eddoctorwho
First time out of the vault
The frustrating thing for me is that, while I think that FO3 is below both of its predecessors in terms of quality, and, as a fumble-fingered RPG player, I far, far, farrrrrr prefer turn-based play, I think Bethesda could have made a pretty interesting game with only a little revamping of the heterogenous setting they've constructed.
Consider this slightly alternate take on FO3, which could have, I think, mitigated a few objections to the game:
Instead of 200 years after the war, Fallout 3 is set thirty-five years after the war. Larger settlements are only just becoming viable, and there's still a lot of small, single-family communities. People are beginning to be able to take time to scout out the blasted landscape, rather than merely surviving.
The Brotherhood of Steel and the Outcasts are nice name checks of established Fallout groups, but I don't know that they're needed as such; instead, they represent the factionalized descendents of US Army and National Guard troops tasked with maintaining order in the DC metropolitan area when the war started.
We can delete the reference to Harold entirely, because sir, at long last, we have some decency.
The Enclave remains; how could they not? Washington DC is a key symbol to them; at this point, they're still obsessed with "winning the war", as they have the largest number of people who can actually remember the Great War, and to their mind, reclaiming Washington DC is part of this. Even robo-Eden can remain; say that John Henry Eden was the last president of the USA, and that he remains president in computerized form for now. The defeat of the Enclave in the DC area causes them to focus most of their resources on the West Coast.
The Super Mutants are the most canonically troubling; my suggestion would be, since it's hard to remove them entirely, backstory them as resulting from Enclave FEV experimentation on a Vault population (since the Enclave would regard Vaults as essentially specimen banks anyway). Have them THINK they could make more of themselves, but be utterly mistaken; human captives of Super Mutants will be immersed in decrepit and malfunctioning vats of FEV, only to die.
Just a few thoughts of my own, here. I think changing the date the story is set in does the most to resolve glaring problems with the environment: all those cars and wooden buildings!
Consider this slightly alternate take on FO3, which could have, I think, mitigated a few objections to the game:
Instead of 200 years after the war, Fallout 3 is set thirty-five years after the war. Larger settlements are only just becoming viable, and there's still a lot of small, single-family communities. People are beginning to be able to take time to scout out the blasted landscape, rather than merely surviving.
The Brotherhood of Steel and the Outcasts are nice name checks of established Fallout groups, but I don't know that they're needed as such; instead, they represent the factionalized descendents of US Army and National Guard troops tasked with maintaining order in the DC metropolitan area when the war started.
We can delete the reference to Harold entirely, because sir, at long last, we have some decency.
The Enclave remains; how could they not? Washington DC is a key symbol to them; at this point, they're still obsessed with "winning the war", as they have the largest number of people who can actually remember the Great War, and to their mind, reclaiming Washington DC is part of this. Even robo-Eden can remain; say that John Henry Eden was the last president of the USA, and that he remains president in computerized form for now. The defeat of the Enclave in the DC area causes them to focus most of their resources on the West Coast.
The Super Mutants are the most canonically troubling; my suggestion would be, since it's hard to remove them entirely, backstory them as resulting from Enclave FEV experimentation on a Vault population (since the Enclave would regard Vaults as essentially specimen banks anyway). Have them THINK they could make more of themselves, but be utterly mistaken; human captives of Super Mutants will be immersed in decrepit and malfunctioning vats of FEV, only to die.
Just a few thoughts of my own, here. I think changing the date the story is set in does the most to resolve glaring problems with the environment: all those cars and wooden buildings!
