JustAShcookius
It Wandered In From the Wastes
Title is really inflammatory, sorry. But I can't help but draw a few simple parallels in this post that strike me as profoundly logical. Been awhile since I've posted guys! Good to be back!
Fallout 3 has a lot of problems with characters and setting. We know this. I'm talking about how Three Dog manipulates your green character to his potential death, yet is a "good guy". I am talking about the inexplicable state of DC 181 years after the war, with basically no progress made whatsoever. We don't talk about Tree Harold. "MUH DESTINY" at Project Purity. ect.
Comparing games 10 years apart from each other is a messy business. Going into details and modifiers including but not limited to, benefit of hindsight, development foibles, Fallout 76 story being so bad it was almost entirely replaced, and gameplay accommodations to the story is both tedious and boring. So I will attempt to keep this relatively superficial and assume the reader has a brain
Before I continue, it must be said that Fallout 76 definitely fails hard at many things. if I state Fallout 76 is better it would only be marginally better, as the final score between it and Fallout 3 is negligible at best. S*** is still s*** at the end of the day. I will be referring to the current build of Fallout 76 and will be ignoring it's infamous past versions.
Here we go, an elementary comparison list:
-THE GAME WORLD
Fallout 3 is bleak. Capital Wasteland is dead. Barely any vegetation alive anywhere. 181 years later. What is the logistics behind feeding everyone? There are so many easy access locations with loot still in them. Fallout 1 did this right, basically everything from everywhere was looted except in the deadliest locations, almost 100 years before Fallout 3 even starts. Fallout 4 loot presence is even more bullshit.
Fallout 76 makes sense at least. 25 years after the bombs/black rain there would still be quite a few places left to scrape random stuff from in a rural location such as Appalachia. The place was bombed minimally, and plant life has somewhat recovered as expected (remember New Vegas desert flora and 1's forests). Game lore explains loot presence due to deadly Scorched Plague. Canned and preserved food perfectly plausible in this timeframe.
-THE STORY
Fallout 3 A kid loses his daddy and... decides to leave the only comfortable home he has ever known on a whim, only to have most of his very own lifelong friends and acquaintances arbitrarily try to beat him to death under "arrest" orders from a known asshole, causing everything to collapse and people die needlessly. In a few days, the Lone Wanderer already gets figuratively lovingly caressed, or lives rent free J Jonah Jameson style in Creep Dog's head like he is the first person to take breath since the bombs fell. Any intelligent option at the Purifier is rendered into an evil ending, leaving only a unpoetic bullshit self sacrifice ending for DESTINY's sake. Pretty odd for an RPG to dictate DESTINY to the main character. This was amended later only with *paid* dlc.
Fallout 76 in it's post Wastelanders update state possesses NPCs and new quest lines. These include the completely laughable Responders, and the repetitive and dumb robots everywhere who dispense radiant, repetitive quests. Oddly enough, the most respectfully written faction in the game is the BOS chapter they added later. Suffice it to say, the storyline, although far from adequate in quality, conveyed sincerity in writing, and was superior to any previous Bethesda written BOS chapter. In totality, the writing was about as equally bad as Fallout 3. Just barely serviceable. The game did a good job making you feel like a nobody, someone who was small in the grand scheme of things. A fresh change of pace from previous Bethesda titles. It does not attempt anything overly pretentious and completely embraced the Bethesda loot and shoot cycle, unironically the main thing Bethesda is good at.
-LORE IN GAME
Fallout 3 innovates a method to convey pre-war information, tidbits, and lore through terminals and recordings. Fine thing to be sure, but the game expects to be carried with this feature. Fallout 1 being set about 84 years after the bombs fell, a lot "younger" than Fallout 3 relegates the old world to a dim and pointless memory to be largely forgotten, with only shadows of it left from before. The only thing that matters is the future and what can be done to salvage the present. Fallout 3 despite being so far in the future after 1, is all about the people living in the past and present with little concern for future affairs. Remember the Declaration of Independence quest as an example? What about the synth man quest? Dusty old artifacts and useless memories abound in the game and it is hard not to run into one such quest during a playthrough. Imagine what the NPCs could do if they were focused on improving their current situation instead of searching for dusty s***. In fact there seems to be little urge to fix anything, and most denizens of the Capital Wasteland seem content to wallow in their comfortable mediocrity, waiting for something to happen, that in all likelihood, will never come (Tree Harold? Anyone?). Even the very thing they were waiting for to magically come along, Project Purity, solves very little and can not grow the food the entire region needs.
Fallout 76 abandons this pandetic and fruitless obsession with the past, relegating it to largely optional experiences that can be glossed over entirely if the player so desires. In addition to confining itself to what it's creators are actually good at, ("The Bethesda Loot and Shoot Formula"), the game focuses on the here and now, the things that can be done to improve the situation of the factions NOW and for the FUTURE.
Rant over. I sincerely think if the cards fall right, and the right team of writers take the helm, the team that developed Fallout 76, could produce a better game than either Fallout 3 or 4.
If there is any hope it is in the proles.
Fallout 3 has a lot of problems with characters and setting. We know this. I'm talking about how Three Dog manipulates your green character to his potential death, yet is a "good guy". I am talking about the inexplicable state of DC 181 years after the war, with basically no progress made whatsoever. We don't talk about Tree Harold. "MUH DESTINY" at Project Purity. ect.
Comparing games 10 years apart from each other is a messy business. Going into details and modifiers including but not limited to, benefit of hindsight, development foibles, Fallout 76 story being so bad it was almost entirely replaced, and gameplay accommodations to the story is both tedious and boring. So I will attempt to keep this relatively superficial and assume the reader has a brain
Before I continue, it must be said that Fallout 76 definitely fails hard at many things. if I state Fallout 76 is better it would only be marginally better, as the final score between it and Fallout 3 is negligible at best. S*** is still s*** at the end of the day. I will be referring to the current build of Fallout 76 and will be ignoring it's infamous past versions.
Here we go, an elementary comparison list:
-THE GAME WORLD
Fallout 3 is bleak. Capital Wasteland is dead. Barely any vegetation alive anywhere. 181 years later. What is the logistics behind feeding everyone? There are so many easy access locations with loot still in them. Fallout 1 did this right, basically everything from everywhere was looted except in the deadliest locations, almost 100 years before Fallout 3 even starts. Fallout 4 loot presence is even more bullshit.
Fallout 76 makes sense at least. 25 years after the bombs/black rain there would still be quite a few places left to scrape random stuff from in a rural location such as Appalachia. The place was bombed minimally, and plant life has somewhat recovered as expected (remember New Vegas desert flora and 1's forests). Game lore explains loot presence due to deadly Scorched Plague. Canned and preserved food perfectly plausible in this timeframe.
-THE STORY
Fallout 3 A kid loses his daddy and... decides to leave the only comfortable home he has ever known on a whim, only to have most of his very own lifelong friends and acquaintances arbitrarily try to beat him to death under "arrest" orders from a known asshole, causing everything to collapse and people die needlessly. In a few days, the Lone Wanderer already gets figuratively lovingly caressed, or lives rent free J Jonah Jameson style in Creep Dog's head like he is the first person to take breath since the bombs fell. Any intelligent option at the Purifier is rendered into an evil ending, leaving only a unpoetic bullshit self sacrifice ending for DESTINY's sake. Pretty odd for an RPG to dictate DESTINY to the main character. This was amended later only with *paid* dlc.
Fallout 76 in it's post Wastelanders update state possesses NPCs and new quest lines. These include the completely laughable Responders, and the repetitive and dumb robots everywhere who dispense radiant, repetitive quests. Oddly enough, the most respectfully written faction in the game is the BOS chapter they added later. Suffice it to say, the storyline, although far from adequate in quality, conveyed sincerity in writing, and was superior to any previous Bethesda written BOS chapter. In totality, the writing was about as equally bad as Fallout 3. Just barely serviceable. The game did a good job making you feel like a nobody, someone who was small in the grand scheme of things. A fresh change of pace from previous Bethesda titles. It does not attempt anything overly pretentious and completely embraced the Bethesda loot and shoot cycle, unironically the main thing Bethesda is good at.
-LORE IN GAME
Fallout 3 innovates a method to convey pre-war information, tidbits, and lore through terminals and recordings. Fine thing to be sure, but the game expects to be carried with this feature. Fallout 1 being set about 84 years after the bombs fell, a lot "younger" than Fallout 3 relegates the old world to a dim and pointless memory to be largely forgotten, with only shadows of it left from before. The only thing that matters is the future and what can be done to salvage the present. Fallout 3 despite being so far in the future after 1, is all about the people living in the past and present with little concern for future affairs. Remember the Declaration of Independence quest as an example? What about the synth man quest? Dusty old artifacts and useless memories abound in the game and it is hard not to run into one such quest during a playthrough. Imagine what the NPCs could do if they were focused on improving their current situation instead of searching for dusty s***. In fact there seems to be little urge to fix anything, and most denizens of the Capital Wasteland seem content to wallow in their comfortable mediocrity, waiting for something to happen, that in all likelihood, will never come (Tree Harold? Anyone?). Even the very thing they were waiting for to magically come along, Project Purity, solves very little and can not grow the food the entire region needs.
Fallout 76 abandons this pandetic and fruitless obsession with the past, relegating it to largely optional experiences that can be glossed over entirely if the player so desires. In addition to confining itself to what it's creators are actually good at, ("The Bethesda Loot and Shoot Formula"), the game focuses on the here and now, the things that can be done to improve the situation of the factions NOW and for the FUTURE.
Rant over. I sincerely think if the cards fall right, and the right team of writers take the helm, the team that developed Fallout 76, could produce a better game than either Fallout 3 or 4.
If there is any hope it is in the proles.