Of Deathclaws & Radscorpions: A Fallout Thread

Yeah, I'm deleting the game. A week in and I've gotten enough out of it, and the only real way to get prime wasteland schwag is to buy lunch boxes.

Still, I picked up Wasteland 2, that'll give me my fallout fix for a while.

Now my dudes aren't dying all the time I think I'm done with it too.

Enjoying Wasteland 2. Man, if I knew that this was them just doing an isometric follow-up to FO2, I'da bought this last year. I like how mechanics from Xcom and other games have been worked into the Infinity Engine-like template.

Also, in the first big town I was in, I saved a dog for a local, and found out that the other locals _reaaaaaallly_ don't take kindly to digging up graves.

(Note: graverobbing also a mechanic in this game. Naturally.)

I don't know if we reported it here, but Chris Avellone left Obsidian recently(which he'd helped found in 2003). Rumor has it he's heading over to inXile, makers of Wasteland 2(and run by Brian Fargo), who are working on a new Bards Tale game.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2015-06-09-chris-avellone-leaves-obsidian-entertainment

Did anyone find Wasteland 2 really hard, or am I just rubbish? I need to get back to it.

nah it's not too bad. i've had to reload a bunch when combats go south (esp when i hit a combat i wasn't prepared for and didn't prep w/ positioning & reloading) but it's not like playing nethack or anything.

can I just say that the sex/baby making mechanic in Fallout Shelter is super, super silly

no

i have lost track of who is the father of whom and worry there is some madd incest going on in my vault

it's like that tv series bakersfield pd

it's apparently impossible to have an incestuous relationship; the characters just hang out and say things like "oh it's so nice spending time with family"

ahahaha okay then i have unintentionally tried and failed to initiate incestuous couplings in my vault as i recognise that phrasing too well

i think like cousins can tho bc i've definitely matched up two residents with the same last name who were willing to reproduce

http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=27085

My response to that: who cares

If you’re one of those people that can’t stand to hear people say bad things about stuff you like, then this is going to be hard for you. I’ve broken the series into five parts to help soften the blow.

lol

I wish there was a Fallout game with all the random character depth and some of the shooting

news flash: video game story is sophomoric

it's almost as if the story is there to serve the gameplay

I don't think it would've been asking too much for him to provide links for counseling services at the end of each part of his exposé.

I agree with some of the points, tho; the tone I enjoyed so much from FO1&2 and later found again in New Vegas was that Fallout wasn't just about post-apoc shootiness, but that it was deliberately riffing on 50s retro-futurism. New Vegas was able to have far more of that in terms of design, architecture, commercial illustration, etc(Googie everywhere), along with a particular vibe of black humor.

Hopefully Bethesda can do some mid-course correction and mix in a bit more of that vibe with the new outing.

http://www.bethblog.com/2015/07/04/happy-4th-of-july-from-bethesda-game-studios/

Kinda weird alt-history panel. They do know that the Fallout-version of the US was far more blatantly militaristic(if not full-on fascist) that invaded & annexed all of Canada, right? Why would you wanna mix that with real world 4th of July stuff, unless even the official blog is doing some ARG thing due to minutemen being in the actual game?

http://cdnstatic.bethsoft.com/bethblog/2015/06/CHjmZbcXAAAVWvi.png

fallout shelter for android is trying to get me to log in via google play games which is trying to get me to open a public google+ account eat a diiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiick

Odd

http://www.dealzon.com/deals/fallout-4#fallout-4

pre-order deal from GMG at like 23% off, which is tempting, but after the last year plus of big AAA releases being jank-as-fuck on day 0, I ain't pre-ordering shit.

Plus I'll probably upgrade video cards later this year and most likely there'll be a coupon inside.

http://news.yahoo.com/buy-fallout-4s-nuka-cola-210240373.html

God help me but I will purchase some Nuka Cola Quantum, and I _never_ buy tie-in merch.

https://bethesda.net/data/images/event/31/fallout4_grognak_full.jpg

More Grognak comix!

https://twitter.com/BethesdaStudios/status/645985936006889472

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CPcAVZ2WUAAKK8U.jpg:large

Eff it. Bit the bullet and used Amazon cred accrued from all those hotel rewards to pre-order the game.

That being said, Bethesda posted some interesting audio bits:

https://bethesda.net/#en/events/game/bringing-voice-to-fallout-4/2015/11/03/43

Interview with the protagonist's two voice-actors.

also, dig this:

https://bethesda.net/#en/events/game/facing-the-music-in-fallout-4/2015/11/02/42

They hired Lynda Carter as a voice and to perform some of the songs on the radio.

The sample song they include is ok, but waaaaayyy too hi-fi for my tastes. I'll wait for some modder to dirty up the track a bit.

did anyone read this?

http://kotaku.com/the-relentless-champions-of-classic-fallout-1715984448

Maybe you’re rolling your eyes at what seems like a bunch of grizzled men and women writing corrosive forum poetry about how PC gaming is ruined forever. But here’s the thing. No Mutants Allowed aren’t wrong. Fallout 3 is a massive departure from what that series meant in the mid-’90s. The NMA users’ cynicism may be loud, but you have to remember, this is about ownership. It’s a battle as old as time. The hardcores. The casuals. The blood runs deep. These people love Fallout, and they saw Fallout become something else. Yeah it’s just a video game, but that helplessness is profound.

It's really poorly written, and seems an exercise in proving how gaming as a culture creates spoiled manbabies with no sense of perspective.

the bland freelance prose of that article is a lot worse than any of the 100%-otm opinions expressed in it by bitter nerds

i preordered this too

The first comment is about how clunky the gameplay of Fallout/Fallout 2 is... which is true!

The cult Fallout people on the web are right to praise the characterization and setting of the originals, but even with a bunch of third-party community patches and hacks to get it running the way it "should" run, it's a pretty glitchy game. The new games are a much different thing and feel like a different franchise that's inspired by the previous one, but that's the world we have. Not that many people want to play something that reminds you that life is nasty, brutish, and short, and if they do, they want to be able to respawn a moment later.

really, they should look into playing that weird eastern european Stalker-ripoff mmo that cankles documented on ilx a long time back

or they can play wasteland 2 which is basically the faithful sequel to the original isometric games.

those original 2 games were amazing but anyone who hates f3 bc it isn't another isometric RPG is an idiot. f3 is fantastic.

i don't think anyone says that (or few admit it), it's often because they had the "easy" mode/scaling/grinding of Bethesda games.
i greatly enjoyed FO3 but I totally understand people who don't like their design philosophies

it's not like activision took the franchise and made it into a call of duty game. f3 somewhat resembles the elder scrolls series but that series is fantastic and up there w/ the original fallouts as an RPG franchise standout

like maybe i'm being unfair but i got the impression that fanatics at the time didn't really get the value added that bethesda was bringing to the table maybe bc like morrowwind/daggerfall/arena were overshadowed by the massive success of oblivion?

people who get angry that their franchise doesn't lockstep follow their ridiculous demands for PURITY who ignore the dozens of games sent to market that are made explicitly with them in mind: what's on their steam playlist

I've no doubt preferring FO1/2 over 3 is a valid position, though its one I don't hold. It's more the entitled "Why didn't you make exactly the game I wanted to my specifications" crew I find so alienating.

f3 was a lot more like oblivion than it was like morrowind

but even with a bunch of third-party community patches and hacks to get it running the way it "should" run, it's a pretty glitchy game.

so is f3! i mean, all my post-daggerfall bethesda games are unrecognizably modded compared to f1/f2.

f3 wasn't weird like morrowind but it was more like morrowind than conventional horses-and-swords fantasy setting oblivion.

anyone who hates f3 bc it isn't another isometric RPG is an idiot.

Why didn't you make exactly the game I wanted to my specifications

people who get angry that their franchise doesn't lockstep follow their ridiculous demands for PURITY

look i'm sure there are strawman-incarnate nerds if there are strawman-incarnate anything, but still.

on the other hand

who ignore the dozens of games sent to market that are made explicitly with them in mind

article def minimized kickstarter-era stuff like pillars of eternity, which has made these guys gods again like they're call of duty kids.

like when fallout 3 came out and everyone enthused like it was the greatest act of immersion in history and the different kind of promise of the late 90s seemed to be dormant it was more forgivable to be upset than it is now that entire studios are like IS THIS ENOUGH LIKE THE LATE 90S FOR YOU SIR ARE YOU SURE

(i also preordered white march pt 2)

everyone enthused like it was the greatest act of immersion in history now who is strawmanning? :p

haha

i mean i said some things myself about the sun coming up over the broken spines of freeways

"immersion" is dumb. i've never felt truly "immersed" in a video game. what would that even mean? that you forget that you're a human being holding a controller? ppl are dumb. gamers are dumb.

no of course you don't forget, you glimpse an experience of being elsewhere.

anyway nhex is right, aside from complaints i don't even want to hear myself make about super mutants and the brotherhood of steel, it's this--

it's often because they had the "easy" mode/scaling/grinding of Bethesda games.

--which is a post-morrowind philosophy, understandable maybe in reaction to a game where you moved at a crawl and actually hit harmless-looking grubs nine out of ten of the times you clicked on them. understandable for n00bs.

not just a hardman thing because in a video game the difficulty of things (not just of game as whole but comparatively, of areas, or of different things you try) is a huge part of yr like sensual experience of the place.

("immersion".)

imo immersion is when the rules of a game world are something you can begin to predict not because you're thinking about the decisions the game designers make, but because the world itself is so cohesive that you make "in-world" decisions not knowing a rule but they work out. low-level immersion can be something like "I can jump up there, because i know i am good enough at jumping" vs "I can jump up there because the level designer made that for me to jump up." higher level immersion can be "I am going to kill that guy because Caesar hates him and he'll probably grant me favour" vs "I'm going to kill that guy to add ponits to my Caesar Likes Me score"