Why do people hate Old World Blues?

Didn't care for most of the humor and I was expecting something more serious in tone. I wanted an experience like dropping the rope down into the WestTek hole. Ominous, creepy and dangerous. Your mind running with possibilities of what horrors might be down there. I ended up liking after awhile and it has it's good points, but it's still a disapointment for me.



The humor is more Rick and Morty as opposed to Futurama.

I guess I was expecting more commentary on science gone wrong but got a wet fart instead.

 

I wouldn’t say that, it’s not Futurama but definitely not Rick and Morty. Rick and Morty humor would require the NPCs to explain every joke made to you in a long drawn out unfunny improv bit with the F bomb dropped every 3 seconds for reinforcement. Sure the dialogue can be long but that’s more of a Chris Avellone issue than them trying to be Rick and Morty. If you want to see Rick and Morty humor in a video game look no further than High On Life. Hell even The Outer Worlds isn’t full-on Rick and Morty like I often see it’s humor compared to, I’d say that’s more Futurama without the funny. I’d say this DLC has more of a Venture Bros type of humor, so much so they even hired the voice of Dr. Venture for Doctor 0.

As for OP, I understand humor is suggestive, but I rather enjoyed the more satirical nature of the DLC and how it also manages to do so with a decent explanation of the scientists of the Think Tank going crazy from isolation after the War. Not everyone agrees though obviously, which is understandable but we got 3 moody and self-reflective DLCs in Honest Hearts, Dead Money, and Lonesome Road. I think Old World Blues was a welcome change of pace. I particularly like the creativity of the DLC and how they get away with more silly elements while also providing good lore to explain them properly. For example the trauma suits made to help fallen veterans get back home for burial or to a field hospital that goes haywire and just has skeletons of dead people in the suits that are attacking you. Everything in the Big Empty had a purpose at one point or is the result of scientists with a God complex and their crazed isolation. Good stuff. Don’t know why people don’t see it as canon though, that I just find stupid. Nothing in the DLC goes without explanation of some sort and compare that to Mothership Zeta that felt like Bethesda ran out of ideas and just made an alien shoot ‘em up arcade game with flat companions made essentially as canon fodder (you literally play Galaga at the end of the DLC, Bethesda is not so clever or creative when it comes to quirky stuff like this). In the end I suppose it all comes down to if you can just enjoy the ride or not, and many people don’t.

 

I can see why some people dislike it. It's humor is a bit too much like Fallout 2. Personally, I like it because it links all the horrible things that happen in many other areas of the game.

However, I will not deny that it tends to go too far in some caves, such as: conversation with your brain, the brains being over the top, etc.

 

The humor is pretty much used to hide a lot of the dark subtext in the DLC and looking at it that way makes me forgive a lot of the humor in it.

My actual issue with the DLC is the damage sponge robot scorpions, taking way too many hits to die and constantly respawning. Making exploring outside really obnoxious.

 

Those scorpions were so retarded. Not even too hard just a big sponge cake.

 

It's funny... I have never played the FO3 DLCs [afaik]. But when I saw the scorpions, I knew they were based on the Wasteland Scorpitrons, and started making a replacement model to use in the DLC when I eventually played it... but lost interest after the model, and never played the DLC.

Spoiler: Scorpitron model (Also in SIG)

 

Maybe you should...play the DLC.

 

Mothership Zeta always crashed the game for me. The others... Well I only bought the game to tinker with the GECK; specifically to do the ADV MK II armor.



[see SIG]

 

Oh I meant Old World Blues.

 

OWB made me laugh out loud too, especially at first, and the humour is the right kind, but eventually I just really wanted to leave. A lot of it is walking, shooting immortal fucking scorpions and boring fetch quests and there isn't enough gravity to anything for me to care. The twist didn't have much of an impact on me even though it turns the silliness into an explanation for a threat to the whole world. It's also kind of hard to square having the teleporter after the end with the basegame world you go back to.

I wouldn't say I hate it - the characters are as larger than life as FNV characters always are, the humour is good, the quests are fun at times, but I'd only recommend it on the first playthrough.

 

I really hate OWB and don't consider it to be canon. Far too many things in it that I have issues with. Suits that turn sentient if there is skeleton inside of them. Robot scorpions that are just manufactured out of nowhere. In fact anything that they've made for the past 150 years calls into question where they got the resources from. Hybridization through a beam on an open platform. The fact that you can talk to your own brain. The fact that you are walking around without a brain inside of your head. Gabe the dog surviving for apparently 200 years? Ghoul internment camp survivors that are still around after 200 years? All the neon shit that doesn't feel like it fits in with Fallout's aesthetic at all. Sentient lightswitches. Like I have a problem with any robot being sentient, period. I can see a robot being programmed for some quips and stuff but we're talking about sentient beings in The Sink. And there's definitely tons more I don't even remember at this point.

Old World Blues' problem is also that it is very concentrated. Like I know people shit on Fallout 2 for all of its sillyness but OWB is so much worse.

Then we got the problem of the RPG design and combat. Dead Money set a very high bar for me when it comes to choice and consequence and OWB is basically just a series of fetch quests with penis jokes. The combat in the DLC is especially horrendous if you're playing it at a higher level cause the enemies scale up with you so they turn into extreme bullet sponges which is just a chore to deal with.

I just don't see the benefit to considering it canon. I suppose most of the content inside of it is pretty isolated from the rest of the world of Fallout (barring cazadors and nightstalkers and some stuff in the Sierra Madre) but I still don't see any benefit at all to calling it canon. Spacesuit skeletons with blasters is on par with super sayan ancient alien vampires in Fallout 4 to me. Just saying.

 

The spacesuit skeletons are just robots with dead people stuck inside them. I don’t see what’s so hard to believe about that.

 

Old World Blues is fine this just shows how weird NMA is. Everyone thinks Fallout is something different.

 

If power armor can't walk around on its own then I don't buy it that a rubber suit with some electronic components inside of it can walk on its own.

[edit]

I should clarify, when the people in the suits died they would go through the decomposition process which means that fluid would start draining. I don't really buy it that the inside of the suit is completely sealed against all those potential fluids. Or were the suits stuffed with skeletons after the fact?

Anyway, if the suits have been around for 200+ years moseying about then we get into the same problem I got with pretty much any robot that's just wandering the wastes. 200 years is a very long time. Too long. If they made more suits or made them post war then again I just don't buy it that they have massive stockpiles of resources that they can go through or that they can just recycle things over and over again.

There is a way you can make these suits work. I just don't think it is in Fallout, especially if they're 2 centuries old.

[edit]

Now I got an idea for how to make them work actually. See the suits themselves are a new technology that they were doing just prewar for the intention of automized power armor but needed a prototype suit first so that's where these ones come in. The tech is basically synthetic muscle and tendons and a very strong radio signal that goes to a ZAX super computer. Pre-war these scientists, assistants and engineers were informed to use these suits when doing normal tasks. The suits would record the data and send it to the ZAX super computer to analyze and store programmed repeated patterns. When the nukes dropped and things got hairy those who survived used the suits as they provided excellent radiation protection and kept trying to appease the Think Tank.

Due to the harshness of post apocalyptic life as well as their new found fascination with lobotomy it meant that they had to engage in a lot more combat. So while they tried their best to maintain various technology to make sure it would work they also had to fight off hostiles. Creating a defensive protocol. When these people died the suits got shelved for a while but as things started to fall apart whoever was in charge of this division, let's just say it's Zero, had to fully test the program again as they couldn't wander out and just fix things here and there.

But the suits would not work on their own because they don't have the rigid component inside that were necessary for the suit to stand up, imagine yourself without bones, you'd just flop to the ground. So he stuffed the suits with the skeletons of his former employees and activated the program and sent them on their merry way. Whenever a suit is damaged and can no longer function the other suits would take it to Zero to fix it, eventually he got tired of having to do this so he would try and teach the suits to take care of it themselves in order to be selfreliant.

Now the reason for why they're hostile towards you is because, well, you're a lobotomite. They can just tell that you are and will shoot on sight as they've been programmed to do.

Now these suits are reliant on radio signals so they would only stick around areas that are near said signals, gameplay wise if you stepped outside these ranges the suits would just collapse and "die" or they would retreat and end combat sequence. If you kill a bunch of them it would trigger Zero to comment on it the next time you visit him where he asks you to please avoid killing them as every time you do they need to repair themselves and the stocks aren't endless, indicating that in fact resources are not limitless and it is a concern to the Think Tank.

I think this could've worked within the lore, it's not perfect but it would explain why they're still around, why they need skeletons inside of them, the fact that the skeletons were put there after the fact. How they can move around the way that they do (ZAX super computer doing the computing work). Why they attack you the player. As well as why certain things around Big Empty are still functioning after 200+ years; It's cause the Think Tank delegated the work to the suits to perform maintenance tasks and keep areas safe. Personally I would changed the suits designs to have variations where there would be these little patches of off colour, indicating that they've been repaired.

So I mean, I don't oppose the idea of it. It's the implementation that I don't like. What I just wrote is complete fanon and irrelevant to the actual lore in OWB.

 

This was one of the few things I liked. Combat suits with ai that keep dead soldiers marching on and fighting after death is pretty messed up and fits in with the rest of the post war science horrors.

Kinda wish it was in the other games as some toughand terrible thing to come actoss like a deathclaw or something. Just someold skeleton from the war in a suit trying to kill you with the skull ratling around inside.

Honestly, me going in expecting something serious and scary kinda ruined it for me. If I had went in knowing it was more silly I'd have liked it better.

 

I loved the humor and think people want Fallout to be something it has not been since the first game.

 

In order to work at all, the suits must all be free standing.
They are basically robots with sensors to avoid their internal occupant.


A bionic arm can't help with dead-lifting; a connected spine, hip, and leg would be needed. With exo-skeletons, the outer shell supports itself, and the machine is puppeted from the inside—with zero load upon the occupant.

The ADV MKII armors are said to have a leg locking mechanism for guard duty; they lock the legs to essentially —hang— suspended inside the suit while standing for long periods.

It was argued several times on Bethsoft forums that if the suit can maintain its own balance, then it should be capable of following the owner at a distance... as if it were on a leash—even while laden with equipment. (Whether strapped on, and repeatedly tugged off balance, or a built in following feature.) IE. similar to Big-Dog.


I have no qualms with an exo-suit having a negligible weight corpse inside it, and still functioning normally; fluids and all. Any such suit would be liquid tight internally.

_____________

There are other —different— styles of exo-skeleton... simpler designs; not like Ironman. These are like the Heavy Loader Ripley uses in Aliens, and (the far simpler) the Berkley Bionics Exo-Hiker.

The Exo-Hiker cannot move by itself [afaik].

_________

 

That's a pretty old video. Wonder what happened to that idea.

 

Shameful to think someone thought you'd recommend playing FO3 or any part of it.