smart move by bethesda

[Mansh00ter]

Actually I played both Fallout 1 and 2 about five times each when they were released and still consider them to be on my top five list, so I know what I'm talking about. Fallout 1 was very much a wasteland, a ravaged world where just getting water was difficult, nevermind fancy stuff like electricity!

 

Fallout 2 was, which was admitted by the developers themselves, partially a step in the wrong direction when it comes to depicting the whole setting. You had contemporary weapons, you had much less "unforgiving wasteland" and much more civilization to deal with, etc. But it was all small scale, like the Vault City or isolated pockets of civilization such as the New Reno or Shady Sands Mk II.

 

I mean when you get down to it, what's Fallout about - post nuclear apocalypse! Not cowboys, not Wild West, its nuclear devastation, postapocalyptic megalomania and how to survive it (and save the world in the process). The old-world references, any goofiness, including cowboys, mafia dons, farmers with sexy daughters, aliens etc. are for sideline purposes only, or should be. Because sorry to break this to you, as soon as postapocalyptic wasteland is not the pivotal theme of the whole game world, its stops being a true Fallout game.

 

P.S. Sure, it's been 200 years - but if you want to be a stickler for realism, 200 years of post nuclear apocalypse would just mean 200 years of global radiation, starvation and overall social decline. You could forget farming too since a nuclear winter combined with the subsequent climate change and radiological damage would pretty much wipe out any chance of having organized agriculture.

[mirja]

i think you guys forget that there are actually people that are new to the fallout series. (like me)

and the game is pretty damn cool for a new player, its different and it looks great.

 

all the small flaws and whatnot you "hardcore" FO guys are talking about doesent seem relevant to a new player.

im sure the game developers didnt make this game only for people that have played fo 1,2,3.

 

if the game was made for old school players i guess you would start as level 1000 with a nuclear machine gun that would be able to blow the planet out of orbit.

 

a new player like me have lot of fun and discovery to do. (just like a new game is supposed to be)

 

and as i understand it, its an standalone game that doesent require experiance from the other games in the series.

[cerebus23]

well the whole premise of fallout 1 2 etc is not a real depection of a post apocalypse world, yea you would have a long term nuclear winter that would last maybe a few decades of those 200 years but the resulting fallout spread around the world would probably irradiate a good chunk of the planet even in the places that were not directly hit.

 

these are games, if the game was about well noone can live outside and we live inside small bunkers and cannot go anywhere for 500 more years there would not be much game to be had in that. nm the logistics of living inside a bunker and having enough food, water and oxygen and power systems to live several hundred years isolated from the outside entirely, nm inbreeding with only a maybe 30-50 people per bunker/vault over several hundred years.

 

but if you take the game at face value for the aftereffects, then gangs roaming bands of thugs small isolated communities just trying to get by and living more or less as tribes, makes a ton of sense. clean resources would be incredibly rare and just by their rarity make any survivors very protective or aggressive of their territories. it would be a simple matter of survival we got x amt of food and water to handle xx amt out of people wo starving to death or running out of water so we have to protect our own or take others to save our tribe.

 

i got no problem with the dam the story explains that ncr engineers fixed up the dam and maintained it,admittedly that would be a huge job after 200 years of lack of service. my bigger problem is with that massive lake that is rad free, that seems more to stretch the bounds of suspension of belief wo a deus ex machina to explain how the lake avoided any and all radioactive fallout over the last 200 years. even with vegas being protected from the majority of nukes that were launched its way, simple weather patterns would spread radiation to that area via winds and the rains that the desert gets.

 

but meh its a game and i think fo2 had a good bit of cowboy to it. heck small towns, tribes, limited resources would make a surviving world more like max max or cowboy style just out of the logistics of resources.

[Dynastia]

my bigger problem is with that massive lake that is rad free, that seems more to stretch the bounds of suspension of belief wo a deus ex machina to explain how the lake avoided any and all radioactive fallout over the last 200 years.

 

Actually it's FO3 that's wrong there. Radioactive fallout can't pollute water for very long before it decays. The real long-term hazards would be anything made of metal (like that great big metal aircraft carrier that Project Purity "experts" decided would be a wicked-awesome place to start rebuilding society from)..

[WizardOfAtlantis]

Yeah, they did a good job to take some cues from the modding community. They could have taken more but I guess that's a bit difficult, what with the game having to appeal to console and pc markets. It's a strange new direction...hopefully smart companies will listen to what mods people like and continue their development that way, obviously at the same time adding their own ideas...they're supposed to be the professionals, after all, even if at times it might not seem so (such as FO3's plot). I love NV! :thumbsup:

[thirt33n]

i liked FO3 a lot and also dig FNV, but i can understand why fallout purists would not be so keen on the newer incarnations of the game. thats why i think FO:wanderers edition was so great, it let you kinda bypass a little of that and make it your own.

 

 

[secksegai]

I guess I'm a bit of a purists since I played FO1 and 2 at least once every few years since they were such great games and the experience was both enjoyable and memorable. FO3 was going to have a hard time feeling like "Fallout" in the sheer fact that you were now in a 3D Environment and effectively an FPS setup. If you were to take the original games and "upgrade" them in 3D that alone would make them feel like less than they were for most people.

 

Players with experience of the Fallout Universe prior to FO3 will see the world differently than someone who hasn't. We've got expectations and different interpretations of how things would change, even amongst ourselves. I myself felt FO3 wasn't as Fallout-like as it could have been, but in the end I still enjoyed playing it, bugs and all. New Vegas definitely feels more like the originals, but the setting alone could be a big factor. Considering the first two were a lot farther West than the Capitol Wasteland, they did have a bit more freedom with the Lore. I think the biggest frustration for me with FO3 was being restricted to Sewer Travel so often. It's one thing to spawn dangerous mobs topside to hinder travel, it's another to conveniently block pathways with indestructible objects and forcing sewer travel. Topside is where you can see the Aftermath of the Great War and how people have adjusted since then.

 

I think the biggest appeal for NV to me has been having so many more open areas. Since I've usually had builds that relied extensively on stealth and range, the open areas really feel like a wasteland. It feels a lot more like 1 and 2, where you'd traverse a lot of nothingness before coming upon something notable, and without a lot of inconvenient random encounters during fast travel along the way.

 

I'm pretty sure I've played FONV more times than FO3 at this point, and that's counting FO3 with all the DLCs.

[pjz]

I think both games have a very different feel to them, which is fine, considering their settings are 2100 miles apart and there is no more instant long-distances communication or unified culture. I loved Fallout 3 and also love Fallout NV, both are great games. I strongly dislike how the Brotherhood is depicted in NV but otherwise I really appreciate all the color and effort and detail that went into the setting and level design and backstory. The whole chunk of content involving the Boomers, including their home Vault, was some of the freshest stuff I've seen in a video game in quite a while, I laughed out loud a few times.

[WizardOfAtlantis]

If you were to take the original games and "upgrade" them in 3D that alone would make them feel like less than they were for most people.

That's a good point, and one I've thought about myself quite a bit. It's a very literal example of how you "envision" a game and its sequels.

[CarlCorey]

I bought copies of Fallout 1 and 2 so I could see what people are talking about but I just can't get into spending any time with them right now due to the old-school game mechanics. I suppose I could read the manuals ... ;)

 

One problem I have with NV is that it won't let me play evil as easily. My favorite FO3 character suffered a nervous break-down immediately after leaving the vault, suffered amnesia and turned feral, discovered vampirism and cannibalism from the Family and slowly became more and more murderous and evil while becoming less feral (even started wearing clothes on visits to Megaton around level 23). Never once even touched the main quest. I figured a bullet through the brain would be a good way to start an amnesiac character in NV but the story line forces me to have basic knowledge of the world. And, just because I attack back at Powder Gangers when they shoot at me, why does that make me good? In FO3, this character started out with bare hands, a knife and reasonable stealth only later on picking up a gun for those times a ranged attack was more prudent. In NV, you pretty much have to start shooting and level up a bit before you can hope to rely on unarmed and melee as a specialty.

 

None of this is a criticism of NV! Just an example of how I've had to adjust my expectations and approach to playing the game.

 

And, by the way secksegai, I thought the Metro tunnels and sewers were a great place to do combat with a combination of 100% sneak, no armor, a silenced pistol and a combat knife.