Kotaku profiles No Mutants Allowed and hating Fallout 3

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For the second time in its history (as far as I remember, at least) No Mutants Allowed has been the focus of some game journalism. Over at Kotaku, Luke Winke talked to a few NMA regulars (mostly me and The Dopamine Cleric), looked through the forums, and wrote up a pretty good article on NMA's place in the Fallout fandom.

Sean says his favorite period in No Mutants Allowed was after Fallout 2 but before Fallout 3.During that stretch, the Fallout license was tangled up, its future was up in the air. That all changed on June 5, 2007, when the first trailer for Fallout 3 was released.
“At the time I was giving them the benefit of the doubt,” Sean said, “but there was some heated debate in the community. ‘Bethesda couldn’t make a game to save their life!’ and so on and so forth. I held out until I saw the preliminary artwork. It was very Battlestar Galactica, and it just wasn’t what Fallout was about. It was dark and grim, and I was like ‘oh, now I understand how they’re going to implement humor.’ They’re not going to try that sarcastic, subjective writer’s touch that earlier Fallouts had, it was just going to be dick jokes. And dick jokes are funny! But they aren’t Fallout.”​

You can see some of the vitriol we spewed at Fallout 3 fans back in the day (no Roshambo quotes, though). But the article also captures the love we collectively feel for the first two Fallout games, and I think it does a good job of showing many of the reasons as to why Fallout 3 is a fundamentally different game from the first two installments. Give it a read!
 
Don't know if this is good press or bad, but is the first time that I read something about us that doesn't make us look like a bunch of.....hmm.....glittering gems of hatred.
 
A nicely balanced read. Amazing that NMA is still going strong in the face of everything, when you think about it.

Nicely done with the quotes, guys!
 
Just finished reading. Yeah that was a pretty balanced article. I especially liked when the author states flat out that NMA's opinion on Fallout 3 is not wrong. :)

Kind of disliked them posting Fallout 1 & 2 spoiler images though. Especially since it's articles like this that could get people who have never played the originals to play them. >_>
 
Nice article, I'm glad to see that not all of the media is on Bethesda's payroll. A while back, I was looking for a writer to create a backstory for my player home in New Vegas. The story was going to be related to the Fallout 2 events, namely the destruction of the Enclave Oil Rig, but sadly none of the people who contacted me played any of the classics. All of them just started on with Fallout 3 and they were praising it like it was the messiah of games. Anyway, I hope this article will make more people appreciate what the true Fallout games.
 
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Sadly nothing I said was used, guess it was already said to many times by other people that were interviewed.
 
That was a very good read.

Also, bien joué naossano!
 
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Kind of uncomfortable with that article.

On one hand, it is nice to have some NMA coverage on Kotaku and some bit of praise here and there. On the other hand :
- Didn't like how the interviewer introduced himself. He didn't say he was from Kotaku, what he intended to do with the interviews, if he had past experience. We were supposed to accept being interviewed without having any prior knowledge about him, while he had some about us.
- I doubt he had all the necessary agreement from the people he quoted. (it is naossano, not naosanno)
- He tries to make NMA looks like some guardians of an old Fort, while there is so much NEW stuff about Fallout 1st gen. The new enhancement, the total conversions, the online servers, the new games using Fallout blueprints, Wasteland 2 etc... If there was only old stuff, i doubt i would be interested in the Fallout communities anymore.
- Entertaining the myth of the NMA communities being a can of anti-new-fans trolls. First, my focus when i come on NMA/Fogen/Beth communities isn't about arguing with new fans. I enjoy the debates, learning about new/old games, lore discovery/lore sharing, some non-game debates, or just pass the time, amongs other things. Second, the Fallout 3 fanboys aren't persecuted when they come here. Only the HOSTILE Fallout fanboys are treated with a bit of cynism, and even there, most of NMA members are civil to a point, before things escalate. Withouth those hostiles people that come here with the clear intend of starting a fight, there wouldn't be any of those things. Third, i am not interested in re-re-re-stating a thousand times how Fo3 sucks. I just did it last year, the first time i played it, to evacuate all those feelings. If topics are brought up again, i rather copy-past or show some links.
- In my opinion, the guy already had a prior opinion about NMA and just looked for quotes to emphasis his own prior opinion, without aknowledging the facts that would counter that opinion.
 
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Meh. Pretty much as expected, that article. Just an outside look in.

But I did like that there was a bit of the important argument that indeed, we don´t hate Bethesda´s fallout for not being like the old games. But just because they are shit.

Also boo kotaku, gamergate for life or whatever.
 
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Eh, was okay I guess. I don't feel it fully captured the differences in approach between old and new Fallout, nor the appeal of the older games vs. the new. Feels like it was written by someone who hasn't really played the older games that much and is only doing this for the sake of a story (not that that's necessarily true; just how it comes off to me).
Click to expand...

Explains why he chose the images he did. Probably just Google'd "Fallout" and posted the ones he thought were cool and didn't realize a couple of them are spoilers.

On the other hand, he did know about the low intelligence playthroughs. Hard to find that stuff using web search. Not a very popular feature apparently.
 
I've def. read some better criticisms of Fallout 3 highlighting the difference between the philosophies of 1/2 and 3. I think the fundamental concept the journalist missed was Bethesda interpreting blackhumor as slapstick humor and the idea that giving homeless people bottles of water could make Pol Pot a nice person. Branching off of that, Fallout 1/2 gave the player the opportunity to be such a bad person that there was NO recourse, try talking your way out of the bounty hunter encounters if you're a child killer. He did a pretty solid job explaining the implausibility of the environment in the opening, but didn't stress it enough.
 
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Meh, I didn't like this article. It felt like one of those poorly researched Cracked articles with the author knowing the basics, even has the semblance of knowing something deeper than that, but fails to mention certain details that change everything. He didn't write a word on the reception of New Vegas, the debates about Fallout 2 and Tactics. Also it makes this site look the most extreme there is, even though RPGCodex is a lot more about blindly hating whatever Beth does when discussing the Fallout franchise.
 
Someone mentioned this in the comments:

Wood-framed buildings haven’t rotted away because the radiation literally sterilizes the environment.

This has actually occurred around Chernobyl.
 
Someone mentioned this in the comments:

Wood-framed buildings haven’t rotted away because the radiation literally sterilizes the environment.

This has actually occurred around Chernobyl.
 
I'm not sure if I'd completely agree that NMA is a bitter place -- at least at this point. Back in the F3 days probably for sure, but I only started lurking a while after New Vegas was announced. But it is all too easy to read matter-of-fact tones, or just posts in general as being more negative than they're intended. There is a difference between bitter and just being negative. Maybe I'm just too used to seeing articulated criticism to interpret every comment as bitterness instead of being just plain criticism.

Otherwise, not bad.
 
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