I just had to rant as I got kicked out of the Yes Man server because I've been repeatedly trying to talk with a former mutual (bentleyspeener) but I was DM'ed to stop as I actually stopped. They said they didn't like how I followed their Tumblr despite being loyal and I tried to talk with them. Then I was blocked but not only them but also by another one (megan) and another mutual from the same server I've been kicked out despite giving advice.
Yes I fucking messed up, but maybe I shouldn't have done it, I'd rather get a warning
The character names of Fallout 2024 are so funny to me.
Cooper Howard; aka Mr. Howard, aka Todd Howard’s self-insert cowboy/outlaw/rogue/anti-hero.
Maximus; a mighty name with a hearty thrum to its meaning. A name that belongs to the dorkiest (🎶~it’s a man~🎶) repressed (“wanna make my cock explode?”) cinnamon roll of a human being (“they gave me slippers” 🥺)
And then there’s Lucy Maclean; Lucy being latin for “light” or “light bringer” and Ma-CLEAN. She is the CLEAN vault dweller who brought LIGHT to the WASTELAND!
So I've started playing Fallout 4 yesterday, because of the new series an a recommendation, and I have to say:
It's not so bad.
It has a good worldbuilding, interesting lore, simple gameplay (reminds me a bit of Skyrim lol) and funny and lovable NPCs-
Yet there's one thing that I don't like about the game: The main story. It isn't bad or anything, it just doesn't really catch me.
(SPOILER for the beginning of Fallout 4)
For those who don't know what the game is about, basically, in the year 2077, a nuclear war happened and you, your wife and your newborn son go to a protective bunker and due to a series of events you've been put into a coma and awake 200 years later, in a world of nuclear fallout and apocalypse, with your wife dead and your son abducted by random people.
And now, you obviously head out to find your son. And that's the breaking point to me.
Now, I'm no parent, and I'm not saying the parental instinct to find your child isn't important or valid, but I just can't really relate to that.
If I'd awake in a world like that, my instinct would be to seek shelter, a group of survivors, and just accept the loss and move on. Because of two reasons:
a) you don't know when your son got abducted. For all you know, your son could be 100 years old and dying right now, and the only way you know he's still alive is by some old lady/fortune teller on drugs. Yeah.
b) HOW would you even care for a baby or small child in this world?!Adults barely have enough to live and are in constant danger! I'm still wondering how humanity has survived this long, honestly... Plus the mortality in this world is already skyrocketing, so chances are you'd get your son and he'd die like what, a week later and you're sad again? Why do that???
So I can understand the game is appealing to our parental and human instinct to care for others, but honestly, I just can't really relate to the whole parent situation. A sibling? A spouse? Yeah, I'd look for them in that situation. But a newborn baby is too much of a burden in that situation, and even if they're already older, they probably wouldn't recognize me and it'd just be another heartbreak in the end, worth none of the resources I'd put into it.
I'm not saying it's a bad story, or surrealistic, or irrational. It has its logic and valid points, and it's a good story altogether I think.
I don't actually hate the fact Fallout 4 gives you a fully-voiced protagonist with an established backstory. The former is... a bit of a bind in roleplaying, and the latter... has been the case for every other Fallout game -the only one where your entire backstory isn't fully established is like, FONV and even then there are some hardcoded events that you can't avoid.
What I hate is that it's done poorly. Case in point: the idea of the Man Out of Time, a Human Popsicle and Living Relic who remembers the Old World as if it was yesterday (for them it literally was) could have been the most interesting thing Fallout has ever done with a protagonist, but the main character almost never reacts to anything: fought a small army's worth of raiders and a dinosaur in an afternoon and then were rewarded with a can full of bottle caps, and the Sole Survivor just goes along with it -he doesn't even go "what the shit" at the bottle caps, you're literally not given the opportunity to roleplay as being surprised about this, something a normal person probably would be in that situation. Nothing phases them, they don't actually react to anything.
What I hate more than that is the idea of the Spouse. I don't even mind the fact they gave us a spouse and child (I'd have preferred it if Shaun as a character simply didn't exist, but I don't actually mind the idea of Nate/Nora). What I mind is that they gave me the option to design her and then immediately killed her... and other than the first five-ten minutes of the game and then the odd mention elsewhere, it doesn't actually affect anything. The Sole Survivor cares more about the fact Shaun was stolen than they do about the fact they just had their spouse get murdered right in front of their eyes, and less than a handful of weeks after getting thawed out, they might be in a new relationship? When they let me switch between Nate and Nora the first time and then the version of Nora I'd created continued to take Shaun and come to the Vault with me, I was so fucking sure they were going to go somewhere with it: Maybe Nora would become the "Mother" (rather than Shaun?). Maybe Nora would be a permanent companion? Maybe I could switch between them throughout the game? Oh wait no, she's dead.
y’all, if obsidian had more than 10 months to make the classic video game Fallout: New Vegas (2010), we could’ve had:
Hawaiian shirts! (Elvis wore them, don’t @ me)
plastic flamingos!
even more choices!
even more intrigue!
even more nuance!
a monthly big fight night on the New Vegas Strip complete with a Rocky/Creed questline, a silent super mutant Brock Lesnar, and a whole Oceans Eleven casino heist and said fight would be the big distraction! There’s golden boxing gloves on the casino floor of the Lucky 38, for crying out loud! There’s so many boxing gyms in the fallout series! There could’ve been a boxing gym in Freeside! The King could’ve been the host/announcer! Mr. New Vegas could do color commentary! New Vegas patrons could’ve bet on the fights! You could’a been a contendah!
I like Fallout 76 - it’s fun when you do stuff with other players, and I like that you don’t actually have to group up, or PvP, or anything else. That said...the content is really light. I mean, I just hit 75, and I’ve finished almost all of the main questline, and explored the entire map, and I find myself getting bored after playing for less than an hour. Steam helpfully informs me that I spent 400 or so hours playing Fallout 3 and about 960 hours playing Fallout 4 (Jesus! my life...), and I’m quite certain I’d need to create about a dozen characters and level them all to 100 to spend that much time in Fallout 76.
The Fasnacht event was fun, and I look forward to some of the additional content they’re releasing, but it’s painfully obvious if you just look at the map and compare it to 3 or 4 - it’s so much smaller, so many fewer locations - there just isn’t the kind of content that Fallout has spoiled us with in the past.
If anything, playing 76 now gives me the itch to play Fallout 4. Heck, I even updated all my mods for Skyrim SE last night! Maybe this is a scheme to get us to play old games?
Spoilers and rant for the Fallout amazon series incoming!!!
So now that I've had a couple hours of sleep after binging the fallout tv show I can better organize my thoughts on it.
It's still not good.
It feels like fan fiction written by people who were given the CliffsNotes of the west coast lore and given free rein to change or make up whatever they wanted, consequences to existing lore and material be damned. And I can't even blame Bethesda. Not entirely.
BGS has been on a trend of being allergic to canonizing a specific ending to their games for a while now. Hell, any details about The Lone Wanderer have been completely lost to time by Fallout 4 it seems, despite 4 being set only ten years after 3. And I think in some weird way ignoring New Vegas almost entirely was BGSs way of avoiding making one ending or courier 6 canon. Not that it justifies literally nuking decades of standing lore, just explaining why I think they did what they did.
And then there's the great war. This one was just a stupid, stupid decision any way you slice it. Vault-Tec being the ones to start the great war because money and control is such a dumb, uninteresting theory. There were no peace talks threatening to end the resource wars, that doesn't make any sense. It was a war of survival for societies and governments, not politics or territory or anything a standard war is fought over. Without that Alaskan oil, either the U.S or P.R.C were going to collapse, full stop. There was none to spare in exchange for peace, and there was none to trade. It was all or nothing for everyone involved. Not even getting into the fact that the Enclave were the ones behind the experiments in the first place...
All in all, the show was a mess. It was funny, I'll give them that. But it can't be canon without throwing out everything post Fallout 2 to New Vegas on the west coast. And I think if fans had to choose, we'd choose New Vegas over Amazon's Fallout to remain canon.
