Am I in the minority when I say I'm not bothered by Super Mutants in Fallout 3?

Yeah definitely not worth ruining something that could have had one to numerous good sequels just for one good sequel and a bunch of alien ones that feel out of place.

 

Are Super Mutants in New Vegas somehow invalid because its not in a CRPG? That's nonsense. Yeah, its a completely different take on the franchise which makes sense why they're treading old ground and including their vision of the old stuff.

It's their take on those ideas and premises usings the iconography of the previous games.

And yeah, you bring a lot of valid critiques in your post. To me, I'd rather criticize Bethesda titles for the writing and the lack of political science, their obsession with the squalor of the aftermath of the bombs and not really interested in discussing the politics of the factions afterward. To me, that's worth complaining over, not the inclusion of jet and super mutants and whatnot.

 

No? He's not saying that. Super Mutants were probably going to remain a West Coast thing as they were manufactured by the Master and after his death they were free of mind control but doomed to extinction. It has little to do with the genre of the game.

 

"stripped out the [paramount] gameplay" "products that have neither the gameplay....of the original series"

 

Yes, he dislikes that the gameplay was radically different from the original games. That's not the reason Super Mutants being used in brand new territory on the other side of the nation is disappointing though. They went across the entire continent and found that 9/10 things there were the same as the West Coast. Why?

They have radscorpions, Super Mutants, deathclaws, Brotherhood of Steel, the Enclave, and so on. Ghouls were the only thing I'd expect to see there. Not everything besides the NCR.

 

OK well thats getting into the weeds when the purpose of this thread is specifically talking about super mutants.

I think there's interesting gameplay and narrative reasons to have super mutants. When you think radiation, mutants are go hand-in-hand with that in scifi pop fiction. And Like I said, it serves to introduce super mutants to this brand new audience, so I get that even though its super contrived. Especially as its the first 3-d Fallout game, first Fallout game by Bethesda. And Bethesda has introduced more unique creatures and enemies over time.

 

They should drop super mutants and other legacy creatures that shouldn't even be in the region and replace them with some of the ideas they use for the magazines. The vaulter fears the day of the roach when some roided up radroaches come to kick his teeth in.

 

They introduced radroaches if you ignore the fact that tactics had cockroaches and the difference really isn't much. Otherwise they added bloatflies which aren't that interesting and mirelurks. Mirelurks and mirelurk like things is about all they really added. Unless there's something in Fallout 4 I'm missing?

I guess they added some robots too like the Assaultron. Which I didn't find interesting.

76 did the most mutant wise which also just had to have super mutants. I'd rather them just start off fresh on the East Coast. Humans, ghouls, and new mutants. No deathclaws, no supermutants, no Brotherhood of Steel. Power armor faction? Sure. But not the BoS.

3 has far more problems than just super mutants though, so I get they're not bothering everyone especially at the forefront but the stuff really doesn't make sense to have. Super Mutants that were intelligent and could integrate into society and form their own were far more interesting than green orc enemies. So yeah it's a bit annoying to see them shoehorned in and then dumbed down into a common enemy. Maybe a few Mairposa mutants that trekked across the midwest to the east coast fleeing humans who would only ever shoot at them would have been interesting. But not hundreds of these shits running around just going "AUUUUURRRRRGH DIE HOOOMAN"

 

Fallout 76 kind of got lazy and just took local cryptids and xeroxed them into the game.

 

That's literally still more interesting than just slamming radscorpions into the East Coast because "tons of people bought scorpions as pets on the east coast" or whatever dumb shit

 

I would have preferred the ghouls to be rare as well; as a product of Vault 12's unique [I'd say Heavy Metal~esque] circumstance.

—That and their concern over being sterile; which is not a concern if every radiation exposure could cause a ghoul.

The mutants were intended to be a local anomaly of [the local anomaly FEV]; just in Southern California... where it was possible.

Yes they do, and they had a rather specific sci-fi/pop appearance (and danger) in the series; not simply as fodder hulks for an FPP frankenshooter.



The mutants were powerful, but infirm. In two centuries some could have wound up anywhere, including DC. But they should not have been native those the areas.

 

Would have been preferable but from the design documents of Van Buren, it really seems like this would not have been the case and they even mention that the ghoul faction had a breakthrough in research on how to reproduce or something of the sort. So even then, we'd be kinda shit outta luck on that front.

 

Yeah, I can agree with that. Super Mutants being included doesnt bother me, but god bless they're not written well. They're basically orcs as you described. I think thats what should be objected to, not their inclusion.

Theyve introduced gulpers, anglers, yaoo guai, mothmen, and a few others.

Ya, it'd have been cool for them to start from scratch but I get why they dont.

I am 100% on board with the objection to BoS. They have a huge hard on for that faction, and I haaaate it. Like, I said, I can forgive super mutants in the Capitol, but god bless, if you read how the BoS are in Appalachia, like they had to bend over BACKWARDS to make that work. You now have the BoS offering franchising opportunities through the radio.

To me, thats a huge issue since the BoS are a huge part of the story in the Bethesda titles. Like I could write you 20 pages on why 4 was deficient, and not bring super mutants once because theres way, way more pressing matters.

I get that, that is undisputed. I don't think changing that is all that bad.

 

But it's changing established facts; like for instance having Mr. Handy robots that are not new models, but —the original robots— looking nothing like they looked in the series; they could have easily had both, same as with the power T-51 and T-45 suits.
(Their Enclave armor was terrible; despite having images of the original.)

Imagine changing the Spartan Armor, the grunts and the Elites in Halo sequels to not just variation, but entirely different such that they could never have been the ones seen in the previous games—but presented as the originals.

The worst irony is that Bethesda's engine could have had the entire game depict what we saw in only the cutscenes and conversations of the existing series.

____________
The mutants were known to be local to the West Coast, and their audience would be none the wiser if they had simply introduced a new main threat instead of an implausible one. [This goes for the Enclave too IMO.]

 

But here's the thing, why? Why use stuff from the first two games when the actual audience you are promoting the game to is NOT fans of the first two games? Bethesda couldn't give two shits about those fans when they had built a big fanbase with Morrowind and Oblivion. So they could have really made up new shit and no one would care if they didn't used any of the things from the first two games. I very much doubt any of their fans would be upset about no BoS, Super Mutants or the Enclave when they don't even know what any of those things are.

The only explanation for the massive reusage of elements from the first two games is that is actually hard to come up with new stuff. So why come up with new stuff when you can just twist and mangle the internal consistency of the series to jam as much as possible into a setting that didn't had any of those things?

It's a lose-lose scenario anyway. They reuse stuff from the first two games? They are bastardized versions. They come up with new stuff? Stuff like The Institute is made and it's arguably the dumbest faction in the series.

 

Ice cold take:
The Legion are a much better antagonist group than the Master’s Army or the Enclave. The have more nuance and more well fleshed out characters even with everything that was cut and rushed. Legion is the best antagonist group the series has ever seen and likely ever will.

 

Because they like it? And if I granted you that proposition, why not introduce those concepts if the new fans are not going to care either? It's stuff they like, that they think its cool. They're effectively kick starting a new franchise. They're going to use previous iconic stuff and build onto it. And they have the courtesy of not meddling in the West coast's story too much by having it take place across the country.

Those factoids are just....factoids. They're not super important to the story. I think if creators want to throw in an enemy in a far fetched place because it'd serve the story, then go for it. However, FO3 fails this because they don't do anything interesting with super mutants in the Capitol wasteland, besides embarrass themselves with the terrible ending they had to retcon themselves.

They're introducing new people to a franchise, why not play the hits to get people into Fallout before they go off and do their own thing.

 

The problem is that their reason to use those things because they are iconic makes no sense because the audience they are making for doesn't know why they are iconic.

Of course they can't come out and say the actual reason for the recycling (which is that they are lazy assholes), but don't bullshit me at least.

You would think for people that apparently like those things they would treat it with respect. Which they don't.

You can't kickstart a new franchise by recycling so much from previous entries. You do that by actually using new things.

Except these things lost a lot of value because they are in the East Coast. The Master and his accomplishment of Super Mutants? Pfft, Vault Tec did it first apparently.

And i already said in the first page of this thread and i'll say it again: it's boring as shit. You have this whole section of the US hardly mentioned in the first two games and what you do? You just populate it with old shit. Imagine in real life if you went from Portugal all the way to like Belgium and yet it still look nigh the same. Is that really a good thing? Makes the setting narrow and small.

 

You absolutely can. We see it all the time, when there's a new reboot or a soft reboot, you retread old ground to introduce the old iconic stuff to the new ppl from 10-20 years ago that have never seen that before.

I totally get, its boring as shit to you if you're not impressed with the novelty of having the hits being re-created in 3-d after 10 or so years. But, the new fans from 3 onwards ate that stuff up.