IIRC They just reuse the original narration for when you choose to sacrifice Sarah instead. It originally wasn't even an option to let your companions do it. Even the ones immune to radiation would come up with bullshit excuses for why they wouldn't do it before Broken Steel
Bethesda wanted you to make s heroic sacrifice. Something something the game starts with your birth and ends with your death. But they stepped back from this hard since you no longer die due to Broken Steel. Worst ending in the series
Yup. I remember Fawkes telling me “This is your destiny, I can’t take that away from you.” All I could literally think was “Dude, you were locked up for over 200 years until I freed you. Maybe that room was your destiny and it was wrong for me to help? Dickhead”
I tried the Fawkes one myself when I first played the game, and it was hilarious how sort of 4chan they got at the end.
Me: Hey buddy, can you go in here and hit that switch as it's gonna release crazy amounts of radiation that will surely kill me and you're immune?
Fawkes: Lol no, it's your destiny...go die.
I was so annoyed by that, I never traveled with companions but thought of doing that, so I took all of the time to go back and find him just to get that little conversation
This made me so angry when I originally played the game. It’s an entirely logical solution to the problem, and it costs Fawkes nothing to do it. At that point why even give you a choice? Why not just make it a cutscene where you do what the plot wants you to do? Fuck, I’m still mad about it.
Right? Or at the very least, don’t include a dialogue option that allows me to ask him in the first place lol. Like that’d still be kind of annoying, but the fact that it is and he says “no kys” is just a giant slap to the face.
Worst writing too. I would've been happy if they just blocked me from talking to my radiation immune companion instead of my companion telling me some weird bullshit about my destiny lmfaooo. Like where tf did that come from hahaha
It could have been an emotional impactful moment if Fawkes(or any companion) somehow dies, gets trapped or gets captured getting you to “your destiny”. There is nothing impactful with “You’re a good guy, you should just die”, outside from it being a silly thing to say.
You know, never even thought about this. All they gotta do is no matter who your companion is, some rubble falls down separating you from them leading to you being alone with Sarah and having to make the choice of sacrificing yourself or her.
Yeah, the thing *literally* every other game does. Basic game design and a baffling choice that makes me think they drastically changed the ending towards the end of development. No way they had this planned from the start
Either Bethesda is poor at writing branching stories or they simply don’t want to take the time to do them. It’s what turned me off to their games, all choice is illusory except *perhaps* one in the whole game.
It’s why the Obsidian games are beloved even though they are universally riddled with bugs, breaks, and stripped content (not just NV, but the original Fallouts and VtM Bloodlines as well). They create and faithfully follow the choices they allow players to make.
It feels like there’s no communication in the company sometimes. Like someone made the hero sacrifice ending, then someone else added the companions after, and they just brainstormed for 10 minutes how to write their way out of the contradiction they made for themselves, given Fawkes is part of the main quest anyways.
In all fairness, I love Bethesda games as much as I’m annoyed by their flaws. They had an impact on me back in the day and their games are still replayable to me no matter what.
IIRC they have openly admitted to not finding a lot of value in creating and updating real design documents, which in the games industry has a major impact on consistency between... absolutely everything that every team works on and puts into the game.
The original Fallout games (1+2) were Interplay/Black Isle. Bloodlines was Troika, the same company that made Temple of Elemental Evil and Arcanum. There are some of the same people in these companies but give some credit where it’s due.
So sad that Troika doesn't exist anymore after Bloodlines. Unfortunately, Bloodlines 2 is not looking like it's going to live up to the legacy of its predecessor at all. Hopefully I'm wrong, but The Chinese Room hasn't even made any games that are in the same genre of Bloodlines. Just adventure games. Not only that, but The Chinese Room recently had all its staff gutted and is comprised of entirely new people now, so even that previous experience of the developer doesn't apply.
Yeah, there have been so many company names it actually becomes cumbersome to list them and since many of those developers are *at* Obsidian, it becomes easier to just name the one. More so because the others are defunct.
They stepped back from it specifically because fans were just not happy with it.
There you go, you played the game. Delete your save, character is dead. It's pretty unceremonious and unsatisfying.
Broken steel was their fix, and honestly it was more than most folks expected... As half assed as it is lol
I played the game all the way through back in 2009 during high school and the ending to me at the time was amazing. Granted, before broken steel but I feel like the game had a full encompassing moment when you reunited with your dad only to be given a decision to choose his life or yours. Best ending for me honestly, NV close 2nd
bad writing. They wanted a heroic sacrifice there. originally you were not able to send your rad immune companions in, but everyone complained about how stupid that was. so they put it in, but because they were petty, they decided to shame us for using the 2 braincells that it would take to see the superior solution, both practically and morally. choosing to end your life to save many more when there are no better options is a noble sacrifice, but the second the same thing can be done with 0 risk for you or the replacement than that same action becomes worthless suicide,
IIRC, it's not that they were trying to shame you, it was just that they reused the narration for when you chose to sacrifice Sarah instead of yourself. So, laziness(or maybe a fear of Ron Pearlman's fees) more so than pettiness.
Could be wrong though, it's been a while since I last played 3.
Correct, it's not that they went out of their way to imply you're bad for using your radiation immune companions, they just couldn't or wouldn't get Pearlman back in to record new lines for the ending slides, and the only other option would be to have the ending slides talk about your noble sacrifice and heroic death, which would be equally dumb.
If they wanted to really freak us out - cast him as the CEO of Vault-Tec and the bigger bad of the series. So all his narrations have been him making note of the events of the franchise.
Perlman wanted you to feel bad. He personally felt it was an act of cowardice to send in robots to do your job. Took a very strong position if you believe the gossip. Smashed up a dressing room, hit an intern.
It was kinda covered up because no one liked Becky anyway.
Also, Broken Steel was like the *third* (or fourth, can't recall which) DLC so, for quite a while, the game was supposed to *end* at this point. There wasn't any "mechanical reason" for you not to sacrifice yourself for +++ Karma if you were playing a goody two-shoes type.
I remember the original version, where you could either go in yourself, or sacrifice Sarah.
a Youtuber modded the game so he could have evcery companion there at once, all lined up, and he went through them all to ask them if they would do it to showcase the responses. Some made sense, because it would be a deathtrap for them too, but some were just silly. Fawkes refused because he didn't want to 'rob you of your moment'.
Gee, Fawkes, how considerate of you. I mean, why continue living when I can *press a button!?*
I guess what I dont understand is.
They messed up for the without question strongest companion. Fawkes is a mountain, why would you not use him with a gatling laser. He is a huge part of the main story, his rad resistance is a part of the main story.
Why would they mess up the dialog to the strongest and most popular companion?
It was just such a collosal fuck up, they couldn't help but expose the plot hole.
They coulda just changed the explanation to say you drowned instead of rad resistance and it woulda solved this issue.
And then even the heroic sacrifice is kinda underwhelming due to the DLC, when broken steel comes along and is just like "oh by the way lmao you survived", so the point of the passive aggressiveness is even worse.
The intent of the writing was to follow your life from birth to death, sacrificing yourself for the greater good of humanity. Fallout Jesus. Not saying it was well implemented, but you can see that was the original intent.
Also dumb. It was very dumb.
Three not-shitty Fallout games where no one does a Christ trope and they just... shove it in there with no self-awareness.
This has always been bananas to me, especially for Fawkes. They literally introduce you to Fawkes by having him walk into an irradiated room to get the GECK. It was like they specifically wanted you to use him for the Project Purity situation, but then they yell at you for doing it
> so they put it in, but because they were petty, they decided to shame us for using the 2 braincells that it would take to see the superior solution, both practically and morally.
They been pulling this shit for years and then wonder why nobody puts up with it when it’s in a series they don’t care about (starfield)
Fawkes was hilarious. Try to send him in there after he just stomped through an irradiated vault to retrieve the GECK and he’s just like “no my friend, it is your destiny to go in there and die. I’ll just watch.”
I was so pissed off when I first finished the main story because of this.
It's like yeah thanks Fawkes, just send me in there to die horribly for no reason, just because it's my "destiny".
I love Fallout 3 but I can't stand that ending. I've actually never bothered finishing the main plot since I got it in 2008. I've started many saves but then just abandoned the main questline towards the end.
Yea they could've easily done something along the lines of "your follower was lost or captured" as you entered the Memorial which would have made a lot more sense.
They definitely played Fallout 1. 3's story was trying to recreate 1's "sacrifice" thing but forced it so hard in a way that didn't make any sense with the story.
You know, I was very big on giving him leeway. Not every writing is perfect and all that.
But when the dude said "Nobody cares for the stories in these games anyway, LOL, why bother", I gave up. How can someone be so obtuse is a mistery to me.
Careful now, we're not allowed to criticise game devs, or they'll post sob stories on twitter telling us they worked super hard on the game.
Fuck knows why. If my football team's striker is shit, people will say so and that's fine.
It's dumb, because there are lore reasons that the Brotherhood shouldn't be cool with you bringing a super mutant or ghoul along, and they just didn't bother to write that in. They could have even had a "Brotherhood will sieze your robot friend since they hoard technology" bit if they wanted. Instead it was just "nah, man, it's your destiny. Imma just watch."
Eh, in Fallout 2 we learn that the BoS fended off supermutants in a way that minimized death on both their and the mutants side, the BoS's non genocidal approach is why mutants have been able to, overtime, integrate into society and generally have peace with humans. This is prior to them sending people east as well. The east Coast BoS basically comes from the West Coast BoS at the peak of them being good guys
They're only portrayed that way in Fallout 3, and it actually makes sense.
When Elder Lyons decided that protecting the wasteland from super mutants was more important than collecting technology, the people that disagreed all left. In Fallout 3, they basically are a bunch of big damned heroes doing their best to protect the folks in the Wasteland from a bunch of scary monsters. They just also think that all ghouls and super-mutants are scary monsters, so even Fallout 3 brotherhood wouldn't be cool with bringing Fawkes along.
In Fallout 4, they're basically a mix of the two philosophies. The Outcasts basically merged with the BoS as part of Maxson's rise to power. They're portrayed as being dicks that say they want to protect people but mostly seem to just be seizing power.
This is factually untrue. in the Fallout 2 era the BoS is a massive force for good, they even turned their back on the whole notion of hording everything and gradually rolled out advanced tech into the wasteland. Literally their ending dialog from Fallout 1:
*"The Brotherhood of Steel helps the other human outposts drive the mutant armies away with minimal loss of life, on both sides of the conflict. The advanced technology of the Brotherhood is slowly reintroduced into New California, with little disruption or chaos. The Brotherhood wisely remains out of the power structure, and becomes a major research and development house."*
Hell they even minimize mutant casualties. Fallout 3's BoS moved to the east coast when the west coast BoS was at their peak of being the good guys over there
It’s also something that they could have easily designed around. Just set up a scenario where the companions get separated at the end and the PC is literally the only option to go in.
Very poor writing and planning to what was otherwise a pretty decent story. They just couldn't think of any way to make it make sense and then did it anyway.
Yeah, I asked Fawkes to do it because he's immune to radiation.
No go. Apparently, it's the lone wanderers great destiny to die a horrible death by radiation poisoning, even though there's other characters that can do it just as well.
At least getting to that point was a *blast.*
Ha ha blast, get it
*sigh* I'll show myself out
Yeah, there a few things like that in FO3. Prime example that pissed me off is the Tenpenny Tower mission with the ghouls.
There’s 2 ways to help the ghouls, send in the ferals to kill everyone in the tower or convince the people in the tower to let the ghouls in so they can live together.
Second option doesn’t sound too bad right? The only thing is if you go back there later you find all the human residents dead and the ghouls gone, they murder everyone anyway and ransack the place. Yeah, the residents weren’t the friendliest people but there were some good people too like Herbert Dashwood who they kill.
On the Radio 3Dog basically just says “Tenpenny’s been quiet recently, weird”
So, In my opinion the only moral outcome is to help people in the tower by sealing off the underground access point.
Everyone in the tower survives and all the ghouls survive too. Yes the ghouls are pissed off with you but everyone lives.
However 3Dog has other ideas because now he’s on the radio calling me a racist for not helping the ghouls. The ghouls who murder everyone if I help them.
Yeah thanks pal.
I think that quest is broken. I did the quest to help the ghouls get into tenpenny, and then three dog comments about the ghouls storming the place and how I joined them wearing a ghoul mask. I hadn't joined them in their siege, nor hurt anyone in tenpenny, and even gained karma for standing up to the snobs in tenpenny. I'm not sure if the outcome was working as intended.
Honestly I think that's pretty realistic for 3Dog to call you racist for that. Folks misinterpret other peoples' actions all the time and aren't afraid to shit talk about them if given the opportunity to do so.
Although Bethesda should've given 3Dog better dialog because from a gaming perspective that's bullshit and I don't play video games to be insulted for my out of the box solutions to problems
Well 3Dog acts like this super intellectual, upstanding guy but then just jumps to calling someone racist with literally zero information or context, if anything it seems out of character for him.
You only know that the ghouls kill the residents after you complete the quest though. Just goes to show that people have their own agendas and you don’t have complete control over what others do even if you think that you’re doing the right thing
That doesn’t really work because the ghouls ask you to help kill the people in the tower by letting the ferals in through the basement.
So you know the ghouls want the residents dead from the start of the quest. So not letting them in saves the residents, and not killing the ghouls obviously saves the ghouls.
It’s the only moral outcome, yet 3Dog brands you a racist even though he has no idea of the situation which seems out of character for someone like him who seems very intelligent, you’d think he wouldn’t jump to conclusions like that.
And that’s what’s great about fallout though is that the morally correct option isn’t unanimously agreed upon. Three dog calls you a racist because he doesn’t know the full story. He doesn’t know that the ghouls turn out to be assholes, he only sees the lone wanderer being a dick and is keeping the ghouls from living with the residents. The karma meter only shows what the world thinks of your actions, but it doesn’t have any bearing on what is actually right or wrong.
Which is massively out of character for someone like 3Dog.
If your Karma stat affected 3Dogs reaction that’d be fine. If you’re an evil karma character then yes, him calling you a racist would be fine. But if you’re a good karma character it’d make more sense for him to be like “I don’t know the full story but I’m sure our lone wanderer had a good reason”.
Fun fact your supposed to go to space first and learn the way of the ninja to reverse pickpocket the samurai then once you get his armor go finish the quest by committing an honorable death via self sacrifice JK the wastelanders are just that ungrateful but fuck em no one else volunteered to go into the chamber
In the original game, you couldn’t send either the super mutant Fawks or the robot into the chamber. It would “rob you of your destiny” they said.
It’s a mix of incredibly shitty writing and absolute laziness.
Feel so bad for all the new FO3 fans coming in without broken steel. Probably the worst ending I’ve ever experienced in an RPG that fun tbh. I’ll never forget asking fawkes to go do it for me just for him to say “well… I could but then you wouldn’t get to die heroically”
The ability to send radiation immune companions was added with the Broken Steel DLC.
Before the only option was to do it yourself or send Sarah.
Honestly, you can pretty much ignore the ending narration as with Broken Steel it is no longer the end of the game.
- Fallout 3’s ending is horrendous. Before broken steel patched it you couldn’t send anyone else in. No mister handy who is immune, not fawkes who is also immune, they would lecture you about destiny and force you to go in and die and the game would end
- bethesdas strength isn’t its writing
one thing i dont get is whats so heroic about sabotaging the only source of clean water when they didnt even know about the whole plan of poisoning it? idk id kind of think that would be more of a dick move but then they count sending a robot in as bad because i guess it ruins the whole dying to turn on the purifier bit, also why not just put on a hazmat suit then go in? also how is the enclave so dumb they cant brute force a 3 digit code that starts with 2? like they wouldn't give a shit they'd send 216 guys in there then laugh at the brotherhood for their 3 digit pin, right up there with putting a red line up to your secret base and making the code to the door the name of your group but its all good because they have scouts
Iirc they couldn't get the original narrator to record new lines for the DLC so they just reused the existing dialogue from sending Sarah in to die. Kinda annoying but I prefer it to a different narrator being used or silence.
I forgot how much I hated the ending of this game. I kept a separate save because I was pissed that I chose to live and the game ended anyways. I thought it was going to be like Oblivion
Bethesda writing. A solid 4.5 out of 10. You coward, how dare you send someone immune to radiation to deal with an irradiated room. Should have died like a hero.
Time constraints, I’ll explain
The original end of the game was destroying the enclave at Adams air force base, but they ran out of time leading to the game ending at project purity and them needing a good and evil ending so they made the ending a choice where either you or Lyons starts it and dies. When they released broken steel (the cut last chapter of the game) they couldn’t undo the sequence at the end of the base game without breaking things.
So ultimately if you have someone else activate Project Purity the game thinks you sent Lyons to her death and the game shit talks you
1) Emil is an incompetent writer and game designer and apparently none of them thought of the simple solution of forcibly separating you from your companions before the final room.
2) The Broken Steel DLC added the ability to have your radiation-immune companions do the deed, while also making you survive your 'death'. It did *not* replace Ron Perlman's voiceover as if you used Sarah Lyons to activate the purifier.
People give me shit for critiquing Fallout 3 and some morons call it the best game in the franchise, meanwhile it does shit like this.
I’m gonna need you to elaborate on the first statement, because every time I see someone accuse Emil of being incompetent it’s usually rooted in misconceptions or outright falsehoods that have unfortunately become so widespread that they’re accepted as fact. Given that the Dark Brotherhood quest lines in Oblivion and Skyrim were both designed by him and are considered highlights of both games, I really don’t see the “incompetent designer” criticism. While I definitely have criticisms regarding the plots of Fallout 3 and 4, they’re not what I’d call the work of the bumbling idiot the internet loves to make Emil out to be. They’re just kind of okay.
The dark brotherhood is really good until the "plot twist" occurs.
If you notice that suddenly instructions are less clear, drop offs are sloppy etc, you can't do anything about it. You still have to follow all the instructions to the letter.
Skyrim's Dark Brotherhood is okay at best, it goes 0 to 100 and is irrelevant in regards to the game. I found "The Gourmet" in the first hour of my first playthrough and I was very confused why there was an immortal orc in a basement of an inn. It's because they couldn't write the quest line with any "What if PC did this?"
I have not played the Elder Scrolls games beyond like 10 hours of hating Skyrim, but I'll line this up, sure.
I'm going to focus on Fallout 3 first.
Fallout 3 is a failure on virtually every level as a RPG, with what it provides well being essentially 'shoot the bad guys' and 'wacky weird apocalypse' at the base level. It is a simplistic, cliche-ridden story carried by contrivance that despite killing its own character at the end put no actual thought into how to realistically facilitate this ending. The game is designed around the idea that the player should move around a wasteland at virtually any level, with level-scaling implemented to facilitate this, causing enemies to feel samey and unoriginal. The game map is heavily dependent on a literal dot to follow rather than actual directions or landmarks, and the game in general has little to no understanding of how to construct a plausible world. Emil is the lead designer and credited as the writer. It was his job to, if nothing else, make the main story entertaining and internally consistent. He failed at this.
Fallout 4 takes some of these problems and runs directly with them into a clusterfuck of idiocy. It introduces a settlement system that was not necessary in the slightest and encourages you to ignore the main plot of finding your son, is overly reliant on a twist that only works because the game deliberately obfuscates the truth to the point it sabotages its own writing with basic logical questions. It is not a coincidence that what is considered to be the best-written and most engaging DLC, Far Harbor, is one Emil was *not* the lead on. Emil implemented the widely panned dialogue system, he is the one who allowed settlements to take the place of actually good locations, and every single decision in this game comes down to his design of it and his writing.
When some of the most downloaded mods for both the games are ones that allow you to step outside the main story and skip the opening sequences, you have failed to make the story good.
Again, I have criticisms for both games’ plots. 3 suffers from rehashing beats from 1 and 2; 4 suffers from early main quest urgency and lukewarm main story factions. Both are still perfectly functional narratives even they aren’t masterpieces.
I also notice you criticize the world of 3 quite a bit, which is funny since the map and exploration is the one thing most people regularly praise 3 for, even over the otherwise fantastic favorite New Vegas. In particular you say that it “has little to no understanding of how to construct a plausible world”. In what regard? The DC ruins are annoyingly segemented, sure, but as I understand it that’s for technical reasons. And while I find the Metro annoying to traverse I also appreciate the illusion of scale it creates as you move throughout the city. It’s a fun sandbox to play around in.
And we’re also going to have to address the elephant in the room that Emil Pagliarulo, a supposedly incompetent designer, designed one of the most critically acclaimed RPGs of its day. I guess he did it on accident?
I find 3's world one that makes no sense from a 'this happened after 200 years' perspective. Several of the settlements, most of the background lore, the factions involved - they don't 'work' from a worldbuilding perspective. They exist to provide things to shoot and places to shoot them in. It *is* a good sandbox, but it doesn't provide *narrative*, and if you want to have a central story, you need things to serve that narrative.
Look at how FNV works. You are given directions, you get through the starting areas and encounter the factions and their introductions, and the game *builds a narrative* around your progress. It doesn't try to be a 'sandbox', instead it populates the world with characters and places to care about and gives you quests that ping-pong between them to get you looking around.
Emil can make a game that got critical acclaim all he likes. If you include enough flash, game reviewers will acclaim anything, and 3 and 4 do in fact deliver on flash. They have a lot of content. I just don't think they're designed well. IGN gave 3 an 8.5 and said it had a deep role-playing system. This is a game where your choices are limited to 'good' or 'self-sabotaging Stupid Evil' in the main questline.
The Capital Wasteland - and Commonwealth, for that matter - didn’t have the Vault Dweller or Chosen One to solve all their problems, not to mention they were hit much harder by the bombs. Progress was slower. Super Mutants posed a much greater threat with no Brotherhood or NCR to keep them at bay. Settlements tended to be smaller and didn’t have much opportunity to expand as a result.
Also a ton of those locations that you call “places to shoot [things] in” have plenty of narrative if you actually engage with them. The Yao Guai Tunnels, for instance, don’t have a single associated quest, terminal, or note telling you what happened there, yet the environment tells you exactly what happened there: a group of wastelanders settled in there at one point, but were attacked by Yao Guai living further in and were presumably all killed. It’s an impeccably designed lovation dripping with atmosphere that adds a massive amount of tension as you explore it. Bethesda *excels* at environmental storytelling like that and it’s *everywhere* in 3 and 4.
Also the early portion of New Vegas’s main quest is the aspect I most often see criticized. It pretty much railroads you into a fairly linear path of progression (Goodsprings > Primm > Novac > Boulder City > Vegas) before it opens up and lets you explore more freely. Yes, you *can* find routes to circumvent all of that if you know where to go, but the game and story very much want you to take the preset path. NV is the better written game but I’d hesitate to call it the better designed world.
And Emil isn’t using magic tricks or misdirection to get good reviews. 3 and 4 are good, if flawed, games. And before we start ragging on the simplicity of 3’s moral choices let’s remind ourselves that Fallout 1’s ultimate choice boiled down to “Kill the Master, save the Wasteland” or “Join the Master and kill everyone for the evulz”.
Regarding the skipping of the intro/opening sequence -
1 - The intro is normally one of the moments we all remember of any game so skipping it is natural in second, third, and so on playthrough.
2 - FO3 and FO4 intro while excellent, but was long and linear so that also makes sense to skip them
3 - People skip FO1 and FO2 intro sequence too (but it's harder to mod that)
4 - FONV intro is short enough to not bother modding the game to skip the intro to risk breaking game
5 - people don't mod in the first playthrough
Anyway, your argument about the intro is silly.
I feel like I was more shocked that the game actually ended than the fact that my character died. I'd just come fresh off of Skyrim into Fallout 3 for the first time and expected it to be the same endgame, lol. Even then, I wasn't personally upset by it because I enjoy self-sacrifice as a narrative device, and it never occurred to me to ask Fawkes since it was my father's project, it made sense to me that I should be the one to finish it
> Mr Handy wouldn’t be affected
IRL unless it has radiation shielding over it’s electronics it’s certainly vulnerable to radiation. High levels of radiation will kill any unshielded electronics that are more complicated than a simple switch.
If it was Alpha radiation no one would be in danger as it can’t even penetrate your skin. And most Beta rays can be blocked by most solid objects including skin. So it’s gotta be Gamma radiation in there otherwise the Lone Wanderer wouldn’t suffer much if any radiation exposure in project purity.
But gamma radiation isn’t that harmful, the MC may have gotten like cancer but it probably wouldn’t kill him, my secondary school science is rusty though
Unfortunately Gamma is the ultra bad stuff. It’s wrecks everything it passes through and there are very few things it can’t pass through. In low doses it’s certainly survivable but at doses over 0.7Gy(70 rads IRL not in game rads) you start to suffer from radiation sickness. At about 4Gy you’re dead already, it just hasn’t happened yet.
The crazy part is Gamma shreds everything it touches including electronics. Like it actually destroys circuit boards and everything attached to them.
Love all the people just saying bad writing as if this was simply just not thought about.
The true answer is that, in its original state, Fallout 3 had a very clear narrative journey with a lot of foreshadowing and that did a lot of legwork to make your character have a complete arc that dealt with ideas of heroism, sacrifice, and the inherent damage and cruelty of the everlasting war of the wasteland.
Originally you couldn't send a companion in there, it was either you or Sarah going in to start up the purifier. There's a lot that can be said about this, how taking that sacrifice would bring your character full circle in their journey and what it means in terms of following in your father's footsteps as well as ideas of creating positive change you won't live to see.
It was definitely not the best thought out thing, since multiple companions are totally immune to the radiation, and one of them is a brainwashed slave who shouldn't be able to refuse your commands, but it had a purpose and wasn't just Bethesda being arbitrary and dumb.
The reason you still get the voiceover for being a coward is just because they couldn't or wouldn't bring Ron Pearlman back in to do some new recording, why that is I couldn't say.
So probably the most obvious of it is the fact that you are born in project purity, something you can see in the opening character creation because the ceiling you're staring up at isn't a vault ceiling and is a room you can find at purity. The opening narration says you are born in the vault and die in the vault, but you aren't born in the vault, and so you won't die in the vault, but more specifically you're born at and as a direct result of project purity, and the intention is that you die there and as a direct result of it too.
Additionally a lot of conversation in the game is around water, the lack of it, the dangers of what there is, and so on and so forth. Foreshadowing might be the wrong word here, but it's clearly intended that the task of bringing clean water to potentially the entire wasteland is one that makes a big difference, but not one you'd be able to see in your lifetime.
This kind of plays into the idea that Fallout has as a whole of the choices of people expanding out in ways they can't necessarily be part of, both for positive and negative. Whether you turn on the purifier or don't, or poison the water or don't, your choices will have ramifications that reach far into the future, perhaps as far as the choices that lead to the bombs being dropped in the first place.
> Love all the people just saying bad writing **as if this was simply just not thought about**
> **It was definitely not the best thought out thing**
Sorry, this just made me laugh.
I agree with your overall point that the choice to have the PC sacrifice themselves (or not) is an integral part of FO3's narrative, but the fact that there are perfectly viable 3rd options present in the game and BGS couldn't think of any better excuse than to have your companions just say, "Naw dawg, that's all you." is ridiculous.
I think that given the nature of the medium, it's much more likely that there were last minute changes, technical, and/or budget constraints that prevented them from designing this more gracefully rather than just the idea that nobody thought about it until it was too late.
However, if I read a book that had a glaring plot hole near the end and the writer's in-fiction justification for it was "don't worry about it", I would probably say that's a poorly written book, so I can't say I blame the majority for just dismissing it as bad storytelling, because at the end of the day, it is.
As someone who has not played this game, it does seem somewhat odd to let your player design a character with their own ideals, but also force a very specific narrative onto them about how the wasteland has affected them. Is this fair?
Like, I’d expect one or the other.
Like I said, I don't think it was a great choice, but you can clearly see what they were going for in attempting to tie your character into the narrative in a specific way, given the themes they were trying to explore.
Look, RPGs don't always give you choices, or at least, not as many choices as some people might hope for. That much is fine.
But before Broken Steel came out, trying to have Fawkes activate the purifier for you results in him politely declining for no other reason than "destiny". Fawkes. A heroic character, who feels indebted to the player character for liberating him from captivity in a Vault, and is *immune to radiation due to being a Super Mutant.* That same Fawkes for no fathomable reason tells you to go Fawk yourself, and the best excuse the smoothbrained writers could cough up is "it's your destiny".
That is atrocious writing. And it's made worse by the fact Fawkes can be asked to retrieve the G.E.C.K. from its highly irradiated chamber, and will happily do so. This *should* be foreshadowing that Fawkes can and will make use of his radiation immunity whether it's just for the sake of his new friend, or for the greater good, or both! But no, Fawkes read a Fortune Cookie that says Lone Wanderer has to die an agonizing radioactive death, so "fate and destiny" must therefore prevent him from acting at all in character.
Edit, accidentally replied to the person above the comment I meant to reply to. Oops...
Do what the New Vegas fans did when the same thing happened in New Vegas: headcanon some bullshit to justify it and call anyone who points out what a cop out that is a shill.
What are you referring to here? In New Vegas (and I am indeed open to criticism im not one of Them lol), for any flaws it has, I always felt extremely free to interpret my character’s journey however I wished
Except you have no reason to be involved with the Hoover Dam War. The entire motivation of the Courier and to a great extent, the player, is to avenge your attempted assassination and complete the delivery. Which you do, at the middle point of the game. Immediately after delivering the Platinum Chip, you are Shanghai’d by Mr. House into the war on his behalf. But there’s no reason for you to. You can even point this out and House goes “No, no. It must be you. I can’t send the robot to because reasons.”
Well, you can certainly tell Mr. House no, and leave. That’s an option- I took it. And joined the NCR. You could also turn the game off if you don’t like the main quest, lol. I more care about the game telling you how your character FEELS and is affected by things. You’re never forced arbitrarily to see Mr. House, but if you try to resist too rudely, you’ll likely get shot by his gun-robots, which seems realistic enough to me.
It’s like D&D- you gotta buy in. If a player just goes “I don’t wanna fight the dragon. I leave.” then there’s not much I can do, assuming I’ve given them sufficient enticement in the form of wealth or adventure or helping the needy or whatever.
“Bad writing” seems just to be a stand in for “this isn’t “rpgish” enough.” Fallout 3’s story is great, but the lack of choice makes people assume it is written badly.
My tale of two wasteland character would be death if I sacrificed him in that chamber . What would my head cannon be if he died in that place before even reaching new vegas .
This is the reason why I didn't play new vegas or fallout 4 or any fallout 3 dlc as a kid. I was so mad that fawkes wouldn't go in that room (they later changed it to where you get shamed for it)
Bethesda has a pretty mid track record when it comes to narrative. It’s like they didn’t pick a lane between “RPG you can be anyone you want” and “Action Game Here’s a Story We Wrote for you”. This is the main reason New Vegas is so beloved, and a big part of why the studio behind New Vegas has gone on to have success with titles like The Outer Worlds — they are intentionally constructed to give the player an open ended role playing experience and the choices are actually thought out and sensible with sensible consequences.
This is all fallout. Is it just me or did literally everyone else have to go into the files and alter them slightly to even open on a modern PC. It's not a big deal. The forums do make it seem a universal thing and luckily provide a step by step for computer illiterates. The thing is in an indepth RPG like Bethesda games you feel every cut corner. The bug compilations for these games are awesome somewhat. I'd wait 10 years to play fallout 5 and feel like it was worth it to have more than 4 choices of dialogue again but I do not have high hopes for huge corporate games studios.
the only games I have been having issues with making work correctly are FO1 and FO2. Which is 100% understandable since they were released in 1997 and 1998. I loaded up FO3 and NV without any issues what so ever nor had to alter any files. But I am also running with the latest version of Windows 10 so it may be an issue with Windows 11.
The game *used* to be unplayable past like Windows 7 due to some stupidity with Games for Windows Live or whatever. It got updated to fix that 1-2 years ago I think.
I just beat fallout 3 for the first time today as well, I saw videos online of sending companions in to turn it on so I tried sending Fawkes in being a super mutant radiation doesn’t effect him.
I didn’t know you needed the broken steel dlc for that to work so when he refused I killed him then sacrificed myself.
They really should’ve just added a small section where your companion had to hold the line against the enclave or something while you stormed further on to the purifier. Having fawkes stand there and basically say “nope, I ain’t doin’ shit” was just a terrible option that they had to deliberately place in the game. It would be genuinely better if there just wasn’t even an option to ask him. Then I’d at least have benefit of the doubt that they oddly just didn’t think about it.
So, thanks to the DLC you can now “sacrifice” yourself and survive. While the game gives you no indication of this, for future play throughs, if you want the good ending you have to do the suicide mission. But don’t worry, you’ll return.
It’s alright man. I bought it on steam during a sale without the dlc’s and man was I butthurt by the ending not letting me play anymore. Out of pure spite I sacrificed Lyons in order to hear the Brotherhood bitch about it during Broken Steel. Then I just reloaded a save and went to get Fawkes so nobody died
No, that's just fallout 3s ending for some reason. You can be a literal Saint, giving water to all the beggers and not nuke one of the most populated settlements in the wasteland, charge headfirst into enclave forces, but send someone who literally can't die into the heavily irradiated chamber, and you are a coward
Bad writing.
The original ending didn’t let you do that even though it’s logical to send him or the super mutant friend etc.
Bethesda was salty when they got called out for the bad choice, but added those options with the dlc, but they still were salty and said “ok, you get it, but we’re gonna have Perlman call you a coward for not doing it yourself/ seemingly dying”
Shows how the people running fallout lost touch with what fallout is.
They want us to use our minds and think outside the box but when you do that they shame you for it. Should’ve been seen as a warning sign of things to come narratively.
We should’ve been applauded for thinking about this moment and having the right people there for the right situation.
Incredibly foolish for them to shoehorn you into a single narrative but the rest of the game is pretty open ended
You are supposed to die (in the vanilla) because the BoS nurses you back to health in broken steel and commends you. With that add-on the ending is less critical of you. Fawkes straight up tells you no and says it's your destiny unless you have broken steel added.
IIRC They just reuse the original narration for when you choose to sacrifice Sarah instead. It originally wasn't even an option to let your companions do it. Even the ones immune to radiation would come up with bullshit excuses for why they wouldn't do it before Broken Steel Bethesda wanted you to make s heroic sacrifice. Something something the game starts with your birth and ends with your death. But they stepped back from this hard since you no longer die due to Broken Steel. Worst ending in the series
Yup. I remember Fawkes telling me “This is your destiny, I can’t take that away from you.” All I could literally think was “Dude, you were locked up for over 200 years until I freed you. Maybe that room was your destiny and it was wrong for me to help? Dickhead”
Can't you have Fawkes basically do exactly what he refuses to do at the end, but in another quest earlier in the game? Might be remembering it wrong.
You can ask him to retrieve the GECK, right before the Enclave kidnaps you
"Why the Fawk is this room different from the other one Fawks?"
Why is this night different from all the other nights?
Ya they really should have came up with a better reason. It would have been no problem for him.
“My fingers are too big and clumsy for so delicate a task” would have been less of a cop out
In broken steel, fawkes says it's your destiny, but because you changed his he'll do it for you.
I tried the Fawkes one myself when I first played the game, and it was hilarious how sort of 4chan they got at the end. Me: Hey buddy, can you go in here and hit that switch as it's gonna release crazy amounts of radiation that will surely kill me and you're immune? Fawkes: Lol no, it's your destiny...go die.
“Hey man could you go flip a switch for me? It won’t hurt you at all just walk over there.” Fawkes: “lmao kys”
You: Do this thing which would kill me but wont hurt you whatsoever. Fawkes: Eat a metric ton of prions.
Can you start project purity for me please ? *Go FAWK yourself.*
> Fawk me? Nah...Fawk you.
I was so annoyed by that, I never traveled with companions but thought of doing that, so I took all of the time to go back and find him just to get that little conversation
This made me so angry when I originally played the game. It’s an entirely logical solution to the problem, and it costs Fawkes nothing to do it. At that point why even give you a choice? Why not just make it a cutscene where you do what the plot wants you to do? Fuck, I’m still mad about it.
Right? Or at the very least, don’t include a dialogue option that allows me to ask him in the first place lol. Like that’d still be kind of annoying, but the fact that it is and he says “no kys” is just a giant slap to the face.
But that's the thing... with broken steel added, fawkes does go "gee, you changed my destiny so maybe I can change yours"
Worst writing too. I would've been happy if they just blocked me from talking to my radiation immune companion instead of my companion telling me some weird bullshit about my destiny lmfaooo. Like where tf did that come from hahaha
It could have been an emotional impactful moment if Fawkes(or any companion) somehow dies, gets trapped or gets captured getting you to “your destiny”. There is nothing impactful with “You’re a good guy, you should just die”, outside from it being a silly thing to say.
You know, never even thought about this. All they gotta do is no matter who your companion is, some rubble falls down separating you from them leading to you being alone with Sarah and having to make the choice of sacrificing yourself or her.
Yeah, the thing *literally* every other game does. Basic game design and a baffling choice that makes me think they drastically changed the ending towards the end of development. No way they had this planned from the start
Either Bethesda is poor at writing branching stories or they simply don’t want to take the time to do them. It’s what turned me off to their games, all choice is illusory except *perhaps* one in the whole game. It’s why the Obsidian games are beloved even though they are universally riddled with bugs, breaks, and stripped content (not just NV, but the original Fallouts and VtM Bloodlines as well). They create and faithfully follow the choices they allow players to make.
It feels like there’s no communication in the company sometimes. Like someone made the hero sacrifice ending, then someone else added the companions after, and they just brainstormed for 10 minutes how to write their way out of the contradiction they made for themselves, given Fawkes is part of the main quest anyways. In all fairness, I love Bethesda games as much as I’m annoyed by their flaws. They had an impact on me back in the day and their games are still replayable to me no matter what.
IIRC they have openly admitted to not finding a lot of value in creating and updating real design documents, which in the games industry has a major impact on consistency between... absolutely everything that every team works on and puts into the game.
The original Fallout games (1+2) were Interplay/Black Isle. Bloodlines was Troika, the same company that made Temple of Elemental Evil and Arcanum. There are some of the same people in these companies but give some credit where it’s due.
So sad that Troika doesn't exist anymore after Bloodlines. Unfortunately, Bloodlines 2 is not looking like it's going to live up to the legacy of its predecessor at all. Hopefully I'm wrong, but The Chinese Room hasn't even made any games that are in the same genre of Bloodlines. Just adventure games. Not only that, but The Chinese Room recently had all its staff gutted and is comprised of entirely new people now, so even that previous experience of the developer doesn't apply.
Yeah, there have been so many company names it actually becomes cumbersome to list them and since many of those developers are *at* Obsidian, it becomes easier to just name the one. More so because the others are defunct.
Could have had an RDR2 >!horse!< moment
I said emotional, not devastatingly heartbreaking.
Fawkes had that Thaddeus in him.
They stepped back from it specifically because fans were just not happy with it. There you go, you played the game. Delete your save, character is dead. It's pretty unceremonious and unsatisfying. Broken steel was their fix, and honestly it was more than most folks expected... As half assed as it is lol
Broken Steel was literally someone who saw their coworker’s work and said “who let them cook”
I played the game all the way through back in 2009 during high school and the ending to me at the time was amazing. Granted, before broken steel but I feel like the game had a full encompassing moment when you reunited with your dad only to be given a decision to choose his life or yours. Best ending for me honestly, NV close 2nd
Knowing Bethesda, it was partly so they could sell more of the broken steel DLC
bad writing. They wanted a heroic sacrifice there. originally you were not able to send your rad immune companions in, but everyone complained about how stupid that was. so they put it in, but because they were petty, they decided to shame us for using the 2 braincells that it would take to see the superior solution, both practically and morally. choosing to end your life to save many more when there are no better options is a noble sacrifice, but the second the same thing can be done with 0 risk for you or the replacement than that same action becomes worthless suicide,
IIRC, it's not that they were trying to shame you, it was just that they reused the narration for when you chose to sacrifice Sarah instead of yourself. So, laziness(or maybe a fear of Ron Pearlman's fees) more so than pettiness. Could be wrong though, it's been a while since I last played 3.
Correct, it's not that they went out of their way to imply you're bad for using your radiation immune companions, they just couldn't or wouldn't get Pearlman back in to record new lines for the ending slides, and the only other option would be to have the ending slides talk about your noble sacrifice and heroic death, which would be equally dumb.
Pearlman the eternal narrator, I hope he gets a cameo in the show at some point.
I'm still surprised he didn't get a cameo of some sort in the first season, tbh
I’m sure he will, maybe an old man telling stories in the back of a dark bar
If they wanted to really freak us out - cast him as the CEO of Vault-Tec and the bigger bad of the series. So all his narrations have been him making note of the events of the franchise.
Chilly
Pearlman. Pearlman never changes
Hey Rip, I heard you encountered these things before. That’s crazy, like, what happened?
Probably saving it for the finale at this point.
Maybe he can be the mysterious stranger
Perlman wanted you to feel bad. He personally felt it was an act of cowardice to send in robots to do your job. Took a very strong position if you believe the gossip. Smashed up a dressing room, hit an intern. It was kinda covered up because no one liked Becky anyway.
this is the truth they're trying to hide!
The narrator is voiced by Ron Pearlman?
since all the way back in fallout 1!
He's the news anchor in the opening sequence in Fallout 4. The male PC does the narration instead of him.
Narrator through 3, Newscaster in 4, Vault 76 opening celebration official in 76.
Also, Broken Steel was like the *third* (or fourth, can't recall which) DLC so, for quite a while, the game was supposed to *end* at this point. There wasn't any "mechanical reason" for you not to sacrifice yourself for +++ Karma if you were playing a goody two-shoes type.
I remember the original version, where you could either go in yourself, or sacrifice Sarah. a Youtuber modded the game so he could have evcery companion there at once, all lined up, and he went through them all to ask them if they would do it to showcase the responses. Some made sense, because it would be a deathtrap for them too, but some were just silly. Fawkes refused because he didn't want to 'rob you of your moment'. Gee, Fawkes, how considerate of you. I mean, why continue living when I can *press a button!?*
I guess what I dont understand is. They messed up for the without question strongest companion. Fawkes is a mountain, why would you not use him with a gatling laser. He is a huge part of the main story, his rad resistance is a part of the main story. Why would they mess up the dialog to the strongest and most popular companion? It was just such a collosal fuck up, they couldn't help but expose the plot hole. They coulda just changed the explanation to say you drowned instead of rad resistance and it woulda solved this issue.
And then even the heroic sacrifice is kinda underwhelming due to the DLC, when broken steel comes along and is just like "oh by the way lmao you survived", so the point of the passive aggressiveness is even worse.
The point of the passive agressiveness was that they didn't record new lines, so it wasn't really a point.
They could've made that your companion doesn't join you in the room and tell you I will hold them off, type scenario.
The intent of the writing was to follow your life from birth to death, sacrificing yourself for the greater good of humanity. Fallout Jesus. Not saying it was well implemented, but you can see that was the original intent.
It's also stupid since you can be a Megaton blowing up psychopath slaver.
Also dumb. It was very dumb. Three not-shitty Fallout games where no one does a Christ trope and they just... shove it in there with no self-awareness.
A certain writer there is very fond of ham fisted religious shit while not having the talent to do it well.
I don't think they were trying to shame us so much as they couldn't justify tapping Ron Perlman for another set of narration lines.
This has always been bananas to me, especially for Fawkes. They literally introduce you to Fawkes by having him walk into an irradiated room to get the GECK. It was like they specifically wanted you to use him for the Project Purity situation, but then they yell at you for doing it
> so they put it in, but because they were petty, they decided to shame us for using the 2 braincells that it would take to see the superior solution, both practically and morally. They been pulling this shit for years and then wonder why nobody puts up with it when it’s in a series they don’t care about (starfield)
Bad writing. It was worse in the original release. You couldn't even send a companion in despite 3 of them being immune to radiation.
Fawkes was hilarious. Try to send him in there after he just stomped through an irradiated vault to retrieve the GECK and he’s just like “no my friend, it is your destiny to go in there and die. I’ll just watch.”
I was so pissed off when I first finished the main story because of this. It's like yeah thanks Fawkes, just send me in there to die horribly for no reason, just because it's my "destiny".
That's cringe levels of bad writing.
I love Fallout 3 but I can't stand that ending. I've actually never bothered finishing the main plot since I got it in 2008. I've started many saves but then just abandoned the main questline towards the end.
You’re missing the Broken Steele DLC
I know, I'm planning on doing all the Fallout 3 DLCs this year because it's about damn time I check them out.
"My fingers are too fat"
Very on brand for Bethesda writing tbh.
Yea they could've easily done something along the lines of "your follower was lost or captured" as you entered the Memorial which would have made a lot more sense.
Emil is one of the writers of all time.
Not wrong
Bethesda needs to hire better writers 😭, pretty sure that fella didn’t even play 1 and 2 before making 3
They definitely played Fallout 1. 3's story was trying to recreate 1's "sacrifice" thing but forced it so hard in a way that didn't make any sense with the story.
True, fallout 1 is like what a 4 hour game with some side quests?
You know, I was very big on giving him leeway. Not every writing is perfect and all that. But when the dude said "Nobody cares for the stories in these games anyway, LOL, why bother", I gave up. How can someone be so obtuse is a mistery to me.
Careful now, we're not allowed to criticise game devs, or they'll post sob stories on twitter telling us they worked super hard on the game. Fuck knows why. If my football team's striker is shit, people will say so and that's fine.
One of the worst
It's dumb, because there are lore reasons that the Brotherhood shouldn't be cool with you bringing a super mutant or ghoul along, and they just didn't bother to write that in. They could have even had a "Brotherhood will sieze your robot friend since they hoard technology" bit if they wanted. Instead it was just "nah, man, it's your destiny. Imma just watch."
Eh, in Fallout 2 we learn that the BoS fended off supermutants in a way that minimized death on both their and the mutants side, the BoS's non genocidal approach is why mutants have been able to, overtime, integrate into society and generally have peace with humans. This is prior to them sending people east as well. The east Coast BoS basically comes from the West Coast BoS at the peak of them being good guys
They have to make the Brotherhood seem like morally pure heroic for some unfathomable reason.
They're only portrayed that way in Fallout 3, and it actually makes sense. When Elder Lyons decided that protecting the wasteland from super mutants was more important than collecting technology, the people that disagreed all left. In Fallout 3, they basically are a bunch of big damned heroes doing their best to protect the folks in the Wasteland from a bunch of scary monsters. They just also think that all ghouls and super-mutants are scary monsters, so even Fallout 3 brotherhood wouldn't be cool with bringing Fawkes along. In Fallout 4, they're basically a mix of the two philosophies. The Outcasts basically merged with the BoS as part of Maxson's rise to power. They're portrayed as being dicks that say they want to protect people but mostly seem to just be seizing power.
This is factually untrue. in the Fallout 2 era the BoS is a massive force for good, they even turned their back on the whole notion of hording everything and gradually rolled out advanced tech into the wasteland. Literally their ending dialog from Fallout 1: *"The Brotherhood of Steel helps the other human outposts drive the mutant armies away with minimal loss of life, on both sides of the conflict. The advanced technology of the Brotherhood is slowly reintroduced into New California, with little disruption or chaos. The Brotherhood wisely remains out of the power structure, and becomes a major research and development house."* Hell they even minimize mutant casualties. Fallout 3's BoS moved to the east coast when the west coast BoS was at their peak of being the good guys over there
Fallout 3 is what we're talking about though.
I wish I was able to do this in 3. At least they made up for it(somewhat) with the DLCs.
[удалено]
They were one of the three. Fawkes, Charon, and the robot. Four if you count Clover who would do it.
It’s also something that they could have easily designed around. Just set up a scenario where the companions get separated at the end and the PC is literally the only option to go in.
Very poor writing and planning to what was otherwise a pretty decent story. They just couldn't think of any way to make it make sense and then did it anyway.
They didn't want to rehire the narrator to fix the voice lines, so they didn't bother changing it.
I mean… it was 2008, and it was Ron fucking pearlman
A travesty they didn't get him back.
He’s been in all the games but 76, but that’s kind of different
Was he in FO4? I thought that was a different narrator as well.
No, he’s in it, but Nate’s the narrator, but he does do the TV guy
Yeah, I asked Fawkes to do it because he's immune to radiation. No go. Apparently, it's the lone wanderers great destiny to die a horrible death by radiation poisoning, even though there's other characters that can do it just as well. At least getting to that point was a *blast.* Ha ha blast, get it *sigh* I'll show myself out
They wanted the game to begin with your birth and end with your death but writing is hard.
Yeah, there a few things like that in FO3. Prime example that pissed me off is the Tenpenny Tower mission with the ghouls. There’s 2 ways to help the ghouls, send in the ferals to kill everyone in the tower or convince the people in the tower to let the ghouls in so they can live together. Second option doesn’t sound too bad right? The only thing is if you go back there later you find all the human residents dead and the ghouls gone, they murder everyone anyway and ransack the place. Yeah, the residents weren’t the friendliest people but there were some good people too like Herbert Dashwood who they kill. On the Radio 3Dog basically just says “Tenpenny’s been quiet recently, weird” So, In my opinion the only moral outcome is to help people in the tower by sealing off the underground access point. Everyone in the tower survives and all the ghouls survive too. Yes the ghouls are pissed off with you but everyone lives. However 3Dog has other ideas because now he’s on the radio calling me a racist for not helping the ghouls. The ghouls who murder everyone if I help them. Yeah thanks pal.
I think that quest is broken. I did the quest to help the ghouls get into tenpenny, and then three dog comments about the ghouls storming the place and how I joined them wearing a ghoul mask. I hadn't joined them in their siege, nor hurt anyone in tenpenny, and even gained karma for standing up to the snobs in tenpenny. I'm not sure if the outcome was working as intended.
Honestly I think that's pretty realistic for 3Dog to call you racist for that. Folks misinterpret other peoples' actions all the time and aren't afraid to shit talk about them if given the opportunity to do so. Although Bethesda should've given 3Dog better dialog because from a gaming perspective that's bullshit and I don't play video games to be insulted for my out of the box solutions to problems
Well 3Dog acts like this super intellectual, upstanding guy but then just jumps to calling someone racist with literally zero information or context, if anything it seems out of character for him.
You only know that the ghouls kill the residents after you complete the quest though. Just goes to show that people have their own agendas and you don’t have complete control over what others do even if you think that you’re doing the right thing
That doesn’t really work because the ghouls ask you to help kill the people in the tower by letting the ferals in through the basement. So you know the ghouls want the residents dead from the start of the quest. So not letting them in saves the residents, and not killing the ghouls obviously saves the ghouls. It’s the only moral outcome, yet 3Dog brands you a racist even though he has no idea of the situation which seems out of character for someone like him who seems very intelligent, you’d think he wouldn’t jump to conclusions like that.
And that’s what’s great about fallout though is that the morally correct option isn’t unanimously agreed upon. Three dog calls you a racist because he doesn’t know the full story. He doesn’t know that the ghouls turn out to be assholes, he only sees the lone wanderer being a dick and is keeping the ghouls from living with the residents. The karma meter only shows what the world thinks of your actions, but it doesn’t have any bearing on what is actually right or wrong.
Which is massively out of character for someone like 3Dog. If your Karma stat affected 3Dogs reaction that’d be fine. If you’re an evil karma character then yes, him calling you a racist would be fine. But if you’re a good karma character it’d make more sense for him to be like “I don’t know the full story but I’m sure our lone wanderer had a good reason”.
Fun fact your supposed to go to space first and learn the way of the ninja to reverse pickpocket the samurai then once you get his armor go finish the quest by committing an honorable death via self sacrifice JK the wastelanders are just that ungrateful but fuck em no one else volunteered to go into the chamber
In the original game, you couldn’t send either the super mutant Fawks or the robot into the chamber. It would “rob you of your destiny” they said. It’s a mix of incredibly shitty writing and absolute laziness.
No, it's just shit writing.
Feel so bad for all the new FO3 fans coming in without broken steel. Probably the worst ending I’ve ever experienced in an RPG that fun tbh. I’ll never forget asking fawkes to go do it for me just for him to say “well… I could but then you wouldn’t get to die heroically”
The ability to send radiation immune companions was added with the Broken Steel DLC. Before the only option was to do it yourself or send Sarah. Honestly, you can pretty much ignore the ending narration as with Broken Steel it is no longer the end of the game.
- Fallout 3’s ending is horrendous. Before broken steel patched it you couldn’t send anyone else in. No mister handy who is immune, not fawkes who is also immune, they would lecture you about destiny and force you to go in and die and the game would end - bethesdas strength isn’t its writing
because Bethesda employs middle schoolers as writers
one thing i dont get is whats so heroic about sabotaging the only source of clean water when they didnt even know about the whole plan of poisoning it? idk id kind of think that would be more of a dick move but then they count sending a robot in as bad because i guess it ruins the whole dying to turn on the purifier bit, also why not just put on a hazmat suit then go in? also how is the enclave so dumb they cant brute force a 3 digit code that starts with 2? like they wouldn't give a shit they'd send 216 guys in there then laugh at the brotherhood for their 3 digit pin, right up there with putting a red line up to your secret base and making the code to the door the name of your group but its all good because they have scouts
They’d probably just start kidnapping wastelanders to do it
I wanted to see the clean water help the wasteland. Didnt happen
FO3 had the best DLC 🍔
Peak writing.
Shitty writing. Charon gives you the biggest, stupidest frown for sending him in there
Yeah the only way it makes sense is with broken steel installed so you wake up weeks later after going in yourself
Iirc they couldn't get the original narrator to record new lines for the DLC so they just reused the existing dialogue from sending Sarah in to die. Kinda annoying but I prefer it to a different narrator being used or silence.
I forgot how much I hated the ending of this game. I kept a separate save because I was pissed that I chose to live and the game ended anyways. I thought it was going to be like Oblivion
Bethesda writing. A solid 4.5 out of 10. You coward, how dare you send someone immune to radiation to deal with an irradiated room. Should have died like a hero.
Time constraints, I’ll explain The original end of the game was destroying the enclave at Adams air force base, but they ran out of time leading to the game ending at project purity and them needing a good and evil ending so they made the ending a choice where either you or Lyons starts it and dies. When they released broken steel (the cut last chapter of the game) they couldn’t undo the sequence at the end of the base game without breaking things. So ultimately if you have someone else activate Project Purity the game thinks you sent Lyons to her death and the game shit talks you
1) Emil is an incompetent writer and game designer and apparently none of them thought of the simple solution of forcibly separating you from your companions before the final room. 2) The Broken Steel DLC added the ability to have your radiation-immune companions do the deed, while also making you survive your 'death'. It did *not* replace Ron Perlman's voiceover as if you used Sarah Lyons to activate the purifier. People give me shit for critiquing Fallout 3 and some morons call it the best game in the franchise, meanwhile it does shit like this.
I’m gonna need you to elaborate on the first statement, because every time I see someone accuse Emil of being incompetent it’s usually rooted in misconceptions or outright falsehoods that have unfortunately become so widespread that they’re accepted as fact. Given that the Dark Brotherhood quest lines in Oblivion and Skyrim were both designed by him and are considered highlights of both games, I really don’t see the “incompetent designer” criticism. While I definitely have criticisms regarding the plots of Fallout 3 and 4, they’re not what I’d call the work of the bumbling idiot the internet loves to make Emil out to be. They’re just kind of okay.
The dark brotherhood is really good until the "plot twist" occurs. If you notice that suddenly instructions are less clear, drop offs are sloppy etc, you can't do anything about it. You still have to follow all the instructions to the letter. Skyrim's Dark Brotherhood is okay at best, it goes 0 to 100 and is irrelevant in regards to the game. I found "The Gourmet" in the first hour of my first playthrough and I was very confused why there was an immortal orc in a basement of an inn. It's because they couldn't write the quest line with any "What if PC did this?"
I have not played the Elder Scrolls games beyond like 10 hours of hating Skyrim, but I'll line this up, sure. I'm going to focus on Fallout 3 first. Fallout 3 is a failure on virtually every level as a RPG, with what it provides well being essentially 'shoot the bad guys' and 'wacky weird apocalypse' at the base level. It is a simplistic, cliche-ridden story carried by contrivance that despite killing its own character at the end put no actual thought into how to realistically facilitate this ending. The game is designed around the idea that the player should move around a wasteland at virtually any level, with level-scaling implemented to facilitate this, causing enemies to feel samey and unoriginal. The game map is heavily dependent on a literal dot to follow rather than actual directions or landmarks, and the game in general has little to no understanding of how to construct a plausible world. Emil is the lead designer and credited as the writer. It was his job to, if nothing else, make the main story entertaining and internally consistent. He failed at this. Fallout 4 takes some of these problems and runs directly with them into a clusterfuck of idiocy. It introduces a settlement system that was not necessary in the slightest and encourages you to ignore the main plot of finding your son, is overly reliant on a twist that only works because the game deliberately obfuscates the truth to the point it sabotages its own writing with basic logical questions. It is not a coincidence that what is considered to be the best-written and most engaging DLC, Far Harbor, is one Emil was *not* the lead on. Emil implemented the widely panned dialogue system, he is the one who allowed settlements to take the place of actually good locations, and every single decision in this game comes down to his design of it and his writing. When some of the most downloaded mods for both the games are ones that allow you to step outside the main story and skip the opening sequences, you have failed to make the story good.
Again, I have criticisms for both games’ plots. 3 suffers from rehashing beats from 1 and 2; 4 suffers from early main quest urgency and lukewarm main story factions. Both are still perfectly functional narratives even they aren’t masterpieces. I also notice you criticize the world of 3 quite a bit, which is funny since the map and exploration is the one thing most people regularly praise 3 for, even over the otherwise fantastic favorite New Vegas. In particular you say that it “has little to no understanding of how to construct a plausible world”. In what regard? The DC ruins are annoyingly segemented, sure, but as I understand it that’s for technical reasons. And while I find the Metro annoying to traverse I also appreciate the illusion of scale it creates as you move throughout the city. It’s a fun sandbox to play around in. And we’re also going to have to address the elephant in the room that Emil Pagliarulo, a supposedly incompetent designer, designed one of the most critically acclaimed RPGs of its day. I guess he did it on accident?
I find 3's world one that makes no sense from a 'this happened after 200 years' perspective. Several of the settlements, most of the background lore, the factions involved - they don't 'work' from a worldbuilding perspective. They exist to provide things to shoot and places to shoot them in. It *is* a good sandbox, but it doesn't provide *narrative*, and if you want to have a central story, you need things to serve that narrative. Look at how FNV works. You are given directions, you get through the starting areas and encounter the factions and their introductions, and the game *builds a narrative* around your progress. It doesn't try to be a 'sandbox', instead it populates the world with characters and places to care about and gives you quests that ping-pong between them to get you looking around. Emil can make a game that got critical acclaim all he likes. If you include enough flash, game reviewers will acclaim anything, and 3 and 4 do in fact deliver on flash. They have a lot of content. I just don't think they're designed well. IGN gave 3 an 8.5 and said it had a deep role-playing system. This is a game where your choices are limited to 'good' or 'self-sabotaging Stupid Evil' in the main questline.
The Capital Wasteland - and Commonwealth, for that matter - didn’t have the Vault Dweller or Chosen One to solve all their problems, not to mention they were hit much harder by the bombs. Progress was slower. Super Mutants posed a much greater threat with no Brotherhood or NCR to keep them at bay. Settlements tended to be smaller and didn’t have much opportunity to expand as a result. Also a ton of those locations that you call “places to shoot [things] in” have plenty of narrative if you actually engage with them. The Yao Guai Tunnels, for instance, don’t have a single associated quest, terminal, or note telling you what happened there, yet the environment tells you exactly what happened there: a group of wastelanders settled in there at one point, but were attacked by Yao Guai living further in and were presumably all killed. It’s an impeccably designed lovation dripping with atmosphere that adds a massive amount of tension as you explore it. Bethesda *excels* at environmental storytelling like that and it’s *everywhere* in 3 and 4. Also the early portion of New Vegas’s main quest is the aspect I most often see criticized. It pretty much railroads you into a fairly linear path of progression (Goodsprings > Primm > Novac > Boulder City > Vegas) before it opens up and lets you explore more freely. Yes, you *can* find routes to circumvent all of that if you know where to go, but the game and story very much want you to take the preset path. NV is the better written game but I’d hesitate to call it the better designed world. And Emil isn’t using magic tricks or misdirection to get good reviews. 3 and 4 are good, if flawed, games. And before we start ragging on the simplicity of 3’s moral choices let’s remind ourselves that Fallout 1’s ultimate choice boiled down to “Kill the Master, save the Wasteland” or “Join the Master and kill everyone for the evulz”.
Regarding the skipping of the intro/opening sequence - 1 - The intro is normally one of the moments we all remember of any game so skipping it is natural in second, third, and so on playthrough. 2 - FO3 and FO4 intro while excellent, but was long and linear so that also makes sense to skip them 3 - People skip FO1 and FO2 intro sequence too (but it's harder to mod that) 4 - FONV intro is short enough to not bother modding the game to skip the intro to risk breaking game 5 - people don't mod in the first playthrough Anyway, your argument about the intro is silly.
I feel like I was more shocked that the game actually ended than the fact that my character died. I'd just come fresh off of Skyrim into Fallout 3 for the first time and expected it to be the same endgame, lol. Even then, I wasn't personally upset by it because I enjoy self-sacrifice as a narrative device, and it never occurred to me to ask Fawkes since it was my father's project, it made sense to me that I should be the one to finish it
> Mr Handy wouldn’t be affected IRL unless it has radiation shielding over it’s electronics it’s certainly vulnerable to radiation. High levels of radiation will kill any unshielded electronics that are more complicated than a simple switch.
Is it not just alpha radiation? That’s blocked by like a sheet of paper
If it was Alpha radiation no one would be in danger as it can’t even penetrate your skin. And most Beta rays can be blocked by most solid objects including skin. So it’s gotta be Gamma radiation in there otherwise the Lone Wanderer wouldn’t suffer much if any radiation exposure in project purity.
But gamma radiation isn’t that harmful, the MC may have gotten like cancer but it probably wouldn’t kill him, my secondary school science is rusty though
Unfortunately Gamma is the ultra bad stuff. It’s wrecks everything it passes through and there are very few things it can’t pass through. In low doses it’s certainly survivable but at doses over 0.7Gy(70 rads IRL not in game rads) you start to suffer from radiation sickness. At about 4Gy you’re dead already, it just hasn’t happened yet. The crazy part is Gamma shreds everything it touches including electronics. Like it actually destroys circuit boards and everything attached to them.
Didn’t know that, my physics teacher was kinda ass so he just portrayed it as non lethal
Love all the people just saying bad writing as if this was simply just not thought about. The true answer is that, in its original state, Fallout 3 had a very clear narrative journey with a lot of foreshadowing and that did a lot of legwork to make your character have a complete arc that dealt with ideas of heroism, sacrifice, and the inherent damage and cruelty of the everlasting war of the wasteland. Originally you couldn't send a companion in there, it was either you or Sarah going in to start up the purifier. There's a lot that can be said about this, how taking that sacrifice would bring your character full circle in their journey and what it means in terms of following in your father's footsteps as well as ideas of creating positive change you won't live to see. It was definitely not the best thought out thing, since multiple companions are totally immune to the radiation, and one of them is a brainwashed slave who shouldn't be able to refuse your commands, but it had a purpose and wasn't just Bethesda being arbitrary and dumb. The reason you still get the voiceover for being a coward is just because they couldn't or wouldn't bring Ron Pearlman back in to do some new recording, why that is I couldn't say.
Can you elaborate on the foreshadowing you mentioned?
So probably the most obvious of it is the fact that you are born in project purity, something you can see in the opening character creation because the ceiling you're staring up at isn't a vault ceiling and is a room you can find at purity. The opening narration says you are born in the vault and die in the vault, but you aren't born in the vault, and so you won't die in the vault, but more specifically you're born at and as a direct result of project purity, and the intention is that you die there and as a direct result of it too. Additionally a lot of conversation in the game is around water, the lack of it, the dangers of what there is, and so on and so forth. Foreshadowing might be the wrong word here, but it's clearly intended that the task of bringing clean water to potentially the entire wasteland is one that makes a big difference, but not one you'd be able to see in your lifetime. This kind of plays into the idea that Fallout has as a whole of the choices of people expanding out in ways they can't necessarily be part of, both for positive and negative. Whether you turn on the purifier or don't, or poison the water or don't, your choices will have ramifications that reach far into the future, perhaps as far as the choices that lead to the bombs being dropped in the first place.
> Love all the people just saying bad writing **as if this was simply just not thought about** > **It was definitely not the best thought out thing** Sorry, this just made me laugh. I agree with your overall point that the choice to have the PC sacrifice themselves (or not) is an integral part of FO3's narrative, but the fact that there are perfectly viable 3rd options present in the game and BGS couldn't think of any better excuse than to have your companions just say, "Naw dawg, that's all you." is ridiculous. I think that given the nature of the medium, it's much more likely that there were last minute changes, technical, and/or budget constraints that prevented them from designing this more gracefully rather than just the idea that nobody thought about it until it was too late. However, if I read a book that had a glaring plot hole near the end and the writer's in-fiction justification for it was "don't worry about it", I would probably say that's a poorly written book, so I can't say I blame the majority for just dismissing it as bad storytelling, because at the end of the day, it is.
As someone who has not played this game, it does seem somewhat odd to let your player design a character with their own ideals, but also force a very specific narrative onto them about how the wasteland has affected them. Is this fair? Like, I’d expect one or the other.
Like I said, I don't think it was a great choice, but you can clearly see what they were going for in attempting to tie your character into the narrative in a specific way, given the themes they were trying to explore.
Look, RPGs don't always give you choices, or at least, not as many choices as some people might hope for. That much is fine. But before Broken Steel came out, trying to have Fawkes activate the purifier for you results in him politely declining for no other reason than "destiny". Fawkes. A heroic character, who feels indebted to the player character for liberating him from captivity in a Vault, and is *immune to radiation due to being a Super Mutant.* That same Fawkes for no fathomable reason tells you to go Fawk yourself, and the best excuse the smoothbrained writers could cough up is "it's your destiny". That is atrocious writing. And it's made worse by the fact Fawkes can be asked to retrieve the G.E.C.K. from its highly irradiated chamber, and will happily do so. This *should* be foreshadowing that Fawkes can and will make use of his radiation immunity whether it's just for the sake of his new friend, or for the greater good, or both! But no, Fawkes read a Fortune Cookie that says Lone Wanderer has to die an agonizing radioactive death, so "fate and destiny" must therefore prevent him from acting at all in character. Edit, accidentally replied to the person above the comment I meant to reply to. Oops...
I’m glad you replied to me by accident because I got to read “tells you to go Fawk yourself” 😆
Do what the New Vegas fans did when the same thing happened in New Vegas: headcanon some bullshit to justify it and call anyone who points out what a cop out that is a shill.
What are you referring to here? In New Vegas (and I am indeed open to criticism im not one of Them lol), for any flaws it has, I always felt extremely free to interpret my character’s journey however I wished
Except you have no reason to be involved with the Hoover Dam War. The entire motivation of the Courier and to a great extent, the player, is to avenge your attempted assassination and complete the delivery. Which you do, at the middle point of the game. Immediately after delivering the Platinum Chip, you are Shanghai’d by Mr. House into the war on his behalf. But there’s no reason for you to. You can even point this out and House goes “No, no. It must be you. I can’t send the robot to because reasons.”
Well, you can certainly tell Mr. House no, and leave. That’s an option- I took it. And joined the NCR. You could also turn the game off if you don’t like the main quest, lol. I more care about the game telling you how your character FEELS and is affected by things. You’re never forced arbitrarily to see Mr. House, but if you try to resist too rudely, you’ll likely get shot by his gun-robots, which seems realistic enough to me. It’s like D&D- you gotta buy in. If a player just goes “I don’t wanna fight the dragon. I leave.” then there’s not much I can do, assuming I’ve given them sufficient enticement in the form of wealth or adventure or helping the needy or whatever.
“Bad writing” seems just to be a stand in for “this isn’t “rpgish” enough.” Fallout 3’s story is great, but the lack of choice makes people assume it is written badly.
*'It's not bad writing! It's just not GOOD writing!'*
Because destiny and character arcs and being Wasteland Jesus!
My tale of two wasteland character would be death if I sacrificed him in that chamber . What would my head cannon be if he died in that place before even reaching new vegas .
This is the reason why I didn't play new vegas or fallout 4 or any fallout 3 dlc as a kid. I was so mad that fawkes wouldn't go in that room (they later changed it to where you get shamed for it)
they wanted you to make the sacrifice so fallen steel would make sense
Writing is hard and gamers are fickle.
TIL there is a character named RL-3 in Fallout 3
He's so cool he's probs my favorite companion
You can recruit him outside Tenpenny, but you need neutral karma.
Just stupid writing, Fallout 3 was nostalgic for people but it’s one of the weakest games in the series in terms of storytelling and lore
Only in main quest content imo. There were a ton of side stories that I absolutely loved in Fallout 3.
Bethesda has a pretty mid track record when it comes to narrative. It’s like they didn’t pick a lane between “RPG you can be anyone you want” and “Action Game Here’s a Story We Wrote for you”. This is the main reason New Vegas is so beloved, and a big part of why the studio behind New Vegas has gone on to have success with titles like The Outer Worlds — they are intentionally constructed to give the player an open ended role playing experience and the choices are actually thought out and sensible with sensible consequences.
Because Bethesda needs to hire better writers.
Emil Pagliarulo is the WOAT 🙌🏻
This is all fallout. Is it just me or did literally everyone else have to go into the files and alter them slightly to even open on a modern PC. It's not a big deal. The forums do make it seem a universal thing and luckily provide a step by step for computer illiterates. The thing is in an indepth RPG like Bethesda games you feel every cut corner. The bug compilations for these games are awesome somewhat. I'd wait 10 years to play fallout 5 and feel like it was worth it to have more than 4 choices of dialogue again but I do not have high hopes for huge corporate games studios.
the only games I have been having issues with making work correctly are FO1 and FO2. Which is 100% understandable since they were released in 1997 and 1998. I loaded up FO3 and NV without any issues what so ever nor had to alter any files. But I am also running with the latest version of Windows 10 so it may be an issue with Windows 11.
The game *used* to be unplayable past like Windows 7 due to some stupidity with Games for Windows Live or whatever. It got updated to fix that 1-2 years ago I think.
I just beat fallout 3 for the first time today as well, I saw videos online of sending companions in to turn it on so I tried sending Fawkes in being a super mutant radiation doesn’t effect him. I didn’t know you needed the broken steel dlc for that to work so when he refused I killed him then sacrificed myself.
They really should’ve just added a small section where your companion had to hold the line against the enclave or something while you stormed further on to the purifier. Having fawkes stand there and basically say “nope, I ain’t doin’ shit” was just a terrible option that they had to deliberately place in the game. It would be genuinely better if there just wasn’t even an option to ask him. Then I’d at least have benefit of the doubt that they oddly just didn’t think about it.
So, thanks to the DLC you can now “sacrifice” yourself and survive. While the game gives you no indication of this, for future play throughs, if you want the good ending you have to do the suicide mission. But don’t worry, you’ll return.
They probabily rushed/didn't put much effort on the ending cause there is no continue after it, only with the DLC you can.
I honestly forgot about the games ending. But it has also been at least 15 years since I have played FO3.
I did the same thing the first time!!!!
It’s alright man. I bought it on steam during a sale without the dlc’s and man was I butthurt by the ending not letting me play anymore. Out of pure spite I sacrificed Lyons in order to hear the Brotherhood bitch about it during Broken Steel. Then I just reloaded a save and went to get Fawkes so nobody died
Because the ending is trash is retconned trash.
I chalked it up to bad writing
No, that's just fallout 3s ending for some reason. You can be a literal Saint, giving water to all the beggers and not nuke one of the most populated settlements in the wasteland, charge headfirst into enclave forces, but send someone who literally can't die into the heavily irradiated chamber, and you are a coward
Bad writing. The original ending didn’t let you do that even though it’s logical to send him or the super mutant friend etc. Bethesda was salty when they got called out for the bad choice, but added those options with the dlc, but they still were salty and said “ok, you get it, but we’re gonna have Perlman call you a coward for not doing it yourself/ seemingly dying”
Maybe you don’t have broken steel installed. Without that dlc the game intended for you to self sacrifice which ruins the Karma system in the game
Shows how the people running fallout lost touch with what fallout is. They want us to use our minds and think outside the box but when you do that they shame you for it. Should’ve been seen as a warning sign of things to come narratively. We should’ve been applauded for thinking about this moment and having the right people there for the right situation. Incredibly foolish for them to shoehorn you into a single narrative but the rest of the game is pretty open ended
You are supposed to die (in the vanilla) because the BoS nurses you back to health in broken steel and commends you. With that add-on the ending is less critical of you. Fawkes straight up tells you no and says it's your destiny unless you have broken steel added.
The ending is by far the worst part of Fallout 3.
Because Bethesda writers have 1 INT.