Today's update us all about Caesar's Legion. Man, are these guys major league assholes. Long before you meet them, you hear all these outrageous rumors, about their aggression, their cruelty, their utter contempt for any not of their number and it seems a little overblown, but then you get to the town of Nipton, and you find that the reality is worse.
These are a group of people who are somehow under the impression that it is acceptable human behavior to hold a "lottery" where the first place winner gets to go free, the second place winner gets his legs broken, and the losers get enslaved, beheaded, or crucified. They do this to an entire town, who's primary sin is being foolish and greedy enough to do business with them. And then they wrap these atrocities up in a sort of fatuous self-righteousness, condemning all outsiders as "profligates" who are "dissolute."
I am honestly having a hard time thinking of a more despicable group of video game villains (that they, in leaving a taunting message after their raid on Ranger Station Charlie, made a special point of mentioning they captured a woman alive is just . . . ugh - maybe you could dial it down on the darkness just a bit, Fallout: New Vegas).
Yet they're not exactly unrealistic. I wrote earlier about the problem of video game evil degenerating into pure, motiveless, puppy-kicking malice, and Caesar's Legion certainly seems to qualify . . . except all the terrible shit they get up to, the real Roman Empire did as bad or worse, and for much the same reasons. The evil of Caesar's Legion is distressingly recognizable - it is the arrogant, power-worshiping, culturally exclusionary evil that is behind virtually every part of human history that makes you wish a meteor would hit the planet so life could start over from square one. They have a strong morality - that only applies to the in-group, they are dedicated to keeping public order . . . by any means necessary, and the warrior ideal that gives them cultural cohesion simultaneously builds up a dangerous masculinism that degrades women for no reason other than to stroke the egos of the socially dominant group. It's actually a textbook reactionary ideology.
In a more straightforward game, they'd work perfectly as antagonists. I'm picturing something like a more action-packed version of The Handmaid's Tale where Offred somehow gets her hands on a flamethrower (and, however much it would completely ignore the themes of the book, I would still definitely play that game). The problem with Caesar's Legion here is that they obscure the fact that the New California Republic is actually the game's main villain.
The Fallout series has always had a bit of the western genre in its DNA, and nowhere is that more apparent than in Fallout: New Vegas. The NCR, even more than in Fallout 2 represents the encroachment of civilization upon a previously free and independent society. The parallels with the United States' 19th century colonization of the continent could not be more explicit. You even have Native American stand-ins in the form of the Great Khans, who were previously forced out of territory closer to the NCRs heartland (speculation - would using actual Native Americans for this role have been a welcome move towards inclusion and the acknowledgement of real historical events, or would have seemed too on the nose - also, after playing four Fallout games, I'm kind of getting the impression that no Native Americans survived the great war) who are subject to further harassment and massacre, and eventually moved into a reservation (the fact that the main character of the previous games is largely responsible for this is a discussion for another time).
So what you have, in essence, is a group of people who were doing fine on their own, until a well-intentioned, but thoughtless imperial power forces its way in with the dual mandate of spreading liberal ideology and claiming resources it really has no moral right to, and due to bureaucratic incompetence and the intrinsic difference in systemic incentives between the roles, is far better at the latter task than the former. The question then becomes, how do you possibly resist such a force? The wealth they bring with them has an enormously transformative (mostly for the better) effect on your lifestyle, and it's not as if your local strongman is a bastion of humanist enlightenment, so the logical, and perhaps even the moral, choice is to go along with them, but the problem is that you don't actually have a choice. They smile and play nice, and it may even be that official policy back in their capitol is to leave you be, but the choice is a false one. To the people who brave the frontier, you are an obstacle. If you don't assimilate, you'll be displaced, and if you do assimilate, they will do everything in their power to erase everything about you that makes you unique, because they're convinced that their way is the best way.
Yet, in all honesty, you can't support a continuation of the status quo. The wasteland is so filled with raiders and monsters that it's not safe to travel, and the preexisting local culture is dominated by whoever has the biggest guns and the most willingness to use them. Ideally, what you'd want is for the NCR to give you enough breathing room to develop on your own, while trying to steer local politics in a direction that emulates the best of their governmental and social traditions while maintaining a distinctively Mojave character. But that would require the NCR to respect local autonomy and cede control of valuable strategic resources to powers outside their sphere of influence, so that's never going to happen.
It's a melancholy, nuanced conflict, where right and wrong are difficult to see, and where your outlaw character has to make hard choices about whether taking down a bad system is worth fighting good people. It's an intriguing and unconventional choice as a backdrop for a science fiction game . . . unless you add in a howlingly awful faction of nakedly aggressive conquerors - in which case the Mojave is bound to be overrun anyway so you might as well choose the lesser of two evils.
On the other hand, maybe the reason the themes seem so muddled is because they're actually going for some other theme. In terms of social groups in the Mojave, it breaks down into - Caesar's Legion, the NCR, the Strip, Raiders, and then assorted tribal societies like the Great Khans, the Boomers, Novac, Goodsprings, Primm, and the Bright Followers (though the last barely count since their intent is to leave the planet ASAP). And from that list, it becomes clear that a larger issue at play here is how one defines political legitimacy in the wake of a complete breakdown of public order.
The NCR and Caesar's Legion are more or less traditional states. Though they have different methods, they are both highly organized and seek to control territories and populations for the purposes of mobilizing labor and resources in service of a centralized authority.
The Strip is interesting because it's organized much like a state, but goes out of its way to shun the trappings of statehood (if I were in the mood to stir up shit, I'd call it a "libertarian monarchy"). It's controlled by an autocrat who shows little interest in day-to-day affairs and takes no title other than "guy who owns the securitrons." Below him are a class of aristocratic elites who nonetheless insist on referring to themselves as "crime families" despite the fact that they are the primary wielders of civic authority in the territory they occupy.
Which brings us to the Raiders. Much like the families of the Strip, they are referred to in the game as a criminal organization, but ultimately the land they occupy is not under the control of any sovereign power. Yes, their primary means of subsistence appears to be theft from other, more settled people, but how does that distinguish them from imperialist states like Caesar's Legion and the NCR, who are more than happy to move into places uninvited and take things that don't belong to them? The main difference appears to be the fact that they don't seek to establish political authority over the territory they control.
Then there are the tribal groups. These can actually be sorted into two categories. The Great Khans and the Boomers are like proto-states. They have a certain degree of formality about things like succession and the chain of command and they form a group identity centered around their ethnic and cultural distinctiveness. The Great Khans, in particular, are interesting, because they are a displaced people, who, in the time period of Fallout 1 & 2, were classified as raiders, but have become much more settled and productive in subsequent years. This goes to show the fluidity between "raider" and "tribal," which is only natural because in the real world, "raider" is rarely a defining aspect of cultural identity and more of an economic activity that some cultures engage in. Realistically, we should be seeing more Jackal and Viper farms and manufactories, where they engage in their normal day-to-day activities which they often supplement with raiding.
Finally, we have the random villages like Goodsprings and the like. Interestingly, these are true tribal societies, and perhaps the most accurately observed of any of the Fallout series various cultures. See, the problem with "tribal" societies in Fallout 2 is that they basically came out of nowhere, and seemed almost offensively derived from western stereotypes about how "primitive" societies work. Goodsprings is much more along the lines of what you'd expect to see. Their culture is generically American, and yet they are still classically tribal. They have no particularly formal organization, but there is a respected local figure who wields moderate informal authority (in this case, Trudy) due to personal relationships and a small difference in economic status.
If I'm being brutally honest, I think this sensitive portrayal of post-nuclear American tribalism is probably an accident. The villages seem more like satellites of New Vegas than independent cultural units, and the extremely tenuous nature of their governments might well be due to shallow world-building than any attempt at anthropological realism.
Nonetheless, if I take the text as written, rather than as what I think the authors intended, it poses a fascinating question - how do you build civilization? The raw materials of society are people, but in the absence of a dynamic unifying force, most are content to follow the path of least resistance and allow the status quo to endure. So what happens when the status quo becomes untenable, and the pitiless calculus of crisis forces previously independent people to band together or perish?
Or, maybe this all just an excuse to beat Roman cosplayers to death with a rusty shovel (true fact - that was my primary weapon for like four of the first six hours of the game), and I'm vastly overthinking things. But what are the odds of that?
Saturday, March 7, 2015
Thursday, March 5, 2015
Fallout: New Vegas - 3/20 hours
Fallout: New Vegas is my favorite game in the series, but I have to admit - Fallout 3 had the better opening. New Vegas' isn't bad or anything, it's just very by the numbers. The voice-over gives you a brief rundown of the political situation in the Mojave, and then it cuts to a group of thugs standing around a freshly dug grave. Their leader, a swanky (I know of no better word to describe him) 50s guy gives you a little speech about the meaning of fate, and then shoots you in the head. You wake up in a nearby doctor's office, and you create your character by answering the questions of the medical evaluation. There's a certain charm - you assign your stats with a "love-tester" machine (Doc Mitchell might not be the most qualified health practitioner out there) and of course, the whole "shallow grave in the desert" thing is practically obligatory in any Las Vegas story - but compared to the absolutely brilliant beginning of Fallout 3, it feels somewhat lacking.
On the other hand, it does have the advantage of getting you into the action relatively quickly. There's a tutorial where the improbably named Sunny Smiles teaches you the basics of wasteland survival, which I always do for the easy xp, but it's completely optional. In theory, you could be out exploring the world in as little as five minutes after starting a new file. And to be completely fair to the game, it's not entirely clear whether your character is supposed to have amnesia or not. It would certainly explain why you don't know anything about the world around you (which is why it's such a popular cliche), but nothing you have to do actually requires that your character be ignorant. So I'm only deducting half a point for using such a hoary old plot device.
The town of Goodsprings is a pleasant enough rpg starting town. It doesn't have any hugely memorable landmarks or crazy, over-the-top characters, but perhaps that's for the best - the very nature of the game means you're going to leave it sooner rather than later. It only has one quest of note - a group of bandits, called the Powder Gangers wants to get revenge on a trader named Ringo, who shot one of their number rather than pay "toll" money. Because the people of Goodsprings won't turn him over, they intend to invade. You need to organize the townspeople into an effective resistance.
Alternately, you can aid the Gangers in knocking over the town, but I don't see why anyone would actually do that - the reward is not particularly good, and the Powder Gangers' Leader, Joe Cobb, treats both you, and people who have been nothing but kind and helpful towards you, with a massive amount of disrespect, so even if you're not the "noble hero" type, it'd be much more satisfying to stop the invasion than help it.
It makes me think about the nature of video game evil. It's an oft-noted problem of games with a "morality" system that the "evil" choices tend to be so ridiculously over the top that no reasonable person would choose them, and thus, rather than being grim antiheroes or self-serving villains, "evil" characters are cackling jackasses who go around spreading misery for no particular reason.
I think the reason for this problem is violence, specifically how deeply ingrained it is in the very structure of video games. In real life, the defining characteristic of antisocial people like criminals is their willingness to initiate violence whenever they're frustrated by a problem that resists being solved any other way. It's not that they have exotic motives ("I'm angry and upset because I feel this other person isn't respecting me" has got to be the most common feeling in the world), but the fact that they believe these motives justify violence that makes them "evil."
In this context, the problem with video game writing becomes obvious - the mechanics of gameplay practically demand that violence be the go-to solution to almost every problem. So, going ludicrously over the top is pretty much the only way to distinguish "good" from "evil."
Take the situation in Goodsprings as an example. A good and an evil character are going to react in pretty much the exact same way. Joe Cobb rolls into town and starts throwing around threats and basically acting like he owns the place. And when you try to talk to him, he instantly disrespects you. There's basically nothing about this guy or his his cause that's appealing in any way. You actually have to chase him down and suggest that you can help him out before he'll even let you in on his plan, and at no point does he try and entice you with a reward. Furthermore, his actual complaint against the people of Goodsprings is incredibly petty ("some guy shot one of our guys while we were threatening to shoot him, and now we want revenge), so you don't even get a thrilling sensation of power by aiding him.
So an evil character, coming into this situation, is almost certainly going to go "Hey Cobb, you prick, these people were good to me, so if I ever see you and your cronies in this town again, I'm going to hack you apart with this rusty machete." And a good character will react almost the exact same way, but probably de-emphasize the machete hacking and play up the self defense angle. Even if you hypothetically add the proviso "and when I'm done, I'm going to track down your friends and give them a taste of the same treatment, to serve as an example of what happens to any asshole that dares cross me" well, spoiler alert, that'll get you "good karma" too.
And you know what, I'm fine with that. What's the alternative - "I spend the next twenty years teaching the ex-convicts the conflict resolution and technical skills necessary to help them deal constructively with their anger while making a positive contribution to society?" Maybe that would be an interesting game, but it's not what I signed up for. Still, a little more nuance to the psychology of violent characters would not be amiss.
That's not a specific complaint about Fallout: New Vegas, though. Even with the occasional nonsensical sidequest, I love this game. My next destination, Primm, exemplifies why. It's a minor town. You basically stop by once and then never think of it again, but it has a couple of memorable characters - the cowardly Deputy Beagle and the delightful robot, Primm Slim, and a backstory that manages to be a fun pop-culture parody without venturing into Fallout 2's sometimes immersion-breaking heavy-handedness. I absolutely adored hearing a robot with a cowboy hat explain the history of a cut-rate Bonny and Clyde, badmouthing a long-destroyed competitor, and making a terrible pun about Primm's "Primm-ier tourist attraction." So much so that, after clearing out the bandit presence, I reprogrammed him to be sheriff (that this also saved me a schlepp across the wasteland is purely coincidental, I assure you).
Information gathered from the grateful locals pointed me towards my next quest destination, and suggested that there was more to my near-death experience than a simple delivery gone awry. So it is, with a glad heart, and new robot companion (an old Enclave propaganda drone that I managed to repair), that I head to the town of Novac, to see if I can track down the scoundrel who shot me and get my revenge.
On the other hand, it does have the advantage of getting you into the action relatively quickly. There's a tutorial where the improbably named Sunny Smiles teaches you the basics of wasteland survival, which I always do for the easy xp, but it's completely optional. In theory, you could be out exploring the world in as little as five minutes after starting a new file. And to be completely fair to the game, it's not entirely clear whether your character is supposed to have amnesia or not. It would certainly explain why you don't know anything about the world around you (which is why it's such a popular cliche), but nothing you have to do actually requires that your character be ignorant. So I'm only deducting half a point for using such a hoary old plot device.
The town of Goodsprings is a pleasant enough rpg starting town. It doesn't have any hugely memorable landmarks or crazy, over-the-top characters, but perhaps that's for the best - the very nature of the game means you're going to leave it sooner rather than later. It only has one quest of note - a group of bandits, called the Powder Gangers wants to get revenge on a trader named Ringo, who shot one of their number rather than pay "toll" money. Because the people of Goodsprings won't turn him over, they intend to invade. You need to organize the townspeople into an effective resistance.
Alternately, you can aid the Gangers in knocking over the town, but I don't see why anyone would actually do that - the reward is not particularly good, and the Powder Gangers' Leader, Joe Cobb, treats both you, and people who have been nothing but kind and helpful towards you, with a massive amount of disrespect, so even if you're not the "noble hero" type, it'd be much more satisfying to stop the invasion than help it.
It makes me think about the nature of video game evil. It's an oft-noted problem of games with a "morality" system that the "evil" choices tend to be so ridiculously over the top that no reasonable person would choose them, and thus, rather than being grim antiheroes or self-serving villains, "evil" characters are cackling jackasses who go around spreading misery for no particular reason.
I think the reason for this problem is violence, specifically how deeply ingrained it is in the very structure of video games. In real life, the defining characteristic of antisocial people like criminals is their willingness to initiate violence whenever they're frustrated by a problem that resists being solved any other way. It's not that they have exotic motives ("I'm angry and upset because I feel this other person isn't respecting me" has got to be the most common feeling in the world), but the fact that they believe these motives justify violence that makes them "evil."
In this context, the problem with video game writing becomes obvious - the mechanics of gameplay practically demand that violence be the go-to solution to almost every problem. So, going ludicrously over the top is pretty much the only way to distinguish "good" from "evil."
Take the situation in Goodsprings as an example. A good and an evil character are going to react in pretty much the exact same way. Joe Cobb rolls into town and starts throwing around threats and basically acting like he owns the place. And when you try to talk to him, he instantly disrespects you. There's basically nothing about this guy or his his cause that's appealing in any way. You actually have to chase him down and suggest that you can help him out before he'll even let you in on his plan, and at no point does he try and entice you with a reward. Furthermore, his actual complaint against the people of Goodsprings is incredibly petty ("some guy shot one of our guys while we were threatening to shoot him, and now we want revenge), so you don't even get a thrilling sensation of power by aiding him.
So an evil character, coming into this situation, is almost certainly going to go "Hey Cobb, you prick, these people were good to me, so if I ever see you and your cronies in this town again, I'm going to hack you apart with this rusty machete." And a good character will react almost the exact same way, but probably de-emphasize the machete hacking and play up the self defense angle. Even if you hypothetically add the proviso "and when I'm done, I'm going to track down your friends and give them a taste of the same treatment, to serve as an example of what happens to any asshole that dares cross me" well, spoiler alert, that'll get you "good karma" too.
And you know what, I'm fine with that. What's the alternative - "I spend the next twenty years teaching the ex-convicts the conflict resolution and technical skills necessary to help them deal constructively with their anger while making a positive contribution to society?" Maybe that would be an interesting game, but it's not what I signed up for. Still, a little more nuance to the psychology of violent characters would not be amiss.
That's not a specific complaint about Fallout: New Vegas, though. Even with the occasional nonsensical sidequest, I love this game. My next destination, Primm, exemplifies why. It's a minor town. You basically stop by once and then never think of it again, but it has a couple of memorable characters - the cowardly Deputy Beagle and the delightful robot, Primm Slim, and a backstory that manages to be a fun pop-culture parody without venturing into Fallout 2's sometimes immersion-breaking heavy-handedness. I absolutely adored hearing a robot with a cowboy hat explain the history of a cut-rate Bonny and Clyde, badmouthing a long-destroyed competitor, and making a terrible pun about Primm's "Primm-ier tourist attraction." So much so that, after clearing out the bandit presence, I reprogrammed him to be sheriff (that this also saved me a schlepp across the wasteland is purely coincidental, I assure you).
Information gathered from the grateful locals pointed me towards my next quest destination, and suggested that there was more to my near-death experience than a simple delivery gone awry. So it is, with a glad heart, and new robot companion (an old Enclave propaganda drone that I managed to repair), that I head to the town of Novac, to see if I can track down the scoundrel who shot me and get my revenge.
Tuesday, March 3, 2015
Fallout 3 - Wrap Up
The DLC Point Lookout was somewhat notorious for its implausibly powerful hillbillies. That was the one thing I went into the story knowing about. So, I guess I was expecting a more hillbilly-themed adventure. Sure, there were these weird "tribals" that were constantly attacking me, a power-armored killer wielding a gatling laser, despite being armed with axes, knives, or at best shotguns, and sure, they were implausibly difficult to kill, but it turns out they simply weren't as important as their outsized reputation would have you believe. In the end, the DLC's story was slight to the point of virtual non-existence. An asshole ghoul and an asshole brain in a vat hate each other, and each wants to use me to destroy the other. The ghoul winds up dying in the final battle and I use a captured hillbilly shotgun to shatter the brain's vat.
I think they knew each other before the War, and potentially there is quite an interesting story there about America's internal politics, and they way powerful individuals, working on agendas of narrow personal interest, nonetheless created an environment of global catastrophe that no particular individual desired as an emergent property of their intersecting schemes, but unless there were some data terminals I overlooked (always a possibility - I tend to be less systematic about these games as time goes on), this was not that story. I barely understood what the two antagonists' relationship was, and never, at any point, felt that I had enough information to make a good decision about who to side with.
I think the "good" choice is Desmond, the ghoul, simply because if you side with Calvert, the brain, he winds up betraying you. I guess I should have seen it coming, because he also treated his tribal followers like shit (but then again, it's not as if Desmond treated me with gratitude and kindness). Honestly, I don't have an especially strong emotional reaction either way. My overall opinion of Point Lookout - it was good to see a new, wilder environment in the Fallout universe, but this faded resort town near a coastal swamp was still too dominated by the game's grey and brown color palate, and while the story was pleasant enough (if forgettable), it was a real disappointment, after fighting mutants and power-armored soldiers, to get my ass handed to me by hillbillies. In other words, a solid C+ effort.
But what about Fallout 3 as a whole? To me, it has an interesting place in the Fallout canon, because Fallout 2 was the game that made me fall in love with the universe and Fallout: New Vegas is my favorite game in the series, so this one, wedged as it is between two absolute titans of my personal gaming landscape, is often overshadowed in my affections. Yet there was a time when it was the Fallout. As near-perfect a game as Fallout was, and as subtly radical a leap forward Fallout 2 represented, they were still, at the end of the day, isometric 2-d rpgs. The very nature of the design keeps you at a certain remove. Fallout 3 is a 3-d experience. It creates a world rich in detail and draws you in.
Many people have derogatorily referred to it as "Oblivion with guns," and, snark aside, I think it's an apt description. The thing that animates it even more than plot or action or character optimization is bringing a complicated setting to life. Oblivion gives you Tamriel and Fallout 3 gives you the capital wasteland. And while the latter is not as lore-heavy as the former, it does exceed at giving you little moments of background that don't draw attention to themselves, but do a good job as sketching out the world. Things like advertisements, the placement of random items, and the position of skeletons can suggest events and flesh out a culture without explicitly stating anything. These little moments of discovery reward exploration and make the world feel larger and more lived-in (well, died-in, but you know what I mean). It's this ambient storytelling that marks Fallout 3's primary innovation over the Elder Scrolls games (previous Fallouts did have some of this, but it was very inconsistent), and I'm pretty sure it's something that carried over into Skyrim.
All-in-all, I'd say Fallout 3 carries itself like a reboot. It attempts to capture the essence of the series and bring it into a new technological context, and in that regard, I think it's successful. It doesn't quite work as a sequel to Fallout 2 because staple enemies like the super mutants or the Enclave don't make a lot of sense transported across the country. However, if you view these things as originating in the Capital Wasteland, they work fantastically to create a perilous and exciting sci-fi world. So, really Fallout 3 wants to be the first Fallout game you've ever played. And I kind of envy those for whom this is true. Coming into it, as I did, with the baggage of the rest of the series, I "merely" got sucked in for more than a hundred hours back in 2008 and almost 40 hours in the past couple of weeks.
Maybe it is a classic after all.
I think they knew each other before the War, and potentially there is quite an interesting story there about America's internal politics, and they way powerful individuals, working on agendas of narrow personal interest, nonetheless created an environment of global catastrophe that no particular individual desired as an emergent property of their intersecting schemes, but unless there were some data terminals I overlooked (always a possibility - I tend to be less systematic about these games as time goes on), this was not that story. I barely understood what the two antagonists' relationship was, and never, at any point, felt that I had enough information to make a good decision about who to side with.
I think the "good" choice is Desmond, the ghoul, simply because if you side with Calvert, the brain, he winds up betraying you. I guess I should have seen it coming, because he also treated his tribal followers like shit (but then again, it's not as if Desmond treated me with gratitude and kindness). Honestly, I don't have an especially strong emotional reaction either way. My overall opinion of Point Lookout - it was good to see a new, wilder environment in the Fallout universe, but this faded resort town near a coastal swamp was still too dominated by the game's grey and brown color palate, and while the story was pleasant enough (if forgettable), it was a real disappointment, after fighting mutants and power-armored soldiers, to get my ass handed to me by hillbillies. In other words, a solid C+ effort.
But what about Fallout 3 as a whole? To me, it has an interesting place in the Fallout canon, because Fallout 2 was the game that made me fall in love with the universe and Fallout: New Vegas is my favorite game in the series, so this one, wedged as it is between two absolute titans of my personal gaming landscape, is often overshadowed in my affections. Yet there was a time when it was the Fallout. As near-perfect a game as Fallout was, and as subtly radical a leap forward Fallout 2 represented, they were still, at the end of the day, isometric 2-d rpgs. The very nature of the design keeps you at a certain remove. Fallout 3 is a 3-d experience. It creates a world rich in detail and draws you in.
Many people have derogatorily referred to it as "Oblivion with guns," and, snark aside, I think it's an apt description. The thing that animates it even more than plot or action or character optimization is bringing a complicated setting to life. Oblivion gives you Tamriel and Fallout 3 gives you the capital wasteland. And while the latter is not as lore-heavy as the former, it does exceed at giving you little moments of background that don't draw attention to themselves, but do a good job as sketching out the world. Things like advertisements, the placement of random items, and the position of skeletons can suggest events and flesh out a culture without explicitly stating anything. These little moments of discovery reward exploration and make the world feel larger and more lived-in (well, died-in, but you know what I mean). It's this ambient storytelling that marks Fallout 3's primary innovation over the Elder Scrolls games (previous Fallouts did have some of this, but it was very inconsistent), and I'm pretty sure it's something that carried over into Skyrim.
All-in-all, I'd say Fallout 3 carries itself like a reboot. It attempts to capture the essence of the series and bring it into a new technological context, and in that regard, I think it's successful. It doesn't quite work as a sequel to Fallout 2 because staple enemies like the super mutants or the Enclave don't make a lot of sense transported across the country. However, if you view these things as originating in the Capital Wasteland, they work fantastically to create a perilous and exciting sci-fi world. So, really Fallout 3 wants to be the first Fallout game you've ever played. And I kind of envy those for whom this is true. Coming into it, as I did, with the baggage of the rest of the series, I "merely" got sucked in for more than a hundred hours back in 2008 and almost 40 hours in the past couple of weeks.
Maybe it is a classic after all.
Monday, March 2, 2015
Fallout 3 - 33 minutes
I've finished Broken Steel, and I have to say that the story doesn't give me much to write about. You go to a series of locations, blow shit up, and then go to the next. It's pretty much exactly what you'd expect from a "mop up the Enclave remnants" storyline. Liberty Prime is destroyed, which kind of sucks. As much as he overshadowed me in the last story mission, I'm going to miss that bizarre, genocidal robot. In the end, I got revenge by destroying one of the Enclave's cool mechanical toys - a giant mobile base that somewhat resembles the Jawas' sand crawler. I wish I hadn't, though, because it would have been much more satisfying to take it over.
It's not like the Enclave had anything that could stop me. The last few battles of the DLC were some of my most intense yet, so much so that I had to dip into my massive stockpiles of mind-altering chemicals just to give me an edge. But once I was hopped-up on Jet and Psycho, I was pretty much an unstoppable killing machine.
Speaking of which, I'm kind of annoyed by a certain piece of loot I found in the Enclave mobile base. It was an alien pistol of such phenomenal power that once I got it, I barely needed the drugs anymore. So, to find it when I'm level 27, and my stockpile of alien power cells had been steadily spent from a high of about 1800 to less than 150, really gets my goat. I know I'm about to quit soon, and that with only 1 DLC left, I probably won't need too much more ammo, but when I think about all the times I used three shots to kill an enemy with the disintegrator, when the pistol would only have taken two, my parsimonious nature feels a kind of outrage. (Perhaps the Fallout games are not the healthiest thing in the world for me to play)
Aside from acting as the Brotherhood of Steel's attack dog, I also indulged in a bit of virtual tourism, taking a long detour from the final mission to visit the White House and the Capitol Building. That's my favorite part of the open-world genre, getting the opportunity to see real things rendered in 3-D, and then having action-adventure inside of them. I was a bit disappointed that the White House turned out to be a radioactive crater. It makes sense, given the basic premise of the game, but I would have liked to have a look around. Besides, I can't help noticing that Fallout 3's nuclear devastation is quite selective. The Washington Monument was hit hard enough to expose the girders inside it, but Georgetown was barely touched at all. The buildings there looked more abandoned than destroyed, and some of them clearly had their original paint.
I suppose I could call that a flaw in world-building, but I think that would involve an excessive cleaving to literalism. I think with this sort of project, it's probably better to give the impression of a ruined nuclear wasteland while actually crafting an environment that's fun to play in. It's the same reason distances are compressed and populations are reduced. If things looked like they actually looked in real life, you'd spend most of your time getting from place to place, and there wouldn't be a whole heck of a lot to see along the way (and I got to experience what that was like in Ship Simulator Extremes).
It's just kind of jarring when you notice (I felt the same way about Skyrim), but if you want to present a game with epic scope, it's pretty much what you have to do.
Plus, it gives you some pretty amazing moments. Fighting a bunch of super-mutants in the Capitol Rotunda was an unforgettable thrill, though it would probably have been better if the Super Mutant Behemoth had not gotten glitched inside a wall and thus preemptively neutralized.
Nonetheless, what with huge shootouts in front of famous national monuments and giant robots and implausibly large tanks getting blown up by orbital strikes, it is probably all down hill from here. I still have the Point Lookout DLC to do, but everything I've heard about it (basically "radioactive hillbillies") suggests it won't be able to compare.
I guess we'll see.
It's not like the Enclave had anything that could stop me. The last few battles of the DLC were some of my most intense yet, so much so that I had to dip into my massive stockpiles of mind-altering chemicals just to give me an edge. But once I was hopped-up on Jet and Psycho, I was pretty much an unstoppable killing machine.
Speaking of which, I'm kind of annoyed by a certain piece of loot I found in the Enclave mobile base. It was an alien pistol of such phenomenal power that once I got it, I barely needed the drugs anymore. So, to find it when I'm level 27, and my stockpile of alien power cells had been steadily spent from a high of about 1800 to less than 150, really gets my goat. I know I'm about to quit soon, and that with only 1 DLC left, I probably won't need too much more ammo, but when I think about all the times I used three shots to kill an enemy with the disintegrator, when the pistol would only have taken two, my parsimonious nature feels a kind of outrage. (Perhaps the Fallout games are not the healthiest thing in the world for me to play)
Aside from acting as the Brotherhood of Steel's attack dog, I also indulged in a bit of virtual tourism, taking a long detour from the final mission to visit the White House and the Capitol Building. That's my favorite part of the open-world genre, getting the opportunity to see real things rendered in 3-D, and then having action-adventure inside of them. I was a bit disappointed that the White House turned out to be a radioactive crater. It makes sense, given the basic premise of the game, but I would have liked to have a look around. Besides, I can't help noticing that Fallout 3's nuclear devastation is quite selective. The Washington Monument was hit hard enough to expose the girders inside it, but Georgetown was barely touched at all. The buildings there looked more abandoned than destroyed, and some of them clearly had their original paint.
I suppose I could call that a flaw in world-building, but I think that would involve an excessive cleaving to literalism. I think with this sort of project, it's probably better to give the impression of a ruined nuclear wasteland while actually crafting an environment that's fun to play in. It's the same reason distances are compressed and populations are reduced. If things looked like they actually looked in real life, you'd spend most of your time getting from place to place, and there wouldn't be a whole heck of a lot to see along the way (and I got to experience what that was like in Ship Simulator Extremes).
It's just kind of jarring when you notice (I felt the same way about Skyrim), but if you want to present a game with epic scope, it's pretty much what you have to do.
Plus, it gives you some pretty amazing moments. Fighting a bunch of super-mutants in the Capitol Rotunda was an unforgettable thrill, though it would probably have been better if the Super Mutant Behemoth had not gotten glitched inside a wall and thus preemptively neutralized.
Nonetheless, what with huge shootouts in front of famous national monuments and giant robots and implausibly large tanks getting blown up by orbital strikes, it is probably all down hill from here. I still have the Point Lookout DLC to do, but everything I've heard about it (basically "radioactive hillbillies") suggests it won't be able to compare.
I guess we'll see.
Saturday, February 28, 2015
Fallout 3 - 28 minutes
I've finally finished the main quest. There wasn't much left to it. Instead of cooperating with Colonel Autumn, you resist him, and before things can get ugly, a voice on the intercom intervenes - it's President Eden himself! He invites me to speak with him personally, and I get a chance to scope out the Enclave base.
It's all right. It's pretty much just a bunker. There are some science labs that house mysterious tubes containing biological samples of the various wasteland creatures, but I didn't really learn that much about the Enclave from just wandering around.
So perhaps it was just as well that Colonel Autumn countermanded the president's order and instructed the Enclave troops to shoot me on sight. Their weapons and armor were really valuable, and too good to waste on NPCs. Once I'd loaded myself down with as much loot as I could carry, and executed every living soul I could find, I made my way to the President (by the way Fallout 3's morality system could use some refining, because while I am undoubtedly a war criminal - shooting the fleeing scientists was the only way to be sure they wouldn't start up their twisted experiments elsewhere - the only "bad karma" I got was from killing Anna Holt, who used to work with project Purity until she switched sides - I guess having a name earns you some cosmic protection here).
In a shocking twist of events, it turns out President Eden is an AI. Which, you know, whatever. Like Malcolm McDowell isn't cool enough on his own, so you have to add a sci-fi wrinkle to it. Like most science fiction AIs, "President" Eden is poorly programmed at best. His great idea for advancing the Enclave's goals was to spike project Purity with a variant of the FEV that would target and kill all "mutants." The fact that the end of Fallout 2 revolved around the obvious fact that every single generation of human beings is a mutation of the one before did not seem to make the Enclave reconsider their fanaticism even one bit. Nor was he given pause by the notion that maybe, if all this radiation is causing mutations in an organism as complex as a human being, it will be absolutely devastating to a virus, and thus any countermeasures you might have in place to prevent blowback would be a crapshoot at best.
Even if you were a genocidal maniac, it's a terrible, terrible plan. Luckily, Eden's flawed programming is also vulnerable to being talked into suicide by random strangers (with Speech 100, granted, but still that's a pretty big security loophole). I rushed out of the base before it could self destruct, and once outside I met up with Fawkes, who had somehow tracked me down, acquiring a terrifying gatling laser in the process. Together, we reported back to Elder Lyons at the Citadel (I wound up giving him the virus to destroy, which only recently struck me as kind of a foolish move - the Brotherhood loves pawing through old technology, and historically has been pretty ruthless with outsiders, my only hope is that Fallout 3's characterization of this branch as heroic and honorable outliers remains consistent).
What follows is a sequence that made a very large, very favorable impression on me when I first played it, but now strikes me as shakily executed. The Brotherhood has repaired a giant robot called Liberty Prime, and is sending it to strike at the Enclave occupation of Project Purity. I had to follow along with it in a running battle through the streets of the DC ruins. In theory, it's pretty cool, and there is something awe-inspiring in seeing this giant robot lay waste to the Enclave troops. However, this time through I couldn't help but notice how superfluous I was to the whole mission. Liberty Prime was so strong, I didn't actually have to engage the enemy at all. All I had to do was stroll casually behind the robot and more or less automatically get to the quest objective. I did manage to pick up some pretty sweet armor from one of the corpses. Not only was it stronger than my regular power armor, it offered a strength bonus without an agility penalty. The fire resistance on top of that was simply a bonus.
The best thing about this mission is that Liberty Prime gives some intriguing insight into the mentality of the prewar society. It is, quite frankly, batshit crazy. The way in recites these bloodthirsty propaganda slogans while tossing around miniature atomic bombs like footballs. makes me suspect that perhaps democracy was not the main thing the people of Anchorage would be getting from the US government.
Once inside the Jefferson Memorial, I easily talked my way past Colonel Autumn (I think the big problem with speech is that it often seems to cut out content rather than opening it up), and was faced with a "moral dilemma." Unless someone entered the radiation-filled chamber to activate the purifier, it would explode and wreak terrible havoc on the Capital Wasteland. I could either nobly sacrifice myself to bring pure water to the wasteland or I could selfishly send one of my companions into the chamber and have them flip the switch . . . except that one of my companions is Fawkes the supermutant, who has already been established as completely immune to radiation, so there is no rational, ethical, or practical reason for me to go in instead.
Naturally, the original version of this ending, where not personally going in was treated like some kind of black-hearted betrayal, caused a great deal of distress amongst the fans. It didn't make sense and was also vaguely insulting. Broken Steel changed things up a bit so at least Fawkes acknowledged the basic sensibleness of him going instead of you. However, it did not change the fact that the ending cinematic basically calls you out for "not knowing the meaning of sacrifice," despite the fact that no one actually had to sacrifice anything. Ach!
I probably should have just done the damned thing myself, seeing as how Broken Steel first knocks you out in a purifier explosion and then wakes you up two weeks later none the worse for wear. As much as I love Fallout 3, I swear, this game never met a railroad it didn't like.
The situation now is that the Brotherhood is waging some mop-up operations against the Enclave, Sarah Lyons is in a coma, and I have been promoted to the rank of Knight (despite never formally joining the organization). I'm looking forward to some fun and blasty mission with this DLC, but the first thing I did, as soon as I had the freedom to move, was go and snag some of the more important and easily accessible Bobbleheads.
Mostly this involved going through some story-free dungeons, but I did stop at a place called the Republic of Dave, which felt like it should have had some politics-themed quest associated with it, seeing as how it was a corrupt pro forma democracy where only one person ever won the election. I really would have liked to throw my considerable skills behind elevating one of the ambitious young go-getters to displace the arrogant, delusional polygamist in charge, but there's no real way to sway people's votes or otherwise monitor the votes for fairness.
The other place that seemed like it should have a quest is Evergreen Mills, which didn't have much story, but it was a really long, elaborate dungeon and was home to a named character who had a unique shotgun (which, by the way, hot damn - its attack power when fully repaired was almost as good as a heavy weapon). But no one, not even Smiling Jack, even begun to talk to me, so I don't know, I guess the story is just implied.
I wound up getting four bobbleheads total, which is a significant boost to my power. I'm currently level 22, and I've been playing for almost 30 hours. There are a bunch of sidequests I could do, but I think I will focus purely on the DLC in order to get through it and start on Fallout: New Vegas. So, probably another ten hours at least.
It's all right. It's pretty much just a bunker. There are some science labs that house mysterious tubes containing biological samples of the various wasteland creatures, but I didn't really learn that much about the Enclave from just wandering around.
So perhaps it was just as well that Colonel Autumn countermanded the president's order and instructed the Enclave troops to shoot me on sight. Their weapons and armor were really valuable, and too good to waste on NPCs. Once I'd loaded myself down with as much loot as I could carry, and executed every living soul I could find, I made my way to the President (by the way Fallout 3's morality system could use some refining, because while I am undoubtedly a war criminal - shooting the fleeing scientists was the only way to be sure they wouldn't start up their twisted experiments elsewhere - the only "bad karma" I got was from killing Anna Holt, who used to work with project Purity until she switched sides - I guess having a name earns you some cosmic protection here).
In a shocking twist of events, it turns out President Eden is an AI. Which, you know, whatever. Like Malcolm McDowell isn't cool enough on his own, so you have to add a sci-fi wrinkle to it. Like most science fiction AIs, "President" Eden is poorly programmed at best. His great idea for advancing the Enclave's goals was to spike project Purity with a variant of the FEV that would target and kill all "mutants." The fact that the end of Fallout 2 revolved around the obvious fact that every single generation of human beings is a mutation of the one before did not seem to make the Enclave reconsider their fanaticism even one bit. Nor was he given pause by the notion that maybe, if all this radiation is causing mutations in an organism as complex as a human being, it will be absolutely devastating to a virus, and thus any countermeasures you might have in place to prevent blowback would be a crapshoot at best.
Even if you were a genocidal maniac, it's a terrible, terrible plan. Luckily, Eden's flawed programming is also vulnerable to being talked into suicide by random strangers (with Speech 100, granted, but still that's a pretty big security loophole). I rushed out of the base before it could self destruct, and once outside I met up with Fawkes, who had somehow tracked me down, acquiring a terrifying gatling laser in the process. Together, we reported back to Elder Lyons at the Citadel (I wound up giving him the virus to destroy, which only recently struck me as kind of a foolish move - the Brotherhood loves pawing through old technology, and historically has been pretty ruthless with outsiders, my only hope is that Fallout 3's characterization of this branch as heroic and honorable outliers remains consistent).
What follows is a sequence that made a very large, very favorable impression on me when I first played it, but now strikes me as shakily executed. The Brotherhood has repaired a giant robot called Liberty Prime, and is sending it to strike at the Enclave occupation of Project Purity. I had to follow along with it in a running battle through the streets of the DC ruins. In theory, it's pretty cool, and there is something awe-inspiring in seeing this giant robot lay waste to the Enclave troops. However, this time through I couldn't help but notice how superfluous I was to the whole mission. Liberty Prime was so strong, I didn't actually have to engage the enemy at all. All I had to do was stroll casually behind the robot and more or less automatically get to the quest objective. I did manage to pick up some pretty sweet armor from one of the corpses. Not only was it stronger than my regular power armor, it offered a strength bonus without an agility penalty. The fire resistance on top of that was simply a bonus.
The best thing about this mission is that Liberty Prime gives some intriguing insight into the mentality of the prewar society. It is, quite frankly, batshit crazy. The way in recites these bloodthirsty propaganda slogans while tossing around miniature atomic bombs like footballs. makes me suspect that perhaps democracy was not the main thing the people of Anchorage would be getting from the US government.
Once inside the Jefferson Memorial, I easily talked my way past Colonel Autumn (I think the big problem with speech is that it often seems to cut out content rather than opening it up), and was faced with a "moral dilemma." Unless someone entered the radiation-filled chamber to activate the purifier, it would explode and wreak terrible havoc on the Capital Wasteland. I could either nobly sacrifice myself to bring pure water to the wasteland or I could selfishly send one of my companions into the chamber and have them flip the switch . . . except that one of my companions is Fawkes the supermutant, who has already been established as completely immune to radiation, so there is no rational, ethical, or practical reason for me to go in instead.
Naturally, the original version of this ending, where not personally going in was treated like some kind of black-hearted betrayal, caused a great deal of distress amongst the fans. It didn't make sense and was also vaguely insulting. Broken Steel changed things up a bit so at least Fawkes acknowledged the basic sensibleness of him going instead of you. However, it did not change the fact that the ending cinematic basically calls you out for "not knowing the meaning of sacrifice," despite the fact that no one actually had to sacrifice anything. Ach!
I probably should have just done the damned thing myself, seeing as how Broken Steel first knocks you out in a purifier explosion and then wakes you up two weeks later none the worse for wear. As much as I love Fallout 3, I swear, this game never met a railroad it didn't like.
The situation now is that the Brotherhood is waging some mop-up operations against the Enclave, Sarah Lyons is in a coma, and I have been promoted to the rank of Knight (despite never formally joining the organization). I'm looking forward to some fun and blasty mission with this DLC, but the first thing I did, as soon as I had the freedom to move, was go and snag some of the more important and easily accessible Bobbleheads.
Mostly this involved going through some story-free dungeons, but I did stop at a place called the Republic of Dave, which felt like it should have had some politics-themed quest associated with it, seeing as how it was a corrupt pro forma democracy where only one person ever won the election. I really would have liked to throw my considerable skills behind elevating one of the ambitious young go-getters to displace the arrogant, delusional polygamist in charge, but there's no real way to sway people's votes or otherwise monitor the votes for fairness.
The other place that seemed like it should have a quest is Evergreen Mills, which didn't have much story, but it was a really long, elaborate dungeon and was home to a named character who had a unique shotgun (which, by the way, hot damn - its attack power when fully repaired was almost as good as a heavy weapon). But no one, not even Smiling Jack, even begun to talk to me, so I don't know, I guess the story is just implied.
I wound up getting four bobbleheads total, which is a significant boost to my power. I'm currently level 22, and I've been playing for almost 30 hours. There are a bunch of sidequests I could do, but I think I will focus purely on the DLC in order to get through it and start on Fallout: New Vegas. So, probably another ten hours at least.
Thursday, February 26, 2015
Fallout 3 - 27 minutes
It's weird how Fallout 3 can have so much gameplay and so little plot. For example, it took me about four hours to get through the Mothership Zeta expansion, but I can summarize it thusly: an alien spaceship beams me up, I get probed, and then escape. For awhile I thought the little girl Sally was suspiciously knowledgeable about the ship and its workings, and that there would surely be a shocking plot twist involving her, but that was surely just my fevered imagination, because nothing I saw on the ship even remotely hinted at the possibility (again, aside from the fact that there's this ten-year girl who knows how to hack into alien technology).
If I really think about it, I guess the point of Mothership Zeta is that it's sort of an homage to 50s sci-fi, where the aliens are just this incomprehensible malevolent force, and nothing they do makes a lot of sense (for instance, I enjoyed listening to the recordings of my fellow abductees from throughout history, but nothing ever explained exactly what the aliens wanted with them). Sally then, is probably just an archetypal plucky young heroine who assists the daring action hero. She'd probably make a good protagonist to a more interesting stealth-based game.
Still, it wasn't a total waste of time. I got an alien disintegrator that has become my go-to weapon in the capitol wasteland. There's something indescribably satisfying about scoring a critical hit and then watching your enemy collapse into a pile of blue dust. I think it's the sound that does it for me. It's a weird sort of static-y chime that triggers the part of my brain that says "bonus." I also got to see Fallout's version of Earth from space. Let's just say humanity really did a number on it. It really looked like a total shithole. I think that's actually a limitation of Fallout's vision of the apocalypse. The nuclear winter notwithstanding, if human beings ever did wipe ourselves out, it probably wouldn't take too long for nature to bounce back hard and erase virtually every sign that we ever existed. So things should really be green and lush instead of bleak and brown. I think that'd be an interesting version of the apocalypse to see.
Anyway, once I was off the alien ship, the main quest advanced at a pretty steady clip. I caught up with my father in Vault 112. He was a prisoner in Dr Braun's virtual reality - a black and white suburb with a 50s sitcom vibe called Tranquility Lane. Dr Braun had been using his control over the simulation (and let me take a moment to remark on how hard it is to pin down Fallout's tech level here, because full 3-d VR simulations don't really jibe with the analogue retro-future of the rest of the series - it just feels weird to go into the Matrix while using a computer with a monochrome CRT monitor) to sadistically torture his fellow survivors. Since the man is a genuinely bona-fide scientific genius, this just feels like a pathetically wasteful way to spend eternity. Ordinarily, he makes you jump through some hoops, tormenting the other vault dwellers, before he'll give you information, but it's possible, if you talk to the right person (or, say, have played this level so many times you know exactly where to go) to short circuit the entire quest and shut down the simulation from the inside. This involves unleashing the simulated Chinese army onto the residents so they'll die in real life and condemning Dr Braun to untold centuries of nothing but himself and whatever AI he can drum up for company (it's no more than he deserves, sure, but it makes me wonder what the original plan for Vault 112 was - surely Vault-Tec had a way of getting Dr Braun back, for the value of his intellectual property if nothing else).
Anyway, having rescued Dad, he immediately drops into his self-absorbed old habits, going back to Rivet City to start up Project Purity again, as if he had never left. He makes me clean out the basement and flip some switches (and in some of the game's most obvious padding, dividing this mission into two trips thanks to some "forgotten" fuses). While in the intake pipe, "clearing a blockage" the Enclave attacks Project Purity. Strangely enough, the blockage doesn't clear until after it's too late for me to stop the attack.
You know, I'm thinking I might have been too hard on the Pitt. I didn't like how it railroaded me into impersonating a slave, but actually Fallout 3 seems to do this all the time. In Mothership Zeta, you're beamed directly into a prison cell. At the Jefferson Memorial, you arrive at the Rotunda after your father has gotten into a showdown with the Enclave, and a locked door prevents you from intervening has he activates some kind of radiation bomb as a preemptive suicide strike. Later, after you retrieve the GECK from Vault 87, you're ambushed by the Enclave, who apparently have exactly one copy of the grenade that instantly lays your ass out, regardless of how powerful you are. And, of course, the game's original ending was notorious.
Still, the escape was pretty thrilling. I finally got to take the fight to the Enclave (though, now that I think about it, prior to strong-arming my father, they haven't really done anything to me, and I can't even really blame them for Dad's death because that willful bastard literally brought it upon himself), and scored a whole bunch of nifty new power armor. Aside from having to reload when my itchy trigger finger accidentally took out a Brotherhood of Steel turret (and honestly, you put a turret in a monster-infested sewer and you can't really be surprised when a survivor gets nervous and takes a shot at it), it was a quick and easy trip.
After that, I have to avenge my father's death by bringing his dream to life, so that means a trip west, to Vault 87, in order to retrieve the GECK. I already mentioned how this trip ends, so let me briefly complain about the beginning. Little Lamplight, the town that lies in front of the vault entrance, is without a doubt the worst location in any of the fallout games, and a strong contender for one of gaming's most ill-conceived ideas.
Right away, the town endeavors to make you hate it by it's choice of welcoming party - Mayor McCready is a hostile, paranoid, foulmouthed piece of human garbage, and incidentally a pre-teen kid. In fact, the whole town is kids. My brain ties itself in knots trying to figure out how this could possibly function. It's like, I guess numbers and tradition could probably get people to move out when they turn 18, but there's no way that the people who stay behind could master the skills necessary to keep a community safe and prosperous. And where do the new kids come from? And why don't the residents of Big Town just come back en masse?
It's not worth thinking about. What's worse is that, unless you're like me and lay waste to Paradise Falls as an incidental sidetrip on your way to somewhere else, McCready will force you to go on a tedious fetch-quest before he lets you in. Once you get through, it's not so bad. Vault 87 if a fairly typical sci-fi dungeon. You get to meet a frendly super mutant named Fawkes who will walk through some intense radiation to retrieve the GECK for you (spoiler alert - this is part of what drives people crazy about the original ending). And on your way out, you fall to a bullshit ambush.
Because of course you do. How else will the game get you to the Enclave base, to be interrogated by Colonel Autumn? As a plot turn, it's fairly dramatic, but as an example of Fallout's famed player agency, it stinks. Just to get my revenge on the story, I decide to cooperate with Autumn and tell him the password to Project Purity: 2-1-6 (which would take, I don't know, a long afternoon to guess with manual brute force, so way to go, Dad).
And the bastard shoots me! Which is pretty much the Enclave in a nutshell. They're not just pricks, they're self-destructive, needlessly wasteful pricks.
If I really think about it, I guess the point of Mothership Zeta is that it's sort of an homage to 50s sci-fi, where the aliens are just this incomprehensible malevolent force, and nothing they do makes a lot of sense (for instance, I enjoyed listening to the recordings of my fellow abductees from throughout history, but nothing ever explained exactly what the aliens wanted with them). Sally then, is probably just an archetypal plucky young heroine who assists the daring action hero. She'd probably make a good protagonist to a more interesting stealth-based game.
Still, it wasn't a total waste of time. I got an alien disintegrator that has become my go-to weapon in the capitol wasteland. There's something indescribably satisfying about scoring a critical hit and then watching your enemy collapse into a pile of blue dust. I think it's the sound that does it for me. It's a weird sort of static-y chime that triggers the part of my brain that says "bonus." I also got to see Fallout's version of Earth from space. Let's just say humanity really did a number on it. It really looked like a total shithole. I think that's actually a limitation of Fallout's vision of the apocalypse. The nuclear winter notwithstanding, if human beings ever did wipe ourselves out, it probably wouldn't take too long for nature to bounce back hard and erase virtually every sign that we ever existed. So things should really be green and lush instead of bleak and brown. I think that'd be an interesting version of the apocalypse to see.
Anyway, once I was off the alien ship, the main quest advanced at a pretty steady clip. I caught up with my father in Vault 112. He was a prisoner in Dr Braun's virtual reality - a black and white suburb with a 50s sitcom vibe called Tranquility Lane. Dr Braun had been using his control over the simulation (and let me take a moment to remark on how hard it is to pin down Fallout's tech level here, because full 3-d VR simulations don't really jibe with the analogue retro-future of the rest of the series - it just feels weird to go into the Matrix while using a computer with a monochrome CRT monitor) to sadistically torture his fellow survivors. Since the man is a genuinely bona-fide scientific genius, this just feels like a pathetically wasteful way to spend eternity. Ordinarily, he makes you jump through some hoops, tormenting the other vault dwellers, before he'll give you information, but it's possible, if you talk to the right person (or, say, have played this level so many times you know exactly where to go) to short circuit the entire quest and shut down the simulation from the inside. This involves unleashing the simulated Chinese army onto the residents so they'll die in real life and condemning Dr Braun to untold centuries of nothing but himself and whatever AI he can drum up for company (it's no more than he deserves, sure, but it makes me wonder what the original plan for Vault 112 was - surely Vault-Tec had a way of getting Dr Braun back, for the value of his intellectual property if nothing else).
Anyway, having rescued Dad, he immediately drops into his self-absorbed old habits, going back to Rivet City to start up Project Purity again, as if he had never left. He makes me clean out the basement and flip some switches (and in some of the game's most obvious padding, dividing this mission into two trips thanks to some "forgotten" fuses). While in the intake pipe, "clearing a blockage" the Enclave attacks Project Purity. Strangely enough, the blockage doesn't clear until after it's too late for me to stop the attack.
You know, I'm thinking I might have been too hard on the Pitt. I didn't like how it railroaded me into impersonating a slave, but actually Fallout 3 seems to do this all the time. In Mothership Zeta, you're beamed directly into a prison cell. At the Jefferson Memorial, you arrive at the Rotunda after your father has gotten into a showdown with the Enclave, and a locked door prevents you from intervening has he activates some kind of radiation bomb as a preemptive suicide strike. Later, after you retrieve the GECK from Vault 87, you're ambushed by the Enclave, who apparently have exactly one copy of the grenade that instantly lays your ass out, regardless of how powerful you are. And, of course, the game's original ending was notorious.
Still, the escape was pretty thrilling. I finally got to take the fight to the Enclave (though, now that I think about it, prior to strong-arming my father, they haven't really done anything to me, and I can't even really blame them for Dad's death because that willful bastard literally brought it upon himself), and scored a whole bunch of nifty new power armor. Aside from having to reload when my itchy trigger finger accidentally took out a Brotherhood of Steel turret (and honestly, you put a turret in a monster-infested sewer and you can't really be surprised when a survivor gets nervous and takes a shot at it), it was a quick and easy trip.
After that, I have to avenge my father's death by bringing his dream to life, so that means a trip west, to Vault 87, in order to retrieve the GECK. I already mentioned how this trip ends, so let me briefly complain about the beginning. Little Lamplight, the town that lies in front of the vault entrance, is without a doubt the worst location in any of the fallout games, and a strong contender for one of gaming's most ill-conceived ideas.
Right away, the town endeavors to make you hate it by it's choice of welcoming party - Mayor McCready is a hostile, paranoid, foulmouthed piece of human garbage, and incidentally a pre-teen kid. In fact, the whole town is kids. My brain ties itself in knots trying to figure out how this could possibly function. It's like, I guess numbers and tradition could probably get people to move out when they turn 18, but there's no way that the people who stay behind could master the skills necessary to keep a community safe and prosperous. And where do the new kids come from? And why don't the residents of Big Town just come back en masse?
It's not worth thinking about. What's worse is that, unless you're like me and lay waste to Paradise Falls as an incidental sidetrip on your way to somewhere else, McCready will force you to go on a tedious fetch-quest before he lets you in. Once you get through, it's not so bad. Vault 87 if a fairly typical sci-fi dungeon. You get to meet a frendly super mutant named Fawkes who will walk through some intense radiation to retrieve the GECK for you (spoiler alert - this is part of what drives people crazy about the original ending). And on your way out, you fall to a bullshit ambush.
Because of course you do. How else will the game get you to the Enclave base, to be interrogated by Colonel Autumn? As a plot turn, it's fairly dramatic, but as an example of Fallout's famed player agency, it stinks. Just to get my revenge on the story, I decide to cooperate with Autumn and tell him the password to Project Purity: 2-1-6 (which would take, I don't know, a long afternoon to guess with manual brute force, so way to go, Dad).
And the bastard shoots me! Which is pretty much the Enclave in a nutshell. They're not just pricks, they're self-destructive, needlessly wasteful pricks.
Monday, February 23, 2015
Fallout 3 - 20 minutes part 2
The Pitt and I did not get off to a good start. I am willing to accept a portion of the blame for this. I went into it with the wrong expectations. When Wernher told me that Ashur of the Pitt was buying slaves from all over the capitol wasteland, I assumed that this was going to be a story of me swooping in in full-on John Brown mode and just laying waste to the raider camp. I was mistaken. Apparently, it was intended to be an infiltration mission, where I pose as a slave and aid aid the resistance as a spy.
However, as much as I blundered into the mission unprepared, the Pitt does something unforgivable. After blasting my way through the outer guard, I passed through a gate and found myself confronted by three more guards. Then the game suspended control of my character so the guards could beat me into unconsciousness and steal my equipment. This is despite the fact that I was wearing power armor and I had more than 100 stimpacks, making me more than capable of taking on any number of raiders (a fact that was demonstrated more than decisively at the end of the mission). Whenever video games pull this shit, it fills me with a blinding rage (you should see my notes - I have "cutscene incompetence" underlined twice and followed by three exclamation points - fear my wrath).
This starting setup filled me with resentment for the first half of the DLC. I especially didn't like Midea, my contact, who was trying to get me to accept my role as a slave, and who said, after "reviving" me that she "thought Wernher said I was supposed to be clever." The fucking cheek on this game. My plan to walk in the front door and gun down anyone who stood in the way of freedom was the most intelligent use of my available resources. It worked perfectly in Paradise Falls. Grr. It's making me angry just remembering it.
So let us quickly move on. After I went into a mutant-infested scrapyard to retrieve some steel ingots and fought my way through a trivial arena tournament (though, seriously, what does dropping radioactive barrels into the ring add to the spectator's experience), I finally recovered my gear and basically was able to come down on the raiders like the hammer of god.
Being low on patience, I antagonized and killed Ashur almost as soon as I met him. This got me into a brawl with every single one of his guards . . . who I proceeded to dispatch easily, because it's not like some dipshit raiders with lead pipes are going to bring me down. Within just a couple of minutes, I was ready to breach the laboratory and retrieve the cure to the slaves' mutation . . . only to find that the "cure" was actually a baby with a natural immunity.
From there, things got ugly. When I picked up the baby, it asked if I wanted to "kidnap" her. I didn't, especially since I'd been operating up to that point on the notion that the cure was some kind of formula. I hesitated then, and went to look around and see if I could find any parents locked up. You see, I was still under the illusion that I was a heroic warrior, come to liberate the helpless from under the boot of oppression. Yet I didn't see anyone around who looked like they might be the baby's parents . . . all I saw were dead raiders.
That made me very uneasy, and the feeling was only intensified when I got back to the rebels, and suddenly they were acting as if the baby were some kind of burdensome science experiment. I kept hoping for some dialogue option that would let me get out of this plot, but when I spoke to Wernher and he told me that the child's parents were Ashur and his wife, I realized there was no way back. With a heavy heart, I gave the child to the rebels. I had assurances that she would be treated well, but that didn't make me feel any better about it.
In the end, I unleashed the mutants on the slavers' camp (though, once again, the npc operated on the mistaken notion that I could not simply handle all of the enemies single-handedly, which is a major oversight on the game's part) and left the Pitt feeling compromised and kind of rotten.
So, I'm not really sure what my verdict on the DLC is. Aggravating forced incompetence aside, it portrays a pretty clever story arc - I came in with the best of intentions and under the false impression that I was on an idealistic crusade for freedom, but my zealotry for the cause led to me thoughtlessly trampling over my perceived enemies and catching innocents in the crossfire. It is as story of honor tarnished and the way that war can wound even the victors.
A fairly compelling story, to be sure, but I can't help wondering if that's really what I want out of a video game. I like blasting mutants and collecting weird sci-fi gadgets. I do not so much care for feeling crummy about myself or facing the terrible consequences of my video-game violence. Yet Fallout games have always offered the player freedom, and what is freedom if not the ability to own one's mistakes?
I think I'll give the DLC a tentative thumbs up, which means quite a bit considering how much I hated the beginning. But I fear that means I'm going to have to give myself a thumbs down for this episode. I really should have been more careful.
However, as much as I blundered into the mission unprepared, the Pitt does something unforgivable. After blasting my way through the outer guard, I passed through a gate and found myself confronted by three more guards. Then the game suspended control of my character so the guards could beat me into unconsciousness and steal my equipment. This is despite the fact that I was wearing power armor and I had more than 100 stimpacks, making me more than capable of taking on any number of raiders (a fact that was demonstrated more than decisively at the end of the mission). Whenever video games pull this shit, it fills me with a blinding rage (you should see my notes - I have "cutscene incompetence" underlined twice and followed by three exclamation points - fear my wrath).
This starting setup filled me with resentment for the first half of the DLC. I especially didn't like Midea, my contact, who was trying to get me to accept my role as a slave, and who said, after "reviving" me that she "thought Wernher said I was supposed to be clever." The fucking cheek on this game. My plan to walk in the front door and gun down anyone who stood in the way of freedom was the most intelligent use of my available resources. It worked perfectly in Paradise Falls. Grr. It's making me angry just remembering it.
So let us quickly move on. After I went into a mutant-infested scrapyard to retrieve some steel ingots and fought my way through a trivial arena tournament (though, seriously, what does dropping radioactive barrels into the ring add to the spectator's experience), I finally recovered my gear and basically was able to come down on the raiders like the hammer of god.
Being low on patience, I antagonized and killed Ashur almost as soon as I met him. This got me into a brawl with every single one of his guards . . . who I proceeded to dispatch easily, because it's not like some dipshit raiders with lead pipes are going to bring me down. Within just a couple of minutes, I was ready to breach the laboratory and retrieve the cure to the slaves' mutation . . . only to find that the "cure" was actually a baby with a natural immunity.
From there, things got ugly. When I picked up the baby, it asked if I wanted to "kidnap" her. I didn't, especially since I'd been operating up to that point on the notion that the cure was some kind of formula. I hesitated then, and went to look around and see if I could find any parents locked up. You see, I was still under the illusion that I was a heroic warrior, come to liberate the helpless from under the boot of oppression. Yet I didn't see anyone around who looked like they might be the baby's parents . . . all I saw were dead raiders.
That made me very uneasy, and the feeling was only intensified when I got back to the rebels, and suddenly they were acting as if the baby were some kind of burdensome science experiment. I kept hoping for some dialogue option that would let me get out of this plot, but when I spoke to Wernher and he told me that the child's parents were Ashur and his wife, I realized there was no way back. With a heavy heart, I gave the child to the rebels. I had assurances that she would be treated well, but that didn't make me feel any better about it.
In the end, I unleashed the mutants on the slavers' camp (though, once again, the npc operated on the mistaken notion that I could not simply handle all of the enemies single-handedly, which is a major oversight on the game's part) and left the Pitt feeling compromised and kind of rotten.
So, I'm not really sure what my verdict on the DLC is. Aggravating forced incompetence aside, it portrays a pretty clever story arc - I came in with the best of intentions and under the false impression that I was on an idealistic crusade for freedom, but my zealotry for the cause led to me thoughtlessly trampling over my perceived enemies and catching innocents in the crossfire. It is as story of honor tarnished and the way that war can wound even the victors.
A fairly compelling story, to be sure, but I can't help wondering if that's really what I want out of a video game. I like blasting mutants and collecting weird sci-fi gadgets. I do not so much care for feeling crummy about myself or facing the terrible consequences of my video-game violence. Yet Fallout games have always offered the player freedom, and what is freedom if not the ability to own one's mistakes?
I think I'll give the DLC a tentative thumbs up, which means quite a bit considering how much I hated the beginning. But I fear that means I'm going to have to give myself a thumbs down for this episode. I really should have been more careful.
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