Fallout Underwhelmed by Fallout :(

[Vault Dweller]

MRY, thou art a scholar and a gentleman.

 

[Sykar]

A discussion of whether or not such-and-such element of FO2 or FO1 is "logical" or "plausible" based on real-world standards is the wrong question. Both games are full of magic and pulp science. The issue is that in FO1, for the most part (not counting Easter eggs and a few small exceptions), these elements are thematic and consistent with the specific pulp genre the game is trying to evoke. With FO2, I'm less concerned with whether we can gin up a just-so story for why NCR has grown so fast or how Reno supports its economy. Instead, the question is, how do Prohibition-era gangsters in a pseudo-Las Vegas, gauss technology in NCR, Scientologists, kung-fu, time travel, etc. enhance the core themes and develop the mood of a post-apocalyptic setting.

By stuffing the setting with big, thriving cities and the kind of parasites that a big, thriving society has (Scientology, a pornography industry, etc.), it undermines the sense of marginal, frontier, risk-of-oblivion feel that is critical to the genre. Aspects of San Francisco feel more like cyberpunk than post-apocalyptic. Etc.

Fallout doesn't even remotely have the right elements or the right amount of right elements (Cybernetics/Noir/advanced but downtrodden controlled by corporations world/anti authoritarian motives) to be considered a Cyberpunk game.

 

[Dayyālu]

- Remember what the mortality rate for kids was in the Middle Ages? Why do you expect it to be any different in a post-apoc world? No antibiotics, vaccination, basic meds, plus natural hazards, not to mention raiders and radiation. 6 kids? You'd be lucky if 2 make it to adulthood. In fact you'd be lucky if women don't die during the second or third childbirth.
- Life expectancy of 60 years? In the middle ages it was around 35.

Warning: mostly useless post. Pardon me.

Demography tip: even basic hygiene and organization does wonders to help a good demographic growth. Look at the "thirld world" countries! Funnily enough, good societal norms, willingness to marry early and to remarry often is far more important: if we take the textbook example of the French colonization in North America you can see that a good and stable societal model that despite poor hygiene has an excellent growth (maybe the NCR is similar , but we are talking of a fictional country, I don't know). A stable society with a modicum of pre-war knowledge could have an demographic boom if there are enough resources and free space around, and external enemies are neutralized efficiently.

Second, the story of the Middle Ages where people died at 35 is kind of wrong: if you survived childhood, you had quite some chances to survive even until 60 or 70. The statistics are skewed by considering also high childhood mortality, that gives us the incredibly low ages.


/end sperging, the previous point of MRY about Fallout being sci-fi covers this more than enough. And I like both Fallout 1&2. Gosh, I even like Fallout Tactics. What I can say in a discussion between Titans? Simple minds, simple pleasures after all....

 

[MasPingon]

Another thread like J_C's?

I do think that part of what many people find endearing about Fallout is that it has a sort of "tight" small indie game feel to it (though they might not describe it in those terms). It really is an obvious "B project" with a certain indie-like amateurish quality to it.

But like many indie games, it gets better later on, as the developer grows more confident and ambitious with his craft. Play until Junktown and the Hub and tell us if you've changed your mind.

Infinitron, Infinitron never changes. Still talking out of his ass.

 

[Zombra]

Fallout doesn't even remotely have the right elements or the right amount of right elements (Cybernetics/Noir/advanced but downtrodden controlled by corporations world/anti authoritarian motives) to be considered a Cyberpunk game.

 

[Infinitron]

Infinitron, Infinitron never changes. Still talking out of his ass.

Come on, tell me how I'm wrong. Again and again, people in this thread have said: "Fallout 1 is tight." "Fallout 1 is elegant." "Fallout 1 has a strong core vision that Fallout 2 lacks."

These same characteristics are used to describe indie games as compared to AAA games, all the time.

 

[SCO]

Fanboys, fanboys never change

 

[Seaking4]

Are there people here who played F1 first time after F2 and like F1 better?

I did. I like both of them but I found there was significantly less boring/shit content in F1 than in F2. I thought the middle of F2 was amazing and just as good as anything Fallout 1. Of course, middle of a Fallout game really means shit all because of how open it is.

As for the OP, I don't think his complaints are that odd. Some of it is true. Game gets better though (even though I believe Fallout is solid from start to finish).

 

[Hugh Vagoth]

Just play the game in 720p, if you go up to 1080p it becomes a game for ants.

 

[Darkzone]

Except for:

- Remember what the mortality rate for kids was in the Middle Ages? Why do you expect it to be any different in a post-apoc world? No antibiotics, vaccination, basic meds, plus natural hazards, not to mention raiders and radiation. 6 kids? You'd be lucky if 2 make it to adulthood. In fact you'd be lucky if women don't die during the second or third childbirth.
- If there is enough food? That seems like a big IF right there.
- Life expectancy of 60 years? In the middle ages it was around 35.

You painted some kinda cottage life utopia not a harsh post-apocalyptic world.

How many surrounding villages and small towns would it have to swallow to have 700,000 people?

Except this are not middle ages. There is a doctor in the village who has even the knowledge to create an antivenom. There are stimpacks and they have knowledge about germs and perhaps even penicillin. This are important things that are missing in middle ages.
Also 2 kids to adulthood? Not quite. The bubonic plague had a cost of around 50% of the europeans. This losts were compensated within 50-100 years (indicating 4-5 survived to adulthood), even under this problematic conditions. In modern world 2.11 children is necessary to sustain a normal demographic. Woman dying during childbirth were due to bad hygienic conditions and lack of the knowledge about germs. Bleeding out can be prevented by ergot and a doctor with the knowledge how to create an antivenom would know this. Since 1950 we have nearly tripled the world population, despite the first world has not experienced a greater growth, this means that the major growth were in the third world countries lacking hygiene and medicine.
Life expectancy was only so bad in middle ages, because of the high child mortality. And if you eliminate this, people had not such a bad expectancy. England and Wales had a growth of population between 1780 to 1910 of around 400%, even with wars and emigration.

Dayyalus post is very good, you should carefully read it. I have just seen it, after writing this post.

Edit:
I don't know where this 700k comes from, but i would state that this 4k would be between 2%-20% of the NCR population, if we assume the middle ages city to village population distribution. So between 200k and 20k would be a good number.

 

[hiver]

A discussion of whether or not such-and-such element of FO2 or FO1 is "logical" or "plausible" based on real-world standards is the wrong question. Both games are full of magic and pulp science. The issue is that in FO1, for the most part (not counting Easter eggs and a few small exceptions), these elements are thematic and consistent with the specific pulp genre the game is trying to evoke. With FO2, I'm less concerned with whether we can gin up a just-so story for why NCR has grown so fast or how Reno supports its economy. Instead, the question is, how do Prohibition-era gangsters in a pseudo-Las Vegas, gauss technology in NCR, Scientologists, kung-fu, time travel, etc. enhance the core themes and develop the mood of a post-apocalyptic setting.

By stuffing the setting with big, thriving cities and the kind of parasites that a big, thriving society has (Scientology, a pornography industry, etc.), it undermines the sense of marginal, frontier, risk-of-oblivion feel that is critical to the genre. Aspects of San Francisco feel more like cyberpunk than post-apocalyptic. Etc.

There was no stuffing.

And most of those elements you mentioned above do fit with the alternative history retro 50s pulp setting that Fallout is and always was.

The problem with NCR was that it was presented as a positive development. The good guys. Not that it was there.
They was a gauss weapon or two to find or buy, but i never heard or saw that its a "technology NCR" can fart out of its arse whenever they feel like it. I distinctly remember finding them only in San Fran, close to the end. A Brotherhood tech, was it, is that maybe strange in Fallout universe? Or was it just in that one weapon shop?
Prohibition era gangsters were not real, they just dressed like that, and they really were a very small exception in the whole game.
Pseudo Las Vegas were two half ruined buildings a few hookers and hobos. But i bet you creamed all over NV in glorious first person!
Scientology was a minor short side-quest contained in a small side location. Irrelevant to the core of the game as much as any Easter egg in F1.
Kung-fu was just a little addition to hand to hand combat skill. Was there any other meaning to it except increasing your to-hit chances, giving you an ordinary or two kicks more? Did it affect anything else? Was it "kung-fu" in any other way then just a name?
I dont even remember any time traveling - another small side quest somewhere?



Nobody really gives a fuck if a few guys keep splurging about those few additional small things as if thats the whole game. And if you really want to split hairs then a bit more whacky feeling and style of the game can be contributed to Wasteland roots of Fallout games.

Compare those few small things with the gameplay of the rest of the game. How many places, how many locations, how much of quests and sub-quests and gameplay that were nothing but expansion of the core principles of the first game.

MRY, thou art a scholar and a gentleman.

Sure he is, when conforming to your views while you just skip over any counter argument that doesnt feel too nice or too easy. As usual.


Explain to the masses how is W2 is a true successor to Fallout games, and which one while youre at it. Explain what the fuck did that line about F2 borrowing a page from bethesda mean.

No, right? I didnt think so.

 

[Joni Odin von Hassenstein]

I'm playing Fallout for the first time. Vanilla, patched, with the resolution mod, but no other changes to the game. I'm at the raiders base now, but so far, this game has been a disappointment at worst and underwhelming at best.

Let's start with Shady Sands. You have the entire eastern map where there is no one unique to even talk to except a farmer who has two forced lines. Not only that, there is nothing to find, nothing to do, not a single quest. In the western map, you have a woman who explains how to play the game, and you get free XP for talking to her. Then there is Seth whose only purpose is to point out the only two quests in the area, Ian who you can recruit, and then Aradesh and Tandi, who again point out the same quests. There is a doctor who doesn't do anything except heal your character and manufacture antidote.

Next, you've grown up in a vault all your life but this has ZERO effect on your character. Nothing seems to be a surprise for you, it doesn't even come up in dialogue. At least in Fallout 2, the tribal origin of your character played a part in character interactions in Klamath.

Then there are all the shitty dungeons filled with absurdly easy trash combat... Vault 15, radscorpion caves, the vault 13 exit.... Vault 15 was another disappointment, with nothing to do except kill some trashy rats, although I did like the ambiance/atmosphere overall.

Then I get to raiders, and I find characters like Petrox and Talya with copypasted dialogue, none of which flows even remotely like a conversation. And so much of the dialogue is just broken. For example you can ask Diana to repair your equipment without even finding out that she is the camp armorer first. Really amateurish stuff.

So far everything I have played does not even compare to the first couple of rooms in PST's mortuary.

I feel you, but you didn't even mention the most annoying part: the controls are so incredibly fucked up, it's unbelieveable! It's probably the only game more annoying to play on the controls-side than DA:I.

 

[roshan]

OK, so here are my overall impressions of Fallout so far (I'm at Necropolis now, got bored so I'm taking a break):

1. Setting - Good

I appreciate the "purity" of the setting in Fallout. So far aside from Loxley with his British accent, most things have felt totally in place. However it also suffers from a lack of being fleshed out. You don't see communities struggling with starvation, or lack of water, and rarely do you even see individuals struggling against each other or against environmental forces. Everything feels too settled and stable, and very often the gameworld actually feels boring.

2. Intrigue - Very Poor

Unfortunately, there is no discovery factor so far. There is nothing to unravel, almost everything is at face value. Unlike in Fallout 2 where you could unwrap the tangled relationships between different towns and factions (for example, the families in Reno were allied with various external forces such as the Salvatores and the Enclave, the power struggle over Broken Hills, etc). There just seems to be very little to nothing going on "behind the scenes" in Fallout.

3. Content - Utterly Pathetic

Most areas are completely empty and have nothing to do. Shady Sands west has only the two central quests and no one to interact with except 4 NPCs all related to those quests. Shady Sands east is empty and useless. Junktown has 3 areas with 3 quests distributed across these areas. Necropolis area one has nothing to do except kill feral ghouls, and underground you waste time on 3 molerats. Vault 15 has nothing to do as well except kill rats, etc. The most content rich town is so far the Hub but that is only comparable to the Den, and quests are mostly localized. Perhaps 95% of all NPCs in the game are civilians and guards with only floating text, and out of the rest 2 out of 3 NPCs are useless to talk to and ignorable during a replay.

4. Reactivity - Poor

This is in relation to content. If a game has as few quests as Fallout, the gameworld could at least react to those quests. It's a shame for example that in Junktown no one even recognizes that Gizmo has been disposed off given that was the main quest in the town. Even after siding with Killian, he resets to his default dialogue as if you were a stranger that just wandered into the shop. Basic options such as being able to report Doc Morbid, or reporting the iguana guy are not even available. I can forgive lack of reactivity in a content rich game, but in a content poor game, these become much more glaring flaws.

5. Connectivity - Very Poor

It's funny how fans claim that the towns in Fallout 2 exist in isolation, whereas in fact most towns in Fallout 1 really don't interconnect at all. The only "glue" actually turning this whole thing into a setting instead of a random pastiche of small and uninteresting settlements is the Hub with the caravans going out to other towns.

6. Dialogue - Very Poor to Functional, with a few high points.

There's rarely any flow to dialogue, it often ends randomly like the designers couldn't be bothered to link various dialogue nodes, much of it is amateurish, some of it terribad (like in the Khans). Usually the best it approaches is functional, with the high points basically being some of the Vault Dweller's smartass comments and a few key characters (the jokes about Gizmo, for example and most of the Hub's major characters are generally well written).

7. "More than the sum of it's parts" factor - Good

All that being said, this game does have it's charm, it's fucking Fallout afterall. And for some reason despite being severely flawed is still overall a good game - weirdly enough, and I can't explain it myself.

ADDENDUM:

I can see how this game could be a lot better during a replay, simply because it is very possible to basically blind yourself to all it's flaws, which is probably why it has so many fans. If you already know that no one will react to Gizmo being killed, you won't bother talking to them anymore. If you know that 3/4 characters will have shitty dialogue and are of no consequence, you can simply ignore them, if you know an area is actually empty you won't bother exploring anything, you won't waste time looking into containers most of which turn up empty, or looking for quests where there are none to be found. But as a first timer, particularly one already used to Fallout 2, Arcanum and other games, it's a really disappointing and overall crappy experience finding mostly empty towns, characters, containers, etc. Basically, I now understand what it's like to play Baldur's Gate 2 and PST first and then move on to BG1 afterwards.

 

[roshan]

Just play the game in 720p, if you go up to 1080p it becomes a game for ants.

Yeah, this is what I found too, 720p works best out of all the resolutions.

 

[Davaris]

Come on, tell me how I'm wrong. Again and again, people in this thread have said: "Fallout 1 is tight." "Fallout 1 is elegant." "Fallout 1 has a strong core vision that Fallout 2 lacks."

These same characteristics are used to describe indie games as compared to AAA games, all the time.

Those words are also used to describe fine machinery. It used to be that entertainers aimed to leave their audiences wanting more. The modern American model is to give so much content, it makes one sick.

 

[Hirato]

J_C trying to make up for his famous thread, I see

The things Matt said in that thread was piss in the ocean compared to the drivel you and Grunker were posting there.

 

[MRY]

And most of those elements you mentioned above do fit with the alternative history retro 50s pulp setting that Fallout is and always was.

My take was that the 50s setting was employed because the core books in the post-apocalyptic genre came out of that duck-and-cover era (e.g., Earth Abides (1949), Alas, Babylon (1959), A Canticle for Leibowitz (1960)). In other words, the era was fitted to the genre, rather than being the central point. (I suppose they could've used the 1980s as an alternative jumping off point, relying on the MADD/Reagan era, The Road Warrior, and The Postman . . . .)

Fallout isn't a pastiche of all the pulp elements of the 1950s; it's a pastiche of the post-apocalyptic genre married to 1950s retro-futurism. Nothing about New Reno or San Francisco fits with either of those characteristics. Again, I'm not concerned with whether they are "real" or not. After all, they could've dressed in Kabuki costumes or sombreros and bandilleros or Roman armor -- the question isn't what the internal excuse is, it's whether there is a thematic reason to pick that costume for them. "The whole setting is zany!" is not a very persuasive argument -- why fedoras rather than sombreros, then? Why not cockscombs and wizard hats? If a random d20 can yield the same level of decisions, you're not developing a theme, you're shoe-horning "wouldn't it be fun" ideas into a theme.

But i bet you creamed all over NV in glorious first person!

Tried to play, but couldn't. The truth is, I don't have the time, patience, character to play real RPGs any more. All I can do is live in the past and you won't even let me do that in peace.

Scientology was a minor short side-quest contained in a small side location. Irrelevant to the core of the game as much as any Easter egg in F1. Kung-fu was just a little addition to hand to hand combat skill. Was there any other meaning to it except increasing your to-hit chances, giving you an ordinary or two kicks more? Did it affect anything else? Was it "kung-fu" in any other way then just a name?
I dont even remember any time traveling - another small side quest somewhere?

I feel like you're arguing just to argue. The main antagonist is named after the hero of In the Line of Fire. The leaders of the villainous faction are characterized by Clinton and Quayle jokes. Quayle jokes?! As a kid who grew up in DC in the 80s, I appreciated them, but that would basically be like The Master dancing the Macarena in the final encounter. Nothing in San Francisco is thematic: "its population consists mostly of the Shi, who are the descendants of the crew of a Chinese submarine that crashed there, and of the members of a religious cult known as the Hubologists." The Scientologists have a two-map area with custom map art and multiple quests. The kung fu triads are an even more elaborate area. No one is pillorying the game for the Pinky and the Brain Easter egg or the Mike Tyson joke; those were throwaway. But main quest line areas and central characters are goofy in FO2.

And if you really want to split hairs then a bit more whacky feeling and style of the game can be contributed to Wasteland roots of Fallout games.

Agreed. Fallout 2's setting fits much more with Wasteland. But it's not Wasteland 2; it's Fallout 2. Wasteland is gonzo -- almost from the getgo you're fighting a mutant Peter Rabbit or whatever -- but I would actually say that within its gonzo-ness, it never undercuts the player's buy-in. Things start of absurdly exaggerated, and if anything get slightly more serious as it goes.

Anyway, I liked Fallout 2 a lot. Like Infinitron, I think there are a lot of cool areas and quests and interactions between areas and quests, almost every aspect of actually playing the game is better. I liked the gear, and graphics. I just don't think it matches up to Fallout. And I think Infinitron's "FO1 is like an indie game" analysis is actually spot on. It feels like an indie game and also a "first game" where a lifetime of repressed ideas came bubbling up, each one thoroughly loved but not critically assessed. FO2 was designed with much more thought to how to work the "game" parts of it, but the lore lacks vision, love, or care.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

The high res patch has a pseudo-IE fog of war mode, yes. I don't like the way it works, though, because the uncovering of the fog of war is based on line of sight instead of a circle around your character. Think characters popping into view as you turn corners, and weird black blind spots remaining on the map after you've explored it.

I strongly prefer LoS based FoW over a circle because it's more natural.

Does the FoW also affect enemies?

 

[Grim Monk]

I don't know where this 700k comes from, but i would state that this 4k would be between 2%-20% of the NCR population, if we assume the middle ages city to village population distribution. So between 200k and 20k would be a good number.

It's from the "NCR history holodisk" in Fallout 2.
http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/NCR_history_holodisk

Founded eighty years ago, the NCR is now comprised of the states of Shady, Los Angeles, Maxson, Hub, and Dayglow.
Approximately 700,000 citizens are pleased to call NCR home.

 

[laclongquan]

Las Vegas was developed because Vaults empty its people out AND a humongous source of water right there. That lake should have a lake cult dedicated to it, so rare it is in P-A east coast.

Note the number of Vaults in a few day-distance to each other. More densed than in other area. More Vaults open = more inhabitants with knowledge.
Note the lake. Do remember that in F1, F2, FT, no where do they have a great source of water like that. Potable Water=Agriculture = Life.

 

[Jick Magger]

I liked them both, along with New Vegas.

 

[haraw]

Are there people here who played F1 first time after F2 and like F1 better?

Yep. tho first time i played through FO2 I did it without music and children, couldn't fix those as a kid.

Main reason for preferring FO1 to FO2 is that the latter leaves shit taste in mouth, 'cause it falls apart during the endgame even if you don't mind the lulzy content. Nowadays when i replay FO2 i steer away from all the shittiest content (Brain, Vault 13, ghost in Den, Redding's mines etc. damn there's much of them) and abandon my playthrough in SF.

Still, I think New Reno is the best locations in both fallouts in terms of C&C. That makes it up for me.

 

[FeelTheRads]

I'd really like someone to point me out to some 50s sci-fi where the themes are gangsters and chinamen doing chinamen things.
So, you people who think these are just perfect in Fallout, because hey they knew about them in the 50s and obviously in Fallout you can just throw in everything people knew in the 50s, tell me, what do you think about real-life weapons in Fallout? Perfect fit, amirite? I'm still wondering why they were missing in the first place!

 

[Infinitron]

 

[Sykar]

I'd really like someone to point me out to some 50's sci-fi where the themes are gangesters and chinamen doing chinamen things.
So, you people who think these are just perfect in Fallout, because hey they knew about them in the 50's and obviously in Fallout you can just throw in everything people knew in the 50's, tell me, what do you think about real-life weapons in Fallout? Perfect fit, amirite? I'm still wondering why they were missing in the first place!

Why the fuck does it matter what other Sci Fi movies/games did?