Adventures After The Bombs Fell (Fallout Thread)

[psyanojim]

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

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.

[Jubal]

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?

[psyanojim]

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

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!

[Jubal]

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.

[psyanojim]

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

[Jubal]

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.

[Jubal]

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.