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Kalos posted:Perhaps. On the other hand, updates on Arroyo are given to you in visions from your village's psychic drug-abusing shaman. 3Romeo posted:but walking down the National Mall with Lincoln's Repeater, dressed in pre-war attire, en route to scavenge the loving Declaration of Independence for a dude named Abraham Washington, while President Eden talks about baseball and dogs in between songs like Yankee Doodle Dandy and the Marine Corps Hymn? All that, it loving owns. Nothing silly in that right? What about the village of all children? That's lead by that kid who swears all time? Or the kid who can't pronounce and 'l' yet, so he'll give you a rad unique laser rifle called wazer wifle? Or that you can bypass the entry quest by calling the head of the town a butthead? Or the 'town' (with like eight people) which was regularly 'fought over' by a 'super' villain and 'super' hero? (PS FO1 had psykers and psychic powers. And it's updates were given to you by the pipboy, though that doesn't explain gettting a nice little video of the vault when it happens)) And Fallout 2 does silly poo poo as well, most noticeably San Fran and New Reno. But atleast their silly bullshit are well developed areas, loaded with quests and poo poo to do stuff in.
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Jan 24, 2013 18:35
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Yeah, and New Vegas has loving Johnny Fiveaces in it. Fallout as a whole does silly a lot, and at worst Fallout 3 was the wrong kind of silly.
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Jan 24, 2013 18:40
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Most settlements have less people than you'd think, because Gamebryo is the worst game engine in the world. See also Freeside and the Strip in New Vegas. And the Mechanist and Antagonist are silly, but sillier than the Elvis impersonators and the Roman cosplayers? Or the unicycle robots with policeman TV screen faces, or the president arriving to give a speech in a vertibird called Bear Force One? Or every single thing that happens in Old World Blues?
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Jan 24, 2013 19:03
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Vincent Van Goatse posted:Yeah, and New Vegas has loving Johnny Fiveaces in it. Fallout as a whole does silly a lot, and at worst Fallout 3 was the wrong kind of silly. Johnny Five-Aces isn't in the game entirely. He only shows up in Wild Wasteland. So an easter egg in "add more silly pop culture references mode" isn't exactly a valid criticism. Gamebyro issues aside, everyone was named. Which implies that's everything. The non-named NPCs atleast give the feel you've got more generic fucksticks about. And yes. Little Lamplight is sillier than the Kings. I mean, Fallout has never been super serious, and always somewhat silly, but it's always been cohesive in that. The jokes fit it and the lore around it. Nothing is just out there to be whackily random (other than special encounters maybe, if you think those matter so much). Okay, so OWB is silly. It's as serious as Lonesome Road or Dead Money or Honest Hearts next to Mothership Zeta.
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Jan 24, 2013 20:21
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Calax posted:(I'm convinced Beth doesn't quite understand the concept that your main story should lead you to slowly explore the world, and instead has it send you to the ENDS OF THE EARTH to complete a simple set of tasks) With all of their recent games repeating the same trend, I have the feeling Bethesda knows exactly what they're doing. Part of the reason why I felt like I was doing more exploring in FO3 than FONV was that, since so much of the map in the latter game was uncovered through natural progression of the main storyline (yeah, I could have gone north from the start instead of looping around, but that's clearly not the recommended path), I didn't get the feeling that I was anywhere that wasn't supposed to be part of the path I was meant to take. At least, not nearly as much. By making the 'main' story (which I typically don't care for to begin with) encompass such a relatively little space in their games, everything else you find feels more as though you've stumbled upon it, rather than something you're supposed to find. e: Also, in terms of silliness, I found the relentless Monty Python 'references' more obnoxious than anything in the newer games. Lamplight (which I did not hate as much as people apparently do, man) was just playing on stereotypes of kids (a society of brats should be insufferable to deal with), whereas the bridge and the knights just made me groan outright. fancy stats fucked around with this message at 20:41 on Jan 24, 2013 |
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Jan 24, 2013 20:35
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I prefer not to discuss Little Lamplight, because it always makes me think "where are they getting new kids from?" and then I remember that they get exiled at 16, well after puberty starts, and then I have to go and be sick.
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Jan 24, 2013 21:20
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SpookyLizard posted:Okay, so OWB is silly. It's as serious as Lonesome Road or Dead Money or Honest Hearts next to Mothership Zeta. You can't honestly think that "The Courier gets his brain scooped out by robo-brain mad scientists but it's ok because Benny shooting them in the head gave it telepathy with the COILS OF NIKOLA TESLA also your brain got flushed somewhere here's a barking gun with a dog brain in it, an evil toaster and a mini-securitron that loves mugs, go fight those ROBO-SCORPIONS!" is more ~serious~ than alien abduction. Come on now.
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Jan 24, 2013 21:28
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Byzantine posted:You can't honestly think that "The Courier gets his brain scooped out by robo-brain mad scientists but it's ok because Benny shooting them in the head gave it telepathy with the COILS OF NIKOLA TESLA also your brain got flushed somewhere here's a barking gun with a dog brain in it, an evil toaster and a mini-securitron that loves mugs, go fight those ROBO-SCORPIONS!" is more ~serious~ than alien abduction. You can't honestly think [list of stupid stuff from MZ, some overstated so much it's factually incorrect] is more ~serious~ than the perils of science without conscience
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Jan 24, 2013 21:33
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HitTheTargets posted:Technically you can, you just have to level that criticism at Fallout 2 as well. I know, because there are NMA 'fans' who refuse to acknowledge FO2 as canon. So basically NMA only likes the first game and the elaborate fantasy that they've built up around Van Buren? Either way, what I'm getting at is that New Vegas (OWB aside) is a more sober setting than almost all the preceding Fallout games and acting like Fallout 3 is unique in its light-hearted elements is idiotic. edit: changed "much more" to "more" after remembering Lily exists. Acute Grill fucked around with this message at 22:03 on Jan 24, 2013 |
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Jan 24, 2013 21:55
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I would pay a certain amount of money to see the recording studio videos of the guy voicing Lily. "GGRANDMA'S GOT A PRESENT FOR YOUUUU!" He must have been having a hard time not cracking up.
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Jan 24, 2013 22:02
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I don't really remember Mothership Zeta being particularly not-serious. I remember it being dumb, awful, linear, terrible, boring, annoying and awful, but I don't really remember it actually being wacky or anything.
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Jan 24, 2013 22:04
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Byzantine posted:You can't honestly think that "The Courier gets his brain scooped out by robo-brain mad scientists but it's ok because Benny shooting them in the head gave it telepathy with the COILS OF NIKOLA TESLA also your brain got flushed somewhere here's a barking gun with a dog brain in it, an evil toaster and a mini-securitron that loves mugs, go fight those ROBO-SCORPIONS!" is more ~serious~ than alien abduction. This sounds silly as hell, but the crazier stuff in New Vegas was much better deployed than the stuff in Fallout 3. For example, the barking gun with a dog brain in it is part of the Wizard of Oz shtick the whole DLC has. In Fallout 3, though, a lot of stuff (crazy or serious) is simply just there. vvv I was just about to expand on this when I saw your post! For example, an entire army of Roman cosplayers is pretty silly, especially when put front-and-centre as the main antagonists of the game. But the Legion also ties into lots of cool stuff about the clash of civilisations, pre-War/post-War paradigms, technology and culture, and motifs about dictators and empires and barbarians and the literal/figurative/proverbial Rubicon and stuff. It's also useful to have some out-and-out bad guys running around, as well as a faction full of melee/low-tech grunts to kill, alongside rifle-toting NCR troopers and super-tough Securitrons/BoS mooks. What is the Dunwich Building in FO3 for? Why is it there? Because someone at Bethesda wanted to do a Lovecraft reference? Who knows? It's just a "cool" thing that exists to be "cool" at players. Lt. Danger fucked around with this message at 22:21 on Jan 24, 2013 |
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Jan 24, 2013 22:09
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Edit: /\/\/\/\ yeah, that. In my opinion FO3 was scarcely any more or less frivolous in tone than New Vegas (which is the other one that I've played, I haven't done the classics) and when I first played the latter I actually felt that the Legion was actually more silly than anything Bethesda came up with. I think FO3's problem is that it has a terrible lack of continuity in its tone; its set pieces range from grim and dark to bizarre and cultural and they don't do much to even it out.
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Jan 24, 2013 22:11
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Byzantine posted:You can't honestly think that "The Courier gets his brain scooped out by robo-brain mad scientists but it's ok because Benny shooting them in the head gave it telepathy with the COILS OF NIKOLA TESLA also your brain got flushed somewhere here's a barking gun with a dog brain in it, an evil toaster and a mini-securitron that loves mugs, go fight those ROBO-SCORPIONS!" is more ~serious~ than alien abduction. When you put it that way, of course not. Of course OWB is a wonderful parody of old B science fiction movies. Whereas Motherhsip Zeta is just ALIENS! IN SPACE! WHACKY! <Boring, linear corridor shooter> As other people have posted, the biggest thing is New Vegas whacky jokey stuck is cohesive, and fits together. You don't run across random bullshit in the wastes, and a certain amount of the stuff is disabled if you don't take Wild Wasteland.
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Jan 24, 2013 22:54
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SpookyLizard posted:When you put it that way, of course not. Of course OWB is a wonderful parody of old B science fiction movies. Whereas Motherhsip Zeta is just ALIENS! IN SPACE! WHACKY! <Boring, linear corridor shooter> I know it's bad for minmaxing, but I literally am incapable of doing a run without Wild Wasteland. It just doesn't feel right.
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Jan 24, 2013 23:12
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laplace posted:I know it's bad for minmaxing, but I literally am incapable of doing a run without Wild Wasteland. It just doesn't feel right. They should have made it a gamestart choice that wasn't a trait (or made it not count as a trait). I've always used, if only for Johnny Five Aces. Alien blater too, but sometimes it's nice to get YCS/186.
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Jan 24, 2013 23:32
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The Wild Wasteland stuff is so one-off I can't imagine taking it more than once. Like, is the Indiana Jones fridge still hilarious enough to give up one of the good traits multiple playthroughs in a row? Survey says nooooo
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Jan 24, 2013 23:43
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Wolfsheim posted:The Wild Wasteland stuff is so one-off I can't imagine taking it more than once. Like, is the Indiana Jones fridge still hilarious enough to give up one of the good traits multiple playthroughs in a row? Survey says nooooo But hearing the NCR say "game over man game over" and little things like that are kind of cool.
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Jan 24, 2013 23:50
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Wolfsheim posted:The Wild Wasteland stuff is so one-off I can't imagine taking it more than once. Like, is the Indiana Jones fridge still hilarious enough to give up one of the good traits multiple playthroughs in a row? Survey says nooooo There aren't that many traits that stand out to me to begin with so it never really bothers me.
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Jan 25, 2013 00:02
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Kalos posted:So basically NMA only likes the first game and the elaborate fantasy that they've built up around Van Buren? I'd say Fallout 1 is more serious than New Vegas, that ending was really downbeat and the only particularly wacky nonsense I can remember was Godzilla's footprint out there somewhere.
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Jan 25, 2013 00:09
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khwarezm posted:I'd say Fallout 1 is more serious than New Vegas, that ending was really downbeat and the only particularly wacky nonsense I can remember was Godzilla's footprint out there somewhere. Generally though, anything that was blatantly silly or at odds with the vibe of the setting was relegated to one-off random encounters out in the wasteland, so it was possible to go through FO1 without having too many jarring "oh, that's a reference to X" moments, and few if any whose sheer wackiness could be immersion-breaking. I'd agree that FO1 was the darkest game in the series though.
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Jan 25, 2013 00:30
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MMAgCh posted:And the TARDIS. And the crashed UFO featuring dead extraterrestrials bearing a Velvet Elvis. And some other, minor pop culture references (South Park, Soylent Green, WarGames). The most mainline reference in Fallout were the Mad Max ones. But I don't count a lot of the encounters, because the whacky ones are all "special" encounters and jokes. Also I think the velvet one is a actually a portrait of Tim Cain or someone else at BIS.
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Jan 25, 2013 01:25
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They might be random encounters but if you see them they still happen; you still get dialogue/xp/loot from them. It's not like the Tardis disappears and you get a popup saying "you wake up... that was a weird dream". You can also skip Canterbury Commons if you don't like it. And Mothership Zeta is extra content which isn't even in the vanilla game, making it less "canon" than any Fallout 1 encounter.
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Jan 25, 2013 01:37
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2house2fly posted:They might be random encounters but if you see them they still happen; you still get dialogue/xp/loot from them. It's not like the Tardis disappears and you get a popup saying "you wake up... that was a weird dream". You can also skip Canterbury Commons if you don't like it. And Mothership Zeta is extra content which isn't even in the vanilla game, making it less "canon" than any Fallout 1 encounter. That's some dumb loving logic right there. Because both A) the DLC can still happen, so you'll still experience it for loot, exp, and dialog (not there is much of that worthwhile in MZ) And B) MZ was supposed to be a serious thing and not an out and out joke. I honestly don't understand how you can put a couple of one off p, very obvious jokes on the same level with a full on expansion pack.
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Jan 25, 2013 01:48
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Byzantine posted:You can't honestly think that "The Courier gets his brain scooped out by robo-brain mad scientists but it's ok because Benny shooting them in the head gave it telepathy with the COILS OF NIKOLA TESLA also your brain got flushed somewhere here's a barking gun with a dog brain in it, an evil toaster and a mini-securitron that loves mugs, go fight those ROBO-SCORPIONS!" is more ~serious~ than alien abduction. Strictly speaking, telepathy wasn't involved and getting shot in the head didn't give the Courier special powers. The procedure was to lobotomize people and then replace their brains with a receiver that could receive and distribute signals on the brain's behalf. Presumably, this was so people could become brain robots like the Think Tank after their natural body 'died'. They never perfected this procedure - the coils could replicate the brain but they could never successfully lobotomize someone without making them brain dead anyway. When the Courier turned up the the medical machine thing, before it could attempt to lobotomize him it had to repair the damage done by the bullet and in doing so also, somehow, corrected the pre-programmed procedure that left everyone else brain dead. Nothing mystical here, just lovely medical science and sheer luck. I had to clarify this though because I wouldn't want anyone actually thinking what happened wasn't explained.
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Jan 25, 2013 01:58
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There are other things that are left deliberately vague sometimes, though. Like how the Sierra Madre Casino moves people from room to room--giant robot hands from the ceiling? Teleportation? Nobody knows!
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Jan 25, 2013 02:10
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Speedball posted:There are other things that are left deliberately vague sometimes, though. Like how the Sierra Madre Casino moves people from room to room--giant robot hands from the ceiling? Teleportation? Nobody knows!
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Jan 25, 2013 02:15
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Utgardaloki posted:The procedure was to lobotomize people and then replace their brains with a receiver that could receive and distribute signals on the brain's behalf. Presumably, this was so people could become brain robots like the Think Tank after their natural body 'died'. Yet the Think Tank talks about how rogue brains occasionally get into Robobrain chassis and "go on a tear" like it at least wasn't an exceptional event. Kinda hard to do that if they're dead. i don't know what to believe anymore
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Jan 25, 2013 02:43
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Utgardaloki posted:Nothing mystical here, just lovely medical science and sheer luck. I had to clarify this though because I wouldn't want anyone actually thinking what happened wasn't explained. Was that explained in computer entries or dialogue? I got the impression that the point was to lobotomize people to serve as laborers, and the bullet damage caused the program to bug out somehow and your brain to remain in contact with your body...somehow. And then despite your brain controlling your body to retrieve it, you have to argue with your brain to do what it's been ordering you to do all this time. I enjoyed it, I'm not saying I didn't. I just don't get why OWB, talking deathclaws, getting updates via tribal magic, and whatever the hell else are fine but Zeta/the rest of Fallout 3 is SO HORRID on principle.
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Jan 25, 2013 02:53
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My games about green mutants, radioactive zombies, fusion-powered cars, rayguns, fart-based drugs and giant bipedal lizards are just too silly because  
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Jan 25, 2013 02:59
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SplitSoul posted:My games about green mutants, radioactive zombies, fusion-powered cars, rayguns, fart-based drugs and giant bipedal lizards are just too silly because Yeah, this is a silly argument...about how silly things are! It's so meta it blows my mind!
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Jan 25, 2013 03:27
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Please read this it's on the same page and I'm sure you did but prodding the same question over and over won't get you a different answer because this is pretty much it:Lt. Danger posted:This sounds silly as hell, but the crazier stuff in New Vegas was much better deployed than the stuff in Fallout 3. For example, the barking gun with a dog brain in it is part of the Wizard of Oz shtick the whole DLC has. In Fallout 3, though, a lot of stuff (crazy or serious) is simply just there. Fallout 3 is just horrendously written. I am playing it right now (in the New Vegas engine!) and it is truly kind of blowing my mind every time I run into speech checks because they are such shoehorned, lame and awful things that either accomplish a gameplay objective or do almost nothing while adding none of the fun writing that New Vegas has. While I really enjoy the environments and theme park shoot 'em up fest that I've turned it into, just on the terms of being a role-playing game or creating a "believable" world it is vastly inferior to New Vegas. Which is fine, since it allowed for NV to be made in the first place. edit: I think I should start taking screenshots of all the speech checks in FO3 because seriously almost every single one of them is facepalm inducing from the reference of New Vegas. Especially the stuff with President Eden. Also, the Think Tank directly explains the whole brain thing to you if you ask them. I don't think it's hidden behind any speech checks either, just dialogue. edit 2: Something that just hit me that's actually some minor clever aspect of New Vegas's story: Fallout 3 has a very specific time frame for your character and the events happening: your character is always 19 years old (despite possible customization to look ancient), and everything happening put into the time-frame of assuming that it takes under a year to complete the primary story. Which leads to some absurdities if the game time goes past a year, though the likelihood of happening is pretty small. In comparison, New Vegas has no specific time-frame on ANYTHING that your player is a part of- you could potentially take five years to finish the story and it would still "make sense" on a base level. The occupation of the Mojave Desert and the Legion presence is a standstill that has lasted for an extremely long time with no signs of showing that it's coming to a conclusion without the direct intervention of the Courier. Fereydun fucked around with this message at 03:46 on Jan 25, 2013 |
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Jan 25, 2013 03:33
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I get your point. I guess the fun of exploration, never knowing what the hell you'll stumble on next was more important to me than coherency. Ah well, both games are great. 
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Jan 25, 2013 03:43
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Honest Hearts is...really short. It doesn't feel like I spent more than 3 hours in Zion but I did all the quests & completed the story. It was very good, but I would've liked to see more story vs. just making me wander from landmark to landmark. Then again I'm coming to it at endgame at level 42 so I was in absolutely no danger even with the initial weight restriction limiting my initial equipment, so that probably played a part in how quickly I got through it.
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Jan 25, 2013 04:18
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oldskool posted:Honest Hearts is...really short. It doesn't feel like I spent more than 3 hours in Zion but I did all the quests & completed the story. It was very good, but I would've liked to see more story vs. just making me wander from landmark to landmark. Then again I'm coming to it at endgame at level 42 so I was in absolutely no danger even with the initial weight restriction limiting my initial equipment, so that probably played a part in how quickly I got through it. Relative to the rest of the story DLCs, Honest Hearts just had the smallest budget. Which is a shame because the area looks so neat to explore. Byzantine posted:I get your point. I guess the fun of exploration, never knowing what the hell you'll stumble on next was more important to me than coherency. Good game, not a good fallout game. I've met characters with absolutely no significance in new vegas who have more character than...most characters in fallout 3.
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Jan 25, 2013 04:37
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oldskool posted:Honest Hearts is...really short. It doesn't feel like I spent more than 3 hours in Zion but I did all the quests & completed the story. It was very good, but I would've liked to see more story vs. just making me wander from landmark to landmark. Then again I'm coming to it at endgame at level 42 so I was in absolutely no danger even with the initial weight restriction limiting my initial equipment, so that probably played a part in how quickly I got through it. Hard/Very Hard at level 10 makes it, I feel, the difficulty it was meant to be. It was actually a toss up difficulty wise, not just morally, whether I should wipe out the White Legs. If you look around you can follow the story of the Father in the Cave which makes it exponentially more interesting, something I was guilty of missing first time.
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Jan 25, 2013 04:38
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Fereydun posted:
Re Honest Hearts: it's short compared to the other New Vegas DLCs, but it's bigger than The Pitt or Operation Anchorage, maybe as big as both of them put together. I can't speak for the other Fallout 3 DLCs but those two are really surprisingly short.
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Jan 25, 2013 05:23
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HitTheTargets posted:Technically you can, you just have to level that criticism at Fallout 2 as well. I know, because there are NMA 'fans' who refuse to acknowledge FO2 as canon. Some of the dumber aspects of Fallout 2, like talking, intelligent animals, Chris Avellone refuses to awknowledge as canon-or at least has said that we should pretend they vanished pretty much as soon as Fallout 2 ended. Fallout 2 went too far with its pop culture references and sillier ideas, not because humor in games is bad, but because it was poorly thought out or too dependent on momentary pop culture fads rather than actual wit. Still, it didn't take itself that seriously. The problem with Fallout 3 is where it tried to be serious, it was incoherent and nonsensical.
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Jan 25, 2013 06:06
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Kalos posted:So basically NMA only likes the first game and the elaborate fantasy that they've built up around Van Buren? I agree. It really upsets me when people think badly towards FO2. I actually didn't realize it was less-liked than the original, simply because everyone I'd ever spoken to about it was head over heels with it (much like myself). Sure, it's silly. Sure, it has inconsistencies. But hey, it's charming as hell. I'm actually part of the camp that doesn't hate FO3. I put about 250 hours into it and enjoyed every bit of it. Sure, the writing isn't as good as New Vegas, but it's better than Tactics, it's better than Brotherhood of Steel, and it still feels like Fallout, even with all of the "guns solve everything" and "super serious all the time" problems. It is still a drat good game, specifically compared to a lot of other open-world games. And it's still fun to play. Then again, I don't believe in calling something bad just because it's sequel improves upon it. I don't think FO3 deserved game of the year when it got it, but it definitely served as a lesson for Bethesda on part of what the fans want from a Fallout game.
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Jan 25, 2013 06:23
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There's one system that's no longer in place that I wonder what it'd be like if they included it again. The first two Fallouts had a "mood" thing for the important people with facial portraits that you talked to. Piss 'em off, their neutral expression would darken, and so on. Sometimes it was a useful barometer of how the conversation was going.
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Jan 25, 2013 07:48
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