Literally.

When I first started it up, I had to laugh when I saw that the main data file was "Fallout3.esm." They didn't even bother changing the extension despite the fact that they have been very adamant that it definitely was not Oblivion with guns.

After spending some time with it, I can say that, as I expected, it definitely is not a Fallout game. It has absolutely nothing in common with previous Fallouts aside from key words randomly thrown into a generic post-apocalyptic world ("vault," "Enclave," "Overseer," etc.) It's very disappointing on that front and makes it even more depressing to think about how the real Fallout 3 was canned halfway through development.

If I ignore the fact that it is called Fallout, I can admit that it is not an unmitigated disaster, but the jury is still out on whether or not it surpasses the level of mediocrity.

Van Buren should have been finished.

Discuss.

this is the only fallout 3 thread

I think you just complimented something.

Originally Posted by DrJonez

Originally Posted by KnightMare

this is the only fallout 3 thread

It's the only one that matters considering that the vast majority of the people playing had never heard of Fallout before a year ago.

i am a thug

fyi

Originally Posted by DrJonez

Hey, look.
Jonez is trying to derail yet another thread.

Go away. Maybe to eat a few cases a twinkies.

i tought Oblivion is fallout3 without guns?

Originally Posted by Kurayami

It's the only one that matters considering that the vast majority of the people playing had never heard of Fallout before a year ago.

OK I agree, continue.

Originally Posted by naptown

i am a thug

fyi

Is a thug a baller by necessity?
Or can one be a baller without being a thug?

Hey look, Kura is showing how edgy and anti-establishment he is by hating on something that the majority of people really like. Shocking!

Originally Posted by Kurayami

Is a thug a baller by necessity?
Or can one be a baller without being a thug?

it all depends on how much time you spent in hustlenomics class

They screwed up the Fallout lore. I will quote from a Bethesda forum post:

I've concocted a brilliant theory I'd like to share with you: Fallout 3 is actually a game that should have taken place around 2130-2150. I'm not complaining, mind, I just think it's interesting how much the game seems to lend itself to being significantly sooner after the bombs fell than the story says it is. In no particular order:

1. Accents. After two hundred years, there are still people who have accents from other countries! Now, if you'll recall there was one character in Fallout 1 who had an accent (Loxley), and the PC thought it was weird enough to ask about it (turns out he was carefully cultivating it on purpose). In Fallout 3, though, we've got people like Moira (midwest), Moriarty (really excessive Irish) and Three Dog (sort of an urban rapper thing going on there). This would totally make sense after a mere generation or two, but keep in mind that the difference between British, American, Australian and South African English is the product of 200 years.

2. Everything is covered in prewar crap. Now this is a bit of hyperbole, as there are a lot of fortifications and huts and such that were clearly built after the war, but they're all made out of scrap metal salvaged from pre-war stuff in pretty sloppy ways. Tenpenny Tower is the obvious exception, clearly been renovated pretty effectively, but even the Brotherhood of Steel headquarters is full of rubble, and in the generations we're told Megaton has been around nobody's put so much as a carpet on their jagged metal floor (and before you say there's no carpets, I'll tell you outright I've seen them as set pieces in dozens of ruins and a few outdoor raider camps). I have no trouble believing that raw materials are extremely rare and everyone has to pretty much make do with what's available, but did ten generations of people all decide not to sweep the rocks out of their houses? Much more plausible if it's only been a little while. In-universe, compare with places like Vault City, New California Republic and even Shady Sands - all of which were built post-war, and all of which are totally free of debris. FO3's settlements all look more like Klamath, Junktown and the Den, even the ones established well outside the DC downtown ruins. One particularly odd one that stood out for me was Rivet City; they've even got an NPC who outright tells you her entire job is sweeping the halls, and yet she's somehow not managed to clear out all the scrap paper lying everywhere.

3. The raiders. There's just too many of them, where the hell are they getting their food (more on this later, too)? There's maybe five or six brahmin enclosures in the whole game and zero farms. Their numbers - and their brutally level - simply aren't sustainable for two hundred years. If nothing else, where are they getting new raiders? Evergreen Mills makes sense as a permanent raider encampment that might be serving as a kind of pirate haven a la 16th century Caribbean, but Three Dog on the radio outright says there's increased raider activity there, so presumably this settlement is relatively new.

4. All the major settlements are way too young. Marya will tell you all about Megaton, which is apparently at around four or five generations old, but even she will admit that the walls are relatively recent additions. Rivet City can't be older than Pinkerton according to his account and from the sound of it was quite young when Dr. Li took over, making it probably in the range of 30-50 years old. The Citadel is less than 20. Tenpenny Tower is at most 50-60 years old, and that's assuming Tenpenny founded it in his twenties, which is unlikely. Paradise Falls is heavily implied to have been founded by Eulogy, who can't be older than about 45. I have no trouble believing that it took the urban areas a lot longer to get back on their feet, but surely there would be encampments or settlements besides Megaton which are older than their current inhabitants.

5. Agatha. How the deuce did she learn to play the violin, and then make one? I suppose she could have done both simultaneously, but then how does she even know what a violin looks or sounds like? Presumably this could be handed down generationally, but her violinist ancestor died in a vault, and if any of her family had had a second violin she would presumably still be using it. It makes a lot more sense if she's simply old enough to have lived before the war, and either learned to play them or at least saw and heard a couple in action before the bombs.

6. The food sources. There's lots of (irradiated) water, thanks to the Potomac, and apparently plenty of meat from dogs and such, but it looks like the two major food sources in FO3 are hunting and raiding old food stores. This just begs the question of how any number of people could have survived for 200 years on a diet that depends extremely heavily on a finite supply of pre-war food.

7. Especially since there's so freaking much of the stuff lying around everywhere. If everyone has to eat it, you'd think all the easy sources would have been totally claimed by now, but there are grocery stores all over the place still full of food. (Although, to be fair, a lot of the larger store areas are now raider camps, so it makes sense for places like the Super Duper Mart to still have food around.)

8. Everyone's still obsessed with pre-war life. Obviously the nukes had a massive impact on life that has made life extremely difficult for everyone, but every character except a handful of ghouls hasn't known anything different from the Wasteland. Nor did their parents, or their grandparents, or their great-grandparents. Yet still you get several people who are outright obsessed with pre-war life (like, say, the entire town of Andale; or the crazy woman in Arefu; or the Nuka-Cola enthusiast in Girdershade). Fair enough, life in the Fallout world totally sucks and you do get to see remnants of just how good your predecessors had it, but how do you even know what a fall catalog is? Even the more sane Capitol Wasteland inhabitants are frequently seen wearing "pre-war ____" clothes, and everyone uses prewar weapons. Much like Agatha, this all makes perfect sense if it's only been a few decades; the obsessed people could be the products of similarly deranged parents in denial about the whole post-apocalyptic thing, and nobody would have necessarily figured out how to make nicer clothes from brahmin hides yet. (Aside on clothes, people wearing stuff today from the late 18th century would almost certainly destroy the clothes just by wearing them, especially if they're doing hard work like [say] Moira in her Robco overall.)

9. No plants, except the shrubs and dry grasses and the stuff Harold put out. Now the part about how plants still grow all over the place in radiated areas is largely explained by "Science! not science", I'm talking more like the lack of agriculture, which was all over the place in the first two games.

10. Super mutants. It's a major plot point in both earlier games that they're not fertile and cannot reproduce, but they're still around decades after destroying their vats, and on the far side of the continent? There's a bit of handwaving in the vault with the GECK and the implication that there are cloning vats in there, along with some computer logs that imply that vault was experimenting with FEV, but these supermutants are total idiots. There's no way they could have managed to stay organized enough for decades without someone moderately intelligent in charge. This one's not definite, though, as the game never does bother to explain the super mutants' presence beyond the aforementioned handwaving, and (surprisingly) we never deal with any sort of mutant leadership.

11. Loot! Aside from the point that there's valuable stuff everywhere, a lot of this wouldn't survive a few months, let alone years. Cigarettes, for example, have a shelf life measured in weeks. The cardboard all that prepackaged food comes in would have started decaying long ago in all but the most hermetically sealed areas. Even cans don't last for 200 years. Even ammo, which might quite possibly survive that long, would surely be vastly more scarce and valuable after two hundred years of fighting off bajillions of raiders. Even disregarding the supermutants.

12. The Brotherhood of Steel is very powerful. Now there's no real reason why they couldn't have made a major comeback from FO2 (where their entire Northern California contingent was three guys, if I recall correctly), but enough to stage a major operation with dozens of soldiers (and judging by the mortality rate in areas like the Arlington Library, probably more like several hundred, teeheehee, etc.) thousands of miles away from their headquarters and decades after discovering remnants of the US military* on the offchance that they find something cool in the Pentagon ruins? The reason why I think this sets FO3's date back instead of forward is because it's never explicitly stated just how big the original BoS was, and it's pretty plausible for a military base to have a population in the low thousands.
*Seriously, this is off-topic, but did that bother anyone else? Not only is the Enclave not occupying the Pentagon despite the fact that they are the Pentagon, they even left loads of highly dangerous military information and a giant killbot in the place for two hundred years despite being the best-organized people left in America, by all accounts. A bit of fridge logic, there. Maybe I'll make another thread to point out the continuity errors and plot holes.

13. The Vaults (numbering coincidental). They're all totally demolished ruins except 112 and 101, which is fine. But how did all the Garys survive two hundred years of insanity, for example? And if all the other Vaults were abandoned or killed long enough ago to have skeletal remains inside them, why are the wastelanders so phlegmatic about seeing new vault-dwellers out and about? How do they even know what Vaults are? Keep in mind the 200 years thing here. That's the difference between Shakespeare and the steam engine. Logic dictates that after decades of abandonment the Vaults would be effectively urban legends, especially since nobody ever leaves the two surviving ones, at least not in the last 20 years.

14. Economics. Food prices are low, when logic dictates after 200 years all the easy-access instant food would be gone and people would be aware there couldn't be much left. Ammo prices are also low, even though nobody is making new ammo. The most organized trade system can't be older than about 20 years assuming Canterbury Commons was founded by its current (young-lookin) mayor, and is implied to be less than 5 years old. There are no permanent roads or trade routes competing with Canterbury Commons. Megaton is smack in the middle of all the other settlement (especially if you count the Evergreen Mills raider compound), but there's no indication that there's any trade with other settlements even there, just trade with the five caravans from Canterbury. Even as early as FO1 there was several competing caravan companies with different established trade routes; after 200 years, the random wandering traders might still be around, but most of the action would be going to larger formal outfits if not fully established companies.

15. No tribals. All the townspeople in FO3 live in what are set up more like trade hubs or in tiny 2-6 person settlements. It's pretty much a given that after two hundred years of near-total anarchy, some of the factions would have developed their own insular cultures and habits. The Republic of Dave is about as close to that as FO3 gets; it's the sort of thing that would likely turn into a tribal arrangement pretty quickly. But it was also started by Dave's father (the Kingdom of Tom) so it's still quite young. You could make a case for the raiders, too, but in FO3 they're basically just the mature-rating equivalent of cartoon villains - though even in FO1 and 2, you had different vaguely clannish raider groups with their own personalities.

Now there are several things that make it impossible for this game to take place much earlier in the timeline like I'm saying (like, say, Harold's presence, or the Enclave subplot), but all indications lead me to believe that if this wasn't a sequel (i.e., if Bethesda had made up the whole thing from scratch and FO1 and 2 didn't exist) it would have been set in the region of 40-50 years after the war, which would make a lot more sense considering how the FO3 world works. Most of these are pretty major plot holes if you think about them too much, but would make perfect sense in that time period. Anyone else have some cool things to add to the list?

In particular, the presence of Super Mutants in DC (on the other side of the country from FO2 - they were bred in vats) is ridicilous. It's a bad Fallout game. It's not such a horrible post-apocalyptic game. I'd give it a 2 out of 5.

Egads! They didnt change the file extensions@!

Originally Posted by DrJonez

Hey look, Kura is showing how edgy and anti-establishment he is by hating on something that the majority of people really like. Shocking!

This is rather funny.

Considering that you are the person to say that you are morbidly obese on purpose because anybody in shape is a "sheep."

Originally Posted by Kurayami

It's the only one that matters considering that the vast majority of the people playing had never heard of Fallout before a year ago.

dude

thats a bold statement

Van Buren was was dated and doomed to fail. This was the next logical step in the franchise, and I think Bethesda did pretty good considering the scrutiny they were under.

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Originally Posted by -Jekyll

Egads! They didnt change the file extensions@!

ESM = Elder Scrolls Master

If you're going to spend two years telling the world that you definitely are not creating Oblivion with guns, then you might want to consider, oh, you know, making a tiny change to the very first thing that many people see when starting the game that suggests otherwise.

It shows how little work they did on the backend of it. It is essentially a standalone mod.