Cutting edge gamers might have picked up a few post-apocalyptic references here and there over the past few days. The reason’s simple: I’m playing Fallout 3, Bethesda’s sequel to two of the greatest RPG games ever made. And post-apocalyptic gaming tends to fever the brain.
It’s a conflicting game. Like Bethesda’s previous games, it is a flawed masterpiece, but Fallout 3′s failings seem more starkly contrasted by the nostalgia-filtered perfection of the previous games… which, of course, were flawed masterpieces themselves, games so riddled with bugs at release that fans are still patching them.
But the reason Fallout 3 seems so different from previous Fallout games is because it is — above all else — a quintessential Bethesda game. Sure, gone is the staggeringly beautiful fantasy realm of Oblivion, replaced by a nuclear wasteland of unrelenting but wholly captivating scenic bleakness. Bethesda knows how to build a world. It’s world execution is flawless. What it can’t do is convey actual people as anything besides soulless, patrol-route jerk puppets.
Here’s the one example I’ll make right now. In Fallout 3, you are given the opportunity early on to hire a prostitute and take her to bed. It costs 120 bottle caps, which is reasonable at Berlin rates. But here’s where Bethesda becomes Bethesda.
Once you hire her, she follows you to your room, and any other game developer would have injected some life into the scene. Rockstar would have given you some Lukewarm Coffee, pulling you out of the scene to serenade you with smutty pillow talk and the ululations of the orgasming avatars. The God of War developers would have done a close up of a bedside lamp and presented you with a rhythm mini-game. There’s the Fable series, which has the participants heads’ off-screen, where they emit naughty noises indicative of mildly unpleasant British sex. And then there’s Black Isle, the previous Fallout developers, would have given you a dialogue tree, full of options: pillow talk, romantic seduction or simply a humanizing conversation with a woman of the wastelands forced to sell herself night after night to feed herself.
But what does Bethesda do? The prostitute NPC mutely follows you up to your room and lies down on the bed beside you like a fetal lump. You then get to sleep on the bed beside her. And that’s it. The next morning, you wake up, and she patrol-puppets out without a word.
In short, Bethesda is the company that can totally drain the fun out of fucking a post-apocalyptic prostitute. They don’t know how to do anything different. For Bethesda, humans are just less interesting orcs (or super-mutants) that they have to go through the bother of writing dialogue trees for. But there’s one thing a game set in a nuclear post-apocalypse should be, and it’s human… the struggle of people skittering through the dank decay of civilization like cockroaches, yet still occupying themselves with their souls, whether to embrace or reject.
I love Fallout 3. It’s totally grabbed me. But it’s Bethesda’s wasteland… and, a fan of the previous games, I can’t help but wish they’d called their game anything but Fallout 3.
In short, Bethesda is the company that can totally drain the fun out of fucking a post-apocalyptic prostitute.
Don’t let anybody around there tell you you’re not the best sentence-crafter at BBG.
I’ll have you know that I delight in hovering beside supine hookers, watching them sleep on beds whose filth is so toxic it glows faintly in the night.
Then again, apparently I took the wrong pill today. Hopefully I don’t wind up on the evening news like last time. I had no idea it was the neighbor’s cat, it tasted so much better than that!
This is definitely the best Elder Scrolls yet. I liked how Morrowind sneakily made part of Tamriel something other than a generic fantasy world, but much of Oblivion was a ren-faire theme park.
I haven’t played Fallout 3 yet because I have too much work to do at the moment, but in the original Fallout didn’t screwing a prostitute just cause a fadeout/fadein and some time passing? Not much different.
@15: That really nails the game for me too – I initially did a bit of reloading when I messed up, let someone die or got badly wounded from foolish mistakes but now, now I just let it play out.
Yeah, I am bummed I promised those BoS guys that I would help them but I got lost and now they are dead but shit, these things happen.
Hookers, Meh. I’m busy trying to hook up with Bittercup, thank you very much.
Yeah it is definitely ridiculous. The double standard that media imposes upon consumers. Most of us that actually bought the game WANT the content. Instead the product is molded away from designers wants, by a third party spectator. Video games should be held the same as art and literature. Sure there are children books, but books that are intended for adults are not written within the standards of a 3rd graders accelerated reader program.
I encountered this little gem of sexual frustration in the first hour that I was playing Fallout 3. It struck me as odd that instead of getting to fuck the hooker I wound up married to her.
(ba-dump bump)
Otherwise the game is great fun, if you enjoy punching badguys so hard their heads pop off and roll down the hill.
Maybe mutants don’t need to fuck prostitutes. Maybe they just need company, or maybe their mutant junk doesn’t work properly.
Maybe the ESRB needs to eat a live hand grenade.
I’m pretty choked that my relationship with Charon was so stifled. The least Beth could have done was thrown in a mini sex game with Nova for the boys and a little ghoul love for us weird girls or even just a little normal love for those not into ghouls.
I’m being totally serious here.
I hope Charon is in the next one and there had better be ghouls regardless of whether we can boink them or not.
Nail on the head. I have taken to fill in the blanks, as an RPGer of old, and to imagine the full repercussions of my in-game actions despite Bethesda’s inability to deliver them.
Without venturing too far into spoiler territory, here is a brief example: I got a town’s sheriff killed by doing something I thought was right. The man, so cordial to me, was felled by the repercussions of an altruistic act. I felt terrible and utterly responsible. Bloody vengeance against the murderer did nothing to suppress that feeling. Worse still was the fact that I left the lawman’s child an orphan.
Game Mechanics-wise, it meant most of the town started to refer to he Sheriff in the past-tense. Some alluded to worries that the seedier elements may go unchecked. A grim future was alluded to, but nobody pinned the deed on me, or my actions. It was all so generic and sterile.
On my own, I constructed a pseudo-reality where the town pitied me… knew I was not at fault, but wanted so badly for me not to feel bad about it. I developed an urge to help these people- to ensure the peace and tranquility of their town by becoming the caretaker I had an unwitting hand in removing. Eventually, after careful thought and investigation, I killed those who I thought to be “bad people” in their sleep and hid the bodies.
Now, having moved on from that town, I find myself bringing trinkets from elsewhere in the wasteland back to the orphaned boy. Teddy bears, toy cars, and soda. I place these items with care as the glassy-eyed child ambles aimlessly through his home. I tend to the android-like child in a way that I know he will never fully appreciate in the confines of the game’s mechanics. In the story I’VE crafted, however, the boy looks forward to each of my visits, reaping the benefits of my penance through gifts of dirty toys and irradiated soda pop.
I think Toxonix’s last sentence is the real reason. Back when Fallout 1 and 2 were released, there wasn’t nearly the scrutiny for video games that there is now. Fallout 3 was already pushing a lot of buttons with its drug use, language and violence. As is, they had to change the names of the drugs to get the game rated in Australia so that it could be sold (a change passed along to all other regions as well.)
Plus Bethesda has taken heat in the past for USER generated mods that featured nudity in Morrowind, and mods in Oblivion that removed clothing otherwise not removable to reveal somewhat realistic nude skins. Things that would have gotten past rating agencies a decade ago don’t fly today.
Its still an amazing game though!
Ultimatley they didn’t bring the funny. The hallmark of a good fallout game is it’s wacky plot lines, quirky references to pop culture, and at times bizarre but amusing side quests. Take for example the Elvis portraits in the spaceships, the boxer, nicknamed “the masticator” with a chewed up ear in his inventory, the knights that say knee, the bridge of death, or my all time favorite discovering the real ingredient in iguana bob’s iguana on a stick. It’s these type of wacky side stories that made me love the previous games, and this is what I miss about the newest incarnation.
When I first played Oblivion a few years ago, I immediately thought that they needed to make a post apocalyptic mod for it. Little did I know that they were already working on one. I love it.
I found particular joy in wandering through the irradiated ruins of Washington DC on election day. Now if you’ll excuse me, some ghouls need to learn an important lesson about frag mines and taunting.
Is an RPG game anything like an ATM machine?
After the initial character development chapter being tossed into the wastes with no clue where to go, a short walk brings you to your first ruined neighborhood. What do you encounter first? The glorious, soothing voice of Malcolm MacDowell coming from an Enclave probe telling you everything is going to be all right.
I know who the Enclave are, I’ve dealt with them enough times already in the old titles, but I still stopped and listened for a while.
If there was a way to impart a little more body language into the NPCs it would really have been a masterpiece. All of the other flaws are pretty trivial compared to the fun I’m having. “Oh, it’s just some more ants… WTF? AHHHH RUN AWAY!”
yes you can’t fuck the hooker, but you can kill her, cut off her head and stick it in to a fridge in your new house along with your collection of left hands and assorted eye balls. The rest of her I ate with with a side of sugar bombs and a nice nuke cola.
I’ve been playing games for a long time, and played both Fallouts through so many times they’re whatever the videogame equivalent of dog-eared and worn is.
I really like Fallout 3. It’s not perfect, but all things considered, it is very good.
I think it’s important to note that Bethesda is trying to make a big, mass-market, successful game. That’s how they justify the large budget.
Bethesda can’t make a mass-market game with explicit post-apocalyptic hooker sex. Nor can they allow killing the kids in the game. I’m always a goody two-shoes in these games, but after visiting Little Lamplight, I really wanted to take a few of the brats out.
This, to me, is the biggest hypocrasy brought on by attempting to sell to a wide audience – I can decapitate people and/or shoot their heads apart in graphic, blood-spurting detail (as long as they’re what, over 18?).
But I cannot see nipples. It’s particularly funny that the raider women appear in armor that is skimpier than what’s underneath – metal bra, bare skin. Loot the armor, and all of a sudden there’s a big gray t-shirt under there. Silly.
But that said, I’ll take it. I’ve been waiting years for fresh Fallout, even in this state.
Neither of the original two Fallouts sold very well. Hardcore fans are very divided on the “humor” subject. While I thought F2 was the superior of the two games, some people feel it was too jokey, too filled with pop culture references, and ultimately unsatisfying.
It’s also worth noting that the original games have some serious game problems – some skills are definitely, clearly “better” than others, lots of stuff is still broken, and the inventory system is painful.
All in all, I’d really love to have seen Black Isle’s original Fallout 3 come to life, and I really loved 1 & 2. But it’s not 1997 anymore. It’s 2007, and the world (and games) are different.
Tools are out there, and plenty of engines. Anyone could build a post-apocalyptic game reminiscent (or very much like) the original Fallouts if they wanted. Look at the open-source Quake-engine-based X-com revival UFO – Alien Invasion.
But the writing of the dialog and the story remains the highest quality, and that is probably the thing I miss the most in Fallout 3.
And also the music in 1 & 2 was the best game music I’ve ever heard.
I do miss the humor. I don’t know if Bethesda did it intentionally, but this game is definitely darker. I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing, though. The robotic characters are annoying…I’d love to see a world and characters that changed as you go along. But overall, it still feels like a Fallout game, and it’s still fun as hell. I honestly don’t know how much I’ll be playing Gears 2 because I’m still wrapped up in the Wasteland.
Yep, agreed. Not such a “mature” game after all. God of War had more “mature” content in it than this game. What a fucking joke! We’ll have to put up with this PRUDE bullshit for another 20 years till people realize that kiddies should have their own “PG” version of the game and the adults can have their booze and hookers in the “MA” version.
I agree completely, the people in this game feel so plastic, it can really ruin the realism at times.
One of my biggest complaints about the people is how fake they look. Every single one of them has celebrity style dental care (aside form ghouls obviously) and seems to be the picture of perfect health.
Where’s the scars on people form living in a wasteland? what about malnourished individuals? People with missing limbs or even a limp?
90% of the people feel like cookie cutouts to me, and the diolauge options are just awful.
I’ll give a great example of how cheaply they did the diolauge trees:
After doing a number of quests the people of Megaton became very grateful to me, at times randomly walking up to me and giving me gifts, with thanks.
What ruins this is every single time they say one of two variations on the “thank you” speech, and you only have two, endlessly repeating diolauge options, that makes this just feel faked and forced after the second and third times.
The gifts themselves also are of minuscule value, most often “dirty water” or other equally useless trash that “the entire village pooled their resources to get you.” Funny how the stores sell better stuff then they feel are worth giving you as a gesture of thanks eh?
Either way, the game is fun, but it’s far off the mark for an immersing rpg. The unkillable children make absolutely no sense to me, and the editing out of the sex even more ridiculous.
It’s a sad cultural mark this day and age where, murder, random violence. explicit gore, and cannabilism are more acceptable socially then nudity or any reference to sex…
@12: Wow. It just occurred to me that you can do all of that, which simultaneously displays the hypocrisy of this sort of censorship and is making me restore a previously saved game in order to do exactly what you’ve outlined. Thanks!
No post-apocalyptic hummers? No post-apocalyptic rimjobs? No post-apocalyptic venus butterfly?
Man, the post-apocalypse sucks!
Because pre-apocalyptic hookers aren’t fun.
I totally agree with you about the hooker – yet it doesn’t bother me so much. The world is a far more compelling ‘character’ than any of the characters. I’ve been playing Fallout since Wasteland on the Apple ][ and if you can let go this game is amazing. The 3D recreation of a blasted wasteland is like nothing I’ve ever seen and immerses you far more than any 2D game could (and I love me some 2D RPGs). This game is just dripping with love for Fallout even if it can’t always deliver on realistic humans.
This is a game where I always let the game run and never reload because the world feels real even if the people aren’t. I accidentally ended up killing an entire city of ghouls (who I sympathize with) because one of them took offense to something I said and attacked me. And I just let the game go on, never thinking of reloading, and the world abides.
I just wander across the landscape and run across the Nuka Cola plant, which seems to be there just because Bethesda thought it should be there, and it makes me happy.
I have been to DC and the recreation of the city in piles of concrete and rebar seriously creeps me out.
An NPC offers to teach me how to make a Nuka-cola grenade, ‘Image the look on your enemy’s face when they are burning alive in an explosion of effervescent cola and fruit flavors!’
Seriously, this game is dripping with love for Fallout. They can’t always deliver (Bethesda does have a problem with NPCs you can connect to), but I feel it. This may seem strange for an old man like me to say, but you can’t be too tied to the past. Yes we can haz change.
This is the best review of Fallout 3 (and Bethesda’s past TES games) that I’ve seen. Thank you for properly articulating what I, for all I tried, could not. The almost autistic nature of NPC interaction is why I never made it all the way through Morrowind or Oblivion.
Though it looks like I’ll finish Fallout 3, not because Bethesda has gotten any better in that regard, but because the Fallout world is much more interesting to me than Tamriel.
Oh wait a minute their me fellow companions. Had you tried the naked mods? Well that’s BEing bathesda and NEXUS GECK MOD… fucking better than worrying about interacting with a post-apocalyptic chica, get ya self pizza and a Joint chill out, call it a fucking day.
but still i your written had filled me with hatred and vengence toward bathesda for ruining what i hope also… Raping them woes.