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Hippie Hedgehog posted:Trip report: First playthrough of NV in ... well, since I played it just after launch. Having fun so far! Hell yeah!
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Sep 11, 2023 17:15
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To replay this game again after so long, the only thing better would be winning the lottery.
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Sep 11, 2023 17:37
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oh jay posted:To replay this game again after so long, the only thing better would be winning the lottery. Laterrrrrrrr
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Sep 11, 2023 17:39
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oh jay posted:To replay this game again after so long, the only thing better would be winning the lottery. but the game...the game was rigged from the start.
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Sep 11, 2023 17:45
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Arivia posted:but the game...the game was rigged from the start. Well that would explain very nicely why outta the blue why they'd know the great feeling of winning the lottery then, wouldn't it. Okay I think we have have all the information we need here, lock em up!
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Sep 11, 2023 18:03
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OldMemes posted:Going out on a limb, does anyone have any links to interviews with the developers where they discuss Ceasar's take on hegelian dialectics in depth? I'm looking for some sources. Not in depth, to my knowledge. What follows is a bit awkward as the person responsible reads the thread (someone also needs to trick John Gonzalez into accepting an SA gift account). There's a couple old formspring responses from JESawyer on the subject you can find with a quick googling. Reading through these, the dude's got the patience of a saint answering the same questions over and over, especially engaging on the role of gender in the Legion. quote:JESawyer 5 Jun 11 Additionally, this response mentions Hegel and provides some limited insight into how Sawyer views Hegel as fitting into other frameworks: quote:JESawyer 6 Apr 10 There are any number of reasons to not read into decade old internet posts too deeply (including that they're not from the person who wrote the character, John Gonzalez), but one thing this suggests is that JESawyer's decision for Caesar to cite Hegelian dialectics does not mean that Caesar is applying it as "intended", if such a concept even works with Hegel. In another response that is focused more on Joshua Graham, JESawyer states that (compared with Graham), Caesar never had a radical shift in ideology, is (again, relatively) dispassionate, and is willing to be a hypocrite when it suits him (this last point is something that JESawyer mentions a few times in other places). JESawyer notably seems to avoid giving direct answers on some types of questions, particularly ones that prognosticate about the future of the factions (though he does sort of talk around the fact that "many people are saying" the Legion is likely to implode). Another subject he hints at is more apposite to the question of Caesar's motivations: quote:JESawyer 29 Oct 11 Sawyer also refers to Caesar as operating in a sort of information and ideological bubble of his own creation, and likens him (in some respects but not all) to Colonel Kurtz - an educated man using deliberate isolation from his sources of education to bring blood-soaked, organizing "enlightenment" to an outgroup he sees as savages and subjects. Given the other factors above, a plausible reading is that his use of Hegelian dialectics is ultimately self-serving and allows him to justify his monstrous actions, particularly to himself (since other Legionaries don't have access to his education). One way to interpret the oddly specific Hegel request is that it's part of a much broader thematic frame in which the game's conflicts are structured similarly to the real Cold War (I'm a big fan of this view). Nowadays I think there's a much clearer explanation: JESawyer wants us all to understand that people with training in the humanities and historical theory are innately predisposed toward evil. Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 18:36 on Sep 11, 2023 |
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Sep 11, 2023 18:24
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Discendo Vox posted:JESawyer wants us all to understand that people with training in the humanities and historical theory are innately predisposed toward evil.  Checks out.
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Sep 11, 2023 18:26
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Discendo Vox posted:
I have a communications degree and am also the Zodiac Killer, so this fits.
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Sep 11, 2023 18:44
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It is kinda funny that when you break it down Caesar just really wanting to do his preferred version of fascism and then coming up with a reason that sounds really smart if you're not paying attention is like, the entire business model of the Heritage Foundation/etc
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Sep 11, 2023 18:59
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exactly, Hegelian Dialectics
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Sep 11, 2023 19:44
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I think that may be overly reductive, my humanities joke aside. Caesar's ideology, though it's bigoted and has the effect of ingraining sexism, isn't conservative in any conventional sense- and it's an internal ideology, not an external one. He believes that he's actually applying the dialectics correctly, and is using them to produce a stable society that will outlast him- it's not really part of his rhetorical appeal. The dialectics just let him justify whatever he wants in the moment to himself. [diatribe about the causal falsifiability, the predictions of political theory and the work of Karl Popper that nonetheless studiously avoids citing The Open Society and its Enemies goes here] Caesar is unusual in how detached he is from the harms of his regime or the actual beliefs of his followers; the dialectical framing and, well, historicism seems to immunize him to the actual on-the-ground effects of, say, declaring that all women are for breeding until further notice. Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 19:59 on Sep 11, 2023 |
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Sep 11, 2023 19:47
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thesis: applying hegelianism inevitably results in fascism antithesis: hegelianism is jsut being abused as an excuse by fascists synthesis: hegelianism cant effectively eject fascist logic and therefore sucks chekm8 philosophailures
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Sep 11, 2023 19:58
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Caesar will complete the system of German idealism
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Sep 11, 2023 20:11
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https://twitter.com/NobodyIsOurGuy/status/1701322874286489922?t=BtoJL9WTT-b9l-2DN9Xi_A&s=19 Maybe I've been missing out on some Fallout 76 discourse but has there ever been a moment where Fallout has been pro-china just because the games depict prewar America as a nightmare capitalist hellscape? How do people come to this conclusion? Why are Tankies.
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Sep 12, 2023 15:56
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I think that guy is just a dumbass, I wouldn't worry about the made up kids
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Sep 12, 2023 16:05
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I know it's tilting at windmills but at the same time I can definitely imagine the kind of person who would willfully miss the blatant messaging in Fallout the same way people miss the point of Starship Troopers. I just wish I could unnderstand why this happens on a level beyond "people can be really, really stupid."
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Sep 12, 2023 16:22
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Arc Hammer posted:I know it's tilting at windmills but at the same time I can definitely imagine the kind of person who would willfully miss the blatant messaging in Fallout the same way people miss the point of Starship Troopers. I just wish I could unnderstand why this happens on a level beyond "people can be really, really stupid." If you show fascists the consequences of fascism, they go "hell yeah!", because they are fascists. They like fascism.
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Sep 12, 2023 16:31
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Arc Hammer posted:I know it's tilting at windmills but at the same time I can definitely imagine the kind of person who would willfully miss the blatant messaging in Fallout the same way people miss the point of Starship Troopers. I just wish I could unnderstand why this happens on a level beyond "people can be really, really stupid." For games past the first two, it's at least in part because (NV aside) the devs also started missing the message, especially with the Brotherhood of Steel.
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Sep 12, 2023 16:36
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I dunno, the BoS is pretty explicitly fascist again in F4 so it's hard to tell if that was just them retconning the decisions they made in F3 or the minor BoS outcasts subplot was always meant to lead there
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Sep 12, 2023 16:45
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Discendo Vox posted:For games past the first two, it's at least in part because (NV aside) the devs also started missing the message, especially with the Brotherhood of Steel. I'm not sure about that. The Brotherhood in 3 is weird but the existence of the Outcasts and their beef with the Lyons makes it clear that the current situation with the Brotherhood is also seen as weird in-setting. By the time 4 rolls around the BOS has gone full fash and the jerks on the west coast couldn't be happier that a chosen one named Maxson is back in charge and aggressively keeping people from using fancy tech. I may not really like the writing for the Brotherhood in 3 or 4 but being aggressive expansionist technofascist assholes is entirely in character for them.
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Sep 12, 2023 16:49
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The Brotherhood of Steel being "technofascist" wasn't really their point either, what's transpired with the first person games is very much the devs wanting to have both sides of the power fantasy.
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Sep 12, 2023 16:53
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Things change in-setting. The initial goals of the Brotherhood in Fallout 1 are already waning by the time of Fallout 2 where they've been supplanted by the Enclave as the new top dog power armor organization. Another 40 years later and the paranoid attitude of the Mojave Chapter and the mentions of their ongoing war with the NCR hammers home how the Brotherhood has fallen behind the times and they can't survive with their locked in mindset that any problem can be solved with laser guns and superior technology. The Brotherhood doesn't need to be a 1:1 translation of the Fallout 1 Brotherhood, and the context provided by New Vegas retroactively makes the strangeness of Lyons's chapter and their subsequent jerkass depiction in 4 easier to swallow. They're not the same as they were a hundred years ago. They changed and mostly for the worse as the rest of the world moved on. Got a severe case of the old world blues on a societal level.
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Sep 12, 2023 17:00
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Yeah I've never understood people saying "Bethesda doesn't gt the BoS" based on 3. The entire point is that Lyons went rogue and did a bunch of poo poo the BoS would not approve of, hence the Outcasts. And then in 4 they combined both ways of doing things: increase numbers but with the ruthlessness and xenophobia of the BoS proper. One thing I'll give House is his comment about how the BoS doesn't raid hospitals for life-saving technology - no, they only care about tech that puts people in hospitals, or graves.
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Sep 12, 2023 17:59
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NikkolasKing posted:Yeah I've never understood people saying "Bethesda doesn't gt the BoS" based on 3. The entire point is that Lyons went rogue and did a bunch of poo poo the BoS would not approve of, hence the Outcasts. And then in 4 they combined both ways of doing things: increase numbers but with the ruthlessness and xenophobia of the BoS proper. Honestly I've come to believe that people start with "Bethesda sucks" as a first principle, so they never even try to engage with the setting or explanation, to the point where they straight-up lie about it. And sure, you don't have to like Bethesda, a lot of choices they do are dumb. But there's been so many assertions I've seen that just..aren't true, at all. But people repeat them because Bethesda Sucks, therefore obviously Bethesda thinks the BoS are shining heroes, or their games are unironically "USA #1!!!" and never engage with the ~*incredible satire*~ of Interplay's games, or they said aliens started the war, or or or.
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Sep 12, 2023 18:12
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Fallout is up there with Earthbound in having a vocal minority of fans who have never played the games; 1 and 2 specifically.
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Sep 12, 2023 18:18
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NikkolasKing posted:Yeah I've never understood people saying "Bethesda doesn't gt the BoS" based on 3. The entire point is that Lyons went rogue and did a bunch of poo poo the BoS would not approve of, hence the Outcasts. Yeah, it's a shame because it could have been a reasonably interesting story where a man is changed by a sudden attack of conscience and what that means, but it was clearly just an excuse to let you hang out with the BoS who are The Cool and Good Guys.
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Sep 12, 2023 18:42
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Byzantine posted:Honestly I've come to believe that people start with "Bethesda sucks" as a first principle, so they never even try to engage with the setting or explanation, to the point where they straight-up lie about it. I've blocked most of my memory of playing Fallout 3 from my mind and I've played maybe an hour or two of Fallout 4, so please feel free to completely disregard my assertions as I don't hold them on the basis of much evidence. I was trying to think once about what it was that I liked about the writing in New Vegas, and what I hit on was the many layers of the character Edward Sallow and his actions in the story. Caesar's Legion isn't particularly like Ancient Rome, but it borrows themes (not that kind (look I wouldn't normally make that joke but when I'm responding to you, in particular?)), costuming, terminology, some organizational structure. It does this to provide a consistent terminology and a new identity for those who have been assimilated by the Legion. It presents itself as being another coming of Ancient Rome, and this presentation is hollow, shallow, a paper-thin covering. And all these traits are those it has in-universe. These are characteristics of Caesar's Legion within the setting, and they're consequences of the fact that it was it was set up by the character Edward Sallow. The impression I get from Fallout 3 and 4, notably from the Minutemen (but again, I basically played just enough to meet the Minutemen), is that a militaristic proto-state, which survives by defeating and assimilating weaker bands of raiders and non-militarized tribes, might very well adopt Roman terms and organization. But, that the presentation of this wouldn't go far beyond the existence of the terminology and costuming for aesthetic purposes, and that the shallowness would be a trait of the game rather than something depicted by the game. I think what I'm saying is: One: the stuff in the foreground tends to make me assume there's nothing much in the background, so I'm unsurprised that other people completely miss important details. Two: you shouldn't listen to me, I don't know what I'm talking about.
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Sep 12, 2023 18:48
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Magnetic North posted:Yeah, it's a shame because it could have been a reasonably interesting story where a man is changed by a sudden attack of conscience and what that means, but it was clearly just an excuse to let you hang out with the BoS who are The Cool and Good Guys. but....you also hang out with the BoS in the first game? they literally help you against the Master's Army in most iterations of the ending, and are very cool and good guys that give you cool armor and cool implants and just let you have a rocking time with them. did fallout 1 also miss the point of fallout 1??
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Sep 12, 2023 19:00
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Wolfsheim posted:but....you also hang out with the BoS in the first game? they literally help you against the Master's Army in most iterations of the ending, and are very cool and good guys that give you cool armor and cool implants and just let you have a rocking time with them. did fallout 1 also miss the point of fallout 1?? I didn't claim anything was missing the point of anything. What I mean is that Bethesda's story sucked but some of the things people often complain about in hindsight could have actually been decent with a bit of a punch-up.
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Sep 12, 2023 19:16
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There's kinda just a general lack of depth for Fallout 3, and that in itself doesn't make it awful, but it does mean that what you see is what you get. You're not going to get elaborate explorations into Lyons's motivations. Although the origins of the Brotherhood of Steel are closer to what Lyons is doing than what Father Elijah was doing, so it's fairly easy to see how he would've somehow found his way to the same thing. There could be an interesting thing there with how he would have to argue about his way with other doctrinal "purists". Arc Hammer posted:Maybe I've been missing out on some Fallout 76 discourse but has there ever been a moment where Fallout has been pro-china just because the games depict prewar America as a nightmare capitalist hellscape? How do people come to this conclusion? Weirdly, I don't think there's much emphasis on capitalism when the prewar world is referenced. Most of the bad things that really affected the postwar world seem to be the result of governmental plots.
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Sep 12, 2023 19:16
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SlothfulCobra posted:Weirdly, I don't think there's much emphasis on capitalism when the prewar world is referenced. Most of the bad things that really affected the postwar world seem to be the result of governmental plots. It's definitely a theme in a few spots in New Vegas like the sarsaparilla plant firing workers and replacing them with Mr Handy bots. And Fallout 76 is absolutely littered with notes about automation driving people out of work.
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Sep 12, 2023 19:25
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there's a brief reference to automation in that factory in the Pitt and I think some terminal entries in DC metro and the cola plant and a few others with very general evil corporate stuff (being charged for bathroom breaks/etc) but to call it anti-capitalist would be generous. I think with F4 they go more in on standard society-collapsing stuff like breadlines and corrupt politicians but its still fairly apolitical/cartoonish.Magnetic North posted:I didn't claim anything was missing the point of anything. What I mean is that Bethesda's story sucked but some of the things people often complain about in hindsight could have actually been decent with a bit of a punch-up. Ahh yeah I agree, but I do think they got it right in the broad strokes and just fumbled the execution. Like they were so obviously just doing a soft reboot of Fallout 1 it would've been better to just leave the Enclave out of it and throw an east coast Master into that vault all the super mutants are coming from rather than trying to mash the F1+2 plots together. Like, give us a reason the super mutants are so organized and prolific to the point that Lyons breaks tradition to go after them (they kind of do this in F4 by implying there was some big mutant warlord behind it, and in true Bethesda fashion it's in some obscure terminal entry or missable dialogue option lol)
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Sep 12, 2023 20:26
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I think a recurring theme of Fallout is that devotion to an ideology to the extent that you're willing to launch nukes over it is a bad idea. It's also bad to use an ideology as a thin excuse to do whatever evil thing you already felt like doing. NCR and the Legion both have some people who genuinely believe in what they're doing, but the real power brokers know that the rules are just a set of guidelines that they can use to screw other people over.
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Sep 12, 2023 21:22
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Given the eternal Red Scare the prewar US was caught in, I don't think you can expect there to be much outright anticapitalist writing before the bombs drop, and afterwards it's a moot point. There's definitely terminal entries in 3 where people talk about how pretty much all labor laws have been suspended or repealed. Vavrek posted:The impression I get from Fallout 3 and 4, notably from the Minutemen (but again, I basically played just enough to meet the Minutemen), is that a militaristic proto-state, which survives by defeating and assimilating weaker bands of raiders and non-militarized tribes, might very well adopt Roman terms and organization. But, that the presentation of this wouldn't go far beyond the existence of the terminology and costuming for aesthetic purposes, and that the shallowness would be a trait of the game rather than something depicted by the game. The Minutemen in 4 are basically in the position of the Legion after Caesar dies - their charismatic leader is gone, the organization shuffled along for some more years before it collapsed to infighting, betrayal and people giving up and going home. One of the huge raider gangs on the coast is led by former Minutemen who turned to raiding after the wider organization fell apart. quote:Caesar's Legion isn't particularly like Ancient Rome, but it borrows themes (not that kind (look I wouldn't normally make that joke but when I'm responding to you, in particular?))
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Sep 12, 2023 21:43
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Gaius Marius posted:Fallout is up there with Earthbound in having a vocal minority of fans who have never played the games; 1 and 2 specifically. hey, i've played like a solid third of earthbound
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Sep 12, 2023 22:21
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Most of the problems of the NCR seem to be shown as rooted in liberal capitalism
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Sep 12, 2023 23:17
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https://twitter.com/FilmsFallout/status/1701702810071699592?t=eCGeGIvK1CbTJzF28LvJBg&s=19 Get it before it's taken down its a leaked teaser for the Fallout TV series. Vertibirds, T-60 power armour, Fallout 4/Marked Men style Ghouls, and a big ole' Vault Door and some nukes. Arc Hammer fucked around with this message at 02:47 on Sep 13, 2023 |
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Sep 13, 2023 02:42
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Janky "just another mesh" Fallout 3 power armor instead of walking tank Fallout 4 power armor? Lame.
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Sep 13, 2023 02:50
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I don't have much expectations and probably won't find time to watch it, but I hope it does well. More successful sci-fi shows would be good. That Halo show flopped from what I heard.
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Sep 13, 2023 04:55
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Actually I'm pretty sure the Ghoul they showed was Walton Goggins character. Cowboy Ghoul channelling Boyd Crowder is just perfect.
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Sep 13, 2023 23:39
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