Fallout 3: Gathering Good Karma

Brother None

Brother None

This ghoul has seen it all
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The newest article in IGN's Fallout 3 week deals with Gathering Good Karma. It doesn't tell us much news, but fleshes out the Megaton-related stuff, and has a special "good karma" video feature.<blockquote>I chose a style that likened me to a deranged Ronald McDonald. It went nicely with my safety goggles and army helmet I had picked up while roaming the wastelands. The house also contains a Bobblehead Collection Stand where you can store the hidden collectibles of Fallout 3. Players can also play house with their drab surroundings by purchasing a collection of themes for sale at the local store. These include Raider, Wasteland Explorer, Science, Pre-War, and Love Machine. The change of scenery is nice but the real advantage to this property is the ability to outfit a house with an infirmary, jukebox, laboratory, cola machine, and workbench.

My good deeds transformed Megaton from a backwater dump to a strategically placed home where I could build weapons, fully recover my wounds, stock up on goods, and cook up some performance enhancing drugs. That's not to say that evil characters won't get their own residence at some other location, but not as quickly and not in this town.
After outfitting my new crib I decided to make friendly with my new neighbors. Some characters won't even recognize your existence without the right Karma. I learned this when a reformed raider wouldn't give me the time of day because he just wouldn't speak to a goody-two-shoes. His loss. Other characters who are attracted to decency will open up quests and dialogue options for people who've accumulated enough good karma.

There are other, less distinct choices as well. The shop owner in Megaton has a side project compiling a field guide to the wasteland and she asks players to contribute by exploring the world. I took her task seriously and sought out the information she requested by investigating a local supermarket. Upon return I shared my findings and offered her some of the grub I picked up. She let me keep the loot and also rewarded me with a food sanitizer as a reward – a helpful item for removing the radiation from ruined edible items scattered throughout the world. At any point I could've lied to the woman about my quest and asked for a reward without putting in the work, but I know for a fact that this nefarious behavior would not have gotten me the useful food sanitizer.</blockquote><center>
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Thanks Ausir.
 
Apparently the ones collecting the evil fingers are the Regulators. Not a very original name in itself, so it's plausible from the setting perspective, but it's not good from design perspective to have identically-named yet entirely different and unrelated factions in different games.
 
The Regulators were a good example of Fallout's original approach: if you didn't know what to expect, Adytum looked like a well-regulated, peaceful town, where the townsfolk were harassed by the blades and the Regulators kept the peace. I think I even fell for it the first time and killed the Blades.

But yeah, they were pretty evil. Still, they were a form of law.

PS: oh god if you <STRIKE>don't</strike> blow up Megaton you get a suite in Tenpenny Towers. That's so...typical.

And this whole feature highlight how Bethesda doesn't grasp the concept "shades of gray". All they did was add "neutral" to the normal "evil-good" divide. "evil-neutral-good" is still a simplistic divide tho'. Really weird how they didn't get that.
 
Also, as Killzig pointed out - giving money to the church, obeying the police... Fallout's anti-establishment vibe is completely missing.
 
Dude what is with your "Killzig's funnel" act lately.

Why doesn't killy post here anyway? Latent NMA hate?
 
I now know I definitely prefer hearing Emil talk compared to Todd now that I've seen them kind of back to back here.
 
Brother None said:
Dude what is with your "Killzig's funnel" act lately.

Why doesn't killy post here anyway? Latent NMA hate?
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He posted here yesterday. I just don't want him to yell at me for copypasting his words. :)
 
i´m with Emil on this, i simply find it hard to be evil in a game. I think the only game i manage to go evil all the way was Kotor.

Edit: Also that mole rat crippled head info up top was funny, the thing is missing the whole head and it is only crippled?
 
Brother None said:
The Regulators were a good example of Fallout's original approach: if you didn't know what to expect, Adytum looked like a well-regulated, peaceful town, where the townsfolk were harassed by the blades and the Regulators kept the peace. I think I even fell for it the first time and killed the Blades.
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Dumbass :lol:

Anyway, about the thing, I think they're putting way too much emphasis on karma points. I don't understand it as a mistake, it's not necessarily a mistake. I take it as a sign that the only thing our choices will affect are our karma points. Pretty much like in crappy Baldur's Gate...

JESUS said:
i´m with Emil on this, i simply find it hard to be evil in a game. I think the only game i manage to go evil all the way was Kotor.
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That's because you only play yourself. That's lame, lazy and unimaginative.

That said, there's really nothing wrong with it (besides the above mentioned, that is). But playing a character is really the way to go if you want to enjoy games. Because you can experience most of what it has to give you. The last two games that really made that work were (oh, surprise!!!) the witcher and mask of the betrayer (that I've played), but it worked just the same in the old gods like Fallout, Torment or Arcanum.

:EDIT:
The Gothic series was always a great playground for different characters too. Although a bit more actiony and less c&c-y.
 
Brother None said:
PS: oh god if you don't blow up Megaton you get a suite in Tenpenny Towers. That's so...typical.
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Wouldn't it make more sense to get a suite in Tenpenny Towers if you blew up Megaton? Tenpenny being in on the whole thing and whatnot.
 
Brother None said:
PS: oh god if you don't blow up Megaton you get a suite in Tenpenny Towers. That's so...typical.
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Shouldn't you only get a suite if you blow up Megaton?

How is that typical? That is expected, but I don't think it is typical. Now if you want to go for a stretch and say it is typical in the sense that since you did something for the bad guy, and he now sees you as a partner, so he now gives you a place in his own home, then I guess it is typical.

Honestly, the word typical couldn't define this situation. As I said, if anything it is expected. It is what you expect to happen, and honestly it makes sense. If he didn't give you a suite there, then why would you blow up Megaton? You would just be shooting yourself in the foot, since you would be missing out on a good starting place to have a storage place.
 
Well I do like the Idea of people coming after me.

"Good, Bad....I'm the guy with the gun"
 
As long as the suite is way different from the house, I'm cool. It seems they really want you to have a sort of base.
 
"So the game really changes to this "collect people's fingers"-game and then, you get more powerful...that way."
Todd, you never cease to amaze me

She let me keep the loot and also rewarded me with a food sanitizer as a reward – a helpful item for removing the radiation from ruined edible items scattered throughout the world. At any point I could've lied to the woman about my quest and asked for a reward without putting in the work, but I know for a fact that this nefarious behavior would not have gotten me the useful food sanitizer.
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This is so stupid. How the hell could that woman know if you lied to him. This is not how Fallout works. In Fallout, you would still get the food sanitizer, but lose some Karma.
Good example is in Klamath: While guarding the brahmin, you can scare Torr and get reward from Duntons. Then you could save him and get Sulik join you. The good Karma that you get from saving Torr pretty much covers the karma you lost while helping Duntons. But not with Beth.

I also hate how they have this "this is good, this is evil"-thing going on. Kinda like a story written by elementary school pupil.


The whole "ya get good karma if you give money to church" thing is so effin' retarded, feels like Beth can't make difference between Fallout and Elderscroll. Verrry fallout spirit. More like indulgence.

Seems that more I hear from this game, more I start to hate it... Beth has ruined the combat, voiceactors, dialogue (as far as we know), the whole "shades of grey"-thing.... Hope they don't forget to hire David Hasselhoff to play Harold.[/quote]
 
I think the idea of having a base is a great thing. It is a wonderful way to make it so that you can always just go back somewhere, and make new weapons or whatever you might need for some big adventure.

I hope that you get more than one though. At least have one near some major areas of the game. That way you don't have to go back to Megaton, or Tenpenny each time you need to rearm yourself with whatever you can make in the house.

I am not sure if I have missed this, but can you make your own ammo? If so that would be amazing. By make you own ammo, I mean more than just for the Rock-It and such. I want to be able to take old shells and convert them to new ones, but that might be asking for to much...
 
Giving money to a church is good in the eyes of a community centered around it.
That guy doesn't know if that lady would have refused or not. Maybe he just pooled points in everything but speech, making his lies have a low success rate.
 
As far as the video goes, I personally thought most of what they had in there was good except for the still missing logic behind how the Regulators know where the fingers come from, and I'm another who has trouble playing anything other than good, although I tend to lean heavily neutral. The bounty hunters, etc. were all cool as well. I know there are things in this game that could have obviously been done better, but I still believe it will be very good, IMHO.

As far as the good & evil discussion, besides a reputation system, I am confused, respectfully, as to what some of you want. It seems to me that you can play any alignment seen in a pen & paper RPG, from principled to selfish to miscreant to aberrant. I've never asked for anything more from a game's choices than that. Maybe I'm missing something. Don't really know what's wrong with helping a church either. I'm sure it's just one kind thing you can do if a pool of many, both good and bad.

And that 'collecting fingers game' comment by Todd just reinforced my thought that much of the game is still pretty new to a lot of them; coming from different departments. Maybe I'm wrong there, but that's the vibe I get. I will say I thought they both sounded more relatable in this video.
 
remmah said:
I think the idea of having a base is a great thing. It is a wonderful way to make it so that you can always just go back somewhere, and make new weapons or whatever you might need for some big adventure.

I hope that you get more than one though. At least have one near some major areas of the game. That way you don't have to go back to Megaton, or Tenpenny each time you need to rearm yourself with whatever you can make in the house.
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Why? You can teleport all you want with no penalty so what does it matter if you only have one? Given there mechanics it makes sense, given the world, it doesn't make sense that you can even get one.

One thing that I find disgusting is how non-permanent karma is. It seems to me that you'll be able to do every quest in the game that doesn't involve killing quest important characters simply by raising or lowering your karma in easily repeatable ways. Shows a complete lack of understanding of choices and consequences.
 
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