Fallout 1 = fake freedom/players' choice?

C

Caine

First time out of the vault
when i started with fallout 1 about 1 week ago i put it aside after getting some tips and reading 2-3 guides (keeping spoilers to a minimum!) read about overall tips and character creation.

http://user.tninet.se/~jyg699a/fallout.html

it seems fallout 1 gives you the freedom to create your character and develop like you want, but if the guide is correct many skills, perks etc. are nonsense, the game has also many bugs which happen and so on, so you cannot really play like you wanted.

so is this correct? and is it fixed in fallout 2? im a bit sad to read that but the same time i think for a first title of the series it might be not the big issue, well im creating my new character now with the guides and hope to be prepared then.
 
I wouldn't say the skills are nonsense, but if all you want to do is complete the game, you probably won't need all that many skills. Just shoot a bunch of stuff untill you win the game. But if you want to explore more possibilities, fish for more xp, then you might need a bigger variety of skills.

As for perks, imho, some of them can be considered "trick perks", in the sense that they are more of a luxury, than an actual benefit, one of the most obvious "trick perks" is the "Here and now", which pretty much robs you of what could have been a permanent bonus to your character, in exchange for an instant level up.

Bugs are usually fixed with patching the game. Otherwise, it's a matter of how you want to approach your game.
In Fallout 2, since the game is bigger, the quests much more numerous, you will encounter many more oportunities to use all your skills, so - many of the skills might feel more useful there.

If that was of any help :]
 
There are some skills which are useless in Fallout, or become more-or-less obsolete ("slightly outdated" is perhaps a better term) after some time, but in general, with a proper patch you will have a well-balanced game without bugs (avoid skills like Gambling though).
Fallout 2 (again, properly patched) fixes many of these issues but is, in itself, not as consistent as the original game, but is way greater in scope and opportunities it offers to the player.

In general, trust me, both games offer you a variety of choices and consequences, and the fake freedom you're mentioning is basically non-existent. You can even play through the original without killing anybody (I think you can do this with the sequel too, but I'm not sure).

I think Per will agree with me, he tends to pop around.


Edit: zegh is a ninja.
 
I don't think real choice is mostly about perks, but about having the options to follow your own story (can you ignore some quests? can you solve them in different ways, that depend on your character? that kind of thing). Bugs are things that happen in software, and that will continue to happen forever. Some modders went as far as to tweak the engine, working around some of the bugs. IMO, the final solution to this kind of problem is to reimplement the engine as open source, so fixing is easier as long as someone is interested. But the ones who tried, ended up changing their minds. I'd love to try to do that, but I don't yet have the skills to implement a game engine all by myself (mostly, I lack the graphics knowledge, and the parser for scripts, and such things that are mostly related to being compatible with the original data).
 
:o I'm surprise someone notice it and discuss about it.
Yes, it's one of Falout style's great flaw, the stat blocks you freedom to do something. the ancester of Fallout name Wasteland doesn't have this problem because it was party based game and you can increase you skill with using the skill or use skill point at library.
so if a skill is necessary and used frequently, the skill increases to help you to solve situation. and for some skill that used not often and only necessary at some point, you just let one person to learn that skill and it's not hard at all. but at Fallout, you can't control you companion but only yourself. the skill only increase when you use skill point but you should increase proper skill to proceed. since you are busy to increase useful skill, useless skill is hard to increase so freedom of skill is broken. and for skill usage, since the skill is ambiguos(think about science. there are plenty of genre!) the skill usage is too simple. if there's a computer, use science, if there's something broken. and another problem is there aren't much situation to use all skill. what you need is just a combat skill, speech, science and that's all. since the traps are weak and useless, you don't have to increase trap skill. you don't need to increase medic skill since you can get enough stimpacks to heal you Hp. at Wasteland all the skill has it's role. even the helicopter driving or toaster repair skill has it's usage and it's convinient. so I can say it's design miss of Fo1.

but it's not only a flaw. if you make stupid character, it would be hard to complete game but it's funny. the developer makes way to complete game for idiot! the best way to enjoy Fallout 1 is just play the game without walkthrough. if you fail, then retry Fo1 isn't that long game. learn the game you own is one of the enjoy point of game. and for useless skill, they are not useless. they have their role and good points though then can't help you to solve quest directly.


at Fo2 it's solved little bit by skillbook vander, companion and various situation.
at Fo2 some companion has skill to use instead of you.
you can let them to use skill instead of you if your skill isn't high enough.
and for situation more skills are useful for lots of time.
for outdoorsman, it wasn't that great help at fo1 because enemies are weak and events that happens you skill is low isn't that critical.
but it's useful at Fo2 because enemies are strong.
there's lots of situations that medic skill helps a lot.

anyway the article became too long and I doubt I wrote this article with correct word and grammer but I wish my article can help you.
 
I think you took my advice in response to your (poorly designed) character and checked out the link I sent you and read it in the wrong light. Efficiency does not render inefficiency out of your control to choose. You're absolutely free to build the character you'd initially conceived, but those of us who've gone over the myriad of possibilities (and the very fact THAT there are so many options and multitudes of builds are a sign of freedom of choice, not a lack thereof) and analyzed those options have simply distilled the choices down to a smaller number because we want the most bang for our buck, as far as character building is concerned. It's the same concept as min-maxing; aiming for the most benefit with the least amount of drawback, and Fallout allows for this in spades. At the same time, it doesn't restrict you into doing this. It's fake freedom to say that you can do anything you want, when really you have to complete Quest 1 to unlock Quest 2, at which point you must proceed to Quest 2, which unlocks quest 3, and you must do this all the way to Quest 7. That's not freedom, you're following a pre-determined scenario. Oh, but you can get there any way you want! Horse shit.

Fallout and Fallout 2 provide REAL freedom, because you can beat the game without any such sequential nonsense. You can complete the primary objectives that result in the game ending while avoiding EVERYTHING else, if you so choose. You can beat them without killing anyone. You can beat them as a near-sighted, drug-addled, socially-impaired mute with a gift for darts (seriously). You can do all kinds of crazy and perfectly practical things; it's all up to your choice. That is ACTUAL freedom, there's nothing fake about it.
 
SnapSlav said:
I think you took my advice in response to your (poorly designed) character and checked out the link I sent you and read it in the wrong light. Efficiency does not render inefficiency out of your control to choose. You're absolutely free to build the character you'd initially conceived, but those of us who've gone over the myriad of possibilities (and the very fact THAT there are so many options and multitudes of builds are a sign of freedom of choice, not a lack thereof) and analyzed those options have simply distilled the choices down to a smaller number because we want the most bang for our buck, as far as character building is concerned. It's the same concept as min-maxing; aiming for the most benefit with the least amount of drawback, and Fallout allows for this in spades. At the same time, it doesn't restrict you into doing this. It's fake freedom to say that you can do anything you want, when really you have to complete Quest 1 to unlock Quest 2, at which point you must proceed to Quest 2, which unlocks quest 3, and you must do this all the way to Quest 7. That's not freedom, you're following a pre-determined scenario. Oh, but you can get there any way you want! Horse shit.

Fallout and Fallout 2 provide REAL freedom, because you can beat the game without any such sequential nonsense. You can complete the primary objectives that result in the game ending while avoiding EVERYTHING else, if you so choose. You can beat them without killing anyone. You can beat them as a near-sighted, drug-addled, socially-impaired mute with a gift for darts (seriously). You can do all kinds of crazy and perfectly practical things; it's all up to your choice. That is ACTUAL freedom, there's nothing fake about it.
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sry then i have to excuse myself and did really misunderstood the guide! and also the poorly designed message from you :), what you described is avtually the thing i love in the old games i dont feel in most many games as they were made with much more passion (i still think so!) but also was very confused with all random stuff i read about the bugs, glitches, strange behaviours, unefficient skills etc. so i though that maybe i get to some point and played 10 hours and see i misskilled my char and have to start over (which would suck hehe).
 
SnapSlav said:
I think you took my advice in response to your (poorly designed) character and checked out the link I sent you and read it in the wrong light. Efficiency does not render inefficiency out of your control to choose. You're absolutely free to build the character you'd initially conceived, but those of us who've gone over the myriad of possibilities (and the very fact THAT there are so many options and multitudes of builds are a sign of freedom of choice, not a lack thereof) and analyzed those options have simply distilled the choices down to a smaller number because we want the most bang for our buck, as far as character building is concerned.
Click to expand...

There are builds that are pretty much unplayable, not simply inefficient, though.
 
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