Good post on Wasteland 2 forums

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Krellen is one of the rare non-Codexian commenters on the W2 forums. He's also a frequent commenter on Shamus Young's blog. He made this excellent post.

http://wasteland.inxile-entertainment.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1189&p=20465

Setting, Location, and Continuity

by krellen » April 2nd, 2012, 9:52 pm

This is a sister thread to this one I wrote earlier.

A franchise is defined largely by three things - Mood, Theme (addressed in the linked post above), and Setting. Of these three pieces, the Setting is the easiest to implement, the easiest to botch, and the least important to continuity.

I'm going to be picking on Fallout 3 a lot in this discussion. If you are a fan of the title, please, take the time to ready my points before rebutting. At no point am I going to claim that Fallout 3 is a bad game. I'm merely stating that it is a bad Fallout game.

Setting are the trappings that make up a franchise's world - the people, places, and things (technological and otherwise) that define the world and differentiate it not only from ours, but from other fictional worlds as well. What would Star Wars be without the Force? Star Trek without the Federation? Fallout without the retro-50s vibe?

Make no mistake: Setting is important. And yet Setting alone will not maintain continuity.

Each title I mentioned above has within its franchise elements that failed to maintain the franchise. Star Wars has the prequels. Star Trek has Enterprise. Fallout has Fallout 3. Each one of those titles very openly maintained the Setting of the franchise, but they failed because Setting was all they kept.

Star Wars

The Star Wars prequels definitely take place in the Star Wars universe; we have Jedi, the Force, the Republic, blasters, droids, planets and people from the original films. And yet for many people, these films do not feel like they are part of the same franchise. The prequels are full of nods to Setting, and yet hardly touch at all upon the Mood and Themes of the original films; in many cases, the nods themselves are the problem. Midichlorians ruined the Mystery of the Force. Leaping Yoda shattered his image as Wise Old Sage. A whiny Anakin undercuts the Sinister Villainy of Darth Vader.

Moreover, the prequels changed the genre by failing to maintain the Mood. Instead of a Space Opera, we get a political drama. Meaningful duels between two characters (Vader and Kenodi, Luke and the Emperor-in-proxy Vader) are turned into CGI-fueled action-fests with little narrative purpose (the finale of Genosis, every fight with Yoda). Instead of flirty, playful banter (Leia and Han) we get awkward, stilted romance (Padme and Anakin).

Furthermore, other titles have proven the relative unimportance of many aspects of Setting. X-Wing and TIE Fighter are both wildly successful titles in the Star Wars franchise, and neither deal at all with Jedi or the Force.

Star Trek

Enterprise is clearly meant to take place in the same universe as Star Trek - it has Vulcans, and Klingons, warp drive and transporters, it even tries to focus on exploration and discovery. And yet it fails as part of the Star Trek franchise, trying to maintain the Mood of discovery without paying attention to Theme or Setting.

Theme: Star Trek has always been about idealism triumphant. It doesn't ignore pragmatism - pragmatism exists, there are pragmatists aplenty in Star Trek's universe, and many conflicts are presented with a pragmatic solution - but it holds idealism as paramount. Whenever idealism and pragmatism come into conflict, idealism wins - unreservedly. It's this last point that causes Enterprise to fail; while Archer often takes the idealistic solution, his idealism often comes back to bite him in the ass. An early example of this is the episode around P'Jem, with the Vulcans spying on the Andorians from their supposedly sacred monastery. Archer idealistically tries to protect the Vulcans, only to find out the Andorians were right - and then he idealistically reveals the truth, only to find he's started a war.

A title can maintain franchise without touching on all Themes from earlier works, but it cannot do so whilecontradicting those earlier Themes.

Setting: Perhaps the best example here of the importance of Setting is Enterprise. Taking place before the original series, Enterprise had some pretty big shoes to fill. It clung to the sense of discovery and wonder present in the original series and the later successful titles, and yet when pushed, it opted to completely co-opt Setting in favour of narrative expedience. The failures in Setting range from the minor - botching the established name of the Andorian homeworld and introducing new alien species heretofore unheard of - to the moderate - introducing Klingons without the conflict that canonically led to the Prime Directive, establishing a conflict between Andorians and Vulcans that did not exist before - to the most egregious - ignoring central precepts of the Star Trek setting like the Temporal Prime Directive and world-shattering plot lines that somehow escape all mention in "later" series.

Settings are flexible; like well-made steel, there is some flex and give to them. But push it too far, and your Setting will bend and warp, or, worse, shatter altogether.

--

Both Star Wars and Star Trek have failures that tried to take the timeline earlier than the established franchise, and thought that, because of that, setting is all they needed. But it's not only the past that falls into this trap.

Fallout

There are divided camps on Fallout 3. Some consider it a great game; others consider it a complete failure. While there are outliers, for the most part the divide between these two camps can be determined by whether or not the person had been a fan of Fallout prior to the release of Fallout 3. For many of the former, Fallout 3 is great - it fits very much their expectations for a Post-Apocalyptic world. For the latter, however, Fallout 3 fails, because it is an entirely different person wearing Fallout's clothes.

Both Fallouts (from here on out, "Fallout" shall refer to Fallouts 1 and 2, while Fallout 3 shall be referred to explicitly so) illicit an overall Mood of Curiosity or Discovery. There's a world out there to get to know, places to discover and explore. Finding out about things is a central point to the Fallout title - discovering a water chip, finding a MacGuffin, learning the motives of the Master and the Enclave, seeing what settlements exist and how the world has adapted to the nuclear devastation.

Fallout 3's overarching Mood, on the other hand, is Isolation. It's a big world out there, and you are alone in it. While there are things to discover and explore, they are largely not the focus of the game; the game focuses on long stretches of time between locations and the utter isolation that is inherent in Fallout 3's seamless, unbroken world. Even the very beginning of the game is about isolation - your father has abandoned you, you are thrust alone from the Vault, and you're stuck in this wide open world with no direction. Many fans of Fallout 3 talk about how amazing their experiences with Isolation are, how wonderfully emergent the game play of surviving on your own in this wide open world can be.

Fallout avoided Isolation by removing you from the overall world. Exploration was done on a simple map, with no real representation of your character upon it. Settlements were far from one another, but the player rarely actuallysaw the distance and the emptiness. Instead they were drawn to the next green hub, the next new settlement to discover and explore.

Fallout 3 lacked Discovery because of the nature of its seamless world. While there were plenty of things to find, plenty of locations and discoveries, all were surrounded by Isolation: all were separated from each other by large stretches of map - and game play! - empty of anything but waste. Because you were never pulled out from the world, the large stretches of empty became a major part of the title absent from its earlier namesakes.

The Mood is the biggest difference, but Themes play a major role in the differences as well. The first Fallout had a minor Theme of Water (finding the water chip was your excuse to go out in the world, not the ultimate goal); the second did not touch upon it at all. Fallout 3 took the Theme of Water and made it central to the entire plot, thrusting constantly in the player's face the need for water: through the dual items of Clean and Dirty Water, through the beggars outside major settlements looking for water, through the central plot line focusing on purifying water. Taking a minor theme and making it paramount is incredibly jarring; what was once a narrative excuse has now become the entire focus.

Fallout had a resonant theme of Old vs. New; the Old Master sought to create a New race from the Old vault stock, while New settlements thrived while the Old vault stagnated. The Old Government returns to destroy the New humanity, while a New village tribal seeks Old technology as a remedy to all that is wrong. Fallout 3 ignored this theme altogether. There is nothing New in Fallout 3; it is all Old ruins, surrounding Old relics, focusing solely on the past. Even the one New thing - Project Purity - was Old by the time the game started, and it was your father looking at his Old glory that drove the narrative. Discarding a major theme - not even touching on it briefly - is also incredibly jarring to continuity.

At the same time, Fallout 3 clung desperately to the Setting of Fallout; everywhere you turned, Setting was there staring you in the face. Nuka-Cola. Corvega. Robco. Robobrains. Even aspects of Setting that had no place whatsoever in the Capital Wasteland were featured: The Brotherhood. Super Mutants. The Enclave. Harold. Fallout 3 wore Fallout's Setting like a shroud, hoping that Setting alone would carry on its legacy. This was perhaps the most jarring part of all; instead of a similar title that might plausibly explain the differences in Mood and Theme through slight changes of Setting, Fallout 3 shoved Setting out before it every where it went, drawing as much attention to it as possible. It shouted mightily, "I am Fallout! I have its Setting!", which serves only to draw further attention to all the aspects in which it differs from its predecessors.

Setting is important, but it is not enough, and a hollow Setting is the worst sin of all.

For discussion: what aspects of Wasteland's Setting are vital to you? What are not important? What are some changes to Setting that could be made without destroying continuity?

Good read.

"Setting is important, but it is not enough, and a hollow Setting is the worst sin of all."

I have to disagree with this. Whilst I agree with the general point he's making about exploration versus isolation, Fallout did a considerably better job at communicating a sense of isolation on the world map. Compare watching the days tick by as you trek across a vast, inhospitable wasteland to Fallout 3, where settlements are often literally a mile or so down the road from each other

Yes, but in real time, it's over pretty quickly. Mostly it just makes you feel the pressure of the game's time limit. Or worry about ambushes.

Whether it's real-time or not is irrelevent. Journeying from point A to point B in Fallout 3 does a worse job of communicating a sense of isolation than ten-fifteen seconds of Map time in Fallout, due to everything being so close together and the nature of the Capital Wasteland itself, which as a setting is far more densely packed than the California Wastes.

I guess this is a subjective thing. If you spent time exploring and looking at things (LARPING LOLOLOL), instead of running from town to dungeon to town, Fallout 3 felt pretty isolated.

Exactly. Fallout 3 failed terribly at the open, empty world bit. I mean, it's a fucking theme park, you can't walk a hundred meters in any direction without running into something. Or without being attacked by a random mob. The only sense of isolation F3 had was the fact that there were two actual settlements in the entire game.

What large stretches? It takes two fucking minutes to walk from where you first enter the game world to the nearest settlement. The only reason it takes longer is because you get shit thrown at you al the time, so for every meter you travel towards your destination, you have to backpedal 10 meters, fighting off mobs. Oh, and let's not forget that you can also fast travel, making travelling even more seamless than in Fallout 1/2

Yes, the setting itself certainly comes into it - Capital(Capitol?) Wasteland is a highly industrialized chunk of urban landscape, whereas the Core Region is more akin to a Mad Max-esque depiction of post-apoc earth. On the other hand, the Nevada Wastes were supposed to be closer to the Core Region in character (despite the limited damage from nukes), but still suffered from issues of scale.

...and that's actually a good enough reason on its own.

I cannot speak with authority because I never played Wasteland. But I feel KnotanAlt has a point.

Just give me a game with interesting, challenging, turn based gameplay in any not retarded setting, If the story and the rest is decent, motivation to play will come by itself.

I don't think anyone can influence that, seeing as the story is mostly written and all. Besides, Fargo and Avellone are on the job

Doesn't make much sense to me. The sense of discovery - knowing there's a world out there to get to know, places to discover and explore - would be improved by making things closer to each other (literally or via use of overworld map)?

Reading the post seems to be challenging, not to even mention understanding the spirit of it. Too many big words innit?

Anyway, ffordesoon makes a very good point as well.

Baby Sitter Quest v.s. Some Dude Who Happened to be There and was Later Forgotten

So, where's that promised good post?

Read the post, he fucking agrees with you

The last paragraph is more or less the only thing I can agree with him. The post from ffordesoon Haba quoted makes a lot more sense for me.

Ironic that ffordesoon was in the Codex Vigilance Thread's Hall of Retards, while it still existed.

yeah one thing that still pisses me off is the inevitable 'I never played Fallout 1 and 2, but Fallout 3 is great rpg blather nostalgia goggles blather atmospheric blather bad interface, aged poorly blather ' post in fallout discussions

the utter lack of subtlety in Fallout 3's 50s theme thing has been addressed

so, isolationism: it only works when you're believably isolated

why do I say believeable

for all the fucking talk of how fallout 3 is so god damn fucking immersive, the themepark reduced scale nature that comes with the tragic necessity of a lovingly handcrafted seamless first person world, pod people android npc mannerisms, animation and AI conversation, two towns where you can explore everything and yet not figure out how the fuck it stays alive, and 3 brahmin merchants being the economy all add together to make you feel like you've been jammed into the world's largest PVP-enabled larp festival.

The whole damn setting's believability hit the uncanny valley failure zone and people applaud it because they think superficial setpiece fidelity adds up to realism and good design. Oh yeah, that must be why Final Fantasy: The Spirits within is a better movie than Wall-E, which is not as serious or realistic.
And speaking of realism, how about the amount of ambient npcs in the hub and the den, or new reno even! Try rendering that shit in Fallout 3, why don't you?

I keep saying, fallout 1 and 2 did scale well because it abstracted the sense of scale via travel and the world map and 'hot location zones' where you entered via the clicky green circles and ignored the rest of the area you were visiting but the important thing was that they were still 'there', just not pertinent to the gameplay. Let your imagination fill in the gaps.

With Fallout 3, what you see is what you'll get, what you see is what IS. Everything has been set in stone here, metre by metre, with all the charm of a 14-year old DM's epic campaign. You're not just playing one big theme park, the entire world location has been CANONISED into one big pile of stagnant failure.

That is also why random encounters in Fallout 3 feel less like discovering by chance something rare and mysterious and forgotten by humanity, and more like running into a hobo SLIGHTLY zanier than the other hobos around the corner. Instead of 'my character just had a singular lifetime experience', you get 'my character had a quirky encounter today, par for the course in this craaaazy themepark'.

fuck yeah, the strength of bethesda games is to have a large gameworld with an ocean of I don't give a fuck shinies for gamers who like 'exploring' or as I like to call it, 'travel grinding'

Also another thing Fallout 3 fans don't seem to be able to grasp is whether new lore is good or offers something interesting.
The BoS faction in Fallout 3. "What's wrong, they said it was a seperate faction with its own ideals, it's completely faithful to the setting'. FUCK OFF THEY ARE SATURDAY MORNING CARTOON KNIGHTS WITH GUNS, I DON'T CARE IF THEY WROTE THEIR LIFE STORIES INTO THE GAME, THEY ARE A TERRIBLE WASTE OF GAMEPLAY AND FACTION SPACE.

Any idiot should have been able to tell that they took the old tech-monopolising faction and turned them into focus-group friendly gun wielding good guys of the wasteland because in this day and age, awesome guys in power armor will remind you of master chief AND your WoW paladin and therefore make this game awesome too. It's a terrible waste of an unique faction and a shit tier redesign and people still defend it.

ps I don't like fallout 3 much

Should've stopped reading right here - OP is wrong, original post is retarded. I won't even bother to explain why, the reasons are far too obvious (but are mostly tied not to what the Fallout is but how this author perceives Fallout in his head) and far too tedious to be named. Fallout is anything but retro-vibe, finding mcguffins, discovering identity of Enclave and teh Master, New vs Old, all that shit - all is wrong, so fuck that shit.

Okay, what's your definition of Fallout, your holiness

I agree that Krellen could have mentioned FO3's overuse of the retro-50's stuff, but not every single thing you can criticize has to be mentioned in every criticism of FO3.

Heh, noticed this as well.

yeah, he's very ambivalent. There's a fifty-fifty chance he writes something good or complete bullshit. Maybe it will turn more in favor to the first one.

This. If I have to read another "Wasteland 2 should be/have/..." thread I'm going to fucking murder someone... or internet rage. Whatever.

I just don't give a fuck. I don't care what somebody whose game development experience consists of playing a few CRPGs has to say about making Wasteland 2.

"Wasteland 2 should have great tactical combat and a world map and three dozen playable characters and great atmosphere and 200 weapons and great AI and there should be a level that takes place at my house and you can interact with my dog but if you make eye contact he becomes hostile and it should have meaningful choices and consequences and music composed by Mozart and a story by Tolstoy and there should be animals that you can catch around the world and train to battle with other animal trainers for fun and there should be over 200 skills and 400 attributes and it should have a realistic reputation system and it should have localized damage and"

I'm not talking about OP's post in particular, I'm just tired of seeing this shit. "Wasteland 2 should [insert a very long and detailed description of user's personal dream-game here]". It's boring and I wish Fargo had downplayed his desires for input because I'm tired of scrolling past this stuff.