I don't understand complaints about Beth's take on pre-war society

 
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PossibleCabbage said:
SteveJobsGhost said:
Ah yes, that's a valid point. I myself thought that Fallout 3 was set in an advanced 1950's America rather than an alternate future.
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I think Bethesda has an unfortunate habit of having certain aesthetic tendencies and relying on them as crutch when nothing else comes to mind. For Fallout one of these was "make it like the 50s" and throughout their entire oeuvre they tend to do this with horror (note how in Fallout 3 nearly every place Raiders hang out has headless corpses chained to bloody mattresses and various body parts in coolers). I think they have a tendency to think of scenes or places as instances of their aesthetic, rather than thinking about what's going on here and why and designing the scene or location on internal logic.

I think a lot of these things (hororr, old-timeyness) are a lot more effective aesthetically when they're done sparingly, so they provide punctuation juxtaposed against other stuff, rather than if they simply permeate the entire atmosphere of the game.
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It just reeks of routine, in terms of production and design.
In fact, before FO3 - the "raider" was not a recognizeable group of anything, there was a bunch of bandit scum south of Shady Sands, another bunch of bandits between Vault City and Broken Hills - otherwise I've never had encounters with "raiders" in these games.
Fallout Tactics was probably the pre FO3 game that made "raiders" a specific thing, and then only barely, with just 2-3 camps (and even they tried to reason with you, before you massacred them :D)
 
Okay, I feel I have to disagree with everyone on this.

Yes, Interplay Fallout had retro-futurism mixed in with light elements of cyberpunk and yes it's a different style to the Jestons-esque retrofuturism of Bethesda, but come on. It's not retro-futuristic 60's. It's always been retrofuturistic 50's.

Oh, and on the stuff about the breakdown of society. I always saw that the U.S.A had the best quality of life before the war, benefits of hoarding all the oil and annexing countries for their resources I suppose. Even New Vegas had elements of the pre-war time being pretty okay for many parts of America. Remember the Sierra Madre?

Sometimes I feel like you guys just oppose Bethesda for the sake of opposing Bethesda.
 
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AlphaPromethean said:
Sometimes I feel like you guys just oppose Bethesda for the sake of opposing Bethesda.
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With FO3 from Fallout, Bethesda did the equivalent of taking 'BladeRunner' source material, and making 'Wall-E' from it. There is reason to hold enmity towards them. FO3 & 4 are embarrassing. You cannot even admit being a Fallout fan anymore without seeing it as self-stigmatizing. Now it's like claiming fandom of Power Rangers.

**No no... more accurately, it's like being a fan T.M.N.T and knowing that it's seen as this:
TMNT_new_zpsvbmgtsvs.jpg


instead of this:
TMNT_original_zps2gfyrcff.jpg


http://www.omgfacts.com/hollywood/6915/The-original-Teenage-Mutant-Ninja-Turtles-were-really-violent-and-gory-comic-books


As befell the TMNT before... With Fallout, Bethesda acquired the recipe for a masterpiece, and created typical food-court fare, sans the authentic spicing that could turn off the mainstream audience. Unforgivable. It's advertising sirloin ~made out of chopped up big-macs.
 
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The Fallout games while based on 50's retro futurism actually have very little fifties references. It doesn't take a genius to know that.
 
AlphaPromethean said:
Okay, I feel I have to disagree with everyone on this.

Yes, Interplay Fallout had retro-futurism mixed in with light elements of cyberpunk and yes it's a different style to the Jestons-esque retrofuturism of Bethesda, but come on. It's not retro-futuristic 60's. It's always been retrofuturistic 50's.

Oh, and on the stuff about the breakdown of society. I always saw that the U.S.A had the best quality of life before the war, benefits of hoarding all the oil and annexing countries for their resources I suppose. Even New Vegas had elements of the pre-war time being pretty okay for many parts of America. Remember the Sierra Madre?

Sometimes I feel like you guys just oppose Bethesda for the sake of opposing Bethesda.
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I honestly don't mind the weapon design from Bethesda in general. It works well enough and fits the post-apocalypse theme.

There is one, technically two, weapon design I dislike. That's the design for the laser pistol and rifle. It's tricky to say whether it's a case of one or two things, because my grievance is the same for both. They're blocks. Just... literally blocks. Maybe the customization allowed in Fallout 4 will let me make them look more appealing, but on a base level I dislike them so much. I miss the old laser rifle from the first two games. It was sleek, yet still managed to look experimental, cobbled together. It was perfect. To go from that... to a block. It's such a shame.

I like the looks of the laser musket though. Looks pretty cool. I can dig it.
 
Gizmojunk said:
AlphaPromethean said:
Sometimes I feel like you guys just oppose Bethesda for the sake of opposing Bethesda.
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With FO3 from Fallout, Bethesda did the equivalent of taking 'BladeRunner' source material, and making 'Wall-E' from it. There is reason to hold enmity towards them. FO3 & 4 are embarrassing. You cannot even admit being a Fallout fan anymore without seeing it as self-stigmatizing. Now it's like claiming fandom of Power Rangers.

**No no... more accurately, it's like being a fan T.M.N.T and knowing that it's seen as this:
TMNT_new_zpsvbmgtsvs.jpg


instead of this:
TMNT_original_zps2gfyrcff.jpg


http://www.omgfacts.com/hollywood/6915/The-original-Teenage-Mutant-Ninja-Turtles-were-really-violent-and-gory-comic-books


As befell the TMNT before... With Fallout, Bethesda acquired the recipe for a masterpiece, and created typical food-court fare, sans the authentic spicing that could turn off the mainstream audience. Unforgivable. It's advertising sirloin ~made out of chopped up big-macs.
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Not a remotely comparable comparison when Eastman and Laird sold the rights off and FO3 is not nearly as "family friendly" by comparison to the originals.
 
TMNT was a dark parody of Frank Miller's style--Ronin, Daredevil, etc., that was watered down for broad appeal.

Likewise, Fallout currently moves further and further away from its RPG roots in attempt to appeal to a more mainstream, casual audience.

Gizmojunk's point remains. Both properties lost their bite in order to create safe, marketable products for mass consumption.
 
Battlecross said:
Not a remotely comparable comparison when Eastman and Laird sold the rights off and FO3 is not nearly as "family friendly" by comparison to the originals.
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Of course it's directly comparable, or I wouldn't have mentioned it.
It is exactly comparable.

**And the point is not just the dulled bite, but the stigma associated with it. For now-a-days, the term 'ninja-turtle' is synonymous with hyperactive toddlers.

1283311541924012_zpszqhdk1dm.png


(...And one could almost say the same of the recent Fallouts; thanks to Bethesda. Remember what their take on it is: https://youtu.be/GABzWHuIZ_4?t=54s )
 
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Gizmojunk said:
Battlecross said:
Not a remotely comparable comparison when Eastman and Laird sold the rights off and FO3 is not nearly as "family friendly" by comparison to the originals.
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Of course it's directly compatible, or I wouldn't have mentioned it.
It is exactly comparable.

**And the point is not just the dulled bite, but the stigma associated with it. For now-a-days, the term 'ninja-turtle' is synonymous with hyperactive toddlers.

1283311541924012_zpszqhdk1dm.png


(...And one could almost say the same of the recent Fallouts; thanks to Bethesda. Remember what their take on it is: https://youtu.be/GABzWHuIZ_4?t=54s )
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Again, it isn't. The differences aren't even remotely the same and the creators sold it off knowing what it would be.
 
Battlecross said:
Again, it isn't. The differences aren't even remotely the same and the creators sold it off knowing what it would be.
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Irrelevant. (You are incorrect in this; and it doesn't matter what their intentions were; what matters is the result.)

**It's even plausible [though unprovable] that Interplay was unaware of just how bad (or how successful) Bethesda was going to make the franchise become... And at what cost to reputation. It's very sad. Fallout has gone from a tactical RPG with in depth NPC interaction, and player choice, to a brain-dead franken-shooter that is hamstrung by vestigial aspects of both RPGs and shooters; and being the least of each genre put into one [doubly disappointing] package that offends both audiences ~but appeals to the more plentiful middle-ground. *Don't think that this wasn't intentional on their part. That's why it's insidious.

Bethesda's stewardship of the Fallout IP, (to me) is [would be] akin to watching Robert De Nero try to reboot his career on Hollywood Squares; (and succeeding :( ).
 
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