My review of Fallout: the Series Season One 9/10

[Hassknecht]

Hm. In pure storytelling I find it pretty mediocre at best. The whole story just comes together because of a string of coincidences (the raiders just now took over the vault, and just now there was need for a breeder for Lucy, and it just so happens that the Enclave dude fled with research and meets Lucy several times and it just so happens that his research could be a bargaining chip for her) and it's not all that surprising or well thought out or paced. Just random McGuffining and coinkidinks. You get one engaging character and you learn very little about his actual motivations in this story despite a load of flashback scenes around him, and a bunch of side characters that range from tarded (Bo from Superstore) to the saccharine fish out of water (Dollar Store New Girl) to plain sociopath while also being useless (Durrnzel Washington). The latter being marred also by a pretty terrible performance by the actor.
All in all its just not a very interesting cast and they don't do very interesting things.
The whole thing is then filled with mediocre cinematography and lame humor.
The set and prop design and quality was mostly pretty good, but all in all I could never give it more than a 4/10. At its best moments it's merely mediocre, and at its worst it's just plain bad

 

[Norzan]

It's sort of like discussing Fallout 3.

People have discussed in detail why Fallout 3 sucks, it's a you problem if you can't accept that. So to whine and complain that you can't discuss Fallout 3 when people say a lot more than just "it sucks" is childish.

When it comes to the show, there are theses here on what some people perceive as problems. So people aren't just saying it sucks and moving on.

 

[CT Phipps]

People have discussed in detail why Fallout 3 sucks, it's a you problem if you can't accept that. So to whine and complain that you can't discuss Fallout 3 when people say a lot more than just "it sucks" is childish.

When it comes to the show, there are theses here on what some people perceive as problems. So people aren't just saying it sucks and moving on.

I think you kind of rushed past the point.

"I like Fallout 3 and would love to discuss what I like and don't like but a lot of people here hate Fallout 3 so it sometimes feels irritating that people don't have any interest in discussing Fallout 3. They just want to bash it."

Same with the show.

 

[Norzan]

"I like Fallout 3 and would love to discuss what I like and don't like but people here hate Fallout 3 so it sometimes feels irritating that people don't have any interest in discussing Fallout 3. They just want to bash it."

You came to the forum that is infamous for criticizing the game and basically a den for the people that want to do it without the fear of getting bombarded by a bunch of Bethesda fans telling them they are wrong.

You have Fallout Reddit if you want to discuss Fallout 3 with other like-minded people.

 

[CT Phipps]

You came to the forum that is infamous for criticizing the game and basically a den for the people that want to do it without the fear of getting bombarded by a bunch of Bethesda fans telling them they are wrong.

You have Fallout Reddit if you want to discuss Fallout 3 with other like-minded people.

Eh,

I'm also not afraid of good natured argument. Which is part of why I like this place. A lot of people hate arguing and only want to talk with people who agree with them. I was raised to believe that its fun to test your thoughts against other people and see how they stand up.

Part of why I like NMA is that it's never been too ban heavy or afraid of people getting in long passionate discussions.

Sometimes I get persuaded, sometimes I think I make my point. Reddit is hardly a place that cares about lore, worldbuilding, or the fact that Fallout 4 is a much inferior game to Fallout 3. Which is a perspective as alien here as believing in midiclorians. As far as NMA is concerned, they don't see any difference in Bethesda games so it's up to me to explain why they're so very different.

 

[TheGM]

As far as NMA is concerned, they don't see any difference in Bethesda games so it's up to me to explain why they're so very different.

Turns out CT Phipps was the chosen defender of Bethesda this entire time.

 

[CT Phipps]

Turns out CT Phipps was the chosen defender of Bethesda this entire time.

Question: Did you notice that I was shitting on Fallout 4 or did you just mentally edit that part out because it doesn't fit with your joke?



Because I can talk ALL DAY about how Fallout 3 is better than Fallout 4 in themes, writing, worldbuilding, and characters.

 

[Hassknecht]

Oddly enough, I like F4 better than 3 because like Skyrim it can be made turned into an enjoyable sandbox with a bunch of mods, while Fallout 3 is just irredeemable to me.

 

[Norzan]

Fallout 4's gameplay isn't vomit-inducing and that alone makes it better than Fallout 3.

 

[Hardboiled Android]

Oddly enough, I like F4 better than 3 because like Skyrim it can be made turned into an enjoyable sandbox with a bunch of mods, while Fallout 3 is just irredeemable to me.

Exploration is generally fun in Fallout 3, it's not in Fallout 4. That's what it comes down to for me, that's the fun part of Fallout 3 and Fallout 4's side locations are detestbly bad in comparison. NukaWorld does bring back a little of the fun of Fallout 3 exploration (appropriately, given it is literally a themepark) so I like it, if not as much as Far Harbor (which is decently well written and has good atmosphere and decent worldbuilding, but it has bad exploration like the basegame).

There are a bunch of other virtues I could list out for Fallout 3 which only really shined through when I stopped comparing it to New Vegas (or the originals) and started comparing it to Fallout 4. A "You Have No Idea How Bad Things Really Are" situation.

 

[CT Phipps]

Oddly enough, I like F4 better than 3 because like Skyrim it can be made turned into an enjoyable sandbox with a bunch of mods, while Fallout 3 is just irredeemable to me.

I understand for me but the flaws of 4 are basically:

* The dumbed down mechanics
* Fucking wasting your partner within a few minutes of gameplay
* The reactions to your conversations are usually identical
* There's no real sense of making the Wasteland a better place as all of the factions suck and you can't take a third option.
* The Institute is a shitty set of villains. You can't even enjoy blowing them up since they seem genuinely ignorant over malicious.
* The Commonwealth isn't evocative as a setting
* Somehow, they made combining Blade Runner and Fallout boring - Which offends me as both a post apocalypse and cyberpunk author.
* The reversal of a child chasing their dad
* You can't be evil until Nuka World when you suddenly can't be good

Basically, I cared about saving the people of the Capital Wasteland and couldn't care less about the Commonwealth.

I don't begrudge people who find it fun to play gameplay wise, and that's important, but it just feels like such a step down.

 

[CT Phipps]

Exploration is generally fun in Fallout 3, it's not in Fallout 4. That's what it comes down to for me, that's the fun part of Fallout 3 and Fallout 4's side locations are detestbly bad in comparison. NukaWorld does bring back a little of the fun of Fallout 3 exploration (appropriately, given it is literally a themepark) so I like it, if not as much as Far Harbor (which is decently well written and has good atmosphere and decent worldbuilding, but it has bad exploration like the basegame).

There are a bunch of other virtues I could list out for Fallout 3 which only really shined through when I stopped comparing it to New Vegas (or the originals) and started comparing it to Fallout 4. A "You Have No Idea How Bad Things Really Are" situation.

This says better than me in a lot of ways. I loved going around the Capital Wasteland and looking under every nook and cranny. I just felt most of the Commonwealth was the same.

Far Harbor's writing was better and Nuka World was a fun place to be. Neither of which was true in the base game.

 

[TheGM]

Question: Did you notice that I was shitting on Fallout 4

That never even happened. you don't even know what you posted do you? You said it was inferior, for all we know you gave FO4 a 9/10 while FO3 got a 9.5/10.

 

[CT Phipps]

That never even happened. you don't even know what you posted do you? You said it was inferior, for all we know you gave FO4 a 9/10 while FO3 got a 9.5/10.

I see, clearly I must pass the trials of hatred to earn my red lightsaber.

 

[Hassknecht]

I understand for me but the flaws of 4 are basically:

* The dumbed down mechanics
* Fucking wasting your partner within a few minutes of gameplay
* The reactions to your conversations are usually identical
* There's no real sense of making the Wasteland a better place as all of the factions suck and you can't take a third option.
* The Institute is a shitty set of villains. You can't even enjoy blowing them up since they seem genuinely ignorant over malicious.
* The Commonwealth isn't evocative as a setting
* Somehow, they made combining Blade Runner and Fallout boring - Which offends me as both a post apocalypse and cyberpunk author.
* The reversal of a child chasing their dad
* You can't be evil until Nuka World when you suddenly can't be good

Basically, I cared about saving the people of the Capital Wasteland and couldn't care less about the Commonwealth.

I don't begrudge people who find it fun to play gameplay wise, and that's important, but it just feels like such a step down.

Yeah. It's in all ways a worse Fallout game than even Fallout 3. It is absolutely terrible as an RPG, it has a shitty story and is generally as wide as an ocean and as shallow as a puddle. It has a lot of good ideas, and all of them are executed so half-heartedly it hurts.
But the gameplay loop of going out, finding settlement places, killing a bunch of shit and connecting your places is more fun in itself than anything Fallout 3 had to offer. I enjoyed Fallout 4 as a mindless time waster. With We Are The Minutemen and Sim Settlements it's mildly fun.
Thats more than Fallout 3 ever did for me, because not only was its writing just as offensively bad, it also played like shit and no mods could fix that for me.

 

[Hardboiled Android]

But the gameplay loop of going out, finding settlement places, killing a bunch of shit and connecting your places is more fun in itself than anything Fallout 3 had to offer.

I don't like the settlement system because it requires too much micromanagement in a way that feels so divorced from anything else in the game. Same goes for weapon and armor crafting, aside from being stupidly modular and denigrating weapon diversity I hated having to worry about it rather than just being able to find or buy what I needed. And I hated having to worry about resource collection in the course of exploration to supply those two tiresome gameplay loops.

Admittedly they are good time sinks, especially with Survival Mode, which really was quite well done and I must confess made the game fun for a time. But the entire rest of the game/world is such that I just don't have any motivation to do it ever again.

 

[TheGM]

I see, clearly I must pass the trials of hatred to earn my red lightsaber.

Homie, you couldn't even pass a voight-kampff test.

With We Are The Minutemen and Sim Settlements it's mildly fun.

I could see a Militia sim being some what entertaining since interacting with the other factions is brutal do to their rampant retardery.
I'm sure there is a mod out that the fixes the settlers and gives them some agency since they just sit around until you tell them to pick berries or whatever.

 

[CT Phipps]

I think my opinion can be summarized on the grand finale of each game.

Base Fallout 3 has one of the shittiest endings of all time but by adding Broken Steel, they managed to redeem the base game. It has some genuinely good plot progression by adding the Adam's Air Force base mission where you go from a kid fleeing their Vault to someone who is a power armored badass wiping out the Enclave in a massive personal assault. The way it should be. You even get to destroy a big GI Joe esque personal carrier that I owned as a toy growing up.

Fallout 4 fucks this up because unlike Fallout 3 or New Vegas, the finale is not you on a mission to wipe out Caesar's Legion in the Battle for Hoover Dam. Caesar's Legion will crucify, rape, enslave, and destroy all technology in New Vegas so there's actual fucking stakes. With Fallout 3, you are up against a conquering army that will wipe all out mutants in the Wasteland.

With the Institute? Ehh, they will keep replacing people and playing stupid science games with folk. The most evil thing the Institute does is create and release super Mutants but that's BARELY MENTIONED and clearly only there to explain why Super Mutants are there to begin with. The Brotherhood of Steel annexing the Commonwealth and killing all ghouls feels like a much bigger deal but the game treats them as one of the good guys. Either way, the final mission is you shoot up the place and blow it up--eliminating one of the last safe places in the world and either letting its civilian population evacuate (Good but turning them into homeless refugees) or eliminating them all (Evil but the whole point is getting rid of the bad guys--isn't it?)

If you're in the Railroad, you also wipe out all the infrastructure to make Synths. So wipe them out. Making the Railroad a bunch of idiots. If you're with the Brotherhood of Steel, they have Liberty Prime so they don't NEED you to win the fight. Only the Minutemen Ending at least feels like you're needed to win the mission. That or siding with the Institute where I think that's actually the most reasonable from an ethical standpoint.

Basically, Fallout 4 pisses me off because it feels very much like Fallout 2's more complicated in many ways but dumbs it down to being stupid. The Institute is like Vault City but the ending was, "Let's blow up Vault City." Which no one sane would advocate for.

It's not even fun to do.

 

[Hassknecht]

I don't like the settlement system because it requires too much micromanagement in a way that feels so divorced from anything else in the game. Same goes for weapon and armor crafting, aside from being stupidly modular and denigrating weapon diversity I hated having to worry about it rather than just being able to find or buy what I needed. And I hated having to worry about resource collection in the course of exploration to supply those two tiresome gameplay loops.

Admittedly they are good time sinks, especially with Survival Mode, which really was quite well done and I must confess made the game fun for a time. But the entire rest of the game/world is such that I just don't have any motivation to do it ever again.

Hence Sim Settlement, it takes away a lot of the micromanagement and makes the system a lot more satisfying.
Without it the game is just arse on all levels, except the graphics being better than F3, not that that's a high bar.
Thing is, to me F4 can be turned into something somewhat enjoyable. It has some base mechanics that can be build upon. Fallout 3 doesn't have that to me. The most I enjoyed it was when I tried Tales of Two Wastelands, and the best thing about Fallout 3 was that it led to NV. The improved mechanics helped, but not a lot. The writing is still abysmal.

Homie, you couldn't even pass a voight-kampff test.

I could see a Militia sim being some what entertaining since interacting with the other factions is brutal do to their rampant retardery.
I'm sure there is a mod out that the fixes the settlers and gives them some agency since they just sit around until you tell them to pick berries or whatever.

Yeah, that's Sim Settlements.

 

[CT Phipps]

Hence Sim Settlement, it takes away a lot of the micromanagement and makes the system a lot more satisfying.
Without it the game is just arse on all levels, except the graphics being better than F3, not that that's a high bar.
Thing is, to me F4 can be turned into something somewhat enjoyable. It has some base mechanics that can be build upon. Fallout 3 doesn't have that to me. The most I enjoyed it was when I tried Tales of Two Wastelands, and the best thing about Fallout 3 was that it led to NV. The improved mechanics helped, but not a lot. The writing is still abysmal.

Some people love building settlements and make dozens of them but if you DONT love building settlements, it becomes a very questionable gameplay loop.