So in the end, did the Super Mutants add to anything?

Personally, I never considered the things in FO3 to be "true" super mutants. They're a different color, have different physical characteristics, well...everything. I like Fawkes' term 'meta human" because it implies they are merely just another abomination that wanders the wasteland.

It might have worked better if these "meta humans" were the unexpected result of a different biological agent (not FEV in any form) and originated from say Raven Rock or some other military base. They would not have been the superior threat they make them out to be in the game, but rather scattered, largely disorganized bands that acted as just another nuisance.

But that still doesn't work because 200 years later, disorganized bands of creatures that are low in number and can't reproduce should have died off completely. So in conclusion..no the SM's added nothing to FO:3 other than cheesy cannon fodder with no back story.
 
UI liked fighting them, but they were too weak, somewhat illogical and boring beacusew you couldn't interact with them.

What they should have been: A bit stronger, A bit fewer in numbers, lead my a small contingent of survivors from the master's army (they could have discovered vault 87 and the FEV with some weird type of mutants in there and then just expanded the business to try to reestablish the master's idea)

At least some leadertypes and other characters that you could interact with.
 
So, you mean they should have actually been a faction. I don't like the idea, but I can not deny it makes a lot more sense than what Beth made.
 
Hyddan92 said:
UI liked fighting them, but they were too weak, somewhat illogical and boring beacusew you couldn't interact with them.
Click to expand...

I thought of this today, in fact most human enemies of FO3 would feel much more real if there was some way to communicate with them.
Evergreen Mills as a constantly hostile place is totally pointless (first time I played FO3, I took for granted Evergreen Mills would be a real settlement, with communications and quests and tasks. The disapointment was great, but no big surprise... ), the same with Talon Company HQ, and of course, the super mutants.
 
The Dutch Ghost said:
When Fallout 3 details were made public I was rather pissed about the fact that the Super Mutants would be the main enemy/one of the main enemies again, seeing as the Super Mutants were defeated in Fallout 1 and remnants of them were the main enemy in Fallout Tactics and Fallout POS.

One of the fears I had was that the entry of the Super Mutants would also include a Master v 2.0.
Still I was giving Bethesda little benefit of the doubt about the Super Mutants, thinking that we at least would be dealing with remnants of the Master' army.

I became more skeptical when I learned that these weren't actually the Master's old army but a new local group with a whole different origin.

Fallout 1 made it quite clear that all experiments with FEV were taking place at Mariposa, now we suddenly had a Vault were FEV experiments were taking place, something that BTW doesn't make any sense as it doesn't fit the Vault Experiment concept.

My question now is, in the end, was the inclusion of the Super Mutants in Fallout 3 other than them having appeared in FO1/FO2/FOT justified?

In my opinion, NO!

The Super Mutants didn't matter at all to the main quest/storyline and in the few roles they fit in the side quests they could just as easily be replaced with a different type of foe.

In fact, a different type of foe would have been preferred of instead of recycling an old Fallout idea yet again.

Your thoughts?
Click to expand...

It was for brand recognition nothing more.
 
Oppen said:
So, you mean they should have actually been a faction. I don't like the idea, but I can not deny it makes a lot more sense than what Beth made.
Click to expand...

Sort of yes, after reading a lot about fallout lore I understand that their existence on the East Coast are more or less completely illogical. But Bethesda could at least have tried to make it a bit more logical with something/someone that organizes them a bit and that you could actually interact with.

Adding in a small group of survivors from the master's army could explain why they try so hard to expand their numbers and why they are organized. Let's say it's a really small group, not more than a dozen hardcore first gen's that never gave up on the master's idea. They wandered east, farer east than any other super mutant, steady dwindling in numbers thanks to fights with humans and wasteland critters, and possible break-ups and infighting.

Finally, after many many years they reach the DC Wasteland were they hear from some wastelanders about a vault which is highly radioactive and apperently contains some form af "mutated freaks" Upon hearing this the super mutant group travels there and discover primitive mutants and large quantities of FEV, they qucíckly seize power over the vault and makes themselves rules over the few mutants that dwells there. Here they starts to organize the others so they can raid settlements and capture more humans to turn into new super mutants.

Ruled by a dictatorial leader with an iron fist (that also hates humans) they try the best they can to imitate the master and rebuild what was lost. They talk about prophecies about the Master's return etc. etc. Like a brainwashed cult. You of course know nothing about this "master guy" but later hears about him from the BoS. And then you could either help the mutants or help BoS destroy them. The first gen's that discovered the vault would now all be very old, and since the takeover of the vault only a few would still be alive, if you became a friend of these they could add in some amazing stories of the master and the wars from their point of view, and of what happened after. They could tell you about their defeat and how their "people" were slaughtered, scattered and without a home, a few great intelligent super mutants gathered as many survivors as they could and started the great exodus east (or whatever they want to call it) but during that great travel almost all died off before they reached the capital wasteland.

The main reason they need your help is that they need new first gen's, they have plenty of dum brutes but only very very few of their new mutants turns out as something that is not completely retarded.

Or something like that. But they should be less widespread than in the game now, maybe only being in a part of the map.


zegh8578 said:
Hyddan92 said:
UI liked fighting them, but they were too weak, somewhat illogical and boring beacusew you couldn't interact with them.
Click to expand...

I thought of this today, in fact most human enemies of FO3 would feel much more real if there was some way to communicate with them.
Evergreen Mills as a constantly hostile place is totally pointless (first time I played FO3, I took for granted Evergreen Mills would be a real settlement, with communications and quests and tasks. The disapointment was great, but no big surprise... ), the same with Talon Company HQ, and of course, the super mutants.
Click to expand...

Yeah i was really dissapointed that you couldn't interact more with the talon Company assholes, they're just evil and nothing more. Maybe do some jobs for them if you blew up Megaton and didn't get them after you. After you had met them somewhere or something. Same with the raiders In evergreen mills and the fairfax ruins their could have been local warlords that bickered with each other and had quests for you.
 
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I will say that I liked their war cry of "We are the FUTURE!". It would have made a lot more sense if it was said by the Master's army rather than orcs.
 
Still a Vault with FEV does not make sense. The Vaults were never intended as testing facilities to create super soldiers, they were shelters used for social experiments to gain information for a planned space colonization program. (or if we go with just Fallout 1, shelters that in general just did not work out as their planners made mistakes regarding supplies, population and so on)

Mariposa base was specifically re purposed for FEV testing and research into improving it after the project got transferred from West Tek. Only other place where supplies of FEV would make sense would be another military facility (not that I am suggesting more FEV research facilities in Fallout lore, FEV like the Enclave is not necessary in every Fallout game)

Bethesa could have done something different, perhaps making a game that takes place around the same time as Fallout 1 or before/after it, complete with its own original factions, enemies, and creatures, instead of the copy and paste job they turned out.
 
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Eh, time for another practical consideration. Yes, ofc a bunch of stuff was illogical, I'm not defending that game if you pay me.

But, err, did any of you guys play Fallout 1? You know, the one where the super mutants are in fact pretty much an uninteractive Orc/ogre horde sacrificing their captives to their eldricht abomination monster god thus making more of themselves?

Fallout 2 was pretty much a huge WTF Bizzaro retconing regarding that. Check the name of this site? See it? Why would a fan community, unless theyr'e batshit insane, call themselves that unless at some point Fallout 2 didn't exist? There was once a world where the idea of Ghouls as harmless put-upon trading card game playing goofs, or having a super mutant in your party would totaly and completely break immersion in the world of Fallout.

The game that brought us super mutants and ghouls as anything other than ogres and orcs respectively also brought us gems like talking deathclaws, fake vault 13's, the entirety of Monthy Pyton and the holy grail reenacted in disjointed episodes throughout the wasteland, the temple of trials with the self-repairing solid metal doors and handy plastic explosives in a jar, the whole concept of vaults not being genuine bomb shelters, many different reuputations for sex and depravity with only a token badge for becoming a ranger or a sherif, a quest which lets you cover an entire map with heaps of crap out of just one toilet, a shotgun wedding, a magic 8 ball, ghosts, gauss rifles, visions, color coded geckos some of which breath fire, 200 Hp chinamen who get the "gave up demoralized and leaderless after your rampage" endgame cutscene if you throw a plant spike at a random guard before entering a tanker, more miniguns than any sentient race ever had reaso to develop... and had close to no radiation or titular fallout. Or the Brotherhood of Steel. Or even it's own original main bad guys. It's also really, really all over the place in terms of setting, story, genre, writing, content, precedents, quality, balance, state of completedness upon publishing, continuity, sense, mood, consistency... It's hell'a fun though!

So to someone asking what were super mutants doing in Fallout 3, the answer, of course, is making sure nobody sayes it's not fallout because there aren't supermutants in it. Just like what they were doing in Fallout 2. It's a long standing tradition, ever since Fallout 2 was made to be more of a diesel punk - western - monkey island mashup with a lot of humorous references to the original Fallout. The ghouls and mutants in the two cities that house them (there's also 2 in NCR) were complete WTF moments as far as the Fallout universe up till then was concerned (far more improbable than the ones in Fallout 3), the ones in the Military Base had nothing to do with the Master except conviniently walking into where the vats were, and the ones roaming around the end zone of the map and right next to the capital of the NCR were there because - heck, we have no endgame, so mutants, otherwise this isn't fallout. The supermutants that you can fight in Fallout 2 really don't make any sense, as they would've been wiped off the map long ago.

Basicaly, they were there because the Military base is where it is on the map, and since they wanted vault 13 in (but didn't really know what to do with it either, so talking Deathclaws because, why not?). Shady sands, and Vault 15 have to be there since they're all on the same paralel. And so is the Military base, so why the hell not? Because it was thoroughly destroyed in the first game? And you have a ton of new stuff that the new hero could be fighting? Naaaah, instead of properly introducing the new bad guys a bit, let's just stick mutants down there and call it a day. Saves money since you can just reuse all the old models and stuff. Even better! Instead of putting the new bad guys there exploring the ruins, let's make it so that they turned into super mutants while they were at it, cuz, you know, supermutants! And let's even give them supermutant gear even though they would've had the new bad guys gear, cuz they weren't masters army? But then we'd have to make new animations for them! Well, they could've dropped them and found all this stuff, it was a mutant military base! But what happened to all the gauss rifles and new stuff they had before they were sealed there? Shus, that would totaly mess up the careful zone by zone linear gear/threat progression... (beat) ...which totaly isn't there, because we're selling it as non-linear seeing how we couldn't be arsed to come up with a coherent plot or coordinate people designing different cities, if we had all that we wouldn't need supermutants in the first place! And make sure that the player gets a ton of XP just for finding the place! But, dude, you can't miss it, there's nowhere to go but San Fran after NCR and this is like right in the way. Exactly! So give them a ton of XP and stick a Power Armor down there, the supermutants are easy to shoot - noone will complain that none of it makes sense. You know players, give them a shiny set of armor and a 2 AP per shot gun they'll think it's the best idea ever! But what do they need the power armor for, there's a stronger armor in a bloodly locker like, one quest away! And you know they'll go straight for that one because it's the only quest on the entry map and the only BoS quest in the entire game? Yeah, but theeeey don't know that! But still, dude, they've seen Supermutants before, I don't know... Ok, here's what we do - do everythign I've said, but stick a magician summoning a bunch of other monsters right at the bottom. Make him a supermutant, too. (Pause) And if anyone asks how he's doing it - he's tossig gebrils into the vats and deathclaws come out! So it's science and not magic! And make HIM drop a piece of the new gear, while you're at it! But just one. So the players still have something to loot off the main bad guy. Brilliant! Right, so, um, who's the actual bad guy this time around? The prezident of the United States! The same United States which have been blown to kingdom come way before the first game started, which is kind of the basic premise of the games entire universe? The very same! Brilliant! Ok, supermutants it is then, and a wizard who is a supermutant, the bad guy is the prezident of a country which hasn't existed for even longer than the supermutants have been defeated, we got that sorted out, and that saves us a few days and some cash, anyone got any ideas? Yeah, I got one, how about if we pay the guy who designed Modoc to make a new map of it which is exactly the same except covered in shit...

So - supermutants! I'd say Fallout 3 really screwed that up, the time before that it wasn't just brand recognition, it was also model recycling. :D (I do love Broken Hills though, this is just me fooling around shareing a bit of perspective. Sorry if all the Fallout 2 references got a bit sidetracky, but it's an ancient thread and I just felt inspired).
 
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To be fair, the Enclave DID explore the Mariposa Military Base, they took some FEV there, and even had one of their soldier become a power armor super-mutant.

But it is sure that Melchior was underdevellopped.

I may be not objective because of my Fo2 extreme religious cult, but the way i see it, the game seems mostly a humorous satire of societies, game mechanics, storytelling, with sometimes enough elements to make the situation believable, sometimes purposly not.

When i like Fo2 writting it is certainly not the main story that i don't think was meant to be taken seriously (particularly Horrigan, that seems more a parody of super-villain), but the overall tone and the way they adress some real-life and storytelling issues, with a big load of humor.
 
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Oh for sure, I like the game in the same way. It's like a Don Quijote of RPG's. It's also a childhood happy memory which keeps on giving whenever I return to it.

In fact, the Enclave digging up mariposa and getting screwed over there and all that makes for a good episode in the story. Heck, I actually liked Melchiors mechanics - Fallout combat is rather samey due to lack of magic, so a summoner makes for an interesting enemy and managing to sneak one into the game was a stroke of genious.

What I was trying to illustrate is that if you remade Fallout 3 as an isometric turn based shooter, and then set out to make it more in tune with the Fallout universe, and did the same with Fallout 2 (keeping the engine) the results would be rather surprising. For Fallout 3 all it would take is changing the dates, and some critter stats and make a few item names original instead of missfired references. You'd have a rather badly written (or even underwritten), shallow Fallout game but you wouldn't have to change all that much. It'd also still be Fallout 3, the sequel to Fallout with proper gravitas (terribly misaimed and misfocused, but I suppose someone in the Fallout universe took the BoS seriously enough).

Now try that with Fallout 2. :D That game did to it's own cannon stuff that's downright psychodelic, and the fact that it became cannon made making another one a very tricky proposition. Heck, if there's a cannon story that includes all the stuff you can do in that game, or even half the stuff I do on every playthrough and link to it in my mind, I'd probably laugh out loud at hearing it. It's a deep game at times, a touching game at times, a great game at times, an awful game at times and a very, very lighthearted game at a lot of times. And it pokes more fun at the Fallout universe and itself than at anything else, as it were, or just as much as anything else it's lampooning. But it breaks the fourth wall / cannon / it's internal logic more times per city on average than Fallout 3 did in the entire game, and doesn't even bother with the plot untill you run out of map. Making Fallout 3 "plausible" would be childs play compared to doing the same with Fallout 2. If there's a diehard Fallout 3 hater (who'd know all the sacreligeus moments better than me, as I've given it up every time I tried it due to being bored/alienated by the real time/3d) I'd love to see a list of them, and then try to make one for fallout 2 for science sake.

Anywho, applying "this or that didn't work out as I expected" or "this or that didn't make sense" approach to critiqueing Fallout 3 is kind of silly to me, because if you applied that logic to Fallout 2 and went around trying to fix everything that didn't work as anyone expected it you'd get a different game entirely. I mean, I still love it and all, but I have trouble taking it seriously. Apparently so did the devs :D
 
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I won't say that Fallout 3 storyline and quests fail in every way, but for a lot of them, you're wondering why they put them ? what purpose does it serve ? was it intended to be funny ? did they actually finished it ? Does it make sense within that place, the game storyline, the Fallout mythology ?

For instance, after you've done the quest with Vampires/Arefu, what is the point of Lucy West not reacting to her family issues ? Why would the lone wanderer explode the Citadel, while he already killed 75% of the Enclave ? Why are you kicked of the vault while the point of "troubles in homefront" was to allow vault citizen to open themselves to the outside world ? What's the point of having two Brotherhood of steel units, if there's not any quest involving both groups in the same time ? How could we care about Desmond/Calvert issue if we are offered no basis for their conflict ? I won't say that for everything, but for the most part, you're not given enough element to actually care for the story. Beside that, the main quest seems to cease to have any relevance after your father dies, as everything after is just basically shooting big black & yellow stuff. You're asked to suspend your disbelief on things that haven't enough interest in the first place.

That's why i sometimes like more Mothership Zeta than Fallout 3. Your objective is very basic, but it makes sense in context. The ennemies have sometimes crazy reactions but those are supposed to be crazy. You don't think that the dev failed and making them, but succeeded in making them in a way that fit with the genre of that dlc. Some characters are underdevellopped, but there is a sense of urgency that make us forgive those npc to not talk much. There are internal rules in that self contained universe than are respected within it, but wouldn't make sense if you get those at the end of Metro 2033 or Silent Hill, for example...
 
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Ye, true, you can't really defend Fallout 3 too hard, it's not a very good game in too many ways (it's not necessarily horrible either)... But something you've said in another thread made me think about something that came to my mind. You know all the pointless locations that you explore and visit in Fallout 3? Those really suck in a 3d bethesda RPG. But what I remember well from Fallout 3 is that the terrain and stuff had so much more potential than what you get in the older games, except the real time screws it up and makes everything too frantic. The sniper + minefield thing was impossibly cool, for example. Having random encounters with an objective, a location, anything like that where you could get at least a little bit tactical would've been great instead of just standing around and having a shootout. The reason it would work a lot better in the old isometric setup (a la shadowrun) is that traveling the worldmap doesn't take any real world time, so if the location is only interesting strategicaly and is basicaly just a staging ground for a tactical encounter, you'd be glad for it instead of aving wasted tons of time finding it, scouting it, searching it...

If somebody hacked the engine to allow for such location based random encounters instead of the usual ones and used the same ones which sucked badly in Fallout 3, I bet noone would complain for one second or find them out of place...

EDIT: What I was going at is that a lot of "flaws" or "pointlessness" in Fallout 3 would've been easily adjusted had that game been done in an (updated) isometric engine. A lot of stuff that's just not engaging would've worked just fine, and if all the dialogues weren't voiced they could easily be modded/patched to fit. Etc, etc...
 
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i don't think they did. i keep wondering what purpose they have in fo3, and i realize they are just there to be mooks.
 
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