I just don't understand it, sorry. There seems to be very little actually keeping anyone in the area - very little material incentive.
In the Black Isle games, the world made pretty good sense. Isolated towns had no-one to depend upon but themselves and traders going between them, and raiders and slavers alike preyed upon both, while a few remaining "cities" handled "big" trade, drugs, weapons, put the slaves to use, etc. The immense and inhospitable span of the wastelands kept everyone more-or-less isolated from one-another, yet dependent upon one another for certain commodities, except in the case of tiny farm towns (Arroyo) and sprawling oases (Vault City.)
In short, there were pretty good reasons for almost everyone to be where they were, doing what they were doing, for the locations that they occupied to exist in the first place and for those locations to be developing in the fashion that was apparent.
But Bethesda's game is so nonsensical that it disperses all remnants of verisimilitude. Who are these "Wastelanders" and why would they, nearly 300 years after the war, be scrounging vagabonds in a wasteland depleted of its resources and plagued by threats that they are woefully unprepared to deal with?
Why would an old woman live out of a tiny shack next to a river upon the other bank of which ferocious horrors stalk - who is she selling mirelurk meat to, who would have the money/barter or even the interest in that area? Talon Mercs? Outcasts? Unlikely - but would Megatons denizens really brave the trek just for some crabpeople-cakes?
What locations are the traders travelling between - who besides Megaton would be interested in their goods? The raiders would murder them, the Tenpenny crew has its own stock... The only other identifiable source for commerce would be the isolated "neighborhoods," but what source of income do they have in order to trade? Andale has human meat, from, according to the game, travellers, which would eventually kill trade - but no other place that I can find in the game has even a hint of sustainable agriculture. Megaton has ONE brahmin - the rest, that I've found, are running wild. This is in stark contrast to agricultural systems depicted in the first two games, which made pretty good sense in most cases.
Who has the money - or the need - to buy slaves? Who has cause or means to hire mercenaries or hitmen - and why would they be in such a hopeless locale anyway? What (plausible) different interests or locations suffice to make Megaton a sustained junction between them?
I haven't been to Arefu or Rivet City yet, but so far as I'm aware, those are the only locations I haven't already dealt with that have a population significant enough that they may be involved in the socioeconomic structure of DC.
I can't see any real reason for Bethesda's version of DC to be anything more than a STALKER-esque scavengers' battleground - and I daresay the game would've been a lot better done that way, if it had to be done at all.
It's silly, surely, to over-analyze a dumbed-down, consoley game like this - but I think it all serves to support the statement that Bethesda's Oblivion-and-after "designers" are rather like base amateurs given AAA resources in that they don't possess (or at least don't express) any special intellectual, artistic, creative or logical approach to creating a story or a gameworld, and instead just amass an amorphous, chaotic clusterfuck of "hey what about this"-type ideas. This is reflected starkly in the "feel" of the world they've created, in which all the elements seem a random mish-mash instead of a cohesive, vital, dynamic environment.
The end result is that the game is only a "Fallout" by strained association, and the post-apocalyptic ambience of the game is so vague and unstructured that it seems more fitting for a decade just after the war rather than centuries after.
obama yo mama![Rolling Eyes :roll: :roll:](/../../xencustomimages/smilies/icon_rolleyes.gif)
In the Black Isle games, the world made pretty good sense. Isolated towns had no-one to depend upon but themselves and traders going between them, and raiders and slavers alike preyed upon both, while a few remaining "cities" handled "big" trade, drugs, weapons, put the slaves to use, etc. The immense and inhospitable span of the wastelands kept everyone more-or-less isolated from one-another, yet dependent upon one another for certain commodities, except in the case of tiny farm towns (Arroyo) and sprawling oases (Vault City.)
In short, there were pretty good reasons for almost everyone to be where they were, doing what they were doing, for the locations that they occupied to exist in the first place and for those locations to be developing in the fashion that was apparent.
But Bethesda's game is so nonsensical that it disperses all remnants of verisimilitude. Who are these "Wastelanders" and why would they, nearly 300 years after the war, be scrounging vagabonds in a wasteland depleted of its resources and plagued by threats that they are woefully unprepared to deal with?
Why would an old woman live out of a tiny shack next to a river upon the other bank of which ferocious horrors stalk - who is she selling mirelurk meat to, who would have the money/barter or even the interest in that area? Talon Mercs? Outcasts? Unlikely - but would Megatons denizens really brave the trek just for some crabpeople-cakes?
What locations are the traders travelling between - who besides Megaton would be interested in their goods? The raiders would murder them, the Tenpenny crew has its own stock... The only other identifiable source for commerce would be the isolated "neighborhoods," but what source of income do they have in order to trade? Andale has human meat, from, according to the game, travellers, which would eventually kill trade - but no other place that I can find in the game has even a hint of sustainable agriculture. Megaton has ONE brahmin - the rest, that I've found, are running wild. This is in stark contrast to agricultural systems depicted in the first two games, which made pretty good sense in most cases.
Who has the money - or the need - to buy slaves? Who has cause or means to hire mercenaries or hitmen - and why would they be in such a hopeless locale anyway? What (plausible) different interests or locations suffice to make Megaton a sustained junction between them?
I haven't been to Arefu or Rivet City yet, but so far as I'm aware, those are the only locations I haven't already dealt with that have a population significant enough that they may be involved in the socioeconomic structure of DC.
I can't see any real reason for Bethesda's version of DC to be anything more than a STALKER-esque scavengers' battleground - and I daresay the game would've been a lot better done that way, if it had to be done at all.
It's silly, surely, to over-analyze a dumbed-down, consoley game like this - but I think it all serves to support the statement that Bethesda's Oblivion-and-after "designers" are rather like base amateurs given AAA resources in that they don't possess (or at least don't express) any special intellectual, artistic, creative or logical approach to creating a story or a gameworld, and instead just amass an amorphous, chaotic clusterfuck of "hey what about this"-type ideas. This is reflected starkly in the "feel" of the world they've created, in which all the elements seem a random mish-mash instead of a cohesive, vital, dynamic environment.
The end result is that the game is only a "Fallout" by strained association, and the post-apocalyptic ambience of the game is so vague and unstructured that it seems more fitting for a decade just after the war rather than centuries after.
obama yo mama
![Rolling Eyes :roll: :roll:](/../../xencustomimages/smilies/icon_rolleyes.gif)