Microsoft has bought Zenimax/Bethesda

As far as patch up jobs for lore goes, The Fallout Bible is remarkably comprehensive and earnest. Too much fiction tries to play off shoddy continuity as "well achskually it makes sense because of X and Y retcon y'see" to try and not break the illusion.

FO Bible takes the approach of "Yeah this shit doesn't make sense/is stupid/unfinished because of human developer reasons, but here's the sensical continuity reason I just invented to solve it.". It's retconning and stitching that doesn't insult the fans, which is nice.
 
I'm waiting for the east coast fallouts to be declared non-canon, or at the least a totally separate timeline.
 
comment.jpg
 
Gizmojunk said:
View attachment 16984
Click to expand...
The fact that Fallout 76 will have Oblivion's type of level scaling in a future update (or probably already in the game) is another reason to not continuing playing this game. Or not even begin to start playing in the first place.

https://bethesda.net/en/article/4pf...eland-season-2-daily-ops-and-more-in-patch-22

The biggest update coming in Patch 22 is a complete game-changer. The One Wasteland system adds a brand-new level of freedom to how you explore Appalachia. With this new system you can traverse the wasteland however you want, whenever you want and with whomever you want, even if you’re a newcomer to the game. Previously, new or low-lever players might have faced serious difficulty if they ventured too far away from the early game area, encountering creatures way too difficult for them to handle. But with One Wasteland, those creatures will level set to each individual player.
Click to expand...

If there was one thing that they could have done to make this game even more unappealing, it was this.
 
Last edited:
Norzan said:
The fact that Fallout 76 will have Oblivion's type of level scaling in a future update (or probably already in the game) is another reason to not continuing playing this game. Or not even begin to start playing in the first place.
Click to expand...
It has level scaling already. it's shit, damn near every single fight is a fucking slog if you don't have some broken op build or have spent money to buy a better gun.
 
TheGM said:
It has level scaling already.
Click to expand...
It did, but it was nowhere as bad as Oblivion's. Regions had a level range, meaning you could go to a region where the lowest level was much higher than your own, meaning fighting enemies much higher level than you, or go to an area where your level was much higher than the highest level of the area, meaning fighting enemies much lowered level than you. Meaning there was a chance of not running into damage sponges from time to time.

Now it has the absolute worst level scaling, which is the same as Oblivion's, which guarantees that you will fight nothing but damage sponges for the entire game.
 
Last edited:
Gizmojunk said:
What areas are simulated in Fallout 1 or 2? None as far as I know. ;)

Even FO3 is abstracted in terms of simulating a smaller than real life area, but Fallout is practically an abstraction of what you could see on the table at a PnP GURPs session.

View attachment 16969

The vaults are said to hold a thousand people—certainly not in the three floor, twenty room Vault 13 that we see shown in Fallout, where only eight rooms are apartment space, and with less than twenty people shown across all three floors of the map.
v13a.webp


The entire game and every scene in it is a fully abstracted conceptual representation; especially the cities.
Click to expand...
Thats sort of my point.
 
I feel that every meaning behind Fallout is gone in FO76.
It is basically a Fallout themed dollhouse.

The other day I heard from someone on the Codex that a while back Bethesda considered making it so that TES, Fallout, and the upcoming Starfield take place in the same universe, being the "past", "near future", and "distant future".

This only makes a case why IPs from one company should not be sold to any other company despite the money offered.
Most developers can not handle the creations of other developers.
Also greed and appeasing the most common audience member destroys everything with heart/soul.
 
The Dutch Ghost said:
This only makes a case why IPs from one company should not be sold to any other company despite the money offered.
Most developers can not handle the creations of other developers.
Click to expand...
The studio itself changes personnel so who was there at the inception 10 years ago are not necessarily the same people doing the 3rd installment.
Also, sometimes the OG creator themselves turns to dogshit.

Just look at George A Romero and his last Of The Dead films in contrast to the original trilogy.
 
Mr Fish said:
The studio itself changes personnel so who was there at the inception 10 years ago are not necessarily the same people doing the 3rd installment.
Also, sometimes the OG creator themselves turns to dogshit.

Just look at George A Romero and his last Of The Dead films in contrast to the original trilogy.
Click to expand...

That is true. Similar cases can be made for other IPs I feel have been ruined by their own creators or others such as Star Trek.
Gene wasn't exactly the sole creator, without other producers and writers it would not have taken off.

I wish there was a way of preserving the quality and vision in franchises.
 
One company that I know of went out and surveyed the hard core player-base for insight into a series to which they were making the third installment; the previous two games were by Bungie Studios.
(The games were Myth 1, 2, and 3.)

It was a shame that even with community input they were still not able to make the title be up to snuff, and it's been largely forgotten. Funny... This has happened before, with Westwood Studios. They made the first two 'Eye of the Beholder' games, and after a falling out, SSI made their own sequel, 'Eye of the Beholder 3'—critically panned, flawed, and largely forgotten about.
 
TheGM said:
There is. it called they only make one and stop.
Click to expand...
I whole-heartedly agree. Each time something is sequelized, spun off, rebooted, or remade there is probably a 80% or higher chance that they royally mess it up. But the idea of not building a franchise is such a foreign concept to most modern entertainment businesses and fandoms (especially for video games) that we only see this occur in the most limited circumstances (indie studios, art house / auteur type development at financially stable developers / publishers, and for single entries that did not reach their targeted financially goals). In fact most publicly traded video game companies would probably have a shareholder revolt if they steered their business strategy away from the current franchise-heavy practices because they would be accused of leaving money on the table.

We can blame management for being short-sighted and we can blame creatives from succumbing to business pressures, but ultimately we need to blame the throngs of entertainment consumers (myself included) that often spend a little bit of money to check out for themselves the new creatively empty husk of a franchise entry while neglecting the original work that is lacking in name recognition. This is partially due to human nature - most people tend to crave entertainment that is a blend of the familiar and the new. We all probably have experienced a work of entertainment and afterward wished that to have some kind of follow-up for it.

We can only image what the modern media landscape and human culture would be like if the only follow ups were spiritual successors. They could still be marketed as "from the creators of..." or "inspired by..." but maybe we would all enjoy things more because it would have to fit into our preconceived expectations.

And yes, it is not quite this black and white. There are sometimes quality franchise entries decades after the original emerged. There are lots of original works that are pretentious, misguided, or unpolished.

Oh and by the way Zenimax Online says they are working on a new MMO engine for a brand new IP. I guess we will see how that turns out.
 
Hardboiled Android said:
I guess it'd be very difficult to compare since theyre so fundamentally different, but I still reckon New Vegas is larger. Obviously the theoretical size of Fo2 takes place over a larger area, which does help to stick in dungeons without losing suspension of disbelief, but in terms of the actual area simulated, actual locations, I'd think Fo2 is smaller. And obviously, New Vegas has more quests, NPCs, etc etc.
Click to expand...
GizmoJunk gave a wonderful reply to you here, so there you go.

But additionally I would say that while it seemed that New Vegas has more contents (and actually true if you count in all the DLCs vs. FO2's Restoration Project), FO2's fundamental system made it a much better functioning RPG in regards to content. When I say this, I specifically mean the way you can go about each and every particular quests are much more varied thanks to the freeform interactivity it allows you to utilize in relation to each and every object you can see on your game screen ---> :grab::push::watchclosely:
In comparison, New Vegas's fundamental system is much more restricted and limited, because the options are automatically presented to you through pop-ups, rather than your own manual handiwork. I guess it's more convenient that way, but I preferred FO1&2's freeform interactivity.

However, without a shadow of a doubt, New Vegas is the better designed game thanks to years of accumulated experience gained by the developers. Which was nothing sort of a miracle considering they have to work with completely unfamiliar tools, while only have 18 months to do it.

Hardboiled Android said:
Vault 22 and 34 are both great dungeons, true, though they're not nearly as rewarding to visit materially as the Glow - not even close in the case of 22, which has almost no great loot I can remember. But thats moreso to blame on the different economies of FNV than 1/2, so again it is hard to do apples-to-apples.
Click to expand...
Norzan said:
Vault 11 and Repconn Headquarters are also pretty cool dungeons. I honestly don't need for the dungeon to have great rewards on the loot side if the dungeon is well designed, memorable, and it has a pretty cool backstory.

The funny thing is that Bethesda dungeons usually have shit rewards, with only the occasional dungeon having an unique weapon (and a large chunk of unique weapons are tied to quests or specific enemies that are not in dungeons). So they have copy and pasted design, they are completely forgettable, and a lot of the time they don't even have good loot because of terrible loot scaling (open the treasure chest at the end and getting like 50 bucks and a shitty piece of armor). Why people give any praise to these dungeons is beyond me.
Click to expand...
Now that I really think about it, my honest opinion is that New Vegas really doesn't need dungeons. At that point in the timeline, I'd reckon whatever dungeons that could possibly exist in the setting would've been scavenged into the void. The main course and intrigue is in the 'surface'; where all the assassinations and conspiracies and naked powergrabs happens between the contesting factions. That, and the everyday lives of average wastelanders.
 
Black Angel said:
Affinity system sounds a lot like Arcanum's Reaction Modifier mechanic tied to Beauty stat. The way it works is exactly the same, e.g if you have high BE and NPCs views you favorably, the more likely they'll converse and share information with you. Albeit Reaction Modifier isn't affected by BE alone, alignment and race also plays a role.
Also, CHA being factored into speech dialogue check is exactly what Age of Decadence did, though not all checks are modified by it. Pretty straightforward way to improve the stat, but yeah it's no-brainer.
Click to expand...
Ah Age of Decadence, wish more old school rpg give more importance to punish or reward you for minmaxing stats. It's really satisfying that in that game you can max your way to be social/genius character but once you go exploring you failed almost always. And exploring is one of important part of the game so miss half of the content much like how you would if not investing in intellect and social stats.

But too bad, not even that game is brave enough to include Luck stat and make good application of it. I should have make separate thread for it, really curious how to make a good system that fully utilize luck to be as important as intelligent and perception. The original fallout games had roll system as if they were pnp rpg, which in turn influenced by luck for the success chance. I know this is very hard to translate even in isometric rpg without much direct player agency. I heard ATOM RPG offer something about making Luck important, i haven't played the game or even watch let's play to properly judge though.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top