The Potomac River

[hurrdurrmurrgurr]

The RL Potomac River is way bigger than that little stream that's in the game.

 

Someone didn't do their homework.

 

Even if the river's size was reduced through erosion in 270 years, the channel would be a lot deeper.

 

So, in 270 years it never(?) rained nor snowed. Come on...bs.

 

The area of DC was once a swamp/wet lands. With no one caring for the land, it would revert to it's natural state.

 

I work for a place that has concrete side walks and an asphalt parking lot. The concrete has only been where it is for 12 years and already it is cracked and broken, same for the asphalt. In 270 years grass and weeds would reign supreme. You'd never know that there was ever any concrete nor asphalt.

 

What has stopped the inhabitants of the 'wasteland' from burning every scrap of wood in existence, every bit of paper, every tire?

Is there, really, that many weapons and ammo in DC that every body for 270 years can own/steal a gun, operate it w/o training, never cleaning it, and still have it operational?

If the fallout is still falling out, radio would not work, nor would robots(unless properly protected), nor computers.

Why are there gas stations? The FO3 cars ran on Nuclear power. ha...this then bugs me...I would NEVER have driven one of those cars. They were unsafe at any speed. Fire a pistol at a RL car will not make it explode, depending on where you hit it. No matter where you hit a FO3 car, it explodes just like a small tactical nuke.

 

Spoiler Alert! When the FEV runs out, and it will, no more super mutants. None of them are smart enough to make more of the FEV and in that vault there are no full containers. BTW if they are that stupid, how do they know how to do anything?

 

For being a scientist, your dad is a stupid man. Why aren't you allowed to tell your stupid dad that the vault people tried to kill you just because he left.

There aren't enough dialog choices.

 

Any way back to the original topic. Even with erosion, the topography of the DC area is all wrong. Only the basic shape of the river and it's length appear to be spot on.

 

Please don't attack me for 'voicing' my opinion.

In regards to the topography, it's a game not a simulator. As for the lack of swamp, when Beth was trying to restart the dead fallout franchise they knew that the current generation had no idea about the lore and only understood the post nuclear part. Beth gave the public what they wanted. Once the game was a success they added the swamp in as dlc. So yeah it's a game.

The fact that it's a game and not having any clutter at all would be boring stopped the dev team from burning everything.

If you haven't noticed first person shooters are kind of big right now so having guns everywhere for your lawless wasteland is good business sense. They were also trying to distance themselves from claims that it would be Oblivion 2.0 so having everything be melee orientated was out of the question. (No tribal warfare wouldn't sell either) As for the cleaning and all that, it's still not a sim.

Radios and robots work in Fallout because the setting says so, it was never based on fact it was based on 50's scifi tropes.

There's no real reason for the gas stations just as there was no real reason for the oil rig in Fallout 2, it's there because it's there. Also whether you would drive one or not they are fun to shoot so they explode.

When the FEV runs out too bad for them, it hasn't happened in the game yet so how is it an issue? Also dragging someone by the leg and chucking them in a big dunk tank doesn't take intelligence.

Because telling him is irrelevant, he isn't going back there and neither are you. Maybe a "they attacked me when you left" message would be something to throw in but how would it go anywhere or lead to anything?

Back onto the original topic it's just a game.

Please don't attack me for telling you to deal with it, because you should.

[Fatalmasterpiece]

@hurdur....

 

Simulators are games... ever played a flight sim? Quite fun games. Just FYI.

 

Chess is just a game. I want missile launchers in my Chess game, I mean, it's just a game after all, what does it matter?

 

 

 

I have to disagree with the people who say games shouldn't be realistic. Some don't of course, like Chess, but it's obvious with this kind of game they are trying to attain a level of realism to present a vision of a possible future.

 

There's this thing called Suspension of Disbelief. It is the "formula for justifying the use of fantastic or non-realistic elements" in this case, in a game. Without it you loose interest in something because it ceases to be believable and the gamer feels not like he is really there but instead that he is playing a game like Chess and just moving fake little wooden men around a board.

 

Unfortunately many elements of Fallout 3 and New Vegas break the veil of SoD and leave the gamer saying "Cmon...". :thumbsup:

[7thsealord]

Unfortunately many elements of Fallout 3 and New Vegas break the veil of SoD and leave the gamer saying "Cmon...". :thumbsup:

 

FO3 is hardly unique in that respect.

[evilneko]

Unfortunately many elements of Fallout 3 and New Vegas break the veil of SoD and leave the gamer saying "Cmon...".

 

*YMMV tag required.

[Keanumoreira]

There are a great many things unrealistic in Fallout 3 and in all the fallout games. How come Popculture basically stopped after the fifties?

 

 

 

That actually isn't considered unrealistic. According to the fundemental law of history, you need change in order for the subject to exist since that's what the whole things about. Who's to say that it couldn't stop at the 50's? Look at our society today. It wasn't much different 3 years prior other than technological advances, so why hasn't that changed alltogether? Simply put, it doesn't matter whether or not the trend didn't continue, maybe they were so advanced that they saw our modern society as an advancal flaw when they considered statistics and other possibilities. Maybe they were so advanced that they could afford to, and actually wanted to, stay where they were. Keep in mind that this is an alternate universe, completly seperate from ours with two timelines with events that led to the development of both realitites. Perhaps they went down a slightly different path than what we did regarding the 50's, and maybe that's why they stayed there.

 

 

The White house must have been hit by something with so little yield that i doubt it was a nuke. If you barely reach critical mass, the crater would be much larger.

 

 

They never said a nuke was dropped on the White House. All it said was that on October 23'rd, 2077, "the bombs fell". It didn't say what bombs in particular, and all countries after WWII still had some when the world came to peace. Seeing as these weapons of mass destruction are very powerful, they needed to lock them away, and some of them where atomic bombs. Atomic bombs still lay in storage today, as they did in the Fallout universe as it only splits from ours after WWII, therefore, for all we know, perhaps when all the bombs were released, one of them included an atom bomb that fell on the White House, which yes, can make a crater that big. Or, quite simply, maybe it was a combination of smaller bombs that made that crater.

Edited February 18, 2011 by Keanumoreira

[7thsealord]

Well, hey, there are Mininukes. To say nothing of exotic stuff like Nuka Grenades. Not every nuclear weapon is a city-buster. after all.

[evilneko]

"Dirty" bombs (which the nuka 'nade essentially is) could potentially produce much the same effect of having (relatively) small craters filled with radioactivity.

[ThomasCovenant]

"Dirty" bombs (which the nuka 'nade essentially is) could potentially produce much the same effect of having (relatively) small craters filled with radioactivity.

Thanks to all for weighing in. It was just my opinion.

To the shill that felt like attacking me, when I specifically asked you not to: wtf is wrong with you?

I've gotten this on every one of the forums for the 3 Bethesda games that I have.

I ask a question, seeking answers. Not everyone knows the lore of the games.

And people like you have a F-ing cow, and start acting like you're a frigging employee of Bethesda who'll lose his f-ing job if he doesn't put me in my place.

I asked questions expecting well thought out answers and you felt the unending need to blast me.

I really shouldn't have to "deal with it" at all.

If you can't say something constructive, just shut the F up.

Btw this is not the "free" country that you've been taught that it is.

[Moderator: if this post is "too much", I suppose that you can just delete it.]

[Fatalmasterpiece]

Depending on the type of detonation a full fledged nuke may not leave a very large crater at all.

 

You could have a surface burst which would create a massive crater, exploding just at ground level. A subsurface burst however is most likely considering the likely subterranean complex existing below the White House. Such an explosion would leave little crater since much of the mass collapses it's self back into the explosion.

 

Or it could be an air burst which leaves very little crater at all but makes the well known huge mushroom cloud, and a fire ball which clears all surface material away.

[hurrdurrmurrgurr]

"Dirty" bombs (which the nuka 'nade essentially is) could potentially produce much the same effect of having (relatively) small craters filled with radioactivity.

Thanks to all for weighing in. It was just my opinion.

To the shill that felt like attacking me, when I specifically asked you not to: wtf is wrong with you?

I've gotten this on every one of the forums for the 3 Bethesda games that I have.

I ask a question, seeking answers. Not everyone knows the lore of the games.

And people like you have a F-ing cow, and start acting like you're a frigging employee of Bethesda who'll lose his f-ing job if he doesn't put me in my place.

I asked questions expecting well thought out answers and you felt the unending need to blast me.

I really shouldn't have to "deal with it" at all.

If you can't say something constructive, just shut the F up.

Btw this is not the "free" country that you've been taught that it is.

[Moderator: if this post is "too much", I suppose that you can just delete it.]

There are two ways to explain any inconsistencies in a video game, the first is to ramble about possibilities and hypothetical situations such as saying that grass didn't regrow because all the seeds were fried and the top soil destroyed. The second is to say that the grass didn't grow because the devs intended it, customers identify post apoc landscapes with mad max so that's what Beth intended Fallout 3 to be. Now you can respond to the first point of reasoning by mentioning how unlikely it is for all the seeds to be killed off in the entire country when 200 years have passed for germination to take hold. Then I can respond by bringing up desertification and suggesting that that's what happened to the entire DC area, after all 200 years is a long time for any number of possibilities to carry out.

 

However by following with the second point that DC is a desert because it would sell more copies you have to respond with an answer which refutes my assertion, perhaps by mentioning the success of a game like Stalker which did feature a forested landscape. Regardless by debating the real world reason why the bethesda devs made their choice rather than the lore reason we are left with much less room for wild speculation and can go off sales figures and marketing data, which is what devs use, to decide the probable reason.

 

If you read several posts down from mine you will notice Fatalmasterpiece debating with me on the second route to which I can now respond by saying that in order to revive the franchise Bethesda needed to reach out to the largest market, the CoD crowd. This group of gamers as a whole has not been known to appreciate the level of difficulty and punishment for failure which flight sims employ. Taking the flight Sim route and providing harder penalties and a realistic experience would drive away much of the more casual market and that is the last thing Beth needed to revive Fallout.

 

To respond to your last reply I didn't blast you or put you in your place, I pointed out that gun maintenance wouldn't sell as many copies and neither would most of your other suggestions for a more realistic experience. There are plenty of mods to change the game to what you want it to be but otherwise Beth did what they felt would get the game sold and that's pretty much the end of the story. You are still welcome to reply to the other posts in the thread which did debate with you the lore reasons for the landscape rather than picking out and screaming injustice at mine.