Fallout Fluff Forum - Plasma Guns, Power Armors, Mutants and Tribals, no it's not 40K

[Calemyr]

You realize just how similar, in terms of cultural assimation of tribals toward a recreation of old cultural identities, the Kings and the Legion are surprinsigly similar.

Obviously, one is much more forceful than the other.and just plain evil.

Well, yeah. Uniting disparate tribes under an established (old world) banner is kind of a theme for the game. NCR is doing it (democracy), House is doing it (Vegas), Caesar is doing it (Rome), and the Kings are doing it (Elvis). The Enclave and the Brotherhood do it, too, in their own way. Ulysses is obsessed with the concept. How else do you blend people with nothing else in common into a cohesive whole?

The key thing is that the Kings seek to inspire and protect while the Legion seeks to conquer and grow.

[BladeofObliviom]

The Enclave and the Brotherhood do it, too.

Actually, I'd argue against this one. Their lack of willingness to bring in disparate tribes and reforge them under a new banner is likely their biggest weakness. The Brotherhood refuses to accept new blood in a vast majority of cases, and the Enclave is outright genocidal.

[Calemyr]

Actually, I'd argue against this one. Their lack of willingness to bring in disparate tribes and reforge them under a new banner is likely their biggest weakness. The Brotherhood refuses to accept new blood in a vast majority of cases, and the Enclave is outright genocidal.

They don't bring anyone else in, but they keep themselves together under an old world banner. They aren't a family or friends, they're members of a lingering faction born out of an old world government organization. That's why I separated them from the others in my list. I should amend that to "The Enclave and the Brotherhood do it, too, in their own way."

[Cikomyr]

And now i picture the Kings finding old preserved videos of Elvis's performance. These songs suddenly become battlesongs and national anthems.

[Calemyr]

And now i picture the Kings finding old preserved videos of Elvis's performance. These songs suddenly become battlesongs and national anthems.

Announcer: "And now, please stand up and put your hand through your hair for the national anthem."
Kings: "Uah-oom, oh, yeah. I'm all shook up..."
Announcer: "Thank ya, thank ya very much."

[Triaxx]

Now I have the mental image of a battle fought to Blue Suede Shoes.

[Cikomyr]

And this is why wr love Fallout.

By the way, have you ever thought that Fallout 3 has a huge tonal difference compared to the previous games (and the one after)? I noticed it when looking for the soundtrack of all games: Fallout 3 is much more.. 50s Incarnate, while New Vegas is.more about "the Western Frontier".

The original Fallouts did not put THAT much emphasis on the flavor of the pre-War world. I mean, there was some, but it was subdued. The thematic was much more focused on " this is a whole new world born over the ashes of the old".

Fallout 3 seemed obsessed with: "Futuristic 50s, but AFTER THE APOCALYPSE!!". There was absolutely nothing original about the " New World".

[GloatingSwine]

Fallout 3 seemed obsessed with: "Futuristic 50s, but AFTER THE APOCALYPSE!!". There was absolutely nothing original about the " New World".

That's largely because it was made by Bethesda and Bethesda really aren't very good at writing.

Fallout 3 is full of super generic stuff, bandits are just "bandits" rather than being factions with their own agendas and stories you can find out, super mutants are just dumb monsters rather than being a faction with their own agenda and story etc.

So they only had one thing to focus on, which was the '50s thing, and they ran with it, rather than thinking much about the actual world they were creating.

[Cikomyr]

That is not to say Bethesda's contribution to the Fallout franchise is bad. Their fleshing out of the Old World was fantastic, hilarious and perfectly appropriate. They just fell short of developing the New World.

Want it or not, New Vegas really profited from these elements. Which is what all Fallout games should reach: build upon the establishes setting of past games but keep pushing for more. Like i said before: New Vegas has manages to reconcile Fallout 3 with the entire franchise

[Gracht Grabmaw]

That's largely because it was made by Bethesda and Bethesda really aren't very good at writing.

Fallout 3 is full of super generic stuff, bandits are just "bandits" rather than being factions with their own agendas and stories you can find out, super mutants are just dumb monsters rather than being a faction with their own agenda and story etc.

So they only had one thing to focus on, which was the '50s thing, and they ran with it, rather than thinking much about the actual world they were creating.

I have to disagree about Bethesda being bad at writing (The Elder Scrolls series is definately one of the more imaginative fantasy worlds I can think of) but yeah, Fallout 3 as a whole felt like it was way more interested in the apocalyptic vision, rather than the post-apocalypse. It's supposedly set 200 years after the end of the world but for all intents and purposes it might as well have been just 20 years for all the new world has developed in the meantime.
Major pre-war sites are virtually untouched by the wastelanders, raiders somehow outnumber the population of the stable settlements yet they aren't organized enough to form anything resembling a structured community, slave-trade is thriving even though the only people with a demand for slaves are private customers since there are no plantations or major building projects or anything else that would need a lot of slave labor... it's just a mess. The only explaination I can think of for why the Capital Wasteland is in the state it is is that the Enclave regularly sends agents like the Talon Company to destabilize the region somehow in preparation for their big invasion. Only even the people in the position to notice something like that (namely Three-Dog, Lyons and Li) never actually state it.

[factotum]

I have to disagree about Bethesda being bad at writing (The Elder Scrolls series is definately one of the more imaginative fantasy worlds I can think of)

Eh? The Elder Scrolls games are great fun, don't get me wrong, but the writing in them is definitely not stellar--an ocean with the depth of a paddling pool, I think I've heard it described. I mean, Daggerfall has multiple possible endings, and rather than pick one of those to be the *canonical* ending for future instalments of the series, they just said, "Oh, all these things happened at once--we'll call it the Warp in the West and be done with it.". That doesn't even achieve the heights of retconning in terms of story structure!

[Mando Knight]

And now i picture the Kings finding old preserved videos of Elvis's performance. These songs suddenly become battlesongs and national anthems.

Now I have the mental image of a battle fought to Blue Suede Shoes.

I had once thought of scripting a mod that would add a Kings Radio channel to the game. Similar to Agatha's violin in FO3, it would require you finding a holodisk of Elvis's works in one of the Vaults, then bringing it back to the Kings.

Of course, such a mod would require having some Elvis songs on hand. Since they're not in the public domain to my knowledge, the theoretical mod would then come with a note in the readme that it was designed to make use of a particular Elvis album (probably a greatest hits album, for purposes of getting especially as many of the already-referenced songs as possible in), the acquisition of which would be up to the player... and thus making it a fetch quest for Elvis music so you could play a fetch quest for Elvis music...

[Driderman]

And this is why wr love Fallout.

By the way, have you ever thought that Fallout 3 has a huge tonal difference compared to the previous games (and the one after)? I noticed it when looking for the soundtrack of all games: Fallout 3 is much more.. 50s Incarnate, while New Vegas is.more about "the Western Frontier".

The original Fallouts did not put THAT much emphasis on the flavor of the pre-War world. I mean, there was some, but it was subdued. The thematic was much more focused on " this is a whole new world born over the ashes of the old".

Fallout 3 seemed obsessed with: "Futuristic 50s, but AFTER THE APOCALYPSE!!". There was absolutely nothing original about the " New World".

Probably because the development team had corporate executives breathing down their neck telling them to make sure it was proper "Fallout-y" and one of the top things on the checklist they made when they decided to revive the IP was "1950's retroscience"

[GloatingSwine]

I have to disagree about Bethesda being bad at writing (The Elder Scrolls series is definately one of the more imaginative fantasy worlds I can think of).

As long as you only look at Morrowind, I guess. The rest are all super generic.

And even there the Dunmer are basically just D&D dark elves except not underground and default bad guy race.

And even then it's mostly the aesthetic rather than any parts of the narrative or scenario.

[Cikomyr]

I had once thought of scripting a mod that would add a Kings Radio channel to the game. Similar to Agatha's violin in FO3, it would require you finding a holodisk of Elvis's works in one of the Vaults, then bringing it back to the Kings.

Of course, such a mod would require having some Elvis songs on hand. Since they're not in the public domain to my knowledge, the theoretical mod would then come with a note in the readme that it was designed to make use of a particular Elvis album (probably a greatest hits album, for purposes of getting especially as many of the already-referenced songs as possible in), the acquisition of which would be up to the player... and thus making it a fetch quest for Elvis music so you could play a fetch quest for Elvis music...

Special to-pay DLC of Elvis music where you have to pay for the royalties. you bring the disc to the kings, they get to have their radio show..

and then, in the endgame description, you learn that this huge cultural bonus managed to make them the uber-dominant faction of the Wasteland, and they even conquered the NCR. Bringing a New Order to the New World, one where you had to become a King and relinquish your past life to serve the common good.

[Mando Knight]

And, just to throw everyone for a loop, I'd name the contact for the quest Tchaikovsky.

Because man don't know 'bout a rock 'n roll show, and all that jive... and he's got some news

[Nerd-o-rama]

I have to disagree about Bethesda being bad at writing (The Elder Scrolls series is definately one of the more imaginative fantasy worlds I can think of) but yeah, Fallout 3 as a whole felt like it was way more interested in the apocalyptic vision, rather than the post-apocalypse. It's supposedly set 200 years after the end of the world but for all intents and purposes it might as well have been just 20 years for all the new world has developed in the meantime.
Major pre-war sites are virtually untouched by the wastelanders, raiders somehow outnumber the population of the stable settlements yet they aren't organized enough to form anything resembling a structured community, slave-trade is thriving even though the only people with a demand for slaves are private customers since there are no plantations or major building projects or anything else that would need a lot of slave labor... it's just a mess. The only explaination I can think of for why the Capital Wasteland is in the state it is is that the Enclave regularly sends agents like the Talon Company to destabilize the region somehow in preparation for their big invasion. Only even the people in the position to notice something like that (namely Three-Dog, Lyons and Li) never actually state it.

I've heard two reasonable contributing factors for the deplorable state of the Capital Wasteland compared to the West at the same time:

1) This was a fanfic explanation, but it works out - thanks to better missile defenses compared to California, DC and the rest of the eastern seaboard got hit with fewer modern, relatively-radiation-clean, building-evaporating hydrogen bombs (much like Vegas, which like the Capital Wasteland still has an abundance of Pre-War buildings standing), but enough damage was still done in the first few minutes of the war that they were unable to fend off the older, "dirtier" short-range and plane-based atom bombs that arrived later. The Chinese attack might have also focused special, high-radiation weapons like Cobalt bombs on the US's capital, the overabundance of dirty bombs affecting the landscape and poisoning the environment far longer than the ICBM assault on the west coast did. (Although, if we're talking about realistic radiation, anything radioactive enough to be useful in a military weapon for that purpose would have decayed down to negligible 200 years later no matter what material it was. Notice how in New Vegas and even Fallout 2, highly radioactive areas are usually the places accidentally contaminated by waste or unshielded power plants, not residual bomb radiation.)

2) And this one is somewhat more supported by canon information - the Capital Wasteland is what California would look like without the Vault Dweller having ever existed. There's no central government, Super Mutants run rampant (and compared to the Master's, are both less intelligent and have no central guiding force of their own), the Enclave as usual just sits on their asses in a bunker, and while the Brotherhood of Steel is uncharacteristically altruistic, they are recent arrivals. Nothing had been done to help civilization rebuild in the Capital Wasteland until James and the Lone Wanderer wandered out, so between that and the more radioactive on average environment restricting trade and travel, it was even worse off than California decades previously.

Personally, I think it was a combination of these two. A less-tameable environment thanks to higher radiation levels, and less interest in and ability to create centralized and civilized society until much later than the Capital Wasteland.

Also, Bethesda isn't very good at writing.

[GolemsVoice]

In their book that came with the collector's edition, they basically said "Yeah we know that, since we're talking about the capital, NOTHING would have been left standing. However, we wanted to present some of the iconic monuments, so we decided to minimize the damage."

[Terraoblivion]

Look, I get that you want the player to feel like their actions change things. That is definitely important in creating an open world game where the players have an effect...But that doesn't mean that people have to sit on their hands and do nothing without the player. Societies can be made and stuff without there having been a player character at one point.

[Cikomyr]

Look, I get that you want the player to feel like their actions change things. That is definitely important in creating an open world game where the players have an effect...But that doesn't mean that people have to sit on their hands and do nothing without the player. Societies can be made and stuff without there having been a player character at one point.

You could make the argument that the Capital Wasteland being so deserted is because it was so gorram irradiated in the first place.

Which what attracted the New Brotherhood there. It's a place without an established power base that they could turn fertile again, with their technological capacity.

Also would explain the irrational attraction of the Super Mutants for the place, it being so irradiated.

No need to claim that its what would have happened if the Vault Dweller had never stepped out. But you do have to realize that without the VD, Sandy Shades would have been devastated by either the raiders or the Brotherhood (who's xenophobic tendencies already showed back in the first Fallout).

One of the ending has the Brotherhood outright wiping out Sandy Shades to prevent the emergence of the NCR. Kind of like they knew it would happen.

[thorgrim29]

Well, if you consider that Ulysses is basically right (which he is apparently supposed to be) the Fallout universe runs on absurd amounts of Great Person History

[BladeofObliviom]

No need to claim that its what would have happened if the Vault Dweller had never stepped out. But you do have to realize that without the VD, Sandy Shades would have been devastated by either the raiders or the Brotherhood (who's xenophobic tendencies already showed back in the first Fallout).

One of the ending has the Brotherhood outright wiping out Sandy Shades to prevent the emergence of the NCR. Kind of like they knew it would happen.

Achieving this ending requires Rhombus to die, which is pretty unlikely without PC intervention. Seriously, the guy's stats are better than The Lieutenant's.

[Gaelbert]

Well, if you consider that Ulysses is basically right (which he is apparently supposed to be) the Fallout universe runs on absurd amounts of Great Person History

According to Avellone anyways. Apparently Sawyer designed the game going the opposite way, trying to highlight trends that were greater than any individual. It's hard to do that in an open world RPG because players expect to have a large effect on the world, but NV still was definitely more faction/trend oriented than F3.

[GolemsVoice]

Often the Chosen One just gives the final push in the right direction. However, the world of Fallout, especially the Capitol Wasteland, is a world where violence is still the main threat (as opposed to New Vegas, where it's already more politics and large scale, actual warfare). And usually the Vault Dweller is the most heavily armed guy around. A world where raiders, super mutants or just ordinary bandits run around and burn down anything they can find just for the hell of it is not a world where civilized society can form unless it is either hidden or heavily armed. New Vegas has those, Fallout 3 not quite so many.

[Cikomyr]

Am i the only one who found the Fission Batteries to be the height of absurdity? And yet perfectly fitting?

[Mando Knight]

Am i the only one who found the Fission Batteries to be the height of absurdity? And yet perfectly fitting?

Atomic batteries are a real-world technology, but nowhere near as widespread, powerful, or long-lasting as Fallout's Fission Batteries.

Even more absurd are the Microfusion Cells. Not only has the Pre-War world discovered cold fusion, they've made it small enough to use as the power source for energy weapons and power armor (the T-51b runs on 60kW cells).

[Nerd-o-rama]

Look, I get that you want the player to feel like their actions change things. That is definitely important in creating an open world game where the players have an effect...But that doesn't mean that people have to sit on their hands and do nothing without the player. Societies can be made and stuff without there having been a player character at one point.

I understand that Great Person Theory makes you very, very angry on a personal level, so let me rephrase that - there was no event or trend to curb the more anarchic elements of the Wasteland in the Capital and establish a stable civilization larger than isolated towns. California's success was a combination of a number of factors - less radiation, more natural resources (especially food and, somehow, water), several useful/successful Vaults that were opened in a timely fashion (including the forced-cosmopolitan Vault 15, part of which became Shady Sands), and a trend toward trade and capitalism that helped unite people into the NCR. The aggressive Super Mutant population was deprived of any unity or ability to expand, and like the Ghouls, integrated into human society rather than destroying or competing with it.

Now, this last part was largely accomplished by the adventures of a single hapless schmuck because Fallout is a work of literature following the Heroic Fantasy archetype, not an actual historical account. The point is, the Capital Wasteland had none of this, at least without the presence of numerous technologies and social aspects that were introduced over the course of Fallout 3 (which is somehow even more Hero's Journey than the original).

[Hiro Protagonest]

While it may not be fluff, I decided to say that I've started to play the first three games, and the companion AI in the first one is horrible. Now I see why "Fallout Tactics" is titled as such even though the first two are also turn-based combat; no control over your allies. I could totally rescue Tandi without Ian dying if he wasn't such an idiot who'd rather pursue a fleeing bandit across the camp where there are many other bandits wanting to kill him instead of just target the nearest one, who is probably Garl and therefore someone I want to kill, or stick with me so we can get out of there.

Also I feel like there might've been a companion opportunity in Junktown that I missed.

Oh, and am I supposed to find the water chip in Vault 15, or should I move on to The Hub?

[Farix]

Also I feel like there might've been a companion opportunity in Junktown that I missed.

Oh, and am I supposed to find the water chip in Vault 15, or should I move on to The Hub?

In Junktown you can pick up

Spoiler

Show

Tycho

and Dogmeat, but well...

Move on, you didn't think finding the chip would be that easy now did you?

[Hiro Protagonest]

In Junktown you can pick up

Spoiler

Show

Tycho

and Dogmeat, but well...

Dogmeat attacked me after I got him when the fight with the assassin started, so I just figured that the guy who said "be wary, that dog's a killer" or something along those lines was right, and shot him.