There being more than one species of Super Mutant is stupid

[Gizmojunk]

You have to be completely delusional to not think Fallout 3 rehashed out of lazyness.

Sadly I do not think it is out of laziness at all. I do think it is a wholly calculated usage of the assets to market the concept to the majority of their [known & well understood] TES audience—most of which might never have even heard of the Fallout series.

I believe that it is quite purposely TES re-skinned with the Fallout figurehead assets in full view for the primary reason of "Me-To!"

And those that had even slight recall of the game making the rounds back then, would certainly remember the icons... even if they remember nothing other about them.

It's Fallout!(meaning it's Power Armor and big ugly mutants—and some plant dude named Harold).
Fallout

Their market all think Fallout means this:

Spoiler

 

[mannawyadden]

Gotta love how you purposely ignore what i said (which you do a lot, to make your arguments seem better than what they are)

You mean like how you ignored my point about the Outcasts saying the West Coast Elders would put Lyons in front of a firing squad?

So this is the part of my prophecy where my posts are misunderstood as being a defense of Bethesda's decisions and I try to explain myself.

All I'm saying is that every Fallout game will recycle elements from previous installments. Fallout 2, New Vegas, Van Buren, and 1.5 all disguise their recycling by simply taking place in the same region. The recycling is much more obvious when you change the region and time period. That's all it is.

Elements are recycled because thats what games and movies in a franchise always do. There's nothing shocking about it. Some things disguise their recycling better than others.

I don't think that having multiple Super Mutant strains is a bad idea compared to the alternative of having them be part of the Master's Army. At least they made them a completely different species instead of defiling The Master's legacy with what would inevitably have been a failed portrayal.

 

[naossano]

The super-mutants come from mariposa, not the glow.

 

[mannawyadden]

I believe that it is quite purposely TES re-skinned with the Fallout figurehead assets in full view for the primary reason of "Me-To!"

Exactly. It's all working as intended. I wish there were a Fallout game that had only brand new elements, but the closest we'll come to that is a small little DLC like Point Lookout.

 

[Gizmojunk]

The fact that it's TES re-skinned, instead of Fallout retrofit for the modern PC—is why it loses regardless of merit. The very things that are its strong points... count against it—because they actively distance it from its root... like some bad gene mutation.

 

[mannawyadden]

The fact that it's TES re-skinned, instead of Fallout retrofit for the modern PC—is why it loses regardless of merit. The very things that are its strong points... count against it—because they actively distance it from its root... like some bad gene mutation.

This is the part of my prophecy where I realize the point of the thread is to once again discuss the failings of the modern Fallout games and not to discuss Super Mutant species. Everything has unfolded exactly as I have forseen. Farewell!

 

[Norzan]

Did you read the OP? He/she was criticizing how ridiculous the Super Mutants are in Fallout 3 and 4. So yes, it is about the failings of the Bethesda Fallout games, because the Super Mutants are a major failing in these games.

Only 3D game that does Super Mutants right is New Vegas and that's because they know what the Super Mutants are actually about. They are not mindless ogres, they are another race in the world with motivations, personalities and goals.

 

[Deleted member 98605]

And another circular waste of time has ended, because a beth defender can't read the first line of OP post 1.

 

[mannawyadden]

And another circular waste of time has ended, because a beth defender can't read the first line of OP post 1.

I read and responded to OP, but thanks for calling me a beth defender, that was the only thing missing from completing the prophecy. I'll steal a line from Norzan and say I'm defending the game, not the company.

Did you read the OP? He/she was criticizing how ridiculous the Super Mutants are in Fallout 3 and 4. So yes, it is about the failings of the Bethesda Fallout games, because the Super Mutants are a major failing in these games.

OP said it would've been better if the mutants in FO3 had belonged to the Master and I disagree. It would've been an indequate portrayal at best and a cheap rehashing of the same thing we've already seen at worst. Having more than one possible strain or mutant experiments going on in Vault 87 doesn't seem to require much suspension of disbelief to me.

^Those statements are on the initial topic of mutants in FO3 and FO4, but the discussion inevitably goes from saying multiple strains are stupid and lazy into generalized statements about the games being TES reskins, and about why and how developers choose to recycle ideas. Which is all well and good. I just think it's just boring to read and post about compared to talking about mutant factions.

Norzan, you asked what there is to even discuss about the different mutant strains. I'd like to know, too. One day I will create my own thread about that very topic. I havent played FO4 or New Vegas or finished FO76, so that day is not today. See you in a few years

 

[NMLevesque]

"FEV Research" and ZAX 1.2's dialogue clearly indicate that it was only at two facilities: West-Tek and Mariposa. Everything afterward is a direct contradiction. Vault 87 is especially odious in that it asks us to believe they would stuff their beyond top-secret, super soldier serum into some random vault for civilians on the opposite end of the country. Equipment and security concerns alone make it beyond moronic.

 

[naossano]

Beside, they could have achieved the same result by making up their own backstory.
In this regard fo4 did it slightly better by having other people creating a new kind of substance that basically achieves the same effect. The part they failed was giving reason for the Institute to create that other fev.

Or they could have copied fallout where it actually mattered. Having a visionnary character attempting to create a new species that would be better equiped to survive in the post-apocalyptic world, so the man-man end of the world wouldn't happen again.

But that would requires a lower amount of lazyness from Beth. And some marginal amount of understanding of fallout themes.

(similarly, it wouldn't have been that hard to create some suspiciously similar substitues of the BOS and the Enclave for the east coast. There is no need to have the same characters and faction crossing over to the other side of the known world, when all you need is the themes that those represent.)

 

[Gizmojunk]

But that would requires a lower amount of lazyness from Beth. And some marginal amount of understanding of fallout themes.

You cannot create a game like FO3 if the company is lazy. I do not like FO3, but I respect the level of effort involved to create it.

I truly suspect that they don't give a damn about a proper or —in keeping with— narrative for a Fallout game. Rather I believe that they choose the simplified path as the path that their intended customers can all follow with relative ease; it's the same situation in mall food-courts; great local favorites could...technically be served, but it's unfamiliar, and might not sit well with (in the belly of) the majority of visitors, especially the all important tourists.

A complex and layered plot would doubtless be seen as confining, restrictive, —reading/lecturing [ie. boring; where's the BOOM?], and would [should!] require keeping many aspects of it in mind at once. That's pure poison to the arcade player mentality that they profit so handsomely from—and they would do nothing to sabotage that.

I don't think it's laziness at all; I think it is artifact of being ruthlessly pragmatic about it.

 

[naossano]

Their skills lies in promoting their games, not making them.
You'd be hard pressed to find anything professionnal about the game themselves.
But they are master at picthing their unreleased project, so by the time people have time to read the reviews, they already sold milions of units at day one, million of units of a game buyers don't have enough knowledge when they buy it. They would achieve similar success no matter what is (or is not) in the game. Their last release might have poor review, but it sold well enough because people bought it without knowing if it would suck or not.

 

[KingArthur]

1st off can we stop ganging up on @mannawyadden ?

Second, I agree with @naossano in that Beth could literally sell painted dogshit if they wanted to, making unpainted a preorder bonus, and people would buy it for $60.

 

[Norzan]

1st off can we stop ganging up on @mannawyadden ?

No one is ganging up on him and he's the one that came here and starting whining about people talking about Bethesda failings, which is the topic of thread. Then resorted to nonsense bullshit like "people only hate Fallout 3 because it's made by Bethesda". Not the exact words, but pretty much implied.

 

[KingArthur]

No one is ganging up on him and he's the one that came here and starting whining about people talking about Bethesda failings, which is the topic of thread.

I mean fair enough, but feeding into his whining only makes it worse. It's less for his sake and more so the thread doesn't get derailed.

 

[Norzan]

All they had to do was come up with a new mutant type. That's it. I don't care how iconic Super Mutants are or they wanted to just reuse elements from the previous games, they just needed to come up with a new big mutant type. They could come up with its own backstory, give it unique attacks and done. They didn't need to drag Super Mutants into Fallout 3, 4 and 76 and come up with contrivances to have them in these games.

The fact mannawyadden didn't even played New Vegas or 4 (or even just researched), makes him lose a lot of the context on why people hate Super Mutants in the East Coast.

And i already said this, but they did nothing with Super Mutants. They are just ogres, they don't have personalities, motivations or goals. They are factually worse than the West Coast version because they lack everything that made the West Coast ones even remotely interesting and don't have a single thing replacing the things that were removed. So, what is there to discuss even?

 

[mannawyadden]

Then resorted to nonsense bullshit like "people only hate Fallout 3 because it's made by Bethesda". Not the exact words, but pretty much implied.

I wasn't trying to imply that. Sorry I upset you. When I used the word "Bethesda" I was careless and what I really should've said was "Bethesda's games", but that isn't much better either. I don't care about the company and neither do you. Its an easy blanket term to quickly refer to 3, 4 and 76. Maybe "Modern Fallout" takes the implication about the company out of the dialogue. And when I said you were biased, I meant because you hate the game so much, its hard to see anything positive about it.

I mean fair enough, but feeding into his whining only makes it worse. It's less for his sake and more so the thread doesn't get derailed.

Yeah, I was whining about the fact that the purpose of this thread was just to cry about the way Super Mutants were handled without actually giving any discussion to the topic. In that case, it would just inevitably degenerate into "Why Modern Fallouts Suck Thread #9001". Everyone agreeing in a thread is boring, so I wanted to argue that the scenario we got is better than the alternative, and to disagree with OP saying the FO3 mutants should've been part of the Master's army.

Unfortunately it's hard for me to discuss modern Super Mutants, because as Norzan said, me not playing several of the modern games makes me unable to have the proper context or information. And I didn't research the games because I didn't want to get spoiled.

All they had to do was come up with a new mutant type. That's it. I don't care how iconic Super Mutants are or they wanted to just reuse elements from the previous games, they just needed to come up with a new big mutant type.

<...>

And i already said this, but they did nothing with Super Mutants. They are just ogres, they don't have personalities, motivations or goals. They are factually worse than the West Coast version because they lack everything that made the West Coast ones even remotely interesting and don't have a single thing replacing the things that were removed. So, what is there to discuss even?

They could have designed a new mutant type, and they almost did by inventing another species that has basically nothing in common with the West Coast mutants. It's only visually they are superficially similar to the old mutants because of the game's marketing strategy, like Gizmojunk said with his food court analogy.

I do agree that the best thing for Fallout would've been to design a completely new type of Mutant visually as well and use that instead, but from a business standpoint we know that wasn't going to happen.

Look at it like this - a company buys Star Wars and goes to make a new movie. They're definitely going to use the well-known images of Stormtroopers, TIE Fighters, Star Destroyers, and a black-clad Force User wearing a mask and holding a red lightsaber.

So they can either:

1. Take all these things and copy and paste them directly and say "This faction is still the same Empire", and then fans of the original movies get to see their beloved Empire get portrayed poorly and hit with retcons

2. Say "This faction is called the First Order, they look a lot like the Empire but it's not them, the old Empire dissolved and these new guys are actually a group of extremists that was hiding outside the galaxy."

Scenario #2 is contrived and it's obvious that they're just recycling Stormtroopers and TIE Fighters, but Scenario #1 drags the Empire through the mud. There is no Scenario #3 where the movie has a brand new faction with new soldiers and spaceships, even if that is the most creative option.

This is all just me trying to explain why the having completely separate mutant strains that only share an appearance is by far preferable to having Fallout 3 desecrate them by saying they are the same species and retconning an interesting and iconic faction from Fallout 1 into one dimensional morons.

Except Fawkes and Uncle Leo, who are apparently anomalies?

 

[KingArthur]

@mannawyadden well, I’m sorry if I upset you. I didn’t mean to sound cold and detatched.

 

[Gizmojunk]

I meant because you hate the game so much, its hard to see anything positive about it.

There isn't anything positive about them—and it is because they are marketed as direct sequels, and they contradict and discard core tenets of the series. This means that even the very impressive aspects [major strong points were they in any other game...besides a Fallout sequel] are tainted, and don't make up for anything; because their value falls far short of the overall offense.

Imagine if Elderscrolls six was released bug free and in a state far superior to all previous TES games in their final patched version.
Imagine it was done in flawless VR.... Now imagine that the narrative states in no uncertain terms, that the entire TES universe is a college VR lab experiment, conceptually along the same lines as Assassin's Creed. So that Arena through Skyrim were the incremental improvements to the engine, and the new gameplay leans heavily towards the concepts seen in the Matrix; with a chosen one who can bend the laws of the machine, and harness the "magical" power beyond any other character, because they are human, and aware... while everyone else in the simulation is an AI; limited by their rigid programming.

Would there be anything positive about that game for diehard TES fans?

**Cipher's line about the Matrix being fake—and him preferring it, does come to mind, but I think that a TES game that officially undoes the series —even while realizing the series' goal in VR— could never be forgiven by the fans.