Fallout LORE is far from being perfect

[tekhedd]

1) The real criticism of Beth is that they aren't even remotely respectful to the pre-existing games. (and their writing is bland to the point where it feels like any entertaining story moments were left in by accident deep in a side-quest vault where nobody bothered to proofread but that's not a lore criticism)

Yes this gets conflated with "this lore is better than that lore", but the whole thread counts as "getting sidetracked".

(That said, "Bethesda's Writing Often Sucks" I think is a legit complaint. You can tell a completely inconsistent story and still make it fun.)

2) Agreed, Fallout 1 is silly. It's alternatively ironic, darkly funny, or sometimes has a simple "real people in the wasteland" that is both gritty in the moment and ironic when set against the backdrop of 50s sci-fi "space age" optimism.

The thing is, it *is* funny. Humor requires timing and understanding how to set up a joke. It's like the difference between good comedy and Adam Sandler, ie "actual humor" vs "reference to thing you liked as a kid!"

All of Bethesda's "enormous sandboxes" are a bit humor deficient. I've wasted plenty of time in them, but not much of that was smiling.

I'm not sure if I'd put F2 in the same league as F1 writing-wise but it had moments.

[edit] Er, so my point is I'm OK with the newer games doing silly things, I just wish they were better at it, because I actually like the environmental design and a lot of the things they've done, and occasionally some of the writing etc. It's a question of "corporate safe big money entertainment with zero risk" doesn't do comedy well. And at the core, Fallout at its best is some sort of gameplay (dungeon crawl? rpg puzzles? a lame city builder sim?) steeped in black comedy. Comedy is always dangerous.

[edit2] Hmm. Bethesda is the "Adam Sandler" of Fallout? "Look at this, it's a reference to that 50s thing!" "Listen, it's a song from before the war!"

 

[Ultramutant]

1) The real criticism of Beth is that they aren't even remotely respectful to the pre-existing games. (and their writing is bland to the point where it feels like any entertaining story moments were left in by accident deep in a side-quest vault where nobody bothered to proofread but that's not a lore criticism)

Yes this gets conflated with "this lore is better than that lore", but the whole thread counts as "getting sidetracked".

(That said, "Bethesda's Writing Often Sucks" I think is a legit complaint. You can tell a completely inconsistent story and still make it fun.)

2) Agreed, Fallout 1 is silly. It's alternatively ironic, darkly funny, or sometimes has a simple "real people in the wasteland" that is both gritty in the moment and ironic when set against the backdrop of 50s sci-fi "space age" optimism.

The thing is, it *is* funny. Humor requires timing and understanding how to set up a joke. It's like the difference between good comedy and Adam Sandler, ie "actual humor" vs "reference to thing you liked as a kid!"

All of Bethesda's "enormous sandboxes" are a bit humor deficient. I've wasted plenty of time in them, but not much of that was smiling.

I'm not sure if I'd put F2 in the same league as F1 writing-wise but it had moments.

[edit] Er, so my point is I'm OK with the newer games doing silly things, I just wish they were better at it, because I actually like the environmental design and a lot of the things they've done, and occasionally some of the writing etc. It's a question of "corporate safe big money entertainment with zero risk" doesn't do comedy well. And at the core, Fallout at its best is some sort of gameplay (dungeon crawl? rpg puzzles? a lame city builder sim?) steeped in black comedy. Comedy is always dangerous.

[edit2] Hmm. Bethesda is the "Adam Sandler" of Fallout? "Look at this, it's a reference to that 50s thing!" "Listen, it's a song from before the war!"

I thought that the main post was about Fallout lore, especially original games, not Bethesda’s. If you are replying to the post then I think you misunderstood me.

I have to disagree with you on Bethesda. From what I know, Todd got in when Morrowind developers got burnout. Todd put his friend Emil in a high position. From that point in time each subsequent game was worse than the previous one. Emil is a bad writer and Todd doesn’t care about company’s products. Also Bethesda is under Zenimax, the leader of which is a crook (I heard it from Father Elijahcal, I wonder where he is). I guess they found their niche where they make money from herd without much effort.

I don’t think Fallout 4 lacks only good humor. It’s just a bad game made by people with some experience on an already existing base and lore. Everything is if not bad then mediocre. I’m sure Creetosis did the most comprehensive analysis on the topic.

And while I have an opportunity, I want to express my disgust towards PA T-45 and T-60. What an abomination…

I really like Fallout’s idea. It is truly unique IMO. I just can’t stand fantasy, while fallout is a down to earth (in terms of sci-fi) franchise with interesting concepts. But the more I learned about Fallout, the less idealistic I was. But maybe it was rigged from the start? The first four games were pretty different (1, 2, Tactics, FOBOS) and it divided people(as some said)? Original developers IMO did some short-sighted decisions regarding lore (a big one is lore time between games). Another thing that I don’t understand is vault experiments. Was it established only in Fallout 2 that Vault-tec did experiments for Enclave to fly to space? Aren’t vaults on Earth and spaceship in space different environments? Vault dwellers have whole planet of their own to live on, while people in space can’t go back. They have limited supplies and materials. And how is it a good experiment when they only have one case? Any variable could change result, without researchers even watching the experiment.

One more thing: why there were so little people in bunkers? I saw someone said because everyone thought it was a drill / were tired of drills or didn’t care. But during cold war many had small bunker. I’m also surprised how no one except Mr. House predicted the war. Europe were fighting each other, Middle East collapsed, China invaded USA, USA annexed North America. How couldn’t anyone prepare? But I guess it wouldn’t be a post-apocalyptic game if half of the population survived.

My final thoughts: At the beginning lore was a bit mess (potentially worsening with Van Buren) and Fallout had some ugly relatives(Tactics, FOBOS). Bethesda just ruined it completely. Maybe Black Isle could do better with fallout 4, 5, etc or/and create a new IP? Maybe it’s just useless and unproductive to think about it? Fallout is dead. People should move on

 

[The_Proletarian]

I thought that the main post was about Fallout lore, especially original games, not Bethesda’s.

That's correct. Discussing Bethesda stuff isn't even interesting.

Another thing that I don’t understand is vault experiments. Was it established only in Fallout 2 that Vault-tec did experiments for Enclave to fly to space?

That was the original idea but it appears that they didn't run with it as it isn't present in the game. In Fallout 1 you don't know of any other purpose of the vaults than survival of the residents.

Aren’t vaults on Earth and spaceship in space different environments?

The experiments weren't about the environment but about the social. They wanted to try out different scenarios as to avoid bad outcomes on a generation ship. Like if you are going to travel with huge spaceship to another star and generation after generation have to live there, as in the vaults, what could go wrong? The Enclave took some hundred years to study the outcome of the vault experiments before their intended leave.

Vault dwellers have whole planet of their own to live on, while people in space can’t go back.

Earth was war torn and deplete of resources so the Enclave needed to find a new home for America.

One more thing: why there were so little people in bunkers?

A lot of people survived outside of the vaults, maybe some of them in bunkers?

 

[Ultramutant]

The experiments weren't about the environment but about the social. They wanted to try out different scenarios as to avoid bad outcomes on a generation ship. Like if you are going to travel with huge spaceship to another star and generation after generation have to live there, as in the vaults, what could go wrong? The Enclave took some hundred years to study the outcome of the vault experiments before their intended leave. (1)

Earth was war torn and deplete of resources so the Enclave needed to find a new home for America. (2)

A lot of people survived outside of the vaults, maybe some of them in bunkers? (3)

1) I meant that environment affects psychology. People in vaults know that they will leave the vault, sooner or later. They know that there should be other survivers. Plants and animals and other life will adapt and radiation will be gone. People are just made for Earth. It has so much things that we take for granted - armosphere, magnetic field, gravitation, sun, etc. People on a starship, on the other hand, are in a completely different situation. Isn’t just thought of being in a space (almost)vacuum with the nearest star few light years away terrifying? But yes, I understand what you are talking about. But still, there are other ways to test it, and Enclave would probably need pure pre-war humans at least for genetic material.

2) It’s been a long time since I was ”studying” Fallout lore, but if I recall correctly, oil, elements for nuclear fission and technology metals were scarce or almost completely gone. So potentially Earthlings had only cold fusion. Isn’t that enough? If not, they could make Dyson swarm and mine asteroids in solar system. Also, they could research new methods(long-term) or (I don’t know how feasible it is) recycle used pre-war resourses, aren’t stuff stayed on Earth? I’m sure something could be done in this direction. On the topic of changing home - the nearest planetary system is 4 light years away and if any of its planet is even habitable, it would be much more worse than Earth (my opinion: I like the idea of terraforming Venus much more). Someone said: People aren’t capable of damaging Earth so much that changing the planet would be a good idea. Enclave had almost empty (of humans) Earth to build America.

3) You’re right. I forgot about the game limitations.

 

[Yossarrion]

And while I have an opportunity, I want to express my disgust towards PA T-45

What's wrong with t45? Interplay was going to introduce it on van buren and a essentially prototyped power armor works great for the setting.

 

[Ultramutant]

What's wrong with t45? Interplay was going to introduce it on van buren and a essentially prototyped power armor works great for the setting.

Never knew about t45 in Van Buren, thanks for info. I searched, but have only found this image. IMO it doesn’t resemble t45 and has no helmet. But I’m not sure if it’s the right one.

I was just saying that it is very ugly. What is this box on the chest?? Why are shoulder pads so ugly and why do they have holes? It has overall many strange bulges. Also I don’t like the helmet as much as the t51’s, but i guess it’s subjective.

It’s partly because of Bethesda’s PA redesign. OG PA was pretty smooth, without unnecessary details (I don’t know how to call it). It’s silhouette was much better and looked masculine. New PA just looks silly and has many open areas and has silhouette of a penguin. And what happened with heels and knees in F4?

(F3 is so funny)

 

[JustAShcookius]

One thing I always wondered is why they have both fission batteries and microfusion. With fusion available why was there resource war? That's my number one lore bit I'm confused about.

Imagine you are a largely undamaged country in the world capable of great things still. All you have heard for years on Galaxy News is how the world has largely torn itself apart in "resource wars". Nuclear power technology is now a thing and guess what those starving, backword, collapsing European countries need...

As they need our miracle energy, we need our money and world dominance. Its a friggen gold mine that makes King Midas look like a child elated over a chunk of iron pyrite. It's all over if they get our blueprints, so we produce domestically under extreme guard with intent to market ASAP. Problem is that America is exhausted, the people are exhausted, worried and spiritless. Production is shaky.

The solution? a distraction. War should give people a temporary fervor for work, right!? What if we exposed Alaska for a few months and baited in our oldest enemy... After all, America plays to win all the time, and if the American people do not "win" soon...

Well crap, turned out to be a bit more of a bloodbath than we anticipated, now we need to divert everything North for the war effort. It was meant to be a three year plan!!!

As expected, the only people who can ruin America are Americans; a cautionary tale about the inability to let go of extreme desire.

"Getting there, it's not the hard part. It's letting go." hmm now where have I heard that one before I wonder?

 

[Sn1p3r187]

which is a good thing. If everything is shrouded in mystery you have plenty a leeway to pull things from a the depth of the pre-war world. If you tell everybody this is how this works, you set up a set of rules the world runs on, which makes some of the more erroneous asspulls look even more absurd.

Sometimes you should keep how the sausage is made a secret.

THIS^^^ Seriously wish more people let the secrets of the old world be discovered on their own as the pc. Adds more challenge and mystery to what the world was like back then instead of being shown and being told

 

[Hassknecht]

Yeah, tell me about it. People will say that that technology was introduced too late to save the world, but I feel like that’s a cop out. I like to think that the energy needs of the world just kept increasing exponentially so that even a highly efficient energy source like fusion power still required ungodly amounts of uranium/plutonium to keep everyone satisfied. Thats kind of a cop out too, but whatever.

Given that oil-powered technology was so fuel-inefficient in the Fallout world that they had pretty much run out of oil before the end of the 21st century, one could argue that their nuclear technology was similarly inefficient.

My personal take on that is yeah, their technology was overall too inefficient to run on the limited resources of uranium (consider also that Fallout runs on the assumptions of the 1950s, and uranium was thought to be a lot more scarce then), oil was running out, and fusion was not yet available at a scale that could save the work. I felt like there was no gridscale fusion solution, only the small-scale "microfusion", and while that could do a lot (I mean, the T-51b power armor had a 60 kW backpack sized reactor that could run for centuries), it couldn't easily or economically be scaled to the required levels in time.
In the end it's all just technobabble and McGuffins, anyway.