Fallout 4

[Owain Taggart]

Yeah, it's also why New Vegas (the city itself) is disappointingly small, which is kind of a drawback when Vegas itself is hyped up with glitz and glamour. In that respect, I like D.C in FO3 much more in terms of layout as it made better use of size and limitation. You never tend to notice how big or small it is.

 

[Reverend]

Issues like Megaton being too small, I just chalk up to lack of technology/time. Cities in RPGs are never as big as they should be, because nobody actually wants to spend an hour walking from one end to the other. Even a town of a few thousand people can easily require an hour or more to walk end to end.

It's not just the size or the town itself, as I said it's the immediate environment as well. There's just no way that area has been inhabited continuously for 200 years. There's no crops, so how do they feed themselves? They can't be scavenging old world food because like I said, there's a super-market within walking distance that still have food on the shelves.
They can't be trading with other settlements since none of the others in the wasteland produce food either.

200 years is 200 winters. What are they using for fuel to keep themselves warm? The bomb? They'd all be dead, sterile or ghouls within a year if it was irradiating the town that badly.

It's pretty clear from the way the game was designed that they were much more interesting in the idea of a world that is only a generation or so since the bombs fell.

If that was the case then fine, why not do that? It's not like there's a fundamental plot reason why the game can't take place before FO1 & 2. The plots are barely connected. The only things they'd have to tweak is the explanation for the Enclave & Brotherhood presences and that shouldn't be too hard.

 

[SPCTRE]

It's pretty clear from the way the game was designed that they were much more interesting in the idea of a world that is only a generation or so since the bombs fell.

If that was the case then fine, why not do that? It's not like there's a fundamental plot reason why the game can't take place before FO1 & 2. The plots are barely connected. The only things they'd have to tweak is the explanation for the Enclave & Brotherhood presences and that shouldn't be too hard.

You know, that is a very good point.

 

[Reverend]

Yeah, all you'd have to say is that the Enclave in DC is the same one we saw in FO2, only before they retreated out west. Indeed, it makes more sense in a way given that you'd expect the remnants of the US government to take refuge fairly close to the capital during the war. Also that the AI stand-in President Eden would be replaced in FO2 with a flesh and blood leader. Maybe starting with the actual pre-war president kept in cryo.
No idea if the lore prevents that, honestly it's been ages since I completed FO2 and I forget a lot of the details about the Enclave.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

I do agree with that. You'd think that, centuries after a nuclear war, things would be a bit more organized.

It's not as if you can rebuild civilization overnight, but for instance, people would still have access to things like bleach. Chlorine bleach is pretty easy to make, and presumably people wouldn't want to live in filth so they would clean things up.

I was just playing FO3 last night and, despite Megaton supposedly being a well-developed city, everything is filthy. They have some access to electricity, they have medical supplies, food, maybe not great water. It appears to be a more or less self-sustaining colony. But everything is totally filthy. Why?

Not to mention, most of the structures represent insane safety hazards. In the span of a couple centuries, nobody came across any books about architectural and mechanical engineering and tried to make the place less of an obvious deathtrap?

I agree that, based on the tech level displayed in FO3 and Megaton in particular, it's as if the war's only been over for a generation or so, rather than a couple centuries.

 

[Reverend]

^I know, right? It's not just the building interiors either, it seems so silly to see so many people wandering around in filthy 200 year old dresses, suits and jumpers for goodness sake! If they've been left unused until recently then they should have rotted generations ago and if they've been in use since the war then by rights they should be made entirely our of patches by this point.

Now I can see people trying to re-create old world style clothes, but the idea that there are wearable clothing still knocking around? Yeah, I don't think so somehow.

 

[fireproof78]

It definitely is a video game world in that real world consequences of these choices seem to have no bearing in this world. Two hundred years is a long time to live in the same state for so long.

It seems that infrastructure was never really rebuilt, so power and communications are still archaic and limited. New Vegas kind of showed a little bit nicer standard of living, and that was partially due to power being more reliable (The Hoover Dam).

I really wish someone would explore the full implications of the results of the Fallout world.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

I can see how making new clothes would actually be really hard, given the profound shortage of plant life in the Wasteland. (Of course, that just makes me wonder how anyone is surviving at all.)

 

[Owain Taggart]

I was just playing FO3 last night and, despite Megaton supposedly being a well-developed city, everything is filthy. They have some access to electricity, they have medical supplies, food, maybe not great water. It appears to be a more or less self-sustaining colony. But everything is totally filthy. Why?

And they have tons of robots, yet none of them that could actually, I don't know, clean? Put those robots to use!! With all the talk of the Radiant AI in Skyrim, I think it'd help at the very least for some of these NPCs to have them do tasks, like cleaning, instead of just having them stand around. That's something that the Fallout franchise has yet to have, and I'm curious to see the improvements they have up their sleeves.

One of the weapons they should create is a vacuum. Point it at an enemy and tell'em they can suck it. Another advantage would be being able to pick up anything laying around, trash or otherwise, more efficiently.

 

[Evil Twin]

^I'm not sure why they didn't carry over/expand FO3's junk weapons to New Vegas. Those were always fun to build and gave a use to some of the more useless junk (toy cars, motorcycle handbrakes, etc.) They reintroduced the Shishkebob in Honest Hearts, but there was no way to build it from scratch.

Speaking of trash, there's one place in NV I always feel COMPELLED to clean up whenever I see it. The office suite with all the junkies in the Aerotech Office Park has a gajillion tin cans lying around on the floor, and I always gotta pick them all up and dump them in one of the trashcans. I've also in the past picked up every single object in the Sierra Madre and deposited the useless items in a trashcan by the fountain as well.

 

[fireproof78]

^I'm not sure why they didn't carry over/expand FO3's junk weapons to New Vegas. Those were always fun to build and gave a use to some of the more useless junk (toy cars, motorcycle handbrakes, etc.) They reintroduced the Shishkebob in Honest Hearts, but there was no way to build it from scratch.

Speaking of trash, there's one place in NV I always feel COMPELLED to clean up whenever I see it. The office suite with all the junkies in the Aerotech Office Park has a gajillion tin cans lying around on the floor, and I always gotta pick them all up and dump them in one of the trashcans. I've also in the past picked up every single object in the Sierra Madre and deposited the useless items in a trashcan by the fountain as well.

That must look nice

 

[SPCTRE]

I swear to God, if anyone as much as looks at this dog the wrong way, I will fucking cut them.

 

[Evil Twin]

So here's the complete perk chart. Seriously Bethesda, could your perks be any more boring? It's Skyrim's lame rank/percentage bullshit all over again.

http://imgur.com/a/5dwdx
http://imgur.com/a/RfFF4
http://imgur.com/a/vk1VA
http://imgur.com/a/XFDt9
http://imgur.com/a/oRH7y
http://imgur.com/a/ZPYwc
http://imgur.com/a/hbJ5S

At least they're not repeating Skyrim's lockpicking nonsense where you can pick a master lock with zero points in the (completely useless) lockpicking tree.

 

[fireproof78]

So here's the complete perk chart. Seriously Bethesda, could your perks be any more boring? It's Skyrim's lame rank/percentage bullshit all over again.

http://imgur.com/a/5dwdx
http://imgur.com/a/RfFF4
http://imgur.com/a/vk1VA
http://imgur.com/a/XFDt9
http://imgur.com/a/oRH7y
http://imgur.com/a/ZPYwc
http://imgur.com/a/hbJ5S

At least they're not repeating Skyrim's lockpicking nonsense where you can pick a master lock with zero points in the (completely useless) lockpicking tree.

I must miss things all the time, because I see nothing terribly different from NV's perks (and I'm currently playing it) that make me terribly offended.

There are several perks that I would take now in NV, so I think I'll be good to go.

 

[martok2112]

I swear to God, if anyone as much as looks at this dog the wrong way, I will fucking cut them.

Yeah, I'm pretty protective about my virtual dog pals in video games too.

In MGS5, I usually stick with non-lethal weapons...but the first time I hear DD yelp, the gloves come off, and all bets are off!

Just a few more days....

 

[Servo]

So here's the complete perk chart. Seriously Bethesda, could your perks be any more boring? It's Skyrim's lame rank/percentage bullshit all over again.

http://imgur.com/a/5dwdx
http://imgur.com/a/RfFF4
http://imgur.com/a/vk1VA
http://imgur.com/a/XFDt9
http://imgur.com/a/oRH7y
http://imgur.com/a/ZPYwc
http://imgur.com/a/hbJ5S

At least they're not repeating Skyrim's lockpicking nonsense where you can pick a master lock with zero points in the (completely useless) lockpicking tree.

Seems like pretty standard Fallout fare to me. Most of those perks are in F3 & FNV. Not seeing the problem.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

So FO4 is being considered a flop before it's even out, huh?

It'll probably be a good game once there's a GOTY edition and some decent mods.

 

[fireproof78]

Really, the new release is just Open Beta. That you have to pay for...or something.

In other news, Jones Soda is partnering with Target and Bethesda to release a Nuka cola Quantum. That's pretty cool.

 

[SPCTRE]

Easy.

 

[martok2112]

One day and a wake up, babaaayyyyy!!!!!