Fallout Fallout General Thread - War, War Never Changes. Nor do game engines.

[Aaron Fox]

I'm unclear on how the Brotherhood's actions are of no value/harmful to the average Joe. They have vertibird patrols out fighting various threats. They specifically focus on eliminating super mutants and the like that the average poorly armed watelander stands no chance of fighting, along with destroying the institute that's actively sabotaging settlements, which is beyond the capability of most anyone outside the Brotherhood. Outside of that, Brotherhood policy regarding recovering technology is to not use force, instead either getting stuff turned over from negotiation or just buying it, which can be very beneficial to the average person.

The only things the brotherhood have done thst are detrimental to wastelanders is that sidequest where you can choose to go around extorting food from people, and thier destruction of Arcadia. The first is clearly stated to be an unofficial, unauthorized action, and merely proves that in any large organization, corruption can happen, there's nothing unique to the brotherhood that let's it happen. Arcadia is indefensible though, based on what information the brotherhood has destroying it was not justified (that's not to say it's not justifiable at all, merely that it's shakey given the information the brotherhood have).

This and that there are technologies that only ends in sorrow. The Synths (in how the Institute was using them) were just one.

 

[Battlegrinder]

This and that there are technologies that only ends in sorrow. The Synths (in how the Institute was using them) were just one.

Yes, but I don't think there's any canonical incident of the brotherhood saving the day on account of thier technological prowess because they were the only ones with the capability to do so, and the East Coast Brotherhood is clearly more focused on military power first and foremost.

 

[Aaron Fox]

Yes, but I don't think there's any canonical incident of the brotherhood saving the day on account of thier technological prowess because they were the only ones with the capability to do so, and the East Coast Brotherhood is clearly more focused on military power first and foremost.

Here's the thing, that's the most overt of the stuff they can do, and out of the three canonical chapters, only the Chicago Chapter from Tactics were shown using their technological and scientific prowess in a variety of situations to gain allies. The West Coast BoS was grabby grabby, this is mine while the East Coast (i.e. Irons) was more focused on the fighting of supermutants.

 

[TheRejectionist]

I started Fallout series with 3 and New Vegas on PS3 because I am a noob with PC gaming and as I said in the Halo thread, I didn't even think my PC was upgradable since it was portable ( I think you guys called it notebook? In my countries we called it portables). I didn't know the FO1, FO2 and Tactics lore.

So I like BOS of 3 and I wished they had continued with Sarah Lyons.

Though they became good guys only because Bethesda wanted it to.

 

[TheRejectionist]

PS : The algorithm seemed to have "read" what I am browsing

 

[Aaron Fox]

I started Fallout series with 3 and New Vegas on PS3 because I am a noob with PC gaming and as I said in the Halo thread, I didn't even think my PC was upgradable since it was portable ( I think you guys called it notebook? In my countries we called it portables). I didn't know the FO1, FO2 and Tactics lore.

So I like BOS of 3 and I wished they had continued with Sarah Lyons.

Though they became good guys only because Bethesda wanted it to.

Although, to be honest, FO3 broke the fandom, so to speak, when it came out. I remember when a good portion of the older players would try to do shit like review bomb and otherwise give FO3 a bad rep. They coalesced into the group 'No Mutants Allowed' and, let's be honest, FO3 was as bare-bones as it is largely because 1) Dev time was already short to begin with (that and they're using an incredibly old engine at that point), 2) it's literally the first true 3D title in the series, and 3) it was hitched to Games for Windows Live.

It should be noted that the West Coast BoS generally exiled any faction within the BoS that didn't go with the orthodoxy. Fallout Tactics is the first to show this and Bethesda likely took this little idea nugget and used it for the Lyons Chapter.

Problem is that, within the Fallout Fandom, the No Mutants Allowed group controls a significant market share within the fandom, and despite the fact that Bethesda got a lot of people into Fallout via 3, it didn't displace the need for catering to those dunderheads with sticks so far up their asses that it's coming out their mouths...

 

[TheRejectionist]

Although, to be honest, FO3 broke the fandom, so to speak, when it came out. I remember when a good portion of the older players would try to do shit like review bomb and otherwise give FO3 a bad rep. They coalesced into the group 'No Mutants Allowed' and, let's be honest, FO3 was as bare-bones as it is largely because 1) Dev time was already short to begin with (that and they're using an incredibly old engine at that point), 2) it's literally the first true 3D title in the series, and 3) it was hitched to Games for Windows Live.

It should be noted that the West Coast BoS generally exiled any faction within the BoS that didn't go with the orthodoxy. Fallout Tactics is the first to show this and Bethesda likely took this little idea nugget and used it for the Lyons Chapter.

Problem is that, within the Fallout Fandom, the No Mutants Allowed group controls a significant market share within the fandom, and despite the fact that Bethesda got a lot of people into Fallout via 3, it didn't displace the need for catering to those dunderheads with sticks so far up their asses that it's coming out their mouths...

So for the first part. I was still very much a troglodyte with the tech in general so I wasn't aware of this online drama. I can realize its barebones even then, though for 13 old me it was enough. Didn't know the latter 3 things.

How they control the market share ? And why their needs weren't displaces ? What exactly Bethesda did I don't follow...

 

[Aaron Fox]

So for the first part. I was still very much a troglodyte with the tech in general so I wasn't aware of this online drama. I can realize its barebones even then, though for 13 old me it was enough. Didn't know the latter 3 things.

How they control the market share ? And why their needs weren't displaces ? What exactly Bethesda did I don't follow...

Something that I learned in marketing, there are various groups going after your products, and some of them are your primary consumers. These primary consumer groups are primary because they control a major market share of the niche you're going into. In this case, despite the fact that FO3 brought in hordes of new customers into the niche, these guys still controlled the majority market share. This is further reinforced with New Vegas. So, to ensure maximum profitability, Bethesda tried to keep both sides happy and, well, we all know how that turned out...

 

[TheRejectionist]

Something that I learned in marketing, there are various groups going after your products, and some of them are your primary consumers. These primary consumer groups are primary because they control a major market share of the niche you're going into. In this case, despite the fact that FO3 brought in hordes of new customers into the niche, these guys still controlled the majority market share. This is further reinforced with New Vegas. So, to ensure maximum profitability, Bethesda tried to keep both sides happy and, well, we all know how that turned out...

I think in Italy and Brazil there and outside of USA-Canada there aren't many original fans, most of them started here with the last entries as the 3, 4 and New Vegas. I wouldn't be surprised if Fallout arrived in Italy in VERY limited quantities, probably because it wouldn't have been translated (I think) and dubbed, it's only recently post-2008 crisis English has become an absolute necessity.

 

[Aaron Fox]

I think in Italy and Brazil there and outside of USA-Canada there aren't many original fans, most of them started here with the last entries as the 3, 4 and New Vegas. I wouldn't be surprised if Fallout arrived in Italy in VERY limited quantities, probably because it wouldn't have been translated (I think) and dubbed, it's only recently post-2008 crisis English has become an absolute necessity.

From my understanding, they don't out populate the 'No Mutants Allowed' portion of the fanbase, at all. Enough that they can achieve some level of parity? Maybe. Just not surpassing the NMA crowd. The only reason for the simplification of the SPECIAL system is that everyone involved understood that they need to get away from the old GURPS-inspired number-crunching version to get more customers and widen the audience.

 

[TheRejectionist]

I should add, the original isometric Fallouts. I wanted to work on a "mini-mod" to replace the voice of the US president in Fallout 2.

If you read the wikia and other sources, you can see why I wanted to do that mod.

 

[Bassoe]

They could even go to China, with an american-as-applepie soldier who as part of an invading force ended up with his company in deep-freeze before getting unthawed 200 or so years later.

Fallout China, aka, the New Warring States Period.

• Neo-imperial dynasty, aka, caesar's legion based on imperial china rather than rome.
• Mao's red guard personality cult turned into an actual religion like a more genocidal version of the Kings. Take every single nasty trait of every single communist regime and mash them together, plus a literal cult. Lots of trigger-happy commissars and gulag slave camps in mordorish industral wastelands.
• The Khanate transhumanist wuxia mongol horde. Before the war, china had their own supersoldier program to rival america's deathclaws and FEV. In some ways they were more successful, their bioengineered supermen kept their minds and fertility, were unaffected by the radiation, able to survive the most poisoned environments, consume anything organic, fight the radiation-spawned monsters and barbarian hordes, etc. Then the bombs fell, the merely human scientists died or were reduced to feral ghoulhood by the radiation and their prototypes were abandoned in a wasteland lethal to anything but themselves and the other monsters. The culture they built was some completely unworkable mess of Proud Warrior Race Guy-isms, deliberately since it was set up by the first generation of them who wanted to make a society in which strength, something they had in abundance would be the most valuable attribute. Their founder may have dressed this up in a propaganda narrative about how a world without science and engineering would mean a world where conflict was limited to 'safe' low-tech forms which only kill individual combatants instead of entire civilizations, but the actual intention was to make a society where their traits were the most valued, and prioritize smothering any developing rival civilizations in their cradle, since if they ever started technologically advancing, they'd inevitably curbstomp with superior weapons technology. Take some thematic inspiration from this December 1953 Mechanix Ilustrated magazine article "How Nuclear Radiation Can Change Our Race" by Otto Binder. The bioengineered supermen have approximately the same relation to wuxia heroes as bretonnians possess in regards to chivalric romance, specifically regarding their treatment of peasants. The Great Khan, their leader, is also the first of their species ever created, they just grow stronger with age.

• Pirate Kingdoms of Taiwan/Yankee Ironborn. Prior to the Great War, the Taiwanese and their American allies/advisors/puppeteers collaborated to build up Taiwan's military prowess as a defense against Chinese invasion/staging ground for invading China. During the War, this turned Taiwan into a nuclear battleground, leaving it largely unable to sustain its population off radioactively contaminated farmland, yet highly stocked with military equipment. The results were predictable. By the current period, Taiwan should be treated with the series' characteristic black comedy, officially of course, their fleet is for fishing and trading and anyone who decides to go a-viking against the mainland is just an outlier, unofficially, they've still got the jolly roger as their flag. There's probably a generational divide between the two views.
• Tibet. Free of the Chinese occupation after the collapse of the CCP/Mao Dynasty and essentially reverted to their fifties theocratic politics. Also sokushinbutsu ghouls.

No way Microsoft will make a Fallout China.

Here's an idea:

Game takes place on China's southeastern coast between Hong Kong and Taiwan. The three primary factions are a group of ghoulified immortal Shaolin monks (think Boxers) who rule China and want to restore traditional values and kick out the Neo Colonial Europeans that have invaded China for its resources; these Neo-Colonials have advanced technology, and have managed to gain a foothold on the continent because of their needed more advanced food production technology.

Meanwhile, Taiwan is an isolationist dictatorship that has spent decades in bunkers, and hopes to reestablish a foothold on Taiwan.

All factions stare at the wealth of Hong Kong, where, due to a fluke, most of manufacturing district still stands. A restored Hong Kong has the potential to have a manfuacturing capacity equal to the rest of Asia.

You play an bad-ass American soldier sent to Hong Kong as part of a diplomatic mission to Hong Kong from the NCR. The idea was that the NCR would try to help calm the region and act as a neutral third party far enough removed to be impartial.

However, when you arrive, the rest of the diplomatic party is assassinated by a bomb, leaving you as the Sole Survivor. (You could even subtly imply that the lead diplomat was a version of the Courier was a Speech 100 guy who managed to solve Fallout New Vegas peacefully).

You end up being torn between all three factions, having to choose who to support, and trying to figure out who was responsible for the assassination plot.

For recognizable things, you've got Hong Kong, Taiwan.... You could even have irradiated hyper-aggressive pandas! There's Shaolin monks, neo-colonial soldiers (lets bring back Redcoats! Why not?), you could have an Opium War... There's plenty to reference.

You could even have a Vietnam DLC.

Protagonist is a taiwanese/yankee pirate. The game starts with your discovery of some moldering untranslatable documents in an ancient prewar military complex with tutorials consisting of shooting some security robots and feral ghouls, then when you return to the free port of Taipei to sell you loot, every faction completely pulls out the stops and attacks simultaneously, they know the value of said documents even if you don't. Cue attempting to escape a full-scale invasion of the island and figuring out just what you've got and how to personally benefit from it and/or trade it to one faction for protection from all the others and prosperity for life.

The documents are The Mandate Of The Heavens, control codes for a prewar PRC military killsat. Whoever possesses both them, and a suitable transmitter which is a bit beyond your capacity to construct entirely on your own, has the power to win the New Warring States Period and unify China under their rule.

Independent Ending (optimistic): You memorized and destroyed the Mandate, stole one faction's radio broadcasting station and nuked everyone who disagreed with your appointing yourself Emperor from orbit.

Independent Ending (pessimistic): Your sole powerbase is a superweapon and fear. Everyone wants to assassinate you and steal it, they'll be a succession war when you die and only the fear that you've done something crazy like setting up a deadman switch where if you don't enter a specific control code every week, the superweapon self-destructs or starts firing automatically or something keeps you alive.

Neo-Imperial Ending (optimistic): The Warring States are at peace under a mostly-benevolent tyrant, the rebuilding of civilization can begin and as the one who made it happen, you've got said tyrant's personal gratitude and the position it grants you.

Neo-Imperial Ending (pessimistic): The tyrant doesn't trust you. Why would they? You were attacking their countrymen until recently and only made a deal for protection. Never trust a traitor, especially not one who knows your only weakness/the controls for the superweapon which is the basis of your authority.

Maoist Ending (optimistic): "All hail Secretary-General you!"

Maoist Ending (pessimistic): "All hail Secretary-General whoever won the power struggle and had you killed and unpersoned!"

Khanate Ending (optimistic): The Khanate destroys the satellite to prevent the reunification of China into a single state and the end of the anarchy under which their physical process is so valued.

Khanate Ending (pessimistic): The Khanate sets out to absolutely guarantee that nobody will ever rise against them, setting off volcanoes with ortillery strikes until they cause a mass extinction. They can thrive in an environment where baseline humans cannot and now they've got a weapon to transform the whole world into such a wasteland.

Taiwanese Yankee Ending (optimistic): Basically a repeat of the xiongnu, chouchi and mongol conquests, China gets taken over by foreigners who set themselves up as the new ruling dynasty.

Taiwanese Yankee Ending (pessimistic): All that fun involved in being pirates? Gone. Enjoy the paperwork that comes from running a colossal empire. And it'll inevitably play out just like every single other time China got taken over by foreigners, your distant descendants will be first assimilated then overthrown by the next invaders.

 

[Bassoe]

There's not a lot to gain by doing a war story in pre war Fallout world IMO. There's nothing in particular you can do in that setting that couldn't be done in any near future sci-fi game.

The idea would be that it wouldn't be the near-future imagined by a modern FPS or technothriller cliché, which is essentially a modern battlefield with the unwelcome additions of suicide-bombing kamikaze quadcopters and headless cybernetic hellhounds with gun turrets attached to their spines, but the less depressing and more surreally hilarious future battlefield imagined by decades-old issues of Astonishing.

We're talking about the same culture which thought a forty-foot humanoid robot tossing off anti-communist propaganda and nuclear footballs was a good idea. Their wars should not be bound by notions of 'practicality'.

 

[Zachowon]

I miss the era of fun tech. Now it is practical

 

[Battlegrinder]

The idea would be that it wouldn't be the near-future imagined by a modern FPS or technothriller cliché, which is essentially a modern battlefield with the unwelcome additions of suicide-bombing kamikaze quadcopters and headless cybernetic hellhounds with gun turrets attached to their spines, but the less depressing and more surreally hilarious future battlefield imagined by decades-old issues of Astonishing.

The issue is we've seen and fought on that future battlefield in operation anchorage, and in the weapons, equipment, and records left behind after the bombs dropped, and it doesn't resemble those magazines at all.

 

[Bassoe]

Yeah, and my point is that it should've. I want to see the prewar American Empire's military in all its ridiculous glory. Bring on the domesticated Deathclaws!

 

[Morphic Tide]

Bring on the domesticated Deathclaws!

Deployed As Designed Deathclaws. The things were terror weapons, made to be chucked behind enemy lines and fuck shit up as nigh-immortal monsters. They are not a Random Bullshit of the Wasteland, they are, like Cazedors, a maliciously intentional horror that unexpectedly led to sustainable populations.

Getting to witness the unholy "Oh Fuck" moment of the first time people realized these things can breed would be quite the wonderful setpiece. Oh, and since they're the generation one terror-weapons, they're far above and beyond any other entry's, because these are the things made to be chucked in a war zone with zero support.

 

[Battlegrinder]

Deployed As Designed Deathclaws. The things were terror weapons, made to be chucked behind enemy lines and fuck shit up as nigh-immortal monsters. They are not a Random Bullshit of the Wasteland,

As far as I know that's not true, they were supposed to be used as frontline troops (exactly how the enclave used them), not rear area sabotage/murder monsters.

You're conflating how they are perceived in the wasteland and in game with how they were viewed pre-war.

 

[Morphic Tide]

As far as I know that's not true, they were supposed to be used as frontline troops (exactly how the enclave used them), not rear area sabotage/murder monsters.

...That is dramatically incoherent with the measures the Enclave literally had to take to try that, particularly the talking Deathclaws in FO2. If they were made as front-line shock troops, why the fuck can't they be trained as-is?

 

[Battlegrinder]

...That is dramatically incoherent with the measures the Enclave literally had to take to try that, particularly the talking Deathclaws in FO2. If they were made as front-line shock troops, why the fuck can't they be trained as-is?

I'm just going off the citations from the wiki, which clear say they were for frontline service.

Given that there's no evidence of them actually being deployed, presumably they were never actually finished and ready for deployment, and the enclaves efforts in fallout 2 and 3 are attempts to do so.