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| I like Fallout 3; For fun | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Dec 12 2012, 08:02 PM (1,182 Views) | |
| Piph0 | Dec 12 2012, 08:02 PM Post #1 |
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Milkman
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After posting "I don't like Skyrim", it got a surprising amount of Fallout 3 comparisons cropping-up. That’s fine, in general, but the debate started going towards Fallout 3 vs Skyrim. I’d thought that might go off topic a bit, and it did. I found myself explaining the finer points of Fallout 3 instead of talking about Skyrim. I put my foot down about such things. Since I don't want to dissuade anyone from talking about points or arguments, I made this topic. Some things you should know before reading or posting: 1. SPOILERS: about any and all things Fallout 3 (may have other games' SPOLIERS as well). 2. Unlike "I don't like Skyrim", this topic of Fallout 3 may have debates based strictly on comparisons about anything, even Skyrim. (I underlined 'may' because I don't want people to feel like they need to.) 3. I'm doing this for fun, debating for debating’s sake. For those who don’t want to read the entire thing (and I don’t blame you!), here are the main points that I have below that talk about some of the reasons why I like Fallout 3: - The tutorial/opening of the game - Notable Characters - An extreme emphasis on exploration and reward - Tactical battles Alright, let's get down to business. I like Fallout 3, like a lot. Heck, it's my favorite game. I know there are flaws. I don't know if you'd agree with me, but I think anyone who has a favorite game knows its flaws. I think this statement goes over all media: movies, books, music, and TV shows. If you don't see any flaws in your favorite game, then you need to play more games. I would say the same thing about a favorite movie, book, music, or TV show. Heck, I'm not that big into any of those, and that's why I can't see flaws like movie-buffs or bookworms can do for their respective media. Ok, things I like. Let's start at the start. The opening of this game is amazing. It's a tutorial that matters. You are baby and dada is in room and he talk and say mother stuff and leave baby lone. Baby escape prison shouting at sassy dark elf all the while learned them basic mechanics of teh game. Then you are 10 years old. Then overseer gives you a pipboy. Then Amata my bestest friend gives you a Grognak the Barbarian comic which can inform you of skill books. Then Mrs. Nice Old Lady gives me the bestest birthday gift... a sweet roll!!!!!!!!!! This teaches you about your item place. Finding the sweet roll gives you a better idea of how to use it. Robot didn't cut the cake good. It is a talking robot and I can understand it too. Then big old meany stupid face tells you he wants the sweet roll. The game gives you lots of options to say things to him, including “I ate it,” and “I threw it on the floor.” Then dad says that he has a special gift and tells me to go to Mr. Jonas then crazy lady gives me a stupid poem. Then Mr. Jonas tells me to see dad then dad gives you a B. B. Gun. Guns are bad. Then I practised on targets and a big bug and it was scary.At the age of 17, my father is making me go to school, even though I am sick. ;_; LOL. If I looked around in dad's office I could find a bobble-head in a safe that I tried to open, but it's too hard x_x. When going to class I found the 'loser-snakes' being jerks to my BFF Amata (it sounds like a navy ship ROLF). I could've challenged Wally's manhood -- he's so predictable :P. But I just told off Butch. Karma’s a bitch. I get in to class and the teacher is all like up in my face :sigh:. I could've totally told him off and I would've totally not needed to take the test, but I took it anyway for my image. There were really weird questions, so I like guessed for most of them, but when I came into the overseer question, I chose the fort one cuz he's at the bottom of my list. xD I handed it over, but I didn't like my job, so I made him change it. Because I'm popular. Alright, I hit the age of 19, so now I'll just put down the facts. The game, at this point, gives you an amazing amount of freedom and really good game mechanics. Even when you first wake up in your bedroom, you open your eyes to a blurry version of Amata. As your vision clears you get told that your dad has left the vault -- which is unheard of -- Jonas has died, and the entire vault is in panic. I would also like to add that during this conversation Amata offers you a gun, and you can take it or insist that she keeps it. At this point you can pick up a melee weapon (baseball bat) and a firearm (B. B. Gun). In addition, you can check in your dresser and find things that you might have picked up from your childhood and teenager section, including things such as the Grognak the Barbarian comic. There is also a first aid kit, to show you what they look like and what they contain inside -- in this case, a handful of stimpacks. Once you step out of the room, there is an aggressive guard who would have attacked you if not for the rad-roaches already attacking him. At this same point the game tells you how to use sneak. If you do use it and go around him, the game rewards you by having the guard get killed via rad-roaches (a script). You can take his vault security armor and actually have a solid damage resistance for your first battles. Soon after, Butch will plead you to help him, saying that his mother is being attacked by rad-roaches. If you choose to and succeed with helping him and his mother, you'll be rewarded with a one of a kind item -- Tunnel Snake's Jacket -- and earn his undying friendship. The point at which we've arrived now hands out no obligation to do anything but to explore, grab items that you may or may not need, and progress. The next thing that you may find is a friendly guard who will inform you about the dangers around you, as well as give you insight into The Overseer's plan to kill you. (I note this because up to this point you may have encountered only hostile guards. This teaches you that not every single enemy-type is hostile at all points.) If we fast forward a bit, we come to Amata being interrogated by her father and one guard. This situation has so many choices and outcomes that I simply cannot list them all. To compensate, I will give you a range: you burst into the room and kill the guard and the Overseer himself, to Amata killing the guard and running away, to the Overseer convincing you to give him your weapons and then turning against you. A bit further down the road, the game introduces its first locked door and computer which you can hack, teaching you one/two things: either the mechanic of lockpicking and computer hacking via your trial and error, and/or showing you that there is more than one way to solve a problem. To show you that there is a way around having to use either of those methods, there is the Overseer's Office Key in a locker near the door and the password is in a locker near the computer. I'd like to add that this multi-path layout happens frequently. You seriously do not need to use either hacking or lock picking at a good many points in the game. Even at the point where you can leave the vault, you can explore even further and find useful items in a back room. That's how much this game rewards you for exploration. So, now we leave the opening of the game and go out into the vast and extremely open world of Fallout 3. From this point on the game strongly hints at certain places for you to go to progress the story, but does not, however, force you to go there by any means. And that, my friends, was only the tutorial. What other games out there develop so much or have so much content in just the tutorial itself? ~~Notable characters: This is a line of characters that have interesting personalities, opinions, or quotable lines. From those qualities alone, it is almost applicable to all named characters in the entire game. Examples of characters, in no particular order: Vault 101: Amata, James, Butch, Wally, Paul, Stanley Armstrong, Beatrice Armstrong, Jonas Megaton: Lucas Simms, Moira Brown, Gob, Doc Church, Colin Moriarty, Nova, Lucy West, Wadsworth, Jericho, Nathan, Mr. Burk, Walter, Billy, That-one-guy-in-front-of-the-bomb (I’m bad with names) Rivet City: Dr. Zimmer, Pinkerton, Doctor Li, Father Clifford, Diego, Lopez, Sister, Ted, Bannon, The Doctor, Seagrave Holmes, Mei Wong, James and Tammy Hargrave, Abraham Washington, Belle Bonny, Angela Staley Little Lamplight: Billy (Biwwy), Zip, Lucy, MacCready, Pricess, Bumble, Éclair, Sticky, Knick Knack and Knock Knock Republic of Dave: Dave, Bob, Rosie, Shawna, Jessica Tenpenny Tower: Allistair Tenpenny, Herbert Daring Dashwood, Mr. Ling, The old chief lady, Mrs. Wellington Big Town: Bittercup, Red, Dusty, Shorty, Pappy Underworld: Mister Crowley, Snowflake, Doctor Barrows, Nurse Graves, Cerberus, Patchwork, Carol, Tulip, Charon, the guy who owns Charon, Sydney Other: Three Dog, Paladin Hoss, Lug-Nut, Dukov, Cherry , The kid in Canterbury Commons , The AntAgonizer, The Mechanist, Bryan Wilks, the “ How marvelous” Scientist, Elder Lyons, Sarah Lyons, Liberty Prime, Crazy Wolfgang, Doc Huff, the wondering Weapons salesmen, Fawkes, Agatha, John Henry Eden, Bob/Harold (heh), Sierra, Ronald, Evan Kings, Ian West, Vance, the leader of Sudden-Death Overtime, Scribe Yearling, Murphy, Everyone in Andale (the happiest place in the waste), Milo, Roy Phillips, “Betty”, Reddin, Button Gwinnett (Yes, that Button Gwinnett) ~~An extreme emphasis on exploration and reward: The entirety of the game is built in a way that just about everything that you find is not junk. There's a severe lack of caps, ammo, stimpacks, and you have to constantly repair your weapon(s) and armor(s) with the same item(s), meaning repeat items can be useful. In addition, I really want to talk about unique items. Since there are various types of weapons and, therefore, various implementations of aforementioned weapons, most unique variations of said weapons – is good. Other than the previously mentioned weapons, unique items can be found as rewards for explorations and maybe even the "end" of a dungeon, such as: unique armor, skillbooks, bobble-heads, schematics, and Nuka-Cola Quantums. The game has a lot of miscellaneous items like food and odds-n-ends, this creates a weird sense of “What is important?” and “What should I keep?” Here’s a hint, about a third of random the items are fairly fruitful. And that’s just the items; I haven’t gotten into perks, locations, or even stories. There is not much to say about perks, other than that they can be given as a reward and they’re always helpful in some facet. The locations suffer the most in this game. A good part of the game is copy-pasted (no, I’m not going to say pasta) and the biggest example of this is metro tunnels. They don’t differ much from each other in the DC area and that sucks, but here is the thing -- almost all areas are reused. Why don’t other areas stand out in the same way? To explain, I’d like to point at the Vaults for some clarity. A Vault's backdrop doesn’t make a Vault. It’s what’s inside. The enemies, the items, item placement, environmental placement, scripted sequences, story -- these are what make vaults dynamic, in the true sense of the word. When first entering a Vault you may find something: a note, few traps, or some bodies. You might not know about the story behind the things you find, but you can learn about it, if you are willing. Take, for example, Vault 108. While exploring it, your path might cross a door marked “Female Dorm” which has been barricaded with tables and lockers from the inside. When the context of the enemies, the placement of environmental objects, and the scraps of notes to be found strewn about are combined in such a fashion, the player is able to fill in the blanks about what happened in the area and have a unique experience in a map that was otherwise a blatant copy of the other vaults. Vault 108 is not even exclusive to the sort of “placement” narrative that Fallout 3 demonstrates here. Despite being nearly identical in room placement to all the other vaults, every vault has its own story, and those stories can be discovered by just looking at the carefully placed context clues, which are unique to each area. This is kind of a good segue into talking about story. In some areas, you will get the “past” of that area—before the bombs dropped. And then there’s another story in that area about something that happened in the “present past” –after the bombs dropped. You get that perspective simultaneously while you’re in the area, and it tells a story that pulls together a nearly complete picture. You get to fill in the blanks all by yourself, which is extremely rewarding. Catcard: I figured I’d post this inside Piph’s post in order to make it easier to quote along with the entire section if someone were so inclined. The first time I really experienced this was when I stumbled upon a small unmarked ghoul village. The area was absolutely desolate, with many of the houses standing as either little more than piles of debris or pseudo-shacks with small groups of hostile ghouls patrolling them, but there were a few intact sheds that I decided to explore as soon as I was safe. I’d just learned that looking for pre-war books was a good idea, so I was really looking around, exploring a little harder than I ever had while playing the game. In the last shack I entered, there was almost nothing there, save for two things, which were resting next to each other in a dirty bathtub: a skeleton, with its arm draped over the rim of the tub… and a toaster. Heavy stuff. Anyway, back to Piph. I could make another huge list for interesting areas like the list of interesting people as I did before, but I won’t do that. Instead, I’ll give you one example of a minor area. I’d like to stay true to the game’s philosophy about storytelling for this example – it’s better to show than to tell. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=PprZbdv0p5I#t=909s ~~Tactical battles: I really hadn’t given this much thought until recently. First off, I wanted to talk about types of weapons, their usefulness and viability, and the flexibility of being able to wield whatever you want. There are pros and cons for just about every type of build you can have, and no matter what type of build you have, it can work. Unarmed, melee, energy weapons, heavy weapons, regular ol’ gun totin’, it’s all viable. Though hard, explosives can still be a worthwhile venture. Heck, even from the start of the game, you can go pure unarmed. Any weapon the game has to offer can fit any type of preferred combat and playstyle you have. You can punch doods. I like punchin’ doods. A lot of people say that shotguns are the best. They’re pretty good – one of my favorite weapons – but not the best. They might have a really high damage output, but you need to be standing right in front of the enemy for it to take full effect, so you might want something more accurate at longer ranges, such as a Chinese Assault Rifle. And then you might want something at even longer ranges, so you could go with a sniper rifle, a scoped magnum, or even a hunting rifle. As for melee, weapons of that type have a high chance of doing crippling damage to enemies’ limbs. And unarmed is daaaaamn sexy. Conservation and cost: to conserve, each battle you have to keep in mind your armor, yourself, and your weapons, and all of these are in fairly short supply. So, to minimize damage to your armor, your weapons, and yourself, you want to find the best course of action to end battles efficiently (not quickly; quickly could get your leg blown off). In that case, you might want to bring more than one “problem solver”. Something that has a lot of ammo but doesn’t do a lot of damage, you might want to keep around for the small fry. Weapons with a low amount of ammo and high damage you might want to have on hand for the big baddies you run into. You also might want to keep a couple of different ranged weapons around, in case you’re thinking that getting up close to a group of enemies that’s sectioned off might not be the best idea. One-on-one tactics: if you’re having a large problem with one enemy, a lot of people usually try to tell you, “Oh, it’s easy if you just do _____!” …But there’s a large range of things that you can do to take down an enemy – a perfect complement to the arsenal you have to do the taking-down with. A lot of people would agree that Deathclaws, for example, are hard. And for good reason: they have a formidable amount of health, and can take down your health to half in one swipe. They are also much, much faster than you. This is where tactics will be helpful. To win, you could choose to use a lot of items (like health items, drugs, etc), or you could choose to kill it before it gets to you. A good way to do this is through sneak damage, which is a boatload of damage…and boats are pretty big. You can blow it to smithereens with your biggest, baddest gun/bomb. My favorite is the Nuka-Grenade. Another way, and also a fairly popular l33tz0rz method, is to cripple its legs so that running and gunning becomes an option. Tactics like this can be applied to every enemy in the game. Almost everything has limbs to cripple. Almost everything can be snuck up to. And I’m pretty sure nothing can resist getting blown up in a fiery Fat Man explosion… or three. These things allow you to create an experience in combat that is as versatile or as narrow as you want it to be. For anyone who’s read this far, I thank you! This thread is for discussing Fallout 3, your personal likes and dislikes about the game, any experiences you’d like to share, and pretty much anything else Fallout 3 related. There won’t be any really harsh parameters here, but please try to keep it all related to Fallout 3. Sincerely, Piph0 with Kikoni and Catcard as scribes, Ray, Catcard and Snowy as editors and DJnuma as the guy laughing in the background while this was being typed out. |
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| DJNUMA | Dec 12 2012, 08:09 PM Post #2 |
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Minor League Commissioner
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My... God.... |
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| catcard | Dec 12 2012, 08:12 PM Post #3 |
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Several days, a lot of thinking, hours of scribing, and a lot of back-and-forth to achieve mutual understanding and communicate Piph's points in better language. Edit: I'd like to remind everyone that there is a TL;DR in the beginning of the post, in case you want to glance over the kinds of points that Piph goes over. At the same time, I'd also like to remind everyone that he worked really hard to get all his ideas written down and edited down, so I recommend reading it at some point... even though I'm a little biased because I helped.
Edited by catcard, Dec 12 2012, 08:16 PM.
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| PvtCryan502 | Dec 12 2012, 08:13 PM Post #4 |
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More than Just a Conjurer of Cheap Tricks
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Holy fudge baskets of Nuclear macaroni. Like I pity the fool that debates against that. Oh well no use crying over spilt armageddon.
Edited by PvtCryan502, Dec 12 2012, 08:15 PM.
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| ViperKang | Dec 12 2012, 08:14 PM Post #5 |
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Now that's a wall of text if I've ever seen one XD And I agree with pretty much everything. |
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| DJNUMA | Dec 12 2012, 08:15 PM Post #6 |
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Minor League Commissioner
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Oh I know cat, I was there when it started..... thats why i changed the comment.. |
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| Drakxii | Dec 12 2012, 08:41 PM Post #7 |
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I like the vast majority of your points Piph. There is only 2 things that stop me from liking FO3 as much as I could. They have to do with the lore/story and I anit going to name anything specific... Spoiler: click to toggle
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| ViperKang | Dec 12 2012, 08:50 PM Post #8 |
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Well to be fair the plot was never REALLY meant to be fallout's strongest point. You could tell from the story. It was nothing to write home about. I think the story was used as a vehicle to meet all the interesting characters that make up the world. And as far as logical encounters go ALL encounters are logical based on the world they reside in. The fallout world in and of itself is illogical. You wanna see even semi logical results of nuclear armageddon? Play metro 2033. So there always have to be a certain suspension of disbelief when you are in a world of giant scorpions and communist fighting war mechs. |
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| Drakxii | Dec 12 2012, 09:06 PM Post #9 |
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I am not saying they are illogical compared to our world. Fallout is suppose to be a "what if" scenario, where small nuclear power was common, the micro circuit never invented, where nuclear fallout is a minor effect that only lasts a short time, etc... With that in mind I have no problems with super mutants(FVE created), mutated animals and humans(created by radiation), giant power suits, nuclear cars, and other such things. But even with the rule changes humans are still humans. They need to eat, they still age, they still need to breed and they still want power and money. IMO, these are the rules that some of the encounters in FO3 violate. |
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| halospaz117 | Dec 12 2012, 09:16 PM Post #10 |
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may i have an example? i only have NV Edited by halospaz117, Dec 12 2012, 09:16 PM.
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This teaches you about your item place. Finding the sweet roll gives you a better idea of how to use it. Robot didn't cut the cake good. It is a talking robot and I can understand it too. Then big old meany stupid face tells you he wants the sweet roll. The game gives you lots of options to say things to him, including “I ate it,” and “I threw it on the floor.” Then dad says that he has a special gift and tells me to go to Mr. Jonas then crazy lady gives me a stupid poem. Then Mr. Jonas tells me to see dad then dad gives you a B. B. Gun. Guns are bad. Then I practised on targets and a big bug and it was scary.







1:55 PM Jul 11