Should Fallout 3 be considered canon?

Yeah a game as big as f2 in the style of f1. Don't get me wrong, I like f2 but it brought lots dumb elements into the series. The overuse of pop culture references, jokes, ghosts, the vault experiments, the enclave... I know these things are why most people love the series but I can't stand them.
 
Koveras said:
Yeah a game as big as f2 in the style of f1. Don't get me wrong, I like f2 but it brought lots dumb elements into the series. The overuse of pop culture references, jokes, ghosts, the vault experiments, the enclave... I know these things are why most people love the series but I can't stand them.
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I honestly have to admit...I...I kinda liked the Fallout 2 silliness.

BUT!

I think NV did it best.

Want silly? Use a special trait.

Want serious? Don't use it.
 
- FoNV does build upon Fallout 3. Just not Bethesda Fallout 3 but the fallout 3 code named van buren that was 80 % designed while interplay still owned the ip. They had to port the game they already had designed on a forced engine, with made them change its code to fit with their intends. They also had to changea bit of timeline as they were required to make the plot happen after beth fallout 3, while it should have happened before.

- there is an ongoing project to port fallout 1 plot into fallout 2 engine. Seek for it on the nodding section and you should find it quickly.

- canon is a legal basis for upcoming official work. If fallout 3 is canon, new vegas developers would be forbidden to use Harold as a non-tree, for instance. If fallout 3 isn't canon, official sequels could use a walking harold. On the other hand, unofficial sequels could use Harold in any way they want, but couldn't make money or be charged. Or an official non canon release could be for a light in- between release not intended to make big profit, but to keep the audience on board. Similarly, an official sequel could subsequently be considered non canon if it didn't make enough profit, regardless on the quality of the product. Reboot usually happen after a while without new entries or after last entry didn't make enough money. It doesn't mean much for us the audience are we are free to disregard or a knowledge any entry we want. But in the industry canon weight a lot.
 
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How I picture Pittsburgh when I go into the city

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How it actually is

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Black Angel said:
Except maybeeeeee the Pitt.
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It was 'acceptable' in a sea of averages and terrible. It still doesn't get anywhere near Fallout 1, 2, and New Vegas.

Ashur and the other characters had questionable writing. Why would the slavers want to stick around when Ashur still hasn't come with the cure he promised, they know they will all eventually become Trogs.
Same goes for the slaves, when they were free shouldn't their first decision be "Exit, stage right"
Ashur wanted the steel mill, the rest couldn't give a damn about it.
 
The Dutch Ghost said:
It was 'acceptable' in a sea of averages and terrible. It still doesn't get anywhere near Fallout 1, 2, and New Vegas.

Ashur and the other characters had questionable writing. Why would the slavers want to stick around when Ashur still hasn't come with the cure he promised, they know they will all eventually become Trogs.
Same goes for the slaves, when they were free shouldn't their first decision be "Exit, stage right"
Ashur wanted the steel mill, the rest couldn't give a damn about it.
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Power. Raiders like to lord over others almost as much as like they gutting them. Not to mention the steel mill provides them with all the ammo they could ever want, among other things.

Not everyone becomes a trog. In fact the notion that the Pitt has 100% infant mortality has to be bullshit because the city would literally have been uninhabitable within 50 years of the war.

The DLC for Fallout 3 should be considered more or less cannon but the main game broad strokes. Although Fallout 4 was so bad, I'm tempted to strike everything Bethesda's done from my personal head cannon retroactively. I'm really disgusted at the laziness of Fallout 4, but do have to admit that for all it's problems, Fallout 3 is mediocre, but fairly justified.
 
I mean nothing in Fallout 3 is beyond canon frankly the whole discussion has become pointless. This fanbase looks bad in some ways when looked at this way. The reason Fallout 3 sucked wasn't simply having mutants on the east coast. It was HOW they did it. We can fixate on minor trivial OCD details like how they fed the population of Megaton (mainly hunting I wager) all day, but the real issues were deeper than that. Canon was not the issue. It's the fact that the games they make have no real C&C pure and simple. The canon argument is just something to fap over.

You have to think about it really. We know more about the lore than the makers do at this point. The canon is not in the hands of people who really give a shit. It's something they want you to care about so you can get emotionally invested, but they place no value in it themselves.

This is why I think fan fiction has died off here a bit. It is hard to care about a universe when it is treated like a theme park. We sit here and debate stuff they shat out in a weekend over beer.
 
TorontRayne said:
I mean nothing in Fallout 3 is beyond canon frankly the whole discussion has become pointless. This fanbase looks bad in some ways when looked at this way. The reason Fallout 3 sucked wasn't simply having mutants on the east coast. It was HOW they did it. We can fixate on minor trivial OCD details like how they fed the population of Megaton (mainly hunting I wager) all day, but the real issues were deeper than that. Canon was not the issue. It's the fact that the games they make have no real C&C pure and simple. The canon argument is just something to fap over.

You have to think about it really. We know more about the lore than the makers do at this point. The canon is not in the hands of people who really give a shit. It's something they want you to care about so you can get emotionally invested, but they place no value in it themselves.

This is why I think fan fiction has died off here a bit. It is hard to care about a universe when it is treated like a theme park. We sit here and debate stuff they shat out in a weekend over beer.
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This is a good point, but we are talking about our own personal headcannons. It's about what we as fans want to consider canon and not. There's enough in Fallout 3 that's good I want to consider canon. I like Rivet City, but it can't be in the Washington Naval Yard because the Anacostia isn't big enough to accommodate it. I liked everything in Point Lookout and it's referenced in one of my favorite NV mods, Strangers Aborad. I like Augustus Autumn adnJohn Henry Eden, and their power struggles, not as written but as concept. I like Owen Lyons and Protector Casdin.

The only thing I don't like is that I played Fallout: Doomsday for Heart of Iron 2 and in that game, they had the FUSA, the surviving non-Enclave part of the government that controlled a good fourth of the East Coast. I want FUSA. I want America to survive, because the concept of America is bigger than the Enclave.
 
You already have two forms of America.
The old America, the america that refused to change, refused the new world. The Enclave.
The new America. An entity born from the new world, but who try to emulate (hopefully the good aspects of) America, but blending with the new environment. The NCR.
(There is also Pre-war america, an america that is different than real-life america, on sevaral aspects)

Those factions are nice, but i prefer the faction that are going a bit further than being expies of our current civilizations and are more a product of this new world, like the Unity, the BOS or the Legion.

About Fallout 3, i would say that it does have consistency issues with the rest of the series lore, but it has even more consistency issues with itself. The world they built constantly contradict itself. Same for the plot. Ultimately, the thing cannot stand of its own, even if it wasn't labelled as Fallout.
 
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naossano said:
You already have two forms of America.
About Fallout 3, i would say that it does have consistency issues with the rest of the series lore, but it has even more consistency issues with itself. The world they built constantly contradict itself. Same for the plot. Ultimately, the thing cannot stand of its own, even if it wasn't labelled as Fallout.
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Oh yeah, I was really surprised at how bad the world building was in Fallout 3 and 4. It's really really bad, from a company that's known for really good world building. They want to be all campy and theme park, but there's no humor. It's a very serious story, that makes little sense unless you play it in Tale of Two Wastelands where supermutants get Nev Vegas's DT. THEN the Supermutants overrunning everything makes sense
 
Well, Fallout 3 isn't the only one guilty of story and gameplay segregation. Super-mutants are supposed to be some uber-treats, capable of holding their own agains't the brotherhood of Steel or the Enclave. While not being pushovers they aren't near as strong opponents ingame.
 
naossano said:
Well, Fallout 3 isn't the only one guilty of story and gameplay segregation. Super-mutants are supposed to be some uber-treats, capable of holding their own agains't the brotherhood of Steel or the Enclave. While not being pushovers they aren't near as strong opponents ingame.
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Where? In New Vegas?! They aren't properly threatening in those games because they aren't armed properly. In Fallout 1 and 2, they will kill you in no time flat if you aren't wearing power armor. If you play Fallout 3 in Tale of Two Wastelands and don't select the option to take away the supermutants DT, they are really nasty enemies to fight, if they spawn with anything more than a hunting rifle.
 
I mean in Fallout 1 & 2. They aren't weak. You shouldn't try them at low-level or undergeared.
But they are much much easier to defeat than the Brotherhood of Steel or the Enclave.
Lore-wise, on the other hand, they can beat them. They can beat the BOS in Fo1 if you wait too long to defeat them. And they had beaten the Enclave crew at Mariposa sometine before Fallout 2.
 
naossano said:
I mean in Fallout 1 & 2. They aren't weak. You shouldn't try them at low-level or undergeared.
But they are much much easier to defeat than the Brotherhood of Steel or the Enclave.
Lore-wise, on the other hand, they can beat them. They can beat the BOS in Fo1 if you wait too long to defeat them. And they had beaten the Enclave crew at Mariposa sometine before Fallout 2.
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I think you misunderstand. They defeated the extermination squad sent to wipe them out. Even then, the Enclave Squad managed to seal them down in the sublevels and wiped out all the mutants on level one except Grendel. If they Enclave had any real interest in wiping them out, they would have sent another, or Frank Horrigan. The mutants of Fallout 1 were way more numerous and organized and equipped, in a way you never see them again. Don't confuse the tactical level squishiness of Supermutants or for that matter NCR troopers with the operational advantages that come from reserves and training and equipment.

What destabilizes the balance for the player in those games is aimed shots. If you took out aimed shots and Sniper/Slayer, every fight with supermutants would be a life or death struggle. With easy access to criticals, even fighting the Enclave isn't tough. I know because I wiped out Navarro just this evening.
 
Charwo said:
What destabilizes the balance for the player in those games is aimed shots. If you took out aimed shots and Sniper/Slayer, every fight with supermutants would be a life or death struggle. With easy access to criticals, even fighting the Enclave isn't tough. I know because I wiped out Navarro just this evening.
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Better to enforce the accuracy of the PC's skill level. A novice marksman should not be making called shots, or frequent critical hits.
 
At Mariposa, they weren't send to kill any super-mutants, there were there to use Redding miners as slave to help them extract FEV, and the miners became so much exposed to it that they turned into super-mutants. Some thought they would need to kill them after they got the sample, but the situation went out of control. The newly turned super-mutants managed to inflict large casualties to the Enclave troopers stationed there, who only managed to seal the entrance, instead of actually kill their opponent. And it is even unclear if they managed to kill any super-mutants. The logs telll that when they shot one, not only two more were coming, but the first one also waked up. They were beaten by people who were just turned into super-mutants, not well organized, and who weren't prime humans to begin with.

Also, the Enclave did send Horrigan there. Although he was just a regular trooper. The Mariposa event made him a super-mutant, and sealed his fate.

About the gameplay version of super-mutant there are many differences with Enclave :
- The SM don't have any kind of armor. Even if their skin is thick, their resistance is nowhere near as power armor.
- The SM have mostly area weapon and use them regardless who is in the area. They keep killing each other when firing at you.
- The SM have limited weaponry. Mostly big guns and a few laser. The Enclave have much more varied weaponry and get the new gear from Fallout 2.
- Amongs their weapons, the Enclave have some ammos specifically made to penetrate armors. Which means that your power armor effectiveness is significantly reduced. (you can also use that stuff agains't them)
- The nightkin truly have a deadly potential, except that they aren't really invisible ingame, which makes much less effective as they are supposed to be lore-wise.

Anyway, the point is that the gameplay doesn't always reflect what is established in lore. Beth tends to do worse, but the previous titles aren't free of that issue.
 
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