Ruins

L

Lord 342

Water Chip? Been There, Done That
This just hit me:
In both Fallouts, for the most part, there were only inhabited areas that you could actively look through. Fallout 2 especially had a dearth of ruins. I'd like to see some places to scrounge around and find stuff to trade and so on. Large cities don't just go away; (unless they're hit with a nuke directly ;) ) and just because they're no people in them doesn't make them so unimportant that we shouldn't be able to see them. From the descriptions and pictures, the LA boneyard is vast, but we never set foot in anything but two minor areas. One of my favorite aspects of Post-apocalyptic fiction is going through ruins and seeing the moments frozen in time. The Omega Man/ I Am Legend had this, The Postman (The novel, not the movie) had this, Deathlands especially had this. A large city could have a small fortified area where people live, and a large mass of ruins, home to raiders, beasts, and so on.

One idea that comes to mind is a vast, abandoned city, rife with hazard, where people have managed to fortify a singe high-rise and get its generators back on line. The high-rise is the "City" in the traditional sense, but the rest of the city is explorable; some things are random, some are not. What does anyone think?
 
Wasn't there supposed to be something like that in VanBuren?
Anyway, It's not a bad idea. At first I thought about saying that the cities would prolly be looted by then, but now I'm not so sure. There's just not enough people left around to loot a whole L.A.-size city.
 
Yeah, those were all skipped over, I guess because the Fallout staff didn't want to make another dungeon-crawling hack-for-experience game. They replaced random dungeon-crawl areas with the random encounters, really, and left the rest to be.

It's not a bad idea, though, and one city like that would've been a better expansion to make Fallout 2 bigger than 1 than the ones we've seen. Fallout 1 was too small for that kind of stuff
 
It's certainly one of my favourite aspects of PA fiction, exploring an empty city. I'd love to see a city done in detail, with some surrounding wastelands instead of a sprawling worldmap that covers half the continent.
 
When there is significant backstory that leads to exploration based upon discovery, especially on replays through the game, then it in fact loses the dungeon-crawler feel. It becomes a good, apropos thing, versus, say, a BanalWare dungeon.
 
[Hands Roshambo a Cigar]

Exactly! The city ruins should be flavor and story, not just a place to build XP and gain items, which the random encounters were. A good RPG engrosses you with story and after playing through a while you find yourself with items and XP as well. They should all be different, some unique, some random, but by and large pertinent. The opening images of the original Fallout, with the city ruins stretching to the horizon, were absolutely tantalizing. I'd love to see something like that to explore.
 
I think what you chaps are trying to describe is something like Chernobyl where the people just up and had to leave. In the game this would have been caused by people trying to leave the cities or get to the vaults or simply killed by the intense radiation and over pressure.

As far as adding atmosphere, I'm definitely for it. Walking along and looking in on an apartment and finding a newspaper spread on the table and tipped coffee cup sitting beside it "Second victory on Adak! Administration says 'Peace soon'!" marching across the top and you can hear the narration in the back of your mind, "War. War never changes." - Colt
 
I like that idea of the 'Tower' in the center of some large ruins. You might need to get something from inside the Tower and need to trade to get access/complete miniquest/kill raider gang/help raiders get in for a slice of the loot (for evil types).

There's a split-second of footage from WW2 you see sometimes. The shot is of tanks and men racing down a road and the camera is inside a house that had part of the wall collapse. The edge of the wall is burning and there's a clock on the wall with the pendulum merrily going. I _think_ it's one of those Felix the Cat ones where the pendulum is the tail. Every time I see it I am blown away. The comment about reading the paper reminds me of that. It also reminds me of the intro to FO1 where the TV is showing Mr. Handy (He's Soooooooo Handy!) and then it pulls back to show the collapsed wall and the effects of the war.

Could be a good mod for FO2. If only I knew anything whatsoever about modding. Can't even get the Bunker 21 mod to work.
 
Good idea. Abandoned cities, buildings, etc., would be interesting. Scavenging for supplies, food and water (provided someone would make a mod introducing the need to drink and eat), meds, ammo etc.
Exploring a destroyed hospital (or an orphanage - Shalebridge Cradle anyone?)...

And listening to the wind whistling between abandoned buildings...
 
Not exactly my idea. Both Fallouts had abandoned millitary facilities with the predictable load o' weapons and tech. I'm talking more like semi-random ruins of cities (layouts by and large not random, but contents and inhabitance are). There is, of course, always room for the Ubiquidous Abandoned Millitary Facility. Area 51 might be a bit cliched, especially after we had the crashed saucer encounter in Fallout 1... but where else would you find an alien blaster!!!
 
Well, Area 51 could be more hard core mystery, heavily radiated and maybe even find a martian or two... Alien Blaster and some other knick knacks.
 
Dagon said:
I wanna see the skeletons of skycrapers
Click to expand...

Exactly. That's more like it. Blast crater. Glass. Crumpled ruins. Identifiable structures, just skeletons, stripped bare and bent. Bordering the destruction, miles upon miles of abandoned buildings. Within, some treasures of bygone days, mutants bred by those who stayed, creatures seeking shelter, and a few humans far worse than the beasts in nature and intent...

The ruins should be packed with stuff. Very little of it of actual utility, mind you, but the more everyday stuff we see, the more we are immersed in the game. The player could have very little use for an operating television, but the sale value for such an item would be *immense*. The scavenging economy of a post-war society cannot be overlooked. Just look at the aftermath of any *real* war, from the civil war to the war in Iraq. (Please, no rabid discussions... I've had more than my fill of politics of late).
 
I would really like to see what the statue of liberty has under her dress :D



But there is 1 thing that has bothered me all the time in Fallout. Why does it have to be all the time the wastelands. Why not a city covert by a tropical forest? Radioactivity does not all ways mean = wasteland. It can make plants grow fast 2. Ok may be its a bit off topic, but it would be cool to see a city covert by a forest, mutated man eating plants...
 
It's not the radiation that kills the plants, it's the dust and debris, from the nuclear explosions, that blocks the sun, which in time kills the plants. :(

I am not saying that it is impossibly, but I am just saying that it is improbable.(the jungle)

__________________
Killing worlds is like killing ants, you can't kill enought of them to mather.
And even if you do, there will always be anothers that you can't get your hands into.
 
Lord 342 said:
...One idea that comes to mind is a vast, abandoned city, rife with hazard, where people have managed to fortify a singe high-rise and get its generators back on line. The high-rise is the "City" in the traditional sense, but the rest of the city is explorable; some things are random, some are not. What does anyone think?
Click to expand...

I could kiss you you know that?

I have seriously considered your idea before, but never thought it through enough to post it.

Obviously any city would have enough of a scavenging "economy" to run on as well as trade with area's not directly hit where agriculture could take place. Of course with all the dangers you would have to seal off part of the city...a massive renovated skyscraper would be a perfect location and could easily be isolated and defended.

I would also like to expand on your idea of the random encounters/scenario's in the ruins. Think of how F2 expanded on random encounters with more than battle's and also special battles like raiders vs. caravans. Well what if the environment was taken into effect? For example:

-A caravan has stopped to rest for the night. In the interest of defense they deside to make camp in the basement of an abandoned building where they wont be noticed and where they can set up guard at the entrance way. A stealth character could attempt to sneak in and steal some of the caravan's stuff. A combat boy could just go in shooting. A charisma boy could just talk her/his way in and maybe do some trade.

-At the end of a normal random encounter your character goes about into some random structures. Most are gutted and inpassable, but some have sections still up with various bits of furniture laying about. Searching a desk/frigerator/box and ruffling through random bits of paper/eons old food/junk yields a small amount of ammo/food/book's.

-A large group of monsters in one encounter not only seems unnatural, but particularly so since they all seem clustered about one building. They've made a nest in the basement/attic/main floor and could be exterminated and maybe yield a dead adventurer and loot.

-A lone wanderer is found living in what's built to be a small hut. Can you imagine him leaning against a paint-peeled wall, in ratty robes? There's a small chance for info and trade, but a high chance for just good old "feeling" of loneliness.

-Nearing the center of a city where the direct nuke hits took place your character is much less likely to have random encoutners with animals/people, but much more prone to radiation/low food-water problems. Stuctures in this area arent just abandoned...they have all either been knocked down to rubble or have one or two walls standing with heaps of bits where furniture should be. However the area near the crater, but not in it has lots of things that werent perishable left completely intact and havent been scavenged...weapons and equipment basically. Could you imagine coming across a military convo that had been roasted by the bombs, but not close enough for metal to melt? The bodys would be just bone's, but any metal objects (guns) might still work.

Thank you so much for bringing this up Lord 342. I would have forgotten about all that stuff.

Sincerely,
The Vault Dweller
 
I'm flattered... I think.... Perhaps you can give that kiss to Watergirl to deliver? Or Lauren? LOL. This reminds me of the old "Going to get two blowjobs" joke.

Anyways building on that, could you just see some valuable piece of equipment right in the middle of the blast crater, in the hands of a radiation-bloated corpse? The bodies of a few beasts would be in the crater as well, the man having ventured inside seeking refuge and not fully understanding the magnitude of radiation. The player could retrieve the item only if he had propper protection.
 
Note, in Fallout 1 + 2, if you clicked on the triangle in a map area that looked like city ruins, you did appear in a local map that had dilapidated (sp?) buildings and junk, and what not. in fact, random encounters took place there sometimes. whether you found tradable junk, I'm not sure... (don't think so, perhaps make an assumption that scavangers got most of the stuff worth anythign before you did?)
 
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