peadar1987

Yeah, I think it would be cool to see Fallout's retro-futuristic aesthetic applied to China. I don't think the game will ever happen though, because marketing won't allow it. China censor media that portray the Communist Party in a bad light, and I the developers will be scared of taking the risk of setting the game outside the US anyway.

I thought Liam Neeson was pretty decent in FO3, better than Chandler Bing as Benny in NV anyway, even if the dialogue as a whole was far better in NV

I actually enjoyed Honest Hearts the most, probably because it had friendly NPCs I could invest myself in, and once you finished, you felt you'd achieved something worthwhile. Plus that scenery! OWB and Dead Money were enjoyable for me, but Fistandilius hits the nail on the head for OWB. You have to carry too much stuff, the weapons are very "niche", it contradicts other areas of the game and fallout canon in a grating way sometimes, and some enemies are needlessly buffed (although that is a criticism of the newer Fallout games in general. It shouldn't take six headshots to drop pretty much anything, let alone a coyote/rattlesnake hybrid!). On the other hand, on my first playthrough, I loved the humour and sense of discovery. Dead Money was a nice change of atmosphere, with the constantly hostile environment, and needing to survive without all your gear. It also has some very interesting NPCs, some of the best in the game. However, I hate the concept of magic, make anything vending machines that work by rearranging individual atoms, and in my own headcanon, I change it to them just being attached to a central distribution network, even if just for the fact that turning a chip into a stimpak should release enough nuclear energy to level the entire Sierra Madre. Lonesome Road, I still found fun, but too linear and combat-focused for me. There's no real way through apart from just shooting everything. Plus no friendly NPCs. I think I had similar feelings about FO3 DLCs. Loved The Pitt, liked Point Lookout, Broken Steel was okay, but again, too much combat and linearity, Operation Anchorage was a fun FPS, but there are far better FPS games out there. It was interesting as a change of pace though, and to see a little of the pre-war fallout universe.

Why would House want to hire you at all if you just left Goodsprings and went directly to New Vegas? The only thing you've ever done is loose his package and almost die. What possible reason could he have for wanting to even talk to someone like that let alone hire them? He already knows you don't have the chip. He already knows Benny has it. He already knows where Benny is. But he's going to hire you... the loser who lost the chip and has done absolutely nothing else but wander to New Vegas? How does that make sense at all? And here's another thing about everyone who complains that you can't join the Enclave in FO3. Why are video games supposedly more real if you have an option to side with the bad guys? There is probably a list of hundreds of organizations in real life that you could never in your life join, but in video games, every single faction is supposed to just give you a chance or else the developer's suck. What sense does that make either? Eden wanted to work with you. Autumn wanted to torture you and take your information by force and then likely kill or imprison you. Besides. If you don't want to side with the BoS, there's nothing stopping you from blasting the Citadel at the end of the BS, is there? Except you haven't just wandered to Vegas, at the very least you'll have had to sneak pask/kill deathclaws, Fiends, Super Mutants, Jackals, Vipers, Powder Gangers and Cazadores. And as House says, he can't just get the chip back with a full frontal assault on the casino, because then all Benny has to do is hold a gun up to the chip and hold House to ransom. Plus, you're an outsider, who has been shot in the head by Benny, House can be fairly confident you're not going to betray him and go over to Benny's side, unlike most other people in Vegas, whose loyalties are suspect at best. As for your other point, because video games are not real life. Would you rather play as a random Vault 101 resident who never gets out? What about as a Megaton farmer who raises Brahmin for 30 years until he is vaporised when some clown sets off the bomb? Because those are both morel likely than being an ass-kicking 19 year old whose dad just happens to be the only person to leave the vault in years. Don't get me wrong, I loved FO3, but I prefer games with more depth and choices, and I still think FO3s are very superficial. Yes, you can blow up the citadel, but please, how does that make any sense? If you're trying to play as an sort of believable character, you've just gone through a huge campaign, fighting alongside the Brotherhood, risking your life on countless occasions only to turn around and kill them all for no reason. I'm not saying you should be able to join the AntAgoniser faction, but a bit more depth is sorely needed.

Just remember Yes Man's last words.I think your joy as a ruler won't last long. The Developers have said that was basically Yes Man saying that he would no longer just take orders from everyone, only you, so you wouldn't have to worry about someone just wandering in and taking over when you were out of the Lucky 38.

You don't have to follow Benny for the story to make sense. You can just go straight to New Vegas. You can just wander off into the hills and pretend you're a hermit, but if you want the plot to develop, you have to interact with it. There's more depth when you do that in New Vegas than in 3. Your big choices in 3? Kill President Eden or don't. Poison the water or don't. In New Vegas you can forgive Benny, kill him, join him, side with any of four factions, take their quests, solve them in a variety of different ways that have real outcomes for the people of the wasteland. Of course it makes sense that the story doesn't develop for you if you don't interact with any of the major players in the wasteland, but there's a difference between being "forced" to talk to Mr. House at some point and decide how to deal with him, and being forced to side with the Brotherhood of Steel.

Even if you play as a "massive dick" you still have to save the wasteland, that's the problem I have with it, no choices, it's like trying to roleplay Grand Theft Auto. Well, you don't, you can poison everyone in the wasteland for absolutely no reason. Not much of a choice really!

Hmm... I think FO3, you are so limited in the type of character you play. You're either a white knight, saving the wasteland, crusading after your dad, helping people*, or you're a massive dick, who blows up Megaton, shoots everyone in the face, and poisons the water supply for no reason. You don't get to have any depth, at least, not in the main questline. I've said before, Fallout 3 would have been one of the best games ever with a few changes. Have the Enclave split, one faction is genocidal, led by Eden, one faction is led by Autumn, and wants to use the water to rule the wasteland, not kill everyone in it. The "nice" Brotherhood are the splinter faction, helping the wastelanders, but hopelessly outnumbered and outgunned, and everyone from the Enclave to the Super Mutants to the Original Brotherhood, fortified in the citadel and helping nobody unless it gets them technology. And then a few independent factions, make the raiders a bit more realistic and less one-dimensional, they'll only rob you if you look like you have something worth having, you can join them, unite them, and make a vast army of "land pirates", or else you can side with the ordinary wastelanders, try and link the communities up, raise an army and fight the Enclave, the Brotherhood, and the Super Mutants on your own. They're all fighting over the purifier, because of the power that amount of clean, fresh water would give to whoever controlled it, and your endings could vary from the Enclave setting up a brutal but stable dictatorship, to the Original Brotherhood trading vital water for tech (at extortionate exchange rates), to you sitting on a throne at the Jefferson Memorial, sending raiding parties out into the wastes to bring back treasure and slaves. Compared to constructing the world to put them all in, I don't think this would have taken too much work in the GECK, and the game would have been absolutely magnificent. *(nothing wrong with that, it's how I usually play the game out of choice)

Hmm... I was all set to argue, and then your last point blew me out of the water. Well played! I still think that it would be more normal to take multiple items with you (although Goodsprings stuff would more likely be bundled with stuff for smaller settlements like Sloan and Primm, I'd say Vegas would be big enough and get enough deliveries that you could load your courier up with five or ten deliveries for there and send them on their way without waiting too long), but in this case, it looks like it was just the chip. Which brings us back to the opening post...

The NCR have only been in the Mojave less than a decade, and it's still the frontline of a war. I reckon in California proper, there is a lot of rebuilding going on, probably factories, shops, safe roads, new houses. That requires organisation and security, which there isn't much of in the Mojave. As for the Fiends, I think it's a consequence of NCR's strategy. The Legion move fast, hit hard, and disappear into the countryside. It's bred a fear of deploying too large a force anywhere to counter military threats like the Fiends. If Oliver commits a large force to take them out, they'll take huge casualties and the Legion can attack when they're distracted. For what it's worth, it's what I would do as well. The Fiends are only held together by the charisma of a few leaders. Cut off the head, and the rest will tear itself to bits. That's what happens in the game, you kill Motor Runner, and the fiends are a spent force, without the NCR getting sucked into high-loss urban warfare against an enemy that know the terrain in South Vegas.

" it's all government and none of it works" Hmm... I don't agree. The NCR and the legion aren't perfect, but it's made very clear that they're a lot better than pure anarchy, as Raul says, before the Legion, Arizona was so think with raiders you couldn't trade with towns two miles down the road, and the first two fallout games show California wasn't exactly a great place before the NCR.

No way in hell House would have allowed that. He leaves nothing up to chance. You forget he hired 6 couriers just so 5 could be decoys. AND he sent Victor to watch you as well. He also sent the chip by standard courier so as not to arouse suspicion. Paying over the odds so the courier could deliver a trinket without making any other, normal deliveries would definitely be seen as suspicious.

The delivery was headed to Vegas!!!Not Goodsprings!!!Go talk to House. Second at the moment of the ambush there were no Death Claws.The guy at the Sloan says the showed up after Powders blew up something and opened a passage from the caves. Actually, he says that they showed up after the Powder Gangers stole all the explosives, and the quarry was temporarily abandoned: http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Quarry_Junction There isn't an established timeline for when exactly the deathclaws showed up, and when the courier was shot in the head. They could either have been there already, or not, it's not established with any certainty in the game. How does that make sense? We already know what his delivery was. It was the platinum chip and he was headed to New Vegas. The Mojave Express are trying to make money. It makes sense that they'd give their couriers more than one thing to carry, that way they get more than one delivery fee, but still only have to pay one set of wages. Your postman doesn't deliver one letter, then go back to the post office to collect the next one.

Wrong.As we all know it was ambush.Probably on the central road.(The one that leads to Sloan)since it's the short way to Vegas from the south. Nothing to say it wasn't an ambush as the courier went to make a delivery in Goodsprings though. Thing is, the game never establishes where the PC was ambushed, so everything we come up with is just speculation. Goodsprings delivery makes as much sense as on-the-road ambush, or the PC trying to find a way around the deathclaws.

Yeah, pretty much. I always just thought Ulysses was a crazy person, and the courier was just a delivery person who was in the wrong place at the wrong time. All of his rationalisations and pseudo-philosophy are, for me, just posturing.

Couriers are usually to be left alone by Caesars order as well, if you go by Ulysses... XD Because Caesar found that the guise of a courier was a useful way for Frumentarii to move around NCR territory without arousing suspicion, so many couriers were actually working for the legion.

I think the courier is just that, a courier. They deliver packages. At the start of the game, they can defend themselves against a fairly moderate threat, a small band of raiders, coyotes, ants, but aren't crazy badasses. If they were, they wouldn't be delivery boys, they'd be special forces, mercenaries, or bounty hunters, all of which pay far better than delivering letters. Most mail traffic goes down the main roads, which had been kept clear by the NCR until the recent increase in Legion activity. If a courier has to deliver a package into a dangerous area, the client pays for an escort. It makes far more sense than all the postmen in the world being John Rambo out of necessity. The Courier simply isn't familiar with the Mojave, normally working further west, which explains why they don't know any of the people there, or their way around. Mind you, New Vegas is very good at leaving a lot of room for your own roleplaying, so if your own character is a former desert ranger, tribal warrior, or NCR commando, who has quit their life of action to become a courier (until the wrong person pissed them off), then that's up to you, and doesn't conflict with the story at all.

so for that option you have to have joined the Toaster faction. Small appliances tremble in fear everywhere. THE WORLD WILL BE BATHED IN THERMONUCLEAR FIRE! AGAIN!

I always thought that was what happened, the "football" was found, brought to the divide, because it had the same markings as the bunkers and silos, and activated, possibly in the hope that it would unlock the doors and the NCR could find valuable military salvage inside. Instead, it set the missiles to fire. They were programmed for targets in China and the USSR, but years of neglect meant that the boosters didn't fire, or the silo doors didn't open, (and by either an unfortunate failure, or a massive engineering oversight, the arming mechanisms on the warheads were set to a timer.) With the timer running, it was just a matter of time before the pressure switches were tripped. The warheads thought they were reentering the earth's atmosphere over China, instead of still sitting in their silos, and detonated. That's how I reconcile it with canon anyway, I totally agree with you, making a device whose sole purpose is to blow up your own missiles in their silos is just daft! Edit (just to make more sense of my previous post): The operation of modern nuclear warheads is classified, but it's reasonable to assume that they aren't actually armed in their silos. They'll be designed to explode a set height above the target, and this will almost certainly be automatic, and not require a signal from the operators (Mutually Assured Destruction requires the missiles to function even if the people who fired them are already dead). The way I'd do it would be to have multiple failsafes, so a flight timer, a radar altimeter, and a barometric altimeter. The warhead is armed when the two altimeters show the missile has reached a certain height, and also when the timer shows a certain time has elapsed since launch. With the bomb armed, it is then given the signal to detonate when both altimeters agree that it is below a certain altitude. However, it's not beyond belief that the US of the Fallout universe would have cut corners safety-wise in order to build more nukes more quickly, and just relied on the timer to tell the bomb when to arm.

Slightly off-topic, but how amazing would it be if you could play Fallout as a co-op game, like TimeSplitters?

I've been thinking about the House ending, and I've realised that I pretty much forgot about the Courier. Even if House doesn't care about the people of the Mojave, that doesn't mean the Courier doesn't. You're his right-hand man, and if you wanted to try and make life better for the people of the Mojave while he played with his robots and rockets, I doubt he'd mind

1. Some post-war organisms are heavily implied to be this as well. Mole rats are supposedly a genetically engineered anti-infrastructure weapon. That said, the Fallout universe doesn't work on standard science, it works on SCIENCE! where radiation is basically magic, the way it was thought of in the 1950s. Also, FEV exposure is heavily implicated in many of the mutations, especially ghoulification 2. Prime normals are those who haven't already been exposed to small doses of FEV, and have no immunity to it. 3. It's completely within the realms of possibility that nuclear weapons were engineered to produce long-lasting fallout. Cobalt jackets, and core design to produce the appropriate neutron flux to produce long-lived fission products, leaving high radiation in the impact zones for decades. I also always imagined that the animals made extinct were made so more by competition than by the initial nuclear strikes. Maybe mountain lions and such did survive, but died out when deathclaws ate all their food. Or Brahmin were simply more hardy than buffalo, and displaced them from their feeding grounds. 4. There's no need for them to have initially been multi-megaton devices, although your suggestion does make perfect sense. Tritium used for many fusion stages has a short half-life, and so would have decayed by the time Lonesome Road happens, meaning that only the fission primary would have been in serviceable order. 5. The only canon result of the Yangtze campaign is the capture of Shanghai, any references to Beijing are non-canon (this also makes sense in the context of the T-51b turning the tide of the campaign. In open warfare, tanks and air superiority are still going to be far more important. However, in urban warfare, fighting building to building, powered armour is going to be a huge advantage). 6. That's what I always thought as well. It's the only sensible reason for entire radioactive rivers. 7. I think it's stated that low Uranium reserves were one of the reasons for the Resource Wars, and also, there is loads of waste dumped everywhere, in caves and basements, so I don't think that squares that well with the existence of waste-burning reactors. The main reason we don't have any large-scale ones today is because they're less useful for producing weapons-grade material, therefore other designs were followed. I can see this being evven more likely to be the case in the Fallout universe. 8. Does functional Nanotech exist in the fallout universe? You're right though, it's strange that random plants can have so much of an effect on someone's health otherwise. 9. I always imagined Brahmin as some sort of "siamese twin" mutation, where two foetuses fused together. 10. I like the idea of symbiotic bacteria, it does make a lot of sense, as any organism using them would have an automatic advantage over its competitors. However, humans are are only actually 1-3% bacteria by mass, as bacterial cells weigh far less than the average human cell. From wikipedia: "It is estimated that 500 to 1,000 species of bacteria live in the human gut[5][6] Bacterial cells are much smaller than human cells, and there are at least ten times as many bacteria as human cells in the body (approximately 1014 versus 1013).[7][8] The mass of microorganisms are estimated to account for 1-3% total body mass.[9] Though members of the flora are found on all surfaces exposed to the environment (on the skin and eyes, in the mouth, nose, small intestine), the vast majority of bacteria live in the large intestine."

Not if you have Broken Steel installed, they just get knocked out

-That's where we fundamentally disagree. I don't, and never will, believe that might makes right, in a post-apocalyptic world or otherwise. -America doesn't exist in the Fallout universe more than the Ottoman Empire exists in ours. Turkey don't have a right to Bulgaria, Serbia or Macedonia, no matter how much military power they might have, and any "continuations" of the US have the right to any land that isn't already occupied by people who want nothing to do with them. -On Comrade Cheng, it's never made clear in the Fallout canon how the Great War started. America could have launched the first nukes, it could have been triggered by a false alarm, it could have been a terrorist attack, or the North Koreans. -I'd sort of agree with you about the Enclave as well. If you take out the genocidal tendencies, they hold the not-unjustifiable position that the best thing for the wasteland and the people in it is to rule from the top with extreme force. Desperate times, desperate measures and all that. However, the same disagreement comes up again. I don't think they have the right to force people to join them, at gunpoint if necessary. -House didn't have much interest in pacifying the area around Vegas. If he had, he has more than enough money to hire an army of mercenaries to augment the securitron army, and do it easily. However, it suited him in the short term for the NCR to deal with the problems of the Fiends, the Great Khans, the Jackals, and the Vipers. In the House ending, it's pretty obvious that he starts this more or less instantly by rolling the Securitrons out into Freeside. -The Mojave is more than capable of running itself as-is, with the trappings of a modern state spreading outwards over time. Goodsprings, Primm, and Novac are functioning communities, in spite of not being part of a state. Obviously there is room for improvement, but it will take time, and over a period of a few decades, it's just as easily achievable from Vegas as from Shady Sands. The region is very rich by post-apocalyptic terms, with water, power, valuable salvage, and a good base for industry. The Mojave could be a very prosperous state in a few years. The independent path isn't perfect, but it's not as if NCR is the only way to go if the Mojave is to become a better place. To be honest, for the general populace, House is probably the worst outcome, as he doesn't particularly care if things are lawless and brutal outside his walls, so long as his own convoys can still get through. It does really depend exactly how bad things are in legion territory for civilians though, something that's never made clear. I like to imagine it's similar to things further west for the most part, with traders, farmers, and scavengers, except with military service for able-bodied men, and pretty severe punishments for not keeping your head down (counterbalanced by being far, far safer from bandits and wildlife)

The independent ending finishes with you as the hero of the Mojave, with control over an army of robots. What happens then is up to you. If you want to rule over them as a dictator, or leave them to their own devices like Mr House, that's up to you, and how you'd imagine your story arc continuing after the events of Hoover Dam. I'd immediately start laying the foundations for democracy, putting in place a constitution etc. I would stand for election, but I wouldn't become a despot. The NCR have no right at all to the Mojave. Zero. None. They are not the United States, they are a collection of people who emerged from fallout shelters and have taken on that mantle. They have no more right to rule over the continental US than the Enclave, and considerably less than the people who have been living there outside of their control for the intervening 150 years or so. The Mojave is no threat to the NCR, they are not at war with them, they have the right to decide their own future, be that as a part of the NCR or not. If you think that the use of force is rarely illegitimate, then you and I view the world completely differently. And as for restoring the Union, would you argue that Turkey has the right to use force to restore the Ottoman Empire? Would it be justified for Vladimir Putin to send the tanks into Ukraine? Germany to expand east to reclaim East Prussia? As for the legion, I agree with you, I think the legion deserves some bad press, but isn't the ultimate evil some people paint it to be. Sure, it's not the NCR, but compare it to the Capital Wasteland, and it's paradise