Shamus Young "The Blistering Stupidity of Fallout 3"

Awww, we've gone a whole day without any bickering. Let's not pull out the pointy sticks of poking just now.

(Seriously.)
 
Walpknut said:
It's trivial but it's still a pretty glaring plot hole. Like, they have been inside the Vault all their lives wearing only Jumpsuits yet this kids got their hands on Leather jackets somehow without explanation.
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What's to say people didn't bring their own clothing into the Vault?
 
It's theoretically possible, though usually outside clothing and non pre-approved items weren't allowed into the vaults, iirc. It still stretches disbelief that three identical 200-year-old leather jackets in near-perfect condition made their way into the gang's hands, and that nothing similar was seen anywhere else in the vault, but as said elsewhere, I think the tunnel snakes are a minor nitpick, no less believable than much of Fallout 2 was.

I'm sure the original video only mentioned them for the sake of completeness, that being kind of the point of the piece. I was honestly a little surprised anyone made it an issue beyond that.
 
"As for society not advancing in 200 years, you’re looking at a civilization where most of the population is killed, nearly all of the infrastructure is damaged, if not destroyed, communications are cut, resources that were already stretched thin are now unavailable, and (due to the war) weapons are readily available to anyone who wants to go put on leather and rob whatever settlements remain. This doesn’t even mention the mutants running around."

Then that civilization should have already been eradicated. God, the more this particular topic gets discussed about, the more I get angry at Bethesda's horrid writing.
 
Well... not necessarily. The Vault 87 mutants do complicate things and cause no shortage of headaches for canon purists, but if anything, you could build an argument on their presence being one of the factors that's kept the Capitol Wasteland so comparatively fallow and chaotic. It still wouldn't nearly do as an explanation, but it would probably help. It would certainly explain why everyone was so happy when the Brotherhood showed up and declared them White Whale Numero Uno.

Every other circumstance described was just as much of an issue everywhere else in the world, though, and they were all resurgent in some degree or other after a handful of decades. The mutants can't account for everything. The CW is, in terms of whole-cloth big picture thinking, the least well-tthought-out of any of the locations presented in Fallout to date. The game's own expansions did much better, at least the two that tried. Even Fallout: Tactics did beter in some regards.
 
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No matter how hard any company tries, they can't please all the fans.

If Fallout 3 and New Vegas both played like Fallout/2, you'd have people complaining about the isometric view and graphics (I'll be honest, both of the games confuse the heck out of me; I only know anything about them from reading up on them to better understand the Fallout World as a whole; I tried my hand at them and couldn't get past the first cave/temple.)
​Curse my sheltered childhood...

Even if the writing was spot-on, relevant to the previous two games and added to the overall timeline, you'd still have people griping, saying "No, THIS is what happened HERE and nothing you say is going to make me change my mind."

I blame how open-ended the games are, and people would complain if they were more linear (I point to the complaints people had with Metroid Fusion and Other M; where you're forced into a set path every playthrough, whereas games like Zero Mission and Super Metroid you could do a whole bunch of different things to spice up the gameplay for yourself.)

I LIKE that the games aren't closed off like that and you get a unique playthrough depending on your actions, but there's people that complain about it, because, let's face it: People will argue over anything and everything just because it's there.

All you can really do is sigh and tune them out.

Play it however you want to play, and focus on the things everyone can agree on and go from there.
 
I really didn't make it an issue, I pointed out how nonsensical even that bit of them was and these two dudes starting going apeshit as if I was holding the game up because it didn't explain Leather Jackets. I even said I didn't even care about them like 4 times, but whatever.


I liked Point Lookout, if the Swamp people hadn't been more resistant to damage than Power Armor and if there were a few non hostile ones it would've been made for an interesting faction, one mutated from rampant incest and congenital deformities rather than by radiation or disease.
THe Pitt was cool in idea but the execution rang hollow, I think they should've made the main game on Pittsburg rather than making it only a DLC. It seemed like a more developed location even when there was only one settlement.
 
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Dio said:
Walpknut said:
My point is that when a work neglects the bigger picture and fails t have a consistent world it's then rather easy to poke further holes with the small stuff too as the bigger stuff dwasn't compeling enough to make you not care about them.
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You are bound to find "holes" if you go out of your way to look for them, or make them yourself.
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I suppose you could find just as many in New Vegas then.
 
Walpknut said:
No I didn't do what you did-You made up reasons for something that makes no sense, I gave you information that is shown in the setting in game. [...]
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No, he pegged you right.. you are biased as hell ;)

I don't see a problem with a gang of juvenile delinquents modeled after 1950s-style Greasers, its no more ridicules then the Kings. What is ridicules is you making assumption about social condition of people who thought the outside is dead, and lived for the past 200 years locked in the confines of a vault (btw this book has a similar setting), that just recently started sending expeditions (and likely trade) with the OUTSIDE..

If you bothered with nitpicking such trivial details, then for sake of comparison pick a similarly obscure details from FO:NV not the main element of FO:NV setting which stares us in the face the whole game..

From the top of my head using the example above: why at the time Robert Edwin House designed his data storage as platinum chip? why our RobCo Industries genius and part owner of EPCONN Aerospace, didn't warn anyone of his conclusion, share his laser tech and help protect other place? or if no one wanted to listen, why the CEO of the most profitable corporations in the world was unable to stockpile vast resources under his defense net? ..

Overall those argument sometimes sound like this:

 
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The Kings jsut recently adopted the Greaser look, and it was because they settled shop on destroyed Freeside on the old Impersonator's school. So it's not quite the same at all.

In any case, if you are gonna harp on such a small detail I didn't ven make huge deal of as your sole argument then it's pretty obvious you Beth advocates are just grasping for straws.:razz:
 
There's a major difference between being given an explanation in-game that you believe is inadequate and not being given one at all. You could argue that the real world itself is a chaotic place with much that is counterintive or unexplained, but there's still a basic logic permeating it all and a cause-effect chain behind everything you see. Fallout 3 largely eschewed this.

New Vegas vs. 3 isn't even what the thread was originally supposed to be about, but since you bring it up, fred2, they do brush on or attempt to explain every point you raised there, even if it takes a few moments of idle thought to put some of it together. In fact, House himself addresses most of them. F3 didn't make those kinds of efforts, in most cases. Like the game or not, it's black and white reality. Observable facts aren't biased.
 
Yamu said:
There's a major difference between being given an explanation in-game that you believe is inadequate and not being given one at all. You could argue that the real world itself is a chaotic place with much that is counterintive or unexplained, but there's still a basic logic permeating it all and a cause-effect chain behind everything you see. Fallout 3 largely eschewed this.

New Vegas vs. 3 isn't even what the thread was originally supposed to be about, but since you bring it up, fred2, they do brush on or attempt to explain every point you raised there, even if it takes a few moments of idle thought to put some of it together. In fact, House himself addresses most of them. F3 didn't make those kinds of efforts, in most cases. Like the game or not, it's black and white reality. Observable facts aren't biased.
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One, the game writing says it's both lasers and missiles. Two, if all you need is a minor explanation of a game changing event that saved an entire city but where leather jackets came from is a problem...and you don't see the issue there...then there really is no explaining things.

How about Lonesome Road and the fact that the Courier's entire blowing up of a community is a non-existent event until the DLC arrives? No one knew about it? Or mentioned it? It's one of the worst written events in a game because it's made out to be this earth shattering (literally and figuratively) event that is never an issue before or after the DLC occurs. Somehow we are to believe a package from the Enclave sent by the NCR just remote detonates a ton of nukes underground when that would be a massive security risk pre-war if it could even happen. Again it's another "This happened because we said so" event that should've been fleshed out better but was not.

This isn't to even go into Ulysses's half baked, philosophical nonsense either. He was a cool character that fell apart totally in execution sadly.

Hardboiled Android said:
Dio said:
Walpknut said:
My point is that when a work neglects the bigger picture and fails t have a consistent world it's then rather easy to poke further holes with the small stuff too as the bigger stuff dwasn't compeling enough to make you not care about them.
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You are bound to find "holes" if you go out of your way to look for them, or make them yourself.
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I suppose you could find just as many in New Vegas then.
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You could find plenty, but people who love NV over FO3 cry about FO3 endlessly and nitpick nonstop. Fans of FO3 over NV don't do the same, which is obsess over a thing they dislike. The purist fans want any reason to complain, so they do.

Big No said:
Battlecross said:
-Snip-
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Wasn't this discussion already finished? Also, didn't you say you were done like three times already?
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Actually no, I said I was done with talking to him.
 
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Yamu said:
There's a major difference between being given an explanation in-game that you believe is inadequate and not being given one at all. You could argue that the real world itself is a chaotic place with much that is counterintive or unexplained, but there's still a basic logic permeating it all and a cause-effect chain behind everything you see.
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Strawmen argument alert. I haven't made that comparison, in fact I specifically noted that he should pick another example that contain similarly obscure\unexplained detail from FO:NV, so that this nitpick can put in context.

Yamu said:
Fallout 3 largely eschewed this. New Vegas vs. 3 isn't even what the thread was originally supposed to be about, but since you bring it up, fred2, they do brush on or attempt to explain every point you raised there, even if it takes a few moments of idle thought to put some of it together. In fact, House himself addresses most of them. F3 didn't make those kinds of efforts, in most cases. Like the game or not, it's black and white reality. Observable facts aren't biased.
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Again strawmen argument alert. I haven't commented on FO3 vs FO:NV, only on the silly Tunnel Snake nitpicking that has been going for 4 pages, and what I consider Walpknut confirmation bias.

Although I will point out that FO1 left a lot of things unsaid\unexplained, which over time was complemented by FO2, and the bible and became common knowledge. As for FO3, I used to have a lot of issues with it (due to my very brief\limited playthrough), however, since I have started filling up the details using the vault things have been much more clearer e.g. i wouldn't make the mistakes that many posters made on the first page.

Lastly, FO:NV was brought up before me, I only tried to pick unexplained detail. if you say that those were explained in game, I would love to educate myself.
 
Battlecross said:
You could find plenty, but people who love NV over FO3 cry about FO3 endlessly and nitpick nonstop. Fans of FO3 over NV don't do the same, which is obsess over a thing they dislike. The purist fans want any reason to complain, so they do.
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You have just lost your own credibility by resorting to generalization and making false claims. You are stating fans that prefer 3 over NV will not do the same, yet it is merely a baseless assumption because you provided nothing to support it. The "purist" dribble needs to come to a halt, because pointless labeling just leads to more nonsensical BS.

I would take NV over Fallout 3, any day of the week, so I guess I fit in the "endless crying and nitpicking" category.
 
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The kings were explained alot better than the tunnel snakes were.

The kings also played a much larger role in NV than the snakes did in FO3. The tunnel snakes are rather insignificant in FO3 and as such they dont get much of a back story.
 
Battlecross said:
Big No said:
Battlecross said:
-Snip-
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Wasn't this discussion already finished? Also, didn't you say you were done like three times already?
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Actually no, I said I was done with talking to him.
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But considering he was the one mostly discussing with you, saying you're done kinda sounds like it would end the discussion by default if there's no one to discuss with.


5545Trey said:
so I guess I fit in the "endless crying and nitpicking" category.
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Well, you do nitpick a lot...:razz:
 
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