Atomic Postman
Vault Archives Overseer
It does prove to be a fundamental issue with the 3D games that they have to be anchored around a major city for their map, because a flattened mess of girders isn't going to be hugely interesting.
As more and more games are made, it seems that the only cities in the world that actually got destroyed were LA and Salt Lake City. In Fallout 3 of course, the capital of the nation remains intact, with the only iconic building that wasn't destroyed in the war (never mind two centuries of decay) being the White House. In Fallout 4, I think that there are three large craters scattered around that have absolutely no destruction surrounding them, and overall the city is very much intact, except for the one fuck big one that has some reason rendered the area surrounding it into something like the surface of Venus (weird the Chinese didn't use these every time). Finally, I believe West Virginia received zero nukes... despite the fact that it was a renewed center of mining and high-tech development, host to several nuclear missile silos and other strategic targets (including the primary continuity of government facility), and is, y'know, an entire fucking state.
This is hilarious.
It shows four fucking checks on that pic, but i would bet there's other checks for the remaining SPECIAL stats. And they are all for the same purpose, which is just insane.
This whole thing has more checks than a lot of quests in New Vegas, and it has more checks than the majority of Fallout 3 and specially Fallout 4. They wanted every single character build to able to fuck that deathclaw, which is just insanity.
Okay I get that nuclear war works differently in the fallout universe but a localized nuclear winter is some of the dumbest shit I’ve ever heard.Right now, the reason for a lot of snow in Portland is, when the nukes hit this location, a cloud of dust and ash went up and blocked the sun. So everything under, essentially froze over.
This is hilarious.
Can you actually say no to this? I can't see the option
I stand corrected, THIS IS HILARIOUSThere's a "no" option at the bottom, but it also leads to a fade to black.
No Divine Intervention can work in this place, there's no escape.
Another thing Iloathelove about this mod is how the modders try to shoehorn the Courier to feeling guilty about what happened to Wolfpack and to whoever you sacrificed on the Wolfenstein space station.
Writers: "You feel bad about this."
the fuck is this retarded crap. here this is what I want you to feel in my hack fanfiction.
I love how the devs, and many other modders in general, seem to miss the point of Lonesome Road. In Lonesome Road the Courier was just doing a mundane job of delivering a package for the NCR. Something routine for them. The package ended up being a denotator for the ICBM 's in Hopeville. The point of the DLC was to show how even something mundane or routine, without us even knowing, can make an impact, for better or worse. The Courier didn't have to feel guilt for what happened. They didn't know what was in the package and was just the delivery boy/girl.
From New California and now The Frontier they are like; "This is your fault! You caused this! You should feel bad!" These devs desperately try to add some guilt trip or motivation for a character that is supposed to be a blank slate and an avatar for the player. I can't help but roll my eyes whenever modders do this. They don't seem to understand the core elements of an RPG.
Long-winded response here. It's also a layman's response, I'm by no means a proffesional, and if anyone is they can feel free to correct me on any details I might get wrong:
It's kinda inherently anachronistic to try and call Classical Era states "Fascist" after 20th century ideologies which did not yet exist.
Perhaps you could see parallels, but given that Rome existed from 753 BC to 476 AD and had a constantly changing political landscape for the period it was around, you could probably find evidence of Rome being whatever political ideology suited your personal interpretation of it, given the timescale and all the major political upheavals that happened within it.
Mussolini tried to play up a lot of the Roman Heritage of Fascist Italy, especially through public artworks, but this was largely an aesthetic technique used to try and justify fascism by using past states.
There's multiple arguements you could make against Rome being fascist:
Firstly being that to talk about Rome having a singular political ideology at all is inherently misleading: Rome started off as a Kingdom, which was overthrown to make a Republic, which was overthrown in to a Dictatorship again, which then after a period of Civil War became a weird semi-democratic semi-dictatorial structure under Augustus, followed by centuries of Emperors, convrted to Christianity and then eventually deciding to partition in multiple different ways, eventually settling on the East/West divide. Some Emperors were also Philosophers, writing their own treatises on what government meant, most famously Marcus Aurelius who wrote extensively about Stoic philosophy. To make a case like "Rome was Fascist" or "Rome was Liberal" or whatever, you'd have to make the case that every single period of Roman History, or even the governing styles and philosophies of every single Roman Emperor conformed to that idelogy.
Secondly, what we usually associate with Fascism is it being Xenophobic, Ultranationalist, Hyper-Authoritarian and Hyper-Traditionalist. Now, you could make the case for Authoritarianism, though I'd respond that making that case would be a flawed analysis given that Rome existed prior to modern conceptions of liberalism and human rights, so arguably all of Rome's neighbours would also fall under that definition, and given that since the Republic period Rome had Civil Law, Courts, the right to Trials, ect., it was arguably less authoritarian than many of it's contemporary states.
As for the Traditionalism and Xenophobia, the Romans had much more of a "Whatever works" approach to traditions and other cultures, their attitude shifting based on what suited their needs. There are cases for instance, of them engaging in Genocide. Typically though, the Romans were much more likely to respond to conquered cultures by adopting their traditions and intergrating them in to the structure of the Roman State: because y'know, this is actually a very efficient way to govern a vast empire that incorporates multiple different cultures: typically cultural inclusion makes your imperial subjects less likely to revolt. If modern Fascists held the same beliefs they do today, and lived in the Roman Empire, they'd probably be disgusted by how regularly Rome changed it's traditions to incorporate conquered cultures.
You could make the case that individual figures had ideologies which resembled a form of proto-Fascism. The figure I'd make the case for is Augustus: He never took on any official monarchial titles, rather insisting on being called "First Citizen" or "First among Equals", while at the same time using his sway in the Senate to be granted several lifetime positions as a Commander, Tribune and Censor, and regularly considered himself more as a speaker for the Roman people rather than a leader. This is kinda similar to the structure of Fascism: dictators placing themselves in power indefinitely, but the propaganda not treating them as such but rather as voices of the Nation(which is of course, inherently circular: you claim to speak for the nation, yet are yourself deciding what the nation constitutes and believes).
There's also the fact that Literature during the Augustan period tended to have pseudo-fascistic qualities when discussing natures of the state: the Poet Virgil famously wrote philosophical treatises about human beings and natural subservience to authority using Bees as an allegory, which resembles Fascist political ideology quite strongly. He also wrote the Aeneid: an attempt to replicate Greek Epic Poetry, which situated Rome as being descended from the survivors of Ancient Troy, in an attempt to justify Rome as being a consistent state that followed from the traditions of Heroic Era Greece(Which was at the time was considered the height of civilisation). This is another trait of fascism: trying to tie yourself to some ancient great civilisation, and treat your rise to power as an attempt to recreate that civilisation.
However even with all this in mind, it would still be something of a misnomer to call Augutus a fascist, given that the Augustan period had very different goals to modern Fascism. Modern Fascism tends to be reactionary and traditionalist, whereas the Augustan period was more about re-establishing what Roman Governance meant in the wake of the collapse of Republicanism, and decades of Civil War.
Anyway, one thing that I think's an interesting take-away from this is that what makes Legion a good faction in New Vegas, IMO, is precisely their selective reading of Roman History. It kinda rings true to actual Fascism. Mussolini did the same thing, taking aesthetics he liked from Roman History and using them to imply a rebirth of ancient civilisation. That's kinda the whole point: Legion, like all fascists, kinda ignore the vast scope of the historical era they're dealing with, and instead summarise it as sort of "Whatever personally suits our claims to be the successor to this civilisation"
Also: You're right in pointing out the irony of the modders not letting you play as the Enclave because they're fascist, but also not considering the Legion as such: given that JESawyer has actively stated that he wrote Legion around Umberto Eco's essay "Ur-Fascism", an essay about the inherent contradictions in fascism.
Like, when literally the designers of the game said they wrote Legion around being showcases of the contradictory nature of fascism, it's hilarious that the Frontier modders are acting as though that's not the case.
Not at all. Fascism is a pretty specific ideology contrary to what people (both on the left and right) tend to think and it was pretty much a very obvious response to some of the stuff that started happening as Europe really started to emerge into what we define as modernity. It isn't really something that would be compatible with any of the political thought you were dealing with as far back as Ancient Rome.
I like how the Courier is in a FPS game now since they are now cursed with full blown cutscene incompetence straight out of Call of Duty and FarCry where the only way for events to advance is for your character become dumb long enough to get injured or captured. Funny considering the Courier is walking weapon of mass destruction and my Courier could uppercut a fucking Giant Roboscorpion into the fucking sky, so the idea of a tribal in football pads taking them down is laughable.Writers: "You feel bad about this."
Courier: "...Not really, no."
Writers: "YOU. FEEL. BAD. ABOUT. THIS."
I hate this shit so much. Spec Ops The Line railed road you to killing all those people with white phosphorus and then kept telling you that you were a bad person for doing this even though you couldn't progress though the game without doing it. People hated Spec Ops for that. Now I am all for giving players negative consequences for their actions. Something that RPG's nowadays lack but you shouldn't make them feel guilt for a choice you forced them to make. Doing so makes you look like a hack.
I wanna play The Frontier out of morbid curiosity. Like rubbernecking after a car crash, but with more alcohol involved beforehand. Potentially, at least.
You’re my favorite new member already.As in Cthulhu mythos some things shouldn't be disturbed, it also includes knowledge that shouldn't be known and sights better left unseen.
Duh, Because it makes their dick hard.I have to have to ask why the thigh high boots?
How the hell would they know what a German was or what they sounded like?If you talk to Wrench after the Enclave space station, she basically says he started started speaking with a German accent one day.