It was my favorite game as a kid, and my first Fallout game. But I've played so many better RPGs since then that every time I replayed FO3 it just got more and more diluted even with my nostalgia. I'll still play sometime just to roam the world map and shoot things, but the writing of the main story and lack of choices in the main story deter me from taking the game seriously.
How easy is it to find a ferry in the area and use it though?
Yeah, but that's not restricted to the iron sights themselves. As said in the post, it could've been a zoom-in and had the same effect of decreasing weapon spread. We've went over this. The iron sights feature itself is not special or it doesn't improve combat in any way. It's a visual difference. The zoom-in feature however is a pivotal part of the combat design because it has that effect on weapon spread. It's best not to conflate the two because that would be fallacious. If the iron sights feature was so pivotal to the design, Fallout 3's combat wouldn't have worked at all, even in the semi-functioning state it is in. The game really did NOT need iron sights, it was thrown in because it was 2010 and Call of Duty was everywhere. Functionally, the zoom-in feature and the iron sight feature are the exact same thing. Their only difference pertains to how the player views the model.
I've given several reason it's implied. The mutants have bases close by to Rivet City. Simple logic predicts that if they weren't using the settlements to their advantage they would be attacking the settlement rather than letting it exist. It's not like they don't know it's there. The fact that they went the full mile and added a prisoner to the base proves that this was intentional. There are only a handful of bases with mutant prisoners on the map. This was entirely intentional.
So? I mean at least we got some degree of personification out of it. I love Fallout 1, but I can't recall any times in that game you could befriend a super mutant.
This isn't true. You could bullshit Harry by telling him you're a ghoul. He's literally blind and stupid. Fawkes on the other hand will only join you once you reach a certain karma level, which shows that he is intelligent enough to discern between the kinds of people he meets.
The FEV destroys their cognitive functions. The West Coast Super Mutants were led by the Master, so they had a leader that was at least somewhat intelligent that dedicated them to his own cause. Mutants on the East Coast don't have such leadership, so their hierarchies' goals are centered less on the long-term and more on the short-term. They're obsessed with preservation. They learned of their sterility early on and it broke them. They're not fighting for a cause, they're fighting for survival.
If they were just "bloodthirsty psychopaths" they wouldn't have any such hierarchy or organization. They would literally just be Fallout 4 super mutants, suicide bombers and all. Uncle Leo disproves this assertion anyway. He shows that mutants can think for themselves but are subject to herd mentality and compliance within their ranks.
And on the whole, it's bad combat design. The zoom-in was one thing, was iron sights were just horrible. I don't understand why this is even being debated. New Vegas gives you the option because the developers understood that not everyone would like having to stare through an aperture in the metal or having an ugly sight obstruct their screen. The ADS function itself shouldn't have been included in the game in the first place in Fallout 3, and it still humors me that even after acquiring Id, Bethesda still went full steam ahead with the iron sights Call of Duty-esque gameplay in Fallout 4.
Fawkes says that he was detained because he was smart. If super mutants detain the smart ones, how would they have smarter leaders?
Fawkes says that when Super Mutants make other SM, they want them to be stupid like they are. If they are not stupid, then they are failures. And it's implied that it's very rare for Super Mutants to be smart and failures, since the SM thought Fawkes being smart was a "curiosity" and an anomaly.
It's likely that these settlements were established initially without awareness on behalf of the super mutants. Megaton was just a hotspot for traders that was protected by the crater initially. Rivet City was once just a lab for Pinkerton where he met a group of settlers. By the time these settlements had trade routes established around them they had become advantageous enough to exploit. Consider that the super mutants back then would've also likely been less dangerous because they aren't provoked by the lack of FEV and the possibility of extinction.
He's smart enough to recognize the faults of his kind and detach from them even at the risk of his own life. A less intelligent mutant would be more easily influenced.
The fact that they have a coordinated army with a loose hierarchical structure proves that they're intelligent enough to form such a cohesive force.
https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Rivet_City_terminal_entries#Council_Meeting_Minutes
Megaton was established by scavengers and traders though. Manya Vargas tells us that her father was one of these people and who was the one that convinced the others to build the wall surrounding it. The wall itself is built from scrap taken from a nearby air station. Plenty of the people in Megaton including the ones that initially started the settlement are actually quite wealthy. It's stated that Moriarty inherited his wealth from his father, Manya Vargas and her husband Nathan inherited her father's wealth and Jericho is rich enough from his time being a raider to the point where he can settle down and retire. These people are obviously wealthy enough to trade with caravans for food and exports.
Entire caravans are established with the sole purpose of selling scrap, see Crazy Wolfgang. There is certainly a niche for scrap and junk because scrap metal can be used in the service of repairs and construction.
It's quite possibility the safest place to hide in the immediate vicinity, especially in the case of these people who have just been denied entry to Vault 101.
Ever since Megaton was established the Capital Wasteland has only ever seen more habitability. The Brotherhood entered the wasteland only a matter of years after and likely caused a boom in the economy. The settlement has grown immensely from it's previous days and will only keep on growing. Caravans even have their own trading center (Canterbury Commons), which considering it's establishment 3 entire years after the Brotherhood showed up I think it's safe to say that the Megaton we see in Fallout 3 is entirely sustainable off trade alone. Early on it had less people which means it required less food and a smaller economy.
New Vegas had more means to build it's economy on. It's a tourist hotspot which was protected from most of the bombs via House's missile defense system. The casinos are still intact and House's oil and electricity reserves exist. The Capital Wasteland was far more bombed out. We've also already established that super mutant and raiders were far more present and influential in the area due to the existence of largely unoccupied land.
It's stated in the game guide, and represented in the game.
They are dangerous and hostile. They are definitely bloodthirsty, but condensing them all down to "bloodthirsty psychopaths" is fallacious. Sure, that's what they are from the outset, but it doesn't mean they don't have internal cohesion within their ranks and members from within their ranks that are capable of thinking and acting rationally. There is difference between being capable of thinking for yourself and actually doing it. Because of this we only see mutants that do think for themselves and don't, but they are implicative of the greater picture.
Fawkes is "smart" in terms of his lack of impulsivity and doubtful demeanor, much like Uncle Leo. "Smart" in this context is the state of not being easily influenced. You can be intelligent and also still be naive, they're not mutually exclusive concepts. Fawkes and Uncle Leo were outliers. They didn't not befit the expectation of a loyal and committed troop. And they don't have smarter leaders. This has already been established previously. Their leaders are obsessed with preservation and survival of the species.
"Intelligence" in this context really just means the state of being rational and not gullible. It's as simple as that. You're overcomplicating things and thinking of things in binaries. Most mutants are gullible because they are already susceptible to influence after having most of their cognitive functions impaired, there are also the privileged few who are able to question the group but fall in line regardless. Fawkes and Uncle Leo are exceptions but they are implicative of the rest of the group. Fawkes was detected as an anomaly right off the bat and thus removed from the group, but Uncle Leo was able to depart from the group even after being accepted by them previously. That implies that Fawkes is less of an "anomaly" than you care to consider.
As mentioned previously, they want total and utter dedication to the group. Fawkes did not devote himself to this. It's not like they run an IQ test on every single super mutant. They're looking for devotion and credulity.
I don't know how the Super Mutants could have missed Megaton.
By the time Megaton had built the wall it had already made itself a target. It is stated that a raider attack occurred in these years too. They definitely would have known about Megaton by the time they started building the wall, and I never said otherwise. What I was saying was that we have no indication that they knew about Megaton when it was just an undefended crater in the ground, in the original inception of the settlement.
That actually proves my point. It proves that if the super mutants actually wanted to they could just attack, but they don't. Each Brotherhood soldier including Lyons is an unreliable narrator, influenced by their own POV. The Brotherhood believes it is their presence in the area which stops them, but that's questionable. Besides, maybe the Brotherhood are right and that the Super Mutants would actually attack these settlements if they had the chance to, it doesn't mean they were doing this 30-40 years ago before the Brotherhood arrived. If that was the case it would likely be an act of impatience brought on by unrestrained desperation. They're running out of FEV and acting unpredictably. There is a plethora of other explanations for this.
I'm sorry, but I have to point out that you're coming up with your own made-up reasons as proof. It's contradicting what the game is telling us directly in our face. There is no hidden meaning on what Fawkes says.
The whole herding settlements is also disproved by yet another case in-game. Big Town got raided by SM and a few settlers were taken to be food. After the Lone Wander finds out about this, the SM come back and eradicate Big Town unless the Lone Wanderer intervenes and saves the settlement. This action goes against what you say SM do with the settlements.
It's an educated interpretation considering the subtext of the game. I've already stated my reasons for believing this. Your own assumption is an interpretation formed without nuance. If we were to assume that "intelligent" or "smart" in this context meant the exact textbook dictionary definition, you would also have to form a reason for why Uncle Leo is able to break free of mutant conditioning despite not being recognized as an anomaly initially. Uncle Leo is able to rationalize the morality of the group and break free from it, that implies that others are able to do the same even if they weren't recognized for it initially, which also implies that "intelligent" in this context means "likelihood of mistrust". It's a blanket term because most super mutants are unable to break free of the conditioning due to their cognitive processes being significantly impaired.
And you're taking this at surface value without considering the rest of what the game tells us. The super mutants could easily discard of all subjects above a certain threshold of intelligence to completely ensure dedication but Uncle Leo being intelligent enough to question the group proves that this characteristic was immediately recognized in Fawkes and thus isolated.
I'm not defending Bethesda, I'm simply discussing Fallout. But it appears to me that even in a situation like this where the dialogue isn't exactly subtle but obvious enough for anyone to piece it together had they viewed it within the context of the game, there's people like you who view it in a vacuum, completely unable to view it as anything more than what it is on the surface. It's not really a surprise then that Fallout 4 was so dumbed down when it has to appeal to these kinds of people who are unable to place information within perspective.
But I never even said this? They don't have a hierarchy intentionally based on intelligence. The reason the hierarchy is structured the way it is is due to the prolonged effects on the FEV. The older the super mutants get the more influence they are granted within the hierarchy, but their cognitive functions are also rapidly deteriorating at the same time. It's not intentional. It's a consequence of what they are.
It really doesn't, it actually proves my point. Super mutants have a base near Little Lamplight. They know they can't abduct children for the joining and so they wait for them to grow old enough to exit Little Lamplight and travel to Big Town so they can herd them into a largely undefended area where they can attack and abduct them. Big Town is a small settlement not on the scale of Megaton or Rivet City and therefore it's entirely up for grabs since it doesn't offer much activity. We see this with Red being captured by them. If they were just using them as food or just wiping them out they would've already eaten or killed her.
Read above. They attempt to kidnap people from there and anyone who poses a threat is just collateral damage. The reason nothing comes of it is because the player is there to stop them and the game doesn't actually show you these people being taken, for the same reason why the game doesn't actually show you anyone being taken. They didn't make animations for it.
And as said previously, it's a matter of perspective and circumstance. The super mutants are getting more unpredictable over time due to the presence of the Brotherhood and the lack of FEV. They're on the verge on an extinction event for what they believe to be their entire species. It's entirely understandable that some may act short-sightedly after already having most of their cognitive functions impaired and not even having a foreseeable future to guide their actions. Unity guided the super mutants in the first game. In Fallout 3, they're left without guidance.
But then they would have to feed them and keep them healthy. Like I said, they're not running a daycare. These super mutants do not have the resources nor the intellectual capability to run something like that.
The purpose of it is to herd them into one place so they can collect them all at once. They don't actually use everyone they capture for the joining anyway. They use some of them for food. Considering that have large outposts all across the easternmost section of the Capital Wasteland, it's actually more convenient for them to use however many they need for food and then send the few to be turned back to Vault 87.
Yeah, I used Red as an example, but there being more people that have been kidnapped only further consolidates my point. If they just wanted these people dead they would've just killed them. We also only know that that happened to one individual, but we don't know what would've happened with Red. We know that these super mutants use people for two main purposes: Food and joining, it could be either of those.
That's actually a gameplay hindrance. Often it's not even super mutants nor slavers who actually kill them but radscorpions and even deathclaws.
What makes you think the super mutants know how to cultivate and cook the cave fungus the children survive on?
But that doesn't mean every human gets turned into food. Some would be taken to Vault 87 for the joining. We're also speaking from a 2277 perspective where the super mutants are already running out of FEV. It makes sense that less people would be taken for the joining when there's less FEV to turn them. It's entirely possible that 1 out of 10 wastelanders gets made eligible for it.
Read back a few posts. I literally said this. The player is there to protect them during these waves of super mutants and the game treats it as such. They didn't consider the possibility of the player just standing around doing nothing so the game follows it's programming. When you exit the area, that's when other enemies like radscorpions and deathclaws can kill them because the enemy AI roams the area and these Big Town residents have low hit points which means they can easily be killed by them. It's a gameplay contrivance. We know that super mutants abduct people and force them to undergo FEV.
But we don't actually physically see the super mutants attack either, so it could've been a plethora of other enemies even in presence of the script, so what's your point here? Big Town is not only being attacked by super mutants, but slavers, raiders, the wildlife, etc. Be consistent here. You can't just say "Oh, it's not shown so therefore your point is wrong!", while also using an argument based off an assumption where evidence is literally not shown.
That sounds like a lot of hassle for no immediate reward. Why spend the resources doing that when they could just wait for them to grow up and attack them on their way to Big Town? And we're also assuming that the super mutants actually even know about the etiquette of Little Lamplight. It's entirely possible that the super mutants think that these kids would grow up and then plan to attack them a number of years later when they have, but never get the chance to due to the deterioration of their memory. It's reasonable to assume that they know that these humans travel from Little Lamplight to Big Town every couple of years, but they likely do not know why. From their perspective, it's like these humans just keep coming from this random cave. We know that one or two have tried attacking previously because there's a dead super mutant just outside the gate, so they likely also know that there's kids in there and that's the reason why they're not attacking in hordes.
It's a design choice to bring consequence to inaction. It really could've been anyone or anything attacking them.
Go back to my comment about the unreliable narrator. Once again, I'm not defending Bethesda. They can go to hell. But they are also fond of using this style of writing in every game they make. Play Skyrim (or rather, don't) and talk to one of the guards after you slay the first dragon. He will tell you false information about Tiber Septim based off his own incomplete understanding of events.
It's still two out of several dozen. And you can't befriend Super Mutants because they aren't interested because why would they? They are following orders.
I said he's hardly above Harry, not the same as. Fawkes would get mocked at by the West Coast Super Mutants.
Because Bethesda wrote an extremely contrived reason for such. It was only done to have the player fight orcs.
You're forgetting the West Coast Super Mutants can go on fine without the Master by the fact Marcus founds Jacobstown. The fact is that West Coast Super Mutants are the very least not morons unlike their East Coast counterparts.
Which they don't because the game never claims as such. You can extrapolate anything you want from any implications, the fact the game doesn't say it in any way proves it's not a thing. And this is definitely one of the things the game should tell the player if it was an actual thing.
This literally happens in Fallout 3 because a Super Mutant at any time can pull out a grenade and kill themselves trying to kill you.
