta and we talked about how this holotape conflicted with another. There were still subtitles but no audio, I believe. That's all you need to know.
You can see my Mothershit Zeta post here: http://www.nma-fallout.com/threads/...ter-eggs-bethesda-and-mothershit-zeta.216699/

And I'm sorry for all the caps and f-bombs, I don't want to be mean or insult you, but I have to EMPHASIZE for you, because you truly don't know how DUMB Fallout 3 is compared to Fallout 2.

And before you complain that you don't have to do the DLC at all in-game. Well, guess what, it is implied that the Lone Wanderer at some point did go through with it. It's canon, you can't avoid that. Sure, maybe the talking deathclaws and 70s thing are also canon, like they exist, but I don't think you, as The Chosen One, would waste your village's time on dealing with weirdos, he isn't forcefully abducted by them and he has to escape or whatever.

Fallout 2 sure is dumb and goofy now, huh?

 

Don't forget the little bit about this little girl being a 200+ years old little girl. She's pre-war and she's still a little girl.

 

Maybe because there's nothing funny about Mothership Zeta?

Nevermind me, I'm just throwing kindle to the fire...

 

Nothing's stopping me, but I can't for the hell of me disregard Mothershit Zeta as comic relief. What's so comical about a bullet-sponge-filled corridor shooter DLC in a RPG GAME (BY THE WAY) with your typical aliens, and not only that it's canon, but it implies aliens set off the nukes, which completely DESTROYS the whole point of Fallout, which is the fact that every SINGLE CONFLICT is man-made and how it's up to humanity to solve its issues. Throwing this third-party species into the mix, especially for CAUSING THE MAIN CONFLICT IN THE ENTIRE FRANCHISE (!!!!!!!!!!! INSTANT RED SIGN !!!!!!!!!!!) is NOTHING to laugh about.
That's not comic relief. That's an insult to the entire lore of the game, the whole point of the game and the fans of the series. It's too far, even for Fallout.

Another rant, I don't care if you are gonna declare me as an angry prick but honestly Fallout 3 just grinds my gears really hard, and it won't ever stop doing so. Just ignore the caps and swear words and actually take my opinion for granted and argue about it. The way I express myself IS the way I express myself and I could care less about how you think I should express my opinion. I might be a bit emotional but I don't let that over take me, I still get to the point and that's all that matters. I'm me and you're you. Okay?

 

I wish it were that simple. oh god I'd wish. But it's still canon and the aliens still bombed everything and even if I don't play it, I'll still just go sad whenever I see Fallout 3 boot up.

 

Mfw all I have to do is ignore Bethesda's efforts and I still have a more or less solid trilogy of games to worship.

 

Interesting. Where did you find this tidbit?

 

I think (I'm short on time at the moment so I will have to check it out later) it was from this interview with Feargus Urquhart, where he mentions something like them 'bolting on' their own tech to the game engine for New Vegas.

I also remember reading that in writing somewhere, but I don't have the time to keep looking for it at the moment.

Here is an interview were Tim Cain and Leonard Boyarsky talk a tiny bit about Obsidian's dialogue writing tool: