Thing's about the game that don't make sense

[Talwyn224]

I agree absolutely that any system is limited to the programming it's set up with and this is reflected inn which the way the LW can convince Eden to initate a self destruct sequence by using simple logic. Again its a bit of a stretch narratively but it works to an extent.

 

The speech I quoted is probably the best evidence we have to base our assumptions that Eden was fully aware of the past mistakes made by the human members of the Enclave.

 

And the more I think on it, I am becoming more convinced that Eden "played to lose" so that America could have the best chance to rebuild. If we take the events in FO3 as any indicator then we can see that it's when Col. Autumn rebels, tha is when the Enclave become far more active and aggressive and specifically in Broken Steel when they really come out swinging by utilising the Orbital Missile launcher to attack the BoS. Eden is out of the picture and thus is unable to reign in the Enclave by this point but if he was indeed able to project outcomes and probabilities, its reasonable to assume he knew that the BoS and Enclave would also lose that battle too.

 

Although Eden tries to "turn" the LW into becoming his agent and insert the FEV into the Purifier, I think that he must have known that this was a long shot at best. Again we have to assume he gamed out all the possibilities and as such would have seen that outcome as highly unlikely that the LW would become an agent of the Enclave.

[Talwyn224]

Another item regarding the game has occurred to me: the proximity between hostile groups.

 

An excellent example of this is the raiders camped out in the ruins of Springvale School and the house that the runaway prostitute Silver [from Megaton] lives in.

 

If we are to believe that raiders are a bunch of psychopathic cannibals who like nothing more than torturing and murdering wastelanders. Yet Ms. Silver lives alone, barely a few hundred meters from this pack of deranged homicidal maniacs and appears to be totally ok with her nearest neighbours!?! :rolleyes:

 

Not once do we get the impression that she is a state of danger from being attacked, raped and eaten. We're shown that the raiders appear to do to any poor wastelander they can get their hands on. And this is where it doesn't make sense. Either the raiders roam in their immediate vicinity hunting and killing anything they can as you'd expect and thus Ms.Silver should be much further away from them or dead.

[7thsealord]

Another fair point.

 

All I can think of is that maybe Silver made some kind of deal with the leader of the local Raider gang. For what, I can't say. Maybe she becomes their "front" for acquiring supplies they need but can't always get by force (figure that Raider gangs go through a LOT of ammo and drugs, if nothing else).

 

There was also that project the Springvale Raiders had going, to tunnel into Vault 101 - maybe she was making some kind of contribution to that.

Edited July 1, 2012 by 7thsealord

[Talwyn224]

I suppose its possible that Silver has managed to pay off the radiers into not attacking her however I din't see that being the likely situation here. The raiders seem to be nothing more than vicious psychos who attack anyone and everyone. In a sense they are the ultimate example of what Thomas Hobbes described as as man in his pure state of nature:

 

"In that state, each person would have a right, or license, to everything in the world. This, Hobbes argues, would lead to a "war of all against all" (bellum omnium contra omnes). The description contains what has been called one of the best known passages in English philosophy, which describes the natural state mankind would be in, were it not for political community as he says here:

 

"In such condition, there is no place for industry; because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently no culture of the earth; no navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea; no commodious building; no instruments of moving, and removing, such things as require much force; no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short."

 

— "Chapter XIII.: Of the Natural Condition of Mankind As Concerning Their Felicity, and Misery.", Leviathan

 

TL;DR

It's a brutal dog eat dog world where life is nasty brutish and often, short.

 

Hence the notion that why would raiders be bothered to bargined with anyone if all they want is to do is skin you alive and wear your ass as a new hat?

BTW, even 3Dog in one of his public service announcements states quite emphatically that raiders can't be bargined or reasoned with so just run or fight are your only options when dealing with them.

 

Again its another example of the inconsistnecy of the games logic and continuity.

 

And I've come across yet another:

 

Tenpenny.

 

Ok so once you get into Megaton and see the bomb there you are presented with tghe option of either defusing the bomb or setting it off at the request of Mr Burke who is working on behalf of Tenpenny. Now if you defuse it, Tenpenny eventually contracts Talon Company Mercs to kill you. You learn this after you kill on of their hit squads and find the contract note on their bodies. That's fine so far.

So then [in my game at least] I go to Tenpenny Tower, walk right in and blow off his head, toss his manky corpse off the building and say good ridance to bad rubbish.

Yet no one in Tenpenny Tower, especially the guards seem to be bothered that I've just executed their boss? :whistling: Gustavo is prepared to sell me guns & ammo and life goes on as normal.

 

Doesn't that seem a little off to you?

 

I think there should be some consequences to you killing Tenpenny. At the very least the guards should turn hostile UNLESS you make a speech check or something convincing them or at least Gustavo that it was justified and now Gustavo is in charge of the place. That'd make a great deal more sense than the way it is currently.

 

I wish I had the time and ability etc to fix all these niggles within the game so as to make a great game perfect.

[7thsealord]

Noting that the Springvale Raiders were sufficiently motivated to plan / organize a tunnelling effort to acquire Vault 101's "riches". Suggesting that there are Raiders capable of some semblance of thinking / planning ahead. Most are probably psychos (as you say), or just totally into the whole "instant gratification" thing, but (at the very least) there could be a few who are less psycho than others.

 

Which would be scary, thinking about it - a Raider leader tough / psycho enough to keep his gang in line, yet sane / smart enough to do serious mid / long-range planning.

 

As regards Tenpenny, agreed. Walk in, cap the old b#####d (check U-Tube some time - amazing variety of assassination methods shown), toss his body off the balcony (yep, I do that too), walk out without even raising a sweat. It really SHOULD be more complicated than that.

 

But there is a lot about the whole Tenpenny Towers situation that is dissatisfying. I mean, the "peaceful solution" in which the Ghouls eventually wipe out the Humans is a definite twist, but I dislike the very limited options here. One can waste the Ghouls, and put up with the consequences (such as getting crap from Three Dog over it forever). You can waste the Humans - not many prizes there, let's face it but, apart from Tenpenny, humilation is the most they deserve. You can try to organize peaceful co-existance, and then see it go horribly horribly wrong.

 

I know happy endings out there in the Wastes are meant to be a rarity, but still.

[Talwyn224]

I agree that the raiders in the school do appear to be more organised than a lot of the other bands however leaving Silver alone, especially when she has food, caps and chems etc in her house just doesn't quite feel right IMO. I suppose it's possible that she's paid them off as she did steal caps from Colin Moriarty yet once the raiders have got their caps, what's to stop them from betraying her and killing her when they feel like it? Yes they may be capable of medium and even long term planning as is the case with the idea to tunnel into Vault 101 but I don't think honouring bargains with individuals is really in their way of operating.

 

I also absolutely agree the whole TenPenny tower vs Roy Phillips quest is unsatisfactory. On my very first run through of the game, way back in 2008, I decided to ignore the situation entirely as I wasn't keen on being a murderer for hire no was I interested in letting in a bunch of ghouls move in with a group of people that clearly wanted nothing to do with ghouls. It was good to play without knowing any consequences or sneaking a look at outcomes via the Fallout wiki as it wasn't barely working back then. But I did kill TenPenny once I discovered he put out a hit on my LW for being a decent guy. In subsequent games I kill Roy and his band immediately as early on in the game he's got decent loot and the reward is good as well.

 

And now yet another thing that doesn't make sense: setting off the megaton nuke and it's explosive impact. We see the bomb is quite large and we can guesstimate it's probably got the yield/force of the one the Fatman bomb. Yet when you set it off it only levels Megaton? And Moria somehow survives being at ground Zero? :confused: Good Grief! This is one of the worst clangers they included in the game I think. To quote from Wikipedia on the effects of dropping FatMan on Nagasaki:

 

" The resulting explosion had a blast yield equivalent to 21 kilotons of TNT. The explosion generated heat estimated at 3,900 °C (7,050 °F) and winds that were estimated at 1,005 km/h (624 mph) ...... The radius of total destruction was about 1 mile (1.6 km), followed by fires across the northern portion of the city to 2 miles (3.2 km) south of the bomb. "

 

So everything in roughly a 2 mile radius from Megaton should be totally gone. I'm not certain how the game takes distance into account but it feels like TenPenny tower is only a few miles away from Megaton and as such, should be effected by the blast and shockwave from the bombs detonation. In addition, if you decide to set the nuke off, you should automatically become THE most HATED person in the wasteland. The BoS and even Outcasts should be hunting you down for your terrible crime. Plus there is no way in hell Moria or anyone else for that matter, survive the blast. Even the Enclave should be unhappy that a nuke has been set off. I think it is the single most evil act you can do in the game yet the repercussions that follow are pathetically weak in comparrison. Your karma is always going to be low from that point on and you do get a cut scene at the end of the game but that's about it really. Pretty lame.

[7thsealord]

The Megaton blast could be a "squib" or partial detonation. I mean, the thing has been sitting in a puddle of water out in the open for two hundred-odd years. Bloody miracle it worked at all, IMO, because keeping a nuke operational requires constant maintenance, and setting one off requires much more than a simple jumpstart approach.

 

Then again, the concept of a 'Use-By Date' obviously never reached the world of FO3. There are still pre-war stocks of food, ammo and batteries out there, all still usable after two hundred-odd years. That is quite impressive technology in itself. But it wouldn't be quite so fun if all we had to fight Mirelurks and Deathclaws were broken bottles, sticks and chunks of old concrete.

 

Also, as I understand it, the Karma loss is quite hefty. Not that I have ever tried that option - some people might like playing Evil B#####ds at least once in a while, but it just never appealed to me.

 

Given that the metaplot involves making nice with the BOS sooner or later, it was probably thought best to limit hostilities between them and the LW.

Edited July 6, 2012 by 7thsealord

[Flipout6]

The fact I can shoot an enemy six times in the head with a shotgun before I even cripple it?

 

As for the Megaton bomb, the shockwave alone would be enough to severely damage Tenpenny tower, and more than likely kill everybody standing on that balcony. (Correct me if I'm wrong, but that would probably happen with today's nukes, let alone the nukes made during wartime 75 years from now.)

Edited July 7, 2012 by Flipout6

[flashman63]

My personal theory on the bombs of all of DC is that they were light loads, more like neutron bombs than anything. My reasoning is that most of the capital wasteland is unharmed, except for the Wasteland which mostly consisted of wooden buildings and did not survive. But, we see the chinese had operatives in america- perhaps this was to allow them to survive and establish the Chinese with a working infrastructure? And also so data collecting could be done from the computers?(Remember, they use vacuum tubes) This would explain why the soil is still unable to supporet life (At least partiall from higher radiation), the survival of a lot of buildings, the use of primitive nukes, rather then ICBMs, and the not so powerful explosion of megaton, which waas actually Killoton.

[7thsealord]

The fact I can shoot an enemy six times in the head with a shotgun before I even cripple it?

 

Raiders and Supermutants - heads are just an optional appendage. ;)