Fallout Enviroment

[ecksile]

Now before we get started I'm sure some of you are gonna bring up the massive bombings and 1950's design as arguments as to why some things are the way they are. I'm going to try to defend my ideas from this as best as possible. Now lets begin...

 

I dont know if anyone noticed but the basic level design of the fallout environment feels rather bland and random when compared to those of other games. It feels thrown together or pieced together. Rushed...Or like Bethesda let all the rookies do the designing for this game. Does anyone else agree?

 

For example have you noticed just in general how empty the wasteland is?...I'm sure you have...Even down town feels empty to me it feels like stuff was just thrown in there. I've notice in a lot of destroyed interiors there's random piles of rubble with no source of where the rubble came from, or just way to big a pile or rubble for the amount of damage it was supposed to have come from. To be honest I dont understand how most of the downtown area survived in general...you would think that would have got pounded harder then the suburbs, and yet the suburbs are extremely lacking in buildings even building rubble (I guess they were hit so hard that the little wooden houses simply evaporated/disintegrated/vaporized?). I'm sure someone will say its because its been 200 years but after 200 years i doubt any building will still be standing...especially after all the damage they would have taken from the initial war and the climate changes post war and the post war war with all the factions...

 

While exploring, the dungeons and interiors begin to feel very similar in design after you've explored just a few, and to me it no longer feels unique or like a new experience or maybe I've just explored the same ones to many times...oblivion was the same way with dungeons so I'm not sure... and whats with all the random lighting in interiors with no apparent source. Wheres this nuclear power plant that's powering everything? You would think the EMP blasts from all the bombs dropped on the "suburbs" would knock out pretty much anything electronic then the destruction and fires would do the rest, plus 200 years of no maintenance aging.

 

How bout the random gravity swing traps (idk what they're really called) that use V6 Internal Combustion Engines as their blunt weapons...Where exactly did they get those engines? Every vehicle I see is nuclear...And how about the roads...the roads that lead to nowhere and randomly disappear and reappear. Their turns are so sharp and random that those big boats they call cars would drive right off...On top of that the roads themselves are so narrow you couldn't fit 2 of those nuclear cars on one at the same time anyways (especially through a turn)...Not to mention one of those tractor trailers (Or 2 :ohmy:).

 

How bout tenpenny tower? Its this random HUGE building out in the middle of nowhere...Where did he get those HUMONGOUS slabs of concrete to block off his building? and who moved them? who fixed up that broken side of the tower? If you go past the tower to that corner of the map behind the little line of buildings there's this huge crater back there...I'm assuming its a crater from a bomb but for a crater that large how are those buildings still standing? How is tenpenny tower still standing? I remember reading somewhere someone said that tenpenny and megaton should be switched and tenpenny should be a trading outpost as well as its usual invite only resident joint. I definitely agree with this....

 

Now lets talk basic layout of the ground...The very basic design of the level itself, the terrain. Lets pretend there was no buildings or houses, no roads or freeways, no walkways, no water towers, not even rubble...nothing at all. All of those random rocks that seem to have grown like trees in the wasteland...Where did all these huge rocks come from? Did the people not move them when building their houses/buildings? Why is the terrain so rocky? Continental shift? Did the bombs killing off all the trees and greenery cause the land to shift because their roots where no longer holding the soil together? Volcano? Ive never been to DC so i cant speak to well for the amount of rocks or the basic street/building layouts but these things just dont fit for me..

 

These are just a few things I've noticed that tend to irk me to no end and brake the immersion for me. It makes me wonder why i mod this game in the first place...There's just so much that needs fixing in my opinion so many little details that where ignored and neglected and so much that needs to be touched up. I'm only 1 person and it makes me think whats the point in trying to improve the game at all? You can polish a turd all you want but at the end of the day its still just a turd...:wallbash:....and with that I think i will end my rant/pointing out of things...I'd like to hear your guys input and thoughts on these topics or anything else you think doesn't logically fit with the basic level designs. Thanks for reading :thumbsup:

[Gaaaary]

To me the wasteland feels quite realistic. I don't think they rushed it, there's so many eastereggs, cool hidden places and so on that it feels really tough to complain. Sure you could overdo it even more and add much more stuff to the scenes , but F3 was already Game of The Year - if you want the game of the century you prolly gotta wait for New Vegas. Sure you could add tons of more items, vehicles, more trash, useless stuff, more gags, more hidden places and so on, but imho for the price of the game you already get quite a lot - even without dlc. Such games have limited development time, limited budget and i still think its great what they made out of it. If you still think the wasteland is just too sterile then prolly noone can change your oppinion, but most people here will prolly agree that the wasteland does not feel "too empty" or "rushed", actually most people i talked to were quite overwhelmed by the game. Imho Fallout 3's real strength is not photo-realistic graphics and ultra-real super-detailed environments, but a quite well balanced grabbag of fun, good storyline, balanced missions and interesting characters.

 

Maybe you will find some people who agree that the terrain is too rocky and that there's not enough info about how tenpenny fixed the tower, but i find such are minor flaws if you can even call them flaws. I don't think it's possible to make a game and please EVERYONE. I have myself sometimes thought like "Yeah right a gun lies here 200 years and noone picked it up" or stuff like that, but nothing so serious i didn't forget it 5 minutes later. I think either you gotta be able to live with the fact that its not a scientific environmental simulator, but a game focused on playability and fun. Every game got some flaws you can find if you have the right eye and are in the mood to rant about it, but for Fallout 3 my overall experience was definitely on the sunny side. I remember games like 7.62 high calibre which was real mad fun and addictive, but in the end i gave up as it crashed like every 10 minutes and at least one mission was impossibly unfair and difficult. For fallout 3 i must say it is one of the very very few games that i have completed several times and still have fun playing it.

[reyiss]

For me its all screwed up anyways the bombs fell in 2077 not 1950. Nothing in the game is 2077 except for energy weapons and robots.

[Maddy21]

For me its all screwed up anyways the bombs fell in 2077 not 1950. Nothing in the game is 2077 except for energy weapons and robots.

 

A game is not always about realism but about the feel of the game. The classic 1950's style post apocalyptic wasteland gives a lot more feel and fun to the game . Mostly because we have read and seen about the cold war and seen the nuclear fallout shelters ,somewhere in our minds we would have expected or imagined an apocalyptic period which fallout 3 creates beautifully...

 

Its not always about realism its also about fun and continuing the same pace and feel of the previous games...

 

 

lets take an example of a different game GTA IV and Saints Row 2, GTA IV tried to be so realistic i thought it would be better that i would walk in my neighborhood than play that game.. But Saints Row 2 was so wacky and insane that you could replay it again and again...

[evilneko]

Well, if the nuking of the wasteland were played straight, there'd be very few buildings of any size at all, urban or otherwise (though Tenpenny, being in the middle of nowhere as it is, would probably stand a decent chance). There'd be no ghouls, no super mutants, and overall very few of the things that make Fallout what it is. That'd be pretty boring I think.

 

In truth I never really thought about the roads that much, or the distribution of the buildings. It's been two hundred years, and the urban areas are pretty much uninhabitable to humans due to the super mutie infestation. That means humans have been picking the suburban ruins clean for two centuries. This may not explain everything, but it's enough for me anyway. ;)

 

For me, there are more important things that add to the immersion. Things like the skeleton in a bathtub with a toaster in some house somewhere, a pair of skeletons cuddled up to each other on a bed in a house in Minefield, journal entries in a farm on the eastern side of the wasteland.. things that give the place a human quality. These things, for me, add to a sense of immersion that makes other things... unimportant (how DOES Little Lamplight get its kids? Where is this "mutfruit" grown?).

 

But Saints Row 2 was so wacky and insane that you could replay it again and again...

 

Damn straight. SR2 is what...well, ALL of the 3D GTA games should have been... in every way. If someone told me the devs who made the 2D GTA games all left and made Saints Row, I'd probably believe them.