Fallout, Lore, Aliens, Easter Eggs, Bethesda and Mothershit Zeta

[R.Graves]

did they think that aliens starting the Great War was really a good idea?

obviously not because they cut that dialogue that implies it out of the dlc. but the fact that the idea got far enough to be voiced is concerning.

 

[Valdetiosi]

Let's look at Mothership Zeta like other DLCs. Does it have any choices? Does it have branching places? Does it have variable foes to tackle against? Does it have any originality to put into it?

Those who say yes, please do explain those, because so far I see it as just a pointless time waster. At least easter egg like monty python knights or bridge keeper doesn't drag on for an hour.

 

[mannawyadden]

One of the biggest things that people HATE about this DLC is the implication that fucking aliens started the Great War.

That is what baffles me. Why did Bethesda change the lore in regards to who started the Great War?

This is false, and a very common misconception within the Fallout fanbase. Nowhere in Mothership Zeta does any such implication get made at any point. Holotape #17 had its dialogue removed before the DLC launched specifically to avoid fans getting this implication. Since it's cut content, Holotape #17 is non-canon.

seriously both 1/2 go so far as to make fun of the idea of having aliens in the game.

Aliens are part of the game, but they were supposed to be a mysterious easter egg, like the alien crash site or the exploding UFO random event in Fallout 3. Giving them their own DLC where you go on their mothership is too much.

 

[RangerBoo]

This is false, and a very common misconception within the Fallout fanbase. Nowhere in Mothership Zeta does any such implication get made at any point. Holotape #17 had its dialogue removed before the DLC launched specifically to avoid fans getting this implication. Since it's cut content, Holotape #17 is non-canon.



Aliens are part of the game, but they were supposed to be a mysterious easter egg, like the alien crash site or the exploding UFO random event in Fallout 3. Giving them their own DLC where you go on their mothership is too much.

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You do know that the random encounters in Fallout 2 were Easter Eggs right? I mean, they had the fucking TARDIS, Starship Enterprise and two Monty Python references in them. They are noncanon and are just silly inside jokes with the devs.

 

[Risewild]

This is false, and a very common misconception within the Fallout fanbase. Nowhere in Mothership Zeta does any such implication get made at any point. Holotape #17 had its dialogue removed before the DLC launched specifically to avoid fans getting this implication. Since it's cut content, Holotape #17 is non-canon.

You're saying that because the dialogue of Log #17 can't be heard, it's not canon? But it still can be read since Bethesda didn't remove the subtitles of it. It still plays in-game. Players still get the information about it.
So players would get annoyed.

I will say this though, I don't care about the audio logs. I do care that the entire DLC does not offer any new unarmed weapon and only one new small guns weapon (and only if you kill or Paulson dies otherwise). It's a DLC totally focused for energy weapon players.
It even adds a unique pre-war plasma pistol... It should have taken that chance to add a unique small gun or a unique unarmed weapon instead.

 

[R.Graves]

Aliens are part of the game, but they were supposed to be a mysterious easter egg, like the alien crash site or the exploding UFO random event in Fallout 3

the fuzzy elvis painting and area 51 license plate on the ship itself suggests if not outright spells it out that its a joke not meant to be taken as canon. aliens are about as canon to fallout 1 as the TARDIS is.

 

[Cobra Commander]

this dlc have some hulkling aliens, I think is called abomination.

you shoot. And shoot. And shoot again. And you keep shooting forever and this thing DON´T DIE!!!!!!

Trully, an abomination. I think the feral ghouls reavers were not enough for them, they needed another bullet sponge in that game.

edit: ok, I went to look at the stats of these creatures. Reaver has more HP than Rawr/Lanius/Ulysses/Legendary Deatchclaw

there's an hour in Broken Steel that you encounter 4 or 5 of them at the same time.

 

[Gizmojunk]

Aliens are part of the game, but they were supposed to be a mysterious easter egg, like the alien crash site or the exploding UFO random event in Fallout 3. Giving them their own DLC where you go on their mothership is too much.

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There is a rather sharp demarcation between the deep wastelands and the rest of the world in Fallout. Fallout's wastelands are almost like walking into the Twilight Zone... It is one colossal 'Thar be Dragons [in the aftermath of the war]' no-man's land—nobody knows what's out there, or what's different than before.

Unlike FO3 & FO4, the game does not allow the PC to backtrack and (hypothetically) report encountered strangeness to others. The alien encounter —and the DR.WHO encounter, to name but two... take place in the deep wastes, during a long trek, where the PC cannot really know what they saw... or if they saw anything at all. They could be dehydrated and hallucinating; coming off drugs, be hellishly overheated; drunk, bleeding half to death, highly irradiated, poisoned... or just plain tired.

Those encounters —referred to as Special encounters— are a point of uncertainty as to which (if any) are real; and excluding the tongue & cheek nature of all of them. The alien UFO could be imagined, could be a deliberate pre-war hoax, an abandoned movie set; real; a forgotten prank. The UFO contains a black velvet painting of Elvis in it. In Fallout 2, it has a rather recent dead whale in the desert; along with a conspicuous pot of petunias (for Douglas Adam's fans to recognize). There is a footprint in the desert that looks about the size of Godzilla, and an item sunk into the dirt in the center of it. It doesn't have to be what it appears to be; it doesn't not have to be... but whatever it is, it's not verifiable—none of them are.

***This is one of the problems with Fallout 2. A cardinal mistake, that certain maps have these deep wasteland [only] encounters in populated towns; most infamously the snickering lock picking, chess playing, eye-test cheating, scorpion rascal in Broken Hills. Also the talking plants both there and in Arroyo. Gecko has the Brain—sans Pinky.

New Reno has the ghost... not only that, but it's a quest.

 

[Risewild]

Aliens are part of the game, but they were supposed to be a mysterious easter egg, like the alien crash site or the exploding UFO random event in Fallout 3.

You're right about the mysterious. Because never in the classic games we are shown undeniable proof that aliens exist.
Graves already mentioned (kinda) how the "spaceship" in that screenshot says "Property of Area 51, return if found." which shows how that spaceship belonged to the USA air force. So the game is not making it clear if it is an outer space, alien vessel or just an experimental USA airship (remember, the USA was developing new military air vehicles that would use alternative fuel sources, like the vertibird before the bombs fell).

The skeleton is also explained in game, believe it or not (I already talked about this in the past around here):
"Alien" skeletons, can easily be mutated dwarves (Fallout has the dwarves). There is an alien skeleton in the Sierra Army Depot, and there are logs mentioning how they experimented on the "subject" by feeding it Mentats. Which for all we know could have mutated a dwarf into have a large skull and brain. It's Fallout, where mutations abound.

Maybe the USA was experimenting and creating a "UFO" inspired airship that would be piloted by super intelligent, large brained, genetic engineered dwarves.

Because there are ingame information that point that could be possible, while nothing in the game tells us real aliens exist, except a couple of skeletons that resemble what we humans think an alien could look like and a aircraft that resembles what we humans think an alien ship could look like (and in neither of those does our character describes as being alien in any way).
Which is a great way the devs made those easter eggs, we have no real evidence for aliens in the classic Fallout games, just like in real life (despite unreliable witnesses and blurry videos shown as proof). You can believe they exist in Fallout, but there are no real proof, only things people can see as proof, while the game also offers bits here and there that can be used as proof to explain those are not aliens.

 

[mannawyadden]

There is a rather sharp demarcation between the deep wastelands and the rest of the world in Fallout.

Those encounters —referred to as Special encounters— are a point of uncertainty as to which (if any) are real

If you can say that Fallout 1 and 2's wasteland encounters are not really part of the game, and there's no proof that they actually happened - even though they are technically part of the game - then I think some leniency should be given to some of the more questionable parts of Fallout 3 as well. Yet, here, cut content is being accused of being proof that aliens started the war, just because the subtitles were left in:

You're saying that because the dialogue of Log #17 can't be heard, it's not canon? But it still can be read since Bethesda didn't remove the subtitles of it. So it still plays in-game. So players still get the information about it.
So players would get annoyed.

Deleted audio is not part of the game, so it's not canon.

The purpose of subtitles is to correspond with in-game audio. The audio the subtitle refers to was deleted, so the subtitle should've been deleted with it. It's a bug. Even if you read what the subtitle says, the soldier is resisting giving the nuclear codes to the aliens. Nowhere in the log does he actually give them the nuke codes, and there's no reason for a player to believe that they launch them. It's the player's fault if they interpret some vague subtitles to mean "aliens caused the war."

Log #17, even before its audio was deleted, was open to interpretation. The same way the aliens in Fallout 1 are open to interpretation.

 

[Gizmojunk]

If you can say that Fallout 1 and 2's wasteland encounters are not really part of the game, and there's no proof that they actually happened...

You misinterpret the meaning. They are part of the game (as you later mention), but part of the setting is a bit Heavy Metal~esque, and should not [always] be taken deadpan literally at face value. The physical laws of reality are bent in Fallout; its setting allows for the country's fear and expectations about the future to have shaped the cultural and technological development of their world; it allows for B-movie style green nuclear goo to turn men into immortal radioactive monsters; even biomechanical cyborgs; Richard Grey had become part of his chair, and its computer systems.

It isn't just the retro-50's aspect that's different. Foremost... it remains essentially a GURPS campaign setting, regardless of them having lost that license.

 

[Risewild]

The purpose of subtitles is to correspond with in-game audio. The audio the subtitle refers to was deleted, so the subtitle should've been deleted with it. It's a bug. Even if you read what the subtitle says, the soldier is resisting giving the nuclear codes to the aliens. Nowhere in the log does he actually give them the nuke codes, and there's no reason for a player to believe that they launch them. It's the player's fault if they interpret some vague subtitles to mean "aliens caused the war."

Or maybe the missing audio is the bug. Bethesda didn't say which was which. Maybe Bethesda lost that audio files and didn't want to pay the VA to redo them. Maybe They forgot to include the audio before making that log and place it in their BSA archive.
It makes more sense to me that it was a mistake or accident that prevented Bethesda from making the log properly, than them going to the extra effort of removing the human voice clips while leaving the Alien babble and the subtitles.

Or maybe the human voice got corrupted in the log and can't be heard by human ears, but your pipboy can still text-dictate it for you .
Again, the subtitles are still there. So ingame information still exists.

They could have made a new voice log that was totally different and replaced the old one with that new one.
They could easily have edited the log and remove the nuke part. I could make a new one in 10 minutes just by splicing audio clips from the original audio log. They could have just erased the part about the codes. It would work quite well too:

Captive: Our defenses consist of 3 battalions of light infantry, 34 pieces of field artillery, 108 armored vehicles and 42 aerial vehicles.
(Alien Babble)
Captive: No... I can't betray... AGH! My head! I can't... won't... AGGGGH! Agggh...
(Alien Babble)

It would have made a good short audio log and still be longer than the one where it's just a cow mooing.
It would also have taken less work and effort and be much better than somehow remove all the human voice and have just an empty log with some alien babble.

Also Bethesda never said they removed the audio or that it was intended , never assume a gaming company does things because of what players think they do it.

 

[R.Graves]

then I think some leniency should be given to some of the more questionable parts of Fallout 3 as well.

hrmmm... so when a game makes no sense at all times if you so much as think about it for 10 seconds it should be forgiven as readily and easily as out of the way easter eggs that were clearly meant as goofs?

The same way the aliens in Fallout 1 are open to interpretation.

again they are absolutely NOT open to interpretation.

its an Easter Egg.
a joke.
what is the whole of Doctor Who canon to fallout as well?

 

[Risewild]

I need to point out another thing that makes me think that the missing human voice in the Alien Captive Audio #17 is the bug instead of the bug being subtitles left in the game. I thought I had posted this in my previous post, but after reading it again I noticed I forgot.

There is, in the same DLC, in a different Audio Log (#7) a missing audio bug too. In this case it's missing the Alien Babble. Is this also because Bethesda cut what the aliens were saying because of lore?

This is the exact same bug, but missing the alien sounds instead. The same bug, in the same DLC and in the same type of audio game files (Alien Captive Logs).
Which leads me to think that whoever was making the Audio logs somehow got confused with audio #7 and #17 (probably because of all the "7"s) and instead of adding the human audio to the alien audio, the person doing it thought he had already added them, but instead it didn't add them at all, so the #7 had the human voice but missed the aliens, and #17 had the aliens and missed the human voice. Seems like an honest mistake to be honest.

Also there is nowhere in the entire game and it's DLCs another bug where the game has subtitles left from cut content, but there are thousands of bugs because the game is missing assets. Just take a look at something like the Unnoficial Fallout 3 Patch and you can see for yourself.

Seems very strange that only one bug of forgetting to remove subtitles exists in the whole game and DLCs, but we have so many bugs caused by missing game assets. And that complemented with what I wrote above, how the log #7 has the same bug but missing the aliens instead... Gives me a strong base to think that the bug is that the audio is missing, and not that the subtitles are the bug.

 

[Daniel The NCR Veteran]

You must be on a quest to post "I didn't like Fallout 3" in as many different words as possible.

 

[Daniel The NCR Veteran]

I think the aliens feel like they belong in this series and add to the level of conspiracy that we already get with stuff like the enclave. is a game with a 1950s feel whats more 1950s like the alien scare ?

Fallout is about wacky shit? You're one of THOSE people. Get out of here. You certainly don't know what the fuck you're talking about and I saw your type before. WacKy ShIt and CoNsPiRaCy with a 1950s FeEL? Did Bethesda's Fallout 3 brainwash you that hard? You probably don't take the games seriously or something because you're entirely missing Fallout's point. And conspiracy? What?

 

[Cobra Commander]

then I think some leniency should be given to some of the more questionable parts of Fallout 3 as well

with this you are saying that MSZ is not part of the canon, then I agree, by this moment.

The BoS don't have the alien ship in 4 and I do not think anywhere is said anything about aliens, even though Lone Wanderer is officially a member of the faction.

 

[mannawyadden]

Aliens in FO1 are open to interpretation.

Also, as I already said, even if log #17 is considered part of the game, its meaning is unclear. The soldier does not give the aliens the code, nor do the aliens launch any nukes in the log. It is ambiguous.

I'm not defending Zeta, but I can't agree that aliens launched nukes just from one unclear audio log as the only evidence.

 

[Alphons]

Setting aside DLC's premise it's still linear and very tight corridor shooter with the worst bullet sponges (aliens with shields have more HP than SMs Overlords, Reavers and Albino Scorpions from the BS) with very bland characters, it's novelty wears off two hours before the end and has the most unfair DLC boss fight (even harder than Ullysses and Mega Roboscorpion).
Even if you think that there is nothing wrong with Aliens in the Fallout franchise- this whole DLC is still the shittiest of them all (of course I'm not counting Workshops).

 

[R.Graves]

Aliens in FO1 are open to interpretation.

no they LITERALLY are not. the game is serious 100% of the time apart from the TARDIS and the space ship WITH A FUZZY ELVIS PAINTING AND "PROPERTY OF AREA 51" on its LICENSE PLATE.

the only way it could be more clearly presented as a joke is if it had a sign which literally said "this is a joke"

nor do the aliens launch any nukes in the log. It is ambiguous.

its not ambiguous. the implication is 100% clear. what do want the audio log to say "omg they just launched the nukes!!! aliens launched nukes the world is doomed!"