Fallout 1 and 2 Really Aren't That Morally Grey

[TheNotoriousAMP]

Okay, so first time poster and figured might as well address something I've seen pop up on the board. Background wise, I've played all the Fallout games except for Brotherhood of Gua(ra)na. Played the first two and tactics about 10 years ago while just starting high school, which really got me into older RPG's (whose excellent stories made me willing to suffer through the crap combat of Arcanum and Torment). Anyway:

Fallout 1 and 2 are often described as offering morally grey choices, but if you look at the actual quest lines and endings, they really aren't that ambiguous. All of the major questlines that affect the ending slides basically follow the same formula: 1- Do nothing: this results in the bad or meh ending. 2- Do a horrific thing: this results in a terrible "everything dies" type ending. 3- Put in a lot of effort, talk to people and be diplomatic (be a good guy): this gets the best ending for everyone. The only slide to even possibly subvert this was the original Junktown slide, before it was changed to fit the previously mentioned model. While the Fallout games are quite sandbox-ey, I don't recall of a situation in the first game where doing something blatantly bad resulted in a better ending for a region. Compare this to Fallout New Vegas, for example, where in the case of the Sharecropper farms you had to blatantly fuck over one of two groups of decent people. Or The Witcher, where you really can't be sure if you did the right thing ever.

The last sentence is really what I am using to judge "moral grayness". While there are a lot of choices, most of them fit into the mold of complete the minumum for the minimal reward, put in the effort for evil or good. This isn't so much gray as binary. Fallout 2 is especially egregious in this as every single town's ending works with this mechanism. Den- Help bartender beat slavers. Modoc- Read a game guide because the quest is impossible without one, and find the guy, bringing peace. Gecko- make Vault City stop being so racist. Vault City- do all the side quests, bring the information to Lynette. Vault 15- bring peace, fight bad guys. NCR- samesies. Broken Hlls- make everyone love each other. Redding- sell the chip to the good mine owner. Ect. The only town to avert this is New Reno and here only barely. In that case, the best ending came from doing the main good guy mob sidequest (and screwing over all of the other bosses) but not becoming a made man or opening up the arms depot. In short, still do the Wright thing, but stop from giving them total vengeance.

Fallout 1 is harder to pin down because of how freaking buggy their endings are (on a side note, Inexile pulled the same crap when Wasteland 2 was first released. Let me be blunt, if you make a story based game, the one thing above all else you need to make sure work are the endings. It's not even that hard, it's basically a choose your own adventure type "condition a is set, leads to ending a" type thing). Plus, much like Fallout 3 (sorry for mentioning it) you don't really have that huge of an impact directly on the towns. You're not the diplomatic getting everyone to love each other so much as the guy who stops the bastards who were going to destroy everything, and the side effects of of this is the good stuff. Shady Sands and Necropolis are really the only two you can directly impact in game. Necropolis by not being a jackass and fixing the purifier and Shady Sands by putting in the effort to fight the raiders (fitting the mold above). The Hub, if it wasn't broken, would kind of still be pretty linear because I consider the Deathclaw encounter part of the main plot, as the primary role of it is to serve as the start of the transition from the wasteland survival genre to a more heroic sci fi genre.

Anyway, that's my opener (one of the main reasons I joined here is to talk about the fallout series from a game and fiction development viewpoint so please provide feedback as to whether or not this is productive for the board). Also, not British, but somehow thought grey was with an e. Sorry 'bout that.

 

[naossano]

Wrong choice of title.
It is pretty misleading of your actual intend.

The gameworld, the characters, the plots and very greys in Fo1-Fo2-FoT-FoNV.
What you are depicting is the quest design, which is mostly back & forth.

Some quest are pretty grey, because they don't provide a "good" option (like Redding mine) or because the "good" option is so much hidden (like Gecko/Vault City) that most people have to settle for a lesser evil alternative (if they want to do good). Also, the fact that you know the consequence only much later force you to live with the consequence or replay the game. (what made the creators considered they have succeeded is when they heard that some people replayed the games 3-4 times to make sure to make up for their poor choices in previous playthrough)

On the other hand, some choice fall pretty flat, like fighting the Enclave at the end of Fo2. As their goal is to wipe out wasteland humanity, and you are a wastelander, you have no choice but fight them if you want to survive. Or In Den/Junktown, you basically choose between the honest folk and the crime lord.
But, there are also non obviousness in some of them, that you can actually have an influence on the city's outcome (at least, at first playthrough) as there is no quest that outright tell you to kill Metzger. If your purpose is to follow main quest or/and roleplay your character, you have no reason to actively go for some of those outcomes.

Although, Fallout still provide some hints of possible outcomes if you get the time to talk with everyone. You don't doom a city from failing to save a drowing guy in entering said city.

 

[oxidize]

It's true that FO2 has a LOT more content for good-characters than for bad ones. I actually made a thread on that where I said "wouldn't it be cool if someone made an evil-mod for FO2".

 

[zegh8578]

Sometimes I think we come to just know the game too well, the mechanics of it. It's like re-watching a favorite movie, untill you can spot faults with every scene - not flaws, just imperfections, reminders of reality, you see actors and directors.

The first time I played FO, I was simply amazed by the moral-choices, and for a first-time player, it was never that obvious that a quest had a level of disobedience to it - like, you can take a detour, you can do things differently than requested (like destroy Becky's still), on a first playthrough, I will destroy Becky's still, cus thats what I'm told to do, and I can't see any other options.

Thus, the more diplomatic - more complex - more good (good is harder than evil, it costs more to feed and give - than to take and steal, and so on), gives more reward, more pay-off in the end. Being evil, gameplay-wise, is easy, you take and shoot and kill. This gives a low-reward.
It might be a bit predictable once you look back at it in retrospect: You did quests properly - and got good ending - you did them sloppily, badly, and got bad ending, it seems a bit biased. But for someone who has not yet analyzed the workings of the game, it feels more intuitive: they put more work into it, and were more rewarded, with the good-trumfing-evil feel to it.

 

[Kilgore Trout]

Sometimes I think we come to just know the game too well, the mechanics of it. It's like re-watching a favorite movie, untill you can spot faults with every scene - not flaws, just imperfections, reminders of reality, you see actors and directors.

I think this is exactly right. In hindsight, the decision making mechanisms that determine narrative outcome are easy to spot, and after enough playthroughs, these can seem rather simplistic. But that's probably not the reaction of a first time player.

I would agree that some newer games have more complex and more morally nuanced choices than the original Fallout, but I would also argue that this is due at least partially to influence of Fallout and other similiar games in the first place. If newer games have gone further in some respects, it's because earlier games, like FO1 and FO2, first showed what could be done.

And while it's true that some behaviors lead to predictable effects (acting like a jerk and/or killing everyone is likely to lead to a bad ending, while trying to be helpful and kind is more likely to lead to a good ending) this doesn't take away the impact of giving you, the player, the choice ​to engage in those behaviors - and this is something that the Fallout series as a whole does an exceptionally good job of.

 

[Crni Vuk]

It's true that FO2 has a LOT more content for good-characters than for bad ones. I actually made a thread on that where I said "wouldn't it be cool if someone made an evil-mod for FO2".

To be fair though, the playstyle of evil characters is not really explored enough in any game, particularly role playing games. It's already difficult enough to find games that are not just about the typical goody two shoes quests, but a game where you really have a chance to roleplay some evil character from start to finish? I don't think that any game has really offered you something like that. Which is not that surprising, it is somewhat more difficult. It requires better writing. A developer I think also mentioned once that 70% of their playerbase prefered the "good" solution in the game. I would like to see at least some games really exploring the role of evil characters, something that is more than just doing evil things for the sake of evil. Kicking the dog or killing children ... yeah ... but there is a lot more than just that. What about characters with sinister minds? Or betrayal. Or no clue. Something that is not just only the way of a psychopath. I also think that games make it WAY to easy for people to follow the good path. Even Fallout 1+2. Doing good things should sometimes at least be a really tough decision. But most games don't even offer you a mental challange here. You usually do the super awesome thing solving all the prolems AND getting the uber awesome phat loot of overpowered stats. Why not sometimes make it a decision of EITHER helping the people OR getting the phat loot.

 

[zegh8578]

It's true that FO2 has a LOT more content for good-characters than for bad ones. I actually made a thread on that where I said "wouldn't it be cool if someone made an evil-mod for FO2".

To be fair though, the playstyle of evil characters is not really explored enough in any game, particularly role playing games. It's already difficult enough to find games that are not just about the typical goody two shoes quests, but a game where you really have a chance to roleplay some evil character from start to finish? I don't think that any game has really offered you something like that. Which is not that surprising, it is somewhat more difficult. It requires better writing. A developer I think also mentioned once that 70% of their playerbase prefered the "good" solution in the game. I would like to see at least some games really exploring the role of evil characters, something that is more than just doing evil things for the sake of evil. Kicking the dog or killing children ... yeah ... but there is a lot more than just that. What about characters with sinister minds? Or betrayal. Or no clue. Something that is not just only the way of a psychopath. I also think that games make it WAY to easy for people to follow the good path. Even Fallout 1+2. Doing good things should sometimes at least be a really tough decision. But most games don't even offer you a mental challange here. You usually do the super awesome thing solving all the prolems AND getting the uber awesome phat loot of overpowered stats. Why not sometimes make it a decision of EITHER helping the people OR getting the phat loot.

It's basically twice the game, if you think about it. There would be two main-quests, both would be equal in scale, so not to be biased, and they would preferably be unique and replayable. And, as you say, most people do lean towards good, so a game priding itself to offer just-as-much-evil-as-good would have a lot to prove. The games "image" could quickly become "that game where you can be totally evil" instead of the uber-balanced rpg it wants to be

 

[Crni Vuk]

Hmm ... someone should do a kickstarter where you play exclusively evil characters, from the crazy psychopath to the inteligent sinister personality that is betraying everyone in the end.

Would be pretty fun.

 

[RetroAmerica]

The problem with being shoehorned into being good or evil was fairly evident in Fallout 2, since by the time you hit the Den, your character had to make a pretty quick choice of whether they wanted to play a moralistic hero or an evil bastard, since if you join the Slaver's Guild your whole game is altered dramatically and many choices no longer appear, or if you take out the Slaver's Guild, you're instead basically set down the path of some form of "good".