Retcons you’d like (excluding Bethesda’s lore)

Dogmeat dying at Mariposa comes from Fallout 2's manual.

Speaking of retcons, I would probably stick to the original concept for Caesar's Legion instead of them being Roman LARPers.

 

Go to your room.

 

They still were Roman larpers weren't they? I seem to recall the Denver document with the two Legion NPCs having Roman names

 

Van Buren Concept Art:

 

Yes but I'm thinking of Chris Avellone's original concept. From what I know there were 3 versions of the Legion: MCA's, Van Buren's and the NV's.

 

Motorized version of General Bethlehem's army from the movie Postman. Van Buren's Legion is like a mix of the original concept with the one ultimately shown in NV, which is Sawyer's baby.

 

I don't think cats are extinct. After all, Stacy in the Den claims to have had one as a pet just recently. It seems that they're merely not shown.

 

But this is the point. Her story implies that her family fed the cat to them.... This is why cats (and horses) are extinct.

 

Ah. That's right, I had forgotten the suggestion that Cuddles might have been eaten by humans. However, I don't think her story is enough evidence to conclude that cats are extinct. In particular, one of the random ambient sounds playing in random-encounter maps in FO2 sounds very much like a hissing cat. (It is one of the many brilliant small details that makes the world of the original games so immersive and engrossing). Thus, I think the most we can tentatively assume based on Stacy's story is that Felis Domesticus is no longer kept as a housepet. But it seems implausible that it should have become completely extinct -- at worst, surviving specimens would have become feral and, where applicable, interbred with Felis Silvestris such that the two species merged.

 

One thing I feel seems quite mechanistic in Fallout New Vegas, is the clear divide they draw between 1st and 2nd gen Supermutants. Neil explicitly says that the majority of Supermutants that would attack you on sight are Second Gen because they're "dumb but good at following orders".

I've gone over this in another thread, but for me it feels only one step removed from Fallout 3's presentation. Like, I get the reasoning behind it: 1st gens were perfected by the Master, 2nd gens were created by accident.

But firstly, lorewise, the creation of Supermutants is a lot more complex then that. Most Supermutants came out with crippling problems because of mutated human stock being harder to perfect with the FEV than non-mutated stock. And besides: it's heavily implied that the existence of Supermutants AT ALL is because The Master specifically perfected FEV in such a way to create them. If it weren't for the Master having initially perfected FEV, being dipped in the Vats would have unpredictable consequences.

Realistically, while I understand the reasoning "All smart Supermutants come from this generation, all dumb from this one" seems a little bit forced. I feel like Supermutants in New Vegas would be far more interesting if the differences between the generations was more to do with their experiences in the world: First Generation Supermutants were created as specific adherents to an ideology that put themselves as the next stage of human evolution, Second Generation Supermutants were created by accident from slave miners. These two generations have unique experiences of the world that I feel could generate cultural and ideological differences between them.

 

I think the 2nd Gens being neanderthals adds some concequences to the FEV proces being chaotic and imprecise.

Ideally if you had a good engine, I'd have 2nd Generation mutants differentiated by freakish, random mutation. Disparity in limb sizes, one eye bubbled over with skin film. Great bulbous tumours and fleshy lumps in masses. An extra, useless arm. Something akin the to Bethesda's Mutant Behemoth would be fitting.

Whereas the Gen1s would be suitably unified an uniform in their mutation.

 

This design is pretty comedic like.... just... why?
Uniting people under shared symbolism/ideology borrowed from history makes sense and is neat, but not taken to that extreme.

 

In theory I can see where this line of arguementation comes from.

Lore-wise, the point I'd raise in response is that FEV was imprecise even for The Master: the vast majority of test subjects didn't get vatted properly, that's exactly why the discovery of Vault 13 is so important to The Master. Even if Gen 2s will never be as perfected as Gen 1s, the point still remains that creating such a clear cut divide with one being the "Smart" supermutants and one being the "Dumb/Evil" supermutants feels like it doesn't fit in well with the fact that even among the Master's creations there was no consistency, and plenty of them turned out rough, or with unexpected side effects he couldn't control.

However disregarding lore for a moment and solely talk about story-telling, I feel like "These people you're fighting are too dumb to know what's good for them, and are easily swayed by propaganda" is kinda a cheap story beat. There are infinitely more interesting stories you could tell about how experiences shape culture, and how even seemingly arbritrary differences in history can shape an entire culture's way of seeing the world, and the differences in Generations of Mutants has this clear potential.

Slowly finding out that the Enclave accidentally created the 2nd Gens using Slave Miners simply to recover FEV in the second game was a major high point of the plot for me. Even the fact that the Supermutant Boss has a son waiting for him who he was ripped away from adds a lot of humanisation to what pretty much only exists to provide a high-level dungeon for players to go through.

Story-wise the "2nd Gens follow Tabitha because they're stupid" feels like a missed opportunity. It creates an inherent divide between generations of Supermutants based on how they were created, and instead of doing something interesting and humanising to the Mutants, instead creates what seems like a shallow and deterministic view of human nature "These people do this becaue they're dumb and evil because of the way they were created" feels more like a World of Warcraft plotline than a Fallout one.

 

Its a good point and clearly meant to be fluff to make Black Mountain into a combat ring whilst the serious Supers story went on at Jacobstown.

I think the underdevelopment of Utobitha is actually a great untapped area

 

Fallout's world setting is (contrary to Bethesda's tampering)... a future as they thought it would happen; hence if they assumed that cats would be easy food, and quickly become extinct (right or wrong)... then that's what would have happened.

 

What is a pulley, Alex?

 

Yes, this is what Fallout 2’s main quest should’ve have been! Fallout 2 sets up this really interesting geopolitical landscape and gradually reveals how the enclave is worming it’s way into this power structure (trading with the Salvatores) and then... none of that matters, the Enclave want to release a super virus to kill literally everyone else on the planet and only you can stop them.

You should have had to get (some of) the factions to join together to take out the enclave (kind of like they eventually do, with the brotherhood and NCR teaming up to wipe out Navarro).