Exilian

Other equivalently big franchises of games have their own thread, and I'm playing Fallout 4 now thanks to Tuco, of this parish (or at least of this parish's pub) who kindly got the game for me.

I think I'm about at the halfway mark for the main quest, though I've hit level thirty by doing slightly more "radiant" quests than I probably needed to (that's the quest design system where you get formula quests with randomly assigned locations to clear/do things at: Skyrim does similar with its barrows etc). Of the game's four main factions, I'm working for the two least authoritarian ones, as you might expect, and my character is dating the nearby post-apocalyptic "city"'s foremost and indeed only journalist and is best friends with a robot in a synthetic human body who is a medical nerd.

Things I've been enjoying with Fallout: I'm definitely liking the capacity to build and design settlements and their defences. I have a few quibbles about the system but generally it works really very well. I think the main drawback of this and the Minutemen parts of the game is the spiralling micromanagement: rather than feeling like I'm building a bigger and more successful volunteer army and overall system, instead I'm feeling more and more stretched as I, personally, get asked to run around building yet more machine gun posts for every small farm in post-apocalyptic eastern Massachussetts. It'd be nice to be able to feel like you're more in a command role with some of that stuff (the castle mission and sections were good on that front but the rest has gotten a little grinding on occasion). But anyway, designing the buildings themselves and making rooftop bars for my post-apocalyptic citizens is something I enjoy a lot.

I think there's enough lightness in the setting for it to work, whereas I think I'd feared it would all come across a bit darker. I'd probably slightly tone down the gore in places by personal preference but I accept I'm at the low-tolerance end of the market there. Things like the occasional chasing down cats quest definitely help break up the shooty gameplay, and I'd probably have liked a ratio further in that direction with if anything less combat and more dialogue. I love the fact that companions are more fleshed out than in Skyrim (which, as the other Bethesda game of that generation, is the obvious comparison), though I'd have liked even more there probably. That said, I accept that combat is in a sense much easier to produce more of than interesting quests, so there's that.

I also actually think that the thought put into post-apocalyptic society is interesting in places (though really lacking in others). On the minus side the usual raider/civilian ratio being miles off thing is present, and it does repeatedly strike me as weird how the whole setup is visibly not more than a year after the bombs hit but in game it's actually two hundred years (in which time nobody has moved any of the dead bodies and there has been no soil erosion whatsoever). I think the game would feel like it made more sense if it was more like a hundred than two hundred years, or if there'd been a bit more of an attempt to think about what 200 years looks like. But if we handwave that, the society stuff I like, in particular the thing of people retreating to live in more densely packed centres within older buildings: "Diamond City", which is built in the ruins of a baseball stadium, is doing precisely what people actually did historically in periods of stark de-urbanisation: in Arles (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arles_Amphitheatre), this even happened with an amphitheatre and I wonder if this was a historical nod. I have some thoughts on how one could have made some of this more interesting, especially since if you do have 200 years to play with then you start getting into questions of whether e.g. some raider groups might actually have ended up with hereditary leadership etc (and it'd be interesting to contrast the cosplay-knighthood of the very very unfuedal Brotherhood with a situation where an actual warrior leadership class was emerging in parts of the game world). So that's all something I've found interesting to mull over.

Anyway, there's a good amount still to do (for those who know, I'm at the "go to CIT" stage of main quest) but I'm away this week so I'll report on my feelings on the ending sometime in May probably! And I'll share screenshots then if I have time too.

It is now sometime in May and I can report on my feelings on the ending! My feelings are... the game doesn't make you feel great about winning, does it? But it's a good and really interesting ending nonetheless.

Tons of spoilers below in tag:

Spoiler

Having the Institute run by Shaun was a very smart stroke on the part of the devs, I think that was an extremely well played plot turn. That said, I think they needed to play up Shaun's attachment to you as family more to humanise the Institute, whereas it felt like that was a bit too expected from the player. Shaun's familial attachment is plot-crucial, because it's the reason he puts stupid amounts of trust in you despite that being obviously daft, but it doesn't come through in the acting as well as it could I think.

As things career towards conflict, I did get strong senses of "I am surrounded by idiots and I cannot explain this fact to them". Every faction is supposedly pretty good at intel, but every faction is nonetheless underestimating all of its opponents' capabilities to a ridiculous degree, and the endgame is nowhere near worth the risks taken. I think maybe the Institute's master-plan needed to be much more destructive to the surface or something? Not sure. But the Institute's need to control synths is not really very well explained, it just ends up seeming like a cult-obsessive feature which ultimately brings an immense amount of destruction. The Brotherhood make more sense in this regard since they actually are a mad cult whose hubris knows no bounds, but the Institute's arrogance and blinkeredness hangs together a little less well.

The minutemen/railroad side is also a bit odd and the relationship between the two feels unresolved (though shout-out to the Radio Freedom broadcaster who does a very earnest job trying to rehabilitate the railroad's image post-game). It's weird that the railroad occupies tons of open checkpoint locations post-game: it makes zero sense for them to do this rather than the minutemen, and it might have been nice to have a "deciding the future" quest/scene where you have to sit down with Des, Z1-14, Preston, and maybe the mad explosives minutemen lady, and thrash out a plan, assuming you're sufficiently pro both minutemen and railroad (part of the oddity here being how much the minutemen are a True Neutral faction). I did keep wishing that, as the Minutemen's literal leader, I could get my teams working together better (I used Minutemen to get into the Institute the first time, then switched to the Railroad plans for destroying the BoS and Institute).

I'd also have liked to have a bit more show-not-tell on the Railroad's achievements after: unlike the other factions just showing them at checkpoints seems weird, and it'd be conversely good to have a bit more visible contact with the supposedly many synths who are being transported out. I guess the achievement feels impersonal, whereas the costs feel extremely personal, especially Liam's suicide which definitely felt a majorly jarring gut-punch. Not an unearned gut-punch, mind you, but it felt to me like there was a mismatch in that the punches landed heavily but the rewards felt thin.

Anyway, definitely enjoyed Fo4, will be up for playing more Fallout games at other times though it's a fairly long game series so probably won't do that immediately. I'd like to pick up the DLCs for Fo4 too, my guy Hannibal still has some story left in him I think (though he's one of my more generic protagonists by and large, just a smart and somewhat charismatic military leader really).

I have finished playing through Fallout: A Post Apocalyptic Roleplaying Game (or, as it's more commonly known, Fallout 1).

I very much blundered through it, and it definitely lacks a few things, but it does hold up despite its age (except for the lack of an autosave which is just horrible). I got really quite bad endings for settlements the most part, because I dragged my feet far too much for major parts of the game and didn't realise there was still a ticking clock after the water chip section, so I wasted a lot of time waiting for healing and suchlike. I also found that I stumbled across too many bits of major plot when I had to look up minor details to sort out sidequests I couldn't find completion points for, and got spoilered.

That said, there's a lot to like. I think one of the really interesting FO1/FO4 comparisons is that they're trying to do such different things with the setting. Fallout 1 feels like it's much more about trying to talk about what life would be like after an imagined apocalypse, whereas 4 feels much more driven by contemporary anxieties and reflecting pre-war (implicitly, our) society in the post-apocalyptic world.

I think the core plot is pretty good, too: it could have had better supporting dialogues, but I think the Overseer is well played and the logic of it broadly works. The transition to part 2 is a bit odd because I really hadn't seen a huge number of the things you're sent out to stop by the time I got back, but nonetheless, I think it works well as a whole.

Spoilery bits:

Spoiler

I did the Cathedral before the Mariposa base, and this felt slightly anticlimactic as an order of operations. I had been captured at the base and reloaded once I got stuck in a cell I couldn't lockpick, but when I did the base "for real", I just sort of ambled in, used my high science skill to set the computers to blow, and wandered out again.

I think my biggest frustration with the ending was that I knew that the mutants were sterile from the Glow but hadn't found the bits you need to prove that to the Master, so that was a bit vexing.

I have now played Fallout 2!

A lot of my comments about Fallout 1 also apply to 2: it also has the sense that it's talking about the setting on its own terms unlike the reflecting-the-past sensibilities of Fo4. Also, the lack of an autosave is still absolutely horrible, 0/10 for that design choice.

I got better outcomes than in Fallout 1, largely because there wasn't an invisible timer I was unaware of. I think 1 has the edge for characters and dialogues, for me: "you're a hero, and you have to leave" is one of the most inspired lines in the franchise, and Fo2's Elder and Shaman don't have quite the same resonance, and I like the Fo1 core bad guy better as a villain than the major villains of FO2. On the other hand, 2 has a significant edge on sidequests: the Vault 15 sections, Redding, the Den, Klamath, and Vault City were all really enjoyable.

Overall, very solid game. And I guess puts me over halfway through the series - still 3 and NV to play.

Spoilery bits:

Spoiler

Unsurprisingly, I have some fondnesss for the NCR, as they're pretty much the least awful option in the Wasteland - there's some individual decent leaders elsewhere but little that's a good general option. They did pretty well out of my endgame, picking up Vault 15, Vault 13, Redding, and Vault City (and presumably also Gecko which sadly got invaded by Vault City because the quest to get a good ending is bugged). The Shi flourished too so that's nice for them.

I didn't really bother with New Reno, so the jet-drug family expanded there, and Vault 13 and Gecko's good endings are bugged. There's no Klamath ending screen AFAIK.

Yes, I thought that FO2 was an objectively 'better' game due to mechanics, variety of quests/decisions etc.

But I preferred FO1s much tighter narrative, and the villains in FO1 gave it a much nastier 'horror/mystery' vibe which definitely fit my tastes better.

Quote from: psyanojim on June 25, 2025, 09:32:51 PMYes, I thought that FO2 was an objectively 'better' game due to mechanics, variety of quests/decisions etc.

But I preferred FO1s much tighter narrative, and the villains in FO1 gave it a much nastier 'horror/mystery' vibe which definitely fit my tastes better.

Yes, absolutely agreed. Which is interesting because I think in some ways the FO2 villains ought to be more up my street, I quite like having somewhat more political and human villains. But in the end the Enclave aren't actually very political - they end up as a sort of high tech doomsday cult, and all their negotiations and interactions in the Wasteland are actually sort of irrelevant in the end other than as foreshadowing for the final boss fight, whereas I think they might have been better if the tension between them wanting to ultimately wipe out the Wastelanders but also actually needing resources from the wasteland had been built up as more of a theme for them. I guess at the end of the day, FO1's villains are almost more political than FO2's as well as being more horror villains, in that they at least go to the trouble of having front organisations, conquest plans, etc.

And one other point on the Enclave:

(I also kinda wanted a chance to point out to their scientists that they've been enormously genetically bottlenecked for generations and given there's only a hundred or so of them on the oil rig they are by definition now horribly inbred, which makes an amusing mockery of their genetic superiority thing)

Yeah, the FO2 ending just seemed to culminate in a fairly boilerplate 'hahaha ultraviolence' type end-boss, despite all the variety leading up to it.

Whereas the FO1 bosses were just so damned... INTERESTING. Horrifying in appearance and nature, but charming, articulate, and just downright weird.

And I absolutely LOVED the pacing of the Cathedral, especially in a gaming era with far fewer spoilers. The descent into the Cathedral really did feel like some kind of descent into Hell or Madness.

I remember liking Fallout 2 more because it was quite a bit bigger: more equipment, more locations, more side quests and so on (plus better NPC management).  Looking back, though, I can see why it was criticized for being a bit too goofy and inconsistent compared to the first.

I couldn't get into Fallout Tactics at all and I did not like Fallout 3 very much, so I stopped there.

I've never played the original two Fallout games; this is making me think it might be a worthwhile experience.

Quote from: Son of the King on June 26, 2025, 12:35:13 PMI've never played the original two Fallout games; this is making me think it might be a worthwhile experience.

I'd absolutely recommend them as long as you have enough jank tolerance not to mind things like the lack of an autosave. :)

I feel like the one thing I'd really have liked from Fo4 to be ported back into FO1/2 was the settlement mechanics. Having an FO2 expansion where you got to do the aftermath of planning out your new settlement and establishing relations with the other towns/factions would be the sort of game I think I'd really enjoy, and it would in a sense almost work better as a mechanic in the more grounded FO1/2 than it did in FO4.

https://www.thegamer.com/fallout-bakersfield-remake-original-1997-game-gzdoom-engine-boomer-shooter/

Necropolis from Fallout 1 as a 'Boomer Shooter' ;D

ok, this is looking even better

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0Wv6kkloCU

Who knew that Fallout 1 and the Doom engine would work so well together?

Quote from: psyanojim on August 26, 2025, 02:49:33 PMok, this is looking even better

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0Wv6kkloCU

Who knew that Fallout 1 and the Doom engine would work so well together?

Oh huh, that actually does look very immersive, yes! And yes, I think it's one of those engine + game style combinations that's a bit of a "now you mention it yes that works, but I wouldn't have thought of it myself".

I would pay truly unreasonable amounts of money to play the Cathedral level from Fallout 1 done in that style.

Unity. Pray. Follow.

Nothing suspicious here, nope, move along :D

I never actually played Doom - would the engine handle the more RPG elements of FO1 okay, do you think?

It is based on GZDoom, which is an open source project, so I'm guessing they can do as they please if they have the skillset and time.

There are already various RPG elements visible in the HUD - hit percentages, combat/world log, item interactions etc

I'd forgotten that the Necropolis level is the first time you encounter a Cathedral member as well. Fallout 1 is still the only game that genuinely convinced me to join a cult :D

And wow, those death animations look brutal, they really nail the visceral feeling of Fallout 1 and 2.

Especially the SMG and Plasma Gun, absolutely nasty. Sprite-based 'gibs' and gore. Way better than the 'AAA' ragdoll nonsense in Fallout 3 and even Fallout 4.

Yes, I have some fondness for a certain sort of ragdoll graphics but it definitely doesn't feel brutal in the way that old games' death animations often did. I think it's definitely an advantage of something slightly stylised: the higher the nominal level of the graphics, I think maybe the harder to make visceral graphical work that really sells itself successfuly?

Yeah there's a bit of 'uncanny valley' going on I think, plus the fact that ragdoll physics always feels more like a clever tech demo than an immersive experience to me.

Compare that with the sheer love that the 2D artists put into the 'gibs' in both Fallout and Doom. The brutal death animations for characters like Gizmo and the Overseer in Fallout 1, and the joy that artist Adrian Carmack put into every flying chunk of flesh in Doom. Such as taking scans of their own scabs and blood to use in game :D

In fact, come to think of it, that is the unifying feature of both Fallout 1/2 and Doom - the emphasis on the 'gibs' and gore. Maybe this is a reason why the combination works?

That was one of John Romeros core design principles wasn't it? In in doubt, add more gibs!

I have played Fallout 3! Not all of it, but main plot and two DLCs.

I enjoyed FO3 more than I expected, but that's partly because several friends of mine talked it down so much. I think it was interesting to see some bridging features between 2 and 3 - the wasteland in 3 still e.g. has centaurs which 4 lacks - but also how 3 develops a lot of stuff visually that just hadn't been possible in 1/2, especially the retrofuturistic vibe and the frozen-in-time thing about the wastelands. There are far more standing ruined buildings in Bethesda fallout, whereas 1/2 despite being much earlier in the timeline feel like far more stuff has already been salvaged and reincorporated into settlements etc.

I think Fallout 3's other main problem for me was that there were too many segments that either a) were a knock-off of something that happened in 1 or 2 or b) were very much "war is in this game's tagline quote let's get the player to do Army Stuff". Operation Anchorage was particularly painful in this regard in that it basically felt like doing Call of Duty in the Fallout 3 engine, but also the end mission of Broken Steel was a grind and I didn't enjoy it much either.

I started on The Pitt but I'm not sure I'll bother finishing it, it's one of those misery railroad choice things apparently (which I think are often annoying in games, but are at their most annoying when they clearly make no sense: by post-game Fallout 3 I 100 percent should be able to fix the problems of the Pitt by personally hiring a merc contingent, equipping them with plasma weapons, and then turning up and pointing a Tesla Cannon at everybody until they let all the slaves go. I obviously get that that'd be game breaking and I totally accept the game not giving me that option... but I should at least have more options than "which of these two terrible leaders will you accept".

On the other hand, there's lots of good FO3 bits too. The settlements with weird problems and themes are fun - Megaton, Rivet City, Canterbury Commons, Arefu, Lamplight and Big Town I found enjoyable and wish I could have given more help to. I think the overarching themes are fine, Project Purity actually was a really good call as a central premise, though I think the FO3 Enclave feel slightly stale villains and some characters' actions in the plot make wildly little sense. I guess maybe we can chalk certain things down to the world going mad. And that probably happens in the game world, too.

I'm not sure if I count among the people 'talking it down', but I'll clarify my opinion

Fallout is probably my favourite game franchise of all time. If not outright, then definitely up there in the top 2 or 3.

So saying that Fallout 3 is my least favourite Fallout is like saying that its my least favourite thing out of my absolute most favourite things ever. So not really negative ;D

And I have played Fallout: New Vegas! So that's the full main set covered.

Thoughts:

• Yeah, it's a very good game indeed. I don't think there's a ton to choose between it and other Fallout games - I'm not in the "FNV is enormously better than either Bethesda Fallout" camp - but I did like it.
• The interconnection of plot lines is very intricate and I like it a lot. Things feel nicely interwoven in a way that makes me feel like I could do a very different second run in a way that isn't super true in a lot of games.
• If it suffered from anything, it's the converse thing to FO3 - my expectations were low for FO3 but high for FNV. Also, FNV relies on some moments of awesome that fall a bit dead on me, because one of the things this game has made me realise is that I'm just not that into casinos. Or the Roman Empire. Or being in the US army, though I did a lot more being in the army than anything else.
• If you don't go down a House/YM route, the securitron army feels almost plot-holed. Also House can be a weirdly minor character in the game, I did not really interact with him much at all until suddenly I had to go assassinate him.
• Generally happy with the endings I got, mostly used Boone, Cass, and Veronica as companions. And Rex. Apparently there was some way to get a Followers/NCR alliance which I failed to work out.
• The game would have been stronger if I hadn't been so heavily spoilered for it. The endgame did not feel like its strongest suit overall: I didn't expect it to have no postgame and I didn't actually kill Caesar at any point.
• Solid companion quests tying into main quest, that was well done. Just generally, quest design solid, good work.
• Really like the Khans, would have liked to see more of them. In general the factions were fine, but I'd have liked the NCR to have leaned in a bit to the weird dieselpunk post apoc democracy and a bit less into Hi Welcome To The US Army, and Caesar's Legion felt a bit cartoonish at times. I was a lot more captivated by the smaller towns and weirder factions than the Strip clans. The Kings were pretty fun I guess, and I should have done more Followers stuff though I guess I just missed some of that.

Awards for which Fallout does which thing better in my totally subjective view:

• Best plot: Fallout 1
• Best world building: Fallout 1, 2, & New Vegas
• Best quest design: Fallout New Vegas, the interlocking main quests are really impressive
• Best gameplay: Fallout 4, smooth gunplay but mostly for the settlement building that lets me scavenge properly
• Best line: Fallout 1 ("You're a hero, and you have to leave")
• Best villain: Fallout 1, The Master
• Best companion: Fallout 2 (Goris), Fallout 4 (Nick Valentine & Piper)
• Biggest gut punch: Fallout 4, Patriot's Note
• Best hero origin: Fallout 3, I like the vault/outside tension and whilst he wasn't always used well in the plot Liam Neeson does a solid enough job as Dad.

And things that stood out to me per game:
Fallout 1: the main quest timer thing, the Cathedral and the Master in general, rescuing Tandi/going to Shady Sands for the first time, that combat opening/closing noise, killing a FO1 deathclaw for the first time, being killed by a pack of radscorpions in five minutes with my first character.
Fallout 2: gecko hunting and the tribal life, Vault City was actually a really cool concept that should have been revisited, the Shi were cool and I'd like to see a less tropey better written future version of them, Goris is one of my favourite companions, seeing the NCR having become a thing was nice, Arroyo at the end.
Fallout 3: Project purity was actually a cool concept even if the later parts of the main quest had some odd choices, I loved the vault stuff and tensions around surfact contact being explored, I like the treeminders' sanctuary (another underrated faction I'd like to bring back), the spaceship and steel plant were not perfect but memorable, excessively war-pew-pew sections for the postgame plot and especially that damn Anchorage DLC. Little Lamplight made no sense but was cool, and I liked Big Town and Megaton.
Fallout New Vegas: The Khans are a fantastic idea that didn't get enough of a run, lots of army stuff which was fine but could have done with a couple more engagements and a couple fewer supply missions probably. The plants vault was interesting, Jacobstown/Black Mountain was kinda fun, Goodsprings was a nice settlement. The big standout in NV isn't any one part of NV, it's the feeling that the whole thing interconnects in a way the other games rarely manage.
Fallout 4: Building settlements was great and a lot of my best FO4 memories revolve around me enjoying that mechanic. I thought the family dynamics in the main plot didn't work super well and the plot was abstracted a bit too much around its core theme to keep an underlying universe that felt as grounded as I wanted it to. The Railroad are cool but underwritten, kinda same with the Minutemen. The Silver Shroud stuff was pretty fun, Diamond City is a great concept and a good nod to an actual historical phenomenon, the beeping of the suicide super mutants will haunt me until I die, the fight against the Mirelurk Queen to get control of the fort was memorably good, and the robots on a boat were enjoyably silly.

It's also been interesting to be able to draw through-lines that aren't the ones most people draw, because Fallout tends to be lumped as "1&2/Later Fallout" or "Bethesda Fallout/Old School Fallout", the latter exacerbated by Bethesda doing East Coast and Obsidian/Black Isle West Coast. But actually there's e.g. some lines between 2 and 3 or 3 and NV that I think get underexplored by that. Particularly with 3 and NV they both are war stories in a way that 1, 2, and 4 are not: the primary focal points of those games are control of resources rather than apocalyptic threats (1 & 2) or the whole what-does-being-human-mean tangent taken in 4. It's probably no accident that 3 and NV were made in the sort of peak Iraq/Afghan war era.