Is it wrong to compare Fallout 1+2 with 3 in terms of story?

Um, As someone who found out about the fallout series through the 3rd, and played over 300 hours of it.

I love the 1st and second. I even like tactics.

New Vegas I like, but don't enjoy the New Vegas setting, and wished Obsidian didn't cut out so much content.


Storywise, Fallout 1 was basically get a water chip and blow up a military base.
Fallout 3 was basically find your Dad and stop the enclave.

I won't bring DLC into this since thats unfair to FO1


But neither story was really all that good.. I don't think the prime focus of these games should be there weak stories, I like Fallout 1 and 2 for the gritty feel they had, and while Fallout 3 had problems, It had the misfortune of being somewhat of a practice game since its the first time this series has been put into 1st person, So I only imagine it would have a lot of issues or trying to hard in some areas.

Anyway its fair to compare them, but neither game had a WOW type of story here that kept me at the edge. Just what I think anyway .-.

 

I don't see how "being the first time they put the series in first person" is an excuse for bad writting? Specially considering Bethesda only does those kinds of games all the time....

 

That comparison between FO1 and FO3 doesn't make much sense to me. It's just a basic idea, almost every story can be summarised like that. If you want to compare two stories, go for the specific themes that appear in it. Like 'going to the previously locked headquarters of a knightly order after the lowest point in the story' or 'unexpected final battle with a giant indestructible guy participating in it, that ends with a heroic sacrifice'.

Look, I understand that you consider the story of FO1 not to be particularly entertaining or keeping you at the edge of your seat. It didn't appeal to you - yeah, okay. I got that. But come on! You're comparing it to something that emulates Oblivion. That is just unfair, right there.

 

People tend to confuse Premise with actual story pretty often...

 

You both seemed to be confused thinking I thought FO3 had a good story either. And it is a good excuse, The writing wasn't god awful it just wasn't the main focus of the game, it being somewhat of a reboot of the franchise to me they had a lot to focus on with the game, and while its a bit clunky, it was a good game maybe not the one some people wanted but pleasing everyone is impossible.

I never said FO1's story wasn't entertaining I just said it wasn't amazing and it didn't I guess "hook me" into the game. Both stories are pretty basic and fitting for the game, they aren't awful but they aren't anything to go praising when both games had awesome game play and things to do.

 

Except they basically just did Oblivion with guns, and had 3 years of development time with tech they were very familiar with, so no, still not an excuse....

 

Then its not an excuse? The story in both games were bland in comparison to its great game play.

Twist it however you want, but fallout 3 really wasn't THAT bad.

 

No, Fallout 3 story and writting was TERRIBLE, along with it's quests and world, not to mention the barebones shooting and unbalanced leveling up. Fallout 1 has a simple main quest (that still gives you tons of ways of solving it) but it leads into a whole web of sidequests with lots of branching out and well written dialogue in a well tought out world, same with New Vegas; Fallout 2 is more disjointed in it's setting but it also has tons of sidequests with with lots of branching out and moments of great writting. Fallout 3 has a linear and restrictive main quest, very few sidequests that aren't just bland fetch quests with bad dialogue and 3 endings that are determined by a single press of a button at the end.

 

An example of this bad dialogue? Personally I have never noticed.

The rest sure,

Shooting aspect was pretty crappy by modern standards.

Don't know what you mean by unbalanced leveling.

Well thought out world though? No. Thats REALLY wrong to me, The world in Fo1 was pretty cool with its towns, when it came to the wasteland itself it sucked. It really did. Any encounter in the wasteland was just a big sandy square with a tire or tree thrown into it. When your by a mountain your in between two giant rocks. Its generic and plain. The cities in the game were awesome though.

And you do know the main quest in Fo1 IS a fetch quest right? Sure its a bit more elaborate, but essentially its just look for the water chip.

I'm not going to bother arguing Fo1 or Fo2 anymore my experience with either isn't as large, and apparently I don't see what your seeing in the two games.

 

"I fight the good fight with my voice!"
"Intelligence 7: So you are saying you fight the good fight with your voice?"
Remember that? all the speech checks are exactly like that, very poorly written.
The hting with the Fetch quests of the other Fallouts is that, as you said, are much more elaborate than that, they have different solutions and in FO1 you can extend the wait time with certain actions as opposed to just walk from way point to waypoint. Also, you don't even seem to grasp what a well tought out world is... "The generic random encounters were plain" uhmmm duh? We are talking about the setting, the towns and the story how they all are connected, not the randomly generated battle sequences in the traveling sections.... not everything has to be an open world game....

 

Dialogue
'I was worried about those Ghouls. Now I can get back to worrying about important things, like what color to dye my hair. Thanks for everything!' Random Tenpenny Resident.
Pretty much everything from Dukov.
Excuses the radiation immune companions make when you tell them to activate Project Purity without Broken Steel. But Fawkes in particular: "I'm sorry, my companion, but no. We all have our own destinies, and yours culminates here. I would not rob you of that."
Butch's 'Tunnel Snakes' bullshit.

Unbalaned
For one thing, LW can have 10 in all SPECIAL stats and 100 in all skills. In fact, there is a perk that sets all your SPECIAL stats to 9. This translates to 'genius in everything'.

Boring FO1 world
You do know what a desert is, I assume? It's like this: towns are few and far apart, everything in between is completely empty, because it is a wasteland. The important part are the settlements marked on your map.

FO1 MQ is a fetch quest
I was led to believe that the major problem with a fetch quest is its simplicity and lack of originality. If it's more elaborate, then the problem goes out the window, because it's not that simple anymore nor is it unoriginal. And again - this is the general idea. What really counts is the realisation.

 

I don't remember any grand dialogue and I just beat Fo1 this weekend. I don't think the dialogue you mentioned is really all that bad honestly.

And what different solutions are there to the fetch quest in Fo1?

And if thats what you meant by well thought out world then eh, kinda leaning towards Fo3 then. Fallout 3 at least had more places outside of the main quest locations.

 

Good FO1 Dialogue
'The Unity will bring about the master race. Master! Master! One able to survive, or even thrive, in the wasteland. As long as there are differences, we will tear ourselves apart fighting each other. We need one race. Race! Race! One goal. Goal! Goal! One people . . . to move forward to our destiny. Destiny.' Richard Grey.
The whole 'Master kills himself' sequence really.

Stuff from Harold like this:
Vault Dweller: Where were the mutants coming from?
Harold: Everywhere! Hell, seemed like you couldn't fart without hitting one. But mostly in the northwest.
Vault Dweller: You farted Northwest?
Harold: [laughs] Pretty good... Noo...

And a ton of others that show wit that was put into writing it.

 

Thinking about it now, I think Fo3 really needed that witty dialogue back.

 

"I've heard a lot about the fungus in your cavern and I'd like to make a deal."
"Yeah, I'll bet you've heard a lot about the 'fungus in my cavern'. (immature chuckles)"

Oohhh, so witty...

Really, the closest thing FO3 had to witty dialogue was crappy (hyuk hyuk) toilet humor.

 

The main plot in the Fallout games isn't the initial qest, but rather the player's interactions with the world and how your actions pan out in the end, Arroyo and Vault 13 are just the kikstart tht makes you go into the world and change it, not the focus of your adventure. Fallout 3 tried to have it's initial quest as the main focus but their filure came in how linear and restrictive it was, how poorly written the whole thing was and how bland the world it takes place in is. Most of the quests only take time because you have to walk from one extreme of the map to other for very convoluted reasons to do the most menial shit possible, and the looting and exploration is not even interestig as all you find are generic weapons.

 

Reword that to state "the main interaction in the Fallout games isn't the initial quest..." and you'll have it right. The plot IS the central quest that results in the game's completion, whether it be the dismantling of the Unity, the destruction of the Enclave, or who takes control of New Vegas. That's the PLOT, but the plot is just the throughline which the rest of the game revolves around. The "meat on the bones", if you will, where the plot is the bone and all that interaction with the wasteland world and its inhabitants making up the meat. Very, very wonderful meat, but it's not the plot at the center. The best of Fallout didn't rely on totally unrelated exploration separate from the plot to make an enjoyable game, rather it found ways to incorporate the extraneous details into the greater whole of the relevant experience. So players were left with an engaging, lasting experience that didn't feel jarringly segmented (unlike FO3's "I'm doing a quest, now I'm climbing rocks!" dichotomy, for instance), but that doesn't make it the "plot", per se.

 

I wouldn't agree with either of you. From what I've seen the average player played Fallout 2 in the exact same way they played Fallout 3 - roam around aimlesly through a samey wasteland picking up tons of useless carp and shooting stuff. More modding and discussion words have been put in about how this or that gun works as opposed to it's real life counterpart. Fallout 1 had the sheer novelty of seeing a setting like that visualised going for it in one generation, the same way Fallut 3 had for another, freedom of action compared to the games of simmilar genres included (for a particular generation Fallout 3 was kinda to semi-realistic shooters with RL guns, what Fallout 1 was to RPG's back in the day).

What comprises the story of Fallout 1, what of Fallout 2 and what of Fallout 3 is kind of hard to tell. Well, 1 is tight enough that you can realistically assume that it means the same thing to most people who played it (even though I only found out on a play through years after the first one that there is more then 1 NPC in it). Fallout 3 also has a more involving main story (overly so).

What exactly is the story of Fallout 2 is something there is a million answers to. When you've spent enough time looking at the code and the dialogues and replaying it, and you're being fully impartial and hold it in no high regard, it becomes obvious that this wasn't really intended. If you transported it to the Fallout 3 engine it would be worse than Fallout 3 was in most of the ways Fallout 3 is griped about (except the tastes the main story caters to would still be different, so someone might actually prefer it). If you transported Fallout 3 to Fallout 2's engine it would probably be very boring and generic.

 

Well, yeah... Fallout 2's very essence was the engine it was built on. That's part of what makes Fallout 2 a Fallout game.

Fallout 3, that was built with TES fans in mind while adding stuff to attract new customers. Their "storyline" was a fan service, and that's it. Transporting Fallout 2 to Fallout 3's engine would be like transporting Halo or Unreal Tournament to the Call of Duty engine. Those games have completely different playing styles, yet if someone was stupid enough to make the transfer, they would be pretty damn boring and bland. That's because they weren't MEANT for that kind of gameplay on the other engine. Fallout 2 was never meant to be in the first person, even if they had the technology to make it possible. Fallout (1 & 2) was made with tabletop roleplaying, isometric gameplay, and turn-based combat in mind. Fallout 3 was made to look and act like TES, but put in the Fallout's world.

Let's take the VATs system in mind for example. Horrible fucking system. Yet it was made as an attempt (albeit a bad one) to reconnect Fallout 3 with Fallout's turn-based routes for people who didn't want to play a first-person (or even third-person if you change the horrid camera control view) game. There's a REASON people don't like fallout 3, and some still barely tolerate Fallout: New Vegas even though it was made by former BIS developers. Fallout 1 and 2 was not meant to be that type of game (by that type of game I mean Fallout 3), plain and simple. Let's pretend, just for a moment, that Black Isle Studios had the same technology as Bethesda did at the time of Fallout 1's creation. Even with said technology, the game would STILL be isometric, it would STILL hold a world map, it would STILL be turn-based, and, well, it would still be a "Fallout game". BIS didn't incorporate many things that Fallout 3 fans seem to love because that's not the kind of game they wanted to make. These guys wanted to make a genuine RPG, like the one's before computer games were a public hobby and RPG fans had to play on a piece of paper with a pen, however they wanted to bring their visions to life on the computer while at the same time keeping the core essence of the First-Generation RPG (as I like to call it). Sure, maybe they couldn't have gave everyone a talking head or get a voice cast to voice every single NPC in the game. But there were things Bethesda couldn't achieve that BIS did. Take the sizes of towns in Fallout 3 for example. After 200-some odd years of regrouping, humanity still can't manage a town with more than a couple dozen citizens. Get the hell out of here. Call it technological limitations or whatever, but BIS was able to achieve their vision pretty much exactly the way they wanted it with their technology, yet Bethesda could only achieve half of their original vision with their supposed "superior game engine".

It's almost like how the Grand Theft auto series decides to recreate their universe and wipe the slate clean everytime their game engine makes an advancement. You have the 2D universe (GTA 1-2), 3D universe (GTA 3, Vice City, San Andreas), and the HD universe (GTA 4-5). That means everything that happened in San Andreas, never happened in GTA 5. Yet many of the same things appear in both games, such as city streets and names, gangs, etc. Now, if one was to compare Fallout 1-2 with Fallout 3 this is how it should be looked at. They were obviously meant to be two very different games, only brandishing the same title.

Fallout 1, for example, held the "world map" as it did not completely because of technological limitations, but because it was trying to show the players how Southern California had been turned into a barren wasteland, with scattered settlements several days journey away from eachother, with nothing but mutated animals, raiders, and the occasional trader in between in the vast expanse of the desert (keep in mind I'm leaving New Vegas out of this for a reason). Fallout 3 however, pay's single attention to one area, yet, these settlements are anything but several days journey from eachother. It gives a cluttered feeling, while Fallout 1 gives you the true view of a post-apocalyptic nuclear war.