The Narrative flaws of New Vegas

[Ethreon]

Did any of you play Wasteland 2?

[JoKelly]

Personally I find the main story a bit shallow and rushed at the same time I tend to fill in the story as my character navigates the wasteland. One of the things I found, for me personally, that made a huge difference was the comments from the NPC's in someguys mods. Random NPC's and story line Characters made comments about some of the couriers actions and that seemed, in my mind, to make the PC and his/her actions a real part of the wasteland. Much like Three dogs on air comments in FO3.

 

being idolized or vilified by whole communities or important people would spread across the area carried by wanderers and Merchants. Stories would grow into legends and legends into Myths. just think about the old west outlaw myths, most outlaws and their gangs were only around for a year no more than two before disappearing or being hunted down. But their stories spread and became larger than their lives. Its in this regard I think that FNV missed the boat.

 

I would have loved wandering into town head into a bar and hear how I, with only a switchblade killed a dozen deathclaws, saved the Mayors wife and rescued a puppy from a tree, then be given the option to lie about who I am only to be recognized by a merchant I bought from at the outpost and end up being challenged by the local tough or have some other effect.

what good would it do to tell them I got up high enough the Death claws couldn't reach me and that I used a Anti material rifle with explosive rounds and that the Mayors wife was somewhere else and that there was no puppy in a tree.

 

In many ways its like the PC exists outside the Mojave, his actions rarely affect the things around him. Followers rarely have a comment about quest actions, The PC never has the option to mention Elijah and Christine to Veronica. The DLC's were a perfect chance to increase some of the Follower dialogues and actions.

 

despite the flaws, I love the game. I tend to fill in the gaps with my own story but it would have been better to see it unfold in the "real" Gameworld. Which is where Modding comes in LOL.

[Ethreon]

I think in the previous first two games you have that, at l;east in 2 NPCs would comment on stuff you did even if they didn't know it was you, on the stuff you wore etc. IT was more lively :)

[JimboUK]

I think in the previous first two games you have that, at l;east in 2 NPCs would comment on stuff you did even if they didn't know it was you, on the stuff you wore etc. IT was more lively :smile:

 

It would have been nice to have a little more of that but I think we have to accept the constraints they working under, not only the time but the fact that Bethesda actively hindered development by insisting on OK'ing everything and taking an age to do so. That said they could have saved time by not redesigning the audio system and breaking it, I still can't figure out what they did that for, Oblivions/FO3s audio worked just fine.

[Spideyisamoron]

 

It’s become something of a truism amongst Fallout fans that New Vegas represents a shining pinnacle of narrative brilliance that transcends the works of George Orwell, Margret Attwood, William Shakespeare, Terry Pratchett and JRR Tolkien while Fallout 3’s writing is a load of arse.

No, the majority is content to simply use the word "better".

 

That said the hook of finding a missing parent is more universal and relatable than trying to give the bloke who shot you and left you for dead a second chance to finish the job.

Finding a missing family member is such a tired trope. It's serviceable, albeit unimaginative, for narratives in the fantasy genre which tend to be personal tales of heroes that go on a journey of self-discovery. Science fiction is not about the individual, though, it's about the human condition as a whole. Fallout, in my opinion, works best as a science fiction franchise. Bethesda made a fantasy game, complete with orcs (super-mutants), a evil antagonist with no redeeming qualities (Enclave, despite them being wiped out in a previous game), heroes in shining armor (BoS, for some reason) and someone to step up and save the world (the player character).

 

However, New Vegas’s greatest misstep in terms of structure is the lack of a darkest hour. It’s a near universal rule of storytelling that to create tension you need to put your protagonist in an increasingly helpless, precarious position as the story progresses, to emphasise the consequence should they fail.

The "darkest hour" trope, is quite positively my least favorite part of any story that has one. Every time I sit down and watch a Hollywood movie, I dread the inevitable moment where everything is made to crumble for no apparent reason and, instead of simply moving on, the story has to spend the next 15 minutes picking the broken pieces up off the floor and putting them back together.

 

And it's not because I want everything to be flowers and sunshine. I'm the kind of sadist who enjoys the utter despair of things like Breaking Bad, The Walking Dead and watching favorite characters getting killed off in Game of Thrones, but in those shows the suffering is more constant and doesn't have a separate act of the story devoted to it. It's just that writers often cram this stuff in unnecessarily because they feel like they have to, are ordered to, or because they genuinely don't have any better ideas.

 

Stories that deviate from traditional methods of storytelling are the ones I find the most interesting. I like stories where the protagonist is really just a normal person, where there are no clearly defined villain, and where my expectations are subverted by not having things play out according to some archaic standard of how to tell a story.

 

Fallout: New Vegas doesn't have a "darkest hour" or many moments of tension. It's not a bad thing, just different, and the narrative being so grounded is a big reason for why I like it.

 

 

A lack of tension becomes problematic as it means there’s little reason to be invested in the story. In New Vegas I could never shake the feeling that I could just saunter off and let House and the NCR take care of things, which meant there was little investment in completing in quests. While some darkest ours can certainly be contrived a better solution would be to find a way to work them into the story more naturally rather than do away with them altogether. I have nothing against more unusual narratives, but even they depend on having something genuinely at stake. 12 Angry Men is essentially one long protracted scene with no clear villain, but it’s still held together by a genuine sense of risk that the characters may wend up either sending an innocent man to his death or letting a murderer out onto the streets.

 

Fallout 3’s handling of morality isn’t really that different from the earlier games. It was impossible to join the Enclave in 2 and all siding with the Master got you was a glorified game over screen. If anything Fallout 3 follows a consistent pattern in the series where the player is free to be the biggest dick in the world in the sidequests but has to fight a greater evil in the main story. If anything Fallout 3 nudged the series in a less linear direction by allowing the player to help Eden (granted they dropped the ball on that in Broken Steel, and it's a little odd that the player can support Eden Who's a genocidal maniac but not Autumn who's really not much worse than the Brotherhood). In some areas it even exceeds the early games. For instance, in Fallout 2 and 3 we see similar quests where a pack of underdog Ghouls is pitted against a band of prejudiced humans.

 

In Gecko the moral dilemma is clear cut as on the one hand you have the Ghouls, who are all friendly, decent hard working folks lead by Harold who we know is a stand-up guy thanks to the first game, and on the other you have Lynette, a paranoid racist elitist from a society dependant on slavery who wants to solve the problem by blowing up the power plant, further irradiating an already derelict Wasteland. Then you have Tenpenny Tower, where the moral dilemma initially seems black and white with the Ghouls as underdogs against the wealthy bigots. However, on closer inspection it turns out many of the Tower’s residents are actually pretty decent, if ignorant people who can be made to see the error of their ways. In contrast we see Philips is an unrepentant monster who’s allowed himself to become the very thing he hated, with his cohorts varying from Michael Masters who somewhat acknowledges the barbarity of what he’s doing but still allows himself to be sucked in by Roy’s charisma to Bessie Linn who tries to filter out and deny the magnitude of Philips’s crimes. The questline’s unavoidable downbeat ending may have been controversial, but it makes a clear statement that some problems can’t be magically fixed by one random bum wandering in from the Wasteland.

 

As for the Brotherhood, their implementation was highly flawed but I think there was more thought put into it than is often acknowledged, though it was hamstrung by Bethesda’s unwillingness to take certain threads to their logical conclusion. They shoot Ghouls on sight (And judging by Winthrop’s aside that they miss most of the time have presumably killed a few), Dr Li warns you not to trust them and the Scourge of the Pitt repeatedly warn the player that they’re not quite the spotless paladins they set themselves up to be, and considering how Maxson turned into Baby’s First Stalin in Fallout 4 I strongly suspect that this was very deliberate.

 

The problem is the game suggests these darker undercurrents but never follows up on them. The player is never allowed to call Lyons or his daughter out on their mistreatment of Ghouls, nor does it allow you to consider the inherent dangers of the Brotherhood having complete control over the Region’s only source of fresh water, something that gives them an unhealthy degree of leverage over the Wasteland’s communities. I suspect Bethesda was going to place more emphasis on the Brotherhood’s shady side but wimped out, fearing that it might put players off.

Edited December 27, 2016 by Spideyisamoron

[Ladez]

A lack of tension becomes problematic as it means there’s little reason to be invested in the story. In New Vegas I could never shake the feeling that I could just saunter off and let House and the NCR take care of things,

Fun fact: the developers joked about putting in an alternate ending where you simply left the Mojave to its fate.

 

Anyways, I don't need tension to be invested in the story. The character and the sociopolitical themes are enough.

 

Besides, it's not like playing a part in how life is going to turn out for the people of New Vegas for decades to come doesn't spell tension for me.

 

I'm not responding to the rest because it's late, it's Christmas tomorrow and I have a pounding headache. May take a look some other time.

[Spideyisamoron]

Character is of course vital, but we still need to care about whether or not they achieve their goals. Ned Stark, Winston Smith, Walter White, Arthur Dent, Sam Gamgee and Atticus Finch are all great characters but if the story was just about them sitting around their apartment all day watching the sports channel and filing their taxes with no stakes then it would be pretty damn boring. We care about Arthur because he’s an utterly bog standard, unremarkable everyman who’s thrown into a vast, bizarre barely comprehendible galaxy with no way of going back home. Both the tension and the humour of the story emerge from the fact that he’s the least prepared person on Earth to handle to concepts and challenges he encounters on his journey.

 

Walter White fascinates us because we’re always on edge, on the one hand kind of sympathising with him while fearing he’ll be consumed by his inner demons. The sense of jeopardy, either from physical danger or emotional strife is what allows us to connect with them. On a more personal level, in the Shawshank Redemption we care about Red because we don’t want him to give into the sense of despair and defeat that have consume so many of his fellow prisoners.