All Fall Out games after 2 are revisionism (new vegas gets a pass). Up hold Black Isle Studios! Down with Bethesda opportunists!
They missed with Outer Worlds, a perfect case study in the effects of liberal brain worms.
Care to share? I wanted to play it (once I get a computer that wasn't made a decade ago) because it's Obsidian.
Well, the opening mission sequence has you deciding whether to help the exploitative boss who’s withholding healthcare from the people of this factory town where everyone works at a fish cannery. Only the best employees get treatment for the plague! It’s implied that the plague deaths are in part caused by the people literally being worked to death.
Oh, also a group of workers fled to start their own colony, and the boss wants to starve them out by shutting off their power so they can’t grow food.
This all sounds like a great set up to tell a story with good politics, but no, instead this is pitched as a “complicated” and morally gray scenario. Actually, the boss is right to withhold medical care from people who don’t meet their quotas. He’s really a good guy doing the best situation.
In the end, they create a situation that reads like a metaphor for the real problems of our world, but they sabotage it by creating reasons in the game that the bosses/capitalists in the game world are right that just don’t exist IRL. In the US, healthcare isn’t expensive because of shortages or lack of infrastructure, it’s literally caused by parasites enriching themselves at the expense of people’s lives. By whitewashing the actions of characters in their allegorical game, they’re effectively papering over/making excuses for real world villainy.
TL;DR: :LIB:
Gotcha. Thanks for the summary without any obvious spoilers!! Ethics in gaming journalism done right.
That's one way moral grayness can be done wrong in media. It's more realistic and engrossing when shit isn't black and white, but when it becomes "the evil villain actually has a point and the goody two shoes criticizing him are just dirty hippies who can't accept reality" then it's worse than complete moral certainty.
There is a certain genre of RPG writing that has two options and a hidden third option, which Outer Worlds suffered from immensely. Now, there isn't anything wrong with having a hidden option sometime, but the problem comes in when that is always portrayed as the "best" option. They tend to be based on compromise, so it reinforces a very lib worldview when it comes to allegories for capitalism; "unfettered" capitalism bad, communism also bad but less so, compromise good.
Is the "boss good actually" narrative pushed by the game itself, or just the characters?
It’s not pushed by the game per se, it is left ambiguous. The problem is they are crafting an ambiguous video game moral choice from something that happens in the real world, and in the real world is not ambiguous at all.
Honestly, there are parts of Fallout 4 that are pretty decent as well. The Institute operating off of pure cognitive dissonance over the horrors they cause to sustain their lifestyle feels like surprisingly pointed social commentary.
Yeah Fallout 1 and 2 were the real deal - I reckon 2 is even better once you've finished the first one (and there's a lot more stuff to do and even more freedom, although it sometimes gets a little too "wacky" for my taste). I think in many ways the introduction of fully-voiced dialogue was a huge setback for the genre, since it really reduced the volume and flexibility of dialogue compared to what was possible just with text. Also even the best dialogue voiced by those dopey-as-fuck mutant Oblivion faces is just impossible to take seriously.
PS I know Fallout 3 gets shat on a lot for its terrible storytelling (and rightfully so lol), but I always felt they built a really fantastic world to explore through if you completely ignore the questlines and focus on the environmental storytelling (and I also think integrating VATS to make it more RPG and less shooter doesn't get enough credit)
PS I know Fallout 3 gets shat on a lot for its terrible storytelling (and rightfully so lol), but I always felt they built a really fantastic world to explore through if you completely ignore the questlines and focus on the environmental storytelling (and I also think integrating VATS to make it more RPG and less shooter doesn’t get enough credit)
There is this 2 hour video of a leftist(?) online arguing that Fallout New Vegas is the best Fallout game (after 1+2)
lol sounds great!
Unpopular opinion, but for me New Vegas is actually the worst of both worlds - the storytelling side was really hampered by being in the oblivion engine and being told by people with creepy oblivion faces, where it would have done much better in some other isometric engine (perhaps without fully-voiced dialogue). And then the actual huge 3d open-world side was just not their forte, and was just a really noticeable step down in quality from F3 (and even F4). They didn't really play to their strengths, and I think it's a shame cos it could have been great
I dunno, for me the best part of the bethesda games is when you ignore the shitty stories and just pick a direction and explore shit for the sake of exploring (and maybe there's some cool loot too). I think they have a real talent for building worlds that feel like real places, that are interesting enough to explore for their own sake. I really like that there's always a bunch of locations that aren't related to any major quests or anything, they just exist. You could strip out all the characters and the combat and the quests and I would still explore the shit out of them to see what's there. That's the main reason why Oblivion was such a letdown for me, because the world was just so completely half-arsed. Also why I bounced off New Vegas more than most - yeah they're better writers but they just didn't build the world itself as well and the places just don't feel quite real. For me, Morrowind, Skyrim, F3, and F4 to a slightly lesser extent really scratched that itch.
I reckon 2 is even better once you’ve finished the first one (and there’s a lot more stuff to do and even more freedom, although it sometimes gets a little too “wacky” for my taste).
Right, I think F1 is the more "perfect" experience, in that it has a more coherent atmosphere and pacing and world, whereas F2 is a game you can just play the shit out of
Also Mutant Year Zero - it's much more postapocalyptic Xcom than an RPG and there's not much story and also your characters are a warthog and a duck, but it's a pretty cool little game
I didn't really get into Wasteland 2 (though I hear it improved a lot since launch), but I gather Wasteland 3 is supposed to be really good so I'm tempted to try that too
Wasteland 2 is decent. It sticks a bit too close to archaic gameplay choices, but once I got over the initial difficulty spike I started having a lot of fun. The director's cut edition is really stable & the game has only crashed on me once so far.
Wasteland 3 is a big improvement in terms of graphics and gameplay, but it's still busted and I had to stop playing it because the game crashes constantly. Personally I'd wait a year before playing it.
Underrail on steam also has Fallout like gameplay, but is much harder
Underrail's a fun game. Feels even older than the original Fallout due to the graphics and some mechanics. I followed a build while playing it and consulted walkthroughs at times... and the fights in the first half of the game are all still touch and go. The story is more linear and the second half probably gets a bit too easy... Amazing atmosphere though. Reminds me of Dune in some ways. ATOM RPG is easier to get into and not die in quite so much.
damn finally my knowledge of russian comes in handy
That's awesome, labor of love mods like that are the absolute best
Tip: keep about 4 saves and rotate saving over them. You might fuck up immensely and need to reload an older save
Good advice. Also useful for basically every game that allows it. Having a corrupted save file also really fucking sucks to deal with
My biggest recommendation? use cheat engine, not to cheat but for the speed hack to get you through some of the really obnoxiously slow parts where you have like 20 enemies taking turns making it take about 5 minutes a round.
I really need to go back and play that one. My first experience with the isometric fallouts was Fallout 2 and it honestly throws a lot at you, I've subsequently read quite a few opinions that Fallout 2 has a lot more going on, and so its kinda overwhelming if you're completely new as I was.
I was obsessed with those terrible "Deathlands" books as an adolescent. Full of violence, mutants, radioactive wastes and government bunkers stocked with all the terrible technology and war machines of a bygone world. Playing a fallout game has always weirdly felt like "going home."
I recently just watched a really long review video of it and now am meaning to play it finally. I play older CRPGs like Baldurs Gate so it shouldn't be so rough for me to get use to.
I love Fallout 1 and 2 and baldurs gate almost scratched the itch for me, but it was just a little too clunky for me. Seemed really good though. You'll love Fallout 1 and 2. I recommend the Fallout 2 Restoration Pack which restores cut content, just avoid the couple options (out of like 20) that put in completely user created stuff.
