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randombattle posted:He makes a lot of points tied to a very flawed idea that if you aren't seeing everyone drink pee to stay hydrated then they have infinite water. Well, he's not wrong that the writing fails to emphasize that clean water is scarce, but he seems to assume that they tried to include that as a theme and failed, rather then realizing that Bethesda just doesn't DO themes, at all. They write video games, the main goal is to advance the plot and give the player things to do, not (necessarily) to have coherent themes or logical, fleshed-out worlds. If you doubt this or think I'm just insulting Bethesda, then just compare, lets say, Skyrim against New Vegas. In New Vegas, the major theme is 'Let go, begin again.' The problems of every major faction and villain boil down to not being able to let go of the past and try something new, being so fixed on avenging past slights or reliving former glories that they completely lose sight of the realities of the present. This is the central dilemma for every human companion. It's the explicit theme of the DLCs. It comes up A LOT. In contrast, what is the theme of Skyrim? 'gently caress dragons', or possibly 'gently caress elves?' Please enlighten me if there actually is one, but I'm drawing a blank here. They seem to be trying (keyword) to bring more complex writing to Fallout 4, but what I'm trying to emphasize here is that there is a huge difference between trying to do quality writing and failing, and not even setting your sights that high in the first place.
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Jun 26, 2015 07:30
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drkeiscool posted:Shamus's final post is up. The only part we should care about is in the comments! quote:P.S. In researching this post, I discovered that Emil Pagliarulo, the lead writer for Fallout 3, received the Best Writing award at the 2008 Game Developers Choice Awards. So, yeah. I still don’t retract my thoughts that he did a piss poor job keeping the writing staff on the same page. Just makes me weep for humanity a bit… So if you're one of those people that didn't like Fallout 3's story, I got some bad news.
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Jun 26, 2015 07:38
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Duckbag posted:Why do you read these forums when people disagree with you? I generally stay out of threads where I feel people in the majority disagree with me, for reasons of maintaining my sanity. This read is roughly 50/50 and I can appreciate different viewpoints even if I don't agree with them. If this Shamus has only written things that make you comment "holy poo poo this guy is bad and wrong", then it's probably better to just not read what he blogs about, is what I am saying.
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Jun 26, 2015 09:06
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I think exposure to differing points of view can be a good thing, provided one makes an effort to not respond to disagreement with anger and insults.
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Jun 26, 2015 09:17
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Also, watching people lose their poo poo over "what do they eat?" is hilarious.
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Jun 26, 2015 09:39
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Mordaedil posted:I generally stay out of threads where I feel people in the majority disagree with me, for reasons of maintaining my sanity. This read is roughly 50/50 and I can appreciate different viewpoints even if I don't agree with them. See, it actually doesn't bother me at all that I disagree with him. It gives me an excuse to argue and show off my sweet, sweet superiority complex. Really though, I read his posts mainly because I'm inclined to agree with him. Fallout 3 did have serious issues and is worthy of a well-considered reevaluation. That's not what he gave us by a long stretch, but it did get us thinking about some interesting things, like the lack of coherent themes in the game (it's got a clear sins of the past vs. brighter future thing going on, but that's about all I can parse), or the vague and sometimes contradictory motivations of many characters. He's also right on that the worldbuilding is lousy, but is utterly confused about why that might be. He thinks he knows what Fallout is "about," but he's so consistently off base I wonder if he even played the originals. He's also one of the most willfully obtuse vidya game writers I've ever seen. Take this: Shamus posted:But the Brotherhood of Steel conclude that not only is it imperative that we take control, but we must do so right now. They even activate their super-robot that still needs some kind of work before it’s properly ready to be used in battle. Then all the “good guys” assault the purifier so that… what? So the we can turn on the purifier instead of the Enclave? The answer, for the kids at home, is "yes." Yes that is what this particular battle (not the "war," the war started 30 years earlier, this is just another skirmish) is about. He got it in one. He understands what the game is about. He's just too pigheaded to put it together. Project Purity at this point has been established as the key to building a new Wasteland, and the Enclave thinks that by controlling it they can control DC (Eden says exactly this in one of his speeches). Evidently, the Brotherhood agrees with them. The Brotherhood cannot afford to see the Enclave take control of DC, so they attack it before the Enclave can get established at the Purifier and use the promise of access (or lack of access) to clean drinking water to drive a wedge between the Wastelanders and the BoS and from there rebuild fascist America in their image. It's all pretty straightforward really. We support the BoS not because of what they're trying to get, but what they intend to do with it. Shamus is the guy watching Raiders of the Lost Ark and thinking: what's the big deal they're both trying to get the Ark? How do I even know who the good guys are?
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Jun 26, 2015 10:16
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Fallout deserved better, YOU deserved better.
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Jun 26, 2015 11:02
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its possible to enjoy fallout 3 while still acknowledging that the plot has a bunch of holes in it and is generally just sort of thrown together yall
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Jun 26, 2015 11:16
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Random rear end in a top hat posted:Well, he's not wrong that the writing fails to emphasize that clean water is scarce, but he seems to assume that they tried to include that as a theme and failed, rather then realizing that Bethesda just doesn't DO themes, at all. They write video games, the main goal is to advance the plot and give the player things to do, not (necessarily) to have coherent themes or logical, fleshed-out worlds. "Clean water is scarce" is not a theme. It should be base level world-building for a game in which the main quest is "make clean water not scarce". Themes are not complex, high-level writing. Themes are basic poo poo.
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Jun 26, 2015 11:21
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Fallout deserved better writing, but it's a tad hyperbolic to say gamers deserve better.Duckbag posted:See, it actually doesn't bother me at all that I disagree with him. It gives me an excuse to argue and show off my sweet, sweet superiority complex. Hey, as long as you don't pop an aneurysm reading his article, it's all good. The post I quoted kinda read as though it was just a formality to go "gently caress this guy". At least this can lead to a discussion.
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Jun 26, 2015 11:21
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I haven't got very far into Skyrim yet (bought it in the last sale, not left Whiterun) but as far as I can tell the theme is either "friends becoming enemies" (Nord on the cart mourns the time he saw Imperial towers as safety, battle-borns against other ones, Ulfric killing family to become King etc.) or "murder is rad".
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Jun 26, 2015 11:25
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Fallout 3 should have been about Dad wanting to make the water clean so he could finally take his son on a nice fishing trip. Or it could have been about Dad wanting to build DC's greatest post apocalyptic hydro-slide theme park. Watch as the wacky Enclave come over to test the pool Ph levels and try to shut Dad's successful business down over the untrained super mutant lifeguards.
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Jun 26, 2015 11:34
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Azhais posted:The only part we should care about is in the comments! I first knew Emil was back when I read some Bethesda interview and he was there talking about how the Mass Effect dialogue really raises the emotional connection with your character. Fallout 4 is going to give pepe who don't like Fallout 3 an aneurysm.
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Jun 26, 2015 12:35
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2house2fly posted:I first knew Emil was back when I read some Bethesda interview and he was there talking about how the Mass Effect dialogue really raises the emotional connection with your character. Fallout 4 is going to give pepe who don't like Fallout 3 an aneurysm. I don't know if I am in a minority, but I found the transition from Knights of the Old Republic to Mass Effect to be a major downgrade.
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Jun 26, 2015 13:02
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chitoryu12 posted:He's not really wrong about that part. There's no explanation for why the Enclave are suddenly in the Vault that originally could only be accessed by getting past a bunch of annoying kids with rifles and going through the back door (Little Lamplight is fine when you return to it with no mention of Enclave soldiers going through them). And no matter what you do to avoid it, you're scripted to always be suddenly hit by a flashbang and stunned. It's really lovely railroading with logic that falls apart immediately. Why would any of that matter? This exact type of sequence happens in hundreds of games. General Shepard is old as hell and probably a pog, yet he gets into intense knife fights with sf dudes. Who cares. It's a core story mission. It's not like they'll say well we would've given the player access to the end game content but he used a stealth boy, so. You're not even playing the game if those gaps in logic are what you're focusing on. I've never sat in the back of a police car and thought where did you guys even come from tho.
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Jun 26, 2015 13:06
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Volkerball posted:I've never sat in the back of a police car and thought where did you guys even come from tho. You do this often?
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Jun 26, 2015 13:29
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Mordaedil posted:Fallout deserved better writing, Eh, I don't know. It'd be nice if it had better writing, but pretty much every game in the series has been full of poo poo that's schlocky or contrived. it's part of the fun, really. All the villains have silly comic-book motivations and ridiculous blind spots. The good guys are just feckless enough that you have to save them, but too proud to give you the thanks you deserve. There are ridiculous situations and pointless side quests and characters that only exist because someone thought it was funny. The first game is a bizarre grab-bag of post-apocalyptic themes and random pop-culture references that shouldn't really work but somehow does (I would have loved to see the talking badgers). The second one is a glorious mess with extended riffs on quest narratives, gangster stories, dystopian scifi, political thrillers, kung-fu movies, and seemingly everything else the developers could think of. There's a ghoul named Gordon of Gecko who loves greed and a complicated card game called "Tragic: The Garnering" that no one alive still knows how to play. There are random encounters cribbed from Monty Python and the Holy Grail and an entire questline making fun of Scientology. None of it has anything to do with the broader story, or the key themes of the game, but it's in there and it's hilarious (well, some of it's just tedious, but I don't want to start any arguments over which is which). My point is that those games worked in a way that Fallout 3 doesn't quite and I don't think it has anything to do with whether the people in DC were thirsty enough of whether the Enclave's plan made any sense (for what it's worth, they didn't make any sense in Fallout 2 either, and the Master and Caesar are in some ways even dumber). I'm all for making smarter games, and Fallout 3 could be a hell of a lot smarter, but Shamus lost me the moment it became apparent that the "Fallout" he was comparing FO3 to was not the buggy Infinity Engine games, but the ideal those games had come to represent.
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Jun 26, 2015 13:31
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Bicyclops posted:Boston stuff Perfect, thanks! An annoying thing with me is not feeling oriented in a game relative to what I know as north, south, etc.
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Jun 26, 2015 13:32
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Rutibex posted:I don't know if I am in a minority, but I found the transition from Knights of the Old Republic to Mass Effect to be a major downgrade. I don't know if I'd call it a downgrade so much as a different way of doing things that isn't always preferable. I had fun with the way the Mass Effect dialogue system works, and I had a lot of fun with Alpha Protocol's take on it, but it's more about directing how the story goes than playing as the character. It's funny how KOTOR2 gives you way more backstory than any of these cinematic games but I still feel more like I'm role-playing in it.
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Jun 26, 2015 13:43
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It at least seems like Emil Pagliarulo loves the material he's working with, and the setting (both the post-apocalypse and Boston). I'm sure he'll repeat some of his mistakes and learn from others.
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Jun 26, 2015 13:57
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drkeiscool posted:Shamus's final post is up. I can appreciate a guy who writes reasonably and passionately at the same time without coming off as a huge nerd. He makes a lot of sense. That said, I rebought FO3 last night. It is still gritty and fun. Also, while lifting my character's cheekbones, the game crashed. That was when I knew I was back home.
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Jun 26, 2015 14:02
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Bicyclops posted:The Charles River will definitely feature prominently in the game. Besides the fact that it's infamous for its pollution, the BU Bridge and Massachusetts Ave bridges go over it, which in "The Institute" legend, are measured in "Smoots" as part of a fraternity pledge. My favorite bit of trivia is that the Mr Smoot in question who was used as a yardstick to measure the length of the bridge, ended up becoming Chairman of the International Standards Organisation. Presumably he put "Previous experience as a unit of measurement" on his resume when applying for the position.
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Jun 26, 2015 14:02
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Duckbag posted:I'm all for making smarter games, and Fallout 3 could be a hell of a lot smarter, but Shamus lost me the moment it became apparent that the "Fallout" he was comparing FO3 to was not the buggy Infinity Engine games, but the ideal those games had come to represent. No I think what he and others are comparing Fallout 3 to is New Vegas. And I say this as someone who liked New Vegas and didn't like Fallout 3, I think that's a little unfair and I'm guilty of it too. I'm going back and playing Fallout 2 now, and it does sort of remind me of the Monster Brew style of throwing a bunch of poo poo together to see how it turns out. There's a very simple plot involving a wasteland-saving MacGuffin, there are weird out-of-place jokes, random themed towns and encampments... it seems like Bethesda actually looked to the early games to get inspiration for Fallout 3 and I think they did as good of a job as they could considering the source. There's just not a whole lot to the early games, there's a world there with a rich history but as far as how that world was used, we don't really see a rich cohesive story with a unifying "theme". And we don't see that until New Vegas. You can't blame Bethesda for not living up to New Vegas' standards if it didn't come out until years after Fallout 3.
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Jun 26, 2015 14:07
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King Vidiot posted:No I think what he and others are comparing Fallout 3 to is New Vegas. And I say this as someone who liked New Vegas and didn't like Fallout 3, I think that's a little unfair and I'm guilty of it too. I'm going back and playing Fallout 2 now, and it does sort of remind me of the Monster Brew style of throwing a bunch of poo poo together to see how it turns out. There's a very simple plot involving a wasteland-saving MacGuffin, there are weird out-of-place jokes, random themed towns and encampments... it seems like Bethesda actually looked to the early games to get inspiration for Fallout 3 and I think they did as good of a job as they could considering the source. There's just not a whole lot to the early games, there's a world there with a rich history but as far as how that world was used, we don't really see a rich cohesive story with a unifying "theme". And we don't see that until New Vegas. You can't blame Bethesda for not living up to New Vegas' standards if it didn't come out until years after Fallout 3. fallout 2 is the only game I can think of where the developers said that if they had more time they would have cut a lot of content. its some weird poo poo
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Jun 26, 2015 14:20
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I always wanted to join the Enclave. Even in 2. gently caress those mud-eating savages, I got max skills and Gorris my Deathclaw bro here, who do you need me to wipe out, Mr. President? I know you hate my irradiated skin or whatever but gently caress it. Just radio me the locale that needs mowing down and I'll do it. Imagine that scene in Predator where Bill Duke mows down a forrest with a minigun. That's me taking out a town full of crackheads and I get PAID for it. But no. Gotta kill Frank Horrigan. Pffft. Gotta make sure the Enclave don't... Whatever they wanted to do in 3. Pffft. Deffo didn't want to join the Master. Man, that cutscene where you get mummified and dunked in the FEV? Nightmare fuel, man.
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Jun 26, 2015 14:22
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Man, Fallout 2 just sounds crazier and crazier the more I hear about it. It makes me wish I could fight through my aversion to mid-90's PC RPGs. There's just been so many refinements and streamlining done to gameplay now that it's really hard to go back and play those games I missed out on. I hate that attacking costs "action points", and looking in your inventory to use a health item costs action points, walking away from a fight costs action points, everything is a lot more expensive (300 coins for a stimpak?!), loot is a lot more rare and fights are a lot tougher and harder to just run away from. Also I'm at that first town now, and it's so easy to get lost because they switch fixed camera angles on you. I walked into the trapper part of town and had no idea how to get back because where I ended up made no sense relative to where I came from.
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Jun 26, 2015 14:36
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Was there any fun or pop-culture schlock jokes in three? It's kind of weird to emulate the chaos of the original CRPGs, yet you don't try to put in anything "new" or location specific besides a Bethesda HQ, the Dunwich Building that doesn't really get used unless you have Point Lookout and Grognac the Barbarian.
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Jun 26, 2015 14:53
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King Vidiot posted:Man, Fallout 2 just sounds crazier and crazier the more I hear about it. It makes me wish I could fight through my aversion to mid-90's PC RPGs. There's just been so many refinements and streamlining done to gameplay now that it's really hard to go back and play those games I missed out on. I hate that attacking costs "action points", and looking in your inventory to use a health item costs action points, walking away from a fight costs action points, everything is a lot more expensive (300 coins for a stimpak?!), loot is a lot more rare and fights are a lot tougher and harder to just run away from. Also I'm at that first town now, and it's so easy to get lost because they switch fixed camera angles on you. I walked into the trapper part of town and had no idea how to get back because where I ended up made no sense relative to where I came from. Running away from fights in Fallout 2 is easy, assuming that you make a character with 10 Agility like your supposed to. Protip: Don't bother with barter, a better investment is the Gambling skill, head over to New Reno and make infinite caps!
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Jun 26, 2015 14:55
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Maybe now with the Supreme Court ruling we'll FINALLY have the option of a gay protagonist in the series
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Jun 26, 2015 16:25
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frajaq posted:Maybe now with the Supreme Court ruling we'll FINALLY have the option of a gay protagonist in the series Scalia can write the rear end in a top hat diatribe dissent about how now you'll be forced to play a tumblrweird genderfluid in every video game.
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Jun 26, 2015 16:29
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Fallout 2 got poo poo on by a lot of NMA types at the time too for being too wacky and unfocused, then Tactics got poo poo on for not being Fallout 3 and having some inconsistencies with the lore. Then 3 got poo poo on because Bethesda and New Vegas is considered to be merely okay over there. Point is, Fallout fans are pretty crazy and hold only the first game to an insanely high pedestal when replaying it recently I was more annoyed at how simple and clear cut between good and evil some of the quests were and annoying the interface quirks were. The Junktown endings being changed at the last minute is honestly a shame because it gives the moral ambiguity the game needs, fans claim the game has but it really doesn't have. Fallout 2 is the much more playable game despite being much more unfocused than Fallout 1 and I don't think I've done a playthrough where I haven't done a mix of good and evil deeds, which is probably a good thing because something like that shouldn't be binary. It's why I'm a bit of a Fallout 3 apologist. Yes Fallout 3 has a lot of problems but it's honestly not that bad as people make out and a small handful of the common complaints raised about the game, including some posters in this thread, are actually answered in the game and they just weren't really paying attention because they were too busy nitpicking other stuff. They had to reintroduce the series to a new audience who hadn't heard of Fallout before because only perceived NMA crazies seemed to like the games and they had to draw on the previous games as inspiration, which came at the expense of giving Fallout 3 it's own concrete identity in the series.
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Jun 26, 2015 16:29
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frajaq posted:Maybe now with the Supreme Court ruling we'll FINALLY have the option of a gay protagonist in the series No - it was outlawed again in 2037 after activists took things too far and tried forcing everyone to get gay married. It's in the Fallout Bible of you don't believe me.
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Jun 26, 2015 16:30
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Graverobbing blew my mind when I played Fallout 2. THIS GAME LETS YOU DO EVERYTHING! *Apart from being a Slaver. Only 3 slave runs and you're now an outcast forever in the wastes*
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Jun 26, 2015 16:43
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I wonder what the odds are of another company making an isometric Fallout again, just for nostalgia's sake? The whole thing has convinced me to reinstall Wasteland 2 and give that another shot. I didn't get very far, got distracted and didn't like my character enough to come back, but the irradiated wasteland bug has bitten me once more..
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Jun 26, 2015 16:54
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frajaq posted:Maybe now with the Supreme Court ruling we'll FINALLY have the option of a gay protagonist in the series The Brotherhood of steel we meet are actually survivalist colonies that also hated gays and thought eminent nuclear Apocalypse would have salted the earth of the "sodomites". Of course, they don't trust any outsider they meet to not be gay so it doesn't matter whether robodad is still into women or now into men, you're gonna have to kill some dipshits to claim THEIR FREEDOMS TO LIVE as your own.
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Jun 26, 2015 17:00
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Mr. Fortitude posted:Fallout 2 got poo poo on by a lot of NMA types at the time too for being too wacky and unfocused, then Tactics got poo poo on for not being Fallout 3 and having some inconsistencies with the lore. Then 3 got poo poo on because Bethesda and New Vegas is considered to be merely okay over there. It's you, you're the crazy one. Back Hack fucked around with this message at 17:53 on Jun 26, 2015 |
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Jun 26, 2015 17:35
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Back Hack posted:It's you, you're the crazy one. How am I the crazy one? Because I feel Fallout 1 aged like milk and Fallout 2 is by far the better of the isometric games?
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Jun 26, 2015 17:47
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Shroud posted:I think a New Orleans/bayou setting would rock with that idea. Vodoo priest protagonist, bead based currency, mutant crawdaddies, banjos. gently caress, I'd buy that day one.
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Jun 26, 2015 17:47
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Spun Dog posted:Vodoo priest protagonist, bead based currency, mutant crawdaddies, banjos. gently caress, I'd buy that day one. poo poo, I want this so bad now
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Jun 26, 2015 17:51
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Spun Dog posted:Vodoo priest protagonist, bead based currency, mutant crawdaddies, banjos. gently caress, I'd buy that day one. Maybe possibly finding underground shelter when hurricanes happen too. Speaking of natural disasters, I'm actually surprised the west coast still exists in the Fallout universe. I'd have thought the nukes would mess with the San Andreas fault and trigger a huge earthquake.
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Jun 26, 2015 17:53
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