There was nothing wrong with it. 'Til I was about 12 years old and that no-talent ass clown became famous and didn’t kill himself

You’re absolutely right on your point about the core elements. They think that the Fallout universe needs a Triforce, a Master Sword, and a Ganon. But it’s just not that kind of series. The iconography is so much less important than the themes. It feels like they’re jingling keys in front of us sometimes when they show off BoS and Super Mutants (who were supposed to be dying out).

Funnily enough, the only icon they use that would feasibly be in every part of the US was Nuka Cola, and they retconned its design…

…I’m so happy in the jongo?

Bethesda has a lot of lore issues, but their main one is that they set pretty much all of their games far too late in the timeline. If you want to tell a post-apocalyptic story, that’s fine.

It doesn’t make sense for anything to be living in a place where the water has been poison for 200 years. Fallout 3 would fit perfectly before Fallout 1 on the timeline.

They knew it didn’t make sense for there to be like 3 half-assed towns in Boston after 200 years, so they created The Institute. Who are so all-powerful they wiped the Commonwealth of any real progress toward society, yet have no clear goals and are extremely incompetent. Set it around 60 years after the bombs, maybe take out the Synth plot and replace it with actual, nonconvoluted slavery, thus expanding on the themes of 3.

To me, the show is a collage of scenes that I like, with quite a bit of stuff that I really dislike. There’s really cool ideas in it, and I honestly do love how they reference some of the universal experiences that we get when playing those games. But the treatment of the lore, in general, is honestly borderline disrespectful. The nuking of Shady Sands, as you referenced. But also the dumbing-down of the Sino-American War to a simple ideological conflict. Fallout is absolutely about how different groups interact and conflict with each other, but it is not about capitalism vs communism, and the Sino-American War is not the real-life Cold War, it’s a war between America and China over depleting resources. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think they even really reference the war, save for a crashed SOVIET satellite. Awfully convenient to tweak it that way when the show is made by a global megacorporation and China’s all in on the American media market now.

Now, they’ve announced that in Season 2, “…every faction might think they’ve won.” To emulate, “…the story of history depend[ing] on who you ask.” Which, yknow, New Vegas already showed with the vast and varying opinions of its characters, as well as quite literally showing the effect of historical debate with the in-game debate about the Bitter Springs Massacre.

I’m waiting to see how they pull it off, but I can’t see how all the factions could think they’ve won if Mr. House is alive, seeing how you have to assassinate him for 3 of the endings.

Also, Caesar has an incurable brain tumor and you either kill Lanius or talk him into abandoning the front entirely in 3 of the endings. I don’t see how the Legion could ever be doing good. Maybe Macaulay Macaulay “Mr. McCulkin” Culkin Culkin is their new leader.

Apologies for the rant, I’ve sorted through my feelings on the material we’ve had for a while but this show has me hot. That said like yeah solid 7/10 as a standalone show and I would even recommend it to people who would never play the games anyway.

There’s an added layer to the West Coast games past 1 as well: they’re post-post apocalyptic. We have nations now, the world is rebuilding.

It really does depend on your preferences.

Fallout 3 is the better exploration game, New Vegas is the better RPG. Now, I love Fallout 3 and I think it has the best world design in the series (lore not included), but I get a great deal more enjoyment from leveling a character toward a specialization and seeing the different ways my small decisions affect the world than I do from dungeon crawling.

New Vegas has me covered there, its perks are really fun and a large part of its many quests have 3 or more solutions (or an alternative quest). Contrast that with Fallout 3, where perks often don’t do more than raise a skill and the quest outcomes are largely binary between angelic and pure evil.

However, if I want to scavenge through the wreckage of a dead world I can think of no finer game than Fallout 3. It really just seeps atmosphere from every pixel.

Spot-on. 3 absolutely follows the world design of 1 & 2, but it scales it down to a city area instead of part of a state.

I’m a huge New Vegas fangirl, but I will say that the random encounters have kept Fallout 3’s world surprisingly fresh. I’ve burnt myself out on the 30 side quests, but if I just go explore then I usually see something new every playthrough. Hell, 3 was the game that really cemented Bethesda’s status as environmental storytellers with a real knack for making a space point toward its previous purpose. Back before they dropped so many skeletons in random places that it became a meme in Fallout 4.

New Vegas simply does not have that type of design. There’s many more avenues to explore in quests and many more quests, but you can tell they focused the dev time almost entirely in that area. 10/10 tho, would recommend.

Bongo I don’t wanna leave the Congo

Bingo

Dude, all the Fallout community is is debate.

We’re just doing our favorite thing: picking a side and trying to solve a conflict between multiple factions.

So fucking glad I decided to spend a little extra money back in 2022 and get 64 GB of RAM.

Now I have collateral if I want to take out a loan.

My god, that game is a masterpiece.

American 9/12, not everywhere else 9/12.

Whine

Holistislop?

Honestly, is this a bad thing? It’s so easy to get lost in the cacophony of internet noise that being able to identify the intent of a post is kinda helpful.

It’s almost as if the forces of good and evil don’t abide by the line we draw in the sand, for some reason.

Wait, this guy’s gay?

The best part of Linux is shitty games don’t work on it.

Definitely not impossible. I also think they have a decent chance of killing the Xbox business model, given that there’s no real reason to buy an Xbox over a PC other than brand loyalty or wanting a console. The Steam Machine fills that second need, of course.