CT Phipps
Carbon Dated and Proud
![](https://www.nma-fallout.com/xencustomimages/nma/nma_4.gif)
Inspired by the discussion in the Todd Howard thread, thank you @R.Graves , @Traeger91. and @Norzan
I decided to do this thread discussing the ups and downs of Fallout 3. I think there's a lot more going on in Fallout 3 than is typically given credit for and I think that it is a game that primarily benefits from mood and emergent storytelling. Basically, a lot of the game isn't 100% accurate from literal representation as it is a massively scaled down version of any civilization but you get a strong sense of what the Capital Wasteland is like from the way the game treats your character from the beginning.
The obvious game to compare this to is Oblivion and Skyrim with the former being the heart of the Empire and largely a safe place unless you go into dungeons or literal Hell. The latter, though, is in the throws of a Civil War and thus is full of raiders, bandits, and random monsters that are now starting to actually attack the settlements themselves. You get the sense of a breakdown in orderly society just by the kinds of monsters and dangers you face in the Wasteland.
It has its flaws, don't get me wrong. Would it have killed the developers to include one or two small farms or crops outside of Megaton? I feel like they should have had crops growing on the top of Rivet City as well. They corrected some of the biggest plot holes in the game with The Pitt (explaining where Paradise Falls sells its slaves) but could have gone deeper into the history of the setting. Even so, some groups are unexplained like the Regulators and Talon Company.
Pros
1. I feel like the mood of the Capital Wasteland is that of a dying civilization. It's a nice contrast to the first two games where things are slowly coming back together. Even in Fallout 1, new culture is emerging and by Fallout 2, new culture has arrived. Fallout: New Vegas keeps that feel by having nation states having emerged. Here, civilization has failed and it is a dying culture. There's no larger law in the region, the only local authorities are ones that are centered around one or two communities, and all of them are under siege except for Rivet City. It is a huge dangerous struggle to travel from Megaton to Canterbury Commons to Rivet City.
2. Much adieu is made of the Brotherhood of Steel being a bunch of good guys in this setting but I feel like the game nicely makes it clear that they're on the backfoot. Despite their power armor and abilities, we encounter them getting their asses handed to them by a Super Mutant Behemoth. We also find out they've suffered a mutiny and the Outcasts have taken however many members of the chapter with them. Basically, Elder Lyons tried to be the Vault Dweller and didn't succeed.
3. The use of Washington DC is a good choice for the themes of American exceptionalism and nationalism leading to the destruction of the country as a whole. Of all things, I'd argue that Fallout 3 seems most inspired by Ancient Egypt in terms of what it's going for with dusty wind swept monuments in the middle of a desert. Ozymandias and all of that. A lot of the quests also reflect the attempt to recover the motivating traditions of the past like the Declaration of Independence, protection of the Lincoln Memorial, and rebuilding basic infrastructure like museums and radio communication. Even the triteness of the celebration of Nuka Cola is from a place of love.
4. The 3D invocation of the post-apocalypse is also something that the gameplay really helps as every single location in the game seems to have a story involved in it. You explore any random building and you'll find a couple that has committed suicide with some MED-X all around a skeleton in a bathtub, a family of cannibals, or a guy who has set himself up as the patriarch of his family like so many Libertarian settlers and yet elected as the president. The terminals really are well done in terms of keeping so many little stories going and ranging from ridiculous to the tragic. Like the teddy bear swinging in the wind outside of a bomb shelter.
5. The Enclave was a controversial choice for this game but I think it actually works very well thematically. They're the remnants of the US government who destroyed the world and thus are people who want to reinstall their own petty society back onto a people who have constant visual reminders of what an utter failure that view was. An anarchist collectivist society has emerged in most communities in the Wasteland and is obviously superior to most of what the Enclave offers.
The Mediocre
1. I mentioned the fact that the game suffers from scaling down efforts. I think this is inevitable in most RPGs as you can't do an entire city in any game engine, no matter how you try. You need to trust your audience to let their imagination do the work in many cases and most people won't care. However, there's some pretty glaring places where this hurts the suspension of disbelief. They're obviously trying to invoke a desert with the preciousness of water from both real life communities and probably fucking Dune for all I know but water is such a precious resource in RL that every community has to have enough of it to live anyway or there'd be no community period. So James wanting to give unlimited Purified water to the Capital Wasteland is fine, that's a admirable goal everywhere, but they'd need to have a basic minimum anyway. It'd have been better if he'd said the Purifer was going to purify the Basin and make it green arable land or clean up the entire region.
2. There's very little sense of how this world connects to one another as parts of the map. Does the Republic of Dave hail from Rivet City, the Pitt, or what not? Who does the Brotherhood of Steel protect? When did the Vaults collapse and did any of the people survive? Perhaps to become Raiders? The Great Khans are all descendants of Vault 15 and that informs their continued eternal hostility.
3. It feels like some of these stories are half-assed when they put so much effort into others. Like Little Lamplight and Big Town is a fucking stupid idea but you could actually tie it all together pretty easily with the fact the kids are right next to the Super Mutant base and Big Town is where the kids are kidnapped by the Super Mutants for harvesting. Is that something that was deliberate? That it's a farming operation? Or is that just pure coincidence?
The Bad
1. The timeline is stupid. People have mentioned that this doesn't make any sort of damn sense as 200 years in the future and wouldn't make much sense if it was 30 years in the future with all the functioning computer terminals and food that's still good in vending machines. It is a place where there's a severe shortage of arrable land and water is a precious commodity but electricity is in abundant fucking supply. In the Glow, at least you understand why nothing has changed because it's fucking ridiculous, but the atmospheric worldbuilding contradicts anything literal.
2. There's no sense of actual history to the Capital Wasteland, which is a shame because so much of that is what makes the Elder Scrolls good. There's just "The Pre-War Era" which is nicely expanded on and then there's the Post-War Era which seems to have all happened at once. The most we actually learn about the history of the Post-War Era is when the Brotherhood of Steel arrived and Enclave but nothing about the local communities or groups. Who founded the Church of Atom? Why? When? Where did James get his education? We don't find out he was a member of Vault 21 until NV. Maybe we could have believed he grew up in Rivet City but it turns out he and Doctor Li are newcomers.
3. The recycling of the previous genre goes overboard with one too many of the factions. Imagine if they'd bothered calling their Super Mutants....ANYTHING ELSE. Call them the Troglodytes or the Ogres or what not. Even if they're made with FEV, they have an entirely different culture and origin story than the Master. Then maybe the Brotherhood and Enclave might have been better. Maybe Lyons was here to investigate rumors of the Enclave's escape to begin with.
I decided to do this thread discussing the ups and downs of Fallout 3. I think there's a lot more going on in Fallout 3 than is typically given credit for and I think that it is a game that primarily benefits from mood and emergent storytelling. Basically, a lot of the game isn't 100% accurate from literal representation as it is a massively scaled down version of any civilization but you get a strong sense of what the Capital Wasteland is like from the way the game treats your character from the beginning.
The obvious game to compare this to is Oblivion and Skyrim with the former being the heart of the Empire and largely a safe place unless you go into dungeons or literal Hell. The latter, though, is in the throws of a Civil War and thus is full of raiders, bandits, and random monsters that are now starting to actually attack the settlements themselves. You get the sense of a breakdown in orderly society just by the kinds of monsters and dangers you face in the Wasteland.
It has its flaws, don't get me wrong. Would it have killed the developers to include one or two small farms or crops outside of Megaton? I feel like they should have had crops growing on the top of Rivet City as well. They corrected some of the biggest plot holes in the game with The Pitt (explaining where Paradise Falls sells its slaves) but could have gone deeper into the history of the setting. Even so, some groups are unexplained like the Regulators and Talon Company.
Pros
1. I feel like the mood of the Capital Wasteland is that of a dying civilization. It's a nice contrast to the first two games where things are slowly coming back together. Even in Fallout 1, new culture is emerging and by Fallout 2, new culture has arrived. Fallout: New Vegas keeps that feel by having nation states having emerged. Here, civilization has failed and it is a dying culture. There's no larger law in the region, the only local authorities are ones that are centered around one or two communities, and all of them are under siege except for Rivet City. It is a huge dangerous struggle to travel from Megaton to Canterbury Commons to Rivet City.
2. Much adieu is made of the Brotherhood of Steel being a bunch of good guys in this setting but I feel like the game nicely makes it clear that they're on the backfoot. Despite their power armor and abilities, we encounter them getting their asses handed to them by a Super Mutant Behemoth. We also find out they've suffered a mutiny and the Outcasts have taken however many members of the chapter with them. Basically, Elder Lyons tried to be the Vault Dweller and didn't succeed.
3. The use of Washington DC is a good choice for the themes of American exceptionalism and nationalism leading to the destruction of the country as a whole. Of all things, I'd argue that Fallout 3 seems most inspired by Ancient Egypt in terms of what it's going for with dusty wind swept monuments in the middle of a desert. Ozymandias and all of that. A lot of the quests also reflect the attempt to recover the motivating traditions of the past like the Declaration of Independence, protection of the Lincoln Memorial, and rebuilding basic infrastructure like museums and radio communication. Even the triteness of the celebration of Nuka Cola is from a place of love.
4. The 3D invocation of the post-apocalypse is also something that the gameplay really helps as every single location in the game seems to have a story involved in it. You explore any random building and you'll find a couple that has committed suicide with some MED-X all around a skeleton in a bathtub, a family of cannibals, or a guy who has set himself up as the patriarch of his family like so many Libertarian settlers and yet elected as the president. The terminals really are well done in terms of keeping so many little stories going and ranging from ridiculous to the tragic. Like the teddy bear swinging in the wind outside of a bomb shelter.
5. The Enclave was a controversial choice for this game but I think it actually works very well thematically. They're the remnants of the US government who destroyed the world and thus are people who want to reinstall their own petty society back onto a people who have constant visual reminders of what an utter failure that view was. An anarchist collectivist society has emerged in most communities in the Wasteland and is obviously superior to most of what the Enclave offers.
The Mediocre
1. I mentioned the fact that the game suffers from scaling down efforts. I think this is inevitable in most RPGs as you can't do an entire city in any game engine, no matter how you try. You need to trust your audience to let their imagination do the work in many cases and most people won't care. However, there's some pretty glaring places where this hurts the suspension of disbelief. They're obviously trying to invoke a desert with the preciousness of water from both real life communities and probably fucking Dune for all I know but water is such a precious resource in RL that every community has to have enough of it to live anyway or there'd be no community period. So James wanting to give unlimited Purified water to the Capital Wasteland is fine, that's a admirable goal everywhere, but they'd need to have a basic minimum anyway. It'd have been better if he'd said the Purifer was going to purify the Basin and make it green arable land or clean up the entire region.
2. There's very little sense of how this world connects to one another as parts of the map. Does the Republic of Dave hail from Rivet City, the Pitt, or what not? Who does the Brotherhood of Steel protect? When did the Vaults collapse and did any of the people survive? Perhaps to become Raiders? The Great Khans are all descendants of Vault 15 and that informs their continued eternal hostility.
3. It feels like some of these stories are half-assed when they put so much effort into others. Like Little Lamplight and Big Town is a fucking stupid idea but you could actually tie it all together pretty easily with the fact the kids are right next to the Super Mutant base and Big Town is where the kids are kidnapped by the Super Mutants for harvesting. Is that something that was deliberate? That it's a farming operation? Or is that just pure coincidence?
The Bad
1. The timeline is stupid. People have mentioned that this doesn't make any sort of damn sense as 200 years in the future and wouldn't make much sense if it was 30 years in the future with all the functioning computer terminals and food that's still good in vending machines. It is a place where there's a severe shortage of arrable land and water is a precious commodity but electricity is in abundant fucking supply. In the Glow, at least you understand why nothing has changed because it's fucking ridiculous, but the atmospheric worldbuilding contradicts anything literal.
2. There's no sense of actual history to the Capital Wasteland, which is a shame because so much of that is what makes the Elder Scrolls good. There's just "The Pre-War Era" which is nicely expanded on and then there's the Post-War Era which seems to have all happened at once. The most we actually learn about the history of the Post-War Era is when the Brotherhood of Steel arrived and Enclave but nothing about the local communities or groups. Who founded the Church of Atom? Why? When? Where did James get his education? We don't find out he was a member of Vault 21 until NV. Maybe we could have believed he grew up in Rivet City but it turns out he and Doctor Li are newcomers.
3. The recycling of the previous genre goes overboard with one too many of the factions. Imagine if they'd bothered calling their Super Mutants....ANYTHING ELSE. Call them the Troglodytes or the Ogres or what not. Even if they're made with FEV, they have an entirely different culture and origin story than the Master. Then maybe the Brotherhood and Enclave might have been better. Maybe Lyons was here to investigate rumors of the Enclave's escape to begin with.
Last edited: