An article about Fallout
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Hardboiled Android
Vault Fossil
Obviously correct in the main. Doesn't matter, Fallout is now eternally a game about exploring cities that got hit by maybe one nuclear bomb and are in basically OK shape but are still inhabited only by monsters and murderers, surrounded by utterly ruined countryside that somehow has dozens of mstill functioning military and high technology centers in a ten square mile area.
I would quibble that I don't really think any comparison could be drawn between Necropolis or especially San Francisco and the way cities are treated in later games, though this is quibbling and the author's point is basically the oppositte.
I would quibble that I don't really think any comparison could be drawn between Necropolis or especially San Francisco and the way cities are treated in later games, though this is quibbling and the author's point is basically the oppositte.
T
TorontoReign
Guest
City settings are not old. Bethesda cities are old.
Atomic Postman
Vault Archives Overseer
It is mildly irksome how the majority of cities seem to be decayed rather than obliterated. The Boneyard in Fallout was a good example in the opposite where by all accounts it's basically a long stretch of single-story charred ruins and foundations. New Vegas to its credit maintains this somewhat by emphasizing that part of the spectacle of New Vegas is that it's actually an intact pre-war city, and you get stuff like the Survivalist Logs where Salt Lake City is described as basically being a stretch of bricks and warped girders, no longer a city. Mind you, I absolutely understand why they decide to do this. Whilst in-lore and in an isometric game it matters far, far less, in a 3D adventure game wandering around something that looks like this does not make for great gameplay.
Hardboiled Android
Vault Fossil
I'd say New Vegas is a really sorry middle ground. The ruins of Vegas we see look like Vegas in the 50s got nuked - worse even, since there were more major hotels and casinos in the 50s then what we see in New Vegas. It should be a megacity, and moreover it shouldn't looked like it was nuked since, of course, it wasn't. Fallout 4's Boston is probably closer to what Vegas should look like, though probably still too generous with how much survives more or less intact.It is mildly irksome how the majority of cities seem to be decayed rather than obliterated. The Boneyard in Fallout was a good example in the opposite where by all accounts it's basically a long stretch of single-story charred ruins and foundations. New Vegas to its credit maintains this somewhat by emphasizing that part of the spectacle of New Vegas is that it's actually an intact pre-war city, and you get stuff like the Survivalist Logs where Salt Lake City is described as basically being a stretch of bricks and warped girders, no longer a city. Mind you, I absolutely understand why they decide to do this. Whilst in-lore and in an isometric game it matters far, far less, in a 3D adventure game wandering around something that looks like this does not make for great gameplay.
But to your latter point, of course it is understandable in the context of a 3D game. But personally I think with this in mind, the style/design system of Hopeville-Ashton is the best model of what cities in Bethesda Fallout games should look like, it's the best middle ground between utter destruction and interesting exploration potential. Extremely destroyed, things sunken and fallen over each other creating ersatz structures and caverns, little bits and pieces here and there of contiguously surviving Old World structures. Lonesome Road really is a triumph of design, the only shame is the linearity.
Atomic Postman
Vault Archives Overseer
What do you think of the mod "Brightweight Strip Overhaul"? in regards to making the Strip look more like it "should"
Hardboiled Android
Vault Fossil
Haven't seen this one, looks like it came out just after my last big modded playthrough. Overall I'd say it's over-doing it by looking at these pictures. I'm fine with there just being three major casinos on the Strip, maybe they could be touched up a little more but whatever. My main concern is what's off the strip.
T
TorontoReign
Guest
If people wanted a real looking Strip maybe Bethesda should have made it so resources could have been spent on that.
Jogre
So Old I'm Losing Radiation Signs
That's the thing: Fallout switched from an Isometric Turn Based Game, to a 3D Open World Game, and not many people think realistically about what was lost in the process or assume it's too minor to count, when fundementally that changes everything.
San Fransisco used to be a place you could visit at the end game, Reno was a town you walked in to and left, you were hoofing across the West Coast on an adventure. These cities weren't the central piece to a tiny geographical area that constrained you.
That being said, I feel Fallout New Vegas is pretty unique in this regard, because it manages to capture the best of both worlds. It tells a small scale story with big stakes, and makes you feel like your going on a grand journey over a fairly small location.
And in some ways it even surpasses 1 and 2 in this regard, because unlike Bethesda Games, it actually makes the most of it's fully rendered worldspace to try and help this journey feel more real.
Every time I replay Fallout New Vegas, the memories circle back to me: I'll be taking the road south of Primm, and run in to multiple hideouts for highway gangs in a row, getting lots of loot, but running low on supplies, and I'll remember the first time I saw the Ranger Unification Statue, and the first visit there being one of desperation, hoping for a place to resupply.
Then there's this moment in the game where you have the quest marker to head to Novac through Nipton, and it's just right to make sure that from Nipton, you immediately head through to the Canyon on the East, and every time I replay this, I always remember that Canyon, not for what happens through it, but as a point of no return, and then I'll immediately remember this as the Raider Ambush, with the proximity mine underneath the traffic cone, and just the sudden memory of this Ambush, and how it makes you feel like you've walked in to tougher territory immediately.
The first part of New Vegas is always somewhat repetitive, but I feel the need to always play it in the order the game gives it to you, because that feeling of a journey is something worth repeating.
I think this is part of the reason I can't switch my brain off for Bethesda games and just enjoy them like other people. The weird isolated islands of content in the middle of nowhere are this massive wake up call to the fact that the world you're playing in doesn't feel real.
Fallout 3 and 4 just feel like dreams to me, where it seems like a coherent narrative while you're in it, but on reflection it just feels like a weird disconnected logic that falls apart.
Atomic Postman
Vault Archives Overseer
It's reflected quite well when House's opening line is "You've come a long way. Literally and I suspect figuratively as well." It feels earned.
Hardboiled Android
Vault Fossil
I genuinely do love the progression in New Vegas so much. Obviously it's one of the biggest complaints from a lot of people, but I really do think the guided path you take is wonderfully designed. And it's made all the more rewarding by the fact that there are several ways to subvert it if you so choose.
Iprovidelittlepianos
Vault Senior Citizen
I think that fact that the city of Vegas has been pretty much a constant war zone between various tribes until Mr. House took control explains all the destroyed buildings and infrastructure to an extent.
Hardboiled Android
Vault Fossil
To an extent, but this is still sort of cope. There are still plenty of buildings more or less intact, they just don't look as large or impressive as Vegas of 2077 should be. Low rises, small two story commercial spaces, and mid twentieth century ranch houses seem to dominate Vegas. It's very clearly based on Vegas in the 50s, rather than a vision of Vegas in the future projected forward from the 1950s. Fallout 3's architecture isn't perfect by any means, but it's leagues better than Fallout New Vegas in this regard.
New Vegas has plenty of strokes of design genius (I will be forever cooming over the Nevada highway patrol jet-cars), but architecture is not one of them. I don't think we should really make appeal to it being a war zone between the tribes to explain it away. One, I don't think there's any reason to think that the fighting in Vegas was any more intense then say the Boneyard between tribe, and even if it was bickering tribals wouldn't really have much ability with their small numbers to utterly remove any trace of Vegas being a metropolis.
Of course this can be explained away any number of ways, limited time, limited budget, limited technical capacity (Vegas was afterall an open city unlike DC, so it's harder to show or imply scale). It's also possible that it was just an oversight on the part of designers. Whatever the case, it is one of the games (relatively few) failings, IMO.
Los Angeles is really well done in Falllout 1. It's totally destroyed.
Jogre
So Old I'm Losing Radiation Signs
Honestly I know I would be dissapointed if a game actually did this (Unless it was some experimental exploration game and not a Fallout Sequel), but I would really love to see the Angel's Boneyard up close.
JustAShcookius
It Wandered In From the Wastes
I loved Lonesome Road, the only thing that came close was the Art Deco style of Dead Money.
Considering that Fallout was a "Western Game" about creating new civilization on the bones of the past, that outdated Mexican influenced Art Deco style could not have been a better architecture choice for a man with an inability to let go.
*sigh* maybe someday someone will make a 3d Los Angeles for us to explore.
Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus' New York City: