After two centuries...

A TAD longer than 20 years, since your character is 19 upon leaving Vault 101, and James had been working on a way to clean the water of the wasteland for several years before your character's birth added the final straw to break the camel's back. But longer than 25-30 years would be seriously pushing the boundaries of believability. Both in terms of story and in terms of setting. The former for the reasons I just listed, and the latter for all the reasons expressed in the totality of this discussion.
 
Walpknut said:
Nah it would still need LOTS of rework on plot and writting in general.
Click to expand...

Just drop the Brotherhood and the Enclave, and you could have Fallout 3 be set like 20-50 years after the war with relatively few problems. You can still have the good guy faction and the bad guy faction, you just can't call them "the Brotherhood of Steel" and "the Enclave" (honestly, the game would have been better off if they were east coast native factions with unique identities even set 200 years after the war.)

Wasn't Fallout 3 originally planned as a prequel and then moved forward when they realized "we can't have the Brotherhood otherwise" anyway? This was a bad decision all around.
 
PossibleCabbage said:
Walpknut said:
Nah it would still need LOTS of rework on plot and writting in general.
Click to expand...

Just drop the Brotherhood and the Enclave, and you could have Fallout 3 be set like 20-50 years after the war with relatively few problems. You can still have the good guy faction and the bad guy faction, you just can't call them "the Brotherhood of Steel" and "the Enclave" (honestly, the game would have been better off if they were east coast native factions with unique identities even set 200 years after the war.)

Wasn't Fallout 3 originally planned as a prequel and then moved forward when they realized "we can't have the Brotherhood otherwise" anyway? This was a bad decision all around.
Click to expand...

That would make it a bit more sensible... but still Fallout 3 is a failure we cannot repair.
 
Like I suggested a long time ago, in another thread, you could have Reavers and Regulators (basically) and it would function the same way only it would be MUCH more compelling.

Like the Regulators AND the Enclave, the bad guys would be some kind of collective that was protected from the nuclear devastation, and emerge with a dictatorial and murderous compulsion to control everything they see. In the Regulators' case it was just a town, but why not combine that sort of origin with that of the BOS, nix the whole isolationist identity, and make them prone to violent expansion, and you'd still have the same baddies to go up against, only their core identity would be drastically different. In the other extreme, like with the Reavers, you have a technologically-obsessed faction that can be a bit violent at times but is otherwise just leaving itself out of other people's business, not too terribly dissimilar to the silly depiction of the East Coast Brotherhood. You could give them the same schism backstory where a group wanted to protect the wastelanders and another group wanted to continue their exclusivity practices, and it would AGAIN be the same faction in form and function, only the identity would be completely different. Neither group needs 200 years to be set up. The original Brotherhood HAD such a divide, and it happened a mere couple years after its establishment back in 2077 (and had the deserters not be slaughtered by the West Tek security systems, they might have become something). So it's not inconceivable for a group to arise with some kind of Pre-War-tech-obsession background to have its own little divide a few years after the Great War, weakening its forces overall by the time it's encountered in the game, and essentially creating the exact same faction as encountered in FO3.

But no, we gotta go with iconic factions, retcon the shit out of them so we can explain what West Coast natives are doing on the East Coast in a world where mass travel is just not (yet) possible, when there CANNOT be any conceivable reason to want to undergo such absurd exoduses, but solely justify it because, "They're cool, and honestly, we can't think of anything better, so we're doing it."
 
SnapSlav said:
Like I suggested a long time ago, in another thread, you could have Reavers and Regulators (basically) and it would function the same way only it would be MUCH more compelling.

Like the Regulators AND the Enclave, the bad guys would be some kind of collective that was protected from the nuclear devastation, and emerge with a dictatorial and murderous compulsion to control everything they see. In the Regulators' case it was just a town, but why not combine that sort of origin with that of the BOS, nix the whole isolationist identity, and make them prone to violent expansion, and you'd still have the same baddies to go up against, only their core identity would be drastically different. In the other extreme, like with the Reavers, you have a technologically-obsessed faction that can be a bit violent at times but is otherwise just leaving itself out of other people's business, not too terribly dissimilar to the silly depiction of the East Coast Brotherhood. You could give them the same schism backstory where a group wanted to protect the wastelanders and another group wanted to continue their exclusivity practices, and it would AGAIN be the same faction in form and function, only the identity would be completely different. Neither group needs 200 years to be set up. The original Brotherhood HAD such a divide, and it happened a mere couple years after its establishment back in 2077 (and had the deserters not be slaughtered by the West Tek security systems, they might have become something). So it's not inconceivable for a group to arise with some kind of Pre-War-tech-obsession background to have its own little divide a few years after the Great War, weakening its forces overall by the time it's encountered in the game, and essentially creating the exact same faction as encountered in FO3.

But no, we gotta go with iconic factions, retcon the shit out of them so we can explain what West Coast natives are doing on the East Coast in a world where mass travel is just not (yet) possible, when there CANNOT be any conceivable reason to want to undergo such absurd exoduses, but solely justify it because, "They're cool, and honestly, we can't think of anything better, so we're doing it."
Click to expand...

Fabulous, this forum software doesn't recognise middle click to open in new tab, and I've just lost a huge reply because it loaded THIS tab instead of a new one. Fuck it, not typing it all up again. Suffice to say, this is more or less what I'm doing with my reconstruction series, setting my own version 20-40 years postwar with a new faction. The faction would have its own problems with hard-liners and greedy idiots screwing with the power balance, and the player would've had the opportunity to influence the outcomes of various things.

I depress myself regularly thinking what could've been, compared to what we actually got heh.
 
Dr Fallout said:
Why not get rid of the whole one-side good, other side bad thing all together?
Click to expand...
Because stealing from source material and making some kind of hodgepodge bad guys that are based on Fallout staples (The Regulators and the Enclave) but not BE either of those things... is actually POSSIBLE with Bethesda at the helm. But removing a black-and-white good and evil story is NOT possible with Bethesda at the helm. Mark my words, when FO4 comes out, we'll see another painfully simplistic and childish approach to "morality" without any real compelling choices, nor tough consequences. There will BE choices, but they'll amount to little more than "do I wanna do this, or that?" Ooooooh, compelling!

Besides, if someone were to make a story overhaul mod, they wouldn't have to do THAT much if they were to replace those two main factions as I had described. They would have a TON of work on their hands, however, if they tried to make the story... y'know... interesting.

Radiosity said:
Fabulous, this forum software doesn't recognise middle click to open in new tab
Click to expand...
Dunno what you mean. I open new tabs with middle click all the time. I even open up "Reply with quote" in middle tabs so I can copy and paste quote selections from different tabs back into the main tab I'm replying to, without much fuss. Might just be your software?

Radiosity said:
I depress myself regularly thinking what could've been, compared to what we actually got heh.
Click to expand...
Yeah, that's pretty much just what the status quo amounts to. We can't control the past, but we can certainly see how much BETTER it would have been, had we anything to say on the matter. It's the Cassandra curse... something I'm intimately familiar with.
 
Dr Fallout said:
Why not get rid of the whole one-side good, other side bad thing all together?
Click to expand...

I think Bethesda had in their heads when making Fallout 3 that Karma was really important. They bothered to record all those different radio sounders for a good/evil/neutral PC and made something like 12 different achievements/trophies about karma. So with this in mind it makes sense that they would want to have the "good faction" and the "evil faction." I mean, in 2015 we realize this sort of black/white morality is pretty silly in games, but way back in the hoary days of 2007 binary morality systems were something that the games industry was really in love with. I mean, Fable 2 wasn't even out yet when Fallout 3 was in development, and no game series underlines how asinine binary morality systems in games can be more than Fable ("do you want to rescue the sad and hungry orphans, or torture them to death as a sacrifice to dark powers"?)

So I think "the Brotherhood is all good" and "the Enclave is all evil" are pretty much just artifacts of the time in which Fallout 3 was made.
 
PossibleCabbage said:
Dr Fallout said:
Why not get rid of the whole one-side good, other side bad thing all together?
Click to expand...

I think Bethesda had in their heads when making Fallout 3 that Karma was really important. They bothered to record all those different radio sounders for a good/evil/neutral PC and made something like 12 different achievements/trophies about karma. So with this in mind it makes sense that they would want to have the "good faction" and the "evil faction." I mean, in 2015 we realize this sort of black/white morality is pretty silly in games, but way back in the hoary days of 2007 binary morality systems were something that the games industry was really in love with. I mean, Fable 2 wasn't even out yet when Fallout 3 was in development, and no game series underlines how asinine binary morality systems in games can be more than Fable ("do you want to rescue the sad and hungry orphans, or torture them to death as a sacrifice to dark powers"?)

So I think "the Brotherhood is all good" and "the Enclave is all evil" are pretty much just artifacts of the time in which Fallout 3 was made.
Click to expand...

At the very least make them interesting... but no...
 
SnapSlav said:
Dr Fallout said:
Why not get rid of the whole one-side good, other side bad thing all together?
Click to expand...
Because stealing from source material and making some kind of hodgepodge bad guys that are based on Fallout staples (The Regulators and the Enclave) but not BE either of those things... is actually POSSIBLE with Bethesda at the helm. But removing a black-and-white good and evil story is NOT possible with Bethesda at the helm. Mark my words, when FO4 comes out, we'll see another painfully simplistic and childish approach to "morality" without any real compelling choices, nor tough consequences. There will BE choices, but they'll amount to little more than "do I wanna do this, or that?" Ooooooh, compelling!

Besides, if someone were to make a story overhaul mod, they wouldn't have to do THAT much if they were to replace those two main factions as I had described. They would have a TON of work on their hands, however, if they tried to make the story... y'know... interesting.

Radiosity said:
Fabulous, this forum software doesn't recognise middle click to open in new tab
Click to expand...
Dunno what you mean. I open new tabs with middle click all the time. I even open up "Reply with quote" in middle tabs so I can copy and paste quote selections from different tabs back into the main tab I'm replying to, without much fuss. Might just be your software?

Radiosity said:
I depress myself regularly thinking what could've been, compared to what we actually got heh.
Click to expand...
Yeah, that's pretty much just what the status quo amounts to. We can't control the past, but we can certainly see how much BETTER it would have been, had we anything to say on the matter. It's the Cassandra curse... something I'm intimately familiar with.
Click to expand...

Hmm, just checked in Firefox and it works ok there, I've noticed this issue a fair amount on certain sites/types of link. As such, it's clearly an Opera problem *goes off to submit bug report*

And yeah, I'm a whore for world building (I'm a writer so kind of a given) so it's fun seeing what could've been and sharing whatever I come up with. I'll likely look at Skyrim once I'm done with Fallout 3. Still, while Fallout 3's world is silly and depressing, it did at least lead to getting New Vegas, my favourite game ever, so there's that I guess.
 
PossibleCabbage said:
no game series underlines how asinine binary morality systems in games can be more than Fable ("do you want to rescue the sad and hungry orphans, or torture them to death as a sacrifice to dark powers"?)
Click to expand...
At least Overlord had fun with it. They liked to joke that you could choose between "evil" and "diabolically evil", but it was really a black and white scenario all over again. Give the stolen food back to the starving town, or keep it for yourself to spite them. But they certainly had their sense of humor with their "take" on morality.
 
Delbert said:
I am highly perplexed as to how old 200-year-old stores still have pre-war food on the shelves after having been well-scavenged and well-travelled for two centuries, and as to how one eats 200-year-old food. It would be as if one of us were to eat some food from 1815.

How is there terminals, fully-functioning, fully-powered, just sitting within buildings? They should be broken or taken by now. How are they powered?
Click to expand...
Fallout tech uses vacuum tubes instead of microchips. EMP would not be an issue so electronics would be fine in that sense. Problem is that vacuum tubes will not last 200 years being powered on. They are also glass so rough handling can kill them quickly. A vacuum tube PipBoy would not likely survive the first time its wearer tripped and fell smashing all the tubes. I guess they still have power because in the fallout universe, everything is nuclear powered. They must have their own little RTG's in them like the soviets did with lighthouses in remote locations with no access to grid power.
 
I always assumed with the weird mix-up of technology they could make insanely powerful preservatives in the food industry (which is actually very unhealthy in the long term)
 
Now I'm going to be defending Beth for once because It's simply a matter of how they built their world. They invested heavily into the tropes of the fifties and therefore the whole "science world of tomorrow!" deal. So when food is packaged with so many preservatives it's still edible two centuries later, I don't find anything really inconsistent with the internal logic of the game. Nor when purely mechanical, overly-bulky items are built like tanks and still function after all that time because the zeitgeist of the times emphasized durability and toughness over aesthetic and practical. So once again these things still working down the line is no real suprise and I don't consider it an issue.

What is an issue is how they are still lying around waiting to be scavenged.​ Hell no. The only truly scavengable places in the originals were hidden locations, heavily guarded by terrifying creatures. Not the Super Duper Mart right down the fucking street.
 
That's the problem. How can settlements survive on small food sources that may or may not be there! And for TWO hundred years no less!
 
honestly you can handwave it by saying future. it was 2077 after all. culture didn't change, but technology did. their food preservatives and building materials could survive 200 years of wasteland exposure.
 
Maybe Humans could survive on no food for weeks on end?

Maybe Humans could be lazy fucks who didn't give a damn?

Maybe Humans could ignore packets of 200 hundred year food, so some random Vault dweller could find them?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top