Fallout Discussion

[Walsingham]

I can't speak for the States, but the fact is that the United Kingdom stopped being able to feed its population with it's own land in the 1930s. We could farm every inch and have windowbaskets and we'd stilll go hungry if the logistics chain broke down.

[Bokishi]

FO3 ftw

 

[Tigranes]

Wals' point is excellent by the way. A double-digit percentage of the world would probably die or starve simply because of that logistics factor. Once communication and transport lines are cut off somewhere like New York, there's going to be a lot of dying.

[Dark_Raven]

There's a thing called file uploads here, use it. Goddamned large images.

[Bokishi]

I'm sorry gabs, I mean that pic is uber tiny to me so I wasn't thinking when I posted it

[Sand]

There's a thing called file uploads here, use it. Goddamned large images.

HAHAHAHAHA!

 

I laugh at you miniscule bandwith!

 

*runs and hides*

[Atreides]

If **** hits the fan the fantasy clique will be living it up while the sci-fi clique'll be all emo.

[Bokishi]

*runs and hides*

 

Don't run and hide you pansy

[Humodour]

*runs and hides*

 

Don't run and hide you pansy

 

Yeah, you should duck and cover.

[Starwars]

To bring this slightly back on topic, this was always one of the hardest things about Fallout 2 for me to accept. That the humans would devolve into a more primitive state, sure thing. But that the Vault Dwellers (who no doubt was experienced with technology as well as had grown "powerful" through his journey through the wasteland) descendants (and there aren't even that many generations after, can't remember exactly how long after Fallout 2 takes place) would turn into tribals with crazed medicine men, with prophecies of artifacts (the GECK which is viewed as a sort of mystical force) and what have you I find extremely hard to grasp. I just don't see them abandoning all that knowledge that the Vault Dweller must have had in such a short time.

 

I know it wasn't supposed to be in the game from the start, but the Temple of Trials only serves to reinforce the weirdness of this. Especially since the inhabitants of Arroyo live in little tents, with the huge Temple sitting next door.

 

I adore Fallout 2 but speaking strictly in terms of the setting I think it ran away in a few to many directions despite the time passed since Fallout 1.

[Dark_Raven]

There's a thing called file uploads here, use it. Goddamned large images.

HAHAHAHAHA!

 

I laugh at you miniscule bandwith!

 

*runs and hides*

[Dark_Raven]

To bring this slightly back on topic, this was always one of the hardest things about Fallout 2 for me to accept. That the humans would devolve into a more primitive state, sure thing. But that the Vault Dwellers (who no doubt was experienced with technology as well as had grown "powerful" through his journey through the wasteland) descendants (and there aren't even that many generations after, can't remember exactly how long after Fallout 2 takes place) would turn into tribals with crazed medicine men, with prophecies of artifacts (the GECK which is viewed as a sort of mystical force) and what have you I find extremely hard to grasp. I just don't see them abandoning all that knowledge that the Vault Dweller must have had in such a short time.

 

I know it wasn't supposed to be in the game from the start, but the Temple of Trials only serves to reinforce the weirdness of this. Especially since the inhabitants of Arroyo live in little tents, with the huge Temple sitting next door.

 

I adore Fallout 2 but speaking strictly in terms of the setting I think it ran away in a few to many directions despite the time passed since Fallout 1.

That was one of those things I didn't understand, which began this thread. The decendtents of the Vault Dweller turned into a bunch of primates. Its bad enough the world went this way but his/her people did the same in less than 100 years?

[Ross_Witchen]

Question for continuous play, Fallout 1

 

 

I want to play game continuously, just for fun. I'm getting close to the point in March, where game will automatically end if you didn't kill the Master.

 

How do I get game to allow me to keep playing, without having to resort to hacking into the save file, to change the game date? Doing all the water merchant payoffs aren't helping. But I remember there was a trick, or download that some1 could do, to keep playing. But that was years ago, and I forgot.

[Starwars]

The official patch disabled the second time limit (or severely delayed it, can't remember). The time limit for finding the Water Chip is the same however.

 

As far as I know there's no other way to change it, but could be wrong.

[Pop]

To bring this slightly back on topic, this was always one of the hardest things about Fallout 2 for me to accept. That the humans would devolve into a more primitive state, sure thing. But that the Vault Dwellers (who no doubt was experienced with technology as well as had grown "powerful" through his journey through the wasteland) descendants (and there aren't even that many generations after, can't remember exactly how long after Fallout 2 takes place) would turn into tribals with crazed medicine men, with prophecies of artifacts (the GECK which is viewed as a sort of mystical force) and what have you I find extremely hard to grasp. I just don't see them abandoning all that knowledge that the Vault Dweller must have had in such a short time.

 

I know it wasn't supposed to be in the game from the start, but the Temple of Trials only serves to reinforce the weirdness of this. Especially since the inhabitants of Arroyo live in little tents, with the huge Temple sitting next door.

 

I adore Fallout 2 but speaking strictly in terms of the setting I think it ran away in a few to many directions despite the time passed since Fallout 1.

I disagree. The sense that I got was that retaining technical knowledge over time in the Fallout universe was like trying to keep a fire going on the Everest summit. That's what made the Brotherhood (and the GECKs that made them somewhat obsolete) so important. Think about it. Especially in a retro-future, advanced technology would need constant maintenance to work. Only the Vaults and the brotherhood bunkers were self-contained and working 80 years after the bombs dropped, and even then when something as relatively minor as a processor chip stopped working it was a major crisis. In the universe of Fallout 1, everything is decaying. The Brotherhood isn't seen as much of a hope, they're more of a band-aid applied to a bullet wound. Given all this, Arroyo makes some sense. Even when you've got a thousand technical manuals lying around, when you're living in a canyon system in the middle of nowhere you're not going to be anything but backwoods rural after a generation or two.

 

If anything, the inconsistency in the Fallout 2 (one that you'll hear a lot about from the fanbase, not without reason) was in the fact that there seemed to be actual widespread progress and growth. The GECKs changed the Fallout universe immensely. I mean christ, they were basically apocalypse-reversing suitcases. They might as well have been Scrolls of Perfect Wish, silver bullets against the themes of the original game. And there were a lot of them, too. At least 4 of them in something like a 50 mile radius (Vault City and Shady Sands, plus the 2 the player can find). In D&D we call that a "magic-heavy setting". And even without the GECKs, San Francisco is way too advanced (more advanced than any other location!)

Edited January 2, 2008 by Pop

[Atreides]

Even in a backward situation there'd be hubs of activity so places like Reno and San Fran made sense I think.

 

Thing that'd suggest the Brotherhood's on the rise was in Tactics where they went on expanding, collecting and acquiring the capacity to manufacture tech they had as well as recruiting the tribals along with the original Brotherhood members.

[Pop]

Reno was fine enough, it was like a microcosm of the Fallout universe - the only really advanced faction (Salvatore) was the smallest and most insular. They got their stuff from an outside source. What made San Francisco so preposterous was that, even if there was GECK use in the city's history that I can't recall or don't know about, the Shi were far more advanced than anyone else in the game. All it took was a lab and some elbow grease and they pretty much solved one of the game-specific Big Huge Problems, Jet addiction, and one of the setting-specific Big Giant Huge Problems, radiation contamination, although conveniently they couldn't get their plants to grow outside the city limits. If I didn't know any better I'd accuse Black Isle of populating their game with Magical Asian Men, that peculiar substrain of the famed Magical Black Men, the pixie-like Africans that hollywood screenwriters insert into movies as a device to give self-absorbed white people much needed help and non-judgmental life lessons.

Edited January 2, 2008 by Pop

[Starwars]

I disagree. The sense that I got was that retaining technical knowledge over time in the Fallout universe was like trying to keep a fire going on the Everest summit. That's what made the Brotherhood (and the GECKs that made them somewhat obsolete) so important. Think about it. Especially in a retro-future, advanced technology would need constant maintenance to work. Only the Vaults and the brotherhood bunkers were self-contained and working 80 years after the bombs dropped, and even then when something as relatively minor as a processor chip stopped working it was a major crisis. In the universe of Fallout 1, everything is decaying. The Brotherhood isn't seen as much of a hope, they're more of a band-aid applied to a bullet wound. Given all this, Arroyo makes some sense. Even when you've got a thousand technical manuals lying around, when you're living in a canyon system in the middle of nowhere you're not going to be anything but backwoods rural after a generation or two.

 

If anything, the inconsistency in the Fallout 2 (one that you'll hear a lot about from the fanbase, not without reason) was in the fact that there seemed to be actual widespread progress and growth. The GECKs changed the Fallout universe immensely. I mean christ, they were basically apocalypse-reversing suitcases. They might as well have been Scrolls of Perfect Wish, silver bullets against the themes of the original game. And there were a lot of them, too. At least 4 of them in something like a 50 mile radius (Vault City and Shady Sands, plus the 2 the player can find). In D&D we call that a "magic-heavy setting". And even without the GECKs, San Francisco is way too advanced (more advanced than any other location!)

 

This post has been edited by Pop: Today, 06:15 AM

 

Oh, I definetely agree that Arroyo would devolve technically, especially given its out of the way location. However, I still don't buy the actual descent into them becoming tribals in that period of time. There are no remnants (working or not) of technology to be found, there are weird prophecies of Chosen Ones etc. The Chosen One himself is largely very ignorant of the world, and I do not believe for one second that more of the Vault Dwellers knowledge and experiences wouldn't have been passed down to new generations in such a short timespan that it is from Fallout 1 to 2. Instead it seems to be all stuff of mystery, prophecies. I could've bought that if there was big gap of several generations between Fallout and Fallout 2. Arroyo also had some contact with the outside world given that they traded with Klamath (though I don't remember the details of that, so correct me if I'm assuming something strange).

If Arroyo was in a state of decay more similar to a community like Modoc, I would find it easier to believe.

 

Totally agree on San Fransisco though. I think it's an awful area both on paper, and even more how it was implemented (it feels very unfinished). In fact, it's often at the time where you travel to San Fransisco that I lose interest in Fallout 2 when replaying it.

 

I think New Reno is suspicioussettings-wise. There is appearantly an established porno-industry, but how many working VCRs or whatever is there throughout Fallout? Enough to support filming porn? Stuff like prostitution makes all the sense in the world I think, but porno-industry I'm not so sure about actually.

But even moreso, I find New Reno hard to accept in how its run. Since it seems to be largely fueled by tourist trade basically, how does it turn? I doubt the inhabitants of New Reno have much to offer in terms of moneys to the high-ups of New Reno, and gambling institutions draw largely on their appeal for tourists I think. Are there that many travellers in the world of Fallout? Obviously the crime families had contacts outside of New Reno as well, but...

Then there is just that "italian mobster" thing which I think is a bit over-the-top. Big gangsters with Tommy-guns and feodora hats? I think it's a bit to obvious.

Nevertheless, New Reno is a wonderful town to visit in the RP sense.

Edited January 2, 2008 by Starwars

[Pop]

It seemed to me as though New Reno included a number of things that were designed more as "hey, that's cool/funny" fodder than actual coherent parts of the setting, but they more or less gel with the rest of the game. It's when you think about it that it doesn't make a lot of sense, particularly the porn stuff.

 

As for the mobsters, yeah, they're all over-the-top caricatures. But in all actuality, life imitates art. Stereotypical gangsters from the movies are cool, and real gangsters imitate them. In the 60's/70's it was the Godfather, these days it's the Sopranos. In that sense, the bouncers aren't terribly out of place (really, it was only the bouncers and Mordino who were throwbacks to pop mafia fiction, and Mordino was on overt Godfather reference).

[Slowtrain]

Fallout 2 seemed to have be mostly a lot of stuff that the devs thought were funny all flung together and mixed up then spit out. I thought it was a pretty sad follow up to a game like Fallout. Course, I never actually finished out. COurse that was because I thought it was prety silly and not very interesting. So that's a bit of chicker vs egg thing there so what can you do. Some things are like that. Bioshock, for example, more recently.

[Dark_Raven]

Intelligent deathclaws and Wannimingos Fallout 2 could have done without.

 

New Reno. What I want to know is why did the Enclave support a weakling like the Salvatore family? They were given plasma/laser weapons to help in their dominacne of New Reno. Not only help the Salavatores but gave them technology like those weapons when they could have just given them projectile weapons like mini guns or M-16s.

[jaguars4ever]

The "good gang" in New Reno was such a joke. They weren't even a gang for FFS - they were just some backwater clan of hicks in severe need of birth control.

[Dark_Raven]

The "good gang" in New Reno was such a joke. They weren't even a gang for FFS - they were just some backwater clan of hicks in severe need of birth control.

Imbred hicks. WoW their major export was booze. No hos or dope. They sucked. I would prefer to wipe them off New Reno but you'll get that nasty killing kids tag and that makes Sulik leave.

 

Which is stupid that he leaves since he's the one who kills them in combat.

[Lokey]

The "good gang" in New Reno was such a joke. They weren't even a gang for FFS - they were just some backwater clan of hicks in severe need of birth control.

Imbred hicks. WoW their major export was booze. No hos or dope. They sucked. I would prefer to wipe them off New Reno but you'll get that nasty killing kids tag and that makes Sulik leave.

 

Which is stupid that he leaves since he's the one who kills them in combat.

More irony! The Wrights are the only way to get Skynet--and that's the NPC you want if you're going to be running around killing kids. Not only doesn't he complain about anything you do, he heals himself to boot...which means more drugs for Myron

[Sand]

My favorite tag title combination was Champion Childkiller.