Many a True Nerd "Fallout 3 is Better than you Think"

Norzan said:
I read somewhere (or i might be misremembering) that the game was meant to be set 20 years after the bombs fell. Which would actually explain the state of the Capital Wasteland. Bethesda wanting to recycle a bunch of shit from the first two games instead decided to set the the game 200 years after the bombs fell.

Which is kind of confusing because they have no qualms in changing lore to fit whatever narrative they want to push, so they could have recycled all the crap from the first two games while keeping the game set 20 years after the bombs fell. Which is far too funny now that i think about it (just the amount of not giving shit that you twist the lore to allow things to happen but still don't care to set the game in the right time).
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I vaguely remember reading that they already had a post apocalypse project in early dev before getting the Fallout IP so I can see some measure if that 20 years thing being true as well. The world would certainly make a lot more sense were that the case.

I do think Bethesda kind of tried (emphasis on TRIED) with Fallout 3 to write sensible reasons for traditional Fallout iconography to reappear so maybe they cared a little more back then than they do now. Fuck, maybe they just wanted to put the Harold quest in so much they shifted the timeline forward.

Anyway, I guess it's not too important now. It seems like they learned all the wrong lessons from 3's critique with 4, including with the world space.
 
Norzan said:
I read somewhere (or i might be misremembering) that the game was meant to be set 20 years after the bombs fell. Which would actually explain the state of the Capital Wasteland. Bethesda wanting to recycle a bunch of shit from the first two games instead decided to set the the game 200 years after the bombs fell.

Which is kind of confusing because they have no qualms in changing lore to fit whatever narrative they want to push, so they could have recycled all the crap from the first two games while keeping the game set 20 years after the bombs fell. Which is far too funny now that i think about it (just the amount of not giving shit that you twist the lore to allow things to happen but still don't care to set the game in the right time).
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This is a claim that constantly gets bandied about but I don't think I've ever seen any proof of it. In fact, I sort of vaguely recall getting to the bottom of it a few months ago, but I can't remember how.
 
Hardboiled Android said:
This is a claim that constantly gets bandied about but I don't think I've ever seen any proof of it. In fact, I sort of vaguely recall getting to the bottom of it a few months ago, but I can't remember how.
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I've seen this rumour grow in real time. It started off as "Bethesda should have" and then became "Bethesda originally intended to" over time. It's absolute bollocks.
 
Blastwave Dave said:
I vaguely remember reading that they already had a post apocalypse project in early dev before getting the Fallout IP so I can see some measure if that 20 years thing being true as well. The world would certainly make a lot more sense were that the case.
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I read that as well. Which honestly it's what i wish happened because Fallout would have been left the fuck alone, and the prospect of some company that gave an actual shit about the franchise picking it up to make at least decent games is far better than the crap we ended up with.

Hardboiled Android said:
This is a claim that constantly gets bandied about but I don't think I've ever seen any proof of it. In fact, I sort of vaguely recall getting to the bottom of it a few months ago, but I can't remember how.
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I haven't either, just something i have heard. Regardless if it's true or not, what we ended up with makes no sense, so who cares?
 
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CT Phipps said:
Yes, because the Roman Empire immediately recovered in the Middle Ages. :-p
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This is a very old post but I was literally awestruck by the stupidity in this comment. You know literally nothing about history if you think this is even faintly a zinger, and especially if you think the Roman empire fell in some great cataclysm.
 
Clown_Shoe_Prostitute said:
This is a very old post but I was literally awestruck by the stupidity in this comment. You know literally nothing about history if you think this is even faintly a zinger, and especially if you think the Roman empire fell in some great cataclysm.
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No, it didn't fall at all. It became the Byzantine Empire but Western Europeans wanted to feel special. Now go lecture someone else.
 
I remember the first time I saw the Many a True Nerd video and I gave it way more credit than it deserved. I realise in hindsight just how utterly bad faith it was.

Like, say what you will about the Hbomberguy video on Fallout 3, it's more obnoxious than his newer videos and I think he's changed his style since then, but his point on Fallout 3 incentivising you to kill random Vault Security Officers just doing their job with no other alternative, and then giving humanisation with the Overseer was quite a clear point:

Hbomb was arguing, quite clearly that games, can by virtue of how their designed, encourage and discourage certain ways of interacting with the game's environment, and that by contrast to Fallout 2 where the first encounter with another human being tries to introduce you to speech as a viable alternative to combat, Fallout 3 treats Security Officers as immediate targets that you're supposed to feel nothing shooting, and then suddenly tries to remind you of the sanctity of human life when you meet the Overseer.

Whatever your objections to this, the fact that MATN immediately responds with him literally jumping on a table to bypass a Vault Security Officer, and then running while being shot at and says "Look, this quest has a peaceful option" is such a bad faith engagement with what Hbomb said that either

A. MATN is completely illiterate in terms of Media Criticism and can't understand an obvious point

B. It's a bad faith arguement made to deliberately mislead his audience.

Neither is particularly flattering.

Plenty of MATN's arguements are just such flagrantly bad faith responses to what's actually being said, that it makes me really dislike him. Y'know it's cool to like Fallout 3 and 4, and it's cool to think complaints about those games are just fanboy whinging. What's not cool is deliberately avoiding the points people are making, and making bad faith interpretations of not only the media itself, but also what other critics say.


Also, every time I hear a bad faith arguement from Bethesda fans, it's without fail either directly lifted from MATN's video, or it's some bullshit Tagaziel made up and tried to sell as being 100% lore accurate and factual.
TheGM said:
T-45 is fucking trash. T-60 just a big T-45. but then there is this abomination.
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I always found it funny that Bethesda made the T-45 and the T-60 the exact same fucking thing.

How could they possibly instill their iconic T-45 power armour in to people's minds without making an identical pair with the exact same aesthetics?
 
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Jogre said:
Also, every time I hear a bad faith arguement from Bethesda fans, it's without fail either directly lifted from MATN's video, or it's some bullshit Tagaziel made up and tried to sell as being 100% lore accurate and factual.
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The brutal, hilarious irony of the Bethesda Fallout fans saying that the Bethesda Fallouts detractors are just an echo chamber, but then they fail to realize that they themselves became an echo chamber by constantly parroting the same arguments from a couple of sources.

The irony is just too delicious.
 
Jogre said:
I remember the first time I saw the Many a True Nerd video and I gave it way more credit than it deserved. I realise in hindsight just how utterly bad faith it was.

Like, say what you will about the Hbomberguy video on Fallout 3, it's more obnoxious than his newer videos and I think he's changed his style since then, but his point on Fallout 3 incentivising you to kill random Vault Security Officers just doing their job with no other alternative, and then giving humanisation with the Overseer was quite a clear point:

Hbomb was arguing, quite clearly that games, can by virtue of how their designed, encourage and discourage certain ways of interacting with the game's environment, and that by contrast to Fallout 2 where the first encounter with another human being tries to introduce you to speech as a viable alternative to combat, Fallout 3 treats Security Officers as immediate targets that you're supposed to feel nothing shooting, and then suddenly tries to remind you of the sanctity of human life when you meet the Overseer.

Whatever your objections to this, the fact that MATN immediately responds with him literally jumping on a table to bypass a Vault Security Officer, and then running while being shot at and says "Look, this quest has a peaceful option" is such a bad faith engagement with what Hbomb said that either

A. MATN is completely illiterate in terms of Media Criticism and can't understand an obvious point

B. It's a bad faith arguement made to deliberately mislead his audience.

Neither is particularly flattering.

Plenty of MATN's arguements are just such flagrantly bad faith responses to what's actually being said, that it makes me really dislike him. Y'know it's cool to like Fallout 3 and 4, and it's cool to think complaints about those games are just fanboy whinging. What's not cool is deliberately avoiding the points people are making, and making bad faith interpretations of not only the media itself, but also what other critics say.


Also, every time I hear a bad faith arguement from Bethesda fans, it's without fail either directly lifted from MATN's video, or it's some bullshit Tagaziel made up and tried to sell as being 100% lore accurate and factual.


I always found it funny that Bethesda made the T-45 and the T-60 the exact same fucking thing.

How could they possibly instill their iconic T-45 power armour in to people's minds without making an identical pair with the exact same aesthetics?
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eh i wouldn't say he doesn't understand media criticism because he does make some good analysis videos. i think the problem comes from his idea that he has to be "fair" to fallout out 3 by finding something good to say about it regardless of what he actually thinks. but ultimately it ends up giving validation to the die hard beth defenders. which annoys me
 
Norzan said:
The brutal, hilarious irony of the Bethesda Fallout fans saying that the Bethesda Fallouts detractors are just an echo chamber, but then they fail to realize that they themselves became an echo chamber by constantly parroting the same arguments from a couple of sources.

The irony is just too delicious.
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there's nothing wrong with using the same argument as someones else if that argument is a good one. repeating an argument doesn't invalidate that argument. but i agree with you that the arguments themselves are flawed
 
Courier_13 said:
there's nothing wrong with using the same argument as someones else if that argument is a good one. repeating an argument doesn't invalidate that argument. but i agree with you that the arguments themselves are flawed
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I never said it invalidated any repeated argument, i was just pointing out the hypocrisity of throwing shit at sites like NMA and RPGCodex for being echo chambers where the same arguments are repeated over and over and everyone there is a drone that has no thought of their own, for only to basically do the same by constantly parrot the same arguments from the same sources, mainly because it aligns with their view of the game. Ever since MATN has posted that wretched video, i never not see at least one comment in any discussion about Fallout 3 saying to go see the video if you want your criticism of Fallout 3 to be invalidated.

To further make this whole thing more hilarious, it's the fact that Bethesda defenders claim Bethesda doesn't care about haters because they sell gazillions of copies and you're just wasting your time criticizing them and their games. But then turn around and make several hours long videos and very long essays on Reddit and other sites defending Bethesda games. If Bethesda doesn't need defending, why are these people defending like their life depends on it?
 
Norzan said:
I never said it invalidated any repeated argument, i was just pointing out the hypocrisity of throwing shit at sites like NMA and RPGCodex for being echo chambers where the same arguments are repeated over over and everyone there is a drone that has no thought of their own, for only to basically do the same by constantly parrot the same arguments from the same sources, mainly because it aligns with their view of the game. Ever since MATN has posted that wretched video, i never not see at least one comment in any discussion about Fallout 3 saying to go see the video if you want your criticism of Fallout 3 to be invalidated.

To further make this whole thing more hilarious, it's the fact that Bethesda defenders claim Bethesda doesn't care about haters because they sell gazillions of copies and you're just wasting your time criticizing them and their games. But then turn around and make several hours long videos and essays on Reddit and other sites. If Bethesda doesn't need defending, why are these people defending like their life depends on it?
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ah my bad then thats a valid point.
 
Courier_13 said:
eh i wouldn't say he doesn't understand media criticism because he does make some good analysis videos. i think the problem comes from his idea that he has to be "fair" to fallout out 3 by finding something good to say about it regardless of what he actually thinks. but ultimately it ends up giving validation to the die hard beth defenders. which annoys me
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Just a word of advice: try and learn to format your posts a bit better.

Like you quoted me with no actual reply, and then proceeded to doublepost. Like I don't personally care, but from my memory of this place, it's one of the few issues that moderators actually police.

Also I don't particularly care whether he's trying to be fair or balanced. What I care about is the arguements made in that video are incredibly bad faith at basically just not engaging with the arguements of the people he's responding to in a fair way, instead just responding to a more baseline pedantic level where he can score easy points.
 
Norzan said:
I read somewhere (or i might be misremembering) that the game was meant to be set 20 years after the bombs fell. Which would actually explain the state of the Capital Wasteland. Bethesda wanting to recycle a bunch of shit from the first two games instead decided to set the the game 200 years after the bombs fell.

Which is kind of confusing because they have no qualms in changing lore to fit whatever narrative they want to push, so they could have recycled all the crap from the first two games while keeping the game set 20 years after the bombs fell. Which is far too funny now that i think about it (just the amount of not giving shit that you twist the lore to allow things to happen but still don't care to set the game in the right time).
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Ive seen this said a lot but I've never been able to verify it myself. but thats certainly what it feels like in the game itself. there's a lot of instances where being set 20 years after the bombs fell seems like the perspective of the backgrounds. but ive yet to see anything that confirms this from bethesda.

I think its better to say that Bethesda likes to reinterpret the lore in a very shallow way. very little of what they've done explicitly breaks the lore rather tents to bend the rules or exploit a loophole. Like you said they like to twist it to suit their purposes.

in my opinion the game should have been set earlier in the timeline and they should have decided what they wanted more. a game set on the east coast or a game that included icons of the west coast.

if they wanted to use the brotherhood, enclave, and super mutants so badly and make a "sequel" to fallout 2 then they should have set the game near california.

IF they wanted to set the game in the east coast to have the freedom to do their own thing then they should have done so without the brotherhood of steel.

their choice to use the brotherhood makes even less sense from a writing perspective because they made up a convoluted excuse to get the brotherhood on the east coast and then changed everything about them because the narrative doesn't work otherwise. Like at that point just make a new faction
 
Jogre said:
Just a word of advice: try and learn to format your posts a bit better.

Like you quoted me with no actual reply, and then proceeded to doublepost. Like I don't personally care, but from my memory of this place, it's one of the few issues that moderators actually police.

Also I don't particularly care whether he's trying to be fair or balanced. What I care about is the arguements made in that video are incredibly bad faith at basically just not engaging with the arguements of the people he's responding to in a fair way, instead just responding to a more baseline pedantic level where he can score easy points.
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Sorry i'm still learning! i'll work on that. and i agree that he's acting in bad faith and misrepresenting certain arguments in his video and its pretty frustrating.
 
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