Zion Tribal Language Help

[dookie32]

We can just take that as translation convention. The characters are really speaking 22nd-23rd century American English and it's translated into OT's modern American English for the players' benefit.

 

And nitpicking? We could nitpick the Deathclaws and how they defy taxonomic classification, but that's a different thread.

 

 

Haha, that's a creative way to explain it, although it's never actually mentioned. Yes, such conventions exist for fiction where characters are ostensibly speaking another language, but the reader/audience/player gets the dialogue in their own contemporary vernacular, whatever that may be, but I think you're giving the writers too much credit--it's much more likely just an oversight. Like I said, the language in Fallout, especially in New Vegas, is more like 20th century English with regional dialects and colloquialisms which obviously were the original text rather than an interpretation of the subtext. Having worked in international business before, I understand it's not ideal to have interpreters translate information too literally, but it's even more silly to shift the output to approximate what a regional dialect would sound like in the listener's language, lol. Whenever people try to do this, it always seems insane to me.

 

As for deathclaws and whatnot, you're right. And also, it's not like we don't have an idea of what radiation does to organisms in our world. For example, there's the wildlife around Chernobyl, albeit it's a much lower dose over a shorter time frame, etc. What I'm saying is that it's not just scientific conjecture as to what actually happens. Moreover, given the history established in FO 1 and 2, it seems like society rebuilds itself somewhat, only to devolve back into chaotic tribalism to artificially lock the setting into place, without explanation of the time gaps between the games to describe why things are this way. It's especially noticeable by the time FO4 rolls around, and you're planting crops in settlements, but the whole place is overrun with raiders and dead trees. Trees that died 200 years ago? My bad, I'm getting too off-topic here.

Edited July 26, 2018 by dookie32

[madmongo]

You shouldn't try to take Fallout too seriously. It's not intended to be a realistic depiction of a dystopian future. The setting for Fallout is what people back in the 50s and 60s thought the future would be, not what the future actually will be. Computers are huge. Robots look like Robby the Robot. Clothing styles are from the 50s. The entire game has that campy 50s/60s sci-fi vibe. You could almost picture pre-war teenagers driving their parent's nuclear powered cars down to the local sock-hop.

 

Sure, in reality things like language would change and evolve. We can expect future language to have changed just as much as our language has changed between Ben Franklin and George Washington's time and ours. And yeah, 200 year old dead trees aren't realistic. Abandoned homes and buildings would be in a lot worse shape than they are in the game too. In reality, radiation doesn't cause giant bugs and super-mutants, but in 1950s sci-fi it does.

 

Even though it is campy 1950s style sci-fi, FNV is still pretty well thought out. They went through the effort to go into great details, like having tourists in Zion whose languages all mix together. The Fallout lore is very detailed, even if it's not all that realistic in some parts.

 

My take on it is that you just have to have fun with it and not take it too seriously. You can immerse yourself in the setting and have some really great role-play, because it is that detailed, but you have to always have it in the back of your mind that you are immersing yourself in a 1950s style sci-fi "what if" scenario.

[WeissYohji]

If you were to read a book from 200 years ago, you'd have little difficulty understanding it. Go back to the 14th century and the Canterbury Tales; you'll have a harder time reading it. Beowulf in the original Old English? It might as well be a dialect of German, since English is a Germanic language. It didn't stop being one post-1066.

 

Role-play: No matter what build I use, I only role-play as far as armor and weapon types go. I could play as some tribal clad in gecko skins running around throwing spears (and I have my last few playthroughs, but with more emphasis on unarmed and energy weapons), and I'd still start with max Intelligence and Luck. I just cannot bring myself to play a low-intelligence character no matter my build. I'll dump skill points into Science, Speech, Medicine, and Repair up through level 8-10, then start Dead Money and take advantage of the skill checks with Christine and Dean. I've done some gun-based builds (usually shotguns and rifles), and now I lean more toward energy weapons because of how easy it is to stay topped off on ammo with a workbench/ED-E/Veronica nearby. I've leaned heavily toward the Holorifle, Compliance Regulator, Fist of Rawr/She's Embrace, and throwing spears BECAUSE of how broken they are. Not so much the spears as the other weapons. I'll often have at least 80 Speech in order to save Dog/God from burning himself to death. I'll always take Educated early on for the extra skill points and the sexuality perks for the damage bonuses and dialogue options. Ditto Jury Rigging, which breaks the in-game economy as much as the gold bars and Pre-War money. Just like Oblivion before, it always comes back to finding every exploit possible.