Making Fallout 3 as RL accurate as possible

[charwo]

I am wondering about if the setting of Fallout can be made into a truly speculative SF piece instead of a retro-future absurdity. I love Fallout for a lot of reason, but I regard the pulp Science! aspect of the series to be an act of failure, not epic failure, because epic failure is in it's own way entertaining. Science! is not even entertaining. It's pathetic. Oh it looks cool! Doing things because they look or sound cool is no reason to do anything! Have we learned nothing from Jackass?! All fiction must be rooted in the real, a standard the humans pass handily, but the world as depicted in vanilla does not.

 

Now, before people take what I say to stupid, let me draw the line of the possible and the impossible: it is perfectly possible for the pre-war to have gone about roughly as described, and that the pre-war world was ridiculously over engineered, jingoistic and paranoid. Also given the 65 year gap between now and 2077, all the technologies can be justified in terms of conventional science. Furthermore, the mutagens that were realized during the war, if engineered properly, could create every single one of the monsters depicted in the games.

 

But....from that premise all other things must follow. Nuclear weapons, even bio-weapons would not create the burnt earth world of Fallout. I'm not saying any of the Green worlds must be right, only that the Fallout 3 depiction is WRONG. And the energy weapons....well, a true laser wouldn't look like that, but it is possible to have an energy weapon is known colloquially as a laser gun and may even use lasers internally as part of the weapon system, but the red beam that comes out the barrel is not a laser. Can't be. Plasma weapons seem more plausible, but then again, kind of an X-factor.

 

So I ask you, what would need to be changed in vanilla Fallout 3 to return Fallout from impossible and ill conceived Science! back to the merely unlikely true SF? If you're a fan of TVtropes, I will now invoke this as to the ramifications hardening Fallout's Hardness scale, assuming that the two hour exchange on October 23, 2077 occurs as depicted?

Edited August 18, 2012 by charwo

[TheStrictNein]

You clearly don't understand Fallout. It's at it's very CORE a "Science!" game, so much so it's pretty much impossible to change that. If you want a hyper-realistic game that makes you cut of your own leg if it gets shot, go find another game, and leave me to my stimpacks.

[charwo]

And Stimpacks can, in theory be dealt with in terms of real, albeit speculative, science. And it is possible, as well as quite necessary for myself, to bring the realm of Fallout back into real science in order to enjoy it. I don't actually don't think it's that hard, other than a Green World mod. For me, no theme must never come in the way of plausibility. Science! is not science at all. The pulp science of the 50s was real, honest speculation based on bad understandings of real 50s science. To base a universe mechanic on Science! when we know for a fact that that mechanic doesn't work like that, is to create fantasy in the guise of science fiction and I will have none of it.

[TheStrictNein]

Science fiction is just that, fiction. It means you can have ****ing anything sciency.

 

Or is this just some more elitist "my sci-fi is purer than your sci-fi" bull****?

[charwo]

Nope: You see, there is a difference between science fiction, and no, Orson Scott card is dead wrong about fantasy being naturalistic in theme and sci fi being mechanical. It is thus:

 

Jules Verne and H.G. Wells are two of the earliest true modern science fiction writers. Both stretched the bounds of what was known at the time to posit things that did not exist. Unlike earlier, and even much of the other speculative fiction of the time, though, they based their plot devices on extrapolations from current science and technology. Previous visits to improbable lands, encounters with strange creatures, and even fictional travels through time were often the result of a dream or mystical insight. Both Wells and Verne presented their readers with fantastic machines, but these were based on scientifically explained principles. They included strange creatures, but they were natural rather than supernatural, with abilities explainable, at least in theory, solely in terms of biology and evolution.

 

The etirety of the article can be found here:

http://dlmorrese.wordpress.com/2012/04/21/the-difference-between-science-fiction-and-fantasy/

 

But it's a common enough definition. Now, I don't agree with the notion that sci fi must be entirely rational and secular. I don't believe the real world is secular. Things like the Dunwhich Building do not bother me in the slightest, because that sort of thing is clearly not a part of the natural order as we understand it. The notion of vampires and werewolves do not bother me as long as they are not justified in terms of natural science. Even the pulp science of real 1950s pop culture doesn't bother me because it was an honest take on concepts they were more ignorant about than they knew. The problem isn't the themes of Science!, the problem is trying to justify illogical bullcrap in scientific parlance. The Science! of Fallout is a lie, not because it is far fetched, but that it actually contradicts known principles of the real world. And considering the POD for Fallout is 1947, the world of Fallout operates on EXACTLY the same principles in physics, chemistry, biology, and historical development that our world does. And the kind of climatic and ecological damage the Capital Wasteland cannot be justified by the premise: Chinese chemical, biological and low yield nuclear weapons, no matter how many they used. You can justify the irradiated water table, you can justify the behavior of the so called Yao Gai, you can justify the sapient robots, and the behavior of the Enclave, you can even justify the entirety of Mothership Zeta and Old World Blues, but you cannot justify laser weaponry as true lasers, you cannot justify the ghouls on radiation alone, you cannot justify the Mr. Handy being built in 2020 without an electronics revolution at least as robust as our own, and you cannot justify the green tint of the sky nor can you justify the Potomac Watershed being barren, because Russian nuke tests and disasters (ie, not done in the desert) show a consistent finding: irradiated helholes are verdant. You can still have an irradiated wasteland where food is toxic and water kills, but it will be green and full of life, just like every inch of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. And when you focus on the impossible, rather than the improbable, you have entered the worst kind of fantasy.

 

And this is not a flavor issue. A good story is internally consistent, and to accept the notion of Science! in Fallout is an inconsistency in it's own story because essentially physics and biology operate in one way in the Fallout in 1946 and another in 1948. Taken at face value, that's simply sloppy writing. An author is bound by the premise, and once the premise has been set (a parallel world that was one with ours until a branch in 1947) it must be followed diligently. That is not a matter of taste: it is a matter of integrity and honesty with the audience. That makes it a moral issue. Fallout has absurdism, but it is not absurdist. Fallout has supernatural elements, but it grounded in reality. It has humor, but it is not a comedy, not even a black one. Fallout is a deadly serious satire of man's hubris, how his hubris is actually justified, his hypocrisies, and his struggle to understand good and evil and his desire to do good. Fallout, despite being a game series, is high art. No I will not take that back. It may be called the spiritual successor of Wasteland, but it is also the spiritual successor of Dr. Stangelove. Science! is beneath it and undercuts the veracity of the satire it's creators, even the people at Bethesda bring to bear with such devastating effect. In short, the more you separate a satire from reality, the less disturbing it becomes, and as a consequence, the less effective it becomes. Fallout becomes less disturbing with Science! and it needs to disturbing.

[Nintii]

The only way I reconcile the "absurdity" of Fallout is that it's taking place in a parallel universe ... here (in my thinking), various elements and ingredients from other parallel "earth's" have

formed in one melting pot on another "earth" to produce a funny yet serious skewed polyglot of social, scientific, political and the extra-terrestrial anomalies to form the sweet smelling

aroma of the weird child called The Capital Wasteland.

Dr Strangelove though has a more realistic or should I say believable and workable world than Fallout 3 ... what ruined everything was Fallout New Vegas ... that was when they tried to make

it real ... more believable ... and failed due to the injection of reality into the totally unrealistic nature of the world in which it was taking place.

It wasn't retro it was stupid.

Fallout 3 was unrealistic and proud.

I was going to say that It's like having sex in a tree, it's both dangerous yet pretty funny ... on the one hand you're trying to have fun and laughing real hard, yet on the other hand you're holding on

for dear life hoping and praying you don't "Fallout" and crack your skull 15 feet below you ... just saying.

[charwo]

The thing is VANILLA Fallout 3 is exactly as you described and frankly, your criticism of New Vegas is the best endorsement I have ever seen.

 

So, because the vanilla game is bulls***, what would be needed to mod to make it right? That is the essential question. For me, a green world, a sky mod, a clear water, reduced radiation mod and a mod that restores the yoa gui to black bears and fills the Wasteland with the fauna the Potomac Watershed should have (boars, deer, more birds, wolves, possibly some exotic animals that aren't native but could have escaped zoos and such and survived in the wild). Maybe more is needed. I don't know. But, three of those four mods I have, and have been having a ball. The animal mod nobody has even thought of, and those who have don't want to do the work. Can't blame them, but it's not a overly huge loss. The first three mods are essential, the animals are not so essential.

[Nintii]

Yes, I agree, an animal mod would make a huge difference ... here are some pics of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster site in the old Soviet Union and Pripyat a ghost town

next to where the disaster took place back on the 26th of April 1986.

Though there was no nuclear explosion as such this "green" world looks tremendously different from the "entire scorched earth" that we see in The Capital Wasteland ... a

blast to have created such devastation that we see in the game surely would have eliminated all life except that of the people living in the Vaults.

 

Here are a few pictures of modern day Chernobyl and Pripyat ... take note of the green trees and believe it or not, animals.

 

http://i1235.photobucket.com/albums/ff434/yuri-chick/060426_chernobyl_big.jpg

 

http://i1235.photobucket.com/albums/ff434/yuri-chick/chernobyl_24_years_03.jpg

 

http://i1235.photobucket.com/albums/ff434/yuri-chick/pripiat_18.jpg

 

One of the first things to make Fallout more real would have been ... Birds, a definite must, then comes the rodents, small animals and the larger predators.

In the game we limited to a minute fraction of animal life.

Also, the entire landscape would NOT be in such an awful state of devastation, there would then have to be grasses (yes plural), those of the countryside hills and that of the inner

cities and also shrubs and trees.

As a matter of fact, a forest type of environment would prevail which would quite obviously host a larger animal population including human settlements.

 

It's the cities that would be blackened and broken by the nuclear blasts but then again even here, life "would find a way".

The inner city where the radiation levels would have been higher would also have been host to the more mutated animals and peoples who managed to survive.

It's more than likely here that the super mutants and their mutated human pets would be found.

Also a forest would have sprung up in various parts of the city.

That would perhaps more accurately reflect the reality of such an environment after such an event.

 

So, it would take and comprehensive animal mod (birds, rodents, small animals through to large predators), a green world mod, a weather mod and a seasonal mod to automatically

change the environment.

Technologies are always born out of necessity and so it wouldn't be very surprising to see laser or plasma weapons next to a simple bow or shotgun.

Furthermore, a far greater amount of human settlements especially in the cities and much larger factions who control actual territories throughout the Wasteland would make it more

"genuine".

[charwo]

That's true.

 

I would say though that the lack of settlements seems to have do with the irradiated water table AND all of the raiders. People need to concentrate into small settlements because subsistence agriculture is chancy because of the drug addled psychos and deathclaws and bears that have lost their fear of humans. But, in truth, the Travelers mod and the town expansions do a great deal to augment that. It's Point Lookout that desperately needs a settlement along the Point Lookout pier. Having small wild animals is not hard, and you could take the bird models from Point Lookout and New Vegas and that wouldn't be too bad. No....the real issue is the Bethesda needs to take it's RL animals from Oblivion and Skyrim and then put them into Fallout 3 and New Vegas or allow us to do it. That's the simplest solution. And it would be stupidly easy to do on top of that.

[Nintii]

I do have the Travellers mod installed but no real town expansions ... also the BOS patrol mod which puts a number of patrols throughout the DC area ... this gives it the feel of a

"let's go and reclaim" our city.

Though a "Pitt" style of larger settlement would have been more preferrable.

 

But getting back to the topic at hand, it sure would be awesome if it were "permissable ?" to have the Skyrim animals in Fallout.

I started a new game a short while back and never really progressed beyond the Vault 101 surrounds ... I decided to go for the "winter" look.

 

Here's what it looks like, the weather mod I'm using blurrs the horizon a bit to give it that hazy feel, this also kind of justifies a more barren world seeing as it's winter.

 

http://i1235.photobucket.com/albums/ff434/yuri-chick/000011.jpg

Edited August 20, 2012 by Nintii