a.lo posted:

my problem with bethesda's take on fallout as opposed to black isle's/obsidian's is that they're just too caught up on the Aesthetic™ of it. they try going so hard on the "50's retro futurism meets mad max" visual that they forget why that's the case in 1, 2, and new vegas.

the kitschy, 50's visuals are there not just to contrast the modern, post-apocalyptic landscape, it's there to contrast to how pre-war america operated. before the nukes fell, america was a totalitarian, military dictatorship that routinely engaged in human rights violations that wore the facade of idealized 50's suburbia. and 200 years later, it's the only thing that remains of its corpse. in new vegas, this part of the setting is acknowledged, but it's more concerned on the current culture of the mojave and a major theme of the game (if not the series) is how to build a new society that won't destroy itself like the one that came before (it's no coincidence some of the characters that cling harder to the past are more prone to have evil karma)

but to bethesda, there's no underlying point. the aesthetic is the point. here's a bunch of things related to nuka-cola, here's a quest where you play as a silver age-esque comic book character, here's group of people that treat power armour like 50's hot rods (and i have to admit, i actually think that's pretty cool), here's a door to door salesman but he's a ghoul, etc, etc. there's all this imagery and aesthetic choices but none of it seems to tie to any theme or actually try saying anything.

Cup Runneth Over posted:

UnReal World is Iron Age

Buck Wildman posted:

heck yeah

https://twitter.com/DigitalEclipse/status/1702670424872747304?t=UPWGZ9WJ5ybsLHPqPYvL5w&s=19

Lib and let die posted:

managed to tear myself away from cabaret club simulator to advance the Y0 story a bit, this poo poo owns, it's better than any bullshit godfather movie

Lib and let die posted:

managed to tear myself away from cabaret club simulator to advance the Y0 story a bit, this poo poo owns, it's better than any bullshit godfather movie

Popy posted:

is Y0 better then goodfellas tho

a.lo posted:

my problem with bethesda's take on fallout as opposed to black isle's/obsidian's is that they're just too caught up on the Aesthetic™ of it. they try going so hard on the "50's retro futurism meets mad max" visual that they forget why that's the case in 1, 2, and new vegas.

the kitschy, 50's visuals are there not just to contrast the modern, post-apocalyptic landscape, it's there to contrast to how pre-war america operated. before the nukes fell, america was a totalitarian, military dictatorship that routinely engaged in human rights violations that wore the facade of idealized 50's suburbia. and 200 years later, it's the only thing that remains of its corpse. in new vegas, this part of the setting is acknowledged, but it's more concerned on the current culture of the mojave and a major theme of the game (if not the series) is how to build a new society that won't destroy itself like the one that came before (it's no coincidence some of the characters that cling harder to the past are more prone to have evil karma)

but to bethesda, there's no underlying point. the aesthetic is the point. here's a bunch of things related to nuka-cola, here's a quest where you play as a silver age-esque comic book character, here's group of people that treat power armour like 50's hot rods (and i have to admit, i actually think that's pretty cool), here's a door to door salesman but he's a ghoul, etc, etc. there's all this imagery and aesthetic choices but none of it seems to tie to any theme or actually try saying anything.

Cuttlefush posted:

not even top 20 dude

Anime Schoolgirl posted:

counterpoint: the fallout 76 story seems to be what you get when you're given a->b guidelines and almost no oversight by the high-concept low-iq crew and while you rarely directly see the process, appalachia's background story and audio logs (remember system shock 2?) illustrate really well all the stops the US government pulled to put down the prevalent pre-war working class unrest. it's actually very good writing for a bethesda game. it's unfortunately hogtied to a bad live service/MMO model and most of the early content is sadly hamstrung by the stupid mandate that there were no non-robot NPCs in the original design.

e: i do realize how funny it is that the game with the best writing since morrowind will stop existing when BGS ceases to exist as a studio, and there's no way they're going to convert it into a singleplayer game under microsoft's current direction.

SirSamVimes posted:

anyone who doesn't honourably swordfight meta knight in every game he is present as a boss fight is a weak-rear end excuse of a gamer

Metric Skeleton posted:

Metric Skeleton posted:

Good Soldier Svejk posted:

Someday they will put out an offline version of that trash and I will play it for weeks

a.lo posted:

my problem with bethesda's take on fallout as opposed to black isle's/obsidian's is that they're just too caught up on the Aesthetic™ of it. they try going so hard on the "50's retro futurism meets mad max" visual that they forget why that's the case in 1, 2, and new vegas.

the kitschy, 50's visuals are there not just to contrast the modern, post-apocalyptic landscape, it's there to contrast to how pre-war america operated. before the nukes fell, america was a totalitarian, military dictatorship that routinely engaged in human rights violations that wore the facade of idealized 50's suburbia. and 200 years later, it's the only thing that remains of its corpse. in new vegas, this part of the setting is acknowledged, but it's more concerned on the current culture of the mojave and a major theme of the game (if not the series) is how to build a new society that won't destroy itself like the one that came before (it's no coincidence some of the characters that cling harder to the past are more prone to have evil karma)

but to bethesda, there's no underlying point. the aesthetic is the point. here's a bunch of things related to nuka-cola, here's a quest where you play as a silver age-esque comic book character, here's group of people that treat power armour like 50's hot rods (and i have to admit, i actually think that's pretty cool), here's a door to door salesman but he's a ghoul, etc, etc. there's all this imagery and aesthetic choices but none of it seems to tie to any theme or actually try saying anything.

silentsnack posted:

lolscientologists fallout 2: goofy references to demonstrate that the developers don't take themselves too seriously
toddbrained fallout 3: Liberty Prime football tossing nukes while spamming low-effort anticommunist slogans is the height of political commentary (actually no it's loving dumb)

Tankbuster posted:

Bethesda put two and two together and added a bit of that mid century americana pulp. If you think a game which starts off with the story of a mad scientist making orcs by dipping them in Tiberium is some deep critique of capitalism and americanism then you need to get your head checked.

Augus posted:

very generous for you to assume that Bethesda missing the political commentary implies the commentary was “deep”

KirbyKhan posted:

Lpzie, this game will test your schizophrenic skills and max out your mental capacity

Ghost Leviathan posted:

Kinda funny that if it was voluntary I'm pretty sure you'd have people lining up for the chance to be Super Mutants. When you're past your physical prime and you've had any kids you want to have, you get to be huge and immortal and yoked and immune to half the poo poo the Wasteland can throw at you.

Metric Skeleton posted:

Baykin posted:

nearing the end of Eiyuden Chronicle finally. while im extremely happy that the game was made and that i played it, i think i'll have to say that its probably middle of the pack quality when compared to the other Suikoden games. imo Suikoden 2 and 3 are still the top of the pile.

as was mentioned when the game came out, the gameplay is pretty much just straight up Suikoden, with very little in the way of quality of life improvements that have happened for jrpgs over the years. however, the Suikoden games also were pretty ahead of the game in all that in the first place. not really requiring much if any boring grinding due to the way that experience scales, which ensures that unused party members (of the 72 potential combat recruits) almost instantly catch up to whatever the intended level is for an area within a couple battles. the menus are nice and snappy, not much pointless downtime waiting on loading for fights and such.

for the story, just very generally, i found it less engaging than most of the Suikoden games. the mythology of the True Runes was something that i was a big fan of, and the replacement of them with the similar Runelenses that have very little mythology is a bit of a disappointment. lacking that, the story focuses almost entirely on the more grounded political storyline which is fine, probably equivalent to the politics in the Suikoden games as well. its just fairly bland "form resistance army to fight evil empire".

the building of the homebase/town is quite a bit more filled out which is somewhat nice. but also feels like took a bit too much of an inspiration from mobile games with having to gather materials in the world to dump into menus to let you press a button to build your new additions.

the minigames that are present are a particular sorespot for a brokebrained completionist like me. they are some of the most boring and overly padded out minigames that i can remember.

all that being said, i still wanna reiterate that i still had fun with the game and enjoyed it overall. probably a solid 7/10 for me. i recommend Suikoden fans play it, but not at super high priority.