A Shaggy Dad Story
June 28, 2015 10:15 AM Subscribe
As Bethesda is gearing up for the release of a new game in the Fallout franchise, Shamus Young of Twenty Sided considers the writing in Fallout 3. In a five part series, Shamus details the "blistering stupidity" of the concept, the world, the protagonists, the antagonists, and the conclusion. Young has been featured previously on the blue talking about both Skyrim and Star Trek.
At any point in this does he explain why after a week I am still playing Fallout Shelter on my iPhone even though there's no more challenge to it, and there doesn't seem to be anything else interesting to build / find / buy?
BECAUSE I WOULD REALLY LIKE TO STOP PLAYING BUT I CAN'T PLEASE HELP
posted by SmileyChewtrain at 10:23 AM on June 28, 2015 [13 favorites]
BECAUSE I WOULD REALLY LIKE TO STOP PLAYING BUT I CAN'T PLEASE HELP
posted by SmileyChewtrain at 10:23 AM on June 28, 2015 [13 favorites]
*SIPS NUKA-COLA*
*looks at calendar*
"Is it November yet?"
posted by Fizz at 10:34 AM on June 28, 2015 [1 favorite]
*looks at calendar*
"Is it November yet?"
posted by Fizz at 10:34 AM on June 28, 2015 [1 favorite]
Also at this point I am completely willing to consider the entire point of Fallout Shelter is to foster a convincing sense of Bunker Ennui.
posted by SmileyChewtrain at 10:41 AM on June 28, 2015 [3 favorites]
posted by SmileyChewtrain at 10:41 AM on June 28, 2015 [3 favorites]
Shamus' write-up is exactly why my excitement for Fallout 4 is laced with concern. Bethesda cannot write a story to save their lives.
posted by Sternmeyer at 10:55 AM on June 28, 2015 [3 favorites]
posted by Sternmeyer at 10:55 AM on June 28, 2015 [3 favorites]
He makes some very good points. Bethesda's writing has always been a little weak in places (the Elder Scrolls has never really stood that well on characterisation either). That being said, F3 is a great game. F:NV is just better, and I wish they'd just farm out F4 to Obsidian (maybe with a slightly better deal for Obsidian, though).
Fallout Shelter is very absorbing, but it doesn't seem to have much depth. I'm guessing, from its great success, that they might put some more work into it - add a few features. Maybe add flooding to the fire and raider emergencies. I think it was an amuse-bouche that actually turned out to be a money-maker, and it's caught them flat-footed.
posted by YAMWAK at 10:57 AM on June 28, 2015 [4 favorites]
Fallout Shelter is very absorbing, but it doesn't seem to have much depth. I'm guessing, from its great success, that they might put some more work into it - add a few features. Maybe add flooding to the fire and raider emergencies. I think it was an amuse-bouche that actually turned out to be a money-maker, and it's caught them flat-footed.
posted by YAMWAK at 10:57 AM on June 28, 2015 [4 favorites]
Fallout Shelter is very absorbing, but it doesn't seem to have much depth. I'm guessing, from its great success, that they might put some more work into it - add a few features. Maybe add flooding to the fire and raider emergencies. I think it was an amuse-bouche that actually turned out to be a money-maker, and it's caught them flat-footed.
It's also kind of a crazy resource hog. My iPhone 6 gets super hot while playing it and it's the only game I've had in all my years of mobile gaming that actively drains the phones battery while plugged in to a power source.
BUT I HAVE TO GET ALL MY DWELLERS TO 100% HAPPINESS DON'T YOU SEE THESE PEOPLE ARE DEPENDING ON ME?
posted by SmileyChewtrain at 11:02 AM on June 28, 2015 [6 favorites]
It's also kind of a crazy resource hog. My iPhone 6 gets super hot while playing it and it's the only game I've had in all my years of mobile gaming that actively drains the phones battery while plugged in to a power source.
BUT I HAVE TO GET ALL MY DWELLERS TO 100% HAPPINESS DON'T YOU SEE THESE PEOPLE ARE DEPENDING ON ME?
posted by SmileyChewtrain at 11:02 AM on June 28, 2015 [6 favorites]
I came here ready to have a fistflight over his "blistering stupidity of the concept," bit until I realized he was talking about the concept of Fallout 3 specifically.
Fallout Three!
You know ... the blisteringly stupid one.
[Emily Litella voice]
Nevermind.
[/Emily Litella voice]
posted by Myca at 11:12 AM on June 28, 2015 [3 favorites]
Fallout Three!
You know ... the blisteringly stupid one.
[Emily Litella voice]
Nevermind.
[/Emily Litella voice]
posted by Myca at 11:12 AM on June 28, 2015 [3 favorites]
I fired up New Vegas last week to get a nostalgia fix, and my response to it was completely different than what I remember. It took me a while to figure it out, but my interest in Fallout 4 plummeted once I did.
Let me explain. Chances are that if you played Fallout you also jumped into Borderlands. They both scratch the same itch, but Borderlands just scratches it better. I fiddled with VAT and couldn't believe I ever wasted my time with it. It's too slow and tedious. Countless hours of Borderlands had honed my middle aged reflexes. The reaction time in Fallout New Vegas seems non responsive after killing thousands of bandits and scags in Borderlands.
If you have played the Borderlands' series (and all the DLC, especially Dragonkeep), the dialogue, the characters, and stories in Fallout are a snooze fest in comparison. The humor, the pop culture references, the style, all of it is vastly superior in Borderlands. It's not even close! The Drama? Not giving away the story in BL2 (or how the 4th DLC addresses that story), but nothing - nothing - in the Fallout series can touch it.
I could go on, but I suspect a lot of Borderlands' fans are going to be disappointed with Fallout 4 unless it is vastly superior to Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas.
posted by Beholder at 11:21 AM on June 28, 2015 [3 favorites]
Let me explain. Chances are that if you played Fallout you also jumped into Borderlands. They both scratch the same itch, but Borderlands just scratches it better. I fiddled with VAT and couldn't believe I ever wasted my time with it. It's too slow and tedious. Countless hours of Borderlands had honed my middle aged reflexes. The reaction time in Fallout New Vegas seems non responsive after killing thousands of bandits and scags in Borderlands.
If you have played the Borderlands' series (and all the DLC, especially Dragonkeep), the dialogue, the characters, and stories in Fallout are a snooze fest in comparison. The humor, the pop culture references, the style, all of it is vastly superior in Borderlands. It's not even close! The Drama? Not giving away the story in BL2 (or how the 4th DLC addresses that story), but nothing - nothing - in the Fallout series can touch it.
I could go on, but I suspect a lot of Borderlands' fans are going to be disappointed with Fallout 4 unless it is vastly superior to Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas.
posted by Beholder at 11:21 AM on June 28, 2015 [3 favorites]
They both scratch the same itch, but Borderlands just scratches it better.
They... no. No. No.
I mean, different strokes for different folks, but... no.
posted by kbanas at 11:34 AM on June 28, 2015 [36 favorites]
They... no. No. No.
I mean, different strokes for different folks, but... no.
posted by kbanas at 11:34 AM on June 28, 2015 [36 favorites]
It's kind of sad when you can get a job as a gaming journalist and totally fail to grasp that science fiction is often commentary on the present rather than extrapolation of the the future. (Though it's apparently great resume fodder for a 70's era Soviet bureaucrat, so he has that going for him.)
posted by Kid Charlemagne at 11:37 AM on June 28, 2015 [4 favorites]
posted by Kid Charlemagne at 11:37 AM on June 28, 2015 [4 favorites]
Borderlands is very different from Fallout 3 in many regards, for me the most significant being that Fallout 3 is an open world, and Borderlands is extremely linear. They also have a very different world-feel. Plus you don't really grind in Fallout as the world grinds you: in Fallout you keep going, knowing that some resources you're using are finite (sort of - alien energy cells were a good example until the stupid(est) DLC). In Borderlands, the only way to go is up. If you grind, you get stronger. That scag you're killing could drop that perfectly tuned legendary that you need.
That being said, Borderlands 2 writing does blow anything Bethesda's ever done out of the water. And yes, Dragon Keep is exceptional.
posted by YAMWAK at 11:54 AM on June 28, 2015 [3 favorites]
That being said, Borderlands 2 writing does blow anything Bethesda's ever done out of the water. And yes, Dragon Keep is exceptional.
posted by YAMWAK at 11:54 AM on June 28, 2015 [3 favorites]
Does anybody (other than this author) really care about logic and plot holes in the story line for a video game? The story is just something to hang the gameplay on and give you some motivation to keep going, I don't really expect it to make much logical sense.
posted by octothorpe at 12:04 PM on June 28, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by octothorpe at 12:04 PM on June 28, 2015 [2 favorites]
Does anybody (other than this author) really care about logic and plot holes in the story line for a movie? The story is just something to hang the sex and violence on and give you some motivation to keep going, I don't really expect it to make much logical sense.
posted by xthlc at 12:08 PM on June 28, 2015 [14 favorites]
posted by xthlc at 12:08 PM on June 28, 2015 [14 favorites]
Why? Because it's a video game?
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 12:08 PM on June 28, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 12:08 PM on June 28, 2015 [1 favorite]
Hell yes people care: The Shandification of Fallout
posted by Apocryphon at 12:09 PM on June 28, 2015 [8 favorites]
posted by Apocryphon at 12:09 PM on June 28, 2015 [8 favorites]
Bethesda isn't in the story-telling business. They're in the place-making business.
posted by BitterOldPunk at 12:12 PM on June 28, 2015 [10 favorites]
posted by BitterOldPunk at 12:12 PM on June 28, 2015 [10 favorites]
I guess that I'm in the minority here. I loved Fallout 3 but didn't even remember the whole water purification plot line until reading this. I'm happy to run around and shoot supermutants without worrying too much about the story.
posted by octothorpe at 12:13 PM on June 28, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by octothorpe at 12:13 PM on June 28, 2015 [1 favorite]
Fallout 3 was a collection of vignettes. It was a big open map sprinkled liberally with little stories. I'm not saying this to dismiss criticism, but just to say that it was enjoyable in the same way an assortment of chocolates or pastries are. Lots of lovely little things even if it fails totally as a meal. I really enjoyed it; though I did enjoy New Vegas more. Speaking of: It's also interesting that he didn't really New Vegas until the end; because as far as I could see, every one of his criticisms is about something Fallout 3 didn't do that New Vegas did.
posted by Grimgrin at 12:17 PM on June 28, 2015 [8 favorites]
posted by Grimgrin at 12:17 PM on June 28, 2015 [8 favorites]
I'm happy to run around and shoot supermutants without worrying too much about the story.
You're likely in the majority. Fallout 3's insanely positive reviews are largely made possible by the gee whiz appearance of Bethesda's world, which distracted people from the shoddy underlying structure of the world and story. But we should aspire for better storytelling and stories from video games, especially one that ostensibly claims to be an RPG.
posted by Apocryphon at 12:17 PM on June 28, 2015
You're likely in the majority. Fallout 3's insanely positive reviews are largely made possible by the gee whiz appearance of Bethesda's world, which distracted people from the shoddy underlying structure of the world and story. But we should aspire for better storytelling and stories from video games, especially one that ostensibly claims to be an RPG.
posted by Apocryphon at 12:17 PM on June 28, 2015
I'd also like if they fixed it so that lategame fallout wasn't just "we made the enemies have 9x hp and do 9x damage because they don't have any combat AI except strafe and shoot or run at you"
posted by Ferreous at 12:18 PM on June 28, 2015 [4 favorites]
posted by Ferreous at 12:18 PM on June 28, 2015 [4 favorites]
Also please use some fucking colors, we've established mutant plants exist, lets have some mutant foliage to spruce the joint up a little.
posted by Ferreous at 12:19 PM on June 28, 2015 [4 favorites]
posted by Ferreous at 12:19 PM on June 28, 2015 [4 favorites]
BitterOldPunk: "Bethesda isn't in the story-telling business. They're in the place-making business."
Well, that's what I like. I loved running around such a detailed ruined Washington DC. The main reason that I didn't like New Vegas nearly as much was that I didn't really like the desert setting.
posted by octothorpe at 12:22 PM on June 28, 2015 [6 favorites]
Well, that's what I like. I loved running around such a detailed ruined Washington DC. The main reason that I didn't like New Vegas nearly as much was that I didn't really like the desert setting.
posted by octothorpe at 12:22 PM on June 28, 2015 [6 favorites]
Yeah -- I went in to this article expecting to hate it, but he's basically right.
And he _does_ mention in the wrapup that, obviously, none of what he says means you can't have fun playing it (I certainly did).
But if you think about all this, they could have improved the story without sacrificing the fun of playing it, and then it would simply be a better game. It was Good Enough to get plenty of enjoyment out of, but it could have been better.
(F:NV was definitely superior in the story-and-lore department)
posted by thefoxgod at 12:23 PM on June 28, 2015 [4 favorites]
And he _does_ mention in the wrapup that, obviously, none of what he says means you can't have fun playing it (I certainly did).
But if you think about all this, they could have improved the story without sacrificing the fun of playing it, and then it would simply be a better game. It was Good Enough to get plenty of enjoyment out of, but it could have been better.
(F:NV was definitely superior in the story-and-lore department)
posted by thefoxgod at 12:23 PM on June 28, 2015 [4 favorites]
I mean, different strokes for different folks, but... no.
Oh come on. They are both level based, gear based, post apocalyptic rpgs. Yes, one is a sandbox and one is linear. Yes, one offers one path, killing, while the other offers three paths, killing, sneaking, and talking, but both franchises are more similar to each other than they are to other hit franchises.
It should also be noted that sneak and speech options aren't that well executed in either Fallout 3 or Fallout New Vegas. The sneak and snipe strategy in either game is far less satisfying that pure sniping in the Borderlands series. Yes, you can talk your way through the new Fallout games, but the dialogue is so bad, why bother? I will give the Fallout series this much, though. As clunky as their inventory system is, it's still a million times better than Borderlands' inventory system, which is pure torture.
posted by Beholder at 12:26 PM on June 28, 2015
Oh come on. They are both level based, gear based, post apocalyptic rpgs. Yes, one is a sandbox and one is linear. Yes, one offers one path, killing, while the other offers three paths, killing, sneaking, and talking, but both franchises are more similar to each other than they are to other hit franchises.
It should also be noted that sneak and speech options aren't that well executed in either Fallout 3 or Fallout New Vegas. The sneak and snipe strategy in either game is far less satisfying that pure sniping in the Borderlands series. Yes, you can talk your way through the new Fallout games, but the dialogue is so bad, why bother? I will give the Fallout series this much, though. As clunky as their inventory system is, it's still a million times better than Borderlands' inventory system, which is pure torture.
posted by Beholder at 12:26 PM on June 28, 2015
Fallout isnt really like borderlands except in that they're first person rpgs. And praising the inventory system of fallout? What is wrong with you!? That is by far one of it's worst features, a giant list with no reasonable interface and an annoying encumbrance system.
Hell, encumbrance systems are by far one of the worst things in any game where you need to pick up random stuff. No one likes inventory management that doesn't have any real effect on gameplay . Something like borderlands at least makes it clear what you have and gives you limited slots that were only taken by equipable items. Fallout is a huge jumbled mess where your decisions on what to carry barely matter and storing stuff is a huge hassle.
posted by Ferreous at 12:30 PM on June 28, 2015 [5 favorites]
Hell, encumbrance systems are by far one of the worst things in any game where you need to pick up random stuff. No one likes inventory management that doesn't have any real effect on gameplay . Something like borderlands at least makes it clear what you have and gives you limited slots that were only taken by equipable items. Fallout is a huge jumbled mess where your decisions on what to carry barely matter and storing stuff is a huge hassle.
posted by Ferreous at 12:30 PM on June 28, 2015 [5 favorites]
Fallout 3 was a collection of vignettes. It was a big open map sprinkled liberally with little stories.
I felt the same way. One of the things I think video games and video game criticism would benefit from would be less insistence on taking everything so literally. The author of this series puts in a little dig at Little Lamplight, for example. Granted, Little Lamplight isn't a thing that could work or exist in the real world, but as a surreal story about the abandonment of children, Little Lamplight does work. Or could, at least, if rules of realism or consistency could be broken as in any other art form.
posted by ddbeck at 12:30 PM on June 28, 2015 [6 favorites]
I felt the same way. One of the things I think video games and video game criticism would benefit from would be less insistence on taking everything so literally. The author of this series puts in a little dig at Little Lamplight, for example. Granted, Little Lamplight isn't a thing that could work or exist in the real world, but as a surreal story about the abandonment of children, Little Lamplight does work. Or could, at least, if rules of realism or consistency could be broken as in any other art form.
posted by ddbeck at 12:30 PM on June 28, 2015 [6 favorites]
Bethesda would be better served by hiring Mrs. Langstrom's 8th Grade Honors English Class as their writing department than whoever they have paid for the "service" of writing their other games.
posted by OnTheLastCastle at 12:32 PM on June 28, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by OnTheLastCastle at 12:32 PM on June 28, 2015 [1 favorite]
Sniping? In Borderlands? Are you serious? It takes fifteen head shots with a legendary rocket launcher to kill anything worth killing at a distance. I mean, in normal mode, maybe, but even then there just aren't that many satisfying sniper points.
Plus Borderlands isn't post-apocalyptic, from what I recall. There was no apocalypse worth speaking of. The money just left, leaving the slave labour to turn savage.
posted by YAMWAK at 12:37 PM on June 28, 2015 [3 favorites]
Plus Borderlands isn't post-apocalyptic, from what I recall. There was no apocalypse worth speaking of. The money just left, leaving the slave labour to turn savage.
posted by YAMWAK at 12:37 PM on June 28, 2015 [3 favorites]
And praising the inventory system of fallout?
I called it clunky!
: )
posted by Beholder at 12:51 PM on June 28, 2015
I called it clunky!
: )
posted by Beholder at 12:51 PM on June 28, 2015
Fallout 3 was okay, but admittedly my biggest complaint with the franchise is that I have to suffer through so much wholesome '50s kitsch. Even when it's done ironically, it still grates on me.
New Vegas, however, is still one of my favorite games. Cass remains my favorite video game companion of all time.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 12:54 PM on June 28, 2015
New Vegas, however, is still one of my favorite games. Cass remains my favorite video game companion of all time.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 12:54 PM on June 28, 2015
I'll have to check these links out. It is broadly the received opinion, though. The second-worst thing that could happen during your extended Fallout 3 wanderings (after game crashes) was idly checking out some mole rats in a garage or something and suddenly plot started happening at you. No, ugh, get it off!
posted by comealongpole at 12:56 PM on June 28, 2015 [6 favorites]
posted by comealongpole at 12:56 PM on June 28, 2015 [6 favorites]
For those of you who haven't played Borderlands, the humble bundle is currently offering loads of the franchise for silly money.
posted by fullerine at 1:00 PM on June 28, 2015 [3 favorites]
posted by fullerine at 1:00 PM on June 28, 2015 [3 favorites]
Fallout 3, where NO ONE has done ANY cleaning at all for 200 years.
posted by jeff-o-matic at 1:06 PM on June 28, 2015 [9 favorites]
posted by jeff-o-matic at 1:06 PM on June 28, 2015 [9 favorites]
Excusing a shitty game story with "meh, it's just video games" means we keep getting shitty video game stories. Demand better.
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 1:09 PM on June 28, 2015 [12 favorites]
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 1:09 PM on June 28, 2015 [12 favorites]
Bethesda isn't in the story-telling business. They're in the place-making business.
Those are the same business. The thing that makes a place work and feel real is story. Sometimes that story is implied rather than explicit, such as when the story is told by the shape of the buildings and the looks on people's faces, but it's still all story. Bethesda is terrible at that business.
Oh come on. [Fallout and Borderlands] are both level based, gear based, post apocalyptic rpgs.
No, they aren't. The games share no mechanical similarities except for being first-person, and being first-person is not at all important to the Fallout experience (see the first two games in the series). Fallout is a game about character and exploration (or at least, it's supposed to be; Fallout 3 doesn't really do a very good job at these things) and Borderlands is FPS gun Diablo. Borderlands is certainly not an RPG.
Granted, Little Lamplight isn't a thing that could work or exist in the real world, but as a surreal story about the abandonment of children, Little Lamplight does work. Or could, at least, if rules of realism or consistency could be broken as in any other art form.
The argument that people don't think the rules of consistency and realism can be broken in video games falls apart terribly if you just look at basically any video game. It's nonsense. The problem with Little Lamplight isn't that an allegorical thing can't exist in a video game. Some highly acclaimed video game series are basically nothing but allegory (off the top of my head, Silent Hill and Metal Gear Solid). The problem with Little Lamplight is that the story, writing, and voice acting are godawful.
posted by IAmUnaware at 1:11 PM on June 28, 2015 [7 favorites]
Those are the same business. The thing that makes a place work and feel real is story. Sometimes that story is implied rather than explicit, such as when the story is told by the shape of the buildings and the looks on people's faces, but it's still all story. Bethesda is terrible at that business.
Oh come on. [Fallout and Borderlands] are both level based, gear based, post apocalyptic rpgs.
No, they aren't. The games share no mechanical similarities except for being first-person, and being first-person is not at all important to the Fallout experience (see the first two games in the series). Fallout is a game about character and exploration (or at least, it's supposed to be; Fallout 3 doesn't really do a very good job at these things) and Borderlands is FPS gun Diablo. Borderlands is certainly not an RPG.
Granted, Little Lamplight isn't a thing that could work or exist in the real world, but as a surreal story about the abandonment of children, Little Lamplight does work. Or could, at least, if rules of realism or consistency could be broken as in any other art form.
The argument that people don't think the rules of consistency and realism can be broken in video games falls apart terribly if you just look at basically any video game. It's nonsense. The problem with Little Lamplight isn't that an allegorical thing can't exist in a video game. Some highly acclaimed video game series are basically nothing but allegory (off the top of my head, Silent Hill and Metal Gear Solid). The problem with Little Lamplight is that the story, writing, and voice acting are godawful.
posted by IAmUnaware at 1:11 PM on June 28, 2015 [7 favorites]
This is why I prefer fantasy to sci-fi. As soon as someone is taking ten bullets from a machine gun to the face without dying I'm beyond my believability zone.
posted by jeff-o-matic at 1:18 PM on June 28, 2015
posted by jeff-o-matic at 1:18 PM on June 28, 2015
Bethesda isn't in the story-telling business. They're in the place-making business.
Those are the same thing. Shadow Of The Colossus was just about all place, possibly less than 20 lines of dialog altogether, but still had a vastly better story than Fallout 3.
posted by mhoye at 1:20 PM on June 28, 2015 [1 favorite]
Those are the same thing. Shadow Of The Colossus was just about all place, possibly less than 20 lines of dialog altogether, but still had a vastly better story than Fallout 3.
posted by mhoye at 1:20 PM on June 28, 2015 [1 favorite]
What I found completely bewildering about Fallout 3 was the stealth system. I pumped my stealth attribute because I like being sneaky, and about midway through or so it completely broke the game. I could stealth up and go into a room and hack away at one mutant's ankles while he ran around in circles complaining about being attacked but never doing anything else in response, while his allies in the room remained completely oblivious that anything was going on at all. I was flabbergasted as to why you would design the stealth system so that high values functioned in that way. The only way to continue with any modicum of challenge intact would have been to stop using stealth - you know, the ability I had sunk most of my resources into. I quit playing.
posted by neuromodulator at 1:24 PM on June 28, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by neuromodulator at 1:24 PM on June 28, 2015 [2 favorites]
both franchises are more similar to each other than they are to other hit franchises
I've put an embarrassing number of hours into both serieses and nope. Even if they're both first person shooters with leveling systems, Fallout is sooooooooo much more of an RPG than Borderlands that it's just different, especially in a world where everyone and their brother has picked up on leveling systems. I mean, just consider the Cannibal Casino questline in NV -- there are multiple ways to "solve" it depending on who you are and what you've decided your PC cares about. In Borderlands, the most choice you ever get is to give the macguffin to Character A or Character B for different rewards, neither of whom will remember your decision.
Sniping? In Borderlands? Are you serious? It takes fifteen head shots with a legendary rocket launcher to kill anything worth killing at a distance.
In Borderlands 2, yeah. In Borderlands 1, a Bessie will instakill most anything up to badass lance. If you get the headshot.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 1:29 PM on June 28, 2015 [4 favorites]
I've put an embarrassing number of hours into both serieses and nope. Even if they're both first person shooters with leveling systems, Fallout is sooooooooo much more of an RPG than Borderlands that it's just different, especially in a world where everyone and their brother has picked up on leveling systems. I mean, just consider the Cannibal Casino questline in NV -- there are multiple ways to "solve" it depending on who you are and what you've decided your PC cares about. In Borderlands, the most choice you ever get is to give the macguffin to Character A or Character B for different rewards, neither of whom will remember your decision.
Sniping? In Borderlands? Are you serious? It takes fifteen head shots with a legendary rocket launcher to kill anything worth killing at a distance.
In Borderlands 2, yeah. In Borderlands 1, a Bessie will instakill most anything up to badass lance. If you get the headshot.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 1:29 PM on June 28, 2015 [4 favorites]
BitterOldPunk: "Bethesda isn't in the story-telling business. They're in the place-making business."
I wish game makers would have the courage to not slather on a, really at best, middlin' story on top of their games.
There's a neat video review of Invisible Inc. at rockpapershotgun where the fellow talks about story emerging from gameplay. He's talking about the game's exit elevator mechanic:
posted by Trochanter at 1:32 PM on June 28, 2015 [8 favorites]
I wish game makers would have the courage to not slather on a, really at best, middlin' story on top of their games.
There's a neat video review of Invisible Inc. at rockpapershotgun where the fellow talks about story emerging from gameplay. He's talking about the game's exit elevator mechanic:
"When you can't find it, and robots are waking up all over the level, that's a story. When you sprint into it with a teargas canister exploding next to you, that's a story. And when one of your agents is waiting, and their partner gets caught by a guard, and with a heart as cold as ice, your agent presses the exit button, that's a hell of a story."I hope as games mature, they'll learn that the game itself can tell its story.
posted by Trochanter at 1:32 PM on June 28, 2015 [8 favorites]
Cass remains my favorite video game companion of all time.
Taking Boone with you to the Fort to kill every last motherfucker in the room. Good times.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 1:33 PM on June 28, 2015 [6 favorites]
Taking Boone with you to the Fort to kill every last motherfucker in the room. Good times.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 1:33 PM on June 28, 2015 [6 favorites]
At any point in this does he explain why after a week I am still playing Fallout Shelter on my iPhone even though there's no more challenge to it, and there doesn't seem to be anything else interesting to build / find / buy?
I keep playing it on my Android, and it doens't even exist yet!
That E3 presentation was pretty perfect. FO4 isn't even the only franchise they are doing good work on, and they were already presenting well before the "final announcement." Then they blew the doors off with FO4, how good it looks, new and amazing features, and then how soon it was going to be released (this November).The whole thing just felt good from front to end. And FO shelter was just a little bit of icing on the cake that was designed to tide people over until a release date that was already announced as being right around the corner; a new game that filled a gap between a great showing and the final product with nostalgia and fun. It's no wonder it did gangbusters. So, the only disappointing thing is that they announced that it would be available that same day, which was also supposed to sound awesome, but they did not qualify at all that it would just be for iOS. So there was a bit of a letdown checking the Play Store, not seeing it, getting the follow-up qualification... but Bethesda keeps doing it right these days. The also regularly improve their products based on consumer feedback, so I think minimally we'll be seeing a more fleshed out story-line for FO4, and by default they will likely let you keep playing once the main story line is completed.
posted by SpacemanStix at 1:38 PM on June 28, 2015
I keep playing it on my Android, and it doens't even exist yet!
That E3 presentation was pretty perfect. FO4 isn't even the only franchise they are doing good work on, and they were already presenting well before the "final announcement." Then they blew the doors off with FO4, how good it looks, new and amazing features, and then how soon it was going to be released (this November).The whole thing just felt good from front to end. And FO shelter was just a little bit of icing on the cake that was designed to tide people over until a release date that was already announced as being right around the corner; a new game that filled a gap between a great showing and the final product with nostalgia and fun. It's no wonder it did gangbusters. So, the only disappointing thing is that they announced that it would be available that same day, which was also supposed to sound awesome, but they did not qualify at all that it would just be for iOS. So there was a bit of a letdown checking the Play Store, not seeing it, getting the follow-up qualification... but Bethesda keeps doing it right these days. The also regularly improve their products based on consumer feedback, so I think minimally we'll be seeing a more fleshed out story-line for FO4, and by default they will likely let you keep playing once the main story line is completed.
posted by SpacemanStix at 1:38 PM on June 28, 2015
I wish game makers would have the courage to not slather on a, really at best, middlin' story on top of their games.
Destiny had so much potential, squandered by terrible choices and completely inept story-telling and world-building. It was so close.
posted by neuromodulator at 1:41 PM on June 28, 2015 [3 favorites]
Destiny had so much potential, squandered by terrible choices and completely inept story-telling and world-building. It was so close.
posted by neuromodulator at 1:41 PM on June 28, 2015 [3 favorites]
I wish Fallout 3 had stuck with the isometric view. I hate first person, ultra-realistic looking games. Stresses me out.
The Shadowrun game mechanics and graphics are a bit better as spiritual successor, in terms of what I liked in the first two.
posted by Matt Oneiros at 1:48 PM on June 28, 2015 [2 favorites]
The Shadowrun game mechanics and graphics are a bit better as spiritual successor, in terms of what I liked in the first two.
posted by Matt Oneiros at 1:48 PM on June 28, 2015 [2 favorites]
Also, the Civilization series and the Starcraft series are basically the same thing - both are strategy games where you build buildings and armies and stuff.
posted by Pyrogenesis at 1:48 PM on June 28, 2015 [5 favorites]
posted by Pyrogenesis at 1:48 PM on June 28, 2015 [5 favorites]
I hope you're right, SpacemanStix.
Bethesda have responded to customer opinion before. Their games used to be much, much (, much, much) buggier, but they're better now. Of course, they're still really buggy, but they really did improve. It just took a long time for the message to sink in.
Thing is, this time do they have any real reason to change? We can complain all we like, but there's no denying that their Elder Scrolls and Fallout brands are exceptionally valuable. Maybe they'll take the 'if it ain't broke...' perspective.
posted by YAMWAK at 1:57 PM on June 28, 2015
Bethesda have responded to customer opinion before. Their games used to be much, much (, much, much) buggier, but they're better now. Of course, they're still really buggy, but they really did improve. It just took a long time for the message to sink in.
Thing is, this time do they have any real reason to change? We can complain all we like, but there's no denying that their Elder Scrolls and Fallout brands are exceptionally valuable. Maybe they'll take the 'if it ain't broke...' perspective.
posted by YAMWAK at 1:57 PM on June 28, 2015
At any point in this does he explain why after a week I am still playing Fallout Shelter on my iPhone even though there's no more challenge to it
I've decided that the trick to Fallout Shelter is to figure out the mechanics, figure out how shallow they are, decide there's not really a reason to keep playing, and then search desperately for meaning beneath the surface since you're apparently still playing anyway and by god it's got to mean something.
So I'm taking Vault 118 into a post-growth direction; now that we're almost at max population capacity, I've ceased the aggressive breeding program and am building out The Guantlet, a 7-level stack of skill-training 3-by rooms through which rotating sextets of dwellers will move one level at a time in order to develop well-rounded-to-the-point-of-superhuman SPECIAL charts, at which point I will begin unleashing them daily into the Wasteland to kill, trade, and scavenge everything that's still left. We're not going to just be survivors. We're going to be an army. We're going to be the army.
I might also give another vault a go and meticulously track the bloodlines of the breeding dwellers to try and nail down just where the game draws the line. You can't have a parent and a child breed, that much is clear; whether anything further than that is prohibited by the game's unstated sexual mores is unclear, though anecdotal observation suggests Not Much.
I've also considered doing an All-Mother run, where a single Vault Mother takes total breeding control of the vault, acting as the uncontested monarch over, and gestator of, life in the vault. Males are used for their necessary contribution but otherwise discarded to the wastes. The time of man is over. Etc.
Really, it's a shame there isn't more depth (and better UI and performance, especially in a larger vault) to it because as an engine for Sketchy Government Vault Experiments it could really be something.
posted by cortex at 1:57 PM on June 28, 2015 [23 favorites]
I've decided that the trick to Fallout Shelter is to figure out the mechanics, figure out how shallow they are, decide there's not really a reason to keep playing, and then search desperately for meaning beneath the surface since you're apparently still playing anyway and by god it's got to mean something.
So I'm taking Vault 118 into a post-growth direction; now that we're almost at max population capacity, I've ceased the aggressive breeding program and am building out The Guantlet, a 7-level stack of skill-training 3-by rooms through which rotating sextets of dwellers will move one level at a time in order to develop well-rounded-to-the-point-of-superhuman SPECIAL charts, at which point I will begin unleashing them daily into the Wasteland to kill, trade, and scavenge everything that's still left. We're not going to just be survivors. We're going to be an army. We're going to be the army.
I might also give another vault a go and meticulously track the bloodlines of the breeding dwellers to try and nail down just where the game draws the line. You can't have a parent and a child breed, that much is clear; whether anything further than that is prohibited by the game's unstated sexual mores is unclear, though anecdotal observation suggests Not Much.
I've also considered doing an All-Mother run, where a single Vault Mother takes total breeding control of the vault, acting as the uncontested monarch over, and gestator of, life in the vault. Males are used for their necessary contribution but otherwise discarded to the wastes. The time of man is over. Etc.
Really, it's a shame there isn't more depth (and better UI and performance, especially in a larger vault) to it because as an engine for Sketchy Government Vault Experiments it could really be something.
posted by cortex at 1:57 PM on June 28, 2015 [23 favorites]
is his critique that a science fiction game made for a mass audience doesn't have the realistic machievellian depths of say Deadwood? that, if you take a systems level analysis of the different factions and groups, that their motivations are piecemeal, that they exist more to satisfy tropes and story continuity than any kind of Fallout World logic?
then yeah, that's accurate. it's a pretty shallow game. New Vegas was a lot better about adding depth but, even then, it was sort of hamfistedly about establishment liberals and big govt (NCR), rigid super-conservatives (Caesar), libertarian states-righteousness (Yes Man), and anarchy (chaos endings) rather than any kind of real systems level, ethnographic analysis of a post-apocalyptic society
I mean, all of these games, Skyrim, Fallout, etc, they're all derivative. they're recycled 90s post-apocalyptic tropes just like how Skyrim is recycled fantasy tropes and how Mass Effect is recycled SF tropes. I mean, if you want to see innovative video games telling new stories and new ways probably blockbuster, multi-million $$$ productions are not gonna be your speed much like how Transformers or Jurassic World are not your speed
posted by runt at 2:09 PM on June 28, 2015 [1 favorite]
then yeah, that's accurate. it's a pretty shallow game. New Vegas was a lot better about adding depth but, even then, it was sort of hamfistedly about establishment liberals and big govt (NCR), rigid super-conservatives (Caesar), libertarian states-righteousness (Yes Man), and anarchy (chaos endings) rather than any kind of real systems level, ethnographic analysis of a post-apocalyptic society
I mean, all of these games, Skyrim, Fallout, etc, they're all derivative. they're recycled 90s post-apocalyptic tropes just like how Skyrim is recycled fantasy tropes and how Mass Effect is recycled SF tropes. I mean, if you want to see innovative video games telling new stories and new ways probably blockbuster, multi-million $$$ productions are not gonna be your speed much like how Transformers or Jurassic World are not your speed
posted by runt at 2:09 PM on June 28, 2015 [1 favorite]
Water purifier plotline what what? Oh, right... plot... I was too busy collecting every possible garden gnome to add to the pile in my little apartment.
posted by Capybara at 2:18 PM on June 28, 2015 [8 favorites]
posted by Capybara at 2:18 PM on June 28, 2015 [8 favorites]
He's right, and yet so wrong.
Shamus is a DM at heart— he obviously loves stories and lore. But he's written some hilarious and perceptive comics and side-notes about how D&D players ignore and/or distort the DM's carefully written plot. (Exercise: listen to one of your players attempt to explain the overall story to another player. Cringe.)
I think you can write a shooter with an overall good story— Borderlands 2 does it. But you can also do a compelling game with a completely stupid, cliché story— Left 4 Dead does that.
I don't really know why FNV gets so much love from story geeks. The Legion is mega-stupid, with sub-Lucas levels of coherence. It's absurd that a tiny population of Brahmin farmers can support a huge neon city. It's absurd that no one has done anything more useful with Hoover Dam in 200 years. It's absurd that Mr House can build an army of robots and can't pacify Freeside, literally next door.
(To say nothing of why nobody can solve a single problem without calling in the wandering walking arsenal. Of course this is how almost every video game works, but it's as big a story problem as anything Shamus points out: if nothing else, it makes all those people stupid or lazy. Stalker and Borderlands 1 get points for making you feel like just one more treasure hunter.)
The Whelk has convinced me that FNV tried to tackle the interesting question of "what do you do after the apocalypse?" But consider the candidates: 1) Pretty much the exact same nation as before; 2) Hitler Satan; 3) a bunch of casinos. (Admittedly the DLC is better, adding the much more interesting 4) Mad Science.)
Bethesda excels at creating beautiful explorable, moddable worlds. I've created some FNV mods myself, so I can see that creating a single quest is a lot of work (and that's using existing art assets). So the variable quality of quests is probably due to a lot of different people working on them. Their main quests tend to be meh, but generally they've been able to have some really fun side quests. Shivering Isles and the Dark Brotherhood in Oblivion, for instance. I liked the quirkier stuff in F3: Tranquility Lane, the Republic of Dave, the Lovecraft building, Three Dog. My favorite playthrough, I concentrated on getting every bobblehead.
In short: RPG plots are kinda dumb, but improving them affects the game surprisingly little.
posted by zompist at 2:25 PM on June 28, 2015 [7 favorites]
Shamus is a DM at heart— he obviously loves stories and lore. But he's written some hilarious and perceptive comics and side-notes about how D&D players ignore and/or distort the DM's carefully written plot. (Exercise: listen to one of your players attempt to explain the overall story to another player. Cringe.)
I think you can write a shooter with an overall good story— Borderlands 2 does it. But you can also do a compelling game with a completely stupid, cliché story— Left 4 Dead does that.
I don't really know why FNV gets so much love from story geeks. The Legion is mega-stupid, with sub-Lucas levels of coherence. It's absurd that a tiny population of Brahmin farmers can support a huge neon city. It's absurd that no one has done anything more useful with Hoover Dam in 200 years. It's absurd that Mr House can build an army of robots and can't pacify Freeside, literally next door.
(To say nothing of why nobody can solve a single problem without calling in the wandering walking arsenal. Of course this is how almost every video game works, but it's as big a story problem as anything Shamus points out: if nothing else, it makes all those people stupid or lazy. Stalker and Borderlands 1 get points for making you feel like just one more treasure hunter.)
The Whelk has convinced me that FNV tried to tackle the interesting question of "what do you do after the apocalypse?" But consider the candidates: 1) Pretty much the exact same nation as before; 2) Hitler Satan; 3) a bunch of casinos. (Admittedly the DLC is better, adding the much more interesting 4) Mad Science.)
Bethesda excels at creating beautiful explorable, moddable worlds. I've created some FNV mods myself, so I can see that creating a single quest is a lot of work (and that's using existing art assets). So the variable quality of quests is probably due to a lot of different people working on them. Their main quests tend to be meh, but generally they've been able to have some really fun side quests. Shivering Isles and the Dark Brotherhood in Oblivion, for instance. I liked the quirkier stuff in F3: Tranquility Lane, the Republic of Dave, the Lovecraft building, Three Dog. My favorite playthrough, I concentrated on getting every bobblehead.
In short: RPG plots are kinda dumb, but improving them affects the game surprisingly little.
posted by zompist at 2:25 PM on June 28, 2015 [7 favorites]
I think that games wrestle with a fundamental tension between the demands of satisfying gameplay, and the demands of satisfying narrative.
The elements of narrative weren't introduced to video games because developers were trying to tell a story; it happened because those elements also happen to be useful for explicating gameplay. Early arcade games were really just games about moving rectangles—but by labeling those rectangles with icons, and assigning roles to them such as "protagonist" or "enemy", developers helped players understand the mechanics and goals of the game.
Anyone can see Pac-Man for the first time, and intuitively understand that the rectangles which look like creatures are going to move and interact with each other, and the things that look like walls probably aren't. They know immediately that the rectangles decorated with monsters should be avoided, and the rectangles decorated with food should be collected. That's one of the reasons that early games had such a cartoonish aesthetic: cartoons were a readymade visual language full of instantly recognizable icons. (Bulging sacks labeled "$$$", robbers in domino masks and striped shirts, treasure chests full of gold, spherical bombs with sizzling fuses, roasted turkey legs, monstrous critters, damsels in distress, big old-timey keys. Those all say something pretty clear about how an object is likely to interact with other objects in the game world.)
If explicit narratives were offered at all, they tended to be flimsy excuse plots ("a gorilla kidnapped your girlfriend; rescue her!"). Again, the developers weren't trying to tell a compelling story—they were just helping the player to build a sensible mental model of the game, to understand how the various rectangles interact. It's a way to motivate the player to manipulate the game world toward particular goals: to help them understand what "plays" they can choose from at any given moment, and what the consequences of each choice might be.
But at that point, you have something that looks—at least superficially—very much like a story. There's a setting, there are characters, they have motivations, there's conflict.
So as hardware improved, it was natural for developers to try to flesh out these little proto-narratives into the same kinds of stories we encounter in books and film and theater. And that hasn't been a complete failure. But we continue to see articles like these, which (quite accurately, I think) bemoan the fact that the narratives we find in games are usually just kinda shitty compared to the narratives we find in books. So it's clear that the melding of "use of character/motivation/setting to represent the game mechanics to the player", and "use of character/motivation/setting to tell a story", hasn't been entirely successful.
And you can say that game narratives are bad because developers don't care about narrative, or are incompetent, or because players don't demand anything better. And there's probably some truth to each of those; the author of these posts certainly points out cases where Bethesda could have told a more coherent story without negatively impacting gameplay.
But when he says stuff like this:
"If we throw up our hands and say they’re still somehow living off of boxes of prepackaged cereal 200 years after the bombs fell, then we at LEAST have to concede that those sorts of things are getting hard to find these days, yes?"
Well, no—we don't. Because strict realism isn't the only valid approach for a game to take, or even the only valid kind of narrative. No, scavenging TV dinners 200 years after the apocalypse doesn't make a bit of sense if you think about it logically—so don't think about it that way. That's not why it's there.
It also doesn't make sense that teenagers would still be forming greaser gangs, or that pipes would still be venting steam centuries after they broke, or that the pre-war world would have had such an improbable mix of 50s-era and super-advanced technology. None of that is supposed to make strictly logical sense. They're impressionistic brush strokes that paint an aesthetic—bits of evocative imagery that add up to a distinctive (and partly satirical and darkly humorous) mood and sensibility.
Don't get me wrong; I agree with much of what the author says, and I think there's plenty of room for improvement in game narratives. But there's a certain kind of gamer who plays games for the story, and expects it to meet the same standards as story-first mediums such as books and film—and I just don't get that. As a medium, games just aren't very well suited to telling stories. If I want a good story, I'll read a book or watch a movie. If I want gameplay, I'll play a game.
If game developers do find ways to tell an actually-engaging story alongside the gameplay, more power to 'em. In many cases, though, I think games are better of de-emphasizing the narrative—rendering an overall aesthetic via the kind of impressionistic approach I described above, but leaving the particulars up to the player's imagination.
Obviously this favors a somewhat more simulationist / sandbox style of game—but in my mind those are the games that most succeed as games. When a game tries to be both at the same time—a fully realized story and a fully realized gameplay experience—I think that each one often ends up hamstrung by the other. When that happens, developers usually choose to sacrifice the narrative to preserve the gameplay, and I think that's usually the right choice to make.
I might argue differently at a different moment; like anything worth talking about, it's complicated. But I do think it's a mistake to approach narrative in games in the same way that we approach non-interactive narratives such as literature and cinema. Game narratives serve different functions and are subject to very different constraints.
posted by escape from the potato planet at 2:26 PM on June 28, 2015 [21 favorites]
The elements of narrative weren't introduced to video games because developers were trying to tell a story; it happened because those elements also happen to be useful for explicating gameplay. Early arcade games were really just games about moving rectangles—but by labeling those rectangles with icons, and assigning roles to them such as "protagonist" or "enemy", developers helped players understand the mechanics and goals of the game.
Anyone can see Pac-Man for the first time, and intuitively understand that the rectangles which look like creatures are going to move and interact with each other, and the things that look like walls probably aren't. They know immediately that the rectangles decorated with monsters should be avoided, and the rectangles decorated with food should be collected. That's one of the reasons that early games had such a cartoonish aesthetic: cartoons were a readymade visual language full of instantly recognizable icons. (Bulging sacks labeled "$$$", robbers in domino masks and striped shirts, treasure chests full of gold, spherical bombs with sizzling fuses, roasted turkey legs, monstrous critters, damsels in distress, big old-timey keys. Those all say something pretty clear about how an object is likely to interact with other objects in the game world.)
If explicit narratives were offered at all, they tended to be flimsy excuse plots ("a gorilla kidnapped your girlfriend; rescue her!"). Again, the developers weren't trying to tell a compelling story—they were just helping the player to build a sensible mental model of the game, to understand how the various rectangles interact. It's a way to motivate the player to manipulate the game world toward particular goals: to help them understand what "plays" they can choose from at any given moment, and what the consequences of each choice might be.
But at that point, you have something that looks—at least superficially—very much like a story. There's a setting, there are characters, they have motivations, there's conflict.
So as hardware improved, it was natural for developers to try to flesh out these little proto-narratives into the same kinds of stories we encounter in books and film and theater. And that hasn't been a complete failure. But we continue to see articles like these, which (quite accurately, I think) bemoan the fact that the narratives we find in games are usually just kinda shitty compared to the narratives we find in books. So it's clear that the melding of "use of character/motivation/setting to represent the game mechanics to the player", and "use of character/motivation/setting to tell a story", hasn't been entirely successful.
And you can say that game narratives are bad because developers don't care about narrative, or are incompetent, or because players don't demand anything better. And there's probably some truth to each of those; the author of these posts certainly points out cases where Bethesda could have told a more coherent story without negatively impacting gameplay.
But when he says stuff like this:
"If we throw up our hands and say they’re still somehow living off of boxes of prepackaged cereal 200 years after the bombs fell, then we at LEAST have to concede that those sorts of things are getting hard to find these days, yes?"
Well, no—we don't. Because strict realism isn't the only valid approach for a game to take, or even the only valid kind of narrative. No, scavenging TV dinners 200 years after the apocalypse doesn't make a bit of sense if you think about it logically—so don't think about it that way. That's not why it's there.
It also doesn't make sense that teenagers would still be forming greaser gangs, or that pipes would still be venting steam centuries after they broke, or that the pre-war world would have had such an improbable mix of 50s-era and super-advanced technology. None of that is supposed to make strictly logical sense. They're impressionistic brush strokes that paint an aesthetic—bits of evocative imagery that add up to a distinctive (and partly satirical and darkly humorous) mood and sensibility.
Don't get me wrong; I agree with much of what the author says, and I think there's plenty of room for improvement in game narratives. But there's a certain kind of gamer who plays games for the story, and expects it to meet the same standards as story-first mediums such as books and film—and I just don't get that. As a medium, games just aren't very well suited to telling stories. If I want a good story, I'll read a book or watch a movie. If I want gameplay, I'll play a game.
If game developers do find ways to tell an actually-engaging story alongside the gameplay, more power to 'em. In many cases, though, I think games are better of de-emphasizing the narrative—rendering an overall aesthetic via the kind of impressionistic approach I described above, but leaving the particulars up to the player's imagination.
Obviously this favors a somewhat more simulationist / sandbox style of game—but in my mind those are the games that most succeed as games. When a game tries to be both at the same time—a fully realized story and a fully realized gameplay experience—I think that each one often ends up hamstrung by the other. When that happens, developers usually choose to sacrifice the narrative to preserve the gameplay, and I think that's usually the right choice to make.
I might argue differently at a different moment; like anything worth talking about, it's complicated. But I do think it's a mistake to approach narrative in games in the same way that we approach non-interactive narratives such as literature and cinema. Game narratives serve different functions and are subject to very different constraints.
posted by escape from the potato planet at 2:26 PM on June 28, 2015 [21 favorites]
Does anybody (other than this author) really care about logic and plot holes in the story line for a video game?
The phrase "video game" in that sentence is so utterly inadequate. Nobody cares about the story in Tetris. Everybody cares about the story in Telltale's Walking Dead games. Some people care about the story in a game like Fallout 3.
The story is just something to hang the gameplay on and give you some motivation to keep going, I don't really expect it to make much logical sense.
A game with great gameplay can still be great even if the story is terrible, just like a great game can have terrible graphics. But most people prefer a game that looks great as well as playing great. Some of us prefer a game that looks great, plays great, and tells a great story.
Portal would have been a great puzzle game without the story and the writing, but I think almost everyone would agree that it's a much better game because the writing is so great. Some games are better without any writing, but if a game is going to have story and dialogue, why wouldn't you prefer that the story and dialogue be great?
posted by straight at 2:26 PM on June 28, 2015 [6 favorites]
The phrase "video game" in that sentence is so utterly inadequate. Nobody cares about the story in Tetris. Everybody cares about the story in Telltale's Walking Dead games. Some people care about the story in a game like Fallout 3.
The story is just something to hang the gameplay on and give you some motivation to keep going, I don't really expect it to make much logical sense.
A game with great gameplay can still be great even if the story is terrible, just like a great game can have terrible graphics. But most people prefer a game that looks great as well as playing great. Some of us prefer a game that looks great, plays great, and tells a great story.
Portal would have been a great puzzle game without the story and the writing, but I think almost everyone would agree that it's a much better game because the writing is so great. Some games are better without any writing, but if a game is going to have story and dialogue, why wouldn't you prefer that the story and dialogue be great?
posted by straight at 2:26 PM on June 28, 2015 [6 favorites]
The lack of food sources bugged me, I admit. Also the tiny town populations (5 people, really? That isn't a town, that is a family, and a small one.) It wouldn't have been hard to add some sickly farms that people from Megaton work, and make it obvious they have to work from dawn to dust just to get enough food that everyone might not starve that winter.
That is one way to make it work: You are travelling around in winter, or a dry season. You don't see any farms, since they aren't being worked right now, and they will be worked in the wet season. This also makes the people with no jobs make sense: They are farmers in the winter, probably spend their day doing maintenance, sewing clothing, etc. The slaves aren't doing anything, since they'll be put to work doing back-breaking land clearing and farmning in the spring.
Also, the need for water; Towns have water, but not much clean water, and it is established the water-purifiers are old and temperamental. If one of those blows a part that can't be replaced, the town dies. That is a reason to purify the river right there. A lot of the towns also probably survive by buying water, or drinking 'clean enough' water that isn't totally pure, but probably won't give you cancer for a few years, vs a river of totally clean water.
Also: He seems to imply you only need enough water for the people, and good enough. What about irrigation? If you had a full river of clean water, you could irrigate crops, grow healthier food, etc. What your Dad is doing makes perfect sense in that light, doubly so that it is obvious you are living in a near-desert.
posted by Canageek at 2:56 PM on June 28, 2015 [4 favorites]
That is one way to make it work: You are travelling around in winter, or a dry season. You don't see any farms, since they aren't being worked right now, and they will be worked in the wet season. This also makes the people with no jobs make sense: They are farmers in the winter, probably spend their day doing maintenance, sewing clothing, etc. The slaves aren't doing anything, since they'll be put to work doing back-breaking land clearing and farmning in the spring.
Also, the need for water; Towns have water, but not much clean water, and it is established the water-purifiers are old and temperamental. If one of those blows a part that can't be replaced, the town dies. That is a reason to purify the river right there. A lot of the towns also probably survive by buying water, or drinking 'clean enough' water that isn't totally pure, but probably won't give you cancer for a few years, vs a river of totally clean water.
Also: He seems to imply you only need enough water for the people, and good enough. What about irrigation? If you had a full river of clean water, you could irrigate crops, grow healthier food, etc. What your Dad is doing makes perfect sense in that light, doubly so that it is obvious you are living in a near-desert.
posted by Canageek at 2:56 PM on June 28, 2015 [4 favorites]
Pregnant Dwellers in Fallout Shelter are functionally immortal: raiders don't kill them, radroaches don't attack them, and they don't starve to death.
So you keep the housing supply severely limited, get all possible Dwellers pregnant, then enslave them in the power stations and water treatment plants while massively building out infrastructure and exercise rooms.
Not sure what the endgame is here, but my vault is filled with the saddest pregnant Dwellers ever, one male Dweller at 100% happiness, and me thinking I'm a horrible, horrible person.
posted by BitterOldPunk at 3:00 PM on June 28, 2015 [10 favorites]
So you keep the housing supply severely limited, get all possible Dwellers pregnant, then enslave them in the power stations and water treatment plants while massively building out infrastructure and exercise rooms.
Not sure what the endgame is here, but my vault is filled with the saddest pregnant Dwellers ever, one male Dweller at 100% happiness, and me thinking I'm a horrible, horrible person.
posted by BitterOldPunk at 3:00 PM on June 28, 2015 [10 favorites]
Umph. I felt like this was a bit weak. And some parts of the plot he either misunderstands or deliberately misrepresents to make his point. The Enclave are very clear about why they want the purifier - they've worked out that it can be modded to work essentially as a genocide machine, not just purifying the river but killing all those beings on the surface infected with radiation (i.e. everyone). They want to use it to depopulate DC so they can recolonise themselves.
That is a pretty clear motivation, I think. They don't want to control the population by restricting access to the water supply. They want to eradicate everyone and build a new republic.
posted by RokkitNite at 3:02 PM on June 28, 2015 [1 favorite]
That is a pretty clear motivation, I think. They don't want to control the population by restricting access to the water supply. They want to eradicate everyone and build a new republic.
posted by RokkitNite at 3:02 PM on June 28, 2015 [1 favorite]
The point of the GECK is to radically transform the environment. Sure, people can get by with the water they can scrape together, but people live on radioactive water and meds half the time. It's a good idea for the same reason curing polio is. It's also variously implied that it's the radioactive water that keeps all those nasty mutated beasts around.
posted by BungaDunga at 3:06 PM on June 28, 2015
posted by BungaDunga at 3:06 PM on June 28, 2015
I got a Harkness card out of a free lunchbox, and I was amused to find out that he can father children if you set him up with vault ladies.
Fallout Shelter doesn't acknowledge that these are miracle android children, sadly.
posted by rewil at 3:14 PM on June 28, 2015 [3 favorites]
Fallout Shelter doesn't acknowledge that these are miracle android children, sadly.
posted by rewil at 3:14 PM on June 28, 2015 [3 favorites]
After playing Witcher 3 it is clear that both Bethesda and Bioware need to step up their games in terms of population their worlds. It's almost indescribable how much more like a living, breathing environment the world of Witcher 3 is compared to the games from the other two. That isn't to say that W3 is perfect (it isn't) or that the others don't also have strengths, but comparing the world in W3 to the worlds in the others is like comparing the opening sequence of Saving Private Ryan to a couple of kids with sticks hitting each other.
posted by Justinian at 3:32 PM on June 28, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by Justinian at 3:32 PM on June 28, 2015 [2 favorites]
(I'm talking about the physical and social environments in the games not necessarily lore or backstory. Look at Novigrad as a city compared to all of Kirkwall in DA2. There are as many NPcs in one square in Novigrad as in all of Kirkwall it seems like.)
posted by Justinian at 3:33 PM on June 28, 2015
posted by Justinian at 3:33 PM on June 28, 2015
God damn it Justinian, I can't afford another game right now~!
posted by Trochanter at 3:36 PM on June 28, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by Trochanter at 3:36 PM on June 28, 2015 [1 favorite]
After playing Witcher 3 it is clear that both Bethesda and Bioware need to step up their games in terms of population
Fallout 3 and especially New Vegas were supposed to be a lot more populated in the "populated" areas than they ended up being--for instance, all the enclosed areas around Freeside/the Strip/etc with the gates? all of that was supposed to be one big cell and there was supposed to be a LOT more activity and NPCs; that ended up being gimped because of the limitations of last-gen consoles. Comparing a current-gen title like Witcher 3 to last-gen titles like Skyrim and Fallout 3/NV is kind of unfair, really.
posted by Pseudonymous Cognomen at 3:40 PM on June 28, 2015 [3 favorites]
Fallout 3 and especially New Vegas were supposed to be a lot more populated in the "populated" areas than they ended up being--for instance, all the enclosed areas around Freeside/the Strip/etc with the gates? all of that was supposed to be one big cell and there was supposed to be a LOT more activity and NPCs; that ended up being gimped because of the limitations of last-gen consoles. Comparing a current-gen title like Witcher 3 to last-gen titles like Skyrim and Fallout 3/NV is kind of unfair, really.
posted by Pseudonymous Cognomen at 3:40 PM on June 28, 2015 [3 favorites]
That was a design choice and I think its fair to criticize it.
Besides, what will Fallout 4's excuse be when it is the same way?
posted by Justinian at 3:43 PM on June 28, 2015
Besides, what will Fallout 4's excuse be when it is the same way?
posted by Justinian at 3:43 PM on June 28, 2015
The article is about criticism of Fallout 3, but I think it's more shows how great and unique the original Fallout was.
The first Fallout did a good job of establishing a diverse, odd, and yet, plausible post-Apocalyptic society. Each town had little details that showed why they existed—sometimes it was because a junkyard was a naturally defensible position (Junktown) or because it arose as a major trading market (The Hub). Every city established a reason to exist either because of food, water, commerce, and/or security. And because the graphics weren't quite there, they couldn't show everything, but they hinted at it and let your imagination fill out the rest.
The different factions were also really well done. Even before you discovered the lore of the Brotherhood of Steel, you could see that these guys were military folks. They didn't talk to the civvies, they hoarded technology, and set up a group with very traditional and conservative values. There were even little things done at the periphery that really fleshed out the universe. Remember that gun dealer in The Hub that talked about being part of a BoS-like Union of Atomic Workers? That's the only time that group is mentioned, but it really fleshed everything out. Again, more little hints scattered that there was more to the world.
And the story itself, an idiotically simple fetch quest: Get the water chip in 150 days. But, shit happens in the meantime. Shit happens your character, and because of that an actual character arc happens. At the end you win and you expect a parade when you get home, but the Overseer is there and he says you can't go back in, because you've changed. And then you remember all the cool weapons and gear, and the high level, your karma, and the fact that you have a new partner and a dog (that may or may not be dead). And that old asshole as right, you have changed.
Fallout is my favorite game ending, and probably my favorite game. And that's part of the reason why I just can't bring myself to play any of the Bethesda Fallout games. That and I'm still sore over Fallout: Tactics.
posted by FJT at 3:44 PM on June 28, 2015 [4 favorites]
The first Fallout did a good job of establishing a diverse, odd, and yet, plausible post-Apocalyptic society. Each town had little details that showed why they existed—sometimes it was because a junkyard was a naturally defensible position (Junktown) or because it arose as a major trading market (The Hub). Every city established a reason to exist either because of food, water, commerce, and/or security. And because the graphics weren't quite there, they couldn't show everything, but they hinted at it and let your imagination fill out the rest.
The different factions were also really well done. Even before you discovered the lore of the Brotherhood of Steel, you could see that these guys were military folks. They didn't talk to the civvies, they hoarded technology, and set up a group with very traditional and conservative values. There were even little things done at the periphery that really fleshed out the universe. Remember that gun dealer in The Hub that talked about being part of a BoS-like Union of Atomic Workers? That's the only time that group is mentioned, but it really fleshed everything out. Again, more little hints scattered that there was more to the world.
And the story itself, an idiotically simple fetch quest: Get the water chip in 150 days. But, shit happens in the meantime. Shit happens your character, and because of that an actual character arc happens. At the end you win and you expect a parade when you get home, but the Overseer is there and he says you can't go back in, because you've changed. And then you remember all the cool weapons and gear, and the high level, your karma, and the fact that you have a new partner and a dog (that may or may not be dead). And that old asshole as right, you have changed.
Fallout is my favorite game ending, and probably my favorite game. And that's part of the reason why I just can't bring myself to play any of the Bethesda Fallout games. That and I'm still sore over Fallout: Tactics.
posted by FJT at 3:44 PM on June 28, 2015 [4 favorites]
Art is a thing that makes art feeling. A story can create art feeling because of a precisely balanced combination of events. Games are interactive, so they're pretty terrible at making precisely balanced combinations of events. They're great at making worlds which you can get art feeling from though.
posted by Sebmojo at 3:48 PM on June 28, 2015
posted by Sebmojo at 3:48 PM on June 28, 2015
The Witcher 3 feels like a game from the future. It's so weirdly perfect in what it does and so full of detail, it's like it skipped a generation.
Not to say it'll be better than Fallout 4. They're trying to do different things. But I'll be shocked if Fallout 4 has anything like the richness of environment and atmosphere of The Witcher 3.
posted by painquale at 3:50 PM on June 28, 2015
Not to say it'll be better than Fallout 4. They're trying to do different things. But I'll be shocked if Fallout 4 has anything like the richness of environment and atmosphere of The Witcher 3.
posted by painquale at 3:50 PM on June 28, 2015
Maybe one day there'll be a game with the rich environment of Witcher 3 that won't require you to play some straight white dude. That's a fatal step back when it comes to opening my pocketbook.
posted by rewil at 3:53 PM on June 28, 2015 [4 favorites]
posted by rewil at 3:53 PM on June 28, 2015 [4 favorites]
Just have him closeted and write mental Geralt/Dandelion slash
posted by Sebmojo at 4:14 PM on June 28, 2015
posted by Sebmojo at 4:14 PM on June 28, 2015
Fallout 4 will be Post-Post-Apocalypse Theme Park Adventure Sandbox Murder Fallout-Branded Funtimes 2, and then Black Isle, in their modern guise, will make the fourth game in their Fallout series of RPGs.
posted by Pope Guilty at 4:22 PM on June 28, 2015
posted by Pope Guilty at 4:22 PM on June 28, 2015
Not to say it'll be better than Fallout 4. They're trying to do different things. But I'll be shocked if Fallout 4 has anything like the richness of environment and atmosphere of The Witcher 3.
Yes, this is what I'm saying. Bethesda and particularly Obsidian and Bioware all have their own strengths. Bethesda makes stunning and beautiful landscapes... but they're ultimately empty and sterile. Bioware doesn't even necessarily have the beautiful part going for them although they definitely moved in the right direction with the Storm Coast locale in DAI which was by far the most visually dynamic and beautiful thing they've done.
But the sheer richness of the world in Witcher 3 puts everyone else to shame. I was actually shocked when I started playing it.
posted by Justinian at 4:31 PM on June 28, 2015
Yes, this is what I'm saying. Bethesda and particularly Obsidian and Bioware all have their own strengths. Bethesda makes stunning and beautiful landscapes... but they're ultimately empty and sterile. Bioware doesn't even necessarily have the beautiful part going for them although they definitely moved in the right direction with the Storm Coast locale in DAI which was by far the most visually dynamic and beautiful thing they've done.
But the sheer richness of the world in Witcher 3 puts everyone else to shame. I was actually shocked when I started playing it.
posted by Justinian at 4:31 PM on June 28, 2015
Not sure what the endgame is here, but my vault is filled with the saddest pregnant Dwellers ever, one male Dweller at 100% happiness, and me thinking I'm a horrible, horrible person.
Yeah, you are!
THEY ARE NOT THINGS!
posted by scaryblackdeath at 4:31 PM on June 28, 2015 [4 favorites]
Yeah, you are!
THEY ARE NOT THINGS!
posted by scaryblackdeath at 4:31 PM on June 28, 2015 [4 favorites]
Maybe one day there'll be a game with the rich environment of Witcher 3 that won't require you to play some straight white dude. That's a fatal step back when it comes to opening my pocketbook.
He's more pale grey, really.
posted by Justinian at 4:37 PM on June 28, 2015
He's more pale grey, really.
posted by Justinian at 4:37 PM on June 28, 2015
require you to play some straight white dude
I'm a straight white dude who doesn't mind playing a straight white dude so much (although I totally respect the objection to that), as he minds playing a game in which every female character is there mostly to have sex with. I'm not sure that's the case with the Witcher 3, but I played about half of the first one and I'm not sure there was a named female character I didn't sleep with. It got freakin' creepy.
posted by neuromodulator at 4:38 PM on June 28, 2015 [1 favorite]
I'm a straight white dude who doesn't mind playing a straight white dude so much (although I totally respect the objection to that), as he minds playing a game in which every female character is there mostly to have sex with. I'm not sure that's the case with the Witcher 3, but I played about half of the first one and I'm not sure there was a named female character I didn't sleep with. It got freakin' creepy.
posted by neuromodulator at 4:38 PM on June 28, 2015 [1 favorite]
The third one is still male gazey but its male gazey in a way kind of like the recent Bond films. As opposed to the embarrassingly puerile and immature manner of the first game. So that's a step forward. To "still maybe a problem", sure, but that's better than "holy shit this is creepy".
posted by Justinian at 4:40 PM on June 28, 2015
posted by Justinian at 4:40 PM on June 28, 2015
Am I the worst nerd here, people? I actually ordered one of those editions with the wearable Pip Boy you can integrate your phone with and which will sync with Fallout 4 and let you use the pip boy for your game.
Help me.
posted by Justinian at 4:43 PM on June 28, 2015 [5 favorites]
Help me.
posted by Justinian at 4:43 PM on June 28, 2015 [5 favorites]
Water purifier plotline what what? Oh, right... plot... I was too busy collecting every possible garden gnome to add to the pile in my little apartment.
________
Stalker and Borderlands 1 get points for making you feel like just one more treasure hunter.... Their main quests tend to be meh, but generally they've been able to have some really fun side quests.
It seems like most of the love comes from the stories we make ourselves in the big pretty sandbox, and it just occurred to me, why does there need to be a main quest at all? Why not just let the game shine for what it is, and not try to make it a movie or a novel?
posted by Meatbomb at 4:56 PM on June 28, 2015 [4 favorites]
________
Stalker and Borderlands 1 get points for making you feel like just one more treasure hunter.... Their main quests tend to be meh, but generally they've been able to have some really fun side quests.
It seems like most of the love comes from the stories we make ourselves in the big pretty sandbox, and it just occurred to me, why does there need to be a main quest at all? Why not just let the game shine for what it is, and not try to make it a movie or a novel?
posted by Meatbomb at 4:56 PM on June 28, 2015 [4 favorites]
Maybe one day there'll be a game with the rich environment of Witcher 3 that won't require you to play some straight white dude.
I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure the protagonist of The Witcher games is Drizzt Do'Urden.
posted by comealongpole at 5:01 PM on June 28, 2015
I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure the protagonist of The Witcher games is Drizzt Do'Urden.
posted by comealongpole at 5:01 PM on June 28, 2015
More Elric I think!
posted by Justinian at 5:03 PM on June 28, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by Justinian at 5:03 PM on June 28, 2015 [2 favorites]
I wish I could get into The Witcher 3. I just find the combat system and Geralt's character soooooo, soooo bad.
posted by codacorolla at 5:21 PM on June 28, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by codacorolla at 5:21 PM on June 28, 2015 [1 favorite]
I would really like a F3 clone that just has stories that happen, not an endgame.
I'd also like, in all such games, the option to have a severely abbreviated introduction if you've already played the game.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 5:40 PM on June 28, 2015 [2 favorites]
I'd also like, in all such games, the option to have a severely abbreviated introduction if you've already played the game.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 5:40 PM on June 28, 2015 [2 favorites]
Lots of praise for FONV, and rightfully so, but if he's going to worry about where's-the-food-come-from, he shouldn't forget how bad the Lonesome Road DLC was. I never even bothered finishing FONV after slogging through that. How do all the story arcs end? Well, if they're as stupid as LR, I just don't care.
posted by barnacles at 6:19 PM on June 28, 2015
posted by barnacles at 6:19 PM on June 28, 2015
Ulysses is so cool, though
posted by Apocryphon at 6:22 PM on June 28, 2015
posted by Apocryphon at 6:22 PM on June 28, 2015
I haven't played Witcher 2 or 3, but Witcher 1 did cities right. Lots of NPCs running around, most of which you can't talk to, because why would you talk to the creepy guy with two swords, a too intense gaze, and a smelly monster head on a hook? It cities felt alive in a way I haven't seen since I first played Baldur's Gate and got to Beregost. I really think Bethesda needs to work on a way to put some more primitive scenery NPCs into its games. Also, smaller scale, more detail per area, which they are getting better as since Oblivion.
posted by Canageek at 6:28 PM on June 28, 2015
posted by Canageek at 6:28 PM on June 28, 2015
I loved FO3 and New Vegas. The worlds are only a centimetre deep however. I've never run a game development company, but I suspect that if you tried to create a game as broad as Fallout but deeper, you would spend millions and wind up with a world two centimetres deep.
posted by um at 6:31 PM on June 28, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by um at 6:31 PM on June 28, 2015 [1 favorite]
Fallout 3 had some interesting set pieces, but they don't make much of a satisfying whole. While I recall things like the soundtrack and Liberty Prime fondly, a lot of it seems like a big mess. And don't even get me started on Little Lamplight.
New Vegas had its own issues, but the DLC remains some of the strongest ever made. (Though I am also WAY too fond of the Holorifle so I might be unbiased in this regard.) OK, Longest Road is a bit of a letdown but the diaries of the Survivalist are great. Plus, talking toaster, sink, and wall switches.
Not really feeling terribly excited by the FO4 trailer, certainly not as much as the Firewatch or Tacoma trailers.
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 6:34 PM on June 28, 2015
New Vegas had its own issues, but the DLC remains some of the strongest ever made. (Though I am also WAY too fond of the Holorifle so I might be unbiased in this regard.) OK, Longest Road is a bit of a letdown but the diaries of the Survivalist are great. Plus, talking toaster, sink, and wall switches.
Not really feeling terribly excited by the FO4 trailer, certainly not as much as the Firewatch or Tacoma trailers.
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 6:34 PM on June 28, 2015
> I got a Harkness card out of a free lunchbox, and I was amused to find out that he can father children if you set him up with vault ladies.
Fallout Shelter doesn't acknowledge that these are miracle android children, sadly.
I got a Three Dog card out of a lunchbox, and his high charisma means that he has sired a few children. I was disappointed to find out that his children take the surname of their mother, and that I had to manually change his third child’s name at birth to be “Brian Dog.”
posted by savetheclocktower at 6:38 PM on June 28, 2015 [4 favorites]
Fallout Shelter doesn't acknowledge that these are miracle android children, sadly.
I got a Three Dog card out of a lunchbox, and his high charisma means that he has sired a few children. I was disappointed to find out that his children take the surname of their mother, and that I had to manually change his third child’s name at birth to be “Brian Dog.”
posted by savetheclocktower at 6:38 PM on June 28, 2015 [4 favorites]
but I suspect that if you tried to create a game as broad as Fallout but deeper, you would spend millions and wind up with a world two centimetres deep.
That's what I thought too until the aforementioned Witcher 3. It's clearly possible to create an intricate and detailed open world. Bethesda and Bioware simply don't bother to do it. I'm sure they can give you reasons why that is (consoles! waaah waaah!) but the fact remains they could and they choose not to do it.
posted by Justinian at 6:40 PM on June 28, 2015
That's what I thought too until the aforementioned Witcher 3. It's clearly possible to create an intricate and detailed open world. Bethesda and Bioware simply don't bother to do it. I'm sure they can give you reasons why that is (consoles! waaah waaah!) but the fact remains they could and they choose not to do it.
posted by Justinian at 6:40 PM on June 28, 2015
figure out the mechanics, figure out how shallow they are, decide there's not really a reason to keep playing, and then search desperately for meaning beneath the surface since you're apparently still playing anyway and by god it's got to mean something
What's the point of playing games if they're just going to duplicate Real Life?
posted by Greg_Ace at 7:13 PM on June 28, 2015 [3 favorites]
What's the point of playing games if they're just going to duplicate Real Life?
posted by Greg_Ace at 7:13 PM on June 28, 2015 [3 favorites]
Where's the food come from? I can clearly remember herds of two headed cows....
Also Iguanas on sticks, i.e. provided by hunters
But yes there was also a lot of silliness, such as the crashed UFO
posted by Hello, I'm David McGahan at 7:32 PM on June 28, 2015
Also Iguanas on sticks, i.e. provided by hunters
But yes there was also a lot of silliness, such as the crashed UFO
posted by Hello, I'm David McGahan at 7:32 PM on June 28, 2015
Apocryphon: Audiolog Ulysees is cool; the disillusioned wanderer who is a true believer. In Caesars cause until the white legs confront him with a vision of his former tribe, twisted and insane. In the cause of the divide until another courier brought death in the package she carried. Finally in the flag of the old world, in the slumbering power to bring ruin to a government he saw as corrupt.
It's just a shame he gets replaced by a fairly generic supervillian in his evil lair at the end of the game.
barnacles: Lonseome Road is the worst DLC. All of the others are far far stronger. Honest Hearts and Dead Money are counterpoints to each other examining the question of letting go of your old life and beginning again from the perspective of those that are forced to and those that are trapped in their old lives respectively. Old World Blues is really enjoyable sci-fi retro future black comedy. All three are worth getting, even doing Old World Blues, Honest Hearts and then Dead Money totally breaks the tension of the last game. Implant GRX and Them's Good Eatin' particularly.
posted by Grimgrin at 7:43 PM on June 28, 2015 [1 favorite]
It's just a shame he gets replaced by a fairly generic supervillian in his evil lair at the end of the game.
barnacles: Lonseome Road is the worst DLC. All of the others are far far stronger. Honest Hearts and Dead Money are counterpoints to each other examining the question of letting go of your old life and beginning again from the perspective of those that are forced to and those that are trapped in their old lives respectively. Old World Blues is really enjoyable sci-fi retro future black comedy. All three are worth getting, even doing Old World Blues, Honest Hearts and then Dead Money totally breaks the tension of the last game. Implant GRX and Them's Good Eatin' particularly.
posted by Grimgrin at 7:43 PM on June 28, 2015 [1 favorite]
I've got some news for you about the provenance of those iguanas on sticks.
posted by knuckle tattoos at 7:45 PM on June 28, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by knuckle tattoos at 7:45 PM on June 28, 2015 [1 favorite]
This is why I prefer fantasy to sci-fi. As soon as someone is taking ten bullets from a machine gun to the face without dying I'm beyond my believability zone.
Agreed. But at the same time, when I am hovering through the countryside in my armour made out of pulsing hellstone, dragging the body of a dragon I have just slain with my ten foot tall double-bladed obsidian axe which is throwing off arcs of lightning because it is just so filled with magic that the magic is spilling out, and I am set upon by a baddie dressed in scraps of cloth, holding a rusty wooden cudgel, with a mouseover reading "Starving Ruffian", who yells something like "I'll 'ave you for lunch!", and who then explodes just by being near me because I have some kind of destructive area-effect static ability, and his loot is just one apple core (the cudgel exploded too)...awww who am I kidding that shit is awesome as hell.
posted by turbid dahlia at 8:51 PM on June 28, 2015 [7 favorites]
Agreed. But at the same time, when I am hovering through the countryside in my armour made out of pulsing hellstone, dragging the body of a dragon I have just slain with my ten foot tall double-bladed obsidian axe which is throwing off arcs of lightning because it is just so filled with magic that the magic is spilling out, and I am set upon by a baddie dressed in scraps of cloth, holding a rusty wooden cudgel, with a mouseover reading "Starving Ruffian", who yells something like "I'll 'ave you for lunch!", and who then explodes just by being near me because I have some kind of destructive area-effect static ability, and his loot is just one apple core (the cudgel exploded too)...awww who am I kidding that shit is awesome as hell.
posted by turbid dahlia at 8:51 PM on June 28, 2015 [7 favorites]
Bethesda isn't in the story-telling business. They're in the place-making business.
And here I've been telling people that they make and sell example files for the mod development tool that they give away for free.
====================
Not sure what the endgame is here, but my vault is filled with the saddest pregnant Dwellers ever, one male Dweller at 100% happiness, and me thinking I'm a horrible, horrible person.
Sounds like Vault 69.
posted by radwolf76 at 9:25 PM on June 28, 2015
And here I've been telling people that they make and sell example files for the mod development tool that they give away for free.
====================
Not sure what the endgame is here, but my vault is filled with the saddest pregnant Dwellers ever, one male Dweller at 100% happiness, and me thinking I'm a horrible, horrible person.
Sounds like Vault 69.
posted by radwolf76 at 9:25 PM on June 28, 2015
It's just a shame he gets replaced by a fairly generic supervillian in his evil lair at the end of the game.
You can talk him down from it, though, and then he helps you fight off the marked men.
Some people will tell you that an antimateriel rifle loaded with explosive rounds is overkill for that fight. Those are bad and wrong people.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 10:07 PM on June 28, 2015
You can talk him down from it, though, and then he helps you fight off the marked men.
Some people will tell you that an antimateriel rifle loaded with explosive rounds is overkill for that fight. Those are bad and wrong people.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 10:07 PM on June 28, 2015
I actually feel like the whole water purifier plotline works for me, at least as the game progresses. Your parents had this dream. It's not really your dream. It's theirs. It's not necessarily the most sensible dream to have, but dreams often aren't, you know? Your dad is this very mortal human being who has this big dream and a kid who does not work conveniently with the big dream. And the thing about it being an RPG is that you've got space to actually decide how your character feels about all this and what they're going to do about it. Some of the details are rather meh, but...
People have managed to survive for an astounding 200 years without rain and without Dad’s nonsensical water purifier
Yeah, and things aren't exactly peachy, are they? Sure, you don't know most of those people. Your dad doesn't even know most of those people. To say that wanting to do something that makes the lives of strangers marginally better is a thing that shouldn't appear in this story because it's "unrealistic" makes this guy seem like a sociopath. Now, maybe you want to play a sociopath and you're just going to tell them all to go get fucked. But I, for one, enjoyed spending Fallout 3 taking this trip from "my dad as this mythic figure with this heroic mission, but I'm not a mythic figure and it's not my job" to "my dad is a human being who makes mistakes and the wasteland is full of human beings who make mistakes and maybe this is one mistake we can actually fix for the sake of all those people whose stories I've been getting involved with in little ways this whole time". The inability to fix everything in other people's lives doesn't diminish what it means to be able to help.
New Vegas, meanwhile, the mechanics improved in almost every way, and I still couldn't find myself to care about the story in that way.
posted by Sequence at 10:31 PM on June 28, 2015
People have managed to survive for an astounding 200 years without rain and without Dad’s nonsensical water purifier
Yeah, and things aren't exactly peachy, are they? Sure, you don't know most of those people. Your dad doesn't even know most of those people. To say that wanting to do something that makes the lives of strangers marginally better is a thing that shouldn't appear in this story because it's "unrealistic" makes this guy seem like a sociopath. Now, maybe you want to play a sociopath and you're just going to tell them all to go get fucked. But I, for one, enjoyed spending Fallout 3 taking this trip from "my dad as this mythic figure with this heroic mission, but I'm not a mythic figure and it's not my job" to "my dad is a human being who makes mistakes and the wasteland is full of human beings who make mistakes and maybe this is one mistake we can actually fix for the sake of all those people whose stories I've been getting involved with in little ways this whole time". The inability to fix everything in other people's lives doesn't diminish what it means to be able to help.
New Vegas, meanwhile, the mechanics improved in almost every way, and I still couldn't find myself to care about the story in that way.
posted by Sequence at 10:31 PM on June 28, 2015
I got a Harkness card out of a free lunchbox, and I was amused to find out that he can father children if you set him up with vault ladies.
Fallout Shelter doesn't acknowledge that these are miracle android children, sadly.
I got a Harkness card too and for whatever reason (maybe the likeness), I thought of him more as a Captain Jack Harkness. He only seems to run into the back room of the barracks with female dwellers, though.
posted by SmileyChewtrain at 10:32 PM on June 28, 2015 [1 favorite]
Fallout Shelter doesn't acknowledge that these are miracle android children, sadly.
I got a Harkness card too and for whatever reason (maybe the likeness), I thought of him more as a Captain Jack Harkness. He only seems to run into the back room of the barracks with female dwellers, though.
posted by SmileyChewtrain at 10:32 PM on June 28, 2015 [1 favorite]
Hell yes people care: The Shandification of Fallout yt
posted by Apocryphon at 3:09 PM on June 28 [8 favorites −] Favorite added! [!]
Thanks for that, I started getting a little bit annoyed by the guy's schtick toward the end of the video but it really put words to why I enjoyed Fallout 3/NV so much, and why NV was ultimately the one I went a replayed recently without even bothering to touch 3. They both wrecked me for a whole bunch of games that will now sit in my library, never ever getting another playthrough.
I wound up refering to A->B->C->D games as theme-park rides. After a while they all start to feel like you're in a little cart on a track, getting a glimpse of some awesome settings that you'd really love to get out and explore, but sadly you're held in the cart by the safety bar and must travel where the ride's designer wants you to go next. I really just don't have the patience for that shit anymore.
posted by mcrandello at 11:10 PM on June 28, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by Apocryphon at 3:09 PM on June 28 [8 favorites −] Favorite added! [!]
Thanks for that, I started getting a little bit annoyed by the guy's schtick toward the end of the video but it really put words to why I enjoyed Fallout 3/NV so much, and why NV was ultimately the one I went a replayed recently without even bothering to touch 3. They both wrecked me for a whole bunch of games that will now sit in my library, never ever getting another playthrough.
I wound up refering to A->B->C->D games as theme-park rides. After a while they all start to feel like you're in a little cart on a track, getting a glimpse of some awesome settings that you'd really love to get out and explore, but sadly you're held in the cart by the safety bar and must travel where the ride's designer wants you to go next. I really just don't have the patience for that shit anymore.
posted by mcrandello at 11:10 PM on June 28, 2015 [1 favorite]
I just don't get how you guys can keep track of and remember the stories in these giant sandbox games. You play like an hour of shooting and inventory adjusting and power-upping and minor-questing, and then there are 30 seconds of main plot exposition, and then another hour of minor-questing and exploring and fiddling. I can remember all the individual tiny quests, but as for the overall framing story, If I'm lucky, I can kind of remember a vague outline, but not nearly enough to be able to identify inconsistencies and contradictions, let alone be disappointed by them.
posted by Bugbread at 11:39 PM on June 28, 2015 [5 favorites]
posted by Bugbread at 11:39 PM on June 28, 2015 [5 favorites]
Yeah, I don't really give that much of a toss about story and lore in these games. I'm signing up for the whole open-world, multiple side quest shenanigans. And fighting giant spiders and the like.
posted by GallonOfAlan at 1:32 AM on June 29, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by GallonOfAlan at 1:32 AM on June 29, 2015 [1 favorite]
I did play most of Fallout relying on a combination of the hunting rifle for sniping distant enemies and stealth attacks with the flaming sword thing for closer/indoor scenarios. Then I got bored and decided to explore hand to hand combat and leveled up in that to the point I could go punch death claws in the face without worrying too much about losing.
I did install a mod that removed the stupid level cap though. 20 levels was just too low and meant that you could easily gimp your character if you made poor decisions.
I'm a completionist though in that I'm more interested in visiting all the places and hoarding all the things. If a NPC could break into what seemed like my fairly flimsy shack in Megaton they'd have to spend weeks clearing out stuff.
Final point: A narrative doesn't have to be 'realistic' to be good/interesting/make sense, it just have to be internally consistent enough not to have gaping plot holes, particularly if you're able to suspend disbelief/take it on its own terms. I realise there were some in Fallout 3 (c.f. the UFO crash site mentioned above) though, but I was having too much fun sneaking up on mutant brutes and punching them in the back of the head. i
posted by Hello, I'm David McGahan at 1:48 AM on June 29, 2015 [1 favorite]
I did install a mod that removed the stupid level cap though. 20 levels was just too low and meant that you could easily gimp your character if you made poor decisions.
I'm a completionist though in that I'm more interested in visiting all the places and hoarding all the things. If a NPC could break into what seemed like my fairly flimsy shack in Megaton they'd have to spend weeks clearing out stuff.
Final point: A narrative doesn't have to be 'realistic' to be good/interesting/make sense, it just have to be internally consistent enough not to have gaping plot holes, particularly if you're able to suspend disbelief/take it on its own terms. I realise there were some in Fallout 3 (c.f. the UFO crash site mentioned above) though, but I was having too much fun sneaking up on mutant brutes and punching them in the back of the head. i
posted by Hello, I'm David McGahan at 1:48 AM on June 29, 2015 [1 favorite]
It's not that I don't like good story, or don't find bad story annoying. It's that I can't see the bad in the overarching story, because I can't keep track of it. Put stupid shit in a side quest and it will annoy me. Make a great side quest story, and I'll love it. But the main quest is usually both too intricate and too spread out for me to notice the bad stuff unless it's hyper-egregious (like, way more than Fallout 3).
posted by Bugbread at 1:51 AM on June 29, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by Bugbread at 1:51 AM on June 29, 2015 [1 favorite]
That was a design choice and I think its fair to criticize it.
Besides, what will Fallout 4's excuse be when it is the same way?
It was a design choice, but one forced on them by hardware limitations as others noted. DA:I gets a pass as well because that game had to support the older platforms. The next gen versions are just graphical upgrades because they decided to give everyone the same gameplay experience. Not everyone's made quite the same call. Shadow Of Mordor supports the older consoles, but on them it's missing the nemesis system that AFAICT is widely-regarded as the coolest part of the game.
As to the latter part: We don't know that Fallout 4 will be as scantily populated. We've seen basically none of it. maybe it will be! But it's hard to say from a couple brief bits shown at E3.
As for Witcher 3 that game has the advantage of only targeting PC and the newer consoles. I think this video is a pretty well-done overview of how the series has grown with each entry.
posted by sparkletone at 2:48 AM on June 29, 2015
Besides, what will Fallout 4's excuse be when it is the same way?
It was a design choice, but one forced on them by hardware limitations as others noted. DA:I gets a pass as well because that game had to support the older platforms. The next gen versions are just graphical upgrades because they decided to give everyone the same gameplay experience. Not everyone's made quite the same call. Shadow Of Mordor supports the older consoles, but on them it's missing the nemesis system that AFAICT is widely-regarded as the coolest part of the game.
As to the latter part: We don't know that Fallout 4 will be as scantily populated. We've seen basically none of it. maybe it will be! But it's hard to say from a couple brief bits shown at E3.
As for Witcher 3 that game has the advantage of only targeting PC and the newer consoles. I think this video is a pretty well-done overview of how the series has grown with each entry.
posted by sparkletone at 2:48 AM on June 29, 2015
(I would've also linked the video about Witcher 2, but that is still forthcoming!)
posted by sparkletone at 3:07 AM on June 29, 2015
posted by sparkletone at 3:07 AM on June 29, 2015
They're free to say that they had to make their games worse to support low end hardware and I'm free to say that their games are made worse because of it.
I do think W3 will be a major shift in what people are willing to tolerate in terms of worldbuilding.
posted by Justinian at 3:07 AM on June 29, 2015
I do think W3 will be a major shift in what people are willing to tolerate in terms of worldbuilding.
posted by Justinian at 3:07 AM on June 29, 2015
Oh god I'd forgotten how bad the characters looked in the original Witcher. Thanks for that link.
posted by Justinian at 3:16 AM on June 29, 2015
posted by Justinian at 3:16 AM on June 29, 2015
I didn't know or maybe forgot they'd used the Neverwinter Nights engine as a baseline, which explains lots about that first one.
They used their own for 2 and 3 AFAIK.
posted by sparkletone at 3:20 AM on June 29, 2015
They used their own for 2 and 3 AFAIK.
posted by sparkletone at 3:20 AM on June 29, 2015
Some good stuff coming out about FO4 now. For example you can "tag" crafting components you are looking for so that they are flagged when you find them in the wild. That way you don't have to pick up everything which isn't nailed down and figure it out later.
Imma still pick up everything that isn't nailed down. You never know when you might need a broken hubcap or a rusty spoon.
posted by Justinian at 3:57 AM on June 29, 2015 [7 favorites]
Imma still pick up everything that isn't nailed down. You never know when you might need a broken hubcap or a rusty spoon.
posted by Justinian at 3:57 AM on June 29, 2015 [7 favorites]
I just realized that I am Ariel. I've got gadgets and gizmos a-plenty. I've got whozits and whatzits galore. You want thingamabobs? I've got twenty! But who cares? No big deal. I want more
posted by Justinian at 3:59 AM on June 29, 2015 [8 favorites]
posted by Justinian at 3:59 AM on June 29, 2015 [8 favorites]
A small point regarding technology in the Fallout universe: The main premise is that the silicon transistor was not invented in the 1940's, and that is where Fallout's timeline diverges from our own. The article states that the tech in Fallout is based on the past's view of the future, but I feel that that is a bit simplistic for what I think is a very cleverly-constructed alternate history future.
I think the author is spot on, however. A main plot that offers essentially zero choice should be regarded as a major failing for a modern RPG.
posted by clorox at 7:10 AM on June 29, 2015 [1 favorite]
I think the author is spot on, however. A main plot that offers essentially zero choice should be regarded as a major failing for a modern RPG.
posted by clorox at 7:10 AM on June 29, 2015 [1 favorite]
It's not that I don't like good story, or don't find bad story annoying. It's that I can't see the bad in the overarching story, because I can't keep track of it. Put stupid shit in a side quest and it will annoy me. Make a great side quest story, and I'll love it. But the main quest is usually both too intricate and too spread out for me to notice the bad stuff unless it's hyper-egregious (like, way more than Fallout 3).
I would be inclined to agree if the sidequest stuff was good. Unfortunately things like Tenpenny (where the 'good' karma option is as fucked up and stupid as the 'bad' karma option, and there isn't much in between), or AREFU (populated with absolutely terrible, terrible characters and concepts) are the norm. Even optional things with no quest associated are pretty bad, because they usually resort to the same quest mechanics of crawling through identical steam tunnels and fighting identical bullet sponge enemies.
I'm actually having a difficult time thinking of a single quest I liked on my most recent playthrough. A prime example is the Antagonizer and The Mechanist, who are fighting over a "town" that is (literally) comprised of 5 people. I guess the concept of super heroes in the wasteland is sort of funny, but they don't do anything with it. There are no stakes, because the only scene you see the two characters interacting in has nobody die, nobody get injured, and nothing particularly bad happening (aside from the special canned character animations that they created for the two primary characters in the quest). You then solve the quest by walking one minute to each of the character's "lairs", fighting trash mobs, and then going directly up to each character and solving it by either saying a single line of dialogue, or just shooting them. Your reward for doing this is 400 bottle caps and a bunch of ugly, useless armor.
posted by codacorolla at 7:48 AM on June 29, 2015 [1 favorite]
I would be inclined to agree if the sidequest stuff was good. Unfortunately things like Tenpenny (where the 'good' karma option is as fucked up and stupid as the 'bad' karma option, and there isn't much in between), or AREFU (populated with absolutely terrible, terrible characters and concepts) are the norm. Even optional things with no quest associated are pretty bad, because they usually resort to the same quest mechanics of crawling through identical steam tunnels and fighting identical bullet sponge enemies.
I'm actually having a difficult time thinking of a single quest I liked on my most recent playthrough. A prime example is the Antagonizer and The Mechanist, who are fighting over a "town" that is (literally) comprised of 5 people. I guess the concept of super heroes in the wasteland is sort of funny, but they don't do anything with it. There are no stakes, because the only scene you see the two characters interacting in has nobody die, nobody get injured, and nothing particularly bad happening (aside from the special canned character animations that they created for the two primary characters in the quest). You then solve the quest by walking one minute to each of the character's "lairs", fighting trash mobs, and then going directly up to each character and solving it by either saying a single line of dialogue, or just shooting them. Your reward for doing this is 400 bottle caps and a bunch of ugly, useless armor.
posted by codacorolla at 7:48 AM on June 29, 2015 [1 favorite]
Yeah, sorry, what I said wasn't meant to be a defense of Fallout 3. I barely remember it, and my memories are all mixed up with New Vegas. I was just speaking generally about overall RPG plots versus subquest plots.
posted by Bugbread at 7:55 AM on June 29, 2015
posted by Bugbread at 7:55 AM on June 29, 2015
Did they ever do a sequel to The Little Mermaid where we realize that Ariel is an uneducated compulsive hoarder and Prince Eric never ever had to develop a personality?
posted by Navelgazer at 9:53 AM on June 29, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by Navelgazer at 9:53 AM on June 29, 2015 [1 favorite]
No, scavenging TV dinners 200 years after the apocalypse doesn't make a bit of sense if you think about it logically
Of course it does! That's the joke, really, that these meals from the 50's-run-amok would totally be like, 75% preservatives and able to survive until, at least, world war 5...and still possess every iota of their dandy, snack-cakey goodness. :9
posted by sexyrobot at 11:21 AM on June 30, 2015 [1 favorite]
Of course it does! That's the joke, really, that these meals from the 50's-run-amok would totally be like, 75% preservatives and able to survive until, at least, world war 5...and still possess every iota of their dandy, snack-cakey goodness. :9
posted by sexyrobot at 11:21 AM on June 30, 2015 [1 favorite]
It's not so much that the Twinkies have lasted 200 years unchanged, as you say that's the funny part. The nonsensical part is the landscape filled with roaming, hungry scavengers that have left Twinkies untouched for 200 years almost everywhere you look.
Discovering undisturbed ruins of a fallen civilization is a cool fantasy, but it's a rather different fantasy from that of the ruined landscape of a fallen civilization that's been worked over for centuries by primitive survivors. The parody 1950's should be the polished bones of Fallout 3, not it's still-stinking rotting flesh.
posted by straight at 2:34 PM on June 30, 2015 [1 favorite]
Discovering undisturbed ruins of a fallen civilization is a cool fantasy, but it's a rather different fantasy from that of the ruined landscape of a fallen civilization that's been worked over for centuries by primitive survivors. The parody 1950's should be the polished bones of Fallout 3, not it's still-stinking rotting flesh.
posted by straight at 2:34 PM on June 30, 2015 [1 favorite]
I'm at the end of the game, and I just realized that I'm following a fanatically patriotic organization's manifest destiny by exterminating three different indigenous tribes in the wasteland to advance (pure, good, karmically approved) a singular vision of the country. The player is a hero in the same way that Andrew Jackson is a hero.
posted by codacorolla at 7:26 PM on July 1, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by codacorolla at 7:26 PM on July 1, 2015 [1 favorite]
Those of you complaining about Bethesda's storytelling need to play some Ubisoft games. Fallout 3 is The Brothers Karamazov by comparison.
posted by um at 7:54 PM on July 1, 2015
posted by um at 7:54 PM on July 1, 2015
What are you thinking of when you say that, um? I would put Ezio among one the best-realized characters in gaming. I'm not saying that as a Ubisoft fan, either - I think they've gone the way of EA in terms of their priorities. But credit where credit is due.
posted by neuromodulator at 11:17 AM on July 2, 2015
posted by neuromodulator at 11:17 AM on July 2, 2015
The nonsensical part is the landscape filled with roaming, hungry scavengers that have left Twinkies untouched for 200 years almost everywhere you look.
Even starving post-apocalyptic scavengers know that you should go easy on the Twinkies.
posted by turbid dahlia at 6:03 PM on July 6, 2015
Even starving post-apocalyptic scavengers know that you should go easy on the Twinkies.
posted by turbid dahlia at 6:03 PM on July 6, 2015
Sorry for the delay neuromodulator, I only just saw your comment. I agree about Ezio. I even liked Ratonhnhaké:ton/Connor and his bitter journey in AC3. But that was a while ago now. I look at the current crop of Ubisoft titles, and they all seem to be re-skinned versions of each other, with a thinly-sketched protagonist motivated by man-pain.
Maybe such a convergence is inevitable when you are focused on producing franchises like Assassin's Creed, Far Cry, and most recently Watch_Dogs and feel like you have to produce a new game in each series every 12 months. On the receiving end it feels like Ubisoft is running a video-game version of mad libs where they're locked in to a template and there is no longer any sense of drama, or surprise, or emotional involvement of any kind.
And Bethesda are by no means terrific at these things, but they do commit to a very understated style of storytelling where they show you things in the world that have nothing to do with any quest or plot, but just seem to exist for their own sake. Skyrim is full of these little details. It's been a while since I played Fallout 3, but I remember things you'd see sometimes when just exploring ruined houses - a bathtub with a skeleton and a toaster, for example. Small, self-contained stories that are just sort of there.
posted by um at 8:00 PM on July 6, 2015
Maybe such a convergence is inevitable when you are focused on producing franchises like Assassin's Creed, Far Cry, and most recently Watch_Dogs and feel like you have to produce a new game in each series every 12 months. On the receiving end it feels like Ubisoft is running a video-game version of mad libs where they're locked in to a template and there is no longer any sense of drama, or surprise, or emotional involvement of any kind.
And Bethesda are by no means terrific at these things, but they do commit to a very understated style of storytelling where they show you things in the world that have nothing to do with any quest or plot, but just seem to exist for their own sake. Skyrim is full of these little details. It's been a while since I played Fallout 3, but I remember things you'd see sometimes when just exploring ruined houses - a bathtub with a skeleton and a toaster, for example. Small, self-contained stories that are just sort of there.
posted by um at 8:00 PM on July 6, 2015
I'm playing Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor. I'm playing as the only playable female avatar. But the game switches me back to the default guy for all the cut scenes. Then my character shows up as an NPC in the cut scenes. Pretty funny.
Not that it matters. The story is typical game level drek. Not a total loss as a game, though. Very much Arkham City with a small bit of Assassin's Creed. I like the combat scheme in AC, so I'm not hating this game.
They tell me I'm going to get overpowered later but for now...
posted by Trochanter at 9:44 PM on July 6, 2015
Not that it matters. The story is typical game level drek. Not a total loss as a game, though. Very much Arkham City with a small bit of Assassin's Creed. I like the combat scheme in AC, so I'm not hating this game.
They tell me I'm going to get overpowered later but for now...
posted by Trochanter at 9:44 PM on July 6, 2015
The 200 years later in FO3 never made sense to me, it seemed like a last minute bolted on plot change that didn't fit the built world at all. I decided that it was maybe 40 years post war and that made much more sense to me personally.
posted by Meatbomb at 7:32 AM on July 7, 2015
posted by Meatbomb at 7:32 AM on July 7, 2015
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posted by Slackermagee at 10:22 AM on June 28, 2015 [2 favorites]