Fallout 3 screenshots galore

[BowserJesus]

Is it seriously going to ruin your play experience if wooden houses are still standing? I can accept the complaints about the no shadows, clunky animations, and copypastad buildings, but I think some of you are just complaining over stupid things.

It's fallout, you met a band of knights looking for a holy hand grenade, you found a whale carcass next to a flower pot in the middle of the dessert, there are zombie-like people with trees growing out of their heads and living off radiation, I don't see how exploding cars, a mini-nuke, destroyed wooden structures, and a city "still-standing" is so far-fetched.

 

[Ausir]

It's fallout, you met a band of knights looking for a holy hand grenade, you found a whale carcass next to a flower pot in the middle of the dessert

Once again, the special encounters are not canon. And we acknowledge that most of the FO2 ones were out of place, even if fun.

 

[whirlingdervish]

there was one zombie-like person with a tree growing out of his head, and he wasn't a ghoul nor did he survive off of radiation.

None of the ghouls survived off of radiation.

The only thing I can think of that would lead to that conclusion is a mention in fallout 2 of the ghouls in gecko liking the warm fuzzy feeling that the leaking reactor gave them.

They still consumed food and drink.

Harold was a human who had been exposed to FEV and thus was technically a Mutant, albeit not a super one.

FEV and it's effects are established lore and thus Harold's existence is explainable within the scope of the game world. (not to mention his backstory is readily available in-game)


Car's that explode when you shoot them, yet somehow didn't explode when a nuclear weapon levelled everything around them, have no precedent in Fallout, and even go further into the negatives by negating principles that already existed in Fallout such as stable nuclear power cells that are used to power weapons and vehicles (as opposed to volatile nuclear reactors under their hood).

Yet again the problem lies in VERISIMILITUDE.


Houses still standing is not the biggest of problems in terms of what is possible in this franchise.

Houses being identical can be explained a bit by making them part of a subdivision of identically laid out houses.

Identical damage to those identical houses is just more of the same Oblivion gate/Ruins nonsense from Bethesda who are apparently too lazy to model more than a few unique terrain/architectural features and then make a few variations of those to increase the illusion that they aren't just the same thing copied and pasted to another location.

 

[alec]

Is it seriously going to ruin your play experience if wooden houses are still standing?

Who said I was going to play FO3? 'Cause I'm not planning on doing so.

I can accept the complaints about the no shadows, clunky animations, and copypastad buildings, but I think some of you are just complaining over stupid things.

So let me get this straight: you accept complaints about a graphical engine not performing the way it should (boo-hoo, no nice pictures), but when someone makes complaints about how the developers are messing with the setting, the lore of the previous games and basically with common sense, you'd rather call that an example of stupidity?

Tell me: what are you doing here?

It's fallout, you met a band of knights looking for a holy hand grenade, you found a whale carcass next to a flower pot in the middle of the dessert, [...]

As Ausir said: special encounters are not canon.

[...] there are zombie-like people with trees growing out of their heads

Plural? I only saw one, namely: Harold. And by God, didn't that tree add a little humour to the game or what? Also: Harold was a mutant, not a ghoul.

I don't see how exploding cars, a mini-nuke, destroyed wooden structures, and a city "still-standing" is so far-fetched.

That's not the point. The point is that it ruins the setting of the previous games. FO had some remnants of the old world still standing, although they were already decaying, and visibly so; FO2 had either tribal villages, shantytowns or cities starting to rebuild (New Reno was a big, big mistake).
36 years after FO2, though, we get to see more remnants of the old world than we ever got so see in the previous games. And thin, weak structures like lantarns are still standing, a little crooked maybe, but they're still there. In one of the screenshots you even see a tricycle in near perfect condition. It's as if rust never existed. It's as if wood doesn't rot away. It's as if complex structures, semi-statues that are attached to the facade of buildings, were made just yesterday.

What a brilliant way to show us the devastation the Great War and time itself (200 years, mind you) unleashed upon the world.
Personally, I wouldn't call that a wasteland, but a city in ruins reminiscent of other shooters, like Call Of Duty.

But yeah, whining about such things, such itsy-bitsy teeny-weeny details is just stupid. It doesn't make any sense whatsoever. We should really focus on the quality of the graphics, 'cause they don't seem realistic enough yet, do they? I betcha if they add those shadows, FO3 will be a perfect sequel to the series.



Kids...

 

[Eyenixon]

It's fallout, you met a band of knights looking for a holy hand grenade, you found a whale carcass next to a flower pot in the middle of the dessert

Once again, the special encounters are not canon. And we acknowledge that most of the FO2 ones were out of place, even if fun.

Hey many of them weren't even fun, just bad jokes by some developers who were obsessed with Monty Python, the singular Star Trek references and stuff like the Power Armor Tin Man were neat and entertaining, but the combination of the Bridge Keeper and the Knights just takes it a bit too far, I like seeing interesting easter eggs that are spread apart, but when they become repetitive you can tell it's just a designer that though "Hurr, I love this piece of media so I'm going to put it in my game and shove it down everyone's throats."

Those ones really sucked, the unexplained vague "I just happened upon this" like the dinosaur footprint and the Alien Blaster are mysterious and interesting while being fun in an unobtrusive way.

EDIT: You guys post real fast.

 

[Tornadium]

Hate to burst your bubble here.

Brother None is actually correct in some points. It is perfectly plausable for wooden structures to be left standing in a post apoc enviroment. The Wasteland/Desert climate of Fallout is perfect for preserving structures.

There is nothing to chip away or errode the buildings. Sure time will take it's toll but it will do so at a much slower rate. The only reasons houses would collapse in less than 400 years or so is due to enviromental catalysts.

Stick a car in the desert, 500 years later it's only just starting to degrade. Same goes for houses.

People calling other people kids

 

[UncannyGarlic]

Is it seriously going to ruin your play experience if wooden houses are still standing? I can accept the complaints about the no shadows, clunky animations, and copypastad buildings, but I think some of you are just complaining over stupid things.

Find an old, abandoned house and tell me how it makes any since that a wooden house that was nuked (and thus partially destroyed) and sat around without use or maintainance for 200 years could still be standing. Wood deteriorates quite quickly when it isn't maintained and wooden structures will become unstable within a couple decades without maintainance in a good area, after 200 years they would be a pile of decayed junk. It's thing to have a few remaining ruined wooden structures throughout the entire game but it's entirely another to have them littering the landscape.

It's fallout, you met a band of knights looking for a holy hand grenade, you found a whale carcass next to a flower pot in the middle of the dessert, there are zombie-like people with trees growing out of their heads and living off radiation, I don't see how exploding cars, a mini-nuke, destroyed wooden structures, and a city "still-standing" is so far-fetched.

Besides the non-canon special encounters, that stuff is all verisimilar while nuclear exploding cars, mini-nuke launchers with non-radioactive explosions, and the generally year-after look of the 200 year-after world is not. The appearance of the world also has the bigger issue of being so dissimilar from Fallout that there isn't more than the very basic and simplistic similarity that they are both post-apocalyptic, in other words it's aesthetically inconsistent (along with almost the entire game). Some of those things are worse than others but just because a problem isn't as severe, doesn't mean that it isn't a problem and worth mentioning.

 

[Matt K]

Brother None is actually correct in some points. It is perfectly plausable for wooden structures to be left standing in a post apoc enviroment. The Wasteland/Desert climate of Fallout is perfect for preserving structures.

But this takes place in DC which is far from being a desert climate. Moisture alone would cause the exposed wood to rot after a while.

 

[whirlingdervish]

Let's not forget the crab people.

I heard they nibble on irradiated wood for nourishment.

Those pesky things.

 

[ArmorB]

Brother None is actually correct in some points. It is perfectly plausable for wooden structures to be left standing in a post apoc enviroment. The Wasteland/Desert climate of Fallout is perfect for preserving structures.

But this takes place in DC which is far from being a desert climate. Moisture alone would cause the exposed wood to rot after a while.

But why would the climate of DC be any different than any of the west costal stuff in the original FOs? They still had lumber and steel sheeting that lasted (unless we are supposed to assume they made their own corrugated steel sheeting and cut their own fresh lumber from all of those trees that aren't there)?

 

[UncannyGarlic]

Hate to burst your bubble here.

Brother None is actually correct in some points. It is perfectly plausable for wooden structures to be left standing in a post apoc enviroment. The Wasteland/Desert climate of Fallout is perfect for preserving structures.

There is nothing to chip away or errode the buildings. Sure time will take it's toll but it will do so at a much slower rate. The only reasons houses would collapse in less than 400 years or so is due to enviromental catalysts.

Stick a car in the desert, 500 years later it's only just starting to degrade. Same goes for houses.

People calling other people kids

Wind (and likely dust storms) erosion combined with the acid rain and termites, amongst other bugs (I think it's fair to say that their survival makes sense and is consistent within the setting), would take their toll on the buildings after 200 years. Again, I think the problem is their prevalence and the general condition of those that survived (stuff like this is pretty bad).

 

[UncannyGarlic]

But why would the climate of DC be any different than any of the west costal stuff in the original FOs? They still had lumber and steel sheeting that lasted (unless we are supposed to assume they made their own corrugated steel sheeting and cut their own fresh lumber from all of those trees that aren't there)?

California, specifically northern California, has a much warmer and drier climate than DC. It's like asking why Nevada and Kentucky don't have the same weather. Here's a climate map to farther illustrate the point

 

[alec]

Hate to burst your bubble here.

Don't. I like to see you try.

Brother None is actually correct in some points. It is perfectly plausable for wooden structures to be left standing in a post apoc enviroment. The Wasteland/Desert climate of Fallout is perfect for preserving structures.

How so? Oh, that's right: climatic changes and weather patterns cease to exist after a nuclear war. There is no fall out in Fallout, The Great Winter of 2130 never occured and those radioactive twisters Cassidy mentions in FO2 are probably just his imagination. A wasteland climate is like a ziplock bag that conserves everything. I totally forgot about that. Damn.

There is nothing to chip away or errode the buildings.

There is no rain to make wooden structures rot away. There is no sand to eat away stone buildings and metal structures. There is no oxygen left to create rust. The wastelandis a completely static place. A vacuum. Nothing ever happens over there.

Sure time will take it's toll but it will do so at a much slower rate. The only reasons houses would collapse in less than 400 years or so is due to enviromental catalysts.

And your "proof" convinced me. There are no more environmental catalysts in the wasteland because - oh yeah, because you said so.

Stick a car in the desert, 500 years later it's only just starting to degrade. Same goes for houses.

That is probably the reason why we don't need archeologists digging up stuff in, for instance, Africa. It's still there, laying on the sand, untouched and perfectly preserved. Desert climates preserve things. It's what they do. That's why the Egyptian Sfinx (which is much older than 500 years, I'll grant you that) is still in a near perfect condition. The only damage it ever suffered from was when it was bombarded by French canons.

People calling other people kids

I don't see a problem with that. Unfortunately for me, I've reached an age where I can call pretty much everyone on this board a kid. That's because I don't live in a desert climate. I am not being preserved and am constantly being attacked by environmental catalysts.



Here are some pictures to prove you are right!

Look! A perfectly preserved car in the Californian desert:



And concerning buildings (also in the Californian desert):



Cuddy mill (newly abandoned) --- First visit --- June 1998. At this point a small amount of damage has occurred inside the building but the exterior was as yet unmarked.



Same Cuddy Mill building --- 4 years later --- Sept. 2002. Inside of building entirely gutted while religious holes have deliberately been made all around the outside with a combination of shotguns and tin snips (--> not quite as serious as a nuclear war, wouldn't you agree?)



The Same cuddy mill two years later, Sept 2004. Building is now nearly completely gone. You can still see the shotgun holes.

Oh, and just for that special FO feeling:

 

[ArmorB]

Mediterranian Climate:

The climate is characterized by hot, dry summers and cool, wet winters.

Sounds wet to me...My point is that FO made visuals happen because it looked cool. There is no way in hell that 20 guage corrugated galvanized steel steeting would last a couple hundred years of winter rains. Yet it is the building block of a vast number of structures in FO.

 

[Per]

Taking a page from alec here:

 

[alec]

You should have been in comedy you.
You always seem to come up with golden ones.

 

[Eyenixon]

Godzilla wouldn't be able to survive since there is no source of viable nuclear energy, all the warheads have been spent and there is only residual radiation.

He could not possibly hope to infuse himself with enough power to battle Mothra and see to the end, therefore his place in Fallout 3 is entirely inaccurate as survival of the fittest would have had its way with him.

DRUUUUGS

 

[ArmorB]

And not that I think a house that looks like it was missed by a tornado or small earthquake is good for FO3 but the house withthe missing wall, I think it's studs and lathe that you see not insulation. but I could be wrong.

 

[Ausir]

Godzilla wouldn't be able to survive since there is no source of viable nuclear energy, all the warheads have been spent and there is only residual radiation.

Maybe he only appears after you nuke Megaton?

 

[ookami]

Maybe he only appears after you nuke Megaton?

And there are the explosive cars and FatMan rounds.