Some odd "holes" in Fallout 3

el gusto said:
My favorite kind of philosophical discussion involves one where after a lengthy argument about some X, a participant finally throws up his hands and says, "I don't think we have a determinate concept of X", therfore what is Internally realistic to you Sander?
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Internal realism/internal consistency within a work of fiction basically means that there are no contradictions within it. For an example,a book begins with the main character having green eyes but somehow the character has blue eyes in the ending without any explanation what so ever that would make sense with in the boundaries of the fictional world.
Obvious contradiction. So the work is not completely internally consistent/realistic. So is with the miracle electricity and working computers. Whos maintaining them ?
Obviously someone would have to, computers don't take 200 years of rain and rust well. Where does the electricity come from ? it has to come from somewhere. no one maintaining anything yet magically everything works ? Now if there were people living there and maintaining it would be internally consistent/realistic. Simple.
just my opinion on this.
 
I dont agree with the fact people rag this game off because it doesnt 'fit' into a realistic view of a post nuclear world, because the fallout post apocylptic world wasnt realistic in the first place anyways... FO3 suigs
 
el gusto said:
I dont agree with the fact people rag this game off because it doesnt 'fit' into a realistic view of a post nuclear world, because the fallout post apocylptic world wasnt realistic in the first place anyways... FO3 suigs
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Did you not read anything at all?
It isn't about realism, it is about fitting its own world. Fallout wasn't realistic in some cases, but it did adhere to its own set of rules. Decay and scarcity of technology and power being some of those rules.
 
el gusto said:
I dont agree with the fact people rag this game off because it doesnt 'fit' into a realistic view of a post nuclear world, because the fallout post apocylptic world wasnt realistic in the first place anyways... FO3 suigs
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that's only one reason, and it's not even a major one - as stated, it's not an issue with being realistic, but internal realism. if you don't understand the difference between those two posts, there's no real point in you arguing for or against.

more to the point, people rag on the game for: useless stats, stupid quests, stupid dialogue, wonky physics, terrible ai, obvious world design flaws, weightless ammo, too much stuff lying around everywhere, bug ridden programming, bad voice acting, easily broken quests, bad karma design, and maintaining the franchise in symbology only.
 
Well, wasn't there a nuclear war between China and the USA?
If Nuclear Armageddon came I really don't think humanity would be back on its feet in just 200-300 years.
Look at Chernobyl for example, thousands of people died just to put a led cap on a couple of reactors which emanated a LOT LESS radiation then a normal nuclear bomb.
In some regards Fallout 3 is weak on the facts but regarding the state of humanity I think it's at least spot on.

And second, if you read through some terminals you find out that some buildings had Generators so it's quite ok for them to have power.
 
No it's not. Generators don't last forever and certainly not without regular maintenance.

Chernobyl - Not thousands. The ones who died directly from chernobyl are the ones who went SWIMMING in the reactor to try and solve the problem.

And we're not saying humanity is supposed to be back on it's feet. In fact, the problem is humanity is too well organised and established in FO3.
 
Trithne said:
No it's not. Generators don't last forever and certainly not without regular maintenance.

Chernobyl - Not thousands. The ones who died directly from chernobyl are the ones who went SWIMMING in the reactor to try and solve the problem.

And we're not saying humanity is supposed to be back on it's feet. In fact, the problem is humanity is too well organised and established in FO3.
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Which is funny because at the same time it looks like things are in the shitter, what with their ratty matresses and for some reason psychotic bandits. But when NPC's talk with each other everything is hunky-dory.

... I don't think I've ever actually used the word hunky-dory before.
 
I liked how Three Dog is educated enough to know what photosynthesis is, but doesn't know what a disc is.

The pip boy radio was a great idea. Until I had heard every news story at least 100 times. Okay, the enclave station was sort of explained; well, not really, but at least it was acknowledged by the NPCs that Eden was repeating himself.

You see, that's the problem with voice acting. They have to repeat shit, because they can't produce the same kind of volume that text can.

I don't know; for all the people who purchased a copy of Fallout 3, how big of a factor was Liam Neeson? How many said, "Wow, voice acting by Liam Neeson? I have got to get this game!"? I would have gladly traded his voice for 10 different no-names who sound different from each other. Who the fuck cares that Liam Neeson is in the game?
 
Internal Consistency

The most internally consistent game of the series was of course, the first. Fallout was a very consistent game, were after 80 years of a nuclear holocaust with killed about 99% of the global population, civilization was starting to growth again on the planet. This young civilization consisted of shanty towns. But it had advanced prewar technology inside abandoned military bases and the BoS, with was like a military vault. You would not find a working robot/computer in the middle of the desert.

In fallout 2 civilization started to develop more, but the world was less consistent, with weird places like New Reno, São Francisco and your isolated tribal village. But still, a decent level of internal coherence with the concept of the game was maintained.

In fallout 3 everything became inconsistent! With robots and computers everywhere on the wastes. People drinking and eating radiated water. DC looks like was bombed 2 or 3 years ago, with Megaton and Rivet city as some king of temporary shelter for the survivors. No significant structures in the game were build after the war (with the exception of megaton), with is inconsistent with the developments of fallout 1 and 2, by 2277 civilization would have reestablished itself in the DC area, I can think of something like the NCR colonizing the east coast. If the developers wanted to make the game with a much closer perspective of the pre war world, why not make the game in the 2090s or something?

Anyway, to me this is one of the 3 greatest problems with fallout 3. The story of the mainquest is the second, and the disposable nature of the weapons and armor is the third.
 
el gusto said:
I dont agree with the fact people rag this game off because it doesnt 'fit' into a realistic view of a post nuclear world, because the fallout post apocylptic world wasnt realistic in the first place anyways... FO3 suigs
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It's just like saying

"I don't really know why people complain about this who NWO being a facist government..."
 
This is sort of petty, but to me it is the most niggling issue. Why do people live in mess? I'm not talking about wrecked buildings or whatever else. If in the world of Fallout 3 all the buildings are in such states of disrepair then I can accept that as being possible, and so maybe the Temple of Union is in a wrecked concrete shell.

But why even in the most well-kept settlements like the Citadel are there piles of bricks and rubbish all over the place? I just don't buy that people don't mind living in such a mess. Surely they'd remove those bricks and other assorted detritus.

I get that it's a dystopic post-apocalyptic world, but I think that people probably wouldn't be happy to have living space taken up by smashed up junk.

Told you it was petty.
 
Public said:
The Vault City in FO2 was very clean...
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Yes, but then again, Vault City got lucky. A good water supply from the vault, a GECK, laser turrets, a source of power, weapons, a jumpsuit dispenser, a lot of how-to guides and a non-insane experiment. That should've given them a advantage over NCR (whose exit from the Vault was more... violent), but they stagnated, it seems.

Frankly, I'm surprised none of those vaults in the DC area emerged to become something like Vault City.
 
Slaughter Manslaught said:
Public said:
The Vault City in FO2 was very clean...
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Yes, but then again, Vault City got lucky. A good water supply from the vault, a GECK, laser turrets, a source of power, weapons, a jumpsuit dispenser, a lot of how-to guides and a non-insane experiment. That should've given them a advantage over NCR (whose exit from the Vault was more... violent), but they stagnated, it seems.

Frankly, I'm surprised none of those vaults in the DC area emerged to become something like Vault City.
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Yes, that was my point, I only left it unexplained because I thought everyone knows why VC is so clean.

And it is rather stupid in FO3, why none of the vaults emerged outside and made settlements. That was their real purpose right? Not all of them were government's experiments.
 
IIRC from the Bible, all of the vaults were experiments, except Vault 8, the control vault, and maybe some vaults with the enclave.
 
The Vaults were some of the most disappointing areas.

Like the clone vault. The sum total of the information given (though logs) was "hey guys, we have a cloning facility. the clones are hostile to non-clones. some of our guys were attacked".

Beth says "OK, background done. Now let's populate this dunge-- I mean Vault -- with mobs called Gary XX."

No Bethesda, that is not good enough. I had absolutely no motivation to go through half the the vaults I encountered, because I didn't need anything therein, and the backstory to each Vault was so poor it was nothing more than a mob grind anyhow.

I decided this post didn't need spoiler tags. There's nothing interesting to spoil.
 
Some vaults were pretty much made to die (Vault 12, Vault 106), while some were made to stay isolated for a long time (Vault 13 and Vault 101, except that Vault 13 was supposed to stay locked for 200 years, while Vault 101, I don't know... It was supposed to be locked forever or at least until the Enclave needs them, right?) and some were hit-or-miss (Vault 15, 27, 29, 42, 53). I can't believe all vaults in the capital wastelands were made to die horribly, that would be kinda crazy.

EDIT: Another hole in Fallout 3 is about Megaton and Vault 101. Lemme see... So, we have Megaton, a city full of people armed with guns and they surely have acess to explosives. And then we have Vault 101, a place whose security staff is possibly small, only has stupid 10mm pistols and they can barely fight off some stupid rad-roaches. Heck, I myself teared the security team appart. Alone, with a 10mm pistol.

So the people of Megaton live in a wasteland shit hole near a nuclear bomb while the people of Vault 101 live with technology, comfort and acess to food and water undreamed by any wastelander outside the Brotherhood or Enclave. Vault 101 is about ten minutes of walking from Megaton. They KNOW the Vault exists, the vault has contacted them before. Can someone explain me WHY the dwellers of Megaton never tried to blow the door and take the vault for themselves? The people of Megaton have to drink water from a shitty, old purifier. The people of Vault 101 have a water chip. They don't got a GECK, but fuck that, even without a GECK, with proper ammounts of water, they could've all the food they want. Why Vault 101 was never invaded?! Sure, there are those raiders trying to dig in, but why should they waste their time digging instead of buying a shitload of bombs and blowing that door?
 
Don't try to make sense of it. Beth didn't. They don't think how things relate to each other, just 'well, there needs to be a town here to get quests at'.
 
Foobar said:
Hey All,

I recently began playing Fallout 3 and am enjoying the game greatly. I was afraid that it wouldn't live up to its predecessors and end up being another soulless Oblivion clone. Boy was I wrong!

In any case, there are a few things that nag at me:

1) This is 200 years after nuclear Armageddon and people still wear rags and sleep on dirty mattresses? I don't know about you, but even remote tribes in Africa manage to keep themselves clean. 200 years is a freaking long time, yet the game looks like the bomb went off last weak.

2) Where is the power coming from? No mater where you go, a remote hut out in the middle of the wastes, or the remains of an old subway system, there seems to be a power grid keeping machines humming and lights flickering. Is there some sort of plausible explanation for this, or is this just a bizarre oversight.

What do you all think?
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1- Have you not noticed that just about every water source in the world is radioactive? Why in the world would you want to clean yourself with radioactive sewer water?

2- Fallout 2 also had more electricity than one would expect. New Reno... nuff said. We know that the people of the fallout universe have fusion batteries. Scientists believe that a single fusion reactor could power modern civilization with about 50 plants around the world. Given that, the amount of electricity being used in FO3 isnt all that odd. Perhaps the reactors in the vaults are tied into the power grid? Maybe there are semblances of civilization somewhere in the US? Hidden backup reactors the military built underground? The world also has robots who can administer medical attention (see FO2), could robots not be programmed to maintain reactors (and each other)?

I think alot of people are bashing Bethesda for the same "sins" interplay commited years ago. How in the word does New Reno get its power? Really... how? Its a freaking vegas strip complete with flashing lights and a casion thats got game tables, hotel rooms, and is lit up like a damn christmas tree. Mind you, the damn Hoover Dam (tee hee) was built to ensure that Nevada could prosper through the depression, and now sends most of its power directly to Vegas. We also see only about two blocks of New Reno despite the fact that its circle on the FO2 world map takes up a relatively large portion of the map swaure it sits on. So we have to assume New Reno is actually larger than what we play in.
 
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