Should Fallout 3 be considered canon?

[Gizmojunk]

Iirc they do, if you pay attention to the combat log you will see NPCs would sometimes aim for legs/arms.

I believe ~but am not sure, that Charwo means in FO3.

**As for FO3, also NPCs cannot ever use VATS on the PC ~thanks to Bethesda's silliness.
No... VATS is not akin or derived of turn based combat; sadly it IS intended to be some [unconscionably stupid] feature of the Pipboy afaik.

 

[Charwo]

I believe ~but am not sure, that Charwo means in FO3.

**As for FO3, also NPCs cannot ever use VATS on the PC ~thanks to Bethesda's silliness.
No... VATS is not akin or derived of turn based combat; sadly it IS intended to be some [unconscionably stupid] feature of the Pipboy afaik.

No I meant in Fallout 1 and 2. They randomly get criticals that say, hurt your knee or cripple your arm, but these are criticals you can get from non-aimed shots. They never, ever get the criticals you get from aimed shots: instant death, groin shot descriptions or even when blinded, never a notice you were hit in the eyes, just blinded. The Enclave soldiers, who have the best weapons skills in Fallout 2 never make aimed shots. Remember, I just wiped out Navarro yesterday, and spent two hours grinding Enclave patrols while listening to Jane Austen.

 

[Black Angel]

They randomly get criticals that say, hurt your knee or cripple your arm, but these are criticals you can get from non-aimed shots.

Eh? I don't think that's the case. Now that I try to remember, it's something along the line, "NPC1 hit [PC name] in the right arm for X damage" or anything like that. I'm not sure, I'm too lazy to boot up Fallout 1/2 right now, and the last time I played them was Fallout 2's TC mod, Fallout 1.5: Resurrection.

 

[Deleted member 93956]

It is. Half my playthroughs are with Fast Shot, which disallows aimed shots completely, adn I got some of those criticals in a very similar if not the same way the NPCs do.

For example, IIRC I never saw noggin or eye shots, but lots in limbs

 

[Gizmojunk]

Limbs are the easy called shots; perhaps they don't risk targeting the head & eyes.

 

[ThatZenoGuy]

NPC's in fallout 1-2 do aimed shots.

Its not nice to have a crit to your eyes, let me tell you that.

 

[Sn1p3r187]

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.

If they wanted all of D.C to be really canon. There shouldn't really have been a D.C left standing after the war. I mean in reality they wouldn't use a surface-burst nuclear weapon unless they were aiming at a military installation or a tactical target. A strategic point like D.C would've been reduced to cinders from a 1.5 megaton air-burst. Going by the lore of the first two Fallout games the Chinese were using air-bursts to destroy strategic targets. I think Sarah Lyons was a pretty good character in my book.

 

[Charwo]

If they wanted all of D.C to be really canon. There shouldn't really have been a D.C left standing after the war. I mean in reality they wouldn't use a surface-burst nuclear weapon unless they were aiming at a military installation or a tactical target. A strategic point like D.C would've been reduced to cinders from a 1.5 megaton air-burst. Going by the lore of the first two Fallout games the Chinese were using air-bursts to destroy strategic targets. I think Sarah Lyons was a pretty good character in my book.

I could see the local missle command shooting down the ICBMs, and with only a few kiloton bombs making it down to destroy DC. The firestorms went on for weeks according to Carol, if an ICBM had hit there'd be nothing to burn that long. But the ones that hit were salted bombs.

 

[Sebor13]

I think that, with how easy it is to rewrite Fallout 3 to make no reference to the Brotherhood of Steel or the Enclave or supermutants or anything like that, it should be disregarded. I always love rewrites that make the story and world of the Capital Wasteland make sense.

I remember reading one where the DC ruins were basically just exposed subway and basements overgrown with trees and basically serving as a nearly impenetrable, flooded swampy forest with all of the settlements sitting on the peripheral. I would have a special type of local mutant replace the supermutants of this game. Maybe they are swampfolk-like mutants (I'd change some things about them) who the humans see as horrific monsters and are seeking to destroy (to spin the Unity - Fallout 1 narrative on its head).

Since I like the story potential of an Enclave Outpost in the Midwest, I wouldn't remove Raven Rock but make it canonically in rural Virginia and one of multiple underground bases across the country that has nothing to do with the Enclave. The people in Raven Rock are hard to find, fear outsiders instead of hate them, and have very limited interactions with the player. You can gain their trust by helping them out with a few things. Just as some examples: they are worried about their ability to continue to power their entire facility into the future and ask for you to find a new source of energy (you can solve this a variety of ways, including linking them to a settlement that has a well functioning power plant (beginning their integration with the outer wasteland) or giving them the schematics to a solar power generator (allowing them to remain insular), they wish to get in contact with another base and ask you to repurpose a radio tower to be a signal that only another one of these bases has the ability to decipher, and have one be the direct descendant of billionaires who owned a mansion that may still be standing that they want to see and ask you to bring them there. It'd just be really limited things that don't get in the way.

Also, I would rewrite Lyons' Pride from being the elite of a Brotherhood of Steel branch that went native into some sort of homegrown military guard called Lyons' Pride, historically lead by a man named Lyons (which could make some interesting internal conflict with Sarah Lyons, a woman, being Owen Lyons' successor). They hate ghouls and swampfolk, which could generally be seen as bad since swampfolk are presented as kind of human by the player, but they do present the chance of a united, forward facing wasteland even if it means the genocide of these mutants. Make Lyons' Pride a darker sort of NCR that has a lot of potential for conflict.

Not a very complicated or thought out story, but I'd argue this is already better than what we got in Fallout 3 (which would definitely be Fallout D.C. or something instead).

 

[Gizmojunk]

I wish a group would band together to rewrite the thing with an eye for the existing assets including (recorded voices), and then assemble a total conversion mod that displaces the entire FO3 campaign with one more in keeping with the setting and atmosphere of the original two. But not necessarily a continuation of them.

 

[Black Angel]

Obligatory @Radiosity's Reconstructing Fallout 3 Retrospective Series